Novel

[Camelo]

CHAPTER 3
The crisp April air whipped through the open
window of the Citroen ZX as it skimmed south
past the Opera House and crossed Place
Vendôme. In the passenger seat, Robert
Langdon felt the city tear past him as he tried to
clear his thoughts. His quick shower and shave
had left him looking reasonably presentable but
had done little to ease his anxiety. The
frightening image of the curator's body remained
locked in his mind.
Jacques Sauniere is dead.
Langdon could not help but feel a deep sense of
loss at the curator's death. Despite Sauniere's
reputation for being reclusive, his recognition for
dedication to the arts made him an easy man to
revere. His books on the secret codes hidden in
the paintings of Poussin and Teniers were some
of Langdon's favorite classroom texts. Tonight's
meeting had been one Langdon was very much
looking forward to, and he was disappointed
when the curator had not shown.
Again the image of the curator's body flashed in
his mind. Jacques Sauniere did that to himself?
Langdon turned and looked out the window,
forcing the picture from his mind.
Outside, the city was just now winding down -
street vendors wheeling carts of candied
amandes, waiters carrying bags of garbage to
the curb, a pair of late night lovers cuddling to
stay warm in a breeze scented with jasmine
blossom. The Citroen navigated the chaos with
authority, its dissonant two-tone siren parting the
traffic like a knife.
"Le capitaine was pleased to discover you were
still in Paris tonight," the agent said, speaking for
the first time since they'd left the hotel. "A
fortunate coincidence."
Langdon was feeling anything but fortunate, and
coincidence was a concept he did not entirely
trust. As someone who had spent his life
exploring the hidden interconnectivity of
disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon
viewed the world as a web of profoundly
intertwined histories and events. The connections
may be invisible, he often preached to his
symbology classes at Harvard, but they are
always there, buried just beneath the surface.
"I assume," Langdon said," that the American
University of Paris told you where I was
staying?" The driver shook his head. "Interpol."
Interpol, Langdon thought. Of course.He had
forgotten that the seemingly innocuous request
of all European hotels to see a passport at check-
in was more
than a quaint formality - it was the
law. On any given night, all across Europe,
Interpol officials could pinpoint exactly who was
sleeping where. Finding Langdon at the Ritz had
probably taken all of five seconds.
As the Citroen accelerated southward across the
city, the illuminated profile of the Eiffel Tower
appeared, shooting skyward in the distance to
the right. Seeing it, Langdon thought of Vittoria,
recalling their playful promise a year ago that
every six months they would meet again at a
different romantic spot on the globe. The Eiffel
Tower, Langdon suspected, would have made
their list. Sadly, he last kissed Vittoria in a noisy
airport in Rome more than a year ago.
"Did you mount her?" the agent asked, looking
over.
Langdon glanced up, certain he had
misunderstood. "I beg your pardon?"
"She is lovely, no?" The agent motioned through
the windshield toward the Eiffel Tower. "Have
you mounted her?"
Langdon rolled his eyes. "No, I haven't climbed
the tower." "She is the symbol of France. I think
she is perfect." Langdon nodded absently.
Symbologists often remarked that France - a
country renowned for machismo, womanizing,
and diminutive insecure leaders like Napoleon
and Pepin the Short - could not have chosen a
more apt national emblem than a thousand-foot
phallus.
When they reached the intersection at Rue de
Rivoli, the traffic light was red, but the Citroen
didn't slow. The agent gunned the sedan across
the junction and sped onto a wooded section of
Rue Castiglione, which served as the northern
entrance to the famed Tuileries Gardens - Paris's
own version of Central Park. Most tourists
mistranslated Jardins des Tuileries as relating to
the thousands of tulips that bloomed here, but
Tuileries was actually a literal reference to
something far less romantic. This park had once
been an enormous, polluted excavation pit from
which Parisian contractors mined clay to
manufacture the city's famous red roofing tiles -
or tuiles.
