The Lost Symbol

“Oh, Professor, I almost forgot!” the assistant had said after giving Langdon the specifics of his travel arrangements to D.C. “There is one more thing Mr. Solomon requested.”

“Yes?” Langdon replied, his mind already moving to the lecture he had just agreed to give.

“Mr. Solomon left a note here for you.” The man began reading awkwardly, as if trying to decipher Peter’s penmanship. “‘Please ask Robert. to bring. the small, sealed package I gave him many years ago.’ ” The man paused. “Does this make any sense to you?”

Langdon felt surprised as he recalled the small box that had been sitting in his wall safe all this time. “Actually, yes. I know what Peter means.”

“And you can bring it?”

“Of course. Tell Peter I’ll bring it.”

“Wonderful.” The assistant sounded relieved. “Enjoy your speech tonight. Safe travels.”

Before leaving home, Langdon had dutifully retrieved the wrapped package from the back of his safe and placed it in his shoulder bag.

Now he was standing in the U.S. Capitol, feeling certain of only one thing. Peter Solomon would be horrified to know how badly Langdon had failed him.

CHAPTER 25

My God,Katherine was right. As usual.

Trish Dunne stared in amazement at the search-spider results that were materializing on the plasma wall before her. She had doubted the search would turn up any results at all, but in fact, she now had over a dozen hits. And they were still coming in.

One entry in particular looked quite promising.

Trish turned and shouted in the direction of the library. “Katherine? I think you’ll want to see this!”

It had been a couple of years since Trish had run a search spider like this, and tonight’s results astounded her. A few years ago, this search would have been a dead end. Now, however, it seemed that the quantity of searchable digital material in the world had exploded to the point where someone could find literally anything. Incredibly, one of the keywords was a word Trish had never even heard before. and the search even found that.

Katherine rushed through the control-room door. “What have you got?”

“A bunch of candidates.” Trish motioned to the plasma wall. “Every one of these documents contains all of your key phrases verbatim.”

Katherine tucked her hair behind her ear and scanned the list.

“Before you get too excited,” Trish added, “I can assure you that most of these documents are not what you’re looking for. They’re what we call black holes. Look at the file sizes. Absolutely enormous. They’re things like compressed archives of millions of e-mails, giant unabridged encyclopedia sets, global message boards that have been running for years, and so forth. By virtue of their size and diverse content, these files contain so many potential keywords that they suck in any search engine that comes anywhere near them.”

Katherine pointed to one of the entries near the top of the list. “How about that one?”

Trish smiled. Katherine was a step ahead, having found the sole file on the list that had a small file size. “Good eyes. Yeah, that’s really our only candidate so far. In fact, that file’s so small it can’t be more than a page or so.”

“Open it.” Katherine’s tone was intense.

Trish could not imagine a one-page document containing all the strange search strings Katherine had provided. Nonetheless, when she clicked and opened the document, the key phrases were there. crystal clear and easy to spot in the text.

Katherine strode over, eyes riveted to the plasma wall. “This document is. redacted?”

Trish nodded. “Welcome to the world of digitized text.”

Automatic redaction had become standard practice when offering digitized documents. Redaction was a process wherein a server allowed a user to search the entire text, but then revealed only a small portion of it — a teaser of sorts — only that text immediately flanking the requested keywords. By omitting the vast majority of the text, the server avoided copyright infringement and also sent the user an intriguing message: I have the information you’re searching for, but if you want the rest of it, you’ll have to buy it from me.

“As you can see,” Trish said, scrolling through the heavily abridged page, “the document contains all of your key phrases.”

Katherine stared up at the redaction in silence.

Trish gave her a minute and then scrolled back to the top of the page. Each of Katherine’s key phrases was underlined in capital letters and accompanied by a small sample of teaser text — the two words that appeared on either side of the requested phrase.

Trish could not imagine what this document was referring to. And what the heck is a “symbolon”?

Katherine stepped eagerly toward the screen. “Where did this document come from? Who wrote it?”