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never spoke at all? Never corresponded? Never sent each other anything in
the mail?"
Another odd question. Langdon shook his head. "No. Never." Fache cocked
his head, as if making a mental note of that fact. Saying nothing, he stared
dead ahead at the chrome doors.
As they ascended, Langdon tried to focus on anything other than the
four walls around him. In the reflection of the shiny elevator door, he saw
the captain's tie clip--a silver crucifix with thirteen embedded pieces of
black onyx. Langdon found it vaguely surprising. The symbol was known as a
crux gemmata--a cross bearing thirteen gems--a Christian ideogram for Christ
and His twelve apostles. Somehow Langdon had not expected the captain of the
French police to broadcast his religion so openly. Then again, this was
France; Christianity was not a religion here so much as a birthright.
"It's a crux gemmata" Fache said suddenly.
Startled, Langdon glanced up to find Fache's eyes on him in the
reflection.
The elevator jolted to a stop, and the doors opened.
Langdon stepped quickly out into the hallway, eager for the wide-open
space afforded by the famous high ceilings of the Louvre galleries. The
world into which he stepped, however, was nothing like he expected.
Surprised, Langdon stopped short.
Fache glanced over. "I gather, Mr. Langdon, you have never seen the
Louvre after hours?"
I guess not, Langdon thought, trying to get his bearings.
Usually impeccably illuminated, the Louvre galleries were startlingly
dark tonight. Instead of the customary flat-white light flowing down from
above, a muted red glow seemed to emanate upward from the
baseboards--intermittent patches of red light spilling out onto the tile
floors.
As Langdon gazed down the murky corridor, he realized he should have
anticipated this scene. Virtually all major galleries employed red service
lighting at night--strategically placed, low-level, noninvasive lights that
enabled staff members to navigate hallways and yet kept the paintings in
relative darkness to slow the fading effects of overexposure to light.
Tonight, the museum possessed an almost oppressive quality. Long shadows
encroached everywhere, and the usually soaring vaulted ceilings appeared as
a low, black void.
"This way," Fache said, turning sharply right and setting out through a
series of interconnected galleries.
Langdon followed, his vision slowly adjusting to the dark. All around,
large-format oils began to materialize like photos developing before him in
an enormous darkroom... their eyes following as he moved through the rooms.
He could taste the familiar tang of museum air--an arid, deionized essence
that carried a faint hint of carbon--the product of industrial, coal-filter
dehumidifiers that ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive carbon
dioxide exhaled by visitors.
Mounted high on the walls, the visible security cameras sent a clear
message to visitors: We see you. Do not touch anything.
"Any of them real?" Langdon asked, motioning to the cameras.
Fache shook his head. "Of course not."
Langdon was not surprised. Video surveillance in museums this size was
cost-prohibitive and ineffective. With acres of galleries to watch over, the
Louvre would require several hundred technicians simply to monitor the
feeds. Most large museums now used "containment security." Forget keeping
thieves out. Keep them in. Containment was activated after hours, and if an
intruder removed a piece of artwork, compartmentalized exits would seal
around that gallery, and the thief would find himself behind bars even
before the police arrived.
The sound of voices echoed down the marble corridor up ahead. The noise
seemed to be coming from a large recessed alcove that lay ahead on the
right. A bright light spilled out into the hallway.
"Office of the curator," the captain said.
As he and Fache drew nearer the alcove, Langdon peered down a short
hallway, into Sauniure's luxurious study--warm wood, Old Master paintings,
and an enormous antique desk on which stood a two-foot-tall model of a
knight in full armor. A handful of police agents bustled about the room,
talking on phones and taking notes. One of them was seated at Sauniure's
desk, typing into a laptop. Apparently, the curator's private office had
become DCPJ's makeshift command post for the evening.
"Messieurs," Fache called out, and the men turned. "Ne nous durangez
pas sous aucun prutexte. Entendu?"
Everyone inside the office nodded their understanding.
Langdon had hung enough NE PAS DERANGER signs on hotel room doors to
catch the gist of the captain's orders. Fache and Langdon were not to be
disturbed under any circumstances.
Leaving the small congregation of agents behind, Fache led Langdon
farther down the darkened hallway. Thirty yards ahead loomed the gateway to
the Louvre's most popular section--la Grande Galerie--a seemingly endless
corridor that housed the Louvre's most valuable Italian masterpieces.
Langdon had already discerned that this was where Sauniure's body lay; the
Grand Gallery's famous parquet floor had been unmistakable in the Polaroid.
As they approached, Langdon saw the entrance was blocked by an enormous
steel grate that looked like something used by medieval castles to keep out
marauding armies.
"Containment security," Fache said, as they neared the grate.
Even in the darkness, the barricade looked like it could have
restrained a tank. Arriving outside, Langdon peered through the bars into
the dimly lit caverns of the Grand Gallery.
"After you, Mr. Langdon," Fache said.
Langdon turned. After me, where?
Fache motioned toward the floor at the base of the grate.
Langdon looked down. In the darkness, he hadn't noticed. The barricade
was raised about two feet, providing an awkward clearance underneath.
"This area is still off limits to Louvre security," Fache said. "My
team from Police Technique et Scientifique has just finished their
investigation." He motioned to the opening. "Please slide under."
Langdon stared at the narrow crawl space at his feet and then up at the
massive iron grate. He's kidding, right? The barricade looked like a
guillotine waiting to crush intruders.
Fache grumbled something in French and checked his watch. Then he
dropped to his knees and slithered his bulky frame underneath the grate. On
the other side, he stood up and looked back through the bars at Langdon.
Langdon sighed. Placing his palms flat on the polished parquet, he lay
on his stomach and pulled himself forward. As he slid underneath, the nape
of his Harris tweed snagged on the bottom of the grate, and he cracked the
back of his head on the iron.
Very suave, Robert, he thought, fumbling and then finally pulling
himself through. As he stood up, Langdon was beginning to suspect it was
going to be a very long night.
Murray Hill Place--the new Opus Dei World Headquarters and conference
center--is located at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City. With a price
tag of just over $47 million, the 133,000-square-foot tower is clad in red
brick and Indiana limestone. Designed by May & Pinska, the building
contains over one hundred bedrooms, six dining rooms, libraries, living
rooms, meeting rooms, and offices. The second, eighth, and sixteenth floors
contain chapels, ornamented with mill-work and marble. The seventeenth floor
is entirely residential. Men enter the building through the main doors on
Lexington Avenue. Women enter through a side street and are "acoustically
and visually separated" from the men at all times within the building.
Earlier this evening, within the sanctuary of his penthouse apartment,
Bishop Manuel Aringarosa had packed a small travel bag and dressed in a
traditional black cassock. Normally, he would have wrapped a purple cincture
around his waist, but tonight he would be traveling among the public, and he
preferred not to draw attention to his high office. Only those with a keen
eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop's ring with purple amethyst, large
diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliquu. Throwing the travel bag
over his shoulder, he said a silent prayer and left his apartment,
descending to the lobby where his driver was waiting to take him to the
airport.
Now, sitting aboard a commercial airliner bound for Rome, Aringarosa
gazed out the window at the dark Atlantic. The sun had already set, but
Aringarosa knew his own star was on the rise. Tonight the battle will be
won, he thought, amazed that only months ago he had felt powerless against
the hands that threatened to destroy his empire.
As president-general of Opus Dei, Bishop Aringarosa had spent the last
decade of his life spreading the message of "God's Work"--literally, Opus
Dei. The congregation, founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Josemarua
Escrivu, promoted a return to conservative Catholic values and encouraged
its members to make sweeping sacrifices in their own lives in order to do
the Work of God.
Opus Dei's traditionalist philosophy initially had taken root in Spain
before Franco's regime, but with the 1934 publication of Josemarua Escrivu's
spiritual book The Way--999 points of meditation for doing God's Work in
one's own life--Escrivu's message exploded across the world. Now, with over
four million copies of The Way in circulation in forty-two languages, Opus
Dei was a global force. Its residence halls, teaching centers, and even
universities could be found in almost every major metropolis on earth. Opus
Dei was the fastest-growing and most financially secure Catholic
organization in the world. Unfortunately, Aringarosa had learned, in an age
of religious cynicism, cults, and televangelists, Opus Dei's escalating
wealth and power was a magnet for suspicion.
"Many call Opus Dei a brainwashing cult," reporters often challenged.
"Others call you an ultraconservative Christian secret society. Which are
you?"
"Opus Dei is neither," the bishop would patiently reply. "We are a
Catholic Church. We are a congregation of Catholics who have chosen as our
priority to follow Catholic doctrine as rigorously as we can in our own
daily lives."
"Does God's Work necessarily include vows of chastity, tithing, and
atonement for sins through self-flagellation and the cilice?"
"You are describing only a small portion of the Opus Dei population,"
Aringarosa said. "There are many levels of involvement. Thousands of Opus
Dei members are married, have families, and do God's Work in their own
communities. Others choose lives of asceticism within our cloistered
residence halls. These choices are personal, but everyone in Opus Dei shares
the goal of bettering the world by doing the Work of God. Surely this is an
admirable quest."
