CHAPTER 70
Standing in the drawing room of Château Villette, Lieutenant Collet watched the
dying fire and felt despondent. Captain Fache had arrived moments earlier and
was now in the next room, yelling into the phone, trying to coordinate the
failed attempt to locate the missing Range Rover.
It could be anywhere by now, Collet thought.
Having disobeyed Fache's direct orders and lost Langdon for a second time,
Collet was grateful that PTS had located a bullet hole in the floor, which at
least corroborated Collet's claims that a shot had been fired. Still, Fache's
mood was sour, and Collet sensed there would be dire repercussions when the dust
settled.
Unfortunately, the clues they were turning up here seemed to shed no light at
all on what was going on or who was involved. The black Audi outside had been
rented in a false name with false credit card numbers, and the prints in the car
matched nothing in the Interpol database.
Another agent hurried into the living room, his eyes urgent. "Where's Captain
Fache?"
Collet barely looked up from the burning embers. "He's on the phone."
"I'm off the phone," Fache snapped, stalking into the room. "What have you got?"
The second agent said, "Sir, Central just heard from André Vernet at the
Depository Bank of Zurich. He wants to talk to you privately. He is changing his
story."
"Oh?" Fache said.
Now Collet looked up.
"Vernet is admitting that Langdon and Neveu spent time inside his bank tonight."
"We figured that out," Fache said. "Why did Vernet lie about it?"
"He said he'll talk only to you, but he's agreed to cooperate fully."
"In exchange for what?"
"For our keeping his bank's name out of the news and also for helping him
recover some stolen property. It sounds like Langdon and Neveu stole something
from Saunière's account."
"What?" Collet blurted. "How?"
Fache never flinched, his eyes riveted on the second agent. "What did they
steal?"
"Vernet didn't elaborate, but he sounds like he's willing to do anything to get
it back."
Collet tried to imagine how this could happen. Maybe Langdon and Neveu had held
a bank employee at gunpoint? Maybe they forced Vernet to open Saunière's account
and facilitate an escape in the armored truck. As feasible as it was, Collet was
having trouble believing Sophie Neveu could be involved in anything like that.
From the kitchen, another agent yelled to Fache. "Captain? I'm going through Mr.
Teabing's speed dial numbers, and I'm on the phone with Le Bourget Airfield.
I've got some bad news."
Thirty seconds later, Fache was packing up and preparing to leave Château
Villette. He had just learned that Teabing kept a private jet nearby at Le
Bourget Airfield and that the plane had taken off about a half hour ago.
The Bourget representative on the phone had claimed not to know who was on the
plane or where it was headed. The takeoff had been unscheduled, and no flight
plan had been logged. Highly illegal, even for a small airfield. Fache was
certain that by applying the right pressure, he could get the answers he was
looking for.
"Lieutenant Collet," Fache barked, heading for the door. "I have no choice but
to leave you in charge of the PTS investigation here. Try to do something right
for a change."
CHAPTER 71
As the Hawker leveled
off, with its nose aimed for England, Langdon carefully lifted the rosewood box
from his lap, where he had been protecting it during takeoff. Now, as he set the
box on the table, he could sense Sophie and Teabing leaning forward with
anticipation.
Unlatching the lid and opening the box, Langdon turned his attention not to the
lettered dials of the cryptex, but rather to the tiny hole on the underside of
the box lid. Using the tip of a pen, he carefully removed the inlaid Rose on top
and revealed the text beneath it. Sub Rosa, he mused, hoping a fresh look at the
text would bring clarity. Focusing all his energies, Langdon studied the strange
text.
After several seconds, he began to feel the initial frustration resurfacing.
"Leigh, I just can't seem to place it."
From where Sophie was seated across the table, she could not yet see the text,
but Langdon's inability to immediately identify the language surprised her. My
grandfather spoke a language so obscure that even a symbologist can't identify
it? She quickly realized she should not find this surprising. This would not be
the first secret Jacques Saunière had kept from his granddaughter.
Opposite Sophie, Leigh Teabing felt ready to burst. Eager for his chance to see
the text, he quivered with excitement, leaning in, trying to see around Langdon,
who was still hunched over the box.
