Langdon shook his head. «Not at all.» Still, he felt a surge of hope. «But if he got the information off the bottom of the pyramid, we can get it, too.»
Sato shook her head. «The pyramid’s gone. We’ve looked. He took it with him.»
Langdon remained silent a moment, closing his eyes and trying to recall what he had seen on the base of the pyramid. The grid of symbols had been one of the last images he had seen before drowning, and trauma had a way of burning memories deeper into the mind. He could recall some of the grid, definitely not all of it, but maybe enough?
He turned to Sato and said hurriedly, «I may be able to remember enough, but I need you to look up something on the Internet.»
She pulled out her BlackBerry.
«Run a search for ‘The Order Eight Franklin Square.’ »
Sato gave him a startled look but began typing without questions.
Langdon’s vision was still blurry, and he was only now starting to process his strange surroundings. He realized that the stone table on which they were leaning was covered with old bloodstains, and the wall to his right was entirely plastered with pages of text, photos, drawings, maps, and a giant web of strings interconnecting them.
Langdon moved toward the strange collage, still clutching the blankets around his body. Tacked on the wall was an utterly bizarre collection of information — pages from ancient texts ranging from black magic to Christian Scripture, drawings of symbols and sigils, pages of conspiracy-theory web sites, and satellite photos of washington, d.c., scrawled with notes and question marks. one of the sheets was a long list of words in many languages. he recognized some of them as sacred masonic words, others as ancient magic words, and others from ceremonial incantations.
Langdon’s long-standing skepticism about the Masonic Pyramid was based largely on what it allegedly revealed — the location of the Ancient Mysteries. This discovery would have to involve an enormous vault filled with thousands upon thousands of volumes that had somehow survived the long-lost ancient libraries in which they had once been stored. It all seemed impossible.
Langdon most definitely did
Sure enough, there was one recurring theme.
My God, he’s looking for the verbum significatium. .
Sato arrived beside him. «Is this what you asked for?» She handed him her BlackBerry.
Langdon looked at the eight-by-eight grid of numbers on the screen. «Exactly.» He grabbed a piece of scrap paper. «I’ll need a pen.»
Sato handed him one from her pocket. «Please hurry.»
Inside the basement office of the Directorate of Science and Technology, Nola Kaye was once again studying the redacted document brought to her by sys-sec Rick Parrish.
She grabbed the phone and dialed.
Sato answered instantly, sounding tense. «Nola, I was just about to call you.»
«I have new information,» Nola said. «I’m not sure how this fits, but I’ve discovered there’s a redacted — »
«forget it, whatever it is,» sato interrupted. «we’re out of time. we failed to apprehend the target, and i have every reason to believe he’s about to carry out his threat.»
Nola felt a chill.
«The good news is we know exactly where he’s going.» Sato took a deep breath. «The bad news is that he’s carrying a
Less than ten miles away, mal’akh tucked the blanket around peter solomon and wheeled him across a moonlit parking lot into the shadow of an enormous building. the structure had exactly thirty-three outer columns. . each precisely thirty-three feet tall. the mountainous structure was deserted at this hour, and nobody would ever see them back here. not that it mattered. from a distance, no one would think twice about a tall, kindly-looking man in a long black coat taking a bald invalid for an evening stroll.
