CHAPTER
28
Inside the
Salle des Etats, Langdon stared in astonishment at the six words glowing on the Plexiglas. The text seemed to hover in space, casting a jagged shadow across Mona Lisa's mysterious smile.
“The Priory,” Langdon whispered. “This proves your grandfather was a member!”
Sophie looked at him in confusion. “You
understand
this?”
“It's flawless,” Langdon said, nodding as his thoughts churned. “It's a proclamation of one of the Priory's most fundamental philosophies!”
Sophie looked baffled in the glow of the message scrawled across the
Mona Lisa
's face.
S
O DARK THE CON OF MAN
“Sophie,” Langdon said, “the Priory's tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a belief that powerful men in the early Christian church ‘conned' the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of the masculine.”
Sophie remained silent, staring at the words.
“The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the sacred feminine, obliterating the goddess from modern religion forever.”
Sophie's expression remained uncertain. “My grandfather sent me to this spot to find this. He must be trying to tell me more than
that
.”
Langdon understood her meaning.
She thinks this is another code
. Whether a hidden meaning existed here or not, Langdon could not immediately say. His mind was still grappling with the bold clarity of Saunière's outward message.
So dark the con of man,
he thought.
So dark indeed
.
Nobody could deny the enormous good the modern Church did in today's troubled world, and yet the Church had a deceitful and violent history. Their brutal crusade to “reeducate” the pagan and feminine-worshipping religions spanned three centuries, employing methods as inspired as they were horrific.
The Catholic Inquisition published the book that arguably could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history.
Malleus Maleficarum
—or
The Witches' Hammer
—indoctrinated the world to “the dangers of freethinking women” and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them. Those deemed “witches” by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any women “suspiciously attuned to the natural world.” Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth—a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God's rightful punishment for Eve's partaking of the Apple of Knowledge, thus giving birth to the idea of Original Sin. During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five
million
women.
The propaganda and bloodshed had worked.
Today's world was living proof.
Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, nor Islamic clerics. The once hallowed act of Hieros Gamos—the natural sexual union between man and woman through which each became spiritually whole—had been recast as a shameful act. Holy men who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil, collaborating with his favorite accomplice . . .
woman
.
Not even the feminine association with the
left-hand
side could escape the Church's defamation. In France and Italy, the words for “left”—
gauche
and
sinistra
—came to have deeply negative overtones, while their right-hand counterparts rang of
right
eousness, dexterity, and correctness. To this day, radical thought was considered
left
wing, irrational thought was
left
brain, and anything evil,
sinister
.
The days of the goddess were over. The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth had become a
man's
world, and the gods of destruction and war were taking their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called
koyanisquatsi
—“life out of balance”—an unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of misogynistic societies, and a growing disrespect for Mother Earth.
“Robert!” Sophie said, her whisper yanking him back. “Someone's coming!”
He heard the approaching footsteps out in the hallway.
“Over here!” Sophie extinguished the black light and seemed to evaporate before Langdon's eyes.
For an instant he felt totally blind.
Over where!
As his vision cleared he saw Sophie's silhouette racing toward the center of the room and ducking out of sight behind the octagonal viewing bench. He was about to dash after her when a booming voice stopped him cold.
“Arretez!”
a man commanded from the doorway.
The Louvre security agent advanced through the entrance to the Salle des Etats, his pistol outstretched, taking deadly aim at Langdon's chest.
Langdon felt his arms raise instinctively for the ceiling.
“Couchez-vous!”
the guard commanded.
“Lie down!”
Langdon was face first on the floor in a matter of seconds. The guard hurried over and kicked his legs apart, spreading Langdon out.
“Mauvaise idée, Monsieur Langdon,”
he said, pressing the gun hard into Langdon's back.
“Mauvaise idée.”
Face down on the parquet floor with his arms and legs spread wide, Langdon found little humor in the irony of his position.
The Vitruvian Man,
he thought.
Face down
.
CHAPTER
29
Inside Saint-Sulpice,
Silas carried the heavy iron votive candle holder from the altar back toward the obelisk. The shaft would do nicely as a battering ram. Eyeing the gray marble panel that covered the apparent hollow in the floor, he realized he could not possibly shatter the covering without making considerable noise.
