The Queen's Cipher (63 page)

Cheryl had also been doing her homework. “What bothers you about Van Horn is his eccentricity. He’s the nut who spent a fortune on developing artificial intelligence and exploring human immortality but who got himself fined for shoplifting. He stole a Snickers bar from a Tampa Bay supermarket when he had five hundred dollars in his wallet. What does that tell you about him?”

“That he’s not to be trusted.”

As they walked on Freddie told her about Coconut Grove’s history. How it had been a magnet for the youth counterculture hosting love-ins and rock concerts. He showed her the Convention Centre in which The Doors’ doomed heroin-taking lead singer Jim Morrison had dropped his leather trousers on stage and been arrested for indecency.

“That was back in the swinging sixties. Long before rising property prices changed things.”

Cheryl looked at the modern landscape of expensive condominiums and yacht clubs. “This wouldn’t light my fire,” she sniffed.

One thing that hadn’t changed was Jack Van Horn’s period home. The reclusive mogul lived in an architect designed Italian Renaissance villa and, to keep people at bay, had surrounded it with a high stone wall and electrically operated wrought-iron gates.

“There has to be some kind of voice activated entry system,” Cheryl used her long fingernails to prise the nameplate away from the wall. The plaque opened to reveal a steel keypad. She pressed the call button and heard a ringing tone.

“Van Horn residence,” said an amplified female voice.

“Dr Brett and Miss Stone to see Mr Van Horn,” she replied crisply.

“Hey fokes, Jack tole me ya were comin,” boomed out of the box.

It was the voice of the Deep South, the old Confederacy and, to combat it, Cheryl reverted to Cockney. After an exchange of pleasantries neither party could possibly have understood, the gates swung open to reveal a long winding drive whose gravel sweep had long since choked with weeds.

Cheryl’s first reaction was one of disappointment. According to her tourist guide the house and gardens embodied ‘the spirit of a bygone opulent age.’ Built in 1916 and named after its Colombian architect, Cartagena was full of good intentions that had never been properly realized. Poison ivy and Virginia creepers had entrapped the live oak and cabbage palms while clumps of bamboo and ficus had been allowed to spread their invasive roots beneath a cracked and pitted pathway. It was as if the garden had grown old and fallen asleep.

“Decline and fall of the House of Van Horn,” she muttered, pointing towards the dry sarcophagus-shaped fountain and crumbling statues on what had once been the southern terrace. “I thought grandfather Reuben made squillions out of corned beef?”

Freddie shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a familiar story. Sunk in indolence and debauchery, his heirs and assigns squandering his fortune, chewing bang and fondling concubines …”

“While listening to their know-it-all tutor quoting Macaulay’s jaundiced view of Indian princes! But what we have here isn’t decadence, its philistine neglect. Fancy letting all these Greek statues go to rack and ruin. You loot Europe for its art treasures, bring them back here for your pleasure, and yet you can’t be bothered to take care of them.”

To have so much and do so little with it offended her socialist heart. Even in class-conscious Britain, money mattered more than lineage but it was what you did with your filthy lucre that defined you. Here, in the land of the free, she had expected money to talk, not to snore in the afternoon sun.

Long before the house came into sight they could hear the sound of hammering, the revving of engines and the squeal of heavy duty brakes. Cartagena was a work in progress. The Venetian-style palazzo was covered in scaffolding and hessian sheeting and surrounded by workmen cutting, welding and pouring cement, while crews in safety harnesses repaired cracks and leaks in its stucco and limestone walls.

Cheryl took his hand as she tried to negotiate the duckboards that were their only passage to the front door. “It’s odd, isn’t it, that Francis Bacon’s private letters should end up in a place like this.”

“I don’t know, impoverished Brits have been selling their heritage to Americans for a century or more and no one seems to have bothered much about it. How else could the Folger Library have acquired a third of the surviving copies of the
First Folio
? And it’s not just Shakespeare that’s being taken over; it’s all our best writers. Cultural imperialism, I call it.”

He pressed a chipped porcelain bell push and the door was opened by a heavily made-up woman in her late thirties. She had streaky blond hair combed back to the shoulders and was wearing a tight mini-skirt, a black T-shirt commemorating a Grateful Dead tour and absurdly high heels.

