Page 170 of The Lost Symbol

“At Fifteenth,” Langdon said, “turn right!”

Simkins followed his navigator, and moments later, Langdon had pointed out a nearly invisible, unpaved access road that bisected the gardens behind the House of the Temple. Simkins turned in to the drive and gunned the Lexus toward the rear of the building.

“Look!” Langdon said, pointing to the lone vehicle parked near the rear entrance. It was a large van. “They’re here.”

Simkins parked the SUV and killed the engine. Quietly, everyone got out and prepared to move in. Simkins stared up at the monolithic structure. “You say the Temple Room is at the top?”

Langdon nodded, pointing all the way to the pinnacle of the building. “That flat area on top of the pyramid is actually a skylight.”

Simkins spun back to Langdon. “The Temple Room has a skylight?”

Langdon gave him an odd look. “Of course. An oculus to heaven . . . directly above the altar.”

The UH-60 sat idling at Dupont Circle.

In the passenger seat, Sato gnawed at her fingernails, awaiting news from her team.

Finally, Simkins’s voice crackled over the radio. “Director?”

“Sato here,” she barked.

“We’re entering the building, but I have some additional recon for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Mr. Langdon just informed me that the room in which the target is most likely located has a very large skylight.”

Sato considered the information for several seconds. “Understood. Thank you.”

Simkins signed off.

Sato spit out a fingernail and turned to the pilot. “Take her up.”

CHAPTER 121

Like any parent who had lost a child, Peter Solomon had often imagined how old his boy would be now . . . what he would look like . . . and what he would have become.

Peter Solomon now had his answers.

The massive tattooed creature before him had begun life as a tiny, precious infant . . . baby Zach curled up in a wicker bassinette . . . taking his first fumbling steps across Peter’s study . . . learning to speak his first words. The fact that evil could spring from an innocent child in a loving family remained one of the paradoxes of the human soul. Peter had been forced to accept early on that although his own blood flowed in his son’s veins, the heart pumping that blood was his son’s own. Unique and singular . . . as if randomly chosen from the universe.

My son . . . he killed my mother, my friend Robert Langdon, and possibly my sister.

An icy numbness flooded Peter’s heart as he searched his son’s eyes for any connection . . . anything familiar. The man’s eyes, however, although gray like Peter’s, were those of a total stranger, filled with a hatred and a vengefulness that were almost otherworldly.

“Are you strong enough?” his son taunted, glancing at the Akedah knife gripped in Peter’s hand. “Can you finish what you started all those years ago?”

“Son . . .” Solomon barely recognized his own voice. “I . . . I loved . . . you.”

“Twice you tried to kill me. You abandoned me in prison. You shot me on Zach’s bridge. Now finish it!”

For an instant, Solomon felt like he was floating outside his own body. He no longer recognized himself. He was missing a hand, was totally bald, dressed in a black robe, sitting in a wheelchair, and clutching an ancient knife.

“Finish it!” the man shouted again, the tattoos on his naked chest rippling. “Killing me is the only way you can save Katherine . . . the only way to save your brotherhood!”

Solomon felt his gaze move to the laptop and cellular modem on the pigskin chair.

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