As he stared at the magnificent shrine before him, Langdon wondered what St. Peter would think if he were here now. The Saint had died a gruesome death, crucified upside down on this very spot. Now he rested in the most sacred of tombs, buried five stories down, directly beneath the central cupola of the basilica.

"Vatican City," the pilot said, sounding anything but welcoming.

Langdon looked out at the towering stone bastions that loomed ahead—impenetrable fortifications surrounding the complex… a strangely earthly defense for a spiritual world of secrets, power, and mystery.

"Look!" Vittoria said suddenly, grabbing Langdon’s arm. She motioned frantically downward toward St. Peter’s Square directly beneath them. Langdon put his face to the window and looked.

"Over there," she said, pointing.

Langdon looked. The rear of the piazza looked like a parking lot crowded with a dozen or so trailer trucks. Huge satellite dishes pointed skyward from the roof of every truck. The dishes were emblazoned with familiar names:

Televisor Europea

Video Italia

BBC

United Press International

Langdon felt suddenly confused, wondering if the news of the antimatter had already leaked out.

Vittoria seemed suddenly tense. "Why is the press here? What’s going on?"

The pilot turned and gave her an odd look over his shoulder. "What’s going on? You don’t know?"

"No," she fired back, her accent husky and strong.

"Il Conclavo," he said. "It is to be sealed in about an hour. The whole world is watching."

Il Conclavo.

The word rang a long moment in Langdon’s ears before dropping like a brick to the pit of his stomach. Il Conclavo. The Vatican Conclave. How could he have forgotten? It had been in the news recently.

Fifteen days ago, the Pope, after a tremendously popular twelve-year reign, had passed away. Every paper in the world had carried the story about the Pope’s fatal stroke while sleeping—a sudden and unexpected death many whispered was suspicious. But now, in keeping with the sacred tradition, fifteen days after the death of a Pope, the Vatican was holding Il Conclavo—the sacred ceremony in which the 165 cardinals of the world—the most powerful men in Christendom—gathered in Vatican City to elect the new Pope.

Every cardinal on the planet is here today, Langdon thought as the chopper passed over St. Peter’s Basilica. The expansive inner world of Vatican City spread out beneath him. The entire power structure of the Roman Catholic Church is sitting on a time bomb.

34

Cardinal Mortati gazed up at the lavish ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and tried to find a moment of quiet reflection. The frescoed walls echoed with the voices of cardinals from nations around the globe. The men jostled in the candlelit tabernacle, whispering excitedly and consulting with one another in numerous languages, the universal tongues being English, Italian, and Spanish.

The light in the chapel was usually sublime—long rays of tinted sun slicing through the darkness like rays from heaven—but not today. As was the custom, all of the chapel’s windows had been covered in black velvet in the name of secrecy. This ensured that no one on the inside could send signals or communicate in any way with the outside world. The result was a profound darkness lit only by candles… a shimmering radiance that seemed to purify everyone it touched, making them all ghostly… like saints.

What privilege, Mortati thought, that I am to oversee this sanctified event. Cardinals over eighty years of age were too old to be eligible for election and did not attend conclave, but at seventy-nine years old, Mortati was the most senior cardinal here and had been appointed to oversee the proceedings.

Following tradition, the cardinals gathered here two hours before conclave to catch up with friends and engage in last-minute discussion. At 7 P.M., the late Pope’s chamberlain would arrive, give opening prayer, and then leave. Then the Swiss Guard would seal the doors and lock all the cardinals inside. It was then that the oldest and most secretive political ritual in the world would begin. The cardinals would not be released until they decided who among them would be the next Pope.

Conclave. Even the name was secretive. "Con clave" literally meant "locked with a key." The cardinals were permitted no contact whatsoever with the outside world. No phone calls. No messages. No whispers through doorways. Conclave was a vacuum, not to be influenced by anything in the outside world. This would ensure that the cardinals kept Solum Dum prae oculis… only God before their eyes.