CHAPTER 61
Princess Sophie.
Sophie felt hollow as she listened to the clicking of Teabing's crutches fade
down the hallway. Numb, she turned and faced Langdon in the deserted ballroom.
He was already shaking his head as if reading her mind.
"No, Sophie," he whispered, his eyes reassuring. "The same thought crossed my
mind when I realized your grandfather was in the Priory, and you said he wanted
to tell you a secret about your family. But it's impossible." Langdon paused. "Saunière
is not a Merovingian name."
Sophie wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. Earlier, Langdon
had asked an unusual passing question about Sophie's mother's maiden name.
Chauvel. The question now made sense. "And Chauvel?" she asked, anxious.
Again he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I know that would have answered some
questions for you. Only two direct lines of Merovingians remain. Their family
names are Plantard and Saint-Clair. Both families live in hiding, probably
protected by the Priory."
Sophie repeated the names silently in her mind and then shook her head. There
was no one in her family named Plantard or Saint-Clair. A weary undertow was
pulling at her now. She realized she was no closer than she had been at the
Louvre to understanding what truth her grandfather had wanted to reveal to her.
Sophie wished her grandfather had never mentioned her family this afternoon. He
had torn open old wounds that felt as painful now as ever. They are dead,
Sophie. They are not coming back. She thought of her mother singing her to sleep
at night, of her father giving her rides on his shoulders, and of her
grandmother and younger brother smiling at her with their fervent GREen eyes.
All that was stolen. And all she had left was her grandfather.
And now he is gone too. I am alone.
Sophie turned quietly back to The Last Supper and gazed at Mary Magdalene's long
red hair and quiet eyes. There was something in the woman's expression that
echoed the loss of a loved one. Sophie could feel it too.
"Robert?" she said softly.
He stepped closer.
"I know Leigh said the Grail story is all around us, but tonight is the first
time I've ever heard any of this."
Langdon looked as if he wanted to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but he
refrained. "You've heard her story before, Sophie. Everyone has. We just don't
realize it when we hear it."
"I don't understand."
"The Grail story is everywhere, but it is hidden. When the Church outlawed
speaking of the shunned Mary Magdalene, her story and importance had to be
passed on through more discreet channels... channels that supported metaphor and
symbolism."
"Of course. The arts."
Langdon motioned to The Last Supper. "A perfect example. Some of today's most
enduring art, literature, and music secretly tell the history of Mary Magdalene
and Jesus."
Langdon quickly told her about works by Da Vinci, Botticelli, Poussin, Bernini,
Mozart, and Victor Hugo that all whispered of the quest to restore the banished
sacred feminine. Enduring legends like Sir Gawain and the GREen Knight, King
Arthur, and Sleeping Beauty were Grail allegories. Victor Hugo's Hunchback of
Notre Dame and Mozart's Magic Flute were filled with Masonic symbolism and Grail
secrets.
"Once you open your eyes to the Holy Grail," Langdon said, "you see her
everywhere. Paintings. Music. Books. Even in cartoons, theme parks, and popular
movies."
Langdon held up his Mickey Mouse watch and told her that Walt Disney had made it
his quiet life's work to pass on the Grail story to future generations.
Throughout his entire life, Disney had been hailed as "the Modern-Day Leonardo
da Vinci." Both men were generations ahead of their times, uniquely gifted
artists, members of secret societies, and, most notably, avid pranksters. Like
Leonardo, Walt Disney loved infusing hidden messages and symbolism in his art.
For the trained symbologist, watching an early Disney movie was like being
barraged by an avalanche of allusion and metaphor.
Most of Disney's hidden messages dealt with religion, pagan myth, and stories of
the subjugated goddess. It was no mistake that Disney retold tales like
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White-all of which dealt with the
incarceration of the sacred feminine. Nor did one need a background in symbolism
to understand that Snow White-a princess who fell from grace after partaking of
a poisoned apple-was a clear allusion to the downfall of Eve in the Garden of
Eden. Or that Sleeping Beauty's Princess Aurora-code-named "Rose" and hidden
deep in the forest to protect her from the clutches of the evil witch-was the
Grail story for children.
Despite its corporate image, Disney still had a savvy, playful element among its
employees, and their artists still amused themselves by inserting hidden
symbolism in Disney products. Langdon would never forget one of his students
bringing in a DVD of The Lion King and pausing the film to reveal a freeze-frame
in which the word SEX was clearly visible, spelled out by floating dust
particles over Simba's head. Although Langdon suspected this was more of a
cartoonist's sophomoric prank than any kind of enlightened allusion to pagan
human sexuality, he had learned not to underestimate Disney's grasp of
symbolism. The Little Mermaid was a spellbinding tapestry of spiritual symbols
so specifically goddess-related that they could not be coincidence.
When Langdon had first seen The Little Mermaid, he had actually gasped aloud
when he noticed that the painting in Ariel's underwater home was none other than
seventeenth-century artist Georges de la Tour's The Penitent Magdalene-a famous
homage to the banished Mary Magdalene-fitting decor considering the movie turned
out to be a ninety-minute collage of blatant symbolic references to the lost
sanctity of Isis, Eve, Pisces the fish goddess, and, repeatedly, Mary Magdalene.
The Little Mermaid's name, Ariel, possessed powerful ties to the sacred feminine
and, in the Book of Isaiah, was synonymous with "the Holy City besieged." Of
course, the Little Mermaid's flowing red hair was certainly no coincidence
either.
The clicking of Teabing's crutches approached in the hallway, his pace unusually
brisk. When their host entered the study, his expression was stern.
"You'd better explain yourself, Robert," he said coldly. "You have not been
honest with me."
CHAPTER 62
"I'm being framed, Leigh," Langdon said, trying to stay calm. You know me. I
wouldn't kill anyone.
Teabing's tone did not soften. "Robert, you're on television, for Christ's sake.
Did you know you were wanted by the authorities?"
"Yes."
"Then you abused my trust. I'm astonished you would put me at risk by coming
here and asking me to ramble on about the Grail so you could hide out in my
home."
"I didn't kill anyone."
"Jacques Saunière is dead, and the police say you did it." Teabing looked
saddened. "Such a contributor to the arts..."
"Sir?" The manservant had appeared now, standing behind Teabing in the study
doorway, his arms crossed. "Shall I show them out?"
"Allow me." Teabing hobbled across the study, unlocked a set of wide glass
doors, and swung them open onto a side lawn. "Please find your car, and leave."
Sophie did not move. "We have information about the clef de vo?te. The Priory
keystone."
Teabing stared at her for several seconds and scoffed derisively. "A desperate
ploy. Robert knows
how I've sought it."
"She's telling the truth," Langdon said. "That's why we came to you tonight. To
talk to you about the keystone."
The manservant intervened now. "Leave, or I shall call the authorities."
"Leigh," Langdon whispered, "we know where it is."
Teabing's balance seemed to falter a bit.
Rémy now marched stiffly across the room. "Leave at once! Or I will forcibly-"
"Rémy!" Teabing spun, snapping at his servant. "Excuse us for a moment."
The servant's jaw dropped. "Sir? I must protest. These people are-"
"I'll handle this." Teabing pointed to the hallway.
After a moment of stunned silence, Rémy skulked out like a banished dog.
In the cool night breeze coming through the open doors, Teabing turned back to
Sophie and Langdon, his expression still wary. "This better be good. What do you
know of the keystone?"
In the thick brush outside Teabing's study, Silas clutched his pistol and gazed
through the glass doors. Only moments ago, he had circled the house and seen
Langdon and the woman talking in the large study. Before he could move in, a man
on crutches entered, yelled at Langdon, threw open the doors, and demanded his
guests leave. Then the woman mentioned the keystone, and everything changed.
Shouts turned to whispers. Moods softened. And the glass doors were quickly
closed.
Now, as he huddled in the shadows, Silas peered through the glass. The keystone
is somewhere inside the house. Silas could feel it.
Staying in the shadows, he inched closer to the glass, eager to hear what was
being said. He would give them five minutes. If they did not reveal where they
had placed the keystone, Silas would have to enter and persuade them with force.
Inside the study, Langdon could sense their host's bewilderment.
"Grand Master?" Teabing choked, eyeing Sophie. "Jacques Saunière?"
Sophie nodded, seeing the shock in his eyes.
"But you could not possibly know that!"
"Jacques Saunière was my grandfather."
Teabing staggered back on his crutches, shooting a glance at Langdon, who
nodded. Teabing turned back to Sophie. "Miss Neveu, I am speechless. If this is
true, then I am truly sorry for your loss. I should admit, for my research, I
have kept lists of men in Paris whom I thought might be good candidates for
involvement in the Priory. Jacques Saunière was on that list along with many
others. But Grand Master, you say? It's hard to fathom." Teabing was silent a
moment and then shook his head. "But it still makes no sense. Even if your
grandfather were the Priory Grand Master and created the keystone himself, he
would never tell you how to find it. The keystone reveals the pathway to the
brotherhood's ultimate treasure. Granddaughter or not, you are not eligible to
receive such knowledge."
"Mr. Saunière was dying when he passed on the information," Langdon said. "He
had limited options."
"He didn't need options," Teabing argued. "There exist three sénéchaux who also
know the secret. That is the beauty of their system. One will rise to Grand
Master and they will induct a new sénéchal and share the secret of the
keystone."
"I guess you didn't see the entire news broadcast," Sophie said. "In addition to
my grandfather, three other prominent Parisians were murdered today. All in
similar ways. All looked like they had been interrogated."
Teabing's jaw fell. "And you think they were..."
"The sénéchaux," Langdon said.
"But how? A murderer could not possibly learn the identities of all four top
members of the Priory of Sion! Look at me, I have been researching them for
decades, and I can't even name one Priory member. It seems inconceivable that
all three sénéchaux and the Grand Master could be discovered and killed in one
day."
"I doubt the information was gathered in a single day," Sophie said. "It sounds
like a well-planned décapiter. It's a technique we use to fight organized crime
syndicates. If DCPJ wants to move on a certain group, they will silently listen
and watch for months, identify all the main players, and then move in and take
them all at the same moment. Decapitation. With no leadership, the group falls
into chaos and divulges other information. It's possible someone patiently
watched the Priory and
then attacked, hoping the top people would reveal the location of the keystone."
Teabing looked unconvinced. "But the brothers would never talk. They are sworn
to secrecy. Even in the face of death."
"Exactly," Langdon said. "Meaning, if they never divulged the secret, and they
were killed..."
Teabing gasped. "Then the location of the keystone would be lost forever!"
"And with it," Langdon said, "the location of the Holy Grail."
Teabing's body seemed to sway with the weight of Langdon's words. Then, as if
too tired to stand another moment, he flopped in a chair and stared out the
window.
Sophie walked over, her voice soft. "Considering my grandfather's predicament,
it seems possible that in total desperation he tried to pass the secret on to
someone outside the brotherhood. Someone he thought he could trust. Someone in
his family."
Teabing was pale. "But someone capable of such an attack... of discovering so
much about the brotherhood..." He paused, radiating a new fear. "It could only
be one force. This kind of infiltration could only have come from the Priory's
oldest enemy."
Langdon glanced up. "The Church."
"Who else? Rome has been seeking the Grail for centuries."
Sophie was skeptical. "You think the Church killed my grandfather?"
Teabing replied, "It would not be the first time in history the Church has
killed to protect itself. The documents that accompany the Holy Grail are
explosive, and the Church has wanted to destroy them for years."
Langdon was having trouble buying Teabing's premise that the Church would
blatantly murder people to obtain these documents. Having met the new Pope and
many of the cardinals, Langdon knew they were deeply spiritual men who would
never condone assassination. Regardless of the stakes.
Sophie seemed to be having similar thoughts. "Isn't it possible that these
Priory members were murdered by someone outside the Church? Someone who didn't
understand what the Grail really is? The Cup of Christ, after all, would be
quite an enticing treasure. Certainly treasure hunters have killed for less."
"In my experience," Teabing said, "men go to far GREater lengths to avoid what
they fear than to
obtain what they desire. I sense a desperation in this assault on the Priory."
"Leigh," Langdon said, "the argument is paradoxical. Why would members of the
Catholic clergy murder Priory members in an effort to find and destroy documents
they believe are false testimony anyway?"
Teabing chuckled. "The ivory towers of Harvard have made you soft, Robert. Yes,
the clergy in Rome are blessed with potent faith, and because of this, their
beliefs can weather any storm, including documents that contradict everything
they hold dear. But what about the rest of the world? What about those who are
not blessed with absolute certainty? What about those who look at the cruelty in
the world and say, where is God today? Those who look at Church scandals and
ask, who are these men who claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to
cover up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests?" Teabing paused.
"What happens to those people, Robert, if persuasive scientific evidence comes
out that the Church's version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the
GREatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever sold"
Langdon did not respond.
"I'll tell you what happens if the documents get out," Teabing said. "The
Vatican faces a crisis of faith unprecedented in its two-millennia history."
After a long silence, Sophie said, "But if it is the Church who is responsible
for this attack, why would they act now? After all these years? The Priory keeps
the SanGREal documents hidden. They pose no immediate threat to the Church."
Teabing heaved an ominous sigh and glanced at Langdon. "Robert, I assume you are
familiar with the Priory's final charge?"
Langdon felt his breath catch at the thought. "I am."
"Miss Neveu," Teabing said, "the Church and the Priory have had a tacit
understanding for years. That is, the Church does not attack the Priory, and the
Priory keeps the SanGREal documents hidden." He paused. "However, part of the
Priory history has always included a plan to unveil the secret. With the arrival
of a specific date in history, the brotherhood plans to break the silence and
carry out its ultimate triumph by unveiling the Sangreal documents to the world
and shouting the true story of Jesus Christ from the mountaintops."
Sophie stared at Teabing in silence. Finally, she too sat down. "And you think
that date is approaching? And the Church knows it?"
"A speculation," Teabing said, "but it would certainly provide the Church
motivation for an all-out attack to find the documents before it was too late."
Langdon had the uneasy feeling that Teabing was making good sense. "Do you think
the Church would actually be capable of uncovering hard evidence of the Priory's
date?"
"Why not-if we're assuming the Church was able to uncover the identities of the
Priory members, then certainly they could have learned of their plans. And even
if they don't have the exact date, their superstitions may be getting the best
of them."
"Superstitions?" Sophie asked.
"In terms of prophecy," Teabing said, "we are currently in an epoch of enormous
change. The millennium has recently passed, and with it has ended the
two-thousand-year-long astrological Age of Pisces-the fish, which is also the
sign of Jesus. As any astrological symbologist will tell you, the Piscean ideal
believes that man must be told what to do by higher powers because man is
incapable of thinking for himself. Hence it has been a time of fervent religion.
Now, however, we are entering the Age of Aquarius-the water bearer-whose ideals
claim that man will learn the truth and be able to think for himself. The
ideological shift is enormous, and it is occurring right now."
Langdon felt a shiver. Astrological prophecy never held much interest or
credibility for him, but he knew there were those in the Church who followed it
very closely. "The Church calls this transitional period the End of Days."
Sophie looked skeptical. "As in the end of the world? The Apocalypse?"
"No." Langdon replied. "That's a common misconception. Many religions speak of
the End of Days. It refers not to the end of the world, but rather the end of
our current age-Pisces, which began at the time of Christ's birth, spanned two
thousand years, and waned with the passing of the millennium. Now that we've
passed into the Age of Aquarius, the End of Days has arrived."
"Many Grail historians," Teabing added, "believe that if the Priory is indeed
planning to release this truth, this point in history would be a symbolically
apt time. Most Priory academics, myself included, anticipated the brotherhood's
release would coincide precisely with the millennium. Obviously, it did not.
Admittedly, the Roman calendar does not mesh perfectly with astrological
markers, so there is some gray area in the prediction. Whether the Church now
has inside information that an exact date is looming, or whether they are just
getting nervous on account of astrological prophecy, I don't know. Anyway, it's
immaterial. Either scenario explains how the Church might be motivated to launch
a preemptive attack against the Priory." Teabing frowned. "And believe me, if
the Church finds the Holy Grail, they will destroy it. The documents and the
relics of the blessed Mary Magdalene as well." His eyes GREw heavy. "Then, my
dear, with the Sangreal documents gone, all evidence will be lost. The Church
will have won their age-old war to rewrite history. The past will be erased
forever."
Slowly, Sophie pulled the cruciform key from her sweater pocket and held it out
to Teabing.
Teabing took the key and studied it. "My goodness. The Priory seal. Where did
you get this?"
"My grandfather gave it to me tonight before he died."
Teabing ran his fingers across the cruciform. "A key to a church?"
She drew a deep breath. "This key provides access to the keystone."
Teabing's head snapped up, his face wild with disbelief. "Impossible! What
church did I miss? I've searched every church in France!"
"It's not in a church," Sophie said. "It's in a Swiss depository bank."
Teabing's look of excitement waned. "The keystone is in a bank?"
"A vault," Langdon offered.
"A bank vault?" Teabing shook his head violently. "That's impossible. The
keystone is supposed to be hidden beneath the sign of the Rose."
"It is," Langdon said. "It was stored in a rosewood box inlaid with a five-petal
Rose."
Teabing looked thunderstruck. "You've seen the keystone?"
Sophie nodded. "We visited the bank."
Teabing came over to them, his eyes wild with fear. "My friends, we must do
something. The keystone is in danger! We have a duty to protect it. What if
there are other keys? Perhaps stolen from the murdered sénéchaux? If the Church
can gain access to the bank as you have-"
"Then they will be too late," Sophie said. "We removed the keystone."
"What! You removed the keystone from its hiding place?"
"Don't worry," Langdon said. "The keystone is well hidden."
"Extremely well hidden, I hope!"
"Actually," Langdon said, unable to hide his grin, "that depends on how often
you dust under your couch."
The wind outside Ch?teau Villette had picked up, and Silas's robe danced in the
breeze as he crouched near the window. Although he had been unable to hear much
of the conversation, the word keystone had sifted through the glass on numerous
occasions.
It is inside.
The Teacher's words were fresh in his mind. Enter Ch?teau Villette. Take the
keystone. Hun no one.
