The abbéthanked her and hung up.
Puzzled, Sister Sandrine remained a moment in the warmth of her bed, trying to shake off
the cobwebs of sleep. Her sixty-year-old body did not awake as fast as it used to, although
tonight's phone call had certainly roused her senses. Opus Dei had always made her uneasy.
Beyond the prelature's adherence to the arcane ritual of corporal mortification, their views on
women were medieval at best. She had been shocked to learn that female numeraries were forced
to clean the men's residence halls for no pay while the men were at mass; women slept on
hardwood floors, while the men had straw mats; and women were forced to endure additional
requirements of corporal mortification... all as added penance for original sin. It seemed Eve's
bite from the apple of knowledge was a debt women were doomed to pay for eternity. Sadly,
while most of the Catholic Church was gradually moving in the right direction with respect to
women's rights, Opus Dei threatened to reverse the progress. Even so, Sister Sandrine had her
orders.
Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood slowly, chilled by the cold stone on the soles of her
bare feet. As the chill rose through her flesh, she felt an unexpected apprehension.
Women's intuition?
A follower of God, Sister Sandrine had learned to find peace in the calming voices of her
own soul. Tonight, however, those voices were as silent as the empty church around her.
CHAPTER 8
Langdon couldn't tear his eyes from the glowing purple text scrawled across the parquet floor.
Jacques Saunière's final communication seemed as unlikely a departing message as any Langdon
could imagine.
The message read:
13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!
Although Langdon had not the slightest idea what it meant, he did understand Fache's
instinct that the pentacle had something to do with devil worship.
O, Draconian devil!
Saunière had left a literal reference to the devil. Equally as bizarre was the series of
numbers. "Part of it looks like a numeric cipher."
"Yes," Fache said. "Our cryptographers are already working on it. We believe these
numbers may be the key to who killed him. Maybe a telephone exchange or some kind of social
identification. Do the numbers have any symbolic meaning to you?"
Langdon looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to extract any symbolic
meaning. If Saunière had even intended any. To Langdon, the numbers looked totally random.
He was accustomed to symbolic progressions that made some semblance of sense, but
everything here— the pentacle, the text, the numbers— seemed disparate at the most fundamental
level.
"You alleged earlier," Fache said, "that Saunière's actions here were all in an effort to send
some sort of message... goddess worship or something in that vein? How does this message fit
in?"
Langdon knew the question was rhetorical. This bizarre communiquéobviously did not fit
Langdon's scenario of goddess worship at all.
O, Draconian devil? Oh, lame saint?
Fache said, "This text appears to be an accusation of some sort. Wouldn't you agree?"
Langdon tried to imagine the curator's final minutes trapped alone in the Grand Gallery,
knowing he was about to die. It seemed logical. "An accusation against his murderer makes
sense, I suppose."
"My job, of course, is to put a name to that person. Let me ask you this, Mr. Langdon. To
your eye, beyond the numbers, what about this message is most strange?"
Most strange? A dying man had barricaded himself in the gallery, drawn a pentacle on
himself, and scrawled a mysterious accusation on the floor. What about the scenario wasn't
strange?
"The word 'Draconian'?" he ventured, offering the first thing that came to mind. Langdon
was fairly certain that a reference to Draco— the ruthless seventh -century B.C. politician— was
an unlikely dying thought. " 'Draconian devil' seems an odd choice of vocabulary."
"Draconian?" Fache's tone came with a tinge of impatience now. "Saunière's choice of
vocabulary hardly seems the primary issue here."
Langdon wasn't sure what issue Fache had in mind, but he was starting to suspect that
Draco and Fache would have gotten along well.
"Saunière was a Frenchman," Fache said flatly. "He lived in Paris. And yet he chose to
write this message..."
"In English," Langdon said, now realizing the captain's meaning.
Fache nodded. "Précisément. Any idea why?"
Langdon knew Saunière spoke impeccable English, and yet the reason he had chosen
English as the language in which to write his final words escaped Langdon. He shrugged.
Fache motioned back to the pentacle on Saunière's abdomen. "Nothing to do with devil
worship? Are you still certain?"
Langdon was certain of nothing anymore. "The symbology and text don't seem to coincide.
I'm sorry I can't be of more help."
"Perhaps this will clarify." Fache backed away from the body and raised the black light
again, letting the beam spread out in a wider angle. "And now?"
To Langdon's amazement, a rudimentary circle glowed around the curator's body. Saunière
had apparently lay down and swung the pen around himself in several long arcs, essentially
inscribing himself inside a circle.
In a flash, the meaning became clear.
"The Vitruvian Man," Langdon gasped. Saunière had created a life -sized replica of
Leonardo da Vinci's most famous sketch.
Considered the most anatomically correct drawing of its day, Da Vinci's The Vitruvian Man
had become a modern-day icon of culture, appearing on posters, mouse pads, and T-shirts
around the world. The celebrated sketch consisted of a perfect circle in which was inscribed a
nude male... his arms and legs outstretched in a naked spread eagle.
Da Vinci. Langdon felt a shiver of amazement. The clarity of Saunière's intentions could
not be denied. In his final moments of life, the curator had stripped off his clothing and arranged
his body in a clear image of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
The circle had been the missing critical element. A feminine symbol of protection, the
circle around the naked man's body completed Da Vinci's intended message— male and female
harmony. The question now, though, was why Saunière would imitate a famous drawing.
"Mr. Langdon," Fache said, "certainly a man like yourself is aware that Leonardo da Vinci
had a tendency toward the darker arts."
