The crisp April air whipped through the open window of the Citro?n ZX as it skimmed south past the Opera House and crossed Place Vend?me. In the passenger seat, Robert Langdon felt the city tear past him as he tried to clear his thoughts. His quick shower and shave had left him looking reasonably presentable but had done little to ease his anxiety. The frightening image of the curator's body remained locked in his mind.
Jacques Saunière is dead.
Langdon could not help but feel a deep sense of loss at the curator's death. Despite Saunière's reputation for being reclusive, his recognition for dedication to the arts made him an easy man to revere. His books on the secret codes hidden in the paintings of Poussin and Teniers were some of Langdon's favorite classroom texts. Tonight's meeting had been one Langdon was very much looking forward to, and he was disappointed when the curator had not shown.
Again the image of the curator's body flashed in his mind. Jacques Saunière did that to himself? Langdon turned and looked out the window, forcing the picture from his mind.
Outside, the city was just now winding down—street vendors wheeling carts of candied amandes, waiters carrying bags of garbage to the curb, a pair of late night lovers cuddling to stay warm in a breeze scented with jasmine blossom. The Citro?n navigated the chaos with authority, its dissonant two-tone siren parting the traffic like a knife.
"Le capitaine was pleased to discover you were still in Paris tonight," the agent said, speaking for the first time since they'd left the hotel. "A fortunate coincidence."
Langdon was feeling anything but fortunate, and coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. As someone who had spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events. The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.
"I assume," Langdon said, "that the American University of Paris told you where I was staying?"
The driver shook his head. "Interpol."
Interpol, Langdon thought. Of course. He had forgotten that the seemingly innocuous request of all European hotels to see a passport at check-in was more than a quaint formality—it was the law. On any given night, all across Europe, Interpol officials could pinpoint exactly who was sleeping where. Finding Langdon at the Ritz had probably taken all of five seconds.
As the Citro?n accelerated southward across the city, the illuminated profile of the Eiffel Tower appeared, shooting skyward in the distance to the right. Seeing it, Langdon thought of Vittoria, recalling their playful promise a year ago that every six months they would meet again at a different romantic spot on the globe. The Eiffel Tower, Langdon suspected, would have made their list. Sadly, he last kissed Vittoria in a noisy airport in Rome more than a year ago.
"Did you mount her?" the agent asked, looking over.
Langdon glanced up, certain he had misunderstood. "I beg your pardon?"
"She is lovely, no?" The agent motioned through the windshield toward the Eiffel Tower. "Have you mounted her?"
Langdon rolled his eyes. "No, I haven't climbed the tower."
"She is the symbol of France. I think she is perfect."
Langdon nodded absently. Symbologists often remarked that France—a country renowned for machismo, womanizing, and diminutive insecure leaders like Napoleon and Pepin the Short—could not have chosen a more apt national emblem than a thousand-foot phallus.
When they reached the intersection at Rue de Rivoli, the traffic light was red, but the Citro?n didn't slow. The agent gunned the sedan across the junction and sped onto a wooded section of Rue Castiglione, which served as the northern entrance to the famed Tuileries Gardens—Paris's own version of Central Park. Most tourists mistranslated Jardins des Tuileries as relating to the thousands of tulips that bloomed here, but Tuileries was actually a literal reference to something far less romantic. This park had once been an enormous, polluted excavation pit from which Parisian contractors mined clay to manufacture the city's famous red roofing tiles—or tuiles.
As they entered the deserted park, the agent reached under the dash and turned off the blaring siren. Langdon exhaled, savoring the sudden quiet. Outside the car, the pale wash of halogen headlights skimmed over the crushed gravel parkway, the rugged whir of the tires intoning a hypnotic rhythm. Langdon had always considered the Tuileries to be sacred ground. These were the gardens in which Claude Monet had experimented with form and color, and literally inspired the birth of the Impressionist movement. Tonight, however, this place held a strange aura of foreboding.
The Citro?n swerved left now, angling west down the park's central boulevard. Curling around a circular pond, the driver cut across a desolate avenue out into a wide quadrangle beyond. Langdon could now see the end of the Tuileries Gardens, marked by a giant stone archway.
Arc du Carrousel.
Despite the orgiastic rituals once held at the Arc du Carrousel, art aficionados revered this place for another reason entirely. From the esplanade at the end of the Tuileries, four of the finest art museums in the world could be seen... one at each point of the compass.
