The Lost Symbol

Langdon’s thoughts were spiraling now. . dreams, memories, hopes, fears, revelations. . all swirling above him in the Rotunda dome. As his eyes began to close again, he found himself staring at three words in Latin, painted within the Apotheosis.

E PLURIBUS UNUM.

«Out of many, one,» he thought, slipping off into sleep.

Epilogue

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

Faces gazed down at him. Where am I?

A moment later, he recalled where he was. He sat up slowly beneath the Apotheosis. His back felt stiff from lying on the hard catwalk.

Where’s Katherine?

Langdon checked his Mickey Mouse watch. It’s almost time. He pulled himself to his feet, peering cautiously over the banister into the gaping space below.

«Katherine?» he called out.

The word echoed back in the silence of the deserted Rotunda.

Retrieving his tweed jacket from the floor, he brushed it off and put it back on. He checked his pockets. The iron key the Architect had given him was gone.

Making his way back around the walkway, Langdon headed for the opening the Architect had shown them. . steep metal stairs ascending into cramped darkness. He began to climb. Higher and higher he ascended. Gradually the stairway became more narrow and more inclined. Still Langdon pushed on.

Just a little farther.

The steps had become almost ladderlike now, the passage frighteningly constricted. Finally, the stairs ended, and Langdon stepped up onto a small landing. Before him was a heavy metal door. The iron key was in the lock, and the door hung slightly ajar. He pushed, and the door creaked open. The air beyond felt cold. As Langdon stepped across the threshold into murky darkness, he realized he was now outside.

«I was just coming to get you,» Katherine said, smiling at him. «It’s almost time.»

When Langdon recognized his surroundings, he drew a startled breath. He was standing on a tiny skywalk that encircled the pinnacle of the U.S. Capitol Dome. Directly above him, the bronze Statue of Freedom gazed out over the sleeping capital city. she faced the east, where the first crimson splashes of dawn had begun to paint the horizon.

Katherine guided Langdon around the balcony until they were facing west, perfectly aligned with the National Mall. In the distance, the silhouette of the Washington Monument stood in the early-morning light. From this vantage point, the towering obelisk looked even more impressive than it had before.

«When it was built,» Katherine whispered, «it was the tallest structure on the entire planet.»

Langdon pictured the old sepia photographs of stonemasons on scaffolding, more than five hundred feet in the air, laying each block by hand, one by one.

We are builders, he thought. We are creators.

Since the beginning of time, man had sensed there was something special about himself. . something more. He had longed for powers he did not possess. He had dreamed of flying, of healing, and of transforming his world in every way imaginable.

And he had done just that.

Today, the shrines to man’s accomplishments adorned the National Mall. The Smithsonian museums burgeoned with our inventions, our art, our science, and the ideas of our great thinkers. They told the history of man as creator — from the stone tools in the Native American History Museum to the jets and rockets in the National Air and Space Museum.

If our ancestors could see us today, surely they would think us gods.

As Langdon peered through the predawn mist at the sprawling geometry of museums and monuments before him, his eyes returned to the Washington Monument. He pictured the lone Bible in the buried cornerstone and thought of how the Word of God was really the word of man.

He thought about the great circumpunct, and how it had been embedded in the circular plaza beneath the monument at the crossroads of America. Langdon thought suddenly of the little stone box Peter had entrusted to him. The cube, he now realized, had unhinged and opened to form the same exact geometrical form — a cross with a circumpunct at its center. Langdon had to laugh. Even that little box was hinting at this crossroads.

«Robert, look!» Katherine pointed to the top of the monument.

Langdon lifted his gaze but saw nothing.

Then, staring more intently, he glimpsed it.

Across the Mall, a tiny speck of golden sunlight was glinting off the highest tip of the towering obelisk. The shining pinpoint grew quickly brighter, more radiant, gleaming on the capstone’s aluminum peak. langdon watched in wonder as the light transformed into a beacon that hovered above the shadowed city. he pictured the tiny engraving on the east-facing side of the aluminum tip and realized to his amazement that the first ray of sunlight to hit the nation’s capital, every single day, did so by illuminating two words: