were positioned behind them, closing in from the rear. Vittoria concealed the gun beneath casually crossed arms in front of her, out of sight but accessible in a flash. She seemed to float faster and faster as the gap lessened, and Langdon battled to keep up. When his shoes scuffed a stone and sent it skittering, Vittoria shot him a sideways glare. But the couple did not seem to hear. They were talking.
At thirty feet, Langdon could start to hear voices. No words. Just faint murmurings. Beside him, Vittoria moved faster with every step. Her arms loosened before her, the gun starting to peek out. Twenty feet. The voices were clearer - one much louder than the other. Angry. Ranting. Langdon sensed it was the voice of an old woman. Gruff. Androgynous. He strained to hear what she was saying, but another voice cut the night.
"Mi scusi!" Vittoria's friendly tone lit the square like a torch.
Langdon tensed as the cloaked couple stopped short and began to turn. Vittoria kept striding toward them, even faster now, on a collision course. They would have no time to react. Langdon realized his own feet had stopped moving. From behind, he saw Vittoria's arms loosening, her hand coming free, the gun swinging forward. Then, over her shoulder, he saw a face, lit now in the street lamp. The panic surged to his legs, and he lunged forward. "Vittoria, no!"
Vittoria, however, seemed to exist a split second ahead of him. In a motion as swift as it was casual, Vittoria's arms were raised again, the gun disappearing as she clutched herself like a woman on a chilly night. Langdon stumbled to her side, almost colliding with the cloaked couple before them.
"Buona sera," Vittoria blurted, her voice startled with retreat.
Langdon exhaled in relief. Two elderly women stood before them scowling out from beneath their mantles. One was so old she could barely stand. The other was helping her. Both clutched rosaries. They seemed confused by the sudden interruption.
Vittoria smiled, although she looked shaken. "Dov'e la chiesa Santa Maria della Vittoria? Where is the Church of - "
The two women motioned in unison to a bulky silhouette of a building on an inclined street from the direction they had come. "e la."
"Grazie," Langdon said, putting his hands on Vittoria's shoulders and gently pulling her back. He couldn't believe they'd almost attacked a pair of old ladies.
"Non si puo entrare," one woman warned. "e chiusa temprano."
"Closed early?" Vittoria looked surprised. "Perche?"
Both women explained at once. They sounded irate. Langdon understood only parts of the grumbling Italian. Apparently, the women had been inside the church fifteen minutes ago praying for the Vatican in its time of need, when some man had appeared and told them the church was closing early.
"Hanno conosciuto l'uomo?" Vittoria demanded, sounding tense. "Did you know the man?"
The women shook their heads. The man was a straniero crudo, they explained, and he had forcibly made everyone inside leave, even the young priest and janitor, who said they were calling the police. But the intruder had only laughed, telling them to be sure the police brought cameras.
Cameras? Langdon wondered.
The women clucked angrily and called the man a bar-邪rabo. Then, grumbling, they continued on their way.
"Bar-邪rabo?" Langdon asked Vittoria. "A barbarian?"
Vittoria looked suddenly taut. "Not quite. Bar-邪rabo is derogatory wordplay. It means ?rabo... Arab."
Langdon felt a shiver and turned toward the outline of the church. As he did, his eyes glimpsed something in the church's stained-glass windows. The image shot dread through his body.
Unaware, Vittoria removed her cell phone and pressed the auto dial. "I'm warning Olivetti."
Speechless, Langdon reached out and touched her arm. With a tremulous hand, he pointed to the church.
Vittoria let out a gasp.
Inside the building, glowing like evil eyes through the stained-glass windows... shone the growing flash of flames.
91
Langdon and Vittoria dashed to the main entrance of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria and found the wooden door locked. Vittoria fired three shots from Olivetti's semi-automatic into the ancient bolt, and it shattered.
The church had no anteroom, so the entirety of the sanctuary spread out in one gasping sweep as Langdon and Vittoria threw open the main door. The scene before them was so unexpected, so bizarre, that Langdon had to close his eyes and reopen them before his mind could take it all in.
The church was lavish baroque... gilded walls and altars. Dead center of the sanctuary, beneath the main cupola, wooden pews had been stacked high and were now ablaze in