Angels & Demons (24 page)

“Permanence rating?”

“Durability. Archivists rate documents one through ten for their structural integrity.
Diagramma
was printed on sedge papyrus. It’s like tissue paper. Life span of no more than a century.”

“Why not something stronger?”

“Galileo’s behest. To protect his followers. This way any scientists caught with a copy could simply drop it in water and the booklet would dissolve. It was great for destruction of evidence, but terrible for archivists. It is believed that only
one
copy of
Diagramma
survived beyond the eighteenth century.”

“One?” Vittoria looked momentarily starstruck as she glanced around the room. “And it’s
here?”

“Confiscated from the Netherlands by the Vatican shortly after Galileo’s death. I’ve been petitioning to see it for years now. Ever since I realized what was in it.”

As if reading Langdon’s mind, Vittoria moved across the aisle and began scanning the adjacent bay of vaults, doubling their pace.

“Thanks,” he said. “Look for reference tabs that have anything to do with Galileo, science, scientists. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Okay, but you still haven’t told me how you figured out
Diagramma
contained the clue. It had something to do with the number you kept seeing in Illuminati letters? 503?”

Langdon smiled. “Yes. It took some time, but I finally figured out that 503 is a simple code. It clearly points to
Diagramma.”

For an instant Langdon relived his moment of unexpected revelation: August 16. Two years ago. He was standing lakeside at the wedding of the son of a colleague. Bagpipes droned on the water as the wedding party made their unique entrance . . . across the lake on a barge. The craft was festooned with flowers and wreaths. It carried a Roman numeral painted proudly on the hull—DCII.

Puzzled by the marking Langdon asked the father of the bride, “What’s with 602?”

“602?”

Langdon pointed to the barge. “DCII is the Roman numeral for 602.”

The man laughed. “That’s not a Roman numeral. That’s the name of the barge.”

“The DCII?”

The man nodded.
“The Dick and Connie II.”

Langdon felt sheepish. Dick and Connie were the wedding couple. The barge obviously had been named in their honor. “What happened to the
DCI?”

The man groaned. “It sank yesterday during the rehearsal luncheon.”

Langdon laughed. “Sorry to hear that.” He looked back out at the barge.
The DCII,
he thought.
Like a
miniature QEII
. A second later, it had hit him.

Now Langdon turned to Vittoria. “503,” he said, “as I mentioned, is a code. It’s an Illuminati trick for concealing what was actually intended as a Roman numeral. The number 503 in Roman numerals is—”

“DIII.”

Langdon glanced up. “That was fast. Please don’t tell me you’re an Illuminata.”

She laughed. “I use Roman numerals to codify pelagic strata.”

Of course,
Langdon thought.
Don’t we all
.

Vittoria looked over. “So what is the meaning of DIII?”

“DI and DII and DIII are very old abbreviations. They were used by ancient scientists to distinguish between the three Galilean documents most commonly confused.

Vittoria drew a quick breath.
“Diàlogo
. . .
Discorsi
. . .
Diagramma.”

“D-one. D-two. D-three. All scientific. All controversial. 503 is DIII.
Diagramma
. The third of his books.”

Vittoria looked troubled. “But one thing still doesn’t make sense. If this
segno,
this clue, this advertisement about the Path of Illumination was really in Galileo’s
Diagramma,
why didn’t the Vatican see it when they repossessed all the copies?”

“They may have seen it and not noticed. Remember the Illuminati markers? Hiding things in plain view?

Dissimulation? The
segno
apparently was hidden the same way—in plain view. Invisible to those who were not looking for it. And also invisible to those who didn’t
understand
it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Galileo hid it well. According to historic record, the
segno
was revealed in a mode the Illuminati called
lingua pura.”

“The pure language?”

“Yes.”

“Mathematics?”

“That’s my guess. Seems pretty obvious. Galileo was a scientist after all, and he was writing
for
scientists. Math would be a logical language in which to lay out the clue. The booklet is called
Diagramma,
so mathematical diagrams may also be part of the code.”

