Sophie had
spent three days with an English dictionary until she found them all.
"I can't imagine," Langdon said, staring at the printout, "how your grandfather created such an intricate anagram in the minutes before he died."
Sophie knew the explanation, and the realization made her feel even worse. I should have seen this! She now recalled that her grandfather—a wordplay aficionado and art lover—had entertained himself as a young man by creating anagrams of famous works of art. In fact, one of his anagrams had gotten him in trouble once when Sophie was a little girl. While being interviewed by an American art magazine, Saunière had expressed his distaste for the modernist Cubist movement by noting that Picasso's masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was a perfect anagram of vile meaningless doodles. Picasso fans were not amused.
"My grandfather probably created this Mona Lisa anagram long ago," Sophie said, glancing up at Langdon. And tonight he was forced to use it as a makeshift code. Her grandfather's voice had called out from beyond with chilling precision.
Leonardo da Vinci!
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