Novel

[The GodMan]

(08-28-2024 11:32 PM)Camelo Wrote:  CHAPTER 6
Having squeezed beneath the security gate,
Robert Langdon now stood just inside the
entrance to the Grand Gallery. He was staring
into the mouth of a long, deep canyon. On either
side of the gallery, stark walls rose thirty feet,
evaporating into the darkness above. The reddish
glow of the service lighting sifted upward,
casting an unnatural smolder across a staggering
collection of Da Vincis, Titians, and Caravaggios
that hung suspended from ceiling cables. Still
lifes, religious scenes, and landscapes
accompanied portraits of nobility and politicians.
Although the Grand Gallery housed the Louvre's
most famous Italian art, many visitors felt the
wing's most stunning offering was actually its
famous parquet floor. Laid out in a dazzling
geometric design of diagonal oak slats, the floor
produced an ephemeral optical illusion - a multi-
dimensional network that gave visitors the sense
they were floating through the gallery on a
surface that changed with every step.
As Langdon's gaze began to trace the inlay, his
eyes stopped short on an unexpected object
lying on the floor just a few yards to his left,
surrounded by police tape. He spun toward
Fache. "Is that... a Caravaggio on the floor?"
Fache nodded without even looking.
The painting, Langdon guessed, was worth
upward of two million dollars, and yet it was
lying on the floor like a discarded poster. "What
the devil is it doing on the floor!"
Fache glowered, clearly unmoved. "This is a crime
scene,
Mr. Langdon. We have touched nothing.
That canvas was pulled from the wall by the
curator. It was how he activated the security
system."
Langdon looked back at the gate, trying to
picture what had happened.
"The curator was attacked in his office, fled into
the Grand Gallery, and activated the security
gate by pulling that painting from the wall. The
gate fell immediately, sealing off all access. This
is the only door in or out of this gallery." Langdon
felt confused. "So the curator actually captured
his attacker inside the Grand Gallery?" Fache
shook his head. "The security gate separated
Sauniere from his attacker. The killer waslocked
out there in the hallway and shot Sauniere
through this gate." Fache pointed toward
anorange tag hanging from one of the bars on
the gate under which they had just passed. "The
PT Steam found flashback residue from a gun. He
fired
through the bars. Sauniere died in here
alone."
Langdon pictured the photograph of Sauniere's
body. They said he did that to himself.Langdon
looked out at the enormous corridor before them.
"So where is his body?"
Fache straightened his cruciform tie clip and
began to walk. "As you probably know, the
Grand Gallery is quite long."
The exact length, if Langdon recalled correctly,
was around fifteen hundred feet, the length of
three Washington Monuments laid end to end.
Equally breathtaking was the corridor's width,
which easily could have accommodated a pair of
side-by-side passenger trains. The center of the
hallway was dotted by the occasional statue or
colossal porcelain urn, which served as a tasteful
divider and kept the flow of traffic moving down
one wall and up the other.
Fache was silent now, striding briskly up the right
side
of the corridor with his gaze dead ahead.
Langdon felt almost disrespectful to be racing
past so many masterpieces without pausing for
so much as a glance.
Not that I could see anything in this lighting, he
thought.
The muted crimson lighting unfortunately
conjured memories of Langdon's last experience
in noninvasive lighting in the Vatican Secret
Archives. This was tonight's second unsettling
parallel with his near-death in Rome. He flashed
on Vittoria again. She had been absent from his
dreams for months. Langdon could not believe
Rome had been only a year ago; it felt like
decades. Another life.His last correspondence
from Vittoria had been in December - a postcard
saying she was headed to the Java Sea to
continue her research in entanglement physics...
something about using satellites to track manta
ray migrations. Langdon had never harbored
delusions that a woman like Vittoria Vetra could
have been happy living with him on a college
campus, but their encounter in Rome had
unlocked in him a longing he never imagined he
could feel. His lifelong affinity for bachelorhood
and the simple freedoms it allowed had been
shaken somehow... replaced by an unexpected
emptiness that seemed to have grown over the
past year.
They continued walking briskly, yet Langdon still
saw no corpse. "Jacques Sauniere went this far?"
"Mr. Sauniere suffered a bullet wound to his
stomach. He died very slowly. Perhaps over
fifteen or twenty minutes. He was obviously a
man of great personal strength."
Langdon turned, appalled. "Security took fifteen
minutes to get here?"
"Of course not. Louvre security responded
immediately to the alarm and found the Grand
Gallery sealed. Through the gate, they could hear
someone moving around at the far end of the
corridor, but they could not see who it was. They
shouted, but they got no answer. Assuming it
could only be a criminal, they followed protocol
and called in the Judicial Police. We took up
positions within fifteen minutes. When we
arrived, we raised the barricade enough to slip
underneath, and I sent a dozen armed agents
inside. They swept the length of the gallery to
corner the intruder." "And?" "They found no one
inside. Except..." He pointed farther down the hall.
"Him."

