Chartrand grabbed Langdon. “Let the camerlegno pass!”
“No!” Vittoria said from above, breathless. “We must evacuate right now! Youcannot take the antimatter out of here! If you bring it up, everyone outside willdie!”
The camerlegno’s voice was remarkably calm. “All of you . . . we must trust. We have little time.”
“You don’t understand,” Vittoria said. “An explosion at ground level will be much worse than one down here!”
The camerlegno looked at her, his green eyes resplendently sane. “Who said anything about an explosion at ground level?”
Vittoria stared. “You’releaving it down here?”
The camerlegno’s certitude was hypnotic. “There will be no more death tonight.”
“Father, but-”
“Please . . . somefaith.” The camerlegno’s voice plunged to a compelling hush. “I am not asking anyone to join me. You are all free to go. All I am asking is that you not interfere with His bidding. Let me do what I have been called to do.” The camerlegno’s stare intensified. “I am to save this church. And Ican . I swear on my life.”
The silence that followed might as well have been thunder.
120
Eleven-fifty-oneP.M.
Necropolisliterally meansCity of the Dead .
Nothing Robert Langdon had ever read about this place prepared him for the sight of it. The colossal subterranean hollow was filled with crumbling mausoleums, like small houses on the floor of a cave. The air smelled lifeless. An awkward grid of narrow walkways wound between the decaying memorials, most of which were fractured brick with marble platings. Like columns of dust, countless pillars of unexcavated earth rose up, supporting a dirt sky, which hung low over the penumbral hamlet.
City of the dead, Langdon thought, feeling trapped between academic wonder and raw fear. He and the others dashed deeper down the winding passages.Did I make the wrong choice?
Chartrand had been the first to fall under the camerlegno’s spell, yanking open the gate and declaring his faith in the camerlegno. Glick and Macri, at the camerlegno’s suggestion, had nobly agreed to provide light to the quest, although considering what accolades awaited them if they got out of here alive, their motivations were certainly suspect. Vittoria had been the least eager of all, and Langdon had seen in her eyes a wariness that looked, unsettlingly, a lot like female intuition.
It’s too late now, he thought, he and Vittoria dashing after the others.We’re committed .
Vittoria was silent, but Langdon knew they were thinking the same thing.Nine minutes is not enough time to get the hell out of Vatican City if the camerlegno is wrong .
As they ran on through the mausoleums, Langdon felt his legs tiring, noting to his surprise that the group was ascending a steady incline. The explanation, when it dawned on him, sent shivers to his core. The topography beneath his feet was that of Christ’s time. He was running up the original Vatican Hill! Langdon had heard Vatican scholars claim that St. Peter’s tomb was near thetop of Vatican Hill, and he had always wondered how they knew. Now he understood.The damn hill is still here!
Langdon felt like he was running through the pages of history. Somewhere ahead was St. Peter’s tomb-theChristian relic. It was hard to imagine that the original grave had been marked only with a modest shrine. Not any more. As Peter’s eminence spread, new shrines were built on top of the old, and now, the homage stretched 440 feet overhead to the top of Michelangelo’s dome, the apex positioned directly over the original tomb within a fraction of an inch.
They continued ascending the sinuous passages. Langdon checked his watch.Eight minutes . He was beginning to wonder if he and Vittoria would be joining the deceased here permanently.
“Look out!” Glick yelled from behind them. “Snake holes!”
Langdon saw it in time. A series of small holes riddled the path before them. He leapt, just clearing them.
Vittoria jumped too, barely avoiding the narrow hollows. She looked uneasy as they ran on.“Snake holes?”
“Snackholes, actually,” Langdon corrected. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” The holes, he had just realized, werelibation tubes . The early Christians had believed in the resurrection of the flesh, and they’d used the holes to literally “feed the dead” by pouring milk and honey into crypts beneath the floor.
The camerlegno felt weak.
He dashed onward, his legs finding strength in his duty to God and man.Almost there . He was in incredible pain.The mind can bring so much more pain than the body . Still he felt tired. He knew he had precious little time.
“I will save your church, Father. I swear it.”
Despite the BBC lights behind him, for which he was grateful, the camerlegno carried his oil lamp high.I am a beacon in the darkness .I am the light. The lamp sloshed as he ran, and for an instant he feared the flammable oil might spill and burn him. He had experienced enough burned flesh for one evening.
