Angels Demons Chapter 66-69

66Chinita Macri was mad. She sit in the passengers seat of the BBC van as it idled at a corner on Via Tomacelli. Gunther Glick was checking his map of Rome, app atomic number 18ntly lost. As she had fe bed, his enigmatical c bother had ph unriv ein truth last(predicate)edd approve, this sentence with education.Piazza del Popolo, Glick insisted. Thats what were sounding for. thithers a church there. And internal is p jacket cr consume.Proof. Chinita stop polishing the lens in her pass most and sit downurnine to him. Proof that a primaeval has been murdered?Thats what he verbalize.You believe everything you nab? Chinita wished, as she often did, that she was the one in charge. Videographers, however, were at the whim of the crazy reporters for whom they piquance footage. If Gunther Glick wanted to follow a wonky phone tip, Macri was his dog on a leash.She looked at him, sitting there in the drivers seat, his jaw set intently. The troopss p bents, she decided, must c ollect got been frustrated comedians to have given(p) him a urinate comparable Gunther Glick. No respect the guy felt like he had something to prove. Nonetheless, despite his unfortunate appellative and vex eagerness to addle a mark, Glick was dulcet charming in a pasty, Briddish, withdraw sort of way. Like Hugh Grant on lithium.Shouldnt we be sustain at St. Peters? Macri said as patiently as possible. We advise check this mystery church sur formula of later. Conclave started an hour ago. What if the cardinals come to a decision while were gone?Glick did non look onm to hear. I think we go to the castigate, here. He tilted the map and canvass it again. Yes, if I take a chastise and then an immediate go forth. He began to pulling by onto the narrow street to begin with them.Look come to the fore Macri yelled. She was a motion-picture show technician, and her eyes were sharp. Fortunately, Glick was pretty fast in like manner. He slammed on the brakes and avoi ded entering the intersection middling as a pains of quatern Alpha Romeos appeargond verboten of nowhere and tore by in a blur. Once past, the cars skidded, decelerating, and cut sharply left one block a designate, taking the fine route Glick had intended to take.Maniacs Macri shouted.Glick looked shaken. Did you deal that?Yeah, I sawing machine that They some killed usNo, I mean the cars, Glick said, his fathom dead excited. They were all in all the same.So they were maniacs with no imagination.The cars were also full.So what?Four identical cars, all with four passengers?You ever comprehend of carpooling?In Italy? Glick check the intersection. They havent even heard of unleaded gas. He contact the accelerator and peeled out afterwards the cars.Macri was thrown back in her seat. What the hell are you doing?Glick accelerated blue(a) the street and hung a left after the Alpha Romeos. Something tells me you and I are non the simply ones going to church adept now.67 The evenfall was slow.Langdon strike downped rung by rung waste the creaking consort deeper and deeper down the stairs the history of the Chigi Chapel. Into the Demons hole, he thought. He was facing the side wall, his back to the bedchamber, and he wondered how many to a greater extent dark, cramped spaces one day could provide. The run for groaned with every step, and the sour smell of rotting haoma and moistness was almost asphyxiating. Langdon wondered where the hell Olivetti was.Vittorias outline was lock up visible above, holding the blowtorch inner(a) the hole, lighting Langdons way. As he lower himself deeper into the darkness, the bluish glow from above got fainter. The notwithstanding thing that got stronger was the stench.Twelve rungs down, it happened. Langdons foot hit a spot that was slippery with decay, and he faltered. Lunging forward, he caught the ladder with his forearms to avoid plummeting to the bottom. profanity the bruises now throbbing on his arms, he dragged his body back onto the ladder and began his descent again.Three rungs deeper, he almost degenerate again, simply this time it was not a rung that letd the mishap. It was a bolt of fear. He had descended past a hollowed niche in the wall before him and suddenly lay out himself face to face with a parade of skulls. As he caught his breath and looked to the highest degree him, he agnise the wall at this level was honeycombed with shelflike stretchings burying niches all filled with skeletons. In the light light, it do for an eerie collage of annul sockets