Chapter 68

   New York editor Jonas Faukman had just climbed into bed for the night when the telephone rang. A little late for callers, he grumbled, picking up the receiver.
   An operator’s voice asked him, “Will you accept charges for a collect call from Robert Langdon?”
   Puzzled, Jonas turned on the light. “Uh… sure, okay.”
   The line clicked. “Jonas?”
   “Robert? You wake me up and you charge me for it?”
   “Jonas, forgive me,” Langdon said. “I’ll keep this very short. I really need to know. The manuscript I gave you. Have you—“
   “Robert, I’m sorry, I know I said I’d send the edits out to you this week, but I’m swamped. Next Monday. I promise.”
   “I’m not worried about the edits. I need to know if you sent any copies out for blurbs without telling me?”
   Faukman hesitated. Langdon’s newest manuscript—an exploration of the history of goddess worship—included several sections about Mary Magdalene that were going to raise some eyebrows. Although the material was well documented and had been covered by others, Faukman had no intention of printing Advance Reading Copies of Langdon’s book without at least a few endorsements from serious historians and art luminaries. Jonas had chosen ten big names in the art world and sent them all sections of the manuscript along with a polite letter asking if they would be willing to write a short endorsement for the jacket. In Faukman’s experience, most people jumped at the opportunity to see their name in print.
   “Jonas?” Langdon pressed. “You sent out my manuscript, didn’t you?”
   Faukman frowned, sensing Langdon was not happy about it. “The manuscript was clean, Robert, and I wanted to surprise you with some terrific blurbs.”
   A pause. “Did you send one to the curator of the Paris Louvre?”
   “What do you think? Your manuscript referenced his Louvre collection several times, his books are in your bibliography, and the guy has some serious clout for foreign sales. Saunière was a nobrainer.”
   The silence on the other end lasted a long time. “When did you send it?”
   “About a month ago. I also mentioned you would be in Paris soon and suggested you two chat. Did he ever call you to meet?” Faukman paused, rubbing his eyes. “Hold on, aren’t you supposed to be in Paris this week?”
   “I am in Paris.”
   Faukman sat upright. “You called me collect from Paris?”
   “Take it out of my royalties, Jonas. Did you ever hear back from Saunière? Did he like the manuscript?”
   “I don’t know. I haven’t yet heard from him.”
   “Well, don’t hold your breath. I’ve got to run, but this explains a lot Thanks.”
   “Robert—“
   But Langdon was gone.
   Faukman hung up the phone, shaking his head in disbelief Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.

   Inside the Range Rover, Leigh Teabing let out a guffaw. “Robert, you’re saying you wrote a manuscript that delves into a secret society, and your editor sent a copy to that secret society?”
   Langdon slumped. “Evidently.”
   “A cruel coincidence, my friend.”
   Coincidence has nothing to do with it, Langdon knew. Asking Jacques Saunière to endorse a manuscript on goddess worship was as obvious as asking Tiger Woods to endorse a book on golf. Moreover, it was virtually guaranteed that any book on goddess worship would have to mention the Priory of Sion.
   “Here’s the milliondollar question,” Teabing said, still chuckling. “Was your position on the Priory favorable or unfavorable?”
   Langdon could hear Teabing’s true meaning loud and clear. Many historians questioned why the Priory was still keeping the Sangreal documents hidden. Some felt the information should have been shared with the world long ago. “I took no position on the Priory’s actions.”
   “You mean lack thereof.”
   Langdon shrugged. Teabing was apparently on the side of making the documents public. “I simply provided history on the brotherhood and described them as a modern goddess worship society, keepers of the Grail, and guardians of ancient documents.”
   Sophie looked at him. “Did you mention the keystone?”
   Langdon winced. He had. Numerous times. “I talked about the supposed keystone as an example of the lengths to which the Priory would go to protect the Sangreal documents.”
   Sophie looked amazed. “I guess that explains P.S. Find Robert Langdon.”
   Langdon sensed it was actually something else in the manuscript that had piqued Saunière’s interest, but that topic was something he would discuss with Sophie when they were alone.
   “So,” Sophie said, “you lied to Captain Fache.”
   “What?” Langdon demanded.
   “You told him you had never corresponded with my grandfather.”
   “I didn’t! My editor sent him a manuscript.”
   “Think about it, Robert. If Captain Fache didn’t find the envelope in which your editor sent the manuscript, he would have to conclude that you sent it.” She paused. “Or worse, that you handdelivered it and lied about it.”

   When the Range Rover arrived at Le Bourget Airfield, Remy drove to a small hangar at the far end of the airstrip. As they approached, a tousled man in wrinkled khakis hurried from the hangar, waved, and slid open the enormous corrugated metal door to reveal a sleek white jet within.
   Langdon stared at the glistening fuselage. “That’s Elizabeth?”
   Teabing grinned. “Beats the bloody Chunnel.”
   The man in khakis hurried toward them, squinting into the headlights. “Almost ready, sir,” he called in a British accent. “My apologies for the delay, but you took me by surprise and—“ He stopped short as the group unloaded. He looked at Sophie and Langdon, and then Teabing.
   Teabing said, “My associates and I have urgent business in London. We’ve no time to waste. Please prepare to depart immediately.” As he spoke, Teabing took the pistol out of the vehicle and handed it to Langdon.
   The pilot’s eyes bulged at the sight of the weapon. He walked over to Teabing and whispered, “Sir, my humble apologies, but my diplomatic flight allowance provides only for you and your manservant. I cannot take your guests.”
   “Richard,” Teabing said, smiling warmly, “two thousand pounds sterling and that loaded gun say you can take my guests.” He motioned to the Range Rover. “And the unfortunate fellow in the back.”

