Langdon realized Kohler was right. Just last week the Harvard School of Divinity had marched on the Biology Building, protesting the genetic engineering taking place in the graduate program. The chairman of the Bio Department, famed ornithologist Richard Aaronian, defended his curriculum by hanging a huge banner from his office window. The banner depicted the Christian "fish" modified with four little feet—a tribute, Aaronian claimed, to the African lungfishes’ evolution onto dry land. Beneath the fish, instead of the word "Jesus," was the proclamation "Darwin!"
A sharp beeping sound cut the air, and Langdon looked up. Kohler reached down into the array of electronics on his wheelchair. He slipped a beeper out of its holder and read the incoming message.
"Good. That is Leonardo’s daughter. Ms. Vetra is arriving at the helipad right now. We will meet her there. I think it best she not come up here and see her father this way."
Langdon agreed. It would be a shock no child deserved.
"I will ask Ms. Vetra to explain the project she and her father have been working on… perhaps shedding light on why he was murdered."
"You think Vetra’s
"Quite possibly. Leonardo told me he was working on something groundbreaking. That is all he said. He had become very secretive about the project. He had a private lab and demanded seclusion, which I gladly afforded him on account of his brilliance. His work had been consuming huge amounts of electric power lately, but I refrained from questioning him." Kohler rotated toward the study door. "There is, however, one more thing you need to know before we leave this flat."
Langdon was not sure he wanted to hear it.
"An item was stolen from Vetra by his murderer."
"An item?"
"Follow me."
The director propelled his wheelchair back into the fog-filled living room. Langdon followed, not knowing what to expect. Kohler maneuvered to within inches of Vetra’s body and stopped. He ushered Langdon to join him. Reluctantly, Langdon came close, bile rising in his throat at the smell of the victim’s frozen urine.
"Look at his face," Kohler said.
Hesitantly, Langdon knelt down. He tried to see Vetra’s face, but the head was twisted 180 degrees backward, his face pressed into the carpet.
Struggling against his handicap Kohler reached down and carefully twisted Vetra’s frozen head. Cracking loudly, the corpse’s face rotated into view, contorted in agony. Kohler held it there a moment.
"Sweet Jesus!" Langdon cried, stumbling back in horror. Vetra’s face was covered in blood. A single hazel eye stared lifelessly back at him. The other socket was tattered and empty. "They stole his
Langdon stepped out of Building C into the open air, grateful to be outside Vetra’s flat. The sun helped dissolve the image of the empty eye socket emblazoned into his mind.
"This way, please," Kohler said, veering up a steep path. The electric wheelchair seemed to accelerate effortlessly. "Ms. Vetra will be arriving any moment."
Langdon hurried to keep up.
"So," Kohler asked. "Do you still doubt the Illuminati’s involvement?"
Langdon had no idea what to think anymore. Vetra’s religious affiliations were definitely troubling, and yet Langdon could not bring himself to abandon every shred of academic evidence he had ever researched. Besides, there was the eye…
"I still maintain," Langdon said, more forcefully than he intended. "that the Illuminati are
"What?"
"Random mutilation," Langdon explained, "is very…
"Deliberate? Surgically removing someone’s eyeball is not deliberate?"
"It sends no clear message. It serves no higher purpose."
Kohler’s wheelchair stopped short at the top of the hill. He turned. "Mr. Langdon, believe me, that missing eye does
As the two men crossed the grassy rise, the beating of helicopter blades became audible to the west. A chopper appeared, arching across the open valley toward them. It banked sharply, then slowed to a hover over a helipad painted on the grass.
Langdon watched, detached, his mind churning circles like the blades, wondering if a full night’s sleep would make his current disorientation any clearer. Somehow, he doubted it.
As the skids touched down, a pilot jumped out and started unloading gear. There was a lot of it—duffels, vinyl wet bags, scuba tanks, and crates of what appeared to be high-tech diving equipment.
Langdon was confused. "Is that Ms. Vetra’s gear?" he yelled to Kohler over the roar of the engines.
Kohler nodded and yelled back, "She was doing biological research in the Balearic Sea."
