INT ANTIMATTER LAB DAY

--- that otherworldly drop, also round and white, a perfect match

for the host, but so different, hovering in the tube like a hot

blob of mercury, defying gravity.

Everything abruptly goes black and a title bleeds on screen:

ANGELS AND DEMONS

CUT TO:

INT HARVARD COLLEGE - NATATORIUM DAWN

The bottom of a swimming pool. A lithe figure SLASHES like a

knife through the water, doing laps.

The swimmer is the only one in the pool, but still pushes like

he's got someone to beat. His strokes echo off vacant bleachers

in an oldish college natatorium.

As he reaches the end of the pool, he sees a murky figure through

the water. The swimmer stops, pulls off his goggles.

ROBERT LANGDON is fiftyish, but looks ten years younger, must have

something to do with two hundred laps at dawn every day.

CLAUDIO VINCENZO is heavier, dressed in a sport jacket and slacks,

looks exhausted. He speaks with an Italian accent.

VINCENZO

Professor Langdon?

LANGDON

Swim might help your jet lag.

VINCENZO

I beg your pardon?

Langdon gets out and pulls a towel off a nearby bench.

LANGDON

(GESTURING)

Bags under your eyes, up at five a.m.,

Italian accent... Do I hear Naples in

those Rs?

7.

VINCENZO

(smiles, shows an ID)

Claudio Vincenzo, Corpo della

Gendarmeria Vaticano.

LANGDON

Vatican Police? I was expecting

another letter.

(Vincenzo looks confused)

My request for access to the Archives?

Vincenzo has no idea what he's talking about.

LANGDON (cont'd)

Shouldn't you be in Rome? Busy time

for you guys.

VINCENZO

In fact I was in New York, on

vacation. I got a call in the

middle of the night --- find Robert

Langdon. A matter of great urgency.

LANGDON

Urgent Vatican business, involving me?

I doubt that.

He heads for the locker room. Vincenzo calls after him.

VINCENZO

They said to show you this.

Langdon turns back. Vincenzo's holding a single sheet of paper in

his right hand. Langdon, curious, makes his way back to him.

Takes the paper ---

--- and, it is safe to say, feels the earth give way beneath his

feet. He looks up, eyes wide, and mutters a single word:

LANGDON

llluminati?

CUT TO:

EXT HARVARD CAMPUS DAWN

As the sun comes up, Langdon and Vincenzo leave the natatorium.

VINCENZO

Yes, of course, but it couldn't be

the llluminati as we knew them, they

disappeared a hundred years ago.

8.

LANGDON

Did they? Look at the paper.

VINCENZO

I've seen it.

LANGDON

Look again.

Vincenzo looks at it. The word llluminati is written in ornate

script. Vincenzo looks back up --- so?

LANGDON (cont'd)

Turn it upside down.

Vincenzo does. Incredibly, the word reads exactly the same way

upside down.

LANGDON (cont'd)

It's called an ambigram, the same

backwards and forwards. That's common

in a symbol, like a Jewish star, or

yin-yang, or a swastika, but this is a

word. People have searched for the

llluminati ambigrammatic symbol for

four centuries, modern symbologists

even tried to create it, but nobody

could pull it off, not even by

computer. Most had concluded it was a

myth. I wrote a book about it.

(REALIZING)

Which is why you're here, isn't it?

VINCENZO

"The Art of the llluminati," by Robert

Langdon.

CUT TO:

INT LANGDON'S APARTMENT DAY

A hand skims along a bookcase and stops at that very title, a

heavy academic tome. Langdon pulls it out and drops it on the

desk in his apartment with a THUD.

(The apartment is cluttered with esoterica, the home of a man

whose taste in furnishings was very fashionable about four hundred

years ago. A single man -- no kid stuff, no cats.)

Langdon flips the book open to an illustrated section in the

middle, filled with renderings of previous attempts to create the

symbol he now holds in his hand.

9.

LANGDON

Incredible. Either someone just

figured out how to make this, or they

found it. Recently. Which would

mean the llluminati have returned.

(looks at Vincenzo)

An ancient brotherhood, enemies of the

church, surfacing just after the death

of a Pope? I'd pull you off

vacation too.

VINCENZO

It's worse than just that. Four

cardinals were kidnapped from their

quarters inside the Vatican some time

between three and five a.m. this

morning. Shortly afterward, the Office

of the Swiss Guard received that

document, along with the threat that

the Cardinals will be publicly

executed, one per hour, starting at

seven p.m. tonight, in Rome.

LANGDON

(mind racing ahead)

Conclave?

VINCENZO

Was to begin today. We have

postponed its start for a few hours, a

story of illness, there are no

suspicions. Yet.

LANGDON

What do you want from me?

VINCENZO

The perpetrators of this heinous act

sent that -- ambigram, you say? -- as a

provocation, a taunt. But it may

also be their undoing. If you can

help us learn their identity, perhaps

we can stop them.

LANGDON

Why me?

VINCENZO

Your expertise. Your erudition. And

your involvement with recent Church --

shall we say "mysteries?"

10.

LANGDON

I wasn't under the impression that

episode had endeared me to the

Vatican.

VINCENZO

Oh, it didn't. But it made you --

what is the word?

(Italian pronunciation)

Formidable. Formidable. A plane

is standing by twenty minutes from

here. Will you come with me?

Langdon doesn't move, just stares at the ambigram, still amazed.

VINCENZO (cont'd)

Professor Langdon, you have spent ten

years of your academic life searching

for the very symbol you now hold in

your hand. And the madman who

created it, or who knows the secrets

of its origin-- that person is in Rome.

(checks his watch)

How much longer must we pretend you

have not already decided to come?

CUT TO:

EXT AIRPORT DAY

A small private plane SCREAMS into the sky.

EXT ROME DAY

We soar over Rome, the Eternal City. A helicopter WHOOSHES into

frame below us.

INT HELICOPTER DAY

The papal helicopter is plush inside, and nearly silent. A very

pricey piece of equipment. Vincenzo stares out the window.

VINCENZO

If the llluminati have returned and

are in Rome, we will hunt them down

and kill them.

Langdon, seated across from him, stifles a laugh.

LANGDON

Spoken like a Roman Catholic.

Vincenzo looks at him sharply.

11.

LANGDON (cont'd)

The llluminati didn't become violent

anti-Papists until the 17th century.

Initially, they were physicists,

mathematicians, astronomers. Their

name means "the Enlightened Ones." In

the 1500s, they started meeting

secretly to share their concerns about

the church's inaccurate teachings.

They were dedicated to the quest for

scientific truth. And for that, the

church -- to use your words -- hunted

them down and killed them. Drove

them underground.

Langdon turns and looks out the front window of the helicopter as,

up ahead, the marble facade of St. Peter's Basilica blazes like

fire in the afternoon sun.

LANGDON (cont'd)

Into a secret society.

EXT ST. PETER'S SQUARE DAY

Pulling away from the helicopter, we see a coat of arms emblazoned

on its side -- two skeleton keys crossing a shield and papal crown.

The helicopter SWOOPS over St. Peter's Square, filled with more

tourists than usual, due to the impending start of Conclave.

We drift toward a structure on the far side of the Square, closer

to its huge, ornate windows. As we approach, large swaths of

black drop down, draping over the windows, closing off our view.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 552