"Serious enough to have spent a year researching it."
Prominent New York editor Jonas Faukman tugged nervously at his goatee. Faukman no
doubt had heard some wild book ideas in his illustrious career, but this one seemed to have left
the man flabbergasted.
"Robert," Faukman finally said, "don't get me wrong. I love your work, and we've had a
great run together. But if I agree to publish an idea like this, I'll have people picketing outside
my office for months. Besides, it will kill your reputation. You're a Harvard historian, for God's
sake, not a pop schlockmeister looking for a quick buck. Where could you possibly find enough
credible evidence to support a theory like this?"
With a quiet smile Langdon pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of his tweed coat and
handed it to Faukman. The page listed a bibliography of over fifty titles— books by well-known
historians, some contemporary, some centuries old— many of them academic bestsellers. All the
book titles suggested the same premise Langdon had just proposed. As Faukman read down the
list, he looked like a man who had just discovered the earth was actually flat. "I know some of
these authors. They're... real historians!"
Langdon grinned. "As you can see, Jonas, this is not only my theory. It's been around for a
long time. I'm simply building on it. No book has yet explored the legend of the Holy Grail from
a symbologic angle. The iconographic evidence I'm finding to support the theory is, well,
staggeringly persuasive."
Faukman was still staring at the list. "My God, one of these books was written by Sir Leigh
Teabing— a British Royal Historian."
"Teabing has spent much of his life studying the Holy Grail. I've met with him. He was
actually a big part of my inspiration. He's a believer, Jonas, along with all of the others on that
list."
"You're telling me all of these historians actually believe..." Faukman swallowed,
apparently unable to say the words.
Langdon grinned again. "The Holy Grail is arguably the most sought-after treasure in
human history. The Grail has spawned legends, wars, and lifelong quests. Does it make sense
that it is merely a cup? If so, then certainly other relics should generate similar or greater
interest— the Crown of Thorns, the True Cross of the Crucifixion, the Titulus— and yet, they do
not. Throughout history, the Holy Grail has been the most special." Langdon grinned. "Now you
know why."
Faukman was still shaking his head. "But with all these books written about it, why isn't this
theory more widely known?"
"These books can't possibly compete with centuries of established history, especially when
that history is endorsed by the ultimate bestseller of all time."
Faukman's eyes went wide. "Don't tell me Harry Potter is actually about the Holy Grail."
"I was referring to the Bible."
Faukman cringed. "I knew that."
"Laissez-le!" Sophie's shouts cut the air inside the taxi. "Put it down!"
Langdon jumped as Sophie leaned forward over the seat and yelled at the taxi driver.
Langdon could see the driver was clutching his radio mouthpiece and speaking into it.
Sophie turned now and plunged her hand into the pocket of Langdon's tweed jacket. Before
Langdon knew what had happened, she had yanked out the pistol, swung it around, and was
pressing it to the back of the driver's head. The driver instantly dropped his radio, raising his one
free hand overhead.
"Sophie!" Langdon choked. "What the hell— "
"Arrêtez!" Sophie commanded the driver.
Trembling, the driver obeyed, stopping the car and putting it in park.
It was then that Langdon heard the metallic voice of the taxi company's dispatcher coming
from the dashboard. "...qui s'appette Agent Sophie Neveu..." the radio crackled. "Et un
Am éricain, Robert Langdon..."
Langdon's muscles turned rigid. They found us already?
"Descendez," Sophie demanded.
The trembling driver kept his arms over his head as he got out of his taxi and took several
steps backward.
Sophie had rolled down her window and now aimed the gun outside at the bewildered
cabbie. "Robert," she said quietly, "take the wheel. You're driving."
Langdon was not about to argue with a woman wielding a gun. He climbed out of the car
and jumped back in behind the wheel. The driver was yelling curses, his arms still raised over his
head.
"Robert," Sophie said from the back seat, "I trust you've seen enough of our magic forest?"
