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.
