CHAPTER 30
Security warden Claude Grouard simmered with rage as he stood over his prostrate
captive in front of the Mona Lisa. This bastard killed Jacques Saunière!
Saunière had been like a well-loved father to Grouard and his security team.
Grouard wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and bury a bullet in Robert
Langdon's back. As senior warden, Grouard was one of the few guards who actually
carried a loaded weapon. He reminded himself, however, that killing Langdon
would be a generous fate compared to the misery about to be communicated by Bezu
Fache and the French prison system.
Grouard yanked his walkie-talkie off his belt and attempted to radio for backup.
All he heard was static. The additional electronic security in this chamber
always wrought havoc with the guards' communications. I have to move to the
doorway. Still aiming his weapon at Langdon, Grouard began backing slowly toward
the entrance. On his third step, he spied something that made him stop short.
What the hell is that!
An inexplicable mirage was materializing near the center of the room. A
silhouette. There was someone else in the room? A woman was moving through the
darkness, walking briskly toward the far left wall. In front of her, a purplish
beam of light swung back and forth across the floor, as if she were searching
for something with a colored flashlight.
"Qui est là?" Grouard demanded, feeling his adrenaline spike for a second time
in the last thirty seconds. He suddenly didn't know where to aim his gun or what
direction to move.
"PTS," the woman replied calmly, still scanning the floor with her light.
Police Technique et Scientifique. Grouard was sweating now. I thought all the
agents were gone! He now recognized the purple light as ultraviolet, consistent
with a PTS team, and yet he could not understand why DCPJ would be looking for
evidence in here.
"Votre nom!" Grouard yelled, instinct telling him something was amiss. "Répondez!"
"C'est mot," the voice responded in calm French. "Sophie Neveu."
Somewhere in the distant recesses of Grouard's mind, the name registered. Sophie
Neveu? That was the name of Saunière's granddaughter, wasn't it? She used to
come in here as a little kid, but that was years ago. This couldn't possibly be
her! And even if it were Sophie Neveu, that was hardly a reason to trust her;
Grouard had heard the rumors of the painful falling-out between Saunière and his
granddaughter.
"You know me," the woman called. "And Robert Langdon did not kill my
grandfather. Believe me."
Warden Grouard was not about to take that on faith. I need backup! Trying his
walkie-talkie again, he got only static. The entrance was still a good twenty
yards behind him, and Grouard began backing up slowly, choosing to leave his gun
trained on the man on the floor. As Grouard inched backward, he could see the
woman across the room raising her UV light and scrutinizing a large painting
that hung on the far side of the Salle des Etats, directly opposite the Mona
Lisa.
Grouard gasped, realizing which painting it was.
What in the name of God is she doing?
Across the room, Sophie Neveu felt a cold sweat breaking across her forehead.
Langdon was still spread-eagle on the floor. Hold on, Robert. Almost there.
Knowing the guard would never actually shoot either of them, Sophie now turned
her attention back to the matter at hand, scanning the entire area around one
masterpiece in particular—another Da Vinci. But the UV light revealed nothing
out of the ordinary. Not on the floor, on the walls, or even on the canvas
itself.
There must be something here!
Sophie felt totally certain she had deciphered her grandfather's intentions
correctly.
What else could he possibly intend?
The masterpiece she was examining was a five-foot-tall canvas. The bizarre scene
Da Vinci had painted included an awkwardly posed Virgin Mary sitting with Baby
Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Angel Uriel on a perilous outcropping of rocks.
When Sophie was a little girl, no trip to the Mona Lisa had been complete
without her grandfather dragging her across the room to see this second
painting.
Grand-père, I'm here! But I don't see it!
Behind her, Sophie could hear the guard trying to radio again for help.
Think!
She pictured the message scrawled on the protective glass of the Mona Lisa. So
dark the con of man. The painting before her had no protective glass on which to
write a message, and Sophie knew her grandfather would never have defaced this
masterpiece by writing on the painting itself. She paused. At least not on the
front. Her eyes shot upward, climbing the long cables that dangled from the
ceiling to support the canvas.
Could that be it? Grabbing the left side of the carved wood frame, she pulled it
toward her. The painting was large and the backing flexed as she swung it away
from the wall. Sophie slipped her head and shoulders in behind the painting and
raised the black light to inspect the back.
It took only seconds to realize her instinct had been wrong. The back of the
painting was pale and blank. There was no purple text here, only the mottled
brown backside of aging canvas and—
Wait.
Sophie's eyes locked on an incongruous glint of lustrous metal lodged near the
bottom edge of the frame's wooden armature. The object was small, partially
wedged in the slit where the canvas met the frame. A shimmering gold chain
dangled off it.
To Sophie's utter amazement, the chain was affixed to a familiar gold key. The
broad, sculpted head was in the shape of a cross and bore an engraved seal she
had not seen since she was nine years old. A fleur-de-lis with the initials P.S.
In that instant, Sophie felt the ghost of her grandfather whispering in her ear.
When the time comes, the key will be yours. A tightness gripped her throat as
she realized that her grandfather, even in death, had kept his promise. This key
opens a box, his voice was saying, where I keep many secrets.
Sophie now realized that the entire purpose of tonight's word game had been this
key. Her grandfather had it with him when he was killed. Not wanting it to fall
into the hands of the police, he hid it behind this painting. Then he devised an
ingenious treasure hunt to ensure only Sophie would find it.
"Au secours!" the guard's voice yelled.
Sophie snatched the key from behind the painting and slipped it deep in her
pocket along with the UV penlight. Peering out from behind the canvas, she could
see the guard was still trying desperately to raise someone on the
walkie-talkie. He was backing toward the entrance, still aiming the gun firmly
at Langdon.
"Au secours!" he shouted again into his radio.
Static.
He can't transmit, Sophie realized, recalling that tourists with cell phones
often got frustrated in here when they tried to call home to brag about seeing
the Mona Lisa. The extra surveillance wiring in the walls made it virtually
impossible to get a carrier unless you stepped out into the hall. The guard was
backing quickly toward the exit now, and Sophie knew she had to act immediately.
Gazing up at the large painting behind which she was partially ensconced, Sophie
realized that Leonardo da Vinci, for the second time tonight, was there to help.
Another few meters, Grouard told himself, keeping his gun leveled.
"Arrêtez! Ou je la détruis!" the woman's voice echoed across the room.
Grouard glanced over and stopped in his tracks. "Mon dieu, non!"
Through the reddish haze, he could see that the woman had actually lifted the
large painting off its cables and propped it on the floor in front of her. At
five feet tall, the canvas almost entirely hid her body. Grouard's first thought
was to wonder why the painting's trip wires hadn't set off alarms, but of course
the artwork cable sensors had yet to be reset tonight. What is she doing!
When he saw it, his blood went cold.
The canvas started to bulge in the middle, the fragile outlines of the Virgin
Mary, Baby Jesus, and John the Baptist beginning to distort.
"Non!" Grouard screamed, frozen in horror as he watched the priceless Da Vinci
stretching. The woman was pushing her knee into the center of the canvas from
behind! "NON!"
Grouard wheeled and aimed his gun at her but instantly realized it was an empty
threat. The canvas was only fabric, but it was utterly impenetrable—a
six-million-dollar piece of body armor.
I can't put a bullet through a Da Vinci!
"Set down your gun and radio," the woman said in calm French, "or I'll put my
knee through this painting. I think you know how my grandfather would feel about
that."
Grouard felt dizzy. "Please... no. That's Madonna of the Rocks!" He dropped his
gun and radio, raising his hands over his head.
"Thank you," the woman said. "Now do exactly as I tell you, and everything will
work out fine."