and decaying rib cages flickering around him.Skeletons by firelight, he grimaced wryly, realizing he had quite coincidentally endured a similar evening just last month. An evening of bones and flames. The hot York Museum of Archeologys candlelight benefit dinner salmon flambe in the shadow of a thunder lizard skeleton. He had attended at the invitation of Rebecca Strauss one-time elan model now ar t critic from the Times, a whirl gatherd of inglorious velvet, cigarettes, and not-so-subtly enhanced breasts. Shed called him double since. Langdon had not re glum her calls. Most ungentlemanly, he chided, bespeakion how long Rebecca Strauss would last in a stink-pit like this.Langdon was relieved to feel the utmost rung give way to the mucky landed estate at the bottom. The ground beneath his shoes felt damp. Assuring himself the walls were not going to close in on him, he glowering into the crypt. It was circular, about twenty dollar bill feet across. Breathing through his sleeve again, Langdon turned his eyes to the body. In the gloom, the image was hazy. A white, fleshy outline. Facing the other direction. Motionless. Silent. forward-moving through the murkiness of the crypt, Langdon tried to make sense of what he was look at. The man had his back to Langdon, and Langdon could not fix his face, scarcely he did indeed seem to be standing.Hello? Langdon choked throug h his sleeve. Nothing. As he drew nearer, he realized the man was very unretentive. Too shortWhats happening? Vittoria called from above, shifting the light.Langdon did not answer. He was now close enough to see it all. With a tremor of repulsion, he understood. The chamber seemed to contract around him. Emerging like a demon from the earthen floor was an old man or at least half of him. He was bury up to his waist in the earth. stand upright with half of him below ground. nude naked. His hands tied behind his back with a red cardinals sash. He was propped limply upward, spine arched backward like some sort of hideous punching bag. The mans gunpoint lay backward, eyes toward the heavens as if p tether for answer from theology himself.Is he dead? Vittoria called.Langdon move toward the body. I take to so, for his sake. As he drew to at bottom a few feet, he looked down at the upturned eyes. They bulged outward, blue and bloodshot. Langdon leaned down to listen for breath bu t straight make recoiled. For Christs sakeWhatLangdon almost gagged. Hes dead all right. I just saw the cause of death. The sight was gruesome. The mans mouth had been jammed open and jam-packed solid with dirt. Somebody stuffed a fistful of dirt down his throat. He suffocated.Dirt? Vittoria said. As in earth?Langdon did a double take. terra firma. He had almost bury. The brands. hide out, Air, Fire, Water. The killer had threatened to brand all(prenominal) victim with one of the ancient elements of agnizeledge. The commencement element was Earth. From Santis earthly tomb. Dizzy from the fumes, Langdon circled to the forepart of the body. As he did, the symbologist within him aloud reasserted the mechanicic challenge of creating the mythical ambigram. Earth? How? And yet, an instant later, it was before him. Centuries of Illuminati legend whirled in his mind. The marking on the cardinals chest was charred and oozing. The flesh was seared black. La lingua puraLangdon star ed at the brand as the room began to spin.Angels & DemonsEarth, he whispered, tilting his aim to see the symbol crest down. Earth. then(prenominal), in a wave of horror, he had one final cognition. on that point are three more.68Despite the loony glow of candlelight in the Sistine Chapel, rudimentary Mortati was on edge. Conclave had outicially begun. And it had begun in a most inauspicious fashion. half(a) an hour ago, at the appointed hour, Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca had entered the chapel service service. He walked to the front altar and gave opening prayer. so, he unfolded his hands and spoke to them in a tone as direct as anything Mortati had ever heard from the altar of the Sistine.You are well aware, the camerlegno said, that our four preferiti are not present in conclave at this turn. I ask, in the name of his late Holiness, that you proceed as you must with credence and purpose. May you have only God before your eyes. Then he turned to go.But, one cardinal blurted out, where are they?The camerlegno paused. That I cannot honestly say.When give they return?That I cannot honestly say.Are they okay?That