Hebrew letters. I'll sketch in the missing vowels for clarity's sake.
B a P V o M e Th
"Remember, of course," he added, "that Hebrew is normally written in the opposite
direction, but we can just as easily use Atbash this way. Next, all we have to do is create our
substitution scheme by rewriting the entire alphabet in reverse order opposite the original
alphabet."
"There's an easier way," Sophie said, taking the pen from Teabing. "It works for all
reflectional substitution ciphers, including the Atbash. A little trick I learned at the Royal
Holloway." Sophie wrote the first half of the alphabet from left to right, and then, beneath it,
wrote the second half, right to left. "Cryptanalysts call it the fold-over. Half as complicated.
Twice as clean."
A B G D H V Z Ch T Y K
Th Sh R Q Tz P O S N M L
Teabing eyed her handiwork and chuckled. "Right you are. Glad to see those boys at the
Holloway are doing their job."
Looking at Sophie's substitution matrix, Langdon felt a rising thrill that he imagined must
have rivaled the thrill felt by early scholars when they first used the Atbash Cipher to decrypt the
now famous Mystery of Sheshach. For years, religious scholars had been baffled by biblical
references to a city called Sheshach. The city did not appear on any map nor in any other
documents, and yet it was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah— the king of Sheshach,
the city of Sheshach, the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash Cipher to the
word, and his results were mind-numbing. The cipher revealed that Sheshach was in fact a code
word for another very well -known city. The decryption process was simple.
Sheshach, in Hebrew, was spelled: Sh-Sh-K.
Sh-Sh-K, when placed in the substitution matrix, became B-B-L.
B-B-L, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.
The mysterious city of Sheshach was revealed as the city of Babel, and a frenzy of biblical
examination ensued. Within weeks, several more Atbash code words were uncovered in the Old
Testament, unveiling myriad hidden meanings that scholars had no idea were there.
"We're getting close," Langdon whispered, unable to control his excitement.
"Inches, Robert," Teabing said. He glanced over at Sophie and smiled. "You ready?"
She nodded.
"Okay, Baphomet in Hebrew without the vowels reads: B-P-V-M-Th. Now we simply apply
your Atbash substitution matrix to translate the letters into our five-letter password."
Langdon's heart pounded. B-P-V-M-Th. The sun was pouring through the windows now. He
looked at Sophie's substitution matrix and slowly began to make the conversion. B is Sh... P is
V...
Teabing was grinning like a schoolboy at Christmas. "And the Atbash Cipher reveals..." He
stopped short. "Good God!" His face went white.
Langdon's head snapped up.
"What's wrong?" Sophie demanded.
"You won't believe this." Teabing glanced at Sophie. "Especially you."
"What do you mean?" she said.
"This is... ingenious," he whispered. "Utterly ingenious!" Teabing wrote again on the paper.
"Drumroll, please. Here is your password." He showed them what he had written.
Sh-V-P-Y-A
Sophie scowled. "What is it?"
Langdon didn't recognize it either.
Teabing's voice seemed to tremble with awe. "This, my friend, is actually an ancient word
of wisdom."
Langdon read the letters again. An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll. An instant later
he got it. He had newer seen this coming. "An ancient word of wisdom!"
Teabing was laughing. "Quite literally!"
Sophie looked at the word and then at the dial. Immediately she realized Langdon and
Teabing had failed to see a serious glitch. "Hold on! This can't be the password," she argued.
"The cryptex doesn't have an Sh on the dial. It uses a traditional Roman alphabet."
"Read the word," Langdon urged. "Keep in mind two things. In Hebrew, the symbol for the
sound Sh can also be pronounced as S, depending on the accent. Just as the letter P can be
pronounced F."
SVFYA? she thought, puzzled.
"Genius!" Teabing added. "The letter Vav is often a placeholder for the vowel sound O!"
Sophie again looked at the letters, attempting to sound them out.
"S...o...f...y...a."
She heard the sound of her voice, and could not believe what she had just said. "Sophia?
This spells Sophia?"
Langdon was nodding enthusiastically. "Yes! Sophia literally means wisdom in Greek. The
root of your name, Sophie, is literally a 'word of wisdom.' "
Sophie suddenly missed her grandfather immensely. He encrypted the Priory keystone with
my name. A knot caught in her throat. It all seemed so perfect. But as she turned her gaze to the
five lettered dials on the cryptex, she realized a problem still existed. "But wait... the word
Sophia has six letters."
Teabing's smile never faded. "Look at the poem again. Your grandfather wrote, 'An ancient
word of wisdom.' "
"Yes?"
Teabing winked. "In ancient Greek, wisdom is spelled S-O-F-I-A."
CHAPTER 78
Sophie felt a wild excitement as she cradled the cryptex and began dialing in the letters. An
ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll. Langdon and Teabing seemed to have stopped
breathing as they looked on.
S... O... F...
"Carefully," Teabing urged. "Ever so carefully."
...I... A.
Sophie aligned the final dial. "Okay," she whispered, glancing up at the others. "I'm going
to pull it apart."
"Remember the vinegar," Langdon whispered with fearful exhilaration. "Be careful."
Sophie knew that if this cryptex were like those she had opened in her youth, all she would
need to do is grip the cylinder at both ends, just beyond the dials, and pull, applying slow, steady
pressure in opposite directions. If the dials were properly aligned with the password, then one of
the ends would slide off, much like a lens cap, and she could reach inside and remove the rolled
papyrus document, which would be wrapped around the vial of vinegar. However, if the
password they had entered were incorrect, Sophie's outward force on the ends would be
transferred to a hinged lever inside, which would pivot downward into the cavity and apply
pressure to the glass vial, eventually shattering it if she pulled too hard.
