Fonseca looked displeased but said nothing.
Then Ambra, Father Be?a, and Langdon began their descent toward the light.
—
Agent Díaz felt grateful for the moment of peace as he watched the three figures disappear down the winding staircase. The growing tension between Ambra Vidal and Agent Fonseca was becoming worrisome.
Guardia agents are not accustomed to threats of dismissal from those they protect—only from Commander Garza.
Díaz still felt baffled by Garza’s arrest. Strangely, Fonseca had declined to share with him precisely who had issued the arrest order or initiated the false kidnapping story.
“The situation is complex,” Fonseca had said. “And for your own protection, it’s better you don’t know.”
So who was issuing orders? Díaz wondered. Was it the prince? It seemed doubtful that Julián would risk Ambra’s safety by spreading a bogus kidnapping story. Was it Valdespino? Díaz wasn’t sure if the bishop had that kind of leverage.
“I’ll be back shortly,” Fonseca grunted, and headed off, saying he needed to find a restroom. As Fonseca slipped into the darkness, Díaz saw him take out his phone, place a call, and commence a quiet conversation.
Díaz waited alone in the abyss of the sanctuary, feeling less and less comfortable with Fonseca’s secretive behavior.
CHAPTER 70
The staircase to the crypt spiraled down three stories into the earth, bending in a wide and graceful arc, before depositing Langdon, Ambra, and Father Be?a in the subterranean chamber.
One of Europe’s largest crypts, Langdon thought, admiring the vast, circular space. Exactly as he recalled, Sagrada Família’s underground mausoleum had a soaring rotunda and housed pews for hundreds of worshippers. Golden oil lanterns placed at intervals around the circumference of the room illuminated an inlaid mosaic floor of twisting vines, roots, branches, leaves, and other imagery from nature.
A crypt was literally a “hidden” space, and Langdon found it nearly inconceivable that Gaudí had successfully concealed a room this large beneath the church. This was nothing like Gaudí’s playful “leaning crypt” in Colònia Güell; this space was an austere neo-Gothic chamber with leafed columns, pointed arches, and embellished vaults. The air was deathly still and smelled faintly of incense.
At the foot of the stairs, a deep recess stretched to the left. Its pale sandstone floor supported an unassuming gray slab, laid horizontally, surrounded by lanterns.
The man himself, Langdon realized, reading the inscription.
ANTONIUS GAUDí
As Langdon scanned Gaudí’s place of rest, he again felt the sharp loss of Edmond. He raised his eyes to the statue of the Virgin Mary above the tomb, whose plinth bore an unfamiliar symbol.
What in the world?
Langdon eyed the strange icon.
Rarely did Langdon see a symbol he could not identify. In this case, the symbol was the Greek letter lambda—which, in his experience, did not occur in Christian symbolism. The lambda was a scientific symbol, common in the fields of evolution, particle physics, and cosmology. Stranger still, sprouting upward out of the top of this particular lambda was a Christian cross.
Religion supported by science? Langdon had never seen anything quite like it.
“Puzzled by the symbol?” Be?a inquired, arriving beside Langdon. “You’re not alone. Many ask about it. It’s nothing more than a uniquely modernist interpretation of a cross on a mountaintop.”
Langdon inched forward, now seeing three faint gilded stars accompanying the symbol.
Three stars in that position, Langdon thought, recognizing it at once. The cross atop Mount Carmel. “It’s a Carmelite cross.”
“Correct. Gaudí’s body lies beneath the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.”
“Was Gaudí a Carmelite?” Langdon found it hard to imagine the modernist architect adhering to the twelfth-century brotherhood’s strict interpretation of Catholicism.
“Most certainly not,” Be?a replied with a laugh. “But his caregivers were. A group of Carmelite nuns lived with Gaudí and tended to him during his final years. They believed he would appreciate being watched over in death as well, and they made the generous gift of this chapel.”
“Thoughtful,” Langdon said, chiding himself for misinterpreting such an innocent symbol. Apparently, all the conspiracy theories circulating tonight had caused even Langdon to start conjuring phantoms out of thin air.
“Is that Edmond’s book?” Ambra declared suddenly.
Both men turned to see her motioning into the shadows to the right of Gaudí’s tomb.
“Yes,” Be?a replied. “I’m sorry the light is so poor.”
Ambra hurried toward a display case, and Langdon followed, seeing that the book had been relegated to a dark region of the crypt, shaded by a massive pillar to the right of Gaudí’s tomb.
“We normally display informational pamphlets there,” Be?a said, “but I moved them elsewhere to make room for Mr. Kirsch’s book. Nobody seems to have noticed.”
Langdon quickly joined Ambra at a hutch-like case that had a slanted glass top. Inside, propped open to page 163, barely visible in the dim light, sat a massive bound edition of The Complete Works of William Blake.
As Be?a had informed them, the page in question was not a poem at all, but rather a Blake illustration. Langdon had wondered which of Blake’s images of God to expect, but it most certainly was not this one.
The Ancient of Days, Langdon thought, squinting through the darkness at Blake’s famous 1794 watercolor etching.
Langdon was surprised that Father Be?a had called this “an image of God.” Admittedly, the illustration appeared to depict the archetypal Christian God—a bearded, wizened old man with white hair, perched in the clouds and reaching down from the heavens—and yet a bit of research on Be?a’s part would have revealed something quite different. The figure was not, in fact, the Christian God but rather a deity called Urizen—a god conjured from Blake’s own visionary imagination—depicted here measuring the heavens with a huge geometer’s compass, paying homage to the scientific laws of the universe.
The piece was so futuristic in style that, centuries later, the renowned physicist and atheist Stephen Hawking had selected it as the jacket art for his book God Created the Integers. In addition, Blake’s timeless demiurge watched over New York City’s Rockefeller Center, where the ancient geometer gazed down from an Art Deco sculpture titled Wisdom, Light, and Sound.
Langdon eyed the Blake book, again wondering why Edmond had gone to such lengths to have it displayed here. Was it pure vindictiveness? A slap in the face to the Christian Church?
Edmond’s war against religion never wanes, Langdon thought, glancing at Blake’s Urizen. Wealth had given Edmond the ability to do whatever he pleased in life, even if it meant displaying blasphemous art in the heart of a Christian church.
Anger and spite, Langdon thought. Maybe it’s just that simple. Edmond, whether fairly or not, had always blamed his mother’s death on organized religion.
“Of course, I’m fully aware,” Be?a said, “that this painting is not the Christian God.”
Langdon turned to the old priest in surprise. “Oh?”
“Yes, Edmond was quite up front about it, although he didn’t need to be—I’m familiar with Blake’s ideas.”
“And yet you have no problem displaying the book?”