The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon) by Dan Brown Page A

casually pulled off the dead finger by the suspect as if it were his own.
    Anderson crouched down to examine the hand. It looked as if it had belonged to a man of about sixty. The ring bore some kind of ornate seal with a two-headed bird and the number 33. Anderson didn’t recognize it. What really caught his eye were the tiny tattoos on the tips of the thumb and index finger.
    A goddamn freak show.
    “Chief?” One of the guards hurried over, holding out a phone. “Personal call for you. Security switchboard just patched it through.”
    Anderson looked at him like he was insane. “I’m in the middle of something here,” he growled.
    The guard’s face was pale. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered. “It’s CIA.”
    Anderson did a double take.
CIA heard about this already?!
    “It’s their Office of Security.”
    Anderson stiffened.
Holy shit.
He glanced uneasily at the phone in the guard’s hand.
    In Washington’s vast ocean of intelligence agencies, the CIA’s Office of Security was something of a Bermuda Triangle—a mysterious and treacherous region from which all who knew of it steered clear whenever possible. With a seemingly self-destructive mandate, the OS had been created by the CIA for one strange purpose—to spy on the CIA itself. Like a powerful internal-affairs office, the OS monitored all CIA employees for illicit behavior: misappropriation of funds, selling of secrets, stealing classified technologies, and use of illegal torture tactics, to name a few.
    They spy on America’s spies.
    With investigative carte blanche in all matters of national security, the OS had a long and potent reach. Anderson could not fathom why they would be interested in this incident at the Capitol, or how they had found out so fast. Then again, the OS was rumored to have eyes everywhere
.
For all Anderson knew, they had a direct feed of U.S. Capitol security cameras. This incident did not match OS directives in any way, although the timing of the call seemed too coincidental to Anderson to be about anything other than this severed hand.
    “Chief?”The guard was holding the phone out to him like a hot potato. “You need to take this call right now. It’s . . .” He paused and silently mouthed two syllables. “SA-TO.”
    Anderson squinted hard at the man.
You’ve got to be kidding.
He felt his palms begin to sweat.
Sato is handling this personally?
    The overlord of the Office of Security—Director Inoue Sato—was a legend in the intelligence community. Born inside the fences of a Japaneseinternment camp in Manzanar, California, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Sato was a toughened survivor who had never forgotten the horrors of war, or the perils of insufficient military intelligence. Now, having risen to one of the most secretive and potent posts in U.S. intelligence work, Sato had proven an uncompromising patriot as well as a terrifying enemy to any who stood in opposition. Seldom seen but universally feared, the OS director cruised the deep waters of the CIA like a leviathan who surfaced only to devour its prey.
    Anderson had met Sato face-to-face only once, and the memory of looking into those cold black eyes was enough to make him count his blessings that he would be having this conversation by telephone.
    Anderson took the phone and brought it to his lips. “Director Sato,” he said in as friendly a voice as possible. “This is Chief Anderson. How may I—”
    “There is a man in your building to whom I need to speak immediately.” The OS director’s voice was unmistakable—like gravel grating on a chalkboard. Throat cancer surgery had left Sato with a profoundly unnerving intonation and a repulsive neck scar to match. “I want you to find him for me immediately.”
    That’s all? You want me to page someone?
Anderson felt suddenly hopeful that maybe the timing of this call was pure coincidence. “Who are you looking for?”
    “His name is Robert Langdon. I believe he is inside your building