In chapter 65, Silas has Teabing and Sophie at gunpoint. He orders Teabing to hand him the cryptex. Teabing agrees and then slashes Silas with one of his crutches, right on the punishment belt strapped around Silas’s thigh. Silas goes down, and they bind and gag him.
In chapter 66, Langdon, Teabing, and Sophie fool Collet and the police into going upstairs. Collet goes down to the barn and finds that most of the sports cars are there with the exception of one.
In chapter 67, in a Range Rover driven by Remy, the group drives across the fields and through the forest behind the chateau. Teabing has Silas at gunpoint in the back seat. Teabing makes a call and orders his plane prepared. He plans to take them to England, away from the French authorities. Silas refuses to give the group information about why Opus Dei wants to see the keystone. Langdon has an idea and asks to use Sophie’s phone.
In chapter 68, Langdon calls Jonas Faukman, his editor, who admits that he sent a copy of Langdon’s recent manuscript to Saunière in order to get a blurb for the back of the novel from him. Teabing asks whether the novel was critical of the Priory, and Langdon says it takes a neutral stance. Teabing thinks the Priory should have revealed where the documents were hidden. When they reach the airfield, the pilot does not want to transport Sophie and Langdon, but Teabing threatens him with the gun and offers him a bribe.
In chapter 69, in the jet, Teabing asks Sophie if she understands the gravity of her own position. If she can find the Holy Grail, Teabing says, she will have the power to reveal the great secret to the world. He wants to know what she plans to do with that power. Sophie says that when she finds the Grail, she will know what to do.
In chapter 70, At Chateau Villette, Fache is furious with Collet. Andre Vernet calls the police and tells them that contrary to what he said, Sophie and Langdon were at the bank that night. He says they took something from Sauniere’s account. At the same time, another agent has gone through Teabing’s speed dial numbers and spoken with the airfield. He has discovered that Teabing spoke with them that night.
In chapter 71, on the plane, Langdon and Teabing try and fail to decipher the text on the back of the rose. Sophie takes the text from them and says it is simply written backwards, the way Da Vinci used to write in his notebooks. One can read it in a mirror.
In chapter 72, Langdon, Sophie, and Teabing copy down the four-line poem inscribed in the box. It includes references to the Knights Templar and the Grail. It is written in iambic pentameter and in English, which the Brotherhood considered the only language uncorrupted by the church. The poem instructs them to find a headstone “praised by Templars” and then use another code, the Atbash Cipher, to decode the password. They feel a bit daunted about the prospect of tracking all this down.
In chapter 73, at the airfield, Fache cannot find out who is on Teabing’s plane with him, but he does manage to determine where the plane will land. He tells his police to have the Kent local police, not the British intelligence service, to surround the plane.
In chapter 74, Langdon guesses what Sophie witnessed her grandfather participating in ten years ago. I am not going to say what her grandfather did because I do not want to spoil the novel. Langdon explains the ritual to Sophie and she tells him exactly what she saw.
In chapter 75, on his charter flight to Paris, Aringarosa speaks with Fache and is horrified to learn that the plan is collapsing so quickly. He offers the pilot all of the Vatican bonds to go to London instead of Paris. The pilot asks for his ring instead. Aringarosa gives it to him, feeling sick.
In chapter 76, Langdon has a realization about the “headstone praised by Templars” which appears in the poem. The Knights Templar were accused of devil worship during the time of Pope Clement. The god they purportedly worshipped sometimes appeared as a large stone head, the head of Baphomet. Langdon and Teabing agree that this must be the password for the cryptex.
In chapter 77, Langdon, Sophie, and Teabing use the Atbash Cipher to decode the word Baphomet. The word they unearth is Sofia, the Greek word for wisdom and a variation of Sophie’s name.
Other than the initial action of this section with Silas, the main characters are basically on the plane to England. So, the content of this section deals more with code-breaking and psychology. Though I am really bad at figuring out codes myself, I love to see others figure them out. I liked this section a lot because I think it’s really interesting to see how the characters break the codes. I was kind of disturbed by the ritual Sauniere participated in. Even when Langdon explained his actions, I still believe it was wrong and really messed up. But according to Sauniere’s faith, he thought he was actually doing something very sacred.
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