He nodded. Plenty.
"Good. Drive us out of here."
Langdon looked down at the car's controls and hesitated. Shit. He groped for the stick shift
and clutch. "Sophie? Maybe you— "
"Go!" she yelled.
Outside, several hookers were walking over to see what was going on. One woman was
placing a call on her cell phone. Langdon depressed the clutch and jostled the stick into what he
hoped was first gear. He touched the accelerator, testing the gas.
Langdon popped the clutch. The tires howled as the taxi leapt forward, fishtailing wildly
and sending the gathering crowd diving for cover. The woman with the cell phone leapt into the
woods, only narrowly avoiding being run down.
"Doucement!" Sophie said, as the car lurched down the road. "What are you doing?"
"I tried to warn you," he shouted over the sound of gnashing gears. "I drive an automatic!"
CHAPTER 39
Although the spartan room in the brownstone on Rue La Bruyère had witnessed a lot of
suffering, Silas doubted anything could match the anguish now gripping his pale body. I was
deceived. Everything is lost.
Silas had been tricked. The brothers had lied, choosing death instead of revealing their true
secret. Silas did not have the strength to call the Teacher. Not only had Silas killed the only four
people who knew where the keystone was hidden, he had killed a nun inside Saint-Sulpice. She
was working against God! She scorned the work of Opus Dei!
A crime of impulse, the woman's death complicated matters greatly. Bishop Aringarosa had
placed the phone call that got Silas into Saint-Sulpice; what would the abbéthink when he
discovered the nun was dead? Although Silas had placed her back in her bed, the wound on her
head was obvious. Silas had attempted to replace the broken tiles in the floor, but that damage
too was obvious. They would know someone had been there.
Silas had planned to hide within Opus Dei when his task here was complete. Bishop
Aringarosa will protect me. Silas could imagine no more blissful existence than a life of
meditation and prayer deep within the walls of Opus Dei's headquarters in New York City. He
would never again set foot outside. Everything he needed was within that sanctuary. Nobody will
miss me. Unfortunately, Silas knew, a prominent man like Bishop Aringarosa could not
disappear so easily.
I have endangered the bishop. Silas gazed blankly at the floor and pondered taking his own
life. After all, it had been Aringarosa who gave Silas life in the first place... in that small rectory
in Spain, educating him, giving him purpose.
"My friend," Aringarosa had told him, "you were born an albino. Do not let others shame
you for this. Do you not understand how special this makes you? Were you not aware that Noah
himself was an albino?"
"Noah of the Ark?" Silas had never heard this.
Aringarosa was smiling. "Indeed, Noah of the Ark. An albino. Like you, he had skin white
like an angel. Consider this. Noah saved all of life on the planet. You are destined for great
things, Silas. The Lord has freed you for a reason. You have your calling. The Lord needs your
help to do His work."
Over time, Silas learned to see himself in a new light. I am pure. White. Beautiful. Like an
angel.
At the moment, though, in his room at the residence hall, it was his father's disappointed
voice that whispered to him from the past.
Tu es un désastre. Un spectre.
Kneeling on the wooden floor, Silas prayed for forgiveness. Then, stripping off his robe, he
reached again for the Discipline.
CHAPTER 40
Struggling with the gear shift, Langdon managed to maneuver the hijacked taxi to the far side of
the Bois de Boulogne while stalling only twice. Unfortunately, the inherent humor in the
situation was overshadowed by the taxi dispatcher repeatedly hailing their cab over the radio.
"Voiture cinq-six-trois. Oùêtes-vous? Répondez!"
When Langdon reached the exit of the park, he swallowed his machismo and jammed on
the brakes. "You'd better drive."
Sophie looked relieved as she jumped behind the wheel. Within seconds she had the car
humming smoothly westward along Allée de Longchamp, leaving the Garden of Earthly
Delights behind.
"Which way is Rue Haxo?" Langdon asked, watching Sophie edge the speedometer over a
hundred kilometers an hour.
