117
   Robert Langdon had little doubt that the chaos and hysteria coursing through St. Peter’s Square at this very instant exceeded anything Vatican Hill had ever witnessed. No battle, no crucifixion, no pilgrimage, no mystical vision… nothing in the shrine’s 2,000-year history could possibly match the scope and drama of this very moment.
   As the tragedy unfolded, Langdon felt oddly separate, as if hovering there beside Vittoria at the top of the stairs. The action seemed to distend, as if in a time warp, all the insanity slowing to a crawl…
   The branded camerlegno… raving for the world to see…
   The Illuminati Diamond… unveiled in its diabolical genius…
   The countdown clock registering the final twenty minutes of Vatican history…
   The drama, however, had only just begun.
   The camerlegno, as if in some sort of post-traumatic trance, seemed suddenly puissant, possessed by demons. He began babbling, whispering to unseen spirits, looking up at the sky and raising his arms to God.
   “Speak!” the camerlegno yelled to the heavens. “Yes, I hear you!”
   In that moment, Langdon understood. His heart dropped like a rock.
   Vittoria apparently understood too. She went white. “He’s in shock,” she said. “He’s hallucinating. He thinks he’s talking to God!”
   Somebody’s got to stop this, Langdon thought. It was a wretched and embarrassing end. Get this man to a hospital!
   Below them on the stairs, Chinita Macri was poised and filming, apparently having located her ideal vantage point. The images she filmed appeared instantly across the square behind her on media screens… like endless drive-in movies all playing the same grisly tragedy.
   The whole scene felt epic. The camerlegno, in his torn cassock, with the scorched brand on his chest, looked like some sort of battered champion who had overcome the rings of hell for this one moment of revelation. He bellowed to the heavens.
   “Ti sento, Dio! I hear you, God!”
   Chartrand backed off, a look of awe on his face.
   The hush that fell across the crowd was instant and absolute. For a moment it was as if the silence had fallen across the entire planet… everyone in front of their TVs rigid, a communal holding of breath.
   The camerlegno stood on the stairs, before the world, and held out his arms. He looked almost Christlike, bare and wounded before the world. He raised his arms to the heavens and, looking up, exclaimed, “Grazie! Grazie, Dio!”
   The silence of the masses never broke.
   “Grazie, Dio!” the camerlegno cried out again. Like the sun breaking through a stormy sky, a look of joy spread across his face. “Grazie, Dio!”
   Thank you, God? Langdon stared in wonder.
   The camerlegno was radiant now, his eerie transformation complete. He looked up at the sky, still nodding furiously. He shouted to the heavens, “Upon this rock I will build my church!”
   Langdon knew the words, but he had no idea why the camerlegno could possibly be shouting them.
   The camerlegno turned back to the crowd and bellowed again into the night. “Upon this rock I will build my church!” Then he raised his hands to the sky and laughed out loud. “Grazie, Dio! Grazie!”
   The man had clearly gone mad.
   The world watched, spellbound.
   The culmination, however, was something no one expected.
   With a final joyous exultation, the camerlegno turned and dashed back into St. Peter’s Basilica.

118
   Eleven-forty-two P.M.
   The frenzied convoy that plunged back into the basilica to retrieve the camerlegno was not one Langdon had ever imagined he would be part of… much less leading. But he had been closest to the door and had acted on instinct.
   He’ll die in here, Langdon thought, sprinting over the threshold into the darkened void. “Camerlegno! Stop!”
   The wall of blackness that hit Langdon was absolute. His pupils were contracted from the glare outside, and his field of vision now extended no farther than a few feet before his face. He skidded to a stop. Somewhere in the blackness ahead, he heard the camerlegno’s cassock rustle as the priest ran blindly into the abyss.
   Vittoria and the guards arrived immediately. Flashlights came on, but the lights were almost dead now and did not even begin to probe the depths of the basilica before them. The beams swept back and forth, revealing only columns and bare floor. The camerlegno was nowhere to be seen.
   “Camerlegno!” Chartrand yelled, fear in his voice. “Wait! Signore!”
   A commotion in the doorway behind them caused everyone to turn. Chinita Macri’s large frame lurched through the entry. Her camera was shouldered, and the glowing red light on top revealed that it was still transmitting. Glick was running behind her, microphone in hand, yelling for her to slow down.
   Langdon could not believe these two. This is not the time!
   “Out!” Chartrand snapped. “This is not for your eyes!”
   But Macri and Glick kept coming.
   “Chinita!” Glick sounded fearful now. “This is suicide! I’m not coming!”
   Macri ignored him. She threw a switch on her camera. The spotlight on top glared to life, blinding everyone.
   Langdon shielded his face and turned away in pain. Damn it! When he looked up, though, the church around them was illuminated for thirty yards.
   At that moment the camerlegno’s voice echoed somewhere in the distance. “Upon this rock I will build my church!”
   Macri wheeled her camera toward the sound. Far off, in the grayness at the end of the spotlight’s reach, black fabric billowed, revealing a familiar form running down the main aisle of the basilica.
   There was a fleeting instant of hesitation as everyone’s eyes took in the bizarre image. Then the dam broke. Chartrand pushed past Langdon and sprinted after the camerlegno. Langdon took off next. Then the guards and Vittoria.
   Macri brought up the rear, lighting everyone’s way and transmitting the sepulchral chase to the world. An unwilling Glick cursed aloud as he tagged along, fumbling through a terrified blow-by-blow commentary.
   The main aisle of St. Peter’s Basilica, Lieutenant Chartrand had once figured out, was longer than an Olympic soccer field. Tonight, however, it felt like twice that. As the guard sprinted after the camerlegno, he wondered where the man was headed. The camerlegno was clearly in shock, delirious no doubt from his physical trauma and bearing witness to the horrific massacre in the Pope’s office.
   Somewhere up ahead, beyond the reach of the BBC spotlight, the camerlegno’s voice rang out joyously. “Upon this rock I will build my church!”
   Chartrand knew the man was shouting Scripture—Matthew 16:18, if Chartrand recalled correctly. Upon this rock I will build my church. It was an almost cruelly inapt inspiration—the church was about to be destroyed. Surely the camerlegno had gone mad.
   Or had he?
   For a fleeting instant, Chartrand’s soul fluttered. Holy visions and divine messages had always seemed like wishful delusions to him—the product of overzealous minds hearing what they wanted to hear—God did not interact directly!
   A moment later, though, as if the Holy Spirit Himself had descended to persuade Chartrand of His power, Chartrand had a vision.