"I don't know," Langdon whispered intently. "My first guess is a Semitic, but
now I'm not so sure. Most primary Semitics include nekkudot. This has none."
"Probably ancient," Teabing offered.
"Nekkudot?" Sophie inquired.
Teabing never took his eyes from the box. "Most modern Semitic alphabets have no
vowels and use nekkudot—tiny dots and dashes written either below or within the
consonants—to indicate what vowel sound accompanies them. Historically speaking,
nekkudot are a relatively modern addition to language."
Langdon was still hovering over the script. "A Sephardic transliteration,
perhaps...?"
Teabing could bear it no longer. "Perhaps if I just..." Reaching over, he edged
the box away from Langdon and pulled it toward himself. No doubt Langdon had a
solid familiarity with the standard ancients—Greek, Latin, the Romances—but from
the fleeting glance Teabing had of this language, he thought it looked more
specialized, possibly a Rashi script or a STA'M with crowns.
Taking a deep breath, Teabing feasted his eyes upon the engraving. He said
nothing for a very long time. With each passing second, Teabing felt his
confidence deflating. "I'm astonished," he said. "This language looks like
nothing I've ever seen!"
Langdon slumped.
"Might I see it?" Sophie asked.
Teabing pretended not to hear her. "Robert, you said earlier that you thought
you'd seen something like this before?"
Langdon looked vexed. "I thought so. I'm not sure. The script looks familiar
somehow."
"Leigh?" Sophie repeated, clearly not appreciating being left out of the
discussion. "Might I have a look at the box my grandfather made?"
"Of course, dear," Teabing said, pushing it over to her. He hadn't meant to
sound belittling, and yet Sophie Neveu was light-years out of her league. If a
British Royal Historian and a Harvard symbologist could not even identify the
language—
"Aah," Sophie said, seconds after examining the box. "I should have guessed."
Teabing and Langdon turned in unison, staring at her.
"Guessed what?" Teabing demanded.
Sophie shrugged. "Guessed that this would be the language my grandfather would
have used."
"You're saying you can read this text?" Teabing exclaimed.
"Quite easily," Sophie chimed, obviously enjoying herself now. "My grandfather
taught me this language when I was only six years old. I'm fluent." She leaned
across the table and fixed Teabing with an admonishing glare. "And frankly, sir,
considering your allegiance to the Crown, I'm a little surprised you didn't
recognize it."
In a flash, Langdon knew.
No wonder the script looks so damned familiar!
Several years ago, Langdon had attended an event at Harvard's Fogg Museum.
Harvard dropout Bill Gates had returned to his alma mater to lend to the museum
one of his priceless acquisitions—eighteen sheets of paper he had recently
purchased at auction from the Armand Hammar Estate.
His winning bid—a cool $30.8 million.
The author of the pages—Leonardo da Vinci.
The eighteen folios—now known as Leonardo's Codex Leicester after their famous
owner, the Earl of Leicester—were all that remained of one of Leonardo's most
fascinating notebooks: essays and drawings outlining Da Vinci's progressive
theories on astronomy, geology, archaeology, and hydrology.
Langdon would never forget his reaction after waiting in line and finally
viewing the priceless parchment. Utter letdown. The pages were unintelligible.
Despite being beautifully preserved and written in an impeccably neat
penmanship—crimson ink on cream paper—the codex looked like gibberish. At first
Langdon thought he could not read them because Da Vinci wrote his notebooks in
an archaic Italian. But after studying them more closely, he realized he could
not identify a single Italian word, or even one letter.
"Try this, sir," whispered the female docent at the display case. She motioned
to a hand mirror affixed to the display on a chain. Langdon picked it up and
examined the text in the mirror's surface.
Instantly it was clear.
Langdon had been so eager to peruse some of the great thinker's ideas that he
had forgotten one of the man's numerous artistic talents was an ability to write
in a mirrored script that was virtually illegible to anyone other than himself.
Historians still debated whether Da Vinci wrote this way simply to amuse himself
or to keep people from peering over his shoulder and stealing his ideas, but the
point was moot. Da Vinci did as he pleased.
Sophie smiled inwardly to see that Robert understood her meaning. "I can read
the first few words," she said. "It's English."
Teabing was still sputtering. "What's going on?"