Chapter 69

   The Hawker 731’s twin Garrett TFE731 engines thundered, powering the plane skyward with gutwrenching force. Outside the window, Le Bourget Airfield dropped away with startling speed.
   I’m fleeing the country, Sophie thought, her body forced back into the leather seat. Until this moment, she had believed her game of cat and mouse with Fache would be somehow justifiable to the Ministry of Defense. I was attempting to protect an innocent man. I was trying to fulfill my grandfather’s dying wishes. That window of opportunity, Sophie knew, had just closed. She was leaving the country, without documentation, accompanying a wanted man, and transporting a bound hostage. If a “line of reason” had ever existed, she had just crossed it. At almost the speed of sound.
   Sophie was seated with Langdon and Teabing near the front of the cabin—the Fan Jet Executive Elite Design, according to the gold medallion on the door. Their plush swivel chairs were bolted to tracks on the floor and could be repositioned and locked around a rectangular hardwood table. A miniboardroom. The dignified surroundings, however, did little to camouflage the less than dignified state of affairs in the rear of the plane where, in a separate seating area near the rest room, Teabing’s manservant Remy sat with the pistol in hand, begrudgingly carrying out Teabing’s orders to stand guard over the bloody monk who lay trussed at his feet like a piece of luggage.
   “Before we turn our attention to the keystone,” Teabing said, “I was wondering if you would permit me a few words.” He sounded apprehensive, like a father about to give the birdsandthebees lecture to his children. “My friends, I realize I am but a guest on this journey, and I am honored as such. And yet, as someone who has spent his life in search of the Grail, I feel it is my duty to warn you that you are about to step onto a path from which there is no return, regardless of the dangers involved.” He turned to Sophie. “Miss Neveu, your grandfather gave you this cryptex in hopes you would keep the secret of the Holy Grail alive.”
   “Yes.”
   “Understandably, you feel obliged to follow the trail wherever it leads.”
   Sophie nodded, although she felt a second motivation still burning within her. The truth about my family. Despite Langdon’s assurances that the keystone had nothing to do with her past, Sophie still sensed something deeply personal entwined within this mystery, as if this cryptex, forged by her grandfather’s own hands, were trying to speak to her and offer some kind of resolution to the emptiness that had haunted her all these years.
   “Your grandfather and three others died tonight,” Teabing continued, “and they did so to keep this keystone away from the Church. Opus Dei came within inches tonight of possessing it. You understand, I hope, that this puts you in a position of exceptional responsibility. You have been handed a torch. A twothousandyearold flame that cannot be allowed to go out. This torch cannot fall into the wrong hands.” He paused, glancing at the rosewood box. “I realize you have been given no choice in this matter, Miss Neveu, but considering what is at stake here, you must either fully embrace this responsibility… or you must pass that responsibility to someone else.”
   “My grandfather gave the cryptex to me. I’m sure he thought I could handle the responsibility.”
   Teabing looked encouraged but unconvinced. “Good. A strong will is necessary. And yet, I am curious if you understand that successfully unlocking the keystone will bring with it a far greater trial.”
   “How so?”
   “My dear, imagine that you are suddenly holding a map that reveals the location of the Holy Grail. In that moment, you will be in possession of a truth capable of altering history forever. You will be the keeper of a truth that man has sought for centuries. You will be faced with the responsibility of revealing that truth to the world. The individual who does so will be revered by many and despised by many. The question is whether you will have the necessary strength to carry out that task.”
   Sophie paused. “I’m not sure that is my decision to make.”
   Teabing’s eyebrows arched. “No? If not the possessor of the keystone, then who?”
   “The brotherhood who has successfully protected the secret for so long.”
   “The Priory?” Teabing looked skeptical. “But how? The brotherhood was shattered tonight. Decapitated, as you so aptly put it. Whether they were infiltrated by some kind of eavesdropping or by a spy within their ranks, we will never know, but the fact remains that someone got to them and uncovered the identities of their four top members. I would not trust anyone who stepped forward from the brotherhood at this point.”
   “So what do you suggest?” Langdon asked.
   “Robert, you know as well as I do that the Priory has not protected the truth all these years to have it gather dust until eternity. They have been waiting for the right moment in history to share their secret. A time when the world is ready to handle the truth.”
   “And you believe that moment has arrived?” Langdon asked.
   “Absolutely. It could not be more obvious. All the historical signs are in place, and if the Priory did not intend to make their secret known very soon, why has the Church now attacked?”
   Sophie argued, “The monk has not yet told us his purpose.”
   “The monk’s purpose is the Church’s purpose,” Teabing replied, “to destroy the documents that reveal the great deception. The Church came closer tonight than they have ever come, and the Priory has put its trust in you, Miss Neveu. The task of saving the Holy Grail clearly includes carrying out the Priory’s final wishes of sharing the truth with the world.”
   Langdon intervened. “Leigh, asking Sophie to make that decision is quite a load to drop on someone who only an hour ago learned the Sangreal documents exist.”
   Teabing sighed. “I apologize if I am pressing, Miss Neveu. Clearly I have always believed these documents should be made public, but in the end the decision belongs to you. I simply feel it is important that you begin to think about what happens should we succeed in opening the keystone.”
   “Gentlemen,” Sophie said, her voice firm. “To quote your words, ‘You do not find the Grail, the Grail finds you.’ I am going to trust that the Grail has found me for a reason, and when the time comes, I will know what to do.”
   Both of them looked startled.
   “So then,” she said, motioning to the rosewood box. “Let’s move on.”