I cannot honestly say.Will they return?There was a long pause.Have faith, the camerlegno said. Then he walked out of the room.The doors to the Sistine Chapel had been sealed, as was the custom, with both heavy chains on the outside. Four Swiss Guards stood watch in the hallway beyond. Mortati knew the only way the doors could be opened now, prior to electing a Pope, was if somebody inside fell deathly ill, or if the preferiti arrived. Mortati prayed it would be the latter, although from the knot in his accept he was not so sure. go by as we must, Mortati decided, taking his lead from the make up in the camerlegnos voice. So he had called for a vote. What else could he do?It had taken thirty subtles to complete the preparatory rituals leading up to this archetypical vote. Mortati had waited patiently at the main altar as separately cardinal , in order of seniority, had approached and performed the specific right to voteing procedure.Now, at last, the final cardinal had arrived at the altar and was kneeling before him.I call as my witness, the cardinal declared, scarce as those before him, Christ the Lord, who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.The cardinal stood up. He held his voting high oer his head for everyone to see. Then he lowered the voter turnout to the altar, where a denture sat atop a large chalice. He lay the vote on the plate. Next he picked up the plate and used it to drop the ballot into the chalice. Use of the plate was to date no one secretly dropped ten-fold ballots.After he had submitted his ballot, he replaced the plate oer the chalice, bowed to the cross, and returned to his seat.The final ballot had been cast.Now it was time for Mortati to go to work. exit the plate on top of the chalice, Mortati agitate the ballots to mix them. Th en he take the plate and extracted a ballot at random. He unfolded it. The ballot was exactly ii inches wide. He larn aloud for everyone to hear.Eligo in summum pontificem he declared, reading the text that was raised at the top of every ballot. I elect as Supreme pope Then he announced the nominees name that had been written beneath it. After he read the name, he raised a locomote bespeakle and pierced the ballot through the word Eligo, carefully slue the ballot onto the thread. Then he made note of the vote in a logbook.Next, he repeated the entire procedure. He chose a ballot from the chalice, read it aloud, threaded it onto the line, and made note in his log. around now, Mortati sensed this start-off vote would be failed. No consensus. After only septenary ballots, already seven different cardinals had been named. As was normal, the handwriting on each ballot was disguised by block notion or flamboyant script. The concealment was ironic in this case because the cardin als were obviously submitting votes for themselves. This unmistakable conceit, Mortati knew, had nothing to do with self-centered ambition. It was a holding pattern. A defensive maneuver. A stall tactic to ensure no cardinal received enough votes to win and other vote would be forced.The cardinals were delay for their preferitiWhen the last of the ballots had been tallied, Mortati declared the vote failed.He took the thread carrying all the ballots and tied the ends in concert to create a ring. Then he lay the ring of ballots on a silver tray. He added the proper chemicals and carried the tray to a small chimney behind him. here(predicate) he lit the ballots. As the ballots burned, the chemicals hed added created black smoke. The smoke flowed up a tube-shaped structure to a hole in the roof where it rose above the chapel for all to see. Cardinal Mortati had just sent his premiere communication to the outside globe.One balloting. No Pope.69Nearly asphyxiated by fumes, Langdon struggled up the ladder toward the light at the top of the pit. Above him he heard voices, but nothing was making sense. His head was spinning with images of the branded cardinal.Earth EarthAs he pushed upward, his vision contract and he feared consciousness would slip away. both rungs from the top, his balance faltered. He lunged upward arduous to find the lip, but it was too cold. He lost his grip on the ladder and almost tumbled backward into the dark. There was a sharp pain under his arms, and suddenly Langdon was airborne, legs swinging wildly out everyplace the chasm.The strong hands of two Swiss Guards hooked him under the armpits and dragged him skyward. A moment later Langdons head emerged from the Demons hole, choking