Out the right-hand window, south across the Seine and Quai Voltaire, Langdon could see the dramatically lit facade of the old train station—now the esteemed Musée d'Orsay. Glancing left, he could make out the top of the ultramodern Pompidou Center, which housed the Museum of Modern Art. Behind him to the west, Langdon knew the ancient obelisk of Ramses rose above the trees, marking the Musée du Jeu de Paume.
But it was straight ahead, to the east, through the archway, that Langdon could now see the monolithic Renaissance palace that had become the most famous art museum in the world.
Musée du Louvre.
Langdon felt a familiar tinge of wonder as his eyes made a futile attempt to absorb the entire mass of the edifice. Across a staggeringly expansive plaza, the imposing facade of the Louvre rose like a citadel against the Paris sky. Shaped like an enormous horseshoe, the Louvre was the longest building in Europe, stretching farther than three Eiffel Towers laid end to end. Not even the million square feet of open plaza between the museum wings could challenge the majesty of the facade's breadth. Langdon had once walked the Louvre's entire perimeter, an astonishing three-mile journey.
Despite the estimated five days it would take a visitor to properly appreciate the 65,300 pieces of art in this building, most tourists chose an abbreviated experience Langdon referred to as "Louvre Lite"—a full sprint through the museum to see the three most famous objects: the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory. Art Buchwald had once boasted he'd seen all three masterpieces in five minutes and fifty-six seconds.
The driver pulled out a handheld walkie-talkie and spoke in rapid-fire French. "Monsieur Langdon est arrivé. Deux minutes."
An indecipherable confirmation came crackling back.
The agent stowed the device, turning now to Langdon. "You will meet the capitaine at the main entrance."
The driver ignored the signs prohibiting auto traffic on the plaza, revved the engine, and gunned the Citro?n up over the curb. The Louvre's main entrance was visible now, rising boldly in the distance, encircled by seven triangular pools from which spouted illuminated fountains.
La Pyramide.
The new entrance to the Paris Louvre had become almost as famous as the museum itself. The controversial, neomodern glass pyramid designed by Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei still evoked scorn from traditionalists who felt it destroyed the dignity of the Renaissance courtyard. Goethe had described architecture as frozen music, and Pei's critics described this pyramid as fingernails on a chalkboard. Progressive admirers, though, hailed Pei's seventy-one-foot-tall transparent pyramid as a dazzling synergy of ancient structure and modern method—a symbolic link between the old and new—helping usher the Louvre into the next millennium.
"Do you like our pyramid?" the agent asked.
Langdon frowned. The French, it seemed, loved to ask Americans this. It was a loaded question, of course. Admitting you liked the pyramid made you a tasteless American, and expressing dislike was an insult to the French.
"Mitterrand was a bold man," Langdon replied, splitting the difference. The late French president who had commissioned the pyramid was said to have suffered from a "Pharaoh complex." Singlehandedly responsible for filling Paris with Egyptian obelisks, art, and artifacts.
Fran?ois Mitterrand had an affinity for Egyptian culture that was so all-consuming that the French still referred to him as the Sphinx.
"What is the captain's name?" Langdon asked, changing topics.
"Bezu Fache," the driver said, approaching the pyramid's main entrance. "We call him le Taureau."
Langdon glanced over at him, wondering if every Frenchman had a mysterious animal epithet. "You call your captain the Bull?"
The man arched his eyebrows. "Your French is better than you admit, Monsieur Langdon."
My French stinks, Langdon thought, but my zodiac iconography is pretty good. Taurus was always the bull. Astrology was a symbolic constant all over the world.
The agent pulled the car to a stop and pointed between two fountains to a large door in the side of the pyramid. "There is the entrance. Good luck, monsieur."
"You're not coming?"
"My orders are to leave you here. I have other business to attend to."
Langdon heaved a sigh and climbed out. It's your circus.
The agent revved his engine and sped off.
As Langdon stood alone and watched the departing taillights, he realized he could easily reconsider, exit the courtyard, grab a taxi, and head home to bed. Something told him it was probably a lousy idea.
As he moved toward the mist of the fountains, Langdon had the uneasy sense he was crossing an imaginary threshold into another world. The dreamlike quality of the evening was settling around him again. Twenty minutes ago he had been asleep in his hotel room. Now he was standing in front of a transparent pyramid built by the Sphinx, waiting for a policeman they called the Bull.