Chapter 70

   Standing in the drawing room of Chateau Villette, Lieutenant Collet watched the dying fire and felt despondent. Captain Fache had arrived moments earlier and was now in the next room, yelling into the phone, trying to coordinate the failed attempt to locate the missing Range Rover.
   It could be anywhere by now, Collet thought.
   Having disobeyed Fache’s direct orders and lost Langdon for a second time, Collet was grateful that PTS had located a bullet hole in the floor, which at least corroborated Collet’s claims that a shot had been fired. Still, Fache’s mood was sour, and Collet sensed there would be dire repercussions when the dust settled.
   Unfortunately, the clues they were turning up here seemed to shed no light at all on what was going on or who was involved. The black Audi outside had been rented in a false name with false credit card numbers, and the prints in the car matched nothing in the Interpol database.
   Another agent hurried into the living room, his eyes urgent. “Where’s Captain Fache?”
   Collet barely looked up from the burning embers. “He’s on the phone.”
   “I’m off the phone,” Fache snapped, stalking into the room. “What have you got?”
   The second agent said, “Sir, Central just heard from Andre Vernet at the Depository Bank of Zurich. He wants to talk to you privately. He is changing his story.”
   “Oh?” Fache said.
   Now Collet looked up.
   “Vernet is admitting that Langdon and Neveu spent time inside his bank tonight.”
   “We figured that out,” Fache said. “Why did Vernet lie about it?”
   “He said he’ll talk only to you, but he’s agreed to cooperate fully.”
   “In exchange for what?”
   “For our keeping his bank’s name out of the news and also for helping him recover some stolen property. It sounds like Langdon and Neveu stole something from Saunière’s account.”
   “What?” Collet blurted. “How?”
   Fache never flinched, his eyes riveted on the second agent. “What did they steal?”
   “Vernet didn’t elaborate, but he sounds like he’s willing to do anything to get it back.”
   Collet tried to imagine how this could happen. Maybe Langdon and Neveu had held a bank employee at gunpoint? Maybe they forced Vernet to open Saunière’s account and facilitate an escape in the armored truck. As feasible as it was, Collet was having trouble believing Sophie Neveu could be involved in anything like that.
   From the kitchen, another agent yelled to Fache. “Captain? I’m going through Mr. Teabing’s speed dial numbers, and I’m on the phone with Le Bourget Airfield. I’ve got some bad news.”

   Thirty seconds later, Fache was packing up and preparing to leave Chateau Villette. He had just learned that Teabing kept a private jet nearby at Le Bourget Airfield and that the plane had taken off about a half hour ago.
   The Bourget representative on the phone had claimed not to know who was on the plane or where it was headed. The takeoff had been unscheduled, and no flight plan had been logged. Highly illegal, even for a small airfield. Fache was certain that by applying the right pressure, he could get the answers he was looking for.
   “Lieutenant Collet,” Fache barked, heading for the door. “I have no choice but to leave you in charge of the PTS investigation here. Try to do something right for a change.”

Chapter 71

   As the Hawker leveled off, with its nose aimed for England, Langdon carefully lifted the rosewood box from his lap, where he had been protecting it during takeoff. Now, as he set the box on the table, he could sense Sophie and Teabing leaning forward with anticipation.
   Unlatching the lid and opening the box, Langdon turned his attention not to the lettered dials of the cryptex, but rather to the tiny hole on the underside of the box lid. Using the tip of a pen, he carefully removed the inlaid Rose on top and revealed the text beneath it. Sub Rosa, he mused, hoping a fresh look at the text would bring clarity. Focusing all his energies, Langdon studied the strange text.
 


 
   After several seconds, he began to feel the initial frustration resurfacing. “Leigh, I just can’t seem to place it.”
   From where Sophie was seated across the table, she could not yet see the text, but Langdon’s inability to immediately identify the language surprised her. My grandfather spoke a language so obscure that even a symbologist can’t identify it? She quickly realized she should not find this surprising. This would not be the first secret Jacques Saunière had kept from his granddaughter.
 
   Opposite Sophie, Leigh Teabing felt ready to burst. Eager for his chance to see the text, he quivered with excitement, leaning in, trying to see around Langdon, who was still hunched over the box.
   “I don’t know,” Langdon whispered intently. “My first guess is a Semitic, but now I’m not so sure. Most primary Semitics include nekkudot. This has none.”
   “Probably ancient,” Teabing offered.
   “Nekkudot?” Sophie inquired.
   Teabing never took his eyes from the box. “Most modern Semitic alphabets have no vowels and use nekkudot —tiny dots and dashes written either below or within the consonants—to indicate what vowel sound accompanies them. Historically speaking, nekkudot are a relatively modern addition to language.”
   Langdon was still hovering over the script. “A Sephardic transliteration, perhaps…?”
   Teabing could bear it no longer. “Perhaps if I just…” Reaching over, he edged the box away from Langdon and pulled it toward himself. No doubt Langdon had a solid familiarity with the standard ancients—Greek, Latin, the Romances—but from the fleeting glance Teabing had of this language, he thought it looked more specialized, possibly a Rashi script or a STA’M with crowns.
   Taking a deep breath, Teabing feasted his eyes upon the engraving. He said nothing for a very long time. With each passing second, Teabing felt his confidence deflating. “I’m astonished,” he said. “This language looks like nothing I’ve ever seen!”
   Langdon slumped.
   “Might I see it?” Sophie asked.
   Teabing pretended not to hear her. “Robert, you said earlier that you thought you’d seen something like this before?”
   Langdon looked vexed. “I thought so. I’m not sure. The script looks familiar somehow.”
   “Leigh?” Sophie repeated, clearly not appreciating being left out of the discussion. “Might I have a look at the box my grandfather made?”
   “Of course, dear,” Teabing said, pushing it over to her. He hadn’t meant to sound belittling, and yet Sophie Neveu was lightyears out of her league. If a British Royal Historian and a Harvard symbologist could not even identify the language—
   “Aah,” Sophie said, seconds after examining the box. “I should have guessed.”
   Teabing and Langdon turned in unison, staring at her.
   “Guessed what?” Teabing demanded.
   Sophie shrugged. “Guessed that this would be the language my grandfather would have used.”
   “You’re saying you can read this text?” Teabing exclaimed.
   “Quite easily,” Sophie chimed, obviously enjoying herself now. “My grandfather taught me this language when I was only six years old. I’m fluent.” She leaned across the table and fixed Teabing with an admonishing glare. “And frankly, sir, considering your allegiance to the Crown, I’m a little surprised you didn’t recognize it.”
   In a flash, Langdon knew.
   No wonder the script looks so damned familiar!
   Several years ago, Langdon had attended an event at Harvard’s Fogg Museum. Harvard dropout Bill Gates had returned to his alma mater to lend to the museum one of his priceless acquisitions—eighteen sheets of paper he had recently purchased at auction from the Armand Hammar Estate.
   His winning bid—a cool $30.8 million.
   The author of the pages—Leonardo da Vinci.
   The eighteen folios—now known as Leonardo’s Codex Leicester after their famous owner, the Earl of Leicester—were all that remained of one of Leonardo’s most fascinating notebooks: essays and drawings outlining Da Vinci’s progressive theories on astronomy, geology, archaeology, and hydrology.
   Langdon would never forget his reaction after waiting in line and finally viewing the priceless parchment. Utter letdown. The pages were unintelligible. Despite being beautifully preserved and written in an impeccably neat penmanship—crimson ink on cream paper—the codex looked like gibberish. At first Langdon thought he could not read them because Da Vinci wrote his notebooks in an archaic Italian. But after studying them more closely, he realized he could not identify a single Italian word, or even one letter.
   “Try this, sir,” whispered the female docent at the display case. She motioned to a hand mirror affixed to the display on a chain. Langdon picked it up and examined the text in the mirror’s surface.
   Instantly it was clear.
   Langdon had been so eager to peruse some of the great thinker’s ideas that he had forgotten one of the man’s numerous artistic talents was an ability to write in a mirrored script that was virtually illegible to anyone other than himself. Historians still debated whether Da Vinci wrote this way simply to amuse himself or to keep people from peering over his shoulder and stealing his ideas, but the point was moot. Da Vinci did as he pleased.
 
