The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon) (48 page)

CHAPTER
114

Less than
ten miles away, Mal’akh tucked the blanket around Peter Solomon and wheeled him across a moonlit parking lot into the shadow of an enormous building. The structure had exactly thirty-three outer columns . . . each precisely thirty-three feet tall. The mountainous structure was deserted at this hour, and nobody would ever see them back here. Not that it mattered. From a distance, no one would think twice about a tall, kindly-looking man in a long black coat taking a bald invalid for an evening stroll.

When they reached the rear entrance, Mal’akh wheeled Peter up close to the security keypad. Peter stared at it defiantly, clearly having no intention of entering the code.

Mal’akh laughed. “You think you’re here to let me in? Have you forgotten so soon that I am one of your brethren?” He reached out and typed the access code that he had been given after his initiation to the thirty-third degree.

The heavy door clicked open.

Peter groaned and began struggling in the wheelchair.

“Peter, Peter,” Mal’akh cooed. “Picture Katherine. Be cooperative, and she will live. You can save her. I give you my word.”

Mal’akh wheeled his captive inside and relocked the door behind them, his heart racing now with anticipation. He pushed Peter through some hallways to an elevator and pressed the call button. The doors opened, and Mal’akh backed in, pulling the wheelchair along with him. Then, making sure Peter could see what he was doing, he reached out and pressed the uppermost button.

A look of deepening dread crossed Peter’s tortured face.

“Shh . . .” Mal’akh whispered, gently stroking Peter’s shaved head as the elevator doors closed. “As you well know . . . the secret is how to die.”

I can’t remember all the symbols!

Langdon closed his eyes, doing his best to recall the precise locations of the symbols on the bottom of the stone pyramid, but even his eidetic memory did not have that degree of recall. He wrote down the few symbols he could remember, placing each one in the location indicated by Franklin’s magic square.

So far, however, he saw nothing that made any sense.

“Look!” Katherine urged. “You must be on the right track. The first row is all Greek letters—the same kinds of symbols are being arranged together!”

Langdon had noticed this, too, but he could not think of any Greek word that fit that configuration of letters and spaces.
I need the first letter.
He glanced again at the magic square, trying to recall the letter that had been in the number one spot near the lower left corner.
Think!
He closed his eyes, trying to picture the base of the pyramid.
The bottom row . . . next to the left-hand corner . . . what letter was there?

For an instant, Langdon was back in the tank, racked with terror, staring up through the Plexiglas at the bottom of the pyramid.

Now, suddenly, he saw it. He opened his eyes, breathing heavily. “The first letter is
H
!”

Langdon turned back to the grid and wrote in the first letter. The word was still incomplete, but he had seen enough. Suddenly he realized what the word might be.

Ηερεδοµ
!

Pulse pounding, Langdon typed a new search into the BlackBerry. He entered the English equivalent of this well-known Greek word. The first hit that appeared was an encyclopedia entry. He read it and knew it had to be right.

HEREDOM n. a significant word in “high degree” Freemasonry, from French Rose Croix rituals, where it refers to a mythical mountain in Scotland, the legendary site of the first such Chapter. From the Greek Ηερεδοµ originating from Hieros-domos, Greek for Holy House.

“That’s it!” Langdon exclaimed, incredulous. “That’s where they went!”

Sato had been reading over his shoulder and looked lost. “To a mythical mountain in Scotland?!”

Langdon shook his head. “No, to a building in Washington whose code name is Heredom.”

CHAPTER
115

The House
of the Temple—known among its brethren as Heredom—had always been the crown jewel of the Masonic Scottish Rite in America. With its steeply sloped, pyramidical roof, the building was named for an imaginary Scottish mountain. Mal’akh knew, however, there was nothing imaginary about the treasure hidden here.

This is the place,
he knew.
The Masonic Pyramid has shown the way.

As the old elevator slowly made its way to the third floor, Mal’akh took out the piece of paper on which he had reorganized the grid of symbols using the Franklin Square. All the Greek letters had now shifted to the first row . . . along with one simple symbol.

The message could not have been more clear.

Beneath the House of the Temple.

Heredom↓

The Lost Word is here . . . somewhere.

Although Mal’akh did not know precisely how to locate it, he was confident that the answer lay in the remaining symbols on the grid. Conveniently, when it came to unlocking the secrets of the Masonic Pyramid and of this building, no one was more qualified to help than Peter Solomon.
The Worshipful Master himself.

Peter continued to struggle in the wheelchair, making muffled sounds through his gag.

“I know you’re worried about Katherine,” Mal’akh said. “But it’s almost over.”

For Mal’akh, the end felt like it had arrived very suddenly. After all the years of pain and planning, waiting and searching . . . the moment had now arrived.

The elevator began to slow, and he felt a rush of excitement.

The carriage jolted to a stop.

The bronze doors slid open, and Mal’akh gazed out at the glorious chamber before them. The massive square room was adorned with symbols and bathed in moonlight, which shone down through the oculus at the pinnacle of the ceiling high above.

I have come full circle,
Mal’akh thought.

The Temple Room was the same place in which Peter Solomon and his brethren had so foolishly initiated Mal’akh as one of their own. Now the Masons’ most sublime secret—something that most of the brethren did not even believe existed—was about to be unearthed.

