Angels & Demons (61 page)

“They described a meeting Leonardo had last month. With
you.”

The camerlegno hesitated, then looked toward the door. “Rocher should not have granted you access without consulting me. How did you get in here?”

“Rocher knows the truth. I called earlier and told him what you have done.”

“What
I
have done? Whatever story you told him, Rocher is a Swiss Guard and far too faithful to this church to believe a bitter scientist over his camerlegno.”

“Actually, he is too faithful
not
to believe. He is so faithful that despite the evidence that one of his loyal guards had betrayed the church, he refused to accept it. All day long he has been searching for another explanation.”

“So you gave him one.”

“The truth. Shocking as it was.”

“If Rocher believed you, he would have arrested me.”

“No. I wouldn’t let him. I offered him my silence in exchange for this meeting.”

The camerlegno let out an odd laugh. “You plan to
blackmail
the church with a story that no one will possibly believe?”

“I have no need of blackmail. I simply want to hear the truth from your lips. Leonardo Vetra was a friend.”

The camerlegno said nothing. He simply stared down at Kohler.

“Try this,” Kohler snapped. “About a month ago, Leonardo Vetra contacted you requesting an urgent audience with the Pope—an audience you granted because the Pope was an admirer of Leonardo’s work and because Leonardo said it was an emergency.”

The camerlegno turned to the fire. He said nothing.

“Leonardo came to the Vatican in great secrecy. He was betraying his daughter’s confidence by coming here, a fact that troubled him deeply, but he felt he had no choice. His research had left him deeply conflicted and in need of spiritual guidance from the church. In a private meeting, he told you and the Pope that he had made a scientific discovery with profound religious implications. He had
proved
Genesis was physically possible, and that intense sources of energy—what Vetra called
God
—could duplicate the moment of Creation.”

Silence.

“The Pope was stunned,” Kohler continued. “He wanted Leonardo to go public. His Holiness thought this discovery might begin to bridge the gap between science and religion—one of the Pope’s life dreams. Then Leonardo explained to you the downside—the reason he required the church’s guidance. It seemed his Creation experiment, exactly as your Bible predicts, produced everything in pairs. Opposites. Light
and
dark. Vetra found himself, in addition to creating matter, creating
antimatter
. Shall I go on?”

The camerlegno was silent. He bent down and stoked the coals.

“After Leonardo Vetra came here,” Kohler said,
“you
came to CERN to see his work. Leonardo’s diaries said you made a personal trip to his lab.”

The camerlegno looked up.

Kohler went on. “The Pope could not travel without attracting media attention, so he sent
you.
Leonardo gave you a secret tour of his lab. He showed you an antimatter annihilation—the Big Bang—the power of Creation. He also showed you a large specimen he kept locked away as proof that his new process could produce antimatter on a large scale. You were in awe. You returned to Vatican City to report to the Pope what you had witnessed.”

The camerlegno sighed. “And what is it that troubles you? That I would respect Leonardo’s confidentiality by pretending before the world tonight that I knew nothing of antimatter?”

“No! It troubles me that Leonardo Vetra practically
proved
the existence of your God, and you had him murdered!”

The camerlegno turned now, his face revealing nothing.

The only sound was the crackle of the fire.

Suddenly, the camera jiggled, and Kohler’s arm appeared in the frame. He leaned forward, seeming to struggle with something affixed beneath his wheelchair. When he sat back down, he held a pistol out before him. The camera angle was a chilling one . . . looking from behind . . . down the length of the outstretched gun . . . directly at the camerlegno.

Kohler said, “Confess your sins, Father. Now.”

The camerlegno looked startled. “You will never get out of here alive.”

“Death would be a welcome relief from the misery your faith has put me through since I was a boy.”

Kohler held the gun with both hands now. “I am giving you a choice. Confess your sins . . . or die right now.”

The camerlegno glanced toward the door.

“Rocher is outside,” Kohler challenged. “He too is prepared to kill you.”

“Rocher is a sworn protector of th—”

“Rocher let me in here.
Armed.
He is sickened by your lies. You have a single option. Confess to me. I have to hear it from your very lips.”

