The Queen's Cipher Read Online Free Page B

Black Beauty or Little Women . It paid off, I suppose, in that I now teach public key cryptography.”
    Freddie gasped in surprise. “What’s that when it’s at home?”
    “It’s a cryptographic system with two separate keys; one encrypts the plaintext while the other decrypts the cipher text. I’m giving a couple of lectures on the subject in London next week.  I’m also attending a workshop at the Globe Theatre. So I’ll be in your country for two or three weeks.”
    It sounded like a hint. Freddie cleared his throat. “Perhaps we could meet in London while you’re over there?” His voice sounded hesitant and feeble.
    “Are you asking me out on a date?”
    He knew he was blushing. The colour spread across his cheeks like splashes of paint, and judging by the broad grin on her face, she had noticed this transformation.
    “If you l-like, but I get awfully tongue-tied on dates.”
    “In saying you are tongue-tied you are quoting Shakespeare. If you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if you refuse to budge an inch, if you are more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare.”
    Two can play at this game, he thought. “If your dreams vanish into thin air, if you are hoodwinked or in a pickle or if you suffer from green-eyed jealousy, you are ....”
    “They want us to leave, Freddie,” she whispered in his ear. “The party’s over.”
    Most of the delegates had already left the reception suite to change for dinner and waiters were hovering, ready to collect the empty plates and glasses.

31 MARCH 2014
    An old man leant over the parapet of the Ponte Pietra watching a twig bobbing up and down in the water. Fame is like a river, he muttered to himself, it bears up things light and swollen and drowns things weighty and solid. The simile was age old but it perfectly described the modern cult of instant celebrity, the reality show princesses and tabloid stars on whom so much time and emotional equity was invested. He was living in a shallow, confessional age that glorified the ephemeral.
    Yet here in Verona there was a sense of permanence. The bridge he stood on predated Caesar. It had been blown up and bombed but always rebuilt to include its original Roman stones. I am like this bridge, he thought, a thing of shreds and patches. Major George Duncan at your service, tours of duty in Germany and Northern Ireland, shrapnel in one leg, now an antiquarian bookseller of somewhat threadbare appearance.
    His civilian uniform consisted of a hand sewn tweed jacket with leather padded elbows, mustard corduroy trousers, shabby chocolate loafers, a Viyella check shirt and a striped public school tie. In contrast to his rather bohemian carapace, the man himself was wearing well: a full head of grey hair and a trim moustache complemented the lined but handsome face women had once found attractive.
    As if to test the potency of his appeal the old warrior bestowed a twinkling smile on a pretty girl hurrying across the bridge. She seemed flattered rather than repelled by his attention and smiled back; making him believe, perhaps misguidedly, that there was life in the old dog yet. On a cloudless spring day he could feel the sap rising.
    The major’s silver-topped cane beat out a staccato rhythm as he limped across the city’s cobblestones to fulfil his chosen mission. The stick turned out to be a handy weapon in the Via Capello where sightseers crowded around the Casa di Giulietta, a thirteenth-century tower-shaped palazzo. It was, of course, all smoke and mirrors, a way of boosting Verona’s tourist trade by cashing in on the popularity of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.
    Like most medieval Italian cities, Verona had had its fair share of feuding merchant families and romantic youngsters and the palazzo certainly possessed an upstairs balcony, albeit of twentieth-century construction. On cue, a Japanese tourist appeared on the not-so-ancient balcony to