The Da Vinci Code, Page 28

  Ch

  T

  Y

  K

  Th

  Sh

  R

  Q

  Tz

  P

  O

  S

  N

  M

  L

  Teabing eyed her handiwork and chuckled. «Right you are. Glad to see those boys at the Holloway are doing their job.»

  Looking at Sophie’s substitution matrix, Langdon felt a rising thrill that he imagined must have rivaled the thrill felt by early scholars when they first used the Atbash Cipher to decrypt the now famous Mystery of Sheshach.For years, religious scholars had been baffled by biblical references to a city called Sheshach.The city did not appear on any map nor in any other documents, and yet it was mentioned repeatedly in the Book of Jeremiah – the king of Sheshach, the city of Sheshach, the people of Sheshach. Finally, a scholar applied the Atbash Cipher to the word, and his results were mind-numbing. The cipher revealed that Sheshach was in fact a code word for another very well-known city. The decryption process was simple.

  Sheshach , in Hebrew, was spelled: Sh-Sh-K.

  Sh-Sh-K, when placed in the substitution matrix, became B-B-L.

  B-B-L, in Hebrew, spelled Babel.

  The mysterious city of Sheshach was revealed as the city of Babel, and a frenzy of biblical examination ensued. Within weeks, several more Atbash code words were uncovered in the Old Testament, unveiling myriad hidden meanings that scholars had no idea were there.

  «We’re getting close,» Langdon whispered, unable to control his excitement.

  «Inches, Robert,» Teabing said. He glanced over at Sophie and smiled. «You ready?» She nodded.» Okay, Baphomet in Hebrew without the vowels reads: B-P-V-M-Th.Now we simply apply your Atbash substitution matrix to translate the letters into our five-letter password.»

  Langdon’s heart pounded. B-P-V-M-Th.The sun was pouring through the windows now. He looked at Sophie’s substitution matrix and slowly began to make the conversion. B is Sh…P is V…

  Teabing was grinning like a schoolboy at Christmas. «And the Atbash Cipher reveals…» He stopped short. «Good God!» His face went white.

  Langdon’s head snapped up.

  «What’s wrong?» Sophie demanded.

  «You won’t believe this.» Teabing glanced at Sophie. «Especially you.» «What do you mean?» she said.» This is… ingenious,» he whispered. «Utterly ingenious!» Teabing wrote again on the paper. «Drumroll, please. Here is your password.» He showed them what he had written.

  Sh-V-P-Y-A

  Sophie scowled. «What is it?»

  Langdon didn’t recognize it either.

  Teabing’s voice seemed to tremble with awe. «This, my friend, is actually an ancient word of wisdom.»

  Langdon read the letters again. An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll.An instant later he got it. He had never seen this coming. «An ancient word of wisdom!» Teabing was laughing. «Quite literally!» Sophie looked at the word and then at the dial. Immediately she realized Langdon and Teabing had failed to see a serious glitch. «Hold on! This can’t be the password,» she argued. «The cryptex doesn’t have an Sh on the dial. It uses a traditional Roman alphabet.»

  « Read the word,» Langdon urged. «Keep in mind two things. In Hebrew, the symbol for the sound Sh can also be pronounced as S, depending on the accent. Just as the letter P can be pronounced F.»

  SVFYA? she thought, puzzled.

  «Genius!» Teabing added. «The letter Vav is often a placeholder for the vowel sound O!» Sophie again looked at the letters, attempting to sound them out.» S… o… f… y… a.»

  She heard the sound of her voice, and could not believe what she had just said. «Sophia? This spells Sophia?»

  Langdon was nodding enthusiastically. «Yes! Sophia literally means wisdom in Greek. The root of your name, Sophie, is literally a ‘word of wisdom.‘»

  Sophie suddenly missed her grandfather immensely. He encrypted the Priory keystone with my name.A knot caught in her throat. It all seemed so perfect. But as she turned her gaze to the five lettered dials on the cryptex, she realized a problem still existed. «But wait… the word Sophia has six letters.»

  Teabing’s smile never faded. «Look at the poem again. Your grandfather wrote, ‘An ancient word of wisdom.‘ «Yes?» Teabing winked. «In ancient Greek, wisdom is spelled S-O-F-I-A.»

  CHAPTER 78

  Sophie felt a wild excitement as she cradled the cryptex and began dialing in the letters. An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll.Langdon and Teabing seemed to have stopped breathing as they looked on.

  S… O… F…

  «Carefully,» Teabing urged. «Ever so carefully.»

  … I… A.

