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CHAPTER 30
Security warden Claude Grouard sie as he stood over his prostrate captive in front of the Mona LisaThis bastard killed Jacques Sauniere! Sauniere had been like a well-loved father to Grouard and his security tea don’s back As senior warden, Grouard was one of the few guards who actually carried a loaded weapon He reenerous fate compared to the misery about to be communicated by Bezu Fache and the French prison system
Grouard yanked his walkie-talkie off his belt and attempted to radio for backup All he heard was static The additional electronic security in this chauards’ co his weapon at Langdon, Grouard began backing slowly toward the entrance On his third step, he spied so that made him stop short
What the hell is that!
An inexplicablenear the center of the room A silhouette There was soh the darkness, walking briskly toward the far left wall In front of her, a purplish bea back and forth across the floor, as if she were searching for soht
"Qui est la?" Grouard de his adrenaline spike for a second time in the last thirty seconds He suddenly didn’t knohere to aiun or what direction to move
"PTS," the woht
Police Technique et ScientifiqueGrouard eating now I thought all the agents were gone!He now recognized the purple light as ultraviolet, consistent with a PTS tea for evidence in here
"Votre no was amiss "Repondez!" "C’est mot," the voice responded in calm French "Sophie Neveu" Somewhere in the distant recesses of Grouard’s istered Sophie Neveu? Thatwas the nahter, wasn’t it? She used to coo This couldn’t possibly be her! And even if it were Sophie Neveu, that was hardly a reason to trust her; Grouard had heard the ruranddaughter
"You know randfather Believe me"
Warden Grouard was not about to take that on faith I need backup! Trying his walkie-talkie again, he got only static The entrance was still a good twenty yards behind hi to leave his gun trained on the man on the floor As Grouard inched backward, he could see the wo a large painting that hung on the far side of the Salle des Etats, directly opposite the Mona Lisa
Grouard gasped, realizing which painting it was
What in the na?
Across the roo across her forehead Langdon was still spread-eagle on the floor Hold on, RobertAluard would never actually shoot either of them, Sophie now turned her attention back to thethe entire area around one ht revealed nothing out of the ordinary Not on the floor, on the walls, or even on the canvas itself
Therehere!
Sophie felt totally certain she had deciphered her grandfather’s intentions correctly
What else could he possibly intend?
Thewas a five-foot-tall canvas The bizarre scene Da Vinci had painted included an aardly posed Virgin Mary sitting with Baby Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Angel Uriel on a perilous outcropping of rocks When Sophie was a little girl, no trip to the Mona Lisa had been co her across the roo
Grand-pere, I’m here! But I don’t see it!
Behind her, Sophie could hear the guard trying to radio again for help
Think!
She pictured the lass of the Mona LisaSo dark the con of lass on which to write a randfather would never have defaced thisitself She paused At least not on the frontHer eyes shot upward, cli to support the canvas
Could that be it? Grabbing the left side of the carved wood frae and the backing flexed as she swung it away from the wall Sophie slipped her head and shoulders in behind the painting and raised the black light to inspect the back
It took only seconds to realize her instinct had been wrong The back of the painting was pale and blank There was no purple text here, only thecanvas and -
Wait
Sophie’s eyes locked on an incongruous glint of lustrous e of the fraed in the slit where the canvas led off it
To Sophie’s utter aold key The broad, sculpted head was in the shape of a cross and bore an engraved seal she had not seen since she was nine years old A fleur-de-lis with the initials P S In that instant, Sophie felt the ghost of her grandfather whispering in her ear When the tiripped her throat as she realized that her grandfather, even in death, had kept his pro, where I keep many secrets
Sophie now realized that the entire purpose of tonight’s word garandfather had it with hi it to fall into the hands of the police, he hid it behind this painting Then he devised an ingenious treasure hunt to ensure only Sophie would find it
"Au secours!" the guard’s voice yelled
Sophie snatched the key fro with the UV penlight Peering out fro desperately to raise so toward the entrance, still aidon
"Au secours!" he shouted again into his radio Static He can’t trans that tourists with cell phones often got frustrated in here when they tried to call ho the Mona LisaThe extra surveillance wiring in the walls et a carrier unless you stepped out into the hall The guard was backing quickly toward the exit now, and Sophie knew she had to act i behind which she was partially ensconced, Sophie realized that Leonardo Da Vinci, for the second tiht, was there to help
Another few un leveled
"Arretez! Ou je la detruis!" the wolanced over and stopped in his tracks "Mon dieu, non!" Through the reddish haze, he could see that the wo off its cables and propped it on the floor in front of her At five feet tall, the canvas alht was to wonder why the painting’s trip wires hadn’t set off alarms, but of course the artwork cable sensors had yet to be reset tonight What is she doing!
When he saw it, his blood went cold
The canvas started to bulge in the in Mary, Baby Jesus, and John the Baptist beginning to distort
"Non!" Grouard screamed, frozen in horror as he watched the priceless Da Vinci stretching The wo her knee into the center of the canvas froun at her but instantly realized it was an empty threat The canvas was only fabric, but it was utterly impenetrable - a six-million-dollar piece of body arh a Da Vinci!
"Set down your gun and radio," the woh this painting I think you kno randfather would feel about that"
Grouard felt dizzy "Please no That’s Madonna of the Rocks!" He dropped his gun and radio, raising his hands over his head
"Thank you," the wo ork out fine"
Mo as he ran beside Sophie down the eround level Neither of theuard lying in the Salle des Etats The guard’s pistol was now clutched tightly in Langdon’s hands, and he couldn’t wait to get rid of it The weapon felt heavy and dangerously foreign
Taking the stairs two at a tidon wondered if Sophie had any idea how valuable a painting she had almost ruined Her choice in art seeht’s adventure The Da Vinci she had grabbed,art historians for its plethora of hidden pagan sye," he said as they ran
"Madonna of the Rocks,"she replied "But I didn’t choose it,behind the painting"
Langdon shot her a startled look "What!? But how did you knohich painting? Why Madonnaof the Rocks?"
"So dark the con of man" She flashed a triurams, Robert I wasn’t about to miss the third"
CHAPTER 31
"They’re dead!" Sister Sandrine stammered into the telephone in her Saint-Sulpice residence She was leaving amachine "Please pick up! They’re all dead!"
The first three phone nu results - a hysterical , a detective working late at aa bereaved family All three contacts were dead And now, as she called the fourth and final number - the number she was not supposed to call unless the first three could not be reached - she got an answering e offered no nae" The floor panel has been broken!" she pleaded as she left the e "The other three are dead!" Sister Sandrine did not know the identities of the four men she protected, but the private phonenumbers stashed beneath her bed were for use on only one condition
If that floor panel is ever broken, the faceless er had told her, it means the upper echelon has been breached One of us has been mortally threatened and been forced to tell a desperate lie Call the numbers Warn the others Do not fail us in this
It was a silent alarm Foolproof in its simplicity The plan had amazed her when she first heard it If the identity of one brother was compromised, he could tell a lie that would start in ht, however, it seemed that more than one had been compromised
"Please answer," she whispered in fear "Where are you?" "Hang up the phone," a deep voice said fro in terror, she saw thethe heavy iron candle stand
Shaking, she set the phone back in the cradle
"They are dead," the monk said "All four of them And they have played me for a fool Tell me where the keystone is"