"Reverse text," Langdon said. "We need a mirror."
"No we don't," Sophie said. "I bet this veneer is thin enough." She lifted the
rosewood box up to a canister light on the wall and began examining the
underside of the lid. Her grandfather couldn't actually write in reverse, so he
always cheated by writing normally and then flipping the paper over and tracing
the reversed impression. Sophie's guess was that he had wood-burned normal text
into a block of wood and then run the back of the block through a sander until
the wood was paper thin and the wood-burning could be seen through the wood.
Then he'd simply flipped the piece over, and laid it in.
As Sophie moved the lid closer to the light, she saw she was right. The bright
beam sifted through the thin layer of wood, and the script appeared in reverse
on the underside of the lid.
Instantly legible.
"English," Teabing croaked, hanging his head in shame. "My native tongue."
At the rear of the plane, Rémy Legaludec strained to hear beyond the rumbling
engines, but the conversation up front was inaudible. Rémy did not like the way
the night was progressing. Not at all. He looked down at the bound monk at his
feet. The man lay perfectly still now, as if in a trance of acceptance, or
perhaps, in silent prayer for deliverance.
CHAPTER 72
Fifteen thousand feet in the air, Robert Langdon felt the physical world fade
away as all of his thoughts converged on Saunière's mirror-image poem, which was
illuminated through the lid of the box.
Sophie quickly found some paper and copied it down longhand. When she was done,
the three of them took turns reading the text. It was like some kind of
archaeological crossword... a riddle that promised to reveal how to open the
cryptex. Langdon read the verse slowly.
An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll... and helps us keep her scatter'd
family whole... a headstone praised by templars is the key... and atbash will
reveal the truth to thee.
Before Langdon could even ponder what ancient password the verse was trying to
reveal, he felt something far more fundamental resonate within him—the meter of
the poem. Iambic pentameter.
Langdon had come across this meter often over the years while researching secret
societies across Europe, including just last year in the Vatican Secret
Archives. For centuries, iambic pentameter had been a preferred poetic meter of
outspoken literati across the globe, from the ancient Greek writer Archilochus
to Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Voltaire—bold souls who chose to write
their social commentaries in a meter that many of the day believed had mystical
properties. The roots of iambic pentameter were deeply pagan.
Iambs. Two syllables with opposite emphasis. Stressed and unstressed. Yin yang.
A balanced pair. Arranged in strings of five. Pentameter. Five for the pentacle
of Venus and the sacred feminine.
"It's pentameter!" Teabing blurted, turning to Langdon. "And the verse is in
English! La lingua pura!"
Langdon nodded. The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the
Church, 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 very physiologies tell us
sex is natural—a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment—and yet modern
religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the
hand of the devil."
Langdon decided not to shock his students with the fact that more than a dozen
secret societies around the world—many of them quite influential—still practiced
sex rites and kept the ancient traditions alive. Tom Cruise's character in the
film Eyes Wide Shut discovered this the hard way when he sneaked into a private
gathering of ultraelite Manhattanites only to find himself witnessing Hieros
Gamos. Sadly, the filmmakers had gotten most of the specifics wrong, but the
basic gist was there—a secret society communing to celebrate the magic of sexual
union.
"Professor Langdon?" A male student in back raised his hand, sounding hopeful.
"Are you saying that instead of going to chapel, we should have more sex?"
Langdon chuckled, not about to take the bait. From what he'd heard about Harvard
parties, these kids were having more than enough sex. "Gentlemen," he said,
knowing he was on tender ground, "might I offer a suggestion for all of you.
Without being so bold as to condone premarital sex, and without being so naive
as to think you're all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice about
your sex lives."
All the men in the audience leaned forward, listening intently.
"The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you
cannot approach sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find
that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred
feminine."
The women smiled knowingly, nodding.
The men exchanged dubious giggles and off-color jokes.
Langdon sighed. College men were still boys.
Sophie's forehead felt cold as she pressed it against the plane's window and
stared blankly into the void, trying to process what Langdon had just told her.
She felt a new regret well within her. Ten years. She pictured the stacks of
unopened letters her grandfather had sent her. I will tell Robert everything.
Without turning from the window, Sophie began to speak. Quietly. Fearfully.
