The voice in his head resounded like peals of thunder. "Did you vow to serve your God?"
"Yes!" the camerlegno cried out.
"Would you die for your God?"
"Yes! Take me now!"
"Would you die for your church?"
"Yes! Please deliver me!"
"But would you die for… mankind?"
It was in the silence that followed that the camerlegno felt himself falling into the abyss. He tumbled farther, faster, out of control. And yet he knew the answer. He had always known.
"Yes!" he shouted into the madness. "I would die for man! Like your son, I would die for them!"
Hours later, the camerlegno still lay shivering on his floor. He saw his mother’s face. God has plans for you, she was saying. The camerlegno plunged deeper into madness. It was then God had spoken again. This time with silence. But the camerlegno understood. Restore their faith.
If not me… then who?
If not now… then when?
As the guards unbolted the door of the Sistine Chapel, Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca felt the power moving in his veins… exactly as it had when he was a boy. God had chosen him. Long ago.
His will be done.
The camerlegno felt reborn. The Swiss Guard had bandaged his chest, bathed him, and dressed him in a fresh white linen robe. They had also given him an injection of morphine for the burn. The camerlegno wished they had not given him painkillers. Jesus endured his pain for three days on the cross! He could already feel the drug uprooting his senses… a dizzying undertow.
As he walked into the chapel, he was not at all surprised to see the cardinals staring at him in wonder. They are in awe of God, he reminded himself. Not of me, but how God works THROUGH me. As he moved up the center aisle, he saw bewilderment in every face. And yet, with each new face he passed, he sensed something else in their eyes. What was it? The camerlegno had tried to imagine how they would receive him tonight. Joyfully? Reverently? He tried to read their eyes and saw neither emotion.
It was then the camerlegno looked at the altar and saw Robert Langdon.
131
Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca stood in the aisle of the Sistine Chapel. The cardinals were all standing near the front of the church, turned, staring at him. Robert Langdon was on the altar beside a television that was on endless loop, playing a scene the camerlegno recognized but could not imagine how it had come to be. Vittoria Vetra stood beside him, her face drawn.
The camerlegno closed his eyes for a moment, hoping the morphine was making him hallucinate and that when he opened them the scene might be different. But it was not.
They knew.
Oddly, he felt no fear. Show me the way, Father. Give me the words that I can make them see Your vision.
But the camerlegno heard no reply.
Father, We have come too far together to fail now.
Silence.
They do not understand what We have done.
The camerlegno did not know whose voice he heard in his own mind, but the message was stark.
And the truth shall set you free…
And so it was that Camerlegno Carlo Ventresca held his head high as he walked toward the front of the Sistine Chapel. As he moved toward the cardinals, not even the diffused light of the candles could soften the eyes boring into him. Explain yourself, the faces said. Make sense of this madness. Tell us our fears are wrong!
Truth, the camerlegno told himself. Only truth. There were too many secrets in these walls… one so dark it had driven him to madness. But from the madness had come the light.
"If you could give your own soul to save millions," the camerlegno said, as he moved down the aisle, "would you?"
The faces in the chapel simply stared. No one moved. No one spoke. Beyond the walls, the joyous strains of song could be heard in the square.
The camerlegno walked toward them. "Which is the greater sin? Killing one’s enemy? Or standing idle while your true love is strangled?" They are singing in St. Peter’s Square! The camerlegno stopped for a moment and gazed up at the ceiling of the Sistine. Michelangelo’s God was staring down from the darkened vault… and He seemed pleased.
"I could no longer stand by," the camerlegno said. Still, as he drew nearer, he saw no flicker of understanding in anyone’s eyes. Didn’t they see the radiant simplicity of his deeds? Didn’t they see the utter necessity!
It had been so pure.
The Illuminati. Science and Satan as one.
Resurrect the ancient fear. Then crush it.
Horror and Hope. Make them believe again.
Tonight, the power of the Illuminati had been unleashed anew… and with glorious consequence. The apathy had evaporated. The fear had shot out across the world like a bolt of lightning, uniting the people. And then God’s majesty had vanquished the darkness.
I could not stand idly by!
The inspiration had been God’s own—appearing like a beacon in the camerlegno’s night of agony. Oh, this faithless world! Someone must deliver them. You. If not you, who? You have been saved for a reason. Show them the old demons. Remind them of their fear. Apathy is death. Without darkness, there is no light. Without evil, there is no good. Make them choose. Dark or light. Where is the fear? Where are the heroes? If not now, when?
The camerlegno walked up the center aisle directly toward the crowd of standing cardinals. He felt like Moses as the sea of red sashes and caps parted before him, allowing him to pass. On the altar, Robert Langdon switched off the television, took Vittoria’s hand, and relinquished the altar. The fact that Robert Langdon had survived, the camerlegno knew, could only have been God’s will. God had saved Robert Langdon. The camerlegno wondered why.
The voice that broke the silence was the voice of the only woman in the Sistine Chapel. "You killed my father?" she said, stepping forward.
When the camerlegno turned to Vittoria Vetra, the look on her face was one he could not quite understand—pain yes, but anger? Certainly she must understand. Her father’s genius was deadly. He had to be stopped. For the good of Mankind.
"He was doing God’s work," Vittoria said.
"God’s work is not done in a lab. It is done in the heart."
"My father’s heart was pure! And his research proved—"
"His research proved yet again that man’s mind is progressing faster than his soul!" The camerlegno’s voice was sharper than he had expected. He lowered his voice. "If a man as spiritual as your father could create a weapon like the one we saw tonight, imagine what an ordinary man will do with his technology."
"A man like you?"
The camerlegno took a deep breath. Did she not see? Man’s morality was not advancing as fast as man’s science. Mankind was not spiritually evolved enough for the powers he possessed. We have never created a weapon we have not used! And yet he knew that antimatter was nothing—another weapon in man’s already burgeoning arsenal. Man could already destroy. Man learned to kill long ago. And his mother’s blood rained down. Leonardo Vetra’s genius was dangerous for another reason.
"For centuries," the camerlegno said, "the church has stood by while science picked away at religion bit by bit. Debunking miracles. Training the mind to overcome the heart. Condemning religion as the opiate of the masses. They denounce God as a hallucination—a delusional crutch for those too weak to accept that life is meaningless. I could not stand by while science presumed to harness the power of God himself! Proof, you say? Yes, proof of science’s ignorance! What is wrong with the admission that something exists beyond our understanding? The day science substantiates God in a lab is the day people stop needing faith!"