   Sophie smiled inwardly to see that Robert understood her meaning. “I can read the first few words,” she said. “It’s English.”
   Teabing was still sputtering. “What’s going on?”
   “Reverse text,” Langdon said. “We need a mirror.”
   “No we don’t,” Sophie said. “I bet this veneer is thin enough.” She lifted the rosewood box up to a canister light on the wall and began examining the underside of the lid. Her grandfather couldn’t actually write in reverse, so he always cheated by writing normally and then flipping the paper over and tracing the reversed impression. Sophie’s guess was that he had woodburned normal text into a block of wood and then run the back of the block through a sander until the wood was paper thin and the woodburning could be seen through the wood. Then he’d simply flipped the piece over, and laid it in.
   As Sophie moved the lid closer to the light, she saw she was right. The bright beam sifted through the thin layer of wood, and the script appeared in reverse on the underside of the lid.
   Instantly legible.
   “English,” Teabing croaked, hanging his head in shame. “My native tongue.”
 
   At the rear of the plane, Remy Legaludec strained to hear beyond the rumbling engines, but the conversation up front was inaudible. Remy did not like the way the night was progressing. Not at all. He looked down at the bound monk at his feet. The man lay perfectly still now, as if in a trance of acceptance, or perhaps, in silent prayer for deliverance.

Chapter 72

   Fifteen thousand feet in the air, Robert Langdon felt the physical world fade away as all of his thoughts converged on Saunière’s mirrorimage poem, which was illuminated through the lid of the box.
 


 
   Sophie quickly found some paper and copied it down longhand. When she was done, the three of them took turns reading the text. It was like some kind of archaeological crossword… a riddle that promised to reveal how to open the cryptex. Langdon read the verse slowly.
   An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll… and helps us keep her scatter’d family whole… a headstone praised by templars is the key… and atbash will reveal the truth to thee.
   Before Langdon could even ponder what ancient password the verse was trying to reveal, he felt something far more fundamental resonate within him—the meter of the poem. Iambic pentameter.
   Langdon had come across this meter often over the years while researching secret societies across Europe, including just last year in the Vatican Secret Archives. For centuries, iambic pentameter had been a preferred poetic meter of outspoken literati across the globe, from the ancient Greek writer Archilochus to Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Voltaire—bold souls who chose to write their social commentaries in a meter that many of the day believed had mystical properties. The roots of iambic pentameter were deeply pagan.
   Iambs. Two syllables with opposite emphasis. Stressed and unstressed. Yin yang. A balanced pair. Arranged in strings of five. Pentameter. Five for the pentacle of Venus and the sacred feminine.
   “It’s pentameter!” Teabing blurted, turning to Langdon. “And the verse is in English! La lingua pura!”
   Langdon nodded. The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the Church, had considered English the only European pure language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish, and Italian, which were rooted in Latin—the tongue of the Vatican —English was linguistically removed from Rome’s propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred, secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to learn it.
   “This poem,” Teabing gushed, “references not only the Grail, but the Knights Templar and the scattered family of Mary Magdalene! What more could we ask for?”
   “The password,” Sophie said, looking again at the poem. “It sounds like we need some kind of ancient word of wisdom?”
   “Abracadabra?” Teabing ventured, his eyes twinkling.
   A word of five letters, Langdon thought, pondering the staggering number of ancient words that might be considered words of wisdom —selections from mystic chants, astrological prophecies, secret society inductions, Wicca incantations, Egyptian magic spells, pagan mantras—the list was endless.
   “The password,” Sophie said, “appears to have something to do with the Templars.” She read the text aloud. “ ‘A headstone praised by Templars is the key.’ “
   “Leigh,” Langdon said, “you’re the Templar specialist. Any ideas?”
   Teabing was silent for several seconds and then sighed. “Well, a headstone is obviously a grave marker of some sort. It’s possible the poem is referencing a gravestone the Templars praised at the tomb of Magdalene, but that doesn’t help us much because we have no idea where her tomb is.”
   “The last line,” Sophie said, “says that Atbash will reveal the truth. I’ve heard that word. Atbash.”
   “I’m not surprised,” Langdon replied. “You probably heard it in Cryptology 101. The Atbash Cipher is one of the oldest codes known to man.”
   Of course! Sophie thought. The famous Hebrew encoding system.
   The Atbash Cipher had indeed been part of Sophie’s early cryptology training. The cipher dated back to 500 B.C. and was now used as a classroom example of a basic rotational substitution scheme. A common form of Jewish cryptogram, the Atbash Cipher was a simple substitution code based on the twentytwoletter Hebrew alphabet. In Atbash, the first letter was substituted by the last letter, the second letter by the next to last letter, and so on.
   “Atbash is sublimely appropriate,” Teabing said. “Text encrypted with Atbash is found throughout the Kabbala, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Old Testament. Jewish scholars and mystics are still finding hidden meanings using Atbash. The Priory certainly would include the Atbash Cipher as part of their teachings.”
   “The only problem,” Langdon said, “is that we don’t have anything on which to apply the cipher.”
   Teabing sighed. “There must be a code word on the headstone. We must find this headstone praised by Templars.”
   Sophie sensed from the grim look on Langdon’s face that finding the Templar headstone would be no small feat.
   Atbash is the key, Sophie thought. But we don’t have a door.
   It was three minutes later that Teabing heaved a frustrated sigh and shook his head. “My friends, I’m stymied. Let me ponder this while I get us some nibblies and check on Remy and our guest.” He stood up and headed for the back of the plane.
   Sophie felt tired as she watched him go.
   Outside the window, the blackness of the predawn was absolute. Sophie felt as if she were being hurtled through space with no idea where she would land. Having grown up solving her grandfather’s riddles, she had the uneasy sense right now that this poem before them contained information they still had not seen.
   There is more there, she told herself. Ingeniously hidden… but present nonetheless.
   Also plaguing her thoughts was a fear that what they eventually found inside this cryptex would not be as simple as “a map to the Holy Grail.” Despite Teabing’s and Langdon’s confidence that the truth lay just within the marble cylinder, Sophie had solved enough of her grandfather’s treasure hunts to know that Jacques Saunière did not give up his secrets easily.

