17
   Not many children could say they remembered the day they met their father, but Vittoria Vetra could. She was eight years old, living where she always had, Orfanotrofio di Siena, a Catholic orphanage near Florence, deserted by parents she never knew. It was raining that day. The nuns had called for her twice to come to dinner, but as always she pretended not to hear. She lay outside in the courtyard, staring up at the raindrops… feeling them hit her body… trying to guess where one would land next. The nuns called again, threatening that pneumonia might make an insufferably headstrong child a lot less curious about nature.
   I can’t hear you, Vittoria thought.
   She was soaked to the bone when the young priest came out to get her. She didn’t know him. He was new there. Vittoria waited for him to grab her and drag her back inside. But he didn’t. Instead, to her wonder, he lay down beside her, soaking his robes in a puddle.
   “They say you ask a lot of questions,” the young man said.
   Vittoria scowled. “Are questions bad?”
   He laughed. “Guess they were right.”
   “What are you doing out here?”
   “Same thing you’re doing… wondering why raindrops fall.”
   “I’m not wondering why they fall! I already know!”
   The priest gave her an astonished look. “You do?”
   “Sister Francisca says raindrops are angels’ tears coming down to wash away our sins.”
   “Wow!” he said, sounding amazed. “So that explains it.”
   “No it doesn’t!” the girl fired back. “Raindrops fall because everything falls! Everything falls! Not just rain!”
   The priest scratched his head, looking perplexed. “You know, young lady, you’re right. Everything does fall. It must be gravity.”
   “It must be what?”
   He gave her an astonished look. “You haven’t heard of gravity?”
   “No.”
   The priest shrugged sadly. “Too bad. Gravity answers a lot of questions.”
   Vittoria sat up. “What’s gravity?” she demanded. “Tell me!”
   The priest gave her a wink. “What do you say I tell you over dinner.”
   The young priest was Leonardo Vetra. Although he had been an award-winning physics student while in university, he’d heard another call and gone into the seminary. Leonardo and Vittoria became unlikely best friends in the lonely world of nuns and regulations. Vittoria made Leonardo laugh, and he took her under his wing, teaching her that beautiful things like rainbows and the rivers had many explanations. He told her about light, planets, stars, and all of nature through the eyes of both God and science. Vittoria’s innate intellect and curiosity made her a captivating student. Leonardo protected her like a daughter.
   Vittoria was happy too. She had never known the joy of having a father. When every other adult answered her questions with a slap on the wrist, Leonardo spent hours showing her books. He even asked what her ideas were. Vittoria prayed Leonardo would stay with her forever. Then one day, her worst nightmare came true. Father Leonardo told her he was leaving the orphanage.
   “I’m moving to Switzerland,” Leonardo said. “I have a grant to study physics at the University of Geneva.”
   “Physics?” Vittoria cried. “I thought you loved God!”
   “I do, very much. Which is why I want to study his divine rules. The laws of physics are the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece.”
   Vittoria was devastated. But Father Leonardo had some other news. He told Vittoria he had spoken to his superiors, and they said it was okay if Father Leonardo adopted her.
   “Would you like me to adopt you?” Leonardo asked.
   “What’s adopt mean?” Vittoria said.
   Father Leonardo told her.
   Vittoria hugged him for five minutes, crying tears of joy. “Oh yes! Yes!”
   Leonardo told her he had to leave for a while and get their new home settled in Switzerland, but he promised to send for her in six months. It was the longest wait of Vittoria’s life, but Leonardo kept his word. Five days before her ninth birthday, Vittoria moved to Geneva. She attended Geneva International School during the day and learned from her father at night.
   Three years later Leonardo Vetra was hired by CERN. Vittoria and Leonardo relocated to a wonderland the likes of which the young Vittoria had never imagined.

   Vittoria Vetra’s body felt numb as she strode down the LHC tunnel. She saw her muted reflection in the LHC and sensed her father’s absence. Normally she existed in a state of deep calm, in harmony with the world around her. But now, very suddenly, nothing made sense. The last three hours had been a blur.
   It had been 10 A.M. in the Balearic Islands when Kohler’s call came through. Your father has been murdered. Come home immediately. Despite the sweltering heat on the deck of the dive boat, the words had chilled her to the bone, Kohler’s emotionless tone hurting as much as the news.
   Now she had returned home. But home to what? CERN, her world since she was twelve, seemed suddenly foreign. Her father, the man who had made it magical, was gone.
   Deep breaths, she told herself, but she couldn’t calm her mind. The questions circled faster and faster. Who killed her father? And why? Who was this American “specialist”? Why was Kohler insisting on seeing the lab?
   Kohler had said there was evidence that her father’s murder was related to the current project. What evidence? Nobody knew what we were working on! And even if someone found out, why would they kill him?
   As she moved down the LHC tunnel toward her father’s lab, Vittoria realized she was about to unveil her father’s greatest achievement without him there. She had pictured this moment much differently. She had imagined her father calling CERN’s top scientists to his lab, showing them his discovery, watching their awestruck faces. Then he would beam with fatherly pride as he explained to them how it had been one of Vittoria’s ideas that had helped him make the project a reality… that his daughter had been integral in his breakthrough. Vittoria felt a lump in her throat. My father and I were supposed to share this moment together. But here she was alone. No colleagues. No happy faces. Just an American stranger and Maximilian Kohler.
   Maximilian Kohler. Der König.
   Even as a child, Vittoria had disliked the man. Although she eventually came to respect his potent intellect, his icy demeanor always seemed inhuman, the exact antithesis of her father’s warmth. Kohler pursued science for its immaculate logic… her father for its spiritual wonder. And yet oddly there had always seemed to be an unspoken respect between the two men. Genius, someone had once explained to her, accepts genius unconditionally.
   Genius, she thought. My father… Dad. Dead.
   The entry to Leonardo Vetra’s lab was a long sterile hallway paved entirely in white tile. Langdon felt like he was entering some kind of underground insane asylum. Lining the corridor were dozens of framed, black-and-white images. Although Langdon had made a career of studying images, these were entirely alien to him. They looked like chaotic negatives of random streaks and spirals. Modern art? he mused. Jackson Pollock on amphetamines?
   “Scatter plots,” Vittoria said, apparently noting Langdon’s interest. “Computer representations of particle collisions. That’s the Z-particle,” she said, pointing to a faint track that was almost invisible in the confusion. “My father discovered it five years ago. Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be the smallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.”
