Inferno / Инферно (by Brown Dan, 2013) - аудиокнига на английском

FACT: All artwork, literature, science, and historical references in this novel are real. “The Consortium” is a private organization with offices in seven countries. Its name has been changed for considerations of security and privacy. Inferno is the underworld as described in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem The Divine Comedy, which portrays hell as an elaborately structured realm populated by entities known as “shades”—bodiless souls trapped between life and death. PROLOGUE I AM THE Shade. Through the dolent city, I flee. Through the eternal woe, I take flight. Along the banks of the river Arno, I scramble, breathless … turning left onto Via dei Castellani, making my way northward, huddling in the shadows of the Uffizi. And still they pursue me. Their footsteps grow louder now as they hunt with relentless determination. For years they have pursued me. Their persistence has kept me underground … forced me to live in purgatory … laboring beneath the earth like a chthonic monster. I am the Shade. Here aboveground, I raise my eyes to the north, but I am unable to find a direct path to salvation … for the Apennine Mountains are blotting out the first light of dawn. I pass behind the palazzo with its crenellated tower and one-handed clock … snaking through the early-morning vendors in Piazza di San Firenze with their hoarse voices smelling of lampredotto and roasted olives. Crossing before the Bargello, I cut west toward the spire of the Badia and come up hard against the iron gate at the base of the stairs. Here all hesitation must be left behind. I turn the handle and step into the passage from which I know there will be no return. I urge my leaden legs up the narrow staircase … spiraling skyward on soft marble treads, pitted and worn. The voices echo from below. Beseeching. They are behind me, unyielding, closing in. They do not understand what is coming … nor what I have done for them! Ungrateful land! As I climb, the visions come hard … the lustful bodies writhing in fiery rain, the gluttonous souls floating in excrement, the treacherous villains frozen in Satan’s icy grasp. I climb the final stairs and arrive at the top, staggering near dead into the damp morning air. I rush to the head-high wall, peering through the slits. Far below is the blessed city that I have made my sanctuary from those who exiled me. The voices call out, arriving close behind me. “What you’ve done is madness!” Madness breeds madness. “For the love of God,” they shout, “tell us where you’ve hidden it!” For precisely the love of God, I will not. I stand now, cornered, my back to the cold stone. They stare deep into my clear green eyes, and their expressions darken, no longer cajoling, but threatening. “You know we have our methods. We can force you to tell us where it is.” For that reason, I have climbed halfway to heaven. Without warning, I turn and reach up, curling my fingers onto the high ledge, pulling myself up, scrambling onto my knees, then standing … unsteady at the precipice. Guide me, dear Virgil, across the void. They rush forward in disbelief, wanting to grab at my feet, but fearing they will upset my balance and knock me off. They beg now, in quiet desperation, but I have turned my back. I know what I must do. Beneath me, dizzyingly far beneath me, the red tile roofs spread out like a sea of fire on the countryside, illuminating the fair land upon which giants once roamed … Giotto, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Botticelli. I inch my toes to the edge. “Come down!” they shout. “It’s not too late!” O, willful ignorants! Do you not see the future? Do you not grasp the splendor of my creation? The necessity? I will gladly make this ultimate sacrifice … and with it I will extinguish your final hope of finding what you seek. You will never locate it in time. Hundreds of feet below, the cobblestone piazza beckons like a tranquil oasis. How I long for more time … but time is the one commodity even my vast fortunes cannot afford. In these final seconds, I gaze down at the piazza, and I behold a sight that startles me. I see your face. You are gazing up at me from the shadows. Your eyes are mournful, and yet in them I sense a veneration for what I have accomplished. You understand I have no choice. For the love of Mankind, I must protect my masterpiece. It grows even now … waiting … simmering beneath the bloodred waters of the lagoon that reflects no stars. And so, I lift my eyes from yours and I contemplate the horizon. High above this burdened world, I make my final supplication. Dearest God, I pray the world remembers my name not as a monstrous sinner, but as the glorious savior you know I truly am. I pray Mankind