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. Peistill 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.

François 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.»

Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow’s peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

Langdon followed the captain down the famous marble staircase into the sunken atrium beneath the glass pyramid. As they descended, they passed between two armed Judicial Police guards with machine guns. The message was clear: Nobody goes in or out tonight without the blessing of Captain Fache.

Descending below ground level, Langdon fought a rising trepidation. Fache’s presence was anything but welcoming, and the Louvre itself had an almost sepulchral aura at this hour. The staircase, like the aisle of a dark movie theater, was illuminated by subtle tread-lighting embedded in each step. Langdon could hear his own footsteps reverberating off the glass overhead. As he glanced up, he could see the faint illuminated wisps of mist from the fountains fading away outside the transparent roof.

«Do you approve?» Fache asked, nodding upward with his broad chin.

Langdon sighed, too tired to play games. «Yes, your pyramid is magnificent.» Fache grunted. «A scar on the face of Paris.» Strike one.Langdon sensed his host was a hard man to please. He wondered if Fache had any idea that this pyramid, at President Mitterrand’s explicit demand, had been constructed of exactly 666 panes of glass – a bizarre request that had always been a hot topic among conspiracy buffs who claimed 666 was the number of Satan.

Langdon decided not to bring it up.

As they dropped farther into the subterranean foyer, the yawning space slowly emerged from the shadows. Built fifty-seven feet beneath ground level, the Louvre’s newly constructed 70, 000-square-foot lobby spread out like an endless grotto. Constructed in warm ocher marble to be compatible with the honey-colored stone of the Louvre facade above, the subterranean hall was usually vibrant with sunlight and tourists. Tonight, however, the lobby was barren and dark, giving the entire space a cold and crypt-like atmosphere.

«And the museum’s regular security staff?» Langdon asked.

«En quarantaine,»Fache replied, sounding as if Langdon were questioning the integrity of Fache’s team. «Obviously, someone gained entry tonight who should not have. All Louvre night wardens are in the Sully Wing being questioned. My own agents have taken over museum security for the evening.»

Langdon nodded, moving quickly to keep pace with Fache.

«How well did you know Jacques Saunière?» the captain asked. «Actually, not at all. We’d never met.» Fache looked surprised. «Your first meeting was to be tonight?»

«Yes. We’d planned to meet at the American University reception following my lecture, but he never showed up.»

Fache scribbled some notes in a little book. As they walked, Langdon caught a glimpse of the Louvre’s lesser-known pyramid – La Pyramide Inversée – a huge inverted skylight that hung from the ceiling like a stalactite in an adjoining section of the entresol. Fache guided Langdon up a short set of stairs to the mouth of an arched tunnel, over which a sign read: DENON. The Denon Wing was the most famous of the Louvre’s three main sections.

«Who requested tonight’s meeting?» Fache asked suddenly. «You or he?»