The Lost Symbol: live reading
John Crace www.theguardian.com
<p>The Guardian's resident book spoiler spends a day with Dan Brown's new blockbuster. Will he get out alive?</p>
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the Guardian
12.01pm: The motorcycle courier arrives at the door. One leg of his trousers is rolled up to the knee. He proffers his hand. Our eyes meet in mutual recognition. "Sorry I'm so late," he says. "I was being followed."

Five long years have I been waiting for this moment, years in which the Christian church has been strangely indifferent to the news that the body of Mary Magdalene has been found under the pyramid outside the Louvre. So what difference should an extra three and a half hours have made? And yet I sensed there was not a minute to lose if I was to save the free world from the Rogue Freemasons.

I grabbed the book. "Sign here," he commanded. Instead I drew a hand, the Hand of Mysteries. The courier stepped back, his face blanched with fear. "So y-y-you're..." he stammered. "Yes," I replied. The race against narcolepsy had begun.

2.30pm: A rash of italics mysteriously appears across the page. We must be deep in the heart of the Freemason's Hall, only yards from Capitol Hill in Washington, where an unnamed initiate is drinking wine from a skull. Aha, he thought, within hours I will have the secrets of the universe. Or something like that.

Robert Langdon looked out the window of the private jet as it prepared to land in Washington. Only hours earlier he had just finished his usual morning ritual of swimming 35 miles to keep his figure trim, when his phone had rung. It was from the office of Peter Solomon, his former mentor and richest man on the planet. Would he deliver the annual Smithsonian lecture in the National Statuary Hall that evening? Mr Solomon would send his private jet to fly him from Boston.

"Good evening, Professor Langdon," said a stewardess. "I loved your last book." " You must have been the only one who did," he muttered.

Mal'akh examined his well-sculpted, 6ft 3ins body in the mirror. Despite the teachings of Leviticus (what's that got to do with anything?) his whole body was adorned with mystical tattoos. Save for a small bare patch on his bald head. That will be filled in soon, he thought. Now that I have been initiated into the 33rd Level of the Brotherhood, the Secrets will soon be mine.

For no very good reason, Langdon thought back to an exchange he had had with a student two semesters past. The student had drawn him a map which showed that Washington had been laid out in Diabolic symbols. "I think you'll find, you're mistaken," he had laughed. "It's Detroit that was designed by the Devil. Washington was planned by the Freemasons."

Katherine Solomon was working in the top secret laboratory that had been given to her by her brother Peter in an unknown room of the Smithsonian repository. Her research into Noetics was so far advanced that only Dan Brown could comprehend her work. She checked her cell phone. Her regular Sunday night meeting with her brother was still on.

His face covered with powder to cover his tattoos and his arm wrapped in a sling, Mal'akh easily slipped past the armed security at the Capitol. I really am the master of disguise. Armed with the knowledge that he had tortured Peter into giving him - knowledge that only Katharine, Peter, Dan Brown and he possessed - Mal'akh was only hours away from entering the portal. It was all nearly in place.

Langdon hurried towards the Rotunda. The lecture was due to start in five minutes and he was running late. Still, he was well-prepared. The Symbolism of the Freemasons was his latest research project and what better place than to deliver his lecture than in the hall designed by Benjamin Franklin and so many of the founding fathers of America and Freemasonry? He strode onwards through the clunky sentences and the turgid repetition of pointless information till he reached his destination.

His brow furrowed. The Statuary Hall was empty. His cell rang. A maniacal laugh echoed through the ether. Hahahahahaha... Don't you think you've been a little gullible? "Not as much as anyone who was up all night queuing for this crap". The conversation was interrupted by a scream. A severed hand lay in the middle of the floor.

"Did you see anyone chuck a hand on the floor," the armed security guard asked the man with the blond hair and blazer. "No," the man replied. Outside the building Mal'akh threw his blond wig and blazer into the bin before yet again cackling wildly. I am the Master of Transformation.

Langdon picked up the hand. It was Peter Solomon's. It was still bleeding. A good sign. Peter must have been alive when it was severed. He examined the hand more closely. It had been tattooed to resemble the Masonic Hand of Mysteries. The hand was an invitation to him to unlock a hidden portal.

It was madness. But then Dan Brown was the author.

4.32pm: Chapters 14–30

Mal'akh pulled away from the Capitol in his stretch limo. None of his other 59 cars gave him the same sense of power. As he drove across the Potomac, he thought about Katharine Solomon. Her top secret laboratory that nobody knew about was about to launch a new Renaissance, to inspire Mankind to rediscover the knowledge it had lost. Her destiny was to light the torch of knowledge. Mine is to extinguish it.

