Angels & Demons (14 page)

“Change. Transition.”

Langdon smiled. “I forgot I was talking to a scientist.”

“So you’re saying the U.S. Great Seal is a call for enlightened, all-seeing change?”

“Some would call it a New World Order.”

Vittoria seemed startled. She glanced down at the bill again. “The writing under the pyramid says
Novus
.

. .
Ordo
. . .
”

“Novus Ordo Seculorum,”
Langdon said. “It means New Secular Order.”

“Secular as in
non
religious?”

“Nonreligious. The phrase not only clearly states the Illuminati objective, but it also blatantly contradicts the phrase beside it. In God We Trust.”

Vittoria seemed troubled. “But how could all this symbology end up on the most powerful currency in the world?”

“Most academics believe it was through Vice President Henry Wallace. He was an upper echelon Mason and certainly had ties to the Illuminati. Whether it was as a member or innocently under their influence, nobody knows. But it was Wallace who sold the design of the Great Seal to the president.”

“How? Why would the president have agreed to—”

“The president was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wallace simply told him
Novus Ordo Seculorum
meant
New
Deal.”

Vittoria seemed skeptical. “And Roosevelt didn’t have anyone else look at the symbol before telling the Treasury to print it?”

“No need. He and Wallace were like brothers.”

“Brothers?”

“Check your history books,” Langdon said with a smile. “Franklin D. Roosevelt was a well-known Mason.”

32

L angdon held his breath as the X-33 spiraled into Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. Vittoria sat across from him, eyes closed as if trying to will the situation into control. The craft touched down and taxied to a private hangar.

“Sorry for the slow flight,” the pilot apologized, emerging from the cockpit. “Had to trim her back. Noise regulations over populated areas.”

Langdon checked his watch. They had been airborne thirty-seven minutes.

The pilot popped the outer door. “Anybody want to tell me what’s going on?”

Neither Vittoria nor Langdon responded.

“Fine,” he said, stretching. “I’ll be in the cockpit with the air-conditioning and my music. Just me and Garth.”

The late-afternoon sun blazed outside the hangar. Langdon carried his tweed jacket over his shoulder. Vittoria turned her face skyward and inhaled deeply, as if the sun’s rays somehow transferred to her some mystical replenishing energy.

Mediterraneans,
Langdon mused, already sweating.

“Little old for cartoons, aren’t you?” Vittoria asked, without opening her eyes.

“I’m sorry?”

“Your wristwatch. I saw it on the plane.”

Langdon flushed slightly. He was accustomed to having to defend his timepiece. The collector’s edition Mickey Mouse watch had been a childhood gift from his parents. Despite the contorted foolishness of Mickey’s outstretched arms designating the hour, it was the only watch Langdon had ever worn. Waterproof and glow-in-the-dark, it was perfect for swimming laps or walking unlit college paths at night. When Langdon’s students questioned his fashion sense, he told them he wore Mickey as a daily reminder to stay young at heart.

“It’s six o’clock,” he said.

Vittoria nodded, eyes still closed. “I think our ride’s here.”

Langdon heard the distant whine, looked up, and felt a sinking feeling. Approaching from the north was a helicopter, slicing low across the runway. Langdon had been on a helicopter once in the Andean Palpa Valley looking at the
Nazca
sand drawings and had not enjoyed it one bit.
A flying shoebox
. After a morning of space plane rides, Langdon had hoped the Vatican would send a car. Apparently not.

The chopper slowed overhead, hovered a moment, and dropped toward the runway in front of them. The craft was white and carried a coat of arms emblazoned on the side—two skeleton keys crossing a shield and papal crown. He knew the symbol well. It was the traditional seal of the Vatican—the sacred symbol of the
Holy See
or “holy seat” of government, the
seat
being literally the ancient throne of St. Peter.
The Holy Chopper,
Langdon groaned, watching the craft land. He’d forgotten the Vatican owned one of these things, used for transporting the Pope to the airport, to meetings, or to his summer palace in Gandolfo. Langdon definitely would have preferred a car.

The pilot jumped from the cockpit and strode toward them across the tarmac. Now it was Vittoria who looked uneasy.
“That’s
our pilot?”

Langdon shared her concern. “To fly, or not to fly. That is the question.”

The pilot looked like he was festooned for a Shakespearean melodrama. His puffy tunic was vertically striped in brilliant blue and gold. He wore matching pantaloons and spats. On his feet were black flats that looked like slippers. On top of it all, he wore a black felt beret.

