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CHAPTER 76
Freedom Plaza is a map.
Located at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Thirteenth Street, the plaza's vast surface of inlaid stone depicts the streets of Washington as they were originally envisioned by Pierre L'Enfant. The plaza is a popular tourist destination not only because the giant map is fun to walk on, but also because Martin Luther King Jr., for whom Freedom Plaza is named, wrote much of his "I Have a Dream" speech in the nearby Willard Hotel.
D.C. cabdriver Omar Amirana brought tourists to Freedom Plaza all the time, but tonight, his two passengers were obviously no ordinary sightseers. The CIA is chasing them? Omar had barely come to a stop at the curb before the man and woman had jumped out.
"Stay right here!" the man in the tweed coat told Omar. "We'll be right back!"
Omar watched the two people dash out onto the wide-open spaces of the enormous map, pointing and shouting as they scanned the geometry of intersecting streets. Omar grabbed his cell phone off the dashboard. "Sir, are you still there?"
"Yes, Omar!" a voice shouted, barely audible over a thundering noise on his end of the line. "Where are they now?"
"Out on the map. It seems like they're looking for something."
"Do not let them out of your sight," the agent shouted. "I'm almost there!"
Omar watched as the two fugitives quickly found the plaza's famous Great Seal--one of the largest bronze medallions ever cast. They stood over it a moment and quickly began pointing to the southwest. Then the man in tweed came racing back toward the cab. Omar quickly set his phone down on the dashboard as the man arrived, breathless.
"Which direction is Alexandria, Virginia?" he demanded.
"Alexandria?" Omar pointed southwest, the exact same direction the man and woman had just pointed toward.
"I knew it!" the man whispered beneath his breath. He spun and shouted back to the woman. "You're right! Alexandria!"
The woman now pointed across the plaza to an illuminated "Metro" sign nearby. "The Blue Line goes directly there. We want King Street Station!"
Omar felt a surge of panic. Oh no.
The man turned back to Omar and handed him entirely too many bills for the fare. "Thanks. We're all set." He hoisted his leather bag and ran off.
"Wait! I can drive you! I go there all the time!"
But it was too late. The man and woman were already dashing across the plaza. They disappeared down the stairs into the Metro Center subway station.
Omar grabbed his cell phone. "Sir! They ran down into the subway! I couldn't stop them! They're taking the Blue Line to Alexandria!"
"Stay right there!" the agent shouted. "I'll be there in fifteen seconds!"
Omar looked down at the wad of bills the man had given him. The bill on top was apparently the one they had been writing on. It had a Jewish star on top of the Great Seal of the United States. Sure enough, the star's points fell on letters that spelled MASON.
Without warning, Omar felt a deafening vibration all around him, as if a tractor trailer were about to collide with his cab. He looked up, but the street was deserted. The noise increased, and suddenly a sleek black helicopter dropped down out of the night and landed hard in the middle of the plaza map.
A group of black-clad men jumped out. Most ran toward the subway station, but one came dashing toward Omar's cab. He yanked open the passenger door. "Omar? Is that you?"
Omar nodded, speechless.
"Did they say where they were headed?" the agent demanded.
"Alexandria! King Street Station," Omar blurted. "I offered to drive, but--"
"Did they say where in Alexandria they were going?"
"No! They looked at the medallion of the Great Seal on the plaza, then they asked about Alexandria, and they paid me with this." He handed the agent the dollar bill with the bizarre diagram. As the agent studied the bill, Omar suddenly put it all together. The Masons! Alexandria! One of the most famous Masonic buildings in America was in Alexandria. "That's it!" he blurted. "The George Washington Masonic Memorial! It's directly across from King Street Station!"
"That it is," the agent said, apparently having just come to the same realization as the rest of the agents came sprinting back from the station.
"We missed them!" one of the men yelled. "Blue Line just left! They're not down there!"
Agent Simkins checked his watch and turned back to Omar. "How long does the subway take to Alexandria?" "Ten minutes at least. Probably more."
"Omar, you've done an excellent job. Thank you."
"Sure. What's this all about?!"
