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CHAPTER 13
For several seconds, Langdon stared in wonder at the photograph of Sauniere's postscript. P. S. Find Robert Langdon.He felt as if the floor were tilting beneath his feet. Sauniere left a postscript with my name on it? In his wildest dreams, Langdon could not fathom why.
"Now do you understand," Sophie said, her eyes urgent," why Fache ordered you here tonight, and why you are his primary suspect?"
The only thing Langdon understood at the moment was why Fache had looked so smug when Langdon suggested Sauniere would have accused his killer by name.
Find Robert Langdon.
"Why would Sauniere write this?" Langdon demanded, his confusion now giving way to anger. "Why would I want to kill Jacques Sauniere?"
"Fache has yet to uncover a motive, but he has been recording his entire conversation with you tonight in hopes you might reveal one."
Langdon opened his mouth, but still no words came.
"He's fitted with a miniature microphone," Sophie explained. "It's connected to a transmitter in his pocket that radios the signal back to the command post."
"This is impossible," Langdon stammered. "I have an alibi. I went directly back to my hotel after my lecture. You can ask the hotel desk."
"Fache already did. His report shows you retrieving your room key from the concierge at about ten- thirty. Unfortunately, the time of the murder was closer to eleven. You easily could have left your hotel room unseen."
"This is insanity! Fache has no evidence!"
Sophie's eyes widened as if to say: No evidence?" Mr. Langdon, your name is written on the floor beside the body, and Sauniere's date book says you were with him at approximately the time of the murder." She paused. "Fache has more than enough evidence to take you into custody for questioning."
Langdon suddenly sensed that he needed a lawyer. "I didn't do this."
Sophie sighed. "This is not American television, Mr. Langdon. In France, the laws protect the police, not criminals. Unfortunately, in this case, there is also the media consideration. Jacques Sauniere was a very prominent and well-loved figure in Paris, and his murder will be news in the morning. Fache will be under immediate pressure to make a statement, and he looks a lot better having a suspect in custody already. Whether or not you are guilty, you most certainly will be held by DCPJ until they can figure out what really happened."
Langdon felt like a caged animal. "Why are you telling me all this?"
"Because, Mr. Langdon, I believe you are innocent." Sophie looked away for a moment and then back into his eyes. "And also because it is partially my fault that you're in trouble."
"I'm sorry? It's your fault Sauniere is trying to frame me?"
"Sauniere wasn't trying to frame you. It was a mistake. That message on the floor was meant for me."
Langdon needed a minute to process that one. "I beg your pardon?"
"That message wasn't for the police. He wrote it for me.I think he was forced to do everything in such a hurry that he just didn't realize how it would look to the police." She paused. "The numbered code is meaningless. Sauniere wrote it to make sure the investigation included cryptographers, ensuring that I would know as soon as possible what had happened to him."
Langdon felt himself losing touch fast. Whether or not Sophie Neveu had lost her mind was at this point up for grabs, but at least Langdon now understood why she was trying to help him. P. S.Find Robert Langdon.She apparently believed the curator had left her a cryptic postscript telling her to find Langdon. "But why do you think his message was for you?"
"The Vitruvian Man,"she said flatly. "That particular sketch has always been my favorite Da Vinci work. Tonight he used it to catch my attention."
"Hold on. You're saying the curator knew your favorite piece of art?" She nodded. "I'm sorry. This is all coming out of order. Jacques Sauniere and I..."
Sophie's voice caught, and Langdon heard a sudden melancholy there, a painful past, simmering just below the surface. Sophie and Jacques Sauniere apparently had some kind of special relationship. Langdon studied the beautiful young woman before him, well aware that aging men in France often took young mistresses. Even so, Sophie Neveu as a" kept woman" somehow didn't seem to fit.
"We had a falling-out ten years ago," Sophie said, her voice a whisper now. "We've barely spoken since. Tonight, when Crypto got the call that he had been murdered, and I saw the images of his body and text on the floor, I realized he was trying to send me a message." "Because of The Vitruvian Man?" "Yes. And the letters P. S."
"Post Script?"
She shook her head. "P. S. are my initials." "But your name is Sophie Neveu." She looked away. "P. S. is the nickname he called me when I lived with him." She blushed. "It stood for Princesse Sophie"
Langdon had no response.
"Silly, I know," she said. "But it was years ago. When I was a little girl." "You knew him when you were a little girl?" "Quite well," she said, her eyes welling now with emotion. "Jacques Sauniere was my grandfather."
CHAPTER 14
"Where's Langdon?" Fache demanded, exhaling the last of a cigarette as he paced back into the command post.
"Still in the men's room, sir." Lieutenant Collet had been expecting the question. Fache grumbled," Taking his time, I see." The captain eyed the GPS dot over Collet's shoulder, and Collet could almost hear the wheels turning. Fache was fighting the urge to go check on Langdon. Ideally, the subject of an observation was allowed the most time and freedom possible, lulling him into a false sense of security. Langdon needed to return of his own volition. Still, it had been almost ten minutes.
Too long.