Chapter 73

   Bourget Airfield’s night shift air traffic controller had been dozing before a blank radar screen when the captain of the Judicial Police practically broke down his door.
   “Teabing’s jet,” Bezu Fache blared, marching into the small tower, “where did it go?”
   The controller’s initial response was a babbling, lame attempt to protect the privacy of their British client—one of the airfield’s most respected customers. It failed miserably.
   “Okay,” Fache said, “I am placing you under arrest for permitting a private plane to take off without registering a flight plan.” Fache motioned to another officer, who approached with handcuffs, and the traffic controller felt a surge of terror. He thought of the newspaper articles debating whether the nation’s police captain was a hero or a menace. That question had just been answered.
   “Wait!” the controller heard himself whimper at the sight of the handcuffs. “I can tell you this much. Sir Leigh Teabing makes frequent trips to London for medical treatments. He has a hangar at Biggin Hill Executive Airport in Kent. On the outskirts of London.”
   Fache waved off the man with the cuffs. “Is Biggin Hill his destination tonight?”
   “I don’t know,” the controller said honestly. “The plane left on its usual tack, and his last radar contact suggested the United Kingdom. Biggin Hill is an extremely likely guess.”
   “Did he have others onboard?”
   “I swear, sir, there is no way for me to know that. Our clients can drive directly to their hangars, and load as they please. Who is onboard is the responsibility of the customs officials at the receiving airport.”
   Fache checked his watch and gazed out at the scattering of jets parked in front of the terminal. “If they’re going to Biggin Hill, how long until they land?”
   The controller fumbled through his records. “It’s a short flight. His plane could be on the ground by… around sixthirty. Fifteen minutes from now.”
   Fache frowned and turned to one of his men. “Get a transport up here. I’m going to London. And get me the Kent local police. Not British MI5. I want this quiet. Kent local. Tell them I want Teabing’s plane to be permitted to land. Then I want it surrounded on the tarmac. Nobody deplanes until I get there.”

