Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin I Series Book II

by Abby L. Vandiver

  To clear my mind, I decided to take a walk. It was a cold, breezy March day, but the wind didn’t seem to bother me. I had put on my black wool coat, black hat and gloves. I made my way up Ford Avenue, toward Euclid. My head tucked down into the collar of my coat, and my thoughts somewhere else. Millions of years in the past.

  As I walked, I decided to go to Q’doba. I thought maybe lunch would help me think. I waited at the light to cross over to Mayfield when I heard, “Hello, Dr. Dickerson.”

  “Can I help you?” I said, glancing over at Nikhil Chandra. He was dressed in grey corduroy pants, white shirt, and a Navy pea coat.

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  “How can I help you?” I asked, again.

  “What a difference a day makes.”

  “It’s been longer than a day since I’ve seen you. How about months? And how could I not remember you coming into my home with your lies.”

  “I understand you’ve attempted to see the book.”

  “I just accused you of being a liar. You don’t have anything to say to that.”

  He smiled. “No.” He hung his head and looked at me out the side of his eye.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “You went to see the Voynich Manuscript?”

  I swear, that man never answers one of my questions. Fine, I wasn’t answering his either.

  “And you didn’t tell me you wrote another book.” he said.

  How does he find out this stuff about me? My God, everyone always knows my business, and I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Do you believe the things that you wrote?”

  “Have you been trying to kill me?” I turned and looked directly at him.

  He coughed. Almost choking. “Excuse me?”

  “Do you plan on doing it now? Right here in the middle of the day? Pulling out a gun and shooting me. Right here on the street, in front of all of these people? Or, maybe you have a knife?”

  He laughed. “I’m a priest. I’d think you’d feel safer with me than with anyone.”

  “I don’t know that you are a priest,” I said, moving in closer to his face. “Where’s your collar.” I pointed to his neck. “Or have you since joined the Navy? And I do know that you don’t work for John Carroll,” I said.

  I had finally got around to Googling him. I hate when people do that. Find out your name and then Google it. But he knew where I lived. He knew about my work. I needed to find out about him.

  “Now you know my secret,” he said. “You want to tell me yours?” He stopped walking, and stood there with his hands in his pocket.

  “Uhm. What I want is for you to leave me alone.”

  “This time I know that there is something more that you have. But you don’t have it all yet.”

  “All of what?”

  “Have you ever read the Book of Enoch?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Vedas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very old documents.”

  “I know.”

  Why would he mention those things to me? They were all the things that had been included in that cryptic Sanskrit message. Perhaps he was the one trying to warn me.

  “None of them have what you need. Enoch only tells the story of what he heard, and what he saw. Not what he knew.”

  “How do you know what I need?” I asked.

  “Tell me, Dr. Dickerson, do you truly believe that ancient man’s advanced knowledge was all from his own ability? That there weren’t any extraterrestrials that came and impregnated the Neanderthal as you wrote in your book?”

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked him, pointedly. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “I think perhaps you have things that you could tell me, Justin. May I call you Justin?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I think you may know more than me,” he said.

  “And what is it that you think I know?”

  “The truth. And I believe that you can uncover it all.”

  “All of what? I can’t uncover anything.”

  “I suspect you can.”

  I didn’t say anything. Could he know about man coming from Mars? Could he know, from a source other than my book?

  Nah.

  He couldn’t know. So, then maybe he wanted something else. Maybe I should be afraid of this man. I stepped back from him.

  He smiled. “I’m a priest, remember? No need to feel afraid of me,” he said.

  Evidently, a mind-reading priest.

  “Look,” I said, undoing the belt on my coat and re-tying it tighter. “I don’t know what you want. Or, for that matter, who you are, so I am going to end this conversation now. Please, don’t bother me again.”

  “You must know that I am on your side. But there are others that might not be.”

  Did he know Professor Abelson?

  “Did you send me a message in Sanskrit?” I asked.

  “No. I don’t know Sanskrit. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Dr. Dickerson. I can help you get what you need.” He hesitated. “If you’ll let me, but I can’t help you keep safe. You’ll have to do that on your own. Have you seen that dark blue Taurus outside your house again?”

  Without acknowledging what he said, I turned to leave. He grabbed my arm and I pulled away.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t get in to see the book at the Beinecke Library at Yale. And I know the truth needs to be told. The world needs to know. We have to tell it.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. We. It’s time for it all to come out and we . . .” he nodded his head and lifted his eyebrows. “We need you to put all the pieces together and be the one to tell it. We’re counting on you, Justin. There’s that seminar coming up in Italy that I told you about the first time we met. Scholars – your peers – are going to examine the Voynich Manuscript. I can still get you that invitation.”

  I let out a long sigh and turned and walked – briskly – away from him. I just wanted to get away from him.

  What was he talking about? Dr. Sabir had written that the answers were in the Book of Enoch. Now this Nikhil Chandra seemed to allude to it being in the Voynich Manuscript.