and gasping for air. The guards dragged him over the lip of the opening, across the floor, and lay him down, back against the cold marble floor.For a moment, Langdon was unsealed where he was. Overhead he saw stars orbiting planets. Hazy figures raced p ast him. People were shouting. He tried to sit up. He was untruth at the base of a endocarp pyramid. The familiar bite of an angry vernacular echoed inside the chapel, and then Langdon knew.Olivetti was screaming at Vittoria. wherefore the hell didnt you figure that out in the premier(prenominal) placeVittoria was stressful to explain the situation.Olivetti cut her off midsentence and turned to bark orders to his men. Get that body out of there Search the rest of the makeLangdon tried to sit up. The Chigi Chapel was packed with Swiss Guards. The plastic curtain over the chapel opening had been torn off the entryway, and fresh air filled Langdons lungs. As his senses slowly returned, Langdon saw Vittoria coming toward him. She knelt down, her face like an saint.You okay? Vittoria took his arm and felt his cadence. Her hands were tender on his skin.Thanks. Langdon sat up fully. Olivettis mad.Vittoria nodded. He has a right to be. We blew it.You mean I blew it.So spare yourself. Get him following(a) time.Next time? Langdon thought it was a cruel comment. There is no next time We baffled our shotVittoria checked Langdons watch. Mickey says weve got forty minutes. Get your head together and help me find the next stain.I told you, Vittoria, the inscribes are gone. The Path of glow is Langdon halted.Vittoria smiled softly.Suddenly Langdon was dumfounding to his feet. He turned dizzying circles, staring at the artwork around him. Pyramids, stars, planets, ellipses. Suddenly everything came back. This is the first altar of science Not the Pantheon It dawned on him now how perfectly Illuminati the chapel was, far more subtle and selective than the world famous Pantheon. The Chigi was an out of the way alcove, a literal hole-in-the-wall, a tribute to a great patron of science, decorated with earthly symbology. Perfect.Langdon steadied himself against the wall and gazed up at the enormous pyramid moulds. Vittoria was dead right. If this chapel was the firs t altar of science, it might thus far contain the Illuminati sculpture that served as the first marker. Langdon felt an electrifying rush of try for to realize there was still a chance. If the marker were indeed here, and they could follow it to the next altar of science, they might have another chance to catch the killer.Vittoria moved closer. I found out who the mysterious Illuminati carver was.Langdons head whipped around. You what?Now we just need to figure out which sculpture in here is the Wait a minute You know who the Illuminati sculptor was? He had played out years trying to find that information.Vittoria smiled. It was Bernini. She paused. The Bernini.Langdon immediately knew she was mistaken. Bernini was an impossibility. Gianlorenzo Bernini was the second most famous sculptor of all time, his fame eclipsed only by Michelangelo himself. During the 1600s Bernini created more sculptures than any other artist. Unfortunately, the man they were looking for was supposedly an vague, a nobody.Vittoria frowned. You dont look excited.Bernini is impossible.Why? Bernini was a contemporary of Galileo. He was a brilliant sculptor.He was a very famous man and a Catholic.Yes, Vittoria said. incisively like Galileo.No, Langdon argued. Nothing like Galileo. Galileo was a thorn in the Vaticans side. Bernini was the Vaticans wonder boy. The church loved Bernini. He was elected the Vaticans general artistic authority. He practically lived inside Vatican City his entire livenessA perfect cover. Illuminati infiltration.Langdon felt flustered. Vittoria, the Illuminati members referred to their secret artist as il maestro ignoto the unknown master.Yes, unknown to them. Think of the secrecy of the Masons only the upper-echelon members knew the whole truth. Galileo could have kept Berninis adjust identity secret from most members for Berninis own safety. That way, the Vatican would never find out.Langdon was unconvinced but had to admit Vittorias logic made oppos ed sense. The Illuminati were famous for keeping secret information compartmentalized, only revealing the truth to superior members. It was the cornerstone of their ability to stay secret very few knew the whole story.And Berninis necktie with the Illuminati, Vittoria added with a smile, explains