The attack on the Solomon estate links a failed attempt to take the family’s pyramid with a later Christmas-day invasion that cost Isabel Solomon her life. Its first assault began when the intruder, then living as Andros and later known as Mal’akh, came to believe that the pyramid might offer the wisdom and power missing from his life.

Background and First Assault

After leaving prison, Andros built a life on the Greek island of Syros, but material comfort and personal success did not relieve his persistent emptiness. A late-night television program about Freemasonry revived his memory of what Zachary Solomon had heard from his father: a mysterious pyramid associated with lost wisdom. Andros concluded that the story might be true and that Zachary, though dead, had left him a route to the object.

Three weeks later, Andros went to the Solomon estate in Potomac. He saw Peter Solomon talking with his sister, Katherine Solomon, through the conservatory glass, then entered wearing a ski mask and carrying a handgun. He had come for the pyramid, but Peter’s household was not an unguarded route to it. Andros was driven out and fled across the grounds as Peter pursued him with a pistol.

The chase ended at a ravine, where the path stopped above an ice-covered river. With no bridge across, Andros turned back and faced Peter. Their confrontation shifted from the attempted theft to the death of Zachary: Peter accused Andros of killing his son, while Andros argued that Peter’s refusal to secure Zachary’s release from prison had made him responsible. Peter shot Andros, who fell toward the river. The immediate result appeared to be the end of the intruder’s threat, but Andros survived and escaped; the pyramid remained in the Solomons’ keeping.

Survival and the Second Attack

Andros survived the fall by finding an opening in the ice near a fallen tree and forcing his way back to the surface. He concealed the hole, then reached a road in the snow and persuaded a passing driver to take him along, claiming that a hunter had shot him. The driver disappeared, and Andros later took his truck, discarded evidence of his escape, and learned from a radio report that the authorities believed the Solomon-estate murderer had fallen through the ice and been carried out to sea. The report also confirmed that Isabel Solomon had been murdered. Andros had failed to take the pyramid, and the family’s loss had not brought him closer to it.

His survival did not end his pursuit. Even after recovering and moving to New York, Andros remained fixated on the pyramid and the wisdom and power he believed it promised. On Christmas Day, six years after the first assault, an intruder claiming to have killed Zachary Solomon in prison broke into the Solomon estate. He had returned for the pyramid; he left without it, and Isabel was dead. The two attacks thus bookend a failed theft with a graver consequence: the object remained hidden, while the family paid for its concealment with another life.

Aftermath and the Pyramid’s New Hiding Place

The attack changed how Peter Solomon and Warren Bellamy protected the pyramid. Days after Isabel Solomon’s death, Peter summoned Bellamy and admitted that he should have followed his earlier advice. Bellamy brought the capstone, still wrapped in faded brown paper and tied with twine, its wax seal bearing Peter’s ring. The two pieces had been kept apart; now, in the wake of the invasion, they were brought closer together before Peter asked that the capstone be entrusted to someone else without telling him who.

Bellamy proposed hiding the pyramid in the United States Capitol Subbasement, which he considered the most secure place in Washington. Its location in the symbolic heart of the nation appealed to Peter, who approved the plan. The decision carried the consequences of the attack forward: the family’s loss led Peter and Bellamy to relocate the pyramid and renew its separate custody. A decade later, Bellamy understood that Peter had chosen Robert Langdon to guard the capstone, and hoped Langdon would prove equal to the responsibility.

Narrative Reversal and Significance

The estate attack is structured around a mistaken ending: after Peter shoots Andros at the ravine, the authorities presume the intruder has been swept away and killed, while the radio report pairs that belief with confirmation of Isabel Solomon’s murder. The later account of Andros’s escape overturns the apparent resolution, revealing that the man presumed lost survived and remained fixed on the pyramid. The Christmas-day invasion then gives that unresolved pursuit a second, more devastating consequence. Together, the attacks turn the pyramid’s concealment into an ongoing danger rather than a completed act of protection: Peter and Warren Bellamy’s decision to move it to the United States Capitol Subbasement follows the family’s loss, while the object itself remains beyond the attacker’s grasp.