The Lost Symbol rl-3

by Dan Brown

  And yet, incredibly, he felt as empty as he had in that Turkish prison.

  What is it I am missing?

  The answer had come to him several months later. Andros was sitting alone in his villa, absently surfing channels in the middle of the night, when he stumbled across a program about the secrets of Freemasonry. The show was poorly done, posing more questions than answers, and yet he found himself intrigued by the plethora of conspiracy theories surrounding the brotherhood. The narrator described legend after legend.

  Freemasons and the New World Order…

  The Great Masonic Seal of the United States…

  The P2 Masonic Lodge…

  The Lost Secret of Freemasonry…

  The Masonic Pyramid…

  Andros sat up, startled. Pyramid. The narrator began recounting the story of a mysterious stone pyramid whose encrypted engraving promised to lead to lost wisdom and unfathomable power. The story, though seemingly implausible, sparked in him a distant memory… a faint recollection from a much darker time. Andros remembered what Zachary Solomon had heard from his father about a mysterious pyramid.

  Could it be? Andros strained to recall the details.

  When the show ended, he stepped out onto the balcony, letting the cool air clear his mind. He remembered more now, and as it all came back, he began to sense there might be some truth to this legend after all. And if so, then Zachary Solomon — although long dead — still had something to offer.

  What do I have to lose?

  Three weeks later, his timing carefully planned, Andros stood in the frigid cold outside the conservatory of the Solomons’ Potomac estate. Through the glass, he could see Peter Solomon chatting and laughing with his sister, Katherine. It looks like they’ve had no trouble forgetting Zachary, he thought.

  Before he pulled the ski mask over his face, Andros took a hit of cocaine, his first in ages. He felt the familiar rush of fearlessness. He pulled out a handgun, used an old key to unlock the door, and stepped inside. “Hello, Solomons.”

  Unfortunately, the night had not gone as Andros had planned. Rather than obtaining the pyramid for which he had come, he found himself riddled with bird shot and fleeing across the snow-covered lawn toward the dense woods. To his surprise, behind him, Peter Solomon was giving chase, pistol glinting in his hand. Andros dashed into the woods, running down a trail along the edge of a deep ravine. Far below, the sounds of a waterfall echoed up through the crisp winter air. He passed a stand of oak trees and rounded a corner to his left. Seconds later, he was skidding to a stop on the icy path, narrowly escaping death.

  My God!

  Only feet in front of him, the path ended, plunging straight down into an icy river far below. The large boulder at the side of the path had been carved by the unskilled hand of a child:

  On the far side of the ravine, the path continued on. So where’s the bridge?! The cocaine was no longer working. I’m trapped! Panicking now, Andros turned to flee back up the path, but he found himself facing Peter Solomon, who stood breathless before him, pistol in hand.

  Andros looked at the gun and took a step backward. The drop behind him was at least fifty feet to an ice-covered river. The mist from the waterfall upstream billowed around them, chilling him to the bone.

  “Zach’s bridge rotted out long ago,” Solomon said, panting. “He was the only one who ever came down this far.” Solomon held the gun remarkably steady. “Why did you kill my son?”

  “He was nothing,” Andros replied. “A drug addict. I did him a favor.”

  Solomon moved closer, gun aimed directly at Andros’s chest. “Perhaps I should do you the same favor.” His tone was surprisingly fierce. “You bludgeoned my son to death. How does a man do such a thing?”

  “Men do the unthinkable when pushed to the brink.”

  “You killed my son!”

  “No,” Andros replied, hotly now. “You killed your son. What kind of man leaves his son in a prison when he has the option to get him out! You killed your son! Not me.”

  “You know nothing!” Solomon yelled, his voice filled with pain.

  You’re wrong, Andros thought. I know everything.

  Peter Solomon drew closer, only five yards away now, gun leveled. Andros’s chest was burning, and he could tell he was bleeding badly. The warmth ran down over his stomach. He looked over his shoulder at the drop. Impossible. He turned back to Solomon. “I know more about you than you think,” he whispered. “I know you are not the kind of man who kills in cold blood.”