  Could he really get me into the seminar? And even if he could, he couldn’t be sure that if I had the Voynich Manuscript I’d know how to decipher it.

  Yet something shook inside of me, and then bubbled up and made my whole body tense. It made me want so bad to turn back, run to him, and say, “Yes! Get me in! I want to go!”

  But I didn’t turn around.

  Was he still standing there? Was he following me? Who was it that he said I had to keep myself safe from? Somebody in a blue Taurus?

  And now paranoia was starting to set in.

  I could have sworn that as I waited on the corner for the light to change, I saw three dark blue Ford Tauruses pass by me. And the driver in each one of them turned and looked at me.

  Oh. My. God.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Villa Mondragone

  Frascati, Italy

  May, 2012

  Nikhil Chandra had been more ‘legitimate’ than I thought. On April 1, I got an invitation to the seminar in Italy to discuss the Voynich Manuscript and to share ideas.

  I still didn’t trust the guy. But then, I was beginning not to trust anyone. I saw everyone and everything as a threat. The guy at the bank, the lady at the grocery store who ended up in every aisle I went in. My doctor, who as soon as he came in the examination room asked me what I had been up to. I was ready to hop off that table and run out of there screaming. It is a scary feeling thinking someone is after you. How are you supposed to live like that? And, let’s not talk about a dark blue Ford Taurus. The sightings of those had multiplied exponentially. I even had a dream about one.

  Geesh!

  So, now on this beautiful May mornin
g, without me ever telling Nikhil Chandra I would come, I was more than happy to be out of Cleveland, and standing in front of the Villa Mondragone in Frascati. It was the Voynich Manuscript Seminar and I was among the seventy-five scholars invited to attend. And the first thing the Chairpersons did after we arrived was pass out a true and exact, to scale, colored facsimile of the book.

  Maybe the Voynich Manuscript wasn’t gibberish or a hoax after all.

  I arrived the night before the seminar was to start. I woke up with the chickens (as my mother used to say), so early that it was nearly two hours until the Welcome Breakfast scheduled for 7 am.

  But everything was awesome. When I got down to the banquet room there were white linen tablecloths and napkins on the tables, the smell of fresh baked pastries and bread, and the aroma of coffee filled my head and made me nearly swoon. I thought about Addie and her coffee addiction, and decided to pour me a cup of the steamy, dark brew.

  I signed in, found my name tag, and got my seat assignment. The first person I saw when I arrived at my table was Nikhil Chandra sitting at the table with his arms crossed over his chest. Momentarily my eager smile waned. But before I could say anything to him, he closed his eyes, shook his head, and when he opened them again, he looked straight ahead and not at me. I took it that he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that we knew each other, or that he had been stalking me for the last few months, which was fine with me. I still wasn’t really sure who he was, and if I liked him or not.

  During that first day, we learned in detail about the book, its previous owners and various attempts at its translation. And, while we did each get a copy of it, the real manuscript was there for us to examine. It was amazing. I peered down at the fine vellum of the open leaves, each a little less than a foot square. I was truly amazed at the clarity of the beautiful uncial lettering. Each page was covered in cellophane, but the sheer magnetism of it reached out even through its clear cover.

  After that first day, the group was given free time for dinner and sightseeing. That way, a member of the dais had said, our minds wouldn’t wonder about what’s outside in beautiful Italia once we were locked down in a room to examine the book.

  I went back to my room at the Hotel Flora on Viale Vittorio Veneto. The small 37-room stately-looking hotel was quaint and beautiful. It had a white and gray plaster façade, and manicured lawns and gardens. As I walked up to the doors of the hotel, I found, standing under the arched entryway, Nikhil Chandra.

  He looked so different than the “Father” I had first met. He was dressed in a very expensive-looking white and blue striped, French-cut shirt and tailored-fit pants, all underneath his even more expensive Burberry trench coat. And he was wearing a pair of brown Ferragamo oxfords.

  So much for a vow of poverty.

  “I should have known,” I said as I walked up to him. “You’d be somewhere in the shadows stalking me.”

  “I really can’t understand why you always give me such a hard time. I got you into this seminar.”

  “You really don’t know why I have such a hard time with having to see you? Or even talk to you?”

  “Honestly, I don’t,” he said, and grinned. “But there may be others, not as likable or as friendly as me, that may be watching you.”

  There he goes feeding my paranoia monster, again.

  “So, here, how about I take you to dinner?” he said. “Away from here. Maybe if we could talk, you might just learn to like me a little better.”

  “If I’m to listen to you talk,” I said, “then you’ll have to pay for my dinner. I don’t want to have to my spend money, and not enjoy my dinner because you were there chatting away.”

  “Fair enough. I know the perfect spot. My car is right over here.” He pointed in the direction of the parking lot and held his hand out to me.

  I looked down at his hand, and then up into his eyes. “I’m not getting in a car with you.”

  “Justin.” He titled his head and looked at me like a sad little puppy.