   Fifty yards ahead, in the center of the church, a ghost appeared… a diaphanous, glowing outline. The pale shape was that of the half-naked camerlegno. The specter seemed transparent, radiating light. Chartrand staggered to a stop, feeling a knot tighten in his chest. The camerlegno is glowing! The body seemed to shine brighter now. Then, it began to sink… deeper and deeper, until it disappeared as if by magic into the blackness of the floor.
   Langdon had seen the phantom also. For a moment, he too thought he had witnessed a magical vision. But as he passed the stunned Chartrand and ran toward the spot where the camerlegno had disappeared, he realized what had just happened. The camerlegno had arrived at the Niche of the Palliums—the sunken chamber lit by ninety-nine oil lamps. The lamps in the niche shone up from beneath, illuminating him like a ghost. Then, as the camerlegno descended the stairs into the light, he had seemed to disappear beneath the floor.
   Langdon arrived breathless at the rim overlooking the sunken room. He peered down the stairs. At the bottom, lit by the golden glow of oil lamps, the camerlegno dashed across the marble chamber toward the set of glass doors that led to the room holding the famous golden box.
   What is he doing? Langdon wondered. Certainly he can’t think the golden box–
   The camerlegno yanked open the doors and ran inside. Oddly though, he totally ignored the golden box, rushing right past it. Five feet beyond the box, he dropped to his knees and began struggling to lift an iron grate embedded in the floor.
   Langdon watched in horror, now realizing where the camerlegno was headed. Good God, no! He dashed down the stairs after him. “Father! Don’t!”
   As Langdon opened the glass doors and ran toward the camerlegno, he saw the camerlegno heave on the grate. The hinged, iron bulkhead fell open with a deafening crash, revealing a narrow shaft and a steep stairway that dropped into nothingness. As the camerlegno moved toward the hole, Langdon grabbed his bare shoulders and pulled him back. The man’s skin was slippery with sweat, but Langdon held on.
   The camerlegno wheeled, obviously startled. “What are you doing!”
   Langdon was surprised when their eyes met. The camerlegno no longer had the glazed look of a man in a trance. His eyes were keen, glistening with a lucid determination. The brand on his chest looked excruciating.
   “Father,” Langdon urged, as calmly as possible, “you can’t go down there. We need to evacuate.”
   “My son,” the camerlegno said, his voice eerily sane. “I have just had a message. I know—”
   “Camerlegno!” It was Chartrand and the others. They came dashing down the stairs into the room, lit by Macri’s camera.
   When Chartrand saw the open grate in the floor, his eyes filled with dread. He crossed himself and shot Langdon a thankful look for having stopped the camerlegno. Langdon understood; had read enough about Vatican architecture to know what lay beneath that grate. It was the most sacred place in all of Christendom. Terra Santa. Holy Ground. Some called it the Necropolis. Some called it the Catacombs. According to accounts from the select few clergy who had descended over the years, the Necropolis was a dark maze of subterranean crypts that could swallow a visitor whole if he lost his way. It was not the kind of place through which they wanted to be chasing the camerlegno.
   “Signore,” Chartrand pleaded. “You’re in shock. We need to leave this place. You cannot go down there. It’s suicide.”
   The camerlegno seemed suddenly stoic. He reached out and put a quiet hand on Chartrand’s shoulder. “Thank you for your concern and service. I cannot tell you how. I cannot tell you I understand. But I have had a revelation. I know where the antimatter is.”
   Everyone stared.
   The camerlegno turned to the group. “Upon this rock I will build my church. That was the message. The meaning is clear.”
   Langdon was still unable to comprehend the camerlegno’s conviction that he had spoken to God, much less that he had deciphered the message. Upon this rock I will build my church? They were the words spoken by Jesus when he chose Peter as his first apostle. What did they have to do with anything?
   Macri moved in for a closer shot. Glick was mute, as if shell-shocked.
   The camerlegno spoke quickly now. “The Illuminati have placed their tool of destruction on the very cornerstone of this church. At the foundation.” He motioned down the stairs. “On the very rock upon which this church was built. And I know where that rock is.”
   Langdon was certain the time had come to overpower the camerlegno and carry him off. As lucid as he seemed, the priest was talking nonsense. A rock? The cornerstone in the foundation? The stairway before them didn’t lead to the foundation, it led to the necropolis! “The quote is a metaphor, Father! There is no actual rock!”
   The camerlegno looked strangely sad. “There is a rock, my son.” He pointed into the hole. “Pietro è la pietra.”
   Langdon froze. In an instant it all came clear.
   The austere simplicity of it gave him chills. As Langdon stood there with the others, staring down the long staircase, he realized that there was indeed a rock buried in the darkness beneath this church.
   Pietro è la pietra. Peter is the rock.
   Peter’s faith in God was so steadfast that Jesus called Peter “the rock”—the unwavering disciple on whose shoulders Jesus would build his church. On this very location, Langdon realized—Vatican Hill—Peter had been crucified and buried. The early Christians built a small shrine over his tomb. As Christianity spread, the shrine got bigger, layer upon layer, culminating in this colossal basilica. The entire Catholic faith had been built, quite literally, upon St. Peter. The rock.
   “The antimatter is on St. Peter’s tomb,” the camerlegno said, his voice crystalline.
   Despite the seemingly supernatural origin of the information, Langdon sensed a stark logic in it. Placing the antimatter on St. Peter’s tomb seemed painfully obvious now. The Illuminati, in an act of symbolic defiance, had located the antimatter at the core of Christendom, both literally and figuratively. The ultimate infiltration.
   “And if you all need worldly proof,” the camerlegno said, sounding impatient now, “I just found that grate unlocked.” He pointed to the open bulkhead in the floor. “It is never unlocked. Someone has been down there… recently.”
   Everyone stared into the hole.
   An instant later, with deceptive agility, the camerlegno spun, grabbed an oil lamp, and headed for the opening.

119
   The stone steps declined steeply into the earth.
   I’m going to die down here, Vittoria thought, gripping the heavy rope banister as she bounded down the cramped passageway behind the others. Although Langdon had made a move to stop the camerlegno from entering the shaft, Chartrand had intervened, grabbing Langdon and holding on. Apparently, the young guard was now convinced the camerlegno knew what he was doing.
   After a brief scuffle, Langdon had freed himself and pursued the camerlegno with Chartrand close on his heels. Instinctively, Vittoria had dashed after them.
