Robert Langdon 01: Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

Author:Dan Brown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780743493468
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

70

Gunther Glick and Chinita Macri sat parked in the BBC van in the shadows at the far end of Piazza del Popolo. They had arrived shortly after the four Alfa Romeos, just in time to witness an inconceivable chain of events. Chinita still had no idea what it all meant, but she’d made sure the camera was rolling.

As soon as they’d arrived, Chinita and Glick had seen a veritable army of young men pour out of the Alfa Romeos and surround the church. Some had weapons drawn. One of them, a stiff older man, led a team up the front steps of the church. The soldiers drew guns and blew the locks off the front doors. Macri heard nothing and figured they must have had silencers. Then the soldiers entered.

Chinita had recommended they sit tight and film from the shadows. After all, guns were guns, and they had a clear view of the action from the van. Glick had not argued. Now, across the piazza, men moved in and out of the church. They yelled to each other. Chinita adjusted her camera to follow a team as they searched the surrounding area. All of them, though dressed in civilian clothes, seemed to move with military precision. ‘Who do you think they are?’ she asked.

‘Hell if I know.’ Glick looked riveted. ‘You getting all this?’

‘Every frame.’

Glick sounded smug. ‘Still think we should go back to Pope-Watch?’

Chinita wasn’t sure what to say. There was obviously something going on here, but she had been in journalism long enough to know that there was often a very dull explanation for interesting events. ‘This could be nothing,’ she said. ‘These guys could have gotten the same tip you got and are just checking it out. Could be a false alarm.’

Glick grabbed her arm. ‘Over there! Focus.’ He pointed back to the church.

Chinita swung the camera back to the top of the stairs. ‘Hello there,’ she said, training on the man now emerging from the church.

‘Who’s the dapper?’

Chinita moved in for a close-up. ‘Haven’t seen him before.’ She tightened in on the man’s face and smiled. ‘But I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.’

Robert Langdon dashed down the stairs outside the church and into the middle of the piazza. It was beginning to get dark now, the springtime sun setting late in southern Rome. The sun had dropped below the surrounding buildings, and shadows streaked the square.

‘Okay, Bernini,’ he said aloud to himself. ‘Where the hell is your angel pointing?’

He turned and examined the orientation of the church from which he had just come. He pictured the Chigi Chapel inside, and the sculpture of the angel inside that. Without hesitation he turned due west, into the glow of the impending sunset. Time was evaporating.

‘Southwest,’ he said, scowling at the shops and apartments blocking his view. ‘The next marker is out there.’

Racking his brain, Langdon pictured page after page of Italian art history. Although very familiar with Bernini’s work, Langdon knew the sculptor had been far too prolific for any nonspecialist to know all of it.

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