The men wore long black tunics, and their masks were black. They looked like pieces in a giant
chess set. Everyone in the circle rocked back and forth and chanted in reverence to
something on the floor before them... something Sophie could not see.
The chanting grew steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The participants
took a step inward and knelt. In that instant, Sophie could finally see what they all were
witnessing. Even as she staggered back in horror, she felt the image searing itself into her
memory forever. Overtaken by nausea, Sophie spun, clutching at the stone walls as she
clambered back up the stairs. Pulling the door closed, she fled the deserted house, and drove in a
tearful stupor back to Paris.
That night, with her life shattered by disillusionment and betrayal, she packed her
belongings and left her home. On the dining room table, she left a note.
I WAS THERE. DON'T TRY TO FIND ME.
Beside the note, she laid the old spare key from the chateau's woodshed.
"Sophie! Langdon's voice intruded. "Stop! Stop!"
Emerging from the memory, Sophie slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt. "What?
What happened?!"
Langdon pointed down the long street before them.
When she saw it, Sophie's blood went cold. A hundred yards ahead, the intersection was
blocked by a couple of DCPJ police cars, parked askew, their purpose obvious. They've sealed
off Avenue Gabriel!
Langdon gave a grim sigh. "I take it the embassy is off-limits this evening?"
Down the street, the two DCPJ officers who stood beside their cars were now staring in
their direction, apparently curious about the headlights that had halted so abruptly up the street
from them.
Okay, Sophie, turn around very slowly.
Putting the SmartCar in reverse, she performed a composed three-point turn and reversed
her direction. As she drove away, she heard the sound of squealing tires behind them. Sirens
blared to life.
Cursing, Sophie slammed down the accelerator.
CHAPTER 33
Sophie's SmartCar tore through the diplomatic quarter, weaving past embassies and consulates,
finally racing out a side street and taking a right turn back onto the massive thoroughfare of
Champs-Elysées.
Langdon sat white-knuckled in the passenger seat, twisted backward, scanning behind them
for any signs of the police. He suddenly wished he had not decided to run. You didn't, he
reminded himself. Sophie had made the decision for him when she threw the GPS dot out the
bathroom window. Now, as they sped away from the embassy, serpentining through sparse
traffic on Champs-Elysées, Langdon felt his options deteriorating. Although Sophie seemed to
have lost the police, at least for the moment, Langdon doubted their luck would hold for long.
Behind the wheel Sophie was fishing in her sweater pocket. She removed a small metal
object and held it out for him. "Robert, you'd better have a look at this. This is what my
grandfather left me behind Madonna of the Rocks."
Feeling a shiver of anticipation, Langdon took the object and examined it. It was heavy and
shaped like a cruciform. His first instinct was that he was holding a funeral pieu — a miniature
version of a memorial spike designed to be stuck into the ground at a gravesite. But then he
noted the shaft protruding from the cruciform was prismatic and triangular. The shaft was also
pockmarked with hundreds of tiny hexagons that appeared to be finely tooled and scattered at
random.
"It's a laser-cut key," Sophie told him. "Those hexagons are read by an electric eye."
A key? Langdon had never seen anything like it.
"Look at the other side," she said, changing lanes and sailing through an intersection.
When Langdon turned the key, he felt his jaw drop. There, intricately embossed on the
center of the cross, was a stylized fleur-de-lis with the initials P.S.! "Sophie," he said, "this is the
seal I told you about! The official device of the Priory of Sion."
She nodded. "As I told you, I saw the key a long time ago. He told me never to speak of it
again."
Langdon's eyes were still riveted on the embossed key. Its high-tech tooling and age-old
symbolism exuded an eerie fusion of ancient and modern worlds.
"He told me the key opened a box where he kept many secrets."
Langdon felt a chill to imagine what kind of secrets a man like Jacques Saunière might
keep. What an ancient brotherhood was doing with a futuristic key, Langdon had no idea. The
Priory existed for the sole purpose of protecting a secret. A secret of incredible power. Could
this key have something to do with it? The thought was overwhelming. "Do you know what it
opens?"
Sophie looked disappointed. "I was hoping you knew."
Langdon remained silent as he turned the cruciform in his hand, examining it.
"It looks Christian," Sophie pressed.
Langdon was not so sure about that. The head of this key was not the traditional long-
stemmed Christian cross but rather was a square cross— with four arms of equal length— which
predated Christianity by fifteen hundred years. This kind of cross carried none of the Christian
connotations of crucifixion associated with the longer-stemmed Latin Cross, originated by
Romans as a torture device. Langdon was always surprised how few Christians who gazed
upon "the crucifix" realized their symbol's violent history was reflected in its very name: "cross"
and "crucifix" came from the Latin verb cruciare— to torture.
"Sophie," he said, "all I can tell you is that equal-armed crosses like this one are considered
peaceful crosses. Their square configurations make them impractical for use in crucifixion, and
their balanced vertical and horizontal elements convey a natural union of male and female,
making them symbolically consistent with Priory philosophy."
She gave him a weary look. "You have no idea, do you?"
Langdon frowned. "Not a clue."
"Okay, we have to get off the road." Sophie checked her rearview mirror. "We need a safe
place to figure out what that key opens."
Langdon thought longingly of his comfortable room at the Ritz. Obviously, that was not an
option. "How about my hosts at the American University of Paris?"
"Too obvious. Fache will check with them."
"You must know people. You live here."
"Fache will run my phone and e-mail records, talk to my coworkers. My contacts are
compromised, and finding a hotel is no good because they all require identification."
Langdon wondered again if he might have been better off taking his chances letting Fache
arrest him at the Louvre. "Let's call the embassy. I can explain the situation and have the
embassy send someone to meet us somewhere."