“Traditional Swiss Guard uniforms,” Langdon explained. “Designed by Michelangelo himself.” As the man drew closer, Langdon winced. “I admit,
not
one of Michelangelo’s better efforts.”

Despite the man’s garish attire, Langdon could tell the pilot meant business. He moved toward them with all the rigidity and dignity of a U.S. Marine. Langdon had read many times about the rigorous requirements for becoming one of the elite Swiss Guard. Recruited from one of Switzerland’s four Catholic cantons, applicants had to be Swiss males between nineteen and thirty years old, at least 5 feet 6

inches, trained by the Swiss Army, and unmarried. This imperial corps was envied by world governments as the most allegiant and deadly security force in the world.

“You are from CERN?” the guard asked, arriving before them. His voice was steely.

“Yes, sir,” Langdon replied.

“You made remarkable time,” he said, giving the X-33 a mystified stare. He turned to Vittoria. “Ma’am, do you have any other clothing?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He motioned to her legs. “Short pants are not permitted inside Vatican City.”

Langdon glanced down at Vittoria’s legs and frowned. He had forgotten. Vatican City had a strict ban on visible legs above the knee—both male and female. The regulation was a way of showing respect for the sanctity of God’s city.

“This is all I have,” she said. “We came in a hurry.”

The guard nodded, clearly displeased. He turned next to Langdon. “Are you carrying any weapons?”

Weapons?
Langdon thought.
I’m not even carrying a change of underwear!
He shook his head. The officer crouched at Langdon’s feet and began patting him down, starting at his socks.
Trusting guy,
Langdon thought. The guard’s strong hands moved up Langdon’s legs, coming uncomfortably close to his groin. Finally they moved up to his chest and shoulders. Apparently content Langdon was clean, the guard turned to Vittoria. He ran his eyes up her legs and torso.

Vittoria glared. “Don’t even think about it.”

The guard fixed Vittoria with a gaze clearly intended to intimidate. Vittoria did not flinch.

“What’s that?” the guard said, pointing to a faint square bulge in the front pocket of her shorts. Vittoria removed an ultrathin cell phone. The guard took it, clicked it on, waited for a dial tone, and then, apparently satisfied that it was indeed nothing more than a phone, returned it to her. Vittoria slid it back into her pocket.

“Turn around, please,” the guard said.

Vittoria obliged, holding her arms out and rotating a full 360 degrees.

The guard carefully studied her. Langdon had already decided that Vittoria’s form-fitting shorts and blouse were not bulging anywhere they shouldn’t have been. Apparently the guard came to the same conclusion.

“Thank you. This way please.”

The Swiss Guard chopper churned in neutral as Langdon and Vittoria approached. Vittoria boarded first, like a seasoned pro, barely even stooping as she passed beneath the whirling rotors. Langdon held back a moment.

“No chance of a car?” he yelled, half-joking to the Swiss Guard, who was climbing in the pilot’s seat. The man did not answer.

Langdon knew that with Rome’s maniacal drivers, flying was probably safer anyway. He took a deep breath and boarded, stooping cautiously as he passed beneath the spinning rotors. As the guard fired up the engines, Vittoria called out, “Have you located the canister?”

The guard glanced over his shoulder, looking confused. “The what?”

“The canister. You called CERN about a canister?”

The man shrugged. “No idea what you’re talking about. We’ve been very busy today. My commander told me to pick you up. That’s all I know.”

Vittoria gave Langdon an unsettled look.

“Buckle up, please,” the pilot said as the engine revved.

Langdon reached for his seat belt and strapped himself in. The tiny fuselage seemed to shrink around him. Then with a roar, the craft shot up and banked sharply north toward Rome.
Rome
. . . the
caput mundi,
where Caesar once ruled, where St. Peter was crucified. The cradle of modern civilization. And at its core . . . a ticking bomb.

33

R ome from the air is a labyrinth—an indecipherable maze of ancient roadways winding around buildings, fountains, and crumbling ruins.

The Vatican chopper stayed low in the sky as it sliced northwest through the permanent smog layer coughed up by the congestion below. Langdon gazed down at the mopeds, sight-seeing buses, and armies of miniature Fiat sedans buzzing around rotaries in all directions.
Koyaanisqatsi,
he thought, recalling the Hopi term for “life out of balance.”

Vittoria sat in silent determination in the seat beside him.

The chopper banked hard.

