“Helicopter!” she shouted as a beam of light pierced the night sky above them. “Get under that portico!”
The dazzling glare of a searchlight flooded the garth just as Langdon and Katherine reached the other side, slipping beneath a Gothic arch into a tunnel that led to the outside lawn. They waited, huddled in the tunnel, as the helicopter passed overhead and began circling the cathedral in wide arcs.
“I guess Galloway was right about hearing visitors,” Katherine said, impressed.
Bad eyes make for great ears.
Her own ears now pounded rhythmically with her racing pulse.
“This way,” Langdon said, clutching his daybag and moving through the passage.
Dean Galloway had given them a single key and a clear set of directions. Unfortunately, when they reached the end of the short tunnel, they found themselves separated from their destination by a wide-open expanse of lawn, currently flooded with light from the helicopter overhead.
“We can’t get across,” Katherine said.
“Hold on . . . look.” Langdon pointed to a black shadow that was materializing on the lawn to their left. The shadow began as an amorphous blob, but it was growing quickly, moving in their direction, becoming more
defined, rushing at them faster and faster, stretching, and finally transforming itself into a massive black rectangle crowned by two impossibly tall spires.
“The cathedral facade is blocking the searchlight,” Langdon said.
“They’re landing out in front!”
Langdon grabbed Katherine’s hand. “Run! Now!”
Inside the cathedral, Dean Galloway felt a lightness in his step that he had not felt in years. He moved through the Great Crossing, down the nave toward the narthex and the front doors.
He could hear the helicopter hovering in front of the cathedral now, and he imagined its lights coming through the rose window in front of him, throwing spectacular colors all over the sanctuary. He recalled the days when he could see color. Ironically, the lightless void that had become his world had illuminated many things for him.
I see more clearly now than ever.
Galloway had been called to God as a young man and over his lifetime had loved the church as much as any man could. Like many of his colleagues who had given their lives in earnest to God, Galloway was weary. He had spent his life straining to be heard above the din of ignorance.
What did I expect?
From the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to American politics—the name Jesus had been hijacked as an ally in all kinds of power struggles. Since the beginning of time, the ignorant had always screamed the loudest, herding the unsuspecting masses and forcing them to do their bidding. They defended their worldly desires by citing Scripture they did not understand. They celebrated their intolerance as proof of their convictions. Now, after all these years, mankind had finally managed to utterly erode everything that had once been so beautiful about Jesus.
Tonight, encountering the symbol of the Rose Cross had fueled him with great hope, reminding him of the prophecies written in the Rosicrucian manifestos, which Galloway had read countless times in the past and could still recall.
Chapter One:
Jehova will redeem humanity by revealing those secrets which he previously reserved only for the elect.
Chapter Four:
The whole world shall become as one book and all the contradictions of science and theology shall be reconciled.
Chapter Seven:
Before the end of the world, God shall create a great flood of spiritual light to alleviate the suffering of humankind.
Chapter Eight:
Before this revelation is possible, the world must sleep away the intoxication of her poisoned chalice, which was filled with the false life of the theological vine.
Galloway knew the church had long ago lost her way, and he had dedicated his life to righting her course. Now, he realized, the moment was fast approaching.
It is always darkest before the dawn.
CIA field agent Turner Simkins was perched on the strut of the Sikorsky helicopter as it touched down on the frosty grass. He leaped off, joined by his men, and immediately waved the chopper back up into the air to keep an eye on all the exits.
Nobody leaves this building.
As the chopper rose back into the night sky, Simkins and his team ran up the stairs to the cathedral’s main entrance. Before he could decide which of the six doors to pound on, one of them swung open.
“Yes?” a calm voice said from the shadows.
Simkins could barely make out the hunched figure in priest’s robes. “Are you Dean Colin Galloway?”
“I am,” the old man replied.
“I’m looking for Robert Langdon. Have you seen him?”
The old man stepped forward now, staring past Simkins with eerie blank eyes. “Now, wouldn’t
that
be a miracle.”
CHAPTER
88
Time is
running out.
Security analyst Nola Kaye was already on edge, and the third mug of coffee she was now drinking had begun coursing through her like an electric current.
No word yet from Sato.
Finally, her phone rang, and Nola leaped on it. “OS,” she answered. “Nola here.”
“Nola, it’s Rick Parrish in systems security.”
Nola slumped.
No Sato.
“Hi, Rick. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to give you a heads-up—our department may have information relevant to what you’re working on tonight.”
Nola set down her coffee.
How the hell do
you
know what I’m working on tonight?
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry, it’s the new CI program we’re beta-testing,” Parrish said. “It keeps flagging your workstation number.”
Nola now realized what he was talking about. The Agency was currently running a new piece of “collaborative integration” software designed to provide real-time alerts to disparate CIA departments when they happened to be processing related data fields. In an era of time-sensitive terrorist threats, the key to thwarting disaster was often as simple as a heads-up telling you that the guy down the hall was analyzing the very data you needed. As far as Nola was concerned, this CI software had proven more of a distraction than any real help—
constant interruption
software, she called it.
