Page 144 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Robert Langdon awoke to the sound of military drumming—a lone rhythmic snare, playing a battle cadence as if leading a small army.

When he opened his eyes, he was looking out over the wintry expanse of a wooded park.

In the distance, dawn’s first light was breaking, filtering through a maze of skyscrapers.

Manhattan, he remembered as his mind slowly sharpened. Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Fifty-second floor.

The drumming continued. It seemed close.

Langdon sat up in bed, now seeing that Katherine was awake beside him, propped up on her elbow, smiling playfully, her hair tousled and loose. She was tinkering with her new phone, which Langdon now realized was the source of the drumming.

“I got tired of Grieg’s ‘Morning Mood,’?” she said. “I changed our wakeup call.”

To a military march? Langdon now heard a single flute join the drum, playing a familiar melody. “Wait…is that Boléro ?”

She gave an innocent shrug. “Maybe.”

Ravel’s orchestral masterpiece was widely considered the most erotic piece of classical music ever written.

Often called “the perfect soundtrack for lovemaking,” Boléro was fifteen minutes of insistent, pulsing rhythm that crescendoed into a full orchestra fortissimo climax that reviewers had referred to as a C-major orgasm.

“Subtle, you are not,” Langdon said, grabbing Katherine’s phone, turning up the volume, and playfully pinning her to the bed. For the next ten seconds, he gazed into her eyes and did absolutely nothing but listen to the snare and flute duet.

“Um, Robert?” Katherine finally said. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for the clarinet entrance in measure eighteen,” he replied. “I’m not a savage.”

An hour later, Langdon and Katherine were lounging in plush terry cloth robes, enjoying a room service breakfast in the sunlight that streamed in over Central Park.

Langdon’s body was sublimely content, and yet his mind was restless, eager for their afternoon meeting with Jonas Faukman at Random House Tower.

He still has no idea we have the manuscript.

Katherine’s book was safely stowed in their room’s safe, bound by two large rubber bands.

Before leaving Prague, they had made three photocopies and securely sent one to Katherine, one to Langdon, and one to Jonas.

With luck, they would not need any of them; Penguin Random House was only a few blocks away.

“Do you have a title yet?” Langdon asked. “Jonas will want to know.”

Katherine glanced up. “For my book? Nothing yet…”

“I ask only because you said something in Prague that’s been bouncing around in my mind. I think you might have landed on the perfect title.”

“Oh?”

“You told me that if science can prove there is indeed something beyond death, then we should be shouting that message from the mountaintops. You called it the secret of all secrets…and you claimed it would have enormous impact on the future of humanity.”

“I remember.”

Langdon waited. Katherine seemed to be waiting too. “Don’t you hear it?” he asked. “ The Secret of Secrets. If you think about it, the question at the core of the book—what happens when we die?—is the mystery that all human minds have pondered. It is truly the secret of secrets.”

“As a book title ?” Katherine looked skeptical. “I don’t know, it sounds…”

“Like a bestseller?” Langdon prompted.

“I was going to say ‘over-the-top.’?”

He laughed. “Well, my precognitive instinct is that the Penguin Random House lobby will soon be making space on its shelves for one more classic.”

Katherine’s eyes welled with emotion. She leaned forward, gently kissing him. “Thank you, Robert…for so many things.”

They sat in silence a long time, watching the bustling world beneath their window. Finally, Katherine stood and checked her watch. “We’ve got five hours to explore the city,” she said. “I’ll take a shower, and then you can play tour guide.”

“Sounds perfect,” Langdon said as she headed for the bathroom. “We’ll start at Trinity Church. Then Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Saint Patrick’s, Grace Church, the Cloist—”

“Robert!” Katherine spun around. “No!”

“Kidding, my dear,” he said with a smile. “Leave it to me. I know exactly where to take you.”

The Circle Line sightseeing boat plowed through the choppy waters of New York Harbor.

In the morning breeze, a lone osprey coasted effortlessly off the port side, scanning the water for its breakfast. On the bow, Katherine Solomon tucked herself under Langdon’s arm, enjoying the warmth of his body and the briny scent of fresh ocean air.

“Incredible, isn’t she?” Langdon whispered as they neared their destination.

She is, Katherine thought. I had no idea…

In front of them, rising more than three hundred feet above the water, a colossal figure stood proudly on her own private island, emanating a solemn grace that seemed almost divinely infused.

With her right arm raised, she held out a gleaming torch whose twenty-four-karat flame glinted in the morning sun.

As the ferry churned closer, Katherine began to see details in the statue’s verdigris copper—the broken chains of bondage around her sandaled feet, the delicate folds in her robes of justice, the tablet in her left hand bearing the nation’s birth date, the steadfast gaze and reassuring countenance…

and there, atop her head, the ancient symbol that Langdon had brought Katherine here to see.

The radiant crown.

The spiked halo adorning America’s Statue of Liberty was the same ornament that had crowned enlightened minds for millennia.

The seven spikes, each over nine feet long, were said to symbolize the rays of enlightenment that would radiate outward from this young country and illuminate all seven continents.

It’s the precise opposite, Katherine believed, seeing them as rays of enlightenment that flowed inward …

representing the stream of cultures, languages, and ideas from the seven continents, all coursing into the melting pot that was the mind of America.

This nation, after all, had been created as a kind of receiver, pulling in disparate souls from around the world, all of them flowing inward toward a shared experience.

Gazing out at Lady Liberty, Katherine could hear the faint echoes of the millions who had come to these shores to pursue their dreams. As my own family did…

generations ago. Her immigrant ancestors were gone now, of course, and yet to where, Katherine remained uncertain.

What she had come to accept was that human consciousness was not as we believed it to be.

Something real and profound lay beyond our physical experience… beyond our physical end.

As the wind blew harder, Katherine gently laid her head on Langdon’s shoulder, her mind as clear as it had ever been. She looked up at him. “I wish we could stand here forever.”

“Me too,” he said with a smile. “But you’ve got a book to deliver.”

- The End -