Moments later, Langdon's pulse was still thundering as he ran beside Sophie down
the emergency stairwell toward the ground level. Neither of them had said a word
since leaving the trembling Louvre guard lying in the Salle des Etats. The
guard's pistol was now clutched tightly in Langdon's hands, and he couldn't wait
to get rid of it. The weapon felt heavy and dangerously foreign.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Langdon wondered if Sophie had any idea how
valuable a painting she had almost ruined. Her choice in art seemed eerily
pertinent to tonight's adventure. The Da Vinci she had grabbed, much like the
Mona Lisa, was notorious among art historians for its plethora of hidden pagan
symbolism.
"You chose a valuable hostage," he said as they ran.
"Madonna of the Rocks," she replied. "But I didn't choose it, my grandfather
did. He left me a little something behind the painting."
Langdon shot her a startled look. "What!? But how did you know which painting?
Why Madonna of the Rocks?"
"So dark the con of man." She flashed a triumphant smile. "I missed the first
two anagrams, Robert. I wasn't about to miss the third."
CHAPTER 31
"They're dead!" Sister
Sandrine stammered into the telephone in her Saint-Sulpice residence. She was
leaving a message on an answering machine. "Please pick up! They're all dead!"
The first three phone numbers on the list had produced terrifying results—a
hysterical widow, a detective working late at a murder scene, and a somber
priest consoling a bereaved family. All three contacts were dead. And now, as
she called the fourth and final number—the number she was not supposed to call
unless the first three could not be reached—she got an answering machine. The
outgoing message offered no name but simply asked the caller to leave a message.
"The floor panel has been broken!" she pleaded as she left the message. "The
other three are dead!"
Sister Sandrine did not know the identities of the four men she protected, but
the private phone numbers stashed beneath her bed were for use on only one
condition.
If that floor panel is ever broken, the faceless messenger had told her, it
means the upper echelon has been breached. One of us has been mortally
threatened and been forced to tell a desperate lie. Call the numbers. Warn the
others. Do not fail us in this.
It was a silent alarm. Foolproof in its simplicity. The plan had amazed her when
she first heard it. If the identity of one brother was compromised, he could
tell a lie that would start in motion a mechanism to warn the others. Tonight,
however, it seemed that more than one had been compromised.
"Please answer," she whispered in fear. "Where are you?"
"Hang up the phone," a deep voice said from the doorway.
Turning in terror, she saw the massive monk. He was clutching the heavy iron
candle stand. Shaking, she set the phone back in the cradle.
"They are dead," the monk said. "All four of them. And they have played me for a
fool. Tell me where the keystone is."
"I don't know!" Sister Sandrine said truthfully. "That secret is guarded by
others." Others who are dead!
The man advanced, his white fists gripping the iron stand. "You are a sister of
the Church, and yet you serve them?"
"Jesus had but one true message," Sister Sandrine said defiantly. "I cannot see
that message in Opus Dei."
A sudden explosion of rage erupted behind the monk's eyes. He lunged, lashing
out with the candle stand like a club. As Sister Sandrine fell, her last feeling
was an overwhelming sense of foreboding.
All four are dead.
The precious truth is lost forever.
CHAPTER 32
The security alarm on the
west end of the Denon Wing sent the pigeons in the nearby Tuileries Gardens
scattering as Langdon and Sophie dashed out of the bulkhead into the Paris
night. As they ran across the plaza to Sophie's car, Langdon could hear police
sirens wailing in the distance.
"That's it there," Sophie called, pointing to a red snub-nosed two-seater parked
on the plaza.
She's kidding, right? The vehicle was easily the smallest car Langdon had ever
seen.
"SmartCar," she said. "A hundred kilometers to the liter."
Langdon had barely thrown himself into the passenger seat before Sophie gunned
the SmartCar up and over a curb onto a gravel divider. He gripped the dash as
the car shot out across a sidewalk and bounced back down over into the small
rotary at Carrousel du Louvre.
For an instant, Sophie seemed to consider taking the shortcut across the rotary
by plowing straight ahead, through the median's perimeter hedge, and bisecting
the large circle of grass in the center.
"No!" Langdon shouted, knowing the hedges around Carrousel du Louvre were there
to hide the perilous chasm in the center—La Pyramide Inversée—the upside-down
pyramid skylight he had seen earlier from inside the museum. It was large enough
to swallow their Smart-Car in a single gulp. Fortunately, Sophie decided on the
more conventional route, jamming the wheel hard to the right, circling properly
until she exited, cut left, and swung into the northbound lane, accelerating
toward Rue de Rivoli.
The two-tone police sirens blared louder behind them, and Langdon could see the
lights now in his side view mirror. The SmartCar engine whined in protest as
Sophie urged it faster away from the Louvre. Fifty yards ahead, the traffic
light at Rivoli turned red. Sophie cursed under her breath and kept racing
toward it. Langdon felt his muscles tighten.
"Sophie?"
Slowing only slightly as they reached the intersection, Sophie flicked her
headlights and stole a quick glance both ways before flooring the accelerator
again and carving a sharp left turn through the empty intersection onto Rivoli.
Accelerating west for a quarter of a mile, Sophie banked to the right around a
wide rotary. Soon they were shooting out the other side onto the wide avenue of
Champs-Elysées.
As they straightened out, Langdon turned in his seat, craning his neck to look
out the rear window toward the Louvre. The police did not seem to be chasing
them. The sea of blue lights was assembling at the museum.
His heartbeat finally slowing, Langdon turned back around. "That was
interesting."
Sophie didn't seem to hear. Her eyes remained fixed ahead down the long
thoroughfare of Champs-Elysées, the two-mile stretch of posh storefronts that
was often called the Fifth Avenue of Paris. The embassy was only about a mile
away, and Langdon settled into his seat. So dark the con of man. Sophie's quick
thinking had been impressive. Madonna of the Rocks.
Sophie had said her grandfather left her something behind the painting. A final
message? Langdon could not help but marvel over Saunière's brilliant hiding
place; Madonna of the Rocks was yet another fitting link in the evening's chain
of interconnected symbolism. Saunière, it seemed, at every turn, was reinforcing
his fondness for the dark and mischievous side of Leonardo da Vinci.
Da Vinci's original commission for Madonna of the Rocks had come from an
organization known as the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, which
needed a painting for the centerpiece of an altar triptych in their church of
San Francesco in Milan. The nuns gave Leonardo specific dimensions, and the
desired theme for the painting—the Virgin Mary, baby John the Baptist, Uriel,
and Baby Jesus sheltering in a cave. Although Da Vinci did as they requested,
when he delivered the work, the group reacted with horror. He had filled the
painting with explosive and disturbing details.
The painting showed a blue-robed Virgin Mary sitting with her arm around an
infant child, presumably Baby Jesus. Opposite Mary sat Uriel, also with an
infant, presumably baby John the Baptist. Oddly, though, rather than the usual
Jesus-blessing-John scenario, it was baby John who was blessing Jesus... and
Jesus was submitting to his authority! More troubling still, Mary was holding
one hand high above the head of infant John and making a decidedly threatening
gesture—her fingers looking like eagle's talons, gripping an invisible head.
Finally, the most obvious and frightening image: Just below Mary's curled
fingers, Uriel was making a cutting gesture with his hand—as if slicing the neck
of the invisible head gripped by Mary's claw-like hand.
Langdon's students were always amused to learn that Da Vinci eventually
mollified the confraternity by painting them a second, "watered-down" version of
Madonna of the Rocks in which everyone was arranged in a more orthodox manner.
The second version now hung in London's National Gallery under the name Virgin
of the Rocks, although Langdon still preferred the Louvre's more intriguing
original.
As Sophie gunned the car up Champs-Elysées, Langdon said, "The painting. What
was behind it?"
Her eyes remained on the road. "I'll show you once we're safely inside the
embassy."
"You'll show it to me?" Langdon was surprised. "He left you a physical object?"
Sophie gave a curt nod. "Embossed with a fleur-de-lis and the initials P.S."
Langdon couldn't believe his ears.
We're going to make it, Sophie thought as she swung the SmartCar's wheel to the
right, cutting sharply past the luxurious Hôtel de Crillon into Paris's
tree-lined diplomatic neighborhood. The embassy was less than a mile away now.