Katharine Solomon walked out of the darkness of her top secret laboratory that nobody knew about and into the brightness of her strip-lit office. She sat down to reflect on the conversation she had had with her brother yesterday.

"Noetics is truly the most important science in the universe," Peter had said.

"Truly," she had replied. "For though ordinary sceptical scientists have ignore my research I have been able to prove that mind can affect matter. I have changed water into ice by telepathy."

"You have only just scratched the surface, grasshopper," he had continued. "Some people might even one day believe Dan Brown can turn words into meaningful sentences."

"Surely not?"

"So it is written in the Book of Zohar, the legendary book of the Ancients that contains the Secrets of the Universe and which most people believe not to exist but thanks to my supernatural talent as Obi-Wan-Kanobe of the Masons I know can be accessed through a mystery portal".

Langdon breathed heavily. This book was an even bigger load of doggy than he had feared. No wonder it had been delayed for so long. But there was nothing else for it. He had to tough it out. His thoughts were interrupted by a security guard. "I've got Director Sato, head of some top secret division of the CIA for you."

Inoue Sato was three feet six inches tall and riddled with throat cancer but she commanded instant respect. "What's going on?" she rasped. "I've no idea," Langdon said, a sentiment echoed by readers around the world, "but it looks as though I'm being invited to jump through a legendary portal. Even though there obviously isn't one."

"Just do it," Sato growled. "If you give in to logic now then we haven't got a plot. Just get a grip. After all you are the bloke that saved the Catholic church from the Illuminati."

With a third blond hairpiece draped artlessly across the finely concealed tattoos of his forehead, Mal'akh had completed his most brilliant transformation yet. He was Dr Christopher Abbadon. How easy it had been to secure a meeting with Peter Solomon! All it had taken was a two hundred million dollar donation to the Masonic cause and his elevation to the 33rd Level has been assured. Soon the Secrets would be his! Not that Solomon had told him willingly ...

Langdon wrestled with the message tattooed on Solomon's severed hand. The stars and the serpents made sense but the runic IIIX885 had him foxed. The same below as up. Of course, the finger was meant to be pointing down. SBBXIII. What could that mean? Sato gasped. "Nobody knows about Room SBBXIII". "It seems they do now," Langdon groaned.

The cell phone rang and Katharine ran to answer. "I'm Christopher Abbadon, your brother's psychiatrist," Mal'akh said. "He told me to meet you at the top secret laboratory that no one knows about. Can you tell me the address?"

"It's in the Smithsonian, the first left after Wal-mart," she replied, knowing she could trust someone who claimed to be her brother's psychiatrist implicitly. She turned to her assistant Trish, the most brilliant computer programmer on the planet. "I need to trace a secret redacted file that contains the words UNDERGROUND, WASHINGTON, SYMBOLON, PYRAMIDS, ANCIENT PORTAL and COMPLETEBOLLOX."

"That's odd," Trish said after a quick Google search. "The website keeps pinging back. It's as if it was a governmental top-secret website though I know it isn't."

Hhahahahahaha. Mal'akh let out another deranged laugh. Everything was fitting into place. How he had laughed when he had electrocuted Peter! How he had enjoyed the look of shock on Peter's face when he realised that Mal'akh was the man he thought he had killed when he had tried to prevent his mother being murdered. "You should have let me take the talisman there and then," he had said, while severing Peter's arm. "No matter. Soon the Secrets shall be mine!"

Langdon fiddled with the talisman in his pocket. He had no idea why Peter's assistant had asked him to bring it from Boston. Sato interrupted his train of thought. "We are now in the Sub-Sub-Basement of the Senate she said. "We are probably getting near to where Benjamin Franklin built a top secret pyramid to hide the secrets of the Universe. Keep moving and find that Portal".

5.48pm: Chapters 31-45

Sato shone a torch inside Room SSBXIII and reeled in horror as a skull surrounded by two receptacles stared back at her.

"Aha," said Langdon, apparently oblivious to the fact he was supposed to be in a top-secret basement room of the Senate that nobody had entered for years. "It must be Peter's Masonic Chamber of Reflection where he comes to meditate on the nature of death. It's all quite standard. Masons have these things everywhere."

"The skull may be standard," Sato replied, ripping away a piece of old canvas that blocked a top-secret entrance at the back of the room. "But this most certainly isn't."

