The Lost Symbol

Next, the man walked over to a drawer and began rooting around. She could hear small metal objects clinking. When he returned, he took her right arm, steadying it. Katherine couldn’t see what he was doing, but Peter apparently could, and he again started bucking wildly.

Katherine felt a sudden, sharp pinch in the crook of her right elbow, and an eerie warmth ran down around it. Peter was making anguished, strangled sounds and trying in vain to get out of the heavy chair. Katherine felt a cold numbness spreading through her forearm and fingertips below the elbow.

When the man stepped aside, Katherine saw why her brother was so horrified. The tattooed man had inserted a medical needle into her vein, as if she were giving blood. The needle, however, was not attached to a tube. Instead, her blood was now flowing freely out of it. running down her elbow, forearm, and onto the stone table.

“A human hourglass,” the man said, turning to Peter. “In a short while, when I ask you to play your role, I want you to picture Katherine. dying alone here in the dark.”

Peter’s expression was one of total torment.

“She will stay alive,” the man said, “for about an hour or so. If you cooperate with me quickly, I will have enough time to save her. Of course, if you resist me at all. your sister will die here alone in the dark.”

Peter bellowed unintelligibly through his gag.

“I know, I know,” the tattooed man said, placing a hand on Peter’s shoulder, “this is hard for you. But it shouldn’t be. After all, this is not the first time you will abandon a family member.” He paused, bending over and whispering in Peter’s ear. “I’m thinking, of course, of your son, Zachary, in Soganlik prison.”

Peter pulled against his restraints and let out another muffled scream through the cloth in his mouth.

“Stop it!” Katherine shouted.

“I remember that night well,” the man taunted as he finished packing. “I heard the whole thing. The warden offered to let your son go, but you chose to teach Zachary a lesson. by abandoning him. Your boy learned his lesson, all right, didn’t he?” The man smiled. “His loss. was my gain.”

The man now retrieved a linen cloth and stuffed it deep into Katherine’s mouth. “Death,” he whispered to her, “should be a quiet thing.”

Peter struggled violently. Without another word, the tattooed man slowly backed Peter’s wheelchair out of the room, giving Peter a long, last look at his sister.

Katherine and Peter locked eyes one final time.

Then he was gone.

Katherine could hear them going up the ramp and through the metal door. As they exited, she heard the tattooed man lock the metal door behind him and continue on through the painting of the Three Graces. A few minutes later, she heard a car start.

Then the mansion fell silent.

All alone in the dark, Katherine lay bleeding.

CHAPTER 108

Robert Langdon’s mind hovered in an endless abyss.

No light. No sound. No feeling.

Only an infinite and silent void.

Softness.

Weightlessness.

His body had released him. He was untethered.

The physical world had ceased to exist. Time had ceased to exist.

He was pure consciousness now. a fleshless sentience suspended in the emptiness of a vast universe.

CHAPTER 109

The modified UH-60 skimmed in low over the expansive rooftops of Kalorama Heights, thundering toward the coordinates given to them by the support team. Agent Simkins was the first to spot the black Escalade parked haphazardly on a lawn in front of one of the mansions. The driveway gate was closed, and the house was dark and quiet.

Sato gave the signal to touch down.

The aircraft landed hard on the front lawn amid several other vehicles. one of them a security sedan with a bubble light on top.

Simkins and his team jumped out, drew their weapons, and dashed up onto the porch. Finding the front door locked, Simkins cupped his hands and peered through a window. The foyer was dark, but Simkins could make out the faint shadow of a body on the floor.

“Shit,” he whispered. “It’s Hartmann.”

One of his agents grabbed a chair off the porch and heaved it through the bay window. The sound of shattering glass was barely audible over the roar of the helicopter behind them. Seconds later, they were all inside. Simkins rushed to the foyer and knelt over Hartmann to check his pulse. Nothing. There was blood everywhere. Then he saw the screwdriver in Hartmann’s throat.

Jesus. He stood up and motioned to his men to begin a full search.

The agents fanned out across the first floor, their laser sights probing the darkness of the luxurious house. They found nothing in the living room or study, but in the dining room, to their surprise, they discovered a strangled female security guard. Simkins was fast losing hope that Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon were alive. This brutal killer clearly had set a trap, and if he had managed to kill a CIA agent and an armed security guard, then it seemed a professor and a scientist had no chance.