  Solomon stepped closer, taking dead aim.

  “I’m warning you,” Andros said, “if you pull that trigger, I will haunt you forever.”

  “You already will.” And with that, Solomon fired.

  As he raced his black limousine back toward Kalorama Heights, the one who now called himself Mal’akh reflected on the miraculous events that had delivered him from certain death atop that icy ravine. He had been transformed forever. The gunshot had echoed only for an instant, and yet its effects had reverberated across decades. His body, once tanned and perfect, was now marred by scars from that night… scars he kept hidden beneath the tattooed symbols of his new identity.

  I am Mal’akh.

  This was my destiny all along.

  He had walked through fire, been reduced to ashes, and then emerged again… transformed once more. Tonight would be the final step of his long and magnificent journey.

  CHAPTER 58

  The coyly nicknamed explosive Key4 had been developed by Special Forces specifically for opening locked doors with minimal collateral damage. Consisting primarily of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine with a diethylhexyl plasticizer, it was essentially a piece of C-4 rolled into paper-thin sheets for insertion into doorjambs. In the case of the library’s reading room, the explosive had worked perfectly.

  Operation leader Agent Turner Simkins stepped over the wreckage of the doors and scanned the massive octagonal room for any signs of movement. Nothing.

  “Kill the lights,” Simkins said.

  A second agent found the wall panel, threw the switches, and plunged the room into darkness. In unison, all four men reached up and yanked down their night-vision headgear, adjusting the goggles over their eyes. They stood motionless, surveying the reading room, which now materialized in shades of luminescent green inside their goggles.

  The scene remained unchanged.

  Nobody made a dash for it in the dark.

  The fugitives were probably unarmed, and yet the field team entered the room with weapons raised. In the darkness, their firearms projected four menacing rods of laser light. The men washed the beams in all directions, across the floor, up the far walls, into the balconies, probing the darkness. Oftentimes, a mere glimpse of a laser-sighted weapon in a darkened room was enough to induce instant surrender.

  Apparently not tonight.

  Still no movement.

  Agent Simkins raised his hand, motioning his team into the space. Silently, the men fanned out. Moving cautiously up the center aisle, Simkins reached up and flipped a switch on his goggles, activating the newest addition to the CIA’s arsenal. Thermal imaging had been around for years, but recent advances in miniaturization, differential sensitivity, and dual-source integration had facilitated a new generation of vision enhancing equipment that gave field agents eyesight that bordered on superhuman.

  We see in the dark. We see through walls. And now… we see back in time.

  Thermal-imaging equipment had become so sensitive to heat differentials that it could detect not only a person’s location… but their previous locations. The ability to see into the past often proved the most valuable asset of all. And tonight, once again, it proved its worth. Agent Simkins now spied a thermal signature at one of the reading desks. The two wooden chairs luminesced in his goggles, registering a reddish-purple color, indicating those chairs were warmer than the other chairs in the room. The desk lamp’s bulb glowed orange. Obviously the two men had been sitting at the desk, but the ques
tion now was in which direction they had gone.

  He found his answer on the central counter that surrounded the large wooden console in the middle of the room. A ghostly handprint, glowing crimson.

  Weapon raised, Simkins moved toward the octagonal cabinet, training his laser sight across the surface. He circled until he saw an opening in the side of the console. Did they really corner themselves in a cabinet? The agent scanned the trim around the opening and saw another glowing handprint on it. Clearly someone had grabbed the doorjamb as he ducked inside the console.

  The time for silence was over.

  “Thermal signature!” Simkins shouted, pointing at the opening. “Flanks converge!”

  His two flanks moved in from opposite sides, effectively surrounding the octagonal console.

  Simkins moved toward the opening. Still ten feet away, he could see a light source within. “Light inside the console!” he shouted, hoping the sound of his voice might convince Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Langdon to exit the cabinet with their hands up.

  Nothing happened.