Langdon raised his eyebrows. Tucked away in the top-secret annexe was a small pyramid with a piece missing off the top. Surely this couldn't be the portal? Sato picked up the pyramid and pointed to a hidden code on its side. "Do you think you can make sense of this?" Do bears shit in the woods?

"I'll have to fiddle around to ratchet up some non-existent suspense first. Oh look, there's a piece missing. I'm not going to be able to do it after all."

Mal'akh followed Christine through the corridors towards the top-secret laboratory that no one knew about. "Have a look at the giant squid we've got preserved over there," she said. "No thanks," Mal'akh muttered, grabbing her by the throat and pushing her head into the tank.

As she drowned in a last fitful intake of ethanol, Mal'akh took her security pass. That would save a lot of time if Katharine proved tricky.

"You're under arrest," Sato yelled. "You should never have held out on the CIA." Langdon blinked uncomprehendingly. "I've just taken an X-ray of your pocket and you're carrying a small pyramid."

Of course. He had completely forgotten about the talismanic pyramid Solomon had given him for safekeeping and that the baddy had made him bring along. It fitted perfectly on top of the unfinished pyramid in the top-secret entrance at the back of the room! Now he could read the code.

"I think you'll find it's actually the capstone," he replied, nerdishly going into pages of unnecessary detail about the meaning of pyramids in Masonic tradition.

"Either way, there's no time to lose. We have to enter the portal to unlock the secrets of the universe and save Peter," Sato growled. "But you are still under arrest."

Just then a huge African-American man rushed into the room, knocking out both Sato and the security guard. Instinctively, Langdon knew he should trust him. "My name's Nunez," he said, "There's even less time to lose." He flicked on a light and Langdon instantly realised the whole of Washington was connected by a series of underground tunnels.

Running for several miles through the passages, they eventually reached the living room of Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol. "I've always wanted to meet you," Langdon said for no good reason. "I can tell that you too are an important mason."

"Of course I am. I understand the Circle of Life and How It Moves Us All. We've got to find the portal."

Langdon's phone rang. "Hahahahahahaha." It was that diabolical laughter again. "Solve the riddle and find the Secrets of the Universe for me", Mal'akh sneered.

"The pyramid is too small to be a proper portal."

"You fool. It is just a symbol. A portal leading to another portal."

Langdon's blood ran cold. He hadn't thought of that. He rang his publisher. "Looks like this one is going to go on a bit," he warned. "By the way, have you got that Katherine Solomon's number."

Katharine was getting agitated. Where were Christine and Dr Abaddon? Her mobile phone rang. "Robert Langdon here. You're in a spot of bother. Your brother has had his arm cut off and Abaddon is a baddy." As she sat down, a powerful tattooed hand clamped her mouth shut.

7.18pm: Chapters 46 – 66

Aha! You thought Katherine was in trouble for a minute. But with a superhuman effort she wriggled her slender 50kg frame away from Mal'akh's heavily muscled grasp and slid off into the dark recesses of the top-secret laboratory that no one knew anything about. But how would she escape?

Bellamy led Langdon into the reading room of the American Library of Congress. "We'll be safe here," he said, fooling no one. "Now get to work on the code. Does it make any sense to you?"

"Of course", Langdon sneered. "It's a simple Masonic cipher. Even one of my first year students at Harvard's world-famous Department of Religious Symbology could solve this in a couple of minutes." Two minutes later, Langdon was looking perplexed. He had solved the riddle but it meant nothing.

In another part of the building, Sato swore at her cryptographer. "How can the cipher be meaningless?" she yelled. "The future of the free world depends on us finding the secrets contained in the portal."

"The key to the cipher is in the capstone that Langdon has in his pocket."

"Then go and get four guards to blow up the Reading Room and capture him."

"The key to the cipher lies in the capstone," said Bellamy. "But it is too dangerous to put the two parts of the pyramid together. Who knows what would happen to the world if the Secrets of the Universe were to be revealed."

Mal'akh spotted Katherine trying to summon help on her mobile phone. A very stupid mistake. A metal bar thudded into his head. The mobile phone had been a decoy. Katherine switched on all the lights, blinding him as she raced for the car. She gunned the accelerator as his scaly tattooed hands tried to force open the door. She had seen him before, she remembered, on the night her mother had been killed. Time for a convenient bit of backstory about Peter's wayward son Zachary who had been murdered in a Turkish jail after telling an inmate the story of the Solomon family pyramid.

