her, motioning with her head to the stele beside the apse. Carved in the granite block were two words:
Capella Chigi
Langdon nodded. Without a sound they moved to the corner of the opening, positioning themselves behind a wide pillar. Vittoria leveled the gun around a corner at the plastic. Then she signaled for Langdon to pull back the shroud.
A good time to start praying, he thought. Reluctantly, he reached over her shoulder. As carefully as possible, he began to pull the plastic aside. It moved an inch and then crinkled loudly. They both froze. Silence. After a moment, moving in slow motion, Vittoria leaned forward and peered through the narrow slit. Langdon looked over her shoulder.
For a moment, neither one of them breathed.
"Empty," Vittoria finally said, lowering the gun. "We're too late."
Langdon did not hear. He was in awe, transported for an instant to another world. In his life, he had never imagined a chapel that looked like this. Finished entirely in chestnut marble, the Chigi Chapel was breathtaking. Langdon's trained eye devoured it in gulps. It was as earthly a chapel as Langdon could fathom, almost as if Galileo and the Illuminati had designed it themselves.
Overhead, the domed cupola shone with a field of illuminated stars and the seven astronomical planets. Below that the twelve signs of the zodiac - pagan, earthly symbols rooted in astronomy. The zodiac was also tied directly to Earth, Air, Fire, Water... the quadrants representing power, intellect, ardor, emotion. Earth is for power, Langdon recalled.
Farther down the wall, Langdon saw tributes to the Earth's four temporal seasons - primavera, estate, autunno, inverno. But far more incredible than any of this were the two huge structures dominating the room. Langdon stared at them in silent wonder. It can't be, he thought. It just can't be! But it was. On either side of the chapel, in perfect symmetry, were two ten-foot-high marble pyramids.
"I don't see a cardinal," Vittoria whispered. "Or an assassin." She pulled aside the plastic and stepped in.
Langdon's eyes were transfixed on the pyramids. What are pyramids doing inside a Christian chapel? And incredibly, there was more. Dead center of each pyramid, embedded in their anterior façades, were gold medallions... medallions like few Langdon had ever seen... perfect ellipses. The burnished disks glimmered in the setting sun as it sifted through the cupola. Galileo's ellipses? Pyramids? A cupola of stars? The room had more Illuminati significance than any room Langdon could have fabricated in his mind.
"Robert," Vittoria blurted, her voice cracking. "Look!"
Langdon wheeled, reality returning as his eyes dropped to where she was pointing. "Bloody hell!" he shouted, jumping backward.
Sneering up at them from the floor was the image of a skeleton - an intricately detailed, marble mosaic depicting "death in flight." The skeleton was carrying a tablet portraying the same pyramid and stars they had seen outside. It was not the image, however, that had turned Langdon's blood cold. It was the fact that the mosaic was mounted on a circular stone - a cupermento - that had been lifted out of the floor like a manhole cover and was now sitting off to one side of a dark opening in the floor.
"Demon's hole," Langdon gasped. He had been so taken with the ceiling he had not even seen it. Tentatively he moved toward the pit. The stench coming up was overwhelming.
Vittoria put a hand over her mouth. "Che puzzo."
"Effluvium," Langdon said. "Vapors from decaying bone." He breathed through his sleeve as he leaned out over the hole, peering down. Blackness. "I can't see a thing."
"You think anybody's down there?"
"No way to know."
Vittoria motioned to the far side of the hole where a rotting, wooden ladder descended into the depths.
Langdon shook his head. "Like hell."
"Maybe there's a flashlight outside in those tools." She sounded eager for an excuse to escape the smell. "I'll look."
"Careful!" Langdon warned. "We don't know for sure that the Hassassin - "
But Vittoria was already gone.
One strong-willed woman, Langdon thought.
As he turned back to the pit, he felt light-headed from the fumes. Holding his breath, he dropped his head below the rim and peered deep into the darkness. Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, he began to see faint shapes below. The pit appeared to open into a small chamber. Demon's hole. He wondered how many generations of Chigis had been unceremoniously dumped in. Langdon closed his eyes and waited, forcing his pupils to dilate so he could see better in the dark. When he opened his eyes again, a pale