The Decrypter: Secret of the Lost Manuscript (Calla Cress Techno Thriller Series: Book 1) (20 page)

British Library

Rare Books & Cryptology Reading Room

“Nash, I’m not leaving without that book.”

Nash leaned into her.  “We’ll find it.  We just need to think.  Where would someone hide it?” He surveyed the room.  “Let’s check the rare books again.”

In one forward movement, Calla began a nervous pace up and down the aisle.  “You’re right.  If this book was not meant to be found, then it would be tucked away amongst rare books.  If a book is not checked out for a period of thirty years, or possibly a generation, it is written off.  Eventually, it is boxed off to some warehouse or destroyed.”

“Maybe that’s what your parents intended,” Nash said.

“But why not just destroy it.  Why place it here?”

He raked a hand through his hair.  “That way there’s no blood on their hands, so to speak.  Or, they just needed it to be found by…just you.”

Calla smiled, grateful for Nash’s support. She imagined she’d made no sense since meeting him at the library. Yet, here he was encouraging her ambitious pursuits.

The rare books area comprised of one short section tucked away in the back, lined along two shelves.  They each took one shelf and scoured for anything resembling a journal, notebook or even a scroll.

Calla rested her hand on the top row of the shelf.  It shook and without warning, one leg collapsed. 

The heavy steel tipped, plummeting hundreds of volumes in her direction. 

Nash threw a hand on the top of the shelf, balancing the edges with his weight. He tilted the collapsing shelf and swiftly placed a fallen book where the leg had broken.  Pulling his hand away, his thumb fell of the spine of a book the size of a cell phone, bound in plum velvet.  He drew it off the tight shelf where it had been camouflaged by shadows cast by the shelf’s edges. 

He secured the shelf firmly against the wall.

Thankful that she had not been crushed by the weight of the bulky shelves, Calla set her gaze on the book barely larger than the palm of Nash’s hand.  She eased it out of his hands. 

Its velvet cover felt smooth under her touch and not a speck of dust rested on its engraved exterior. 

“Nash, it has the same symbol as the one on the manuscript.”

An exact replica of the hieroglyphic she’d seen on the first page of the Deveron Manuscript rested in the bottom corner of its extravagant cover. 

For several moments they inspected the furtive symbol, which was beginning to feel more proverbial now.

Without warning, the door swung open. 

This time, another security member shot her head through and cast them a patronizing glare.  “Your time is up!”

Nash’s grin broke into a cocky smirk.  “We’ll be right out.  Thanks for your fantastic help.”

She stood still.

For all of five seconds, they thought she’d escort them out.  Instead, she hesitated a few more seconds before striding back to the door.  “Start moving, please,” she said and then marched out of the room.

Calla placed the miniature journal in the back pocket of her jeans.  “We’re taking this,” she whispered.

Nash lowered his voice.  “Calla…what?…Why—”

She laid a persuasive hand on his shoulder.  “If you observed carefully, it doesn’t have any bar codes or chips.  This book is not part of the main collection.  Trust me, I work with artifacts all day.”

 She drew it from her pocket and flipped through its pages.  “It even has the key we need.  I’ll bet the library doesn’t have it listed as inventory.”

Nash’s jaw dropped slightly, unable to disguise his astonishment.  In all the months he’d known Calla, he’d never seen her so determined.  He watched her dauntlessness confidence with amusement.  “After you, Miss Cress.”

They shot the security woman wide grins as they coasted out of the room.  When they crossed over to the main entrance, Calla gripped Nash’s arm in warning.  “Here goes.”

He shook his head in slight amusement curious whether she’d really do it. “Still with you, beautiful.”

They inched towards the revolving gate. A uniformed staff member watched as library visitors made their exits and entrances.  Heavily secured with cameras, the exit stood only a few feet from where they waited for their turn through the turnstiles.

Calla fumbled for their passes.  She handed Nash his and took note of two security systems in front of the exit.  Standard for commercial retail and library environments, they’d not paid attention to the protective system on the way in. 

Nash glided through the security barriers tapping his pass on the indicated reader without interruption.

Calla placed her pass on the reader and traipsed through the bars.
Okay, here goes nothing.

“Step back, please!”

She flipped her head round only to face a stout security member. 

With shoulders curling forward, anguish settled in her gut.

Nash made his way back towards her. 

The guard eyed her for several seconds.  “Miss Cress.  It says here that your pass is due for renewal.  Make sure you get it renewed if you want to keep using the facilities.”

With a curt bow, he rounded on her and turned to the person next in line.

They found Calla’s Maserati in the garage and Nash surveyed the dimmed, parking area before giving the all clear.

Calla sank into the driver’s seat and by tacit consent, they flipped the book open.

* * *

No one took note of his approach.

Two streets over, an obscure figure lurked from behind the wall.  It made its way towards the library entrance. 

With his face, concealed by shadows cast by a black, baseball cap, he sailed with brisk steps, determined to see it for himself.

He disappeared into the British Library.

There was no need to take the stairs or the elevators; he simply sauntered through doors and walls until he reached his destination.  He stood outside the Manuscripts Reading Room, and then pushed his head through the door, defying nature and physics. 

He floated into the room, scouring each shelf and looking over the shoulders of quiet readers.  None ascertained his presence. 

Soon, he found the fourth floor below ground and pranced upon the cryptology shelves.  The area had been deserted and with no one loitering about, he took a seat on a table facing the shelves.  Closing his eyes, he stretched his robust arms above his head. He wore all black, but there was no obscurity in him. 