will understand the gift I leave behind. My gift is the future. My gift is salvation. My gift is Inferno. With that, I whisper my amen … and take my final step, into the abyss. CHAPTER 1 THE MEMORIES MATERIALIZED slowly … like bubbles surfacing from the darkness of a bottomless well. A veiled woman. Robert Langdon gazed at her across a river whose churning waters ran red with blood. On the far bank, the woman stood facing him, motionless, solemn, her face hidden by a shroud. In her hand she gripped a blue tainia cloth, which she now raised in honor of the sea of corpses at her feet. The smell of death hung everywhere. Seek, the woman whispered. And ye shall find. Langdon heard the words as if she had spoken them inside his head. “Who are you?” he called out, but his voice made no sound. Time grows short, she whispered. Seek and find. Langdon took a step toward the river, but he could see the waters were bloodred and too deep to traverse. When Langdon raised his eyes again to the veiled woman, the bodies at her feet had multiplied. There were hundreds of them now, maybe thousands, some still alive, writhing in agony, dying unthinkable deaths … consumed by fire, buried in feces, devouring one another. He could hear the mournful cries of human suffering echoing across the water. The woman moved toward him, holding out her slender hands, as if beckoning for help. “Who are you?!” Langdon again shouted. In response, the woman reached up and slowly lifted the veil from her face. She was strikingly beautiful, and yet older than Langdon had imagined—in her sixties perhaps, stately and strong, like a timeless statue. She had a sternly set jaw, deep soulful eyes, and long, silver-gray hair that cascaded over her shoulders in ringlets. An amulet of lapis lazuli hung around her neck—a single snake coiled around a staff. Langdon sensed he knew her … trusted her. But how? Why? She pointed now to a writhing pair of legs, which protruded upside down from the earth, apparently belonging to some poor soul who had been buried headfirst to his waist. The man’s pale thigh bore a single letter—written in mud—R. R? Langdon thought, uncertain. As in … Robert? “Is that … me?” The woman’s face revealed nothing. Seek and find, she repeated. Without warning, she began radiating a white light … brighter and brighter. Her entire body started vibrating intensely, and then, in a rush of thunder, she exploded into a thousand splintering shards of light. Langdon bolted awake, shouting. The room was bright. He was alone. The sharp smell of medicinal alcohol hung in the air, and somewhere a machine pinged in quiet rhythm with his heart. Langdon tried to move his right arm, but a sharp pain restrained him. He looked down and saw an IV tugging at the skin of his forearm. His pulse quickened, and the machines kept pace, pinging more rapidly. Where am I? What happened? The back of Langdon’s head throbbed, a gnawing pain. Gingerly, he reached up with his free arm and touched his scalp, trying to locate the source of his headache. Beneath his matted hair, he found the hard nubs of a dozen or so stitches caked with dried blood. He closed his eyes, trying to remember an accident. Nothing. A total blank. Think. Only darkness. A man in scrubs hurried in, apparently alerted by Langdon’s racing heart monitor. He had a shaggy beard, bushy mustache, and gentle eyes that radiated a thoughtful calm beneath his overgrown eyebrows. “What … happened?” Langdon managed. “Did I have an accident?” The bearded man put a finger to his lips and then rushed out, calling for someone down the hall. Langdon turned his head, but the movement sent a spike of pain radiating through his skull. He took deep breaths and let the pain pass. Then, very gently and methodically, he surveyed his sterile surroundings. The hospital room had a single bed. No flowers. No cards. Langdon saw his clothes on a nearby counter, folded inside a clear plastic bag. They were covered with blood. My God. It must have been bad. Now Langdon rotated his head very slowly toward the window beside his bed. It was dark outside. Night. All Langdon could see in the glass was his own reflection—an ashen stranger, pale and weary, attached to tubes and wires, surrounded by medical equipment. Voices approached in the hall, and Langdon turned his gaze back toward the room. The doctor returned, now accompanied by a woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties. She wore blue scrubs and had tied her blond hair back in a thick ponytail that swung behind her as she walked. “I’m Dr. Sienna Brooks,” she said, giving Langdon a smile as she entered. “I’ll be working with Dr. Marconi tonight.” Langdon nodded weakly. Tall and lissome, Dr. Brooks moved with the assertive gait of an athlete. Even in shapeless