The Lost Symbol rl-3

by Dan Brown

  Solomon stroked his chin. “An elegant interpretation, Professor. I agree, of course, that this grid can be read as allegory, and yet…” His eyes flashed with deepening mystery. “This collection of symbols tells another story as well. A story that is far more revealing.”

  “Oh?”

  Solomon began pacing again, circling the table. “Earlier tonight, inside the Temple Room, when I believed I was going to die, I looked at this grid, and somehow I saw past the metaphor, past the allegory, into the very heart of what these symbols are telling us.” He paused, turning abruptly to Langdon. “This grid reveals the exact location where the Lost Word is buried.”

  “Come again?” Langdon shifted uneasily in his chair, suddenly fearing that the trauma of the evening had left Peter disorientated and confused.

  “Robert, legend has always described the Masonic Pyramid as a map — a very specific map — a map that could guide the worthy to the secret location of the Lost Word.” Solomon tapped the grid of symbols in front of Langdon. “I guarantee you, these symbols are exactly what legend says they are… a map. A specific diagram that reveals exactly where we will find the staircase that leads down to the Lost Word.”

  Langdon gave an uneasy laugh, treading carefully now. “Even if I believed the Legend of the Masonic Pyramid, this grid of symbols can’t possibly be a map. Look at it. It looks nothing like a map.”

  Solomon smiled. “Sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light.”

  Langdon looked again but saw nothing new.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Peter said. “When Masons lay cornerstones, do you know why we lay them in the northeast corner of a building?”

  “Sure, because the northeast corner receives the first rays of morning light. It is symbolic of the power of architecture to climb out of the earth into the light.”

  “Right,” Peter said. “So perhaps you should look there for the first rays of light.” He motioned to the grid. “In the northeast corner.”

  Langdon returned his eyes to the page, moving his gaze to the upper right or northeast corner. The symbol in that corner was ↓.

  “A downward-pointing arrow,” Langdon said, trying to grasp Solomon’s point. “Which means… beneath Heredom.”

  “No, Robert, not beneath,” Solomon replied. “Think. This grid is not a metaphorical maze. It’s a map. And on a map, a directional arrow that points down means —”

  “South,” Langdon exclaimed, startled.

  “Exactly!” Solomon replied, grinning now with excitement. “Due south! On a map, down is south. Moreover, on a map, the word Heredom would not be a metaphor for heaven, it would be the name of a geographic location.”

  “The House of the Temple? You’re saying this map is pointing… due south of this building?”

  “Praise God!” Solomon said, laughing. “Light dawns at last.”

  Langdon studied the grid. “But, Peter… even if you’re right, due south of this building could be anywhere on a longitude that’s over twenty-four thousand miles long.”

  “No, Robert. You are ignoring the legend, which claims the Lost Word is buried in D.C. That shortens the line substantially. In addition, legend also claims that a large stone sits atop the opening of the staircase… and that this stone is engraved with a message in an ancient language… as a kind of marker so the worthy can find it.”

  Langdon was having trouble taking any of this seriously, and while he didn’t know D.C. well enough to picture what was due south of their current location, he was pretty certain there was no huge engraved stone atop a buried staircase.

  “The message inscribed on the stone,” Peter said, “is right here before our eyes.” He tapped the third row of the grid before Langdon. “This is the inscription, Robert! You’ve solved the puzzle!”

  Dumbfounded, Langdon studied the seven symbols.

  Solved? Langdon had no idea whatsoever what these seven disparate symbols could possibly mean, and he was damned sure they were not engraved anywhere in the nation’s capital… particularly on a giant stone over a staircase.

  “Peter,” he said, “I don’t see how this sheds any light at all. I know of no stone in D.C. engraved with this… message.”

  Solomon patted him on the shoulder. “You have walked past it and never seen it. We all have. It is sitting in plain view, like the mysteries themselves. And tonight, when I saw these seven symbols, I realized in an instant that the legend was true. The Lost Word is buried in D.C.… and it does rest at the bottom of a long staircase beneath an enormous engraved stone.”

  Mystified, Langdon remained silent.

  “Robert, tonight I believe you have earned the right to know the truth.”

  Langdon stared at Peter, trying to process what he had just heard. “You’re going to tell me where the Lost Word is buried?”

  “No,” Solomon said, standing up with a smile. “I’m going to show you.”

  Five minutes later, Langdon was buckling himself into the backseat of the Escalade beside Peter Solomon. Simkins climbed in behind the wheel as Sato approached across the parking lot.

  “Mr. Solomon?” the director said, lighting a cigarette as she arrived. “I’ve just made the call you requested.”

  “And?” Peter asked through his open window.

  “I ordered them to give you access. Briefly.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sato studied him, looking curious. “I must say, it’s a most unusual request.”

  Solomon gave an enigmatic shrug.

  Sato let it go, circling around to Langdon’s window and rapping with her knuckles.

  Langdon lowered the window.

  “Professor,” she said, with no hint of warmth. “Your assistance tonight, while reluctant, was critical to our success… and for that, I thank you.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and blew it sideways. “However, one final bit of advice. The next time a senior administrator of the CIA tells you she has a national-security crisis…” Her eyes flashed black. “Leave the bullshit in Cambridge.”

