The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon) (23 page)

CHAPTER
49

Robert Langdon
hung up his cell phone, feeling increasingly worried.
Katherine’s not answering her cell?
Katherine had promised to call him as soon as she was safely out of the lab and on her way to meet him here, but she had never done so.

Bellamy sat beside Langdon at the reading-room desk. He, too, had just made a call, his to an individual he claimed could offer them sanctuary—a safe place to hide. Unfortunately, this person was not answering either, and so Bellamy had left an urgent message, telling him to call Langdon’s cell phone right away.

“I’ll keep trying,” he said to Langdon, “but for the moment, we’re on our own. And we need to discuss a plan for this pyramid.”

The pyramid.
For Langdon, the spectacular backdrop of the reading room had all but disappeared, his world constricting now to include only what was directly in front of him—a stone pyramid, a sealed package containing a capstone, and an elegant African American man who had materialized out of the darkness and rescued him from the certainty of a CIA interrogation.

Langdon had expected a modicum of sanity from the Architect of the Capitol, but now it seemed Warren Bellamy was no more rational than the madman claiming Peter was in purgatory. Bellamy was insisting this stone pyramid was, in fact, the Masonic Pyramid of legend.
An ancient map? That guides us to powerful wisdom?

“Mr. Bellamy,” Langdon said politely, “this idea that there exists some kind of ancient knowledge that can imbue men with great power . . . I simply can’t take it seriously.”

Bellamy’s eyes looked both disappointed and earnest, making Langdon’s skepticism all the more awkward. “Yes, Professor, I had imagined you might feel this way, but I suppose I should not be surprised. You are an outsider looking in. There exist certain Masonic realities that you will perceive as myth because you are not properly initiated and prepared to understand them.”

Now Langdon felt patronized.
I wasn’t a member of Odysseus’s crew, but I’m certain the Cyclops is a myth.
“Mr. Bellamy, even if the legend is true . . .
this
pyramid cannot possibly be the Masonic Pyramid.”

“No?” Bellamy ran a finger across the Masonic cipher on the stone. “It looks to me like it fits the description perfectly. A stone pyramid with a shining metal capstone, which, according to Sato’s X-ray, is exactly what Peter entrusted to you.” Bellamy picked up the little cube-shaped package, weighing it in his hand.

“This stone pyramid is less than a foot tall,” Langdon countered. “Every version of the story I’ve ever heard describes the Masonic Pyramid as enormous.”

Bellamy had clearly anticipated this point. “As you know, the legend speaks of a pyramid rising so high that God Himself can reach out and touch it.”

“Exactly.”

“I can see your dilemma, Professor. However, both the Ancient Mysteries and Masonic philosophy celebrate the potentiality of God within each of us. Symbolically speaking, one could claim that anything within reach of an enlightened man . . . is within reach of God.”

Langdon felt unswayed by the wordplay.

“Even the Bible concurs,” Bellamy said. “If we accept, as Genesis tells us, that ‘God created man in his own image,’ then we
also
must accept what this implies—that mankind was not created
inferior
to God. In Luke 17:20 we are told, ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ ”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know any Christians who consider themselves God’s
equal
.”

“Of course not,” Bellamy said, his tone hardening. “Because most Christians want it both ways. They want to be able to proudly declare they are believers in the Bible and yet simply ignore those parts they find too difficult or too inconvenient to believe.”

Langdon made no response.

“Anyhow,” Bellamy said, “the Masonic Pyramid’s age-old description as being tall enough to be touched by God . . . this has long led to misinterpretations about its size. Conveniently, it keeps academics like yourself insisting the pyramid is a legend, and nobody searches for it.”

Langdon looked down at the stone pyramid. “I apologize that I’m frustrating you,” he said. “I’ve simply always thought of the Masonic Pyramid as a myth.”

“Does it not seem perfectly fitting to you that a map created by
stonemasons would be carved in stone? Throughout history, our most important guideposts have always been carved in stone—including the tablets God gave Moses—Ten Commandments to guide our human conduct.”

“I understand, and yet it is always referred to as the
Legend
of the Masonic Pyramid.
Legend
implies it is mythical.”

“Yes,
legend
.” Bellamy chuckled. “I’m afraid you’re suffering from the same problem Moses had.”

