of the stairs, the unmistakable smell of linseed oil and plaster dust assaulted his nostrils. Ahead, an illuminated SORTIE/EXIT displayed an arrow pointing down a long corridor.
Langdon stepped into the hallway.
To the right gaped a murky restoration studio out of which peered an army of statues in various states of repair. To the left, Langdon saw a suite of studios that resembled Harvard art classrooms - rows of easels, paintings, palettes, framing tools - an art assembly line.
As he moved down the hallway, Langdon wondered if at any moment he might awake with a start in his bed in Cambridge. The entire evening had felt like a bizarre dream. I'm about to dash out of the Louvre...a fugitive.
Sauniere's clever anagrammatic message was still on his mind, and Langdon wondered what Sophie would find at the Mona Lisa...if anything. She had seemed certain her grandfather meant for her to visit the famous painting one more time. As plausible an interpretation as this seemed, Langdon felt haunted now by a troubling paradox.
P. S. Find Robert Langdon.
Sauniere had written Langdon's name on the floor, commanding Sophie to find him. But why? Merely so Langdon could help her break an anagram?
It seemed quite unlikely.
After all, Sauniere had no reason to think Langdon was especially skilled at anagrams. We've never even met.More important, Sophie had stated flat out that she should have broken the anagram on her own. It had been Sophie who spotted the Fibonacci sequence, and, no doubt, Sophie who, if given a little more time, would have deciphered the message with no help from Langdon.
Sophie was supposed to break that anagram on her own.Langdon was suddenly feeling more certain about this, and yet the conclusion left an obvious gaping lapse in the logic of Sauniere's actions.
Why me? Langdon wondered, heading down the hall. Why was Sauniere's dying wish that his estranged granddaughter find me? What is it that Sauniere thinks I know?
With an unexpected jolt, Langdon stopped short. Eyes wide, he dug in his pocket and yanked out the computer printout. He stared at the last line of Sauniere's message. P. S. Find Robert Langdon. He fixated on two letters. P. S. In that instant, Langdon felt Sauniere's puzzling mix of symbolism fall into stark focus. Like a peal of thunder, a career's worth of symbology and history came crashing down around him. Everything Jacques Sauniere had done tonight suddenly made perfect sense.
Langdon's thoughts raced as he tried to assemble the implications of what this all meant. Wheeling, he stared back in the direction from which he had come.
Is there time?
He knew it didn't matter.
Without hesitation, Langdon broke into a sprint back toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 22
Kneeling in the first pew, Silas pretended to pray as he scanned the layout of the sanctuary. Saint- Sulpice, like most churches, had been built in the shape of a giant Roman cross. Its long central section - the nave - led directly to the main altar, where it was transversely intersected by a shorter section, known as the transept. The intersection of nave and transept occurred directly beneath the main cupola and was considered the heart of the church... her most sacred and mystical point.
Not tonight, Silas thought. Saint-Sulpice hides her secrets elsewhere.
Turning his head to the right, he gazed into the south transept, toward the open area of floor beyond the end of the pews, to the object his victims had described.
There it is.
Embedded in the gray granite floor, a thin polished strip of brass glistened in the stone... a golden line slanting across the church's floor. The line bore graduated markings, like a ruler. It was a gnomon, Silas had been told, a pagan astronomical device like a sundial. Tourists, scientists, historians, and pagans from around the world came to Saint-Sulpice to gaze upon this famous line.
The Rose Line.
Slowly, Silas let his eyes trace the path of the brass strip as it made its way across the floor from his right to left, slanting in front of him at an awkward angle, entirely at odds with the symmetry of the church. Slicing across the main altar itself, the line looked to Silas like a slash wound across a beautiful face. The strip cleaved the communion rail in two and then crossed the entire width of the church, finally reaching the corner of the north transept, where it arrived at the base of a most unexpected structure.
A colossal Egyptian obelisk.
Here, the glistening Rose Line took a ninety-degree vertical turn and continued directly up the face