Iron on marble. It would echo off the vaulted ceilings.
Would the nun hear him? She should be asleep by now. Even so, it was a chance Silas preferred not to take. Looking around for a cloth to wrap around the tip of the iron pole, he saw nothing except the altar's linen mantle, which he refused to defile.
My cloak,
he thought. Knowing he was alone in the great church, Silas untied his cloak and slipped it off his body. As he removed it, he felt a sting as the wool fibers stuck to the fresh wounds on his back.
Naked now, except for his loin swaddle, Silas wrapped his cloak over the end of the iron rod. Then, aiming at the center of the floor tile, he drove the tip into it. A muffled thud. The stone did not break. He drove the pole into it again. Again a dull thud, but this time accompanied by a crack. On the third swing, the covering finally shattered, and stone shards fell into a hollow area beneath the floor.
A compartment!
Quickly pulling the remaining pieces from the opening, Silas gazed into the void. His blood pounded as he knelt down before it. Raising his pale bare arm, he reached inside.
At first he felt nothing. The floor of the compartment was bare, smooth stone. Then, feeling deeper, reaching his arm in under the Rose Line, he touched something! A thick stone tablet. Getting his fingers around the edge, he gripped it and gently lifted the tablet out. As he stood and examined his find, he realized he was holding a rough-hewn stone slab with engraved words. He felt for an instant like a modern-day Moses.
As Silas read the words on the tablet, he felt surprise. He had expected the keystone to be a map, or a complex series of directions, perhaps even encoded. The keystone, however, bore the simplest of inscriptions.
Job 38:11
A Bible verse?
Silas was stunned with the devilish simplicity. The secret location of that which they sought was revealed in a Bible verse? The brotherhood stopped at nothing to mock the righteous!
Job. Chapter thirty-eight. Verse eleven.
Although Silas did not recall the exact contents of verse eleven by heart, he knew the Book of Job told the story of a man whose faith in God survived repeated tests.
Appropriate,
he thought, barely able to contain his excitement.
Looking over his shoulder, he gazed down the shimmering Rose Line and couldn't help but smile. There atop the main altar, propped open on a gilded book stand, sat an enormous leather-bound Bible.
Up in the balcony, Sister Sandrine was shaking. Moments ago, she had been about to flee and carry out her orders, when the man below suddenly removed his cloak. When she saw his alabaster-white flesh, she was overcome with a horrified bewilderment. His broad, pale back was soaked with blood-red slashes. Even from here she could see the wounds were fresh.
This man has been mercilessly whipped!
She also saw the bloody
cilice
around his thigh, the wound beneath it dripping.
What kind of God would want a body punished this way?
The rituals of Opus Dei, Sister Sandrine knew, were not something she would ever understand. But that was hardly her concern at this instant.
Opus Dei is searching for the keystone
. How they knew of it, Sister Sandrine could not imagine, although she knew she did not have time to think.
The bloody monk was now quietly donning his cloak again, clutching his prize as he moved toward the altar, toward the Bible.
In breathless silence, Sister Sandrine left the balcony and raced down the hall to her quarters. Getting on her hands and knees, she reached beneath her wooden bed frame and retrieved the sealed envelope she had hidden there years ago.
Tearing it open, she found four Paris phone numbers.
Trembling, she began to dial.
Downstairs, Silas laid the stone tablet on the altar and turned his eager hands to the leather Bible. His long white fingers were sweating now as he turned the pages. Flipping through the Old Testament, he found the Book of Job. He located chapter thirty-eight. As he ran his finger down the column of text, he anticipated the words he was about to read.
They will lead the way!
Finding verse number eleven, Silas read the text. It was only seven words. Confused, he read it again, sensing something had gone terribly wrong. The verse simply read:
H
ITHERTO SHALT THOU COME, BUT NO FURTHER.
CHAPTER
30
Security warden
Claude Grouard simmered with rage as he stood over his prostrate captive in front of the
Mona Lisa. This bastard killed Jacques Saunière!
Saunière had been like a well-loved father to Grouard and his security team.