  “Fine. But if you try to kill me,” I said. “I promise that will not help me to like you any better.”

  “Again, fair enough.”

  We walked over to his car.

  “So why do you always say that someone’s watching me?” I asked as he opened the car door for me.

  “It’s not so much that someone may be watching you, as it is someone is watching the book. I’m sure they’ll find it very upsetting that so many copies are going out into the world. Still, they are pretty confident that no one will figure it out. Although it does seem that a certain dark blue Taurus has an interest in you. ” He started the car and pulled off, hopefully not to a deserted field where he could dump my body.

  “Let’s not talk about that Taurus,” I said. “It makes me nervous.” I was quiet for a moment, and then I asked, “Should I be afraid? Should I be afraid of you?”

  “You should not be afraid of me.” He glanced over at me. “But, if they knew you had translated the manuscripts that you found in Jerusalem, then you might need to worry. And, I am not sure that they don’t know. I found you and your little book. I’m sure they are just as clever as I am,” he said with a wink.

  I didn’t see anything amusing in the possibility of people following me. I turned and looked out the rear window. Had someone followed me here?

  “So, who is this ‘they’?” I asked, turning back.

  “Not sure,” he said.

  I gave him a piercing look. “You’re telling me that people are following me, and then you can’t tell me who they are?”

  “No. Sorry, I can’t. I don’t know who they are. They were assigned to watch the book once it left the Villa. That’s all I know. Who knows, maybe none of them are left. That’s a real possibility. There aren’t many left of us.

  “Ah, here we are,” he said pulling over and parking the main square of Frascati. He hopped out, got my door for me, and led me by my arm to a little restaurant tucked away right off the square.

  He opened the door to the brick front of Ara Anua and said with a smile, “After you.”

  We were led to the back of the restaurant, across the red terracotta-stoned floor. We were seated behind brown taffeta curtains that were roped back. The small seating area had tables that were covered with orange tablecloths, and replicas of wine barrels hung on the walls.

  After we were seated, Nikhil ordered wine for the table and dinner for us. He was quite fluent in Italian, as least from what I gathered. Everyone seemed to know what he meant, and jokes apparently abounded as he and the waiter laughed whenever he came to the table.

  “So, I must tell you things that will help you think better of me, yes? Where should I start?” He raised his eyebrows and rubbed the palms of his hands together.

  “Are you familiar with the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? I said.”

  “Ah. The Mad Hatter. Okay, I’ll start at the beginning.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Nikhil Chandra eyes sparked as he began to tell me his story. And I found myself leaning in close, attentive, excited to hear what he had to say.

  First I learned the story of a Father Alphonse Realini and his mission to keep, and pass on, a secret thousands, if not millions, of years old. A story that would not have been told to me that day by Nikhil if not for the Father’s keen insight.

  During the antipasto, a rich dish of chick pea and truffle oil, I found how much the boy Nikhil had loved the Father and thought of him as his own father. And how, because the Father knew that his secret was destined to be lost, he had shared it with Nikhil, giving him the true information.

  I learned of how a rector of the Jesuit priests at the Villa Mondragone had tried to stop Realini from passing on the information by directing Nikhil’s father to destroy it. There had always been those, Nikhil said, that didn’t want anyone to know the secrets the Father and others like him possessed. Rector Bershoni was one of those people. And the history of that faction went back thousands of yea
rs.

  “Is it a secret society? The people that don’t want the information out, are they part of a secret society?” I asked.

  “No.” Nikhil laughed. “There are just people who know. And those people of course know like-minded people. And even some that may not know the story you’ve learned, have the same agenda - to quell the acquisition of knowledge.”

  Acquisition. That was the word used in the Book of Enoch.

  He told me that Realini believed Bershoni would have destroyed what we now call the Voynich Manuscript, and what Father Realini told him was the Book of Knowledge, if he had not gotten it out of the Church.

  An emphatic “No!” came in response to my question of if the Church had anything to do with all of this.

  “Why didn’t they just kill Father Realini?” I asked.

  Nikhil nearly choked on his wine. “Kill him? He was a priest. An old man. He was an old priest who never spoke of it to anyone, until he thought he was going to die. And these people are not the murderous lot.”

  “Aren’t they trying to kill me?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Well, then why didn’t anyone . . . Why didn’t Rector Bershoni have someone get the book from Wilfrid Voynich?”

  “After he got it, it became well known. It was out in the public’s eye. Plus, it’s filled with gibberish.” Nikhil raised an eye. “No one could ead what’s inside. If indeed it is the book that Father Realini spoke of.”

  “You’re not sure.”

  “Dr. Dickerson, how can I be sure? I don’t know what it says. But the Father seemed sure, and that was enough for me.”

  Nikhil continued his story about the manuscripts’ history. He began telling me where, and how, the manuscripts had been hidden over the years, while the waiter brought in our entrata of steamy pasta con gorgonzola e radicchio, and poured Nikhil his second glass of cabernet sauvignon.