The powers of darkness had long embraced blood sacrifice, and in doing so, they had grown so strong that the powers of goodness now struggled to keep them in check. Soon the Light would be entirely consumed, and the practitioners of darkness would move freely through the minds of men.
CHAPTER 97
«Eight Franklin Square
Nola Kaye sat at her desk and adjusted her headset. «Ma’am, I’ve checked everywhere. . that address doesn’t exist in D.C.»
«But I’m on the roof of
«Okay,» Nola said, eyeing her screen, «I see the problem. One Franklin Square is the
The news seemed to confound the director. «Nola, I don’t have time to explain — the pyramid clearly points to the address Eight Franklin Square.»
Nola sat bolt upright.
«The inscription,» Sato continued, «reads: ‘The secret hides within The Order — Eight Franklin Square.’»
Nola could scarcely imagine. «An
«I assume so,» Sato replied.
Nola thought a moment, and then began typing again. «Ma’am, maybe the street numbers on the square changed over the years? I mean, if this pyramid is as old as legend claims, maybe the numbers on Franklin Square were different when the pyramid was built? I’m now running a search
«What have you got?» Sato demanded.
Nola stared at the first result on the list — a spectacular image of the Great Pyramid of Egypt — which served as the thematic backdrop for the home page dedicated to a building on franklin square. the building was unlike any other building on the square.
What stopped Nola cold was not the building’s bizarre architecture, but rather the description of its
CHAPTER 98
Robert Langdon regained consciousness with a crippling headache.
Wherever he was, it was dark. Deep-cave dark, and deathly silent.
He was lying on his back with his arms at his side. Confused, he tried moving his fingers and toes, relieved to find they moved freely with no pain.
Almost everything.
Langdon realized he was lying on a hard floor that felt unusually smooth, like a sheet of glass. Stranger still, he could feel that the slick surface was in direct contact with his bare flesh. . shoulders, back, buttocks, thighs, calves.
In the darkness, the cobwebs began to lift, and Langdon saw flashes of memory. . frightening snapshots. . a dead CIA agent. . the face of a tattooed beast. . Langdon’s head smashing into the floor. The images came faster. . and now he recalled the sickening image of Katherine Solomon bound and gagged on the dining-room floor.
Langdon sat bolt upright, and as he did, his forehead smashed into something suspended only inches above him. Pain exploded through his skull and he fell back, teetering near unconsciousness. Groggy, he reached up with his hands, groping in the darkness to find the obstacle. What he found made no sense to him. It seemed this room’s ceiling was less than a foot above him.
The truth now dawned on him. Robert Langdon was not in a room at all.
In the darkness of his small, coffinlike container, Langdon began pounding wildly with his fist. He shouted over and over for help. The terror that gripped him deepened with each passing instant until it was intolerable.
The lid of Langdon’s strange coffin refused to budge, even with the full force of his arms and legs pushing upward in wild panic. The box, from all he could tell, was made of heavy fiberglass. Airtight. Soundproof. Lightproof. Escape-proof.
He thought of the deep well into which he had fallen as a young boy, and of the terrifying night he spent treading water alone in the darkness of a bottomless pit. That trauma had scarred Langdon’s psyche, burdening him with an overwhelming phobia of enclosed spaces.
Tonight, buried alive, Robert Langdon was living his ultimate nightmare.
Katherine Solomon trembled in silence on the floor of Mal’akh’s dining room. The sharp wire around her wrists and ankles had already cut into her, and the slightest movements seemed only to tighten her bonds.
The tattooed man had brutally knocked Langdon unconscious and dragged his limp body across the floor along with his leather bag and the stone pyramid. Where they had gone, Katherine had no idea. The agent who had accompanied them was dead. She had not heard a sound in many minutes, and she wondered if the tattooed man and Langdon were still inside the house. She had been trying to scream for help, but with each attempt, the rag in her mouth crept back dangerously closer to her windpipe.
Now she felt approaching footsteps on the floor, and she turned her head, hoping against hope that someone was coming to help. The massive silhouette of her captor materialized in the hallway. Katherine recoiled as she flashed on the image of him standing in her family home ten years earlier.
Now he strode toward her. Langdon was nowhere to be seen. The man crouched down and gripped her around the waist, hoisting her roughly onto his shoulder. The wire sliced into her wrists, and the rag muffled her muted cries of pain. He carried her down the hallway toward the living room, where, earlier today, the two of them had calmly sipped tea together.
He carried Katherine across the living room and stopped directly in front of the large oil painting of the Three Graces that she had admired this afternoon.
«You mentioned you liked this painting,» the man whispered, his lips practically touching her ear. «i’m glad.
