Chapter 20 Chapter Eighteen

Fache ran at full speed along the Grand Gallery of Art.At this moment, Collet's voice came from the intercom, drowning out the sound of distant sirens. "He jumped!" Collet yelled. "My display here says the signal has gone to Place de Carse! Out the toilet window! Now it's not moving! My God, Langdon just killed himself!" Fache heard Collet's call, but found it irrational.He kept running.The gallery seems to have no end.As he sprinted past Sanil's body, he cast his eyes on the far-off partition at the end of Denon Hall.The alarm was getting louder. "Wait!" Collet's voice came over the intercom again. "He's moving! My God, he's alive! Langdon is moving!"

Fache continued to run, complaining that the gallery was too long. "Langdon's moving faster!" Collet continued. "He's running down the streets of Place de Carse. Wait a minute...he's speeding up. He's going too fast!" Coming to the partition, Fache curled up and slipped through the gap.He saw the toilet door and ran there. At this point, the sound of the walkie-talkie was almost overwhelmed by the siren. "He must be in the car! I think he's in the car! I can't—" When Fache finally rushed into the men's room with a gun, Collet's voice was completely drowned out by the sirens.Against the ear-piercing siren, he scanned the place.

The compartments are all empty.There is no one in the toilet.Fache immediately turned his gaze to the shattered glass window at the far end of the toilet.He ran to the glass gap and looked down the sill. Langdon had disappeared.Fache couldn't imagine anyone taking the risk of performing such a stunt.If someone really jumped from such a high place, he would be seriously injured if he didn't die. The sirens finally stopped, and Fache could hear the intercom again. "Moving south...faster...crossing the Seine by the Pont Caruso!" Fache turned to look left and saw that the only traffic on the Caruso Bridge was a large truck with two carriages towing, heading south, away from the Louvre.The carriage has no roof and is covered with plastic sheeting. The whole truck is like a big crane.Fache suddenly realized.A few minutes earlier, the truck might have been parked under the bathroom window waiting for a red light.

A wild adventure, Fache thought.Langdon had no way of knowing what was under the plastic sheeting.What if the trucks were moving steel?What about cement?Or is it rubbish?Jumping from forty feet?It's just crazy. "The red dot has changed direction!" cried Collet. "It turned right onto St.Pelles Bridge." Collet had radioed the police out of the Louvre and sent them in pursuit in patrol cars. Fache knew it was time to end.Within minutes, his men would have surrounded the truck. Langdon had nowhere to go. Fache put away his gun, stepped out of the bathroom, and said to Collet over the intercom: "Get my car over here. I'm going to be there when he's arrested."

Fache trotted back along the art gallery, wondering if Langdon survived the jump. But it doesn't matter. Langdon fled and was convicted. About fifteen yards from the toilet, Langdon and Sophie stood in the darkness of the art gallery.Their backs are pressed against the partition that separates the toilet from the gallery.They were nearly spotted when Fache rushed past them with a gun and headed for the bathroom. The scene sixty seconds ago: Langdon stood in the men's room, refusing to run away on trumped-up charges.Sophie looked at the window, examining the alarm grid embedded in the plate glass.Then she glanced down, as if to gauge the distance from the toilet to the floor.

"Aim for a small target and you can get out of here," she said. Target?Langdon looked out the window anxiously. On the street, an eight-wheeled truck towing two carriages was waiting for the signal light to change color directly under the window.The truck load was loosely covered with blue plastic sheeting.Langdon guessed that Sophie wanted him to jump, and wished she'd stopped thinking about it and thought of something else. "Sophie, there's no way I'm going to jump—" "Get out the tracker." Perplexed, Langdon fumbled in his pocket and found the small metal clasp.Sophie took the tracker and strode to the pool.She grabbed a thick bar of soap, placed the tracker on it, and pressed the tracker into the soap with her thumb.After the tracker was embedded in the soap, she pinched the opening to seal the tracker tightly in the soap.

Sophie handed Langdon the soap, and pulled out a cylindrical trash can from under the sink.Before Langdon could object, Sophie rushed towards the window like a ram with the trash can in her arms.She slammed the bottom of the trash can on the center of the window, shattering the glass.A deafening siren sounded. "Give me the soap!" Sophie's voice was faintly discernible amidst the shrill sirens. Langdon handed her the soap quickly. Sophie took the soap and looked at the eight-wheeler parked on the road below.The target was a large, stationary piece of plastic sheeting, not more than ten feet from the outer wall of the building.When the signal light was about to change color, Sophie took a deep breath and threw the soap out the window.

The soap fell toward the truck, onto the edge of the plastic sheeting, and slid into the cargo box.Just then, the green light came on. "Congratulations," Sophie said, pulling Langdon toward the door. "You just escaped from the Louvre." After Sophie and Langdon left the men's room, they hid in the shadows by the partition while Fache ran past them. Now the sirens had died down, and Fache could hear the sirens of police cars moving away from the Louvre.All the police left.Fache has also left in a hurry.The Louvre was empty. "There is an emergency stairway about fifty meters long in the Art Gallery," Sophie said. "Now that the guards are gone, we can get out of here."

Langdon decided to keep quiet, because he saw that Sophie was far smarter than he was.