Chapter 74

   “You’re quiet,” Langdon said, gazing across the Hawker’s cabin at Sophie.
   “Just tired,” she replied. “And the poem. I don’t know.”
   Langdon was feeling the same way. The hum of the engines and the gentle rocking of the plane were hypnotic, and his head still throbbed where he’d been hit by the monk. Teabing was still in the back of the plane, and Langdon decided to take advantage of the moment alone with Sophie to tell her something that had been on his mind. “I think I know part of the reason why your grandfather conspired to put us together. I think there’s something he wanted me to explain to you.”
   “The history of the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene isn’t enough?”
   Langdon felt uncertain how to proceed. “The rift between you. The reason you haven’t spoken to him in ten years. I think maybe he was hoping I could somehow make that right by explaining what drove you apart.”
   Sophie squirmed in her seat. “I haven’t told you what drove us apart.”
   Langdon eyed her carefully. “You witnessed a sex rite. Didn’t you?”
   Sophie recoiled. “How do you know that?”
   “Sophie, you told me you witnessed something that convinced you your grandfather was in a secret society. And whatever you saw upset you enough that you haven’t spoken to him since. I know a fair amount about secret societies. It doesn’t take the brains of Da Vinci to guess what you saw.”
   Sophie stared.
   “Was it in the spring?” Langdon asked. “Sometime around the equinox? MidMarch?”
   Sophie looked out the window. “I was on spring break from university. I came home a few days early.”
   “You want to tell me about it?”
   “I’d rather not.” She turned suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes welling with emotion. “I don’t know what I saw.”
   “Were both men and women present?”
   After a beat, she nodded.
   “Dressed in white and black?”
   She wiped her eyes and then nodded, seeming to open up a little. “The women were in white gossamer gowns… with golden shoes. They held golden orbs. The men wore black tunics and black shoes.”
   Langdon strained to hide his emotion, and yet he could not believe what he was hearing. Sophie Neveu had unwittingly witnessed a twothousandyearold sacred ceremony. “Masks?” he asked, keeping his voice calm. “Androgynous masks?”
   “Yes. Everyone. Identical masks. White on the women. Black on the men.”
   Langdon had read descriptions of this ceremony and understood its mystic roots. “It’s called Hieros Gamos,” he said softly. “It dates back more than two thousand years. Egyptian priests and priestesses performed it regularly to celebrate the reproductive power of the female,” He paused, leaning toward her. “And if you witnessed Hieros Gamos without being properly prepared to understand its meaning, I imagine it would be pretty shocking.”
   Sophie said nothing.
   “Hieros Gamos is Greek,” he continued. “It means sacred marriage.”
   “The ritual I saw was no marriage.”
   “Marriage as in union, Sophie.”
   “You mean as in sex.”
   “No.”
   “No?” she said, her olive eyes testing him.
   Langdon backpedaled. “Well… yes, in a manner of speaking, but not as we understand it today.” He explained that although what she saw probably looked like a sex ritual, Hieros Gamos had nothing to do with eroticism. It was a spiritual act. Historically, intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis —knowledge of the divine. Since the days of Isis, sex rites had been considered man’s only bridge from earth to heaven. “By communing with woman,” Langdon said, “man could achieve a climactic instant when his mind went totally blank and he could see God.”
   Sophie looked skeptical. “Orgasm as prayer?”
   Langdon gave a noncommittal shrug, although Sophie was essentially correct. Physiologically speaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of thought. A brief mental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurus achieved similar states of thoughtlessness without sex and often described Nirvana as a neverending spiritual orgasm.
   “Sophie,” Langdon said quietly, “it’s important to remember that the ancients’ view of sex was entirely opposite from ours today. Sex begot new life—the ultimate miracle—and miracles could be performed only by a god. The ability of the woman to produce life from her womb made her sacred. A god. Intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit—male and female—through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God. What you saw was not about sex, it was about spirituality. The Hieros Gamos ritual is not a perversion. It’s a deeply sacrosanct ceremony.”
   His words seemed to strike a nerve. Sophie had been remarkably poised all evening, but now, for the first time, Langdon saw the aura of composure beginning to crack. Tears materialized in her eyes again, and she dabbed them away with her sleeve.
   He gave her a moment. Admittedly, the concept of sex as a pathway to God was mindboggling at first. Langdon’s Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. Men seeking spiritual wholeness came to the Temple to visit priestesses—or hierodules —with whom they made love and experienced the divine through physical union. The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the preHebraic name for Eve, Havah.
   “For the early Church,” Langdon explained in a soft voice, “mankind’s use of sex to commune directly with God posed a serious threat to the Catholic power base. It left the Church out of the loop, undermining their selfproclaimed status as the sole conduit to God. For obvious reasons, they worked hard to demonize sex and recast it as a disgusting and sinful act. Other major religions did the same.”
   Sophie was silent, but Langdon sensed she was starting to understand her grandfather better. Ironically, Langdon had made this same point in a class lecture earlier this semester. “Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex?” he asked his students. “Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us sex is natural—a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment—and yet modern religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil.”
   Langdon decided not to shock his students with the fact that more than a dozen secret societies around the world—many of them quite influential—still practiced sex rites and kept the ancient traditions alive. Tom Cruise’s character in the film Eyes Wide Shut discovered this the hard way when he sneaked into a private gathering of ultraelite Manhattanites only to find himself witnessing Hieros Gamos. Sadly, the filmmakers had gotten most of the specifics wrong, but the basic gist was there—a secret society communing to celebrate the magic of sexual union.
   “Professor Langdon?” A male student in back raised his hand, sounding hopeful. “Are you saying that instead of going to chapel, we should have more sex?”
   Langdon chuckled, not about to take the bait. From what he’d heard about Harvard parties, these kids were having more than enough sex. “Gentlemen,” he said, knowing he was on tender ground, “might I offer a suggestion for all of you. Without being so bold as to condone premarital sex, and without being so naive as to think you’re all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice about your sex lives.”
   All the men in the audience leaned forward, listening intently.
   “The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you cannot approach sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred feminine.”
   The women smiled knowingly, nodding.
   The men exchanged dubious giggles and offcolor jokes.
   Langdon sighed. College men were still boys.

   Sophie’s forehead felt cold as she pressed it against the plane’s window and stared blankly into the void, trying to process what Langdon had just told her. She felt a new regret well within her. Ten years. She pictured the stacks of unopened letters her grandfather had sent her. I will tell Robert everything. Without turning from the window, Sophie began to speak. Quietly. Fearfully.
   As she began to recount what had happened that night, she felt herself drifting back… alighting in the woods outside her grandfather’s Normandy chateau… searching the deserted house in confusion… hearing the voices below her… and then finding the hidden door. She inched down the stone staircase, one step at a time, into that basement grotto. She could taste the earthy air. Cool and light. It was March. In the shadows of her hiding place on the staircase, she watched as the strangers swayed and chanted by flickering orange candles.
   I’m dreaming, Sophie told herself. This is a dream. What else could this be?
   The women and men were staggered, black, white, black, white. The women’s beautiful gossamer gowns billowed as they raised in their right hands golden orbs and called out in unison, “I was with you in the beginning, in the dawn of all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start of day.”
   The women lowered their orbs, and everyone rocked back and forth as if in a trance. They were revering something in the center of the circle.
   What are they looking at?
   The voices accelerated now. Louder. Faster.
   “The woman whom you behold is love!” The women called, raising their orbs again.
   The men responded, “She has her dwelling in eternity!”
   The chanting grew steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The participants stepped inward and knelt.
   In that instant, Sophie could finally see what they were all watching.
   On a low, ornate altar in the center of the circle lay a man. He was naked, positioned on his back, and wearing a black mask. Sophie instantly recognized his body and the birthmark on his shoulder. She almost cried out. Grand-père! This image alone would have shocked Sophie beyond belief, and yet there was more.
   Straddling her grandfather was a naked woman wearing a white mask, her luxuriant silver hair flowing out behind it. Her body was plump, far from perfect, and she was gyrating in rhythm to the chanting—making love to Sophie’s grandfather.
   Sophie wanted to turn and run, but she couldn’t. The stone walls of the grotto imprisoned her as the chanting rose to a fever pitch. The circle of participants seemed almost to be singing now, the noise rising in crescendo to a frenzy. With a sudden roar, the entire room seemed to erupt in climax. Sophie could not breathe. She suddenly realized she was quietly sobbing. She turned and staggered silently up the stairs, out of the house, and drove trembling back to Paris.

