had called out from beyond with chilling precision.
Leonardo da Vinci!
The Mona Lisa!
Why his final words to her referenced the famous painting, Sophie had no idea, but she
could think of only one possibility. A disturbing one.
Those were not his final words....
Was she supposed to visit the Mona Lisa? Had her grandfather left her a message there?
The idea seemed perfectly plausible. After all, the famous painting hung in the Salle des Etats—
a private viewing chamber accessible only from the Grand Gallery. In fact, Sophie now realized,
the doors that opened into the chamber were situated only twenty meters from where her
grandfather had been found dead.
He easily could have visited the Mona Lisa before he died.
Sophie gazed back up the emergency stairwell and felt torn. She knew she should usher
Langdon from the museum immediately, and yet instinct urged her to the contrary. As Sophie
recalled her first childhood visit to the Denon Wing, she realized that if her grandfather had a
secret to tell her, few places on earth made a more apt rendezvous than Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
"She's just a little bit farther," her grandfather had whispered, clutching Sophie's tiny hand as he
led her through the deserted museum after hours.
Sophie was six years old. She felt small and insignificant as she gazed up at the enormous
ceilings and down at the dizzying floor. The empty museum frightened her, although she was not
about to let her grandfather know that. She set her jaw firmly and let go of his hand.
"Up ahead is the Salle des Etats," her grandfather said as they approached the Louvre's most
famous room. Despite her grandfather's obvious excitement, Sophie wanted to go home. She had
seen pictures of the Mona Lisa in books and didn't like it at all. She couldn't understand why
everyone made such a fuss.
"C'est ennuyeux," Sophie grumbled.
"Boring," he corrected. "French at school. English at home."
"Le Louvre, c'est pas chez moi!" she challenged.
He gave her a tired laugh. "Right you are. Then let's speak English just for fun."
Sophie pouted and kept walking. As they entered the Salle des Etats, her eyes scanned the
narrow room and settled on the obvious spot of honor— the center of the right-hand wall, where
a lone portrait hung behind a protective Plexiglas wall. Her grandfather paused in the doorway
and motioned toward the painting.
"Go ahead, Sophie. Not many people get a chance to visit her alone."
Swallowing her apprehension, Sophie moved slowly across the room. After everything
she'd heard about the Mona Lisa, she felt as if she were approaching royalty. Arriving in front of
the protective Plexiglas, Sophie held her breath and looked up, taking it in all at once.
Sophie was not sure what she had expected to feel, but it most certainly was not this. No
jolt of amazement. No instant of wonder. The famous face looked as it did in books. She stood in
silence for what felt like forever, waiting for something to happen.
"So what do you think?" her grandfather whispered, arriving behind her. "Beautiful, yes?"
"She's too little."
Saunière smiled. "You're little and you're beautiful."
I am not beautiful, she thought. Sophie hated her red hair and freckles, and she was bigger
than all the boys in her class. She looked back at the Mona Lisa and shook her head. "She's even
worse than in the books. Her face is... brumeux."
"Foggy," her grandfather tutored.
"Foggy," Sophie repeated, knowing the conversation would not continue until she repeated
her new vocabulary word.
"That's called the sfumato style of painting," he told her, "and it's very hard to do. Leonardo
da Vinci was better at it than anyone."
Sophie still didn't like the painting. "She looks like she knows something... like when kids
at school have a secret."
Her grandfather laughed. "That's part of why she is so famous. People like to guess why she
is smiling."
"Do you know why she's smiling?"
"Maybe." Her grandfather winked. "Someday I'll tell you all about it."
Sophie stamped her foot. "I told you I don't like secrets!"
"Princess," he smiled. "Life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once."
"I'm going back up," Sophie declared, her voice hollow in the stairwell.
"To the Mona Lisa?" Langdon recoiled. "Now?"
Sophie considered the risk. "I'm not a murder suspect. I'll take my chances. I need to
understand what my grandfather was trying to tell me."
"What about the embassy?"
Sophie felt guilty turning Langdon into a fugitive only to abandon him, but she saw no
other option. She pointed down the stairs to a metal door. "Go through that door, and follow the
illuminated exit signs. My grandfather used to bring me down here. The signs will lead you to a
security turnstile. It's monodirectional and opens out." She handed Langdon her car keys. "Mine
is the red SmartCar in the employee lot. Directly outside this bulkhead. Do you know how to get
to the embassy?"
Langdon nodded, eyeing the keys in his hand.
"Listen," Sophie said, her voice softening. "I think my grandfather may have left me a
message at the Mona Lisa— some kind of clue as to who killed him. Or why I'm in danger." Or
what happened to my family. "I have to go see."
"But if he wanted to tell you why you were in danger, why wouldn't he simply write it on
the floor where he died? Why this complicated word game?"
"Whatever my grandfather was trying to tell me, I don't think he wanted anyone else to hear
it. Not even the police." Clearly, her grandfather had done everything in his power to send a
confidential transmission directly to her. He had written it in code, included her secret initials,
and told her to find Robert Langdon— a wise command, considering the American symbologist
had deciphered his code. "As strange as it may sound," Sophie said, "I think he wants me to get
to the Mona Lisa before anyone else does."
"I'll come."
"No! We don't know how long the Grand Gallery will stay empty. You have to go."
Langdon seemed hesitant, as if his own academic curiosity were threatening to override
sound judgment and drag him back into Fache's hands.
"Go. Now." Sophie gave him a grateful smile. "I'll see you at the embassy, Mr. Langdon."
Langdon looked displeased. "I'll meet you there on one condition," he replied, his voice
stern.
She paused, startled. "What's that?"
"That you stop calling me Mr. Langdon."
Sophie detected the faint hint of a lopsided grin growing across Langdon's face, and she felt
herself smile back. "Good luck, Robert."