She was finally feeling like she could breathe normally again.
Even as she drove, Sophie's mind remained locked on the key in her pocket, her
memories of seeing it many years ago, the gold head shaped as an equal-armed
cross, the triangular shaft, the indentations, the embossed flowery seal, and
the letters P.S.
Although the key barely had entered Sophie's thoughts through the years, her
work in the intelligence community had taught her plenty about security, and now
the key's peculiar tooling no longer looked so mystifying. A laser-tooled
varying matrix. Impossible to duplicate. Rather than teeth that moved tumblers,
this key's complex series of laser-burned pockmarks was examined by an electric
eye. If the eye determined that the hexagonal pockmarks were correctly spaced,
arranged, and rotated, then the lock would open.
Sophie could not begin to imagine what a key like this opened, but she sensed
Robert would be able to tell her. After all, he had described the key's embossed
seal without ever seeing it. The cruciform on top implied the key belonged to
some kind of Christian organization, and yet Sophie knew of no churches that
used laser-tooled varying matrix keys.
Besides, my grandfather was no Christian....
Sophie had witnessed proof of that ten years ago. Ironically, it had been
another key—a far more normal one—that had revealed his true nature to her.
The afternoon had been warm when she landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport and
hailed a taxi home. Grand-père will be so surprised to see me, she thought.
Returning from graduate school in Britain for spring break a few days early,
Sophie couldn't wait to see him and tell him all about the encryption methods
she was studying.
When she arrived at their Paris home, however, her grandfather was not there.
Disappointed, she knew he had not been expecting her and was probably working at
the Louvre. But it's Saturday afternoon, she realized. He seldom worked on
weekends. On weekends, he usually—
Grinning, Sophie ran out to the garage. Sure enough, his car was gone. It was
the weekend. Jacques Saunière despised city driving and owned a car for one
destination only—his vacation château in Normandy, north of Paris. Sophie, after
months in the congestion of London, was eager for the smells of nature and to
start her vacation right away. It was still early evening, and she decided to
leave immediately and surprise him. Borrowing a friend's car, Sophie drove
north, winding into the deserted moon-swept hills near Creully. She arrived just
after ten o'clock, turning down the long private driveway toward her
grandfather's retreat. The access road was over a mile long, and she was halfway
down it before she could start to see the house through the trees—a mammoth, old
stone château nestled in the woods on the side of a hill.
Sophie had half expected to find her grandfather asleep at this hour and was
excited to see the house twinkling with lights. Her delight turned to surprise,
however, when she arrived to find the driveway filled with parked cars—Mercedeses,
BMWs, Audis, and a Rolls-Royce.
Sophie stared a moment and then burst out laughing. My grand-père, the famous
recluse! Jacques Saunière, it seemed, was far less reclusive than he liked to
pretend. Clearly he was hosting a party while Sophie was away at school, and
from the looks of the automobiles, some of Paris's most influential people were
in attendance.
Eager to surprise him, she hurried to the front door. When she got there,
though, she found it locked. She knocked. Nobody answered. Puzzled, she walked
around and tried the back door. It too was locked. No answer.
Confused, she stood a moment and listened. The only sound she heard was the cool
Normandy air letting out a low moan as it swirled through the valley.
No music.
No voices.
Nothing.
In the silence of the woods, Sophie hurried to the side of the house and
clambered up on a woodpile, pressing her face to the living room window. What
she saw inside made no sense at all.
"Nobody's here!"
The entire first floor looked deserted.
Where are all the people?
Heart racing, Sophie ran to the woodshed and got the spare key her grandfather
kept hidden under the kindling box. She ran to the front door and let herself
in. As she stepped into the deserted foyer, the control panel for the security
system started blinking red—a warning that the entrant had ten seconds to type
the proper code before the security alarms went off.
He has the alarm on during a party?
Sophie quickly typed the code and deactivated the system.
Entering, she found the entire house uninhabited. Upstairs too. As she descended
again to the deserted living room, she stood a moment in the silence, wondering
what could possibly be happening.
It was then that Sophie heard it.
Muffled voices. And they seemed to be coming from underneath her. Sophie could
not imagine. Crouching, she put her ear to the floor and listened. Yes, the
sound was definitely coming from below. The voices seemed to be singing, or...
chanting? She was frightened. Almost more eerie than the sound itself was the
realization that this house did not even have a basement.
At least none I've ever seen.
Turning now and scanning the living room, Sophie's eyes fell to the only object
in the entire house that seemed out of place—her grandfather's favorite antique,
a sprawling Aubusson tapestry. It usually hung on the east wall beside the
fireplace, but tonight it had been pulled aside on its brass rod, exposing the
wall behind it.
Walking toward the bare wooden wall, Sophie sensed the chanting getting louder.
Hesitant, she leaned her ear against the wood. The voices were clearer now.
People were definitely chanting... intoning words Sophie could not discern.
The space behind this wall is hollow!
Feeling around the edge of the panels, Sophie found a recessed fingerhold. It
was discreetly crafted. A sliding door. Heart pounding, she placed her finger in
the slot and pulled it. With noiseless precision, the heavy wall slid sideways.
From out of the darkness beyond, the voices echoed up.
Sophie slipped through the door and found herself on a rough-hewn stone
staircase that spiraled downward. She'd been coming to this house since she was
a child and yet had no idea this staircase even existed!
As she descended, the air grew cooler. The voices clearer. She heard men and
women now. Her line of sight was limited by the spiral of the staircase, but the
last step was now rounding into view. Beyond it, she could see a small patch of
the basement floor—stone, illuminated by the flickering orange blaze of
firelight.
Holding her breath, Sophie inched down another few steps and crouched down to
look. It took her several seconds to process what she was seeing.
The room was a grotto—a coarse chamber that appeared to have been hollowed from
the granite of the hillside. The only light came from torches on the walls. In
the glow of the flames, thirty or so people stood in a circle in the center of
the room.
I'm dreaming, Sophie told herself. A dream. What else could this be?
Everyone in the room was wearing a mask. The women were dressed in white
gossamer gowns and golden shoes. Their masks were white, and in their hands they
carried golden orbs. The men wore long black tunics, and their masks were black.
They looked like pieces in a giant chess set. Everyone in the circle rocked back
and forth and chanted in reverence to something on the floor before them...
something Sophie could not see.
The chanting grew steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The
participants took a step inward and knelt. In that instant, Sophie could finally
see what they all were witnessing. Even as she staggered back in horror, she
felt the image searing itself into her memory forever. Overtaken by nausea,
Sophie spun, clutching at the stone walls as she clambered back up the stairs.
Pulling the door closed, she fled the deserted house, and drove in a tearful
stupor back to Paris.
That night, with her life shattered by disillusionment and betrayal, she packed
her belongings and left her home. On the dining room table, she left a note.
I WAS THERE. DON'T TRY TO FIND ME.
Beside the note, she laid the old spare key from the château's woodshed.
"Sophie! Langdon's voice intruded. "Stop! Stop!"
Emerging from the memory, Sophie slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt.
"What? What happened?!"
Langdon pointed down the long street before them.
When she saw it, Sophie's blood went cold. A hundred yards ahead, the
intersection was blocked by a couple of DCPJ police cars, parked askew, their
purpose obvious. They've sealed off Avenue Gabriel!
Langdon gave a grim sigh. "I take it the embassy is off-limits this evening?"
Down the street, the two DCPJ officers who stood beside their cars were now
staring in their direction, apparently curious about the headlights that had
halted so abruptly up the street from them.
Okay, Sophie, turn around very slowly.
Putting the SmartCar in reverse, she performed a composed three-point turn and
reversed her direction. As she drove away, she heard the sound of squealing
tires behind them. Sirens blared to life.
Cursing, Sophie slammed down the accelerator.