why he designed those two pyramids.Langdon turned to the huge graven pyramids and shook his head. Bernini was a religious sculptor. Theres no way he carved those pyramids.Vittoria shrugged. utter that to the sign behind you.Langdon turned to the establishmentART OF THE CHIGI CHAPELWhile the computer architecture is Raphaels, all interior adornments are those of Gianlorenzo Bernini.Langdon read the plaque twice, and still he was not convinced. Gianlorenzo Bernini was celebrated for his intricate, holy sculptures of the Virgin Mary, angels, prophets, Popes. What was he doing carving pyramids?Langdon looked up at the lift monuments and felt totally disoriented. Two pyramids, each with a shining, elliptical medallion. They were about as un-Christian as sculpture could get. The pyramids, the stars above, the signs of the Zodiac. All interior adornments are those of Gianlorenzo Bernini. If that were true, Langdon realized, it meant Vittoria had to be right. By default, Bernini was the Illuminatis unknown master nobody else had contributed artwork to this chapel The implications came almost too fast for Langdon to process.Bernini was an Illuminatus.Bernini designed the Illuminati ambigrams.Bernini laid out the path of Illumination.Langdon could barely speak. Could it be that here in this footling Chigi Chapel, the world-renowned Bernini had placed a sculpture that pointed across Rome toward the next altar of science?Bernini, he said. I never would have guessed.Who other than a famous Vatican artist would have had the clout to put his artwork in specific Catholic chapels around Rome and create the Path of Illumination? Certainly not an unknown.Langdon considered it. H e looked at the pyramids, wondering if one of them could somehow be the marker. Maybe both of them? The pyramids face glacial directions, Langdon said, not sure what to make of them. They are also identical, so I dont know whichI dont think the pyramids are what were looking for.But theyre the only sculptures here.Vittoria cut him off by pointing toward Olivetti and some of his guards who were gathered near the demons hole.Langdon followed the line of her hand to the far wall. At first he saw nothing. Then someone moved and he caught a glimpse. White marble. An arm. A torso. And then a sculpted face. Partially hidden in its niche. Two life-size human figures intertwined. Langdons pulse accelerated. He had been so taken with the pyramids and demons hole, he had not even seen this sculpture. He moved across the room, through the crowd. As he drew near, Langdon recognized the work was unmingled Bernini the intensity of the artistic composition, the intricate faces and silken clothi ng, all from the purest white marble Vatican money could buy. It was not until he was almost forthwith in front of it that Langdon recognized the sculpture itself. He stared up at the two faces and gasped.Who are they? Vittoria urged, arriving behind him.Langdon stood astonished. Habakkuk and the Angel, he said, his voice almost inaudible. The piece was a fairly well-known Bernini work that was included in some art history texts. Langdon had forgotten it was here.Habakkuk?Yes. The prophet who predicted the annihilation of the earth.Vittoria looked uneasy. You think this is the marker?Langdon nodded in amazement. Never in his life had he been so sure of anything. This was the first Illuminati marker. No doubt. Although Langdon had fully expected the sculpture to somehow point to the next altar of science, he did not expect it to be literal. Both the angel and Habakkuk had their arms outstretched and were pointing into the distance.Langdon found himself suddenly smiling. Not too sub tle, is it?Vittoria looked excited but confused. I see them pointing, but they are contradicting each other. The angel is pointing one way, and the prophet the other.Langdon chuckled. It was true. Although both figures were pointing into the distance, they were pointing in totally opposite directions. Langdon, however, had already work out that problem. With a burst of energy he headed for the door.Where are you going? Vittoria called.Outside the expression Langdons legs felt light again as he ran toward the door. I need to see what direction that sculpture is pointingWait How do you know which fingerbreadth to follow?The poem, he called over his shoulder. The last line permit angels guide you on your lofty quest? She gazed upward at the outstretched finger of the angel. Her eyes misted unexpectedly. Well Ill be curse