Langdon Summoned to the Louvre

Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbology, had just finished a lecture at the American University of Paris and returned to his room at the Hotel Ritz Paris when the telephone rang at 12:32 A.M. The concierge insisted a visitor was urgent, and before Langdon could refuse, a heavy fist pounded on his door. The man identified himself as Lieutenant Jerome Collet of the Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire, the rough equivalent of the U.S. FBI. Through the security chain, Collet slid a Polaroid snapshot of Jacques Saunière's corpse—the curator naked, arranged in a spread-eagle pose with a pentacle drawn on his abdomen in his own blood. Langdon's initial revulsion gave way to anger, and a sense of déjà vu: a year earlier, a similar photograph and request for help had nearly cost him his life inside Vatican City. Collet then delivered the chilling revelation that Saunière had inflicted these wounds on himself.

The Summons and the Journey

Langdon had been scheduled to meet Saunière for drinks after the lecture, but the curator never appeared. The DCPJ found Langdon's name in Saunière's daily planner and tracked him to the Ritz through Interpol's hotel registration system. Collet drove Langdon across Paris in a Citroën ZX with a dissonant two-tone siren, passing the illuminated Eiffel Tower and the Tuileries Gardens. Langdon learned that the captain of the Judicial Police, Bezu Fache—nicknamed "le Taureau" (the Bull)—was waiting for him at the Louvre's main entrance, the controversial glass pyramid designed by I. M. Pei. The agent left Langdon alone at the pyramid's door, and Langdon crossed an imaginary threshold into another world, feeling trapped in a Salvador Dali painting.

The Interrogation Begins

Fache, a stocky, dark man with an arrow-like widow's peak and crushing handshake, met Langdon at the revolving door and led him down the famous marble staircase into the sunken atrium beneath the pyramid. The Louvre was eerily dark, lit only by red service lighting, and guarded by armed Judicial Police. Fache questioned Langdon about his relationship with Saunière, his manuscript on goddess worship, and the purpose of their planned meeting. Langdon admitted he had never met the curator, that Saunière's secretary had contacted him weeks earlier, and that he had no idea what the meeting was about. Fache's questions grew pointed, and Langdon sensed the captain was not merely seeking information but testing him. When Fache revealed that Saunière had stripped naked, drawn a pentacle on his stomach, and arranged his body in the shape of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, Langdon offered his expertise: the pentacle was a pre-Christian symbol of the sacred feminine, not devil worship. Fache remained skeptical, and the tension between them deepened.

The Hidden Message and the Trap

Fache led Langdon to the Grand Gallery, where Saunière's body lay under a spotlight. Using a black light, Fache revealed a glowing message on the parquet floor: a scrambled Fibonacci sequence and the lines "O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!" Langdon was baffled, but Fache pressed him for an interpretation. The captain then disclosed that Saunière had written a fourth line—"P.S. Find Robert Langdon"—which Fache had wiped clean before Langdon's arrival. This postscript, combined with Saunière's date book and the GPS tracking dot planted in Langdon's jacket, made Langdon the prime suspect. Unbeknownst to Langdon, the entire conversation was being recorded, and Fache was conducting a "surveillance cachée"—a covert observation designed to make the suspect incriminate himself. Langdon had walked into a trap, and the only person who could warn him was Sophie Neveu, the cryptographer who had just deciphered the Fibonacci sequence and who, as Saunière's granddaughter, knew the message was meant for her.