  Sophie aligned the final dial. «Okay,» she whispered, glancing up at the others. «I’m going to pull it apart.»

  «Remember the vinegar,» Langdon whispered with fearful exhilaration. «Be careful.»

  Sophie knew that if this cryptex were like those she had opened in her youth, all she would need to do is grip the cylinder at both ends, just beyond the dials, and pull, applying slow, steady pressure in opposite directions. If the dials were properly aligned with the password, then one of the ends would slide off, much like a lens cap, and she could reach inside and remove the rolled papyrus document, which would be wrapped around the vial of vinegar. However, if the password they had entered were incorrect, Sophie’s outward force on the ends would be transferred to a hinged lever inside, which would pivot downward into the cavity and apply pressure to the glass vial, eventually shattering it if she pulled too hard.

  Pull gently , she told herself.

  Teabing and Langdon both leaned in as Sophie wrapped her palms around the ends of the cylinder. In the excitement of deciphering the code word, Sophie had almost forgotten what they expected to find inside. This is the Priory keystone.According to Teabing, it contained a map to the Holy Grail, unveiling the tomb of Mary Magdalene and the Sangreal treasure… the ultimate treasure trove of secret truth.

  Now gripping the stone tube, Sophie double-checked that all of the letters were properly aligned with the indicator. Then, slowly, she pulled. Nothing happened. She applied a little more force. Suddenly, the stone slid apart like a well-crafted telescope. The heavy end piece detached in her hand. Langdon and Teabing almost jumped to their feet. Sophie’s heart rate climbed as she set the end cap on the table and tipped the cylinder to peer inside.

  A scroll!

  Peering down the hollow of the rolled paper, Sophie could see it had been wrapped around a cylindrical object – the vial of vinegar, she assumed. Strangely, though, the paper around the vinegar was not the customary delicate papyrus but rather, vellum. That’s odd, she thought, vinegar can’t dissolve a lambskin vellum.She looked again down the hollow of the scroll and realized the object in the center was not a vial of vinegar after all. It was something else entirely. «What’s wrong?» Teabing asked. «Pull out the scroll.» Frowning, Sophie grabbed the rolled vellum and the object around which it was wrapped, pulling them both out of the container.

  «That’s not papyrus,» Teabing said. «It’s too heavy.» «I know. It’s padding.» «For what? The vial of vinegar?»

  «No.» Sophie unrolled the scroll and revealed what was wrapped inside. «For this.»

  When Langdon saw the object inside the sheet of vellum, his heart sank.

  «God help us,» Teabing said, slumping. «Your grandfather was a pitiless architect.»

  Langdon stared in amazement. I see Saunière has no intention of making this easy.

  On the table sat a second cryptex. Smaller. Made of black onyx. It had been nested within the first. Saunière’s passion for dualism. Two cryptexes.Everything in pairs. Double entendres.Male female.Black nested within white.Langdon felt the web of symbolism stretching onward. White gives birthto black.

  Every man sprang from woman. White – female. Black – male.

  Reaching over, Langdon lifted the small
er cryptex. It looked identical to the first, except half the size and black. He heard the familiar gurgle. Apparently, the vial of vinegar they had heard earlier was inside this smaller cryptex.

  «Well, Robert,» Teabing said, sliding the page of vellum over to him. «You’ll be pleased to hear that at least we’re flying in the right direction.» Langdon examined the thick vellum sheet. Written in ornate penmanship was another four-line verse. Again, in iambic pentameter. The verse was cryptic, but Langdon needed to read only as far as the first line to realize that Teabing’s plan to come to Britain was going to pay off.

  IN LONDON LIES A KNIGHT A POPE INTERRED.

  The remainder of the poem clearly implied that the password for opening the second cryptex could be found by visiting this knight’s tomb, somewhere in the city.

  Langdon turned excitedly to Teabing. «Do you have any idea what knight this poem is referring to?»

  Teabing grinned. «Not the foggiest. But I know in precisely which crypt we should look.»

  At that moment, fifteen miles ahead of them, six Kent police cars streaked down rain-soaked streets toward Biggin Hill Executive Airport.

  CHAPTER 79

  Lieutenant Collet helped himself to a Perrier from Teabing’s refrigerator and strode back out through the drawing room. Rather than accompanying Fache to London where the action was, he was now baby-sitting the PTS team that had spread out through Château Villette.

  So far, the evidence they had uncovered was unhelpful: a single bullet buried in the floor; a paper with several symbols scrawled on it along with the words blade and chalice; and a bloody spiked belt that PTS had told Collet was associated with the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, which had caused a stir recently when a news program exposed their aggressive recruiting practices in Paris.