Reason seldom worked, though. The media always gravitated toward
scandal, and Opus Dei, like most large organizations, had within its
membership a few misguided souls who cast a shadow over the entire group.
Two months ago, an Opus Dei group at a midwestern university had been
caught drugging new recruits with mescaline in an effort to induce a
euphoric state that neophytes would perceive as a religious experience.
Another university student had used his barbed cilice belt more often than
the recommended two hours a day and had given himself a near lethal
infection. In Boston not long ago, a disillusioned young investment banker
had signed over his entire life savings to Opus Dei before attempting
suicide.
Misguided sheep, Aringarosa thought, his heart going out to them.
Of course the ultimate embarrassment had been the widely publicized
trial of FBI spy Robert Hanssen, who, in addition to being a prominent
member of Opus Dei, had turned out to be a sexual deviant, his trial
uncovering evidence that he had rigged hidden video cameras in his own
bedroom so his friends could watch him having sex with his wife. "Hardly the
pastime of a devout Catholic," the judge had noted.
Sadly, all of these events had helped spawn the new watch group known
as the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN). The group's popular
website--www.odan.org--relayed frightening stories from former Opus Dei
members who warned of the dangers of joining. The media was now referring to
Opus Dei as "God's Mafia" and "the Cult of Christ."
We fear what we do not understand, Aringarosa thought, wondering if
these critics had any idea how many lives Opus Dei had enriched. The group
enjoyed the full endorsement and blessing of the Vatican. Opus Dei is a
personal prelature of the Pope himself.
Recently, however, Opus Dei had found itself threatened by a force
infinitely more powerful than the media... an unexpected foe from which
Aringarosa could not possibly hide. Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of
power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow.
"They know not the war they have begun," Aringarosa whispered to
himself, staring out the plane's window at the darkness of the ocean below.
For an instant, his eyes refocused, lingering on the reflection of his
awkward face--dark and oblong, dominated by a flat, crooked nose that had
been shattered by a fist in Spain when he was a young missionary. The
physical flaw barely registered now. Aringarosa's was a world of the soul,
not of the flesh.
As the jet passed over the coast of Portugal, the cell phone in
Aringarosa's cassock began vibrating in silent ring mode. Despite airline
regulations prohibiting the use of cell phones during flights, Aringarosa
knew this was a call he could not miss. Only one man possessed this number,
the man who had mailed Aringarosa the phone.
Excited, the bishop answered quietly. "Yes?"
"Silas has located the keystone," the caller said. "It is in Paris.
Within the Church of Saint-Sulpice."
Bishop Aringarosa smiled. "Then we are close."
"We can obtain it immediately. But we need your influence."
"Of course. Tell me what to do."
When Aringarosa switched off the phone, his heart was pounding. He
gazed once again into the void of night, feeling dwarfed by the events he
had put into motion.
Five hundred miles away, the albino named Silas stood over a small
basin of water and dabbed the blood from his back, watching the patterns of
red spinning in the water. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, he
prayed, quoting Psalms. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Silas was feeling an aroused anticipation that he had not felt since
his previous life. It both surprised and electrified him. For the last
decade, he had been following The Way, cleansing himself of sins...
rebuilding his life... erasing the violence in his past. Tonight, however,
it had all come rushing back. The hatred he had fought so hard to bury had
been summoned. He had been startled how quickly his past had resurfaced. And
with it, of course, had come his skills. Rusty but serviceable.
Jesus' message is one of peace... of nonviolence... of love. This was
the message Silas had been taught from the beginning, and the message he
held in his heart. And yet this was the message the enemies of Christ now
threatened to destroy. Those who threaten God with force will be met with
force. Immovable and steadfast.
For two millennia, Christian soldiers had defended their faith against
those who tried to displace it. Tonight, Silas had been called to battle.
Drying his wounds, he donned his ankle-length, hooded robe. It was
plain, made of dark wool, accentuating the whiteness of his skin and hair.
Tightening the rope-tie around his waist, he raised the hood over his head
and allowed his red eyes to admire his reflection in the mirror. The wheels
are in motion.
Having squeezed beneath the security gate, Robert Langdon now stood
just inside the entrance to the Grand Gallery. He was staring into the mouth
of a long, deep canyon. On either side of the gallery, stark walls rose
thirty feet, evaporating into the darkness above. The reddish glow of the
service lighting sifted upward, casting an unnatural smolder across a
staggering collection of Da Vincis, Titians, and Caravaggios that hung
suspended from ceiling cables. Still lifes, religious scenes, and landscapes
accompanied portraits of nobility and politicians.
Although the Grand Gallery housed the Louvre's most famous Italian art,
many visitors felt the wing's most stunning offering was actually its famous
parquet floor. Laid out in a dazzling geometric design of diagonal oak
slats, the floor produced an ephemeral optical illusion--a multi-dimensional
network that gave visitors the sense they were floating through the gallery
on a surface that changed with every step.
As Langdon's gaze began to trace the inlay, his eyes stopped short on
an unexpected object lying on the floor just a few yards to his left,
surrounded by police tape. He spun toward Fache. "Is that... a Caravaggio on
the floor?"
Fache nodded without even looking.
The painting, Langdon guessed, was worth upward of two million dollars,
and yet it was lying on the floor like a discarded poster. "What the devil
is it doing on the floor!"
Fache glowered, clearly unmoved. "This is a crime scene, Mr. Langdon.
We have touched nothing. That canvas was pulled from the wall by the
curator. It was how he activated the security system."
Langdon looked back at the gate, trying to picture what had happened.
"The curator was attacked in his office, fled into the Grand Gallery,
and activated the security gate by pulling that painting from the wall. The
gate fell immediately, sealing off all access. This is the only door in or
out of this gallery."
Langdon felt confused. "So the curator actually captured his attacker
inside the Grand Gallery?"
Fache shook his head. "The security gate separated Sauniure from his
attacker. The killer was locked out there in the hallway and shot Sauniure
through this gate." Fache pointed toward an orange tag hanging from one of
the bars on the gate under which they had just passed. "The PTS team found
flashback residue from a gun. He fired through the bars. Sauniure died in
here alone."
Langdon pictured the photograph of Sauniure's body. They said he did
that to himself. Langdon looked out at the enormous corridor before them.
"So where is his body?"
Fache straightened his cruciform tie clip and began to walk. "As you
probably know, the Grand Gallery is quite long."
The exact length, if Langdon recalled correctly, was around fifteen
hundred feet, the length of three Washington Monuments laid end to end.
Equally breathtaking was the corridor's width, which easily could have
accommodated a pair of side-by-side passenger trains. The center of the
hallway was dotted by the occasional statue or colossal porcelain urn, which
served as a tasteful divider and kept the flow of traffic moving down one
wall and up the other.
Fache was silent now, striding briskly up the right side of the
corridor with his gaze dead ahead. Langdon felt almost disrespectful to be
racing past so many masterpieces without pausing for so much as a glance.
Not that I could see anything in this lighting, he thought.
The muted crimson lighting unfortunately conjured memories of Langdon's
last experience in noninvasive lighting in the Vatican Secret Archives. This
was tonight's second unsettling parallel with his near-death in Rome. He
flashed on Vittoria again. She had been absent from his dreams for months.
Langdon could not believe Rome had been only a year ago; it felt like
decades. Another life. His last correspondence from Vittoria had been in
December--a postcard saying she was headed to the Java Sea to continue her
research in entanglement physics... something about using satellites to
track manta ray migrations. Langdon had never harbored delusions that a
woman like Vittoria Vetra could have been happy living with him on a college
campus, but their encounter in Rome had unlocked in him a longing he never
imagined he could feel. His lifelong affinity for bachelorhood and the
simple freedoms it allowed had been shaken somehow... replaced by an
unexpected emptiness that seemed to have grown over the past year.
They continued walking briskly, yet Langdon still saw no corpse.
"Jacques Sauniure went this far?"
"Mr. Sauniure suffered a bullet wound to his stomach. He died very
slowly. Perhaps over fifteen or twenty minutes. He was obviously a man of
great personal strength."
Langdon turned, appalled. "Security took fifteen minutes to get here?"
"Of course not. Louvre security responded immediately to the alarm and
found the Grand Gallery sealed. Through the gate, they could hear someone
moving around at the far end of the corridor, but they could not see who it
was. They shouted, but they got no answer. Assuming it could only be a
criminal, they followed protocol and called in the Judicial Police. We took
up positions within fifteen minutes. When we arrived, we raised the
barricade enough to slip underneath, and I sent a dozen armed agents inside.
They swept the length of the gallery to corner the intruder."
"And?"
"They found no one inside. Except..." He pointed farther down the hall.
"Him."
Langdon lifted his gaze and followed Fache's outstretched finger. At
first he thought Fache was pointing to a large marble statue in the middle
of the hallway. As they continued, though, Langdon began to see past the
statue. Thirty yards down the hall, a single spotlight on a portable pole
stand shone down on the floor, creating a stark island of white light in the
dark crimson gallery. In the center of the light, like an insect under a
microscope, the corpse of the curator lay naked on the parquet floor.