“Great to meet y’all,” her glassy blue eyes swept over them. The voice was low and throaty, as though corroded by cigarettes. “The name’s Charlene.” 

She ushered them into an Aladdin’s cave of antique furniture and fittings displayed without any apparent thought for period or design. They followed her as she clip-clopped her way across an imposing reception room where contract Mexican cleaners were vacuuming Aubusson carpets and polishing the Louis Quinze furniture that lined the pink damask walls. Beyond that was an even larger chamber where Empire gilt chairs clashed horribly with the Chinese silk wallpaper and white plaster figures of classical nymphs. This, she told them, was ‘Jack’s den.’     

The man they had come to see was slumped on a striped settee in front of a giant screen. Jack Van Horn was a small, sallow-faced man who had elected to combine frayed denim shorts and yellow flip-flops with an expensive blue and white striped Italian shirt. There was a strong whiff of alcohol on his breath and he hadn’t shaved for days.

“You’ve met Charlene,” he said. “She’s my personal assistant. Knows where the bodies are buried.”

As his eyes wandered back to the eighty four inch television he volunteered the information that the Marlins were losing again, 4-2 at the bottom of the eighth.

“No surprise there,” Cheryl chirped brightly. “Just like last year when they got off to a fast start and ended up last in their division.”

Van Horn looked at her in surprise. “How do you know so much, young lady?”

“Oh, I’m a great baseball fan, always have been.”

“Okay, tell me this honey. What’s wrong with the Marlins this year?”

She had anticipated the question. “Well, for a start, there’s a gaping hole in the middle of their batting order and their relief pitchers are absolute crap.”

“Right on both counts,” Van Horn said, switching off the television. “What would you do about it?”

Before coming to Miami, Cheryl had downloaded Van Horn’s Wikipedia entry and learned that he was the Miami Marlins’ honorary president. Her head was full of baseball trivia, of curve balls, double plays and timeouts, all of which came in handy as she explained why she would sack the coach and his team of talent scouts.

Van Horn’s reedy voice interrupted her flow. “I feel drier than happy hour at the Betty Ford clinic. Charlene, be a good little mouse and fetch another bottle of Jack Daniels from the pantry.”

The billionaire stared at his assistant’s plump bottom as she sashayed out of the room. “Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the book deal. You’ll be planning to do all the writing now, Dr Brett. Pity about Strachan though.”

“Isn’t it,” Freddie agreed. “Of course, we’ll fully acknowledge Donald Strachan’s contribution.”

Charlene returned with the sour mash whiskey. Van Horn gestured towards some dirty looking glasses on a lacquered beech sideboard table. “Fancy a drink?”

They declined and watched him swallow a tumbler in one fluid movement. He gazed at his assistant through lecherous, bloodshot eyes.

“That skirt is so short I can see your religion,” he told her.

“Lawd Jack, what you go shamin’ me in company? I do declare you’re as drunk as a skunk and twice as sassy.”

Van Horn’s brow darkened and Cheryl had visions of their book deal going up in smoke.

“Tell me, Mr Van Horn,” she said hastily. “Why are you a Baconian when the Oxford Theory is much more fashionable in America? There’s even a Roland Emmerich movie about it.”

Given someone else on whom to vent his rage, Van Horn wasted no time in doing so. “What in tarnation was that German peckerhead doing with his film! It was as dumb as a box of rocks. It made intelligent-design folk seem intelligent. As for that English schoolmaster’s theory, it’s a crock of shit – Looney by name and loony by nature if you ask me.”

He was certainly a man of moods. They were like quickly moving weather fronts.

“You still haven’t told me why you became a Baconian,” she said cheekily.

Van Horn looked at her through watery eyes. “It all began when Grandpa Reuben toured Europe during the First World War buying up art treasures. He got himself a copy of Shakespeare’s
First Folio
and found a Bacon letter in the stitching. That started him off and I’ve carried on the tradition. I’m hoping Dr Brett’s book will stir up a hornet’s nest in America.”

“So what’s next?” asked Freddie, hoping for a legal document to sign.

Their host rubbed the stubble on his chin reflectively. Putting down his whiskey tumbler he beckoned for them to follow him. “Before we put our names to anything, there’s a bunch of people I want you to meet in the boardroom. Hope you don’t mind about that.”

Of course Freddie minded. You could see it on his face.