The camerlegno hesitated.

Kohler cocked his gun. “Do you really doubt I will kill you?”

“No matter what I tell you,” the camerlegno said, “a man like you will never understand.”

“Try me.”

The camerlegno stood still for a moment, a dominant silhouette in the dim light of the fire. When he spoke, his words echoed with a dignity more suited to the glorious recounting of altruism than that of a confession.

“Since the beginning of time,” the camerlegno said, “this church has fought the enemies of God. Sometimes with words. Sometimes with swords. And we have always survived.”

The camerlegno radiated conviction.

“But the demons of the past,” he continued, “were demons of fire and abomination . . .
they
were enemies we could fight—enemies who inspired
fear
. Yet Satan is shrewd. As time passed, he cast off his diabolical countenance for a new face . . . the face of pure reason. Transparent and insidious, but soulless all the same.” The camerlegno’s voice flashed sudden anger—an almost maniacal transition. “Tell me, Mr. Kohler! How can the church condemn that which makes logical sense to our minds! How can we decry that which is now the very foundation of our society! Each time the church raises its voice in warning,
you
shout back, calling us ignorant. Paranoid. Controlling! And so your evil grows. Shrouded in a veil of self-righteous intellectualism. It spreads like a cancer. Sanctified by the miracles of its own technology. Deifying itself! Until we no longer suspect you are anything but pure goodness. Science has come to save us from our sickness, hunger, and pain! Behold science—the new God of endless miracles, omnipotent and benevolent! Ignore the weapons and the chaos. Forget the fractured loneliness and endless peril. Science is here!” The camerlegno stepped toward the gun. “But I have seen Satan’s face lurking . . . I have seen the peril . . .”

“What are you talking about! Vetra’s science practically
proved
the existence of your God! He was your ally!”

“Ally? Science and religion are not in this together! We do not seek the same God, you and I! Who is your God? One of protons, masses, and particle charges? How does your God
inspire?
How does your God reach into the hearts of man and remind him he is accountable to a greater power! Remind him that he is accountable to his fellow man! Vetra was misguided. His work was not religious, it was
sacrilegious!
Man cannot put God’s Creation in a test tube and wave it around for the world to see! This does not glorify God, it
demeans
God!” The camerlegno was clawing at his body now, his voice manic.

“And so you had Leonardo Vetra killed!”

“For the church! For all mankind! The madness of it! Man is not ready to hold the power of Creation in his hands. God in a test tube? A droplet of liquid that can vaporize an entire city? He had to be stopped!”

The camerlegno fell abruptly silent. He looked away, back toward the fire. He seemed to be contemplating his options.

Kohler’s hands leveled the gun. “You have confessed. You have no escape.”

The camerlegno laughed sadly. “Don’t you see. Confessing your sins
is
the escape.” He looked toward the door. “When God is on your side, you have options a man like you could never comprehend.” With his words still hanging in the air, the camerlegno grabbed the neck of his cassock and violently tore it open, revealing his bare chest.

Kohler jolted, obviously startled. “What are you doing!”

The camerlegno did not reply. He stepped backward, toward the fireplace, and removed an object from the glowing embers.

“Stop!” Kohler demanded, his gun still leveled. “What are you doing!”

When the camerlegno turned, he was holding a red-hot brand. The Illuminati Diamond. The man’s eyes looked wild suddenly. “I had intended to do this all alone.” His voice seethed with a feral intensity. “But now . . . I see God meant for
you
to be here.
You
are my salvation.”

Before Kohler could react, the camerlegno closed his eyes, arched his back, and rammed the red hot brand into the center of his own chest. His flesh hissed.
“Mother Mary! Blessed Mother . . . Behold your son!”

He screamed out in agony.

Kohler lurched into the frame now . . . standing awkwardly on his feet, gun wavering wildly before him. The camerlegno screamed louder, teetering in shock. He threw the brand at Kohler’s feet. Then the priest collapsed on the floor, writhing in agony.

What happened next was a blur.