   Now she was racing headlong down a precipitous grade where any misplaced step could mean a deadly fall. Far below, she could see the golden glow of the camerlegno’s oil lamp. Behind her, Vittoria could hear the BBC reporters hurrying to keep up. The camera spotlight threw gnarled shadows beyond her down the shaft, illuminating Chartrand and Langdon. Vittoria could scarcely believe the world was bearing witness to this insanity. Turn off the damn camera! Then again, she knew the light was the only reason any of them could see where they were going.
   As the bizarre chase continued, Vittoria’s thoughts whipped like a tempest. What could the camerlegno possibly do down here? Even if he found the antimatter? There was no time!
   Vittoria was surprised to find her intuition now telling her the camerlegno was probably right. Placing the antimatter three stories beneath the earth seemed an almost noble and merciful choice. Deep underground—much as in Z-lab—an antimatter annihilation would be partially contained. There would be no heat blast, no flying shrapnel to injure onlookers, just a biblical opening of the earth and a towering basilica crumbling into a crater.
   Was this Kohler’s one act of decency? Sparing lives? Vittoria still could not fathom the director’s involvement. She could accept his hatred of religion… but this awesome conspiracy seemed beyond him. Was Kohler’s loathing really this profound? Destruction of the Vatican? Hiring an assassin? The murders of her father, the Pope, and four cardinals? It seemed unthinkable. And how had Kohler managed all this treachery within the Vatican walls? Rocher was Kohler’s inside man, Vittoria told herself. Rocher was an Illuminatus. No doubt Captain Rocher had keys to everything—the Pope’s chambers, Il Passetto, the Necropolis, St. Peter’s tomb, all of it. He could have placed the antimatter on St. Peter’s tomb—a highly restricted locale—and then commanded his guards not to waste time searching the Vatican’s restricted areas. Rocher knew nobody would ever find the canister.
   But Rocher never counted on the camerlegno’s message from above.
   The message. This was the leap of faith Vittoria was still struggling to accept. Had God actually communicated with the camerlegno? Vittoria’s gut said no, and yet hers was the science of entanglement physics—the study of interconnectedness. She witnessed miraculous communications every day—twin sea-turtle eggs separated and placed in labs thousands of miles apart hatching at the same instant… acres of jellyfish pulsating in perfect rhythm as if of a single mind. There are invisible lines of communication everywhere, she thought.
   But between God and man?
   Vittoria wished her father were there to give her faith. He had once explained divine communication to her in scientific terms, and he had made her believe. She still remembered the day she had seen him praying and asked him, “Father, why do you bother to pray? God cannot answer you.”
   Leonardo Vetra had looked up from his meditations with a paternal smile. “My daughter the skeptic. So you don’t believe God speaks to man? Let me put it in your language.” He took a model of the human brain down from a shelf and set it in front of her. “As you probably know, Vittoria, human beings normally use a very small percentage of their brain power. However, if you put them in emotionally charged situations—like physical trauma, extreme joy or fear, deep meditation—all of a sudden their neurons start firing like crazy, resulting in massively enhanced mental clarity.”
   “So what?” Vittoria said. “Just because you think clearly doesn’t mean you talk to God.”
   “Aha!” Vetra exclaimed. “And yet remarkable solutions to seemingly impossible problems often occur in these moments of clarity. It’s what gurus call higher consciousness. Biologists call it altered states. Psychologists call it super-sentience.” He paused. “And Christians call it answered prayer.” Smiling broadly, he added, “Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.”
   Now, as she dashed down, headlong into the dark, Vittoria sensed perhaps her father was right. Was it so hard to believe that the camerlegno’s trauma had put his mind in a state where he had simply “realized” the antimatter’s location?
   Each of us is a God, Buddha had said. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.
   It was in that moment of clarity, as Vittoria plunged deeper into the earth, that she felt her own mind open… her own wisdom surface. She sensed now without a doubt what the camerlegno’s intentions were. Her awareness brought with it a fear like nothing she had ever known.
   “Camerlegno, no!” she shouted down the passage. “You don’t understand!” Vittoria pictured the multitudes of people surrounding Vatican City, and her blood ran cold. “If you bring the antimatter up… everyone will die!”
   Langdon was leaping three steps at a time now, gaining ground. The passage was cramped, but he felt no claustrophobia. His once debilitating fear was overshadowed by a far deeper dread.
   “Camerlegno!” Langdon felt himself closing the gap on the lantern’s glow. “You must leave the antimatter where it is! There’s no other choice!”
   Even as Langdon spoke the words, he could not believe them. Not only had he accepted the camerlegno’s divine revelation of the antimatter’s location, but he was lobbying for the destruction of St. Peter’s Basilica—one of the greatest architectural feats on earth… as well as all of the art inside.
   But the people outside… it’s the only way.
   It seemed a cruel irony that the only way to save the people now was to destroy the church. Langdon figured the Illuminati were amused by the symbolism.
   The air coming up from the bottom of the tunnel was cool and dank. Somewhere down here was the sacred necropolis… burial place of St. Peter and countless other early Christians. Langdon felt a chill, hoping this was not a suicide mission.
   Suddenly, the camerlegno’s lantern seemed to halt. Langdon closed on him fast.
   The end of the stairs loomed abruptly from out of the shadows. A wrought-iron gate with three embossed skulls blocked the bottom of the stairs. The camerlegno was there, pulling the gate open. Langdon leapt, pushing the gate shut, blocking the camerlegno’s way. The others came thundering down the stairs, everyone ghostly white in the BBC spotlight… especially Glick, who was looking more pasty with every step.
   Chartrand grabbed Langdon. “Let the camerlegno pass!”
   “No!” Vittoria said from above, breathless. “We must evacuate right now! You cannot take the antimatter out of here! If you bring it up, everyone outside will die!”
   The camerlegno’s voice was remarkably calm. “All of you… we must trust. We have little time.”
   “You don’t understand,” Vittoria said. “An explosion at ground level will be much worse than one down here!”
   The camerlegno looked at her, his green eyes resplendently sane. “Who said anything about an explosion at ground level?”
   Vittoria stared. “You’re leaving it down here?”
   The camerlegno’s certitude was hypnotic. “There will be no more death tonight.”
   “Father, but—”
   “Please… some faith.” The camerlegno’s voice plunged to a compelling hush. “I am not asking anyone to join me. You are all free to go. All I am asking is that you not interfere with His bidding. Let me do what I have been called to do.” The camerlegno’s stare intensified. “I am to save this church. And I can. I swear on my life.”
   The silence that followed might as well have been thunder.

120
   Eleven-fifty-one P.M.
