Angels Demons Page 0,110

was born."

Vittoria looked at him.

"I'm sorry, that always seems like a strange question. What I mean is that I've always known I would serve God. From the moment I could first think. It wasn't until I was a young man, though, in the military, that I truly understood my purpose."

Vittoria was surprised. "You were in the military?"

"Two years. I refused to fire a weapon, so they made me fly instead. Medevac helicopters. In fact, I still fly from time to time."

Vittoria tried to picture the young priest flying a helicopter. Oddly, she could see him perfectly behind the controls. Camerlegno Ventresca possessed a grit that seemed to accentuate his conviction rather than cloud it. "Did you ever fly the Pope?"

"Heavens no. We left that precious cargo to the professionals. His Holiness let me take the helicopter to our retreat in Gandolfo sometimes." He paused, looking at her. "Ms. Vetra, thank you for your help here today. I am very sorry about your father. Truly."

"Thank you."

"I never knew my father. He died before I was born. I lost my mother when I was ten."

Vittoria looked up. "You were orphaned?" She felt a sudden kinship.

"I survived an accident. An accident that took my mother."

"Who took care of you?"

"God," the camerlegno said. "He quite literally sent me another father. A bishop from Palermo appeared at my hospital bed and took me in. At the time I was not surprised. I had sensed God's watchful hand over me even as a boy. The bishop's appearance simply confirmed what I had already suspected, that God had somehow chosen me to serve him."

"You believed God chose you?"

"I did. And I do." There was no trace of conceit in the camerlegno's voice, only gratitude. "I worked under the bishop's tutelage for many years. He eventually became a cardinal. Still, he never forgot me. He is the father I remember." A beam of a flashlight caught the camerlegno's face, and Vittoria sensed a loneliness in his eyes.

The group arrived beneath a towering pillar, and their lights converged on an opening in the floor. Vittoria looked down at the staircase descending into the void and suddenly wanted to turn back. The guards were already helping the camerlegno onto the stairs. They helped her next.

"What became of him?" she asked, descending, trying to keep her voice steady. "The cardinal who took you in?"

"He left the College of Cardinals for another position."

Vittoria was surprised.

"And then, I'm sorry to say, he passed on."

"Le mie condoglianze," Vittoria said. "Recently?"

The camerlegno turned, shadows accentuating the pain on his face. "Exactly fifteen days ago. We are going to see him right now."

84

The dark lights glowed hot inside the archival vault. This vault was much smaller than the previous one Langdon had been in. Less air. Less time. He wished he'd asked Olivetti to turn on the recirculating fans.

Langdon quickly located the section of assets containing the ledgers cataloging Belle Arti. The section was impossible to miss. It occupied almost eight full stacks. The Catholic church owned millions of individual pieces worldwide.

Langdon scanned the shelves searching for Gianlorenzo Bernini. He began his search about midway down the first stack, at about the spot he thought the B's would begin. After a moment of panic fearing the ledger was missing, he realized, to his greater dismay, that the ledgers were not arranged alphabetically. Why am I not surprised?

It was not until Langdon circled back to the beginning of the collection and climbed a rolling ladder to the top shelf that he understood the vault's organization. Perched precariously on the upper stacks he found the fattest ledgers of all - those belonging to the masters of the Renaissance - Michelangelo, Raphael, da Vinci, Botticelli. Langdon now realized, appropriate to a vault called "Vatican Assets," the ledgers were arranged by the overall monetary value of each artist's collection. Sandwiched between Raphael and Michelangelo, Langdon found the ledger marked Bernini. It was over five inches thick.

Already short of breath and struggling with the cumbersome volume, Langdon descended the ladder. Then, like a kid with a comic book, he spread himself out on the floor and opened the cover.

The book was cloth-bound and very solid. The ledger was handwritten in Italian. Each page cataloged a single work, including a short description, date, location, cost of materials, and sometimes a rough sketch of the piece. Langdon fanned through the pages... over eight hundred in all. Bernini had been a busy man.

As a young student of art, Langdon had wondered how single artists