CHAPTER 33
Sophie's SmartCar tore
through the diplomatic quarter, weaving past embassies and consulates, finally
racing out a side street and taking a right turn back onto the massive
thoroughfare of Champs-Elysées.
Langdon sat white-knuckled in the passenger seat, twisted backward, scanning
behind them for any signs of the police. He suddenly wished he had not decided
to run. You didn't, he reminded himself. Sophie had made the decision for him
when she threw the GPS dot out the bathroom window. Now, as they sped away from
the embassy, serpentining through sparse traffic on Champs-Elysées, Langdon felt
his options deteriorating. Although Sophie seemed to have lost the police, at
least for the moment, Langdon doubted their luck would hold for long.
Behind the wheel Sophie was fishing in her sweater pocket. She removed a small
metal object and held it out for him. "Robert, you'd better have a look at this.
This is what my grandfather left me behind Madonna of the Rocks."
Feeling a shiver of anticipation, Langdon took the object and examined it. It
was heavy and shaped like a cruciform. His first instinct was that he was
holding a funeral pieu—a miniature version of a memorial spike designed to be
stuck into the ground at a gravesite. But then he noted the shaft protruding
from the cruciform was prismatic and triangular. The shaft was also pockmarked
with hundreds of tiny hexagons that appeared to be finely tooled and scattered
at random.
"It's a laser-cut key," Sophie told him. "Those hexagons are read by an electric
eye."
A key? Langdon had never seen anything like it.
"Look at the other side," she said, changing lanes and sailing through an
intersection.
When Langdon turned the key, he felt his jaw drop. There, intricately embossed
on the center of the cross, was a stylized fleur-de-lis with the initials P.S.!
"Sophie," he said, "this is the seal I told you about! The official device of
the Priory of Sion."
She nodded. "As I told you, I saw the key a long time ago. He told me never to
speak of it again."
Langdon's eyes were still riveted on the embossed key. Its high-tech tooling and
age-old symbolism exuded an eerie fusion of ancient and modern worlds.
"He told me the key opened a box where he kept many secrets."
Langdon felt a chill to imagine what kind of secrets a man like Jacques Saunière
might keep. What an ancient brotherhood was doing with a futuristic key, Langdon
had no idea. The Priory existed for the sole purpose of protecting a secret. A
secret of incredible power. Could this key have something to do with it? The
thought was overwhelming. "Do you know what it opens?"
Sophie looked disappointed. "I was hoping you knew."
Langdon remained silent as he turned the cruciform in his hand, examining it.
"It looks Christian," Sophie pressed.
Langdon was not so sure about that. The head of this key was not the traditional
long-stemmed Christian cross but rather was a square cross—with four arms of
equal length—which predated Christianity by fifteen hundred years. This kind of
cross carried none of the Christian connotations of crucifixion associated with
the longer-stemmed Latin Cross, originated by Romans as a torture device.
Langdon was always surprised how few Christians who gazed upon "the crucifix"
realized their symbol's violent history was reflected in its very name: "cross"
and "crucifix" came from the Latin verb cruciare—to torture.
"Sophie," he said, "all I can tell you is that equal-armed crosses like this one
are considered peaceful crosses. Their square configurations make them
impractical for use in crucifixion, and their balanced vertical and horizontal
elements convey a natural union of male and female, making them symbolically
consistent with Priory philosophy."
She gave him a weary look. "You have no idea, do you?"
Langdon frowned. "Not a clue."
"Okay, we have to get off the road." Sophie checked her rearview mirror. "We
need a safe place to figure out what that key opens."
Langdon thought longingly of his comfortable room at the Ritz. Obviously, that
was not an option. "How about my hosts at the American University of Paris?"
"Too obvious. Fache will check with them."
"You must know people. You live here."
"Fache will run my phone and e-mail records, talk to my coworkers. My contacts
are compromised, and finding a hotel is no good because they all require
identification."
Langdon wondered again if he might have been better off taking his chances
letting Fache arrest him at the Louvre. "Let's call the embassy. I can explain
the situation and have the embassy send someone to meet us somewhere."
"Meet us?" Sophie turned and stared at him as if he were crazy. "Robert, you're
dreaming. Your embassy has no jurisdiction except on their own property. Sending
someone to retrieve us would be considered aiding a fugitive of the French
government. It won't happen. If you walk into your embassy and request temporary
asylum, that's one thing, but asking them to take action against French law
enforcement in the field?" She shook her head. "Call your embassy right now, and
they are going to tell you to avoid further damage and turn yourself over to
Fache. Then they'll promise to pursue diplomatic channels to get you a fair
trial." She gazed up the line of elegant storefronts on Champs-Elysées. "How
much cash do you have?"
Langdon checked his wallet. "A hundred dollars. A few euro. Why?"
"Credit cards?"
"Of course."
As Sophie accelerated, Langdon sensed she was formulating a plan. Dead ahead, at
the end of Champs-Elysées, stood the Arc de Triomphe—Napoleon's 164-foot-tall
tribute to his own military potency—encircled by France's largest rotary, a
nine-lane behemoth.
Sophie's eyes were on the rearview mirror again as they approached the rotary.
"We lost them for the time being," she said, "but we won't last another five
minutes if we stay in this car."
So steal a different one, Langdon mused, now that we're criminals. "What are you
going to do?"
Sophie gunned the SmartCar into the rotary. "Trust me."
Langdon made no response. Trust had not gotten him very far this evening.
Pulling back the sleeve of his jacket, he checked his watch—a vintage,
collector's-edition Mickey Mouse wristwatch that had been a gift from his
parents on his tenth birthday. Although its juvenile dial often drew odd looks,
Langdon had never owned any other watch; Disney animations had been his first
introduction to the magic of form and color, and Mickey now served as Langdon's
daily reminder to stay young at heart. At the moment, however, Mickey's arms
were skewed at an awkward angle, indicating an equally awkward hour.
2:51 A.M.
"Interesting watch," Sophie said, glancing at his wrist and maneuvering the
SmartCar around the wide, counterclockwise rotary.
"Long story," he said, pulling his sleeve back down.
"I imagine it would have to be." She gave him a quick smile and exited the
rotary, heading due north, away from the city center. Barely making two green
lights, she reached the third intersection and took a hard right onto Boulevard
Malesherbes. They'd left the rich, tree-lined streets of the diplomatic
neighborhood and plunged into a darker industrial neighborhood. Sophie took a
quick left, and a moment later, Langdon realized where they were.
Gare Saint-Lazare.
Ahead of them, the glass-roofed train terminal resembled the awkward offspring
of an airplane hangar and a greenhouse. European train stations never slept.
Even at this hour, a half-dozen taxis idled near the main entrance. Vendors
manned carts of sandwiches and mineral water while grungy kids in backpacks
emerged from the station rubbing their eyes, looking around as if trying to
remember what city they were in now. Up ahead on the street, a couple of city
policemen stood on the curb giving directions to some confused tourists.
Sophie pulled her SmartCar in behind the line of taxis and parked in a red zone
despite plenty of legal parking across the street. Before Langdon could ask what
was going on, she was out of the car. She hurried to the window of the taxi in
front of them and began speaking to the driver.
As Langdon got out of the SmartCar, he saw Sophie hand the taxi driver a big wad
of cash. The taxi driver nodded and then, to Langdon's bewilderment, sped off
without them.
"What happened?" Langdon demanded, joining Sophie on the curb as the taxi
disappeared.
Sophie was already heading for the train station entrance. "Come on. We're
buying two tickets on the next train out of Paris."
Langdon hurried along beside her. What had begun as a one-mile dash to the U.S.
Embassy had now become a full-fledged evacuation from Paris. Langdon was liking
this idea less and less.