   Necropolis literally means City of the Dead.
   Nothing Robert Langdon had ever read about this place prepared him for the sight of it. The colossal subterranean hollow was filled with crumbling mausoleums, like small houses on the floor of a cave. The air smelled lifeless. An awkward grid of narrow walkways wound between the decaying memorials, most of which were fractured brick with marble platings. Like columns of dust, countless pillars of unexcavated earth rose up, supporting a dirt sky, which hung low over the penumbral hamlet.
   City of the dead, Langdon thought, feeling trapped between academic wonder and raw fear. He and the others dashed deeper down the winding passages. Did I make the wrong choice?
   Chartrand had been the first to fall under the camerlegno’s spell, yanking open the gate and declaring his faith in the camerlegno. Glick and Macri, at the camerlegno’s suggestion, had nobly agreed to provide light to the quest, although considering what accolades awaited them if they got out of here alive, their motivations were certainly suspect. Vittoria had been the least eager of all, and Langdon had seen in her eyes a wariness that looked, unsettlingly, a lot like female intuition.
   It’s too late now, he thought, he and Vittoria dashing after the others. We’re committed.
   Vittoria was silent, but Langdon knew they were thinking the same thing. Nine minutes is not enough time to get the hell out of Vatican City if the camerlegno is wrong.
   As they ran on through the mausoleums, Langdon felt his legs tiring, noting to his surprise that the group was ascending a steady incline. The explanation, when it dawned on him, sent shivers to his core. The topography beneath his feet was that of Christ’s time. He was running up the original Vatican Hill! Langdon had heard Vatican scholars claim that St. Peter’s tomb was near the top of Vatican Hill, and he had always wondered how they knew. Now he understood. The damn hill is still here!
   Langdon felt like he was running through the pages of history. Somewhere ahead was St. Peter’s tomb—the Christian relic. It was hard to imagine that the original grave had been marked only with a modest shrine. Not any more. As Peter’s eminence spread, new shrines were built on top of the old, and now, the homage stretched 440 feet overhead to the top of Michelangelo’s dome, the apex positioned directly over the original tomb within a fraction of an inch.
   They continued ascending the sinuous passages. Langdon checked his watch. Eight minutes. He was beginning to wonder if he and Vittoria would be joining the deceased here permanently.
   “Look out!” Glick yelled from behind them. “Snake holes!”
   Langdon saw it in time. A series of small holes riddled the path before them. He leapt, just clearing them.
   Vittoria jumped too, barely avoiding the narrow hollows. She looked uneasy as they ran on. “Snake holes?”
   “Snack holes, actually,” Langdon corrected. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” The holes, he had just realized, were libation tubes. The early Christians had believed in the resurrection of the flesh, and they’d used the holes to literally “feed the dead” by pouring milk and honey into crypts beneath the floor.
   The camerlegno felt weak.
   He dashed onward, his legs finding strength in his duty to God and man. Almost there. He was in incredible pain. The mind can bring so much more pain than the body. Still he felt tired. He knew he had precious little time.
   “I will save your church, Father. I swear it.”
   Despite the BBC lights behind him, for which he was grateful, the camerlegno carried his oil lamp high. I am a beacon in the darkness. I am the light. The lamp sloshed as he ran, and for an instant he feared the flammable oil might spill and burn him. He had experienced enough burned flesh for one evening.
   As he approached the top of the hill, he was drenched in sweat, barely able to breathe. But when he emerged over the crest, he felt reborn. He staggered onto the flat piece of earth where he had stood many times. Here the path ended. The necropolis came to an abrupt halt at a wall of earth. A tiny marker read: Mausoleum S.
   La tomba di San Pietro.
   Before him, at waist level, was an opening in the wall. There was no gilded plaque here. No fanfare. Just a simple hole in the wall, beyond which lay a small grotto and a meager, crumbling sarcophagus. The camerlegno gazed into the hole and smiled in exhaustion. He could hear the others coming up the hill behind him. He set down his oil lamp and knelt to pray.
   Thank you, God. It is almost over.
   Outside in the square, surrounded by astounded cardinals, Cardinal Mortati stared up at the media screen and watched the drama unfold in the crypt below. He no longer knew what to believe. Had the entire world just witnessed what he had seen? Had God truly spoken to the camerlegno? Was the antimatter really going to appear on St. Peter’s—
   “Look!” A gasp went up from the throngs.
   “There!” Everyone was suddenly pointing at the screen. “It’s a miracle!”
   Mortati looked up. The camera angle was unsteady, but it was clear enough. The image was unforgettable.
   Filmed from behind, the camerlegno was kneeling in prayer on the earthen floor. In front of him was a rough-hewn hole in the wall. Inside the hollow, among the rubble of ancient stone, was a terra cotta casket. Although Mortati had seen the coffin only once in his life, he knew beyond a doubt what it contained.
   San Pietro.
   Mortati was not naive enough to think that the shouts of joy and amazement now thundering through the crowd were exaltations from bearing witness to one of Christianity’s most sacred relics. St. Peter’s tomb was not what had people falling to their knees in spontaneous prayer and thanksgiving. It was the object on top of his tomb.
   The antimatter canister. It was there… where it had been all day… hiding in the darkness of the Necropolis. Sleek. Relentless. Deadly. The camerlegno’s revelation was correct.
   Mortati stared in wonder at the transparent cylinder. The globule of liquid still hovered at its core. The grotto around the canister blinked red as the LED counted down into its final five minutes of life.
   Also sitting on the tomb, inches away from the canister, was the wireless Swiss Guard security camera that had been pointed at the canister and transmitting all along.
   Mortati crossed himself, certain this was the most frightful image he had seen in his entire life. He realized, a moment later, however, that it was about to get worse.
   The camerlegno stood suddenly. He grabbed the antimatter in his hands and wheeled toward the others. His face showing total focus. He pushed past the others and began descending the Necropolis the way he had come, running down the hill.
   The camera caught Vittoria Vetra, frozen in terror. “Where are you going! Camerlegno! I thought you said—”
   “Have faith!” he exclaimed as he ran off.
   Vittoria spun toward Langdon. “What do we do?”
   Robert Langdon tried to stop the camerlegno, but Chartrand was running interference now, apparently trusting the camerlegno’s conviction.
   The picture coming from the BBC camera was like a roller coaster ride now, winding, twisting. Fleeting freeze-frames of confusion and terror as the chaotic cortege stumbled through the shadows back toward the Necropolis entrance.
   Out in the square, Mortati let out a fearful gasp. “Is he bringing that up here?”