Vittoria sounded only slightly more hopeful. “I suppose Galileo could have created some sort of mathematical code that went unnoticed by the clergy.”

“You don’t sound sold,” Langdon said, moving down the row.

“I’m not. Mainly because
you
aren’t. If you were so sure about DIII, why didn’t you publish? Then someone who
did
have access to the Vatican Archives could have come in here and checked out
Diagramma
a long time ago.”

“I didn’t
want
to publish,” Langdon said. “I had worked hard to find the information and—” He stopped himself, embarrassed.

“You wanted the
glory.”

Langdon felt himself flush. “In a manner of speaking. It’s just that—”

“Don’t look so embarrassed. You’re talking to a scientist. Publish or perish. At CERN we call it

‘Substantiate or suffocate.’ ”

“It wasn’t only wanting to be the first. I was also concerned that if the wrong people found out about the information in
Diagramma,
it might disappear.”

“The wrong people being the Vatican?”

“Not that they are wrong, per se, but the church has always downplayed the Illuminati threat. In the early 1900s the Vatican went so far as to say the Illuminati were a figment of overactive imaginations. The clergy felt, and perhaps rightly so, that the last thing Christians needed to know was that there was a very powerful anti-Christian movement infiltrating their banks, politics, and universities.”
Present tense,
Robert,
he reminded himself.
There IS a powerful anti-Christian force infiltrating their banks, politics,
and universities
.

“So you think the Vatican would have buried any evidence corroborating the Illuminati threat?”

“Quite possibly. Any threat, real or imagined, weakens faith in the church’s power.”

“One more question.” Vittoria stopped short and looked at him like he was an alien. “Are you
serious?”

Langdon stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I mean is this
really
your plan to save the day?”

Langdon wasn’t sure whether he saw amused pity or sheer terror in her eyes. “You mean finding
Diagramma?”

“No, I mean finding
Diagramma,
locating a four-hundred-year-old
segno,
deciphering some mathematical code, and following an ancient trail of art that only the most brilliant scientists in history have ever been able to follow . . . all in the next four hours.”

Langdon shrugged. “I’m open to other suggestions.”

50

R obert Langdon stood outside Archive Vault 9 and read the labels on the stacks. BRAHE . . . CLAVIUS . . . COPERNICUS . . . KEPLER . . . NEWTON . . .

As he read the names again, he felt a sudden uneasiness.
Here are the scientists
. . .
but where is Galileo?

He turned to Vittoria, who was checking the contents of a nearby vault. “I found the right theme, but Galileo’s missing.”

“No he isn’t,” she said, frowning as she motioned to the next vault. “He’s over here. But I hope you brought your reading glasses, because this
entire
vault is his.”

Langdon ran over. Vittoria was right. Every indictor tab in Vault 10 carried the same keyword.

Langdon let out a low whistle, now realizing why Galileo had his own vault. “The Galileo Affair,” he marveled, peering through the glass at the dark outlines of the stacks. “The longest and most expensive legal proceeding in Vatican history. Fourteen years and six hundred million lire. It’s all here.”

“Have a few legal documents.”

“I guess lawyers haven’t evolved much over the centuries.”

“Neither have sharks.”

Langdon strode to a large yellow button on the side of the vault. He pressed it, and a bank of overhead lights hummed on inside. The lights were deep red, turning the cube into a glowing crimson cell . . . a maze of towering shelves.

“My God,” Vittoria said, looking spooked. “Are we tanning or working?”

“Parchment and vellum fades, so vault lighting is always done with dark lights.”

“You could go mad in here.”

Or worse,
Langdon thought, moving toward the vault’s sole entrance. “A quick word of warning. Oxygen is an oxidant, so hermetic vaults contain very little of it. It’s a partial vacuum inside. Your breathing will feel strained.”

“Hey, if old cardinals can survive it.”

True,
Langdon thought.
May we be as lucky
.

The vault entrance was a single electronic revolving door. Langdon noted the common arrangement of four access buttons on the door’s inner shaft, one accessible from each compartment. When a button was pressed, the motorized door would kick into gear and make the conventional half rotation before grinding to a halt—a standard procedure to preserve the integrity of the inner atmosphere.

