Bingo.
They shook hands.
“Good to meet you, Gianni.”
Annja didn’t miss the fact that he seemed to hold her hand a fraction of a moment longer than necessary.
They followed Charles inside.
“I suspect you’re eager to get started so we’ll save the tour for later and I’ll take you to the room we’ve set up, if that’s all right with you…?”
They made small talk as he led them through the house. She could feel Gianni’s gaze on her as they walked, and she assumed he was sizing her up. Her long auburn hair, athletic form and decidedly feminine curves were likely a far cry from the stuffy museum heads he’d been dealing with about the library.
Then again, he might just be admiring her for totally different reasons. And wouldn’t that be nice?
Yes, it would. She hadn’t had a date in what felt like forever; she been too busy dashing here and there around the globe on behalf of Chasing History’s Monsters, never mind her unofficial role as champion of the innocent.
Charles took them to a small room off the second floor. The diary was waiting for her in the center of the table like a long-lost friend and she went to it eagerly, pulling on the pair of white cotton gloves Charles gave her. Then he and Gianni excused themselves to go back to the meal they’d been sharing. Annja didn’t want a thing. She was too excited.
The journal was thin, bound in dark leather and tied together with a red ribbon that had seen better days. Maybe that’s why Charles Davies had tied his invitation with a ribbon. Cute. It rested on a glass platform designed so she could observe the specimen from all sides. It came equipped with two lamps, one shining down on the book from above and the other shining up on it from below. A legal pad and pencil lay on the table, in case she wanted to take notes.
Annja unzipped her knapsack, removing both her laptop and her digital camera. Booting the laptop, she connected it with a thin white cable to the camera and, after verifying the link between the two devices was working properly, began taking photos. This was so much a part of her standard procedure that it had become second nature to her. She always made a visual record of the artifact first, before beginning a more hands-on examination, and she had no intention of taking shortcuts now just because she wasn’t in the field. What she was doing was simply good science, and if there was anything she prided herself on, it was being thorough. That way, the client couldn’t ever accuse her of being sloppy or, worse yet, unprofessional. Her reputation was all she had in this line of work.
Finished with the camera, she turned her attention to the journal itself. She untied the ribbon and set it gently aside. With anticipation thrumming through her veins, she opened the book and stared at the crisp, clean handwriting on the first page. The Italian unfurled smoothly in her mind.
The morning began with a personal summons from the czar.
Three uninterrupted hours later she closed the journal and sat back. Charles and Gianni must have looked in on her, but she hadn’t noticed them and fortunately they’d let her be. The legal pad beside her was covered with notes, and a fresh set of pictures, this time of some of the journal’s pages, were displayed on the laptop. The journal was just what Gianni and, by extension, Charles had claimed it to be—a firsthand account of the design and construction of the vault commissioned by Ivan the Terrible to house the Library of Gold.
At first Fioravanti’s excitement at being chosen for such an important project had practically leaped off the page and he’d been clear and direct in his language. This changed once he began to suspect that he might never live to see the finished result. By the last several pages he’d become downright evasive in his wording.
But what had interested Annja the most was the final page of the journal. Unlike all of the others, this one was clearly in code, with a series of letters laid out in a rectangular arrangement with eleven rows of eighteen letters.
CAECPARTIZSNAIIYOI
AETPCIOUIRCIEIEUTC
WRRWODTOAAEEINMOFN
NTWTBAURYTIOHUPSUO
SNROTWESUVTKUAIASR
AECTMTSIBUNRASHYAR
LDEREGOWOTSWONIUHT
TTCUDUSIHOOASISELE
RMNINEEEREUNNGPFYD
MNOGAPIOOADTSDETUL
IEEUEFGSENRSSTOETO
It was a form of substitution code and, luckily, one she was familiar with. The trick was to lay out the message with the proper number of rows, each with the right number of letters, until something made sense when you read down the vertical rows.
After a little bit of trial and error, Annja settled on twenty-two rows, each with nine letters.
CAECPARTI
ZSNAIIYOL
AETPCLOUL
RCIEIEUTC
WRRWODTOA
AEEINMOFN
NTWTBAURY
TIOHUPSUO
SNROTWESU
VTKUAIASR
AECTMTSIB
UNRASHYAR
LDEREGOWO
TSWONUUHT
TTCUDISIH
OOASISELE
RMNINEEER
EUNNGPFYD
MROGAPIOO
ADTSDETUL
IEEUEFGSF
NRSSTOETO
Then, reading down the rows moving from left to right, Annja spelled out the entire message, inserting breaks between words where they seemed most appropriate. To her surprise, it had been coded into English.
CZAR WANTS VAULT TO REMAIN A SECRET. INTENDS TO MURDER ENTIRE WORK CREW. CANNOT ESCAPE WITHOUT AROUSING SUSPICION BUT AM SENDING A DETAILED MAP WITH GIUSEPPE FOR YOU TO USE AS YOU SEE FIT. GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN. YOUR BROTHER DOLFO.
If we could only get our hands on that map…
Charles’s confident smile. Did he already have it? Is that why he’s so convinced the journal will lead him to the library?
There was only one way to find out.
Annja took a photograph of the page containing the unbroken code and then one of the decoded message she’d worked out on her scratch pad. Afterward she packed everything up and emerged from the examination room to find Charles’s butler, a tall, thin balding man with tufts of gray hair sprouting out of his ears and dressed in a sharply pressed black suit, waiting for her.
“Sir Charles and his guest have retired to the study. Sir Charles left instructions for me to guide you there, if that would be all right with you?”
Annja indicated the hallway before them with a sweep of her arm. “Lead on.”
He took her down a few of the hallways she’d passed through earlier on her way to the examination room and then up a set of stairs to a room on the third floor. Gianni and Charles were deep in discussion over what looked to be a map—presumably of Moscow—but broke off when Annja arrived. The butler served them all drinks—Scotch for their host, espresso for Gianni and a mug of hot cocoa for Annja—and then they settled down to discuss their next steps. Annja and Gianni sat in leather armchairs in front of the desk with Charles in his wheelchair between them.
Annja didn’t waste any time asking