As he approached the top of the hill, he was drenched in sweat, barely able to breathe. But when he emerged over the crest, he felt reborn. He staggered onto the flat piece of earth where he had stood many times. Here the path ended. The necropolis came to an abrupt halt at a wall of earth. A tiny marker read:Mausoleum S .
La tomba di San Pietro.
Before him, at waist level, was an opening in the wall. There was no gilded plaque here. No fanfare. Just a simple hole in the wall, beyond which lay a small grotto and a meager, crumbling sarcophagus. The camerlegno gazed into the hole and smiled in exhaustion. He could hear the others coming up the hill behind him. He set down his oil lamp and knelt to pray.
Thank you, God. It is almost over.
Outside in the square, surrounded by astounded cardinals, Cardinal Mortati stared up at the media screen and watched the drama unfold in the crypt below. He no longer knew what to believe. Had the entire world just witnessed whathe had seen? Had God truly spoken to the camerlegno? Was the antimatter really going to appear on St. Peter’s-
“Look!” A gasp went up from the throngs.
“There!” Everyone was suddenly pointing at the screen. “It’s a miracle!”
Mortati looked up. The camera angle was unsteady, but it was clear enough. The image was unforgettable.
Filmed from behind, the camerlegno was kneeling in prayer on the earthen floor. In front of him was a rough-hewn hole in the wall. Inside the hollow, among the rubble of ancient stone, was a terra cotta casket. Although Mortati had seen the coffin only once in his life, he knew beyond a doubt what it contained.
San Pietro.
Mortati was not na?ve enough to think that the shouts of joy and amazement now thundering through the crowd were exaltations from bearing witness to one of Christianity’s most sacred relics. St. Peter’s tomb was not what had people falling to their knees in spontaneous prayer and thanksgiving. It was the object ontop of his tomb.
The antimatter canister. It was there . . . where it had been all day . . . hiding in the darkness of the Necropolis. Sleek. Relentless. Deadly. The camerlegno’s revelation was correct.
Mortati stared in wonder at the transparent cylinder. The globule of liquid still hovered at its core. The grotto around the canister blinked red as the LED counted down into its final five minutes of life.
Also sitting on the tomb, inches away from the canister, was the wireless Swiss Guard security camera that had been pointed at the canister and transmitting all along.
Mortati crossed himself, certain this was the most frightful image he had seen in his entire life. He realized, a moment later, however, that it was about to get worse.
The camerlegno stood suddenly. He grabbed the antimatter in his hands and wheeled toward the others. His face showing total focus. He pushed past the others and began descending the Necropolis the way he had come, running down the hill.
The camera caught Vittoria Vetra, frozen in terror. “Where are you going! Camerlegno! I thought you said-”
“Have faith!” he exclaimed as he ran off.
Vittoria spun toward Langdon. “What do we do?”
Robert Langdon tried to stop the camerlegno, but Chartrand was running interference now, apparently trusting the camerlegno’s conviction.
The picture coming from the BBC camera was like a roller coaster ride now, winding, twisting. Fleeting freeze-frames of confusion and terror as the chaotic cortege stumbled through the shadows back toward the Necropolis entrance.
Out in the square, Mortati let out a fearful gasp. “Is he bringing that uphere?”
On televisions all over the world, larger than life, the camerlegno raced upward out of the Necropolis with the antimatter before him. “There will be no more death tonight!”
But the camerlegno was wrong.
121
The camerlegno erupted through the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica at exactly 11:56P.M. He staggered into the dazzling glare of the world spotlight, carrying the antimatter before him like some sort of numinous offering. Through burning eyes he could see his own form, half-naked and wounded, towering like a giant on the media screens around the square. The roar that went up from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square was like none the camerlegno had ever heard-crying, screaming, chanting, praying . . . a mix of veneration and terror.
Deliver us from evil,he whispered.
He felt totally depleted from his race out of the Necropolis. It had almost ended in disaster. Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra had wanted to intercept him, to throw the canister back into its subterranean hiding place, to run outside for cover.Blind fools!
The camerlegno realized now, with fearful clarity, that on any other night, he would never have won the race. Tonight, however, God again had been with him. Robert Langdon, on the verge of overtaking the camerlegno, had been grabbed by Chartrand, ever trusting and dutiful to the camerlegno’s demands for faith. The reporters, of course, were spellbound and lugging too much equipment to interfere.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
The camerlegno could hear the others behind him now . . . see them on the screens, closing in. Mustering the last of his physical strength, he raised the antimatter high over his head. Then, throwing back his bare shoulders in an act of defiance to the Illuminati brand on his chest, he dashed down the stairs.