---

Langdon lifted his gaze and followed Fache'
outstretched finger. At first he thought Fache was
pointing to a large marble statue in the middle
of
the hallway. As they continued, though, Langdon
began to see past the statue. Thirty yards down
the hall, a single spotlight on a portable pole
stand shone down on the floor, creating a stark
island of white light in the dark crimson gallery.
In the center of the light, like an insect under a
microscope, the corpse of the curator lay naked
on the parquet floor.
"You saw the photograph," Fache said," so this
should be of no surprise."
Langdon felt a deep chill as they approached the
body. Before him was one of the strangest
image she had ever seen.
The pallid corpse of Jacques Sauniere lay on the
parquet floor exactly as it appeared in the
photograph. As Langdon stood over the body and
squinted
in the harsh light, he reminded himself
to his amazement that Sauniere had spent his
last minutes of life arranging his own body in this
strange fashion.
Sauniere looked remarkably fit for a man of his
years... and all of his musculature was in plain
view. He had stripped off every shred of clothing,
placed
it neatly on the floor, and laid down on
his back in the center of the wide corridor,
perfectly aligned with the long axis of the room.
His arms and legs were sprawled outward in a
wide spread eagle, like those of a child making a
snow angel... or, perhaps more appropriately, like
a man being drawn and quartered by some
invisible force.
Just below Sauniere's breastbone, a bloody
smear marked the spot where the bullet had
pierced his flesh. The wound had bled surprisingly
little,
leaving only a small pool of blackened
blood.
Sauniere's left index finger was also bloody,
apparently having been dipped into the wound
to create the most unsettling aspect of his own
macabre deathbed; using his own blood as ink,
and employing his own naked abdomen as a
canvas, Sauniere had drawn a simple symbol on
his flesh - five straight lines that intersected to
form a five-pointed star.
The pentacle.
The bloody star, centered on Sauniere's navel,
gave his corpse a distinctly ghoulish aura. The
photo Langdon had seen was chilling enough, but
now,
witnessing the scene in person, Langdon
felt a deepening uneasiness.
He did this to himself.
"Mr. Langdon?" Fache's dark eyes settled on him
again.
"It's a pentacle," Langdon offered, his voice
feeling hollow in the huge space. "One of the
oldest symbols on earth. Used over four
thousand years before Christ."
"And what does it mean?"
Langdon always hesitated when he got this
question. Telling someone what a symbol"
meant" was like telling them how a song should
make them feel - it was different for all people.
A white Ku Klux Klan headpiece conjured images
of hatred and racism in the United States, and
yet the same costume carried a meaning of
religious faith in Spain.
"Symbols carry different meanings in different
settings," Langdon said. "Primarily, the pentacle is
a pagan religious symbol."
Fache nodded. "Devil worship." "No," Langdon
corrected, immediately realizing his choice of