Grouard wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and bury a bullet in Robert Langdon's back. As senior warden, Grouard was one of the few guards who actually carried a loaded weapon. He reminded himself, however, that killing Langdon would be a generous fate compared to the misery about to be communicated by Bezu Fache and the French prison system.
Grouard yanked his walkie-talkie off his belt and attempted to radio for backup. All he heard was static. The additional electronic security in this chamber always wrought havoc with the guards' communications.
I have to move to the doorway
. Still aiming his weapon at Langdon, Grouard began backing slowly toward the entrance. On his third step, he spied something that made him stop short.
What the hell is that!
An inexplicable mirage was materializing near the center of the room. A silhouette. There was someone else in the room? A woman was moving through the darkness, walking briskly toward the far left wall. In front of her, a purplish beam of light swung back and forth across the floor, as if she were searching for something with a colored flashlight.
“Qui est là?”
Grouard demanded, feeling his adrenaline spike for a second time in the last thirty seconds. He suddenly didn't know where to aim his gun or what direction to move.
“PTS,” the woman replied calmly, still scanning the floor with her light.
Police Technique et Scientifique
. Grouard was sweating now.
I thought all the agents were gone!
He now recognized the purple light as ultraviolet, consistent with a PTS team, and yet he could not understand why DCPJ would be looking for evidence in here.
“Votre nom!”
Grouard yelled, instinct telling him something was amiss.
“Répondez!”
“C'est moi,”
the voice responded in calm French.
“Sophie Neveu.”
Somewhere in the distant recesses of Grouard's mind, the name registered.
Sophie Neveu?
That was the name of Saunière's granddaughter, wasn't it? She used to come in here as a little kid, but that was years ago.
This couldn't possibly be her!
And even if it were Sophie Neveu, that was hardly a reason to trust her; Grouard had heard the rumors of the painful falling-out between Saunière and his granddaughter.
“You know me,” the woman called. “And Robert Langdon did not kill my grandfather. Believe me.”
Warden Grouard was not about to take
that
on faith.
I need backup!
Trying his walkie-talkie again, he got only static. The entrance was still a good twenty yards behind him, and Grouard began backing up slowly, choosing to leave his gun trained on the man on the floor. As Grouard inched backward, he could see the woman across the room raising her UV light and scrutinizing a large painting that hung on the far side of the Salle des Etats, directly opposite the
Mona Lisa
.
Grouard gasped, realizing which painting it was.
What in the name of God is she doing?
Across the room, Sophie Neveu felt a cold sweat breaking across her forehead. Langdon was still spread-eagle on the floor.
Hold on, Robert. Almost there.
Knowing the guard would never actually shoot either of them, Sophie now turned her attention back to the matter at hand, scanning the entire area around one masterpiece in particular—another Da Vinci. But the UV light revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Not on the floor, on the walls, or even on the canvas itself.
There must be something here!
Sophie felt totally certain she had deciphered her grandfather's intentions correctly.
What else could he possibly intend?
The masterpiece she was examining was a five-foot-tall canvas. The bizarre scene Da Vinci had painted included an awkwardly posed Virgin Mary sitting with Baby Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Angel Uriel on a perilous outcropping of rocks. When Sophie was a little girl, no trip to the
Mona Lisa
had been complete without her grandfather dragging her across the room to see this second painting.
Grand-père, I'm here! But I don't see it!
Behind her, Sophie could hear the guard trying to radio again for help.
Think!
She pictured the message scrawled on the protective glass of the
Mona Lisa. So dark the con of man.
The painting before her had no protective glass on which to write a message, and Sophie knew her grandfather would never have defaced this masterpiece by writing on the painting itself. She paused.
At least not on the front.
Her eyes shot upward, climbing the long cables that dangled from the ceiling to support the canvas.
Could that be it?
Grabbing the left side of the carved wood frame, she pulled it toward her. The painting was large and the backing flexed as she swung it away from the wall. Sophie slipped her head and shoulders in behind the painting and raised the black light to inspect the back.
It took only seconds to realize her instinct had been wrong. The back of the painting was pale and blank. There was no purple text here, only the mottled brown backside of aging canvas and—
Wait.
Sophie's eyes locked on an incongruous glint of lustrous metal lodged near the bottom edge of the frame's wooden armature. The object was small, partially wedged in the slit where the canvas met the frame. A shimmering gold chain dangled off it.
