Summary: Chapter 21
Sophie remembers that her grandfather liked to create
anagrams of famous paintings. When she was young, he took her to
visit the Mona Lisa when the museum was closed.
She did not think much of the painting at the time. She realizes
that the Mona Lisa would be a good place for him
to leave her a message, and that he would have been able to visit
the painting before he died. Sophie decides to go back up the stairwell
to find the painting. She tells Langdon to go to the embassy without
her and gives him the keys to her car. As he walks away, Langdon
wonders why Saunière told Sophie to find him. Sophie could easily
have figured out the puzzle in the message without him. While thinking
about the letters “P.S.” in the code, Langdon has a sudden realization.
He starts running back to Sophie.
Summary: Chapter 22
At the Church of Saint-Sulpice, Silas looks around the
sanctuary and finds the Rose Line, a strip of brass on the north-south
axis that is imbedded in the structure of the church. This line,
a pagan sundial, was the zero longitude of the world before Greenwich, England,
took that title. Silas has been told that the Priory keystone lies
beneath the obelisk at the northern terminus of the line. He walks
toward the obelisk. Meanwhile, Aringarosa arrives in Rome.
Summary: Chapter 23
Sophie tries to see whether her grandfather left her any
messages in invisible ink by the Mona Lisa. Langdon
reappears, out of breath. He asks Sophie if the initials P.S. mean
anything to her aside from Princesse Sophie. She
says that once, when she was younger, she saw a strange key in her
grandfather’s closet decorated with the initials P.S. and—as Langdon
has already guessed—a fleur-de-lis. Saunière never explained what
the key was for, but he said if she kept the secret, the key would
one day be hers.
Langdon says that Saunière was a member of the Priory
of Sion, an exclusive secret society involved in pagan goddess worship.
The Priory has had many prominent members, among them Leonardo Da
Vinci. It is known as the protector of a huge secret. Sophie thinks that
this might explain the unthinkable scene she witnessed her grandfather
taking part in. Meanwhile, Fache and his partners apprehend the
truck and discover the bar of soap with the GPS tracker in it.
Summary: Chapter 24
Silas kneels at the base of the obelisk. Each of his victims
told him that the keystone was hidden there. He knocks on the tiled
floor and discovers that there is a hollow opening under the ground.
He prepares to break the floor tile. Sister Sandrine, spying on
him from the balcony, prepares to do her duty as a sentry for the
Brothers of Sion. She thinks the stranger standing at the base of
the obelisk is a message from the dead Brothers telling her that
something is wrong.
Summary: Chapter 25
Fache calls the American Embassy and discovers that there
was no message for Langdon. He backtracks through numbers on his
cell phone and finds the number that Langdon called. When he realizes that
it was Sophie Neveu’s number, he becomes angry. He punches in the
access code.
