Angels & Demons by Dan Brown Page A

felt a wry pleasure inside. She knew the amount would stun even the great Maximilian Kohler. She pictured the antimatter below. An incredible sight. Suspended inside the trap, perfectly visible to the naked eye, danced a tiny sphere of antimatter. This was no microscopic speck. This was a droplet the size of a BB.
    Vittoria took a deep breath. “A full quarter of a gram.”
    The blood drained from Kohler’s face. “What!” He broke into a fit of coughing. “A quarter of a gram?
    That converts to . . . almost five kilotons!”
    Kilotons . Vittoria hated the word. It was one she and her father never used. A kiloton was equal to 1,000
    metric tons of TNT. Kilotons were for weaponry. Payload. Destructive power. She and her father spoke in electron volts and joules—constructive energy output.
    “That much antimatter could literally liquidate everything in a half-mile radius!” Kohler exclaimed.
    “Yes, if annihilated all at once,” Vittoria shot back, “which nobody would ever do!”
    “Except someone who didn’t know better. Or if your power source failed!” Kohler was already heading for the elevator.
    “Which is why my father kept it in Haz-Mat under a fail-safe power and a redundant security system.”
    Kohler turned, looking hopeful. “You have additional security on Haz-Mat?”
    “Yes. A second retina-scan.”
    Kohler spoke only two words. “Downstairs. Now.”
    The freight elevator dropped like a rock.
    Another seventy-five feet into the earth.
    Vittoria was certain she sensed fear in both men as the elevator fell deeper. Kohler’s usually emotionless face was taut. I know, Vittoria thought, the sample is enormous, but the precautions we’ve taken are —
    They reached the bottom.
    The elevator opened, and Vittoria led the way down the dimly lit corridor. Up ahead the corridor deadended at a huge steel door. HAZ-MAT. The retina scan device beside the door was identical to the one upstairs. She approached. Carefully, she aligned her eye with the lens.
    She pulled back. Something was wrong. The usually spotless lens was spattered . . . smeared with something that looked like . . . blood? Confused she turned to the two men, but her gaze met waxen faces. Both Kohler and Langdon were white, their eyes fixed on the floor at her feet. Vittoria followed their line of sight . . . down.
    “No!” Langdon yelled, reaching for her. But it was too late.
    Vittoria’s vision locked on the object on the floor. It was both utterly foreign and intimately familiar to her.
    It took only an instant.
    Then, with a reeling horror, she knew. Staring up at her from the floor, discarded like a piece of trash, was an eyeball. She would have recognized that shade of hazel anywhere.
    24
    T he security technician held his breath as his commander leaned over his shoulder, studying the bank of security monitors before them. A minute passed.
    The commander’s silence was to be expected, the technician told himself. The commander was a man of rigid protocol. He had not risen to command one of the world’s most elite security forces by talking first and thinking second.
    But what is he thinking?
    The object they were pondering on the monitor was a canister of some sort—a canister with transparent sides. That much was easy. It was the rest that was difficult.
    Inside the container, as if by some special effect, a small droplet of metallic liquid seemed to be floating in midair. The droplet appeared and disappeared in the robotic red blinking of a digital LED descending resolutely, making the technician’s skin crawl.
    “Can you lighten the contrast?” the commander asked, startling the technician. The technician heeded the instruction, and the image lightened somewhat. The commander leaned forward, squinting closer at something that had just come visible on the base of the container. The technician followed his commander’s gaze. Ever so faintly, printed next to the LED was an acronym. Four capital letters gleaming in the