  Langdon opened his mouth to speak, but Director Inoue Sato had already turned and was headed off across the parking lot toward a waiting helicopter.

  Simkins glanced over his shoulder, stone-faced. “Are you gentlemen ready?”

  “Actually,” Solomon said, “just one moment.” He produced a small, folded piece of dark fabric and handed it to Langdon. “Robert, I’d like you to put this on before we go anywhere.”

  Puzzled, Langdon examined the cloth. It was black velvet. As he unfolded it, he realized he was holding a Masonic hoodwink — the traditional blindfold of a first-degree initiate. What the hell?

  Peter said, “I’d prefer you not see where we’re going.”

  Langdon turned to Peter. “You want to blindfold me for the journey?”

  Solomon grinned. “My secret. My rules.”

  CHAPTER 127

  The breeze felt cold outside CIA headquarters in Langley. Nola Kaye was shivering as she followed sys-sec Rick Parrish across the agency’s moonlit central courtyard.

  Where is Rick taking me?

  The crisis of the Masonic video had been averted, thank God, but Nola still felt uneasy. The redacted file on the CIA director’s partition remained a mystery, and it was nagging at her. She and Sato would debrief in the morning, and Nola wanted all the facts. Finally, she had called Rick Parrish and demanded his help.

  Now, as she followed Rick to some unknown location outside, Nola could not push the bizarre phrases from her memory:

  Secret location underground where the… somewhere in Washington, D.C., the coordinates… uncovered an ancient portal that led… warning the pyramid holds dangerous… decipher this engraved symbolon to unveil…

  “You and I agree,” Parrish said as they walked, “that the hacker who spidered those keywords was definitely searching for information about the Masonic Pyramid.”

  Obviously, Nola thought.

  �
��It turns out, though, the hacker stumbled onto a facet of the Masonic mystery I don’t think he expected.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nola, you know how the CIA director sponsors an internal discussion forum for Agency employees to share their ideas about all kinds of things?”

  “Of course.” The forums provided Agency personnel a safe place to chat online about various topics and gave the director a kind of virtual gateway to his staff.

  “The director’s forums are hosted on his private partition, and yet in order to provide access to employees of all clearance levels, they’re located outside the director’s classified firewall.”

  “What are you getting at?” she demanded as they rounded a corner near the Agency cafeteria.

  “In a word…” Parrish pointed into the darkness. “That.”

  Nola glanced up. Across the plaza in front of them was a massive metal sculpture glimmering in the moonlight.

  In an agency that boasted over five hundred pieces of original art, this sculpture — titled Kryptos — was by far the most famous. Greek for “hidden,” Kryptos was the work of American artist James Sanborn and had become something of a legend here at the CIA.

  The work consisted of a massive S-shaped panel of copper, set on its edge like a curling metal wall. Engraved into the expansive surface of the wall were nearly two thousand letters… organized into a baffling code. As if this were not enigmatic enough, positioned carefully in the area around the encrypted S-wall were numerous other sculptural elements — granite slabs at odd angles, a compass rose, a magnetic lodestone, and even a message in Morse code that referenced “lucid memory” and “shadow forces.” Most fans believed that these pieces were clues that would reveal how to decipher the sculpture.

  Kryptos was art… but it was also an enigma.

  Attempting to decipher its encoded secret had become an obsession for cryptologists both inside and outside the CIA. Finally, a few years back, a portion of the code had been broken, and it became national news. Although much of Kryptos’s code remained unsolved to this day, the sections that had been deciphered were so bizarre that they made the sculpture only more mysterious. It referenced secret underground locations, portals that led into ancient tombs, longitudes and latitudes…

  Nola could still recall bits and pieces of the deciphered sections: The information was gathered and transmitted underground to an unknown location… It was totally invisible… how’s that possible… they used the earth’s magnetic field…

  Nola had never paid much attention to the sculpture or cared if it was ever fully deciphered. At the moment, however, she wanted answers. “Why are you showing me Kryptos?”

  Parrish gave her a conspiratorial smile and dramatically extracted a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “Voilà, the mysterious redacted document you were so concerned about. I accessed the complete text.”

  Nola jumped. “You snooped the director’s classified partition?”

  “No. That’s what I was getting at earlier. Have a look.” He handed her the file.

  Nola seized the page and unfolded it. When she saw the standard Agency headers at the top of the page, she cocked her head in surprise.

  This document was not classified. Not even close.

  EMPLOYEE DISCUSSION BOARD: KRYPTOS

  COMPRESSED STORAGE: THREAD #2456282.5

  Nola found herself looking at a series of postings that had been compressed into a single page for more efficient storage.

  “Your keyword document,” Rick said, “is some cipher-punks rambling about Kryptos.”

  Nola scanned down the document until she spotted a sentence containing a familiar set of keywords.

  Jim, the sculpture says it was transmitted to a secret location UNDERGROUND where the info was hidden.

  “This text is from the director’s online Kryptos forum,” Rick explained. “The forum’s been going for years. There are literally thousands of postings. I’m not surprised one of them happened to contain all the keywords.”

