had considered English the only European pure language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish,
and Italian, which were rooted in Latin— the tongue of the Vatican— English was linguistically
removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred, secret tongue for
those brotherhoods educated enough to learn it.
"This poem," Teabing gushed, "references not only the Grail, but the Knights Templar and
the scattered family of Mary Magdalene! What more could we ask for?"
"The password," Sophie said, looking again at the poem. "It sounds like we need some kind
of ancient word of wisdom?"
"Abracadabra?" Teabing ventured, his eyes twinkling.
A word of five letters, Langdon thought, pondering the staggering number of ancient words
that might be considered words of wisdom— selections from mystic chants, astrological
prophecies, secret society inductions, Wicca incantations, Egyptian magic spells, pagan
mantras— the list was endless.
"The password," Sophie said, "appears to have something to do with the Templars." She
read the text aloud. " 'A headstone praised by Templars is the key.' "
"Leigh," Langdon said, "you're the Templar specialist. Any ideas?"
Teabing was silent for several seconds and then sighed. "Well, a headstone is obviously a
grave marker of some sort. It's possible the poem is referencing a gravestone the Templars
praised at the tomb of Magdalene, but that doesn't help us much because we have no idea where
her tomb is."
"The last line," Sophie said, "says that Atbash will reveal the truth. I've heard that word.
Atbash."
"I'm not surprised," Langdon replied. "You probably heard it in Cryptology 101. The
Atbash Cipher is one of the oldest codes known to man."
Of course! Sophie thought. The famous Hebrew encoding system.
The Atbash Cipher had indeed been part of Sophie's early cryptology training. The cipher
dated back to 500 B.C. and was now used as a classroom example of a basic rotational
substitution scheme. A common form of Jewish cryptogram, the Atbash Cipher was a simple
substitution code based on the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet. In Atbash, the first letter was
substituted by the last letter, the second letter by the next to last letter, and so on.
"Atbash is sublimely appropriate," Teabing said. "Text encrypted with Atbash is found
throughout the Kabbala, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Old Testament. Jewish scholars and
mystics are still finding hidden meanings using Atbash. The Priory certainly would include the
Atbash Cipher as part of their teachings."
"The only problem," Langdon said, "is that we don't have anything on which to apply the
cipher."
Teabing sighed. "There must be a code word on the headstone. We must find this headstone
praised by Templars."
Sophie sensed from the grim look on Langdon's face that finding the Templar headstone
would be no small feat.
Atbash is the key, Sophie thought. But we don't have a door.
It was three minutes later that Teabing heaved a frustrated sigh and shook his head. "My
friends, I'm stymied. Let me ponder this while I get us some nibblies and check on Rémy and our
guest." He stood up and headed for the back of the plane.
Sophie felt tired as she watched him go.
Outside the window, the blackness of the predawn was absolute. Sophie felt as if she were
being hurtled through space with no idea where she would land. Having grown up solving her
grandfather's riddles, she had the uneasy sense right now that this poem before them contained
information they still had not seen.
There is more there, she told herself. Ingeniously hidden... but present nonetheless.
Also plaguing her thoughts was a fear that what they eventually found inside this cryptex
would not be as simple as "a map to the Holy Grail." Despite Teabing's and Langdon's
confidence that the truth lay just within the marble cylinder, Sophie had solved enough of her
grandfather's treasure hunts to know that Jacques Saunière did not give up his secrets easily.
CHAPTER 73
Bourget Airfield's night shift air traffic controller had been dozing before a blank radar screen
when the captain of the Judicial Police practically broke down his door.
"Teabing's jet," Bezu Fache blared, marching into the small tower, "where did it go?"
The controller's initial response was a babbling, lame attempt to protect the privacy of their
British client— one of the airfield's most respected customers. It failed miserably.
"Okay," Fache said, "I am placing you under arrest for permitting a private plane to take off
without registering a flight plan." Fache motioned to another officer, who approached with
handcuffs, and the traffic controller felt a surge of terror. He thought of the newspaper articles
debating whether the nation's police captain was a hero or a menace. That question had just been
answered.
"Wait!" the controller heard himself whimper at the sight of the handcuffs. "I can tell you
this much. Sir Leigh Teabing makes frequent trips to London for medical treatments. He has a
hangar at Biggin Hill Executive Airport in Kent. On the outskirts of London."
Fache waved off the man with the cuffs. "Is Biggin Hill his destination tonight?"
"I don't know," the controller said honestly. "The plane left on its usual tack, and his last
radar contact suggested the United Kingdom. Biggin Hill is an extremely likely guess."
"Did he have others onboard?"
"I swear, sir, there is no way for me to know that. Our clients can drive directly to their
hangars, and load as they please. Who is onboard is the responsibility of the customs officials at
the receiving airport."
Fache checked his watch and gazed out at the scattering of jets parked in front of the
terminal. "If they're going to Biggin Hill, how long until they land?"
The controller fumbled through his records. "It's a short flight. His plane could be on the
ground by... around six-thirty. Fifteen minutes from now."
