Langdon clenched his teeth as he took the sheathed document. Leaving it flat on the table, he read the line at the top. Then he rotated the page 90 degrees, reading the line in the right margin. Another twist, and he read the bottom. Another twist, the left. A final twist completed the circle. There were four lines in all. The first line Vittoria had found was actually the third line of the poem. Utterly agape, he read the four lines again, clockwise in sequence: top, right, bottom, left. When he was done, he exhaled. There was no doubt in his mind. "You found it, Ms. Vetra."

She smiled tightly. "Good, now can we get the hell out of here?"

"I have to copy these lines down. I need to find a pencil and paper."

Vittoria shook her head. "Forget it, professor. No time to play scribe. Mickey’s ticking." She took the page from him and headed for the door.

Langdon stood up. "You can’t take that outside! It’s a—"

But Vittoria was already gone.

55

Langdon and Vittoria exploded onto the courtyard outside the Secret Archives. The fresh air felt like a drug as it flowed into Langdon’s lungs. The purple spots in his vision quickly faded. The guilt, however, did not. He had just been accomplice to stealing a priceless relic from the world’s most private vault. The camerlegno had said, I am giving you my trust.

"Hurry," Vittoria said, still holding the folio in her hand and striding at a half-jog across Via Borgia in the direction of Olivetti’s office.

"If any water gets on that papyrus—"

"Calm down. When we decipher this thing, we can return their sacred Folio 5."

Langdon accelerated to keep up. Beyond feeling like a criminal, he was still dazed over the document’s spellbinding implications. John Milton was an Illuminatus. He composed the poem for Galileo to publish in Folio 5… far from the eyes of the Vatican.

As they left the courtyard, Vittoria held out the folio for Langdon. "You think you can decipher this thing? Or did we just kill all those brain cells for kicks?"

Langdon took the document carefully in his hands. Without hesitation he slipped it into one of the breast pockets of his tweed jacket, out of the sunlight and dangers of moisture. "I deciphered it already."

Vittoria stopped short. "You what?"

Langdon kept moving.

Vittoria hustled to catch up. "You read it once! I thought it was supposed to be hard!"

Langdon knew she was right, and yet he had deciphered the segno in a single reading. A perfect stanza of iambic pentameter, and the first altar of science had revealed itself in pristine clarity. Admittedly, the ease with which he had accomplished the task left him with a nagging disquietude. He was a child of the Puritan work ethic. He could still hear his father speaking the old New England aphorism: If it wasn’t painfully difficult, you did it wrong. Langdon hoped the saying was false. "I deciphered it," he said, moving faster now. "I know where the first killing is going to happen. We need to warn Olivetti."

Vittoria closed in on him. "How could you already know? Let me see that thing again." With the sleight of a boxer, she slipped a lissome hand into his pocket and pulled out the folio again.

"Careful!" Langdon said. "You can’t—"

Vittoria ignored him. Folio in hand, she floated beside him, holding the document up to the evening light, examining the margins. As she began reading aloud, Langdon moved to retrieve the folio but instead found himself bewitched by Vittoria’s accented alto speaking the syllables in perfect rhythm with her gait.

For a moment, hearing the verse aloud, Langdon felt transported in time… as though he were one of Galileo’s contemporaries, listening to the poem for the first time… knowing it was a test, a map, a clue unveiling the four altars of science… the four markers that blazed a secret path across Rome. The verse flowed from Vittoria’s lips like a song.

Vittoria read it twice and then fell silent, as if letting the ancient words resonate on their own.

From Santi’s earthly tomb, Langdon repeated in his mind. The poem was crystal clear about that. The Path of Illumination began at Santi’s tomb. From there, across Rome, the markers blazed the trail.