As they entered the deserted park, the agent
reached under the dash and turned off the
blaring siren. Langdon exhaled, savoring the
sudden quiet. Outside the car, the pale wash of
halogen headlights skimmed over the crushed
gravel parkway, the rugged whir of the tires
intoning a hypnotic rhythm. Langdon had always
considered the Tuileries to be sacred ground.
These were the gardens in which Claude Monet
had experimented with form and color, and
literally inspired the birth of the Impressionist
movement. Tonight, however, this place held a
strange aura of foreboding.
Citroen swerved left now, angling west downThe
the park's central boulevard. Curling around a
circular pond, the driver cut across a desolate
avenue out into a wide quadrangle beyond. Langdon
could
now see the end of the Tuileries Gardens,
marked by a giant stone archway.
Arc du Carrousel.
Despite the orgiastic rituals once held at the Arc du
Carrousel, art aficionados revered this place for
another reason entirely. From the esplanade at the
end of the Tuileries, four of the finest art museums
in the world could be seen... one at each point of the
compass.
Out the right-hand window, south across the Seine
and Quai Voltaire, Langdon could see the
dramatically lit facade of the old train station - now
the esteemed Musee d'Orsay. Glancing left, he could
make out the top of the ultramodern Pompidou
Center, which housed the Museum of Modern Art.
Behind him to the west, Langdon knew the ancient
obelisk of Ramses rose above the trees, marking the
Musee du Jeu de Paume.
But it was straight ahead, to the east, through the
archway, that Langdon could now see the monolithic
Renaissance
palace that had become the most
famous art museum in the world.
Musee du Louvre.
Langdon felt a familiar tinge of wonder as his eyes
made a futile attempt to absorb the entire mass of
the edifice. Across a staggeringly expansive plaza,
the imposing facade of the Louvre rose like a citadel
against the Paris sky. Shaped like an enormous
horseshoe, the Louvre was the longest building in
Europe, stretching farther than three Eiffel Towers
laid end to end. Not even the million square feet of
open plaza between the museum wings could
challenge the majesty of the facade's breadth.
Langdon had once walked the Louvre's entire
perimeter, an astonishing three-mile journey.
Despite the estimated five days it would take a
visitor to properly appreciate the 65, 300 pieces of
art in this building, most tourists chose an
abbreviated experience Langdon referred to as
"Louvre Lite" - a full sprint through the museum to
see the three most famous objects: the Mona Lisa,
Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory.Art Buchwald
had once boasted he'd seen all three masterpieces
in five minutes and fifty-six seconds.
The driver pulled out a handheld walkie-talkie and
spoke in rapid-fire French. "Monsieur Langdonest
arrive.Deux minutes."
An indecipherable confirmation came crackling back.
The agent stowed the device, turning now to
Langdon. "You will meet the capitaine at the main
entrance."
The driver ignored the signs prohibiting auto traffic
on the plaza, revved the engine, and gunned the
Citroen up over the curb. The Louvre's main entrance
was
visible now, rising boldly in the distance,
encircled by seven triangular pools from which
spouted illuminated fountains.
La Pyramide.
The new entrance to the Paris Louvre had become
almost as famous as the museum itself. The
controversial, neomodern glass pyramid designed by
Chinese-born American architect I. M. Peistill evoked
scorn from traditionalists who felt it destroyed the
dignity of the Renaissance courtyard. Goethe had
described architecture as frozen music, and Pei's
critics described this pyramid as fingernails on a
chalkboard. Progressive admirers, though, hailed
Pei's seventy-one-foot-tall transparent pyramid as a
dazzling synergy of ancient structure and modern
method - a symbolic link between the old and new -
helping usher the Louvre into the next millennium.
"Do you like our pyramid?" the agent asked.
Langdon frowned. The French, it seemed, loved to
ask Americans this. It was a loaded question, of
course. Admitting you liked the pyramid made you a
tasteless American, and expressing dislike was an
insult to the French.
"Mitterrand was a bold man," Langdon replied,
splitting the difference. The late French president
who had commissioned the pyramid was said to
have suffered from a" Pharaoh complex."