“I’m sorry?”

Bellamy looked almost amused as he turned in his seat, glancing up at the second-tier balcony, where sixteen bronze statues peered down at them. “Do you see Moses?”

Langdon gazed up at the library’s celebrated statue of Moses. “Yes.”

“He has horns.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“But do you know
why
he has horns?”

Like most teachers, Langdon did not enjoy being lectured to. The Moses above them had horns for the same reason
thousands
of Christian images of Moses had horns—a mistranslation of the book of Exodus. The original Hebrew text described Moses as having
“karan ’ohr panav”
—“facial skin that glowed with rays of light”—but when the Roman Catholic Church created the official Latin translation of the Bible, the translator bungled Moses’s description, rendering it as
“cornuta esset facies sua,”
meaning “his face was horned.” From that moment on, artists and sculptors, fearing reprisals if they were not true to the Gospels, began depicting Moses with horns.

“It was a simple mistake,” Langdon replied. “A mistranslation by Saint Jerome around four hundred A.D.” Bellamy looked impressed. “Exactly. A mistranslation. And the result is . . . poor Moses is now misshapen for all history.”

“Misshapen” was a nice way to put it. Langdon, as a child, had been terrified when he saw Michelangelo’s diabolical “horned Moses”—the centerpiece of Rome’s Basilica of St. Peter in Chains.

“I mention the horned Moses,” Bellamy now said, “to illustrate how a single word, misunderstood, can rewrite history.”

You’re preaching to the choir,
Langdon thought, having learned the lesson firsthand in Paris a number of years back.
SanGreal: Holy Grail. SangReal: Royal Blood.

“In the case of the Masonic Pyramid,” Bellamy continued, “people heard
whispers about a ‘legend.’ And the idea stuck. The
Legend
of the Masonic Pyramid sounded like a myth. But the word
legend
was referring to something else. It had been misconstrued. Much like the word
talisman.
” He smiled. “Language can be very adept at hiding the truth.”

“That’s true, but you’re losing me here.”

“Robert, the Masonic Pyramid is a
map
. And like every map, it has a
legend
—a key that tells you how to read it.” Bellamy took the cube-shaped package and held it up. “Don’t you see? This capstone
is
the legend to the pyramid. It is the key that tells you how to read the most powerful artifact on earth . . . a map that unveils the hiding place of mankind’s greatest treasure—the lost wisdom of the ages.”

Langdon fell silent.

“I humbly submit,” Bellamy said, “that your towering Masonic Pyramid is only
this
. . . a modest stone whose golden capstone reaches high enough to be touched by God. High enough that an enlightened man can reach down and touch it.”

Silence hung between the two men for several seconds.

Langdon felt an unexpected pulse of excitement as he looked down at the pyramid, seeing it in a new light. His eyes moved again to the Masonic cipher. “But this code . . . it seems so . . .”

“Simple?”

Langdon nodded. “Almost
anyone
could decipher this.”

Bellamy smiled and retrieved a pencil and paper for Langdon. “Then perhaps you should enlighten us?”

Langdon felt uneasy about reading the code, and yet considering the circumstances, it seemed a minor betrayal of Peter’s trust. Moreover, whatever the engraving said, he could not imagine that it unveiled a secret hiding place of anything at all . . . much less that of one of history’s greatest treasures.

Langdon accepted the pencil from Bellamy and tapped it on his chin as he studied the cipher. The code was so simple that he barely needed pencil and paper. Even so, he wanted to ensure he made no mistakes, and so he dutifully put pencil to paper and wrote down the most common decryption key for a Masonic cipher. The key consisted of four grids—two plain and two dotted—with the alphabet running through them in order. Each letter of the alphabet was now positioned inside a uniquely shaped “enclosure” or “pen.” The shape of each letter’s
enclosure
became the
symbol
for that letter.

The scheme was so simple, it was almost infantile.

Langdon double-checked his handiwork. Feeling confident the decryption key was correct, he now turned his attention back to the code inscribed on the pyramid. To decipher it, all he had to do was to find the matching shape on his decryption key and write down the letter inside it.

The first character on the pyramid looked like a down arrow or a chalice. Langdon quickly found the chalice-shaped segment on the decryption key. It was located in the lower left-hand corner and enclosed the letter
S
.