"Any chance Langdon is onto us?" Fache asked.
Collet shook his head. "We're still seeing small movements inside the men's room, so the GPS dot is obviously still on him. Perhaps he feels ill? If he had found the dot, he would have removed it and tried to run."
Fache checked his watch. "Fine."
Still Fache seemed preoccupied. All evening, Collet had sensed an atypical intensity in his captain.
Usually detached and cool under pressure, Fache tonight seemed emotionally engaged, as if this were somehow a personal matter for him.
Not surprising, Collet thought. Fache needs this arrest desperately.Recently the Board of Ministers and the media had become more openly critical of Fache's aggressive tactics, his clashes with powerful foreign embassies, and his gross over budgeting on new technologies. Tonight, a high-tech, high-profile arrest of an American would go a long way to silence Fache's critics, helping him secure the job a few more years until he could retire with the lucrative pension. God knows he needs the pension, Collet thought. Fache's zeal for technology had hurt him both professionally and personally. Fache was rumored to have invested his entire savings in the technology craze a few years back and lost his shirt. And Fache is a man who wears only the finest shirts.
Tonight, there was still plenty of time. Sophie Neveu's odd interruption, though unfortunate, had been only a minor wrinkle. She was gone now, and Fache still had cards to play. He had yet to inform Langdon that his name had been scrawled on the floor by the victim. P. S.Find Robert Langdon.The American's reaction to that little bit of evidence would be telling indeed.
"Captain?" one of the DCPJ agents now called from across the office. "I think you better take this call." He was holding out a telephone receiver, looking concerned.
"Who is it?" Fache said.
The agent frowned. "It's the director of our Cryptology Department." "And?" "It's about Sophie Neveu, sir. Something is not quite right."
CHAPTER 15
It was time.
Silas felt strong as he stepped from the black Audi, the nighttime breeze rustling his loose-fitting robe. The winds of change are in the air.He knew the task before him would require more finesse than force, and he left his handgun in the car. The thirteen-round Heckler Koch USP 40 had been provided by the Teacher.
A weapon of death has no place in a house of God.
The plaza before the great church was deserted at this hour, the only visible souls on the far side of Place Saint-Sulpice a couple of teenage hookers showing their wares to the late night tourist traffic. Their nubile bodies sent a familiar longing to Silas's loins. His thigh flexed instinctively, causing the barbed cilice belt to cut painfully into his flesh.
The lust evaporated instantly. For ten years now, Silas had faithfully denied himself all sexual indulgence, even self-administered. It was The Way.He knew he had sacrificed much to follow Opus Dei, but he had received much more in return. A vow of celibacy and the relinquishment of all personal assets hardly seemed a sacrifice. Considering the poverty from which he had come and the sexual horrors he had endured in prison, celibacy was a welcome change.
Now, having returned to France for the first time since being arrested and shipped to prison in Andorra, Silas could feel his homeland testing him, dragging violent memories from his redeemed soul. You have been reborn, he reminded himself. His service to God today had required the sin of murder, and it was a sacrifice Silas knew he would have to hold silently in his heart for all eternity.
The measure of your faith is the measure of the pain you can endure, the Teacher had told him. Silas was no stranger to pain and felt eager to prove himself to the Teacher, the one who had assured him his actions were ordained by a higher power.
"Hago la obra de Dios,"Silas whispered, moving now toward the church entrance.
Pausing in the shadow of the massive doorway, he took a deep breath. It was not until this instant that he truly realized what he was about to do, and what awaited him inside.
The keystone. It will lead us to our final goal.
He raised his ghost-white fist and banged three times on the door. Moments later, the bolts of the enormous wooden portal began to move.
CHAPTER 16
Sophie wondered how long it would take Fache to figure out she had not left the building. Seeing that Langdon was clearly overwhelmed, Sophie questioned whether she had done the right thing by cornering him here in the men's room.
What else was I supposed to do?
She pictured her grandfather's body, naked and spread-eagle on the floor. There was a time when he had meant the world to her, yet tonight, Sophie was surprised to feel almost no sadness for the man. Jacques Sauniere was a stranger to her now. Their relationship had evaporated in a single instant one March night when she was twenty-two. Ten years ago.Sophie had come home a few days early from graduate university in England and mistakenly witnessed her grandfather engaged in something Sophie was obviously not supposed to see. It was an image she barely could believe to this day.
If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes...
Too ashamed and stunned to endure her grandfather's pained attempts to explain, Sophie immediately moved out on her own, taking money she had saved, and getting a small flat with some roommates. She vowed never to speak to anyone about what she had seen. Her grandfather tried desperately to reach her, sending cards and letters, begging Sophie to meet him so he could explain. Explain how!? Sophie never responded except once - to forbid him ever to call her or try to meet her in public. She was afraid his explanation would be more terrifying than the incident itself.
Incredibly, Sauniere had never given up on her, and Sophie now possessed a decade's worth of correspondence unopened in a dresser drawer. To her grandfather's credit, he had never once disobeyed her request and phoned her.
Until this afternoon.
