Robert Langdon behind bars tonight, at any cost. Sophie needed Langdon for herself, and it was this dilemma that left Sophie only one logical conclusion.
Turning toward the window, Sophie gazed through the alarm mesh embedded in the plate glass, down the dizzying forty feet to the pavement below. A leap from this height would leave Langdon with a couple of broken legs. At best.
Nonetheless, Sophie made her decision.
Robert Langdon was about to escape the Louvre, whether he wanted to or not.
Chapter 17
“What do you mean she's not answering?” Fache looked incredulous. “You're calling her cell phone, right? I know she's carrying it.”
Collet had been trying to reach Sophie now for several minutes. “Maybe her batteries are dead. Or her ringer's off.”
Fache had looked distressed ever since talking to the director of Cryptology on the phone. After hanging up, he had marched over to Collet and demanded he get Agent Neveu on the line. Now Collet had failed, and Fache was pacing like a caged lion.
“Why did Crypto call?” Collet now ventured.
Fache turned. “To tell us they found no references to Draconian devils and lame saints.”
“That's all?”
“No, also to tell us that they had just identified the numerics as Fibonacci numbers, but they suspected the series was meaningless.”
Collet was confused. “But they already sent Agent Neveu to tell us that.”
Fache shook his head. “They didn't send Neveu.”
“What?”
“According to the director, at my orders he paged his entire team to look at the images I'd wired him. When Agent Neveu arrived, she took one look at the photos of Sauniere and the code and left the office without a word. The director said he didn't question her behavior because she was understandably upset by the photos.”
“Upset? She's never seen a picture of a dead body?”
Fache was silent a moment. “I was not aware of this, and it seems neither was the director until a coworker informed him, but apparently Sophie Neveu is Jacques Sauniere's granddaughter.”
Collet was speechless.
“The director said she never once mentioned Sauniere to him, and he assumed it was because she probably didn't want preferential treatment for having a famous grandfather.”
Collet could think of only one scenario to explain the troubling developments: Sauniere had written a numeric code on the floor in hopes Fache would involve cryptographers in the investigation, and therefore involve his own granddaughter. As for the rest of the message, was Sauniere communicating in some way with his granddaughter? If so, what did the message tell her? And how did Langdon fit in?
Before Collet could ponder it any further, the silence of the deserted museum was shattered by an alarm. The bell sounded like it was coming from inside the Grand Gallery.
Fache wheeled to Collet. “Where's Langdon?”
“Still in the men's room!” Collet pointed to the blinking red dot on his laptop schematic. “He must have broken the window!” Collet knew Langdon wouldn't get far. Although Paris fire codes required windows above fifteen meters in public buildings be breakable in case of fire, exiting a Louvre second-story window without the help of a hook and ladder would be suicide. Furthermore, there were no trees or grass on the western end of the Denon Wing to cushion a fall. Directly beneath that rest room window, the two-lane Place du Carrousel ran within a few feet of the outer wall. “My God,” Collet exclaimed, eyeing the screen. “Langdon's moving to the window ledge!”
But Fache was already in motion. Yanking his Manurhin MR-93 revolver from his shoulder holster, the captain dashed out of the office.
Collet watched the screen in bewilderment as the blinking dot arrived at the window ledge and then did something utterly unexpected. The dot moved
Fumbling with the controls, Collet called up a Paris street map and recalibrated the GPS. Zooming in, he could now see the exact location of the signal.
It was no longer moving.
It lay at a dead stop in the middle of Place du Carrousel.
Langdon had jumped.
Chapter 18
Fache sprinted down the Grand Gallery as Collet's radio blared over the distant sound of the alarm.
“He jumped!” Collet was yelling. “I'm showing the signal out on Place du Carrousel! Outside the bathroom window! And it's not moving at all! Jesus, I think Langdon has just committed suicide!”
Fache heard the words, but they made no sense. He kept running. The hallway seemed never-ending. As he sprinted past Sauniere's body, he set his sights on the partitions at the far end of the Denon Wing. The alarm was getting louder now.
“Wait!” Collet's voice blared again over the radio. “He's moving! My God, he's alive. Langdon's moving!”
Fache kept running, cursing the length of the hallway with every step.
“Langdon's moving faster!” Collet was still yelling on the radio. “He's running down Carrousel. Wait… he's picking up speed. He's moving too fast!”
Arriving at the partitions, Fache snaked his way through them, saw the rest room door, and ran for it.
The walkie-talkie was barely audible now over the alarm. “He must be in a car! I think he's in a car! I can't—“
Collet's words were swallowed by the alarm as Fache finally burst into the men's room with his gun drawn. Wincing against the piercing shrill, he scanned the area.
The stalls were empty. The bathroom deserted. Fache's eyes moved immediately to the shattered window
