Angels & Demons

Langdon’s eyes were transfixed on the pyramids. What are pyramids doing inside a Christian chapel? And incredibly, there was more. Dead center of each pyramid, embedded in their anterior faзades, were gold medallions… medallions like few Langdon had ever seen… perfect ellipses. The burnished disks glimmered in the setting sun as it sifted through the cupola. Galileo’s ellipses? Pyramids? A cupola of stars? The room had more Illuminati significance than any room Langdon could have fabricated in his mind.

"Robert," Vittoria blurted, her voice cracking. "Look!"

Langdon wheeled, reality returning as his eyes dropped to where she was pointing. "Bloody hell!" he shouted, jumping backward.

Sneering up at them from the floor was the image of a skeleton—an intricately detailed, marble mosaic depicting "death in flight." The skeleton was carrying a tablet portraying the same pyramid and stars they had seen outside. It was not the image, however, that had turned Langdon’s blood cold. It was the fact that the mosaic was mounted on a circular stone—a cupermento—that had been lifted out of the floor like a manhole cover and was now sitting off to one side of a dark opening in the floor.

"Demon’s hole," Langdon gasped. He had been so taken with the ceiling he had not even seen it. Tentatively he moved toward the pit. The stench coming up was overwhelming.

Vittoria put a hand over her mouth. "Che puzzo."

"Effluvium," Langdon said. "Vapors from decaying bone." He breathed through his sleeve as he leaned out over the hole, peering down. Blackness. "I can’t see a thing."

"You think anybody’s down there?"

"No way to know."

Vittoria motioned to the far side of the hole where a rotting, wooden ladder descended into the depths.

Langdon shook his head. "Like hell."

"Maybe there’s a flashlight outside in those tools." She sounded eager for an excuse to escape the smell. "I’ll look."

"Careful!" Langdon warned. "We don’t know for sure that the Hassassin—"

But Vittoria was already gone.

One strong-willed woman, Langdon thought.

As he turned back to the pit, he felt light-headed from the fumes. Holding his breath, he dropped his head below the rim and peered deep into the darkness. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he began to see faint shapes below. The pit appeared to open into a small chamber. Demon’s hole. He wondered how many generations of Chigis had been unceremoniously dumped in. Langdon closed his eyes and waited, forcing his pupils to dilate so he could see better in the dark. When he opened his eyes again, a pale muted figure hovered below in the darkness. Langdon shivered but fought the instinct to pull out. Am I seeing things? Is that a body? The figure faded. Langdon closed his eyes again and waited, longer this time, so his eyes would pick up the faintest light.

Dizziness started to set in, and his thoughts wandered in the blackness. Just a few more seconds. He wasn’t sure if it was breathing the fumes or holding his head at a low inclination, but Langdon was definitely starting to feel squeamish. When he finally opened his eyes again, the image before him was totally inexplicable.

He was now staring at a crypt bathed in an eerie bluish light. A faint hissing sound reverberated in his ears. Light flickered on the steep walls of the shaft. Suddenly, a long shadow materialized over him. Startled, Langdon scrambled up.

"Look out!" someone exclaimed behind him.

Before Langdon could turn, he felt a sharp pain on the back of his neck. He spun to see Vittoria twisting a lit blowtorch away from him, the hissing flame throwing blue light around the chapel.

Langdon grabbed his neck. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I was giving you some light," she said. "You backed right into me."

Langdon glared at the portable blowtorch in her hand.

"Best I could do," she said. "No flashlights."

Langdon rubbed his neck. "I didn’t hear you come in."

Vittoria handed him the torch, wincing again at the stench of the crypt. "You think those fumes are combustible?"

"Let’s hope not."

He took the torch and moved slowly toward the hole. Cautiously, he advanced to the rim and pointed the flame down into the hole, lighting the side wall. As he directed the light, his eyes traced the outline of the wall downward. The crypt was circular and about twenty feet across. Thirty feet down, the glow found the floor. The ground was dark and mottled. Earthy. Then Langdon saw the body.

His instinct was to recoil. "He’s here," Langdon said, forcing himself not to turn away. The figure was a pallid outline against the earthen floor. "I think he’s been stripped naked." Langdon flashed on the nude corpse of Leonardo Vetra.

"Is it one of the cardinals?"

Langdon had no idea, but he couldn’t imagine who the hell else it would be. He stared down at the pale blob. Unmoving. Lifeless. And yet… Langdon hesitated. There was something very strange about the way the figure was positioned. He seemed to be…

Langdon called out. "Hello?"

"You think he’s alive?"

There was no response from below.

"He’s not moving," Langdon said. "But he looks…" No, impossible.

"He looks what?" Vittoria was peering over the edge now too.

Langdon squinted into the darkness. "He looks like he’s standing up."

Vittoria held her breath and lowered her face over the edge for a better look. After a moment, she pulled back. "You’re right. He’s standing up! Maybe he’s alive and needs help!" She called into the hole. "Hello?! Mi puу sentire?"

There was no echo off the mossy interior. Only silence.

Vittoria headed for the rickety ladder. "I’m going down."

Langdon caught her arm. "No. It’s dangerous. I’ll go."

This time Vittoria didn’t argue.

66

Chinita Macri was mad. She sat in the passenger’s seat of the BBC van as it idled at a corner on Via Tomacelli. Gunther Glick was checking his map of Rome, apparently lost. As she had feared, his mystery caller had phoned back, this time with information.

"Piazza del Popolo," Glick insisted. "That’s what we’re looking for. There’s a church there. And inside is proof."

"Proof." Chinita stopped polishing the lens in her hand and turned to him. "Proof that a cardinal has been murdered?"

"That’s what he said."

"You believe everything you hear?" Chinita wished, as she often did, that she was the one in charge. Videographers, however, were at the whim of the crazy reporters for whom they shot footage. If Gunther Glick wanted to follow a feeble phone tip, Macri was his dog on a leash.

She looked at him, sitting there in the driver’s seat, his jaw set intently. The man’s parents, she decided, must have been frustrated comedians to have given him a name like Gunther Glick. No wonder the guy felt like he had something to prove. Nonetheless, despite his unfortunate appellative and annoying eagerness to make a mark, Glick was sweet… charming in a pasty, Briddish, unstrung sort of way. Like Hugh Grant on lithium.

"Shouldn’t we be back at St. Peter’s?" Macri said as patiently as possible. "We can check this mystery church out later. Conclave started an hour ago. What if the cardinals come to a decision while we’re