Fache frowned and turned to one of his men. "Get a transport up here. I'm going to London.
And get me the Kent local police. Not British MI5. I want this quiet. Kent local. Tell them I
want Teabing's plane to be permitted to land. Then I want it surrounded on the tarmac. Nobody
deplanes until I get there."
CHAPTER 74
"You're quiet," Langdon said, gazing across the Hawker's cabin at Sophie.
"Just tired," she replied. "And the poem. I don't know."
Langdon was feeling the same way. The hum of the engines and the gentle rocking of the
plane were hypnotic, and his head still throbbed where he'd been hit by the monk. Teabing was
still in the back of the plane, and Langdon decided to take advantage of the moment alone with
Sophie to tell her something that had been on his mind. "I think I know part of the reason why
your grandfather conspired to put us together. I think there's something he wanted me to explain
to you."
"The history of the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene isn't enough?"
Langdon felt uncertain how to proceed. "The rift between you. The reason you haven't
spoken to him in ten years. I think maybe he was hoping I could somehow make that right by
explaining what drove you apart."
Sophie squirmed in her seat. "I haven't told you what drove us apart."
Langdon eyed her carefully. "You witnessed a sex rite. Didn't you?"
Sophie recoiled. "How do you know that?"
"Sophie, you told me you witnessed something that convinced you your grandfather was in
a secret society. And whatever you saw upset you enough that you haven't spoken to him since. I
know a fair amount about secret societies. It doesn't take the brains of Da Vinci to guess what
you saw."
Sophie stared.
"Was it in the spring?" Langdon asked. "Sometime around the equinox? Mid-March?"
Sophie looked out the window. "I was on spring break from university. I came home a few
days early."
"You want to tell me about it?"
"I'd rather not." She turned suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes welling with emotion. "I
don't know what I saw."
"Were both men and women present?"
After a beat, she nodded.
"Dressed in white and black?"
She wiped her eyes and then nodded, seeming to open up a little. "The women were in
white gossamer gowns... with golden shoes. They held golden orbs. The men wore black tunics
and black shoes."
Langdon strained to hide his emotion, and yet he could not believe what he was hearing.
Sophie Neveu had unwittingly witnessed a two-thousand-year-old sacred ceremony. "Masks?"
he asked, keeping his voice calm. "Androgynous masks?"
"Yes. Everyone. Identical masks. White on the women. Black on the men."
Langdon had read descriptions of this ceremony and understood its mystic roots. "It's called
Hieros Gamos," he said softly. "It dates back more than two thousand years. Egyptian priests and
priestesses performed it regularly to celebrate the reproductive power of the female," He
paused, leaning toward her. "And if you witnessed Hieros Gamos without being properly
prepared to understand its meaning, I imagine it would be pretty shocking."
Sophie said nothing.
"Hieros Gamos is Greek," he continued. "It means sacred marriage."
"The ritual I saw was no marriage."
"Marriage as in union, Sophie."
"You mean as in sex."
"No."
"No?" she said, her olive eyes testing him.
Langdon backpedaled. "Well... yes, in a manner of speaking, but not as we understand it
today." He explained that although what she saw probably looked like a sex ritual, Hieros Gamos
had nothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act
through which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was
spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with
the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and
ultimately achieve gnosis— knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been
considered man's only bridge from earth to heaven. "By communing with woman," Langdon
said, "man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see
God."
Sophie looked skeptical. "Orgasm as prayer?"
Langdon gave a noncommittal shrug, although Sophie was essentially correct.
Physiologically speaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of
thought. A brief mental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed.
Meditation gurus achieved similar states of thoughtlessness without sex and often described
Nirvana as a never-ending spiritual orgasm.
"Sophie," Langdon said quietly, "it's important to remember that the ancients' view of sex
was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life— the ultimate miracle— and miracles
could be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb
made her sacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human
spirit— male and female— through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and
communion with God. What you saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros
Gamos ritual is not a perversion. It's a deeply sacrosanct ceremony."
His words seemed to strike a nerve. Sophie had been remarkably poised all evening, but
now, for the first time, Langdon saw the aura of composure beginning to crack. Tears
materialized in her eyes again, and she dabbed them away with her sleeve.
He gave her a moment. Admittedly, the concept of sex as a pathway to God was mind-
boggling at first. Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them
that the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews
believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His
powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit
priestesses— or hierodules— with whom they made love and experienced the divine through
physical union. The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH— the sacred name of God— in fact derived
from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre -Hebraic
name for Eve, Havah.
"For the early Church," Langdon explained in a soft voice, "mankind's use of sex to
commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church
out of the loop, undermining their self-proclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious
reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other
major religions did the same."
Sophie was silent, but Langdon sensed she was starting to understand her grandfather
better. Ironically, Langdon had made this same point in a class lecture earlier this semester. "Is it
surprising we feel conflicted about sex?" he asked his students. "Our ancient heritage and our