Chapter 75

   The chartered turboprop was just passing over the twinkling lights of Monaco when Aringarosa hung up on Fache for the second time. He reached for the airsickness bag again but felt too drained even to be sick.
   Just let it be over!
   Fache’s newest update seemed unfathomable, and yet almost nothing tonight made sense anymore. What is going on? Everything had spiraled wildly out of control. What have I gotten Silas into? What have I gotten myself into!
   On shaky legs, Aringarosa walked to the cockpit. “I need to change destinations.”
   The pilot glanced over his shoulder and laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
   “No. I have to get to London immediately.”
   “Father, this is a charter flight, not a taxi.”
   “I will pay you extra, of course. How much? London is only one hour farther north and requires almost no change of direction, so—“
   “It’s not a question of money, Father, there are other issues.”
   “Ten thousand euro. Right now.”
   The pilot turned, his eyes wide with shock. “How much? What kind of priest carries that kind of cash?”
   Aringarosa walked back to his black briefcase, opened it, and removed one of the bearer bonds. He handed it to the pilot.
   “What is this?” the pilot demanded.
   “A tenthousandeuro bearer bond drawn on the Vatican Bank.”
   The pilot looked dubious.
   “It’s the same as cash.”
   “Only cash is cash,” the pilot said, handing the bond back.
   Aringarosa felt weak as he steadied himself against the cockpit door. “This is a matter of life or death. You must help me. I need to get to London.”
   The pilot eyed the bishop’s gold ring. “Real diamonds?”
   Aringarosa looked at the ring. “I could not possibly part with this.”
   The pilot shrugged, turning and focusing back out the windshield.
   Aringarosa felt a deepening sadness. He looked at the ring. Everything it represented was about to be lost to the bishop anyway. After a long moment, he slid the ring from his finger and placed it gently on the instrument panel.
   Aringarosa slunk out of the cockpit and sat back down. Fifteen seconds later, he could feel the pilot banking a few more degrees to the north.
   Even so, Aringarosa’s moment of glory was in shambles.
   It had all begun as a holy cause. A brilliantly crafted scheme. Now, like a house of cards, it was collapsing in on itself… and the end was nowhere in sight.

Chapter 76

   Langdon could see Sophie was still shaken from recounting her experience of Hieros Gamos. For his part, Langdon was amazed to have heard it. Not only had Sophie witnessed the fullblown ritual, but her own grandfather had been the celebrant… the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. It was heady company. Da Vinci, Botticelli, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau… Jacques Saunière.
   “I don’t know what else I can tell you,” Langdon said softly.
   Sophie’s eyes were a deep green now, tearful. “He raised me like his own daughter.”
   Langdon now recognized the emotion that had been growing in her eyes as they spoke. It was remorse. Distant and deep. Sophie Neveu had shunned her grandfather and was now seeing him in an entirely different light.
   Outside, the dawn was coming fast, its crimson aura gathering off the starboard. The earth was still black beneath them.
   “Victuals, my dears?” Teabing rejoined them with a flourish, presenting several cans of Coke and a box of old crackers. He apologized profusely for the limited fare as he doled out the goods. “Our friend the monk isn’t talking yet,” he chimed, “but give him time.” He bit into a cracker and eyed the poem. “So, my lovely, any headway?” He looked at Sophie. “What is your grandfather trying to tell us here? Where the devil is this headstone? This headstone praised by Templars.”
   Sophie shook her head and remained silent.
   While Teabing again dug into the verse, Langdon popped a Coke and turned to the window, his thoughts awash with images of secret rituals and unbroken codes. A headstone praised by Templars is the key. He took a long sip from the can. A headstone praised by Templars. The cola was warm.
   The dissolving veil of night seemed to evaporate quickly, and as Langdon watched the transformation, he saw a shimmering ocean stretch out beneath them. The English Channel. It wouldn’t be long now.
   Langdon willed the light of day to bring with it a second kind of illumination, but the lighter it became outside, the further he felt from the truth. He heard the rhythms of iambic pentameter and chanting, Hieros Gamos and sacred rites, resonating with the rumble of the jet.
   A headstone praised by Templars.
   The plane was over land again when a flash of enlightenment struck him. Langdon set down his empty can of Coke hard. “You won’t believe this,” he said, turning to the others. “The Templar headstone—I figured it out.”
   Teabing’s eyes turned to saucers. “You know where the headstone is?”
   Langdon smiled. “Not where it is. What it is.”
   Sophie leaned in to hear.
   “I think the headstone references a literal stone head,” Langdon explained, savoring the familiar excitement of academic breakthrough. “Not a grave marker.”
   “A stone head?” Teabing demanded.
   Sophie looked equally confused.
   “Leigh,” Langdon said, turning, “during the Inquisition, the Church accused the Knights Templar of all kinds of heresies, right?”
   “Correct. They fabricated all kinds of charges. Sodomy, urination on the cross, devil worship, quite a list.”
   “And on that list was the worship of false idols, right? Specifically, the Church accused the Templars of secretly performing rituals in which they prayed to a carved stone head… the pagan god—“
   “Baphomet!” Teabing blurted. “My heavens, Robert, you’re right! A headstone praised by Templars!”
   Langdon quickly explained to Sophie that Baphomet was a pagan fertility god associated with the creative force of reproduction. Baphomet’s head was represented as that of a ram or goat, a common symbol of procreation and fecundity. The Templars honored Baphomet by encircling a stone replica of his head and chanting prayers.
   “Baphomet,” Teabing tittered. “The ceremony honored the creative magic of sexual union, but Pope Clement convinced everyone that Baphomet’s head was in fact that of the devil. The Pope used the head of Baphomet as the linchpin in his case against the Templars.”
   Langdon concurred. The modern belief in a horned devil known as Satan could be traced back to Baphomet and the Church’s attempts to recast the horned fertility god as a symbol of evil. The Church had obviously succeeded, although not entirely. Traditional American Thanksgiving tables still bore pagan, horned fertility symbols. The cornucopia or “horn of plenty” was a tribute to Baphomet’s fertility and dated back to Zeus being suckled by a goat whose horn broke off and magically filled with fruit. Baphomet also appeared in group photographs when some joker raised two fingers behind a friend’s head in the Vsymbol of horns; certainly few of the pranksters realized their mocking gesture was in fact advertising their victim’s robust sperm count.
   “Yes, yes,” Teabing was saying excitedly. “Baphomet must be what the poem is referring to. A headstone praised by Templars.”
   “Okay,” Sophie said, “but if Baphomet is the headstone praised by Templars, then we have a new dilemma.” She pointed to the dials on the cryptex. “Baphomet has eight letters. We only have room for five.”
   Teabing grinned broadly. “My dear, this is where the Atbash Cipher comes into play”