CHAPTER 34
The driver who collected Bishop Aringarosa from Leonardo da Vinci International
Airport pulled up in a small, unimpressive black Fiat sedan. Aringarosa recalled
a day when all Vatican transports were big luxury cars that sported grille-plate
medallions and flags emblazoned with the seal of the Holy See. Those days are
gone. Vatican cars were now less ostentatious and almost always unmarked. The
Vatican claimed this was to cut costs to better serve their dioceses, but
Aringarosa suspected it was more of a security measure. The world had gone mad,
and in many parts of Europe, advertising your love of Jesus Christ was like
painting a bull's-eye on the roof of your car.
Bundling his black cassock around himself, Aringarosa climbed into the back seat
and settled in for the long drive to Castel Gandolfo. It would be the same ride
he had taken five months ago.
Last year's trip to Rome, he sighed. The longest night of my life.
Five months ago, the Vatican had phoned to request Aringarosa's immediate
presence in Rome. They offered no explanation. Your tickets are at the airport.
The Holy See worked hard to retain a veil of mystery, even for its highest
clergy.
The mysterious summons, Aringarosa suspected, was probably a photo opportunity
for the Pope and other Vatican officials to piggyback on Opus Dei's recent
public success—the completion of their World Headquarters in New York City.
Architectural Digest had called Opus Dei's building "a shining beacon of
Catholicism sublimely integrated with the modern landscape," and lately the
Vatican seemed to be drawn to anything and everything that included the word
"modern."
Aringarosa had no choice but to accept the invitation, albeit reluctantly. Not a
fan of the current papal administration, Aringarosa, like most conservative
clergy, had watched with grave concern as the new Pope settled into his first
year in office. An unprecedented liberal, His Holiness had secured the papacy
through one of the most controversial and unusual conclaves in Vatican history.
Now, rather than being humbled by his unexpected rise to power, the Holy Father
had wasted no time flexing all the muscle associated with the highest office in
Christendom. Drawing on an unsettling tide of liberal support within the College
of Cardinals, the Pope was now declaring his papal mission to be "rejuvenation
of Vatican doctrine and updating Catholicism into the third millennium."
The translation, Aringarosa feared, was that the man was actually arrogant
enough to think he could rewrite God's laws and win back the hearts of those who
felt the demands of true Catholicism had become too inconvenient in a modern
world.
Aringarosa had been using all of his political sway—substantial considering the
size of the Opus Dei constituency and their bankroll—to persuade the Pope and
his advisers that softening the Church's laws was not only faithless and
cowardly, but political suicide. He reminded them that previous tempering of
Church law—the Vatican II fiasco—had left a devastating legacy: Church
attendance was now lower than ever, donations were drying up, and there were not
even enough Catholic priests to preside over their churches.
People need structure and direction from the Church, Aringarosa insisted, not
coddling and indulgence!
On that night, months ago, as the Fiat had left the airport, Aringarosa was
surprised to find himself heading not toward Vatican City but rather eastward up
a sinuous mountain road. "Where are we going?" he had demanded of his driver.
"Alban Hills," the man replied. "Your meeting is at Castel Gandolfo."
The Pope's summer residence? Aringarosa had never been, nor had he ever desired
to see it. In addition to being the Pope's summer vacation home, the
sixteenth-century citadel housed the Specula Vaticana—the Vatican
Observatory—one of the most advanced astronomical observatories in Europe.
Aringarosa had never been comfortable with the Vatican's historical need to
dabble in science. What was the rationale for fusing science and faith? Unbiased
science could not possibly be performed by a man who possessed faith in God. Nor
did faith have any need for physical confirmation of its beliefs.
Nonetheless, there it is, he thought as Castel Gandolfo came into view, rising
against a star-filled November sky. From the access road, Gandolfo resembled a
great stone monster pondering a suicidal leap. Perched at the very edge of a
cliff, the castle leaned out over the cradle of Italian civilization—the valley
where the Curiazi and Orazi clans fought long before the founding of Rome.
Even in silhouette, Gandolfo was a sight to behold—an impressive example of
tiered, defensive architecture, echoing the potency of this dramatic cliffside
setting. Sadly, Aringarosa now saw, the Vatican had ruined the building by
constructing two huge aluminum telescope domes atop the roof, leaving this once
dignified edifice looking like a proud warrior wearing a couple of party hats.
When Aringarosa got out of the car, a young Jesuit priest hurried out and
greeted him. "Bishop, welcome. I am Father Mangano. An astronomer here."
Good for you. Aringarosa grumbled his hello and followed his host into the
castle's foyer—a wide-open space whose decor was a graceless blend of
Renaissance art and astronomy images. Following his escort up the wide
travertine marble staircase, Aringarosa saw signs for conference centers,
science lecture halls, and tourist information services. It amazed him to think
the Vatican was failing at every turn to provide coherent, stringent guidelines
for spiritual growth and yet somehow still found time to give astrophysics
lectures to tourists.
"Tell me," Aringarosa said to the young priest, "when did the tail start wagging
the dog?"
The priest gave him an odd look. "Sir?"
Aringarosa waved it off, deciding not to launch into that particular offensive
again this evening. The Vatican has gone mad. Like a lazy parent who found it
easier to acquiesce to the whims of a spoiled child than to stand firm and teach
values, the Church just kept softening at every turn, trying to reinvent itself
to accommodate a culture gone astray.
The top floor's corridor was wide, lushly appointed, and led in only one
direction—toward a huge set of oak doors with a brass sign.
BIBLIOTECA ASTRONOMICA
Aringarosa had heard of this place—the Vatican's Astronomy Library—rumored to
contain more than twenty-five thousand volumes, including rare works of
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Secchi. Allegedly, it was also the
place in which the Pope's highest officers held private meetings... those
meetings they preferred not to hold within the walls of Vatican City.
Approaching the door, Bishop Aringarosa would never have imagined the shocking
news he was about to receive inside, or the deadly chain of events it would put
into motion. It was not until an hour later, as he staggered from the meeting,
that the devastating implications settled in. Six months from now! he had
thought. God help us!
Now, seated in the Fiat, Bishop Aringarosa realized his fists were clenched just
thinking about that first meeting. He released his grip and forced a slow
inhalation, relaxing his muscles.
Everything will be fine, he told himself as the Fiat wound higher into the
mountains. Still, he wished his cell phone would ring. Why hasn't the Teacher
called me? Silas should have the keystone by now.
Trying to ease his nerves, the bishop meditated on the purple amethyst in his
ring. Feeling the textures of the mitre-crozier appliqué and the facets of the
diamonds, he reminded himself that this ring was a symbol of power far less than
that which he would soon attain.
CHAPTER 35
The inside of Gare Saint-Lazare looked like every other train station in Europe,
a gaping indoor-outdoor cavern dotted with the usual suspects—homeless men
holding cardboard signs, collections of bleary-eyed college kids sleeping on
backpacks and zoning out to their portable MP3 players, and clusters of
blue-clad baggage porters smoking cigarettes.
Sophie raised her eyes to the enormous departure board overhead. The black and
white tabs reshuffled, ruffling downward as the information refreshed. When the
update was finished, Langdon eyed the offerings. The topmost listing read: LYON—RAPIDE—3:06
"I wish it left sooner," Sophie said, "but Lyon will have to do." Sooner?
Langdon checked his watch 2:59 A.M. The train left in seven minutes and they
didn't even have tickets yet.
Sophie guided Langdon toward the ticket window and said, "Buy us two tickets
with your credit card."
"I thought credit card usage could be traced by—"
"Exactly."
Langdon decided to stop trying to keep ahead of Sophie Neveu. Using his Visa
card, he purchased two coach tickets to Lyon and handed them to Sophie.
Sophie guided him out toward the tracks, where a familiar tone chimed overhead
and a P.A. announcer gave the final boarding call for Lyon. Sixteen separate
tracks spread out before them. In the distance to the right, at quay three, the
train to Lyon was belching and wheezing in preparation for departure, but Sophie
already had her arm through Langdon's and was guiding him in the exact opposite
direction. They hurried through a side lobby, past an all-night cafe, and
finally out a side door onto a quiet street on the west side of the station.