vocabulary should have been clearer. Nowadays,
the term pagan had become almost synonymous
with devil worship - a gross misconception. The
word's roots actually reached back to the Latin
paganus, meaning country-dwellers. "Pagans"
were literally unindoctrinated country-folk who
clung to the old, rural religions of Nature worship.
In fact, so strong was the Church's fear of those
who lived in the rural villes that the once
innocuous word for" villager" - villain - came to
mean a wicked soul.
"The pentacle," Langdon clarified," is a pre-
Christian symbol that relates to Nature worship.
The ancients envisioned their world in two halves
-
masculine and feminine. Their gods and
goddesses worked to keep a balance of power.
Yin and yang. When male and female were
balanced, there was harmony in the world.
When they were unbalanced, there was chaos."
Langdon motioned to Sauniere's stomach. "This
pentacle is representative of the female half of
all things - a concept religious historians call the
'sacred feminine' or the 'divine goddess. '
Sauniere, of all people, would know this."
"Sauniere drew a goddess symbol on his
stomach?"
Langdon had to admit, it seemed odd. "In its
most specific interpretation, the pentacle
symbolizes Venus - the goddess of female sexual
love and beauty."
Fache eyed the naked man, and grunted.
"Early religion was based on the divine order of
Nature. The goddess Venus and the planet Venus
were one and the same. The goddess had a
place in the nighttime sky and was known by
many names - Venus, the Eastern Star, Ishtar,
Astarte - all of them powerful female concepts
with ties to Nature and Mother Earth."
Fache looked more troubled now, as if he
somehow preferred the idea of devil worship.
Langdon decided not to share the pentacle's
most astonishing property - the graphic origin of
its ties to Venus. As a young astronomy student,
Langdon had been stunned to learn the planet
Venus traced a perfect pentacle across the
ecliptic sky every four years. So astonished were
the ancients to observe this phenomenon, that
Venus and her pentacle became symbols of
perfection, beauty, and the cyclic qualities of
sexual love. As a tribute to the magic of Venus,
the Greeks used her four-year cycle to organize
their Olympiads. Nowadays, few people realized
that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic
Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even
fewer people knew that the five-pointed star
had almost become the official Olympic seal but
was modified at the last moment - its five points
exchanged for five intersecting rings to better
reflect the games' spirit of inclusion and
harmony.
"Mr. Langdon," Fache said abruptly. "Obviously,
the pentacle must also relate to the devil. Your
American horror movies make that point clearly."
Langdon frowned. Thank you, Hollywood.The
five-pointed star was now a virtual cliche in
Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on
the wall of some Satanist's apartment along with
other
alleged demonic symbology. Langdon was
always frustrated when he saw the symbol in
this context; the pentacle's true origins were
actually quite godly.

