square. They all stopped in apparent distress to see the scene now unfolding on the staircase.
"Careful now," Chartrand urged, sounding focused as the group began descending the stairs toward the helicopter.
Langdon felt like they were moving underwater. His arms ached from the weight of the camerlegno and the table. He wondered how the moment could get much less dignified. Then he saw the answer. The two BBC reporters had apparently been crossing the open square on their way back to the press area. But now, with the roar of the crowd, they had turned. Glick and Macri were now running back toward them. Macri’s camera was raised and rolling.
"
But the reporters kept coming. Langdon guessed the other networks would take about six seconds to pick up this live BBC feed again. He was wrong. They took two. As if connected by some sort of universal consciousness, every last media screen in the piazza cut away from their countdown clocks and their Vatican experts and began transmitting the same picture—a jiggling action footage swooping up the Vatican stairs. Now, everywhere Langdon looked, he saw the camerlegno’s limp body in a Technicolor close-up.
Like a man awakening from a nightmare, the camerlegno’s eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright. Taken entirely by surprise, Langdon and the others fumbled with the shifting weight. The front of the table dipped. The camerlegno began to slide. They tried to recover by setting the table down, but it was too late. The camerlegno slid off the front. Incredibly, he did not fall. His feet hit the marble, and he swayed upright. He stood a moment, looking disoriented, and then, before anyone could stop him, he lurched forward, staggering down the stairs toward Macri.
"
Chartrand rushed forward, trying to reign in the camerlegno. But the camerlegno turned on him, wild-eyed, crazed. "Leave me!"
Chartrand jumped back.
The scene went from bad to worse. The camerlegno’s torn cassock, having been only laid over his chest by Chartrand, began to slip lower. For a moment, Langdon thought the garment might hold, but that moment passed. The cassock let go, sliding off his shoulders down around his waist.
The gasp that went up from the crowd seemed to travel around the globe and back in an instant. Cameras rolled, flashbulbs exploded. On media screens everywhere, the image of the camerlegno’s branded chest was projected, towering and in grisly detail. Some screens were even freezing the image and rotating it 180 degrees.
Langdon stared at the brand on the screens. Although it was the imprint of the square brand he had held earlier, the symbol
Orientation. Langdon had forgotten the first rule of symbology.
As the chaos grew, an old Illuminati quote echoed with new meaning: "A flawless diamond, born of the ancient elements with such perfection that all those who saw it could only stare in wonder."
Langdon knew now the myth was true.
Earth, Air, Fire, Water.
117
Robert Langdon had little doubt that the chaos and hysteria coursing through St. Peter’s Square at this very instant exceeded anything Vatican Hill had ever witnessed. No battle, no crucifixion, no pilgrimage, no mystical vision… nothing in the shrine’s 2,000-year history could possibly match the scope and drama of this very moment.
As the tragedy unfolded, Langdon felt oddly separate, as if hovering there beside Vittoria at the top of the stairs. The action seemed to distend, as if in a time warp, all the insanity slowing to a crawl…
The drama, however, had only just begun.
The camerlegno, as if in some sort of post-traumatic trance, seemed suddenly puissant, possessed by demons. He began babbling, whispering to unseen spirits, looking up at the sky and raising his arms to God.
"Speak!" the camerlegno yelled to the heavens. "Yes, I hear you!"
In that moment, Langdon understood. His heart dropped like a rock.
Vittoria apparently understood too. She went white. "He’s in shock," she said. "He’s hallucinating. He thinks he’s talking to God!"
Below them on the stairs, Chinita Macri was poised and filming, apparently having located her ideal vantage point. The images she filmed appeared instantly across the square behind her on media screens… like endless drive-in movies all playing the same grisly tragedy.
The whole scene felt epic. The camerlegno, in his torn cassock, with the scorched brand on his chest, looked like some sort of battered champion who had overcome the rings of hell for this one moment of revelation. He bellowed to the heavens.
"
Chartrand backed off, a look of awe on his face.
The hush that fell across the crowd was instant and absolute. For a moment it was as if the silence had fallen across the entire planet… everyone in front of their TVs rigid, a communal holding of breath.
The camerlegno stood on the stairs, before the world, and held out his arms. He looked almost Christlike, bare and wounded before the world. He raised his arms to the heavens and, looking up, exclaimed, "
The silence of the masses never broke.
"
The camerlegno was radiant now, his eerie transformation complete. He looked up at the sky, still nodding furiously. He shouted to the heavens, "Upon this rock I will build my church!"
Langdon knew the words, but he had no idea why the camerlegno could possibly be shouting them.
The camerlegno turned back to the crowd and bellowed again into the night. "Upon this rock I will build my church!" Then he raised his hands to the sky and laughed out loud. "
The man had clearly gone mad.
The world watched, spellbound.
The culmination, however, was something no one expected.
With a final joyous exultation, the camerlegno turned and dashed back into St. Peter’s Basilica.
118
Eleven-forty-two P.M.
The frenzied convoy that plunged back into the basilica to retrieve the camerlegno was not one Langdon had ever imagined he would be part of… much less leading. But he had been closest to the door and had acted on instinct.
