The Dan Brown Enigma (10 page)

When Brown visited the Pantheon in Rome, the docent told him about the building’s history. This is reflected in the humorous scene in the book where Robert Langdon is desperately searching for the killer while a zealous cardinal reels off facts and figures about the building: ‘Langdon’s progress around his side of the Pantheon was being hampered somewhat by the guide on his heels, now continuing his tireless narration as Langdon prepared to check the final alcove.’

Hidden information and secret societies feature prominently in all of Brown’s work. In
Angels & Demons
he was honing his ability to put them at the very heart of his narrative. ‘For example, the design of the Great Seal on the US dollar bill includes an illustration of a pyramid – an object which arguably has nothing to do with American history,’ Brown explained. In the
Angels & Demons
section of his witness statement Brown said the pyramid was, ‘actually an Egyptian occult symbol representing a convergence upward toward the ultimate source of illumination: in this case, an all-seeing eye. The eye inside the triangle is a pagan symbol adopted by the Illuminati to signify the brotherhood’s ability to infiltrate and watch all things. In addition, the triangle (Greek Delta) is the scientific symbol for change.’

Brown’s fascination with secret societies comes from growing up in New England, where he was influenced by the clandestine clubs of Ivy League universities, Masonic lodges and so on. He recalled that he saw ‘New England as having a long tradition of elite private clubs, fraternities, and secrecy.’ He had friends at Harvard who were members of a secret finals club and he also knew about the Skull & Bones club at Yale. ‘In the town where I grew up, there was a Masonic lodge, and nobody could (or would) tell me what happened behind those closed doors. All of this secrecy captivated me as a young man.’
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Writing about secret societies and material keeps Brown interested in the project. ‘Because a novel can take upwards of a year to write, I need to be constantly learning as I write, or I lose interest,’ he said. ‘Researching and writing about secretive topics helps remind me how much fun it is to “spy” into unseen worlds and it motivates me to try to give the reader that same experience. My goal is always to make the characters and plot so engaging that readers don’t realise how much they are learning along the way.’
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But the novel is not a religious book. It is quite simply ‘a chase and a love story’. The action takes place inside the Vatican and Brown believes that ‘most people understand that an organisation as old and powerful as the Vatican could not possibly have risen to power without acquiring a few skeletons in their closets.’ But perhaps the reason why the novel raised eyebrows in certain circles is because it ‘opens some Vatican closets most people don’t even know exist.’
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As with
Digital Fortress
, codes and treasure hunts feature prominently. In the first novel it was a straight binary code that had to be cracked but in the second Brown put the clues in a series of poems or riddles, which he saw as ‘useful tools for releasing information and moving the plot to the next stage.’

‘I accomplished this by delivering the code in short snippets of verse, which enables the reader a chance to stay one step ahead of Langdon,’ explained Brown. ‘Langdon, as a teacher, symbologist and art historian, satisfies dual prerequisites for my hero – that of being a credible teacher and also of being knowledgeable enough to decipher the clues in the artistic treasure hunts I create.’

Brown has said that he feels that
Angels & Demons
has a superior plot and is better written than
Digital Fortress
. ‘I wanted every single chapter to compel the reader to turn to the next page. I was taught that efficiency of words is the way an author respects his readers’ time, and so I trimmed the novel heavily while I was writing.’
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To build pace and tension he compressed the plot into a 24-hour time span. ‘I tried to keep the reader abreast of where the characters were physically, at all times. That seems to help the reader’s feeling that he is right there the entire time. In addition, I tried to end every chapter with a cliffhanger.’

All five of Brown’s novels are written to a similar style or structure. He believes it is this formula that makes his books so compelling for his readers. Essentially, his books have a hero who is pulled out of their routine and put into unfamiliar and dangerous situations that they don’t understand. Each of his books have very strong female characters who interact with the male character to create romance and implied sexuality. Travel, interesting locations and the countdown all add to the story. ‘I think that it is not so much what I write which is compelling but how I say it,’ Brown said. ‘I must admit, however, that I did not realise this until my first three novels became huge bestsellers after
The Da Vinci Code
.’

