Angels and Demons

Plot

Leonardo Vetra, one of CERN's top physicists who have discovered how to create antimatter, is murdered, his chest branded with an ambigram of the word "Illuminati", an ancient anti-religious organization thought extinct. CERN director Maximilian Kohler calls Vetra's adopted daughter, Vittoria, and Harvard University Professor Robert Langdon, an expert on symbology and religious history, for help. After determining the ambigram is authentic, they discover that a canister of antimatter from Leonardo's lab, which has been stolen, will explode in 24 hours when the canister's battery runs out. Langdon and Vittoria go to Vatican City, where four Preferiti, the Cardinals who are the favorite candidates for Pope, are kidnapped by the Hassassin, who plans to blow up the Vatican with the antimatter canister and kill the four cardinals under the orders of "Janus", the leader of the Illuminati.

Believing that the four cardinals will be ritually murdered on the four altars of the "Path of Illumination", Langdon and Vittoria follow a series of clues left in various churches in and around Rome. After finding the first two men dead (one suffocated by earth and another whose lungs were punctured), they confront the assassin in the act of murdering the third. However, they fail to save the third cardinal and, as the location catches fire, the assassin kidnaps Vittoria. Langdon also fails to save the last cardinal, who is drowned in the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, and confronts the assassin in the Castel Sant' Angelo, the Church of Illumination. Langdon frees Vittoria and together they send the assassin falling several hundred feet to his death.

Meanwhile, Kohler arrives to confront Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, the late Pope's closest aide. Fearing Kohler is Janus, the two hurry back to St. Peter's Basilica. However, the Swiss Guards intervene and open fire on Kohler when Ventresca screams. Just before he dies, Kohler gives Langdon a mini video camera which records his confrontation with Ventresca. With Langdon in pursuit, Ventresca ventures into the catacombs and finds the canister atop the tomb of Saint Peter. Ventresca takes the canister to a safe height in a helicopter and parachutes safely just as the canister explodes in the sky. Reacting to this "miracle", the Cardinals debate whether to elect Ventresca as the new Pope. Meanwhile, Langdon learns from the video that Ventresca himself is Janus, and that he worked to sabotage the conclave. He confesses that he poisoned the Pope upon the Pope's revelation that he had fathered a child, and opposes Vetra's attempt to bridge science and God. Under the guise of Janus, he recruited the assassin to kill Vetra, steal the antimatter, and kidnap and murder the Preferiti.

Cardinal Saverio Mortati, Dean of the College of Cardinals, reveals that Ventresca is, in fact, the late Pope's biological son, conceived with a nun through artificial insemination. Overcome with guilt, Ventresca soaks himself in oil and sets himself on fire before a crowd of onlookers in St. Peter's Square. Mortati is unanimously elected Pope by the Cardinals, and Langdon and Vittoria reunite at Hotel Bernini where they spend the night together.


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