   Matter is energy? Langdon cocked his head. Sounds pretty Zen. He gazed at the tiny streak in the photograph and wondered what his buddies in the Harvard physics department would say when he told them he’d spent the weekend hanging out in a Large Hadron Collider admiring Z-particles.
   “Vittoria,” Kohler said, as they approached the lab’s imposing steel door, “I should mention that I came down here this morning looking for your father.”
   Vittoria flushed slightly. “You did?”
   “Yes. And imagine my surprise when I discovered he had replaced CERN’s standard keypad security with something else.” Kohler motioned to an intricate electronic device mounted beside the door.
   “I apologize,” she said. “You know how he was about privacy. He didn’t want anyone but the two of us to have access.”
   Kohler said, “Fine. Open the door.”
   Vittoria stood a long moment. Then, pulling a deep breath, she walked to the mechanism on the wall.
   Langdon was in no way prepared for what happened next.
   Vittoria stepped up to the device and carefully aligned her right eye with a protruding lens that looked like a telescope. Then she pressed a button. Inside the machine, something clicked. A shaft of light oscillated back and forth, scanning her eyeball like a copy machine.
   “It’s a retina scan,” she said. “Infallible security. Authorized for two retina patterns only. Mine and my father’s.”
   Robert Langdon stood in horrified revelation. The image of Leonardo Vetra came back in grisly detail—the bloody face, the solitary hazel eye staring back, and the empty eye socket. He tried to reject the obvious truth, but then he saw it… beneath the scanner on the white tile floor… faint droplets of crimson. Dried blood.
   Vittoria, thankfully, did not notice.
   The steel door slid open and she walked through.
   Kohler fixed Langdon with an adamant stare. His message was clear: As I told you… the missing eye serves a higher purpose.

18
   The woman’s hands were tied, her wrists now purple and swollen from chafing. The mahogany-skinned Hassassin lay beside her, spent, admiring his naked prize. He wondered if her current slumber was just a deception, a pathetic attempt to avoid further service to him.
   He did not care. He had reaped sufficient reward. Sated, he sat up in bed.
   In his country women were possessions. Weak. Tools of pleasure. Chattel to be traded like livestock. And they understood their place. But here, in Europe, women feigned a strength and independence that both amused and excited him. Forcing them into physical submission was a gratification he always enjoyed.
   Now, despite the contentment in his loins, the Hassassin sensed another appetite growing within him. He had killed last night, killed and mutilated, and for him killing was like heroin… each encounter satisfying only temporarily before increasing his longing for more. The exhilaration had worn off. The craving had returned.
   He studied the sleeping woman beside him. Running his palm across her neck, he felt aroused with the knowledge that he could end her life in an instant. What would it matter? She was subhuman, a vehicle only of pleasure and service. His strong fingers encircled her throat, savoring her delicate pulse. Then, fighting desire, he removed his hand. There was work to do. Service to a higher cause than his own desire.
   As he got out of bed, he reveled in the honor of the job before him. He still could not fathom the influence of this man named Janus and the ancient brotherhood he commanded. Wondrously, the brotherhood had chosen him. Somehow they had learned of his loathing… and of his skills. How, he would never know. Their roots reach wide.
   Now they had bestowed on him the ultimate honor. He would be their hands and their voice. Their assassin and their messenger. The one his people knew as Malak al-haq–the Angel of Truth.

19
   Vetra’s lab was wildly futuristic.
   Stark white and bounded on all sides by computers and specialized electronic equipment, it looked like some sort of operating room. Langdon wondered what secrets this place could possibly hold to justify cutting out someone’s eye to gain entrance.
   Kohler looked uneasy as they entered, his eyes seeming to dart about for signs of an intruder. But the lab was deserted. Vittoria moved slowly too… as if the lab felt unknown without her father there.
   Langdon’s gaze landed immediately in the center of the room, where a series of short pillars rose from the floor. Like a miniature Stonehenge, a dozen or so columns of polished steel stood in a circle in the middle of the room. The pillars were about three feet tall, reminding Langdon of museum displays for valuable gems. These pillars, however, were clearly not for precious stones. Each supported a thick, transparent canister about the size of a tennis ball can. They appeared empty.
   Kohler eyed the canisters, looking puzzled. He apparently decided to ignore them for the time being. He turned to Vittoria. “Has anything been stolen?”
   “Stolen? How?” she argued. “The retina scan only allows entry to us.”
   “Just look around.”
   Vittoria sighed and surveyed the room for a few moments. She shrugged. “Everything looks as my father always leaves it. Ordered chaos.”
   Langdon sensed Kohler weighing his options, as if wondering how far to push Vittoria… how much to tell her. Apparently he decided to leave it for the moment. Moving his wheelchair toward the center of the room, he surveyed the mysterious cluster of seemingly empty canisters.
   “Secrets,” Kohler finally said, “are a luxury we can no longer afford.”
   Vittoria nodded in acquiescence, looking suddenly emotional, as if being here brought with it a torrent of memories.
   Give her a minute, Langdon thought.
   As though preparing for what she was about to reveal, Vittoria closed her eyes and breathed. Then she breathed again. And again. And again…
   Langdon watched her, suddenly concerned. Is she okay? He glanced at Kohler, who appeared unfazed, apparently having seen this ritual before. Ten seconds passed before Vittoria opened her eyes.
   Langdon could not believe the metamorphosis. Vittoria Vetra had been transformed. Her full lips were lax, her shoulders down, and her eyes soft and assenting. It was as though she had realigned every muscle in her body to accept the situation. The resentful fire and personal anguish had been quelled somehow beneath a deeper, watery cool.
   “Where to begin…” she said, her accent unruffled.
   “At the beginning,” Kohler said. “Tell us about your father’s experiment.”
   “Rectifying science with religion has been my father’s life dream,” Vittoria said. “He hoped to prove that science and religion are two totally compatible fields—two different approaches to finding the same truth.” She paused as if unable to believe what she was about to say. “And recently… he conceived of a way to do that.”
   Kohler said nothing.
   “He devised an experiment, one he hoped would settle one of the most bitter conflicts in the history of science and religion.”
   Langdon wondered which conflict she could mean. There were so many.
   “Creationism,” Vittoria declared. “The battle over how the universe came to be.”
   Oh, Langdon thought. The debate.
   “The Bible, of course, states that God created the universe,” she explained. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and everything we see appeared out of a vast emptiness. Unfortunately, one of the fundamental laws of physics states that matter cannot be created out of nothing.”