The story of
Angels & Demons
revolves around the main character of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon as he tries to stop the Illuminati from destroying Vatican City with antimatter. The book begins with Robert Langdon getting a fax from CERN director Maximilian Kohler that shows the ambigram of the Illuminati branded into a dead man’s chest. This man is, or was, Leonardo Vetra, one of the top and most respected physicists at CERN. In addition, one of Vetra’s eyes is missing.

Kohler has discovered the body but not called the police. Instead he contacts Langdon and has him flown over to authenticate the symbol, which he does. The meaning of this is that the Illuminati, a long extinct secret society, is operating again. But things are more serious than that. Kohler has called in Vetra’s daughter, the beautiful Vittoria, who takes them down to the lab where she and her father were working. They discover that a canister of antimatter has been stolen. Because of its volatile nature the antimatter is suspended inside the canister in a high vacuum by a magnetic field, which ensures it cannot come in contact with matter and unleash its tremendous destructive power. The canister is maintained by electricity at CERN but if it is taken away its backup battery lasts only 24 hours. When the battery fails, the antimatter will fall, touch the base of the canister and explode.

The canister, its digital clock ticking down, is hidden somewhere inside the Vatican City with a stolen security camera focused on the readout. The camera is wireless and feeds back to the security monitors in Vatican City but the Swiss Guard, the Vatican’s elite security force, have no idea where the canister is.

To make matters worse, as a result of the recent death of the most recent Pope, a papal enclave to elect a new one is under way at the Vatican. The most likely candidates for the post are four cardinals known as the Preferiti, and they are missing. Langdon and Vittoria arrive at Vatican City and begin searching for them, hoping they will also find the canister and the people responsible for Vetra’s murder. Tradition says that all the cardinals in Vatican City have to be sealed in the enclave until a new Pope is elected. With all the cardinals isolated, the man left in charge is the late Pope’s closest aide, Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca. Along with Commander Olivetti, Captain Rocher and Lieutenant Chartrand, the Camerlengo helps the two heroes in the search.

Langdon is convinced the only way to find the Preferiti is to retrace the Path of Illumination, an ancient and complex process the Illuminati used to induct new recruits into the fold. Prospective inductees had to follow a series of clues in and around Rome. If done correctly, the candidate would discover the secret meeting place of the Illuminati and be granted membership. Langdon and Vittoria set off on the path to uncover the clues that will lead them to the Preferiti and ultimately the canister.

An unknown assassin, working for a shadowy Illuminati master known only as Janus, has said he will kill the four cardinals in four different places, one each hour starting at 8pm. Using ancient texts written by Galileo and through his extensive knowledge of religious symbology and history, Langdon believes that there are four locations in Rome that the Illuminati believed represented Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Each time Langdon and Vittoria arrive at a location, they find one of the cardinals murdered in a way appropriate to the element. The first cardinal is found with soil down his throat and branded with an Earth ambigram, while the second has had his lungs punctured and been branded with an ambigram of Air.

After finding the first two bodies, Langdon heads for the third location at Santa Maria della Vittoria Basilica, where he discovers the assassin has set the third cardinal on fire. But the assassin hasn’t left: he kills Olivetti, tries to kill Langdon and kidnaps Vittoria. Langdon meets the assassin again at a fountain, the landmark for the final element of Water, where the fourth cardinal is drowned.

But Langdon is determined to finish the Path of Illumination, which leads him to the Castel Sant’ Angelo and a secret underground tunnel leading directly to the Pope’s chambers in the Vatican. Langdon finds Vittoria and frees her. They face the assassin together and manage to kill him by pushing him several hundred feet to his grisly death. The two heroes race back to St Peter’s Basilica, only to find that Kohler has arrived to confront the Camerlengo, who points the finger at Kohler, saying that he is Janus. The Camerlengo is branded with the Illuminati Diamond and screams in agony. Hearing his screams, the Swiss Guard break into the Pope’s chambers and shoot Kohler.

The Camerlengo then accuses Captain Rocher of being one of the Illuminati and orders Lieutenant Chartrand to shoot him, which he does. Kohler, however, has managed to hang on long enough to give Langdon a video tape that he says will explain everything.