Crack!

He opened his eyes in time to see a swift, shadowed man hold a knife to his neck. 

The aggressor did not speak, but kept the glistening blade at his Adam’s apple. 

In one rapid movement, he hoisted the attacker’s hand from his throat and launched him to the floor.

Pained by the jolt, the attacker turned and gawked at him with disgust.  Not wishing to be undermined, he pulled out a firearm and aimed its barrel at the looming figure’s chest.

Still seated at the table, the figure clamped his hand on the gun in one sharp maneuver.

The firearm disintegrated into ash and settled like powdered flakes at his feet. 

The weapon had been no match.

Slate recovered from the loss of his weapon.  With only his knife to defend himself, he stood back bewildered by defeat.  No one had ever crushed him in combat. Would this be a first?

He stared blankly.  “Who are you?”

The figure rose, all of seven feet in height.

Was it possible?

Slate turned to flee.

The man moved one step towards him, cutting him off at the door with a swift neck strike.

The impact slammed Slate against the door frame and gathering his wits, he scrambled toward the exit.

Stumbling over his feet, Slate plummeted to the ground, rose abruptly and fled out of the room.  He glanced back once and then no more. 

The towering man retreated.  He reverted to his modest six foot -three and turned to the shelves muttering.  “Good girl. You got here before he did.”

He came out from under the shadow of his dark baseball cap. 

His face was now visible.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Calla wound down the window and leaned forward inserting the key into the ignition. She swung the car out of the parking lot and took a deep breath. The sun beat down through the windshield onto her face as she maneuvered traffic through Central London.

Thirty minutes later, the Maserati pulled into a parking space in front of the estate in West London.

On entering, Nash dropped his shoulder bag in the Persian chair in the entryway.  “Are you sure we can use Allegra’s place?” he asked.

“This is where I'm staying for now.”

They moved into the den where Calla drew the blinds and gratefully took a seat at the desk.

Pearl appeared from the kitchen.  “Your phone has been ringing all morning, Miss Cress.” She set it down on the executive desk.

Calla glanced at Nash.  “Must be Mason,” she said.  “I won’t answer it.”

Nash took a seat across from her.  “What does he want?”

“I don’t know.  He gave me that phone before I went to Berlin and treated me like some sort of technology, illiterate person.”

She switched on her electronic tablet.  “I forgot to take it with me. He wanted a log of all Allegra’s activities.”

“Really?”

She cast Pearl a grateful smile. “Thanks, Pearl.  Just ignore it,” Calla said. “We’ll be working in here for a little while.  Please do not worry about our lunch. We can help ourselves in the kitchen.”

“All right.  In that case, I’ll make sure you have something to help yourselves to.”

Pearl left quietly with an understanding look.

Nash hunched over the table examining Calla’s movements.  “What do you plan to do?” 

She pulled the journal and the manuscript from her bag.  “Get to work on this.”

She spread out the Deveron Manuscript across the desk, as Nash considered its intricate design and make. 

“It’s mind-blowing, isn’t it?  Someone took their art seriously,” she said.

“I agree.” 

“This is where I need your investigative eyes and genius mind.” She passed a hand through her ponytail and pointed to the diagrams she’d noticed earlier.  “Look at these three shapes.  They form a three-sided illustration.”

“Why’s each figure marked with different symbols?” Nash asked.

Calla shrugged her shoulders.  “Let’s check the journal.”

She lifted the journal’s velvet cover and slid a finger through its pages, tracing the lines of writing that grew smaller and more cramped at the bottom.  “Someone created a cypher for the symbols in the Deveron, an asymmetric cryptograph.  You know, in which there are two related keys to unlock a message.”

Nash thought for a moment. “You mean just like with computers over the Internet. At NSA, we’ve used asymmetric cryptography. We create a pair of keys to encrypt and decrypt a message so that it arrives securely.”

“Exactly, we have to think in those terms.”  She continued flipping through the book’s delicate pages.  “The journal must have clues to unlock the Deveron.”

Calla stopped at a detailed handwritten page and rubbed her forehead.  “Someone created a set of encryption keys when the manuscript was conceived, one which they kept private and another they sent to a second party.”

Nash raised his eyes to her. “That second person is the one who wrote the Deveron Manuscript and encrypted the manuscript using the key sent to them by the first person.”

She nodded slowly.

“How’d you figure that out?” he said.

“It’s actually an effective way of encrypting.  It’s been used for centuries.”

Nash tilted his chin upward.  “That means the second party then sent the Deveron document back to the first person, so they could use their secret key to read the manuscript.”

“Exactly!  So what we have here on the third page of the journal is the original, secret key created by the first person,” Calla added.

Nash leaned back and placed his hands behind his head.  “The person who created the keys must’ve wanted his own way of interpreting the information he was sent, even if this meant nobody else did.”

“Right.  They used a secret code, one that was not mathematical.”

Nash rested his elbows on the large desk.  “I think it will take us some time to interpret.  You take the first three pages and I'll take the next four.”

After two hours of silent decrypting, Calla peered at Nash and moaned in exhaustion.  They had each grabbed pencil and paper and begun the lengthy process of analyzing each Deveron symbol on their respective pages, in relation to the key provided by the journal. 

“I think I have something now,” Calla said.

They assembled the papers they’d transcribed.  Nash scanned his closely written lines.  “There are three puzzles we need to unravel.  Here is what I found.”