   Langdon had read about this stalemate. The idea that God allegedly created “something from nothing” was totally contrary to accepted laws of modern physics and therefore, scientists claimed, Genesis was scientifically absurd.
   “Mr. Langdon,” Vittoria said, turning, “I assume you are familiar with the Big Bang Theory?”
   Langdon shrugged. “More or less.” The Big Bang, he knew, was the scientifically accepted model for the creation of the universe. He didn’t really understand it, but according to the theory, a single point of intensely focused energy erupted in a cataclysmic explosion, expanding outward to form the universe. Or something like that.
   Vittoria continued. “When the Catholic Church first proposed the Big Bang Theory in 1927, the—”
   “I’m sorry?” Langdon interrupted, before he could stop himself. “You say the Big Bang was a Catholic idea?”
   Vittoria looked surprised by his question “Of course. Proposed by a Catholic monk, Georges Lemaоtre in 1927.”
   “But, I thought…” he hesitated. “Wasn’t the Big Bang proposed by Harvard astronomer Edwin Hubble?”
   Kohler glowered. “Again, American scientific arrogance. Hubble published in 1929, two years after Lemaоtre.”
   Langdon scowled. It’s called the Hubble Telescope, sir—I’ve never heard of any Lemaоtre Telescope!
   “Mr. Kohler is right,” Vittoria said, “the idea belonged to Lemaоtre. Hubble only confirmed it by gathering the hard evidence that proved the Big Bang was scientifically probable.”
   “Oh,” Langdon said, wondering if the Hubble-fanatics in the Harvard Astronomy Department ever mentioned Lemaоtre in their lectures.
   “When Lemaоtre first proposed the Big Bang Theory,” Vittoria continued, “scientists claimed it was utterly ridiculous. Matter, science said, could not be created out of nothing. So, when Hubble shocked the world by scientifically proving the Big Bang was accurate, the church claimed victory, heralding this as proof that the Bible was scientifically accurate. The divine truth.”
   Langdon nodded, focusing intently now.
   “Of course scientists did not appreciate having their discoveries used by the church to promote religion, so they immediately mathematicized the Big Bang Theory, removed all religious overtones, and claimed it as their own. Unfortunately for science, however, their equations, even today, have one serious deficiency that the church likes to point out.”
   Kohler grunted. “The singularity.” He spoke the word as if it were the bane of his existence.
   “Yes, the singularity,” Vittoria said. “The exact moment of creation. Time zero.” She looked at Langdon. “Even today, science cannot grasp the initial moment of creation. Our equations explain the early universe quite effectively, but as we move back in time, approaching time zero, suddenly our mathematics disintegrates, and everything becomes meaningless.”
   “Correct,” Kohler said, his voice edgy, “and the church holds up this deficiency as proof of God’s miraculous involvement. Come to your point.”
   Vittoria’s expression became distant. “My point is that my father had always believed in God’s involvement in the Big Bang. Even though science was unable to comprehend the divine moment of creation, he believed someday it would.” She motioned sadly to a laser-printed memo tacked over her father’s work area. “My dad used to wave that in my face every time I had doubts.”
   Langdon read the message:


       Science and religion are not at odds.
       Science is simply too young to understand.


   “My dad wanted to bring science to a higher level,” Vittoria said, “where science supported the concept of God.” She ran a hand through her long hair, looking melancholy. “He set out to do something no scientist had ever thought to do. Something that no one has ever had the technology to do.” She paused, as though uncertain how to speak the next words. “He designed an experiment to prove Genesis was possible.”
   Prove Genesis? Langdon wondered. Let there be light? Matter from nothing?
   Kohler’s dead gaze bore across the room. “I beg your pardon?”
   “My father created a universe… from nothing at all.”
   Kohler snapped his head around. “What!”
   “Better said, he recreated the Big Bang.”
   Kohler looked ready to jump to his feet.
   Langdon was officially lost. Creating a universe? Recreating the Big Bang?
   “It was done on a much smaller scale, of course,” Vittoria said, talking faster now. “The process was remarkably simple. He accelerated two ultrathin particle beams in opposite directions around the accelerator tube. The two beams collided head-on at enormous speeds, driving into one another and compressing all their energy into a single pinpoint. He achieved extreme energy densities.” She started rattling off a stream of units, and the director’s eyes grew wider.
   Langdon tried to keep up. So Leonardo Vetra was simulating the compressed point of energy from which the universe supposedly sprang.
   “The result,” Vittoria said, “was nothing short of wondrous. When it is published, it will shake the very foundation of modern physics.” She spoke slowly now, as though savoring the immensity of her news. “Without warning, inside the accelerator tube, at this point of highly focused energy, particles of matter began appearing out of nowhere.”
   Kohler made no reaction. He simply stared.
   “Matter,” Vittoria repeated. “Blossoming out of nothing. An incredible display of subatomic fireworks. A miniature universe springing to life. He proved not only that matter can be created from nothing, but that the Big Bang and Genesis can be explained simply by accepting the presence of an enormous source of energy.”
   “You mean God?” Kohler demanded.
   “God, Buddha, The Force, Yahweh, the singularity, the unicity point—call it whatever you like—the result is the same. Science and religion support the same truth—pure energy is the father of creation.”
   When Kohler finally spoke, his voice was somber. “Vittoria, you have me at a loss. It sounds like you’re telling me your father created matter… out of nothing?”
   “Yes.” Vittoria motioned to the canisters. “And there is the proof. In those canisters are specimens of the matter he created.”
   Kohler coughed and moved toward the canisters like a wary animal circling something he instinctively sensed was wrong. “I’ve obviously missed something,” he said. “How do you expect anyone to believe these canisters contain particles of matter your father actually created? They could be particles from anywhere at all.”
   “Actually,” Vittoria said, sounding confident, “they couldn’t. These particles are unique. They are a type of matter that does not exist anywhere on earth… hence they had to be created.”
   Kohler’s expression darkened. “Vittoria, what do you mean a certain type of matter? There is only one type of matter, and it—” Kohler stopped short.
   Vittoria’s expression was triumphant. “You’ve lectured on it yourself, director. The universe contains two kinds of matter. Scientific fact.” Vittoria turned to Langdon. “Mr. Langdon, what does the Bible say about the Creation? What did God create?”
