were not something she would ever understand. But that was hardly her concern at this instant.
Opus Dei is searching for the keystone. How they knew of it, Sister Sandrine could not imagine,
although she knew she did not have time to think.
The bloody monk was now quietly donning his cloak again, clutching his prize as he moved
toward the altar, toward the Bible.
In breathless silence, Sister Sandrine left the balcony and raced down the hall to her
quarters. Getting on her hands and knees, she reached beneath her wooden bed frame and
retrieved the sealed envelope she had hidden there years ago.
Tearing it open, she found four Paris phone numbers.
Trembling, she began to dial.
Downstairs, Silas laid the stone tablet on the altar and turned his eager hands to the leather Bible.
His long white fingers were sweating now as he turned the pages. Flipping through the Old
Testament, he found the Book of Job. He located chapter thirty-eight. As he ran his finger down
the column of text, he anticipated the words he was about to read.
They will lead the way!
Finding verse number eleven, Silas read the text. It was only seven words. Confused, he
read it again, sensing something had gone terribly wrong. The verse simply read:
HITHERTO SHALT THOU COME, BUT NO FURTHER.
CHAPTER 30
Security warden Claude Grouard simmered with rage as he stood over his prostrate captive in
front of the Mona Lisa. This bastard killed Jacques Saunière! Saunière had been like a well -
loved father to Grouard and his security team.
Grouard wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and bury a bullet in Robert Langdon's
back. As senior warden, Grouard was one of the few guards who actually carried a loaded
weapon. He reminded himself, however, that killing Langdon would be a generous fate
compared to the misery about to be communicated by Bezu Fache and the French prison system.
Grouard yanked his walkie-talkie off his belt and attempted to radio for backup. All he
heard was static. The additional electronic security in this chamber always wrought havoc with
the guards' communications. I have to move to the doorway. Still aiming his weapon at Langdon,
Grouard began backing slowly toward the entrance. On his third step, he spied something that
made him stop short.
What the hell is that!
An inexplicable mirage was materializing near the center of the room. A silhouette. There
was someone else in the room? A woman was moving through the darkness, walking briskly
toward the far left wall. In front of her, a purplish beam of light swung back and forth across the
floor, as if she were searching for something with a colored flashlight.
"Qui est là?" Grouard demanded, feeling his adrenaline spike for a second time in the last
thirty seconds. He suddenly didn't know where to aim his gun or what direction to move.
"PTS," the woman replied calmly, still scanning the floor with her light.
Police Technique et Scientifique. Grouard was sweating now. I thought all the agents were
gone! He now recognized the purple light as ultraviolet, consistent with a PTS team, and yet he
could not understand why DCPJ would be looking for evidence in here.
"Votre nom!" Grouard yelled, instinct telling him something was amiss. "Répondez!"
"C'est mot," the voice responded in calm French. "Sophie Neveu."
Somewhere in the distant recesses of Grouard's mind, the name registered. Sophie Neveu?
That was the name of Saunière's granddaughter, wasn't it? She used to come in here as a little
kid, but that was years ago. This couldn't possibly be her! And even if it were Sophie Neveu, that
was hardly a reason to trust her; Grouard had heard the rumors of the painful falling-out between
Saunière and his granddaughter.
"You know me," the woman called. "And Robert Langdon did not kill my grandfather.
Believe me."
Warden Grouard was not about to take that on faith. I need backup! Trying his walkie-
talkie again, he got only static. The entrance was still a good twenty yards behind him, and
Grouard began backing up slowly, choosing to leave his gun trained on the man on the floor. As
Grouard inched backward, he could see the woman across the room raising her UV light and
scrutinizing a large painting that hung on the far side of the Salle des Etats, directly opposite the
Mona Lisa.
Grouard gasped, realizing which painting it was.
What in the name of God is she doing?
Across the room, Sophie Neveu felt a cold sweat breaking across her forehead. Langdon was still
spread-eagle on the floor. Hold on, Robert. Almost there. Knowing the guard would never
actually shoot either of them, Sophie now turned her attention back to the matter at hand,
scanning the entire area around one masterpiece in particular— another Da Vinci. But the UV
light revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Not on the floor, on the walls, or even on the canvas
itself.
There must be something here!
Sophie felt totally certain she had deciphered her grandfather's intentions correctly.
What else could he possibly intend?
The masterpiece she was examining was a five-foot-tall canvas. The bizarre scene Da Vinci
had painted included an awkwardly posed Virgin Mary sitting with Baby Jesus, John the Baptist,
and the Angel Uriel on a perilous outcropping of rocks. When Sophie was a little girl, no trip to
the Mona Lisa had been complete without her grandfather dragging her across the room to see
this second painting.
Grand-p ère, I'm here! But I don't see it!
Behind her, Sophie could hear the guard trying to radio again for help.
Think!
She pictured the message scrawled on the protective glass of the Mona Lisa. So dark the
con of man. The painting before her had no protective glass on which to write a message, and
Sophie knew her grandfather would never have defaced this masterpiece by writing on the
painting itself. She paused. At least not on the front. Her eyes shot upward, climbing the long
cables that dangled from the ceiling to support the canvas.
Could that be it? Grabbing the left side of the carved wood frame, she pulled it toward her.
The painting was large and the backing flexed as she swung it away from the wall. Sophie
slipped her head and shoulders in behind the painting and raised the black light to inspect the
back.
It took only seconds to realize her instinct had been wrong. The back of the painting was
pale and blank. There was no purple text here, only the mottled brown backside of aging canvas
and—
Wait.
Sophie's eyes locked on an incongruous glint of lustrous metal lodged near the bottom edge
of the frame's wooden armature. The object was small, partially wedged in the slit where the
canvas met the frame. A shimmering gold chain dangled off it.