  Nola kept scanning down until she spotted another posting containing keywords.

  Even though Mark said the code’s lat/long headings point somewhere in WASHINGTON, D.C., the coordinates he used were off by one degree—Kryptos basically points back to itself.

  Parrish walked over to the statue and ran his palm across the cryptic sea of letters. “A lot of this code has yet to be deciphered, and there are plenty of people who think the message might actually relate to ancient Masonic secrets.”

  Nola now recalled murmurs of a Masonic/Kryptos link, but she tended to ignore the lunatic fringe. Then again, looking around at the various pieces of the sculpture arranged around the plaza, she realized that it was a code in pieces — a symbolon — just like the Masonic Pyramid.

  Odd.

  For a moment, Nola could almost see Kryptos as a modern Masonic Pyramid — a code in many pieces, made of different materials, each playing a role. “Do you think there’s any way Kryptos and the Masonic Pyramid might be hiding the same secret?”

  “Who knows?” Parrish shot Kryptos a frustrated look. “I doubt we’ll ever know the whole message. That is, unless someone can convince the director to unlock his safe and sneak a peek at the solution.”

  Nola nodded. It was all coming back to her now. When Kryptos was installed, it arrived with a sealed envelope containing a complete decryption of the sculpture’s codes. The sealed solution was entrusted to then — CIA director William Webster, who locked it in his office safe. The document was allegedly still there, having been transferred from director to director over the years.

  Strangely, Nola’s thoughts of William Webster sparked her memory, bringing back yet another portion of Kryptos’s deciphered text:

  IT’S BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION? ONLY WW.

  Although nobody knew exactly what was buried out there, most people believed the WW was a reference to William Webster. Nola had heard whispers once that it referred in fact to a man named William Whiston — a Royal Society theologian — although she had never bothered to give it much thought.

  Rick was talking again. “I’ve got to admit, I’m not really into artists, but I think this guy Sanborn’s a serious genius. I was just looking online at his Cyrillic Projector project? It shines giant Russian letters from a KGB document on mind control. Freaky.”

  Nola was no longer listening. She was examining the paper, where she had found the third key phrase in another posting.

  Right, that whole section is verbatim from some famous archaeologist’s diary, telling about the moment he dug down and uncovered an ANCIENT PORTAL that led to the tomb of Tutankhamen.

  The archaeologist who was quoted on Kryptos, Nola knew, was in fact famed Egyptologist Howard Carter. The next posting referenced him by name.

  I just skimmed the rest of Carter’s field notes online, and it sounds like he found a clay tablet warning the PYRAMID holds dangerous consequences for anyone who disturbs the peace of the pharaoh. A curse! Should we be worried?:)

  Nola scowled. “Rick, for God’s sake, this idiot’s pyramid reference isn’t even right. Tutankhamen wasn’t buried in a pyramid. He was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Don’t cryptologists watch the Discovery Channel?”

  Parrish shrugged. “Techies.”

  Nola now saw the final key phrase.

  Guys, you know I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but Jim and Dave had better decipher this ENGRAVED SYMBOLON to unveil its final secret before the world ends in 2012… Ciao.

  “Anyhow,” Parrish said, “I figured you’d want to know about the Kryptos forum before you accused the CIA director of harboring classified documentation about an ancient Masonic legend. Somehow, I doubt a man as powerful as the CIA director has time for that sort of thing.”

  Nola pictured the Masonic video and its images of all the influential men participating in an ancient rite. If Rick had any idea…

  In the end, she knew, whatever Kryptos ultimately reveale
d, the message definitely had mystical undertones. She gazed up at the gleaming piece of art — a three-dimensional code standing silently at the heart of one of the nation’s premier intelligence agencies — and she wondered if it would ever give up its final secret.

  As she and Rick headed back inside, Nola had to smile.

  It’s buried out there somewhere.

  CHAPTER 128

  This is crazy.

  Blindfolded, Robert Langdon could see nothing as the Escalade sped southward along the deserted streets. On the seat beside him, Peter Solomon remained silent.

  Where is he taking me?

  Langdon’s curiosity was a mix of intrigue and apprehension, his imagination in overdrive as it tried desperately to put the pieces together. Peter had not wavered from his claim. The Lost Word? Buried at the bottom of a staircase that’s covered by a massive, engraved stone? It all seemed impossible.

  The stone’s alleged engraving was still lodged in Langdon’s memory… and yet the seven symbols, as far as he could tell, made no sense together at all.

  The Stonemason’s Square: the symbol of honesty and being “true.”

  The letters Au: the scientific abbreviation for the element gold.

  The Sigma: the Greek letter S, the mathematical symbol for the sum of all parts.

  The Pyramid: the Egyptian symbol of man reaching heavenward.

  The Delta: the Greek letter D, the mathematical symbol for change.

  Mercury: as depicted by its most ancient alchemical symbol.

  The Ouroboros: the symbol of wholeness and at-one-ment.

  Solomon still insisted these seven symbols were a “message.” But if this was true, then it was a message Langdon had no idea how to read.