Where is your God now? 1 page

The pilot groaned, his headache worsening. He half considered grabbing the windshield’s vinyl covering and putting it up so he wouldn’t have to watch, but he knew he would be airborne in a matter of minutes. Lieutenant Chartrand had just radioed with terrible news. The camerlegno had been attacked by Maximilian Kohler and seriously injured. Chartrand, the American, and the woman were carrying the camerlegno out now so he could be evacuated to a hospital.

The pilot felt personally responsible for the attack. He reprimanded himself for not acting on his gut. Earlier, when he had picked up Kohler at the airport, he had sensed something in the scientist’s dead eyes. He couldn’t place it, but he didn’t like it. Not that it mattered. Rocher was running the show, and Rocher insisted this was the guy. Rocher had apparently been wrong.

A new clamor arose from the crowd, and the pilot looked over to see a line of cardinals processing solemnly out of the Vatican onto St. Peter’s Square. The cardinals’ relief to be leaving ground zero seemed to be quickly overcome by looks of bewilderment at the spectacle now going on outside the church.

The crowd noise intensified yet again. The pilot’s head pounded. He needed an aspirin. Maybe three. He didn’t like to fly on medication, but a few aspirin would certainly be less debilitating than this raging headache. He reached for the first‑aid kit, kept with assorted maps and manuals in a cargo box bolted between the two front seats. When he tried to open the box, though, he found it locked. He looked around for the key and then finally gave up. Tonight was clearly not his lucky night. He went back to massaging his temples.

Inside the darkened basilica, Langdon, Vittoria, and the two guards strained breathlessly toward the main exit. Unable to find anything more suitable, the four of them were transporting the wounded camerlegno on a narrow table, balancing the inert body between them as though on a stretcher. Outside the doors, the faint roar of human chaos was now audible. The camerlegno teetered on the brink of unconsciousness.

Time was running out.

It was 11:39 P.M. when Langdon stepped with the others from St. Peter’s Basilica. The glare that hit his eyes was searing. The media lights shone off the white marble like sunlight off a snowy tundra. Langdon squinted, trying to find refuge behind the façade’s enormous columns, but the light came from all directions. In front of him, a collage of massive video screens rose above the crowd.

Standing there atop the magnificent stairs that spilled down to the piazza below, Langdon felt like a reluctant player on the world’s biggest stage. Somewhere beyond the glaring lights, Langdon heard an idling helicopter and the roar of a hundred thousand voices. To their left, a procession of cardinals was now evacuating onto the square. They all stopped in apparent distress to see the scene now unfolding on the staircase.

"Careful now," Chartrand urged, sounding focused as the group began descending the stairs toward the helicopter.

Langdon felt like they were moving underwater. His arms ached from the weight of the camerlegno and the table. He wondered how the moment could get much less dignified. Then he saw the answer. The two BBC reporters had apparently been crossing the open square on their way back to the press area. But now, with the roar of the crowd, they had turned. Glick and Macri were now running back toward them. Macri’s camera was raised and rolling. Here come the vultures, Langdon thought.

"Alt!" Chartrand yelled. "Get back!"

But the reporters kept coming. Langdon guessed the other networks would take about six seconds to pick up this live BBC feed again. He was wrong. They took two. As if connected by some sort of universal consciousness, every last media screen in the piazza cut away from their countdown clocks and their Vatican experts and began transmitting the same picture–a jiggling action footage swooping up the Vatican stairs. Now, everywhere Langdon looked, he saw the camerlegno’s limp body in a Technicolor close‑up.

This is wrong! Langdon thought. He wanted to run down the stairs and interfere, but he could not. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. Whether it was the roar of the crowd or the cool night air that caused it, Langdon would never know, but at that moment, the inconceivable occurred.

Like a man awakening from a nightmare, the camerlegno’s eyes shot open and he sat bolt upright. Taken entirely by surprise, Langdon and the others fumbled with the shifting weight. The front of the table dipped. The camerlegno began to slide. They tried to recover by setting the table down, but it was too late. The camerlegno slid off the front. Incredibly, he did not fall. His feet hit the marble, and he swayed upright. He stood a moment, looking disoriented, and then, before anyone could stop him, he lurched forward, staggering down the stairs toward Macri.

"No!" Langdon screamed.

Chartrand rushed forward, trying to reign in the camerlegno. But the camerlegno turned on him, wild‑eyed, crazed. "Leave me!"

Chartrand jumped back.

The scene went from bad to worse. The camerlegno’s torn cassock, having been only laid over his chest by Chartrand, began to slip lower. For a moment, Langdon thought the garment might hold, but that moment passed. The cassock let go, sliding off his shoulders down around his waist.

The gasp that went up from the crowd seemed to travel around the globe and back in an instant. Cameras rolled, flashbulbs exploded. On media screens everywhere, the image of the camerlegno’s branded chest was projected, towering and in grisly detail. Some screens were even freezing the image and rotating it 180 degrees.

The ultimate Illuminati victory.

Langdon stared at the brand on the screens. Although it was the imprint of the square brand he had held earlier, the symbol now made sense. Perfect sense. The marking’s awesome power hit Langdon like a train.

Orientation. Langdon had forgotten the first rule of symbology. When is a square not a square? He had also forgotten that iron brands, just like rubber stamps, never looked like their imprints. They were in reverse. Langdon had been looking at the brand’s negative!

As the chaos grew, an old Illuminati quote echoed with new meaning: "A flawless diamond, born of the ancient elements with such perfection that all those who saw it could only stare in wonder."

Langdon knew now the myth was true.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

The Illuminati Diamond.

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 camerlegno… 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 camerlegno, 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno, in his torn cassock, with the scorched brand on his chest, looked like some sort of battered champion who had 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno could possibly be shouting them.

The camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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. "Camerlegno! 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno was nowhere to be seen.

"Camerlegno!" 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno. 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 camerlegno, he wondered where the man was headed. The camerlegno 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno. The specter seemed transparent, radiating light. Chartrand staggered to a stop, feeling a knot tighten in his chest. The camerlegno is glowing! 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 camerlegno had disappeared, he realized what had just happened. The camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno, he saw the camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno wheeled, obviously startled. "What are you doing!"

Langdon was surprised when their eyes met. The camerlegno 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 camerlegno said, his voice eerily sane. "I have just had a message. I know–"

"Camerlegno!" 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 camerlegno. 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 camerlegno.

"Signore," Chartrand pleaded. "You’re in shock. We need to leave this place. You cannot go down there. It’s suicide."

The camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno spoke quickly now. "The Illuminati have placed their tool of destruction on the very cornerstone of this church. At the foundation." He motioned 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno from entering the shaft, Chartrand had intervened, grabbing Langdon and holding on. Apparently, the young guard was now convinced the camerlegno knew what he was doing.

After a brief scuffle, Langdon had freed himself and pursued the camerlegno 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno’s message from above.

The message. This was the leap of faith Vittoria was still struggling to accept. Had God actually communicated with the camerlegno? 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno’s intentions were. Her awareness brought with it a fear like nothing she had ever known.

"Camerlegno, 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.

"Camerlegno!" 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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno’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 camerlegno was there, pulling the gate open. Langdon leapt, pushing the gate shut, blocking the camerlegno’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 camerlegno 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 camerlegno’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!"

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 647