   Langdon felt awkward, not sure what this had to do with anything. “Um, God created… light and dark, heaven and hell—”
   “Exactly,” Vittoria said. “He created everything in opposites. Symmetry. Perfect balance.” She turned back to Kohler. “Director, science claims the same thing as religion, that the Big Bang created everything in the universe with an opposite.”
   “Including matter itself,” Kohler whispered, as if to himself.
   Vittoria nodded. “And when my father ran his experiment, sure enough, two kinds of matter appeared.”
   Langdon wondered what this meant. Leonardo Vetra created matter’s opposite?
   Kohler looked angry. “The substance you’re referring to only exists elsewhere in the universe. Certainly not on earth. And possibly not even in our galaxy!”
   “Exactly,” Vittoria replied, “which is proof that the particles in these canisters had to be created.”
   Kohler’s face hardened. “Vittoria, surely you can’t be saying those canisters contain actual specimens?”
   “I am.” She gazed proudly at the canisters. “Director, you are looking at the world’s first specimens of antimatter.”

20
   Phase two, the Hassassin thought, striding into the darkened tunnel.
   The torch in his hand was overkill. He knew that. But it was for effect. Effect was everything. Fear, he had learned, was his ally. Fear cripples faster than any implement of war.
   There was no mirror in the passage to admire his disguise, but he could sense from the shadow of his billowing robe that he was perfect. Blending in was part of the plan… part of the depravity of the plot. In his wildest dreams he had never imagined playing this part.
   Two weeks ago, he would have considered the task awaiting him at the far end of this tunnel impossible. A suicide mission. Walking naked into a lion’s lair. But Janus had changed the definition of impossible.
   The secrets Janus had shared with the Hassassin in the last two weeks had been numerous… this very tunnel being one of them. Ancient, and yet still perfectly passable.
   As he drew closer to his enemy, the Hassassin wondered if what awaited him inside would be as easy as Janus had promised. Janus had assured him someone on the inside would make the necessary arrangements. Someone on the inside. Incredible. The more he considered it, the more he realized it was child’s play.
   Wahad… tintain… thalatha… arbaa, he said to himself in Arabic as he neared the end. One… two… three… four…

21
   “I sense you’ve heard of antimatter, Mr. Langdon?” Vittoria was studying him, her dark skin in stark contrast to the white lab.
   Langdon looked up. He felt suddenly dumb. “Yes. Well… sort of.”
   A faint smile crossed her lips. “You watch Star Trek.”
   Langdon flushed. “Well, my students enjoy…” He frowned. “Isn’t antimatter what fuels the U.S.S. Enterprise?”
   She nodded. “Good science fiction has its roots in good science.”
   “So antimatter is real?”
   “A fact of nature. Everything has an opposite. Protons have electrons. Up-quarks have down-quarks. There is a cosmic symmetry at the subatomic level. Antimatter is yin to matter’s yang. It balances the physical equation.”
   Langdon thought of Galileo’s belief of duality.
   “Scientists have known since 1918,” Vittoria said, “that two kinds of matter were created in the Big Bang. One matter is the kind we see here on earth, making up rocks, trees, people. The other is its inverse—identical to matter in all respects except that the charges of its particles are reversed.”
   Kohler spoke as though emerging from a fog. His voice sounded suddenly precarious. “But there are enormous technological barriers to actually storing antimatter. What about neutralization?”
   “My father built a reverse polarity vacuum to pull the antimatter positrons out of the accelerator before they could decay.”
   Kohler scowled. “But a vacuum would pull out the matter also. There would be no way to separate the particles.”
   “He applied a magnetic field. Matter arced right, and antimatter arced left. They are polar opposites.”
   At that instant, Kohler’s wall of doubt seemed to crack. He looked up at Vittoria in clear astonishment and then without warning was overcome by a fit of coughing. “Incred… ible…” he said, wiping his mouth, “and yet…” It seemed his logic was still resisting. “Yet even if the vacuum worked, these canisters are made of matter. Antimatter cannot be stored inside canisters made out of matter. The antimatter would instantly react with—”
   “The specimen is not touching the canister,” Vittoria said, apparently expecting the question. “The antimatter is suspended. The canisters are called ‘antimatter traps’ because they literally trap the antimatter in the center of the canister, suspending it at a safe distance from the sides and bottom.”
   “Suspended? But… how?”
   “Between two intersecting magnetic fields. Here, have a look.”
   Vittoria walked across the room and retrieved a large electronic apparatus. The contraption reminded Langdon of some sort of cartoon ray gun—a wide cannonlike barrel with a sighting scope on top and a tangle of electronics dangling below. Vittoria aligned the scope with one of the canisters, peered into the eyepiece, and calibrated some knobs. Then she stepped away, offering Kohler a look.
   Kohler looked nonplussed. “You collected visible amounts?”
   “Five thousand nanograms,” Vittoria said. “A liquid plasma containing millions of positrons.”
   “Millions? But a few particles is all anyone has ever detected… anywhere.”
   “Xenon,” Vittoria said flatly. “He accelerated the particle beam through a jet of xenon, stripping away the electrons. He insisted on keeping the exact procedure a secret, but it involved simultaneously injecting raw electrons into the accelerator.”
   Langdon felt lost, wondering if their conversation was still in English.
   Kohler paused, the lines in his brow deepening. Suddenly he drew a short breath. He slumped like he’d been hit with a bullet. “Technically that would leave…”
   Vittoria nodded. “Yes. Lots of it.”
   Kohler returned his gaze to the canister before him. With a look of uncertainty, he hoisted himself in his chair and placed his eye to the viewer, peering inside. He stared a long time without saying anything. When he finally sat down, his forehead was covered with sweat. The lines on his face had disappeared. His voice was a whisper. “My God… you really did it.”
   Vittoria nodded. “My father did it.”
   “I… I don’t know what to say.”
   Vittoria turned to Langdon. “Would you like a look?” She motioned to the viewing device.
   Uncertain what to expect, Langdon moved forward. From two feet away, the canister appeared empty. Whatever was inside was infinitesimal. Langdon placed his eye to the viewer. It took a moment for the image before him to come into focus.
   Then he saw it.
   The object was not on the bottom of the container as he expected, but rather it was floating in the center—suspended in midair—a shimmering globule of mercurylike liquid. Hovering as if by magic, the liquid tumbled in space. Metallic wavelets rippled across the droplet’s surface. The suspended fluid reminded Langdon of a video he had once seen of a water droplet in zero G. Although he knew the globule was microscopic, he could see every changing gorge and undulation as the ball of plasma rolled slowly in suspension.
