Free The Tenth Chamber by Glenn Cooper

ordered.
    They kept their voices low while they hungrily tucked into three-egg cheese omelettes and pommes frites.
    ‘You know I’ll have to drop everything,’ Luc said wistfully. ‘All my projects have to end. None of them will ever be finished.’
    ‘Well, that’s obvious,’ Hugo replied. ‘But you’re okay with that, no?’
    ‘Of course! I’m just feeling overwhelmed all of a sudden. You never prepare for something like this.’
    ‘I’m happy for you,’ Hugo said expansively with a touch of playful sarcasm. ‘You’ll be busy and famous, I’ll return to my grubby business life and only emerge from time to time to bask in your reflected glory. Please don’t forget your old friend down the line. Maybe you’ll name it, Pineau-Simard, or if you must, Simard-Pineau, and toss me a bone once in a blue moon when you’re on the chat shows.’
    ‘Don’t be so fast to disappear behind the curtain,’ Luc laughed. ‘You’ve got a job.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    ‘The manuscript. You’re the manuscript guy, remember?’
    ‘Surely it’s of less importance now.’
    ‘Not at all,’ Luc insisted, whispering. ‘The manuscript is part of this. When it’s time to tell the story to the world, we’ll have to understand its role. There’s some kind of important historical context that can’t be ignored. The book must be decoded,’ he whispered.
    ‘I suppose I can make some enquiries,’ Hugo sighed.
    ‘To whom?’
    ‘Ever hear of the Voynich manuscript?’
    Luc shook his head.
    ‘Well, to make a very long story a very short story, it’s a bizarre, possibly fifteenth-century manuscript that was acquired by a Polish rare-books dealer named Voynich in 1910 or thereabouts. It’s a fabulous thing, really, the craziest collection of fanciful illustrations of herbals, astronomical signs, biological processes, medicinal concoctions, even recipes, and it’s all written in a beautifully weird script and language that’s defied a century of deciphering efforts. Some think it was written by Roger Bacon or John Dee, both mathematical geniuses of their day who dabbled in alchemy circles, others think it’s a giant fifteenth- or sixteenth-century hoax. Anyway, I bring it up because, to this day, amateur and professional cryptographers have tried to break the code. I’ve met some of these people at seminars and conferences. They’re real characters with their own language. You should hear them go on about Beaufort ciphers and Zipf’s law and other crap, but I can contact one of the less loony ones and see if he’ll look at our book.’
    ‘Okay,’ Luc nodded. ‘Do it. But be very discreet.’
    The couple at the other table got up to leave without any attempting to pay. The young man pushed through the door first. Following behind, the woman glanced over her shoulder, looked directly at Hugo, and repeated that fleeting almost-a-smile before the door closed and she was gone.
    ‘Did you see that?’ Hugo asked Luc. ‘Maybe the countryside isn’t so bad after all.’
    Three men came in, two of them farm hands from the look, their hands dirty, shoes crusted with dirt. The third, an older man, was clean and well dressed in a suit without the tie. The café owner nodded to them from behind the bar and addressed the older man loudly by name. ‘Good day, Pelay. How are you?’
    ‘The same as I was at breakfast,’ he said gruffly, but while he was answering, he gawked unselfconsciously at Luc and Hugo.
    The trio occupied a rear corner table, talking among themselves.
    Luc felt distinctly uncomfortable. Since the café owner seemed to be communicating with the men behind them with his eyes, Luc felt as if he was in the children’s game, piggy in the middle. Every time Luc turned his head to look behind, the men glanced away and resumed their chat. Hugo seemed oblivious to the little drama, or perhaps, Luc, thought, he was being overly sensitive.
    The owner called over their heads. ‘Hey, Pelay, do you want some bacon