Righteousness exists in many forms.
And more death will come before tonight is over.
As Ávila emerged into an open plaza on the riverbank, he raised his eyes to the massive structure before him. It was an undulating mess of perverse forms covered in metal tile—as if two thousand years of architectural progress had been tossed out the window in favor of total chaos.
Some call this a museum. I call it a monstrosity.
Focusing his thoughts, Ávila crossed the plaza, winding his way through a series of bizarre sculptures outside Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum. As he neared the building, he watched dozens of guests mingling in their finest black and white.
The godless masses have congregated.
But tonight will not go as any of them imagine.
He straightened his admiral’s cap and smoothed his jacket, mentally fortifying himself for the task that lay ahead. Tonight was part of a far greater mission—a crusade of righteousness.
As Ávila crossed the courtyard toward the museum’s entrance, he gently touched the rosary in his pocket.
CHAPTER 3
THE MUSEUM ATRIUM felt like a futuristic cathedral.
As Langdon stepped inside, his gaze shifted immediately skyward, climbing a set of colossal white pillars along a towering curtain of glass, ascending two hundred feet to a vaulted ceiling, where halogen spotlights blazed pure white light. Suspended in the air, a network of catwalks and balconies traversed the heavens, dotted with black-and-white-clad visitors who moved in and out of the upper galleries and stood at high windows, admiring the lagoon below. Nearby, a glass elevator slid silently back down the wall, returning to earth to collect more guests.
It was like no museum Langdon had ever seen. Even the acoustics felt foreign. Instead of the traditional reverent hush created by sound-dampening finishes, this place was alive with murmuring echoes of voices percolating off the stone and glass. For Langdon, the only familiar sensation was the sterile tang on the back of his tongue; museum air was the same worldwide—filtered meticulously of all particulates and oxidants and then moistened with ionized water to 45 percent humidity.
Langdon moved through a series of surprisingly tight security points, noticing more than a few armed guards, and finally found himself standing at another check-in table. A young woman was handing out headsets. “Audioguía?”
Langdon smiled. “No, thank you.”
As he neared the table, though, the woman stopped him, switching to perfect English. “I’m sorry, sir, but our host tonight, Mr. Edmond Kirsch, has asked that everyone wear a headset. It’s part of the evening’s experience.”
“Oh, of course, I’ll take one.”
Langdon reached for a headset, but she waved him off, checking his name tag against a long list of guests, finding his name, and then handing him a headset whose number was matched with his name. “The tours tonight are customized for each individual visitor.”
Really? Langdon looked around. There are hundreds of guests.
Langdon eyed the headset, which was nothing but a sleek loop of metal with tiny pads at each end. Perhaps seeing his puzzled look, the young woman came around to help him.
“These are quite new,” she said, helping him don the device. “The transducer pads don’t go inside your ears, but rather rest on your face.” She placed the loop behind his head and positioned the pads so that they gently clamped onto his face, just above the jawbone and below the temple.
“But how—”
“Bone conduction technology. The transducers drive sound directly into the bones of your jaw, allowing sound to reach your cochlea directly. I tried it earlier, and it’s really quite amazing—like having a voice inside your head. What’s more, it leaves your ears free to have outside conversations.”
“Very clever.”
“The technology was invented by Mr. Kirsch more than a decade ago. It’s now available in many brands of consumer headphones.”
I hope Ludwig van Beethoven gets his cut, Langdon thought, fairly certain that the original inventor of bone conduction technology was the eighteenth-century composer who, upon going deaf, discovered he could affix a metal rod to his piano and bite down on it while he played, enabling him to hear perfectly through vibrations in his jawbone.
“We hope you enjoy your tour experience,” the woman said. “You have about an hour to explore the museum before the presentation. Your audio guide will alert you when it is time to go upstairs to the auditorium.”
“Thank you. Do I need to press anything to—”
“No, the device is self-activating. Your guided tour will begin as soon as you start moving.”
“Ah yes, of course,” Langdon said with a smile. He headed out across the atrium, moving toward a scattering of other guests, all waiting for the elevators and wearing similar headsets pressed to their jawbones.
He was only halfway across the atrium when a male voice sounded in his head. “Good evening and welcome to the Guggenheim in Bilbao.”
Langdon knew it was his headset, but he still stopped short and looked behind him. The effect was startling—precisely as the young woman had described—like having someone inside your head.
“A most heartfelt welcome to you, Professor Langdon.” The voice was friendly and light, with a jaunty British accent. “My name is Winston, and I’m honored to be your guide this evening.”
Who did they get to record this—Hugh Grant?
“Tonight,” the cheery voice continued, “you may feel free to meander as you wish, anywhere you like, and I’ll endeavor to enlighten you as to what it is you’re viewing.”
Apparently, in addition to a chirpy narrator, personalized recordings, and bone conduction technology, each headset was equipped with GPS to discern precisely where in the museum the visitor was standing and therefore what commentary to generate.
“I do realize, sir,” the voice added, “that as a professor of art, you are one of our more savvy guests, and so perhaps you will have little need of my input. Worse yet, it is possible you will wholly disagree with my analysis of certain pieces!” The voice gave an awkward chuckle.
Seriously? Who wrote this script? The merry tone and personalized service were admittedly a charming touch, but Langdon could not imagine the amount of effort it must have taken to customize hundreds of headsets.
Thankfully, the voice fell silent now, as if it had exhausted its preprogrammed welcome dialogue.
Langdon glanced across the atrium at another enormous red banner suspended above the crowd.
EDMOND KIRSCH
TONIGHT WE MOVE FORWARD
What in the world is Edmond going to announce?
Langdon turned his eyes to the elevators, where a cluster of chatting guests included two famous founders of global Internet companies, a prominent Indian actor, and various other well-dressed VIPs whom Langdon sensed he probably should know but didn’t. Feeling both disinclined and ill-prepared to make small talk on the topics of social media and Bollywood, Langdon moved in the opposite direction, drifting toward a large piece of modern art that stood against the far wall.
The installation was nestled in a dark grotto and consisted of nine narrow conveyor belts that emerged from slits in the floor and raced upward, disappearing into slits in the ceiling. The piece resembled nine moving walkways running on a vertical plane. Each conveyor bore an illuminated message, which scrolled skyward.