"You saw the photograph," Fache said, "so this should be of no
surprise."
Langdon felt a deep chill as they approached the body. Before him was
one of the strangest images he had ever seen.
The pallid corpse of Jacques Sauniure lay on the parquet floor exactly
as it appeared in the photograph. As Langdon stood over the body and
squinted in the harsh light, he reminded himself to his amazement that
Sauniure had spent his last minutes of life arranging his own body in this
strange fashion.
Sauniure looked remarkably fit for a man of his years... and all of his
musculature was in plain view. He had stripped off every shred of clothing,
placed it neatly on the floor, and laid down on his back in the center of
the wide corridor, perfectly aligned with the long axis of the room. His
arms and legs were sprawled outward in a wide spread eagle, like those of a
child making a snow angel... or, perhaps more appropriately, like a man
being drawn and quartered by some invisible force.
Just below Sauniure's breastbone, a bloody smear marked the spot where
the bullet had pierced his flesh. The wound had bled surprisingly little,
leaving only a small pool of blackened blood.
Sauniure's left index finger was also bloody, apparently having been
dipped into the wound to create the most unsettling aspect of his own
macabre deathbed; using his own blood as ink, and employing his own naked
abdomen as a canvas, Sauniure had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh--five
straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.
The pentacle.
The bloody star, centered on Sauniure's navel, gave his corpse a
distinctly ghoulish aura. The photo Langdon had seen was chilling enough,
but now, witnessing the scene in person, Langdon felt a deepening
uneasiness.
He did this to himself.
"Mr. Langdon?" Fache's dark eyes settled on him again.
"It's a pentacle," Langdon offered, his voice feeling hollow in the
huge space. "One of the oldest symbols on earth. Used over four thousand
years before Christ."
"And what does it mean?"
Langdon always hesitated when he got this question. Telling someone
what a symbol "meant" was like telling them how a song should make them
feel--it was different for all people. A white Ku Klux Klan headpiece
conjured images of hatred and racism in the United States, and yet the same
costume carried a meaning of religious faith in Spain.
"Symbols carry different meanings in different settings," Langdon said.
"Primarily, the pentacle is a pagan religious symbol."
Fache nodded. "Devil worship."
"No," Langdon corrected, immediately realizing his choice of vocabulary
should have been clearer.
Nowadays, the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil
worship--a gross misconception. The word's roots actually reached back to
the Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. "Pagans" were literally
unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature
worship. In fact, so strong was the Church's fear of those who lived in the
rural villes that the once innocuous word for "villager"--villain--came to
mean a wicked soul.
"The pentacle," Langdon clarified, "is a pre-Christian symbol that
relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two
halves--masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a
balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there
was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos."
Langdon motioned to Sauniure's stomach. "This pentacle is representative of
the female half of all things--a concept religious historians call the
'sacred feminine' or the 'divine goddess.' Sauniure, of all people, would
know this."
"Sauniure drew a goddess symbol on his stomach?"
Langdon had to admit, it seemed odd. "In its most specific
interpretation, the pentacle symbolizes Venus--the goddess of female sexual
love and beauty."
Fache eyed the naked man, and grunted.
"Early religion was based on the divine order of Nature. The goddess
Venus and the planet Venus were one and the same. The goddess had a place in
the nighttime sky and was known by many names--Venus, the Eastern Star,
Ishtar, Astarte--all of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature
and Mother Earth."
Fache looked more troubled now, as if he somehow preferred the idea of
devil worship.
Langdon decided not to share the pentacle's most astonishing
property--the graphic origin of its ties to Venus. As a young astronomy
student, Langdon had been stunned to learn the planet Venus traced a perfect
pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years. So astonished were the
ancients to observe this phenomenon, that Venus and her pentacle became
symbols of perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of sexual love. As a
tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to
organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year
schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even
fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official
Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment--its five points exchanged
for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games' spirit of inclusion
and harmony.
"Mr. Langdon," Fache said abruptly. "Obviously, the pentacle must also
relate to the devil. Your American horror movies make that point clearly."
Langdon frowned. Thank you, Hollywood. The five-pointed star was now a
virtual clichu in Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on the wall
of some Satanist's apartment along with other alleged demonic symbology.
Langdon was always frustrated when he saw the symbol in this context; the
pentacle's true origins were actually quite godly.
"I assure you," Langdon said, "despite what you see in the movies, the
pentacle's demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate. The original
feminine meaning is correct, but the symbolism of the pentacle has been
distorted over the millennia. In this case, through bloodshed."
"I'm not sure I follow."
Langdon glanced at Fache's crucifix, uncertain how to phrase his next
point. "The Church, sir. Symbols are very resilient, but the pentacle was
altered by the early Roman Catholic Church. As part of the Vatican's
campaign to eradicate pagan religions and convert the masses to
Christianity, the Church launched a smear campaign against the pagan gods
and goddesses, recasting their divine symbols as evil."
"Go on."
"This is very common in times of turmoil," Langdon continued. "A newly
emerging power will take over the existing symbols and degrade them over
time in an attempt to erase their meaning. In the battle between the pagan
symbols and Christian symbols, the pagans lost; Poseidon's trident became
the devil's pitchfork, the wise crone's pointed hat became the symbol of a
witch, and Venus's pentacle became a sign of the devil." Langdon paused.
"Unfortunately, the United States military has also perverted the pentacle;
it's now our foremost symbol of war. We paint it on all our fighter jets and
hang it on the shoulders of all our generals." So much for the goddess of
love and beauty.
"Interesting." Fache nodded toward the spread-eagle corpse. "And the
positioning of the body? What do you make of that?"
Langdon shrugged. "The position simply reinforces the reference to the
pentacle and sacred feminine."
Fache's expression clouded. "I beg your pardon?"
"Replication. Repeating a symbol is the simplest way to strengthen its
meaning. Jacques Sauniure positioned himself in the shape of a five-pointed
star." If one pentacle is good, two is better.
Fache's eyes followed the five points of Sauniure's arms, legs, and
head as he again ran a hand across his slick hair. "Interesting analysis."
He paused. "And the nudity?" He grumbled as he spoke the word, sounding
repulsed by the sight of an aging male body. "Why did he remove his
clothing?"
Damned good question, Langdon thought. He'd been wondering the same
thing ever since he first saw the Polaroid. His best guess was that a naked
human form was yet another endorsement of Venus--the goddess of human
sexuality. Although modern culture had erased much of Venus's association
with the male/female physical union, a sharp etymological eye could still
spot a vestige of Venus's original meaning in the word "venereal." Langdon
decided not to go there.
"Mr. Fache, I obviously can't tell you why Mr. Sauniure drew that
symbol on himself or placed himself in this way, but I can tell you that a
man like Jacques Sauniure would consider the pentacle a sign of the female
deity. The correlation between this symbol and the sacred feminine is widely
known by art historians and symbologists."
"Fine. And the use of his own blood as ink?"
"Obviously he had nothing else to write with."
Fache was silent a moment. "Actually, I believe he used blood such that
the police would follow certain forensic procedures."
"I'm sorry?"
"Look at his left hand."
Langdon's eyes traced the length of the curator's pale arm to his left
hand but saw nothing. Uncertain, he circled the corpse and crouched down,
now noting with surprise that the curator was clutching a large, felt-tipped
marker.
"Sauniure was holding it when we found him," Fache said, leaving
Langdon and moving several yards to a portable table covered with
investigation tools, cables, and assorted electronic gear. "As I told you,"
he said, rummaging around the table, "we have touched nothing. Are you
familiar with this kind of pen?"
Langdon knelt down farther to see the pen's label.
STYLO DE LUMIERE NOIRE.
He glanced up in surprise.
The black-light pen or watermark stylus was a specialized felt-tipped
marker originally designed by museums, restorers, and forgery police to
place invisible marks on items. The stylus wrote in a noncorrosive,
alcohol-based fluorescent ink that was visible only under black light.
Nowadays, museum maintenance staffs carried these markers on their daily
rounds to place invisible "tick marks" on the frames of paintings that
needed restoration.
As Langdon stood up, Fache walked over to the spotlight and turned it
off. The gallery plunged into sudden darkness.
Momentarily blinded, Langdon felt a rising uncertainty. Fache's
silhouette appeared, illuminated in bright purple. He approached carrying a
portable light source, which shrouded him in a violet haze.
"As you may know," Fache said, his eyes luminescing in the violet glow,
"police use black-light illumination to search crime scenes for blood and
other forensic evidence. So you can imagine our surprise..." Abruptly, he
pointed the light down at the corpse.
Langdon looked down and jumped back in shock.
His heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight now glowing before
him on the parquet floor. Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the curator's
final words glowed purple beside his corpse. As Langdon stared at the
shimmering text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this entire night
growing thicker.
Langdon read the message again and looked up at Fache. "What the hell
does this mean!"
