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 Camerlengo . . . 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 Camerlengo, 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo, in his torn cassock, with the
scorched brand on his chest, looked like some sort of battered champion whohad 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo could
possibly be shouting them.
The Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo turned and dashed back into
St. Peter’s Basilica.Eleven-forty-two P.M.
The frenzied convoy that plunged back into the basilica to retrieve the
Camerlengo 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. “Camerlengo! 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo was nowhere to be seen.
“Camerlengo!” 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo. 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 Camerlengo, he wondered where
the man was headed. The Camerlengo 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
Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo 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
Camerlengo. The specter seemed transparent, radiating light. Chartrand
staggered to a stop, feeling a knot tighten in his chest. The Camerlengo isglowing!
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 Camerlengo had disappeared, he realized what had
just happened. The Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo
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
Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo, he saw
the Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo wheeled, obviously startled. “What are you doing!”Langdon was surprised when their eyes met. The Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo said, his voice eerily sane. “I have just had a
message. I know—”
“Camerlengo!” 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
Camerlengo. 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
Camerlengo.
“Signore,” Chartrand pleaded. “You’re in shock. We need to leave this place.
You cannot go down there. It’s suicide.”
The Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo spoke quickly now. “The Illuminati have placed their tool
of destruction on the very cornerstone of this church. At the foundation.” Hemotioned 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo spun, grabbed an oil
lamp, and headed for the opening.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 Camerlengo from entering the shaft,
Chartrand had intervened, grabbing Langdon and holding on. Apparently, the
young guard was now convinced the Camerlengo knew what he was doing.
After a brief scuffle, Langdon had freed himself and pursued the
Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo
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 Camerlengo’s message from above.
The message. This was the leap of faith Vittoria was still struggling to
accept. Had God actually communicated with the Camerlengo? 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo’s intentions were. Her awareness
brought with it a fear like nothing she had ever known.
“Camerlengo, 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.
“Camerlengo!” 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo’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
Camerlengo was there, pulling the gate open. Langdon leapt, pushing the gate
shut, blocking the Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo 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 Camerlengo’s certitude was hypnotic. “There will be no more death
tonight.”
“Father, but—”
“Please . . . some faith.” The Camerlengo’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 Camerlengo’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.
