Reading - The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, p. 44-105

In chapter 7, Sister Sandrine, the keeper of the Church of Saint-Suplice, is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from her boss, who tells her that Bishop Aringarosa asked him to let a member of Opus Dei come to the church immediately. She is taken aback by this request, but she does as her boss asks.

In chapter 8, Langdon takes in the cryptic message that Saunière has written next to his body:

“13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!”

With the help of a black light, Fache reveals that Saunière has also drawn a circle around his naked body with invisible ink. The way his nude body is splayed within the circle suggests Da Vinci’s famous drawing, The Vitruvian Man.  In his office, Collet eavesdrops on Fache’s and Langdon’s conversation using audio equipment.Apparently, prior to Langdon’s arrival, Fache announced to his men that he thought he knew the identity of Saunière’s killer.  In addition to monitoring the audio equipment, Collet is monitoring the GPS tracking system.

In chapter 9, Sophie Neveu shows up at the Grand Gallery claiming that she has deciphered the code.  Fache is angered by this interruption.  As soon as Sophie arrives, she gives Langdon a message to call the U.S. Embassy, which has been trying to contact him with news. However, Langdon discovers that the number she has given him is not the U.S. Embassy at all, but Sophie’s own answering machine with a recording telling him that he is in danger.

In chapter 10, Silas reflects on his past while arriving at Saint-Suplice.  On the plane, Bishop Aringarosa thinks about how Opus Dei offered the Teacher a large amount of money for information about the location of the keystone. The Teacher told Aringarosa that he must not be in contact with Silas, presumably in order to maintain secrecy and throw the police off the scent.

In chapter 11, as Langdon listens to Sophie’s message, Sophie tells Fache that if put in ascending order, the numbers next to Saunière’s body form the Fibonacci sequence, a progression in which each term is equal to the sum of the two preceding terms. If Sophie is right, the code was a cryptographic joke. Unsatisfied with Sophie’s interpretation, Fache grows even angrier. Sophie leaves, and Langdon tells Fache that according to the embassy, a friend has had an accident. Langdon goes to the restroom after saying he isn’t feeling well and would like to be alone. Collet and Fache track him electronically. Fache tells Collet to make sure Langdon doesn’t leave the gallery.

In chapter 12, Sophie meets Langdon in the bathroom to explain her message further. She tells him that he is a suspect, and that a GPS tracker has been planted on him. After rummaging in his pocket, Langdon finds a tracker and realizes it must have been planted on him at the hotel. Langdon’s first impulse is to throw the tracker away, but Sophie convinces him that a static dot on the tracking screen would immediately arouse police suspicion. She shows him a picture of the crime scene that Fache uploaded to her departmental website. Fache photographed a line and then erased before Langdon’s arrival, but the line is visible in the picture. It reads, “P.S. Find Robert Langdon.”

In chapter 13, Sophie tells Langdon that the police have more than enough evidence to arrest him for the murder, but she knows that he is innocent. She believes Saunière was telling her to look for him. Saunière knew that The Vitruvian Man was her favorite Da Vinci drawing. He also must have known that if he put numbers into the message on the floor, the cryptography department would get involved with the investigation. Also, she thinks that the “P.S.” in the message “P.S. Find Robert Langdon” stands for Princesse Sophie, his nickname for her. Langdon is confused about Sophie’s connection to Saunière. He suspects that Sophie may have been Saunière’s mistress until she tells him that Saunière was her grandfather.

In chapter 14, ten minutes have gone by. Fache and Collet wonder why Langdon has not returned from the bathroom.  The tracking dot is showing slight movements, indicating that it is still on his body. If Langdon had found the device, he would have removed it and tried to run.  The director of the cryptology department calls. He wants to talk to Fache about Sophie Neveu.

In chapter 15, Silas moves toward the Church of Saint-Suplice.  Prepared to retrieve the keystone, he knocks on the door of the church.

In chapter 16, Sophie thinks about the phone message she got from Saunière earlier that day.  Their relationship had evaporated in a single instant ten years ago after she saw him engaged in an act she found despicable.  The message Sophie got from Saunière sounded urgent. In it, he said they were both in danger, and he had to tell her the truth about what happened to her family. Sophie’s family died in a car accident when she was little. She thought her grandfather’s message was just a ploy to get her to talk to him. She did not call him back.  Sophie asks Langdon to explain why Saunière would want to meet with him, but he doesn’t know. She tries to convince Langdon to leave the museum with her and go to the American Embassy for protection while they figure out what happened to her grandfather. Langdon refuses to run. Fache calls Sophie’s cell phone, but she turns it off. Sophie looks out the window and wonders whether Langdon could make it out of the building by jumping.

In chapter 17, Fache informs Collet that the director of cryptography cracked the code—like Sophie, he believes it to be meaningless Fibonacci numbers. The director also revealed that he did not send Sophie over to the museum, and that Saunière was Sophie’s grandfather. Collet, like Sophie, believes that Saunière must have written the code in order to get his granddaughter involved in the case.  Fache and Collet continue to try to reach Sophie. An alarm rings, signaling a security breach in the men’s room. The two policemen see on the GPS screen that Langdon has apparently jumped out of the window.

In chapter 18, Collet sees the tracking dot go out of the window and then come to a complete stop. The police assume Langdon has committed suicide, but then the dot starts moving away from the building and down the road. Fache looks out the bathroom window and sees a huge flatbed truck moving away. Assuming that Langdon must have jumped onto the truck, Fache runs out of the building to apprehend him.
Meanwhile, Sophie and Langdon hide in the shadows of the museum. The narrator explains that Sophie broke the window using a garbage can and then threw the GPS tracker, which she had imbedded in a bar of soap, out the window and onto the truck. Once all of the police have left the building, Sophie tells Langdon to go down a side stairwell with her. Langdon is impressed with Sophie’s quick thinking.

In chapter 19, Silas enters Saint-Suplice. Sister Sandrine offers to give him a tour of the church, but he refuses it. He asks her to go back to bed, saying he wants to pray and can show himself around. She agrees, but she is suspicious of him. Hiding in the shadows, she watches him pray, thinking that Silas might be the enemy she was warned about.

In chapter 20,  as he tries to decipher Saunière’s message, Langdon realizes that everything in the message relates in some way to PHI, or 1.618, the number of Divine Proportion, starting with the Fibonacci sequence. He thinks of a lecture he gives about how PHI is the numerical proportion of many things in nature and in art, including the pentacle, the symbol of the sacred feminine.  Suddenly, Langdon realizes that the word portion of Saunière’s message is actually an anagram. He unscrambles it and gets: “Leonardo Da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!”

This part of the novel is very intense and I love it.  Langdon and Sophie are running from the police and this whole section moves very quickly.  Less than 30 minutes have gone by and yet so much has happened in the plot line.  As I am reading this, I feel like I am reading faster and faster to find out what happens next.  I don't like Fache and I feel like even though he is the head of the police, this case is somewhat very personal to him or something.  I also am blown away by how Sophie's mind works.  I wish I had her problem solving abilities.