   On televisions all over the world, larger than life, the camerlegno raced upward out of the Necropolis with the antimatter before him. “There will be no more death tonight!”
   But the camerlegno was wrong.

121
   The camerlegno erupted through the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica at exactly 11:56 P.M. He staggered into the dazzling glare of the world spotlight, carrying the antimatter before him like some sort of numinous offering. Through burning eyes he could see his own form, half-naked and wounded, towering like a giant on the media screens around the square. The roar that went up from the crowd in St. Peter’s Square was like none the camerlegno had ever heard—crying, screaming, chanting, praying… a mix of veneration and terror.
   Deliver us from evil, he whispered.
   He felt totally depleted from his race out of the Necropolis. It had almost ended in disaster. Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra had wanted to intercept him, to throw the canister back into its subterranean hiding place, to run outside for cover. Blind fools!
   The camerlegno realized now, with fearful clarity, that on any other night, he would never have won the race. Tonight, however, God again had been with him. Robert Langdon, on the verge of overtaking the camerlegno, had been grabbed by Chartrand, ever trusting and dutiful to the camerlegno’s demands for faith. The reporters, of course, were spellbound and lugging too much equipment to interfere.
   The Lord works in mysterious ways.
   The camerlegno could hear the others behind him now… see them on the screens, closing in. Mustering the last of his physical strength, he raised the antimatter high over his head. Then, throwing back his bare shoulders in an act of defiance to the Illuminati brand on his chest, he dashed down the stairs.
   There was one final act.
   Godspeed, he thought. Godspeed.
   Four minutes…
   Langdon could barely see as he burst out of the basilica. Again the sea of media lights bore into his retinas. All he could make out was the murky outline of the camerlegno, directly ahead of him, running down the stairs. For an instant, refulgent in his halo of media lights, the camerlegno looked celestial, like some kind of modern deity. His cassock was at his waist like a shroud. His body was scarred and wounded by the hands of his enemies, and still he endured. The camerlegno ran on, standing tall, calling out to the world to have faith, running toward the masses carrying this weapon of destruction.
   Langdon ran down the stairs after him. What is he doing? He will kill them all!
   “Satan’s work,” the camerlegno screamed, “has no place in the House of God!” He ran on toward a now terrified crowd.
   “Father!” Langdon screamed, behind him. “There’s nowhere to go!”
   “Look to the heavens! We forget to look to the heavens!”
   In that moment, as Langdon saw where the camerlegno was headed, the glorious truth came flooding all around him. Although Langdon could not see it on account of the lights, he knew their salvation was directly overhead.
   A star-filled Italian sky. The escape route.
   The helicopter the camerlegno had summoned to take him to the hospital sat dead ahead, pilot already in the cockpit, blades already humming in neutral. As the camerlegno ran toward it, Langdon felt a sudden overwhelming exhilaration.
   The thoughts that tore through Langdon’s mind came as a torrent…
   First he pictured the wide-open expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. How far was it? Five miles? Ten? He knew the beach at Fiumocino was only about seven minutes by train. But by helicopter, 200 miles an hour, no stops… If they could fly the canister far enough out to sea, and drop it… There were other options too, he realized, feeling almost weightless as he ran. La Cava Romana! The marble quarries north of the city were less than three miles away. How large were they? Two square miles? Certainly they were deserted at this hour! Dropping the canister there…
   “Everyone back!” the camerlegno yelled. His chest ached as he ran. “Get away! Now!”
   The Swiss Guard standing around the chopper stood slack-jawed as the camerlegno approached them.
   “Back!” the priest screamed.
   The guards moved back.
   With the entire world watching in wonder, the camerlegno ran around the chopper to the pilot’s door and yanked it open. “Out, son! Now!”
   The guard jumped out.
   The camerlegno looked at the high cockpit seat and knew that in his exhausted state, he would need both hands to pull himself up. He turned to the pilot, trembling beside him, and thrust the canister into his hands. “Hold this. Hand it back when I’m in.”
   As the camerlegno pulled himself up, he could hear Robert Langdon yelling excitedly, running toward the craft. Now you understand, the camerlegno thought. Now you have faith!
   The camerlegno pulled himself up into the cockpit, adjusted a few familiar levers, and then turned back to his window for the canister.
   But the guard to whom he had given the canister stood empty-handed. “He took it!” the guard yelled.
   The camerlegno felt his heart seize. “Who!”
   The guard pointed. “Him!”
   Robert Langdon was surprised by how heavy the canister was. He ran to the other side of the chopper and jumped in the rear compartment where he and Vittoria had sat only hours ago. He left the door open and buckled himself in. Then he yelled to the camerlegno in the front seat.
   “Fly, Father!”
   The camerlegno craned back at Langdon, his face bloodless with dread. “What are you doing!”
   “You fly! I’ll throw!” Langdon barked. “There’s no time! Just fly the blessed chopper!”
   The camerlegno seemed momentarily paralyzed, the media lights glaring through the cockpit darkening the creases in his face. “I can do this alone,” he whispered. “I am supposed to do this alone.”
   Langdon wasn’t listening. Fly! he heard himself screaming. Now! I’m here to help you! Langdon looked down at the canister and felt his breath catch in his throat when he saw the numbers. “Three minutes, Father! Three!”
   The number seemed to stun the camerlegno back to sobriety. Without hesitation, he turned back to the controls. With a grinding roar, the helicopter lifted off.
   Through a swirl of dust, Langdon could see Vittoria running toward the chopper. Their eyes met, and then she dropped away like a sinking stone.

122
   Inside the chopper, the whine of the engines and the gale from the open door assaulted Langdon’s senses with a deafening chaos. He steadied himself against the magnified drag of gravity as the camerlegno accelerated the craft straight up. The glow of St. Peter’s Square shrank beneath them until it was an amorphous glowing ellipse radiating in a sea of city lights.
   The antimatter canister felt like deadweight in Langdon’s hands. He held tighter, his palms slick now with sweat and blood. Inside the trap, the globule of antimatter hovered calmly, pulsing red in the glow of the LED countdown clock.
   “Two minutes!” Langdon yelled, wondering where the camerlegno intended to drop the canister.
   The city lights beneath them spread out in all directions. In the distance to the west, Langdon could see the twinkling delineation of the Mediterranean coast—a jagged border of luminescence beyond which spread an endless dark expanse of nothingness. The sea looked farther now than Langdon had imagined. Moreover, the concentration of lights at the coast was a stark reminder that even far out at sea an explosion might have devastating effects. Langdon had not even considered the effects of a ten-kiloton tidal wave hitting the coast.