Fache's eyes shone white. "That, monsieur, is precisely the question
you are here to answer."
Not far away, inside Sauniure's office, Lieutenant Collet had returned
to the Louvre and was huddled over an audio console set up on the curator's
enormous desk. With the exception of the eerie, robot-like doll of a
medieval knight that seemed to be staring at him from the corner of
Sauniure's desk, Collet was comfortable. He adjusted his AKG headphones and
checked the input levels on the hard-disk recording system. All systems were
go. The microphones were functioning flawlessly, and the audio feed was
crystal clear.
Le moment de vuritu, he mused.
Smiling, he closed his eyes and settled in to enjoy the rest of the
conversation now being taped inside the Grand Gallery.
The modest dwelling within the Church of Saint-Sulpice was located on
the second floor of the church itself, to the left of the choir balcony. A
two-room suite with a stone floor and minimal furnishings, it had been home
to Sister Sandrine Bieil for over a decade. The nearby convent was her
formal residence, if anyone asked, but she preferred the quiet of the church
and had made herself quite comfortable upstairs with a bed, phone, and hot
plate.
As the church's conservatrice d'affaires, Sister Sandrine was
responsible for overseeing all nonreligious aspects of church
operations--general maintenance, hiring support staff and guides, securing
the building after hours, and ordering supplies like communion wine and
wafers.
Tonight, asleep in her small bed, she awoke to the shrill of her
telephone. Tiredly, she lifted the receiver.
"Soeur Sandrine. Eglise Saint-Sulpice."
"Hello, Sister," the man said in French.
Sister Sandrine sat up. What time is it? Although she recognized her
boss's voice, in fifteen years she had never been awoken by him. The abbu
was a deeply pious man who went home to bed immediately after mass.
"I apologize if I have awoken you, Sister," the abbu said, his own
voice sounding groggy and on edge. "I have a favor to ask of you. I just
received a call from an influential American bishop. Perhaps you know him?
Manuel Aringarosa?"
"The head of Opus Dei?" Of course I know of him. Who in the Church
doesn't? Aringarosa's conservative prelature had grown powerful in recent
years. Their ascension to grace was jump-started in 1982 when Pope John Paul
II unexpectedly elevated them to a "personal prelature of the Pope,"
officially sanctioning all of their practices. Suspiciously, Opus Dei's
elevation occurred the same year the wealthy sect allegedly had transferred
almost one billion dollars into the Vatican's Institute for Religious
Works--commonly known as the Vatican Bank--bailing it out of an embarrassing
bankruptcy. In a second maneuver that raised eyebrows, the Pope placed the
founder of Opus Dei on the "fast track" for sainthood, accelerating an often
century-long waiting period for canonization to a mere twenty years. Sister
Sandrine could not help but feel that Opus Dei's good standing in Rome was
suspect, but one did not argue with the Holy See.
"Bishop Aringarosa called to ask me a favor," the abbu told her, his
voice nervous. "One of his numeraries is in Paris tonight...."
As Sister Sandrine listened to the odd request, she felt a deepening
confusion. "I'm sorry, you say this visiting Opus Dei numerary cannot wait
until morning?"
"I'm afraid not. His plane leaves very early. He has always dreamed of
seeing Saint-Sulpice."
"But the church is far more interesting by day. The sun's rays through
the oculus, the graduated shadows on the gnomon, this is what makes
Saint-Sulpice unique."
"Sister, I agree, and yet I would consider it a personal favor if you
could let him in tonight. He can be there at... say one o'clock? That's in
twenty minutes."
Sister Sandrine frowned. "Of course. It would be my pleasure."
The abbu thanked her and hung up.
Puzzled, Sister Sandrine remained a moment in the warmth of her bed,
trying to shake off the cobwebs of sleep. Her sixty-year-old body did not
awake as fast as it used to, although tonight's phone call had certainly
roused her senses. Opus Dei had always made her uneasy. Beyond the
prelature's adherence to the arcane ritual of corporal mortification, their
views on women were medieval at best. She had been shocked to learn that
female numeraries were forced to clean the men's residence halls for no pay
while the men were at mass; women slept on hardwood floors, while the men
had straw mats; and women were forced to endure additional requirements of
corporal mortification... all as added penance for original sin. It seemed
Eve's bite from the apple of knowledge was a debt women were doomed to pay
for eternity. Sadly, while most of the Catholic Church was gradually moving
in the right direction with respect to women's rights, Opus Dei threatened
to reverse the progress. Even so, Sister Sandrine had her orders.
Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood slowly, chilled by the cold
stone on the soles of her bare feet. As the chill rose through her flesh,
she felt an unexpected apprehension.
Women's intuition?
A follower of God, Sister Sandrine had learned to find peace in the
calming voices of her own soul. Tonight, however, those voices were as
silent as the empty church around her.
Langdon couldn't tear his eyes from the glowing purple text scrawled
across the parquet floor. Jacques Sauniure's final communication seemed as
unlikely a departing message as any Langdon could imagine.
The message read:
13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!
Although Langdon had not the slightest idea what it meant, he did
understand Fache's instinct that the pentacle had something to do with devil
worship.
O, Draconian devil!
Sauniure had left a literal reference to the devil. Equally as bizarre
was the series of numbers. "Part of it looks like a numeric cipher."
"Yes," Fache said. "Our cryptographers are already working on it. We
believe these numbers may be the key to who killed him. Maybe a telephone
exchange or some kind of social identification. Do the numbers have any
symbolic meaning to you?"
Langdon looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to
extract any symbolic meaning. If Sauniure had even intended any. To Langdon,
the numbers looked totally random. He was accustomed to symbolic
progressions that made some semblance of sense, but everything here--the
pentacle, the text, the numbers--seemed disparate at the most fundamental
level.
"You alleged earlier," Fache said, "that Sauniure's actions here were
all in an effort to send some sort of message... goddess worship or
something in that vein? How does this message fit in?"
Langdon knew the question was rhetorical. This bizarre communiquu
obviously did not fit Langdon's scenario of goddess worship at all.
O, Draconian devil? Oh, lame saint?
Fache said, "This text appears to be an accusation of some sort.
Wouldn't you agree?"
Langdon tried to imagine the curator's final minutes trapped alone in
the Grand Gallery, knowing he was about to die. It seemed logical. "An
accusation against his murderer makes sense, I suppose."
"My job, of course, is to put a name to that person. Let me ask you
this, Mr. Langdon. To your eye, beyond the numbers, what about this message
is most strange?"
Most strange? A dying man had barricaded himself in the gallery, drawn
a pentacle on himself, and scrawled a mysterious accusation on the floor.
What about the scenario wasn't strange?
"The word 'Draconian'?" he ventured, offering the first thing that came
to mind. Langdon was fairly certain that a reference to Draco--the ruthless
seventh-century B.C. politician--was an unlikely dying thought. " 'Draconian
devil' seems an odd choice of vocabulary."
"Draconian?" Fache's tone came with a tinge of impatience now.
"Sauniure's choice of vocabulary hardly seems the primary issue here."
Langdon wasn't sure what issue Fache had in mind, but he was starting
to suspect that Draco and Fache would have gotten along well.
"Sauniure was a Frenchman," Fache said flatly. "He lived in Paris. And
yet he chose to write this message..."
"In English," Langdon said, now realizing the captain's meaning.
Fache nodded. "Prucisument. Any idea why?"
Langdon knew Sauniure spoke impeccable English, and yet the reason he
had chosen English as the language in which to write his final words escaped
Langdon. He shrugged.
Fache motioned back to the pentacle on Sauniure's abdomen. "Nothing to
do with devil worship? Are you still certain?"
Langdon was certain of nothing anymore. "The symbology and text don't
seem to coincide. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."
"Perhaps this will clarify." Fache backed away from the body and raised
the black light again, letting the beam spread out in a wider angle. "And
now?"
To Langdon's amazement, a rudimentary circle glowed around the
curator's body. Sauniure had apparently lay down and swung the pen around
himself in several long arcs, essentially inscribing himself inside a
circle.
In a flash, the meaning became clear.
"The Vitruvian Man," Langdon gasped. Sauniure had created a life-sized
replica of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous sketch.
Considered the most anatomically correct drawing of its day, Da Vinci's
The Vitruvian Man had become a modern-day icon of culture, appearing on
posters, mouse pads, and T-shirts around the world. The celebrated sketch
consisted of a perfect circle in which was inscribed a nude male... his arms
and legs outstretched in a naked spread eagle.
Da Vinci. Langdon felt a shiver of amazement. The clarity of Sauniure's
intentions could not be denied. In his final moments of life, the curator
had stripped off his clothing and arranged his body in a clear image of
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
The circle had been the missing critical element. A feminine symbol of
protection, the circle around the naked man's body completed Da Vinci's
intended message--male and female harmony. The question now, though, was why
the mail?"
Another odd question. Langdon shook his head. "No. Never." Fache cocked
his head, as if making a mental note of that fact. Saying nothing, he stared
dead ahead at the chrome doors.
