Page 87 of The Lost Symbol

“No,” Andros replied, hotly now. “You killed your son. What kind of man leaves his son in a prison when he has the option to get him out! You killed your son! Not me.”

“You know nothing!” Solomon yelled, his voice filled with pain.

You’re wrong, Andros thought. I know everything.

Peter Solomon drew closer, only five yards away now, gun leveled. Andros’s chest was burning, and he could tell he was bleeding badly. The warmth ran down over his stomach. He looked over his shoulder at the drop. Impossible. He turned back to Solomon. “I know more about you than you think,” he whispered. “I know you are not the kind of man who kills in cold blood.”

Solomon stepped closer, taking dead aim.

“I’m warning you,” Andros said, “if you pull that trigger, I will haunt you forever.”

“You already will.” And with that, Solomon fired.

As he raced his black limousine back toward Kalorama Heights, the one who now called himself Mal’akh reflected on the miraculous events that had delivered him from certain death atop that icy ravine. He had been transformed forever. The gunshot had echoed only for an instant, and yet its effects had reverberated across decades. His body, once tanned and perfect, was now marred by scars from that night . . . scars he kept hidden beneath the tattooed symbols of his new identity.

I am Mal’akh.

This was my destiny all along.

He had walked through fire, been reduced to ashes, and then emerged again . . . transformed once more. Tonight would be the final step of his long and magnificent journey.

CHAPTER 58

The coyly nicknamed explosive Key4 had been developed by Special Forces specifically for opening locked doors with minimal collateral damage. Consisting primarily of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine with a diethylhexyl plasticizer, it was essentially a piece of C-4 rolled into paper-thin sheets for insertion into doorjambs. In the case of the library’s reading room, the explosive had worked perfectly.

Operation leader Agent Turner Simkins stepped over the wreckage of the doors and scanned the massive octagonal room for any signs of movement. Nothing.

“Kill the lights,” Simkins said.

A second agent found the wall panel, threw the switches, and plunged the room into darkness. In unison, all four men reached up and yanked down their night-vision headgear, adjusting the goggles over their eyes. They stood motionless, surveying the reading room, which now materialized in shades of luminescent green inside their goggles.

The scene remained unchanged.

Nobody made a dash for it in the dark.

The fugitives were probably unarmed, and yet the field team entered the room with weapons raised. In the darkness, their firearms projected four menacing rods of laser light. The men washed the beams in all directions, across the floor, up the far walls, into the balconies, probing the darkness. Oftentimes, a mere glimpse of a laser-sighted weapon in a darkened room was enough to induce instant surrender.

Apparently not tonight.

Still no movement.

Agent Simkins raised his hand, motioning his team into the space. Silently, the men fanned out. Moving cautiously up the center aisle, Simkins reached up and flipped a switch on his goggles, activating the newest addition to the CIA’s arsenal. Thermal imaging had been around for years, but recent advances in miniaturization, differential sensitivity, and dual-source integration had facilitated a new generation of vision enhancing equipment that gave field agents eyesight that bordered on superhuman.

We see in the dark. We see through walls. And now . . . we see back in time.

Thermal-imaging equipment had become so sensitive to heat differentials that it could detect not only a person’s location . . . but their previous locations. The ability to see into the past often proved the most valuable asset of all. And tonight, once again, it proved its worth. Agent Simkins now spied a thermal signature at one of the reading desks. The two wooden chairs luminesced in his goggles, registering a reddish-purple color, indicating those chairs were warmer than the other chairs in the room. The desk lamp’s bulb glowed orange. Obviously the two men had been sitting at the desk, but the question now was in which direction they had gone.

He found his answer on the central counter that surrounded the large wooden console in the middle of the room. A ghostly handprint, glowing crimson.

Weapon raised, Simkins moved toward the octagonal cabinet, training his laser sight across the surface. He circled until he saw an opening in the side of the console. Did they really corner themselves in a cabinet? The agent scanned the trim around the opening and saw another glowing handprint on it. Clearly someone had grabbed the doorjamb as he ducked inside the console.

The time for silence was over.

“Thermal signature!” Simkins shouted, pointing at the opening. “Flanks converge!”

His two flanks moved in from opposite sides, effectively surrounding the octagonal console.

Simkins moved toward the opening. Still ten feet away, he could see a light source within. “Light inside the console!” he shouted, hoping the sound of his voice might convince Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Langdon to exit the cabinet with their hands up.