To Sophie's utter amazement, the chain was affixed to a familiar gold key. The broad,
sculpted head was in the shape of a cross and bore an engraved seal she had not seen since she
was nine years old. A fleur-de-lis with the initials P.S. In that instant, Sophie felt the ghost of her
grandfather whispering in her ear. When the time comes, the key will be yours. A tightness
gripped her throat as she realized that her grandfather, even in death, had kept his promise. This
key opens a box, his voice was saying, where I keep many secrets.
Sophie now realized that the entire purpose of tonight's word game had been this key. Her
grandfather had it with him when he was killed. Not wanting it to fall into the hands of the
police, he hid it behind this painting. Then he devised an ingenious treasure hunt to ensure only
Sophie would find it.
"Au secours!" the guard's voice yelled.
Sophie snatched the key from behind the painting and slipped it deep in her pocket along
with the UV penlight. Peering out from behind the canvas, she could see the guard was still
trying desperately to raise someone on the walkie-talkie. He was backing toward the entrance,
still aiming the gun firmly at Langdon.
"Au secours!" he shouted again into his radio.
Static.
He can't transmit, Sophie realized, recalling that tourists with cell phones often got
frustrated in here when they tried to call home to brag about seeing the Mona Lisa. The extra
surveillance wiring in the walls made it virtually impossible to get a carrier unless you stepped
out into the hall. The guard was backing quickly toward the exit now, and Sophie knew she had
to act immediately.
Gazing up at the large painting behind which she was partially ensconced, Sophie realized
that Leonardo da Vinci, for the second time tonight, was there to help.
Another few meters, Grouard told himself, keeping his gun leveled.
"Arrêtez! Ou je la détruis!" the woman's voice echoed across the room.
Grouard glanced over and stopped in his tracks. "Mon dieu, non!"
Through the reddish haze, he could see that the woman had actually lifted the large painting
off its cables and propped it on the floor in front of her. At five feet tall, the canvas almost
entirely hid her body. Grouard's first thought was to wonder why the painting's trip wires hadn't
set off alarms, but of course the artwork cable sensors had yet to be reset tonight. What is she
doing!
When he saw it, his blood went cold.
The canvas started to bulge in the middle, the fragile outlines of the Virgin Mary, Baby
Jesus, and John the Baptist beginning to distort.
"Non!" Grouard screamed, frozen in horror as he watched the priceless Da Vinci stretching.
The woman was pushing her knee into the center of the canvas from behind! "NON!"
Grouard wheeled and aimed his gun at her but instantly realized it was an empty threat. The
canvas was only fabric, but it was utterly impenetrable— a six-million-dollar piece of body
armor.
I can't put a bullet through a Da Vinci!
"Set down your gun and radio," the woman said in calm French, "or I'll put my knee
through this painting. I think you know how my grandfather would feel about that."
Grouard felt dizzy. "Please... no. That's Madonna of the Rocks!" He dropped his gun and
radio, raising his hands over his head.
"Thank you," the woman said. "Now do exactly as I tell you, and everything will work out
fine."
Moments later, Langdon's pulse was still thundering as he ran beside Sophie down the
emergency stairwell toward the ground level. Neither of them had said a word since leaving the
trembling Louvre guard lying in the Salle des Etats. The guard's pistol was now clutched tightly
in Langdon's hands, and he couldn't wait to get rid of it. The weapon felt heavy and dangerously
foreign.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Langdon wondered if Sophie had any idea how valuable a
painting she had almost ruined. Her choice in art seemed eerily pertinent to tonight's adventure.
The Da Vinci she had grabbed, much like the Mona Lisa, was notorious among art historians for
its plethora of hidden pagan symbolism.
"You chose a valuable hostage," he said as they ran.
"Madonna of the Rocks," she replied. "But I didn't choose it, my grandfather did. He left me
a little something behind the painting."
Langdon shot her a startled look. "What!? But how did you know which painting? Why
Madonna of the Rocks?"
"So dark the con of man." She flashed a triumphant smile. "I missed the first two anagrams,
Robert. I wasn't about to miss the third."
CHAPTER 31
"They're dead!" Sister Sandrine stammered into the telephone in her Saint-Sulpice residence. She
was leaving a message on an answering machine. "Please pick up! They're all dead!"
The first three phone numbers on the list had produced terrifying results— a hysterical
widow, a detective working late at a murder scene, and a somber priest consoling a bereaved
family. All three contacts were dead. And now, as she called the fourth and final number— the
number she was not supposed to call unless the first three could not be reached— she got an
answering machine. The outgoing message offered no name but simply asked the caller to leave
a message.
"The floor panel has been broken!" she pleaded as she left the message. "The other three are
dead!"
Sister Sandrine did not know the identities of the four men she protected, but the private
phone numbers stashed beneath her bed were for use on only one condition.
If that floor panel is ever broken, the faceless messenger had told her, it means the upper
echelon has been breached. One of us has been mortally threatened and been forced to tell a
desperate lie. Call the numbers. Warn the others. Do not fail us in this.
It was a silent alarm. Foolproof in its simplicity. The plan had amazed her when she first
heard it. If the identity of one brother was compromised, he could tell a lie that would start in
motion a mechanism to warn the others. Tonight, however, it seemed that more than one had
been compromised.
"Please answer," she whispered in fear. "Where are you?"
"Hang up the phone," a deep voice said from the doorway.
Turning in terror, she saw the massive monk. He was clutching the heavy iron candle stand.
Shaking, she set the phone back in the cradle.
"They are dead," the monk said. "All four of them. And they have played me for a fool. Tell
me where the keystone is."
"I don't know!" Sister Sandrine said truthfully. "That secret is guarded by others." Others
