I need to sleep.

Unfortunately, that didn't look to be a viable possibility anytime soon.

There were over fifteen of them, crowded into the hotel room; it was spacious, but enough surfaces were taken that later arrivals leant against the walls. Their faces were ordinary, their clothes undistinguishable. Robert had never seen any of them; none had been in Roslin Chapel aside from the three arrayed at his side.

But David smiled on seeing who had shown. "We've word from the hospital," he raised his voice over low conversation. Silence fell immediately. "Jean will be fine. They want to keep her under observation for two days, but there's no internal bleeding."

"Ten Euros she's up to her usual mischief." An older, balding man grinned at the young African woman leaning against the wall next to his seat on one duvet-covered bed.

"No bet," she retorted. "I may be young, but I'm no fool to place a wager against you, Maurice."

The light laughter was pleasant enough, but he really was too tired to make an effort at understanding the joke. Robert kept his mouth shut, rather than vent his temper. I can't even work up the energy to be angry.

"Back to business," Mitch stepped forward. "This is Professor Robert Landgon. The Grand Master called on him to help us several days ago, before he and our three Sénéchaux were killed defending the location of the Grail. He helped us at cost to himself, and now is being pursued by Opus Dei."

"Why?" The young African woman's face was drawn in concentrated thought.

"Unfortunately, Opus Dei is unaware that our Grand Master took the location of the Grail to his grave."

"Manuel Aringarosa, not Opus Dei," Sophie corrected. "I doubt most of the sect has any idea what's going on."

"But he can't be acting alone," Robert objected. "He must have the approval of the Church."

"Ze Council of Shadows 'as sanctioned murders before," rumbled a singularly heavyset woman through a thick French accent.

"The Council of Shadows." A weight dropped into Robert's stomach, a blow to the senses. It really does exist, then. Most of what he knew was academic only; but if a fraction of it was true . . .

"But the point is still valid." A man unremarkable but for his slender height spoke from behind a group of four pressed between bed and window. "The Council of Shadows may not know that this Aringarosa has failed."

"Which means he shall continue to try to find the Grail. Professor Langdon was kidnapped after coming to Roslin Chapel, following the last clue – this shows that he has not given up yet."

"Or that the kidnapping was a contingency plan in place before he even made the first move," David countered.

"The problem," murmured a teenage boy at Maurice's side, "is that we don't know what this Aringarosa knows."

"But we know what he's done, which is almost as good," the African woman pointed out.

Dark hair bobbed with Sophie's agreement.

Robert really wasn't in the mood for games. "Explain."

"He can only act based off what he knows." Sophie's brother was becoming excited, brown eyes flashing. "He's been acting on Teabing's orders this whole time. That's the only way he could have known the identities of the Grand Master and Sénéchaux." The bitterness in David's words found echoes in the still faces filling the hotel room. The scholar had done his research for years; Opus Dei had two millennia, but they were hampered by that history as much as they were helped by it.

"And the kidnapper?" the teen challenged.

"Evrard Moreau. He called himself the Disciple," Robert interjected.

"That's Aringarosa acting on his own." Mitch was using the scant meter available to him to pace.

A middle-aged man just inside the door folded his arms. "Is this Disciple in custody?"

"Yes," Sophie's hands fisted. "We caught him after he attacked the safehouse. He is in police custody now for two counts of attempted murder."

Robert shivered. In Fache's custody. Which meant that sooner or later, they would have to head back to the police station to give their statements. And to get his.

"But what about Aringarosa?" the teen burst out. "He's the head of the snake."

"Exactament." Sophie smiled over at the boy. The expression disappeared. "And we have no way of knowing if he will strike again."

David was tapping one heel absently against the wall. "We need to persuade the Council of Shadows to call him off."

"Or dangle the Professor out in plain sight to get his attention," mused a voice from the back of the room. "We'd have our own opportunity to deal with him then."

Robert rubbed sore wrists through ripped wool. "No thank you!"

"No." Mitch ran fingers through messy blond strands. "It's too great a risk, especially if we don't capture this Disciple."

"This Disciple is only a dog, running to Aringarosa's call," Sophie objected. "And if Aringarosa is making his moves with approval from this Council . . . ."

"In fact," Robert started thinking aloud. One hand went to his still-sore throat. "I wonder how much the Council of Shadows knows of what he's actually doing."

Silence reigned for a short time. David's eyes were distant. "Then it would seem that the only way to stop all this is to go directly to the Council. They can curtail Aringarosa's movements, put a halt to this altogether."

"Bold," Maurice muttered. Aged eyes wandered over the room, flicking a glance at Robert that sliced down to the marrow. "We can't take the chance of revealing ourselves any more than we have been in the last few days."