As she began to recount what had happened that night, she felt herself drifting
back... alighting in the woods outside her grandfather's Normandy château...
searching the deserted house in confusion... hearing the voices below her... and
then finding the hidden door. She inched down the stone staircase, one step at a
time, into that basement grotto. She could taste the earthy air. Cool and light.
It was March. In the shadows of her hiding place on the staircase, she watched
as the strangers swayed and chanted by flickering orange candles.
I'm dreaming, Sophie told herself. This is a dream. What else could this be?
The women and men were staggered, black, white, black, white. The women's
beautiful gossamer gowns billowed as they raised in their right hands golden
orbs and called out in unison, "I was with you in the beginning, in the dawn of
all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start of day."
The women lowered their orbs, and everyone rocked back and forth as if in a
trance. They were revering something in the center of the circle.
What are they looking at?
The voices accelerated now. Louder. Faster.
"The woman whom you behold is love!" The women called, raising their orbs again.
The men responded, "She has her dwelling in eternity!"
The chanting grew steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The
participants stepped inward and knelt.
In that instant, Sophie could finally see what they were all watching.
On a low, ornate altar in the center of the circle lay a man. He was naked,
positioned on his back, and wearing a black mask. Sophie instantly recognized
his body and the birthmark on his shoulder. She almost cried out. Grand-père!
This image alone would have shocked Sophie beyond belief, and yet there was
more.
Straddling her grandfather was a naked woman wearing a white mask, her luxuriant
silver hair flowing out behind it. Her body was plump, far from perfect, and she
was gyrating in rhythm to the chanting—making love to Sophie's grandfather.
Sophie wanted to turn and run, but she couldn't. The stone walls of the grotto
imprisoned her as the chanting rose to a fever pitch. The circle of participants
seemed almost to be singing now, the noise rising in crescendo to a frenzy. With
a sudden roar, the entire room seemed to erupt in climax. Sophie could not
breathe. She suddenly realized she was quietly sobbing. She turned and staggered
silently up the stairs, out of the house, and drove trembling back to Paris.
CHAPTER 75
The chartered turboprop was just passing over the twinkling lights of Monaco
when Aringarosa hung up on Fache for the second time. He reached for the
airsickness bag again but felt too drained even to be sick.
Just let it be over!
Fache's newest update seemed unfathomable, and yet almost nothing tonight made
sense anymore. What is going on? Everything had spiraled wildly out of control.
What have I gotten Silas into? What have I gotten myself into!
On shaky legs, Aringarosa walked to the cockpit. "I need to change
destinations."
The pilot glanced over his shoulder and laughed. "You're joking, right?"
"No. I have to get to London immediately."
"Father, this is a charter flight, not a taxi."
"I will pay you extra, of course. How much? London is only one hour farther
north and requires almost no change of direction, so—"
"It's not a question of money, Father, there are other issues."
"Ten thousand euro. Right now."
The pilot turned, his eyes wide with shock. "How much? What kind of priest
carries that kind of cash?"
Aringarosa walked back to his black briefcase, opened it, and removed one of the
bearer bonds. He handed it to the pilot.
"What is this?" the pilot demanded.
"A ten-thousand-euro bearer bond drawn on the Vatican Bank."
The pilot looked dubious.
"It's the same as cash."
"Only cash is cash," the pilot said, handing the bond back.
Aringarosa felt weak as he steadied himself against the cockpit door. "This is a
matter of life or death. You must help me. I need to get to London."
The pilot eyed the bishop's gold ring. "Real diamonds?"
Aringarosa looked at the ring. "I could not possibly part with this."
The pilot shrugged, turning and focusing back out the windshield.
Aringarosa felt a deepening sadness. He looked at the ring. Everything it
represented was about to be lost to the bishop anyway. After a long moment, he
slid the ring from his finger and placed it gently on the instrument panel.
Aringarosa slunk out of the cockpit and sat back down. Fifteen seconds later, he
could feel the pilot banking a few more degrees to the north.
Even so, Aringarosa's moment of glory was in shambles.
It had all begun as a holy cause. A brilliantly crafted scheme. Now, like a
house of cards, it was collapsing in on itself... and the end was nowhere in
sight.