Sophie's eyes remained focused on the road. "The cab driver said it's adjacent to the Roland
Garros tennis stadium. I know that area."
Langdon pulled the heavy key from his pocket again, feeling the weight in his palm. He
sensed it was an object of enormous consequence. Quite possibly the key to his own freedom.
Earlier, while telling Sophie about the Knights Templar, Langdon had realized that this key,
in addition to having the Priory seal embossed on it, possessed a more subtle tie to the Priory of
Sion. The equal-armed cruciform was symbolic of balance and harmony but also of the Knights
Templar. Everyone had seen the paintings of Knights Templar wearing white tunics emblazoned
with red equal-armed crosses. Granted, the arms of the Templar cross were slightly flared at the
ends, but they were still of equal length.
A square cross. Just like the one on this key.
Langdon felt his imagination starting to run wild as he fantasized about what they might
find. The Holy Grail. He almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. The Grail was believed to
be somewhere in England, buried in a hidden chamber beneath one of the many Templar
churches, where it had been hidden since at least 1500.
The era of Grand Master Da Vinci.
The Priory, in order to keep their powerful documents safe, had been forced to move them
many times in the early centuries. Historians now suspected as many as six different Grail
relocations since its arrival in Europe from Jerusalem. The last Grail "sighting" had been in 1447
when numerous eyewitnesses described a fire that had broken out and almost engulfed the
documents before they were carried to safety in four huge chests that each required six men to
carry. After that, nobody claimed to see the Grail ever again. All that remained were occasional
whisperings that it was hidden in Great Britain, the land of King Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table.
Wherever it was, two important facts remained:
Leonardo knew where the Grail resided during his lifetime.
That hiding place had probably not changed to this day.
For this reason, Grail enthusiasts still pored over Da Vinci's art and diaries in hopes of
unearthing a hidden clue as to the Grail's current location. Some claimed the mountainous
backdrop in Madonna of the Rocks matched the topography of a series of cave-ridden hills in
Scotland. Others insisted that the suspicious placement of disciples in The Last Supper was
some kind of code. Still others claimed that X rays of the Mona Lisa revealed she originally had
been painted wearing a lapis lazuli pendant of Isis— a detail Da Vinci purportedly later decided
to paint over. Langdon had never seen any evidence of the pendant, nor could he imagine how it
could possibly reveal the Holy Grail, and yet Grail aficionados still discussed it ad nauseum on
Internet bulletin boards and worldwide-web chat rooms.
Everyone loves a conspiracy.
And the conspiracies kept coming. Most recently, of course, had been the earthshaking
discovery that Da Vinci's famed Adoration of the Magi was hiding a dark secret beneath its
layers of paint. Italian art diagnostician Maurizio Seracini had unveiled the unsettling truth,
which the New York Times Magazine carried prominently in a story titled "The Leonardo Cover-
Up."
Seracini had revealed beyond any doubt that while the Adoration's gray-green sketched
underdrawing was indeed Da Vinci's work, the painting itself was not. The truth was that some
anonymous painter had filled in Da Vinci's sketch like a paint-by-numbers years after Da Vinci's
death. Far more troubling, however, was what lay beneath the impostor's paint. Photographs
taken with infrared reflectography and X ray suggested that this rogue painter, while filling in
Da Vinci's sketched study, had made suspicious departures from the underdrawing... as if to
subvert Da Vinci's true intention. Whatever the true nature of the underdrawing, it had yet to be
made public. Even so, embarrassed officials at Florence's Uffizi Gallery immediately banished
the painting to a warehouse across the street. Visitors at the gallery's Leonardo Room now found
a misleading and unapologetic plaque where the Adoration once hung.
THIS WORK IS UNDERGOING
DIAGNOSTIC TESTS IN PREPARATION
FOR RESTORATION.
In the bizarre underworld of modern Grail seekers, Leonardo da Vinci remained the quest's
