CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
369 Fulham Road
Chelsea, London
Isabella was drifting off to sleep when a knock sounded on the door.
“No more needles,” she called out.
“How are you, Dr. Marin?”
She opened her eyes to see the female FBI agent who’d come to save her. Her blond hair was in a ratty ponytail, and she wore black-framed glasses. From twelve feet away, Isabella could see dark bruises on her wrists and arms, see how pale she was, the thick white bandage wrapped around her hand.
“What happened?”
Mike knew her voice was too loud because of her eardrums, but who cared? “Well, let’s see. Since I saw you last, a crazy falcon attacked me, Ardelean shot a missile into a house I was in, and I fell down a flight of stairs.” She came forward. “My name’s Michaela Caine, special agent, FBI. But none of this compares to what you’ve been through—may I call you Isabella?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’m Mike. Now, tell me the truth, how are you feeling?”
“I guess I’m okay, really. I keep telling them I’m fine, but they won’t leave me alone. A missile? Like the one they used to shoot down the helicopter?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. No one else was hurt.”
Isabella licked her tongue over her dry lips. “It seems like a nightmare now, like something so horrendous it really couldn’t have happened. But I know Gil is dead—at least in my head—but not here yet.” She touched her heart. “I know Radu is dead, too.” She swallowed tears. “Does Radu’s brother know he’s dead?”
“Yes, he does. And unfortunately, we can’t find him. But we do know he’s a very angry, out-of-control man at what he now sees as absolute betrayal. It doesn’t help he’s probably over the edge on all the LSD he was taking. He’s out for revenge. He blames those in power because they sent a team in a helicopter, namely us, to his home to save you, and Radu died. He blames all of us, really.”
Mike saw Isabella was trembling. She stepped to the hospital bed and touched her shoulder. “All you went through, it was horrible, all of it. I don’t know everything Ardelean did to you, but still, Isabella, you tried to save Radu. No, no, his death wasn’t your fault. You were heroic. But what about the Voynich?”
“It was about a recipe in the Voynich, part of it in the missing pages that I had. And it was about blood and how to combine them. What do you know about the Voynich manuscript?”
“One of my teammates was in art crimes, Agent Ben Houston. He worked the case when the Voynich was stolen from Yale. You met him, I believe. With Melinda St. Germaine?”
“Oh, yes. Was that only a couple of days ago?” She shook her head in wonder. “It seems like a decade. Agent Houston was kind and knowledgeable.”
“I know no one has ever been able to translate it or decode it—so tell me.”
Isabelle nodded. “The Voynich tells the story of the illegitimate line that started with Vlad Dracul’s half brothers. I’ve pieced together what I can and I think one of the twins was ill, an affliction of the blood. They tried to cure him—with herbs, with baths, but they didn’t know how blood worked. And so, when the brother Andrei bled uncontrollably and weakened, they came up with the idea to replace the blood. So Alexandru, the stronger of the two, found him blood to drink. This wasn’t quite that clear in the manuscript, but I believe it’s close enough.
“The Voynich manuscript is a record of their conversations about how the experiments were going. Roman and Radu both read and speak Voynichese. They’ve brought those two long-ago brothers into the present. Radu is—was—a brilliant scientist. Very strange, because of the limitations of his illness, but brilliant. The experiments he was doing were completely out of the box. The equipment—sorry, you already know this. Did Radu want me to give him all my blood? He wanted so much to live, as did Roman. Perhaps I would have survived for a while, depending on how long they would allow me to replenish my blood. Was I the match they’d been searching for? Yes, I believe so. Roman killed so many people, primarily Romanians, searching for a match. I think Roman made Radu into a monster.”
Mike shook her head. “No, he valued himself, his own life, over anyone else’s, including yours. He called you his blood sister, yet, if it came down to it, do you think he would have hesitated to exsanguinate you rather than accept his own death? None of it was right, Isabella. All of it was centuries-old madness.
“Your physician told me they’d drugged you, there were still traces in your blood.”
“Oh yes. After all the initial terror, whatever the drug Roman gave me made me feel wonderful. I wasn’t afraid any longer, even when they wheeled me in and hooked me up. I wasn’t even afraid when I saw my blood flowing through the tube into Radu’s arm.”
Mike said, “Did either of them mention where Roman lived when he wasn’t at the house with Radu?”
“They have some estate up north, where Roman takes his birds.” She shuddered. “He let one of them feed on my stomach. I will have the scars forever.”
Mike couldn’t imagine. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m alive,” Isabella said. “Without you, I’d be dead.”
Mike merely nodded. “Tell me about the missing Voynich pages you found in the British Museum. Isn’t that why Ardelean kidnapped you in the first place? To get those pages, to complete his recipe for Radu?”
Isabella stared at her, then shrugged. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. Maybe back as far as the time of Vlad Dracul, pages were ripped out of the manuscript. At some point, the pages were separated from the main manuscript, and moved from place to place. Where, I don’t know, until a young girl saw a man bury the pages under a rowan tree in Eastern Poland, back in 1912, I think. She was part of a large Romany tribe camped close by. She dug the pages up and took them back to the camp and showed them to my great-great-grandmother, Kezia. She was also known as the Old Princess. She could read the pages and prophesied twins of her line would come and they would read them and reunite them with the great manuscript, as she called the Voynich.
“Their stories were passed down to me. My sister and I were the first twins in nearly a hundred years. But my sister died when we were four years old. It was then I told my mother I heard the pages weeping.
“She and my father believed the pages would drive me mad, so they buried them in a lead box so I couldn’t ever hear them again. There’s more, of course, but eventually, after my mother’s death, in her will, she told me where to find the pages.”
Isabella studied Mike’s face. “You might believe me mad, but it’s the truth—even before I unwrapped the pages, I heard them singing to me, talking to me, and yes, crying. And I knew I had to reunite them with the great manuscript.
“But someone had stolen the Voynich from the Beinecke at Yale the year before. If I’d known in time, I would have stolen it myself. Instead, I came up with a plan. I pretended to find the pages and made a big announcement, praying the person who’d stolen the Voynich would come after the pages. I wanted him to come.
“I had a gun. I was ready.” She shuddered. “But it all happened so fast. I accepted Gil’s marriage proposal and this Dr. Laurence Bruce, really Roman Ardelean, showed up at the front door.” She swallowed. “Only he wasn’t the one who stole the Voynich.”
“No,” Mike said, “he wasn’t. Actually, it was a very bad man named Corinthian Jones who stole it, as leverage, to use on Ardelean. We even know where it is—in his safe.”
Isabella’s eyes flashed. “Do you know where the loose pages are too? I know Roman had them that night.”
“I don’t know, but I will alert everyone still at the house to look for them.”
“Are you going to put me in a straitjacket?”
Mike flashed back to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, its magic, its prophecy, and slowly shook her head. “I’ve seen and heard so many strange things this past year—well, let me say if we’re talking straitjackets, they’ll have to get two, one for each of us.” She leaned down, smoothed a hand across Isabella’s forehead. “Before the Voynich is returned to Yale, you can reunite the pages—yes, I know we’ll find them—with the great manuscript.” She paused, then said, “The Old Princess, that’s a lovely name.
“Now, can you think of anything to help us figure out what Ardelean might do?”
Isabella shook her head, said instead, “Thank you for saving me.”
Mike nodded and walked to the door. Isabella’s voice stopped her.
“Wait—I remember he did say he had plans, big plans. Something to do with a shipment and a man named Barstow. I only heard bits and pieces of the conversation, and something about it was time for this program to come to light. He was going to give the world a show. I don’t know what program he meant.”
Mike said, “I do. Thank you, Isabella.”