Pull gently, she told herself.
Teabing and Langdon both leaned in as Sophie wrapped her palms around the ends of the
cylinder. In the excitement of deciphering the code word, Sophie had almost forgotten what they
expected to find inside. This is the Priory keystone. According to Teabing, it contained a map to
the Holy Grail, unveiling the tomb of Mary Magdalene and the Sangreal treasure... the ultimate
treasure trove of secret truth.
Now gripping the stone tube, Sophie double -checked that all of the letters were properly
aligned with the indicator. Then, slowly, she pulled. Nothing happened. She applied a little more
force. Suddenly, the stone slid apart like a well-crafted telescope. The heavy end piece detached
in her hand. Langdon and Teabing almost jumped to their feet. Sophie's heart rate climbed as she
set the end cap on the table and tipped the cylinder to peer inside.
A scroll!
Peering down the hollow of the rolled paper, Sophie could see it had been wrapped around
a cylindrical object— the vial of vinegar, she assumed. Strangely, though, the paper around the
vinegar was not the customary delicate papyrus but rather, vellum. That's odd, she thought,
vinegar can't dissolve a lambskin vellum. She looked again down the hollow of the scroll and
realized the object in the center was not a vial of vinegar after all. It was something else entirely.
"What's wrong?" Teabing asked. "Pull out the scroll."
Frowning, Sophie grabbed the rolled vellum and the object around which it was wrapped,
pulling them both out of the container.
"That's not papyrus," Teabing said. "It's too heavy."
"I know. It's padding."
"For what? The vial of vinegar?"
"No." Sophie unrolled the scroll and revealed what was wrapped inside. "For this."
When Langdon saw the object inside the sheet of vellum, his heart sank.
"God help us," Teabing said, slumping. "Your grandfather was a pitiless architect."
Langdon stared in amazement. I see Saunière has no intention of making this easy.
On the table sat a second cryptex. Smaller. Made of black onyx. It had been nested within
the first. Saunière's passion for dualism. Two cryptexes. Everything in pairs. Double entendres.
Male female. Black nested within white. Langdon felt the web of symbolism stretching onward.
White gives birth to black.
Every man sprang from woman.
White—female.
Black— male.
Reaching over, Langdon lifted the smaller cryptex. It looked identical to the first, except
half the size and black. He heard the familiar gurgle. Apparently, the vial of vinegar they had
heard earlier was inside this smaller cryptex.
"Well, Robert," Teabing said, sliding the page of vellum over to him.
"You'll be pleased to hear that at least we're flying in the right direction."
Langdon examined the thick vellum sheet. Written in ornate penmanship was another four-
line verse. Again, in iambic pentameter. The verse was cryptic, but Langdon needed to read only
as far as the first line to realize that Teabing's plan to come to Britain was going to pay off.
IN LONDON LIES A KNIGHT A POPE INTERRED.
The remainder of the poem clearly implied that the password for opening the second
cryptex could be found by visiting this knight's tomb, somewhere in the city.
Langdon turned excitedly to Teabing. "Do you have any idea what knight this poem is
referring to?"
Teabing grinned. "Not the foggiest. But I know in precisely which crypt we should look."
At that moment, fifteen miles ahead of them, six Kent police cars streaked down rain -soaked
streets toward Biggin Hill Executive Airport.
CHAPTER 79
Lieutenant Collet helped himself to a Perrier from Teabing's refrigerator and strode back out
through the drawing room. Rather than accompanying Fache to London where the action was, he
was now baby-sitting the PTS team that had spread out through Chateau Villette.
So far, the evidence they had uncovered was unhelpful: a single bullet buried in the floor; a
paper with several symbols scrawled on it along with the words blade and chalice; and a bloody
spiked belt that PTS had told Collet was associated with the conservative Catholic group Opus
Dei, which had caused a stir recently when a news program exposed their aggressive recruiting
practices in Paris.
Collet sighed. Good luck making sense of this unlikely mélange.
Moving down a lavish hallway, Collet entered the vast ballroom study, where the chief PTS
examiner was busy dusting for fingerprints. He was a corpulent man in suspenders.
"Anything?" Collet asked, entering.
The examiner shook his head. "Nothing new. Multiple sets matching those in the rest of the
house."
"How about the prints on the cilice belt?"
"Interpol is still working. I uploaded everything we found."
Collet motioned to two sealed evidence bags on the desk. "And this?"
The man shrugged. "Force of habit. I bag anything peculiar."
Collet walked over. Peculiar?
"This Brit's a strange one," the examiner said. "Have a look at this." He sifted through the
evidence bags and selected one, handing it to Collet.
The photo showed the main entrance of a Gothic cathedral— the traditional, recessed
archway, narrowing through multiple, ribbed layers to a small doorway.
Collet studied the photo and turned. "This is peculiar?"
"Turn it over."
On the back, Collet found notations scrawled in English, describing a cathedral's long
hollow nave as a secret pagan tribute to a woman's womb. This was strange. The notation
describing the cathedral's doorway, however, was what startled him. "Hold on! He thinks a
cathedral's entrance represents a woman's..."
The examiner nodded. "Complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil
clitoris above the doorway." He sighed. "Kind of makes you want to go back to church."
Collet picked up the second evidence bag. Through the plastic, he could see a large glossy
photograph of what appeared to be an old document. The heading at the top read:
1
Les Dossiers Secrets— Number 4 °lm 249
"What's this?" Collet asked.
"No idea. He's got copies of it all over the place, so I bagged it."
Collet studied the document.
PRIEURE DE SIGN— LES NAUTONIERS/GRAND MASTERS
JEAN DE GISORS 1188-1220
MARIE DE SAINT-CLAIR 1220-1266