Langdon wrote down
S
.

The next symbol on the pyramid was a dotted square missing its right side. That shape on the decryption grid enclosed the letter
O
.

He wrote down
O
.

The third symbol was a simple square, which enclosed the letter
E
.

Langdon wrote down
E
.

S O E . . .

He continued, picking up speed until he had completed the entire grid.

Now, as he gazed down at his finished translation, Langdon let out a puzzled sigh.
Hardly what I’d call a eureka moment.

Bellamy’s face showed the hint of a smile. “As you know, Professor, the Ancient Mysteries are reserved only for the truly enlightened.”

“Right,” Langdon said, frowning.
Apparently, I don’t qualify.

CHAPTER
50

In a basement
office deep inside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the same sixteen-character Masonic cipher glowed brightly on a high-definition computer monitor. Senior OS analyst Nola Kaye sat alone and studied the image that had been e-mailed to her ten minutes ago by her boss, Director Inoue Sato.

Is this some kind of joke?
Nola knew it was not, of course; Director Sato had no sense of humor, and the events of tonight were anything but a joking matter. Nola’s high-level clearance within the CIA’s all-seeing Office of Security had opened her eyes to the shadow worlds of power. But what Nola had witnessed in the last twenty-four hours had changed her impressions forever of the secrets that powerful men kept.

“Yes, Director,” Nola now said, cradling the phone on her shoulder as she talked to Sato. “The engraving is indeed the Masonic cipher. However, the cleartext is meaningless. It appears to be a grid of random letters.” She gazed down at her decryption.

“It must say
something,
” Sato insisted.

“Not unless it has a second layer of encryption that I’m not aware of.”

“Any guesses?” Sato asked.

“It’s a grid-based matrix, so I could run the usual—Vigenère, grilles, trellises, and so forth—but no promises, especially if it’s a onetime pad.”

“Do what you can. And do it fast. How about the X-ray?”

Nola swiveled her chair to a second system, which displayed a standard
security X-ray of someone’s bag. Sato had requested information on what appeared to be a small pyramid inside a cube-shaped box. Normally, a two-inch-tall object would not be an issue of national security unless it was made of enriched plutonium. This one was not. It was made of something almost equally startling.

“Image-density analysis was conclusive,” Nola said. “Nineteen-point-three grams per cubic centimeter. It’s pure gold. Very, very valuable.”

“Anything else?”

“Actually, yes. The density scan picked up minor irregularities on the surface of the gold pyramid. It turns out the gold is engraved with text.”

“Really?” Sato sounded hopeful. “What does it say?”

“I can’t tell yet. The inscription is extremely faint. I’m trying to enhance with filters, but the resolution on the X-ray is not great.”

“Okay, keep trying. Call me when you have something.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And, Nola?” Sato’s tone turned ominous. “As with everything you have learned in the last twenty-four hours, the images of the stone pyramid and gold capstone are classified at the highest levels of security. You are to consult no one. You report to me directly. I want to make sure that is clear.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Good. Keep me posted.” Sato hung up.

Nola rubbed her eyes and looked blearily back at her computer screens. She had not slept in over thirty-six hours, and she knew damn well she would not sleep again until this crisis had reached its conclusion.

Whatever that may be.

Back at the Capitol Visitor Center, four black-clad CIA field-op specialists stood at the entrance to the tunnel, peering hungrily down the dimly lit shaft like a pack of dogs eager for the hunt.

Sato approached, having just hung up from a call. “Gentlemen,” she said, still holding the Architect’s key, “are your mission parameters clear?”

“Affirmative,” the lead agent replied. “We have
two
targets. The first is an engraved stone pyramid, approximately one foot tall. The second is a smaller, cube-shaped package, approximately two inches tall. Both were last seen in Robert Langdon’s shoulder bag.”

“Correct,” Sato said. “These two items must be retrieved quickly and intact. Do you have any questions?”

“Parameters for use of force?”

Sato’s shoulder was still throbbing from where Bellamy had struck her
with a bone. “As I said, it is of critical importance that these items be retrieved.”

“Understood.” The four men turned and headed into the darkness of the tunnel.

Sato lit a cigarette and watched them disappear.