Langdon asked, turning and addressing the chief with a newfound determination.
“Direction?” The chief glanced where Langdon was pointing. He sounded confused. “I don’t know . . . west, I think.”
“What churches are in that direction?”
The chief’s puzzlement seemed to deepen. “Dozens. Why?”
Langdon frowned. Of course there were dozens. “I need a city map. Right away.”
The chief sent someone running out to the fire truck for a map. Langdon turned back to the statue. Earth . . . Air . . . Fire . . . VITTORIA.
The final marker is Water, he told himself. Bernini’s Water. It was in a church out there somewhere. A needle in a haystack. He spurred his mind through all the Bernini works he could recall. I need a tribute to Water!
Langdon flashed on Bernini’s statue of Triton-the Greek God of the sea. Then he realized it was located in the square outside this very church, in entirely the wrong direction. He forced himself to think. What figure would Bernini have carved as a glorification of water? Neptune and Apollo? Unfortunately that statue was in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
“Signore?” A fireman ran in with a map.
Langdon thanked him and spread it out on the altar. He immediately realized he had asked the right people; the fire department’s map of Rome was as detailed as any Langdon had ever seen. “Where are we now?”
The man pointed. “Next to Piazza Barberini.”
Langdon looked at the angel’s spear again to get his bearings. The chief had estimated correctly. According to the map, the spear was pointing west. Langdon traced a line from his current location west across the map. Almost instantly his hopes began to sink. It seemed that with every inch his finger traveled, he passed yet another building marked by a tiny black cross. Churches. The city was riddled with them. Finally, Langdon’s finger ran out of churches and trailed off into the suburbs of Rome. He exhaled and stepped back from the map. Damn.
Surveying the whole of Rome, Langdon’s eyes touched down on the three churches where the first three cardinals had been killed. The Chigi Chapel . . . St. Peter’s . . . here . . .
Seeing them all laid out before him now, Langdon noted an oddity in their locations. Somehow he had imagined the churches would be scattered randomly across Rome. But they most definitely were not. Improbably, the three churches seemed to be separated systematically, in an enormous city-wide triangle. Langdon double-checked. He was not imagining things. “Penna,” he said suddenly, without looking up.
Someone handed him a ballpoint pen.
Langdon circled the three churches. His pulse quickened. He triple-checked his markings. A symmetrical triangle!
Langdon’s first thought was for the Great Seal on the one-dollar bill-the triangle containing the all-seeing eye. But it didn’t make sense. He had marked only three points. There were supposed to be four in all.
So where the hell is Water? Langdon knew that anywhere he placed the fourth point, the triangle would be destroyed. The only option to retain the symmetry was to place the fourth marker inside the triangle, at the center. He looked at the spot on the map. Nothing. The idea bothered him anyway. The four elements of science were considered equal. Water was not special; Water would not be at the center of the others.
Still, his instinct told him the systematic arrangement could not possibly be accidental. I’m not yet seeing the whole picture. There was only one alternative. The four points did not make a triangle; they made some other shape.
Langdon looked at the map. A square, perhaps?
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