The Lost Symbol

Nola Kaye sat at her desk and adjusted her headset. “Ma’am, I’ve checked everywhere. that address doesn’t exist in D.C.”

“But I’m on the roof of One Franklin Square,” Sato said. “There has to be an Eight!”

Director Sato’s on a roof? “Hold on.” Nola began running a new search. She was considering telling the OS director about the hacker, but Sato seemed fixated on Eight Franklin Square at the moment. Besides, Nola still didn’t have all the information. Where’s that damned sys-sec, anyway?

“Okay,” Nola said, eyeing her screen, “I see the problem. One Franklin Square is the name of the building. not the address. The address is actually 1301 K Street.”

The news seemed to confound the director. “Nola, I don’t have time to explain — the pyramid clearly points to the address Eight Franklin Square.”

Nola sat bolt upright. The pyramid points to a specific location?

“The inscription,” Sato continued, “reads: ‘The secret hides within The Order — Eight Franklin Square.’”

Nola could scarcely imagine. “An order like. a Masonic or fraternal order?”

“I assume so,” Sato replied.

Nola thought a moment, and then began typing again. “Ma’am, maybe the street numbers on the square changed over the years? I mean, if this pyramid is as old as legend claims, maybe the numbers on Franklin Square were different when the pyramid was built? I’m now running a search without the number eight. for. ‘the order’. ‘Franklin Square’. and ‘Washington, D.C.’. and this way, we might get some idea if there’s —” She stalled midsentence as the search results appeared.

“What have you got?” Sato demanded.

Nola stared at the first result on the list — a spectacular image of the Great Pyramid of Egypt — which served as the thematic backdrop for the home page dedicated to a building on Franklin Square. The building was unlike any other building on the square.

Or in the entire city, for that matter.

What stopped Nola cold was not the building’s bizarre architecture, but rather the description of its purpose. According to the Web site, this unusual edifice was built as a sacred mystical shrine, designed by. and designed for. an ancient secret order.

CHAPTER 98

Robert Langdon regained consciousness with a crippling headache.

Where am I?

Wherever he was, it was dark. Deep-cave dark, and deathly silent.

He was lying on his back with his arms at his side. Confused, he tried moving his fingers and toes, relieved to find they moved freely with no pain. What happened? With the exception of his headache and the profound darkness, everything seemed more or less normal.

Almost everything.

Langdon realized he was lying on a hard floor that felt unusually smooth, like a sheet of glass. Stranger still, he could feel that the slick surface was in direct contact with his bare flesh. shoulders, back, buttocks, thighs, calves. Am I naked? Puzzled, he ran his hands over his body.

Jesus! Where the hell are my clothes?

In the darkness, the cobwebs began to lift, and Langdon saw flashes of memory. frightening snapshots. a dead CIA agent. the face of a tattooed beast. Langdon’s head smashing into the floor. The images came faster. and now he recalled the sickening image of Katherine Solomon bound and gagged on the dining-room floor.

My God!

Langdon sat bolt upright, and as he did, his forehead smashed into something suspended only inches above him. Pain exploded through his skull and he fell back, teetering near unconsciousness. Groggy, he reached up with his hands, groping in the darkness to find the obstacle. What he found made no sense to him. It seemed this room’s ceiling was less than a foot above him. What in the world? As he spread his arms to his sides in an attempt to roll over, both of his hands hit sidewalls.

The truth now dawned on him. Robert Langdon was not in a room at all.

I’m in a box!

In the darkness of his small, coffinlike container, Langdon began pounding wildly with his fist. He shouted over and over for help. The terror that gripped him deepened with each passing instant until it was intolerable.

I have been buried alive.

The lid of Langdon’s strange coffin refused to budge, even with the full force of his arms and legs pushing upward in wild panic. The box, from all he could tell, was made of heavy fiberglass. Airtight. Soundproof. Lightproof. Escape-proof.

I am going to suffocate alone in this box.

He thought of the deep well into which he had fallen as a young boy, and of the terrifying night he spent treading water alone in the darkness of a bottomless pit. That trauma had scarred Langdon’s psyche, burdening him with an overwhelming phobia of enclosed spaces.

Tonight, buried alive, Robert Langdon was living his ultimate nightmare.