Singlehandedly responsible for filling Paris with
Egyptian obelisks, art, and artifacts.
François Mitterrand had an affinity for
Egyptian culture that was so all-consuming that the
French still referred to him as the Sphinx.
"What is the captain's name?" Langdon asked,
changing topics.
"Bezu Fache," the driver said, approaching the
pyramid's main entrance. "We call him le Taureau."
Langdon glanced over at him, wondering if every
Frenchman had a mysterious animal epithet. "You
call your captain the Bull?"
The man arched his eyebrows. "Your French is better
than you admit, Monsieur Langdon."
My French stinks, Langdon thought, but my zodiac
iconography is pretty good.Taurus was always the
bull. Astrology was a symbolic constant all over the
world.
The agent pulled the car to a stop and pointed
between two fountains to a large door in the side of
the pyramid. "There is the entrance. Good luck,
monsieur." "You're not coming?" "My orders are to
leave you here. I have other business to attend to."
Langdon heaved a sigh and climbed out. It's your
circus. The agent revved his engine and sped off.
As Langdon stood alone and watched the departing
taillights, he realized he could easily reconsider, exit
the courtyard, grab a taxi, and head home to bed.
Something told him it was probably a lousy idea.
As he moved toward the mist of the fountains,
Langdon had the uneasy sense he was crossing an
imaginary threshold into another world. The
dreamlike quality of the evening was settling around
him again.
Twenty minutes ago he had been asleep
in his hotel room. Now he was standing in front of a
transparent pyramid built by the Sphinx, waiting for
a policeman they called the Bull.
I'm trapped in a Salvador Dali painting, he thought.
Langdon strode to the main entrance - an enormous
revolving door. The foyer beyond was dimly lit and
deserted.
Do I knock?
Langdon wondered if any of Harvard's revered
Egyptologists had ever knocked on the front door of
a pyramid and expected an answer. He raised his
hand to bang on the glass, but out of the darkness
below, a figure appeared, striding up the curving
staircase. The man was stocky and dark, almost
Neanderthal, dressed in a dark double-breasted suit
that strained to cover his wide shoulders. He
advanced with unmistakable authority on squat,
powerful legs. He was speaking on his cell phone
but finished the call as he arrived. He motioned for
Langdon to enter.
"I am Bezu Fache," he announced as Langdon
pushed through the revolving door. "Captain of the
Central Directorate Judicial Police." His tone was
fitting - a guttural rumble... like a gathering storm.
Langdon held out his hand to shake. "Robert
Langdon."
Fache's enormous palm wrapped around Langdon's
with crushing force.
"I saw the photo," Langdon said. "Your agent said
Jacques Sauniere himself did - "
"Mr. Langdon," Fache's ebony eyes locked on. "What
you see in the photo is only the beginning of what
Sauniere did."

---

CHAPTER 4
Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry
ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his
chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was
slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like
widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and
preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he
advanced,
his dark eyes seemed to scorch the
earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that
forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in
all matters.
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Langdon followed the captain down the famous
marble staircase into the sunken atrium beneath
the glass pyramid. As they descended, they
passed between two armed Judicial Police
guards with machine guns. The message was
clear: Nobody goes in or out tonight without the
blessing of Captain Fache.
Descending below ground level, Langdon fought
a rising trepidation. Fache's presence was
anything but welcoming, and the Louvre itself
had an almost sepulchral aura at this hour. The
staircase, like the aisle of a dark movie theater,
was illuminated by subtle tread-lighting
embedded in each step. Langdon could hear his
own footsteps reverberating off the glass
overhead. As he glanced up, he could see the
faint illuminated wisps of mist from the fountains
fading away outside the transparent roof.
"Do you approve?" Fache asked, nodding upward
with his broad chin.
Langdon sighed, too tired to play games. "Yes,
your pyramid is magnificent." Fache grunted. "A
scar on the face of Paris." Strike one.Langdon
sensed his host was a hard man to please. He
wondered if Fache had any idea that this
pyramid, at President Mitterrand's explicit
demand, had been constructed of exactly 666
panes of glass - a bizarre request that had
always been a hot topic among conspiracy buffs
who claimed 666 was the number of Satan.
Langdon decided not to bring it up.
As they dropped farther into the subterranean
foyer, the yawning space slowly emerged from
the shadows. Built fifty-seven feet beneath
ground level, the Louvre's newly constructed 70,
000-square-foot lobby spread out like an endless
grotto. Constructed in warm ocher marble to be
compatible with the honey-colored stone of the
Louvre facade above, the subterranean hall was
usually vibrant with sunlight and tourists. Tonight,
however, the lobby was barren and dark, giving
the entire space a cold and crypt-like
atmosphere.
"And the museum's regular security staff?"
Langdon asked.
"En quarantaine,"Fache replied, sounding as if
Langdon were questioning the integrity of
Fache's team. "Obviously, someone gained entry
tonight who should not have. All Louvre night
wardens are in the Sully Wing being questioned.
My own agents have taken over museum
security for the evening."
Langdon nodded, moving quickly to keep pace
with Fache.
-- Advertisement --
"How well did you know Jacques Sauniere?" the
captain asked. "Actually, not at all. We'd never
met." Fache looked surprised. "Your first meeting
was to be tonight?"
"Yes. We'd planned to meet at the American
University reception following my lecture, but he
never showed up."
Fache scribbled some notes in a little book. As
they walked, Langdon caught a glimpse of the
Louvre's lesser-known pyramid - La Pyramide
Inversee - a huge inverted skylight that hung
from the ceiling like a stalactite in an adjoining
section of the entresol. Fache guided Langdon up
a short set of stairs to the mouth of an arched
tunnel, over which a sign read: DENON. The
Denon Wing was the most famous of the
Louvre's three main sections.
"Who requested tonight's meeting?" Fache asked
suddenly. "You or he?"
The question seemed odd. "Mr. Sauniere did,"
Langdon replied as they entered the tunnel. "His
secretary contacted me a few weeks ago via e-
mail. She said the curator had heard I would be
lecturing in Paris this month and wanted to
discuss something with me while I was here."
"Discuss what?"
"I don't know. Art, I imagine. We share similar
interests."
Fache looked skeptical. "You have no idea what
your meeting was about?"
Langdon did not. He'd been curious at the time
but had not felt comfortable demanding specifics.
The venerated Jacques Sauniere had a renowned
penchant for privacy and granted very few
meetings; Langdon was grateful simply for the
opportunity to meet him.
"Mr. Langdon, can you at least guess what our
murder victim might have wanted to discuss
with you on the night he was killed? It might be
helpful."
The pointedness of the question made Langdon
uncomfortable. "I really can't imagine. I didn't
ask. I felt honored to have been contacted at all.
I'm an admirer of Mr. Sauniere's work. I use his
texts often in my classes."
Fache made note of that fact in his book.
The two men were now halfway up the Denon
Wing's entry tunnel, and Langdon could see the
twin ascending escalators at the far end, both
motionless.
"So you shared interests with him?" Fache asked.
"Yes. In fact, I've spent much of the last year
writing the draft for a book that deals with Mr.
Sauniere's primary area of expertise. I was
looking forward to picking his brain."
Fache glanced up. "Pardon?"
The idiom apparently didn't translate. "I was
looking forward to learning his thoughts on the
topic."
"I see. And what is the topic?"
Langdon hesitated, uncertain exactly how to put
it. "Essentially, the manuscript is about the
iconography of goddess worship - the concept of
female sanctity and the art and symbols
associated with it."
Fache ran a meaty hand across his hair. "And
Sauniere was knowledgeable about this?"
"Nobody more so." "I see."
Langdon sensed Fache did not see at all. Jacques
Sauniere was considered the premiere goddess
iconographer on earth. Not only did Sauniere
have a personal passion for relics relating to
fertility, goddess cults, Wicca, and the sacred
feminine, but during his twenty-year tenure as
curator, Sauniere had helped the Louvre amass
the largest collection of goddess art on earth -
labrys axes from the priestesses' oldest Greek
shrine in Delphi, gold caducei wands, hundreds of
Tjetankhs resembling small standing angels,
sistrum rattles used in ancient Egypt to dispel evil
spirits,
and an astonishing array of statues
depicting Horus being nursed by the goddess Isis.

---

Chapter 4 CONT'D


Jacques Sauniere knew of your"Perhaps
manuscript?" Fache offered. "And he called the
meeting to offer his help on your book."
Langdon shook his head. "Actually, nobody yet
knows about my manuscript. It's still in draft
form, and I haven't shown it to anyone except
my editor."
Fache fell silent.
Langdon did not add the reason he hadn't yet
shown the manuscript to anyone else. The three-
hundred-page draft - tentatively titled Symbols of
the
Lost Sacred Feminine - proposed some very
unconventional interpretations of established
religious iconography which would certainly be
controversial.
Now, as Langdon approached the stationary
escalators, he paused, realizing Fache was no
longer beside him. Turning, Langdon saw Fache
standing several yards back at a service elevator.
"We'll take the elevator," Fache said as the lift
doors opened. "As I'm sure you're aware, the
gallery is quite a distance on foot."
Although Langdon knew the elevator would
expedite the long, two-story climb to the Denon
Wing, he remained motionless.
"Is something wrong?" Fache was holding the
door, looking impatient.
Langdon exhaled, turning a longing glance back
up the open-air escalator. Nothing's wrong at all,
he lied to himself, trudging back toward the
elevator. As a boy, Langdon had fallen down an
abandoned well shaft and almost died treading
water in the narrow space for hours before being
rescued.
Since then, he'd suffered a haunting
phobia of enclosed spaces - elevators, subways,
squash courts. The elevator is a perfectly safe
machine, Langdon continually told himself, never
believing it. It's a tiny metal box hanging in an
enclosed shaft! Holding his breath, he stepped
into the lift, feeling the familiar tingle of
adrenaline as the doors slid shut. Two floors.Ten
seconds.
"You and Mr. Sauniere," Fache said as the lift
began to move," you never spoke at all? Never
corresponded? Never sent each other anything in
the mail?"
Another odd question. Langdon shook his head.
"No. Never." Fache cocked his head, as if making
a mental note of that fact. Saying nothing, he
stared dead ahead at the chrome doors.
As they ascended, Langdon tried to focus on
anything other than the four walls around him. In
the reflection
of the shiny elevator door, he saw
the captain's tie clip - a silver crucifix with
thirteen embedded pieces of black onyx. Langdon
found
it vaguely surprising. The symbol was
known as a crux gemmata - a cross bearing
thirteen gems - a Christian ideogram for Christ
and His twelve apostles. Somehow Langdon had
not expected the captain of the French police to
broadcast his religion so openly. Then again, this
was France; Christianity was not a religion here
so much as a birthright.
"It's a crux gemmata" Fache said suddenly.
Startled, Langdon glanced up to find Fache's eyes
on him in the reflection. The elevator jolted to a
stop, and the doors opened. Langdon stepped
quickly out into the hallway, eager for the wide-
open space afforded by the famous high ceilings
of the Louvre galleries. The world into which he
stepped, however, was nothing like he expected.
Surprised, Langdon stopped short.
Fache glanced over. "I gather, Mr. Langdon, you
have never seen the Louvre after hours?"
I guess not, Langdon thought, trying to get his
bearings.
Usually impeccably illuminated, the Louvre
galleries were startlingly dark tonight. Instead of
the customary flat-white light flowing down from
above,
a muted red glow seemed to emanate
upward from the baseboards - intermittent
patches of red light spilling out onto the tile
floors.
As Langdon gazed down the murky corridor, he
realized he should have anticipated this scene.
Virtually all major galleries employed red service
lighting at night - strategically placed, low-level,
noninvasive lights that enabled staff members to
navigate hallways and yet kept the paintings
inrelative darkness to slow the fading effects of
overexposure to light. Tonight, the museum
possessed an almost oppressive quality. Long
shadows encroached everywhere, and the
usually soaring vaulted ceilings appeared as a
low, black void.
"This way," Fache said, turning sharply right and
setting out through a series of interconnected
galleries.
Langdon followed, his vision slowly adjusting to
the dark. All around, large-format oils began to
materialize like photos developing before him in
an enormous darkroom... their eyes following as
he moved through the rooms. He could taste the
familiar tang of museum air - an arid, deionized
essence that carried a faint hint of carbon - the
product of industrial, coal-filter dehumidifiers that
ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive
carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors.
Mounted high on the walls, the visible security
cameras sent a clear message to visitors: We see
you.Do not touch anything.
"Any of them real?" Langdon asked, motioning to
the cameras. Fache shook his head. "Of course
not." Langdon was not surprised. Video
surveillance in museums this size was cost-
prohibitive and ineffective. With acres of galleries
to watch over, the Louvre would require several
hundred technicians simply to monitor the feeds.
Most large museums now used" containment
security." Forget keeping thieves out.Keep them
in.Containment was activated after hours, and if
an intruder removed a piece of artwork,
compartmentalized exits would seal around that
gallery, and the thief would find himself behind
bars even before the police arrived.
The sound of voices echoed down the marble
corridor up ahead. The noise seemed to be
coming from a large recessed alcove that lay
ahead on the right. A bright light spilled out into
the hallway. "Office of the curator," the captain
said. As he and Fache drew nearer the alcove,
Langdon peered down a short hallway, into
Sauniere's luxurious study - warm wood, Old
Master paintings, and an enormous antique desk
on which stood a two-foot-tall model of a knight
in full armor. A handful of police agents bustled
about the room, talking on phones and taking
notes. One of them was seated at Sauniere's
desk, typing into a laptop. Apparently, the
curator's private office had become DCPJ's
makeshift command post for the evening.

---

Chapter 4 CONT'D


Fache called out, and the men
"Messieurs,"
turned. "Ne nous derangez pas sous aucun
pretexte. Entendu?"
Everyone inside the office nodded their
understanding.
Langdon had hung enough NE PAS DERANGER
signs on hotel room doors to catch the gist of the
captain's orders. Fache and Langdon were not to
be disturbed under any circumstances.
Leaving the small congregation of agents behind,
Fache led Langdon farther down the darkened
hallway. Thirty yards ahead loomed the gateway
to the Louvre's most popular section - la Grande
Galerie - a seemingly endless corridor that
housed the Louvre's most valuable Italian
masterpieces. Langdon had already discerned
that this was where Sauniere's body lay; the
Grand Gallery's famous parquet floor had been
unmistakable in the Polaroid.
As they approached, Langdon saw the entrance
was blocked by an enormous steel grate that
looked like something used by medieval castles
to keep out marauding armies.
"Containment security,"Fache said, as they
neared the grate.
Even in the darkness, the barricade looked like it
could have restrained a tank. Arriving outside,
Langdon peered through the bars into the dimly
lit caverns of the Grand Gallery.
"After you, Mr. Langdon," Fache said. Langdon
turned. After me, where?Fache motioned toward
the floor at the base of the grate.
Langdon looked down. In the darkness, he hadn't
noticed. The barricade was raised about two feet,
providing an awkward clearance underneath.
"This area is still off limits to Louvre security,"
Fache said. "My team from Police Technique
etScientifique has just finished their
investigation." He motioned to the opening.
"Please slide under."
Langdon stared at the narrow crawl space at his
feet and then up at the massive iron grate. He's
kidding, right? The barricade looked like a
guillotine waiting to crush intruders.
Fache grumbled something in French and
checked his watch. Then he dropped to his knees
and slithered his bulky frame underneath the
grate. On the other side, he stood up and looked
back through the bars at Langdon.
Langdon sighed. Placing his palms flat on the
polished parquet, he lay on his stomach and
pulled himself forward. As he slid underneath,
the nape of his Harris tweed snagged on the
bottom of the grate, and he cracked the back of
his head on the iron.