“He won’t find anything,” Langdon said, still feeling groggy and disorientated as he followed Sato and the others up the wooden ramp out of the basement. “There is no actual
Word
. It’s all a metaphor—a
symbol
of the Ancient Mysteries.”

Katherine followed, with two agents assisting her weakened body up the ramp.

As the group moved gingerly through the wreckage of the steel door, through the rotating painting, and into the living room, Langdon explained to Sato that the Lost Word was one of Freemasonry’s most enduring symbols—a single word, written in an arcane language that man could no longer decipher. The Word, like the Mysteries themselves, promised to unveil its hidden power only to those enlightened enough to decrypt it. “It is said,” Langdon concluded, “that if you can possess and
understand
the Lost Word . . . then the Ancient Mysteries will become clear to you.”

Sato glanced over. “So you believe this man is looking for a
word
?”

Langdon had to admit it sounded absurd at face value, and yet it answered a lot of questions. “Look, I’m no specialist in ceremonial magic,” he said, “but from the documents on his basement walls . . . and from Katherine’s description of the untattooed flesh on his head . . . I’d say he’s hoping to find the Lost Word and inscribe it on his body.”

Sato moved the group toward the dining room. Outside, the helicopter was warming up, its blades thundering louder and louder.

Langdon kept talking, thinking aloud. “If this guy truly believes he is about to unlock the power of the Ancient Mysteries, no symbol would be more potent in his mind than the Lost Word. If he could find it and inscribe it on the top of his head—a sacred location in itself—then he would no doubt consider himself perfectly adorned and ritualistically
prepared to . . .” He paused, seeing Katherine blanch at the thought of Peter’s impending fate.

“But, Robert,” she said weakly, her voice barely audible over the helicopter blades. “This is good news, right? If he wants to inscribe the Lost Word on the top of his head before he sacrifices Peter, then we have time. He won’t kill Peter until he finds the Word. And, if there
is
no Word . . .”

Langdon tried to look hopeful as the agents helped Katherine into a chair. “Unfortunately, Peter still thinks you’re bleeding to death. He thinks the only way to save you is to cooperate with this lunatic . . .probably to help him find the Lost Word.”

“So what?” she insisted. “If the Word doesn’t exist—”

“Katherine,” Langdon said, staring deeply into her eyes. “If
I
believed you were dying, and if someone promised me I could save you by finding the Lost Word, then I would find this man a word—
any
word—and then I’d pray to God he kept his promise.”

“Director Sato!” an agent shouted from the next room. “You’d better see this!”

Sato hurried out of the dining room and saw one of her agents coming down the stairs from the bedroom. He was carrying a blond wig.
What the hell?

“Man’s hairpiece,” he said, handing it to her. “Found it in the dressing room. Have a close look.”

The blond wig was much heavier than Sato expected. The skullcap seemed to be molded of a thick gel. Strangely, the underside of the wig had a wire protruding from it.

“Gel-pack battery that molds to your scalp,” the agent said. “Powers a fiber-optic pinpoint camera hidden in the hair.”

“What?” Sato felt around with her fingers until she found the tiny camera lens nestled invisibly within the blond bangs. “This thing’s a hidden camera?”

“
Video
camera,” the agent said. “Stores footage on this tiny solid-state card.” He pointed to a stamp-size square of silicon embedded in the skullcap. “Probably motion activated.”

Jesus,
she thought.
So that’s how he did it.

This sleek version of the “flower in the lapel” secret camera had played a key role in the crisis the OS director was facing tonight. She glared at it a moment longer and then handed it back to the agent.

“Keep searching the house,” she said. “I want every bit of information you can find on this guy. We know his laptop is missing, and I want to know exactly
how
he plans to connect it to the outside world while he’s on the move. Search his study for manuals, cables, anything at all that might give us a clue about his hardware.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The agent hurried off.

Time to move out.
Sato could hear the whine of the helicopter blades at full pitch. She hurried back to the dining room, where Simkins had now ushered Warren Bellamy in from the helicopter and was gathering intel from him about the building to which they believed their target had gone.

House of the Temple.

“The front doors are sealed from within,” Bellamy was saying, still wrapped in a foil blanket and shivering visibly from his time outside in Franklin Square. “The building’s rear entrance is your only way in. It’s got a keypad with an access PIN known only to the brothers.”

“What’s the PIN?” Simkins demanded, taking notes.

Bellamy sat down, looking too feeble to stand. Through chattering teeth, he recited his access code and then added, “The address is 1733 Sixteenth, but you’ll want the access drive and parking area, behind the building. Kind of tricky to find, but—”

“I know exactly where it is,” Langdon said. “I’ll show you when we get there.”

Simkins shook his head. “You’re not coming, Professor. This is a military—”

“The hell I’m not!” Langdon fired back. “Peter’s in there! And that building’s a labyrinth! Without someone to lead you in, you’ll take ten minutes to find your way up to the Temple Room!”

“He’s right,” Bellamy said. “It’s a maze. There
is
an elevator, but it’s old and loud and opens in full view of the Temple Room. If you hope to move in quietly, you’ll need to ascend on foot.”

“You’ll never find your way,” Langdon warned. “From that rear entrance, you’re navigating through the Hall of Regalia, the Hall of Honor, the middle landing, the Atrium, the Grand Stair—”

“Enough,” Sato said. “Langdon’s coming.”