  Collet sighed. Good luck making sense of this unlikely mélange.

  Moving down a lavish hallway, Collet entered the vast ballroom study, where the chief PTS examiner was busy dusting for fingerprints. He was a corpulent man in suspenders. «Anything?» Collet asked, entering. The examiner shook his head. «Nothing new. Multiple sets matching those in the rest of the house.» «How about the prints on the cilice belt?» «Interpol is still working. I uploaded everything we found.»

  Collet motioned to two sealed evidence bags on the desk. «And this?» The man shrugged. «Force of habit. I bag anything peculiar.» Collet walked over. Peculiar?

  «This Brit’s a strange one,» the examiner said. «Have a look at this.» He sifted through the evidence bags and selected one, handing it to Collet.

  The photo showed the main entrance of a Gothic cathedral – the traditional, recessed archway, narrowing through multiple, ribbed layers to a small doorway.

  Collet studied the photo and turned. «This is peculiar?» «Turn it over.» On the back, Collet found notations scrawled in English, describing a cathedral’s long hollow nave as a secret pagan tribute to a woman’s womb. This was strange. The notation describing the cathedral’s doorway, however, was what startled him. «Hold on! He thinks a cathedral’s entrance represents a woman’s…»

  The examiner nodded. «Complete with receding labial ridges and a nice little cinquefoil clitoris above the doorway.» He sighed. «Kind of makes you want to go back to church.»

  Collet picked up the second evidence bag. Through the plastic, he could see a large glossy photograph of what appeared to be an old document. The heading at the top read:

  Les Dossiers Secrets – Number 4° lm1 249

  «What’s this?» Collet asked.

  «No idea. He’s got copies of it all over the place, so I bagged it.» Collet studied the document.

  PRIEURE DE SIGN – LES NAUTONIERS/GRAND MASTERS

  JEAN DE GISORS

  1188-1220

  MARIE DE SAINT-CLAIR

  1220-1266

  GUILLAUME DE GlSORS

  1266-1307

  EDOUARD DE BAR

  1307-1336

  JEANNE DE BAR

  1336-1351

  JEAN DE SAINT-CLAIR

  1351-1366

  BLANCE D'EVREUX

  1366-1398

  NICOLAS FLAMEL

  1398-1418

  RENE D'ANJOU

  1418-1480

  IOLANDE DE BAR

  1480-1483

  SANDRO BOTTICELLI

  1483-1510

  LEONARDO DA VINCI

  1510-1519

  CONNETABLE DE BOURBON

  1519-1527

  FERDINAND DE GONZAQUE

  1527-1575

  LOUIS DE NEVERS

  1575-1595

  ROBERT FLUDD

  1595-1637

  J. VALENTIN ANDREA

  1637-1654

  ROBERT BOYLE

  1654-1691

  ISAAC NEWTON

  1691-1727

  CHARLES RADCLYFFE

  1727-1746

  CHARLES DE LORRAINE

  1746-1780

  MAXIMILIAN DE LORRAINE

  1780-1801

  CHARLES NODIER

  1801-1844

  VICTOR HUGO

  1844-1885

  CLAUDE DEBUSSY

  1885-1918

  JEAN COCTEAU

  1918-1963

  Prieuré de Sion? Collet wondered.

  «Lieutenant?» Another agent stuck his head in. «The switchboard has an urgent call for Captain Fache, but they can’t reach him. Will you take it?» Collet returned to the kitchen and took the call. It was André Vernet.

  The banker’s refined accent did little to mask the tension in his voice. «I thought Captain Fache said he would call me, but I have not yet heard from him.»

  «The captain is quite busy,» Collet replied. «May I help you?»

  «I was assured I would be kept abreast of your progress tonight.»

  For a moment, Collet thought he recognized the timbre of the man’s voice, but he couldn’t quite place it. «Monsieur Vernet, I am currently in charge of the Paris investigation. My name is Lieutenant Collet.»

  There was a long pause on the line. «Lieutenant, I have another call coming in. Please excuse me. I will call you later.» He hung up.

  For several seconds, Collet held the receiver. Then it dawned on him. I knew I recognized that voice! The revelation made him gasp.

  The armored car driver. With the fake Rolex. Collet now understood why the banker had hung up so quickly. Vernet had remembered the name Lieutenant Collet – the officer he blatantly lied to earlier tonight.

  Collet pondered the implications of this bizarre development. Vernet is involved.Instinctively, he knew he should call Fache. Emotionally, he knew this lucky break was going to be his moment to shine.

  He immediately called Interpol and requested every shred of information they