There was a great flurry onscreen as the Swiss Guard burst into the room. The soundtrack exploded with gunfire. Kohler clutched his chest, blown backward, bleeding, falling into his wheelchair.

“No!” Rocher called, trying to stop his guards from firing on Kohler.

The camerlegno, still writhing on the floor, rolled and pointed frantically at Rocher.
“Illuminatus!”

“You bastard,” Rocher yelled, running at him. “You sanctimonious bas—”

Chartrand cut him down with three bullets. Rocher slid dead across the floor. Then the guards ran to the wounded camerlegno, gathering around him. As they huddled, the video caught the face of a dazed Robert Langdon, kneeling beside the wheelchair, looking at the brand. Then, the entire frame began lurching wildly. Kohler had regained consciousness and was detaching the tiny camcorder from its holder under the arm of the wheelchair. Then he tried to hand the camcorder to Langdon.

“G-give . . .” Kohler gasped. “G-give this to the m-media.”

Then the screen went blank.

130

T he camerlegno began to feel the fog of wonder and adrenaline dissipating. As the Swiss Guard helped him down the Royal Staircase toward the Sistine Chapel, the camerlegno heard singing in St. Peter’s Square and he knew that mountains had been moved.

Grazie Dio.

He had prayed for strength, and God had given it to him. At moments when he had doubted, God had spoken.
Yours is a Holy mission,
God had said.
I will give you strength.
Even with God’s strength, the camerlegno had felt fear, questioning the righteousness of his path.

If not you,
God had challenged,
then WHO?

If not now, then WHEN?

If not this way, then HOW?

Jesus, God reminded him, had saved them all . . . saved them from their own apathy. With two deeds, Jesus had opened their eyes. Horror and Hope. The crucifixion and the resurrection. He had changed the world.

But that was millennia ago. Time had eroded the miracle. People had forgotten. They had turned to false idols—techno-deities and miracles of the mind.
What about miracles of the heart!

The camerlegno had often prayed to God to show him how to make the people believe again. But God had been silent. It was not until the camerlegno’s moment of deepest darkness that God had come to him.
Oh, the horror of that night!

The camerlegno could still remember lying on the floor in tattered nightclothes, clawing at his own flesh, trying to purge his soul of the pain brought on by a vile truth he had just learned.
It cannot be!
he had screamed. And yet he knew it was. The deception tore at him like the fires of hell. The bishop who had taken him in, the man who had been like a father to him, the clergyman whom the camerlegno had stood beside while he rose to the papacy . . . was a fraud. A common sinner. Lying to the world about a deed so traitorous at its core that the camerlegno doubted even God could forgive it. “Your
vow!”
the camerlegno had screamed at the Pope. “You broke your vow to God!
You,
of all men!”

The Pope had tried to explain himself, but the camerlegno could not listen. He had run out, staggering blindly through the hallways, vomiting, tearing at his own skin, until he found himself bloody and alone, lying on the cold earthen floor before St. Peter’s tomb.
Mother Mary, what do I do?
It was in that moment of pain and betrayal, as the camerlegno lay devastated in the Necropolis, praying for God to take him from this faithless world, that God had come.

The voice in his head resounded like peals of thunder.
“Did you vow to serve your God?”

“Yes!” the camerlegno cried out.

“Would you die for your God?”

“Yes! Take me now!”

“Would you die for your church?”

“Yes! Please deliver me!”

“But would you die for . . . mankind?”

It was in the silence that followed that the camerlegno felt himself falling into the abyss. He tumbled farther, faster, out of control. And yet he knew the answer. He had always known.

“Yes!” he shouted into the madness. “I would die for man! Like your son, I would die for them!”

Hours later, the camerlegno still lay shivering on his floor. He saw his mother’s face.
God has plans for
you,
she was saying. The camerlegno plunged deeper into madness. It was then God had spoken again. This time with silence. But the camerlegno understood.
Restore their faith.
If not me . . . then who?

If not now . . . then when?

As the guards unbolted the door of the Sistine Chapel, Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca felt the power moving in his veins . . . exactly as it had when he was a boy. God had chosen him. Long ago.
His will be done.