But Agent Simkins was already running back to the chopper, shouting as he went. "King Street Station! We'll get there before they do!"
Bewildered, Omar watched the great black bird lift off. It banked hard to the south across Pennsylvania Avenue, and then thundered off into the night.
Underneath the cabbie's feet, a subway train was picking up speed as it headed away from Freedom Plaza. On board, Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon sat breathless, neither one saying a word as the train whisked them toward their destination.
CHAPTER 77
The memory always began the same way.
He was falling . . . plummeting backward toward an ice-covered river at the bottom of a deep ravine. Above him, the merciless gray eyes of Peter Solomon stared down over the barrel of Andros's handgun. As he fell, the world above him receded, everything disappearing as he was enveloped by the cloud of billowing mist from the waterfall upstream.
For an instant, everything was white, like heaven.
Then he hit the ice.
Cold. Black. Pain.
He was tumbling . . . being dragged by a powerful force that pounded him relentlessly across rocks in an impossibly cold void. His lungs ached for air, and yet his chest muscles had contracted so violently in the cold that he was unable even to inhale.
I'm under the ice.
The ice near the waterfall was apparently thin on account of the turbulent water, and Andros had broken directly through it. Now he was being washed downstream, trapped beneath a transparent ceiling. He clawed at the underside of the ice, trying to break out, but he had no leverage. The searing pain from the bullet hole in his shoulder was evaporating, as was the sting of the bird shot; both were blotted out now by the crippling throb of his body going numb.
The current was accelerating, slingshotting him around a bend in the river. His body screamed for oxygen. Suddenly he was tangled in branches, lodged against a tree that had fallen into the water. Think! He groped wildly at the branch, working his way toward the surface, finding the spot where the branch pierced up through the ice. His fingertips found the tiny space of open water surrounding the branch, and he pulled at the edges, trying to break the hole wider; once, twice, the opening was growing, now several inches across.
Propping himself against the branch, he tipped his head back and pressed his mouth against the small opening. The winter air that poured into his lungs felt warm. The sudden burst of oxygen fueled his hope. He planted his feet on the tree trunk and pressed his back and shoulders forcefully upward. The ice around the fallen tree, perforated by branches and debris, was weakened already, and as he drove his powerful legs into the trunk, his head and shoulders broke through the ice, crashing up into the winter night. Air poured into his lungs. Still mostly submerged, he wriggled desperately upward, pushing with his legs, pulling with his arms, until finally he was out of the water, lying breathless on the bare ice.
Andros tore off his soaked ski mask and pocketed it, glancing back upstream for Peter Solomon. The bend in the river obscured his view. His chest was burning again. Quietly, he dragged a small branch over the hole in the ice in order to hide it. The hole would be frozen again by morning.
As Andros staggered into the woods, it began to snow. He had no idea how far he had run when he stumbled out of the woods onto an embankment beside a small highway. He was delirious and hypothermic. The snow was falling harder now, and a single set of headlights approached in the distance. Andros waved wildly, and the lone pickup truck immediately pulled over. It had Vermont plates. An old man in a red plaid shirt jumped out.
Andros staggered toward him, holding his bleeding chest. "A hunter . . . shot me! I need a . . . hospital!"
Without hesitation, the old man helped Andros up into the passenger seat of the truck and turned up the heater. "Where's the nearest hospital?!"
Andros had no idea, but he pointed south. "Next exit." We're not going to a hospital.
The old man from Vermont was reported missing the next day, but nobody had any idea where on his journey from Vermont he might have disappeared in the blinding snowstorm. Nor did anyone link his disappearance to the other news story that dominated the headlines the next day--the shocking murder of Isabel Solomon.
When Andros awoke, he was lying in a desolate bedroom of a cheap motel that had been boarded up for the season. He recalled breaking in and binding his wounds with torn bedsheets, and then burrowing into a flimsy bed beneath a pile of musty blankets. He was famished.
He limped to the bathroom and saw the pile of bloody bird-shot pellets in the sink. He vaguely recalled prying them out of his chest. Raising his eyes to the dirty mirror, he reluctantly unwrapped his bloody bandages to survey the damage. The hard muscles of his chest and abdomen had stopped the bird shot from penetrating too deep, and yet his body, once perfect, was now ruined with wounds. The single bullet fired by Peter Solomon had apparently gone cleanly through his shoulder, leaving a bloody crater.