Time is running out. They decide to evacuate the Basilica but the Camerlengo suddenly goes into a trance and refuses to go. He says he’s had a vision from God and now knows where the canister is. He tears into the catacombs under the Basilica with Langdon, Vittoria and others in hot pursuit. They arrive at St Peter’s Tomb to find the canister sitting there, the clock dangerously close to the end.

With only five minutes left, Langdon and the Camerlengo grab the canister and head for a helicopter. They manage to get into the air well above the city when the thing explodes, causing no damage to the city below. The Camerlengo parachutes safely down onto the roof of St Peter’s Basilica and stands triumphantly before the crowds in the Square. But what has happened to Langdon? There was only one parachute in the helicopter.

Everyone sees the survival of the Camerlengo as a miracle, so the cardinals in the conclave say that Catholic law should be made to elect the Camerlengo as the new Pope. But Langdon has survived by managing to use a window cover from the chopper as a parachute and landing heavily in the Tiber River. He is hurt, but the injuries aren’t serious and he manages to get back to the Basilica and views Kohler’s tape with the College of Cardinals. Kohler was right: it does tell the truth and Langdon, Vittoria and the cardinals confront the Camerlengo in the Sistine Chapel.

At this point we find that the Pope had been due to meet Vetra to discuss his work on antimatter at CERN. Vetra, a devout Catholic, believed he’d found a way through his research to bring science and religion together, linking Man and God. This was an anathema to the Camerlengo, who strongly felt that only the Church should have domain over God. The Pope had revealed to the Camerlengo when discussing Vetra that science had given him a son. This had been done through artificial insemination.

The Camerlengo had looked up to the Pope, seeing him as a holy man who was completely against science. Enraged and feeling betrayed the Camerlengo plotted to stop the Pope and Vetra. His first step was to poison the Pope. He then took the guise of the Illuminati master Janus and recruited the assassin, setting the wheels in motion for the murder of Vetra, stealing the canister and murdering the four cardinals.

As Langdon has suspected from the beginning, the real Illuminati had nothing to do with the plot. The secret order has long since gone and the whole thing was a plot by the Camerlengo to carry out his evil plans. But there is a sting in the tail for the Camerlengo when he discovers that he was the Pope’s son through artificial insemination. Overcome with grief, the Camerlengo sets fire to himself in St Peter’s Square for all to see. In the conclave a new Pope is elected.

Langdon and Vittoria end up in bed together in the Hotel Bernini, where Lieutenant Chartrand delivers the Illuminati Diamond from the new Pope for Langdon to keep on loan indefinitely.
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While the plot may sound far-fetched, the true test is what people think of it and what the reviews say about it. On Amazon, one reviewer (Kelly Flynn) called
Angels & Demons
‘a no-holds-barred, pull-out-all-the-stops, breathless tangle of a thriller – think Katherine Neville’s
The Eight
(but cleverer) or Umberto Eco’s
Foucault’s Pendulum
(but more accessible).’
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This review also says the book is ‘a heck of a good read’ and ‘tasty brain candy’.

Another reviewer said that
Angels & Demons
was better than
The Da Vinci Code
. ‘A fast-paced, exciting read. For my money, I think this is a more interesting and surprising book than
The Da Vinci Code
and I recommend it to any fan of
The Da Vinci Code
.’
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And again…

‘Even for me with the attention span of a fly I could not put this book down! Full of twists and turns it leaves you guessing till the end. Beautifully written, great plot, every chapter leaves you fully engaged and excited to read more!!’
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Not all the reviews are so positive. One reader gave the book a single star saying, ‘My wife asked me to read this book before we went to Rome so that I would know some of the places we would visit… this is the only use for this book. Now, before I start, can I just say that I know this is a work of fiction, BUT when the author begins by making claims of fact and clearly trying to make out that the story is true, then it deserves to be judged on how realistic it is. The story is undoubtedly exciting, but the ending is so preposterous that it completely blows away any lingering sense of realism. Also the death of one of the characters is a total anticlimax, and is at odds with the level of suspense that had been built up to that point. I certainly won’t be rushing back to read more Dan Brown on the basis of this book.’
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