I'm trapped in a Salvador Dali painting, he thought.
Langdon strode to the main entrance—an enormous revolving door. The foyer beyond was dimly lit and deserted.
Do I knock?
Langdon wondered if any of Harvard's revered Egyptologists had ever knocked on the front door of a pyramid and expected an answer. He raised his hand to bang on the glass, but out of the darkness below, a figure appeared, striding up the curving staircase. The man was stocky and dark, almost Neanderthal, dressed in a dark double-breasted suit that strained to cover his wide shoulders. He advanced with unmistakable authority on squat, powerful legs. He was speaking on his cell phone but finished the call as he arrived. He motioned for Langdon to enter.
"I am Bezu Fache," he announced as Langdon pushed through the revolving door. "Captain of the Central Directorate Judicial Police." His tone was fitting—a guttural rumble... like a gathering storm.
Langdon held out his hand to shake. "Robert Langdon."
Fache's enormous palm wrapped around Langdon's with crushing force.
"I saw the photo," Langdon said. "Your agent said Jacques Saunière himself did—"
"Mr. Langdon," Fache's ebony eyes locked on. "What you see in the photo is only the beginning of what Saunière did."
当雪铁龙ZX向南急驰掠过歌剧院，穿过旺多姆广场时，清冷的四月风透过车窗向车内袭来。罗伯特。兰登正坐在客座上，试图理清思绪，却只感到城市从他身旁飞驰而过。他已匆匆地冲了沐浴，刮了胡子，这使外表看上去倒也说得过去，但他无法减轻自己的焦虑感。那令人恐惧的博物馆长尸体的样子一直锁定在他的脑海里。
雅克。索尼埃死了。
对于馆长的死，兰登禁不住有一种怅然若失的感受。尽管大家都知道索尼埃离群索居，但他对艺术的那份奉献精神却很容易使人们对他肃然起敬。他有关普桑和特尼尔斯画中隐藏密码的书籍是兰登上课时最喜欢用的课本。对今晚的会面，兰登抱有很大的期望，馆长没来他非常失望。
馆长尸体的那幅图景再次在他脑海闪过。雅克。索尼埃把自己弄成那样？兰登转身向窗外望去，使劲地把那景象从脑子中挤出去。
车外，城市街道曲曲折折地延伸。街头小贩推着车沿街叫卖桃脯，服务生正抱垃圾袋要把他们放在路边，一对深夜恋人在溢满茉莉花香的微风里拥抱在一起取暖。雪铁龙以居高临下的姿态穿过这一片混乱，那刺耳的双声调警笛像刀子一样把车流划开。
