Heathrow Airport, London – 8:04 a.m.
The wheels of the transatlantic flight touched down with a jolt that snapped Langdon from uneasy dreams—half-visions of glowing machines and ancient languages whispered through time. Katherine sat beside him, her fingers still wrapped protectively around a weathered journal they had recovered from Lucius Solomon's Prague apartment.
Lenka was waiting by the exit, alert as ever. She'd slept the least, but looked the most prepared.
As they cleared customs under assumed names, Langdon couldn't help but feel the gravity of the city around them.
London.
A palimpsest of memory.
Beneath its orderly modernity lay layers of buried stories—Roman temples beneath cathedrals, pagan rites masked by royal liturgy, coded manuscripts buried in its most celebrated literature.
And somewhere in it all, the next step of the journey.
In the back seat of a waiting black cab, Langdon opened Lucius's journal. It was filled with fragmented notes, alchemical symbols, and one poem written in iambic pentameter and signed simply: A.
Where mind and crown entwine in stone, A name once inked by hand alone.
Where shadows fall on poet's tomb, The secret stirs in England's womb.
Langdon read the stanza aloud. Katherine leaned in.
"A name inked by hand," she mused. "Could it be referring to Shakespeare?" Langdon nodded. "And the 'poet's tomb'... Westminster Abbey. Poet's Corner." "But 'mind and crown entwine in stone'," Lenka added, "sounds more like... the Tower of London?" Langdon smiled grimly. "Welcome to England. Where every clue leads to three more." Their cab turned onto Victoria Embankment, the Thames sliding gray and steady beside them. In the distance, the gothic spires of Westminster rose into the clouded sky.
Langdon folded the poem. "We'll start at the Abbey." "And if the manuscript is hidden there?" Katherine asked.
Langdon met her gaze.
"Then we pray the dead are more generous than the living."