The Solomon woman's escape was a problem. But not a serious one. Having blown up the entire top-secret laboratory that no one had ever heard about, Mal'akh decided to nip home for a change. He too needed time to indulge in backstory.

It had been a stroke of luck being in the same Turkish jail as Zachary. Once the fool had told him about the pyramid that contained the secrets of the universe, his death had been a foregone conclusion. He'd managed to pin the murder on a warder and escape unnoticed with Zachary's fortune of $200, before going off to a Greek island where he'd buffed himself up into Superman. It had been a shame he'd been shot and left for dead when he'd come for the Pyramid last time. But his hour had come etc. The transformation was complete. The Secrets of the Universe were soon to be his etc.

As she drove her Volvo up the stairs into the Reading Room of Congress, Katharine had more important things on her mind than worrying about losing five years of world-changing research at her top-secret laboratory that nobody knew about. She was to be Robert's love interest. Who would have thought it?

"Thank you for saving my life," she cooed, holding him tightly. "We have to unlock the Secrets of the Universe by putting the pyramid together."

"Er, gosh, I suppose we ought to," he said, "but I'm still not sure this portal thingy really exists."

"Of course it does," Bellamy added gravely. "You're such a cynic. Next you'll be trying to tell me the creation story isn't true. Every Top Mason knows there's a Secret Staircase leading under Washington to the Fountain of All Knowledge."

An explosion rocked the building. "That will be Sato sending in a hit squad to get us," he continued. "You two go and hide in the top-secret conveyor belt that transports books around the Library and I'll set up a diversion."

The top-secret conveyor belt spat out Katherine and Robert into the hallowed halls of the Adams building.

"We've got to solve the riddle to save Peter," Katherine sobbed, pulling out the solid gold capstone. They both blinked in amazement at the solid goldness of the capstone, before Robert spotted an inscription.

The

secret hides

within The Order

"Hmm," Robert said. "That's a bit disappointing."

"Look," cried Katherine. "There's a date on the bottom. AD 1514."

Robert smiled. "Just what we need. That's not a date. That's a person."

To be continued. But not tonight as I've had enough. I expect you have too. More first thing tomorrow …

8.11am: Chapters 67-86

Elsewhere in Washington, a blind old man received a phone call.

Is there no help for the widow's son?

The same words uttered by King Solomon centuries ago! It could only two things. Warren Bellamy needed the help of a fellow Mason. And the plot was going from bad to worse.

"AD stands for Albrecht Durer," said Langdon, as they hurried through the cavernous Adams Building. "He was the ultimate Renaissance Man. To this day, no one but Dan Brown understands the messages in his art. He makes Da Vinci look like a halfwit."

And this makes the Da Vinci Code look like a masterpiece, Katherine thought.

"The painting we are looking for is Melencolia 1," he continued, " a cryptic work, blah blah, depicting how even My Genius has difficulty comprehending the Ancient Mysteries. In alchemical terms, it represents our pathetic inability to turn lead into gold, something we are doing at the very moment – transforming leaden sentences into hard cash."

"But all I see are symbols," Katherine wailed.

"Look harder and you will see a regular polyhedron. But it is not any regular polyhedron, it is a Magic Square that will enable us to decode the Pyramid!"

Bellamy was pushed blindfolded into the back of an SUV. What are they going to do with me? Eventually he was dragged into a top secret office.

"Where do we begin?" said Sato.

Katherine's eyes widened as Langdon rearranged the random letters to fit with the Magic Square created by Albrecht Durer, the great mystic artist who no one but Dan Brown can decode, in Melencolia1. Jeova Sanctus Unus. One True God. Oh no! There were yet more layers to discover. This book was going on and on.

Langdon shrugged as his phone rang. "I was told by Bellamy that you needed sanctuary," the blind old man said.

Mal'akh was a bit pissed off he hadn't been getting enough word count in the book recently. So he stripped naked, muttered some rubbish about Boaz and Jachin, admired his Purification wrapped a virginal white loin cloth around his naked buttocks and checked his email. WHAT YOU REQUIRE IS WITHIN REACH, his top-secret contact had written.

Langdon and Katherine rushed to the taxi stand. "North-West on Massachusetts Avenue," Katherine shouted as they got in. Langdon was still perplexed by Jeova Sanctus Unus. Their contact had told them to meet where Rome meets the Tiber and the pillars of Mount Sinai, blah blah.

The taxi-driver froze. He recognised his passengers as the two people on the CIA's most wanted list. "Here's what you do," said a voice in his ear-piece. "Tell me where you drop them and we'll arrest them."