---

assure you," Langdon said," despite what you"I
see in the movies, the pentacle's demonic
interpretation is historically inaccurate. The
original feminine meaning is correct, but the
symbolism of the pentacle has been distorted
over the millennia. In this case, through
bloodshed." "I'm not sure I follow." Langdon
glanced at Fache's crucifix, uncertain how to
phrase his next point. "The Church, sir. Symbols
are very resilient, but the pentacle was altered
by the early Roman Catholic Church. As part of
the Vatican's campaign to eradicate pagan
religions and convert the masses to Christianity,
the Church launched a smear campaign against
the pagan gods and goddesses, recasting their
divine symbols as evil."
"Go on."
"This is very common in times of turmoil,"
Langdon continued. "A newly emerging power
will take over the existing symbols and degrade
them over time in an attempt to erase their
meaning. In the battle between the pagan
symbols and Christian symbols, the pagans lost;
Poseidon's trident became the devil's pitchfork,
the wise crone's pointed hat became the symbol
of a witch, and Venus's pentacle became a sign
of the devil." Langdon paused. "Unfortunately, the
United
States military has also perverted the
pentacle; it's now our foremost symbol of war.
We paint it on all our fighter jets and hang it on
the shoulders of all our generals." So much for
the goddess of love and beauty.
"Interesting." Fache nodded toward the spread-
eagle corpse. "And the positioning of the body?
What do you make of that?" Langdon shrugged.
"The position simply reinforces the reference to
the pentacle and sacred feminine."
Fache's expression clouded. "I beg your pardon?"
"Replication. Repeating a symbol is the simplest
way to strengthen its meaning. Jacques Sauniere
positioned himself in the shape of a five-pointed
star." If one pentacle is good, two is better.
Fache's eyes followed the five points of
Sauniere's arms, legs, and head as he again ran
a hand across his slick hair. "Interesting analysis."
He paused. "And the nudity?" He grumbled as he
spoke the word, sounding repulsed by the sight
of an aging male body. "Why did he remove his
clothing?"
Damned good question, Langdon thought. He'd
been wondering the same thing ever since he
first saw the Polaroid. His best guess was that a
naked human form was yet another
endorsement of Venus - the goddess of human
sexuality. Although modern culture had erased
much of Venus's association with the male/
female physical union, a sharp etymological eye
could still spot a vestige of Venus's original
meaning in the word" venereal." Langdon
decided not to go there.
"Mr. Fache, I obviously can't tell you why Mr.
Sauniere drew that symbol on himself or placed
himself in this way, but I can tell you that a man
like Jacques Sauniere would consider the
pentacle a sign of the female deity. The
correlation between this symbol and the sacred
feminine is widely known by art historians and
symbologists."
"Fine. And the use of his own blood as ink?"
"Obviously he had nothing else to write with."
Fache was silent a moment. "Actually, I believe
he used blood such that the police would follow
certain forensic procedures."
"I'm sorry?"
"Look at his left hand."
Langdon's eyes traced the length of the curator's
pale arm to his left hand but saw nothing.
Uncertain, he circled the corpse and crouched
down, now noting with surprise that the curator
was clutching a large, felt-tipped marker.
"Sauniere was holding it when we found him,"
Fache said, leaving Langdon and moving several
yards to a portable table covered with
investigation tools, cables, and assorted electronic
gear. "As
I told you," he said, rummaging around
the table," we have touched nothing. Are you
familiar with this kind of pen?"
Langdon knelt down farther to see the pen's
label. STYLO DE LUMIERE NOIRE. He glanced up
in surprise.
The black-light pen or watermark stylus was a
specialized felt-tipped marker originally designed
by museums, restorers, and forgery police to
place invisible marks on items. The stylus wrote
in a noncorrosive, alcohol-based fluorescent ink
that was visible only under black light.
Nowadays, museum maintenance staffs carried
these markers on their daily rounds to place
invisible" tick marks" on the frames of paintings
that needed restoration.
As Langdon stood up, Fache walked over to the
spotlight and turned it off. The gallery plunged
into sudden darkness.
Momentarily blinded, Langdon felt a rising
uncertainty. Fache's silhouette appeared,
illuminated in bright purple. He approached
carrying a portable light source, which shrouded
him in a violet haze.
"As you may know," Fache said, his eyes
luminescing in the violet glow," police use black-
light illumination to search crime scenes for blood
and other forensic evidence. So you can imagine
our surprise..." Abruptly, he pointed the light
down at the corpse.
Langdon looked down and jumped back in
shock.
His heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight
now glowing before him on the parquet floor.
Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the
curator's final words glowed purple beside his
corpse. As Langdon stared at the shimmering
text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this
entire night growing thicker.
Langdon read the message again and looked up
at Fache. "What the hell does this mean!" Fache's
eyes shone white. "That, monsieur, is precisely
the question you are here to answer."
Not far away, inside Sauniere's office, Lieutenant
Collet had returned to the Louvre and was
huddled over an audio console set up on the
curator's enormous desk. With the exception of
the eerie, robot-like doll of a medieval knight
that seemed to be staring at him from the corner
of Sauniere's desk, Collet was comfortable. He
adjusted his AKG headphones and checked the
input levels on the hard-disk recording system.
All systems were go. The microphones were
functioning flawlessly, and the audio feed was
crystal clear.
Le moment de verite, he mused.
Smiling, he closed his eyes and settled in to
enjoy the rest of the conversation now being
taped inside the Grand Gallery.

