Chapter 108 104

Robb.Langdon was lying on the large sheet of coins at the bottom of The Fountain of Four Rivers, the plastic tube still in his mouth.The air that came out of the snorkel to bubbly the fountain had been polluted by the pump, making his throat burn.But he didn't complain, he was still alive. He wasn't sure how fake his drowning looked like, but Langdon had heard too much of it all his life surrounded by water.He tried his best to imitate it, and eventually he even exhaled all the air in his lungs and stopped breathing, so that the muscles in his body would carry him to the bottom of the water.

Fortunately, Hasashin believed it, and then let go of his hand. At this point, standing still at the bottom of the fountain, Langdon waited as long as possible.He was suffocating and wondered if Hasassim was still there.Langdon took a breath of acrid air from the tube, let go, and swam across the bottom of the fountain, finding the smooth bulge in the center of the fountain.Then he crept up the bump, and just under the shadow of the great marble statue he surfaced stealthily. The van is gone. This was the only thing Langdon wanted to see.After he took a big breath of fresh air, he swam back to where Cardinal Bagia sank on all fours.Langdon knew that the cardinal should be unconscious by now, and the chances of waking up were slim, but he had to try.Langdon found the body. Standing on his feet, he reached down with both hands to grab the chain that was wrapped around the cardinal's body, and pulled hard.When the Cardinal finally emerged from the water, Langdon saw that his eyes had been rolled up, protruding outward.Not a good sign.He was not breathing and could not feel a pulse.

Langdon knew he would never be able to lift the body out of the fountain, so he pulled Cardinal Bagia across the water and into the hollow at the head of the marble pile in the center of the fountain.The water here is relatively shallow and there is a sloping ledge.Langdon dragged the naked body onto the ledge as far as it could go, but not by much. Then he started.Langdon pressed down on the cardinal's chained chest, forcing water out of his lungs, and began CPR.Do your numbers carefully, be careful, and resist the urge to blow too hard or press too fast.For the first three minutes, Langdon had hoped to save the old man.Five minutes later, he knew it was over.

The most popular candidate.The man who would have been Pope lay dead before him. Yet even now, lying in the shadows on a half-submerged ledge, Cardinal Bagia retains an air of calm and dignity.The water patted his chest lightly, almost as if blaming himself, as if begging for forgiveness for being the ultimate murderer who drowned the old man, as if trying to wash away the wound on which its name was written. Langdon reached out a hand and brushed the old man's face lightly, closing his upturned eyes.Exhausted and trembling, he suddenly felt tears welling up.He froze, and then, for the first time in years, Langdon cried.