Pope had replied. "Something I have hidden my entire life. Science gave me a gift when I was a young man. A gift I have never forgotten."
"I don't understand. What does science have to offer a man of God?"
"It is complicated," the Pope had said. "I will need time to make you understand. But first, there is a simple fact about me that you must know. I have kept it hidden all these years. I believe it is time I told you."
Then the Pope had told him the astonishing truth.
132
The camerlegno lay curled in a ball on the dirt floor in front of St. Peter's tomb. The Necropolis was cold, but it helped clot the blood flowing from the wounds he had torn at his own flesh. His Holiness would not find him here. Nobody would find him here...
"It is complicated," the Pope's voice echoed in his mind. "I will need time to make you understand..."
But the camerlegno knew no amount of time could make him understand.
Liar! I believed in you! GOD believed in you!
With a single sentence, the Pope had brought the camerlegno's world crashing down around him. Everything the camerlegno had ever believed about his mentor was shattered before his eyes. The truth drilled into the camerlegno's heart with such force that he staggered backward out of the Pope's office and vomited in the hallway.
"Wait!" the Pope had cried, chasing after him. "Please let me explain!"
But the camerlegno ran off. How could His Holiness expect him to endure any more? Oh, the wretched depravity of it! What if someone else found out? Imagine the desecration to the church! Did the Pope's holy vows mean nothing?
The madness came quickly, screaming in his ears, until he awoke before St. Peter's tomb. It was then that God came to him with an awesome fierceness.
Yours is a Vengeful God!
Together, they made their plans. Together they would protect the church. Together they would restore faith to this faithless world. Evil was everywhere. And yet the world had become immune! Together they would unveil the darkness for the world to see... and God would overcome! Horror and Hope. Then the world would believe!
God's first test had been less horrible than the camerlegno imagined. Sneaking into the Papal bed chambers... filling his syringe... covering the deceiver's mouth as his body spasmed into death. In the moonlight, the camerlegno could see in the Pope's wild eyes there was something he wanted to say.
But it was too late.
The Pope had said enough.
133
"The Pope fathered a child."
Inside the Sistine Chapel, the camerlegno stood unwavering as he spoke. Five solitary words of astonishing disclosure. The entire assembly seemed to recoil in unison. The cardinals' accusing miens evaporated into aghast stares, as if every soul in the room were praying the camerlegno was wrong.
The Pope fathered a child.
Langdon felt the shock wave hit him too. Vittoria's hand, tight in his, jolted, while Langdon's mind, already numb with unanswered questions, wrestled to find a center of gravity.
The camerlegno's utterance seemed like it would hang forever in the air above them. Even in the camerlegno's frenzied eyes, Langdon could see pure conviction. Langdon wanted to disengage, tell himself he was lost in some grotesque nightmare, soon to wake up in a world that made sense.
"This must be a lie!" one of the cardinals yelled.
"I will not believe it!" another protested. "His Holiness was as devout a man as ever lived!"
It was Mortati who spoke next, his voice thin with devastation. "My friends. What the camerlegno says is true." Every cardinal in the chapel spun as though Mortati had just shouted an obscenity. "The Pope indeed fathered a child."
The cardinals blanched with dread.
The camerlegno looked stunned. "You knew? But... how could you possibly know this?"
Mortati sighed. "When His Holiness was elected... I was the Devil's Advocate."
There was a communal gasp.
Langdon understood. This meant the information was probably true. The infamous "Devil's Advocate" was the authority when it came to scandalous information inside the Vatican. Skeletons in a Pope's closet were dangerous, and prior to elections, secret inquiries into a candidate's background were carried out by a lone cardinal who served as the "Devil's Advocate" - that individual responsible for unearthing reasons why the eligible cardinals should not become Pope. The Devil's Advocate was appointed in advance by the reigning Pope in preparation for his own death. The Devil's Advocate was never supposed to reveal his identity. Ever.
"I was the Devil's Advocate," Mortati repeated. "That is how I found out."
Mouths dropped. Apparently tonight was