Page 34 of The Lost Symbol

“Don’t be,” she replied curtly. “It appears we’re now at a dead end until you share whatever it is you’re still not telling me.”

“Ma’am?”

Sato stepped toward him. “We’ve come full circle, Professor. You’ve told me nothing I could not have learned from my own staff. And so I will ask you once more. Why were you brought here tonight? What makes you so special? What is it that you alone know?”

“We’ve been through this,” Langdon fired back. “I don’t know why this guy thinks I know anything at all!”

Langdon was half tempted to demand how the hell Sato knew that he was in the Capitol tonight, but they’d been through that, too. Sato isn’t talking. “If I knew the next step,” he told her, “I’d tell you. But I don’t. Traditionally, the Hand of the Mysteries is extended by a teacher to a student. And then, shortly afterward, the hand is followed up with a set of instructions . . . directions to a temple, the name of the master who will teach you—something! But all this guy left for us is five tattoos! Hardly—” Langdon stopped short.

Sato eyed him. “What is it?”

Langdon’s eyes shot back to the hand. Five tattoos. He now realized that what he was saying might not be entirely true.

“Professor?” Sato pressed.

Langdon inched toward the gruesome object. Peter will point the way.

“Earlier, it crossed my mind that maybe this guy had left an object clenched in Peter’s palm—a map, or a letter, or a set of directions.”

“He didn’t,” Anderson said. “As you can see, those three fingers are not clenched tightly.”

“You’re right,” Langdon said. “But it occurs to me . . .” He crouched down now, trying to see up under the fingers to the hidden part of Peter’s palm. “Maybe it’s not written on paper.”

“Tattooed?” Anderson said.

Langdon nodded.

“Do you see anything on the palm?” Sato asked.

Langdon crouched lower, trying to peer up under the loosely clenched fingers. “The angle is impossible. I can’t—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sato said, moving toward him. “Just open the damned thing!”

Anderson stepped in front of her. “Ma’am! We should really wait for forensics before we touch—”

“I want some answers,” Sato said, pushing past him. She crouched down, edging Langdon away from the hand.

Langdon stood up and watched in disbelief as Sato pulled a pen from her pocket, sliding it carefully under the three clenched fingers. Then, one by one, she pried each finger upward until the hand stood fully open, with its palm visible.

She glanced up at Langdon, and a thin smile spread across her face. “Right again, Professor.”

CHAPTER 22

Pacing the library, Katherine Solomon pulled back the sleeve of her lab coat and checked her watch. She was not a woman accustomed to waiting, but at the moment, she felt as if her whole world were on hold. She was waiting for Trish’s search-spider results, she was waiting for word from her brother, and also, she was waiting for a callback from the man who was responsible for this entire troubling situation.

I wish he hadn’t told me, she thought. Normally, Katherine was extremely careful about making new acquaintances, and although she had met this man for the first time only this afternoon, he had earned her trust in a matter of minutes. Completely.

His call had come this afternoon while Katherine was at home enjoying her usual Sunday-afternoon pleasure of catching up on the week’s scientific journals.

“Ms. Solomon?” an unusually airy voice had said. “My name is Dr. Christopher Abaddon. I was hoping I might speak to you for a moment about your brother?”

“I’m sorry, who is this?” she had demanded. And how did you get my private cell-phone number?

“Dr. Christopher Abaddon?”

Katherine did not recognize the name.

The man cleared his throat, as if the situation had just become awkward. “I apologize, Ms. Solomon. I was under the impression your brother had told you about me. I’m his doctor. Your cell number was listed as his emergency contact.”