   “It’s… floating,” he said.
   “It had better be,” Vittoria replied. “Antimatter is highly unstable. Energetically speaking, antimatter is the mirror image of matter, so the two instantly cancel each other out if they come in contact. Keeping antimatter isolated from matter is a challenge, of course, because everything on earth is made of matter. The samples have to be stored without ever touching anything at all—even air.”
   Langdon was amazed. Talk about working in a vacuum.
   “These antimatter traps?” Kohler interrupted, looking amazed as he ran a pallid finger around one’s base. “They are your father’s design?”
   “Actually,” she said, “they are mine.”
   Kohler looked up.
   Vittoria’s voice was unassuming. “My father produced the first particles of antimatter but was stymied by how to store them. I suggested these. Airtight nanocomposite shells with opposing electromagnets at each end.”
   “It seems your father’s genius has rubbed off.”
   “Not really. I borrowed the idea from nature. Portuguese man-o’-wars trap fish between their tentacles using nematocystic charges. Same principle here. Each canister has two electromagnets, one at each end. Their opposing magnetic fields intersect in the center of the canister and hold the antimatter there, suspended in midvacuum.”
   Langdon looked again at the canister. Antimatter floating in a vacuum, not touching anything at all. Kohler was right. It was genius.
   “Where’s the power source for the magnets?” Kohler asked.
   Vittoria pointed. “In the pillar beneath the trap. The canisters are screwed into a docking port that continuously recharges them so the magnets never fail.”
   “And if the field fails?”
   “The obvious. The antimatter falls out of suspension, hits the bottom of the trap, and we see an annihilation.”
   Langdon’s ears pricked up. “Annihilation?” He didn’t like the sound of it.
   Vittoria looked unconcerned. “Yes. If antimatter and matter make contact, both are destroyed instantly. Physicists call the process ‘annihilation.’ ”
   Langdon nodded. “Oh.”
   “It is nature’s simplest reaction. A particle of matter and a particle of antimatter combine to release two new particles—called photons. A photon is effectively a tiny puff of light.”
   Langdon had read about photons—light particles—the purest form of energy. He decided to refrain from asking about Captain Kirk’s use of photon torpedoes against the Klingons. “So if the antimatter falls, we see a tiny puff of light?”
   Vittoria shrugged. “Depends what you call tiny. Here, let me demonstrate.” She reached for the canister and started to unscrew it from its charging podium.
   Without warning, Kohler let out a cry of terror and lunged forward, knocking her hands away. “Vittoria! Are you insane?”

22
   Kohler, incredibly, was standing for a moment, teetering on two withered legs. His face was white with fear. “Vittoria! You can’t remove that trap!”
   Langdon watched, bewildered by the director’s sudden panic.
   “Five hundred nanograms!” Kohler said. “If you break the magnetic field—”
   “Director,” Vittoria assured, “it’s perfectly safe. Every trap has a failsafe—a back-up battery in case it is removed from its recharger. The specimen remains suspended even if I remove the canister.”
   Kohler looked uncertain. Then, hesitantly, he settled back into his chair.
   “The batteries activate automatically,” Vittoria said, “when the trap is moved from the recharger. They work for twenty-four hours. Like a reserve tank of gas.” She turned to Langdon, as if sensing his discomfort. “Antimatter has some astonishing characteristics, Mr. Langdon, which make it quite dangerous. A ten milligram sample—the volume of a grain of sand—is hypothesized to hold as much energy as about two hundred metric tons of conventional rocket fuel.”
   Langdon’s head was spinning again.
   “It is the energy source of tomorrow. A thousand times more powerful than nuclear energy. One hundred percent efficient. No byproducts. No radiation. No pollution. A few grams could power a major city for a week.”
   Grams? Langdon stepped uneasily back from the podium.
   “Don’t worry,” Vittoria said. “These samples are minuscule fractions of a gram—millionths. Relatively harmless.” She reached for the canister again and twisted it from its docking platform.
   Kohler twitched but did not interfere. As the trap came free, there was a sharp beep, and a small LED display activated near the base of the trap. The red digits blinked, counting down from twenty-four hours.
   24:00:00…
   23:59:59…
   23:59:58…
   Langdon studied the descending counter and decided it looked unsettlingly like a time bomb.
   “The battery,” Vittoria explained, “will run for the full twenty-four hours before dying. It can be recharged by placing the trap back on the podium. It’s designed as a safety measure, but it’s also convenient for transport.”
   “Transport?” Kohler looked thunderstruck. “You take this stuff out of the lab?”
   “Of course not,” Vittoria said. “But the mobility allows us to study it.”
   Vittoria led Langdon and Kohler to the far end of the room. She pulled a curtain aside to reveal a window, beyond which was a large room. The walls, floors, and ceiling were entirely plated in steel. The room reminded Langdon of the holding tank of an oil freighter he had once taken to Papua New Guinea to study Hanta body graffiti.
   “It’s an annihilation tank,” Vittoria declared.
   Kohler looked up. “You actually observe annihilations?”
   “My father was fascinated with the physics of the Big Bang—large amounts of energy from minuscule kernels of matter.” Vittoria pulled open a steel drawer beneath the window. She placed the trap inside the drawer and closed it. Then she pulled a lever beside the drawer. A moment later, the trap appeared on the other side of the glass, rolling smoothly in a wide arc across the metal floor until it came to a stop near the center of the room.
   Vittoria gave a tight smile. “You’re about to witness your first antimatter-matter annihilation. A few millionths of a gram. A relatively minuscule specimen.”
   Langdon looked out at the antimatter trap sitting alone on the floor of the enormous tank. Kohler also turned toward the window, looking uncertain.
   “Normally,” Vittoria explained, “we’d have to wait the full twenty-four hours until the batteries died, but this chamber contains magnets beneath the floor that can override the trap, pulling the antimatter out of suspension. And when the matter and antimatter touch…”
   “Annihilation,” Kohler whispered.
   “One more thing,” Vittoria said. “Antimatter releases pure energy. A one hundred percent conversion of mass to photons. So don’t look directly at the sample. Shield your eyes.”
   Langdon was wary, but he now sensed Vittoria was being overly dramatic. Don’t look directly at the canister? The device was more than thirty yards away, behind an ultrathick wall of tinted Plexiglas. Moreover, the speck in the canister was invisible, microscopic. Shield my eyes? Langdon thought. How much energy could that speck possibly–
   Vittoria pressed the button.