Langdon was surprised by Fache's knowledge of Da Vinci, and it certainly went a long way
toward explaining the captain's suspicions about devil worship. Da Vinci had always been an
awkward subject for historians, especially in the Christian tradition. Despite the visionary's
genius, he was a flamboyant homosexual and worshipper of Nature's divine order, both of which
placed him in a perpetual state of sin against God. Moreover, the artist's eerie eccentricities
projected an admittedly demonic aura: Da Vinci exhumed corpses to study human anatomy; he
kept mysterious journals in illegible reverse handwriting; he believed he possessed the alchemic
power to turn lead into gold and even cheat God by creating an elixir to postpone death; and his
inventions included horrific, never-before-imagined weapons of war and torture.
Misunderstanding breeds distrust, Langdon thought.
Even Da Vinci's enormous output of breathtaking Christian art only furthered the artist's
reputation for spiritual hypocrisy. Accepting hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions, Da
Vinci painted Christian themes not as an expression of his own beliefs but rather as a
commercial venture— a means of funding a lavish lifestyle. Unfortunately, Da Vinci was a
prankster who often amused himself by quietly gnawing at the hand that fed him. He
incorporated in many of his Christian paintings hidden symbolism that was anything but
Christian— tributes to his own beliefs and a subtle thumbing of his nose at the Church. Langdon
had even given a lecture once at the National Gallery in London entitled: "The Secret Life of
Leonardo: Pagan Symbolism in Christian Art."
"I understand your concerns," Langdon now said, "but Da Vinci never really practiced any
dark arts. He was an exceptionally spiritual man, albeit one in constant conflict with the
Church." As Langdon said this, an odd thought popped into his mind. He glanced down at the
message on the floor again. O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!
"Yes?" Fache said.
Langdon weighed his words carefully. "I was just thinking that Saunière shared a lot of
spiritual ideologies with Da Vinci, including a concern over the Church's elimination of the
sacred feminine from modern religion. Maybe, by imitating a famous Da Vinci drawing,
Saunière was simply echoing some of their shared frustrations with the modern Church's
demonization of the goddess."
Fache's eyes hardened. "You think Saunière is calling the Church a lame saint and a
Draconian devil?"
Langdon had to admit it seemed far-fetched, and yet the pentacle seemed to endorse the
idea on some level. "All I am saying is that Mr. Saunière dedicated his life to studying the
history of the goddess, and nothing has done more to erase that history than the Catholic Church.
It seems reasonable that Saunière might have chosen to express his disappointment in his final
good-bye."
"Disappointment?" Fache demanded, sounding hostile now. "This message sounds more
enraged than disappointed, wouldn't you say?"
Langdon was reaching the end of his patience. "Captain, you asked for my instincts as to
what Saunière is trying to say here, and that's what I'm giving you."
"That this is an indictment of the Church?" Fache's jaw tightened as he spoke through
clenched teeth. "Mr. Langdon, I have seen a lot of death in my work, and let me tell you
something. When a man is murdered by another man, I do not believe his final thoughts are to
write an obscure spiritual statement that no one will understand. I believe he is thinking of one
thing only." Fache's whispery voice sliced the air. "La vengeance. I believe Saunière wrote this
note to tell us who killed him." Langdon stared. "But that makes no sense whatsoever."
"No?"
"No," he fired back, tired and frustrated. "You told me Saunière was attacked in his office
by someone he had apparently invited in."
"Yes."
"So it seems reasonable to conclude that the curator knew his attacker."
Fache nodded. "Go on."
"So if Saunière knew the person who killed him, what kind of indictment is this?" He
pointed at the floor. "Numeric codes? Lame saints? Draconian devils? Pentacles on his stomach?
It's all too cryptic."
Fache frowned as if the idea had never occurred to him. "You have a point."
"Considering the circumstances," Langdon said, "I would assume that if Saunière wanted to
tell you who killed him, he would have written down somebody's name."
As Langdon spoke those words, a smug smile crossed Fache's lips for the first time all
night. "Précisément," Fache said. "Précisément."
I am witnessing the work of a master, mused Lieutenant Collet as he tweaked his audio gear and
listened to Fache's voice coming through the headphones. The agent supérieur knew it was
moments like these that had lifted the captain to the pinnacle of French law enforcement.
Fache will do what no one else dares.
The delicate art of cajoler was a lost skill in modern law enforcement, one that required
exceptional poise under pressure. Few men possessed the necessary sangfroid for this kind of
operation, but Fache seemed born for it. His restraint and patience bordered on the robotic.
Fache's sole emotion this evening seemed to be one of intense resolve, as if this arrest were
somehow personal to him. Fache's briefing of his agents an hour ago had been unusually
succinct and assured. I know who murdered Jacques Saunière, Fache had said. You know what to
do. No mistakes tonight.
And so far, no mistakes had been made.
Collet was not yet privy to the evidence that had cemented Fache's certainty of their
suspect's guilt, but he knew better than to question the instincts of the Bull. Fache's intuition
seemed almost supernatural at times. God whispers in his ear, one agent had insisted after a
particularly impressive display of Fache's sixth sense. Collet had to admit, if there was a God,
Bezu Fache would be on His A-list. The captain attended mass and confession with zealous
regularity— far more than the requisite holiday attendance fulfilled by other officials in the name
of good public relations. When the Pope visited Paris a few years back, Fache had used all his
muscle to obtain the honor of an audience. A photo of Fache with the Pope now hung in his
office. The Papal Bull, the agents secretly called it.
Collet found it ironic that one of Fache's rare popular public stances in recent years had
been his outspoken reaction to the Catholic pedophilia scandal. These priests should be hanged
twice! Fache had declared. Once for their crimes against children. And once for shaming the