Chapter 77

   Langdon was impressed. Teabing had just finished writing out the entire twentytwoletter Hebrew alphabet—alefbeit —from memory. Granted, he’d used Roman equivalents rather than Hebrew characters, but even so, he was now reading through them with flawless pronunciation.
   A B G D H V Z Ch T Y K L M N S O P Tz Q R Sh Th
   “Alef, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, Hei, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yud, Kaf, Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samech, Ayin, Pei, Tzadik, Kuf, Reish, Shin, and Tav.” Teabing dramatically mopped his brow and plowed on. “In formal Hebrew spelling, the vowel sounds are not written. Therefore, when we write the word Baphomet using the Hebrew alphabet, it will lose its three vowels in translation, leaving us—“
   “Five letters,” Sophie blurted.
   Teabing nodded and began writing again. “Okay, here is the proper spelling of Baphomet in Hebrew letters. I’ll sketch in the missing vowels for clarity’s sake.
   B a P V o M e Th

   “Remember, of course,” he added, “that Hebrew is normally written in the opposite direction, but we can just as easily use Atbash this way. Next, all we have to do is create our substitution scheme by rewriting the entire alphabet in reverse order opposite the original alphabet.”
   “There’s an easier way,” Sophie said, taking the pen from Teabing. “It works for all reflectional substitution ciphers, including the Atbash. A little trick I learned at the Royal Holloway.” Sophie wrote the first half of the alphabet from left to right, and then, beneath it, wrote the second half, right to left. “Cryptanalysts call it the foldover. Half as complicated. Twice as clean.”

   A
   B
   G
   D
   H
   V
   Z
   Ch
   T
   Y
   K

   Th
   Sh
   R
   Q
   Tz
   P
   O
   S
   N
   M
   L

   Teabing eyed her handiwork and chuckled. “Right you are. Glad to see those boys at the Holloway are doing their job.”
   Looking at Sophie’s substitution matrix, Langdon felt a rising thrill that he imagined must have rivaled the thrill felt by early scholars when they first used the Atbash Cipher to decrypt the now famous Mystery of Sheshach. For years, religious scholars had been baffled by biblical references to a city called Sheshach. The city did not appear on any map nor in any other documents, and yet it was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah—the king of Sheshach, the city of Sheshach, the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash Cipher to the word, and his results were mindnumbing. The cipher revealed that Sheshach was in fact a code word for another very wellknown city. The decryption process was simple.
   Sheshach, in Hebrew, was spelled: ShShK.
   ShShK, when placed in the substitution matrix, became BBL.
   BBL, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.
   The mysterious city of Sheshach was revealed as the city of Babel, and a frenzy of biblical examination ensued. Within weeks, several more Atbash code words were uncovered in the Old Testament, unveiling myriad hidden meanings that scholars had no idea were there.
   “We’re getting close,” Langdon whispered, unable to control his excitement.
   “Inches, Robert,” Teabing said. He glanced over at Sophie and smiled. “You ready?”
   She nodded.
   “Okay, Baphomet in Hebrew without the vowels reads: BPVMTh. Now we simply apply your Atbash substitution matrix to translate the letters into our fiveletter password.”
   Langdon’s heart pounded. BPVMTh. The sun was pouring through the windows now. He looked at Sophie’s substitution matrix and slowly began to make the conversion. B is Sh… P is V…
   Teabing was grinning like a schoolboy at Christmas. “And the Atbash Cipher reveals…” He stopped short. “Good God!” His face went white.
   Langdon’s head snapped up.
   “What’s wrong?” Sophie demanded.
   “You won’t believe this.” Teabing glanced at Sophie. “Especially you.”
   “What do you mean?” she said.
   “This is… ingenious,” he whispered. “Utterly ingenious!” Teabing wrote again on the paper. “Drumroll, please. Here is your password.” He showed them what he had written.
   ShVPYA

   Sophie scowled. “What is it?”
   Langdon didn’t recognize it either.
   Teabing’s voice seemed to tremble with awe. “This, my friend, is actually an ancient word of wisdom.”
   Langdon read the letters again. An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll. An instant later he got it. He had newer seen this coming. “An ancient word of wisdom!”
   Teabing was laughing. “Quite literally!”
   Sophie looked at the word and then at the dial. Immediately she realized Langdon and Teabing had failed to see a serious glitch. “Hold on! This can’t be the password,” she argued. “The cryptex doesn’t have an Sh on the dial. It uses a traditional Roman alphabet.”
   “Read the word,” Langdon urged. “Keep in mind two things. In Hebrew, the symbol for the sound Sh can also be pronounced as S, depending on the accent. Just as the letter P can be pronounced F.”
   SVFYA? she thought, puzzled.
   “Genius!” Teabing added. “The letter Vav is often a placeholder for the vowel sound O!”
   Sophie again looked at the letters, attempting to sound them out.
   “S…o…f…y…a.”
   She heard the sound of her voice, and could not believe what she had just said. “Sophia? This spells Sophia?”
   Langdon was nodding enthusiastically. “Yes! Sophia literally means wisdom in Greek. The root of your name, Sophie, is literally a ‘word of wisdom.’ “
   Sophie suddenly missed her grandfather immensely. He encrypted the Priory keystone with my name. A knot caught in her throat. It all seemed so perfect. But as she turned her gaze to the five lettered dials on the cryptex, she realized a problem still existed. “But wait… the word Sophia has six letters.”
   Teabing’s smile never faded. “Look at the poem again. Your grandfather wrote, ‘An ancient word of wisdom.’ “
   “Yes?”
   Teabing winked. “In ancient Greek, wisdom is spelled SOFIA.”