Angels & Demons

wrath of hell, shaking the granite foundation of Vatican City, knocking the breath out of people’s lungs, sending others stumbling backward. The reverberation circled the colonnade, followed by a sudden torrent of warm air. The wind tore through the square, letting out a sepulchral moan as it whistled through the columns and buffeted the walls. Dust swirled overhead as people huddled… witnesses to Armageddon.

Then, as fast as it appeared, the sphere imploded, sucking back in on itself, crushing inward to the tiny point of light from which it had come.

124

Never before had so many been so silent.

The faces in St. Peter’s Square, one by one, averted their eyes from the darkening sky and turned downward, each person in his or her own private moment of wonder. The media lights followed suit, dropping their beams back to earth as if out of reverence for the blackness now settling upon them. It seemed for a moment the entire world was bowing its head in unison.

Cardinal Mortati knelt to pray, and the other cardinals joined him. The Swiss Guard lowered their long swords and stood numb. No one spoke. No one moved. Everywhere, hearts shuddered with spontaneous emotion. Bereavement. Fear. Wonder. Belief. And a dread-filled respect for the new and awesome power they had just witnessed.

Vittoria Vetra stood trembling at the foot of the basilica’s sweeping stairs. She closed her eyes. Through the tempest of emotions now coursing through her blood, a single word tolled like a distant bell. Pristine. Cruel. She forced it away. And yet the word echoed. Again she drove it back. The pain was too great. She tried to lose herself in the images that blazed in other’s minds… antimatter’s mind-boggling power… the Vatican’s deliverance… the camerlegno… feats of bravery… miracles… selflessness. And still the word echoed… tolling through the chaos with a stinging loneliness.

Robert.

He had come for her at Castle St. Angelo.

He had saved her.

And now he had been destroyed by her creation.

As Cardinal Mortati prayed, he wondered if he too would hear God’s voice as the camerlegno had. Does one need to believe in miracles to experience them? Mortati was a modern man in an ancient faith. Miracles had never played a part in his belief. Certainly his faith spoke of miracles… bleeding palms, ascensions from the dead, imprints on shrouds… and yet, Mortati’s rational mind had always justified these accounts as part of the myth. They were simply the result of man’s greatest weakness—his need for proof. Miracles were nothing but stories we all clung to because we wished they were true.

And yet…

Am I so modern that I cannot accept what my eyes have just witnessed? It was a miracle, was it not? Yes! God, with a few whispered words in the camerlegno’s ear, had intervened and saved this church. Why was this so hard to believe? What would it say about God if God had done nothing? That the Almighty did not care? That He was powerless to stop it? A miracle was the only possible response!

As Mortati knelt in wonder, he prayed for the camerlegno’s soul. He gave thanks to the young chamberlain who, even in his youthful years, had opened this old man’s eyes to the miracles of unquestioning faith.

Incredibly, though, Mortati never suspected the extent to which his faith was about to be tested…

The silence of St. Peter’s Square broke with a ripple at first. The ripple grew to a murmur. And then, suddenly, to a roar. Without warning, the multitudes were crying out as one.

"Look! Look!"

Mortati opened his eyes and turned to the crowd. Everyone was pointing behind him, toward the front of St. Peter’s Basilica. Their faces were white. Some fell to their knees. Some fainted. Some burst into uncontrollable sobs.

"Look! Look!"

Mortati turned, bewildered, following their outstretched hands. They were pointing to the uppermost level of the basilica, the rooftop terrace, where huge statues of Christ and his apostles watched over the crowd.

There, on the right of Jesus, arms outstretched to the world… stood Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca.

125

Robert Langdon was no longer falling.

There was no more terror. No pain. Not even the sound of the racing wind. There was only the soft sound of lapping water, as though he were comfortably asleep on a beach.

In a paradox of self-awareness, Langdon sensed this was death. He felt glad for it. He allowed the drifting numbness to possess him entirely. He let it carry him wherever it was he would go. His pain and fear had been anesthetized, and he did not wish it back at any price. His final memory had been one that could only have been conjured in hell.

Take me. Please…

But the lapping that lulled in him a far-off sense of peace was also pulling him back. It was trying to awaken him from a dream. No! Let me be! He did not want to awaken. He sensed demons gathering on the perimeter of his bliss, pounding to shatter his rapture. Fuzzy images swirled. Voices yelled. Wind churned. No, please! The more he fought, the more the fury filtered through.

Then, harshly, he was living it all again…

The helicopter was in a dizzying dead climb. He was trapped inside. Beyond the open door, the lights of Rome looked farther away with every passing second. His survival instinct told him to jettison the canister right now. Langdon knew it would take less than twenty seconds for the canister to fall half a mile. But it would be falling toward a city of people.

Higher! Higher!

Langdon wondered how high they were now. Small prop planes, he knew, flew at altitudes of about four miles. This helicopter had to be at a good fraction of that by now. Two miles up? Three? There was still a chance. If they timed the drop perfectly, the canister would fall only partway toward earth, exploding a safe distance over the ground and away from the chopper. Langdon looked out at the city sprawling below them.

"And if you calculate incorrectly?" the camerlegno said.

Langdon turned, startled. The camerlegno was not even looking at him, apparently having read Langdon’s thoughts from the ghostly reflection in the windshield. Oddly, the camerlegno was no longer engrossed in his controls. His hands were not even on the throttle. The chopper, it seemed, was now in some sort of autopilot mode, locked in a climb. The camerlegno reached above his head, to the ceiling of the cockpit, fishing behind a cable-housing, where he removed a key, taped there out of view.

Langdon watched in bewilderment as the camerlegno quickly unlocked the metal cargo box bolted between the seats. He removed some sort of large, black, nylon pack. He lay it on the seat next to him. Langdon’s thoughts churned. The camerlegno’s movements seemed composed, as if he had a solution.

"Give me the canister," the camerlegno said, his tone serene.

Langdon did not know what to think anymore. He thrust the canister to the camerlegno. "Ninety seconds!"

What the camerlegno did with the antimatter took Langdon totally by surprise. Holding the canister carefully in his hands, the camerlegno placed it inside the cargo box. Then he closed the heavy lid and used the key to lock it tight.

"What are you doing!" Langdon demanded.

"Leading us from temptation." The camerlegno threw the key out the open window.

As the key tumbled into the night, Langdon felt his soul falling with it.

The camerlegno then took the nylon pack and slipped his arms through the straps. He fastened a waist clamp around his stomach and cinched it all down like a backpack. He turned to a dumbstruck Robert Langdon.

"I’m sorry," the camerlegno said. "It wasn’t supposed to happen this way." Then he opened his door and hurled himself into the night.

The image burned in Langdon’s unconscious mind, and with it came the pain. Real pain. Physical pain. Aching.