Now, Langdon and the others had adjourned suddenly to another room,
extinguishing the study lights as they went. Feeling like a panther stalking
prey, Silas crept to the glass doors. Finding them unlocked, he slipped inside
and closed the doors silently behind him. He could hear muffled voices from
another room. Silas pulled the pistol from his pocket, turned off the safety,
and inched down the hallway.
CHAPTER 63
Lieutenant Collet stood alone at the foot of Leigh Teabing's driveway and gazed
up at the massive house. Isolated. Dark. Good ground cover. Collet watched his
half-dozen agents spreading silently out along the length of the fence. They
could be over it and have the house surrounded in a matter of minutes. Langdon
could not have chosen a more ideal spot for Collet's men to make a surprise
assault.
Collet was about to call Fache himself when at last his phone rang.
Fache sounded not nearly as pleased with the developments as Collet would have
imagined. "Why didn't someone tell me we had a lead on Langdon?"
"You were on a phone call and-"
"Where exactly are you, Lieutenant Collet?"
Collet gave him the address. "The estate belongs to a British national named
Teabing. Langdon drove a fair distance to get here, and the vehicle is inside
the security gate, with no signs of forced entry, so chances are good that
Langdon knows the occupant."
"I'm coming out," Fache said. "Don't make a move. I'll handle this personally."
Collet's jaw dropped. "But Captain, you're twenty minutes away! We should act
immediately. I have him staked out. I'm with eight men total. Four of us have
field rifles and the others have
sidearms."
"Wait for me."
"Captain, what if Langdon has a hostage in there? What if he sees us and decides
to leave on foot? We need to move now! My men are in position and ready to go."
"Lieutenant Collet, you will wait for me to arrive before taking action. That is
an order." Fache hung up.
Stunned, Lieutenant Collet switched off his phone. Why the hell is Fache asking
me to wait? Collet knew the answer. Fache, though famous for his instinct, was
notorious for his pride. Fache wants credit for the arrest. After putting the
American's face all over the television, Fache wanted to be sure his own face
got equal time. Collet's job was simply to hold down the fort until the boss
showed up to save the day.
As he stood there, Collet FLASHed on a second possible explanation for this
delay. Damage control. In law enforcement, hesitating to arrest a fugitive only
occurred when uncertainty had arisen regarding the suspect's guilt. Is Fache
having second thoughts that Langdon is the right man? The thought was
frightening. Captain Fache had gone out on a limb tonight to arrest Robert
Langdon-surveillance cachée, Interpol, and now television. Not even the GREat
Bezu Fache would survive the political fallout if he had mistakenly splashed a
prominent American's face all over French television, claiming he was a
murderer. If Fache now realized he'd made a mistake, then it made perfect sense
that he would tell Collet not to make a move. The last thing Fache needed was
for Collet to storm an innocent Brit's private estate and take Langdon at
gunpoint.
Moreover, Collet realized, if Langdon were innocent, it explained one of this
case's strangest paradoxes: Why had Sophie Neveu, the granddaughter of the
victim, helped the alleged killer escape? Unless Sophie knew Langdon was falsely
charged. Fache had posited all kinds of explanations tonight to explain Sophie's
odd behavior, including that Sophie, as Saunière's sole heir, had persuaded her
secret lover Robert Langdon to kill off Saunière for the inheritance money.
Saunière, if he had suspected this, might have left the police the message P.S.
Find Robert Langdon. Collet was fairly certain something else was going on here.
Sophie Neveu seemed far too solid of character to be mixed up in something that
sordid.
"Lieutenant?" One of the field agents came running over. "We found a car."
Collet followed the agent about fifty yards past the driveway. The agent pointed
to a wide shoulder on the opposite side of the road. There, parked in the brush,
almost out of sight, was a black Audi. It had rental plates. Collet felt the
hood. Still warm. Hot even.
"That must be how Langdon got here," Collet said. "Call the rental company. Find
out if it's stolen."
"Yes, sir."
Another agent waved Collet back over in the direction of the fence. "Lieutenant,
have a look at this." He handed Collet a pair of night vision binoculars. "The
grove of trees near the top of the driveway."
Collet aimed the binoculars up the hill and adjusted the image intensifier
dials. Slowly, the GREenish shapes came into focus. He located the curve of the
driveway and slowly followed it up, reaching the grove of trees. All he could do
was stare. There, shrouded in the greenery, was an armored truck. A truck
identical to the one Collet had permitted to leave the Depository Bank of Zurich
earlier tonight. He prayed this was some kind of bizarre coincidence, but he
knew it could not be.
"It seems obvious," the agent said, "that this truck is how Langdon and Neveu
got away from the bank."
Collet was speechless. He thought of the armored truck driver he had stopped at
the roadblock. The Rolex. His impatience to leave. I never checked the cargo
hold.
Incredulous, Collet realized that someone in the bank had actually lied to DCPJ
about Langdon and Sophie's whereabouts and then helped them escape. But who? And
why? Collet wondered if maybe this were the reason Fache had told him not to
take action yet. Maybe Fache realized there were more people involved tonight
than just Langdon and Sophie. And if Langdon and Neveu arrived in the armored
truck, then who drove the Audi?
Hundreds of miles to the south, a chartered Beechcraft Baron 58 raced northward
over the Tyrrhenian Sea. Despite calm skies, Bishop Aringarosa clutched an
airsickness bag, certain he could be ill at any moment. His conversation with
Paris had not at all been what he had imagined.
Alone in the small cabin, Aringarosa twisted the gold ring on his finger and
tried to ease his overwhelming sense of fear and desperation. Everything in
Paris has gone terribly wrong. Closing his eyes, Aringarosa said a prayer that
Bezu Fache would have the means to fix it.
CHAPTER 64
Teabing sat on the divan, cradling the wooden box on his lap and admiring the
lid's intricate inlaid Rose. Tonight has become the strangest and most magical
night of my life.
"Lift the lid," Sophie whispered, standing over him, beside Langdon.
Teabing smiled. Do not rush me. Having spent over a decade searching for this
keystone, he wanted to savor every millisecond of this moment. He ran a palm
across the wooden lid, feeling the texture of the inlaid flower.
"The Rose," he whispered. The Rose is Magdalene is the Holy Grail. The Rose is
the compass that guides the way. Teabing felt foolish. For years he had traveled
to cathedrals and churches all over France, paying for special access, examining
hundreds of archways beneath rose windows, searching for an encrypted keystone.
La clef de vo?te-a stone key beneath the sign of the Rose.
Teabing slowly unlatched the lid and raised it.
As his eyes finally gazed upon the contents, he knew in an instant it could only
be the keystone. He was staring at a stone cylinder, crafted of interconnecting
lettered dials. The device seemed surprisingly familiar to him.
"Designed from Da Vinci's diaries," Sophie said. "My grandfather made them as a
hobby."
Of course, Teabing realized. He had seen the sketches and blueprints. The key to
finding the Holy Grail lies inside this stone. Teabing lifted the heavy cryptex
from the box, holding it gently. Although he had no idea how to open the
cylinder, he sensed his own destiny lay inside. In moments of failure, Teabing
had questioned whether his life's quest would ever be rewarded. Now those doubts
were gone forever. He could hear the ancient words... the foundation of the
Grail legend:
Vous ne trouvez pas le Saint-Graal, c'est le Saint-Graal qui vous trouve.
You do not find the Grail, the Grail finds you.
And tonight, incredibly, the key to finding the Holy Grail had walked right
through his front door.
While Sophie and Teabing sat with the cryptex and talked about the vinegar, the
dials, and what the password might be, Langdon carried the rosewood box across
the room to a well-lit table to get a better look at it. Something Teabing had
just said was now running through Langdon's mind.
The key to the Grail is hidden beneath the sign of the Rose.
Langdon held the wooden box up to the light and examined the inlaid symbol of
the Rose. Although his familiarity with art did not include woodworking or
inlaid furniture, he had just recalled the famous tiled ceiling of the Spanish
monastery outside of Madrid, where, three
centuries after its construction, the ceiling tiles began to fall out, revealing
sacred texts scrawled by monks on the plaster beneath.
Langdon looked again at the Rose.
Beneath the Rose.
Sub Rosa.
Secret.
A bump in the hallway behind him made Langdon turn. He saw nothing but shadows.
Teabing's manservant most likely had passed through. Langdon turned back to the
box. He ran his finger over the smooth edge of the inlay, wondering if he could
pry the Rose out, but the craftsmanship was perfect. He doubted even a razor
blade could fit in between the inlaid Rose and the carefully carved depression
into which it was seated.
Opening the box, he examined the inside of the lid. It was smooth. As he shifted
its position, though, the light caught what appeared to be a small hole on the
underside of the lid, positioned in the exact center. Langdon closed the lid and
examined the inlaid symbol from the top. No hole.
It doesn't pass through.
Setting the box on the table, he looked around the room and spied a stack of
papers with a paper clip on it. Borrowing the clip, he returned to the box,
opened it, and studied the hole again. Carefully, he unbent the paper clip and
inserted one end into the hole. He gave a gentle push. It took almost no effort.
He heard something clatter quietly onto the table. Langdon closed the lid to
look. It was a small piece of wood, like a puzzle piece. The wooden Rose had
popped out of the lid and fallen onto the desk.
Speechless, Langdon stared at the bare spot on the lid where the Rose had been.
There, engraved in the wood, written in an immaculate hand, were four lines of
text in a language he had never seen.
The characters look vaguely Semitic, Langdon thought to himself, and yet I don't
recognize the language!
A sudden movement behind him caught his attention. Out of nowhere, a crushing
blow to the head knocked Langdon to his knees.
As he fell, he thought for a moment he saw a pale ghost hovering over him,
clutching a gun. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER 65
Sophie Neveu, despite working in law enforcement, had never found herself at
gunpoint until tonight. Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now
staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white
hair. He looked at her with red eyes that radiated a frightening, disembodied
quality. Dressed in a wool robe with a rope tie, he resembled a medieval cleric.
Sophie could not imagine who he was, and yet she was feeling a sudden newfound
respect for Teabing's suspicions that the Church was behind this.
"You know what I have come for," the monk said, his voice hollow.
Sophie and Teabing were seated on the divan, arms raised as their attacker had
commanded. Langdon lay groaning on the floor. The monk's eyes fell immediately
to the keystone on Teabing's lap.
Teabing's tone was defiant. "You will not be able to open it."
"My Teacher is very wise," the monk replied, inching closer, the gun shifting
between Teabing and Sophie.
Sophie wondered where Teabing's manservant was. Didn't he hear Robert fall?
"Who is your teacher?" Teabing asked. "Perhaps we can make a financial
arrangement."
"The Grail is priceless." He moved closer.
"You're bleeding," Teabing noted calmly, nodding to the monk's right ankle where
a trickle of blood had run down his leg. "And you're limping."
"As do you," the monk replied, motioning to the metal crutches propped beside
Teabing. "Now, hand me the keystone."
"You know of the keystone?" Teabing said, sounding surprised.
"Never mind what I know. Stand up slowly, and give it to me."
"Standing is difficult for me."
"Precisely. I would prefer nobody attempt any quick moves."
Teabing slipped his right hand through one of his crutches and grasped the
keystone in his left. Lurching to his feet, he stood erect, palming the heavy
cylinder in his left hand, and leaning
unsteadily on his crutch with his right.
The monk closed to within a few feet, keeping the gun aimed directly at
Teabing's head. Sophie watched, feeling helpless as the monk reached out to take
the cylinder.
"You will not succeed," Teabing said. "Only the worthy can unlock this stone."
God alone judges the worthy, Silas thought.
"It's quite heavy," the man on crutches said, his arm wavering now. "If you
don't take it soon, I'm afraid I shall drop it!" He swayed perilously.
Silas stepped quickly forward to take the stone, and as he did, the man on
crutches lost his balance. The crutch slid out from under him, and he began to
topple sideways to his right. No! Silas lunged to save the stone, lowering his
weapon in the process. But the keystone was moving away from him now. As the man
fell to his right, his left hand swung backward, and the cylinder tumbled from
his palm onto the couch. At the same instant, the metal crutch that had been
sliding out from under the man seemed to accelerate, cutting a wide arc through
the air toward Silas's leg.
Splinters of pain tore up Silas's body as the crutch made perfect contact with
his cilice, crushing the barbs into his already raw flesh. Buckling, Silas
crumpled to his knees, causing the belt to cut deeper still. The pistol
discharged with a deafening roar, the bullet burying itself harmlessly in the
floorboards as Silas fell. Before he could raise the gun and fire again, the
woman's foot caught him square beneath the jaw.
At the bottom of the driveway, Collet heard the gunshot. The muffled pop sent
panic through his veins. With Fache on the way, Collet had already relinquished
any hopes of claiming personal credit for finding Langdon tonight. But Collet
would be damned if Fache's ego landed him in front of a Ministerial Review Board
for negligent police procedure.
A weapon was discharged inside a private home! And you waited at the bottom of
the driveway?
Collet knew the opportunity for a stealth approach had long since passed. He
also knew if he stood idly by for another second, his entire career would be
history by morning. Eyeing the estate's iron gate, he made his decision.
"Tie on, and pull it down."
In the distant recesses of his groggy mind, Robert Langdon had heard the
gunshot. He'd also heard a scream of pain. His own? A jackhammer was boring a
hole into the back of his cranium. Somewhere nearby, people were talking.
"Where the devil were you?" Teabing was yelling.
The manservant hurried in. "What happened? Oh my God! Who is that? I'll call the
police!"
"Bloody hell! Don't call the police. Make yourself useful and get us something
with which to restrain this monster."
"And some ice!" Sophie called after him.
Langdon drifted out again. More voices. Movement. Now he was seated on the
divan. Sophie was holding an ice pack to his head. His skull ached. As Langdon's
vision finally began to clear, he found himself staring at a body on the floor.
Am I hallucinating? The massive body of an albino monk lay bound and gagged with
duct tape. His chin was split open, and the robe over his right thigh was soaked
with blood. He too appeared to be just now coming to.
Langdon turned to Sophie. "Who is that? What... happened?"
Teabing hobbled over. "You were rescued by a knight brandishing an Excalibur
made by Acme Orthopedic."
Huh? Langdon tried to sit up.
Sophie's touch was shaken but tender. "Just give yourself a minute, Robert."
"I fear," Teabing said, "that I've just demonstrated for your lady friend the
unfortunate benefit of my condition. It seems everyone underestimates you."
From his seat on the divan, Langdon gazed down at the monk and tried to imagine
what had happened.
"He was wearing a cilice," Teabing explained.
"A what?"
Teabing pointed to a bloody strip of barbed leather that lay on the floor. "A
Discipline belt. He wore it on his thigh. I took careful aim."
Langdon rubbed his head. He knew of Discipline belts. "But how... did you know?"
Teabing grinned. "Christianity is my field of study, Robert, and there are
certain sects who wear their hearts on their sleeves." He pointed his crutch at
the blood soaking through the monk's cloak. "As it were."
"Opus Dei," Langdon whispered, recalling recent media coverage of several
prominent Boston businessmen who were members of Opus Dei. Apprehensive
coworkers had falsely and publicly accused the men of wearing Discipline belts
beneath their three-piece suits. In fact, the three men did no such thing. Like
many members of Opus Dei, these businessmen were at the "supernumerary" stage
and practiced no corporal mortification at all. They were devout Catholics,
caring fathers to their children, and deeply dedicated members of the community.
Not surprisingly, the media spotlighted their spiritual commitment only briefly
before moving on to the shock value of the sect's more stringent "numerary"
members... members like the monk now lying on the floor before Langdon.
Teabing was looking closely at the bloody belt. "But why would Opus Dei be
trying to find the Holy Grail?"
Langdon was too groggy to consider it.
"Robert," Sophie said, walking to the wooden box. "What's this?" She was holding
the small Rose inlay he had removed from the lid.
"It covered an engraving on the box. I think the text might tell us how to open
the keystone."
Before Sophie and Teabing could respond, a sea of blue police lights and sirens
erupted at the bottom of the hill and began snaking up the half-mile driveway.
Teabing frowned. "My friends, it seems we have a decision to make. And we'd
better make it fast."
CHAPTER 66
Collet and his agents burst through the front door of Sir Leigh Teabing's estate
with their guns drawn. Fanning out, they began searching all the rooms on the
first level. They found a bullet hole in the drawing room floor, signs of a
struggle, a small amount of blood, a strange, barbed leather belt, and a
partially used roll of duct tape. The entire level seemed deserted.
Just as Collet was about to divide his men to search the basement and grounds
behind the house, he heard voices on the level above them.
"They're upstairs!"
Rushing up the wide staircase, Collet and his men moved room by room through the
huge home, securing darkened bedrooms and hallways as they closed in on the
sounds of voices. The sound seemed to be coming from the last bedroom on an
exceptionally long hallway. The agents inched down the corridor, sealing off
alternate exits.
As they neared the final bedroom, Collet could see the door was wide open. The
voices had stopped suddenly, and had been replaced by an odd rumbling, like an
engine.
Sidearm raised, Collet gave the signal. Reaching silently around the door frame,
he found the light switch and flicked it on. Spinning into the room with men
pouring in after him, Collet shouted and aimed his weapon at... nothing.
An empty guest bedroom. Pristine.
The rumbling sounds of an automobile engine poured from a black electronic panel
on the wall beside the bed. Collet had seen these elsewhere in the house. Some
kind of intercom system. He raced over. The panel had about a dozen labeled
buttons:
STUDY... KITCHEN... LAUNDRY... CELLAR...
So where the hell do I hear a car?
MASTER BEDROOM... SUN ROOM... BARN... LIBRARY...
Barn! Collet was downstairs in seconds, running toward the back door, grabbing
one of his agents on the way. The men crossed the rear lawn and arrived
breathless at the front of a weathered gray barn. Even before they entered,
Collet could hear the fading sounds of a car engine. He drew his weapon, rushed
in, and flicked on the lights.
The right side of the barn was a rudimentary workshop-lawn-mowers, automotive
tools, gardening supplies. A familiar intercom panel hung on the wall nearby.