Very suave, Robert, he thought, fumbling and
then finally pulling himself through. As he stood
up, Langdon was beginning to suspect it was
going to be a very long night.

---

CHAPTER 5
Murray Hill Place - the new Opus Dei World
Headquarters and conference center - is located
at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City. With
a price tag of just over $47 million, the 133, 000-
square-foot tower is clad in red brick and Indiana
limestone.
Designed by May & Pinska, the
building contains over one hundred bedrooms, six
dining rooms, libraries, living rooms, meeting
rooms, and offices. The second, eighth, and
sixteenth floors contain chapels, ornamented with
mill-
work and marble. The seventeenth floor is
entirely residential. Men enter the building
through the main doors on Lexington Avenue.
Women enter through a side street and are
'acoustically and visually separated' from the
men at all times within the building.
Earlier this evening, within the sanctuary of his
penthouse apartment, Bishop Manuel Aringarosa
had packed a small travel bag and dressed in a
traditional black cassock. Normally, he would
have wrapped a purple cincture around his waist,
but
tonight he would be traveling among the
public, and he preferred not to draw attention to
his high office. Only those with a keen eye
would notice his 14-karat gold bishop's ring with
purple amethyst, large diamonds, and hand-
tooled mitre-crozier applique. Throwing the travel
bag over his shoulder, he said a silent prayer and
left his apartment, descending to the lobby
where his driver was waiting to take him to the
airport.
Now, sitting aboard a commercial airliner bound
for Rome, Aringarosa gazed out the window at
the dark Atlantic. The sun had already set, but
Aringarosa knew his own star was on the rise.
Tonight the battle will be won, he thought,
amazed that only months ago he had felt
powerless against the hands that threatened to
destroy his empire.
As president-general of Opus Dei, Bishop
Aringarosa had spent the last decade of his life
spreading the message of "God's Work" - literally,
Opus
Dei.The congregation, founded in 1928 by
the Spanish priest Josemaria Escriva, promoted a
return to conservative Catholic values and
encouraged its members to make sweeping
sacrifices in their own lives in order to do the
Work of God.
Opus Dei's traditionalist philosophy initially had
taken root in Spain before Franco's regime, but
with the 1934 publication of Josemaria Escriva's
spiritual book The Way - 999 points of meditation
for doing God's Work in
one's own life - Escriva's
message exploded across the world. Now, with
over four million copies of The Way in circulation
in forty-two languages, Opus Dei was a global
force. Its residence halls, teaching centers, and
even universities could be found in almost every
major metropolis on earth. Opus Dei was the
fastest-growing and most financially secure
Catholic organization in the world. Unfortunately,
Aringarosa had learned, in an age of religious
cynicism, cults, and televangelists, Opus Dei's
escalating wealth and power was a magnet for
suspicion.
"Many call Opus Dei a brainwashing cult,"
reporters often challenged. "Others call you an
ultraconservative Christian secret society. Which
are you?"
"Opus Dei is neither," the bishop would patiently
reply. "We are a Catholic Church. We are a
congregation of Catholics who have chosen as
our priority to follow Catholic doctrine as
rigorously as we can in our own daily lives."
"Does God's Work necessarily include vows of
chastity, tithing, and atonement for sins through
self-flagellation and the cilice?"
"You are describing only a small portion of the
Opus Dei population," Aringarosa said. "There are
many levels of involvement. Thousands of Opus
Dei members are married, have families, and do
God's Work in their own communities. Others
choose lives of asceticism within our cloistered
residence halls. These choices are personal, but
everyone in Opus Dei shares the goal of
bettering the world by doing the Work of God.
Surely this is an admirable quest."
Reason seldom worked, though. The media
always gravitated toward scandal, and Opus Dei,
like most large organizations, had within its
membership a few misguided souls who cast a
shadow over the entire group.
