WHILE WAITING FOR THE EMAIL, he decided to take a look at the sentence Jorge had added to his message. He sat down in front of the computer again. He accessed his email to study the text in depth. After waiting a few seconds, he read the enigmatic message again:
— Nostradamus: Century I, Stanza XXVII. Who is capable of seeing, from below, the crack in the chain link?
He was only a passing acquaintance with the life and work of Michel de Nostradamus, a famous physician from the 16th century, whose prophecies earned him the recognition of Catherine de Medici and King Charles IX.
His Centuries continued to haunt the world, four centuries later, especially since they tried to relate certain stanzas of his work to the September 11 attacks. Cursed be the day on which Gregory Evans worked the most in his entire life. Several writers had analyzed the complex content of his poems and no one had reached an agreement when it came to defining the date of his predictions about the near future of humanity.
He did not have a copy of the Centuries at home, although he had the help of the web. As Candice had done before, Greg entered the words "Nostradamus" and "Centuries" into the search engine window. In a few minutes, the writer's complete work was before his eyes.
Now he had to find stanza XXVII. He slowly turned the pages until he found what he was looking for:
"Under the Guien chains of the wounded sky, not far from there lies the hidden treasure, which after being imprisoned for long centuries, will die if it finds the stimulus of the popped eye..."
He read the quatrain several times and, no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible to guess what that set of words meant. He then tried the other sentence:
— Who is able to glimpse, from below, the crack in the chain link?
There was something in the text that triggered his warning sensors, making him relive a moment he had already experienced. He was sure he had heard it before, but he couldn't remember when or why.
He sat there mulling it over, figuring it out, until he looked at the clock on his computer. It was one twenty in the morning. An hour had passed since Alissa had left. Hoping to have better luck with the manuscript, he opened his email again.
There was the email Candice had promised.
He opened the attached Word document to see what it contained. In addition to a warm greeting and a warning phrase reminding him to be very careful, he found the frequency table:
HIGH AVERAGE LOW LOW
E -16.78% R — 4.94% Y -1.54% J — 0.30%
A — 11.96% U — 4.80% Q -1.53% NH — 0.29%
0 — 8.69% 1-4.15% B — 0.92% Z — 0.15%
L — 8.37% T — 3.31% H — 0.89% X — 0.06%
S — 7.88% C — 2.92% G — 0.73% K — 0.02%
N — 7.01% P — 2.77% F — 0.52% W — 0.01%
D — 6.87% M — 2.12% V — 0.39%
With these references he could begin his work. It wouldn't be easy, but it wasn't impossible either. He hoped to translate it that very night. He went to take the last sip of his third cabernet sauvignon, but before doing so, he raised his glass:
— For you, who never cease to amaze me!
After toasting in honor of Candice, he got up and went to the kitchen. He urgently needed a cup of coffee. It would be a very long night, since he would still have to send Geovanna an email with a detailed report of his investigations, first of all, and then begin translating the manuscript, a task that promised to be as complicated as it was interesting.