One of its buttons was flipped down, transmitting.
GUEST BEDROOM II.
Collet wheeled, anger brimming. They lured us upstairs with the intercom!
Searching the other side of the barn, he found a long line of horse stalls. No
horses. Apparently the owner preferred a different kind of horsepower; the
stalls had been converted into an impressive automotive parking facility. The
collection was astonishing-a black Ferrari, a pristine Rolls-Royce, an antique
Astin Martin sports coupe, a vintage Porsche 356.
The last stall was empty.
Collet ran over and saw oil stains on the stall floor. They can't get off the
compound. The driveway and gate were barricaded with two patrol cars to prevent
this very situation.
"Sir?" The agent pointed down the length of the stalls.
The barn's rear slider was wide open, giving way to a dark, muddy slope of
rugged fields that stretched out into the night behind the barn. Collet ran to
the door, trying to see out into the darkness. All he could make out was the
faint shadow of a forest in the distance. No headlights. This wooded valley was
probably crisscrossed by dozens of unmapped fire roads and hunting trails, but
Collet was confident his quarry would never make the woods. "Get some men spread
out down there. They're probably already stuck somewhere nearby. These fancy
sports cars can't handle terrain."
"Um, sir?" The agent pointed to a nearby pegboard on which hung several sets of
keys. The labels above the keys bore familiar names.
DAIMLER... ROLLS-ROYCE... ASTIN MARTIN... PORSCHE...
The last peg was empty.
When Collet read the label above the empty peg, he knew he was in trouble.
CHAPTER 67
The Range Rover was Java Black Pearl, four-wheel drive, standard transmission,
with high-strength polypropylene lamps, rear light cluster fittings, and the
steering wheel on the right.
Langdon was pleased he was not driving.
Teabing's manservant Rémy, on orders from his master, was doing an impressive
job of maneuvering the vehicle across the moonlit fields behind Ch?teau
Villette. With no headlights, he had crossed an open knoll and was now
descending a long slope, moving farther away from the estate. He seemed to be
heading toward a jagged silhouette of wooded land in the distance.
Langdon, cradling the keystone, turned in the passenger seat and eyed Teabing
and Sophie in the back seat.
"How's your head, Robert?" Sophie asked, sounding concerned.
Langdon forced a pained smile. "Better, thanks." It was killing him.
Beside her, Teabing glanced over his shoulder at the bound and gagged monk lying
in the cramped luggage area behind the back seat. Teabing had the monk's gun on
his lap and looked like an old photo of a British safari chap posing over his
kill.
"So glad you popped in this evening, Robert," Teabing said, grinning as if he
were having fun for the first time in years.
"Sorry to get you involved in this, Leigh."
"Oh, please, I've waited my entire life to be involved." Teabing looked past
Langdon out the windshield at the shadow of a long hedgerow. He tapped Rémy on
the shoulder from behind. "Remember, no brake lights. Use the emergency brake if
you need it. I want to get into the woods a bit. No reason to risk them seeing
us from the house."
Rémy coasted to a crawl and guided the Range Rover through an opening in the
hedge. As the vehicle lurched onto an overgrown pathway, almost immediately the
trees overhead blotted out the moonlight.
I can't see a thing, Langdon thought, straining to distinguish any shapes at all
in front of them. It was pitch black. Branches rubbed against the left side of
the vehicle, and Rémy corrected in the other direction. Keeping the wheel more
or less straight now, he inched ahead about thirty yards.
"You're doing beautifully, Rémy," Teabing said. "That should be far enough.
Robert, if you could press that little blue button just below the vent there.
See it?"
Langdon found the button and pressed it.
A muted yellow glow fanned out across the path in front of them, revealing thick
underbrush on either side of the pathway. Fog lights, Langdon realized. They
gave off just enough light to keep them on the path, and yet they were deep
enough into the woods now that the lights would not give them away.
"Well, Rémy," Teabing chimed happily. "The lights are on. Our lives are in your
hands."
"Where are we going?" Sophie asked.
"This trail continues about three kilometers into the forest," Teabing said.
"Cutting across the estate and then arching north. Provided we don't hit any
standing water or fallen trees, we shall emerge unscathed on the shoulder of
highway five."
Unscathed. Langdon's head begged to differ. He turned his eyes down to his own
lap, where the keystone was safely stowed in its wooden box. The inlaid Rose on
the lid was back in place, and although his head felt muddled, Langdon was eager
to remove the inlay again and examine the engraving beneath more closely. He
unlatched the lid and began to raise it when Teabing laid a hand on his shoulder
from behind.
"Patience, Robert," Teabing said. "It's bumpy and dark. God save us if we break
anything. If you didn't recognize the language in the light, you won't do any
better in the dark. Let's focus on getting away in one piece, shall we? There
will be time for that very soon."
Langdon knew Teabing was right. With a nod, he relatched the box.
The monk in back was moaning now, struggling against his trusses. Suddenly, he
began kicking wildly.
Teabing spun around and aimed the pistol over the seat. "I can't imagine your
complaint, sir. You trespassed in my home and planted a nasty welt on the skull
of a dear friend. I would be well within my rights to shoot you right now and
leave you to rot in the woods."
The monk fell silent.
"Are you sure we should have brought him?" Langdon asked.
"Bloody well positive!" Teabing exclaimed. "You're wanted for murder, Robert.
This scoundrel is your ticket to freedom. The police apparently want you badly
enough to have tailed you to my home."
"My fault," Sophie said. "The armored car probably had a transmitter."
"Not the point," Teabing said. "I'm not surprised the police found you, but I am
surprised that this Opus Dei character found you. From all you've told me, I
can't imagine how this man could have tailed you to my home unless he had a
contact either within the Judicial Police or within the Zurich Depository."
Langdon considered it. Bezu Fache certainly seemed intent on finding a scapegoat
for tonight's murders. And Vernet had turned on them rather suddenly, although
considering Langdon was being charged with four murders, the banker's change of
heart seemed understandable.
"This monk is not working alone, Robert," Teabing said, "and until you learn who
is behind all this, you both are in danger. The good news, my friend, is that
you are now in the position of power. This monster behind me holds that
information, and whoever is pulling his strings has got to be quite nervous
right now."
Rémy was picking up speed, getting comfortable with the trail. They splashed
through some water, climbed a small rise, and began descending again.
"Robert, could you be so kind as to hand me that phone?" Teabing pointed to the
car phone on the dash. Langdon handed it back, and Teabing dialed a number. He
waited for a very long time before someone answered. "Richard? Did I wake you?
Of course, I did. Silly question. I'm sorry. I have a small problem. I'm feeling
a bit off. Rémy and I need to pop up to the Isles for my treatments. Well, right
away, actually. Sorry for the short notice. Can you have Elizabeth ready in
about twenty minutes? I know, do the best you can. See you shortly." He hung up.
"Elizabeth?" Langdon said.
"My plane. She cost me a Queen's ransom."
Langdon turned full around and looked at him.
"What?" Teabing demanded. "You two can't expect to stay in France with the
entire Judicial Police after you. London will be much safer."
Sophie had turned to Teabing as well. "You think we should leave the country?"
"My friends, I am far more influential in the civilized world than here in
France. Furthermore, the Grail is believed to be in GREat Britain. If we unlock
the keystone, I am certain we will discover a map that indicates we have moved
in the proper direction."
"You're running a big risk," Sophie said, "by helping us. You won't make any
friends with the French police."
Teabing gave a wave of disgust. "I am finished with France. I moved here to find
the keystone. That work is now done. I shan't care if I ever again see Ch?teau
Villette."
Sophie sounded uncertain. "How will we get through airport security?"
Teabing chuckled. "I fly from Le Bourget-an executive airfield not far from
here. French doctors make me nervous, so every fortnight, I fly north to take my
treatments in England. I pay for certain special privileges at both ends. Once
we're airborne, you can make a decision as to whether or not you'd like someone
from the U.S. Embassy to meet us."
Langdon suddenly didn't want anything to do with the embassy. All he could think
of was the keystone, the inscription, and whether it would all lead to the
Grail. He wondered if Teabing was right about Britain. Admittedly most modern
legends placed the Grail somewhere in the United Kingdom. Even King Arthur's
mythical, Grail-rich Isle of Avalon was now believed to be none other than
Glastonbury, England. Wherever the Grail lay, Langdon never imagined he would
actually be looking for it. The SanGREal documents. The true history of Jesus
Christ. The tomb of Mary Magdalene. He suddenly felt as if he were living in
some kind of limbo tonight... a bubble where the real world could not reach him.
"Sir?" Rémy said. "Are you truly thinking of returning to England for good?"
"Rémy, you needn't worry," Teabing assured. "Just because I am returning to the
Queen's realm does not mean I intend to subject my palate to bangers and mash
for the rest of my days. I expect you will join me there permanently. I'm
planning to buy a splendid villa in Devonshire, and we'll have all your things
shipped up immediately. An adventure, Rémy. I say, an adventure!"
Langdon had to smile. As Teabing railed on about his plans for a triumphant
return to Britain, Langdon felt himself caught up in the man's infectious
enthusiasm.
Gazing absently out the window, Langdon watched the woods passing by, ghostly
pale in the yellow blush of the fog lights. The side mirror was tipped inward,
brushed askew by branches, and Langdon saw the reflection of Sophie sitting
quietly in the back seat. He watched her for a long while and felt an unexpected
upwelling of contentment. Despite his troubles tonight, Langdon was thankful to
have landed in such good company.
After several minutes, as if suddenly sensing his eyes on her, Sophie leaned
forward and put her hands on his shoulders, giving him a quick rub. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Langdon said. "Somehow."
Sophie sat back in her seat, and Langdon saw a quiet smile cross her lips. He
realized that he too was now grinning.
Wedged in the back of the Range Rover, Silas could barely breathe. His arms were
wrenched backward and heavily lashed to his ankles with kitchen twine and duct
tape. Every bump in the road sent pain shooting through his twisted shoulders.
At least his captors had removed the cilice. Unable to inhale through the strip
of tape over his mouth, he could only breathe through his nostrils, which were
slowly clogging up due to the dusty rear cargo area into which he had been
crammed. He began coughing.
"I think he's choking," the French driver said, sounding concerned.
The British man who had struck Silas with his crutch now turned and peered over
the seat, frowning coldly at Silas. "Fortunately for you, we British judge man's
civility not by his compassion for his friends, but by his compassion for his
enemies." The Brit reached down and grabbed the duct tape on Silas's mouth. In
one fast motion, he tore it off.
Silas felt as if his lips had just caught fire, but the air pouring into his
lungs was sent from God.
"Whom do you work for?" the British man demanded.
"I do the work of God," Silas spat back through the pain in his jaw where the
woman had kicked him.
"You belong to Opus Dei," the man said. It was not a question.
"You know nothing of who I am."
"Why does Opus Dei want the keystone?"
Silas had no intention of answering. The keystone was the link to the Holy
Grail, and the Holy Grail was the key to protecting the faith.
I do the work of God. The Way is in peril.
Now, in the Range Rover, struggling against his bonds, Silas feared he had
failed the Teacher and the bishop forever. He had no way even to contact them
and tell them the terrible turn of events. My captors have the keystone! They
will reach the Grail before we do! In the stifling darkness, Silas prayed. He
let the pain of his body fuel his supplications.
A miracle, Lord. I need a miracle. Silas had no way of knowing that hours from
now, he would get one.
"Robert?" Sophie was still watching him. "A funny look just crossed your face."
Langdon glanced back at her, realizing his jaw was firmly set and his heart was
racing. An incredible notion had just occurred to him. Could it really be that
simple an explanation? "I need to use your cell phone, Sophie."
"Now?"
"I think I just figured something out."
"What?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. I need your phone."
Sophie looked wary. "I doubt Fache is tracing, but keep it under a minute just
in case." She gave
him her phone.
"How do I dial the States?"
"You need to reverse the charges. My service doesn't cover transatlantic."
Langdon dialed zero, knowing that the next sixty seconds might answer a question
that had been puzzling him all night.
CHAPTER 68
New York editor Jonas Faukman had just climbed into bed for the night when the
telephone rang. A little late for callers, he grumbled, picking up the receiver.
An operator's voice asked him, "Will you accept charges for a collect call from
Robert Langdon?"
Puzzled, Jonas turned on the light. "Uh... sure, okay."
The line clicked. "Jonas?"
"Robert? You wake me up and you charge me for it?"
"Jonas, forgive me," Langdon said. "I'll keep this very short. I really need to
know. The manuscript I gave you. Have you-"
"Robert, I'm sorry, I know I said I'd send the edits out to you this week, but
I'm swamped. Next Monday. I promise."
"I'm not worried about the edits. I need to know if you sent any copies out for
blurbs without telling me?"
Faukman hesitated. Langdon's newest manuscript-an exploration of the history of
goddess worship-included several sections about Mary Magdalene that were going
to raise some eyebrows. Although the material was well documented and had been
covered by others, Faukman had no intention of printing Advance Reading Copies
of Langdon's book without at least a few endorsements from serious historians
and art luminaries. Jonas had chosen ten big names in the art world and sent
them all sections of the manuscript along with a polite letter asking if they
would be willing to write a short endorsement for the jacket. In Faukman's
experience, most people jumped at the opportunity to see their name in print.
"Jonas?" Langdon pressed. "You sent out my manuscript, didn't you?"
Faukman frowned, sensing Langdon was not happy about it. "The manuscript was
clean, Robert, and I wanted to surprise you with some terrific blurbs."
A pause. "Did you send one to the curator of the Paris Louvre?"
"What do you think? Your manuscript referenced his Louvre collection several
times, his books are in your bibliography, and the guy has some serious clout
for foreign sales. Saunière was a no-brainer."
The silence on the other end lasted a long time. "When did you send it?"
"About a month ago. I also mentioned you would be in Paris soon and suggested
you two chat. Did he ever call you to meet?" Faukman paused, rubbing his eyes.
"Hold on, aren't you supposed to be in Paris this week?"
"I am in Paris."
Faukman sat upright. "You called me collect from Paris?"
"Take it out of my royalties, Jonas. Did you ever hear back from Saunière? Did
he like the manuscript?"
"I don't know. I haven't yet heard from him."
"Well, don't hold your breath. I've got to run, but this explains a lot Thanks."
"Robert-"
But Langdon was gone.
Faukman hung up the phone, shaking his head in disbelief Authors, he thought.
Even the sane ones are nuts.
Inside the Range Rover, Leigh Teabing let out a guffaw. "Robert, you're saying
you wrote a manuscript that delves into a secret society, and your editor sent a
copy to that secret society?"
Langdon slumped. "Evidently."
"A cruel coincidence, my friend."
Coincidence has nothing to do with it, Langdon knew. Asking Jacques Saunière to
endorse a manuscript on goddess worship was as obvious as asking Tiger Woods to
endorse a book on golf. Moreover, it was virtually guaranteed that any book on
goddess worship would have to mention the Priory of Sion.
"Here's the million-dollar question," Teabing said, still chuckling. "Was your
position on the Priory favorable or unfavorable?"
Langdon could hear Teabing's true meaning loud and clear. Many historians
questioned why the Priory was still keeping the SanGREal documents hidden. Some
felt the information should have been shared with the world long ago. "I took no
position on the Priory's actions."
"You mean lack thereof."
Langdon shrugged. Teabing was apparently on the side of making the documents
public. "I simply provided history on the brotherhood and described them as a
modern goddess worship society, keepers of the Grail, and guardians of ancient
documents."
Sophie looked at him. "Did you mention the keystone?"
Langdon winced. He had. Numerous times. "I talked about the supposed keystone as
an example of the lengths to which the Priory would go to protect the SanGREal
documents."
Sophie looked amazed. "I guess that explains P.S. Find Robert Langdon."
Langdon sensed it was actually something else in the manuscript that had piqued
Saunière's interest, but that topic was something he would discuss with Sophie
when they were alone.
"So," Sophie said, "you lied to Captain Fache."
"What?" Langdon demanded.
"You told him you had never corresponded with my grandfather."
"I didn't! My editor sent him a manuscript."
"Think about it, Robert. If Captain Fache didn't find the envelope in which your
editor sent the manuscript, he would have to conclude that you sent it." She
paused. "Or worse, that you hand-delivered it and lied about it."
When the Range Rover arrived at Le Bourget Airfield, Rémy drove to a small
hangar at the far end
of the airstrip. As they approached, a tousled man in wrinkled khakis hurried
from the hangar, waved, and slid open the enormous corrugated metal door to
reveal a sleek white jet within.
Langdon stared at the glistening fuselage. "That's Elizabeth?"
Teabing grinned. "Beats the bloody Chunnel."
The man in khakis hurried toward them, squinting into the headlights. "Almost
ready, sir," he called in a British accent. "My apologies for the delay, but you
took me by surprise and-" He stopped short as the group unloaded. He looked at
Sophie and Langdon, and then Teabing.
Teabing said, "My associates and I have urgent business in London. We've no time
to waste. Please prepare to depart immediately." As he spoke, Teabing took the
pistol out of the vehicle and handed it to Langdon.
The pilot's eyes bulged at the sight of the weapon. He walked over to Teabing
and whispered, "Sir, my humble apologies, but my diplomatic flight allowance
provides only for you and your manservant. I cannot take your guests."
"Richard," Teabing said, smiling warmly, "two thousand pounds sterling and that
loaded gun say you can take my guests." He motioned to the Range Rover. "And the
unfortunate fellow in the back."
CHAPTER 69
The Hawker 731's twin Garrett TFE-731 engines thundered, powering the plane
skyward with gut-wrenching force. Outside the window, Le Bourget Airfield
dropped away with startling speed.
I'm fleeing the country, Sophie thought, her body forced back into the leather
seat. Until this moment, she had believed her game of cat and mouse with Fache
would be somehow justifiable to the Ministry of Defense. I was attempting to
protect an innocent man. I was trying to fulfill my grandfather's dying wishes.
That window of opportunity, Sophie knew, had just closed. She was leaving the
country, without documentation, accompanying a wanted man, and transporting a
bound hostage. If a "line of reason" had ever existed, she had just crossed it.
