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Chapter 65
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Just for two weeks Chapter 66
"What do you mean she's not answering?" Romano looked incredulous. "You're calling her cell phone, right? I know she's carrying it." Suslowicz had been trying to reach agent McEwan for several minutes. "Maybe her batteries are dead. Or her ringer is off."Romano had looked distressed ever since talking to the director of Cryptology on the phone. After hanging up, he had marched over to Suslowicz and demanded he get Agent McEwan on the line. Now Suslowicz had failed, and Romano was pacing like a caged lion."Why did Crypto call?" Suslowicz now ventured.Romano turned. "To tell me they found no reference to Draconian devil and lame saints.""That's all?""No, also to tell us that they had just identified the numerics as Fibonacci numbers, but they suspected the series was meaningless."Suslowicz was confused. "But they already sent agent McEwan to tell us that."Romano shook his head. "They didn't send McEwan.""What?""According to the director, at my orders he played his entire team
Just for two weeks Chapter 67
Romano sprinted down the Grand Gallery as Suslowicz's radio blared over the distant sound of the alarm. "He jumped!" Suslowicz was yelling. "I'm showing the signal out on the Place du Carrousel! Outside the bathroom window! And it's not moving at all! Jesus, I think Jim has just committed suicide!"Romano heard the words, but they made no sense. He kept running. The hallway seemed never-ending. As he sprinted past Esquibel's body, he set his sight on the partitions at the far end of the Denon Wing. The alarm was getting louder now."Wait!" Suslowicz's voice blared again over the radio. "He's moving! My God, he's alive. Jim's moving.Romano kept running, cursing the length of the hallway with every step."Jim's moving fast!" Suslowicz was still yelling on the road. "He's running down the Carrousel. Wait… he's picking up speed. He's moving too fast!"Arriving at the partitions, Roman snaked his way through them, saw the restroom door, and ran for it. The walkie-talkie was barely audible
Just for two weeks Chapter 68
Emerging from the shadows, Jim and Sophie moved stealthily up the deserted Grand Gallery corridor toward the emergency exit stairwell. As he moved, Jim felt like he was trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. The newest aspect of this mystery was a deeply troubling one: The Captain of the judicial Police is trying to frame me for murder"Do you think," he whispered, "that maybe Fache wrote that message on the floor?"Sophie didn't even turn. "Impossible."Jim wasn't so sure. "He seems pretty intent on making me look guilty. Maybe he thought writing my name on the floor would help his case?""The Fibonacci sequence? The P.S.? All the Da Vinci and goddess symbolism? That had to be my grandfather."Jim knew she was right. The symbolism of the clues meshed too perfectly - the pentacle, The Vitruvian Man, Da Vinci, the goddess, and even the Fibonacci sequence. A coherent symbolic set, as iconographers would call it. All inextricably tied."And his phone call to me this afternoon,"
Just for two weeks Chapter 69
Kneeling in the first pew, Amorth pretended to pray as he scanned the layout of the sanctuary. Saint-Sulpice, like most churches, had been built in the shape of a giant Roman cross. Its long central section - the nave - led directly to the main altar, where it was transversely intersected by a shorter section, known as the transept. The intersection of nave and transept occurred directly beneath the main cupola and was considered the heart of the church… her most sacred and mystical point. Turning his head to the right, he gazed into the south transept, toward the open area of floor beyond the end of the pews, to the object his victims had described. There it is. Embedded in the gray granite floor, a thin polished strip of brass glistened in the stone… a golden line slanting across the church's floor. The line bore graduated markings, like a ruler. It was a gnomon, Amorth had been told, a pagan astronomical device like a sundial. Tourists, scientists, historians, and pagan from around
Just for two weeks Chapter 70
Sophie arrived breathless outside the large wooden doors of the Salle des Etats - the room that housed the Mona Lisa. Before entering, she gazed reluctantly farther down the hall, twenty yards or so, to the spot where her grandfather's body Still lay under the spotlight.The remorse that gripped her was powerful and sudden, a deep sadness laced with guilt. The man had reached out to her so many times over the past ten years, and yet Sophie had remained immovable - leaving his letters packages unopened in a bottom drawer and denying his efforts to see her. He lied to me! Kept appalling secrets! What was I supposed to do? And so she had blocked him out. Completely.Now her grandfather was dead, and he was talking to her from the grave.The Mona Lisa.She reached for huge wooden doors, and pushed. The entryway yawned open. Sophie stood on the threshold a moment, scanning the large rectangular chamber beyond. It too was bathed in a soft red light. The Salle des Etats was one of the museum
Just for two weeks Chapter 71
Amorth gazed upward at the Saint-Sulpice obelisk, taking in the length of the massive marble shaft. His sinews felt taunt with exhilaration. He glanced around the church one more time to make sure he was alone. Then he knelt at the base of the structure, not out of reverence, but out of necessity. The cruciform key is hidden beneath the Rose Line. At the base of the Sulpice obelisk. All the brothers had concurred.On his knees now, Silas ran his hands across the stone floor. He saw no cracks or markings to indicate a movable tile, so he began rapping softly with his knuckles on the floor. Following the brass line closer to the obelisk, he knocked on each tile adjacent to the brass line. Finally, one of them echoed strangely. There's a hollow area beneath the floor!Amorth smiled. His victims had spoken the truth.Standing, he search the sanctuary for something with which to break the floor tile.High above Amorth, in the balcony, Sister Rosaria stifled a gasp. Her darkest fears had ju
Just for two weeks Chapter 72
Jim, now having made it clear to Sophie that he has no intention of leaving, moved with her across the Salle des Etats. The Mona Lisa was still twenty yards ahead when Sophie turned on the back light. And the bluish crescent of penlight fanned out on the floor in front of them. She swung the beam back and forth across the floor like a minesweeper, searching for any hint of luminescent ink. Walking beside her, Jim was already feeling the tingle of anticipation that accompanied his face-to-face reunions with great works of art. He strained to see beyond the cocoon of purplish light emanating from the black light in Sophie's hand. To the left, the room's octagonal viewing divan emerged, looking like a dark island on the empty sea of parquet.Jim could now begin to see the panel of dark glass on the wall. Behind it, he knew, in the confines of her own private cell, hung the most celebrated painting in the world.The Mona Lisa's status as the most famous piece of art in the world, Jim
Just for two weeks Chapter 73
Inside the Salle des Etats, Jim stared in astonishment at the six words glowing on the plexiglas. The text seemed to hover in space, casting a jagged shadow across Mona Lisa's mysterious smile."The Priory," Jim whispered. "This proves your grandfather was a member!"Sophie looked at him in confusion. "You understand this?""It's flawless," Jim said, nodding as his thoughts churned. "It's a proclamation of one of the Priory's most fundamental philosophies!"Sophie looked baffled in the glow of the message scrawled across the Mona Lisa's face. Her expression remained uncertain. "My grandfather sent me to this spot to find this. He must be trying to tell me more than that."Jim understood her meaning. Whether a hidden meaning existed here or not, Jim could not immediately say. His mind was still grappling with the bold clarity of Esquibel's outward message."Jim!" Sophie said, her whisper yanking him back. "Someone's coming!"He heard the approaching footsteps out in the hallway."Over
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