The Lost Symbol

of the box, reached down, and slid a small panel to one side, revealing a plexiglas window in the top of the tank.

Light!

Langdon covered his eyes, squinting into the ray of light that now streamed in from above. As his eyes adjusted, hope turned to confusion. He was looking up through what appeared to be a window in the top of his crate. Through the window, he saw a white ceiling and a fluorescent light.

Without warning, the tattooed face appeared above him, peering down.

«Where is Katherine?!» Langdon shouted. «Let me out!»

The man smiled. «Your friend Katherine is here with me,» the man said. «I have the power to spare her life. Your life as well. But your time is short, so I suggest you listen carefully.»

Langdon could barely hear him through the glass, and the water had risen higher, creeping across his chest.

«Are you aware,» the man asked, «that there are symbols on the base of the pyramid?»

«Yes!» Langdon shouted, having seen the extensive array of symbols when the pyramid had lain on the floor upstairs. «But I have no idea what they mean! You need to go to Eight Franklin Square! The answer is there! That’s what the capstone — »

«Professor, you and I both know the CIA is waiting for me there. I have no intention of walking into a trap. Besides, I didn’t need the street number. There is only one building on that square that could possibly be relevant — the Almas Shrine Temple.» He paused, staring down at Langdon. «The Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.»

Langdon was confused. He was familiar with the Almas Temple, but he had forgotten it was on Franklin Square. The Shriners are. . «The Order»? Their temple sits atop a secret staircase? It made no historical sense whatsoever, but Langdon was in no position at the moment to debate history. «Yes!» he shouted. «That must be it! The secret hides within The Order!»

«You’re familiar with the building?»

«Absolutely!» Langdon raised his throbbing head to keep his ears above the quickly rising liquid. «I can help you! Let me out!»

«So you believe you can tell me what this temple has to do with the symbols on the base of the pyramid?»

«Yes! Let me just look at the symbols!»

«Very well, then. Let’s see what you come up with.»

Hurry! With the warm liquid rising around him, Langdon pushed up on the lid, willing the man to unclasp it. Please! Hurry! But the lid never opened. Instead, the base of the pyramid suddenly appeared, hovering above the Plexiglas window.

Langdon stared up in panic.

«I trust this view is close enough for you?»The man held the pyramid in his tattooed hands. «Think fast, Professor. I’m guessing you have less than sixty seconds.»

CHAPTER 102

Robert Langdon had often heard it said that an animal, when cornered, was capable of miraculous feats of strength. nonetheless, when he threw his full force into the underside of his crate, nothing budged at all. around him, the liquid continued rising steadily. with no more than six inches of breathing room left, langdon had lifted his head into the pocket of air that remained. he was now face-to-face with the plexiglas window, his eyes only inches away from the underside of the stone pyramid whose baffling engraving hovered above him.

I have no idea what this means.

Concealed for over a century beneath a hardened mixture of wax and stone dust, the Masonic Pyramid’s final inscription was now laid bare. The engraving was a perfectly square grid of symbols from every tradition imaginable — alchemical, astrological, heraldic, angelic, magical, numeric, sigilic, Greek, Latin. As a totality, this was symbolic anarchy — a bowl of alphabet soup whose letters came from dozens of different languages, cultures, and time periods.

Total chaos.

symbologist robert langdon, in his wildest academic interpretations, could not fathom how this grid of symbols could be deciphered to mean anything at all. Order from this chaos? Impossible.

The liquid was now creeping over his Adam’s apple, and Langdon could feel his level of terror rising along with it. He continued banging on the tank. The pyramid stared back at him tauntingly.

In frantic desperation, Langdon focused every bit of his mental energy on the chessboard of symbols. What could they possibly mean? Unfortunately, the assortment seemed so disparate that he could not even imagine where to begin. They’re not even from the same eras in history!

Outside the tank, her voice muffled but audible, Katherine could be heard tearfully begging for Langdon’s release. Despite his failure to see a solution, the prospect of death seemed to motivate every cell in his body to find one. He felt a strange clarity of mind, unlike anything he had ever experienced. Think! He scanned the grid intensely, searching for some clue — a pattern, a hidden word, a special icon, anything at all — but he saw only a grid of unrelated symbols. Chaos.

With each passing second, Langdon had begun to feel an eerie numbness overtaking his body. It was as if his very flesh were preparing to shield his mind from the pain of death. The water was now threatening to pour into his ears, and he lifted his head as far as he could, pushing it against the top of the crate. Frightening images began flashing before his eyes. A boy in New England treading water at the bottom of a dark well. A man in Rome trapped beneath a skeleton in an overturned coffin.

Katherine’s shouts were growing more frantic. From all Langdon could hear, she was trying to reason with a madman — insisting that Langdon could not be expected to decipher the pyramid without going to visit the Almas Temple. «That building obviously holds the missing piece to this puzzle! How can Robert decipher the pyramid without all the information?!»

Langdon appreciated her efforts, and yet he felt certain that «Eight Franklin Square» was not pointing to the Almas Temple. The time line is all wrong! According to legend, the Masonic Pyramid was created in the mid-1800s, decades before the Shriners even existed. In fact, Langdon realized, it was probably before the square was even called Franklin Square. The capstone could not possibly have been pointing to an unbuilt building at a nonexistent address. Whatever «Eight Franklin Square» was pointing to. . it had to exist in 1850.

Unfortunately, Langdon was drawing a total blank.

He probed his memory banks for anything that could possibly fit the time line. Eight Franklin Square? Something that was in existence in 1850? Langdon came up with nothing. The liquid was trickling into his ears now. Fighting his terror, he stared up at the grid of symbols on the glass. I don’t understand the connection! In a petrified frenzy, his mind began spewing all the far-flung parallels it could generate.

Eight Franklin Square. . squares. . this grid of symbols is a square. . the square and the compass are Masonic symbols. . Masonic altars are square. . squares have ninety-degree angles. The water kept rising, but Langdon blocked it out. Eight Franklin. . eight. . this grid is eight-by-eight. . Franklin has eight letters. . «The Order» has eight letters. . 8 is the rotated symbolfor infinity. . eight is the number of destruction in numerology. .

Langdon had no idea.

Outside the tank, Katherine was still pleading, but Langdon’s hearing was now intermittent as the water was