As she approached the end of the aisle, she sensed the sound was coming from the floor just around the corner at the end of the pews. As she moved forward, gun outstretched in her right hand, she realized she was also holding something in her left hand—her cell phone. In her panic she had forgotten that outside she had used it to dial the commander… setting off his phone’s silent vibration feature as a warning. Vittoria raised her phone to her ear. It was still ringing. The commander had never answered. Suddenly, with rising fear, Vittoria sensed she knew what was making the sound. She stepped forward, trembling.

The entire church seemed to sink beneath her feet as her eyes met the lifeless form on the floor. No stream of liquid flowed from the body. No signs of violence tattooed the flesh. There was only the fearful geometry of the commander’s head… torqued backward, twisted 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Vittoria fought the images of her own father’s mangled body.

The phone on the commander’s belt lay against the floor, vibrating over and over against the cold marble. Vittoria hung up her own phone, and the ringing stopped. In the silence, Vittoria heard a new sound. A breathing in the dark directly behind her.

She started to spin, gun raised, but she knew she was too late. A laser beam of heat screamed from the top of her skull to the soles of her feet as the killer’s elbow crashed down on the back of her neck.

"Now you are mine," a voice said.

Then, everything went black.

Across the sanctuary, on the left lateral wall, Langdon balanced atop a pew and scraped upward on the wall trying to reach the cleat. The cable was still six feet above his head. Cleats like these were common in churches and were placed high to prevent tampering. Langdon knew priests used wooden ladders called piuò li to access the cleats. The killer had obviously used the church’s ladder to hoist his victim. So where the hell is the ladder now! Langdon looked down, searching the floor around him. He had a faint recollection of seeing a ladder in here somewhere. But where? A moment later his heart sank. He realized where he had seen it. He turned toward the raging fire. Sure enough, the ladder was high atop the blaze, engulfed in flames.

Filled now with desperation, Langdon scanned the entire church from his raised platform, looking for anything at all that could help him reach the cleat. As his eyes probed the church, he had a sudden realization.

Where the hell is Vittoria? She had disappeared. Did she go for help? Langdon screamed out her name, but there was no response. And where is Olivetti!

There was a howl of pain from above, and Langdon sensed he was already too late. As his eyes went skyward again and saw the slowly roasting victim, Langdon had thoughts for only one thing. Water. Lots of it. Put out the fire. At least lower the flames."I need water, damn it!" he yelled out loud.

"That’s next," a voice growled from the back of the church.

Langdon wheeled, almost falling off the pews.

Striding up the side aisle directly toward him came a dark monster of a man. Even in the glow of the fire, his eyes burned black. Langdon recognized the gun in his hand as the one from his own jacket pocket… the one Vittoria had been carrying when they came in.

The sudden wave of panic that rose in Langdon was a frenzy of disjunct fears. His initial instinct was for Vittoria. What had this animal done to her? Was she hurt? Or worse? In the same instant, Langdon realized the man overhead was screaming louder. The cardinal would die. Helping him now was impossible. Then, as the Hassassin leveled the gun at Langdon’s chest, Langdon’s panic turned inward, his senses on overload. He reacted on instinct as the shot went off. Launching off the bench, Langdon sailed arms first over the sea of church pews.

When he hit the pews, he hit harder than he had imagined, immediately rolling to the floor. The marble cushioned his fall with all the grace of cold steel. Footsteps closed to his right. Langdon turned his body toward the front of the church and began scrambling for his life beneath the pews.

High above the chapel floor, Cardinal Guidera endured his last torturous moments of consciousness. As he looked down the length of his naked body, he saw the skin on his legs begin to blister and peel away. I am in hell, he decided. God, why hast thou forsaken me? He knew this must be hell because he was looking at the brand on his chest upside down… and yet, as if by the devil’s magic, the word made perfect sense.

92

Three ballotings. No Pope.