Section Five

When Langdon lands in Switzerland he is escorted by the pilot to a car where they drive on their way to CERN. On their drive, Langdon realizes that he does not have his passport with him to get across the borders. The driver tells him that there is no need to worry, that they have an agreement with the Swiss Guards and that it will be no problem. When they get to security, the driver tells the Swiss Guard Langdon's name, and that he is a guest of the director. The Guard does a quick scan on him, and they're through. When the two men get to CERN, Langdon meets Kohler in person.

Kohler had the nickname of "Konig" meaning King. His colleagues had given this name to him behind his back, and it was a name that was given to him more out of fears than of reverence.

Within moments of meeting Kohler, Langdon could read the man's personality. He was a crippled, middle aged, bitter man. He was a stern man who kept his distance from others. He had dead gray eyes and a chronic cough.

When Langdon goes to mention the photo which was faxed to him, Kohler quickly stops him and tells him that they are on their way to see the victim now. Kohler led Langdon down many halls past different rooms explaining may of the different things that the researchers do at CERN until they finally reached their destination.

Kohler explained to Langdon that earlier on in the morning he was supposed to meet with a man named Leonardo Vetra. When the man didn't show up for the meeting, or answer his phone when Kohler tried to call him, he went looking for him. Kohler knew that something was wrong when the man did not show up to the meeting with any warning, and especially when he did not answer his phone. When Kohler goes looking for him, he got up to his dorm and found him dead in his living room.

When Langdon realized that he was about to go see this dead man's body he got chills all over his body. He also asked Kohler where all of the police were, and why they weren't all over the scene. Kohler explains that it is a very complex situation and that they cannot yet notify officials. The only people who know about the death of Leonardo Vetra are Kohler, Robert, and Leonardo's adopted daughter who was also a physicist at CERN and working on a secret project with her father.

As Langdon and Kohler entered the room, Langdon felt a sudden chill over his body, as he looked across the room through a white, cold fog, he saw the dead body. The image that Langdon saw was terrible. He saw Leonardo Vetra stripped of his clothes, laying in the middle of the floor in a puddle of his own urine. His neck was broken and his head was spun around 180 degrees the wrong way, facing the floor. As Langdon's eyes moved towards the man's chest he saw something that was impossible to miss. On the middle of the man's chest was a brand of an ambigram of the word "Illuminati". The word had been burned into the flesh of Vetra's chest.

As Langdon studied the body all sorts of thoughts crossed his mind. He turned to Kohler and asked how much he already knew. Kohler explained that he knew only what was on Langdon's website as he is a professor of religious studies back home. Kohler knew that the word Illuminati meant "the enlightened ones" and was the name of an ancient brotherhood. He said he had not heard of the word, so he ran a web search on it. He came up with many results, but Langdon's site seemed to be the most reliable as it had many great references.

Langdon began to explain the ancient brotherhood to Kohler. He told him that the Illuminati were a group of scientists who little by little were disproving religion, and for this reason gained an enemy. The churches and the Illuminati were enemies and began killing important people that belonged to each group. He told Kohler that Galileo was an Illuminati. He was also a member of the church, and was trying to explain to the church that science was reinforcing religion. He said "that religion and science were not enemies, but rather allies" like good and bad, light and dark, religion and science fit together, and without eachother, the other would not exist. Langdon explained that when the church captured Galileo, because they thought he was an enemy, the Illuminati were not pleased with the churches actions. The church captured four Illuminati scientists and tried to force answers out of them about the group. The four scientists refused to speak, so the church used torture as an approach to get it out of them. The church branded the four scientists alive. They burned the symbol of the cross onto the chests of the scientists, brutally murdered them then left them in the streets of Rome as a warning to others thinking about joining the brotherhood. After this incident, the Illuminati went into hiding, they kept everything about their brotherhood very top secret. They grew as a group and became known as "the single most dangerous anti-Christian force on earth." When Langdon is done explaining all of this to Kohler he looks to him and says "Mr. Kohler, I do not know how this marking appeared on this man's chest... or why... but you are looking at the long-lost symbol of the world's oldest and most powerful satanic cult."