  Fine, we’ll do this the other way.

  As Simkins drew closer to the opening, he could hear an unexpected hum rumbling from within. It sounded like machinery. He paused, trying to imagine what could be making such a noise in such a small space. He inched closer, now hearing voices over the sound of machinery. Then, just as he arrived at the opening, the lights inside went out.

  Thank you, he thought, adjusting his night vision. Advantage, us.

  Standing at the threshold, he peered through the opening. What lay beyond was unexpected. The console was less of a cabinet than a raised ceiling over a steep set of stairs that descended into a room below. The agent aimed his weapon down the stairs and began descending. The hum of machinery grew louder with every step.

  What the hell is this place?

  The room beneath the reading room was a small, industrial-looking space. The hum he heard was indeed machinery, although he was not sure whether it was running because Bellamy and Langdon had activated it, or because it ran around the clock. Either way, it clearly made no difference. The fugitives had left their telltale heat signatures on the room’s lone exit — a heavy steel door whose keypad showed four clear fingerprints glowing on the numbers. Around the door, slivers of glowing orange shone beneath the doorjamb, indicating that lights were illuminated on the other side.

  “Blow the door,” Simkins said. “This was their escape route.”

  It took eight seconds to insert and detonate a sheet of Key4. When the smoke cleared, the field-team agents found themselves peering into a strange underground world known here as “the stacks.”

  The Library of Congress had miles and miles of bookshelves, most of them underground. The endless rows of shelves looked like some kind of “infinity” optical illusion created with mirrors.

  A sign announced

  TEMPERATURE-CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT

  Keep this door closed at all times.

  Simkins pushed through the mangled doors and felt cool air beyond. He couldn’t help but smile. Could this get any easier? Heat signatures in controlled environments showed up like solar flares, and already his goggles revealed a glowing red smear on a banister up ahead, which Bellamy or Langdon had grabbed on to while running past.

  “You can run,” he whispered to himself, “but you can’t hide.”

  As Simkins and his team advanced into the maze of stacks, he realized the playing field was tipped so heavily in his favor that he would not even need his goggles to track his prey. Under normal circumstances, this maze of stacks would have been a respectable hiding place, but the Library of Congress used motion-activated lights to save energy, and the fugitives’ escape route was now lit up like a runway. A narrow strip of illumination stretched into the distance, dodging and weaving as it went.

  All the men ripped off their goggles. Surging ahead on well-trained legs, the field team followed the trail of lights, zigging and zagging through a seemingly endless labyrinth of books. Soon Simkins began seeing lights flickering on in the darkness up ahead. We’re gaining. He pushed harder, faster, until he heard footsteps and labored breathing ahead. Then he saw a target.

  “I’ve got visual!” he yelled.

  The lanky form of Warren Bellamy was apparently bringing up the rear. The primly dressed African American staggered through the stacks, obviously out of breath. It’s no use, old man.

  “Stop right there, Mr. Bellamy!” Simkins yelled.

  Bellamy kept running, turning sharp corners, weaving through the rows of books. At every turn, the lights kept coming on over his head.

  As the team drew within twenty yards, they shouted again to stop, but Bellamy ran on.

  “Take him down!” Simkins commanded.

  The agent carrying the team’s nonlethal rifle raised it and fired. The projectile that launched down the aisle and wrapped itself around Bellamy’s legs was nicknamed Silly String, but there was nothing silly about it. A military technology invented at Sandia National Laboratories, this nonlethal “incapacitant” was a thread of gooey polyurethane that turned rock hard on contact, creating a rigid web of plastic across the back of the fugitive’s knees. The effect on a running target was that of jamming a stick into the spokes of a moving bike. The man’s legs seized midstride, and he pitched forward, crashing to the floor. Bellamy slid another ten feet down a darkened aisle before coming to a stop, the lights above him flickering unceremoniously to life.

  “I’ll deal with Bellamy,” Simkins shouted. “You keep going after Langdon! He must be up ahead some —” The team leader stopped, now seeing that the library stacks ahead of Bellamy were all pitch-black. Obviously, there was no one else running in front of Bellamy. He’s alone?