Making matters worse, Andros had failed to obtain that for which he had traveled all this distance. The pyramid. His stomach growled, and he limped outside to the man's truck, hoping maybe to find food. The pickup was now covered with heavy snow, and Andros wondered how long he had been sleeping in this old motel. Thank God I woke up. Andros found no food anywhere in the front seat, but he did find some arthritis painkillers in the glove compartment. He took a handful, washing them down with several mouthfuls of snow.
I need food.
A few hours later, the pickup that pulled out from behind the old motel looked nothing like the truck that had pulled in two days earlier. The cab cap was missing, as were the hubcaps, bumper stickers, and all of the trim. The Vermont plates were gone, replaced by those from an old maintenance truck Andros had found parked by the motel Dumpster, into which he had thrown all the bloody sheets, bird shot, and other evidence that he had ever been at the motel.
Andros had not given up on the pyramid, but for the moment it would have to wait. He needed to hide, heal, and above all, eat. He found a roadside diner where he gorged himself on eggs, bacon, hash browns, and three glasses of orange juice. When he was done, he ordered more food to go. Back on the road, Andros listened to the truck's old radio. He had not seen a television or newspaper since his ordeal, and when he finally heard a local news station, the report stunned him.
"FBI investigators," a news announcer said, "continue their search for the armed intruder who murdered Isabel Solomon in her Potomac home two days ago. The murderer is believed to have fallen through the ice and been washed out to sea."
Andros froze. Murdered Isabel Solomon? He drove on in bewildered silence, listening to the full report.
It was time to get far, far away from this place.
The Upper West Side apartment offered breathtaking views of Central Park. Andros had chosen it because the sea of green outside his window reminded him of his lost view of the Adriatic. Although he knew he should be happy to be alive, he was not. The emptiness had never left him, and he found himself fixated on his failed attempt to steal Peter Solomon's pyramid.
Andros had spent long hours researching the Legend of the Masonic Pyramid, and although nobody seemed to agree on whether or not the pyramid was real, they all concurred on its famous promise of vast wisdom and power. The Masonic Pyramid is real, Andros told himself. My inside information is irrefutable.
Fate had placed the pyramid within Andros's reach, and he knew that ignoring it was like holding a winning lottery ticket and never cashing it in. I am the only non-Mason alive who knows the pyramid is real . . . as well as the identity of the man who guards it.
Months had passed, and although his body had healed, Andros was no longer the cocky specimen he had been in Greece. He had stopped working out, and he had stopped admiring himself naked in the mirror. He felt as if his body were beginning to show signs of age. His once-perfect skin was a patchwork of scars, and this only depressed him further. He still relied on the painkillers that had nursed him through his recovery, and he felt himself slipping back to the lifestyle that had put him in Soganlik Prison. He didn't care. The body craves what the body craves.
One night, he was in Greenwich Village buying drugs from a man whose forearm had been tattooed with a long, jagged lightning bolt. Andros asked him about it, and the man told him the tattoo was covering a long scar he had gotten in a car accident. "Seeing the scar every day reminded me of the accident," the dealer said, "and so I tattooed over it with a symbol of personal power. I took back control."
That night, high on his new stash of drugs, Andros staggered into a local tattoo parlor and took off his shirt. "I want to hide these scars," he announced. I want to take back control.
"Hide them?" The tattoo artist eyed his chest. "With what?"
"Tattoos."
"Yes . . . I mean tattoos of what?"
Andros shrugged, wanting nothing more than to hide the ugly reminders of his past. "I don't know. You choose."
The artist shook his head and handed Andros a pamphlet on the ancient and sacred tradition of tattooing. "Come back when you're ready."
Andros discovered that the New York Public Library had in its collection fifty-three books on tattooing, and within a few weeks, he had read them all. Having rediscovered his passion for reading, he began carrying entire backpacks of books back and forth between the library and his apartment, where he voraciously devoured them while overlooking Central Park.