"我们局长发现你今晚还在巴黎后非常高兴。"那特工说道。这是他离开酒店后第一次开口。
"真凑巧，太幸运了。"
兰登一点也不觉得幸运，他不十分相信机缘巧合这种说法。作为一个终生都有在探索孤立的象征符号或观念之间隐含的相关性的人，兰登把这个世界视为一张由历史和事件相互交织而成的深不可测的大网。他经常在哈佛的符号学课上鼓吹说，各种关联性也许看不到，但他们却一直在那儿，伏在表层下面。
"我想是巴黎美国大学告诉你们我的住处的。"兰登说。
开车人摇摇头说："国际刑警组织"。
国际刑警组织，兰登心里想。当然，他忘了，所有欧洲酒店都要求看客人的护照。这无关痛痒的请求其实不仅仅是一个古怪的登记手续，那是法律。在任何一个晚上，在整个欧洲，国际刑警组织都能准确地定位谁睡在什么地方。弄清楚兰登住在里茨酒店恐怕只花了五秒钟时间。
雪铁龙继续加速向南穿越城区。这时被照亮的埃菲尔铁塔的轮廓开始显现出来。在车右边铁塔直插云霄。看到铁塔，兰登想起了维多利亚，想起了他一年前玩笑般的承诺。他说他们每六个月都要在全球范围内换一个浪漫的地方约会。兰登想，当时埃菲尔铁塔一定是上了他们的名单的。遗憾的是，他一年前是在罗马一个喧闹的机场和维多利亚吻别的。
"你上过她吗？"特工看着远方问。
兰登抬头看了他一眼，确信自己没听懂他的话。"对不起，你说什么？" "她很可爱，不是吗？"特工透过挡风玻璃指向埃菲尔铁塔。"你上过她吗？"
兰登的眼珠转了转。"没有，我还没爬过那铁塔。"
"她是法国的象征。我认为她完美无瑕。"
兰登心不在焉地点了点头。
符号学家常说，法国是一个因那些有男子汉气概、沉溺于女色的、像拿破仑和矮子那样危险的小个子领袖的出名的国家。它选择一个一千英尺高的男性生殖器作为国家的象征再合适不过了。
他们到里沃利路口时遇到了红灯，但雪铁龙并未减速。特工加大油门驰过路口，快速冲入卡斯蒂哥亚诺路有林荫的那一段。这一部分路段被用作著名的杜伊勒里花园--法国版的中央公园的北入口。许多游客都误以为杜伊勒里这个名字和这里几千珠盛开的丁香有关，因为二者发音有相似的地方，但杜伊勒里字面意思的确指的是多少有些浪漫的东西。这个公园曾经是一个被污染的大坑，黎承包商从这里挖粘土烧制巴黎著名的房顶红瓦--这个词的法语语音为杜伊勒里。
他们进入这空无一人的公园时，特工把手伸到仪表板下面把吵人的警笛关掉。兰登出了口气，体味着这瞬间到来的宁静。车外，泛白的车头晕光灯一晃一晃地照着前方碎砂砾停车道，轮胎发出难听的、有节奏的沙沙声，使人昏昏欲睡。
兰登一直把杜伊勒里当作一块圣地。正是在这些花园里，克劳德·莫内对形式和颜色作了实验，实际上是催生了印象派运动。然而，今晚这个地方被不祥的氛围笼罩着。
雪铁龙现在开始左拐，沿公园的中心大道向西驰去。轿车沿着一个环形池塘在奔驰，穿过了一条废弃的大道驶进远处的一块四边形场地。兰登现在可以看到杜伊勒里花园的边界，边界处有一块巨大的石拱门--小凯旋门。
尽管在小凯旋门曾举行过狂欢节，但艺术迷们是出于另一个完全不同的原因而对其景仰不已。从杜伊勒里花园尽头处的空地上可以看到全球四个最好的艺术博物馆--指南针的四个方向上各有一个。
在右车窗外边，朝南跨过塞纳河和凯伏尔泰大道，兰登可以看到灯火通明的老火车站，即现在著名的道赛美术博物馆的正面。他往左一瞥，看到了那超级现代的蓬皮杜中心的顶部，蓬皮杜中心是现代艺术博物馆所在地。在他身后西部，他看到古老的高过树顶的拉美西斯方尖碑，那是裘德。波姆国立美术馆的标志。
但朝正东，透过石拱门，兰登可以看到耸立着独石柱碑的文艺复兴时的宫殿，现在已成为举世闻名的艺术博物馆--卢浮宫美术馆。
当兰登的眼睛徒劳地试图看完整整个大厦时，他感觉到一些似曾有过的惊奇。在极宽大的广场对面，宏伟的卢浮宫正面在巴黎的天空映衬下像个城堡一样矗立着。卢浮宫形如一个巨大的马掌，它是欧洲最长的建筑，其长度比三个平放的对接起来的埃菲尔铁塔都要长。就是在美术馆翼楼之间的百万平方英尺开放广场，在宽度上也无法和它正面的宽度相比。兰登有一次曾漫步于卢浮宫的各个角落，令人吃惊的是，竟然有三英里的路程。
