Westminster Abbey – 9:46 a.m.
The towering nave of Westminster Abbey echoed faintly with the low murmur of tourists and the distant clicks of cameras. But Robert Langdon wasn't here for history on display—he was hunting history concealed.
He moved quickly past the statues of Newton and Darwin, pausing only briefly under the stained-glass gaze of Elizabeth I. Katherine walked beside him, her fingers ghosting over the stone markers set into the floor. Lenka stayed a step behind, eyes sweeping the crowd for signs of surveillance.
Finally, they reached Poet's Corner.
Langdon knelt before a modest brass plaque beneath the statue of William Shakespeare. It read simply:
"Blest be the man that spares these stones…" He ran his fingers along the edge of the surrounding stone tiles, then pressed gently on the corner of one. It shifted—a millimetre.
Katherine leaned closer. "This isn't just a tomb." Langdon nodded. "It's a vault." He removed a small penlight and aimed it into the gap. "The Abbey was once under the dominion of the Order of the Phoenix—the secretive Anglican offshoot tied to the noetic manuscripts. If they protected the amplifier's origins, they likely hid part of the code here." Just as he stood, Lenka gave a quiet signal. "Movement. Behind Milton's bust.
Two men. Templar-style earpieces." Langdon exhaled. "Too late for subtlety." Katherine whispered, "Then we trigger the mechanism." Langdon nodded. He stood and recited aloud a line from Shakespeare's Tempest:
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." The ground beneath them gave a faint click.
Then… silence.
A tile to the right of the Shakespeare memorial slid open to reveal a brass cylinder wrapped in parchment.
Lenka grabbed it. "We move—now." They turned to leave, but a tall figure stepped from behind Chaucer's statue, blocking their path. He wore a dark suit, his face shadowed—but his voice was unmistakable.
"You shouldn't have come to London, Professor Langdon." Langdon froze.
He knew that voice.
It belonged to Erasmus Lowell—a reclusive historian of ancient consciousness, presumed dead ten years ago.
Katherine whispered, "You knew him?" Langdon replied, barely audible, "He mentored the man who mentored me." Lowell smiled. "And now I'm here to finish what Solomon never could."