At almost the speed of sound.
Sophie was seated with Langdon and Teabing near the front of the cabin-the Fan
Jet Executive Elite Design, according to the gold medallion on the door. Their
plush swivel chairs were bolted to tracks on the floor and could be repositioned
and locked around a rectangular hardwood table. A mini-boardroom. The dignified
surroundings, however, did little to camouflage the less than
dignified state of affairs in the rear of the plane where, in a separate seating
area near the rest room, Teabing's manservant Rémy sat with the pistol in hand,
begrudgingly carrying out Teabing's orders to stand guard over the bloody monk
who lay trussed at his feet like a piece of luggage.
"Before we turn our attention to the keystone," Teabing said, "I was wondering
if you would permit me a few words." He sounded apprehensive, like a father
about to give the birds-and-the-bees lecture to his children. "My friends, I
realize I am but a guest on this journey, and I am honored as such. And yet, as
someone who has spent his life in search of the Grail, I feel it is my duty to
warn you that you are about to step onto a path from which there is no return,
regardless of the dangers involved." He turned to Sophie. "Miss Neveu, your
grandfather gave you this cryptex in hopes you would keep the secret of the Holy
Grail alive."
"Yes."
"Understandably, you feel obliged to follow the trail wherever it leads."
Sophie nodded, although she felt a second motivation still burning within her.
The truth about my family. Despite Langdon's assurances that the keystone had
nothing to do with her past, Sophie still sensed something deeply personal
entwined within this mystery, as if this cryptex, forged by her grandfather's
own hands, were trying to speak to her and offer some kind of resolution to the
emptiness that had haunted her all these years.
"Your grandfather and three others died tonight," Teabing continued, "and they
did so to keep this keystone away from the Church. Opus Dei came within inches
tonight of possessing it. You understand, I hope, that this puts you in a
position of exceptional responsibility. You have been handed a torch. A
two-thousand-year-old flame that cannot be allowed to go out. This torch cannot
fall into the wrong hands." He paused, glancing at the rosewood box. "I realize
you have been given no choice in this matter, Miss Neveu, but considering what
is at stake here, you must either fully embrace this responsibility... or you
must pass that responsibility to someone else."
"My grandfather gave the cryptex to me. I'm sure he thought I could handle the
responsibility."
Teabing looked encouraged but unconvinced. "Good. A strong will is necessary.
And yet, I am curious if you understand that successfully unlocking the keystone
will bring with it a far GREater trial."
"How so?"
"My dear, imagine that you are suddenly holding a map that reveals the location
of the Holy Grail. In that moment, you will be in possession of a truth capable
of altering history forever. You will be the keeper of a truth that man has
sought for centuries. You will be faced with the responsibility of revealing
that truth to the world. The individual who does so will be revered by many and
despised by many. The question is whether you will have the necessary strength
to carry out that task."
Sophie paused. "I'm not sure that is my decision to make."
Teabing's eyebrows arched. "No? If not the possessor of the keystone, then who?"
"The brotherhood who has successfully protected the secret for so long."
"The Priory?" Teabing looked skeptical. "But how? The brotherhood was shattered
tonight. Decapitated, as you so aptly put it. Whether they were infiltrated by
some kind of eavesdropping or by a spy within their ranks, we will never know,
but the fact remains that someone got to them and uncovered the identities of
their four top members. I would not trust anyone who stepped forward from the
brotherhood at this point."
"So what do you suggest?" Langdon asked.
"Robert, you know as well as I do that the Priory has not protected the truth
all these years to have it gather dust until eternity. They have been waiting
for the right moment in history to share their secret. A time when the world is
ready to handle the truth."
"And you believe that moment has arrived?" Langdon asked.
"Absolutely. It could not be more obvious. All the historical signs are in
place, and if the Priory did not intend to make their secret known very soon,
why has the Church now attacked?"
Sophie argued, "The monk has not yet told us his purpose."
"The monk's purpose is the Church's purpose," Teabing replied, "to destroy the
documents that reveal the GREat deception. The Church came closer tonight than
they have ever come, and the Priory has put its trust in you, Miss Neveu. The
task of saving the Holy Grail clearly includes carrying out the Priory's final
wishes of sharing the truth with the world."
Langdon intervened. "Leigh, asking Sophie to make that decision is quite a load
to drop on someone who only an hour ago learned the SanGREal documents exist."
Teabing sighed. "I apologize if I am pressing, Miss Neveu. Clearly I have always
believed these documents should be made public, but in the end the decision
belongs to you. I simply feel it is important that you begin to think about what
happens should we succeed in opening the keystone."
"Gentlemen," Sophie said, her voice firm. "To quote your words, 'You do not find
the Grail, the Grail finds you.' I am going to trust that the Grail has found me
for a reason, and when the time comes, I will know what to do."
Both of them looked startled.
"So then," she said, motioning to the rosewood box. "Let's move on."
CHAPTER 70
Standing in the drawing room of Ch?teau Villette, Lieutenant Collet watched the
dying fire and felt despondent. Captain Fache had arrived moments earlier and
was now in the next room, yelling into the phone, trying to coordinate the
failed attempt to locate the missing Range Rover.
It could be anywhere by now, Collet thought.
Having disobeyed Fache's direct orders and lost Langdon for a second time,
Collet was grateful that PTS had located a bullet hole in the floor, which at
least corroborated Collet's claims that a shot had been fired. Still, Fache's
mood was sour, and Collet sensed there would be dire repercussions when the dust
settled.
Unfortunately, the clues they were turning up here seemed to shed no light at
all on what was going on or who was involved. The black Audi outside had been
rented in a false name with false credit card numbers, and the prints in the car
matched nothing in the Interpol database.
Another agent hurried into the living room, his eyes urgent. "Where's Captain
Fache?"
Collet barely looked up from the burning embers. "He's on the phone."
"I'm off the phone," Fache snapped, stalking into the room. "What have you got?"
The second agent said, "Sir, Central just heard from André Vernet at the
Depository Bank of Zurich. He wants to talk to you privately. He is changing his
story."
"Oh?" Fache said.
Now Collet looked up.
"Vernet is admitting that Langdon and Neveu spent time inside his bank tonight."
"We figured that out," Fache said. "Why did Vernet lie about it?"
"He said he'll talk only to you, but he's aGREed to cooperate fully."
"In exchange for what?"
"For our keeping his bank's name out of the news and also for helping him
recover some stolen property. It sounds like Langdon and Neveu stole something
from Saunière's account."
"What?" Collet blurted. "How?"
Fache never flinched, his eyes riveted on the second agent. "What did they
steal?"
"Vernet didn't elaborate, but he sounds like he's willing to do anything to get
it back."
Collet tried to imagine how this could happen. Maybe Langdon and Neveu had held
a bank employee at gunpoint? Maybe they forced Vernet to open Saunière's account
and facilitate an escape in the armored truck. As feasible as it was, Collet was
having trouble believing Sophie Neveu could be involved in anything like that.
From the kitchen, another agent yelled to Fache. "Captain? I'm going through Mr.
Teabing's speed dial numbers, and I'm on the phone with Le Bourget Airfield.
I've got some bad news."
Thirty seconds later, Fache was packing up and preparing to leave Ch?teau
Villette. He had just learned that Teabing kept a private jet nearby at Le
Bourget Airfield and that the plane had taken off about a half hour ago.
The Bourget representative on the phone had claimed not to know who was on the
plane or where it was headed. The takeoff had been unscheduled, and no flight
plan had been logged. Highly illegal, even for a small airfield. Fache was
certain that by applying the right pressure, he could get the answers he was
looking for.
"Lieutenant Collet," Fache barked, heading for the door. "I have no choice but
to leave you in charge of the PTS investigation here. Try to do something right
for a change."
CHAPTER 71
As the Hawker leveled off, with its nose aimed for England, Langdon carefully
lifted the rosewood box from his lap, where he had been protecting it during
takeoff. Now, as he set the box on the table, he could sense Sophie and Teabing
leaning forward with anticipation.
Unlatching the lid and opening the box, Langdon turned his attention not to the
lettered dials of the cryptex, but rather to the tiny hole on the underside of
the box lid. Using the tip of a pen, he carefully removed the inlaid Rose on top
and revealed the text beneath it. Sub Rosa, he mused, hoping a fresh look at the
text would bring clarity. Focusing all his energies, Langdon studied the
strange text.
After several seconds, he began to feel the initial frustration resurfacing.
"Leigh, I just can't seem to place it."
From where Sophie was seated across the table, she could not yet see the text,
but Langdon's inability to immediately identify the language surprised her. My
grandfather spoke a language so obscure that even a symbologist can't identify
it? She quickly realized she should not find this surprising. This would not be
the first secret Jacques Saunière had kept from his granddaughter.
Opposite Sophie, Leigh Teabing felt ready to burst. Eager for his chance to see
the text, he quivered with excitement, leaning in, trying to see around Langdon,
who was still hunched over the box.
"I don't know," Langdon whispered intently. "My first guess is a Semitic, but
now I'm not so sure. Most primary Semitics include nekkudot. This has none."
"Probably ancient," Teabing offered.
"Nekkudot?" Sophie inquired.
Teabing never took his eyes from the box. "Most modern Semitic alphabets have no
vowels and use nekkudot-tiny dots and dashes written either below or within the
consonants-to indicate what vowel sound accompanies them. Historically speaking,
nekkudot are a relatively modern addition to language."
Langdon was still hovering over the script. "A Sephardic transliteration,
perhaps...?"
Teabing could bear it no longer. "Perhaps if I just..." Reaching over, he edged
the box away from Langdon and pulled it toward himself. No doubt Langdon had a
solid familiarity with the standard ancients-GREek, Latin, the Romances-but from
the fleeting glance Teabing had of this language, he thought it looked more
specialized, possibly a Rashi script or a STA'M with crowns.
Taking a deep breath, Teabing feasted his eyes upon the engraving. He said
nothing for a very long time. With each passing second, Teabing felt his
confidence deflating. "I'm astonished," he said. "This language looks like
nothing I've ever seen!"
Langdon slumped.
"Might I see it?" Sophie asked.
Teabing pretended not to hear her. "Robert, you said earlier that you thought
you'd seen something like this before?"
Langdon looked vexed. "I thought so. I'm not sure. The script looks familiar
somehow."
"Leigh?" Sophie repeated, clearly not appreciating being left out of the
discussion. "Might I have a look at the box my grandfather made?"
"Of course, dear," Teabing said, pushing it over to her. He hadn't meant to
sound belittling, and yet Sophie Neveu was light-years out of her league. If a
British Royal Historian and a Harvard symbologist could not even identify the
language-
"Aah," Sophie said, seconds after examining the box. "I should have guessed."
Teabing and Langdon turned in unison, staring at her.
"Guessed what?" Teabing demanded.
Sophie shrugged. "Guessed that this would be the language my grandfather would
have used."
"You're saying you can read this text?" Teabing exclaimed.
"Quite easily," Sophie chimed, obviously enjoying herself now. "My grandfather
taught me this language when I was only six years old. I'm fluent." She leaned
across the table and fixed Teabing with an admonishing glare. "And frankly, sir,
considering your allegiance to the Crown, I'm a little surprised you didn't
recognize it."
In a FLASH, Langdon knew.
No wonder the script looks so damned familiar!
Several years ago, Langdon had attended an event at Harvard's Fogg Museum.
Harvard dropout Bill Gates had returned to his alma mater to lend to the museum
one of his priceless acquisitions-eighteen sheets of paper he had recently
purchased at auction from the Armand Hammar Estate.
His winning bid-a cool $30.8 million.
The author of the pages-Leonardo da Vinci.
The eighteen folios-now known as Leonardo's Codex Leicester after their famous
owner, the Earl of Leicester-were all that remained of one of Leonardo's most
fascinating notebooks: essays and drawings outlining Da Vinci's proGREssive
theories on astronomy, geology, archaeology, and hydrology.
Langdon would never forget his reaction after waiting in line and finally
viewing the priceless parchment. Utter letdown. The pages were unintelligible.
Despite being beautifully preserved and written in an impeccably neat
penmanship-crimson ink on cream paper-the codex looked like gibberish. At first
Langdon thought he could not read them because Da Vinci wrote his notebooks in
an archaic Italian. But after studying them more closely, he realized he could
not identify a single Italian word, or even one letter.
"Try this, sir," whispered the female docent at the display case. She motioned
to a hand mirror affixed to the display on a chain. Langdon picked it up and
examined the text in the mirror's surface.
Instantly it was clear.
Langdon had been so eager to peruse some of the GREat thinker's ideas that he
had forgotten one of the man's numerous artistic talents was an ability to write
in a mirrored script that was virtually illegible to anyone other than himself.
Historians still debated whether Da Vinci wrote this way simply to amuse himself
or to keep people from peering over his shoulder and stealing his ideas, but the
point was moot. Da Vinci did as he pleased.
Sophie smiled inwardly to see that Robert understood her meaning. "I can read
the first few words," she said. "It's English."
Teabing was still sputtering. "What's going on?"
"Reverse text," Langdon said. "We need a mirror."
"No we don't," Sophie said. "I bet this veneer is thin enough." She lifted the
rosewood box up to a canister light on the wall and began examining the
underside of the lid. Her grandfather couldn't actually write in reverse, so he
always cheated by writing normally and then flipping the paper over and tracing
the reversed impression. Sophie's guess was that he had wood-burned normal text
into a block of wood and then run the back of the block through a sander until
the wood was paper thin and the wood-burning could be seen through the wood.
Then he'd simply flipped the piece over, and laid it in.
As Sophie moved the lid closer to the light, she saw she was right. The bright
beam sifted through the thin layer of wood, and the script appeared in reverse
on the underside of the lid.
Instantly legible.
"English," Teabing croaked, hanging his head in shame. "My native tongue."
At the rear of the plane, Rémy Legaludec strained to hear beyond the rumbling
engines, but the conversation up front was inaudible. Rémy did not like the way
the night was proGREssing. Not at all. He looked down at the bound monk at his
feet. The man lay perfectly still now, as if in a trance of acceptance, or
perhaps, in silent prayer for deliverance.
CHAPTER 72
Fifteen thousand feet in the air, Robert Langdon felt the physical world fade
away as all of his thoughts converged on Saunière's mirror-image poem, which was
illuminated through the lid of the box.
Sophie quickly found some paper and copied it down longhand. When she was done,
the three of them took turns reading the text. It was like some kind of
archaeological crossword... a riddle that promised to reveal how to open the
cryptex. Langdon read the verse slowly.
An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll... and helps us keep her scatter'd
family whole... a headstone praised by templars is the key... and atbash will
reveal the truth to thee.
Before Langdon could even ponder what ancient password the verse was trying to
reveal, he felt something far more fundamental resonate within him-the meter of
the poem. Iambic pentameter.
Langdon had come across this meter often over the years while researching secret
societies across Europe, including just last year in the Vatican Secret
Archives. For centuries, iambic pentameter had been a preferred poetic meter of
outspoken literati across the globe, from the ancient GREek writer Archilochus
to Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Voltaire-bold souls who chose to write
their social commentaries in a meter that many of the day believed had mystical
properties. The roots of iambic pentameter were deeply pagan.
Iambs. Two syllables with opposite emphasis. Stressed and unstressed. Yin yang.
A balanced pair. Arranged in strings of five. Pentameter. Five for the pentacle
of Venus and the sacred feminine.
"It's pentameter!" Teabing blurted, turning to Langdon. "And the verse is in
English! La lingua pura!"
Langdon nodded. The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the
Church, had considered English the only European pure language for centuries.
Unlike French, Spanish, and Italian, which were rooted in Latin-the tongue of
the Vatican-English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine,
and therefore became a sacred, secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated
enough to learn it.
"This poem," Teabing gushed, "references not only the Grail, but the Knights
Templar and the scattered family of Mary Magdalene! What more could we ask for?"
"The password," Sophie said, looking again at the poem. "It sounds like we need
some kind of ancient word of wisdom?"
"Abracadabra?" Teabing ventured, his eyes twinkling.
A word of five letters, Langdon thought, pondering the staggering number of
ancient words that might be considered words of wisdom-selections from mystic
chants, astrological prophecies, secret society inductions, Wicca incantations,
Egyptian magic spells, pagan mantras-the list was endless.
"The password," Sophie said, "appears to have something to do with the
Templars." She read the text aloud. " 'A headstone praised by Templars is the
key.' "
"Leigh," Langdon said, "you're the Templar specialist. Any ideas?"
Teabing was silent for several seconds and then sighed. "Well, a headstone is
obviously a grave marker of some sort. It's possible the poem is referencing a
gravestone the Templars praised at the tomb of Magdalene, but that doesn't help
us much because we have no idea where her tomb is."
"The last line," Sophie said, "says that Atbash will reveal the truth. I've
heard that word. Atbash."
"I'm not surprised," Langdon replied. "You probably heard it in Cryptology 101.
The Atbash Cipher is one of the oldest codes known to man."
Of course! Sophie thought. The famous Hebrew encoding system.
The Atbash Cipher had indeed been part of Sophie's early cryptology training.
The cipher dated back to 500 B.C. and was now used as a classroom example of a
basic rotational substitution scheme. A common form of Jewish cryptogram, the
Atbash Cipher was a simple substitution code based on the twenty-two-letter
Hebrew alphabet. In Atbash, the first letter was substituted by the last letter,
the second letter by the next to last letter, and so on.
"Atbash is sublimely appropriate," Teabing said. "Text encrypted with Atbash is
found throughout the Kabbala, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Old Testament.
Jewish scholars and mystics are still finding hidden meanings using Atbash. The
Priory certainly would include the Atbash Cipher as part of their teachings."
"The only problem," Langdon said, "is that we don't have anything on which to
apply the cipher."
Teabing sighed. "There must be a code word on the headstone. We must find this
headstone praised by Templars."
Sophie sensed from the grim look on Langdon's face that finding the Templar
headstone would be no small feat.
Atbash is the key, Sophie thought. But we don't have a door.