尽管要想好好地欣赏馆藏的653，000件艺术品估计需要五天，大部分游客都选择一种被兰登称作"轻型卢浮宫"的不完全游的方式--急匆匆地去看宫里最有名的三样东西--蒙娜丽莎、米罗的维纳斯和胜利女神。阿特。布奇华德曾骄傲地说他曾在五分五十六秒内就看完了这三大杰作。
开车人拿出手提式步话机用法语连珠炮式地说："先生，兰登到了。两分钟。"
步话机传回对方尖利急促的回话声，别人听不懂他在说什么。
特工收好步话机后转向兰登说："你会在大门口见到局长。"
开车人丝毫不理会广场上禁止车辆通行的标志牌，把雪铁龙发动起来，快速驶过路边的镶边石。此时能看到卢浮宫的大门很显眼地立在远方，正门被七个长方形的水池围住，水池射出的喷泉被灯光照得通体发亮。
金字塔。
巴黎卢浮宫的这个新入口现在几乎和卢浮宫美术馆一样有名。这座由生于中国的美国建筑家贝聿铭设计的引起诸多争议的全新的现代玻璃金字塔，现在仍受到传统派的嘲讽。因为他们觉得它破坏了这个文艺复兴时期王宫的尊严。歌德曾把建筑描述为冻结了的音乐，批评贝聿铭的人把这金字塔描述为光洁黑板上的指甲划痕。然而激进的崇拜者们认为贝聿铭这七十一英尺高的透明金字塔将古老的结构和现代方法结合起来，艳丽多姿，二者相得益彰--它是一种连接新与旧的象征，它有助于将卢浮宫推进下一个千年。
"你喜欢我们的金字塔吗？"特工问。
兰登皱起了眉头。好像法国人很喜欢问美国人这个问题。这当然不是一个轻而易举就回答得了的问题。承认你喜欢这个金字塔，别人倒觉得你是个很没品味的美国人，说你讨厌它，这又是对法国的大不敬。
"密特朗是个很大胆的人。"兰登回答道，也避开了两难的回答。这位授权建造这个金字塔的前总统据说患有"法老情结"。弗朗索瓦。密特朗独自负责把巴黎填满埃及的尖塔，艺术和工艺品。他很喜欢那些耗资费时的埃及文化，所以现在法国人还称他为司芬克斯。
"局长叫什么？"兰登改换话题问道。
"贝祖。法希。"开车人道。他们已接近金字塔的大门口。"我们叫他LeTaureau."
兰登瞥了他一眼，心想是不是每个法国人都有个奇怪的动物名称。"你们叫局长公牛？"
那人皱起了眉毛。"你的法语比你自己承认的要好，兰登先生。"
我的法语很臭，兰登心里想。可我对星座图谱很了解。Taurus是金牛座。全世界的星相学符号都是一致的。
特工把车停了下来，从两股喷泉中间指向金字塔一侧的大门说："入口处到了。祝您好运，先生。"
"你不去？"
"我奉命把你送到这儿，我还有其他任务。"
兰登叹了一口气下了车。这是你的杂耍。
特工迅速地把车发动起来，一溜烟地开走了。
兰登独自站在那里，望着渐渐远离的汽车尾灯。他知道他可以轻易地重新策划一下，走出这院子，拦一辆出租车回家睡觉。但隐约中他又觉得这很可能是下策。
当兰登走向喷泉发出的水雾时，他惴惴不安地感到自己正穿越一个虚幻的门槛而步入另一个世界。在这种夜的氛围中，他犹如做梦一般。二十分钟以前他还在酒店酣睡。此刻他却在司芬克斯建造的透明金字塔前等待一位被他们称作公牛的警察。
他心想，我这仿佛是被困在萨尔瓦多。达利的一幅画作中。
兰登大步流星迈向正门---个巨大的旋转门。远处的门厅里灯光昏暗，空无一人。
我要敲门吗？
兰登不知道是否曾有德高望重的哈佛大学的埃及学专家敲过金字塔的前门并期望有人开门。他举手去拍玻璃，但在黑暗中，一个人影从下面出现了，大步走上旋转楼梯。那人矮胖身材，皮肤黝黑，差不多就像原始的尼安德特人。他身着黑色的双胸兜套装，套装扯得很紧，罩住了他宽厚的肩膀。他迈着短粗有力的腿，带着不容质疑的权威向前走去。他正在用手机通话，但到兰登面前时正好通话完毕。他示意兰登进去。
兰登穿过旋转门时他自我介绍说："我是贝祖。法希，中央司法警察总管。"他说话的语气倒与他长相挺相称--从喉头处发出低沉的声音……象暴风前的闷雷。
兰登伸手和他握手："罗伯特。兰登。"
法希的大手紧裹着兰登的手，那力量似乎能把兰登的手攥碎。
"我看到了相片。"兰登说。"你的特工说雅克。索尼埃自己把自己弄成--"
法希的黑亮的眼睛看着兰登。"兰登先生，你在照片上看到的才只是索尼埃所作所为的开始。"