---

CHAPTER 7
The modest dwelling within the Church of Saint-
Sulpice was located on the second floor of the
church itself, to the left of the choir balcony. A
two-room suite with a stone floor and minimal
furnishings, it had been home to Sister Sandrine
Bieil for over a decade. The nearby convent
washer formal residence, if anyone asked, but
she preferred the quiet of the church and had
made herself quite comfortable upstairs with a
bed, phone, and hot plate.
Advertisement
As the church's conservatrice d'affaires, Sister
Sandrine was responsible for overseeing all
nonreligious aspects of church operations -
general maintenance, hiring support staff and
guides, securing the building after hours, and
ordering supplies like communion wine and
wafers.
Tonight, asleep in her small bed, she awoke to
the shrill of her telephone. Tiredly, she lifted the
receiver.
"Soeur Sandrine. Eglise Saint-Sulpice."
"Hello, Sister," the man said in French.
Sister Sandrine sat up. What time is it? Although
she recognized her boss's voice, in fifteen years
she had never been awoken by him. The abbe
was a deeply pious man who went home to bed
immediately after mass.
"I apologize if I have awoken you, Sister," the
abbe said, his own voice sounding groggy and on
edge.
"I have a favor to ask of you. I just
received a call from an influential American
bishop.
Perhaps you know him? Manuel Aringarosa?"
"The head of Opus Dei?" Of course I know of
him.Who in the Church doesn't? Aringarosa's
conservative prelature had grown powerful in
recent years. Their ascension to grace was jump-
started in 1982 when Pope John Paul II
unexpectedly elevated them to a" personal
prelature of the Pope," officially sanctioning all of
their practices. Suspiciously, Opus Dei's elevation
occurred the same year the wealthy sect
allegedly had transferred almost one billion
dollars into the Vatican's Institute for Religious
Works - commonly known as the Vatican Bank -
bailing it out of an embarrassing bankruptcy. In a
second maneuver that raised eyebrows, the
Pope placed the founder of Opus Dei on the" fast
track" for sainthood, accelerating an often
century-long waiting period for canonization to a
mere twenty years. Sister Sandrine could not
help but feel that Opus Dei's good standing in
Rome was suspect, but one did not argue with
the Holy See.
"Bishop Aringarosa called to ask me a favor," the
abbe told her, his voice nervous. "One of his
numeraries is in Paris tonight..."
-- Advertisement --
As Sister Sandrine listened to the odd request,
she felt a deepening confusion. "I'm sorry, you
say this visiting Opus Dei numerary cannot wait
until morning?"
"I'm afraid not. His plane leaves very early. He
has always dreamed of seeing Saint-Sulpice."
"But the church is far more interesting by day.
The sun's rays through the oculus, the graduated
shadows on the gnomon, this is what makes
Saint-Sulpice unique."
"Sister, I agree, and yet I would consider it a
personal favor if you could let him in tonight. He
can be there at... say one o'clock? That's in
twenty minutes."
Sister Sandrine frowned. "Of course. It would be
my pleasure." The abbe thanked her and hung
up. Puzzled, Sister Sandrine remained a moment
in the warmth of her bed, trying to shake off the
cobwebs of sleep. Her sixty-year-old body did not
awake
as fast as it used to, although tonight's
phone call had certainly roused her senses. Opus
Dei had always made her uneasy. Beyond the
prelature's adherence to the arcane ritual of
corporal mortification, their views on women
were medieval at best. She had been shocked to
learn that female numeraries were forced to
clean the men's residence halls for no pay while
the men were at mass; women slept on
hardwood floors, while the men had straw mats;
and women were forced to endure additional
requirements of corporal mortification... all as
added penance for original sin. It seemed Eve's
bite from the apple of knowledge was a debt
women were doomed to pay for eternity. Sadly,
while most of the Catholic Church was gradually
moving in the right direction with respect to
women's rights, Opus Dei threatened to reverse
the progress. Even so, Sister Sandrine had her
orders.
Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood slowly,
chilled by the cold stone on the soles of her bare
feet. As the chill rose through her flesh, she felt
an unexpected apprehension.
Women's intuition?
A follower of God, Sister Sandrine had learned to
find peace in the calming voices of her own soul.
Tonight, however, those voices were as silent as
the empty church around her.

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