It was three minutes later that Teabing heaved a frustrated sigh and shook his
head. "My friends, I'm stymied. Let me ponder this while I get us some nibblies
and check on Rémy and our guest." He stood up and headed for the back of the
plane.
Sophie felt tired as she watched him go.
Outside the window, the blackness of the predawn was absolute. Sophie felt as if
she were being hurtled through space with no idea where she would land. Having
grown up solving her grandfather's riddles, she had the uneasy sense right now
that this poem before them contained information they still had not seen.
There is more there, she told herself. Ingeniously hidden... but present
nonetheless.
Also plaguing her thoughts was a fear that what they eventually found inside
this cryptex would not be as simple as "a map to the Holy Grail." Despite
Teabing's and Langdon's confidence that the truth lay just within the marble
cylinder, Sophie had solved enough of her grandfather's treasure hunts to know
that Jacques Saunière did not give up his secrets easily.
CHAPTER 73
Bourget Airfield's night shift air traffic controller had been dozing before a
blank radar screen when the captain of the Judicial Police practically broke
down his door.
"Teabing's jet," Bezu Fache blared, marching into the small tower, "where did it
go?"
The controller's initial response was a babbling, lame attempt to protect the
privacy of their British client-one of the airfield's most respected customers.
It failed miserably.
"Okay," Fache said, "I am placing you under arrest for permitting a private
plane to take off without registering a flight plan." Fache motioned to another
officer, who approached with handcuffs, and the traffic controller felt a surge
of terror. He thought of the newspaper articles debating whether the nation's
police captain was a hero or a menace. That question had just been answered.
"Wait!" the controller heard himself whimper at the sight of the handcuffs. "I
can tell you this much. Sir Leigh Teabing makes frequent trips to London for
medical treatments. He has a hangar at Biggin Hill Executive Airport in Kent. On
the outskirts of London."
Fache waved off the man with the cuffs. "Is Biggin Hill his destination
tonight?"
"I don't know," the controller said honestly. "The plane left on its usual tack,
and his last radar contact suggested the United Kingdom. Biggin Hill is an
extremely likely guess."
"Did he have others onboard?"
"I swear, sir, there is no way for me to know that. Our clients can drive
directly to their hangars, and load as they please. Who is onboard is the
responsibility of the customs officials at the receiving airport."
Fache checked his watch and gazed out at the scattering of jets parked in front
of the terminal. "If they're going to Biggin Hill, how long until they land?"
The controller fumbled through his records. "It's a short flight. His plane
could be on the ground by... around six-thirty. Fifteen minutes from now."
Fache frowned and turned to one of his men. "Get a transport up here. I'm going
to London. And get me the Kent local police. Not British MI5. I want this quiet.
Kent local. Tell them I want Teabing's plane to be permitted to land. Then I
want it surrounded on the tarmac. Nobody deplanes until I get there."
CHAPTER 74
"You're quiet," Langdon said, gazing across the Hawker's cabin at Sophie.
"Just tired," she replied. "And the poem. I don't know."
Langdon was feeling the same way. The hum of the engines and the gentle rocking
of the plane were hypnotic, and his head still throbbed where he'd been hit by
the monk. Teabing was still in the back of the plane, and Langdon decided to
take advantage of the moment alone with Sophie to tell her something that had
been on his mind. "I think I know part of the reason why your grandfather
conspired to put us together. I think there's something he wanted me to explain
to you."
"The history of the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene isn't enough?"
Langdon felt uncertain how to proceed. "The rift between you. The reason you
haven't spoken to him in ten years. I think maybe he was hoping I could somehow
make that right by explaining what drove you apart."
Sophie squirmed in her seat. "I haven't told you what drove us apart."
Langdon eyed her carefully. "You witnessed a sex rite. Didn't you?"
Sophie recoiled. "How do you know that?"
"Sophie, you told me you witnessed something that convinced you your grandfather
was in a secret society. And whatever you saw upset you enough that you haven't
spoken to him since. I know a fair amount about secret societies. It doesn't
take the brains of Da Vinci to guess what you saw."
Sophie stared.
"Was it in the spring?" Langdon asked. "Sometime around the equinox? Mid-March?"
Sophie looked out the window. "I was on spring break from university. I came
home a few days early."
"You want to tell me about it?"
"I'd rather not." She turned suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes welling with
emotion. "I don't know what I saw."
"Were both men and women present?"
After a beat, she nodded.
"Dressed in white and black?"
She wiped her eyes and then nodded, seeming to open up a little. "The women were
in white gossamer gowns... with golden shoes. They held golden orbs. The men
wore black tunics and black shoes."
Langdon strained to hide his emotion, and yet he could not believe what he was
hearing. Sophie Neveu had unwittingly witnessed a two-thousand-year-old sacred
ceremony. "Masks?" he asked, keeping his voice calm. "Androgynous masks?"
"Yes. Everyone. Identical masks. White on the women. Black on the men."
Langdon had read descriptions of this ceremony and understood its mystic roots.
"It's called Hieros
Gamos," he said softly. "It dates back more than two thousand years. Egyptian
priests and priestesses performed it regularly to celebrate the reproductive
power of the female," He paused, leaning toward her. "And if you witnessed
Hieros Gamos without being properly prepared to understand its meaning, I
imagine it would be pretty shocking."
Sophie said nothing.
"Hieros Gamos is GREek," he continued. "It means sacred marriage."
"The ritual I saw was no marriage."
"Marriage as in union, Sophie."
"You mean as in sex."
"No."
"No?" she said, her olive eyes testing him.
Langdon backpedaled. "Well... yes, in a manner of speaking, but not as we
understand it today." He explained that although what she saw probably looked
like a sex ritual, Hieros Gamos had nothing to do with eroticism. It was a
spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act through which male and
female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually
incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union
with the female remained the sole means through which man could become
spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis-knowledge of the divine.
Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man's only bridge from
earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon said, "man could achieve a
climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God."
Sophie looked skeptical. "Orgasm as prayer?"
Langdon gave a noncommittal shrug, although Sophie was essentially correct.
Physiologically speaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second
entirely devoid of thought. A brief mental vacuum. A moment of clarity during
which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurus achieved similar states of
thoughtlessness without sex and often described Nirvana as a never-ending
spiritual orgasm.
"Sophie," Langdon said quietly, "it's important to remember that the ancients'
view of sex was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life-the
ultimate miracle-and miracles could be performed only by a god. The ability of
the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god. Intercourse was
the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit-male and female-through
which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. What you
saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros Gamos ritual is not
a perversion.
It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."
His words seemed to strike a nerve. Sophie had been remarkably poised all
evening, but now, for the first time, Langdon saw the aura of composure
beginning to crack. Tears materialized in her eyes again, and she dabbed them
away with her sleeve.
He gave her a moment. Admittedly, the concept of sex as a pathway to God was
mind-boggling at first. Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted
when he first told them that the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic
sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in
Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal,
Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit
priestesses-or hierodules-with whom they made love and experienced the divine
through physical union. The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH-the sacred name of God-in
fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine
Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah.
"For the early Church," Langdon explained in a soft voice, "mankind's use of sex
to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base.
It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as
the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex
and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religions did the
same."
Sophie was silent, but Langdon sensed she was starting to understand her
grandfather better. Ironically, Langdon had made this same point in a class
lecture earlier this semester. "Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex?"
he asked his students. "Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us
sex is natural-a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment-and yet modern
religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the
hand of the devil."
Langdon decided not to shock his students with the fact that more than a dozen
secret societies around the world-many of them quite influential-still practiced
sex rites and kept the ancient traditions alive. Tom Cruise's character in the
film Eyes Wide Shut discovered this the hard way when he sneaked into a private
gathering of ultraelite Manhattanites only to find himself witnessing Hieros
Gamos. Sadly, the filmmakers had gotten most of the specifics wrong, but the
basic gist was there-a secret society communing to celebrate the magic of sexual
union.
"Professor Langdon?" A male student in back raised his hand, sounding hopeful.
"Are you saying that instead of going to chapel, we should have more sex?"
Langdon chuckled, not about to take the bait. From what he'd heard about Harvard
parties, these kids were having more than enough sex. "Gentlemen," he said,
knowing he was on tender ground, "might I offer a suggestion for all of you.
Without being so bold as to condone premarital sex, and without being so naive
as to think you're all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice about
your sex lives."
All the men in the audience leaned forward, listening intently.
"The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you
cannot approach sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find
that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred
feminine."
The women smiled knowingly, nodding.
The men exchanged dubious giggles and off-color jokes.
Langdon sighed. College men were still boys.
Sophie's forehead felt cold as she pressed it against the plane's window and
stared blankly into the void, trying to process what Langdon had just told her.
She felt a new reGREt well within her. Ten years. She pictured the stacks of
unopened letters her grandfather had sent her. I will tell Robert everything.
Without turning from the window, Sophie began to speak. Quietly. Fearfully.
As she began to recount what had happened that night, she felt herself drifting
back... alighting in the woods outside her grandfather's Normandy ch?teau...
searching the deserted house in confusion... hearing the voices below her... and
then finding the hidden door. She inched down the stone staircase, one step at a
time, into that basement grotto. She could taste the earthy air. Cool and light.
It was March. In the shadows of her hiding place on the staircase, she watched
as the strangers swayed and chanted by flickering orange candles.
I'm dreaming, Sophie told herself. This is a dream. What else could this be?
The women and men were staggered, black, white, black, white. The women's
beautiful gossamer gowns billowed as they raised in their right hands golden
orbs and called out in unison, "I was with you in the beginning, in the dawn of
all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start of day."
The women lowered their orbs, and everyone rocked back and forth as if in a
trance. They were revering something in the center of the circle.
What are they looking at?
The voices accelerated now. Louder. Faster.
"The woman whom you behold is love!" The women called, raising their orbs again.
The men responded, "She has her dwelling in eternity!"
The chanting GREw steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The
participants stepped inward and knelt.
In that instant, Sophie could finally see what they were all watching.
On a low, ornate altar in the center of the circle lay a man. He was naked,
positioned on his back, and wearing a black mask. Sophie instantly recognized
his body and the birthmark on his shoulder. She almost cried out. Grand-père!
This image alone would have shocked Sophie beyond belief, and yet there was
more.
Straddling her grandfather was a naked woman wearing a white mask, her luxuriant
silver hair flowing out behind it. Her body was plump, far from perfect, and she
was gyrating in rhythm to the chanting-making love to Sophie's grandfather.
Sophie wanted to turn and run, but she couldn't. The stone walls of the grotto
imprisoned her as the chanting rose to a fever pitch. The circle of participants
seemed almost to be singing now, the noise rising in crescendo to a frenzy. With
a sudden roar, the entire room seemed to erupt in climax. Sophie could not
breathe. She suddenly realized she was quietly sobbing. She turned and staggered
silently up the stairs, out of the house, and drove trembling back to Paris.
CHAPTER 75
The chartered turboprop was just passing over the twinkling lights of Monaco
when Aringarosa hung up on Fache for the second time. He reached for the
airsickness bag again but felt too drained even to be sick.
Just let it be over!
Fache's newest update seemed unfathomable, and yet almost nothing tonight made
sense anymore. What is going on? Everything had spiraled wildly out of control.
What have I gotten Silas into? What have I gotten myself into!
On shaky legs, Aringarosa walked to the cockpit. "I need to change
destinations."
The pilot glanced over his shoulder and laughed. "You're joking, right?"
"No. I have to get to London immediately."
"Father, this is a charter flight, not a taxi."
"I will pay you extra, of course. How much? London is only one hour farther
north and requires almost no change of direction, so-"
"It's not a question of money, Father, there are other issues."
"Ten thousand euro. Right now."
The pilot turned, his eyes wide with shock. "How much? What kind of priest
carries that kind of cash?"
Aringarosa walked back to his black briefcase, opened it, and removed one of the
bearer bonds. He handed it to the pilot.
"What is this?" the pilot demanded.
"A ten-thousand-euro bearer bond drawn on the Vatican Bank."
The pilot looked dubious.
"It's the same as cash."
"Only cash is cash," the pilot said, handing the bond back.
Aringarosa felt weak as he steadied himself against the cockpit door. "This is a
matter of life or death. You must help me. I need to get to London."
The pilot eyed the bishop's gold ring. "Real diamonds?"
Aringarosa looked at the ring. "I could not possibly part with this."
The pilot shrugged, turning and focusing back out the windshield.
Aringarosa felt a deepening sadness. He looked at the ring. Everything it
represented was about to be lost to the bishop anyway. After a long moment, he
slid the ring from his finger and placed it gently on the instrument panel.
Aringarosa slunk out of the cockpit and sat back down. Fifteen seconds later, he
could feel the pilot banking a few more deGREes to the north.
Even so, Aringarosa's moment of glory was in shambles.
It had all begun as a holy cause. A brilliantly crafted scheme. Now, like a
house of cards, it was collapsing in on itself... and the end was nowhere in
sight.
CHAPTER 76
Langdon could see Sophie was still shaken from recounting her experience of
Hieros Gamos. For his part, Langdon was amazed to have heard it. Not only had
Sophie witnessed the full-blown ritual, but her own grandfather had been the
celebrant... the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. It was heady company. Da
Vinci, Botticelli, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau... Jacques Saunière.
"I don't know what else I can tell you," Langdon said softly.
Sophie's eyes were a deep GREen now, tearful. "He raised me like his own
daughter."
Langdon now recognized the emotion that had been growing in her eyes as they
spoke. It was remorse. Distant and deep. Sophie Neveu had shunned her
grandfather and was now seeing him in an entirely different light.
Outside, the dawn was coming fast, its crimson aura gathering off the starboard.
The earth was still black beneath them.
"Victuals, my dears?" Teabing rejoined them with a flourish, presenting several
cans of Coke and a box of old crackers. He apologized profusely for the limited
fare as he doled out the goods. "Our friend the monk isn't talking yet," he
chimed, "but give him time." He bit into a cracker and eyed the poem. "So, my
lovely, any headway?" He looked at Sophie. "What is your grandfather trying to
tell us here? Where the devil is this headstone? This headstone praised by
Templars."
Sophie shook her head and remained silent.
While Teabing again dug into the verse, Langdon popped a Coke and turned to the
window, his thoughts awash with images of secret rituals and unbroken codes. A
headstone praised by Templars is the key. He took a long sip from the can. A
headstone praised by Templars. The cola was warm.
The dissolving veil of night seemed to evaporate quickly, and as Langdon watched
the transformation, he saw a shimmering ocean stretch out beneath them. The
English Channel. It wouldn't be long now.
Langdon willed the light of day to bring with it a second kind of illumination,
but the lighter it became outside, the further he felt from the truth. He heard
the rhythms of iambic pentameter and chanting, Hieros Gamos and sacred rites,
resonating with the rumble of the jet.
A headstone praised by Templars.
The plane was over land again when a FLASH of enlightenment struck him. Langdon
set down his empty can of Coke hard. "You won't believe this," he said, turning
to the others. "The Templar headstone-I figured it out."
Teabing's eyes turned to saucers. "You know where the headstone is?"
Langdon smiled. "Not where it is. What it is."
Sophie leaned in to hear.
"I think the headstone references a literal stone head," Langdon explained,
savoring the familiar excitement of academic breakthrough. "Not a grave marker."
"A stone head?" Teabing demanded.
Sophie looked equally confused.
"Leigh," Langdon said, turning, "during the Inquisition, the Church accused the
Knights Templar of all kinds of heresies, right?"
"Correct. They fabricated all kinds of charges. Sodomy, urination on the cross,
devil worship, quite a list."
"And on that list was the worship of false idols, right? Specifically, the
Church accused the Templars of secretly performing rituals in which they prayed
to a carved stone head... the pagan god-"
"Baphomet!" Teabing blurted. "My heavens, Robert, you're right! A headstone
praised by Templars!"
Langdon quickly explained to Sophie that Baphomet was a pagan fertility god
associated with the creative force of reproduction. Baphomet's head was
represented as that of a ram or goat, a common symbol of procreation and
fecundity. The Templars honored Baphomet by encircling a stone replica of his
head and chanting prayers.
"Baphomet," Teabing tittered. "The ceremony honored the creative magic of sexual
union, but Pope Clement convinced everyone that Baphomet's head was in fact that
of the devil. The Pope used the head of Baphomet as the linchpin in his case
against the Templars."
Langdon concurred. The modern belief in a horned devil known as Satan could be
traced back to Baphomet and the Church's attempts to recast the horned fertility
god as a symbol of evil. The Church had obviously succeeded, although not
entirely. Traditional American Thanksgiving tables
still bore pagan, horned fertility symbols. The cornucopia or "horn of plenty"
was a tribute to Baphomet's fertility and dated back to Zeus being suckled by a
goat whose horn broke off and magically filled with fruit. Baphomet also
appeared in group photographs when some joker raised two fingers behind a
friend's head in the V-symbol of horns; certainly few of the pranksters realized
their mocking gesture was in fact advertising their victim's robust sperm count.
"Yes, yes," Teabing was saying excitedly. "Baphomet must be what the poem is
referring to. A headstone praised by Templars."
"Okay," Sophie said, "but if Baphomet is the headstone praised by Templars, then
we have a new dilemma." She pointed to the dials on the cryptex. "Baphomet has
eight letters. We only have room for five."
Teabing grinned broadly. "My dear, this is where the Atbash Cipher comes into
play"
CHAPTER 77
Langdon was impressed. Teabing had just finished writing out the entire
twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet-alef-beit-from memory. Granted, he'd used
Roman equivalents rather than Hebrew characters, but even so, he was now reading
through them with flawless pronunciation.
A B G D H V Z Ch T Y K L M N S O P Tz Q R Sh Th
"Alef, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, Hei, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yud, Kaf, Lamed, Mem,
Nun, Samech, Ayin, Pei, Tzadik, Kuf, Reish, Shin, and Tav." Teabing dramatically
mopped his brow and plowed on. "In formal Hebrew spelling, the vowel sounds are
not written. Therefore, when we write the word Baphomet using the Hebrew
alphabet, it will lose its three vowels in translation, leaving us-"
"Five letters," Sophie blurted.