As they ascended, Langdon tried to focus on anything other than the
four walls around him. In the reflection of the shiny elevator door, he saw
the captain's tie clip--a silver crucifix with thirteen embedded pieces of
black onyx. Langdon found it vaguely surprising. The symbol was known as a
crux gemmata--a cross bearing thirteen gems--a Christian ideogram for Christ
and His twelve apostles. Somehow Langdon had not expected the captain of the
French police to broadcast his religion so openly. Then again, this was
France; Christianity was not a religion here so much as a birthright.
"It's a crux gemmata" Fache said suddenly.
Startled, Langdon glanced up to find Fache's eyes on him in the
reflection.
The elevator jolted to a stop, and the doors opened.
Langdon stepped quickly out into the hallway, eager for the wide-open
space afforded by the famous high ceilings of the Louvre galleries. The
world into which he stepped, however, was nothing like he expected.
Surprised, Langdon stopped short.
Fache glanced over. "I gather, Mr. Langdon, you have never seen the
Louvre after hours?"
I guess not, Langdon thought, trying to get his bearings.
Usually impeccably illuminated, the Louvre galleries were startlingly
dark tonight. Instead of the customary flat-white light flowing down from
above, a muted red glow seemed to emanate upward from the
baseboards--intermittent patches of red light spilling out onto the tile
floors.
As Langdon gazed down the murky corridor, he realized he should have
anticipated this scene. Virtually all major galleries employed red service
lighting at night--strategically placed, low-level, noninvasive lights that
enabled staff members to navigate hallways and yet kept the paintings in
relative darkness to slow the fading effects of overexposure to light.
Tonight, the museum possessed an almost oppressive quality. Long shadows
encroached everywhere, and the usually soaring vaulted ceilings appeared as
a low, black void.
"This way," Fache said, turning sharply right and setting out through a
series of interconnected galleries.
Langdon followed, his vision slowly adjusting to the dark. All around,
large-format oils began to materialize like photos developing before him in
an enormous darkroom... their eyes following as he moved through the rooms.
He could taste the familiar tang of museum air--an arid, deionized essence
that carried a faint hint of carbon--the product of industrial, coal-filter
dehumidifiers that ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive carbon
dioxide exhaled by visitors.
Mounted high on the walls, the visible security cameras sent a clear
message to visitors: We see you. Do not touch anything.
"Any of them real?" Langdon asked, motioning to the cameras.
Fache shook his head. "Of course not."
Langdon was not surprised. Video surveillance in museums this size was
cost-prohibitive and ineffective. With acres of galleries to watch over, the
Louvre would require several hundred technicians simply to monitor the
feeds. Most large museums now used "containment security." Forget keeping
thieves out. Keep them in. Containment was activated after hours, and if an
intruder removed a piece of artwork, compartmentalized exits would seal
around that gallery, and the thief would find himself behind bars even
before the police arrived.
The sound of voices echoed down the marble corridor up ahead. The noise
seemed to be coming from a large recessed alcove that lay ahead on the
right. A bright light spilled out into the hallway.
"Office of the curator," the captain said.
As he and Fache drew nearer the alcove, Langdon peered down a short
hallway, into Sauniure's luxurious study--warm wood, Old Master paintings,
and an enormous antique desk on which stood a two-foot-tall model of a
knight in full armor. A handful of police agents bustled about the room,
talking on phones and taking notes. One of them was seated at Sauniure's
desk, typing into a laptop. Apparently, the curator's private office had
become DCPJ's makeshift command post for the evening.
"Messieurs," Fache called out, and the men turned. "Ne nous durangez
pas sous aucun prutexte. Entendu?"
Everyone inside the office nodded their understanding.
Langdon had hung enough NE PAS DERANGER signs on hotel room doors to
catch the gist of the captain's orders. Fache and Langdon were not to be
disturbed under any circumstances.
Leaving the small congregation of agents behind, Fache led Langdon
farther down the darkened hallway. Thirty yards ahead loomed the gateway to
the Louvre's most popular section--la Grande Galerie--a seemingly endless
corridor that housed the Louvre's most valuable Italian masterpieces.
Langdon had already discerned that this was where Sauniure's body lay; the
Grand Gallery's famous parquet floor had been unmistakable in the Polaroid.
As they approached, Langdon saw the entrance was blocked by an enormous
steel grate that looked like something used by medieval castles to keep out
marauding armies.
"Containment security," Fache said, as they neared the grate.
Even in the darkness, the barricade looked like it could have
restrained a tank. Arriving outside, Langdon peered through the bars into
the dimly lit caverns of the Grand Gallery.
"After you, Mr. Langdon," Fache said.
Langdon turned. After me, where?
Fache motioned toward the floor at the base of the grate.
Langdon looked down. In the darkness, he hadn't noticed. The barricade
was raised about two feet, providing an awkward clearance underneath.
"This area is still off limits to Louvre security," Fache said. "My
team from Police Technique et Scientifique has just finished their
investigation." He motioned to the opening. "Please slide under."
Langdon stared at the narrow crawl space at his feet and then up at the
massive iron grate. He's kidding, right? The barricade looked like a
guillotine waiting to crush intruders.
Fache grumbled something in French and checked his watch. Then he
dropped to his knees and slithered his bulky frame underneath the grate. On
the other side, he stood up and looked back through the bars at Langdon.
Langdon sighed. Placing his palms flat on the polished parquet, he lay
on his stomach and pulled himself forward. As he slid underneath, the nape
of his Harris tweed snagged on the bottom of the grate, and he cracked the
back of his head on the iron.
Very suave, Robert, he thought, fumbling and then finally pulling
himself through. As he stood up, Langdon was beginning to suspect it was
going to be a very long night.
Murray Hill Place--the new Opus Dei World Headquarters and conference
center--is located at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City. With a price
tag of just over $47 million, the 133,000-square-foot tower is clad in red
brick and Indiana limestone. Designed by May & Pinska, the building
contains over one hundred bedrooms, six dining rooms, libraries, living
rooms, meeting rooms, and offices. The second, eighth, and sixteenth floors
contain chapels, ornamented with mill-work and marble. The seventeenth floor
is entirely residential. Men enter the building through the main doors on
Lexington Avenue. Women enter through a side street and are "acoustically
and visually separated" from the men at all times within the building.
Earlier this evening, within the sanctuary of his penthouse apartment,
Bishop Manuel Aringarosa had packed a small travel bag and dressed in a
traditional black cassock. Normally, he would have wrapped a purple cincture
around his waist, but tonight he would be traveling among the public, and he
preferred not to draw attention to his high office. Only those with a keen
eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop's ring with purple amethyst, large
diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliquu. Throwing the travel bag
over his shoulder, he said a silent prayer and left his apartment,
descending to the lobby where his driver was waiting to take him to the
airport.
Now, sitting aboard a commercial airliner bound for Rome, Aringarosa
gazed out the window at the dark Atlantic. The sun had already set, but
Aringarosa knew his own star was on the rise. Tonight the battle will be
won, he thought, amazed that only months ago he had felt powerless against
the hands that threatened to destroy his empire.
As president-general of Opus Dei, Bishop Aringarosa had spent the last
decade of his life spreading the message of "God's Work"--literally, Opus
Dei. The congregation, founded in 1928 by the Spanish priest Josemarua
Escrivu, promoted a return to conservative Catholic values and encouraged
its members to make sweeping sacrifices in their own lives in order to do
the Work of God.
Opus Dei's traditionalist philosophy initially had taken root in Spain
before Franco's regime, but with the 1934 publication of Josemarua Escrivu's
spiritual book The Way--999 points of meditation for doing God's Work in
one's own life--Escrivu's message exploded across the world. Now, with over
four million copies of The Way in circulation in forty-two languages, Opus
Dei was a global force. Its residence halls, teaching centers, and even
universities could be found in almost every major metropolis on earth. Opus
Dei was the fastest-growing and most financially secure Catholic
organization in the world. Unfortunately, Aringarosa had learned, in an age
of religious cynicism, cults, and televangelists, Opus Dei's escalating
wealth and power was a magnet for suspicion.
"Many call Opus Dei a brainwashing cult," reporters often challenged.
"Others call you an ultraconservative Christian secret society. Which are
you?"
"Opus Dei is neither," the bishop would patiently reply. "We are a
Catholic Church. We are a congregation of Catholics who have chosen as our
priority to follow Catholic doctrine as rigorously as we can in our own
daily lives."
"Does God's Work necessarily include vows of chastity, tithing, and
atonement for sins through self-flagellation and the cilice?"
"You are describing only a small portion of the Opus Dei population,"
Aringarosa said. "There are many levels of involvement. Thousands of Opus
Dei members are married, have families, and do God's Work in their own
communities. Others choose lives of asceticism within our cloistered
residence halls. These choices are personal, but everyone in Opus Dei shares
the goal of bettering the world by doing the Work of God. Surely this is an
admirable quest."
Reason seldom worked, though. The media always gravitated toward
scandal, and Opus Dei, like most large organizations, had within its
membership a few misguided souls who cast a shadow over the entire group.
