"Banned from the city for secrecy and security until the conclave concludes."
"And when does it conclude?"
The guard shrugged. "God only knows." The words sounded oddly literal.
After parking the cart on the wide lawn directly behind St. Peter’s Basilica, the guard escorted Langdon and Vittoria up a stone escarpment to a marble plaza off the back of the basilica. Crossing the plaza, they approached the rear wall of the basilica and followed it through a triangular courtyard, across Via Belvedere, and into a series of buildings closely huddled together. Langdon’s art history had taught him enough Italian to pick out signs for the Vatican Printing Office, the Tapestry Restoration Lab, Post Office Management, and the Church of St. Ann. They crossed another small square and arrived at their destination.
The Office of the Swiss Guard is housed adjacent to Il Corpo di Vigilanza, directly northeast of St. Peter’s Basilica. The office is a squat, stone building. On either side of the entrance, like two stone statues, stood a pair of guards.
Langdon had to admit, these guards did not look quite so comical. Although they also wore the blue and gold uniform, each wielded the traditional "Vatican long sword"—an eight-foot spear with a razor-sharp scythe—rumored to have decapitated countless Muslims while defending the Christian crusaders in the fifteenth century.
As Langdon and Vittoria approached, the two guards stepped forward, crossing their long swords, blocking the entrance. One looked up at the pilot in confusion. "I pantaloni," he said, motioning to Vittoria’s shorts.
The pilot waved them off. "Il comandante vuole vederli subito."
The guards frowned. Reluctantly they stepped aside.
Inside, the air was cool. It looked nothing like the administrative security offices Langdon would have imagined. Ornate and impeccably furnished, the hallways contained paintings Langdon was certain any museum worldwide would gladly have featured in its main gallery.
The pilot pointed down a steep set of stairs. "Down, please."
Langdon and Vittoria followed the white marble treads as they descended between a gauntlet of nude male sculptures. Each statue wore a fig leaf that was lighter in color than the rest of the body.
The Great Castration, Langdon thought.
It was one of the most horrific tragedies in Renaissance art. In 1857, Pope Pius IX decided that the accurate representation of the male form might incite lust inside the Vatican. So he got a chisel and mallet and hacked off the genitalia of every single male statue inside Vatican City. He defaced works by Michelangelo, Bramante, and Bernini. Plaster fig leaves were used to patch the damage. Hundreds of sculptures had been emasculated. Langdon had often wondered if there was a huge crate of stone penises someplace.
"Here," the guard announced.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and dead-ended at a heavy, steel door. The guard typed an entry code, and the door slid open. Langdon and Vittoria entered.
Beyond the threshold was absolute mayhem.
36
The Office of the Swiss Guard.
Langdon stood in the doorway, surveying the collision of centuries before them. Mixed media. The room was a lushly adorned Renaissance library complete with inlaid bookshelves, oriental carpets, and colorful tapestries… and yet the room bristled with high-tech gear—banks of computers, faxes, electronic maps of the Vatican complex, and televisions tuned to CNN. Men in colorful pantaloons typed feverishly on computers and listened intently in futuristic headphones.
"Wait here," the guard said.
Langdon and Vittoria waited as the guard crossed the room to an exceptionally tall, wiry man in a dark blue military uniform. He was talking on a cellular phone and stood so straight he was almost bent backward. The guard said something to him, and the man shot a glance over at Langdon and Vittoria. He nodded, then turned his back on them and continued his phone call.
The guard returned. "Commander Olivetti will be with you in a moment."
"Thank you."
The guard left and headed back up the stairs.
Langdon studied Commander Olivetti across the room, realizing he was actually the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of an entire country. Vittoria and Langdon waited, observing the action before them. Brightly dressed guards bustled about yelling orders in Italian.
"Continua cercando!" one yelled into a telephone.
"Probasti il musèo?" another asked.
Langdon did not need fluent Italian to discern that the security center was currently in intense search mode. This was the good news. The bad news was that they obviously had not yet found the antimatter.
"You okay?" Langdon asked Vittoria.
She shrugged, offering a tired smile.
When the commander finally clicked off his phone and approached across the room, he seemed to grow with each step. Langdon was tall himself and not accustomed to looking up at many people, but Commander Olivetti demanded it. Langdon sensed immediately that the commander was a man who had weathered tempests, his face hale and steeled. His dark hair was cropped in a military buzz cut, and his eyes burned with the kind of hardened determination only attainable through years of intense training. He moved with ramrod exactness, the earpiece hidden discreetly behind one ear making him look more like U.S. Secret Service than Swiss Guard.
The commander addressed them in accented English. His voice was startlingly quiet for such a large man, barely a whisper. It bit with a tight, military efficiency. "Good afternoon," he said. "I am Commander Olivetti—Comandante Principale of the Swiss Guard. I’m the one who called your director."
Vittoria gazed upward. "Thank you for seeing us, sir."
The commander did not respond. He motioned for them to follow and led them through the tangle of electronics to a door in the side wall of the chamber. "Enter," he said, holding the door for them.
Langdon and Vittoria walked through and found themselves in a darkened control room where a wall of video monitors was cycling lazily through a series of black-and-white images of the complex. A young guard sat watching the images intently.
"Fuori," Olivetti said.
The guard packed up and left.
Olivetti walked over to one of the screens and pointed to it. Then he turned toward his guests. "This image is from a remote camera hidden somewhere inside Vatican City. I’d like an explanation."
Langdon and Vittoria looked at the screen and inhaled in unison. The image was absolute. No doubt. It was CERN’s antimatter canister. Inside, a shimmering droplet of metallic liquid hung ominously in the air, lit by the rhythmic blinking of the LED digital clock. Eerily, the area around the canister was almost entirely dark, as if the antimatter were in a closet or darkened room. At the top of the monitor flashed superimposed text: Live Feed—Camera #86.
Vittoria looked at the time remaining on the flashing indicator on the canister. "Under six hours," she whispered to Langdon, her face tense.
Langdon checked his watch. "So we have until…" He stopped, a knot tightening in his stomach.
"Midnight," Vittoria said, with a withering look.
Midnight, Langdon thought. A flair for the dramatic. Apparently whoever stole the canister last night had timed it perfectly. A stark foreboding set in as he realized he was currently sitting at ground zero.
Olivetti’s whisper now sounded more like a hiss. "Does this object belong to your facility?"
Vittoria nodded. "Yes, sir. It was stolen from us. It contains an extremely combustible substance called antimatter."
Olivetti looked unmoved. "I am quite familiar with incendiaries, Ms. Vetra. I have not heard of antimatter."
"It’s new technology. We need to locate it immediately or evacuate Vatican City."