Angels Demons Page 0,29

knew it had been she who convinced her father to create the specimen. Against his better judgment. And he had been killed for it.

A quarter of a gram...

Like any technology - fire, gunpowder, the combustion engine - in the wrong hands, antimatter could be deadly. Very deadly. Antimatter was a lethal weapon. Potent, and unstoppable. Once removed from its recharging platform at CERN, the canister would count down inexorably. A runaway train.

And when time ran out...

A blinding light. The roar of thunder. Spontaneous incineration. Just the flash... and an empty crater. A big empty crater.

The image of her father's quiet genius being used as a tool of destruction was like poison in her blood. Antimatter was the ultimate terrorist weapon. It had no metallic parts to trip metal detectors, no chemical signature for dogs to trace, no fuse to deactivate if the authorities located the canister. The countdown had begun...

Langdon didn't know what else to do. He took his handkerchief and lay it on the floor over Leonardo Vetra's eyeball. Vittoria was standing now in the doorway of the empty Haz-Mat chamber, her expression wrought with grief and panic. Langdon moved toward her again, instinctively, but Kohler intervened.

"Mr. Langdon?" Kohler's face was expressionless. He motioned Langdon out of earshot. Langdon reluctantly followed, leaving Vittoria to fend for herself. "You're the specialist," Kohler said, his whisper intense. "I want to know what these Illuminati bastards intend to do with this antimatter."

Langdon tried to focus. Despite the madness around him, his first reaction was logical. Academic rejection. Kohler was still making assumptions. Impossible assumptions. "The Illuminati are defunct, Mr. Kohler. I stand by that. This crime could be anything - maybe even another CERN employee who found out about Mr. Vetra's breakthrough and thought the project was too dangerous to continue."

Kohler looked stunned. "You think this is a crime of conscience, Mr. Langdon? Absurd. Whoever killed Leonardo wanted one thing - the antimatter specimen. And no doubt they have plans for it."

"You mean terrorism."

"Plainly."

"But the Illuminati were not terrorists."

"Tell that to Leonardo Vetra."

Langdon felt a pang of truth in the statement. Leonardo Vetra had indeed been branded with the Illuminati symbol. Where had it come from? The sacred brand seemed too difficult a hoax for someone trying to cover his tracks by casting suspicion elsewhere. There had to be another explanation.

Again, Langdon forced himself to consider the implausible. If the Illuminati were still active, and if they stole the antimatter, what would be their intention? What would be their target? The answer furnished by his brain was instantaneous. Langdon dismissed it just as fast. True, the Illuminati had an obvious enemy, but a wide-scale terrorist attack against that enemy was inconceivable. It was entirely out of character. Yes, the Illuminati had killed people, but individuals, carefully conscripted targets. Mass destruction was somehow heavy-handed. Langdon paused. Then again, he thought, there would be a rather majestic eloquence to it - antimatter, the ultimate scientific achievement, being used to vaporize -

He refused to accept the preposterous thought. "There is," he said suddenly, "a logical explanation other than terrorism."

Kohler stared, obviously waiting.

Langdon tried to sort out the thought. The Illuminati had always wielded tremendous power through financial means. They controlled banks. They owned gold bullion. They were even rumored to possess the single most valuable gem on earth - the Illuminati Diamond, a flawless diamond of enormous proportions. "Money," Langdon said. "The antimatter could have been stolen for financial gain."

Kohler looked incredulous. "Financial gain? Where does one sell a droplet of antimatter?"

"Not the specimen," Langdon countered. "The technology. Antimatter technology must be worth a mint. Maybe someone stole the specimen to do analysis and R and D."

"Industrial espionage? But that canister has twenty-four hours before the batteries die. The researchers would blow themselves up before they learned anything at all."

"They could recharge it before it explodes. They could build a compatible recharging podium like the ones here at CERN."

"In twenty-four hours?" Kohler challenged. "Even if they stole the schematics, a recharger like that would take months to engineer, not hours!"

"He's right." Vittoria's voice was frail.

Both men turned. Vittoria was moving toward them, her gait as tremulous as her words.

"He's right. Nobody could reverse engineer a recharger in time. The interface alone would take weeks. Flux filters, servo-coils, power conditioning alloys, all calibrated to the specific energy grade of the locale."

Langdon frowned. The point was taken. An antimatter trap was not something one could simply plug into a wall socket. Once removed from CERN, the