Two months ago, an Opus Dei group at a midwestern university had been
caught drugging new recruits with mescaline in an effort to induce a
euphoric state that neophytes would perceive as a religious experience.
Another university student had used his barbed cilice belt more often than
the recommended two hours a day and had given himself a near lethal
infection. In Boston not long ago, a disillusioned young investment banker
had signed over his entire life savings to Opus Dei before attempting
suicide.
Misguided sheep, Aringarosa thought, his heart going out to them.
Of course the ultimate embarrassment had been the widely publicized
trial of FBI spy Robert Hanssen, who, in addition to being a prominent
member of Opus Dei, had turned out to be a sexual deviant, his trial
uncovering evidence that he had rigged hidden video cameras in his own
bedroom so his friends could watch him having sex with his wife. "Hardly the
pastime of a devout Catholic," the judge had noted.
Sadly, all of these events had helped spawn the new watch group known
as the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN). The group's popular
website--www.odan.org--relayed frightening stories from former Opus Dei
members who warned of the dangers of joining. The media was now referring to
Opus Dei as "God's Mafia" and "the Cult of Christ."
We fear what we do not understand, Aringarosa thought, wondering if
these critics had any idea how many lives Opus Dei had enriched. The group
enjoyed the full endorsement and blessing of the Vatican. Opus Dei is a
personal prelature of the Pope himself.
Recently, however, Opus Dei had found itself threatened by a force
infinitely more powerful than the media... an unexpected foe from which
Aringarosa could not possibly hide. Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of
power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow.
"They know not the war they have begun," Aringarosa whispered to
himself, staring out the plane's window at the darkness of the ocean below.
For an instant, his eyes refocused, lingering on the reflection of his
awkward face--dark and oblong, dominated by a flat, crooked nose that had
been shattered by a fist in Spain when he was a young missionary. The
physical flaw barely registered now. Aringarosa's was a world of the soul,
not of the flesh.
As the jet passed over the coast of Portugal, the cell phone in
Aringarosa's cassock began vibrating in silent ring mode. Despite airline
regulations prohibiting the use of cell phones during flights, Aringarosa
knew this was a call he could not miss. Only one man possessed this number,
the man who had mailed Aringarosa the phone.
Excited, the bishop answered quietly. "Yes?"
"Silas has located the keystone," the caller said. "It is in Paris.
Within the Church of Saint-Sulpice."
Bishop Aringarosa smiled. "Then we are close."
"We can obtain it immediately. But we need your influence."
"Of course. Tell me what to do."
When Aringarosa switched off the phone, his heart was pounding. He
gazed once again into the void of night, feeling dwarfed by the events he
had put into motion.
Five hundred miles away, the albino named Silas stood over a small
basin of water and dabbed the blood from his back, watching the patterns of
red spinning in the water. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean, he
prayed, quoting Psalms. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Silas was feeling an aroused anticipation that he had not felt since
his previous life. It both surprised and electrified him. For the last
decade, he had been following The Way, cleansing himself of sins...
rebuilding his life... erasing the violence in his past. Tonight, however,
it had all come rushing back. The hatred he had fought so hard to bury had
been summoned. He had been startled how quickly his past had resurfaced. And
with it, of course, had come his skills. Rusty but serviceable.
Jesus' message is one of peace... of nonviolence... of love. This was
the message Silas had been taught from the beginning, and the message he
held in his heart. And yet this was the message the enemies of Christ now
threatened to destroy. Those who threaten God with force will be met with
force. Immovable and steadfast.
For two millennia, Christian soldiers had defended their faith against
those who tried to displace it. Tonight, Silas had been called to battle.
Drying his wounds, he donned his ankle-length, hooded robe. It was
plain, made of dark wool, accentuating the whiteness of his skin and hair.
Tightening the rope-tie around his waist, he raised the hood over his head
and allowed his red eyes to admire his reflection in the mirror. The wheels
are in motion.
Having squeezed beneath the security gate, Robert Langdon now stood
just inside the entrance to the Grand Gallery. He was staring into the mouth
of a long, deep canyon. On either side of the gallery, stark walls rose
thirty feet, evaporating into the darkness above. The reddish glow of the
service lighting sifted upward, casting an unnatural smolder across a
staggering collection of Da Vincis, Titians, and Caravaggios that hung
suspended from ceiling cables. Still lifes, religious scenes, and landscapes
accompanied portraits of nobility and politicians.
Although the Grand Gallery housed the Louvre's most famous Italian art,
many visitors felt the wing's most stunning offering was actually its famous
parquet floor. Laid out in a dazzling geometric design of diagonal oak
slats, the floor produced an ephemeral optical illusion--a multi-dimensional
network that gave visitors the sense they were floating through the gallery
on a surface that changed with every step.
As Langdon's gaze began to trace the inlay, his eyes stopped short on
an unexpected object lying on the floor just a few yards to his left,
surrounded by police tape. He spun toward Fache. "Is that... a Caravaggio on
the floor?"
Fache nodded without even looking.
The painting, Langdon guessed, was worth upward of two million dollars,
and yet it was lying on the floor like a discarded poster. "What the devil
is it doing on the floor!"
Fache glowered, clearly unmoved. "This is a crime scene, Mr. Langdon.
We have touched nothing. That canvas was pulled from the wall by the
curator. It was how he activated the security system."
Langdon looked back at the gate, trying to picture what had happened.
"The curator was attacked in his office, fled into the Grand Gallery,
and activated the security gate by pulling that painting from the wall. The
gate fell immediately, sealing off all access. This is the only door in or
out of this gallery."
Langdon felt confused. "So the curator actually captured his attacker
inside the Grand Gallery?"
Fache shook his head. "The security gate separated Sauniure from his
attacker. The killer was locked out there in the hallway and shot Sauniure
through this gate." Fache pointed toward an orange tag hanging from one of
the bars on the gate under which they had just passed. "The PTS team found
flashback residue from a gun. He fired through the bars. Sauniure died in
here alone."
Langdon pictured the photograph of Sauniure's body. They said he did
that to himself. Langdon looked out at the enormous corridor before them.
"So where is his body?"
Fache straightened his cruciform tie clip and began to walk. "As you
probably know, the Grand Gallery is quite long."
The exact length, if Langdon recalled correctly, was around fifteen
hundred feet, the length of three Washington Monuments laid end to end.
Equally breathtaking was the corridor's width, which easily could have
accommodated a pair of side-by-side passenger trains. The center of the
hallway was dotted by the occasional statue or colossal porcelain urn, which
served as a tasteful divider and kept the flow of traffic moving down one
wall and up the other.
Fache was silent now, striding briskly up the right side of the
corridor with his gaze dead ahead. Langdon felt almost disrespectful to be
racing past so many masterpieces without pausing for so much as a glance.
Not that I could see anything in this lighting, he thought.
The muted crimson lighting unfortunately conjured memories of Langdon's
last experience in noninvasive lighting in the Vatican Secret Archives. This
was tonight's second unsettling parallel with his near-death in Rome. He
flashed on Vittoria again. She had been absent from his dreams for months.
Langdon could not believe Rome had been only a year ago; it felt like
decades. Another life. His last correspondence from Vittoria had been in
December--a postcard saying she was headed to the Java Sea to continue her
research in entanglement physics... something about using satellites to
track manta ray migrations. Langdon had never harbored delusions that a
woman like Vittoria Vetra could have been happy living with him on a college
campus, but their encounter in Rome had unlocked in him a longing he never
imagined he could feel. His lifelong affinity for bachelorhood and the
simple freedoms it allowed had been shaken somehow... replaced by an
unexpected emptiness that seemed to have grown over the past year.
They continued walking briskly, yet Langdon still saw no corpse.
"Jacques Sauniure went this far?"
"Mr. Sauniure suffered a bullet wound to his stomach. He died very
slowly. Perhaps over fifteen or twenty minutes. He was obviously a man of
great personal strength."
Langdon turned, appalled. "Security took fifteen minutes to get here?"
"Of course not. Louvre security responded immediately to the alarm and
found the Grand Gallery sealed. Through the gate, they could hear someone
moving around at the far end of the corridor, but they could not see who it
was. They shouted, but they got no answer. Assuming it could only be a
criminal, they followed protocol and called in the Judicial Police. We took
up positions within fifteen minutes. When we arrived, we raised the
barricade enough to slip underneath, and I sent a dozen armed agents inside.
They swept the length of the gallery to corner the intruder."
"And?"
"They found no one inside. Except..." He pointed farther down the hall.
"Him."
Langdon lifted his gaze and followed Fache's outstretched finger. At
first he thought Fache was pointing to a large marble statue in the middle
of the hallway. As they continued, though, Langdon began to see past the
statue. Thirty yards down the hall, a single spotlight on a portable pole
stand shone down on the floor, creating a stark island of white light in the
dark crimson gallery. In the center of the light, like an insect under a
microscope, the corpse of the curator lay naked on the parquet floor.
"You saw the photograph," Fache said, "so this should be of no
surprise."
