Halfway to the ground, the shelf hit the stack next to it. Langdon hung on, throwing his weight forward, urging the second shelf to topple. There was a moment of motionless panic, and then, creaking under the weight, the second stack began to tip. Langdon was falling again.

Like enormous dominoes, the stacks began to topple, one after another. Metal on metal, books tumbling everywhere. Langdon held on as his inclined stack bounced downward like a ratchet on a jack. He wondered how many stacks there were in all. How much would they weigh? The glass at the far end was thick…

Langdon’s stack had fallen almost to the horizontal when he heard what he was waiting for—a different kind of collision. Far off. At the end of the vault. The sharp smack of metal on glass. The vault around him shook, and Langdon knew the final stack, weighted down by the others, had hit the glass hard. The sound that followed was the most unwelcome sound Langdon had ever heard.

Silence.

There was no crashing of glass, only the resounding thud as the wall accepted the weight of the stacks now propped against it. He lay wide-eyed on the pile of books. Somewhere in the distance there was a creaking. Langdon would have held his breath to listen, but he had none left to hold.

One second. Two…

Then, as he teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, Langdon heard a distant yielding… a ripple spidering outward through the glass. Suddenly, like a cannon, the glass exploded. The stack beneath Langdon collapsed to the floor.

Like welcome rain on a desert, shards of glass tinkled downward in the dark. With a great sucking hiss, the air gushed in.

Thirty seconds later, in the Vatican Grottoes, Vittoria was standing before a corpse when the electronic squawk of a walkie-talkie broke the silence. The voice blaring out sounded short of breath. "This is Robert Langdon! Can anyone hear me?"

Vittoria looked up. Robert! She could not believe how much she suddenly wished he were there.

The guards exchanged puzzled looks. One took a radio off his belt. "Mr. Langdon? You are on channel three. The commander is waiting to hear from you on channel one."

"I know he’s on channel one, damn it! I don’t want to speak to him. I want the camerlegno. Now! Somebody find him for me."

In the obscurity of the Secret Archives, Langdon stood amidst shattered glass and tried to catch his breath. He felt a warm liquid on his left hand and knew he was bleeding. The camerlegno’s voice spoke at once, startling Langdon.

"This is Camerlegno Ventresca. What’s going on?"

Langdon pressed the button, his heart still pounding. "I think somebody just tried to kill me!"

There was a silence on the line.

Langdon tried to calm himself. "I also know where the next killing is going to be."

The voice that came back was not the camerlegno’s. It was Commander Olivetti’s: "Mr. Langdon. Do not speak another word."

87

Langdon’s watch, now smeared with blood, read 9:41 P.M. as he ran across the Courtyard of the Belvedere and approached the fountain outside the Swiss Guard security center. His hand had stopped bleeding and now felt worse than it looked. As he arrived, it seemed everyone convened at once—Olivetti, Rocher, the camerlegno, Vittoria, and a handful of guards.

Vittoria hurried toward him immediately. "Robert, you’re hurt."

Before Langdon could answer, Olivetti was before him. "Mr. Langdon, I’m relieved you’re okay. I’m sorry about the crossed signals in the archives."

"Crossed signals?" Langdon demanded. "You knew damn well—"

"It was my fault," Rocher said, stepping forward, sounding contrite. "I had no idea you were in the archives. Portions of our white zones are cross-wired with that building. We were extending our search. I’m the one who killed power. If I had known…"

"Robert," Vittoria said, taking his wounded hand in hers and looking it over, "the Pope was poisoned. The Illuminati killed him."

Langdon heard the words, but they barely registered. He was saturated. All he could feel was the warmth of Vittoria’s hands.

The camerlegno pulled a silk handkerchief from his cassock and handed it to Langdon so he could clean himself. The man said nothing. His green eyes seemed filled with a new fire.

"Robert," Vittoria pressed, "you said you found where the next cardinal is going to be killed?"

Langdon felt flighty. "I do, it’s at the—"

"No," Olivetti interrupted. "Mr. Langdon, when I asked you not to speak another word on the walkie-talkie, it was for a reason." He turned to the handful of assembled Swiss Guards. "Excuse us, gentlemen."

The soldiers disappeared into the security center. No indignity. Only compliance.

Olivetti turned back to the remaining group. "As much as it pains me to say this, the murder of our Pope is an act that could only have been accomplished with help from within these walls. For the good of all, we can trust no one. Including our guards." He seemed to be suffering as he spoke the words.

Rocher looked anxious. "Inside collusion implies—"