   When Langdon turned and looked straight ahead through the cockpit window, he was more hopeful. Directly in front of them, the rolling shadows of the Roman foothills loomed in the night. The hills were spotted with lights—the villas of the very wealthy—but a mile or so north, the hills grew dark. There were no lights at all—just a huge pocket of blackness. Nothing.
   The quarries! Langdon thought. La Cava Romana!
   Staring intently at the barren pocket of land, Langdon sensed that it was plenty large enough. It seemed close, too. Much closer than the ocean. Excitement surged through him. This was obviously where the camerlegno planned to take the antimatter! The chopper was pointing directly toward it! The quarries! Oddly, however, as the engines strained louder and the chopper hurtled through the air, Langdon could see that the quarries were not getting any closer. Bewildered, he shot a glance out the side door to get his bearings. What he saw doused his excitement in a wave of panic. Directly beneath them, thousands of feet straight down, glowed the media lights in St. Peter’s Square.
   We’re still over the Vatican!
   “Camerlegno!” Langdon choked. “Go forward! We’re high enough! You’ve got to start moving forward! We can’t drop the canister back over Vatican City!”
   The camerlegno did not reply. He appeared to be concentrating on flying the craft.
   “We’ve got less than two minutes!” Langdon shouted, holding up the canister. “I can see them! La Cava Romana! A couple of miles north! We don’t have—”
   “No,” the camerlegno said. “It’s far too dangerous. I’m sorry.” As the chopper continued to claw heavenward, the camerlegno turned and gave Langdon a mournful smile. “I wish you had not come, my friend. You have made the ultimate sacrifice.”
   Langdon looked in the camerlegno’s exhausted eyes and suddenly understood. His blood turned to ice. “But… there must be somewhere we can go!”
   “Up,” the camerlegno replied, his voice resigned. “It’s the only guarantee.”
   Langdon could barely think. He had entirely misinterpreted the camerlegno’s plan. Look to the heavens!
   Heaven, Langdon now realized, was literally where he was headed. The camerlegno had never intended to drop the antimatter. He was simply getting it as far away from Vatican City as humanly possible.
   This was a one-way trip.

123
   In St. Peter’s Square, Vittoria Vetra stared upward. The helicopter was a speck now, the media lights no longer reaching it. Even the pounding of the rotors had faded to a distant hum. It seemed, in that instant, that the entire world was focused upward, silenced in anticipation, necks craned to the heavens… all peoples, all faiths… all hearts beating as one.
   Vittoria’s emotions were a cyclone of twisting agonies. As the helicopter disappeared from sight, she pictured Robert’s face, rising above her. What had he been thinking? Didn’t he understand?
   Around the square, television cameras probed the darkness, waiting. A sea of faces stared heavenward, united in a silent countdown. The media screens all flickered the same tranquil scene… a Roman sky illuminated with brilliant stars. Vittoria felt the tears begin to well.
   Behind her on the marble escarpment, 161 cardinals stared up in silent awe. Some folded their hands in prayer. Most stood motionless, transfixed. Some wept. The seconds ticked past.
   In homes, bars, businesses, airports, hospitals around the world, souls were joined in universal witness. Men and women locked hands. Others held their children. Time seemed to hover in limbo, souls suspended in unison.
   Then, cruelly, the bells of St. Peter’s began to toll.
   Vittoria let the tears come.
   Then… with the whole world watching… time ran out.
   The dead silence of the event was the most terrifying of all.
   High above Vatican City, a pinpoint of light appeared in the sky. For a fleeting instant, a new heavenly body had been born… a speck of light as pure and white as anyone had ever seen.
   Then it happened.
   A flash. The point billowed, as if feeding on itself, unraveling across the sky in a dilating radius of blinding white. It shot out in all directions, accelerating with incomprehensible speed, gobbling up the dark. As the sphere of light grew, it intensified, like a burgeoning fiend preparing to consume the entire sky. It raced downward, toward them, picking up speed.
   Blinded, the multitudes of starkly lit human faces gasped as one, shielding their eyes, crying out in strangled fear.
   As the light roared out in all directions, the unimaginable occurred. As if bound by God’s own will, the surging radius seemed to hit a wall. It was as if the explosion were contained somehow in a giant glass sphere. The light rebounded inward, sharpening, rippling across itself. The wave appeared to have reached a predetermined diameter and hovered there. For that instant, a perfect and silent sphere of light glowed over Rome. Night had become day.
   Then it hit.
   The concussion was deep and hollow—a thunderous shock wave from above. It descended on them like the wrath of hell, shaking the granite foundation of Vatican City, knocking the breath out of people’s lungs, sending others stumbling backward. The reverberation circled the colonnade, followed by a sudden torrent of warm air. The wind tore through the square, letting out a sepulchral moan as it whistled through the columns and buffeted the walls. Dust swirled overhead as people huddled… witnesses to Armageddon.
   Then, as fast as it appeared, the sphere imploded, sucking back in on itself, crushing inward to the tiny point of light from which it had come.

124
   Never before had so many been so silent.
   The faces in St. Peter’s Square, one by one, averted their eyes from the darkening sky and turned downward, each person in his or her own private moment of wonder. The media lights followed suit, dropping their beams back to earth as if out of reverence for the blackness now settling upon them. It seemed for a moment the entire world was bowing its head in unison.
   Cardinal Mortati knelt to pray, and the other cardinals joined him. The Swiss Guard lowered their long swords and stood numb. No one spoke. No one moved. Everywhere, hearts shuddered with spontaneous emotion. Bereavement. Fear. Wonder. Belief. And a dread-filled respect for the new and awesome power they had just witnessed.
   Vittoria Vetra stood trembling at the foot of the basilica’s sweeping stairs. She closed her eyes. Through the tempest of emotions now coursing through her blood, a single word tolled like a distant bell. Pristine. Cruel. She forced it away. And yet the word echoed. Again she drove it back. The pain was too great. She tried to lose herself in the images that blazed in other’s minds… antimatter’s mind-boggling power… the Vatican’s deliverance… the camerlegno… feats of bravery… miracles… selflessness. And still the word echoed… tolling through the chaos with a stinging loneliness.
   Robert.
   He had come for her at Castle St. Angelo.
   He had saved her.
   And now he had been destroyed by her creation.