To Sophie's utter amazement, the chain was affixed to a familiar gold key. The broad, sculpted head was in the shape of a cross and bore an engraved seal she had not seen since she was nine years old. A fleur-de-lis with the initials P.S. In that instant, Sophie felt the ghost of her grandfather whispering in her ear.
When the time comes, the key will be yours.
A tightness gripped her throat as she realized that her grandfather, even in death, had kept his promise.
This key opens a box,
his voice was saying,
where I keep many secrets.
Sophie now realized that the entire purpose of tonight's word game had been this key. Her grandfather had it with him when he was killed. Not wanting it to fall into the hands of the police, he hid it behind this painting. Then he devised an ingenious treasure hunt to ensure only Sophie would find it.
“Au secours!”
the guard's voice yelled.
Sophie snatched the key from behind the painting and slipped it deep in her pocket along with the UV penlight. Peering out from behind the canvas, she could see the guard was still trying desperately to raise someone on the walkie-talkie. He was backing toward the entrance, still aiming the gun firmly at Langdon.
“Au secours!”
he shouted again into his radio.
Static.
He can't transmit,
Sophie realized, recalling that tourists with cell phones often got frustrated in here when they tried to call home to brag about seeing the
Mona Lisa
. The extra surveillance wiring in the walls made it virtually impossible to get a carrier unless you stepped out into the hall. The guard was backing quickly toward the exit now, and Sophie knew she had to act immediately.
Gazing up at the large painting behind which she was partially ensconced, Sophie realized that Leonardo da Vinci, for the second time tonight, was there to help.
Another few meters
, Grouard told himself, keeping his gun leveled.
“Arrêtez! Ou je la détruis!”
the woman's voice echoed across the room.
Grouard glanced over and stopped in his tracks. “
Mon dieu, non!”
Through the reddish haze, he could see that the woman had actually lifted the large painting off its cables and propped it on the floor in front of her. At five feet tall, the canvas almost entirely hid her body. Grouard's first thought was to wonder why the painting's trip wires hadn't set off alarms, but of course the artwork cable sensors had yet to be reset tonight.
What is she doing!
When he saw it, his blood went cold.
The canvas started to bulge in the middle, the fragile outlines of the Virgin Mary, Baby Jesus, and John the Baptist beginning to distort.
“Non!”
Grouard screamed, frozen in horror as he watched the priceless Da Vinci stretching. The woman was pushing her knee into the center of the canvas from behind!
“NON!”
Grouard wheeled and aimed his gun at her but instantly realized it was an empty threat. The canvas was only fabric, but it was utterly impenetrable—a six-million-dollar piece of body armor.
I can't put a bullet through a Da Vinci!
“Set down your gun and radio,” the woman said in calm French, “or I'll put my knee through this painting. I think you know how my grandfather would feel about that.”
Grouard felt dizzy. “Please . . . no. That's
Madonna of the Rocks
!” He dropped his gun and radio, raising his hands over his head.
“Thank you,” the woman said. “Now do exactly as I tell you, and everything will work out fine.”
Moments later, Langdon's pulse was still thundering as he ran beside Sophie down the emergency stairwell toward the ground level. Neither of them had said a word since leaving the trembling Louvre guard lying in the Salle des Etats. The guard's pistol was now clutched tightly in Langdon's hands, and he couldn't wait to get rid of it. The weapon felt heavy and dangerously foreign.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Langdon wondered if Sophie had any idea how valuable a painting she had almost ruined. Her choice in art seemed eerily pertinent to tonight's adventure. The Da Vinci she had grabbed, much like the
Mona Lisa,
was notorious among art historians for its plethora of hidden pagan symbolism.
“You chose a valuable hostage,” he said as they ran.
“Madonna of the Rocks,”
she replied. “But I didn't choose it, my grandfather did. He left me a little something behind the painting.”
Langdon shot her a startled look. “What!? But how did you know which painting? Why
Madonna of the Rocks?”
“So dark the con of man.” She flashed a triumphant smile. “I missed the first two anagrams, Robert. I wasn't about to miss the third.”