  Bellamy was still on his chest, breathing heavily, his legs and ankles all tangled with hardened plastic. The agent walked over and used his foot to roll the old man over onto his back.

  “Where is he?!” the agent demanded.

  Bellamy’s lip was bleeding from the fall. “Where is who?”

  Agent Simkins lifted his foot and placed his boot squarely on Bellamy’s pristine silk tie. Then he leaned in, applying some pressure. “Believe me, Mr. Bellamy, you do not want to play this game with me.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Robert Langdon felt like a corpse.

  He lay supine, hands folded on his chest, in total darkness, trapped in the most confined of spaces. Although Katherine lay nearby in a similar position near his head, Langdon could not see her. He had his eyes closed to prevent himself from catching even a fleeting glimpse of his frightening predicament.

  The space around him was small.

  Very small.

  Sixty seconds ago, with the double doors of the reading room crashing down, he and Katherine had followed Bellamy into the octagonal console, down a steep set of stairs, and into the unexpected space below.

  Langdon had realized at once where they were. The heart of the library’s circulation system. Resembling a small airport baggage distribution center, the circulation room had numerous conveyor belts that angled off in different directions. Because the Library of Congress was housed in three separate buildings, books requested in the reading room often had to be transported great distances by a system of conveyors through a web of underground tunnels.

  Bellamy immediately crossed the room to a steel door, where he inserted his key card, typed a sequence of buttons, and pushed open the door. The space beyond was dark, but as the door opened, a span of motion-sensor lights flickered to life.

  When Langdon saw what lay beyond, he realized he was looking at something few people ever saw. The Library of Congress stacks. He felt encouraged by Bellamy’s plan. What better place to hide than in a giant labyrinth?

  Bellamy did not guide them into the stacks, however. Instead, he propped the door open with a book and turned back to face them. “I had hoped to be able to explain a lot more to you, but we have no time.” He gave Langdon his key card. “You’ll ne
ed this.”

  “You’re not coming with us?” Langdon asked.

  Bellamy shook his head. “You’ll never make it unless we split up. The most important thing is to keep that pyramid and capstone in safe hands.”

  Langdon saw no other way out except the stairs back up to the reading room. “And where are you going?”

  “I’ll coax them into the stacks away from you,” Bellamy said. “It’s all I can do to help you escape.”

  Before Langdon could ask where he and Katherine were supposed to go, Bellamy was heaving a large crate of books off one of the conveyors. “Lie on the belt,” Bellamy said. “Keep your hands in.”

  Langdon stared. You cannot be serious! The conveyor belt extended a short distance then disappeared into a dark hole in the wall. The opening looked large enough to permit passage of a crate of books, but not much more. Langdon glanced back longingly at the stacks.

  “Forget it,” Bellamy said. “The motion-sensor lights will make it impossible to hide.”

  “Thermal signature!” a voice upstairs shouted. “Flanks converge!”

  Katherine apparently had heard all she needed to hear. She climbed onto the conveyor belt with her head only a few feet from the opening in the wall. She crossed her hands over her chest like a mummy in a sarcophagus.

  Langdon stood frozen.

  “Robert,” Bellamy urged, “if you won’t do this for me, do it for Peter.”

  The voices upstairs sounded closer now.

  As if in a dream, Langdon moved to the conveyor. He slung his daybag onto the belt and then climbed on, placing his head at Katherine’s feet. The hard rubber conveyor felt cold against his back. He stared at the ceiling and felt like a hospital patient preparing for insertion headfirst into an MRI machine.

  “Keep your phone on,” Bellamy said. “Someone will call soon… and offer help. Trust him.”

  Someone will call? Langdon knew that Bellamy had been trying to reach someone with no luck and had left a message earlier. And only moments ago, as they hurried down the spiral staircase, Bellamy had tried one last time and gotten through, speaking very briefly in hushed tones and then hanging up.