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We're going to make it, Sophie thought as she swung the SmartCar's wheel to the right, cutting
sharply past the luxurious Hôtel de Crillon into Paris's tree-lined diplomatic neighborhood. The
embassy was less than a mile away now. She was finally feeling like she could breathe normally
again.
Even as she drove, Sophie's mind remained locked on the key in her pocket, her memories of
seeing it many years ago, the gold head shaped as an equal-armed cross, the triangular shaft, the
indentations, the embossed flowery seal, and the letters P.S.
Although the key barely had entered Sophie's thoughts through the years, her work in the
intelligence community had taught her plenty about security, and now the key's peculiar tooling no
longer looked so mystifying. A laser-tooled varying matrix. Impossible to duplicate. Rather than
teeth that moved tumblers, this key's complex series of laser-burned pockmarks was examined by
an electric eye. If the eye determined that the hexagonal pockmarks were correctly spaced,
arranged, and rotated, then the lock would open.
Sophie could not begin to imagine what a key like this opened, but she sensed Robert would be
able to tell her. After all, he had described the key's embossed seal without ever seeing it. The
cruciform on top implied the key belonged to some kind of Christian organization, and yet Sophie
knew of no churches that used laser-tooled varying matrix keys.
Besides, my grandfather was no Christian....
Sophie had witnessed proof of that ten years ago. Ironically, it had been another key—a far more
normal one—that had revealed his true nature to her.
The afternoon had been warm when she landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport and hailed a taxi
home. Grand-père will be so surprised to see me, she thought. Returning from graduate school in
Britain for spring break a few days early, Sophie couldn't wait to see him and tell him all about the
encryption methods she was studying.
When she arrived at their Paris home, however, her grandfather was not there. Disappointed, she
knew he had not been expecting her and was probably working at the Louvre. But it's Saturday
afternoon, she realized. He seldom worked on weekends. On weekends, he usually—
Grinning, Sophie ran out to the garage. Sure enough, his car was gone. It was the weekend. Jacques
Saunière despised city driving and owned a car for one destination only—his vacation château in
Normandy, north of Paris. Sophie, after months in the congestion of London, was eager for the
smells of nature and to start her vacation right away. It was still early evening, and she decided to
leave immediately and surprise him. Borrowing a friend's car, Sophie drove north, winding into the
deserted moon-swept hills near Creully. She arrived just after ten o'clock, turning down the long
private driveway toward her grandfather's retreat. The access road was over a mile long, and she
was halfway down it before she could start to see the house through the trees—a mammoth, old
stone château nestled in the woods on the side of a hill.
Sophie had half expected to find her grandfather asleep at this hour and was excited to see the
house twinkling with lights. Her delight turned to surprise, however, when she arrived to find the
driveway filled with parked cars—Mercedeses, BMWs, Audis, and a Rolls-Royce.
Sophie stared a moment and then burst out laughing. My grand-père, the famous recluse! Jacques
Saunière, it seemed, was far less reclusive than he liked to pretend. Clearly he was hosting a party
while Sophie was away at school, and from the looks of the automobiles, some of Paris's most
influential people were in attendance.
Eager to surprise him, she hurried to the front door. When she got there, though, she found it
locked. She knocked. Nobody answered. Puzzled, she walked around and tried the back door. It too
was locked. No answer.
Confused, she stood a moment and listened. The only sound she heard was the cool Normandy air
letting out a low moan as it swirled through the valley.
No music.
No voices.
Nothing.
In the silence of the woods, Sophie hurried to the side of the house and clambered up on a
woodpile, pressing her face to the living room window. What she saw inside made no sense at all.
"Nobody's here!"
The entire first floor looked deserted.
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