The Da Vinci Code

CHAPTER 10
Silas sat behind the wheel of the black Audi the Teacher had arranged for him and gazed out at the 
great Church of Saint-Sulpice. Lit from beneath by banks of floodlights, the church's two bell 
towers rose like stalwart sentinels above the building's long body. On either flank, a shadowy row 
of sleek buttresses jutted out like the ribs of a beautiful beast.
The heathens used a house of God to conceal their keystone. Again the brotherhood had confirmed 
their legendary reputation for illusion and deceit. Silas was looking forward to finding the keystone 
and giving it to the Teacher so they could recover what the brotherhood had long ago stolen from 
the faithful.
How powerful that will make Opus Dei.
Parking the Audi on the deserted Place Saint-Sulpice, Silas exhaled, telling himself to clear his 
mind for the task at hand. His broad back still ached from the corporal mortification he had 

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endured earlier today, and yet the pain was inconsequential compared with the anguish of his life 
before Opus Dei had saved him.
Still, the memories haunted his soul.
Release your hatred, Silas commanded himself. Forgive those who trespassed against you.
Looking up at the stone towers of Saint-Sulpice, Silas fought that familiar undertow... that force 
that often dragged his mind back in time, locking him once again in the prison that had been his 
world as a young man. The memories of purgatory came as they always did, like a tempest to his 
senses... the reek of rotting cabbage, the stench of death, human urine and feces. The cries of 
hopelessness against the howling wind of the Pyrenees and the soft sobs of forgotten men.
Andorra, he thought, feeling his muscles tighten.
Incredibly, it was in that barren and forsaken suzerain between Spain and France, shivering in his 
stone cell, wanting only to die, that Silas had been saved.
He had not realized it at the time.
The light came long after the thunder.
His name was not Silas then, although he didn't recall the name his parents had given him. He had 
left home when he was seven. His drunken father, a burly dockworker, enraged by the arrival of an 
albino son, beat his mother regularly, blaming her for the boy's embarrassing condition. When the 
boy tried to defend her, he too was badly beaten.
One night, there was a horrific fight, and his mother never got up. The boy stood over his lifeless 
mother and felt an unbearable up-welling of guilt for permitting it to happen.
This is my fault!
As if some kind of demon were controlling his body, the boy walked to the kitchen and grasped a 
butcher knife. Hypnotically, he moved to the bedroom where his father lay on the bed in a drunken 
stupor. Without a word, the boy stabbed him in the back. His father cried out in pain and tried to 
roll over, but his son stabbed him again, over and over until the apartment fell quiet.
The boy fled home but found the streets of Marseilles equally unfriendly. His strange appearance 
made him an outcast among the other young runaways, and he was forced to live alone in the 
basement of a dilapidated factory, eating stolen fruit and raw fish from the dock. His only 
companions were tattered magazines he found in the trash, and he taught himself to read them. 
Over time, he grew strong. When he was twelve, another drifter—a girl twice his age—mocked 
him on the streets and attempted to steal his food. The girl found herself pummeled to within 

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inches of her life. When the authorities pulled the boy off her, they gave him an ultimatum—leave 
Marseilles or go to juvenile prison.
The boy moved down the coast to Toulon. Over time, the looks of pity on the streets turned to 
looks of fear. The boy had grown to a powerful young man. When people passed by, he could hear 
them whispering to one another. A ghost, they would say, their eyes wide with fright as they stared 
at his white skin. A ghost with the eyes of a devil!
And he felt like a ghost... transparent... floating from seaport to seaport.
People seemed to look right through him.
At eighteen, in a port town, while attempting to steal a case of cured ham from a cargo ship, he was 
caught by a pair of crewmen. The two sailors who began to beat him smelled of beer, just as his 
father had. The memories of fear and hatred surfaced like a monster from the deep. The young man 
broke the first sailor's neck with his bare hands, and only the arrival of the police saved the second 
sailor from a similar fate.
Two months later, in shackles, he arrived at a prison in Andorra.