CHAPTER 76
Langdon could see Sophie
was still shaken from recounting her experience of Hieros Gamos. For his part,
Langdon was amazed to have heard it. Not only had Sophie witnessed the
full-blown ritual, but her own grandfather had been the celebrant... the Grand
Master of the Priory of Sion. It was heady company. Da Vinci, Botticelli, Isaac
Newton, Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau... Jacques Saunière.
"I don't know what else I can tell you," Langdon said softly.
Sophie's eyes were a deep green now, tearful. "He raised me like his own
daughter."
Langdon now recognized the emotion that had been growing in her eyes as they
spoke. It was remorse. Distant and deep. Sophie Neveu had shunned her
grandfather and was now seeing him in an entirely different light.
Outside, the dawn was coming fast, its crimson aura gathering off the starboard.
The earth was still black beneath them.
"Victuals, my dears?" Teabing rejoined them with a flourish, presenting several
cans of Coke and a box of old crackers. He apologized profusely for the limited
fare as he doled out the goods. "Our friend the monk isn't talking yet," he
chimed, "but give him time." He bit into a cracker and eyed the poem. "So, my
lovely, any headway?" He looked at Sophie. "What is your grandfather trying to
tell us here? Where the devil is this headstone? This headstone praised by
Templars."
Sophie shook her head and remained silent.
While Teabing again dug into the verse, Langdon popped a Coke and turned to the
window, his thoughts awash with images of secret rituals and unbroken codes. A
headstone praised by Templars is the key. He took a long sip from the can. A
headstone praised by Templars. The cola was warm.
The dissolving veil of night seemed to evaporate quickly, and as Langdon watched
the transformation, he saw a shimmering ocean stretch out beneath them. The
English Channel. It wouldn't be long now.
Langdon willed the light of day to bring with it a second kind of illumination,
but the lighter it became outside, the further he felt from the truth. He heard
the rhythms of iambic pentameter and chanting, Hieros Gamos and sacred rites,
resonating with the rumble of the jet.
A headstone praised by Templars.
The plane was over land again when a flash of enlightenment struck him. Langdon
set down his empty can of Coke hard. "You won't believe this," he said, turning
to the others. "The Templar headstone—I figured it out."
Teabing's eyes turned to saucers. "You know where the headstone is?"
Langdon smiled. "Not where it is. What it is."
Sophie leaned in to hear.
"I think the headstone references a literal stone head," Langdon explained,
savoring the familiar excitement of academic breakthrough. "Not a grave marker."
"A stone head?" Teabing demanded.
Sophie looked equally confused.
"Leigh," Langdon said, turning, "during the Inquisition, the Church accused the
Knights Templar of all kinds of heresies, right?"
"Correct. They fabricated all kinds of charges. Sodomy, urination on the cross,
devil worship, quite a list."
"And on that list was the worship of false idols, right? Specifically, the
Church accused the Templars of secretly performing rituals in which they prayed
to a carved stone head... the pagan god—"
"Baphomet!" Teabing blurted. "My heavens, Robert, you're right! A headstone
praised by Templars!"
Langdon quickly explained to Sophie that Baphomet was a pagan fertility god
associated with the creative force of reproduction. Baphomet's head was
represented as that of a ram or goat, a common symbol of procreation and
fecundity. The Templars honored Baphomet by encircling a stone replica of his
head and chanting prayers.
"Baphomet," Teabing tittered. "The ceremony honored the creative magic of sexual
union, but Pope Clement convinced everyone that Baphomet's head was in fact that
of the devil. The Pope used the head of Baphomet as the linchpin in his case
against the Templars."
Langdon concurred. The modern belief in a horned devil known as Satan could be
traced back to Baphomet and the Church's attempts to recast the horned fertility
god as a symbol of evil. The Church had obviously succeeded, although not
entirely. Traditional American Thanksgiving tables still bore pagan, horned
fertility symbols. The cornucopia or "horn of plenty" was a tribute to
Baphomet's fertility and dated back to Zeus being suckled by a goat whose horn
broke off and magically filled with fruit. Baphomet also appeared in group
photographs when some joker raised two fingers behind a friend's head in the
V-symbol of horns; certainly few of the pranksters realized their mocking
gesture was in fact advertising their victim's robust sperm count.
