The Lost Symbol

Concealed for over a century beneath a hardened mixture of wax and stone dust, the Masonic Pyramid’s final inscription was now laid bare. The engraving was a perfectly square grid of symbols from every tradition imaginable — alchemical, astrological, heraldic, angelic, magical, numeric, sigilic, Greek, Latin. As a totality, this was symbolic anarchy — a bowl of alphabet soup whose letters came from dozens of different languages, cultures, and time periods.

Total chaos.

symbologist robert langdon, in his wildest academic interpretations, could not fathom how this grid of symbols could be deciphered to mean anything at all. Order from this chaos? Impossible.

The liquid was now creeping over his Adam’s apple, and Langdon could feel his level of terror rising along with it. He continued banging on the tank. The pyramid stared back at him tauntingly.

In frantic desperation, Langdon focused every bit of his mental energy on the chessboard of symbols. What could they possibly mean? Unfortunately, the assortment seemed so disparate that he could not even imagine where to begin. They’re not even from the same eras in history!

Outside the tank, her voice muffled but audible, Katherine could be heard tearfully begging for Langdon’s release. Despite his failure to see a solution, the prospect of death seemed to motivate every cell in his body to find one. He felt a strange clarity of mind, unlike anything he had ever experienced. Think! He scanned the grid intensely, searching for some clue — a pattern, a hidden word, a special icon, anything at all — but he saw only a grid of unrelated symbols. Chaos.

With each passing second, Langdon had begun to feel an eerie numbness overtaking his body. It was as if his very flesh were preparing to shield his mind from the pain of death. The water was now threatening to pour into his ears, and he lifted his head as far as he could, pushing it against the top of the crate. Frightening images began flashing before his eyes. A boy in New England treading water at the bottom of a dark well. A man in Rome trapped beneath a skeleton in an overturned coffin.

Katherine’s shouts were growing more frantic. From all Langdon could hear, she was trying to reason with a madman — insisting that Langdon could not be expected to decipher the pyramid without going to visit the Almas Temple. «That building obviously holds the missing piece to this puzzle! How can Robert decipher the pyramid without all the information?!»

Langdon appreciated her efforts, and yet he felt certain that «Eight Franklin Square» was not pointing to the Almas Temple. The time line is all wrong! According to legend, the Masonic Pyramid was created in the mid-1800s, decades before the Shriners even existed. In fact, Langdon realized, it was probably before the square was even called Franklin Square. The capstone could not possibly have been pointing to an unbuilt building at a nonexistent address. Whatever «Eight Franklin Square» was pointing to. . it had to exist in 1850.

Unfortunately, Langdon was drawing a total blank.

He probed his memory banks for anything that could possibly fit the time line. Eight Franklin Square? Something that was in existence in 1850? Langdon came up with nothing. The liquid was trickling into his ears now. Fighting his terror, he stared up at the grid of symbols on the glass. I don’t understand the connection! In a petrified frenzy, his mind began spewing all the far-flung parallels it could generate.

Eight Franklin Square. . squares. . this grid of symbols is a square. . the square and the compass are Masonic symbols. . Masonic altars are square. . squares have ninety-degree angles. The water kept rising, but Langdon blocked it out. Eight Franklin. . eight. . this grid is eight-by-eight. . Franklin has eight letters. . «The Order» has eight letters. . 8 is the rotated symbolfor infinity. . eight is the number of destruction in numerology. .

Langdon had no idea.

Outside the tank, Katherine was still pleading, but Langdon’s hearing was now intermittent as the water was sloshing around his head.

». . impossible without knowing. . capstone’s message clearly. . the secret hides within — »

Then she was gone.

Water poured into Langdon’s ears, blotting out the last of Katherine’s voice. A sudden womblike silence engulfed him, and Langdon realized he truly was going to die.