The Lost Symbol

The Library of Congress had miles and miles of bookshelves, most of them underground. The endless rows of shelves looked like some kind of “infinity” optical illusion created with mirrors.

A sign announced

TEMPERATURE-CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT

Keep this door closed at all times.

Simkins pushed through the mangled doors and felt cool air beyond. He couldn’t help but smile. Could this get any easier? Heat signatures in controlled environments showed up like solar flares, and already his goggles revealed a glowing red smear on a banister up ahead, which Bellamy or Langdon had grabbed on to while running past.

“You can run,” he whispered to himself, “but you can’t hide.”

As Simkins and his team advanced into the maze of stacks, he realized the playing field was tipped so heavily in his favor that he would not even need his goggles to track his prey. Under normal circumstances, this maze of stacks would have been a respectable hiding place, but the Library of Congress used motion-activated lights to save energy, and the fugitives’ escape route was now lit up like a runway. A narrow strip of illumination stretched into the distance, dodging and weaving as it went.

All the men ripped off their goggles. Surging ahead on well-trained legs, the field team followed the trail of lights, zigging and zagging through a seemingly endless labyrinth of books. Soon Simkins began seeing lights flickering on in the darkness up ahead. We’re gaining. He pushed harder, faster, until he heard footsteps and labored breathing ahead. Then he saw a target.

“I’ve got visual!” he yelled.

The lanky form of Warren Bellamy was apparently bringing up the rear. The primly dressed African American staggered through the stacks, obviously out of breath. It’s no use, old man.

“Stop right there, Mr. Bellamy!” Simkins yelled.

Bellamy kept running, turning sharp corners, weaving through the rows of books. At every turn, the lights kept coming on over his head.

As the team drew within twenty yards, they shouted again to stop, but Bellamy ran on.

“Take him down!” Simkins commanded.

The agent carrying the team’s nonlethal rifle raised it and fired. The projectile that launched down the aisle and wrapped itself around Bellamy’s legs was nicknamed Silly String, but there was nothing silly about it. A military technology invented at Sandia National Laboratories, this nonlethal “incapacitant” was a thread of gooey polyurethane that turned rock hard on contact, creating a rigid web of plastic across the back of the fugitive’s knees. The effect on a running target was that of jamming a stick into the spokes of a moving bike. The man’s legs seized midstride, and he pitched forward, crashing to the floor. Bellamy slid another ten feet down a darkened aisle before coming to a stop, the lights above him flickering unceremoniously to life.

“I’ll deal with Bellamy,” Simkins shouted. “You keep going after Langdon! He must be up ahead some —” The team leader stopped, now seeing that the library stacks ahead of Bellamy were all pitch-black. Obviously, there was no one else running in front of Bellamy. He’s alone?

Bellamy was still on his chest, breathing heavily, his legs and ankles all tangled with hardened plastic. The agent walked over and used his foot to roll the old man over onto his back.

“Where is he?!” the agent demanded.

Bellamy’s lip was bleeding from the fall. “Where is who?”

Agent Simkins lifted his foot and placed his boot squarely on Bellamy’s pristine silk tie. Then he leaned in, applying some pressure. “Believe me, Mr. Bellamy, you do not want to play this game with me.”

CHAPTER 59

Robert Langdon felt like a corpse.

He lay supine, hands folded on his chest, in total darkness, trapped in the most confined of spaces. Although Katherine lay nearby in a similar position near his head, Langdon could not see her. He had his eyes closed to prevent himself from catching even a fleeting glimpse of his frightening predicament.

The space around him was small.

Very small.

Sixty seconds ago, with the double doors of the reading room crashing down, he and Katherine had followed Bellamy into the octagonal console, down a steep set of stairs, and into the unexpected space below.

Langdon had realized at once where they were. The heart of the library’s circulation system. Resembling a small airport baggage distribution center, the circulation room had numerous conveyor belts that angled off in different directions. Because the Library of Congress was housed in three separate buildings, books requested in the reading room often had to be transported great distances by a system of conveyors through a web of underground tunnels.