   Instantly, Langdon was blinded. A brilliant point of light shone in the canister and then exploded outward in a shock wave of light that radiated in all directions, erupting against the window before him with thunderous force. He stumbled back as the detonation rocked the vault. The light burned bright for a moment, searing, and then, after an instant, it rushed back inward, absorbing in on itself, and collapsing into a tiny speck that disappeared to nothing. Langdon blinked in pain, slowly recovering his eyesight. He squinted into the smoldering chamber. The canister on the floor had entirely disappeared. Vaporized. Not a trace.
   He stared in wonder. “G… God.”
   Vittoria nodded sadly. “That’s precisely what my father said.”

23
   Kohler was staring into the annihilation chamber with a look of utter amazement at the spectacle he had just seen. Robert Langdon was beside him, looking even more dazed.
   “I want to see my father,” Vittoria demanded. “I showed you the lab. Now I want to see my father.”
   Kohler turned slowly, apparently not hearing her. “Why did you wait so long, Vittoria? You and your father should have told me about this discovery immediately.”
   Vittoria stared at him. How many reasons do you want? “Director, we can argue about this later. Right now, I want to see my father.”
   “Do you know what this technology implies?”
   “Sure,” Vittoria shot back. “Revenue for CERN. A lot of it. Now I want—”
   “Is that why you kept it secret?” Kohler demanded, clearly baiting her. “Because you feared the board and I would vote to license it out?”
   “It should be licensed,” Vittoria fired back, feeling herself dragged into the argument. “Antimatter is important technology. But it’s also dangerous. My father and I wanted time to refine the procedures and make it safe.”
   “In other words, you didn’t trust the board of directors to place prudent science before financial greed.”
   Vittoria was surprised with the indifference in Kohler’s tone. “There were other issues as well,” she said. “My father wanted time to present antimatter in the appropriate light.”
   “Meaning?”
   What do you think I mean? “Matter from energy? Something from nothing? It’s practically proof that Genesis is a scientific possibility.”
   “So he didn’t want the religious implications of his discovery lost in an onslaught of commercialism?”
   “In a manner of speaking.”
   “And you?”
   Vittoria’s concerns, ironically, were somewhat the opposite. Commercialism was critical for the success of any new energy source. Although antimatter technology had staggering potential as an efficient and nonpolluting energy source—if unveiled prematurely, antimatter ran the risk of being vilified by the politics and PR fiascoes that had killed nuclear and solar power. Nuclear had proliferated before it was safe, and there were accidents. Solar had proliferated before it was efficient, and people lost money. Both technologies got bad reputations and withered on the vine.
   “My interests,” Vittoria said, “were a bit less lofty than uniting science and religion.”
   “The environment,” Kohler ventured assuredly.
   “Limitless energy. No strip mining. No pollution. No radiation. Antimatter technology could save the planet.”
   “Or destroy it,” Kohler quipped. “Depending on who uses it for what.” Vittoria felt a chill emanating from Kohler’s crippled form. “Who else knew about this?” he asked.
   “No one,” Vittoria said. “I told you that.”
   “Then why do you think your father was killed?”
   Vittoria’s muscles tightened. “I have no idea. He had enemies here at CERN, you know that, but it couldn’t have had anything to do with antimatter. We swore to each other to keep it between us for another few months, until we were ready.”
   “And you’re certain your father kept his vow of silence?”
   Now Vittoria was getting mad. “My father has kept tougher vows than that!”
   “And you told no one?”
   “Of course not!”
   Kohler exhaled. He paused, as though choosing his next words carefully. “Suppose someone did find out. And suppose someone gained access to this lab. What do you imagine they would be after? Did your father have notes down here? Documentation of his processes?”
   “Director, I’ve been patient. I need some answers now. You keep talking about a break-in, but you saw the retina scan. My father has been vigilant about secrecy and security.”
   “Humor me,” Kohler snapped, startling her. “What would be missing?”
   “I have no idea.” Vittoria angrily scanned the lab. All the antimatter specimens were accounted for. Her father’s work area looked in order. “Nobody came in here,” she declared. “Everything up here looks fine.”
   Kohler looked surprised. “Up here?”
   Vittoria had said it instinctively. “Yes, here in the upper lab.”
   “You’re using the lower lab too?”
   “For storage.”
   Kohler rolled toward her, coughing again. “You’re using the Haz-Mat chamber for storage? Storage of what?”
   Hazardous material, what else! Vittoria was losing her patience. “Antimatter.”
   Kohler lifted himself on the arms of his chair. “There are other specimens? Why the hell didn’t you tell me!”
   “I just did,” Vittoria fired back. “And you’ve barely given me a chance!”
   “We need to check those specimens,” Kohler said. “Now.”
   “Specimen,” Vittoria corrected. “Singular. And it’s fine. Nobody could ever—”
   “Only one?” Kohler hesitated. “Why isn’t it up here?”
   “My father wanted it below the bedrock as a precaution. It’s larger than the others.”
   The look of alarm that shot between Kohler and Langdon was not lost on Vittoria. Kohler rolled toward her again. “You created a specimen larger than five hundred nanograms?”
   “A necessity,” Vittoria defended. “We had to prove the input/yield threshold could be safely crossed.” The question with new fuel sources, she knew, was always one of input vs. yield—how much money one had to expend to harvest the fuel. Building an oil rig to yield a single barrel of oil was a losing endeavor. However, if that same rig, with minimal added expense, could deliver millions of barrels, then you were in business. Antimatter was the same way. Firing up sixteen miles of electromagnets to create a tiny specimen of antimatter expended more energy than the resulting antimatter contained. In order to prove antimatter efficient and viable, one had to create specimens of a larger magnitude.
   Although Vittoria’s father had been hesitant to create a large specimen, Vittoria had pushed him hard. She argued that in order for antimatter to be taken seriously, she and her father had to prove two things. First, that cost-effective amounts could be produced. And second, that the specimens could be safely stored. In the end she had won, and her father had acquiesced against his better judgment. Not, however, without some firm guidelines regarding secrecy and access. The antimatter, her father had insisted, would be stored in Haz-Mat—a small granite hollow, an additional seventy-five feet below ground. The specimen would be their secret. And only the two of them would have access.
   “Vittoria?” Kohler insisted, his voice tense. “How large a specimen did you and your father create?”