When Langdon reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs, the unmistakable smell of linseed
oil and plaster dust assaulted his nostrils. Ahead, an illuminated SORTIE/EXIT displayed an
arrow pointing down a long corridor.
Langdon stepped into the hallway.
To the right gaped a murky restoration studio out of which peered an army of statues in
various states of repair. To the left, Langdon saw a suite of studios that resembled Harvard art
classrooms— rows of easels, paintings, palettes, framing tools— an art assembly line.
As he moved down the hallway, Langdon wondered if at any moment he might awake with
a start in his bed in Cambridge. The entire evening had felt like a bizarre dream. I'm about to
dash out of the Louvre... a fugitive.
Saunière's clever anagrammatic message was still on his mind, and Langdon wondered
what Sophie would find at the Mona Lisa... if anything. She had seemed certain her grandfather
meant for her to visit the famous painting one more time. As plausible an interpretation as this
seemed, Langdon felt haunted now by a troubling paradox.
P.S. Find Robert Langdon.
Saunière had written Langdon's name on the floor, commanding Sophie to find him. But
why? Merely so Langdon could help her break an anagram?
It seemed quite unlikely.
After all, Saunière had no reason to think Langdon was especially skilled at anagrams.
We've never even met. More important, Sophie had stated flat out that she should have broken
the anagram on her own. It had been Sophie who spotted the Fibonacci sequence, and, no doubt,
Sophie who, if given a little more time, would have deciphered the message with no help from
Langdon.
Sophie was supposed to break that anagram on her own. Langdon was suddenly feeling
more certain about this, and yet the conclusion left an obvious gaping lapse in the logic of
Saunière's actions.
Why me? Langdon wondered, heading down the hall. Why was Saunière's dying wish that
his estranged granddaughter find me? What is it that Saunière thinks I know?
With an unexpected jolt, Langdon stopped short. Eyes wide, he dug in his pocket and
yanked out the computer printout. He stared at the last line of Saunière's message.
P.S. Find Robert Langdon.
He fixated on two letters.
P.S.
In that instant, Langdon felt Saunière's puzzling mix of symbolism fall into stark focus.
Like a peal of thunder, a career's worth of symbology and history came crashing down around
him. Everything Jacques Saunière had done tonight suddenly made perfect sense.
Langdon's thoughts raced as he tried to assemble the implications of what this all meant.
Wheeling, he stared back in the direction from which he had come.
Is there time?
He knew it didn't matter.
Without hesitation, Langdon broke into a sprint back toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 22
Kneeling in the first pew, Silas pretended to pray as he scanned the layout of the sanctuary.
Saint-Sulpice, like most churches, had been built in the shape of a giant Roman cross. Its long
central section— the nave— led directly to the main altar, where it was transversely intersected
by a shorter section, known as the transept. The intersection of nave and transept occurred
directly beneath the main cupola and was considered the heart of the church... her most sacred
and mystical point.
Not tonight, Silas thought. Saint-Sulpice hides her secrets elsewhere.
Turning his head to the right, he gazed into the south transept, toward the open area of floor
beyond the end of the pews, to the object his victims had described.
There it is.
Embedded in the gray granite floor, a thin polished strip of brass glistened in the stone... a
golden line slanting across the church's floor. The line bore graduated markings, like a ruler. It
was a gnomon, Silas had been told, a pagan astronomical device like a sundial. Tourists,
scientists, historians, and pagans from around the world came to Saint-Sulpice to gaze upon this
famous line.
The Rose Line.
Slowly, Silas let his eyes trace the path of the brass strip as it made its way across the floor
from his right to left, slanting in front of him at an awkward angle, entirely at odds with the
symmetry of the church. Slicing across the main altar itself, the line looked to Silas like a slash
wound across a beautiful face. The strip cleaved the communion rail in two and then crossed the
entire width of the church, finally reaching the corner of the north transept, where it arrived at
the base of a most unexpected structure.
A colossal Egyptian obelisk.
Here, the glistening Rose Line took a ninety-degree vertical turn and continued directly up
the face of the obelisk itself, ascending thirty -three feet to the very tip of the pyramidical apex,
where it finally ceased.
The Rose Line, Silas thought. The brotherhood hid the keystone at the Rose Line.
Earlier tonight, when Silas told the Teacher that the Priory keystone was hidden inside
Saint-Sulpice, the Teacher had sounded doubtful. But when Silas added that the brothers had all
given him a precise location, with relation to a brass line running through Saint-Sulpice, the
Teacher had gasped with revelation. "You speak of the Rose Line!"
The Teacher quickly told Silas of Saint-Sulpice's famed architectural oddity— a strip of
brass that segmented the sanctuary on a perfect north-south axis. It was an ancient sundial of
sorts, a vestige of the pagan temple that had once stood on this very spot. The sun's rays, shining
through the oculus on the south wall, moved farther down the line every day, indicating the
passage of time, from solstice to solstice.
The north-south stripe had been known as the Rose Line. For centuries, the symbol of the
Rose had been associated with maps and guiding souls in the proper direction. The Compass
Rose— drawn on almost every map— indicated North, East, South, and West. Originally known
as the Wind Rose, it denoted the directions of the thirty-two winds, blowing from the directions
of eight major winds, eight half-winds, and sixteen quarter-winds. When diagrammed inside a
circle, these thirty-two points of the compass perfectly resembled a traditional thirty-two petal
rose bloom. To this day, the fundamental navigational tool was still known as a Compass Rose,
its northernmost direction still marked by an arrowhead... or, more commonly, the symbol of the
fleur-de-lis.
On a globe, a Rose Line— also called a meridian or longitude— was any imaginary line
drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole. There were, of course, an infinite number of Rose