"Go to Freedom Plaza instead," Katherine yelled to the cabbie. "If you overlay the Star of David on the Great Seal of America it spells out MASON."

Sato stared hard at Bellamy. "You have no idea what you have done," she said. "The man who has kidnapped Peter Solomon holds The Secret Power of the Universe and is Capable of initiating a serried of Events that will Profoundly Change The World As We Know It." Her phone rang, as all phones do when you need a way to shunt the plot along. "Good," she said, "They are going to the George Washington Masonic Memorial, inspired by the ancient lighthouse at Pharos and housing a spectacular bronze sculpture of George Washington in full Masonic regalia. My 27 agents will soon have Langdon."

"God damn," cried 27 top CIA agents. "Where are they? They've given us the slip."

Langdon smiled grimly as their train hurtled in the opposite direction to the George Washington Masonic Memorial where blah blah. It had been just as well that Katherine had spotted the taxi driver was chatting to the CIA over the intercom and had created a diversion with the Star of David that had allowed them to escape! It was time to get out. Where better to find the One True God in the Washington National Cathedral, which stood on a tributary of the Potomac known as the Tiber and was built from stones from Mount Sinai?

"You Masons are playing a very, very dangerous game," Sato said for the 97th time. "Peter Solomon is a threat to National Security. The World is about to Suffer a Cataclysm from which it May Never Recover."

"I ain't bovvered," Bellamy replied. "We Masons are always right."

"Then look at this," Sato smiled wanly, opening up her computer to reveal a top secret file. Bellamy blanched. It couldn't be. It was impossible. What had he done etc? The world could be afflicted by a Terrible Cataclysm. He had made a Dreadful Mistake.

Mal'akh was pleased to have another chapter. It gave him time to recall how he had once called himself Andros and to witter on about Elohim, Eli and John Milton. He entered his Sanctum Sanctorum where he practised his Art and picked up the most famous knife in the Universe that he had bought for $3,000,000,000,000,000,000 million. It was time for his Blood Eucharist His transformation was almost complete. He was almost a masterpiece. Which was more than can be said for this.

The old blind man was ready for them. "You didn't expect the Cathedral Dean to be a Top Mason too, did you," he smiled.

"No Father," Langdon and Katherine muttered obediently.

"Well the Masons have a long connection with the Christian church, both of which organisations have dome untold good over the centuries, just to be clear so I don't get Dan Brown into trouble with any important religious and secret organisations like he did in the past. And just to be clear, it's the Rogue Masons who are the baddies in this story, not the proper Masons who have done untold good blah blah..."

"So what do we do next Father?"

"Open your minds, O cynics, and accept the Masonic prophecies and the word of the Lord as literal truths."

"He's right," exclaimed Katherine. "If you just whack the pyramid in the right place it falls into a perfect Rosicrucian Cross...."

"... and if you place that in Peter's Masonic ring," Langdon continued excitedly, and twist it through 33 degrees, the magical level at which all knowledge is revealed to the Masons, it will spell out Isaac Newton. The One True God is a pseudonym for Isaac Newton ...

" ... and through a simple alchemical process using Newtonian physics we can transform the pyramid again!" Katherine interrupted.

Mal'akh took out the world's most expensive knife costing $27,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and castrated himself. In order to create you had to destroy. If only he had cut out a whole load more bollocks ...

10.34am: Chapters 87 - 112

As Katherine and Langdon rushed from the Washington National Cathedral, situated on a tributary of the Potomac known as the Tiber blah blah, the CIA agents closed in on the old blind man's office. It would be OK, he thought. Tonight he had done God's work and America would be grateful.

"Damn," cried the 2,978 CIA agents. "We've missed them again."

Down in the kitchen of a nearby edifice that might once have resembled a Roman temple, Katherine prepared to do her Newtonian physics. "Science and mysticism are much more closely related than most people imagine," she wittered, a sentiment that gave Richard Dawkins a mild cardiac infarction at his Oxfordshire home.

"We've been thinking along the wrong tracks with 33 degrees. We shouldn't have been trying to turn the pyramid through 33 degrees, though that obviously helped when we stuck it in the ring and it turned up Isaac's name. We should be heating it to 33 in Newtonian degrees – which is the sacred number for the boiling point of water – and through a process known as incandescence we should be able to read a top secret inscription that has been cunningly hidden on the surface."

Katherine plugged in the kettle and she and Langdon smiled in grim satisfaction as the words EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE appeared on the pyramid. So the Masons were right! There was an actual portal to a secret vault under Washington, sometimes known as the American Rome, where all the secrets of the Universe had been concealed by America's Founding Fathers, many of whom had been Masons.