Two months ago, an Opus Dei group at a mid-
western university had been caught drugging
new recruits with mescaline in an effort to
induce a euphoric state that neophytes would
perceive as a religious experience. Another
university student had used his barbed cilice belt
more often than the recommended two hours a
day and had given himself a near lethal infection.
In
Boston not long ago, a disillusioned young
investment banker had signed over his entire life
savings to Opus Dei before attempting suicide.
Misguided sheep, Aringarosa thought, his heart
going out to them.
Of course the ultimate embarrassment had been
the widely publicized trial of FBI spy Robert
Hanssen, who, in addition to being a prominent
member of Opus Dei, had turned out to be a
sexual deviant, his trial uncovering evidence that
he had rigged hidden video cameras in his own
bedroom so his friends could watch him having
sex with his wife. "Hardly the pastime of a
devout Catholic," the judge had noted.
Sadly, all of these events had helped spawn the
new watch group known as the Opus Dei
Awareness Network (ODAN). The group's popular
website
- www odan.org - relayed frightening
stories from former Opus Dei members who
warned of the dangers of joining. The media was
now referring
to Opus Dei as" God's Mafia" and"
the Cult of Christ."
We fear what we do not understand, Aringarosa
thought, wondering if these critics had any idea
how many lives Opus Dei had enriched. The
group enjoyed the full endorsement and blessing
of the Vatican. Opus Dei is a personal prelature
of the Pope himself.
Recently, however, Opus Dei had found itself
threatened by a force infinitely more powerful
than the media... an unexpected foe from which
Aringarosa could not possibly hide. Five months
ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been
shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the
blow.
"They know not the war they have begun,"
Aringarosa whispered to himself, staring out the
plane's window at the darkness of the ocean
below. For an instant, his eyes refocused,
lingering on the reflection of his awkward face -
dark and oblong, dominated by a flat, crooked
nose that had been shattered by a fist in Spain
when he was a young missionary. The physical
flaw barely registered now. Aringarosa's was a
world of the soul, not of the flesh.
As the jet passed over the coast of Portugal, the
cell phone in Aringarosa's cassock began
vibrating in silent ring mode. Despite airline
regulations prohibiting the use of cell phones
during flights, Aringarosa knew this was a call he
could not miss. Only one man possessed this
number, the man who had mailed Aringarosa the
phone.
Excited, the bishop answered quietly. "Yes?"
"Silas has located the keystone," the caller said.
"It is in Paris. Within the Church of Saint-Sulpice."
Bishop Aringarosa smiled. "Then we are close."
"We can obtain it immediately. But we need your
influence." "Of course. Tell me what to do."
When
Aringarosa switched off the phone, his heart was
pounding. He gazed once again into the void of
night, feeling dwarfed by the events he had put
into motion.
Five hundred miles away, the albino named Silas
stood over a small basin of water and dabbed
the blood from his back, watching the patterns of
red spinning in
the water. Purge me with hyssop
andI shall be clean, he prayed, quoting Psalms.
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Silas was feeling an aroused anticipation that he
had not felt since his previous life. It both
surprised and electrified him. For the last decade,
he had been following The Way, cleansing
himself of sins... rebuilding his life... erasing the
violence in his past. Tonight, however, it had all
come rushing back. The hatred he had fought so
hard to bury had been summoned. He had been
startled how quickly his past had resurfaced. And
with it, of course, had come his skills. Rusty but
serviceable.
Jesus' message is one of peace...of
nonviolence...of love.This was the message Silas
had been taught from the beginning, and the
message he held in his heart. And yet this was
the message the enemies of Christ now
threatened to destroy. Those who threaten God
with force will be met with force.Immovable and
steadfast.
For two millennia, Christian soldiers had
defended their faith against those who tried to
displace it. Tonight, Silas had been called to
battle.
Drying his wounds, he donned his ankle-length,
hooded robe. It was plain, made of dark wool,
accentuating the whiteness of his skin and hair.
Tightening the rope-tie around his waist, he
raised the hood over his head and allowed his
red eyes to admire his reflection in the mirror.
The wheels are in motion.