There was one final act.
Godspeed,he thought.Godspeed.
Four minutes . . .
Langdon could barely see as he burst out of the basilica. Again the sea of media lights bore into his retinas. All he could make out was the murky outline of the camerlegno, directly ahead of him, running down the stairs. For an instant, refulgent in his halo of media lights, the camerlegno looked celestial, like some kind of modern deity. His cassock was at his waist like a shroud. His body was scarred and wounded by the hands of his enemies, and still he endured. The camerlegno ran on, standing tall, calling out to the world to have faith, running toward the masses carrying this weapon of destruction.
Langdon ran down the stairs after him.What is he doing? He will kill them all!
“Satan’s work,” the camerlegno screamed, “has no place in the House of God!” He ran on toward a now terrified crowd.
“Father!” Langdon screamed, behind him. “There’s nowhere to go!”
“Look to the heavens! We forget to look to the heavens!”
In that moment, as Langdon saw where the camerlegno was headed, the glorious truth came flooding all around him. Although Langdon could not see it on account of the lights, he knew their salvation was directly overhead.
A star-filled Italian sky.The escape route.
The helicopter the camerlegno had summoned to take him to the hospital sat dead ahead, pilot already in the cockpit, blades already humming in neutral. As the camerlegno ran toward it, Langdon felt a sudden overwhelming exhilaration.
The thoughts that tore through Langdon’s mind came as a torrent . . .
First he pictured the wide-open expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. How far was it? Five miles? Ten? He knew the beach atFiumocino was only about seven minutes by train. But by helicopter, 200 miles an hour, no stops . . . If they could fly the canister far enough out to sea, and drop it . . . There were other options too, he realized, feeling almost weightless as he ran.La Cava Romana! The marble quarries north of the city were less than three miles away. How large were they? Two square miles? Certainly they were deserted at this hour! Dropping the canisterthere . . .
“Everyone back!” the camerlegno yelled. His chest ached as he ran. “Get away! Now!”
The Swiss Guard standing around the chopper stood slack-jawed as the camerlegno approached them.
“Back!” the priest screamed.
The guards moved back.
With the entire world watching in wonder, the camerlegno ran around the chopper to the pilot’s door and yanked it open. “Out, son! Now!”
The guard jumped out.
The camerlegno looked at the high cockpit seat and knew that in his exhausted state, he would need both hands to pull himself up. He turned to the pilot, trembling beside him, and thrust the canister into his hands. “Hold this. Hand it back when I’m in.”
As the camerlegno pulled himself up, he could hear Robert Langdon yelling excitedly, running toward the craft.Now you understand , the camerlegno thought.Now you have faith!
The camerlegno pulled himself up into the cockpit, adjusted a few familiar levers, and then turned back to his window for the canister.
But the guard to whom he had given the canister stood empty-handed. “He took it!” the guard yelled.
The camerlegno felt his heart seize. “Who!”
The guard pointed. “Him!”
Robert Langdon was surprised by how heavy the canister was. He ran to the other side of the chopper and jumped in the rear compartment where he and Vittoria had sat only hours ago. He left the door open and buckled himself in. Then he yelled to the camerlegno in the front seat.
“Fly, Father!”
The camerlegno craned back at Langdon, his face bloodless with dread. “What are you doing!”
“Youfly! I’ll throw!” Langdon barked. “There’s no time! Just fly the blessed chopper!”
The camerlegno seemed momentarily paralyzed, the media lights glaring through the cockpit darkening the creases in his face. “I can do this alone,” he whispered. “I amsupposed to do this alone.”
Langdon wasn’t listening.Fly! he heard himself screaming.Now! I’m here to help you! Langdon looked down at the canister and felt his breath catch in his throat when he saw the numbers.“Three minutes, Father!Three!”
The number seemed to stun the camerlegno back to sobriety. Without hesitation, he turned back to the controls. With a grinding roar, the helicopter lifted off.
Through a swirl of dust, Langdon could see Vittoria running toward the chopper. Their eyes met, and then she dropped away like a sinking stone.
122
Inside the chopper, the whine of the engines and the gale from the open door assaulted Langdon’s senses with a deafening chaos. He steadied himself against the magnified drag of gravity as the camerlegno accelerated the craft straight up. The glow of St. Peter’s Square shrank beneath them until it was an amorphous glowing ellipse radiating in a sea of city lights.