   As Cardinal Mortati prayed, he wondered if he too would hear God’s voice as the camerlegno had. Does one need to believe in miracles to experience them? Mortati was a modern man in an ancient faith. Miracles had never played a part in his belief. Certainly his faith spoke of miracles… bleeding palms, ascensions from the dead, imprints on shrouds… and yet, Mortati’s rational mind had always justified these accounts as part of the myth. They were simply the result of man’s greatest weakness—his need for proof. Miracles were nothing but stories we all clung to because we wished they were true.
   And yet…
   Am I so modern that I cannot accept what my eyes have just witnessed? It was a miracle, was it not? Yes! God, with a few whispered words in the camerlegno’s ear, had intervened and saved this church. Why was this so hard to believe? What would it say about God if God had done nothing? That the Almighty did not care? That He was powerless to stop it? A miracle was the only possible response!
   As Mortati knelt in wonder, he prayed for the camerlegno’s soul. He gave thanks to the young chamberlain who, even in his youthful years, had opened this old man’s eyes to the miracles of unquestioning faith.
   Incredibly, though, Mortati never suspected the extent to which his faith was about to be tested…
   The silence of St. Peter’s Square broke with a ripple at first. The ripple grew to a murmur. And then, suddenly, to a roar. Without warning, the multitudes were crying out as one.
   “Look! Look!”
   Mortati opened his eyes and turned to the crowd. Everyone was pointing behind him, toward the front of St. Peter’s Basilica. Their faces were white. Some fell to their knees. Some fainted. Some burst into uncontrollable sobs.
   “Look! Look!”
   Mortati turned, bewildered, following their outstretched hands. They were pointing to the uppermost level of the basilica, the rooftop terrace, where huge statues of Christ and his apostles watched over the crowd.
   There, on the right of Jesus, arms outstretched to the world… stood Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca.

125
   Robert Langdon was no longer falling.
   There was no more terror. No pain. Not even the sound of the racing wind. There was only the soft sound of lapping water, as though he were comfortably asleep on a beach.
   In a paradox of self-awareness, Langdon sensed this was death. He felt glad for it. He allowed the drifting numbness to possess him entirely. He let it carry him wherever it was he would go. His pain and fear had been anesthetized, and he did not wish it back at any price. His final memory had been one that could only have been conjured in hell.
   Take me. Please…
   But the lapping that lulled in him a far-off sense of peace was also pulling him back. It was trying to awaken him from a dream. No! Let me be! He did not want to awaken. He sensed demons gathering on the perimeter of his bliss, pounding to shatter his rapture. Fuzzy images swirled. Voices yelled. Wind churned. No, please! The more he fought, the more the fury filtered through.
   Then, harshly, he was living it all again…
   The helicopter was in a dizzying dead climb. He was trapped inside. Beyond the open door, the lights of Rome looked farther away with every passing second. His survival instinct told him to jettison the canister right now. Langdon knew it would take less than twenty seconds for the canister to fall half a mile. But it would be falling toward a city of people.
   Higher! Higher!
   Langdon wondered how high they were now. Small prop planes, he knew, flew at altitudes of about four miles. This helicopter had to be at a good fraction of that by now. Two miles up? Three? There was still a chance. If they timed the drop perfectly, the canister would fall only partway toward earth, exploding a safe distance over the ground and away from the chopper. Langdon looked out at the city sprawling below them.
   “And if you calculate incorrectly?” the camerlegno said.
   Langdon turned, startled. The camerlegno was not even looking at him, apparently having read Langdon’s thoughts from the ghostly reflection in the windshield. Oddly, the camerlegno was no longer engrossed in his controls. His hands were not even on the throttle. The chopper, it seemed, was now in some sort of autopilot mode, locked in a climb. The camerlegno reached above his head, to the ceiling of the cockpit, fishing behind a cable-housing, where he removed a key, taped there out of view.
   Langdon watched in bewilderment as the camerlegno quickly unlocked the metal cargo box bolted between the seats. He removed some sort of large, black, nylon pack. He lay it on the seat next to him. Langdon’s thoughts churned. The camerlegno’s movements seemed composed, as if he had a solution.
   “Give me the canister,” the camerlegno said, his tone serene.
   Langdon did not know what to think anymore. He thrust the canister to the camerlegno. “Ninety seconds!”
   What the camerlegno did with the antimatter took Langdon totally by surprise. Holding the canister carefully in his hands, the camerlegno placed it inside the cargo box. Then he closed the heavy lid and used the key to lock it tight.
   “What are you doing!” Langdon demanded.
   “Leading us from temptation.” The camerlegno threw the key out the open window.
   As the key tumbled into the night, Langdon felt his soul falling with it.
   The camerlegno then took the nylon pack and slipped his arms through the straps. He fastened a waist clamp around his stomach and cinched it all down like a backpack. He turned to a dumbstruck Robert Langdon.
   “I’m sorry,” the camerlegno said. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” Then he opened his door and hurled himself into the night.
   The image burned in Langdon’s unconscious mind, and with it came the pain. Real pain. Physical pain. Aching. Searing. He begged to be taken, to let it end, but as the water lapped louder in his ears, new images began to flash. His hell had only just begun. He saw bits and pieces. Scattered frames of sheer panic. He lay halfway between death and nightmare, begging for deliverance, but the pictures grew brighter in his mind.
   The antimatter canister was locked out of reach. It counted relentlessly downward as the chopper shot upward. Fifty seconds. Higher. Higher. Langdon spun wildly in the cabin, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. Forty-five seconds. He dug under seats searching for another parachute. Forty seconds. There was none! There had to be an option! Thirty-five seconds. He raced to the open doorway of the chopper and stood in the raging wind, gazing down at the lights of Rome below. Thirty-two seconds.
   And then he made the choice.
   The unbelievable choice…
   With no parachute, Robert Langdon had jumped out the door. As the night swallowed his tumbling body, the helicopter seemed to rocket off above him, the sound of its rotors evaporating in the deafening rush of his own free fall.
   As he plummeted toward earth, Robert Langdon felt something he had not experienced since his years on the high dive—the inexorable pull of gravity during a dead drop. The faster he fell, the harder the earth seemed to pull, sucking him down. This time, however, the drop was not fifty feet into a pool. The drop was thousands of feet into a city—an endless expanse of pavement and concrete.
   Somewhere in the torrent of wind and desperation, Kohler’s voice echoed from the grave… words he had spoken earlier this morning standing at CERN’s free-fall tube. One square yard of drag will slow a falling body almost twenty percent. Twenty percent, Langdon now realized, was not even close to what one would need to survive a fall like this. Nonetheless, more out of paralysis than hope, he clenched in his hands the sole object he had grabbed from the chopper on his way out the door. It was an odd memento, but it was one that for a fleeting instant had given him hope.