Tension sprang up in the room, crisscrossing from various individuals, present and unspoken.

"He is the first Knight our order has known in centuries," snapped the man who had suggested using Robert as bait. "You can't possibly think we'll abandon him now!"

"I wasn't suggesting -"

"Then what exactly were you -"

"Hold on just a -"

Noise exploded as suddenly everyone was trying to be heard over one another.

"Be quiet!" Mitch spoke into the terse silence. "I spoke with Jean." The bodyguard's whole body hesitated before turning to Robert. "She said. . . She told me that you know -"

"That I know where the Grail is." Low as his voice was, by the time Robert finished the bodyguard's sentence, he'd gathered every eye in the room.

"Do you?" Maurice, hope shining from every line of his body.

What do I say to that? "I – maybe. I would have to check." Noncommittal as he tried to be, there was a sudden energy surging through every person in the room that he could almost touch.

"She also said that there's a way to stop Opus Dei from targeting you, ever again." David, stepping forward now.

Thoughts of sleep disappeared under the buzz of adrenaline. "How?"

"We know quite a lot of things that the Council of Shadows would rather not have come into public knowledge."

"The murders," Sophie's face clenched. The man she had known all her life as her grandfather had been killed at Aringarosa's order. His heart hurt at the expression she wore.

"Is the evidence solid enough to prove that?" Robert didn't believe they could have been so careless. "And . . . isn't there some risk of retaliation?" After all, they know about the Priory . . .

"Not at all," old Maurice grinned slyly. "The Holy Grail – Mary Magdalene as Jesus' wife? Who would believe them? It's nonsense! Make believe! Blasphemy, that the Catholic Church could believe such a thing!" He chuckled, laughter rippling through the room.

The African woman patted old Maurice on the shoulder. "They have less proof of our existence than we do of theirs. And you must be the one to approach them with the deal, Professor. The Priory shan't be connected at all."

He hadn't come this far to lose courage, or sight of what the true goal was, now. So Robert decided to accept with the best grace he could manage as the adrenaline slipped away and exhaustion took a firmer hold on his mind. "Of course."

"Right." Mitch stopped his pacing, fingers snapping in thought. "Betsy, Frances, and Eric, I need you to start gathering the evidence," he turned toward the window and the people positioned before it. "Cyrille, Marjolaine, Étienne, and Valéry, I need you to contact -"

"Are you alright, Robert?"

He blinked, opening eyes more inclined to droop; Mitch was delegating with David overseeing. Sophie's face, concerned, hovering before him. A smile appeared from somewhere, and he gave it to her. "I'm tired." A thought occurred. "And I have. . ." Fingers fumbled for a pen, paper – something to write with and on. David slipped a pencil to his hand, and Robert swiped a napkin from under one of the upturned glasses on the bureau. Two series of numbers scrambled over thin paper.

"What is this?" Lifted between two fingers, Sophie passed the napkin to her brother.

"Phone numbers?" David was reaching for his own.

"From the Disciple's cell phone."

The hand immediately dropped; Mitch plucked the thin tissue from Sophie's brother. "Then we have a place to start, it seems." The napkin then went to a group of five wedged between the room's two beds, clustered around the phone.

"They know better than to use a landline," Mitch assured Sophie as he returned. Robert hoped so; the Disciple's attack on the Priory 'safehouse' had been swift and precise.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Heads turned; the noise was very close. Sophie held up a beeper, and began reading the text. "It's Fache. He wants to see me at the station; he's questioning the Disciple. And he wants Robert there."

"I'm going with you," Mitch said immediately, heading toward the door.

David reached for his coat as well, but the blond bodyguard took it from him. "I need someone here just to make sure everything keeps running smoothly. Stay, David."

Robert watched, curious, as a silent battle of wills took place. One that the elder St. Claire lost, draping the coat over a hook with a huff. He'd much rather stay at the hotel, memories from the kidnapping or no; sleep was becoming harder and harder to push off.

"Professor Langdon?"

Sophie and Mitch were waiting at the door, puzzlement and concern washing over him in waves. The last time he'd seen anyone look at him like that had been before his mother died. "Coming."

If he tried, he could concentrate on the conversation buzzing around him as they walked down the hall to the elevator; he did catch a few words here and there. But Robert's greatest battle at this point was that against exhaustion. He'd been able to rest in Compeigne, but the past five days had afforded him far too few opportunities to do so.

Leather cushioning welcomed him as he slid into the backseat of the car they'd arrived at the hotel in. The careful motions of the vehicle with Sophie behind the wheel – and not racing for their lives, for once – soothed him into comforting darkness.