   Vittoria felt a wry pleasure inside. She knew the amount would stun even the great Maximilian Kohler. She pictured the antimatter below. An incredible sight. Suspended inside the trap, perfectly visible to the naked eye, danced a tiny sphere of antimatter. This was no microscopic speck. This was a droplet the size of a BB.
   Vittoria took a deep breath. “A full quarter of a gram.”
   The blood drained from Kohler’s face. “What!” He broke into a fit of coughing. “A quarter of a gram? That converts to… almost five kilotons!”
   Kilotons. Vittoria hated the word. It was one she and her father never used. A kiloton was equal to 1,000 metric tons of TNT. Kilotons were for weaponry. Payload. Destructive power. She and her father spoke in electron volts and joules—constructive energy output.
   “That much antimatter could literally liquidate everything in a half-mile radius!” Kohler exclaimed.
   “Yes, if annihilated all at once,” Vittoria shot back, “which nobody would ever do!”
   “Except someone who didn’t know better. Or if your power source failed!” Kohler was already heading for the elevator.
   “Which is why my father kept it in Haz-Mat under a fail-safe power and a redundant security system.”
   Kohler turned, looking hopeful. “You have additional security on Haz-Mat?”
   “Yes. A second retina-scan.”
   Kohler spoke only two words. “Downstairs. Now.”

   The freight elevator dropped like a rock.
   Another seventy-five feet into the earth.
   Vittoria was certain she sensed fear in both men as the elevator fell deeper. Kohler’s usually emotionless face was taut. I know, Vittoria thought, the sample is enormous, but the precautions we’ve taken are–
   They reached the bottom.
   The elevator opened, and Vittoria led the way down the dimly lit corridor. Up ahead the corridor dead-ended at a huge steel door. HAZ-MAT. The retina scan device beside the door was identical to the one upstairs. She approached. Carefully, she aligned her eye with the lens.
   She pulled back. Something was wrong. The usually spotless lens was spattered… smeared with something that looked like… blood? Confused she turned to the two men, but her gaze met waxen faces. Both Kohler and Langdon were white, their eyes fixed on the floor at her feet.
   Vittoria followed their line of sight… down.
   “No!” Langdon yelled, reaching for her. But it was too late.
   Vittoria’s vision locked on the object on the floor. It was both utterly foreign and intimately familiar to her.
   It took only an instant.
   Then, with a reeling horror, she knew. Staring up at her from the floor, discarded like a piece of trash, was an eyeball. She would have recognized that shade of hazel anywhere.

24
   The security technician held his breath as his commander leaned over his shoulder, studying the bank of security monitors before them. A minute passed.
   The commander’s silence was to be expected, the technician told himself. The commander was a man of rigid protocol. He had not risen to command one of the world’s most elite security forces by talking first and thinking second.
   But what is he thinking?
   The object they were pondering on the monitor was a canister of some sort—a canister with transparent sides. That much was easy. It was the rest that was difficult.
   Inside the container, as if by some special effect, a small droplet of metallic liquid seemed to be floating in midair. The droplet appeared and disappeared in the robotic red blinking of a digital LED descending resolutely, making the technician’s skin crawl.
   “Can you lighten the contrast?” the commander asked, startling the technician.
   The technician heeded the instruction, and the image lightened somewhat. The commander leaned forward, squinting closer at something that had just come visible on the base of the container.
   The technician followed his commander’s gaze. Ever so faintly, printed next to the LED was an acronym. Four capital letters gleaming in the intermittent spurts of light.
   “Stay here,” the commander said. “Say nothing. I’ll handle this.”

25
   Haz-Mat. Fifty meters below ground.
   Vittoria Vetra stumbled forward, almost falling into the retina scan. She sensed the American rushing to help her, holding her, supporting her weight. On the floor at her feet, her father’s eyeball stared up. She felt the air crushed from her lungs. They cut out his eye! Her world twisted. Kohler pressed close behind, speaking. Langdon guided her. As if in a dream, she found herself gazing into the retina scan. The mechanism beeped.
   The door slid open.
   Even with the terror of her father’s eye boring into her soul, Vittoria sensed an additional horror awaited inside. When she leveled her blurry gaze into the room, she confirmed the next chapter of the nightmare. Before her, the solitary recharging podium was empty.
   The canister was gone. They had cut out her father’s eye to steal it. The implications came too fast for her to fully comprehend. Everything had backfired. The specimen that was supposed to prove antimatter was a safe and viable energy source had been stolen. But nobody knew this specimen even existed! The truth, however, was undeniable. Someone had found out. Vittoria could not imagine who. Even Kohler, whom they said knew everything at CERN, clearly had no idea about the project.
   Her father was dead. Murdered for his genius.
   As the grief strafed her heart, a new emotion surged into Vittoria’s conscious. This one was far worse. Crushing. Stabbing at her. The emotion was guilt. Uncontrollable, relentless guilt. Vittoria knew it had been she who convinced her father to create the specimen. Against his better judgment. And he had been killed for it.
   A quarter of a gram…
   Like any technology—fire, gunpowder, the combustion engine—in the wrong hands, antimatter could be deadly. Very deadly. Antimatter was a lethal weapon. Potent, and unstoppable. Once removed from its recharging platform at CERN, the canister would count down inexorably. A runaway train.
   And when time ran out…
   A blinding light. The roar of thunder. Spontaneous incineration. Just the flash… and an empty crater. A big empty crater.
   The image of her father’s quiet genius being used as a tool of destruction was like poison in her blood. Antimatter was the ultimate terrorist weapon. It had no metallic parts to trip metal detectors, no chemical signature for dogs to trace, no fuse to deactivate if the authorities located the canister. The countdown had begun…
   Langdon didn’t know what else to do. He took his handkerchief and lay it on the floor over Leonardo Vetra’s eyeball. Vittoria was standing now in the doorway of the empty Haz-Mat chamber, her expression wrought with grief and panic. Langdon moved toward her again, instinctively, but Kohler intervened.
   “Mr. Langdon?” Kohler’s face was expressionless. He motioned Langdon out of earshot. Langdon reluctantly followed, leaving Vittoria to fend for herself. “You’re the specialist,” Kohler said, his whisper intense. “I want to know what these Illuminati bastards intend to do with this antimatter.”
   Langdon tried to focus. Despite the madness around him, his first reaction was logical. Academic rejection. Kohler was still making assumptions. Impossible assumptions. “The Illuminati are defunct, Mr. Kohler. I stand by that. This crime could be anything—maybe even another CERN employee who found out about Mr. Vetra’s breakthrough and thought the project was too dangerous to continue.”