"Right," said Katherine. "I know I threw away your cell phone when we were in the taxi to confuse the 97,612 CIA agents who were following us, but I want you to use your eidetic memory to remember the number of the person who tricked you in to giving the lecture. That will be Mal'akh and if we can get hold of him and give him the address we will be able to save my brother!"

An unfamiliar voice answered Langdon's call. "It's Secret Agent, Montgomery. Mal'akh has left his house, but we've uncovered some interesting artefacts and found your brother with the cruelly severed arm."

"Hoooooooray," cried Katherine. "Everything's going to be fine. Except it isn't because there's still 150 pages to go."

"Not so fast," rasped Sato, inhaling an unfiltered cigarette into her cancerous throat. "Finally I've found you. You have no idea what You've Been Dealing With. America Could Be About To Endure a Millennium of Darkness if The Secrets of the Universe Fall into the Wrong Hands. But even though I've been tracking you down with 112,657 Top Secret CIA agents for most of the book and have been threatening to put you in a Top Secret Maximum Security Prison, I'm now going to work with you and let you go and collect your brother while I go and scout out EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE."

"I'm afraid I've been a bit of a Silly-Billy even though I am one of America's Top Masons," Bellamy confessed. "I've been secretly sending Mal'akh messages all through the book.

"Tell me something I didn't know," said Mal'akh and several million readers. "Though frankly your messages don't seem to have made much difference to the plot one way or the other." But enough of that. It was time for him to grow some wings or some other such nonsense.

Langdon was puzzled by the appearance of some white globules that had appeared from nowhere on the base of the pyramid. And then he understood. Sincerely. Sin Cerely. Although we now use it as a polite form of address at the end of a letter, its original meaning was "without wax". And it was wax that was appearing at the base of the pyramid. There was yet another inscription hidden on the pyramid by a Top secret coating of wax. And putting the pyramid in boiling water had loosened it. He hastily scratched away the surface and then scratched his head. The base was covered in 64 indecipherable marks.

His puzzlement was interrupted by Katherine flying through the air. And before he had time to work out what was going on, he was struck by a powerful force that rendered him unconscious.

"Mwahahahahahahahahaha," Mal'akh cackled repeatedly, while prancing around in his loin cloth and muttering strange incantations that had been lifted from the Wikipedia entry for Black Magic. "I've fooled you all again. I tortured Secret Agent Montgomery – almost as much as I've tortured the English language – into making you think everything was OK so you would come along. I am the Warrior. Mwahahahahahahahahaha."

Sato looked grumpily around FRANKLIN SQUARE. There was no EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE. The only building in sight was the towering neo-classical construction of the Temple of Harry Potter and The Ancient Order of Hippogryphs. And it couldn't be that. He was back to SQUARE one. FRANKLIN SQUARE ONE.

As Katherine wept gently into the bindings that secured her to the operating table, she thought back to Zachary and the Secret Powers of the Solomons. This consoled her even more than philosophy consoled Alain de Botton and she started to concentrate her Noetic energy. If only she could summon the Ghost of Noel Edmonds to Order the Cosmos, perhaps then she could use her mind to free her shackles. Or perhaps not.

Langdon woke up to find himself in near darkness. He was entombed in a coffin with only a small eye-hole for him to see out of. Mal'akh's heavily tattooed body appeared at the Perspex. "Solve the riddle of EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE or you die."

As so often before, Langdon's brain raced into overdrive. Of course! EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE was another CODE. It was the EIGHT by EIGHT MAGIC SQUARE invented by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN one of the greatest Americans who had ever lived who also happened to be a MASON! He gestured to Mal'akh to rearrange the 64 incomprehensible symbols according to the EIGHT FRANKLIN SQUARE. Langdon's mind boggled. Literally. He couldn't believe what he was seeing as the SQUARE fell into place.

"Mwahahahahahahahahahaha". Mal'akh's Satanic laugh echoed around the Top Secret basement where they were all hidden. He turned to leave the room before returning, pushing a wheelchair in which Peter sat holding the stump from his hand that had been cruelly severed. He then placed a line into Katherine's veins to allow her to slowly bleed to death for no good reason. The piece de resistance he left till last. He switched on the tap and watched Langdon's coffin fill with water.