Teabing nodded and began writing again. "Okay, here is the proper spelling of
Baphomet in Hebrew letters. I'll sketch in the missing vowels for clarity's
sake.
B a P V o M e Th
"Remember, of course," he added, "that Hebrew is normally written in the
opposite direction, but we can just as easily use Atbash this way. Next, all we
have to do is create our substitution scheme by rewriting the entire alphabet in
reverse order opposite the original alphabet."
"There's an easier way," Sophie said, taking the pen from Teabing. "It works for
all reflectional
substitution ciphers, including the Atbash. A little trick I learned at the
Royal Holloway." Sophie wrote the first half of the alphabet from left to right,
and then, beneath it, wrote the second half, right to left. "Cryptanalysts call
it the fold-over. Half as complicated. Twice as clean."
A B G D H V Z Ch T Y K
Th Sh R Q Tz P O S N M L
Teabing eyed her handiwork and chuckled. "Right you are. Glad to see those boys
at the Holloway are doing their job."
Looking at Sophie's substitution matrix, Langdon felt a rising thrill that he
imagined must have rivaled the thrill felt by early scholars when they first
used the Atbash Cipher to decrypt the now famous Mystery of Sheshach. For years,
religious scholars had been baffled by biblical references to a city called
Sheshach. The city did not appear on any map nor in any other documents, and yet
it was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah-the king of Sheshach, the
city of Sheshach, the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash
Cipher to the word, and his results were mind-numbing. The cipher revealed that
Sheshach was in fact a code word for another very well-known city. The
decryption process was simple.
Sheshach, in Hebrew, was spelled: Sh-Sh-K.
Sh-Sh-K, when placed in the substitution matrix, became B-B-L.
B-B-L, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.
The mysterious city of Sheshach was revealed as the city of Babel, and a frenzy
of biblical examination ensued. Within weeks, several more Atbash code words
were uncovered in the Old Testament, unveiling myriad hidden meanings that
scholars had no idea were there.
"We're getting close," Langdon whispered, unable to control his excitement.
"Inches, Robert," Teabing said. He glanced over at Sophie and smiled. "You
ready?"
She nodded.
"Okay, Baphomet in Hebrew without the vowels reads: B-P-V-M-Th. Now we simply
apply your Atbash substitution matrix to translate the letters into our
five-letter password."
Langdon's heart pounded. B-P-V-M-Th. The sun was pouring through the windows
now. He looked at Sophie's substitution matrix and slowly began to make the
conversion. B is Sh... P is V...
Teabing was grinning like a schoolboy at Christmas. "And the Atbash Cipher
reveals..." He stopped short. "Good God!" His face went white.
Langdon's head snapped up.
"What's wrong?" Sophie demanded.
"You won't believe this." Teabing glanced at Sophie. "Especially you."
"What do you mean?" she said.
"This is... ingenious," he whispered. "Utterly ingenious!" Teabing wrote again
on the paper. "Drumroll, please. Here is your password." He showed them what he
had written.
Sh-V-P-Y-A
Sophie scowled. "What is it?"
Langdon didn't recognize it either.
Teabing's voice seemed to tremble with awe. "This, my friend, is actually an
ancient word of wisdom."
Langdon read the letters again. An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll. An
instant later he got it. He had newer seen this coming. "An ancient word of
wisdom!"
Teabing was laughing. "Quite literally!"
Sophie looked at the word and then at the dial. Immediately she realized Langdon
and Teabing had failed to see a serious glitch. "Hold on! This can't be the
password," she argued. "The cryptex doesn't have an Sh on the dial. It uses a
traditional Roman alphabet."
"Read the word," Langdon urged. "Keep in mind two things. In Hebrew, the symbol
for the sound Sh can also be pronounced as S, depending on the accent. Just as
the letter P can be pronounced F."
SVFYA? she thought, puzzled.
"Genius!" Teabing added. "The letter Vav is often a placeholder for the vowel
sound O!"
Sophie again looked at the letters, attempting to sound them out.
"S...o...f...y...a."
She heard the sound of her voice, and could not believe what she had just said.
"Sophia? This spells Sophia?"
Langdon was nodding enthusiastically. "Yes! Sophia literally means wisdom in
GREek. The root of your name, Sophie, is literally a 'word of wisdom.' "
Sophie suddenly missed her grandfather immensely. He encrypted the Priory
keystone with my name. A knot caught in her throat. It all seemed so perfect.
But as she turned her gaze to the five lettered dials on the cryptex, she
realized a problem still existed. "But wait... the word Sophia has six letters."
Teabing's smile never faded. "Look at the poem again. Your grandfather wrote,
'An ancient word of wisdom.' "
"Yes?"
Teabing winked. "In ancient GREek, wisdom is spelled S-O-F-I-A."
CHAPTER 78
Sophie felt a wild excitement as she cradled the cryptex and began dialing in
the letters. An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll. Langdon and Teabing
seemed to have stopped breathing as they looked on.
S... O... F...
"Carefully," Teabing urged. "Ever so carefully."
...I... A.
Sophie aligned the final dial. "Okay," she whispered, glancing up at the others.
"I'm going to pull it apart."
"Remember the vinegar," Langdon whispered with fearful exhilaration. "Be
careful."
Sophie knew that if this cryptex were like those she had opened in her youth,
all she would need to do is grip the cylinder at both ends, just beyond the
dials, and pull, applying slow, steady pressure in opposite directions. If the
dials were properly aligned with the password, then one of the ends would slide
off, much like a lens cap, and she could reach inside and remove the rolled
papyrus document, which would be wrapped around the vial of vinegar. However, if
the password they had
entered were incorrect, Sophie's outward force on the ends would be transferred
to a hinged lever inside, which would pivot downward into the cavity and apply
pressure to the glass vial, eventually shattering it if she pulled too hard.
Pull gently, she told herself.
Teabing and Langdon both leaned in as Sophie wrapped her palms around the ends
of the cylinder. In the excitement of deciphering the code word, Sophie had
almost forgotten what they expected to find inside. This is the Priory keystone.
According to Teabing, it contained a map to the Holy Grail, unveiling the tomb
of Mary Magdalene and the SanGREal treasure... the ultimate treasure trove of
secret truth.
Now gripping the stone tube, Sophie double-checked that all of the letters were
properly aligned with the indicator. Then, slowly, she pulled. Nothing happened.
She applied a little more force. Suddenly, the stone slid apart like a
well-crafted telescope. The heavy end piece detached in her hand. Langdon and
Teabing almost jumped to their feet. Sophie's heart rate climbed as she set the
end cap on the table and tipped the cylinder to peer inside.
A scroll!
Peering down the hollow of the rolled paper, Sophie could see it had been
wrapped around a cylindrical object-the vial of vinegar, she assumed. Strangely,
though, the paper around the vinegar was not the customary delicate papyrus but
rather, vellum. That's odd, she thought, vinegar can't dissolve a lambskin
vellum. She looked again down the hollow of the scroll and realized the object
in the center was not a vial of vinegar after all. It was something else
entirely.
"What's wrong?" Teabing asked. "Pull out the scroll."
Frowning, Sophie grabbed the rolled vellum and the object around which it was
wrapped, pulling them both out of the container.
"That's not papyrus," Teabing said. "It's too heavy."
"I know. It's padding."
"For what? The vial of vinegar?"
"No." Sophie unrolled the scroll and revealed what was wrapped inside. "For
this."
When Langdon saw the object inside the sheet of vellum, his heart sank.
"God help us," Teabing said, slumping. "Your grandfather was a pitiless
architect."
Langdon stared in amazement. I see Saunière has no intention of making this
easy.
On the table sat a second cryptex. Smaller. Made of black onyx. It had been
nested within the first. Saunière's passion for dualism. Two cryptexes.
Everything in pairs. Double entendres. Male female. Black nested within white.
Langdon felt the web of symbolism stretching onward. White gives birth to black.
Every man sprang from woman.
White-female.
Black-male.
Reaching over, Langdon lifted the smaller cryptex. It looked identical to the
first, except half the size and black. He heard the familiar gurgle. Apparently,
the vial of vinegar they had heard earlier was inside this smaller cryptex.
"Well, Robert," Teabing said, sliding the page of vellum over to him.
"You'll be pleased to hear that at least we're flying in the right direction."
Langdon examined the thick vellum sheet. Written in ornate penmanship was
another four-line verse. Again, in iambic pentameter. The verse was cryptic, but
Langdon needed to read only as far as the first line to realize that Teabing's
plan to come to Britain was going to pay off.
IN LONDON LIES A KNIGHT A POPE INTERRED.
The remainder of the poem clearly implied that the password for opening the
second cryptex could be found by visiting this knight's tomb, somewhere in the
city.
Langdon turned excitedly to Teabing. "Do you have any idea what knight this poem
is referring to?"
Teabing grinned. "Not the foggiest. But I know in precisely which crypt we
should look."
At that moment, fifteen miles ahead of them, six Kent police cars streaked down
rain-soaked streets toward Biggin Hill Executive Airport.
CHAPTER 79
Lieutenant Collet helped himself to a Perrier from Teabing's refrigerator and
strode back out through the drawing room. Rather than accompanying Fache to
London where the action was, he was now baby-sitting the PTS team that had
spread out through Ch?teau Villette.
So far, the evidence they had uncovered was unhelpful: a single bullet buried in
the floor; a paper with several symbols scrawled on it along with the words
blade and chalice; and a bloody spiked belt that PTS had told Collet was
associated with the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, which had caused a
stir recently when a news program exposed their agGREssive recruiting practices
in Paris.
Collet sighed. Good luck making sense of this unlikely mélange.
Moving down a lavish hallway, Collet entered the vast ballroom study, where the
chief PTS examiner was busy dusting for fingerprints. He was a corpulent man in
suspenders.
"Anything?" Collet asked, entering.
The examiner shook his head. "Nothing new. Multiple sets matching those in the
rest of the house."
"How about the prints on the cilice belt?"
"Interpol is still working. I uploaded everything we found."
Collet motioned to two sealed evidence bags on the desk. "And this?"
The man shrugged. "Force of habit. I bag anything peculiar."
Collet walked over. Peculiar?
"This Brit's a strange one," the examiner said. "Have a look at this." He sifted
through the evidence bags and selected one, handing it to Collet.
The photo showed the main entrance of a Gothic cathedral-the traditional,
recessed archway, narrowing through multiple, ribbed layers to a small doorway.
Collet studied the photo and turned. "This is peculiar?"
"Turn it over."
On the back, Collet found notations scrawled in English, describing a
cathedral's long hollow nave as a secret pagan tribute to a woman's womb. This
was strange. The notation describing the
cathedral's doorway, however, was what startled him. "Hold on! He thinks a
cathedral's entrance represents a woman's..."
The examiner nodded. "Complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little
cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway." He sighed. "Kind of makes you want to go
back to church."
Collet picked up the second evidence bag. Through the plastic, he could see a
large glossy photograph of what appeared to be an old document. The heading at
the top read:
Les Dossiers Secrets-Number 4° lm1 249
"What's this?" Collet asked.
"No idea. He's got copies of it all over the place, so I bagged it."
Collet studied the document.
PRIEURE DE SIGN-LES NAUTONIERS/GRAND MASTERS
JEAN DE GISORS 1188-1220
MARIE DE SAINT-CLAIR 1220-1266
GUILLAUME DE GlSORS 1266-1307
EDOUARD DE BAR 1307-1336
JEANNE DE BAR 1336-1351
JEAN DE SAINT-CLAIR 1351-1366
BLANCE D'EVREUX 1366-1398
NICOLAS FLAMEL 1398-1418
RENE D'ANJOU 1418-1480
IOLANDE DE BAR 1480-1483
SANDRO BOTTICELLI 1483-1510
LEONARDO DA VINCI 1510-1519
CONNETABLE DE BOURBON 1519-1527
FERDINAND DE GONZAQUE 1527-1575
LOUIS DE NEVERS 1575-1595
ROBERT FLUDD 1595-1637
J. VALENTIN ANDREA 1637-1654
ROBERT BOYLE 1654-1691
ISAAC NEWTON 1691-1727
CHARLES RADCLYFFE 1727-1746
CHARLES DE LORRAINE 1746-1780
MAXIMILIAN DE LORRAINE 1780-1801
CHARLES NODIER 1801-1844
VICTOR HUGO 1844-1885
CLAUDE DEBUSSY 1885-1918
JEAN COCTEAU 1918-1963
Prieuré de Sion? Collet wondered.
"Lieutenant?" Another agent stuck his head in. "The switchboard has an urgent
call for Captain Fache, but they can't reach him. Will you take it?"
Collet returned to the kitchen and took the call.
It was André Vernet.
The banker's refined accent did little to mask the tension in his voice. "I
thought Captain Fache said he would call me, but I have not yet heard from him."
"The captain is quite busy," Collet replied. "May I help you?"
"I was assured I would be kept abreast of your proGREss tonight."
For a moment, Collet thought he recognized the timbre of the man's voice, but he
couldn't quite place it. "Monsieur Vernet, I am currently in charge of the Paris
investigation. My name is Lieutenant Collet."
There was a long pause on the line. "Lieutenant, I have another call coming in.
Please excuse me. I will call you later." He hung up.
For several seconds, Collet held the receiver. Then it dawned on him. I knew I
recognized that voice! The revelation made him gasp.
The armored car driver.
With the fake Rolex.
Collet now understood why the banker had hung up so quickly. Vernet had
remembered the name Lieutenant Collet-the officer he blatantly lied to earlier
tonight.
Collet pondered the implications of this bizarre development. Vernet is
involved. Instinctively, he knew he should call Fache. Emotionally, he knew this
lucky break was going to be his moment to shine.
He immediately called Interpol and requested every shred of information they
could find on the Depository Bank of Zurich and its president, André Vernet.
CHAPTER 80
"Seat belts, please," Teabing's pilot announced as the Hawker 731 descended into
a gloomy morning drizzle. "We'll be landing in five minutes."
Teabing felt a joyous sense of homecoming when he saw the misty hills of Kent
spreading wide beneath the descending plane. England was less than an hour from
Paris, and yet a world away. This morning, the damp, spring GREen of his
homeland looked particularly welcoming. My time in France is over. I am
returning to England victorious. The keystone has been found. The question
remained, of course, as to where the keystone would ultimately lead. Somewhere
in the United Kingdom. Where exactly, Teabing had no idea, but he was already
tasting the glory.
As Langdon and Sophie looked on, Teabing got up and went to the far side of the
cabin, then slid aside a wall panel to reveal a discreetly hidden wall safe. He
dialed in the combination, opened the safe, and extracted two passports.
"Documentation for Rémy and myself." He then removed a thick stack of
fifty-pound notes. "And documentation for you two."
Sophie looked leery. "A bribe?"
"Creative diplomacy. Executive airfields make certain allowances. A British
customs official will GREet us at my hangar and ask to board the plane. Rather
than permitting him to come on, I'll tell him I'm traveling with a French
celebrity who prefers that nobody knows she is in England-press considerations,
you know-and I'll offer the official this generous tip as gratitude for his
discretion."
Langdon looked amazed. "And the official will accept?"
"Not from anyone, they won't, but these people all know me. I'm not an arms
dealer, for heaven's sake. I was knighted." Teabing smiled. "Membership has its
privileges."
Rémy approached up the aisle now, the Heckler Koch pistol cradled in his hand.
"Sir, my agenda?"
Teabing glanced at his servant. "I'm going to have you stay onboard with our
guest until we return.
We can't very well drag him all over London with us."
Sophie looked wary. "Leigh, I was serious about the French police finding your
plane before we return."
Teabing laughed. "Yes, imagine their surprise if they board and find Rémy."
Sophie looked surprised by his cavalier attitude. "Leigh, you transported a
bound hostage across international borders. This is serious."
"So are my lawyers." He scowled toward the monk in the rear of the plane. "That
animal broke into my home and almost killed me. That is a fact, and Rémy will
corroborate."
"But you tied him up and flew him to London!" Langdon said.
Teabing held up his right hand and feigned a courtroom oath. "Your honor,
forgive an eccentric old knight his foolish prejudice for the British court
system. I realize I should have called the French authorities, but I'm a snob
and do not trust those laissez-faire French to prosecute properly. This man
almost murdered me. Yes, I made a rash decision forcing my manservant to help me
bring him to England, but I was under GREat stress. Mea culpa. Mea culpa."
Langdon looked incredulous. "Coming from you, Leigh, that just might fly."
"Sir?" the pilot called back. "The tower just radioed. They've got some kind of
maintenance problem out near your hangar, and they're asking me to bring the
plane directly to the terminal instead."
Teabing had been flying to Biggin Hill for over a decade, and this was a first.
"Did they mention what the problem is?"
"The controller was vague. Something about a gas leak at the pumping station?
They asked me to park in front of the terminal and keep everyone onboard until
further notice. Safety precaution. We're not supposed to deplane until we get
the all clear from airport authorities."
Teabing was skeptical. Must be one hell of a gas leak. The pumping station was a
good half mile from his hangar.
Rémy also looked concerned. "Sir, this sounds highly irregular."
Teabing turned to Sophie and Langdon. "My friends, I have an unpleasant
suspicion that we are about to be met by a welcoming committee."
Langdon gave a bleak sigh. "I guess Fache still thinks I'm his man."
"Either that," Sophie said, "or he is too deep into this to admit his error.
Teabing was not listening. Regardless of Fache's mind-set, action needed to be
taken fast. Don't lose sight of the ultimate goal. The Grail. We're so dose.
Below them, the landing gear descended with a clunk.
"Leigh," Langdon said, sounding deeply remorseful, "I should turn myself in and
sort this out legally. Leave you all out of it."
"Oh, heavens, Robert!" Teabing waved it off. "Do you really think they're going
to let the rest of us go? I just transported you illegally. Miss Neveu assisted
in your escape from the Louvre, and we have a man tied up in the back of the
plane. Really now! We're all in this together."
"Maybe a different airport?" Sophie said.
Teabing shook his head. "If we pull up now, by the time we get clearance
anywhere else, our welcoming party will include army tanks."
Sophie slumped.