A lone taxi sat idling by the doorway.
The driver saw Sophie and flicked his lights.
Sophie jumped in the back seat. Langdon got in after her.
As the taxi pulled away from station, Sophie took out their newly purchased
train tickets and tore them up.
Langdon sighed. Seventy dollars well spent.
It was not until their taxi had settled into a monotonous northbound hum on Rue
de Clichy that Langdon felt they'd actually escaped. Out the window to his
right, he could see Montmartre and the beautiful dome of Sacré-Coeur. The image
was interrupted by the flash of police lights sailing past them in the opposite
direction.
Langdon and Sophie ducked down as the sirens faded.
Sophie had told the cab driver simply to head out of the city, and from her
firmly set jaw, Langdon sensed she was trying to figure out their next move.
Langdon examined the cruciform key again, holding it to the window, bringing it
close to his eyes in an effort to find any markings on it that might indicate
where the key had been made. In the intermittent glow of passing streetlights,
he saw no markings except the Priory seal.
"It doesn't make sense," he finally said.
"Which part?"
"That your grandfather would go to so much trouble to give you a key that you
wouldn't know what to do with."
"I agree."
"Are you sure he didn't write anything else on the back of the painting?"
"I searched the whole area. This is all there was. This key, wedged behind the
painting. I saw the Priory seal, stuck the key in my pocket, then we left."
Langdon frowned, peering now at the blunt end of the triangular shaft. Nothing.
Squinting, he brought the key close to his eyes and examined the rim of the
head. Nothing there either. "I think this key was cleaned recently."
"Why?"
"It smells like rubbing alcohol."
She turned. "I'm sorry?"
"It smells like somebody polished it with a cleaner." Langdon held the key to
his nose and sniffed. "It's stronger on the other side." He flipped it over.
"Yes, it's alcohol-based, like it's been buffed with a cleaner or—" Langdon
stopped.
"What?"
He angled the key to the light and looked at the smooth surface on the broad arm
of the cross. It seemed to shimmer in places... like it was wet. "How well did
you look at the back of this key before you put it in your pocket?"
"What? Not well. I was in a hurry."
Langdon turned to her. "Do you still have the black light?"
Sophie reached in her pocket and produced the UV penlight. Langdon took it and
switched it on, shining the beam on the back of the key.
The back luminesced instantly. There was writing there. In penmanship that was
hurried but legible.
"Well," Langdon said, smiling. "I guess we know what the alcohol smell was."
Sophie stared in amazement at the purple writing on the back of the key.
24 Rue Haxo
An address! My grandfather wrote down an address!
"Where is this?" Langdon asked.
Sophie had no idea. Facing front again, she leaned forward and excitedly asked
the driver, "Connaissez-vous la Rue Haxo?"
The driver thought a moment and then nodded. He told Sophie it was out near the
tennis stadium on the western outskirts of Paris. She asked him to take them
there immediately.
"Fastest route is through Bois de Boulogne," the driver told her in French. "Is
that okay?"
Sophie frowned. She could think of far less scandalous routes, but tonight she
was not going to be picky. "Oui." We can shock the visiting American.
Sophie looked back at the key and wondered what they would possibly find at 24
Rue Haxo. A church? Some kind of Priory headquarters?
Her mind filled again with images of the secret ritual she had witnessed in the
basement grotto ten years ago, and she heaved a long sigh. "Robert, I have a lot
of things to tell you." She paused, locking eyes with him as the taxi raced
westward. "But first I want you to tell me everything you know about this Priory
of Sion."
CHAPTER 36
Outside the Salle des
Etats, Bezu Fache was fuming as Louvre warden Grouard explained how Sophie and
Langdon had disarmed him. Why didn't you just shoot the blessed painting!
"Captain?" Lieutenant Collet loped toward them from the direction of the command
post. "Captain, I just heard. They located Agent Neveu's car."
"Did she make the embassy?"
"No. Train station. Bought two tickets. Train just left."
Fache waved off warden Grouard and led Collet to a nearby alcove, addressing him
in hushed tones. "What was the destination?"
"Lyon."
"Probably a decoy." Fache exhaled, formulating a plan. "Okay, alert the next
station, have the train stopped and searched, just in case. Leave her car where
it is and put plainclothes on watch in case they try to come back to it. Send
men to search the streets around the station in case they fled on foot. Are
buses running from the station?"
"Not at this hour, sir. Only the taxi queue."
"Good. Question the drivers. See if they saw anything. Then contact the taxi
company dispatcher with descriptions. I'm calling Interpol."
Collet looked surprised. "You're putting this on the wire?"
Fache regretted the potential embarrassment, but he saw no other choice.
Close the net fast, and close it tight.
The first hour was critical. Fugitives were predictable the first hour after
escape. They always needed the same thing. Travel. Lodging. Cash. The Holy
Trinity. Interpol had the power to make all three disappear in the blink of an
eye. By broadcast-faxing photos of Langdon and Sophie to Paris travel
authorities, hotels, and banks, Interpol would leave no options—no way to leave
the city, no place to hide, and no way to withdraw cash without being
recognized. Usually, fugitives panicked on the street and did something stupid.
Stole a car. Robbed a store. Used a bank card in desperation. Whatever mistake
they committed, they quickly made their whereabouts known to local authorities.
"Only Langdon, right?" Collet said. "You're not flagging Sophie Neveu. She's our
own agent."
"Of course I'm flagging her!" Fache snapped. "What good is flagging Langdon if
she can do all his dirty work? I plan to run Neveu's employment file—friends,
family, personal contacts—anyone she might turn to for help. I don't know what
she thinks she's doing out there, but it's going to cost her one hell of a lot
more than her job!"
"Do you want me on the phones or in the field?"
"Field. Get over to the train station and coordinate the team. You've got the
reins, but don't make a move without talking to me."
"Yes, sir." Collet ran out.
Fache felt rigid as he stood in the alcove. Outside the window, the glass
pyramid shone, its reflection rippling in the windswept pools. They slipped
through my fingers. He told himself to relax.
Even a trained field agent would be lucky to withstand the pressure that
Interpol was about to apply.
A female cryptologist and a schoolteacher?
They wouldn't last till dawn.
CHAPTER 37
The heavily forested park
known as the Bois de Boulogne was called many things, but the Parisian
cognoscenti knew it as "the Garden of Earthly Delights." The epithet, despite
sounding flattering, was quite to the contrary. Anyone who had seen the lurid
Bosch painting of the same name understood the jab; the painting, like the
forest, was dark and twisted, a purgatory for freaks and fetishists. At night,
the forest's winding lanes were lined with hundreds of glistening bodies for
hire, earthly delights to satisfy one's deepest unspoken desires—male, female,
and everything in between.
As Langdon gathered his thoughts to tell Sophie about the Priory of Sion, their
taxi passed through the wooded entrance to the park and began heading west on
the cobblestone crossfare. Langdon was having trouble concentrating as a
scattering of the park's nocturnal residents were already emerging from the
shadows and flaunting their wares in the glare of the headlights. Ahead, two
topless teenage girls shot smoldering gazes into the taxi. Beyond them, a
well-oiled black man in a G-string turned and flexed his buttocks. Beside him, a
gorgeous blond woman lifted her miniskirt to reveal that she was not, in fact, a
woman.
Heaven help me! Langdon turned his gaze back inside the cab and took a deep
breath.
"Tell me about the Priory of Sion," Sophie said.
Langdon nodded, unable to imagine a less congruous a backdrop for the legend he
was about to tell. He wondered where to begin. The brotherhood's history spanned
more than a millennium... an astonishing chronicle of secrets, blackmail,
betrayal, and even brutal torture at the hands of an angry Pope.
"The Priory of Sion," he began, "was founded in Jerusalem in 1099 by a French
king named Godefroi de Bouillon, immediately after he had conquered the city."
Sophie nodded, her eyes riveted on him.
