Robert Langdon awoke with a start. He had been dreaming. The bathrobe beside his bed bore the monogram HOTEL RITZ PARIS.He saw a dim light filtering through the blinds. Is it dusk ordawn? he wondered.
Langdon's body felt warm and deeply contented. He had slept the better part of the last two days. Sitting up slowly in bed, he now realized what had awoken him... the strangest thought. For day she had been trying to sort through a barrage of information, but now Langdon found himself fixed on something he'd not considered before.
Could it be?
He remained motionless a long moment.
Getting out of bed, he walked to the marble shower. Stepping inside, he let the powerful jets message his shoulders. Still, the thought enthralled him.
Impossible.
Twenty minutes later, Langdon stepped out of the Hotel Ritz into Place Vendôme. Night was falling. The days of sleep had left him disoriented... and yet his mind felt oddly lucid. He had promised himself he would stop in the hotel lobby for a cafe au lait to clear his thoughts, but instead his legs carried him directly out the front door into the gathering Paris night.
Walking east on Rue des Petits Champs, Langdon felt a growing excitement. He turned south onto Rue Richelieu, where the air grew sweet with the scent of blossoming jasmine from the stately gardens of the Palais Royal.
He continued south until he saw what he was looking for - the famous royal arcade - a glistening expanse of polished black marble. Moving onto it, Langdon scanned the surface beneath his feet. Within seconds, he found what he knew was there - several bronze medallions embedded in the ground in a perfectly straight line. Each disk was five inches in diameter and embossed with the letters N and S.
Nord. Sud.
He turned due south, letting his eye trace the extended line formed by the medallions. He began moving again, following the trail, watching the pavement as he walked. As he cut across the corner of the Comedie-Française, another bronze medallion passed beneath his feet. Yes!
The streets of Paris, Langdon had learned years ago, were adorned with 135 of these bronze markers, embedded in sidewalks, courtyards, and streets, on a north-south axis across the city. He had once followed the line from Sacre-Coeur, north across the Seine, and finally to the ancient Paris Observatory. There he discovered the significance of the sacred path it traced.
The earth's original prime meridian.The first zero longitude of the world.Paris's ancient Rose Line. Now, as Langdon hurried across Rue de Rivoli, he could feel his destination within reach. Less than a block away.
The Holy Grail 'neath ancient Roslin waits.
The revelations were coming now in waves. Sauniere's ancient spelling of Roslin... the blade and chalice... the tomb adorned with masters' art.
Is that why Sauniere needed to talk with me? Had I unknowingly guessed the truth?
He broke into a jog, feeling the Rose Line beneath his feet, guiding him, pulling him toward his destination. As he entered the long tunnel of Passage Richelieu, the hairs on his neck began to bristle with anticipation. He knew that at the end of this tunnel stood the most mysterious of Parisian monuments - conceived and commissioned in the 1980s by the Sphinx himself, François Mitterrand, a man rumored to move in secret circles, a man whose final legacy to Paris was a place Langdon had visited only days before.
Another lifetime.
With a final surge of energy, Langdon burst from the passageway into the familiar courtyard and came to a stop. Breathless, he raised his eyes, slowly, disbelieving, to the glistening structure in front of him.
The Louvre Pyramid.
Gleaming in the darkness.
He admired it only a moment. He was more interested in what lay to his right. Turning, he felt his feet again tracing the invisible path of the ancient Rose Line, carrying him across the courtyard to the Carrousel du Louvre - the enormous circle of grass surrounded by a perimeter of neatly trimmed hedges - once the site of Paris's primeval nature-worshipping festivals... joyous rites to celebrate fertility and the Goddess.