Page 195 of The Secret of Secrets

“Don’t you see, Katherine? The note wasn’t delivered from outside…The person who left it was inside the apartment the whole time!”

A creeping chill overtook her. He was already hiding inside. “In the hall closet…” she whispered, picturing the dark-haired Russian waiting for a quiet moment…emerging from the closet…sliding the note partway under the door…knocking loudly on the inside of the door…. and immediately disappearing back into the closet. It was a brilliant trick. Both Sasha and Robert were completely fooled.

“No,” Langdon said, his face now ashen. “Not in the closet.” He looked as disturbed as she could remember seeing him. “Nobody was in the closet. The hiding place was…far more ingenious.” His voice was tremulous now. “I can’t believe I never saw any of this…”

“What didn’t you see? I don’t understand.”

Langdon stood up. “You talked about it in your lecture last night,” Langdon said, locking eyes with Katherine. “You described it as evidence of nonlocal consciousness…proof that our brains work as receivers, and if they are damaged, the signals can get confused…”

“You mean sudden savant syndrome?” she said. “Okay, but I don’t see—”

“No! What you described right after that!”

Katherine thought a moment, recalling the sequence of her speech, and suddenly it dawned on her what Langdon was referring to. She needed only an instant more to grasp what he was trying to tell her. “Oh…Robert…you can’t possibly think—”

“I found this in the bathroom,” he said, holding up something tiny, pinched between his thumb and index finger. “It was stuck on the inside of his dirty skullcap.”

Katherine saw what Langdon was holding.

If he was correct, then everything they had believed about the golem figure was dead wrong.

Chapter 123

Steam filled the lab shower at Crucifix Bastion. The Golěm tipped his head back and savored the softness of the water on his face. Gently massaging his cheeks with his palms, he could feel the final remnants of dried clay releasing from his flesh…the last of The Golěm dissolving away.

As he ran his hands over his head, he realized that in his exhaustion he’d forgotten to remove his skullcap. Finding the edge of the skintight cap with his fingertips, he pried it away from his forehead, wincing as it slid backward off his head, inevitably tearing several hairs from his scalp.

The Golěm dropped the cap onto the floor and gently massaged his scalp, letting the water flow through his thick hair, rinsing away any remaining mud. Only after the water spiraling down the drain had become perfectly clear did he step from the shower.

Wrapped in a towel, he stood at the sink, taking a rare moment to study himself in the mirror.

The eyes staring back at him were bloodshot and weary…a face scarred by a violent past. He knew this was not a pretty face, and yet it was the face he had been given.

I have learned to see beauty in it, he thought.

Over time, The Golěm had come to love this face…the way the blond hair fell to the shoulders and framed the innocent blue eyes. Even the crooked nose had a charm to him now. He pictured the candlelit photo on the wall of his svatyně and smiled.

“Sasha,” he whispered to his reflection. “I wish you could know me.”

The blond woman in the mirror did not reply.

Despite Sasha’s bodily presence in the room, she heard nothing. The Golěm had locked her away in a sleeplike void where she was blissfully unaware of all things, including even herself.

Although they shared this physical form, The Golěm had established his dominance long ago, always in control, carefully filtering what Sasha witnessed, remembered, understood. He did this for her protection, to shelter her gentle soul. He was the vault to hold her pain, the army to fight her battles.

You summoned me, Sasha…and I answered.

The Golěm would never forget that horrifying moment in the Russian psychiatric hospital, when Sasha’s soul, unable to endure another moment of suffering, had called out to the universe in desperate need of help.

The moment of my birth…

Few recalled the instant they came to be, and yet The Golěm recalled his. He had flickered abruptly into consciousness, awaking to sheer horror, finding himself trapped in a body that was being mercilessly beaten. Overcome with pain and outrage, he instinctively rose up, summoning wells of strength this body had never accessed, and he strangled his attacker’s neck. Standing over the lifeless body of Sasha’s night nurse, The Golěm had heard his own hollow voice for the very first time.

“I am your protector, Sasha. You are safe now.”

In the foyer outside Sasha’s apartment, Katherine Solomon’s brain struggled to organize the cascade of disquieting thoughts brought on by Langdon’s words. He was correct that her lecture last night had included a description of sudden savant syndrome—a condition she believed was clear evidence of nonlocal consciousness—a damaged brain receiving multiple signals.

He was also correct that she had then discussed a second remarkable phenomenon.