reethinking women" and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and
destroy them. Those deemed "witches" by the Church included all female
scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and
any women "suspiciously attuned to the natural world." Midwives also were
killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the
pain of childbirth--a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God's rightful
punishment for Eve's partaking of the Apple of Knowledge, thus giving birth
to the idea of Original Sin. During three hundred years of witch hunts, the
Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women.
The propaganda and bloodshed had worked.
Today's world was living proof.
Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment,
had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female
Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, nor Islamic clerics. The once hallowed
act of Hieros Gamos--the natural sexual union between man and woman through
which each became spiritually whole--had been recast as a shameful act. Holy
men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to
commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the
devil, collaborating with his favorite accomplice... woman.
Not even the feminine association with the left-hand side could escape
the Church's defamation. In France and Italy, the words for "left"--gauche
and sinistra--came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand
counterparts rang of righteousness, dexterity, and correctness. To this day,
radical thought was considered left wing, irrational thought was left brain,
and anything evil, sinister.
The days of the goddess were over. The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth
had become a man's world, and the gods of destruction and war were taking
their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its
female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this
obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the
Hopi Native Americans called koyanisquatsi--"life out of balance"--an
unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of
misogynistic societies, and a growing disrespect for Mother Earth.
"Robert!" Sophie said, her whisper yanking him back. "Someone's
coming!"
He heard the approaching footsteps out in the hallway.
"Over here!" Sophie extinguished the black light and seemed to
evaporate before Langdon's eyes.
For an instant he felt totally blind. Over where! As his vision cleared
he saw Sophie's silhouette racing toward the center of the room and ducking
out of sight behind the octagonal viewing bench. He was about to dash after
her when a booming voice stopped him cold.
"Arrutez!" a man commanded from the doorway.
The Louvre security agent advanced through the entrance to the Salle
des Etats, his pistol outstretched, taking deadly aim at Langdon's chest.
Langdon felt his arms raise instinctively for the ceiling.
"Couchez-vous!" the guard commanded. "Lie down!"
Langdon was face first on the floor in a matter of seconds. The guard
hurried over and kicked his legs apart, spreading Langdon out.
"Mauvaise idue, Monsieur Langdon," he said, pressing the gun hard into
Langdon's back. "Mauvaise idue."
Face down on the parquet floor with his arms and legs spread wide,
Langdon found little humor in the irony of his position. The Vitruvian Man,
he thought. Face down.
CHAPTER 29
Inside Saint-Sulpice, Silas carried the heavy iron votive candle holder
from the altar back toward the obelisk. The shaft would do nicely as a
battering ram. Eyeing the gray marble panel that covered the apparent hollow
in the floor, he realized he could not possibly shatter the covering without
making considerable noise.
Iron on marble. It would echo off the vaulted ceilings.
Would the nun hear him? She should be asleep by now. Even so, it was a
chance Silas preferred not to take. Looking around for a cloth to wrap
around the tip of the iron pole, he saw nothing except the altar's linen
mantle, which he refused to defile. My cloak, he thought. Knowing he was
alone in the great church, Silas untied his cloak and slipped it off his
body. As he removed it, he felt a sting as the wool fibers stuck to the
fresh wounds on his back.
Naked now, except for his loin swaddle, Silas wrapped his cloak over
the end of the iron rod. Then, aiming at the center of the floor tile, he
drove the tip into it. A muffled thud. The stone did not break. He drove the
pole into it again. Again a dull thud, but this time accompanied by a crack.
On the third swing, the covering finally shattered, and stone shards fell
into a hollow area beneath the floor.
A compartment!
Quickly pulling the remaining pieces from the opening, Silas gazed into
the void. His blood pounded as he knelt down before it. Raising his pale
bare arm, he reached inside.
At first he felt nothing. The floor of the compartment was bare, smooth
stone. Then, feeling deeper, reaching his arm in under the Rose Line, he
touched something! A thick stone tablet. Getting his fingers around the
edge, he gripped it and gently lifted the tablet out. As he stood and
examined his find, he realized he was holding a rough-hewn stone slab with
engraved words. He felt for an instant like a modern-day Moses.
As Silas read the words on the tablet, he felt surprise. He had
expected the keystone to be a map, or a complex series of directions,
perhaps even encoded. The keystone, however, bore the simplest of
inscriptions.
Job 38:11
A Bible verse? Silas was stunned with the devilish simplicity. The
secret location of that which they sought was revealed in a Bible verse? The
brotherhood stopped at nothing to mock the righteous!
Job. Chapter thirty-eight. Verse eleven.
Although Silas did not recall the exact contents of verse eleven by
heart, he knew the Book of Job told the story of a man whose faith in God
survived repeated tests. Appropriate, he thought, barely able to contain his
excitement.
Looking over his shoulder, he gazed down the shimmering Rose Line and
couldn't help but smile. There atop the main altar, propped open on a gilded
book stand, sat an enormous leather-bound Bible.
Up in the balcony, Sister Sandrine was shaking. Moments ago, she had
been about to flee and carry out her orders, when the man below suddenly
removed his cloak. When she saw his alabaster-white flesh, she was overcome
with a horrified bewilderment. His broad, pale back was soaked with
blood-red slashes. Even from here she could see the wounds were fresh.
This man has been mercilessly whipped!
She also saw the bloody cilice around his thigh, the wound beneath it
dripping. What kind of God would want a body punished this way? The rituals
of Opus Dei, Sister Sandrine knew, were not something she would ever
understand. But that was hardly her concern at this instant. Opus Dei is
searching for the keystone. How they knew of it, Sister Sandrine could not
imagine, although she knew she did not have time to think.
The bloody monk was now quietly donning his cloak again, clutching his
prize as he moved toward the altar, toward the Bible.
In breathless silence, Sister Sandrine left the balcony and raced down
the hall to her quarters. Getting on her hands and knees, she reached
beneath her wooden bed frame and retrieved the sealed envelope she had
hidden there years ago.
Tearing it open, she found four Paris phone numbers.
Trembling, she began to dial.
Downstairs, Silas laid the stone tablet on the altar and turned his
eager hands to the leather Bible. His long white fingers were sweating now
as he turned the pages. Flipping through the Old Testament, he found the
Book of Job. He located chapter thirty-eight. As he ran his finger down the
column of text, he anticipated the words he was about to read.
They will lead the way!
Finding verse number eleven, Silas read the text. It was only seven
words. Confused, he read it again, sensing something had gone terribly
wrong. The verse simply read:
HITHERTO SHALT THOU COME, BUT NO FURTHER.
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
Sauniure! Sauniure 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 lu?" 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.
"Rupondez!"
"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 Sauniure'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 Sauniure 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-pure, 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.
"Arrutez! Ou je la dutruis!" 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
Inversue--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-Elysues.
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-Elysues, 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 Sauniure's brilliant
hiding place; Madonna of the Rocks was yet another fitting link in the
evening's chain of interconnected symbolism. Sauniure, 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-Elysues, 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 Hutel 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-pure 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 Sauniure despised city driving and owned a car
for one destination only--his vacation chuteau 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 chuteau 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-pure, the
famous recluse! Jacques Sauniure, 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 chuteau'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-Elysues.
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-Elysues, 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
Sauniure might keep. What an ancient brotherhood was doing with a futuristic
key, Langdon had no idea. The Priory existed for the