Langdon felt a deep chill as they approached the body. Before him was
one of the strangest images he had ever seen.
The pallid corpse of Jacques Sauniure lay on the parquet floor exactly
as it appeared in the photograph. As Langdon stood over the body and
squinted in the harsh light, he reminded himself to his amazement that
Sauniure had spent his last minutes of life arranging his own body in this
strange fashion.
Sauniure looked remarkably fit for a man of his years... and all of his
musculature was in plain view. He had stripped off every shred of clothing,
placed it neatly on the floor, and laid down on his back in the center of
the wide corridor, perfectly aligned with the long axis of the room. His
arms and legs were sprawled outward in a wide spread eagle, like those of a
child making a snow angel... or, perhaps more appropriately, like a man
being drawn and quartered by some invisible force.
Just below Sauniure's breastbone, a bloody smear marked the spot where
the bullet had pierced his flesh. The wound had bled surprisingly little,
leaving only a small pool of blackened blood.
Sauniure's left index finger was also bloody, apparently having been
dipped into the wound to create the most unsettling aspect of his own
macabre deathbed; using his own blood as ink, and employing his own naked
abdomen as a canvas, Sauniure had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh--five
straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.
The pentacle.
The bloody star, centered on Sauniure's navel, gave his corpse a
distinctly ghoulish aura. The photo Langdon had seen was chilling enough,
but now, witnessing the scene in person, Langdon felt a deepening
uneasiness.
He did this to himself.
"Mr. Langdon?" Fache's dark eyes settled on him again.
"It's a pentacle," Langdon offered, his voice feeling hollow in the
huge space. "One of the oldest symbols on earth. Used over four thousand
years before Christ."
"And what does it mean?"
Langdon always hesitated when he got this question. Telling someone
what a symbol "meant" was like telling them how a song should make them
feel--it was different for all people. A white Ku Klux Klan headpiece
conjured images of hatred and racism in the United States, and yet the same
costume carried a meaning of religious faith in Spain.
"Symbols carry different meanings in different settings," Langdon said.
"Primarily, the pentacle is a pagan religious symbol."
Fache nodded. "Devil worship."
"No," Langdon corrected, immediately realizing his choice of vocabulary
should have been clearer.
Nowadays, the term pagan had become almost synonymous with devil
worship--a gross misconception. The word's roots actually reached back to
the Latin paganus, meaning country-dwellers. "Pagans" were literally
unindoctrinated country-folk who clung to the old, rural religions of Nature
worship. In fact, so strong was the Church's fear of those who lived in the
rural villes that the once innocuous word for "villager"--villain--came to
mean a wicked soul.
"The pentacle," Langdon clarified, "is a pre-Christian symbol that
relates to Nature worship. The ancients envisioned their world in two
halves--masculine and feminine. Their gods and goddesses worked to keep a
balance of power. Yin and yang. When male and female were balanced, there
was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos."
Langdon motioned to Sauniure's stomach. "This pentacle is representative of
the female half of all things--a concept religious historians call the
'sacred feminine' or the 'divine goddess.' Sauniure, of all people, would
know this."
"Sauniure drew a goddess symbol on his stomach?"
Langdon had to admit, it seemed odd. "In its most specific
interpretation, the pentacle symbolizes Venus--the goddess of female sexual
love and beauty."
Fache eyed the naked man, and grunted.
"Early religion was based on the divine order of Nature. The goddess
Venus and the planet Venus were one and the same. The goddess had a place in
the nighttime sky and was known by many names--Venus, the Eastern Star,
Ishtar, Astarte--all of them powerful female concepts with ties to Nature
and Mother Earth."
Fache looked more troubled now, as if he somehow preferred the idea of
devil worship.
Langdon decided not to share the pentacle's most astonishing
property--the graphic origin of its ties to Venus. As a young astronomy
student, Langdon had been stunned to learn the planet Venus traced a perfect
pentacle across the ecliptic sky every four years. So astonished were the
ancients to observe this phenomenon, that Venus and her pentacle became
symbols of perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of sexual love. As a
tribute to the magic of Venus, the Greeks used her four-year cycle to
organize their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year
schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even
fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official
Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment--its five points exchanged
for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games' spirit of inclusion
and harmony.
"Mr. Langdon," Fache said abruptly. "Obviously, the pentacle must also
relate to the devil. Your American horror movies make that point clearly."
Langdon frowned. Thank you, Hollywood. The five-pointed star was now a
virtual clichu in Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on the wall
of some Satanist's apartment along with other alleged demonic symbology.
Langdon was always frustrated when he saw the symbol in this context; the
pentacle's true origins were actually quite godly.
"I assure you," Langdon said, "despite what you see in the movies, the
pentacle's demonic interpretation is historically inaccurate. The original
feminine meaning is correct, but the symbolism of the pentacle has been
distorted over the millennia. In this case, through bloodshed."
"I'm not sure I follow."
Langdon glanced at Fache's crucifix, uncertain how to phrase his next
point. "The Church, sir. Symbols are very resilient, but the pentacle was
altered by the early Roman Catholic Church. As part of the Vatican's
campaign to eradicate pagan religions and convert the masses to
Christianity, the Church launched a smear campaign against the pagan gods
and goddesses, recasting their divine symbols as evil."
"Go on."
"This is very common in times of turmoil," Langdon continued. "A newly
emerging power will take over the existing symbols and degrade them over
time in an attempt to erase their meaning. In the battle between the pagan
symbols and Christian symbols, the pagans lost; Poseidon's trident became
the devil's pitchfork, the wise crone's pointed hat became the symbol of a
witch, and Venus's pentacle became a sign of the devil." Langdon paused.
"Unfortunately, the United States military has also perverted the pentacle;
it's now our foremost symbol of war. We paint it on all our fighter jets and
hang it on the shoulders of all our generals." So much for the goddess of
love and beauty.
"Interesting." Fache nodded toward the spread-eagle corpse. "And the
positioning of the body? What do you make of that?"
Langdon shrugged. "The position simply reinforces the reference to the
pentacle and sacred feminine."
Fache's expression clouded. "I beg your pardon?"
"Replication. Repeating a symbol is the simplest way to strengthen its
meaning. Jacques Sauniure positioned himself in the shape of a five-pointed
star." If one pentacle is good, two is better.
Fache's eyes followed the five points of Sauniure's arms, legs, and
head as he again ran a hand across his slick hair. "Interesting analysis."
He paused. "And the nudity?" He grumbled as he spoke the word, sounding
repulsed by the sight of an aging male body. "Why did he remove his
clothing?"
Damned good question, Langdon thought. He'd been wondering the same
thing ever since he first saw the Polaroid. His best guess was that a naked
human form was yet another endorsement of Venus--the goddess of human
sexuality. Although modern culture had erased much of Venus's association
with the male/female physical union, a sharp etymological eye could still
spot a vestige of Venus's original meaning in the word "venereal." Langdon
decided not to go there.
"Mr. Fache, I obviously can't tell you why Mr. Sauniure drew that
symbol on himself or placed himself in this way, but I can tell you that a
man like Jacques Sauniure would consider the pentacle a sign of the female
deity. The correlation between this symbol and the sacred feminine is widely
known by art historians and symbologists."
"Fine. And the use of his own blood as ink?"
"Obviously he had nothing else to write with."
Fache was silent a moment. "Actually, I believe he used blood such that
the police would follow certain forensic procedures."
"I'm sorry?"
"Look at his left hand."
Langdon's eyes traced the length of the curator's pale arm to his left
hand but saw nothing. Uncertain, he circled the corpse and crouched down,
now noting with surprise that the curator was clutching a large, felt-tipped
marker.
"Sauniure was holding it when we found him," Fache said, leaving
Langdon and moving several yards to a portable table covered with
investigation tools, cables, and assorted electronic gear. "As I told you,"
he said, rummaging around the table, "we have touched nothing. Are you
familiar with this kind of pen?"
Langdon knelt down farther to see the pen's label.
STYLO DE LUMIERE NOIRE.
He glanced up in surprise.
The black-light pen or watermark stylus was a specialized felt-tipped
marker originally designed by museums, restorers, and forgery police to
place invisible marks on items. The stylus wrote in a noncorrosive,
alcohol-based fluorescent ink that was visible only under black light.
Nowadays, museum maintenance staffs carried these markers on their daily
rounds to place invisible "tick marks" on the frames of paintings that
needed restoration.
As Langdon stood up, Fache walked over to the spotlight and turned it
off. The gallery plunged into sudden darkness.
Momentarily blinded, Langdon felt a rising uncertainty. Fache's
silhouette appeared, illuminated in bright purple. He approached carrying a
portable light source, which shrouded him in a violet haze.
"As you may know," Fache said, his eyes luminescing in the violet glow,
"police use black-light illumination to search crime scenes for blood and
other forensic evidence. So you can imagine our surprise..." Abruptly, he
pointed the light down at the corpse.
Langdon looked down and jumped back in shock.
His heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight now glowing before
him on the parquet floor. Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the curator's
final words glowed purple beside his corpse. As Langdon stared at the
shimmering text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this entire night
growing thicker.
Langdon read the message again and looked up at Fache. "What the hell
does this mean!"
Fache's eyes shone white. "That, monsieur, is precisely the question
you are here to answer."
Not far away, inside Sauniure's office, Lieutenant Collet had returned
to the Louvre and was huddled over an audio console set up on the curator's
enormous desk. With the exception of the eerie, robot-like doll of a
medieval knight that seemed to be staring at him from the corner of
Sauniure's desk, Collet was comfortable. He adjusted his AKG headphones and
checked the input levels on the hard-disk recording system. All systems were
go. The microphones were functioning flawlessly, and the audio feed was
crystal clear.
Le moment de vuritu, he mused.
Smiling, he closed his eyes and settled in to enjoy the rest of the
conversation now being taped inside the Grand Gallery.
The modest dwelling within the Church of Saint-Sulpice was located on
the second floor of the church itself, to the left of the choir balcony. A
two-room suite with a stone floor and minimal furnishings, it had been home
to Sister Sandrine Bieil for over a decade. The nearby convent was her
formal residence, if anyone asked, but she preferred the quiet of the church
and had made herself quite comfortable upstairs with a bed, phone, and hot
plate.
As the church's conservatrice d'affaires, Sister Sandrine was
responsible for overseeing all nonreligious aspects of church
operations--general maintenance, hiring support staff and guides, securing
the building after hours, and ordering supplies like communion wine and
wafers.
Tonight, asleep in her small bed, she awoke to the shrill of her
telephone. Tiredly, she lifted the receiver.
"Soeur Sandrine. Eglise Saint-Sulpice."
"Hello, Sister," the man said in French.
Sister Sandrine sat up. What time is it? Although she recognized her
boss's voice, in fifteen years she had never been awoken by him. The abbu
was a deeply pious man who went home to bed immediately after mass.
"I apologize if I have awoken you, Sister," the abbu said, his own
voice sounding groggy and on edge. "I have a favor to ask of you. I just
received a call from an influential American bishop. Perhaps you know him?
Manuel Aringarosa?"
"The head of Opus Dei?" Of course I know of him. Who in the Church
doesn't? Aringarosa's conservative prelature had grown powerful in recent
years. Their ascension to grace was jump-started in 1982 when Pope John Paul
II unexpectedly elevated them to a "personal prelature of the Pope,"
officially sanctioning all of their practices. Suspiciously, Opus Dei's
elevation occurred the same year the wealthy sect allegedly had transferred
almost one billion dollars into the Vatican's Institute for Religious
Works--commonly known as the Vatican Bank--bailing it out of an embarrassing
bankruptcy. In a second maneuver that raised eyebrows, the Pope placed the
founder of Opus Dei on the "fast track" for sainthood, accelerating an often
century-long waiting period for canonization to a mere twenty years. Sister
Sandrine could not help but feel that Opus Dei's good standing in Rome was
suspect, but one did not argue with the Holy See.
"Bishop Aringarosa called to ask me a favor," the abbu told her, his
voice nervous. "One of his numeraries is in Paris tonight...."
As Sister Sandrine listened to the odd request, she felt a deepening
confusion. "I'm sorry, you say this visiting Opus Dei numerary cannot wait
until morning?"
"I'm afraid not. His plane leaves very early. He has always dreamed of
seeing Saint-Sulpice."
"But the church is far more interesting by day. The sun's rays through
the oculus, the graduated shadows on the gnomon, this is what makes
Saint-Sulpice unique."
"Sister, I agree, and yet I would consider it a personal favor if you
could let him in tonight. He can be there at... say one o'clock? That's in
twenty minutes."
Sister Sandrine frowned. "Of course. It would be my pleasure."
The abbu thanked her and hung up.
Puzzled, Sister Sandrine remained a moment in the warmth of her bed,
trying to shake off the cobwebs of sleep. Her sixty-year-old body did not
awake as fast as it used to, although tonight's phone call had certainly
roused her senses. Opus Dei had always made her uneasy. Beyond the
prelature's adherence to the arcane ritual of corporal mortification, their
views on women were medieval at best. She had been shocked to learn that
female numeraries were forced to clean the men's residence halls for no pay
while the men were at mass; women slept on hardwood floors, while the men
had straw mats; and women were forced to endure additional requirements of
corporal mortification... all as added penance for original sin. It seemed
Eve's bite from the apple of knowledge was a debt women were doomed to pay
for eternity. Sadly, while most of the Catholic Church was gradually moving
in the right direction with respect to women's rights, Opus Dei threatened
to reverse the progress. Even so, Sister Sandrine had her orders.
Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood slowly, chilled by the cold
stone on the soles of her bare feet. As the chill rose through her flesh,
she felt an unexpected apprehension.
Women's intuition?
A follower of God, Sister Sandrine had learned to find peace in the
calming voices of her own soul. Tonight, however, those voices were as
silent as the empty church around her.
Langdon couldn't tear his eyes from the glowing purple text scrawled
across the parquet floor. Jacques Sauniure's final communication seemed as
unlikely a departing message as any Langdon could imagine.
The message read:
13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!
Although Langdon had not the slightest idea what it meant, he did
understand Fache's instinct that the pentacle had something to do with devil
worship.
O, Draconian devil!
Sauniure had left a literal reference to the devil. Equally as bizarre
was the series of numbers. "Part of it looks like a numeric cipher."
"Yes," Fache said. "Our cryptographers are already working on it. We
believe these numbers may be the key to who killed him. Maybe a telephone
exchange or some kind of social identification. Do the numbers have any
symbolic meaning to you?"
Langdon looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to
extract any symbolic meaning. If Sauniure had even intended any. To Langdon,
the numbers looked totally random. He was accustomed to symbolic
progressions that made some semblance of sense, but everything here--the
pentacle, the text, the numbers--seemed disparate at the most fundamental
level.
"You alleged earlier," Fache said, "that Sauniure's actions here were
all in an effort to send some sort of message... goddess worship or
something in that vein? How does this message fit in?"
Langdon knew the question was rhetorical. This bizarre communiquu
obviously did not fit Langdon's scenario of goddess worship at all.
O, Draconian devil? Oh, lame saint?
Fache said, "This text appears to be an accusation of some sort.
Wouldn't you agree?"
Langdon tried to imagine the curator's final minutes trapped alone in
the Grand Gallery, knowing he was about to die. It seemed logical. "An
accusation against his murderer makes sense, I suppose."
"My job, of course, is to put a name to that person. Let me ask you
this, Mr. Langdon. To your eye, beyond the numbers, what about this message
is most strange?"
Most strange? A dying man had barricaded himself in the gallery, drawn
a pentacle on himself, and scrawled a mysterious accusation on the floor.
What about the scenario wasn't strange?
"The word 'Draconian'?" he ventured, offering the first thing that came
to mind. Langdon was fairly certain that a reference to Draco--the ruthless
seventh-century B.C. politician--was an unlikely dying thought. " 'Draconian
devil' seems an odd choice of vocabulary."
"Draconian?" Fache's tone came with a tinge of impatience now.
"Sauniure's choice of vocabulary hardly seems the primary issue here."
Langdon wasn't sure what issue Fache had in mind, but he was starting
to suspect that Draco and Fache would have gotten along well.
"Sauniure was a Frenchman," Fache said flatly. "He lived in Paris. And
yet he chose to write this message..."
"In English," Langdon said, now realizing the captain's meaning.
Fache nodded. "Prucisument. Any idea why?"
Langdon knew Sauniure spoke impeccable English, and yet the reason he
had chosen English as the language in which to write his final words escaped
Langdon. He shrugged.
Fache motioned back to the pentacle on Sauniure's abdomen. "Nothing to
do with devil worship? Are you still certain?"
Langdon was certain of nothing anymore. "The symbology and text don't
seem to coincide. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."
"Perhaps this will clarify." Fache backed away from the body and raised
the black light again, letting the beam spread out in a wider angle. "And
now?"
To Langdon's amazement, a rudimentary circle glowed around the
curator's body. Sauniure had apparently lay down and swung the pen around
himself in several long arcs, essentially inscribing himself inside a
circle.
In a flash, the meaning became clear.
"The Vitruvian Man," Langdon gasped. Sauniure had created a life-sized
replica of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous sketch.
Considered the most anatomically correct drawing of its day, Da Vinci's
The Vitruvian Man had become a modern-day icon of culture, appearing on
posters, mouse pads, and T-shirts around the world. The celebrated sketch
consisted of a perfect circle in which was inscribed a nude male... his arms
and legs outstretched in a naked spread eagle.
Da Vinci. Langdon felt a shiver of amazement. The clarity of Sauniure's
intentions could not be denied. In his final moments of life, the curator
had stripped off his clothing and arranged his body in a clear image of
Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
The circle had been the missing critical element. A feminine symbol of
protection, the circle around the naked man's body completed Da Vinci's
intended message--male and female harmony. The question now, though, was why