“Are you alright?” Cheryl whispered urgently as Van Horn led the way down another long corridor.

“Sure, couldn’t be more so,” he replied. “Totally out of my depth though.”

The boardroom turned out to be a gloomy library where the curtains were permanently drawn to protect ancient paper and leather from the harsh Floridian sun. In the centre of the room, illuminated by overhead spotlights, three people sat at a mahogany conference table. Van Horn introduced them as his ‘three wise men’ even though one of them was a power-dressing blonde woman. She, it transpired, was the CEO of Key Lime Publishing while the smiling giant in the sharkskin suit headed up the cable network channels and the thin, intense man in the black polo neck doubled as chief press officer and managing editor of Van Horn’s ailing newspaper empire.

“Right, listen up folks; I’d like to introduce my guests, Dr Brett and Miss Stone from Oxford University who are here today to discuss a book deal which, as you know, is close to my heart. But I want you to put that out of your minds and judge our English friends’ proposal strictly on merit. If it doesn’t make strategic and financial sense, we don’t do it. End of story.” 

Sitting at the boardroom table, Van Horn was a different man, sober and sensible.

The first thing for discussion was Freddie’s proposed article for the
London Review of
Books
. He explained that it would concentrate solely on the Bodley letters and what they revealed about Francis Bacon, the gentleman spy. Van Horn’s press officer shook his head in dismay. Richard Klein thought the magazine piece would serve as a spoiler, reducing the value of what he called ‘the corporate package.’ It was important, Klein said, to control the news agenda, particularly at a time of slumping ad sales.

“I-I think you’re mistaken in that,” Freddie replied, trying to control his stutter and grin at the same time. “The article is simply an appetizer. It introduces people to the idea of co-authorship.”

“I reckon Dr Brett is right,” said Van Horn decisively. “Let’s move on.”

Cheryl breathed a sigh of relief. One hurdle had been cleared.

Next to speak was the grinning colossus who ran Van Horn’s cable news channels. Edward Lewis was an English journalist who had made his name in the murky waters of American reality television. In judging a peak hour singing competition Lewis had seduced and bullied contestants in equal measure. Today he was oozing charm.

“Judging from Dr Brett’s synopsis, V.H, I’d say his book is a winner. Initial disbelief gave way to excitement as I realized what we could do with this. For a start, there is a history show to be made about the clandestine activities of medieval monks. We follow the cipher trail from the Benedictine abbot to the Virgin Queen’s magician, the double agent who blew the whistle on the Spanish Armada and on to the tortured genius that was Francis Bacon. What a story! You couldn’t make it up.”

As on television, so in the flesh, Cheryl thought. Lewis was a smoothie, a shallow, smart-talking dissembler but, fortunately for them, Van Horn hadn’t seen through him.

“I’m also impressed by the fact that the ciphers Dr Brett decoded – the number alphabet and the cipher square – have a provenance and a history. They weren’t invented by him. And with the latest digital technology we can visualize the actual process of decipherment, hit the jackpot …”

“You talk about jackpots, Eddie,” his boss interrupted him. “Can we make money out of this?”

“We surely can. It’s a sexy subject as is Bacon’s alleged royal birth. Think of the documentary drama we’d commission on Queen Elizabeth, the woman who reinvented herself as a virgin and fooled people for forty years. We’ll get Helen Mirren to play her. Pure gold dust, I’d say.”

Van Horn’s small, greedy eyes were gleaming. “What do you think Rich? Deal or no deal?”

Richard Klein cleared his throat. Turning towards the chair he revealed the sharp profile of an ascetic. Put a black hood on his head, Cheryl thought, and he would be Savonarola’s spitting image, more likely to burn books than praise them. And how right she was!

“I know you’re very keen to promote this book, Jack,” Klein began, “but I think it would be a mistake. At a time when our newspapers are losing money hand over fist, with soaring costs and falling circulation, can we really afford to antagonize all those readers who hold contrary opinions to our own? The Shakespeare authorship question is an absolute minefield. Learned professors and literary experts are positively vitriolic on the subject and the theorists are no better, hurling insults around as they champion at least eighty different candidates. And it’s not as if the Bacon theory was even fashionable. It was superseded long ago. The Oxfordians have taken over and they’ve got important backers down here in the South, big money men who advertise with us, and they’ll be real upset if we nail our colours to another mast.”