With her head now turned to one side and her cheek pressed into the carpet, Katherine could see Langdon, his body still jerking, facing away from her. Beyond that, Agent Hartmann lay motionless in the foyer.
Cold metal pinched Katherine's wrists, and she realized she was being bound with wire. In terror, she tried to pull away, but doing so sent searing pain into her hands.
"This wire will cut you if you move," the man said, finishing with her wrists and moving down to her ankles with frightening efficiency.
Katherine kicked at him, and he threw a powerful fist into the back of her right thigh, crippling her leg. Within seconds, her ankles were bound.
"Robert!" she now managed to call out.
Langdon was groaning on the floor in the hallway. He lay crumpled on his leather bag with the stone pyramid lying on its side near his head. Katherine realized the pyramid was her last hope.
"We deciphered the pyramid!" she told her attacker. "I'll tell you everything!"
"Yes, you will." With that, he pulled the cloth from the dead woman's mouth and firmly stuffed it into Katherine's.
It tasted like death.
Robert Langdon's body was not his own. He lay, numb and immobile, his cheek pressed against the hardwood floor. He had heard enough about stun guns to know they crippled their victims by temporarily overloading the nervous system. Their action--something called electromuscular disruption--might as well have been a bolt of lightning. The excruciating jolt of pain seemed to penetrate every molecule of his body. Now, despite his mind's focused intention, his muscles refused to obey the command he was sending them.
Get up!
Facedown, paralyzed on the floor, Langdon was gulping shallow breaths, scarcely able to inhale. He had yet to lay eyes on the man who had attacked him, but he could see Agent Hartmann lying in an expanding pool of blood. Langdon had heard Katherine struggling and arguing, but moments ago her voice had become muffled, as if the man had stuffed something in her mouth.
Get up, Robert! You've got to help her! Langdon's legs were tingling now, a fiery and painful recovery of feeling, but still they refused to cooperate. Move! His arms twitched as sensation started to come back, along with feeling in his face and neck. With great effort, he managed to rotate his head, dragging his cheek roughly across the hardwood floor as he turned his head to look down into the dining room.
Langdon's sight line was impeded--by the stone pyramid, which had toppled out of his bag and was lying sideways on the floor, its base inches from his face.
For an instant, Langdon didn't understand what he was looking at. The square of stone before him was obviously the base of the pyramid, and yet it looked somehow different. Very different. It was still square, and still stone . . . but it was no longer flat and smooth. The base of the pyramid was covered with engraved markings. How is this possible? He stared for several seconds, wondering if he was hallucinating. I looked at the base of this pyramid a dozen times . . . and there were no markings!
Langdon now realized why.
His breathing reflex kick-started, and he drew a sudden gasp of air, realizing that the Masonic Pyramid had secrets yet to share. I have witnessed another transformation.
In a flash, Langdon understood the meaning of Galloway's last request. Tell Peter this: The Masonic Pyramid has always kept her secret . . . sincerely. The words had seemed strange at the time, but now Langdon understood that Dean Galloway was sending Peter a code. Ironically, this same code had been a plot twist in a mediocre thriller Langdon had read years ago.
Sin-cere.
Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture "without wax"--literally sine cera--was considered a "sincere" piece of art. The phrase stuck. To this day we still sign our letters "sincerely" as a promise that we have written "without wax" and that our words are true.
The engravings on the base of this pyramid had been concealed by the same method. When Katherine followed the capstone's directions and boiled the pyramid, the wax melted away, revealing the writing on the base. Galloway had run his hands over the pyramid in the sitting room, apparently feeling the markings exposed on the bottom.
Now, if only for an instant, Langdon had forgotten all the danger he and Katherine faced. He stared at the incredible array of symbols on the base of the pyramid. He had no idea what they meant . . . or what they would ultimately reveal, but one thing was for certain. The Masonic Pyramid has secrets left to tell. Eight Franklin Square is not the final answer.
Whether it was this adrenaline-filled revelation or simply the extra few seconds lying there, Langdon did not know, but he suddenly felt control returning to his body. Painfully, he swept an arm to one side, pushing the leather bag out of the way to clear his sight line into the dining room.
To his horror, he saw that Katherine had been tied up, and a large rag had been stuffed deep into her mouth. Langdon flexed his muscles, trying to climb to his knees, but a moment later, he froze in utter disbelief. The dining-room doorway had just filled with a chilling sight--a human form unlike anything Langdon had ever seen.
What in the name of God . . . ?!
Langdon rolled, kicking with his legs, trying to back away, but the huge tattooed man grabbed him, flipping him onto his back and straddling his chest. He placed his knees on Langdon's biceps, pinning Langdon pain fully to the floor. The man's chest bore a rippling double-headed phoenix. His neck, face, and shaved head were covered with a dazzling array of unusually intricate symbols--sigils, Langdon knew--which were used in the rituals of dark ceremonial magic.
Before Langdon could process anything more, the huge man clasped Langdon's ears between his palms, lifted his head up off the floor, and, with incredible force, smashed it back down onto the hardwood.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER 96
Mal'akh stood in his hallway and surveyed the carnage around him. His home looked like a battlefield.
Robert Langdon lay unconscious at his feet.
Katherine Solomon was bound and gagged on the dining-room floor.
The corpse of a female security guard lay crumpled nearby, having toppled off the chair where she was propped. This female guard, eager to save her own life, had done exactly as Mal'akh commanded. With a knife to her throat, she had answered Mal'akh's cell phone and told the lie that had coaxed Langdon and Katherine to come racing out here. She had no partner, and Peter Solomon was certainly not okay. As soon as the woman had given her performance, Mal'akh had quietly strangled her. To complete the illusion that Mal'akh was not home, he had phoned Bellamy using the hands- free speaker in one of his cars. I'm on the road, he had told Bellamy and whoever else had been listening. Peter is in my trunk. In fact, Mal'akh was driving only between his garage and his front yard, where he had left several of his myriad cars parked askew with the headlights on and the engines running.
The deception had worked perfectly.
Almost.
The only wrinkle was the bloody black-clad heap in the foyer with a screwdriver protruding from his neck. Mal'akh searched the corpse and had to chuckle when he found a high-tech transceiver and cell phone with a CIA logo. It seems even they are aware of my power. He removed the batteries and crushed both devices with a heavy bronze doorstop.
Mal'akh knew he had to move quickly now, especially if the CIA was involved. He strode back over to Langdon. The professor was out cold and would be for a while. Mal'akh's eyes moved with trepidation now to the stone pyramid on the floor beside the professor's open bag. His breath caught, and his heart pounded.