"King Godefroi was allegedly the possessor of a powerful secret—a secret that
had been in his family since the time of Christ. Fearing his secret might be
lost when he died, he founded a secret brotherhood—the Priory of Sion—and
charged them with protecting his secret by quietly passing it on from generation
to generation. During their years in Jerusalem, the Priory learned of a stash of
hidden documents buried beneath the ruins of Herod's temple, which had been
built atop the earlier ruins of Solomon's Temple. These documents, they
believed, corroborated Godefroi's powerful secret and were so explosive in
nature that the Church would stop at nothing to get them." Sophie looked
uncertain.
"The Priory vowed that no matter how long it took, these documents must be
recovered from the rubble beneath the temple and protected forever, so the truth
would never die. In order to retrieve the documents from within the ruins, the
Priory created a military arm—a group of nine knights called the Order of the
Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon." Langdon paused. "More
commonly known as the Knights Templar."
Sophie glanced up with a surprised look of recognition. Langdon had lectured
often enough on the Knights Templar to know that almost everyone on earth had
heard of them, at least abstractedly. For academics, the Templars' history was a
precarious world where fact, lore, and misinformation had become so intertwined
that extracting a pristine truth was almost impossible. Nowadays, Langdon
hesitated even to mention the Knights Templar while lecturing because it
invariably led to a barrage of convoluted inquiries into assorted conspiracy
theories.
Sophie already looked troubled. "You're saying the Knights Templar were founded
by the Priory of Sion to retrieve a collection of secret documents? I thought
the Templars were created to protect the Holy Land."
"A common misconception. The idea of protection of pilgrims was the guise under
which the Templars ran their mission. Their true goal in the Holy Land was to
retrieve the documents from beneath the ruins of the temple."
"And did they find them?"
Langdon grinned. "Nobody knows for sure, but the one thing on which all
academics agree is this: The Knights discovered something down there in the
ruins... something that made them wealthy and powerful beyond anyone's wildest
imagination."
Langdon quickly gave Sophie the standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights
Templar history, explaining how the Knights were in the Holy Land during the
Second Crusade and told King Baldwin II that they were there to protect
Christian pilgrims on the roadways. Although unpaid and sworn to poverty, the
Knights told the king they required basic shelter and requested his permission
to take up residence in the stables under the ruins of the temple. King Baldwin
granted the soldiers' request, and the Knights took up their meager residence
inside the devastated shrine.
The odd choice of lodging, Langdon explained, had been anything but random. The
Knights believed the documents the Priory sought were buried deep under the
ruins—beneath the Holy of Holies, a sacred chamber where God Himself was
believed to reside. Literally, the very center of the Jewish faith. For almost a
decade, the nine Knights lived in the ruins, excavating in total secrecy through
solid rock.
Sophie looked over. "And you said they discovered something?"
"They certainly did," Langdon said, explaining how it had taken nine years, but
the Knights had finally found what they had been searching for. They took the
treasure from the temple and traveled to Europe, where their influence seemed to
solidify overnight.
Nobody was certain whether the Knights had blackmailed the Vatican or whether
the Church simply tried to buy the Knights' silence, but Pope Innocent II
immediately issued an unprecedented papal bull that afforded the Knights Templar
limitless power and declared them "a law unto themselves"—an autonomous army
independent of all interference from kings and prelates, both religious and
political.
With their new carte blanche from the Vatican, the Knights Templar expanded at a
staggering rate, both in numbers and political force, amassing vast estates in
over a dozen countries. They began extending credit to bankrupt royals and
charging interest in return, thereby establishing modern banking and broadening
their wealth and influence still further.
By the 1300s, the Vatican sanction had helped the Knights amass so much power
that Pope Clement V decided that something had to be done. Working in concert
with France's King Philippe IV, the Pope devised an ingeniously planned sting
operation to quash the Templars and seize their treasure, thus taking control of
the secrets held over the Vatican. In a military maneuver worthy of the CIA,
Pope Clement issued secret sealed orders to be opened simultaneously by his
soldiers all across Europe on Friday, October 13 of 1307.
At dawn on the thirteenth, the documents were unsealed and their appalling
contents revealed. Clement's letter claimed that God had visited him in a vision
and warned him that the Knights Templar were heretics guilty of devil worship,
homosexuality, defiling the cross, sodomy, and other blasphemous behavior. Pope
Clement had been asked by God to cleanse the earth by rounding up all the
Knights and torturing them until they confessed their crimes against God.
Clement's Machiavellian operation came off with clockwork precision. On that
day, countless Knights were captured, tortured mercilessly, and finally burned
at the stake as heretics. Echoes of the tragedy still resonated in modern
culture; to this day, Friday the thirteenth was considered unlucky.
Sophie looked confused. "The Knights Templar were obliterated? I thought
fraternities of Templars still exist today?"
"They do, under a variety of names. Despite Clement's false charges and best
efforts to eradicate them, the Knights had powerful allies, and some managed to
escape the Vatican purges. The Templars' potent treasure trove of documents,
which had apparently been their source of power, was Clement's true objective,
but it slipped through his fingers. The documents had long since been entrusted
to the Templars' shadowy architects, the Priory of Sion, whose veil of secrecy
had kept them safely out of range of the Vatican's onslaught. As the Vatican
closed in, the Priory smuggled their documents from a Paris preceptory by night
onto Templar ships in La Rochelle."
"Where did the documents go?"
Langdon shrugged. "That mystery's answer is known only to the Priory of Sion.
Because the documents remain the source of constant investigation and
speculation even today, they are believed to have been moved and rehidden
several times. Current speculation places the documents somewhere in the United
Kingdom."
Sophie looked uneasy.
"For a thousand years," Langdon continued, "legends of this secret have been
passed on. The entire collection of documents, its power, and the secret it
reveals have become known by a single name—Sangreal. Hundreds of books have been
written about it, and few mysteries have caused as much interest among
historians as the Sangreal."
"The Sangreal? Does the word have anything to do with the French word sang or
Spanish sangre—meaning 'blood'?"
Langdon nodded. Blood was the backbone of the Sangreal, and yet not in the way
Sophie probably imagined. "The legend is complicated, but the important thing to
remember is that the Priory guards the proof, and is purportedly awaiting the
right moment in history to reveal the truth."
"What truth? What secret could possibly be that powerful?"
Langdon took a deep breath and gazed out at the underbelly of Paris leering in
the shadows. "Sophie, the word Sangreal is an ancient word. It has evolved over
the years into another term... a more modern name." He paused. "When I tell you
its modern name, you'll realize you already know a lot about it. In fact, almost
everyone on earth has heard the story of the Sangreal."
Sophie looked skeptical. "I've never heard of it."
"Sure you have." Langdon smiled. "You're just used to hearing it called by the
name 'Holy Grail.' "
CHAPTER 38
Sophie scrutinized Langdon in the back of the taxi. He's joking. "The Holy
Grail?"
Langdon nodded, his expression serious. "Holy Grail is the literal meaning of
Sangreal. The phrase derives from the French Sangraal, which evolved to Sangreal,
and was eventually split into two words, San Greal."
Holy Grail. Sophie was surprised she had not spotted the linguistic ties
immediately. Even so, Langdon's claim still made no sense to her. "I thought the
Holy Grail was a cup. You just told me the Sangreal is a collection of documents
that reveals some dark secret."
"Yes, but the Sangreal documents are only half of the Holy Grail treasure. They
are buried with the Grail itself... and reveal its true meaning. The documents
gave the Knights Templar so much power because the pages revealed the true
nature of the Grail."
The true nature of the Grail? Sophie felt even more lost now. The Holy Grail,
she had thought, was the cup that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper and with
which Joseph of Arimathea later caught His blood at the crucifixion. "The Holy
Grail is the Cup of Christ," she said. "How much simpler could it be?"
