The Lost Symbol

eyes of Katherine Solomon.

As Mal’akh reached the bay door, he reassured himself that Katherine had not truly escaped; she had only prolonged the inevitable. He slid through the opening and strode confidently across the darkness until his feet hit the carpet. Then he took a right turn and headed for the Cube. The banging on the door of Pod 5 had stopped, and Mal’akh suspected the guard was now trying to remove the dime Mal’akh had jammed into the key panel to render it useless.

When Mal’akh reached the door that led into the Cube, he located the outer keypad and inserted Trish’s key card. The panel lit up. He entered Trish’s PIN and went inside. The lights were all ablaze, and as he moved into the sterile space, he squinted in amazement at the dazzling array of equipment. Mal’akh was no stranger to the power of technology; he performed his own breed of science in the basement of his home, and last night some of that science had borne fruit.

The Truth.

Peter Solomon’s unique confinement — trapped alone in the in-between — had laid bare all of the man’s secrets. I can see his soul. Mal’akh had learned certain secrets he anticipated, and others he had not, including the news about katherine’s lab and her shocking discoveries. Science is getting close, Mal’akh had realized. And I will not allow it to light the way for the unworthy.

Katherine’s work here had begun using modern science to answer ancient philosophical questions. Does anyone hear our prayers? Is there life after death? Do humans have souls? Incredibly, Katherine had answered all of these questions, and more. Scientifically. Conclusively. The methods she used were irrefutable. Even the most skeptical of people would be persuaded by the results of her experiments. If this information were published and made known, a fundamental shift would begin in the consciousness of man. They will start to find their way. Mal’akh’s last task tonight, before his transformation, was to ensure that this did not happen.

As he moved through the lab, Mal’akh located the data room that Peter had told him about. He peered through the heavy glass walls at the two holographic data-storage units. Exactly as he said they would be. Mal’akh found it hard to imagine that the contents of these little boxes could change the course of human development, and yet Truth had always been the most potent of all the catalysts.

Eyeing the holographic storage units, Mal’akh produced Trish’s key card and inserted it in the door’s security panel. To his surprise, the panel did not light up. Apparently, access to this room was not a trust extended to Trish Dunne. He now reached for the key card he had found in Katherine’s lab-coat pocket. When he inserted this one, the panel lit up.

Mal’akh had a problem. I never got Katherine’s PIN. He tried Trish’s PIN, but it didn’t work. Stroking his chin, he stepped back and examined the three-inch-thick Plexiglas door. Even with an ax, he knew he would be unable to break through and obtain the drives he needed to destroy.

Mal’akh had planned for this contingency, however.

Inside the power-supply room, exactly as Peter had described, Mal’akh located the rack holding several metal cylinders resembling large scuba tanks. The cylinders bore the letters LH, the number 2, and the universal symbol for combustible. One of the canisters was connected to the lab’s hydrogen fuel cell.

Mal’akh left one canister connected and carefully heaved one of the reserve cylinders down onto a dolly beside the rack. Then he rolled the cylinder out of the power-supply room, across the lab, to the Plexiglas door of the data-storage room. Although this location would certainly be plenty close enough, he had noticed one weakness in the heavy Plexiglas door — the small space between the bottom and the jamb.

At the threshold, he carefully laid the canister on its side and slid the flexible rubber tube beneath the door. it took him a moment to remove the safety seals and access the cylinder’s valve, but once he did, ever so gently, he uncocked the valve. through the plexiglas, he could see the clear, bubbling liquid begin draining out of the tube onto the floor inside the storage room. mal’akh watched the puddle expand, oozing across the floor, steaming and bubbling as it grew. hydrogen remained in liquid form only when it was cold, and as it warmed up, it would start to boil off. the resulting gas, conveniently, was even more flammable than the liquid.

Remember the Hindenburg.

Mal’akh hurried now into the lab and retrieved the Pyrex jug of Bunsen-burner fuel — a viscous, highly flammable, yet noncombustible oil. He carried it to the Plexiglas door, pleased to see the liquid hydrogen canister was still draining, the puddle of boiling liquid inside the data-storage room now covering the entire floor, encircling the pedestals that supported the holographic storage units. A whitish mist now rose from the boiling puddle as the liquid hydrogen began turning to gas. . filling the small space.

Mal’akh raised the jug of Bunsen-burner fuel and squirted a healthy amount on the hydrogen canister, the tubing, and into the small opening beneath the door. Then, very carefully, he began backing out of the lab, leaving an unbroken stream of oil on the floor as he went.

The dispatch operator handling 911 calls for Washington, D.C., had been unusually busy tonight. Football, beer, and a full moon, she thought as yet another emergency call appeared on her screen, this one from a gas-station pay phone on the Suitland Parkway in Anacostia. A car accident probably.

«Nine-one-one,» she answered. «What is your emergency?»

«I was just attacked at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center,» a panicked woman’s voice said. «Please send the police! Forty-two-ten Silver Hill Road!»

«Okay, slow down,» the operator said. «You need to — »

«I need you to send officers also to a mansion in Kalorama Heights where I think my brother may be held captive!»

The operator sighed. Full moon.

CHAPTER 53

As I tried to tell you,» bellamy was saying to langdon, «there is more to this pyramid than meets the eye.»

Apparently so. Langdon had to admit that the stone pyramid sitting in his unzipped daybag looked much more mysterious to him now. His decryption of the Masonic cipher had rendered a seemingly meaningless grid of letters.

Chaos.

For a long while, Langdon examined the grid, searching for any hint of meaning within the letters — hidden words, anagrams, clues of any sort — but he found nothing.

«The Masonic Pyramid,» Bellamy explained, «is said to guard its secrets behind many veils. Each time you pull back a curtain, you face another. You have unveiled these letters, and yet they tell you nothing until you peel back another layer. Of course, the way to do that is known only to the one who holds the capstone. The capstone, I suspect, has an inscription as well, which tells you how to decipher the pyramid.»

Langdon glanced at the cube-shaped package on the desk. From what Bellamy had said, Langdon now understood that the capstone and pyramid were a «segmented cipher»—a code broken into pieces. Modern cryptologists used segmented ciphers all the time, although the security scheme had been invented in ancient Greece. The Greeks, when they wanted to store secret information, inscribed it on a clay tablet and then shattered the tablet into pieces, storing each piece in a separate location. only when all the pieces were gathered together could the secrets be read. this kind of inscribed clay tablet — called a symbolon — was in fact the origin of the modern word symbol.

«Robert,» Bellamy said, «this pyramid and capstone have been kept apart for generations, ensuring the secret’s safety.» His tone turned rueful. «Tonight, however, the pieces have come dangerously close. I’m sure I don’t have to say this. . but it is our duty to ensure this pyramid is not assembled.»