   The windshield tarp had been lying in the back of the helicopter. It was a concave rectangle—about four yards by two—like a huge fitted sheet… the crudest approximation of a parachute imaginable. It had no harness, only bungie loops at either end for fastening it to the curvature of the windshield. Langdon had grabbed it, slid his hands through the loops, held on, and leapt out into the void.
   His last great act of youthful defiance.
   No illusions of life beyond this moment.
   Langdon fell like a rock. Feet first. Arms raised. His hands gripping the loops. The tarp billowed like a mushroom overhead. The wind tore past him violently.
   As he plummeted toward earth, there was a deep explosion somewhere above him. It seemed farther off than he had expected. Almost instantly, the shock wave hit. He felt the breath crushed from his lungs. There was a sudden warmth in the air all around him. He fought to hold on. A wall of heat raced down from above. The top of the tarp began to smolder… but held.
   Langdon rocketed downward, on the edge of a billowing shroud of light, feeling like a surfer trying to outrun a thousand-foot tidal wave. Then suddenly, the heat receded.
   He was falling again through the dark coolness.
   For an instant, Langdon felt hope. A moment later, though, that hope faded like the withdrawing heat above. Despite his straining arms assuring him that the tarp was slowing his fall, the wind still tore past his body with deafening velocity. Langdon had no doubt he was still moving too fast to survive the fall. He would be crushed when he hit the ground.
   Mathematical figures tumbled through his brain, but he was too numb to make sense of them… one square yard of drag… 20 percent reduction of speed. All Langdon could figure was that the tarp over his head was big enough to slow him more than 20 percent. Unfortunately, though, he could tell from the wind whipping past him that whatever good the tarp was doing was not enough. He was still falling fast… there would be no surviving the impact on the waiting sea of concrete.
   Beneath him, the lights of Rome spread out in all directions. The city looked like an enormous starlit sky that Langdon was falling into. The perfect expanse of stars was marred only by a dark strip that split the city in two—a wide, unlit ribbon that wound through the dots of light like a fat snake. Langdon stared down at the meandering swatch of black.
   Suddenly, like the surging crest of an unexpected wave, hope filled him again.
   With almost maniacal vigor, Langdon yanked down hard with his right hand on the canopy. The tarp suddenly flapped louder, billowing, cutting right to find the path of least resistance. Langdon felt himself drifting sideways. He pulled again, harder, ignoring the pain in his palm. The tarp flared, and Langdon sensed his body sliding laterally. Not much. But some! He looked beneath him again, to the sinuous serpent of black. It was off to the right, but he was still pretty high. Had he waited too long? He pulled with all his might and accepted somehow that it was now in the hands of God. He focused hard on the widest part of the serpent and… for the first time in his life, prayed for a miracle.
   The rest was a blur.
   The darkness rushing up beneath him… the diving instincts coming back… the reflexive locking of his spine and pointing of the toes… the inflating of his lungs to protect his vital organs… the flexing of his legs into a battering ram… and finally… the thankfulness that the winding Tiber River was raging… making its waters frothy and air-filled… and three times softer than standing water.
   Then there was impact… and blackness.
   It had been the thundering sound of the flapping canopy that drew the group’s eyes away from the fireball in the sky. The sky above Rome had been filled with sights tonight… a skyrocketing helicopter, an enormous explosion, and now this strange object that had plummeted into the churning waters of the Tiber River, directly off the shore of the river’s tiny island, Isola Tiberina.
   Ever since the island had been used to quarantine the sick during the Roman plague of A.D. 1656, it had been thought to have mystic healing properties. For this reason, the island had later become the site for Rome’s Hospital Tiberina.
   The body was battered when they pulled it onto shore. The man still had a faint pulse, which was amazing, they thought. They wondered if it was Isola Tiberina’s mythical reputation for healing that had somehow kept his heart pumping. Minutes later, when the man began coughing and slowly regained consciousness, the group decided the island must indeed be magical.

126
   Cardinal Mortati knew there were no words in any language that could have added to the mystery of this moment. The silence of the vision over St. Peter’s Square sang louder than any chorus of angels.
   As he stared up at Camerlegno Ventresca, Mortati felt the paralyzing collision of his heart and mind. The vision seemed real, tangible. And yet… how could it be? Everyone had seen the camerlegno get in the helicopter. They had all witnessed the ball of light in the sky. And now, somehow, the camerlegno stood high above them on the rooftop terrace. Transported by angels? Reincarnated by the hand of God?
   This is impossible…
   Mortati’s heart wanted nothing more than to believe, but his mind cried out for reason. And yet all around him, the cardinals stared up, obviously seeing what he was seeing, paralyzed with wonder.
   It was the camerlegno. There was no doubt. But he looked different somehow. Divine. As if he had been purified. A spirit? A man? His white flesh shone in the spotlights with an incorporeal weightlessness.
   In the square there was crying, cheering, spontaneous applause. A group of nuns fell to their knees and wailed saetas. A pulsing grew from in the crowd. Suddenly, the entire square was chanting the camerlegno’s name. The cardinals, some with tears rolling down their faces, joined in. Mortati looked around him and tried to comprehend. Is this really happening?
   Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca stood on the rooftop terrace of St. Peter’s Basilica and looked down over the multitudes of people staring up at him. Was he awake or dreaming? He felt transformed, otherworldly. He wondered if it was his body or just his spirit that had floated down from heaven toward the soft, darkened expanse of the Vatican City Gardens… alighting like a silent angel on the deserted lawns, his black parachute shrouded from the madness by the towering shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica. He wondered if it was his body or his spirit that had possessed the strength to climb the ancient Stairway of Medallions to the rooftop terrace where he now stood.
   He felt as light as a ghost.
   Although the people below were chanting his name, he knew it was not him they were cheering. They were cheering from impulsive joy, the same kind of joy he felt every day of his life as he pondered the Almighty. They were experiencing what each of them had always longed for… an assurance of the beyond… a substantiation of the power of the Creator.
   Camerlegno Ventresca had prayed all his life for this moment, and still, even he could not fathom that God had found a way to make it manifest. He wanted to cry out to them. Your God is a living God! Behold the miracles all around you!
   He stood there a while, numb and yet feeling more than he had ever felt. When, at last, the spirit moved him, he bowed his head and stepped back from the edge.
   Alone now, he knelt on the roof, and prayed.