   Kohler looked stunned. “You think this is a crime of conscience, Mr. Langdon? Absurd. Whoever killed Leonardo wanted one thing—the antimatter specimen. And no doubt they have plans for it.”
   “You mean terrorism.”
   “Plainly.”
   “But the Illuminati were not terrorists.”
   “Tell that to Leonardo Vetra.”
   Langdon felt a pang of truth in the statement. Leonardo Vetra had indeed been branded with the Illuminati symbol. Where had it come from? The sacred brand seemed too difficult a hoax for someone trying to cover his tracks by casting suspicion elsewhere. There had to be another explanation.
   Again, Langdon forced himself to consider the implausible. If the Illuminati were still active, and if they stole the antimatter, what would be their intention? What would be their target? The answer furnished by his brain was instantaneous. Langdon dismissed it just as fast. True, the Illuminati had an obvious enemy, but a wide-scale terrorist attack against that enemy was inconceivable. It was entirely out of character. Yes, the Illuminati had killed people, but individuals, carefully conscripted targets. Mass destruction was somehow heavy-handed. Langdon paused. Then again, he thought, there would be a rather majestic eloquence to it—antimatter, the ultimate scientific achievement, being used to vaporize—
   He refused to accept the preposterous thought. “There is,” he said suddenly, “a logical explanation other than terrorism.”
   Kohler stared, obviously waiting.
   Langdon tried to sort out the thought. The Illuminati had always wielded tremendous power through financial means. They controlled banks. They owned gold bullion. They were even rumored to possess the single most valuable gem on earth—the Illuminati Diamond, a flawless diamond of enormous proportions. “Money,” Langdon said. “The antimatter could have been stolen for financial gain.”
   Kohler looked incredulous. “Financial gain? Where does one sell a droplet of antimatter?”
   “Not the specimen,” Langdon countered. “The technology. Antimatter technology must be worth a mint. Maybe someone stole the specimen to do analysis and R and D.”
   “Industrial espionage? But that canister has twenty-four hours before the batteries die. The researchers would blow themselves up before they learned anything at all.”
   “They could recharge it before it explodes. They could build a compatible recharging podium like the ones here at CERN.”
   “In twenty-four hours?” Kohler challenged. “Even if they stole the schematics, a recharger like that would take months to engineer, not hours!”
   “He’s right.” Vittoria’s voice was frail.
   Both men turned. Vittoria was moving toward them, her gait as tremulous as her words.
   “He’s right. Nobody could reverse engineer a recharger in time. The interface alone would take weeks. Flux filters, servo-coils, power conditioning alloys, all calibrated to the specific energy grade of the locale.”
   Langdon frowned. The point was taken. An antimatter trap was not something one could simply plug into a wall socket. Once removed from CERN, the canister was on a one-way, twenty-four-hour trip to oblivion.
   Which left only one, very disturbing, conclusion.
   “We need to call Interpol,” Vittoria said. Even to herself, her voice sounded distant. “We need to call the proper authorities. Immediately.”
   Kohler shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
   The words stunned her. “No? What do you mean?”
   “You and your father have put me in a very difficult position here.”
   “Director, we need help. We need to find that trap and get it back here before someone gets hurt. We have a responsibility!”
   “We have a responsibility to think,” Kohler said, his tone hardening. “This situation could have very, very serious repercussions for CERN.”
   “You’re worried about CERN’s reputation? Do you know what that canister could do to an urban area? It has a blast radius of a half mile! Nine city blocks!”
   “Perhaps you and your father should have considered that before you created the specimen.”
   Vittoria felt like she’d been stabbed. “But… we took every precaution.”
   “Apparently, it was not enough.”
   “But nobody knew about the antimatter.” She realized, of course, it was an absurd argument. Of course somebody knew. Someone had found out.
   Vittoria had told no one. That left only two explanations. Either her father had taken someone into his confidence without telling her, which made no sense because it was her father who had sworn them both to secrecy, or she and her father had been monitored. The cell phone maybe? She knew they had spoken a few times while Vittoria was traveling. Had they said too much? It was possible. There was also their E-mail. But they had been discreet, hadn’t they? CERN’s security system? Had they been monitored somehow without their knowledge? She knew none of that mattered anymore. What was done, was done. My father is dead.
   The thought spurred her to action. She pulled her cell phone from her shorts pocket.
   Kohler accelerated toward her, coughing violently, eyes flashing anger. “Who… are you calling?”
   “CERN’s switchboard. They can connect us to Interpol.”
   “Think!” Kohler choked, screeching to a halt in front of her. “Are you really so naive? That canister could be anywhere in the world by now. No intelligence agency on earth could possibly mobilize to find it in time.”
   “So we do nothing?” Vittoria felt compunction challenging a man in such frail health, but the director was so far out of line she didn’t even know him anymore.
   “We do what is smart,” Kohler said. “We don’t risk CERN’s reputation by involving authorities who cannot help anyway. Not yet. Not without thinking.”
   Vittoria knew there was logic somewhere in Kohler’s argument, but she also knew that logic, by definition, was bereft of moral responsibility. Her father had lived for moral responsibility—careful science, accountability, faith in man’s inherent goodness. Vittoria believed in those things too, but she saw them in terms of karma. Turning away from Kohler, she snapped open her phone.
   “You can’t do that,” he said.
   “Just try and stop me.”
   Kohler did not move.
   An instant later, Vittoria realized why. This far underground, her cell phone had no dial tone.
   Fuming, she headed for the elevator.

26
   The Hassassin stood at the end of the stone tunnel. His torch still burned bright, the smoke mixing with the smell of moss and stale air. Silence surrounded him. The iron door blocking his way looked as old as the tunnel itself, rusted but still holding strong. He waited in the darkness, trusting.
   It was almost time.
   Janus had promised someone on the inside would open the door. The Hassassin marveled at the betrayal. He would have waited all night at that door to carry out his task, but he sensed it would not be necessary. He was working for determined men.
   Minutes later, exactly at the appointed hour, there was a loud clank of heavy keys on the other side of the door. Metal scraped on metal as multiple locks disengaged. One by one, three huge deadbolts ground open. The locks creaked as if they had not been used in centuries. Finally all three were open.
   Then there was silence.
   The Hassassin waited patiently, five minutes, exactly as he had been told. Then, with electricity in his blood, he pushed. The great door swung open.