His stomach dropping, Langdon gazed farther into the distance. His eyes found the crumbling ruins of the Roman Coliseum. The Coliseum, Langdon had always thought, was one of history’s greatest ironies. Now a dignified symbol for the rise of human culture and civilization, the stadium had been built to host centuries of barbaric events—hungry lions shredding prisoners, armies of slaves battling to the death, gang rapes of exotic women captured from far-off lands, as well as public beheadings and castrations. It was ironic, Langdon thought, or perhaps fitting, that the Coliseum had served as the architectural blueprint for Harvard’s Soldier Field—the football stadium where the ancient traditions of savagery were reenacted every fall . . . crazed fans screaming for bloodshed as Harvard battled Yale. As the chopper headed north, Langdon spied the Roman Forum—the heart of pre-Christian Rome. The decaying columns looked like toppled gravestones in a cemetery that had somehow avoided being swallowed by the metropolis surrounding it.

To the west the wide basin of the Tiber River wound enormous arcs across the city. Even from the air Langdon could tell the water was deep. The churning currents were brown, filled with silt and foam from heavy rains.

“Straight ahead,” the pilot said, climbing higher.

Langdon and Vittoria looked out and saw it. Like a mountain parting the morning fog, the colossal dome rose out of the haze before them: St. Peter’s Basilica.

“Now
that,”
Langdon said to Vittoria, “is something Michelangelo got right.”

Langdon had never seen St. Peter’s from the air. The marble façade blazed like fire in the afternoon sun. Adorned with 140 statues of saints, martyrs, and angels, the Herculean edifice stretched two football fields wide and a staggering
six
long. The cavernous interior of the basilica had room for over 60,000

worshipers . . . over one hundred times the population of Vatican City, the smallest country in the world. Incredibly, though, not even a citadel of this magnitude could dwarf the piazza before it. A sprawling expanse of granite, St. Peter’s Square was a staggering open space in the congestion of Rome, like a classical Central Park. In front of the basilica, bordering the vast oval common, 284 columns swept outward in four concentric arcs of diminishing size . . . an architectural
trompe de l’oiel
used to heighten the piazza’s sense of grandeur.

As he stared at the magnificent shrine before him, Langdon wondered what St. Peter would think if he were here now. The Saint had died a gruesome death, crucified upside down on this very spot. Now he rested in the most sacred of tombs, buried five stories down, directly beneath the central cupola of the basilica.

“Vatican City,” the pilot said, sounding anything but welcoming.

Langdon looked out at the towering stone bastions that loomed ahead—impenetrable fortifications surrounding the complex . . . a strangely earthly defense for a spiritual world of secrets, power, and mystery.

“Look!” Vittoria said suddenly, grabbing Langdon’s arm. She motioned frantically downward toward St. Peter’s Square directly beneath them. Langdon put his face to the window and looked.

“Over there,” she said, pointing.

Langdon looked. The rear of the piazza looked like a parking lot crowded with a dozen or so trailer trucks. Huge satellite dishes pointed skyward from the roof of every truck. The dishes were emblazoned with familiar names:

VIDEO ITALIA

BBC

Langdon felt suddenly confused, wondering if the news of the antimatter had already leaked out. Vittoria seemed suddenly tense. “Why is the press here? What’s going on?”

The pilot turned and gave her an odd look over his shoulder. “What’s going on? You don’t know?”

“No,” she fired back, her accent husky and strong.

“Il Conclavo,”
he said. “It is to be sealed in about an hour. The whole world is watching.”

Il Conclavo
.

The word rang a long moment in Langdon’s ears before dropping like a brick to the pit of his stomach.
Il
Conclavo
.
The Vatican Conclave
. How could he have forgotten? It had been in the news recently. Fifteen days ago, the Pope, after a tremendously popular twelve-year reign, had passed away. Every paper in the world had carried the story about the Pope’s fatal stroke while sleeping—a sudden and unexpected death many whispered was suspicious. But now, in keeping with the sacred tradition, fifteen days after the death of a Pope, the Vatican was holding
Il Conclavo
—the sacred ceremony in which the 165 cardinals of the world—the most powerful men in Christendom—gathered in Vatican City to elect the new Pope.
Every cardinal on the planet is here today,
Langdon thought as the chopper passed over St. Peter’s Basilica. The expansive inner world of Vatican City spread out beneath him.
The entire power structure
of the Roman Catholic Church is sitting on a time bomb
.