"Meet us?" Sophie turned and stared at him as if he were crazy. "Robert, you're dreaming.
Your embassy has no jurisdiction except on their own property. Sending someone to retrieve us
would be considered aiding a fugitive of the French government. It won't happen. If you walk
into your embassy and request temporary asylum, that's one thing, but asking them to take action
against French law enforcement in the field?" She shook her head. "Call your embassy right
now, and they are going to tell you to avoid further damage and turn yourself over to Fache.
Then they'll promise to pursue diplomatic channels to get you a fair trial." She gazed up the line
of elegant storefronts on Champs-Elysées. "How much cash do you have?"
Langdon checked his wallet. "A hundred dollars. A few euro. Why?"
"Credit cards?"
"Of course."
As Sophie accelerated, Langdon sensed she was formulating a plan. Dead ahead, at the end
of Champs-Elysées, stood the Arc de Triomphe— Napoleon's 164-foot-tall tribute to his own
military potency— encircled by France's largest rotary, a nine-lane behemoth.
Sophie's eyes were on the rearview mirror again as they approached the rotary. "We lost
them for the time being," she said, "but we won't last another five minutes if we stay in this car."
So steal a different one, Langdon mused, now that we're criminals. "What are you going to
do?"
Sophie gunned the SmartCar into the rotary. "Trust me."
Langdon made no response. Trust had not gotten him very far this evening. Pulling back the
sleeve of his jacket, he checked his watch— a vintage, collector's-edition Mickey Mouse
wristwatch that had been a gift from his parents on his tenth birthday. Although its juvenile
dial often drew odd looks, Langdon had never owned any other watch; Disney animations had
been his first introduction to the magic of form and color, and Mickey now served as Langdon's
daily reminder to stay young at heart. At the moment, however, Mickey's arms were skewed at
an awkward angle, indicating an equally awkward hour.
2:51 A.M.
"Interesting watch," Sophie said, glancing at his wrist and maneuvering the SmartCar
around the wide, counterclockwise rotary.
"Long story," he said, pulling his sleeve back down.
"I imagine it would have to be." She gave him a quick smile and exited the rotary, heading
due north, away from the city center. Barely making two green lights, she reached the third
intersection and took a hard right onto Boulevard Malesherbes. They'd left the rich, tree-lined
streets of the diplomatic neighborhood and plunged into a darker industrial neighborhood.
Sophie took a quick left, and a moment later, Langdon realized where they were.
Gare Saint-Lazare.
Ahead of them, the glass-roofed train terminal resembled the awkward offspring of an
airplane hangar and a greenhouse. European train stations never slept. Even at this hour, a half-
dozen taxis idled near the main entrance. Vendors manned carts of sandwiches and mineral
water while grungy kids in backpacks emerged from the station rubbing their eyes, looking
around as if trying to remember what city they were in now. Up ahead on the street, a couple of
city policemen stood on the curb giving directions to some confused tourists.
Sophie pulled her SmartCar in behind the line of taxis and parked in a red zone despite
plenty of legal parking across the street. Before Langdon could ask what was going on, she was
out of the car. She hurried to the window of the taxi in front of them and began speaking to the
driver.
As Langdon got out of the SmartCar, he saw Sophie hand the taxi driver a big wad of cash.
The taxi driver nodded and then, to Langdon's bewilderment, sped off without them.
"What happened?" Langdon demanded, joining Sophie on the curb as the taxi disappeared.
Sophie was already heading for the train station entrance. "Come on. We're buying two
tickets on the next train out of Paris."
Langdon hurried along beside her. What had begun as a one-mile dash to the U.S. Embassy
had now become a full-fledged evacuation from Paris. Langdon was liking this idea less and
less.
CHAPTER 34
The driver who collected Bishop Aringarosa from Leonardo da Vinci International Airport
pulled up in a small, unimpressive black Fiat sedan. Aringarosa recalled a day when all Vatican
transports were big luxury cars that sported grille-plate medallions and flags emblazoned with
the seal of the Holy See. Those days are gone. Vatican cars were now less ostentatious and
almost always unmarked. The Vatican claimed this was to cut costs to better serve their dioceses,
but Aringarosa suspected it was more of a security measure. The world had gone mad, and in
many parts of Europe, advertising your love of Jesus Christ was like painting a bull's -eye on the
roof of your car.
Bundling his black cassock around himself, Aringarosa climbed into the back seat and
settled in for the long drive to Castel Gandolfo. It would be the same ride he had taken five
months ago.
Last year's trip to Rome, he sighed. The longest night of my life.
Five months ago, the Vatican had phoned to request Aringarosa's immediate presence in
Rome. They offered no explanation. Your tickets are at the airport. The Holy See worked hard
to retain a veil of mystery, even for its highest clergy.
The mysterious summons, Aringarosa suspected, was probably a photo opportunity for the
Pope and other Vatican officials to piggyback on Opus Dei's recent public success— the
completion of their World Headquarters in New York City. Architectural Digest had called Opus
Dei's building "a shining beacon of Catholicism sublimely integrated with the modern
landscape," and lately the Vatican seemed to be drawn to anything and everything that included
the word "modern."
Aringarosa had no choice but to accept the invitation, albeit reluctantly. Not a fan of the
current papal administration, Aringarosa, like most conservative clergy, had watched with grave
concern as the new Pope settled into his first year in office. An unprecedented liberal, His
Holiness had secured the papacy through one of the most controversial and unusual conclaves in
Vatican history. Now, rather than being humbled by his unexpected rise to power, the Holy
Father had wasted no time flexing all the muscle associated with the highest office in
Christendom. Drawing on an unsettling tide of liberal support within the College of Cardinals,
the Pope was now declaring his papal mission to be "rejuvenation of Vatican doctrine and
updating Catholicism into the third millennium."
