AS SOON AS HE FINISHED his story, Candice looked down at the floor. She seemed absorbed in a great set of thoughts. She tried to remember where she had heard a similar story before. The mechanisms of her subconscious went into action, forcing her brain to recover images lost in the past. The macabre detail of the warning that spoke of safeguarding a secret, as well as the ritual of cutting out the tongue of anyone who broke an oath, were part of a series of details that seemed vaguely familiar to her.
That is the initiation oath of the Freemasons of Scotland!
She realized this mentally. She congratulated herself, believing that she had found some parallel between Viana's torture and an ancient law of the Masonic lodge of Edinburgh. However, it was too early to tell Greg. First, she would have to check if she was on the right track.
— Turn on the computer," she said to him mysteriously. — I would really like to take a look at the manuscript.
— Are you sure you want to share this with me? — Greg tried to warn her, once again, of the danger she was running by helping him. The young woman, who had washed her hands, energetically made her decision very clear, in a deep but intense voice:
— It won't be so easy for you to get rid of me... — she kissed him almost on the lips, pulling her away at the last moment so she could stand up. — Now, turn on the computer and let's look at this mysterious text... I have a feeling.
A few minutes later, they were looking together at that confusing thing that Jorge had sent before he died. It was identical to Geovanna's, but the paleographer had added a few sentences at the end of that message:
— Nostradamus: Century 1, Stanza XXVII. Who is capable of seeing, from below, the crack in the chain link?
— Here it is — said Gregory Evans, sitting at his office desk — a cipher code composed of Greek and Latin letters and Arabic numbers. A damned cryptogram, impossible to interpret.
— And what does that mean? — Alissa pointed with her index finger to the last lines of the message.
— I have no idea! But it must be something important, for him to have taken the trouble to add it to the text. Maybe it's a warning, or even something I should understand or look for. I'll study it later, right now what worries me most is deciphering this alphabet soup.
— It's a medieval nomenclature — she said, with certainty —... a list — she concluded, shyly.
— A what...?
— A system of transcription rules, thanks to which a message containing secret information is transformed into an encrypted message...
Candice, who had just managed to avoid a yawn, used the paleography lessons she had learned at university.
— During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most widely used procedures in diplomatic mail was the mixed substitution system. In it, Arabic numerals, common and invented letters were used to replace the characters of the alphabet. The transmitter and receiver had a transcription code. One used it to write the cryptogram, the other to translate the text.
— Viana was able to do it without a code — he observed. — But he was a genius in his field, able to read the spelling of ancient Scandinavian writings blindfolded. I, on the other hand, feel incapable of seeing certain things even without any obstruction. This jumble of letters is enough to drive anyone crazy.
— My dear, what you lack is perspective... — she commented, looking at him tenderly. — You have the solution to the problem in your own home. What happens is that you blind yourself, to the point of not realizing what is before your eyes...
She could not help but show her creativity. Showing off her skills in public satisfied her vanity too much.
— But I will tell you about that later. Now I need to prove one detail.
She allowed herself the right to leave him aside, to take his place. She was certain that she would find the weapons she needed to fight in this unique crusade on the web of networks. There was nothing that could not be found on the Internet.
She left her email to type the words "oath" and "Edinburgh Archives" into the Google search engine. Seconds later, several web pages appeared on her computer screen, all containing those terms. Without thinking twice, Candice clicked on one that spoke of operational Freemasonry. Greg then remembered the maxim written by the killer in Jorge's apartment. It mentioned the word "lodge." That was precisely the name given to the brotherhood formed by the Freemasons.
Alissa began to read the text quickly. With movements of the mouse, she downloaded pages at great speed. Sometimes she stopped to take a look and, soon after, she went back up to the beginning of the list.
— Yes, here it is! — she exclaimed, unable to hide her joy at finding it.