“After I’m in,” Langdon said, “just press the button and follow me through. There’s only eight percent humidity inside, so be prepared to feel some dry mouth.”

Langdon stepped into the rotating compartment and pressed the button. The door buzzed loudly and began to rotate. As he followed its motion, Langdon prepared his body for the physical shock that always accompanied the first few seconds in a hermetic vault. Entering a sealed archive was like going from sea level to 20,000 feet in an instant. Nausea and light-headedness were not uncommon.
Double vision,
double over,
he reminded himself, quoting the archivist’s mantra. Langdon felt his ears pop. There was a hiss of air, and the door spun to a stop.

He was in.

Langdon’s first realization was that the air inside was thinner than he had anticipated. The Vatican, it seemed, took their archives a bit more seriously than most. Langdon fought the gag reflex and relaxed his chest while his pulmonary capillaries dilated. The tightness passed quickly.
Enter the Dolphin,
he mused, gratified his fifty laps a day were good for something. Breathing more normally now, he looked around the vault. Despite the transparent outer walls, he felt a familiar anxiety.
I’m in a box,
he thought.
A blood
red box
.

The door buzzed behind him, and Langdon turned to watch Vittoria enter. When she arrived inside, her eyes immediately began watering, and she started breathing heavily.

“Give it a minute,” Langdon said. “If you get light-headed, bend over.”

“I . . . feel . . .” Vittoria choked, “like I’m . . . scuba diving . . . with the wrong . . . mixture.”

Langdon waited for her to acclimatize. He knew she would be fine. Vittoria Vetra was obviously in terrific shape, nothing like the doddering ancient Radcliffe alumnae Langdon had once squired through Widener Library’s hermetic vault. The tour had ended with Langdon giving mouth-to-mouth to an old woman who’d almost aspirated her false teeth.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

Vittoria nodded.

“I rode your damn space plane, so I thought I owed you.”

This brought a smile.
“Touché.”

Langdon reached into the box beside the door and extracted some white cotton gloves.

“Formal affair?” Vittoria asked.

“Finger acid. We can’t handle the documents without them. You’ll need a pair.”

Vittoria donned some gloves. “How long do we have?”

Langdon checked his Mickey Mouse watch. “It’s just past seven.”

“We have to find this thing within the hour.”

“Actually,” Langdon said, “we don’t have that kind of time.” He pointed overhead to a filtered duct.

“Normally the curator would turn on a reoxygenation system when someone is inside the vault. Not today. Twenty minutes, we’ll both be sucking wind.”

Vittoria blanched noticeably in the reddish glow.

Langdon smiled and smoothed his gloves. “Substantiate or suffocate, Ms. Vetra. Mickey’s ticking.”

51

B BC reporter Gunther Glick stared at the cell phone in his hand for ten seconds before he finally hung up.

Chinita Macri studied him from the back of the van. “What happened? Who was that?”

Glick turned, feeling like a child who had just received a Christmas gift he feared was not really for him.

“I just got a tip. Something’s going on inside the Vatican.”

“It’s called conclave,” Chinita said. “Helluva tip.”

“No, something else.”
Something big
. He wondered if the story the caller had just told him could possibly be true. Glick felt ashamed when he realized he was praying it was. “What if I told you four cardinals have been kidnapped and are going to be murdered at different churches tonight.”

“I’d say you’re being hazed by someone at the office with a sick sense of humor.”

“What if I told you we were going to be given the exact location of the first murder?”

“I’d want to know who the hell you just talked to.”

“He didn’t say.”

“Perhaps because he’s full of shit?”

Glick had come to expect Macri’s cynicism, but what she was forgetting was that liars and lunatics had been Glick’s business for almost a decade at the
British Tattler
. This caller had been neither. This man had been coldly sane. Logical.
I will call you just before eight,
the man had said,
and tell you where the
first killing will occur
.
The images you record will make you famous
. When Glick had demanded why the caller was giving him this information, the answer had been as icy as the man’s Mideastern accent.
The
media is the right arm of anarchy
.