Teabing sensed that if they were to have any chance of postponing confrontation
with the British authorities long enough to find the Grail, bold action had to
be taken. "Give me a minute," he said, hobbling toward the cockpit.
"What are you doing?" Langdon asked.
"Sales meeting," Teabing said, wondering how much it would cost him to persuade
his pilot to perform one highly irregular maneuver.
CHAPTER 81
The Hawker is on final approach.
Simon Edwards-Executive Services Officer at Biggin Hill Airport-paced the
control tower, squinting nervously at the rain-drenched runway. He never
appreciated being awoken early on a Saturday morning, but it was particularly
distasteful that he had been called in to oversee the arrest of one of his most
lucrative clients. Sir Leigh Teabing paid Biggin Hill not only for a private
hangar but a "per landing fee" for his frequent arrivals and departures.
Usually, the airfield had advance warning of his schedule and was able to follow
a strict protocol for his arrival. Teabing liked things just so. The
custom-built Jaguar stretch limousine that he kept in his hangar was to be
fully gassed, polished, and the day's London Times laid out on the back seat. A
customs official was to be waiting for the plane at the hangar to expedite the
mandatory documentation and luggage check. Occasionally, customs agents accepted
large tips from Teabing in exchange for turning a blind eye to the transport of
harmless organics-mostly luxury foods-French escargots, a particularly ripe
unprocessed Roquefort, certain fruits. Many customs laws were absurd, anyway,
and if Biggin Hill didn't accommodate its clients, certainly competing airfields
would. Teabing was provided with what he wanted here at Biggin Hill, and the
employees reaped the benefits.
Edwards's nerves felt frayed now as he watched the jet coming in. He wondered if
Teabing's penchant for spreading the wealth had gotten him in trouble somehow;
the French authorities seemed very intent on containing him. Edwards had not yet
been told what the charges were, but they were obviously serious. At the French
authorities' request, Kent police had ordered the Biggin Hill air traffic
controller to radio the Hawker's pilot and order him directly to the terminal
rather than to the client's hangar. The pilot had aGREed, apparently believing
the far-fetched story of a gas leak.
Though the British police did not generally carry weapons, the gravity of the
situation had brought out an armed response team. Now, eight policemen with
handguns stood just inside the terminal building, awaiting the moment when the
plane's engines powered down. The instant this happened, a runway attendant
would place safety wedges under the tires so the plane could no longer move.
Then the police would step into view and hold the occupants at bay until the
French police arrived to handle the situation.
The Hawker was low in the sky now, skimming the treetops to their right. Simon
Edwards went downstairs to watch the landing from tarmac level. The Kent police
were poised, just out of sight, and the maintenance man waited with his wedges.
Out on the runway, the Hawker's nose tipped up, and the tires touched down in a
puff of smoke. The plane settled in for deceleration, streaking from right to
left in front of the terminal, its white hull glistening in the wet weather. But
rather than braking and turning into the terminal, the jet coasted calmly past
the access lane and continued on toward Teabing's hangar in the distance.
All the police spun and stared at Edwards. "I thought you said the pilot aGREed
to come to the terminal!"
Edwards was bewildered. "He did!"
Seconds later, Edwards found himself wedged in a police car racing across the
tarmac toward the distant hangar. The convoy of police was still a good five
hundred yards away as Teabing's Hawker taxied calmly into the private hangar and
disappeared. When the cars finally arrived and skidded to a stop outside the
gaping hangar door, the police poured out, guns drawn.
Edwards jumped out too.
The noise was deafening.
The Hawker's engines were still roaring as the jet finished its usual rotation
inside the hangar, positioning itself nose-out in preparation for later
departure. As the plane completed its 180-deGREe turn and rolled toward the
front of the hangar, Edwards could see the pilot's face, which understandably
looked surprised and fearful to see the barricade of police cars.
The pilot brought the plane to a final stop, and powered down the engines. The
police streamed in, taking up positions around the jet. Edwards joined the Kent
chief inspector, who moved warily toward the hatch. After several seconds, the
fuselage door popped open.
Leigh Teabing appeared in the doorway as the plane's electronic stairs smoothly
dropped down. As he gazed out at the sea of weapons aimed at him, he propped
himself on his crutches and scratched his head. "Simon, did I win the
policemen's lottery while I was away?" He sounded more bewildered than
concerned.
Simon Edwards stepped forward, swallowing the frog in his throat. "Good morning,
sir. I apologize for the confusion. We've had a gas leak and your pilot said he
was coming to the terminal."
"Yes, yes, well, I told him to come here instead. I'm late for an appointment. I
pay for this hangar, and this rubbish about avoiding a gas leak sounded
overcautious."
"I'm afraid your arrival has taken us a bit off guard, sir."
"I know. I'm off my schedule, I am. Between you and me, the new medication gives
me the tinkles. Thought I'd come over for a tune-up."
The policemen all exchanged looks. Edwards winced. "Very good, sir."
"Sir," the Kent chief inspector said, stepping forward. "I need to ask you to
stay onboard for another half hour or so."
Teabing looked unamused as he hobbled down the stairs. "I'm afraid that is
impossible. I have a medical appointment." He reached the tarmac. "I cannot
afford to miss it."
The chief inspector repositioned himself to block Teabing's proGREss away from
the plane. "I am here at the orders of the French Judicial Police. They claim
you are transporting fugitives from the law on this plane."
Teabing stared at the chief inspector a long moment, and then burst out
laughing. "Is this one of those hidden camera programs? Jolly good!"
The chief inspector never flinched. "This is serious, sir. The French police
claim you also may have
a hostage onboard."
Teabing's manservant Rémy appeared in the doorway at the top of the stairs. "I
feel like a hostage working for Sir Leigh, but he assures me I am free to go."
Rémy checked his watch. "Master, we really are running late." He nodded toward
the Jaguar stretch limousine in the far corner of the hangar. The enormous
automobile was ebony with smoked glass and whitewall tires. "I'll bring the
car." Rémy started down the stairs.
"I'm afraid we cannot let you leave," the chief inspector said. "Please return
to your aircraft. Both of you. Representatives from the French police will be
landing shortly."
Teabing looked now toward Simon Edwards. "Simon, for heaven's sake, this is
ridiculous! We don't have anyone else on board. Just the usual-Rémy, our pilot,
and myself. Perhaps you could act as an intermediary? Go have a look onboard,
and verify that the plane is empty."
Edwards knew he was trapped. "Yes, sir. I can have a look."
"The devil you will!" the Kent chief inspector declared, apparently knowing
enough about executive airfields to suspect Simon Edwards might well lie about
the plane's occupants in an effort to keep Teabing's business at Biggin Hill. "I
will look myself."
Teabing shook his head. "No you won't, Inspector. This is private property and
until you have a search warrant, you will stay off my plane. I am offering you a
reasonable option here. Mr. Edwards can perform the inspection."
"No deal."
Teabing's demeanor turned frosty. "Inspector, I'm afraid I don't have time to
indulge in your games. I'm late, and I'm leaving. If it is that important to you
to stop me, you'll just have to shoot me." With that, Teabing and Rémy walked
around the chief inspector and headed across the hangar toward the parked
limousine.
The Kent chief inspector felt only distaste for Leigh Teabing as the man hobbled
around him in defiance. Men of privilege always felt like they were above the
law.
They are not. The chief inspector turned and aimed at Teabing's back. "Stop! I
will fire!"
"Go ahead," Teabing said without breaking stride or glancing back. "My lawyers
will fricassee your testicles for breakfast. And if you dare board my plane
without a warrant, your spleen will follow."
No stranger to power plays, the chief inspector was unimpressed. Technically,
Teabing was correct and the police needed a warrant to board his jet, but
because the flight had originated in France, and because the powerful Bezu Fache
had given his authority, the Kent chief inspector felt certain his career would
be far better served by finding out what it was on this plane that Teabing
seemed so intent on hiding.
"Stop them," the inspector ordered. "I'm searching the plane."
His men raced over, guns leveled, and physically blocked Teabing and his servant
from reaching the limousine.
Now Teabing turned. "Inspector, this is your last warning. Do not even think of
boarding that plane. You will reGREt it."
Ignoring the threat, the chief inspector gripped his sidearm and marched up the
plane's gangway. Arriving at the hatch, he peered inside. After a moment, he
stepped into the cabin. What the devil?
With the exception of the frightened-looking pilot in the cockpit, the aircraft
was empty. Entirely devoid of human life. Quickly checking the bathroom, the
chairs, and the luggage areas, the inspector found no traces of anyone hiding...
much less multiple individuals.
What the hell was Bezu Fache thinking? It seemed Leigh Teabing had been telling
the truth.
The Kent chief inspector stood alone in the deserted cabin and swallowed hard.
Shit. His face flushed, he stepped back onto the gangway, gazing across the
hangar at Leigh Teabing and his servant, who were now under gunpoint near the
limousine. "Let them go," the inspector ordered. "We received a bad tip."
Teabing's eyes were menacing even across the hangar. "You can expect a call from
my lawyers. And for future reference, the French police cannot be trusted."
With that, Teabing's manservant opened the door at the rear of the stretch
limousine and helped his crippled master into the back seat. Then the servant
walked the length of the car, climbed in behind the wheel, and gunned the
engine. Policemen scattered as the Jaguar peeled out of the hangar.
"Well played, my good man," Teabing chimed from the rear seat as the limousine
accelerated out of the airport. He turned his eyes now to the dimly lit front
recesses of the spacious interior. "Everyone comfy?"
Langdon gave a weak nod. He and Sophie were still crouched on the floor beside
the bound and gagged albino.
Moments earlier, as the Hawker taxied into the deserted hangar, Rémy had popped
the hatch as the plane jolted to a stop halfway through its turn. With the
police closing in fast, Langdon and Sophie dragged the monk down the gangway to
ground level and out of sight behind the limousine. Then the jet engines had
roared again, rotating the plane and completing its turn as the police cars came
skidding into the hangar.
Now, as the limousine raced toward Kent, Langdon and Sophie clambered toward the
rear of the limo's long interior, leaving the monk bound on the floor. They
settled onto the long seat facing Teabing. The Brit gave them both a roguish
smile and opened the cabinet on the limo's bar. "Could I offer you a drink? Some
nibblies? Crisps? Nuts? Seltzer?"
Sophie and Langdon both shook their heads.
Teabing grinned and closed the bar. "So then, about this knight's tomb..."
CHAPTER 82
"Fleet Street?" Langdon asked, eyeing Teabing in the back of the limo. There's a
crypt on Fleet Street? So far, Leigh was being playfully cagey about where he
thought they would find the "knight's tomb," which, according to the poem, would
provide the password for opening the smaller cryptex.
Teabing grinned and turned to Sophie. "Miss Neveu, give the Harvard boy one more
shot at the verse, will you?"
Sophie fished in her pocket and pulled out the black cryptex, which was wrapped
in the vellum. Everyone had decided to leave the rosewood box and larger cryptex
behind in the plane's strongbox, carrying with them only what they needed, the
far more portable and discreet black cryptex. Sophie unwrapped the vellum and
handed the sheet to Langdon.
Although Langdon had read the poem several times onboard the jet, he had been
unable to extract any specific location. Now, as he read the words again, he
processed them slowly and carefully, hoping the pentametric rhythms would reveal
a clearer meaning now that he was on the ground.
In London lies a knight a Pope interred.
His labor's fruit a Holy wrath incurred.
You seek the orb that ought be on his tomb.
It speaks of Rosy flesh and seeded womb.
The language seemed simple enough. There was a knight buried in London. A knight
who labored at something that angered the Church. A knight whose tomb was
missing an orb that should be present. The poem's final reference-Rosy flesh and
seeded womb-was a clear allusion to Mary Magdalene, the Rose who bore the seed
of Jesus.
Despite the apparent straightforwardness of the verse, Langdon still had no idea
who this knight was or where he was buried. Moreover, once they located the
tomb, it sounded as if they would be searching for something that was absent.
The orb that ought be on his tomb?
"No thoughts?" Teabing clucked in disappointment, although Langdon sensed the
Royal Historian was enjoying being one up. "Miss Neveu?"
She shook her head.
"What would you two do without me?" Teabing said. "Very well, I will walk you
through it. It's quite simple really. The first line is the key. Would you read
it please?"
Langdon read aloud. " 'In London lies a knight a Pope interred.' "
"Precisely. A knight a Pope interred." He eyed Langdon. "What does that mean to
you?"
Langdon shrugged. "A knight buried by a Pope? A knight whose funeral was
presided over by a Pope?"
Teabing laughed loudly. "Oh, that's rich. Always the optimist, Robert. Look at
the second line. This knight obviously did something that incurred the Holy
wrath of the Church. Think again. Consider the dynamic between the Church and
the Knights Templar. A knight a Pope interred?"
"A knight a Pope killed?" Sophie asked.
Teabing smiled and patted her knee. "Well done, my dear. A knight a Pope buried.
Or killed."
Langdon thought of the notorious Templar round-up in 1307-unlucky Friday the
thirteenth-when Pope Clement killed and interred hundreds of Knights Templar.
"But there must be endless graves of 'knights killed by Popes.' "
"Aha, not so! "Teabing said. "Many of them were burned at the stake and tossed
unceremoniously into the Tiber River. But this poem refers to a tomb. A tomb in
London. And there are few knights buried in London." He paused, eyeing Langdon
as if waiting for light to dawn. Finally he huffed. "Robert, for heaven's sake!
The church built in London by the Priory's military arm-the Knights Templar
themselves!"
"The Temple Church?" Langdon drew a startled breath. "It has a crypt?"
"Ten of the most frightening tombs you will ever see."
Langdon had never actually visited the Temple Church, although he'd come across
numerous references in his Priory research. Once the epicenter of all
Templar/Priory activities in the United Kingdom, the Temple Church had been so
named in honor of Solomon's Temple, from which the Knights Templar had extracted
their own title, as well as the SanGREal documents that gave them all their
influence in Rome. Tales abounded of knights performing strange, secretive
rituals within the Temple Church's unusual sanctuary. "The Temple Church is on
Fleet Street?"
"Actually, it's just off Fleet Street on Inner Temple Lane." Teabing looked
mischievous. "I wanted to see you sweat a little more before I gave it away."
"Thanks."
"Neither of you has ever been there?"
Sophie and Langdon shook their heads.
"I'm not surprised," Teabing said. "The church is hidden now behind much larger
buildings. Few people even know it's there. Eerie old place. The architecture is
pagan to the core."
Sophie looked surprised. "Pagan?"
"Pantheonically pagan!" Teabing exclaimed. "The church is round. The Templars
ignored the traditional Christian cruciform layout and built a perfectly
circular church in honor of the sun." His eyebrows did a devilish dance. "A not
so subtle howdy-do to the boys in Rome. They might as well have resurrected
Stonehenge in downtown London."
Sophie eyed Teabing. "What about the rest of the poem?"
The historian's mirthful air faded. "I'm not sure. It's puzzling. We will need
to examine each of the ten tombs carefully. With luck, one of them will have a
conspicuously absent orb."
Langdon realized how close they really were. If the missing orb revealed the
password, they would be able to open the second cryptex. He had a hard time
imagining what they might find inside.
Langdon eyed the poem again. It was like some kind of primordial crossword
puzzle. A five-letter word that speaks of the Grail? On the plane, they had
already tried all the obvious passwords-GRAIL, GRAAL, GREAL, VENUS, MARIA,
JESUS, SARAH-but the cylinder had not budged. Far too obvious. Apparently there
existed some other five-letter reference to the Rose's seeded womb. The fact
that the word was eluding a specialist like Leigh Teabing signified to Langdon
that it was no ordinary Grail reference.
"Sir Leigh?" Rémy called over his shoulder. He was watching them in the rearview
mirror through the open divider. "You said Fleet Street is near Blackfriars
Bridge?"
"Yes, take Victoria Embankment."
"I'm sorry. I'm not sure where that is. We usually go only to the hospital."
Teabing rolled his eyes at Langdon and Sophie and grumbled, "I swear, sometimes
it's like baby-sitting a child. One moment please. Help yourself to a drink and
savory snacks." He left them, clambering awkwardly toward the open divider to
talk to Rémy.
Sophie turned to Langdon now, her voice quiet. "Robert, nobody knows you and I
are in England."
Langdon realized she was right. The Kent police would tell Fache the plane was
empty, and Fache would have to assume they were still in France. We are
invisible. Leigh's little stunt had just bought them a lot of time.
"Fache will not give up easily," Sophie said. "He has too much riding on this
arrest now."
Langdon had been trying not to think about Fache. Sophie had promised she would
do everything in her power to exonerate Langdon once this was over, but Langdon
was starting to fear it might not matter. Fache could easily be pan of this
plot. Although Langdon could not imagine the Judicial Police tangled up in the
Holy Grail, he sensed too much coincidence tonight to disregard Fache as a
possible accomplice. Fache is religions, and he is intent on pinning these
murders on me. Then again, Sophie had argued that Fache might simply be
overzealous to make the arrest. After all, the evidence against Langdon was
substantial. In addition to Langdon's name scrawled on the Louvre floor and in
Saunière's date book, Langdon now appeared to have lied about his manuscript and
then run away. At Sophie's suggestion.
"Robert, I'm sorry you're so deeply involved," Sophie said, placing her hand on
his knee. "But I'm very glad you're here."
The comment sounded more pragmatic than romantic, and yet Langdon felt an
unexpected flicker of attraction between them. He gave her a tired smile. "I'm a
lot more fun when I've slept."
Sophie was silent for several seconds. "My grandfather asked me to trust you.
I'm glad I listened to him for once."
"Your grandfather didn't even know me."
"Even so, I can't help but think you've done everything he would have wanted.
You helped me find the keystone, explained the SanGREal, told me about the
ritual in the basement." She paused. "Somehow I feel closer to my grandfather
tonight than I have in years. I know he would be happy
about that."
In the distance, now, the skyline of London began to materialize through the
dawn drizzle. Once dominated by Big Ben and Tower Bridge, the horizon now bowed
to the Millennium Eye-a colossal, ultramodern Ferris wheel that climbed five
hundred feet and afforded breathtaking views of the city. Langdon had attempted
to board it once, but the "viewing capsules" reminded him of sealed sarcophagi,
and he opted to keep his feet on the ground and enjoy the view from the airy
banks of the Thames.
