Chapter 75 Chapter Seventy-Four

Langdon saw what he was looking for from ten yards away.Through the sparse crowd of tourists, he saw Bernini's white marble ellipse, The West Wind, stand out against the gray granite ashlars that covered the rest of the piazza.Apparently, Victoria saw the marble too.Her hands clenched tightly. "Relax," Langdon said softly, "be your piranha." Victoria loosened her grip. They got closer, and everything seemed perfectly normal, which was so scary.Tourists loitered, nuns chatted around the square, and a little girl at the base of the obelisk was feeding pigeons. Langdon refrained from looking at his watch.He knew the time was coming.

The oval stone was right under their feet, and Langdon and Victoria stopped slowly—not urgently—though out of a sense of responsibility, like two tourists pausing to enjoy a certain scenic spot with interest . ""West Wind"." Victoria read the inscription on the stone. Langdon stared down at the marble relief, feeling suddenly childish.In his art books, in his many trips to Rome, he never found the meaning of The West Wind. until now. The relief is oval, about three feet long, and has a face carved in profile—depicting the angelic visage of Zephyr.From the angel's mouth, Bernini carved out a strong breath, exhaled outward, and blew it outside the Vatican... "God's Breath".This is what Bernini engraved for the second element... Chi... an ethereal westerly wind exhaled from the angel's mouth.As Langdon stared at it, he realized that the relief had a deeper meaning.Bernini carved five distinctly different winds...five!Moreover, there is a dazzling star on each side of this relief.Langdon immediately thought of Galileo.Two stars, five winds, ellipse, symmetry... His stomach was empty and he felt a headache.

Victoria was on her feet again almost immediately, and she led Langdon away from the cameo. "I felt like someone was following us," she said. Langdon looked up. "where?" Victoria walked more than thirty yards before speaking.She pointed to the Holy See above, as if to show Langdon something on the dome. "Someone followed us through the square." Victoria turned her head and glanced inadvertently, "Still following us, let's continue walking." "Do you think it's a black fiend?" Victoria shook her head. "Unless the Illuminati hire a woman with a BBC camera."

St. Peter's Basilica rang a deafening bell, startling Langdon and Victoria. Time is up.In order to get rid of the reporter, they had already walked away from "West Wind", and now they walked towards the relief again. Apart from the roaring bells, it looked eerily peaceful here.Tourists hang out, a homeless drunk dozes ugly under the base of the obelisk; a young girl feeds pigeons.Langdon wondered if the reporter had scared the killer away.Filled with doubts, he decided to recall the killer's statement again, I want to make your cardinals the news. When the echo of the ninth bell disappeared, the entire square fell silent again, and it was peaceful.

Just then... the little girl screamed.