Langdon knew he was drowning. He tried to resist but eventually his reflex to breathe was too powerful. Water filled his lungs. He felt delirious. He found himself thinking of the APOCALYPSE, The Verbum Significatium, the Verbum Omnificum, of the Lecture Peter Solomon had given in which he had made sure everyone knew you could be a Great and Loyal American and Still be a Mason and How the Book of Revelation was really all TRUE too. He was all Consciousness. Which was odd. Because by now the readers were all Unconsciousness.

The house was empty. Or so Sato thought as she looked round. Mal'akh had fled. But where were the others? Just then she spotted a Top Secret Entrance into the Top Secret Hidden Basement. She raced down the stairs. Katherine was still alive. Thank God! Thank America!

"We need to get to THE SACRED MOUNTAIN," she repeated gnomically.

But where was Langdon? Over there! Sato forced open the coffin in which he had been drowning for the past half an hour. Langdon spluttered.

"You didn't think you would get out of this book that easily, did you?" she laughed grimly. "For no very good reason, you've been suspended in a Top Secret Breathable Liquid that the CIA has been developing in its Top Secret Laboratories. So you're still alive after all."

Langdon looked pensive. For the first time he felt he understood precisely what was going on. Which was more than anyone reading it did ...

1.17pm: Chapters 113 - Epilogue

Langdon gulped in the fresh air greedily, expunging the last traces of the Top Secret Breathable Water that no one seemed quite sure why Mal'akh had bothered to use instead of Secret Ordinary Water as he had been trying to kill him anyway. "Hmm," Langdon thought, not for the first time. I know that Peter is alive. He's in Purgatory. Lucky him. This reader's in Hell.

"Oh, goody goody, you're alive after all," said Katherine, kissing Langdon and wiping her tear-bespattered cheeks on his very smart turtle neck sweater.

"You must have been submerged in Top Secret Breathable Water. Now we must follow Mal'akh to the Sacred Mountain where he's taken Peter."

"But we don't know where it is. And Mal'akh has taken the pyramid."

"Oh yes we do," Katherine smiled knowingly. "Because you've got an eidetic memory."

Langdon closed his eyes and summoned his eidetic memory. "They've gone to Heredom".

"Is that the Holy Mountain in Scotland?"

"Don't be so stupid. Can't you guess that it's the jewel in the crown of the Masonic Scottish Rite in America? Mal'Akh wants to tattoo the Lost Word on his Head. We haven't a moment to waste."

"You can't come," barked Sato. "This is a matter of National Security which Threatens the Entire American Way of Life. Only Top Secret Agents are allowed."

"The hell I can't," Langdon riposted. "I never miss the denouement of my own books. But we can leave the love interest behind and catch up with her later."

"OK", Katherine simpered meekly.

Mal'akh dragged Peter into the Altar Room of the Grand Masonic Temple that was bounded on all sides by Doric columns depicting the Hidden Secrets of the Ancient, blah, blah. He imagines the Lost Word is a real word yet it's only allegorical, thought Peter, himself baffled by the fact that for the first time in 450 pages he had had a thought that allowed that everything the Masons did was not entirely based on Fact. He thought too some more about the mysteries of the number 33. There are a perfect 33 vertebrae in the human body. LPs are played at 33 RPM.

The time had almost come. Mal'Akh laid out the black crow's foot and the $798,000,000,000,000,000,000 knife that had come from the desert of Canaan and had once been held by Abraham as he prepared to sacrifice his son, Isaac. "You really haven't understood anything," he sneered at Peter.

Sato and Langdon looked on aghast. Mal'akh had secretly recorded all the initiation rites of the Masons in a video camera concealed in his blond hairpiece and now he was preparing to broadcast it to the world via the internet, a worldwide communications system that allowed simultaneous broadcast of files.

MESSAGE 29% COMPLETE.

Images of Senators, the director of the CIA, Supreme Court Judges all dressed in bowler hats and wellington boots looking very stupid. Even though he instinctively understood and was at great pains to point out, that the video had been selected to show the Masons in the worst possible light and to ignore the Tremendous Amount of Good Works they did Unnoticed for American Society, Langdon rather doubted whether the rest of America would take such an Enlightened View.

MESSAGE 53% COMPLETE.

"You can see why I've been obsessed with National Security," Sato spat. "If this gets out American Society will Be Changed Forever and the Forces of Darkness Will Have Won."

Langdon nodded, though he Top Secretly wondered if Sato wasn't being a bit ridiculous about the whole thing and that the readers might feel cheated by such a lame explanation.

MESSAGE 71% COMPLETE.