“Right, I forgot,” Nola said. “What have you got?” She was positive that nobody else in the building
knew
about this crisis, much less could be working on it. The only computer work Nola had done tonight was historical research for Sato on esoteric Masonic topics
.
Nonetheless, she was obliged to play the game.
“Well, it’s probably nothing,” Parrish said, “but we stopped a hacker tonight, and the CI program keeps suggesting I share the information with you.”
A hacker?
Nola sipped her coffee. “I’m listening.”
“About an hour ago,” Parrish said, “we snagged a guy named Zoubianis trying to access a file on one of our internal databases. This guy claims it was a job for hire and that he has no idea
why
he was being paid to access this particular file or even that it was on a CIA server.”
“Okay.”
“We finished questioning him, and he’s clean. But here’s the weird thing—the
same
file he was targeting had been flagged earlier tonight by an internal search engine. It looks like someone piggybacked into our system, ran a specific keyword search, and generated a redaction. The thing is, the
keywords
they used are really strange. And there’s one in particular that the CI flagged as a high-priority match—one that’s unique to both of our data sets.” He paused. “Do you know the word . . .
symbolon
?”
Nola jolted upright, spilling coffee on her desk.
“The other keywords are just as unusual,” Parrish continued.
“Pyramid, portal—”
“Get down here,” Nola commanded, mopping up her desk. “And bring everything you’ve got!”
“These words actually
mean
something to you?”
“NOW!”
CHAPTER
89
Cathedral College
is an elegant, castlelike edifice located adjacent to the National Cathedral. The College of Preachers, as it was originally envisioned by the first Episcopal bishop of Washington, was founded to provide ongoing education for clergy after their ordination. Today, the college offers a wide variety of programs on theology, global justice, healing, and spirituality.
Langdon and Katherine had made the dash across the lawn and used Galloway’s key to slip inside just as the helicopter rose back over the cathedral, its floodlights turning night back into day. Now, standing breathless inside the foyer, they surveyed their surroundings. The windows provided sufficient illumination, and Langdon saw no reason to turn the lights on and take a chance of broadcasting their whereabouts to the helicopter overhead. As they moved down the central hallway, they passed a series of conference halls, classrooms, and sitting areas. The interior reminded Langdon of the neo-Gothic buildings of Yale University—breathtaking on the outside, and yet surprisingly utilitarian on the inside, their period elegance having been retrofitted to endure heavy foot traffic.
“Down here,” Katherine said, motioning toward the far end of the hall.
Katherine had yet to share with Langdon her new revelation regarding the pyramid, but apparently the reference to Isaacus Neutonuus had sparked it. All she had said as they crossed the lawn was that the pyramid could be transformed using simple science. Everything she needed, she believed, could probably be found in this building. Langdon had no idea what she needed or how Katherine intended to transform a solid piece of granite or gold, but considering he had just witnessed a cube metamorphose into a Rosicrucian cross, he was willing to have faith.
They reached the end of the hall and Katherine frowned, apparently not seeing what she wanted. “You said this building has dormitory facilities?”
“Yes, for residential conferences.”
“So they
must
have a kitchen in here somewhere, right?”
“You’re hungry?”
She frowned back at him. “No, I need a lab.”
Of course you do.
Langdon spotted a descending staircase that bore a promising symbol.
America’s favorite pictogram.
The basement kitchen was industrial looking—lots of stainless steel and big bowls—clearly designed to cook for large groups. The kitchen had no windows. Katherine closed the door and flipped on the lights. The exhaust fans came on automatically.
She began rooting around in the cupboards for whatever it was she needed. “Robert,” she directed, “put the pyramid out on the island, if you would.”
Feeling like the novice sous chef taking orders from Daniel Boulud, Langdon did as he was told, removing the pyramid from his bag and placing the gold capstone on top of it. When he finished, Katherine was busy filling an enormous pot with hot tap water.
“Would you please lift this to the stove for me?”
Langdon heaved the sloshing pot onto the stove as Katherine turned on the gas burner and cranked up the flame.
“Are we doing lobsters?” he asked hopefully.
“Very funny. No, we’re doing alchemy. And for the record, this is a
pasta
pot, not a lobster pot.” She pointed to the perforated strainer insert that she had removed from the pot and placed on the island beside the pyramid.
Silly me.
“And boiling pasta is going to help us decipher the pyramid?”
Katherine ignored the comment, her tone turning serious. “As I’m sure you know, there is a historical and symbolic
reason
the Masons chose thirty-three as their highest degree.”
“Of course,” Langdon said. In the days of Pythagoras, six centuries before Christ, the tradition of
numerology
hailed the number 33 as the highest of all the Master Numbers. It was the most sacred figure, symbolizing Divine Truth. The tradition lived on within the Masons . . . and elsewhere. It was no coincidence that Christians were taught that Jesus was crucified at age thirty-three, despite no real historical evidence to that effect. Nor was it coincidence that Joseph was said to have been
thirty-three when he married the Virgin Mary, or that Jesus accomplished thirty-three miracles, or that God’s name was mentioned thirty-three times in Genesis, or that, in Islam, all the dwellers of heaven were permanently thirty-three years old.
“Thirty-three,” Katherine said, “is a sacred number in many mystical traditions.”