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and Langdon now lived with an almost crippling aversion to enclosed spaces. But this underground space was . . . airy somehow. Light. Spacious.
     
The ceiling was a vast expanse of glass with a series of dramatic light fixtures that threw a muted glow across the pearl-colored interior finishes.
     
Normally, Langdon would have taken a full hour in here to admire the architecture, but with five minutes until showtime, he put his head down and dashed through the main hall toward the security checkpoint and escalators. Relax, he told himself. Peter knows you’re on your way. The event won’t start without you.
     
At the security point, a young Hispanic guard chatted with him while Langdon emptied his pockets and removed his vintage watch.
     
“Mickey Mouse?” the guard said, sounding mildly amused.
     
Langdon nodded, accustomed to the comments. The collector’s edition Mickey Mouse watch had been a gift from his parents on his ninth birthday. “I wear it to remind me to slow down and take life less seriously.”
     
“I don’t think it’s working,” the guard said with a smile. “You look like you’re in a serious hurry.”
     
Langdon smiled and put his daybag through the X-ray machine. “Which way to the Statuary Hall?”
     
The guard motioned toward the escalators. “You’ll see the signs.”
     
“Thanks.” Langdon grabbed his bag off the conveyor and hurried on.
     
As the escalator ascended, Langdon took a deep breath and tried to gather his thoughts. He gazed up through the rain-speckled glass ceiling at the mountainous form of the illuminated Capitol Dome overhead. It was an astonishing building. High atop her roof, almost three hundred feet in the air, the Statue of Freedom peered out into the misty darkness like a ghostly sentinel. Langdon always found it ironic that the workers who hoisted each piece of the nineteen-and-a-half-foot bronze statue to her perch were slaves—a Capitol secret that seldom made the syllabi of high school history classes.
     
This entire building, in fact, was a treasure trove of bizarre arcana that included a “killer bathtub” responsible for the pneumonic murder of Vice President Henry Wilson, a staircase with a permanent bloodstain over which an inordinate number of guests seemed to trip, and a sealed basement chamber in which workers in 1930 discovered General John Alexander Logan’s long-deceased stuffed horse.
     
No legends were as enduring, however, as the claims of thirteen different ghosts that haunted this building. The spirit of city designer Pierre L’Enfant frequently was reported wandering the halls, seeking payment of his bill, now two hundred years overdue. The ghost of a worker who fell from the Capitol Dome during construction was seen wandering the corridors with a tray of tools. And, of course, the most famous apparition of all, reported numerous times in the Capitol basement—an ephemeral black cat that prowled the substructure’s eerie maze of narrow passageways and cubicles.
     
Langdon stepped off the escalator and again checked his watch. Three minutes. He hurried down the wide corridor, following the signs toward the Statuary Hall and rehearsing his opening remarks in his head. Langdon had to admit that Peter’s assistant had been correct; this lecture topic would be a perfect match for an event hosted in Washington, D.C., by a prominent Mason.
     
It was no secret that D.C. had a rich Masonic history. The cornerstone of this very building had been laid in a full Masonic ritual by George Washington himself. This city had been conceived and designed by Master Masons—George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Pierre L’Enfant—powerful minds who adorned their new capital with Masonic symbolism, architecture, and art.
     
Of course, people see in those symbols all kinds of crazy ideas.
     
Many conspiracy theorists claimed the Masonic forefathers had concealed powerful secrets throughout Washington along with symbolic messages hidden in