Langdon felt a squeeze on his knee, pulling him back, and Sophie's GREen eyes
were on him. He realized she had been speaking to him. "What do you think we
should do with the Sangreal documents if we ever find them?" she whispered.
"What I think is immaterial," Langdon said. "Your grandfather gave the cryptex
to you, and you should do with it what your instinct tells you he would want
done."
"I'm asking for your opinion. You obviously wrote something in that manuscript
that made my grandfather trust your judgment. He scheduled a private meeting
with you. That's rare."
"Maybe he wanted to tell me I have it all wrong."
"Why would he tell me to find you unless he liked your ideas? In your
manuscript, did you support the idea that the SanGREal documents should be
revealed or stay buried?"
"Neither. I made no judgment either way. The manuscript deals with the symbology
of the sacred feminine-tracing her iconography throughout history. I certainly
didn't presume to know where the Grail is hidden or whether it should ever be
revealed."
"And yet you're writing a book about it, so you obviously feel the information
should be shared."
"There's an enormous difference between hypothetically discussing an alternate
history of Christ, and..." He paused.
"And what?"
"And presenting to the world thousands of ancient documents as scientific
evidence that the New Testament is false testimony."
"But you told me the New Testament is based on fabrications."
Langdon smiled. "Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That
is the definition of faith-acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that
which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory,
and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through
modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the
unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own
metaphors."
"So you are in favor of the SanGREal documents staying buried forever?"
"I'm a historian. I'm opposed to the destruction of documents, and I would love
to see religious scholars have more information to ponder the exceptional life
of Jesus Christ."
"You're arguing both sides of my question."
"Am I? The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on
the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance
to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that
contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief,
pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists
that we have proof the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus
was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths
understand the stories are metaphorical."
Sophie looked skeptical. "My friends who are devout Christians definitely
believe that Christ literally walked on water, literally turned water into wine,
and was born of a literal virgin birth."
"My point exactly," Langdon said. "Religious allegory has become a part of the
fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and
be better people."
"But it appears their reality is false."
Langdon chuckled. "No more false than that of a mathematical cryptographer who
believes in the imaginary number 'i' because it helps her break codes."
Sophie frowned. "That's not fair."
A moment passed.
"What was your question again?" Langdon asked.
"I can't remember."
He smiled. "Works every time."
CHAPTER 83
Langdon's Mickey Mouse wristwatch read almost seven-thirty when he emerged from
the Jaguar limousine onto Inner Temple Lane with Sophie and Teabing. The
threesome wound through a maze of buildings to a small courtyard outside the
Temple Church. The rough-hewn stone shimmered in the rain, and doves cooed in
the architecture overhead.
London's ancient Temple Church was constructed entirely of Caen stone. A
dramatic, circular edifice with a daunting facade, a central turret, and a
protruding nave off one side, the church looked more like a military stronghold
than a place of worship. Consecrated on the tenth of February in 1185 by
Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Temple Church survived eight centuries of
political turmoil, the GREat Fire of London, and the First World War, only to be
heavily damaged by Luftwaffe incendiary bombs in 1940. After the war, it was
restored to its original, stark grandeur.
The simplicity of the circle, Langdon thought, admiring the building for the
first time. The architecture was coarse and simple, more reminiscent of Rome's
rugged Castel Sant'Angelo than the refined Pantheon. The boxy annex jutting out
to the right was an unfortunate eyesore, although it did little to shroud the
original pagan shape of the primary structure.
"It's early on a Saturday," Teabing said, hobbling toward the entrance, "so I'm
assuming we won't have services to deal with."
The church's entryway was a recessed stone niche inside which stood a large
wooden door. To the left of the door, looking entirely out of place, hung a
bulletin board covered with concert schedules and religious service
announcements.
Teabing frowned as he read the board. "They don't open to sightseers for another
couple of hours." He moved to the door and tried it. The door didn't budge.
Putting his ear to the wood, he listened. After a moment, he pulled back, a
scheming look on his face as he pointed to the bulletin board. "Robert, check
the service schedule, will you? Who is presiding this week?"
Inside the church, an altar boy was almost finished vacuuming the communion
kneelers when he heard a knocking on the sanctuary door. He ignored it. Father
Harvey Knowles had his own keys and was not due for another couple of hours. The
knocking was probably a curious tourist or indigent. The altar boy kept
vacuuming, but the knocking continued. Can't you read? The sign on the door
clearly stated that the church did not open until nine-thirty on Saturday. The
altar boy remained with his chores.
Suddenly, the knocking turned to a forceful banging, as if someone were hitting
the door with a metal rod. The young man switched off his vacuum cleaner and
marched angrily toward the door. Unlatching it from within, he swung it open.
Three people stood in the entryway. Tourists, he grumbled. "We open at
nine-thirty."
The heavyset man, apparently the leader, stepped forward using metal crutches.
"I am Sir Leigh Teabing," he said, his accent a highbrow, Saxonesque British.
"As you are no doubt aware, I am escorting Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Wren the
Fourth." He stepped aside, flourishing his arm toward the attractive couple
behind them. The woman was soft-featured, with lush burgundy hair. The man was
tall, dark-haired, and looked vaguely familiar.
The altar boy had no idea how to respond. Sir Christopher Wren was the Temple
Church's most famous benefactor. He had made possible all the restorations
following damage caused by the GREat Fire. He had also been dead since the early
eighteenth century. "Um... an honor to meet you?"
The man on crutches frowned. "Good thing you're not in sales, young man, you're
not very convincing. Where is Father Knowles?"
"It's Saturday. He's not due in until later."
The crippled man's scowl deepened. "There's gratitude. He assured us he would be
here, but it looks like we'll do it without him. It won't take long."
The altar boy remained blocking the doorway. "I'm sorry, what won't take long?"
The visitor's eyes sharpened now, and he leaned forward whispering as if to save
everyone some embarrassment. "Young man, apparently you are new here. Every year
Sir Christopher Wren's descendants bring a pinch of the old man's ashes to
scatter in the Temple sanctuary. It is part of his last will and testament.
Nobody is particularly happy about making the trip, but what can we do?"
The altar boy had been here a couple of years but had never heard of this
custom. "It would be better if you waited until nine-thirty. The church isn't
open yet, and I'm not finished hoovering."
The man on crutches glared angrily. "Young man, the only reason there's anything
left of this building for you to hoover is on account of the gentleman in that
woman's pocket."
"I'm sorry?"
"Mrs. Wren," the man on crutches said, "would you be so kind as to show this
impertinent young man the reliquary of ashes?"
The woman hesitated a moment and then, as if awaking from a trance, reached in
her sweater pocket and pulled out a small cylinder wrapped in protective fabric.
"There, you see?" the man on crutches snapped. "Now, you can either grant his
dying wish and let us sprinkle his ashes in the sanctuary, or I tell Father
Knowles how we've been treated."
The altar boy hesitated, well acquainted with Father Knowles' deep observance of
church tradition... and, more importantly, with his foul temper when anything
cast this time-honored shrine in anything but favorable light. Maybe Father
Knowles had simply forgotten these family members were coming. If so, then there
was far more risk in turning them away than in letting them in. After all, they
said it would only take a minute. What harm could it do?
When the altar boy stepped aside to let the three people pass, he could have
sworn Mr. and Mrs. Wren looked just as bewildered by all of this as he was.
Uncertain, the boy returned to his chores, watching them out of the corner of
his eye.
Langdon had to smile as the threesome moved deeper into the church.
"Leigh," he whispered, "you lie entirely too well."
Teabing's eyes twinkled. "Oxford Theatre Club. They still talk of my Julius
Caesar. I'm certain nobody has ever performed the first scene of Act Three with
more dedication."
Langdon glanced over. "I thought Caesar was dead in that scene."
Teabing smirked. "Yes, but my toga tore open when I fell, and I had to lie on
stage for half an hour with my todger hanging out. Even so, I never moved a
muscle. I was brilliant, I tell you."
Langdon cringed. Sorry I missed it.
As the group moved through the rectangular annex toward the archway leading into
the main church, Langdon was surprised by the barren austerity. Although the
altar layout resembled that of a linear Christian chapel, the furnishings were
stark and cold, bearing none of the traditional ornamentation. "Bleak," he
whispered.
Teabing chuckled. "Church of England. Anglicans drink their religion straight.
Nothing to distract from their misery."
Sophie motioned through the vast opening that gave way to the circular section
of the church. "It looks like a fortress in there," she whispered.
Langdon aGREed. Even from here, the walls looked unusually robust.
"The Knights Templar were warriors," Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum
crutches echoing in this reverberant space. "A religio-military society. Their
churches were their strongholds and their banks."
"Banks?" Sophie asked, glancing at Leigh.
"Heavens, yes. The Templars invented the concept of modern banking. For European
nobility, traveling with gold was perilous, so the Templars allowed nobles to
deposit gold in their nearest Temple Church and then draw it from any other
Temple Church across Europe. All they needed was proper documentation." He
winked. "And a small commission. They were the original ATMs." Teabing pointed
toward a stained-glass window where the breaking sun was refracting through a
white-clad knight riding a rose-colored horse. "Alanus Marcel," Teabing said,
"Master of the Temple in the early twelve hundreds. He and his successors
actually held the Parliamentary chair of Primus Baro Angiae."
Langdon was surprised. "First Baron of the Realm?"
Teabing nodded. "The Master of the Temple, some claim, held more influence than
the king himself." As they arrived outside the circular chamber, Teabing shot a
glance over his shoulder at the altar boy, who was vacuuming in the distance.
"You know," Teabing whispered to Sophie, "the Holy Grail is said to once have
been stored in this church overnight while the Templars moved it from one hiding
place to another. Can you imagine the four chests of SanGREal documents sitting
right here with Mary Magdalene's sarcophagus? It gives me gooseflesh."
Langdon was feeling gooseflesh too as they stepped into the circular chamber.
His eye traced the curvature of the chamber's pale stone perimeter, taking in
the carvings of gargoyles, demons, monsters, and pained human faces, all staring
inward. Beneath the carvings, a single stone pew curled around the entire
circumference of the room.
"Theater in the round," Langdon whispered.
Teabing raised a crutch, pointing toward the far left of the room and then to
the far right. Langdon had already seen them.
Ten stone knights.
Five on the left. Five on the right.
Lying prone on the floor, the carved, life-sized figures rested in peaceful
poses. The knights were depicted wearing full armor, shields, and swords, and
the tombs gave Langdon the uneasy sensation that someone had snuck in and poured
plaster over the knights while they were sleeping. All of the figures were
deeply weathered, and yet each was clearly unique-different armory pieces,
distinct leg and arm positions, facial features, and markings on their shields.
In London lies a knight a Pope interred.
Langdon felt shaky as he inched deeper into the circular room.
This had to be the place.
CHAPTER 84
In a rubbish-strewn alley very close to Temple Church, Rémy Legaludec pulled the
Jaguar limousine to a stop behind a row of industrial waste bins. Killing the
engine, he checked the area. Deserted. He got out of the car, walked toward the
rear, and climbed back into the limousine's main cabin where the monk was.
Sensing Rémy's presence, the monk in the back emerged from a prayer-like trance,
his red eyes looking more curious than fearful. All evening Rémy had been
impressed with this trussed man's ability to stay calm. After some initial
struggles in the Range Rover, the monk seemed to have accepted his plight and
given over his fate to a higher power.
Loosening his bow tie, Rémy unbuttoned his high, starched, wing-tipped collar
and felt as if he could breathe for the first time in years. He went to the
limousine's wet bar, where he poured himself a Smirnoff vodka. He drank it in a
single swallow and followed it with a second.
Soon I will be a man of leisure.
Searching the bar, Rémy found a standard service wine-opener and flicked open
the sharp blade. The knife was usually employed to slice the lead foil from
corks on fine bottles of wine, but it would serve a far more dramatic purpose
this morning. Rémy turned and faced Silas, holding up the glimmering blade.
Now those red eyes FLASHed fear.
Rémy smiled and moved toward the back of the limousine. The monk recoiled,
struggling against his bonds.
"Be still," Rémy whispered, raising the blade.
Silas could not believe that God had forsaken him. Even the physical pain of
being bound Silas had turned into a spiritual exercise, asking the throb of his
blood-starved muscles to remind him of the pain Christ endured. I have been
praying all night for liberation. Now, as the knife descended, Silas clenched
his eyes shut.
A slash of pain tore through his shoulder blades. He cried out, unable to
believe he was going to die here in the back of this limousine, unable to defend
himself. I was doing God's work. The Teacher said he would protect me.
Silas felt the biting warmth spreading across his back and shoulders and could
picture his own blood, spilling out over his flesh. A piercing pain cut through
his thighs now, and he felt the onset of that familiar undertow of
disorientation-the body's defense mechanism against the pain.
As the biting heat tore through all of his muscles now, Silas clenched his eyes
tighter, determined that the final image of his life would not be of his own
killer. Instead he pictured a younger Bishop Aringarosa, standing before the
small church in Spain... the church that he and Silas had built with their own
hands. The beginning of my life.
Silas felt as if his body were on fire.
"Take a drink," the tuxedoed man whispered, his accent French. "It will help
with your circulation."
Silas's eyes flew open in surprise. A blurry image was leaning over him,
offering a glass of liquid. A mound of shredded duct tape lay on the floor
beside the bloodless knife.
"Drink this," he repeated. "The pain you feel is the blood rushing into your
muscles."
Silas felt the fiery throb transforming now to a prickling sting. The vodka
tasted terrible, but he drank it, feeling grateful. Fate had dealt Silas a
healthy share of bad luck tonight, but God had solved it all with one miraculous
twist.
God has not forsaken me.
Silas knew what Bishop Aringarosa would call it.
Divine intervention.
"I had wanted to free you earlier," the servant apologized, "but it was
impossible. With the police arriving at Ch?teau Villette, and then at Biggin
Hill airport, this was the first possible moment. You understand, don't you,
Silas?"
Silas recoiled, startled. "You know my name?"
The servant smiled.
Silas sat up now, rubbing his stiff muscles, his emotions a torrent of
incredulity, appreciation, and confusion. "Are you... the Teacher?"
Rémy shook his head, laughing at the proposition. "I wish I had that kind of
power. No, I am not the Teacher. Like you, I serve him. But the Teacher speaks
highly of you. My name is Rémy."
Silas was amazed. "I don't understand. If you work for the Teacher, why did
Langdon bring the keystone to your home?"
"Not my home. The home of the world's foremost Grail historian, Sir Leigh
Teabing."
"But you live there. The odds..."
Rémy smiled, seeming to have no trouble with the apparent coincidence of
Langdon's chosen refuge. "It was all utterly predictable. Robert Langdon was in
possession of the keystone, and he needed help. What more logical place to run
than to the home of Leigh Teabing? That I happen to live there is why the
Teacher approached me in the first place." He paused. "How do you think the
Teacher knows so much about the Grail?"
Now it dawned, and Silas was stunned. The Teacher had recruited a servant who
had access to all of Sir Leigh Teabing's research. It was brilliant.
"There is much I have to tell you," Rémy said, handing Silas the loaded Heckler
Koch pistol. Then he reached through the open partition and retrieved a small,
palm-sized revolver from the glove box. "But first, you and I have a job to do."
Captain Fache descended from his transport plane at Biggin Hill and listened in
disbelief to the Kent chief inspector's account of what had happened in
Teabing's hangar.
"I searched the plane myself," the inspector insisted, "and there was no one
inside." His tone turned haughty. "And I should add that if Sir Leigh Teabing
presses charges against me, I will-"
"Did you interrogate the pilot?"
"Of course not. He is French, and our jurisdiction requires-"
"Take me to the plane."
Arriving at the hangar, Fache needed only sixty seconds to locate an anomalous
smear of blood on the pavement near where the limousine had been parked. Fache
walked up to the plane and rapped loudly on the fuselage.
"This is the captain of the French Judicial Police. Open the door!"
The terrified pilot opened the hatch and lowered the stairs.
Fache ascended. Three minutes later, with the help of his sidearm, he had a full
confession,
including a description of the bound albino monk. In addition, he learned that
the pilot saw Langdon and Sophie leave something behind in Teabing's safe, a
wooden box of some sort. Although the pilot denied knowing what was in the box,
he admitted it had been the focus of Langdon's full attention during the flight
to London.
"Open the safe," Fache demanded.
The pilot looked terrified. "I don't know the combination!"
"That's too bad. I was going to offer to let you keep your pilot's license."
The pilot wrung his hands. "I know some men in maintenance here. Maybe they
could drill it?"
"You have half an hour."
The pilot leapt for his radio.
Fache strode to the back of the plane and poured himself a hard drink. It was
early, but he had not yet slept, so this hardly counted as drinking before noon.
Sitting in a plush bucket seat, he closed his eyes, trying to sort out what was
going on. The Kent police's blunder could cost me dearly. Everyone was now on
the lookout for a black Jaguar limousine.
Fache's phone rang, and he wished for a moment's peace. "Allo?"
"I'm en route to London." It was Bishop Aringarosa. "I'll be arriving in an
hour."
Fache sat up. "I thought you were going to Paris."
"I am deeply concerned. I have changed my plans."
"You should not have."
"Do you have Silas?"
"No. His captors eluded the local police before I landed."
Aringarosa's anger rang sharply. "You assured me you would stop that plane!"
Fache lowered his voice. "Bishop, considering your situation, I recommend you
not test my patience today. I will find Silas and the others as soon as
possible. Where are you landing?"
"One moment." Aringarosa covered the receiver and then came back. "The pilot is
trying to get clearance at Heathrow. I'm his only passenger, but our redirect
was unscheduled."
"Tell him to come to Biggin Hill Executive Airport in Kent. I'll get him
clearance. If I'm not here when you land, I'll have a car waiting for you."
"Thank you."
"As I expressed when we first spoke, Bishop, you would do well to remember that
you are not the only man on the verge of losing everything."