"Sophie," Langdon whispered, leaning toward her now, "according to the Priory of
Sion, the Holy Grail is not a cup at all. They claim the Grail legend—that of a
chalice—is actually an ingeniously conceived allegory. That is, that the Grail
story uses the chalice as a metaphor for something else, something far more
powerful." He paused. "Something that fits perfectly with everything your
grandfather has been trying to tell us tonight, including all his symbologic
references to the sacred feminine."
Still unsure, Sophie sensed in Langdon's patient smile that he empathized with
her confusion, and yet his eyes remained earnest. "But if the Holy Grail is not
a cup," she asked, "what is it?"
Langdon had known this question was coming, and yet he still felt uncertain
exactly how to tell her. If he did not present the answer in the proper
historical background, Sophie would be left with a vacant air of
bewilderment—the exact expression Langdon had seen on his own editor's face a
few months ago after Langdon handed him a draft of the manuscript he was working
on.
"This manuscript claims what?" his editor had choked, setting down his wineglass
and staring across his half-eaten power lunch. "You can't be serious."
"Serious enough to have spent a year researching it."
Prominent New York editor Jonas Faukman tugged nervously at his goatee. Faukman
no doubt had heard some wild book ideas in his illustrious career, but this one
seemed to have left the man flabbergasted.
"Robert," Faukman finally said, "don't get me wrong. I love your work, and we've
had a great run together. But if I agree to publish an idea like this, I'll have
people picketing outside my office for months. Besides, it will kill your
reputation. You're a Harvard historian, for God's sake, not a pop schlockmeister
looking for a quick buck. Where could you possibly find enough credible evidence
to support a theory like this?"
With a quiet smile Langdon pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of his tweed
coat and handed it to Faukman. The page listed a bibliography of over fifty
titles—books by well-known historians, some contemporary, some centuries
old—many of them academic bestsellers. All the book titles suggested the same
premise Langdon had just proposed. As Faukman read down the list, he looked like
a man who had just discovered the earth was actually flat. "I know some of these
authors. They're... real historians!"
Langdon grinned. "As you can see, Jonas, this is not only my theory. It's been
around for a long time. I'm simply building on it. No book has yet explored the
legend of the Holy Grail from a symbologic angle. The iconographic evidence I'm
finding to support the theory is, well, staggeringly persuasive."
Faukman was still staring at the list. "My God, one of these books was written
by Sir Leigh Teabing—a British Royal Historian."
"Teabing has spent much of his life studying the Holy Grail. I've met with him.
He was actually a big part of my inspiration. He's a believer, Jonas, along with
all of the others on that list."
"You're telling me all of these historians actually believe..." Faukman
swallowed, apparently unable to say the words.
Langdon grinned again. "The Holy Grail is arguably the most sought-after
treasure in human history. The Grail has spawned legends, wars, and lifelong
quests. Does it make sense that it is merely a cup? If so, then certainly other
relics should generate similar or greater interest—the Crown of Thorns, the True
Cross of the Crucifixion, the Titulus—and yet, they do not. Throughout history,
the Holy Grail has been the most special." Langdon grinned. "Now you know why."
Faukman was still shaking his head. "But with all these books written about it,
why isn't this theory more widely known?"
"These books can't possibly compete with centuries of established history,
especially when that history is endorsed by the ultimate bestseller of all
time."
Faukman's eyes went wide. "Don't tell me Harry Potter is actually about the Holy
Grail."
"I was referring to the Bible."
Faukman cringed. "I knew that."
"Laissez-le!" Sophie's shouts cut the air inside the taxi. "Put it down!"
Langdon jumped as Sophie leaned forward over the seat and yelled at the taxi
driver. Langdon could see the driver was clutching his radio mouthpiece and
speaking into it.
Sophie turned now and plunged her hand into the pocket of Langdon's tweed
jacket. Before Langdon knew what had happened, she had yanked out the pistol,
swung it around, and was pressing it to the back of the driver's head. The
driver instantly dropped his radio, raising his one free hand overhead.
"Sophie!" Langdon choked. "What the hell—"
"Arrêtez!" Sophie commanded the driver.
Trembling, the driver obeyed, stopping the car and putting it in park.
It was then that Langdon heard the metallic voice of the taxi company's
dispatcher coming from the dashboard. "...qui s'appette Agent Sophie Neveu..."
the radio crackled. "Et un Américain, Robert Langdon..."
Langdon's muscles turned rigid. They found us already?
"Descendez," Sophie demanded.
The trembling driver kept his arms over his head as he got out of his taxi and
took several steps backward.
Sophie had rolled down her window and now aimed the gun outside at the
bewildered cabbie. "Robert," she said quietly, "take the wheel. You're driving."
Langdon was not about to argue with a woman wielding a gun. He climbed out of
the car and jumped back in behind the wheel. The driver was yelling curses, his
arms still raised over his head.
"Robert," Sophie said from the back seat, "I trust you've seen enough of our
magic forest?"
He nodded. Plenty.
"Good. Drive us out of here."
Langdon looked down at the car's controls and hesitated. Shit. He groped for the
stick shift and clutch. "Sophie? Maybe you—"
"Go!" she yelled.
Outside, several hookers were walking over to see what was going on. One woman
was placing a call on her cell phone. Langdon depressed the clutch and jostled
the stick into what he hoped was first gear. He touched the accelerator, testing
the gas.
Langdon popped the clutch. The tires howled as the taxi leapt forward,
fishtailing wildly and sending the gathering crowd diving for cover. The woman
with the cell phone leapt into the woods, only narrowly avoiding being run down.
"Doucement!" Sophie said, as the car lurched down the road. "What are you
doing?"
"I tried to warn you," he shouted over the sound of gnashing gears. "I drive an
automatic!"
CHAPTER 39
Although the spartan room in the brownstone on Rue La Bruyère had witnessed a
lot of suffering, Silas doubted anything could match the anguish now gripping
his pale body. I was deceived. Everything is lost.
Silas had been tricked. The brothers had lied, choosing death instead of
revealing their true secret. Silas did not have the strength to call the
Teacher. Not only had Silas killed the only four people who knew where the
keystone was hidden, he had killed a nun inside Saint-Sulpice. She was working
against God! She scorned the work of Opus Dei!
A crime of impulse, the woman's death complicated matters greatly. Bishop
Aringarosa had placed the phone call that got Silas into Saint-Sulpice; what
would the abbé think when he discovered the nun was dead? Although Silas had
placed her back in her bed, the wound on her head was obvious. Silas had
attempted to replace the broken tiles in the floor, but that damage too was
obvious. They would know someone had been there.
Silas had planned to hide within Opus Dei when his task here was complete.
Bishop Aringarosa will protect me. Silas could imagine no more blissful
existence than a life of meditation and prayer deep within the walls of Opus
Dei's headquarters in New York City. He would never again set foot outside.
Everything he needed was within that sanctuary. Nobody will miss me.
Unfortunately, Silas knew, a prominent man like Bishop Aringarosa could not
disappear so easily.
I have endangered the bishop. Silas gazed blankly at the floor and pondered
taking his own life. After all, it had been Aringarosa who gave Silas life in
the first place... in that small rectory in Spain, educating him, giving him
purpose.
"My friend," Aringarosa had told him, "you were born an albino. Do not let
others shame you for this. Do you not understand how special this makes you?
Were you not aware that Noah himself was an albino?"
"Noah of the Ark?" Silas had never heard this.
Aringarosa was smiling. "Indeed, Noah of the Ark. An albino. Like you, he had
skin white like an angel. Consider this. Noah saved all of life on the planet.
You are destined for great things, Silas. The Lord has freed you for a reason.
You have your calling. The Lord needs your help to do His work."
Over time, Silas learned to see himself in a new light. I am pure. White.
Beautiful. Like an angel.
At the moment, though, in his room at the residence hall, it was his father's
disappointed voice that whispered to him from the past.
Tu es un désastre. Un spectre.
Kneeling on the wooden floor, Silas prayed for forgiveness. Then, stripping off
his robe, he reached again for the Discipline.
To Index