Museum curator Jacques Sauniére flees through the halls of the Louvre in Paris, pursued by a mysterious albino in a monk’s robe. Sauniére pulls a painting off the wall, triggering a security alarm and lowering a metal gate, separating him from his pursuer. The albino reaches the gate and aims a gun at the curator, threatening to kill him if he doesn’t divulge information. Sauniére offers a pre-rehearsed answer (not the truth), and the albino tells him that “the others” he’s questioned have told him the same. Shocked, Sauniére realizes that “the others,” his brethren in a secret society, have confessed the same lie and are now dead. If he dies, the truth they have safeguarded will be lost forever.

The albino, believing he alone possesses the truth, shoots the curator, leaving him to bleed to death on the gallery floor. Realizing he will be dead before help arrives, Sauniére desperately tries to pass on his secret before it dies with him.

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of religious symbology, is awoken in his Paris hotel room at 12:32am. A visitor at the front desk—“an important man” insists on seeing him (8). Too tired to see anyone, Langdon tells the concierge to take the man’s information.