Vittoria ran to Kohler’s side, but Kohler could no longer speak. Langdon watched as Vittoria pulled out her cell phone and paged CERN’s infirmary. Langdon felt like a ship on the periphery of a storm… tossed but detached.

Meet me at Leonardo da Vinci Airport. Kohler’s words echoed.

The uncertain shadows that had fogged Langdon’s mind all morning, in a single instant, solidified into a vivid image. As he stood there in the swirl of confusion, he felt a door inside him open… as if some mystic threshold had just been breached. The ambigram. The murdered priest/scientist. The antimatter. And now… the target. Leonardo da Vinci Airport could only mean one thing. In a moment of stark realization, Langdon knew he had just crossed over. He had become a believer.

Five kilotons. Let there be light.

Two paramedics materialized, racing across the atrium in white smocks. They knelt by Kohler, putting an oxygen mask on his face. Scientists in the hall stopped and stood back.

Kohler took two long pulls, pushed the mask aside, and still gasping for air, looked up at Vittoria and Langdon. "Rome."

"Rome?" Vittoria demanded. "The antimatter is in Rome? Who called?"

Kohler’s face was twisted, his gray eyes watering. "The Swiss…" He choked on the words, and the paramedics put the mask back over his face. As they prepared to take him away, Kohler reached up and grabbed Langdon’s arm.

Langdon nodded. He knew.

"Go…" Kohler wheezed beneath his mask. "Go… call me…" Then the paramedics were rolling him away.

Vittoria stood riveted to the floor, watching him go. Then she turned to Langdon. "Rome? But… what was that about the Swiss?"

Langdon put a hand on her shoulder, barely whispering the words. "The Swiss Guard," he said. "The sworn sentinels of Vatican City."

The X-33 space plane roared into the sky and arched south toward Rome. On board, Langdon sat in silence. The last fifteen minutes had been a blur. Now that he had finished briefing Vittoria on the Illuminati and their covenant against the Vatican, the scope of this situation was starting to sink in.

What the hell am I doing? Langdon wondered. I should have gone home when I had the chance! Deep down, though, he knew he’d never had the chance.

Langdon’s better judgment had screamed at him to return to Boston. Nonetheless, academic astonishment had somehow vetoed prudence. Everything he had ever believed about the demise of the Illuminati was suddenly looking like a brilliant sham. Part of him craved proof. Confirmation. There was also a question of conscience. With Kohler ailing and Vittoria on her own, Langdon knew that if his knowledge of the Illuminati could assist in any way, he had a moral obligation to be here.

There was more, though. Although Langdon was ashamed to admit it, his initial horror on hearing about the antimatter’s location was not only the danger to human life in Vatican City, but for something else as well.

Art.

The world’s largest art collection was now sitting on a time bomb. The Vatican Museum housed over 60,000 priceless pieces in 1,407 rooms—Michelangelo, da Vinci, Bernini, Botticelli. Langdon wondered if all of the art could possibly be evacuated if necessary. He knew it was impossible. Many of the pieces were sculptures weighing tons. Not to mention, the greatest treasures were architectural—the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, Michelangelo’s famed spiral staircase leading to the Musèo Vaticano—priceless testaments to man’s creative genius. Langdon wondered how much time was left on the canister.

"Thanks for coming," Vittoria said, her voice quiet.

Langdon emerged from his daydream and looked up. Vittoria was sitting across the aisle. Even in the stark fluorescent light of the cabin, there was an aura of composure about her—an almost magnetic radiance of wholeness. Her breathing seemed deeper now, as if a spark of self-preservation had ignited within her… a craving for justice and retribution, fueled by a daughter’s love.

Vittoria had not had time to change from her shorts and sleeveless top, and her tawny legs were now goose-bumped in the cold of the plane. Instinctively Langdon removed his jacket and offered it to her.

"American chivalry?" She accepted, her eyes thanking him silently.

The plane jostled across some turbulence, and Langdon felt a surge of danger. The windowless cabin felt cramped again, and he tried to imagine himself in an open field. The notion, he realized, was ironic. He had been in an open field when it had happened. Crushing darkness. He pushed the memory from his mind. Ancient history.

Vittoria was watching him. "Do you believe in God, Mr. Langdon?"

The question startled him. The earnestness in Vittoria’s voice was even more disarming than the inquiry. Do I believe in God? He had hoped for a lighter topic of conversation to pass the trip.

A spiritual conundrum, Langdon thought. That’s what my friends call me. Although he studied religion for years, Langdon was not a religious man. He respected the power of faith, the benevolence of churches, the strength religion gave to many people… and yet, for him, the intellectual suspension of disbelief that was imperative if one were truly going to "believe" had always proved too big an obstacle for his academic mind. "I want to believe," he heard himself say.

Vittoria’s reply carried no judgment or challenge. "So why don’t you?"

He chuckled. "Well, it’s not that easy. Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracles—immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture… they all carry similar requirements—and similar penalties. They claim that if I don’t live by a specific code I will go to hell. I can’t imagine a God who would rule that way."

"I hope you don’t let your students dodge questions that shamelessly."

The comment caught him off guard. "What?"

"Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories… legends and history of man’s quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God’s hand?"

Langdon took a long moment to consider it.

"I’m prying," Vittoria apologized.

"No, I just…"

"Certainly you must debate issues of faith with your classes."

"Endlessly."

"And you play devil’s advocate, I imagine. Always fueling the debate."

Langdon smiled. "You must be a teacher too."

"No, but I learned from a master. My father could argue two sides of a Möbius Strip."

Langdon laughed, picturing the artful crafting of a Möbius Strip—a twisted ring of paper, which technically possessed only one side. Langdon had first seen the single-sided shape in the artwork of M. C. Escher. "May I ask you a question, Ms. Vetra?"

"Call me Vittoria. Ms. Vetra makes me feel old."

He sighed inwardly, suddenly sensing his own age. "Vittoria, I’m Robert."

"You had a question."

"Yes. As a scientist and the daughter of a Catholic priest, what do you think of religion?"

Vittoria paused, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes. "Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing. That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us."

Langdon was intrigued. "So you’re saying that whether you are a Christian or a Muslim simply depends on where you were born?"