Mal'akh

Mal'ak is the antagonist in the Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol. His real name is Zachary Solomon. He is the son of industrialist Peter Solomon and seeks to steal a Masonic pyramid which his father owns.

Mal'akh was born as Zachary Solomon in the Solomon estate of New York. He had a luxurious childhood, with every wealth he could have.

When he was eighteen, Zachary was presented with a family choice between wealth and wisdom by his father Peter. Zachary was asked to either choose to protect a family pyramid, owned by Masons, or to inherit his money and use it well. Zachary was too obssessed with his money and he demanded the money instead of a pyramid. He stole his money and ran off, spending it luxuriously on flamboyant, drunken teenage parties.

However, his first downfall came when he was caught smuggling cocaine into Europe and was arrested.

In prison, he became Inmate 37, and when his father Peter flew in to get him out he heard Peter talking to a guard who said that he could get him out. But it would cost Peter. Peter refused to teach Zachary money was always the answer and refused. Zachary was outraged and arranged with the guard to kill another inmate, dress him in Zachary's clothes, and pretend to Peter that Zachary died because of his decision. So, this was arranged. Zachary promised the guard he could have money and a new home, but he betrayed the guard and killed him.

Now Zachary escaped to Greece and lived flamboyantly, having sex with many women. He became toned and muscular. He also began to indulge in drugs. He renamed himself Andros, meaning warrior. He became depressed and started researching Masons. He heard about a pyramid said to give the owner power. He remembered his father's pyramid.

So, he disguised himself in a black mask and ski suit and broke into his family home, pretending to have been Zachary's killer, and he threatened his sister Katherine and Peter and ordered the pyramid. But when he said that Katherine would die if the pyramid wasn't given, their grandmother came in, shooting, but Zachary knifed her and ran off. Peter followed him, and Zachary said if he pulled the trigger, he, Zachary, would haunt Peter. Peter still shot Zachary and left him for dead.

Later, Zachary recovered from the fall and he became angered that his once perfect body was ruined by the bullet. He killed a man who picked him up and stole his car. Then he ate and found that the FBI were after him. He escaped and went back to New York.

Zachary found that tattoos were an answer to hiding his injury, and he went to an artist and had his whole body tattooed with Biblical and black magic symbols. He now was more in love with himself than ever, and he thought of himself as an angel - such that when he perfored black magic experiments, he prayed to the angel Mal'akh - and named himself Mal'akh after the angel.

Now, he kidnapped Peter Solomon from his apartment under the pretence of a meeting, thanking Peter for his recent induction into the Masons. Zachary took Peter to his mansion and kept him in a flotation tank. Then, he phoned Robert Langdon, a symbologist, and pretended to be Peter's air pilot, and asked him to come to Washington. He said Peter was doing a speech there. It was when he got there Langdon realized Mal'akh had cut off Peter's hand and left it in the Capitol.

Mal'akh kept phoning Robert Langdon over the evening, saying they were short on time, and he broke into Katherine Solomon's lab, killed her assistant Trish, and set fire to the lab, blowing it up and, he hoped, destroying the evidence of her "heretical" research into the Afterlife. Zachary, aka Mal'akh, now confronted Langdon and the CIA when they broke into his house. He killed a CIA agent, kidnapped Katherine, put Robert in a flotation tank, and made Katherine think Robert was drowned. He drugged Katherine by injecting her arm with a needle and taking her blood. He showed her the deformed Peter, who was disguised as him (by making him bald and dressing him in a robe) to confuse Langdon when the sacrifice took place.

Zachary took Peter to a temple in Washington and explained that he was his own son and how come Peter didn't love him, and then ordered Peter to kill him. Zachary lay on the altar and demanded Peter use his fear and anger to kill him. Peter was just about to, but Robert Langdon ran in, and knocked him down, thinking Peter was Mal'akh. Peter had only stabbed the altar and not Zachary. Then, a helicopter from the CIA came on the skylight, smashing it to pieces and causing the blades to fall on Zachary, killing him.

Before he died, Peter told him that he still loved Zachary despite his evil ways, infuriating Zachary even more, because he wanted Peter to kill him through anger. In the last section, we get a description of death from Zachary's perspective, as he goes into a dark Afterlife, and hears chanting before seeing all the evil souls before him, and being consumed by a dark wave of energy.