"Yes, yes," Teabing was saying excitedly. "Baphomet must be what the poem is
referring to. A headstone praised by Templars."
"Okay," Sophie said, "but if Baphomet is the headstone praised by Templars, then
we have a new dilemma." She pointed to the dials on the cryptex. "Baphomet has
eight letters. We only have room for five."
Teabing grinned broadly. "My dear, this is where the Atbash Cipher comes into
play"
CHAPTER 77
Langdon was impressed. Teabing had just finished writing out the entire
twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet—alef-beit—from memory. Granted, he'd used
Roman equivalents rather than Hebrew characters, but even so, he was now reading
through them with flawless pronunciation.
A B G D H V Z Ch T Y K L M N S O P Tz Q R Sh Th
"Alef, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, Hei, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yud, Kaf, Lamed, Mem,
Nun, Samech, Ayin, Pei, Tzadik, Kuf, Reish, Shin, and Tav." Teabing dramatically
mopped his brow and plowed on. "In formal Hebrew spelling, the vowel sounds are
not written. Therefore, when we write the word Baphomet using the Hebrew
alphabet, it will lose its three vowels in translation, leaving us—"
"Five letters," Sophie blurted.
Teabing nodded and began writing again. "Okay, here is the proper spelling of
Baphomet in 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 Château 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:
Les Dossiers Secrets—Number 4° lm1 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 |
GUILLAUME DE GlSORS |
1266-1307 |
EDOUARD DE BAR |
1307-1336 |
JEANNE DE BAR |
1336-1351 |
JEAN DE SAINT-CLAIR |
1351-1366 |
BLANCE D'EVREUX |
1366-1398 |
NICOLAS FLAMEL |
1398-1418 |
RENE D'ANJOU |
1418-1480 |
IOLANDE DE BAR |
1480-1483 |
SANDRO BOTTICELLI |
1483-1510 |
LEONARDO DA VINCI |
1510-1519 |
CONNETABLE DE BOURBON |
1519-1527 |
FERDINAND DE GONZAQUE |
1527-1575 |
LOUIS DE NEVERS |
1575-1595 |
ROBERT FLUDD |
1595-1637 |
J. VALENTIN ANDREA |
1637-1654 |
ROBERT BOYLE |
1654-1691 |
ISAAC NEWTON |
1691-1727 |
CHARLES RADCLYFFE |
1727-1746 |
CHARLES DE LORRAINE |
1746-1780 |
MAXIMILIAN DE LORRAINE |
1780-1801 |
CHARLES NODIER |
1801-1844 |
VICTOR HUGO | 1844-1885 |
CLAUDE DEBUSSY | 1885-1918 |
JEAN COCTEAU | 1918-1963 |
Prieuré de Sion? Collet wondered.
"Lieutenant?" Another agent stuck his head in. "The switchboard has an urgent
call for Captain Fache, but they can't reach him. Will you take it?"
Collet returned to the kitchen and took the call.
It was André Vernet.
The banker's refined accent did little to mask the tension in his voice. "I
thought Captain Fache said he would call me, but I have not yet heard from him."
"The captain is quite busy," Collet replied. "May I help you?"
"I was assured I would be kept abreast of your progress tonight."
For a moment, Collet thought he recognized the timbre of the man's voice, but he
couldn't quite place it. "Monsieur Vernet, I am currently in charge of the Paris
investigation. My name is Lieutenant Collet."
There was a long pause on the line. "Lieutenant, I have another call coming in.
Please excuse me. I will call you later." He hung up.
For several seconds, Collet held the receiver. Then it dawned on him. I knew I
recognized that voice! The revelation made him gasp.
The armored car driver.
With the fake Rolex.
Collet now understood why the banker had hung up so quickly. Vernet had
remembered the name Lieutenant Collet—the officer he blatantly lied to earlier
tonight.
Collet pondered the implications of this bizarre development. Vernet is
involved. Instinctively, he knew he should call Fache. Emotionally, he knew this
lucky break was going to be his moment to shine.
He immediately called Interpol and requested every shred of information they
could find on the Depository Bank of Zurich and its president, André Vernet.