"Tell me the Lost Word," Mal'akh screamed. Peter was sweating profusely. If the video unfairly showing the Masons looking a bit Crap were to get out then America As We Know It Would End. And yet there was Lost Word. He would have to make something up!

"Of course," said Mal'akh, preparing to tattoo himself with human blood to affect the Final Transformation. "It was bound to be that Simple. By the way, I'm surprised you didn't recognise me. I'm not really Mal'akh, I'm your son Zachary, whom you left to rot in a Turkish jail. Mwahahahahahahhaha."

MESSAGE 97% COMPLETE.

"Gosh, so you are. Who would have thought it? Apart from most of the readers?"

"Now sacrifice me so I can complete my Resurrection. Or whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing."

"I'm a wee bit reluctant to kill my son but I have to put the Masons first in order to Preserve the American way of Life. So here goes."

There was a crash and a blinding light. Mal'akh smiled enigmatically. So this is what it is like to be a God.

Langdon rushed in as the helicopter hovering overhead got too close to the cupola and sent shards of glass crashing to the altar below. Oh bugger, thought Mal'akh, apparently amazed to find he hadn't been transformed into a God after all. "Help," he sobbed. "I'm in a lot of pain and I don't know if I'm going to make it."

MESSAGE 100% COMPLETE.

"Oh do belt up," Peter and Langdon laughed. "No one's interested in you any more so you can butt out of the story. We've got a few loose ends to tie up."

"Damn," Sato grimaced. "He managed to get the very unfair Top Secret data about the Masons released over the internet, a worldwide etc. America Will Never Be The Same."

"Relax," said a computer geek appearing from nowhere. "I cross-referenced bandwidths blah blah and was able to block the download. America is Safe."

Peter smiled. Now that America was Safe he miraculously felt better himself. Suddenly he was no longer bothered by the festering gangrenous stump from which his hand had been cruelly severed the day before and which might have caused a Lesser Person to seek help from a Hospital. Instead he would arise from his Wheelchair and induct Langdon into the Final Mysteries.

"Have one more go at decoding the pyramid," he instructed Langdon.

"Well I see the Symbolism of the Intelligent Design, the all seeing-eye, the singularity before Big Bank, whose intention was to make America

the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave."

"Look again. The Meaning is More Literal."

"Oh, I see," Langdon nodded knowingly. "The down sign means south. So we now have to go to some other great American Landmark in Washington."

Peter blindfolded Langdon for no good reason, only revealing the Top Secret location after they had arrived. "Good Lord," Langdon gasped. "We're at the top of the 555 foot tall Great Egyptian Obelisk and if I'm not very much mistaken, the same words – LAUD DEO – that I've just quickly translated from the pyramid are on the top of the Obelisk."

"Laus Deo, Praise the Lord," Peter replied, helpfully offering a simultaneous translation. "That is what all Good Masons and all Good Americans should strive to do. But have you also noticed there is a symbol on the pyramid telling you to look at the Cornerstone in the North-East."

"So the Lost Word is buried under the North-east corner of the Obelisk?"

"Not quite," said Peter, getting even more irritating, if you can imagine that, by the second. "Think of the Book of Psalms, Leviticus, Revelation and all that stuff."

In the Beginning was the Word.

"I get it. The Lost Word is the Bible."

"Precisely. The Founding Fathers buried a Bible, for within the Bible are all the Ancient Mysteries of the Universe."

"Then Christianity must be the One True Faith."

"I never said that, because I don't want to piss off all the other non-Christian religions. But obviously that's what I mean. How could it not be what with Jesus being American and all."

Katherine bounded up the 555 feet to the top of the Obelisk and held Langdon tightly to her. "You know in all the excitement I've quite forgotten that my nephew Mal'akh is lying dead in some Great Masonic Chamber," she sniggered.

"Us too."

"And guess what? All my brilliant Top Secret Noetic research managed to survive the five megaton explosion in the Top Secret laboratory that no one knew about. I must have been able to restore it all through my Amazing Will Power."

Peter looked on with the benevolence of Confucius. "I have one more surprise in store for you," he whispered sagely.

Langdon and Katherine stood where no one else had ever stood, high in the dome of Capitol Hill, looking out at the Obelisk as the first rays of sunlight burst out over Washington.

They both fell to their knees in prayer before the Almighty Divinity. "See how the sunlight reflects the Golden aura of Laus Deo," Katherine incanted with sublime reverence. "We are entering a New Era when Science will Embrace Religion. Well, Christianity at any rate.

"Oh do shut up," Langdon yawned. "Come over here and give us a shag."