scrubs, she had a willowy elegance about her. Despite the absence of any makeup that Langdon could see, her complexion appeared unusually smooth, the only blemish a tiny beauty mark just above her lips. Her eyes, though a gentle brown, seemed unusually penetrating, as if they had witnessed a profundity of experience rarely encountered by a person her age. “Dr. Marconi doesn’t speak much English,” she said, sitting down beside him, “and he asked me to fill out your admittance form.” She gave him another smile. “Thanks,” Langdon croaked. “Okay,” she began, her tone businesslike. “What is your name?” It took him a moment. “Robert … Langdon.” She shone a penlight in Langdon’s eyes. “Occupation?” This information surfaced even more slowly. “Professor. Art history … and symbology. Harvard University.” Dr. Brooks lowered the light, looking startled. The doctor with the bushy eyebrows looked equally surprised. “You’re … an American?” Langdon gave her a confused look. “It’s just …” She hesitated. “You had no identification when you arrived tonight. You were wearing Harris Tweed and Somerset loafers, so we guessed British.” “I’m American,” Langdon assured her, too exhausted to explain his preference for well-tailored clothing. “Any pain?” “My head,” Langdon replied, his throbbing skull only made worse by the bright penlight. Thankfully, she now pocketed it, taking Langdon’s wrist and checking his pulse. “You woke up shouting,” the woman said. “Do you remember why?” Langdon flashed again on the strange vision of the veiled woman surrounded by writhing bodies. Seek and ye shall find. “I was having a nightmare.” “About?” Langdon told her. Dr. Brooks’s expression remained neutral as she made notes on a clipboard. “Any idea what might have sparked such a frightening vision?” Langdon probed his memory and then shook his head, which pounded in protest. “Okay, Mr. Langdon,” she said, still writing, “a couple of routine questions for you. What day of the week is it?” Langdon thought for a moment. “It’s Saturday. I remember earlier today walking across campus … going to an afternoon lecture series, and then … that’s pretty much the last thing I remember. Did I fall?” “We’ll get to that. Do you know where you are?” Langdon took his best guess. “Massachusetts General Hospital?” Dr. Brooks made another note. “And is there someone we should call for you? Wife? Children?” “Nobody,” Langdon replied instinctively. He had always enjoyed the solitude and independence provided him by his chosen life of bachelorhood, although he had to admit, in his current situation, he’d prefer to have a familiar face at his side. “There are some colleagues I could call, but I’m fine.” Dr. Brooks finished writing, and the older doctor approached. Smoothing back his bushy eyebrows, he produced a small voice recorder from his pocket and showed it to Dr. Brooks. She nodded in understanding and turned back to her patient. “Mr. Langdon, when you arrived tonight, you were mumbling something over and over.” She glanced at Dr. Marconi, who held up the digital recorder and pressed a button. A recording began to play, and Langdon heard his own groggy voice, repeatedly muttering the same phrase: “Ve … sorry. Ve … sorry.” “It sounds to me,” the woman said, “like you’re saying, ‘Very sorry. Very sorry.’ ” Langdon agreed, and yet he had no recollection of it. Dr. Brooks fixed him with a disquietingly intense stare. “Do you have any idea why you’d be saying this? Are you sorry about something?” As Langdon probed the dark recesses of his memory, he again saw the veiled woman. She was standing on the banks of a bloodred river surrounded by bodies. The stench of death returned. Langdon was overcome by a sudden, instinctive sense of danger … not just for himself … but for everyone. The pinging of his heart monitor accelerated rapidly. His muscles tightened, and he tried to sit up. Dr. Brooks quickly placed a firm hand on Langdon’s sternum, forcing him back down. She shot a glance at the bearded doctor, who walked over to a nearby counter and began preparing something. Dr. Brooks hovered over Langdon, whispering now. “Mr. Langdon, anxiety is common with brain injuries, but you need to keep your pulse rate down. No movement. No excitement. Just lie still and rest. You’ll be okay. Your memory will come back slowly.” The doctor returned now with a syringe, which he handed to Dr. Brooks. She injected its contents into Langdon’s IV. “Just a mild sedative to calm you down,” she explained, “and also to help with the pain.” She stood to go. “You’ll be fine, Mr. Langdon. Just sleep. If you need anything, press the button on your bedside.” She turned out the light and departed with the bearded doctor. In the darkness, Langdon felt the drugs washing through his system almost instantly, dragging his body back down into that deep well from which he had emerged. He fought the feeling, forcing his eyes open in the darkness of his room. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like cement. As Langdon shifted, he found himself again facing the window. The lights were out, and in the dark glass, his own reflection had disappeared, replaced by an illuminated skyline in the distance. Amid a contour of spires and domes, a single regal facade dominated Langdon’s field of view. The building was an imposing stone fortress with a notched parapet and a three-hundred-foot tower that swelled near the top, bulging outward into a massive machicolated battlement. Langdon sat bolt upright in bed, pain exploding in his head. He fought off the searing throb and fixed his gaze on the tower. Langdon knew the medieval structure well. It was unique in the world. Unfortunately, it was also located four thousand miles from Massachusetts. Outside his window, hidden in the shadows of the Via Torregalli, a powerfully built woman effortlessly unstraddled her BMW motorcycle and advanced with the intensity of a panther stalking its prey. Her gaze was sharp. Her close-cropped hair—styled into spikes—stood out against the upturned collar of her black leather riding suit. She checked her silenced weapon, and stared up at the window where Robert Langdon’s light had just gone out. Earlier tonight her original mission had gone horribly awry. The coo of a single dove had changed everything. Now she had come to make it right. CHAPTER 2 I’M IN FLORENCE!? Robert Langdon’s head throbbed. He was now seated upright in his hospital bed, repeatedly jamming his finger into the call button. Despite the sedatives in his system, his heart was racing. Dr. Brooks hurried back in, her ponytail bobbing. “Are you okay?” Langdon shook his head in bewilderment. “I’m in … Italy!?” “Good,” she said. “You’re remembering.” “No!” Langdon pointed out the window at the commanding edifice in the distance. “I recognize the Palazzo Vecchio.” Dr. Brooks flicked the lights back on, and the Florence skyline disappeared. She came to his bedside, whispering calmly. “Mr. Langdon, there’s no need to worry. You’re suffering from mild amnesia, but Dr. Marconi confirmed that your brain function is fine.” The bearded doctor rushed in as well, apparently hearing the call button. He checked Langdon’s heart monitor as the young doctor spoke to him in rapid, fluent Italian—something about how Langdon was “agitato” to learn he was in Italy. Agitated? Langdon thought angrily. More like stupefied! The adrenaline surging through his system was now doing battle with the sedatives. “What happened to me?” he demanded. “What day is it?!” “Everything is fine,” she said. “It’s early morning. Monday, March eighteenth.” Monday. Langdon forced his aching mind to reel back to the last images he could recall—cold and dark—walking alone across the Harvard campus to a Saturday-night lecture series. That was two days ago?! A sharper panic now gripped him as he tried to recall anything at all from the lecture or afterward. Nothing. The ping of his heart monitor accelerated. The older doctor scratched at his beard and continued adjusting equipment while Dr. Brooks sat again beside Langdon. “You’re going to be okay,” she reassured him, speaking gently. “We’ve diagnosed you with retrograde amnesia, which is very common in head trauma. Your memories of the past few days may be muddled or missing, but you should suffer no permanent damage.” She paused. “Do you remember my first name? I told you when I walked in.” Langdon thought a moment. “Sienna.” Dr. Sienna Brooks. She smiled. “See? You’re already forming new memories.” The pain in Langdon’s head was almost unbearable, and his near-field vision remained blurry. “What … happened? How did I get here?” “I think you should rest, and maybe—” “How did I get here?!” he demanded, his heart monitor accelerating further. “Okay, just breathe easy,” Dr. Brooks said, exchanging a nervous look with her colleague. “I’ll tell you.” Her voice turned markedly more serious. “Mr. Langdon, three hours ago, you staggered into our emergency room, bleeding from a head wound, and you immediately collapsed. Nobody had any idea who you were or how you got here. You were mumbling in English, so Dr. Marconi asked me to assist. I’m on sabbatical here from the U.K.” Langdon felt like he had awoken inside a Max Ernst painting. What the hell am I doing in Italy? Normally Langdon came here every other June for an art conference, but this was March. The sedatives pulled harder at him now, and he felt as if earth’s gravity were growing stronger by the second, trying to drag him down through his mattress. Langdon fought it, hoisting his head, trying to stay alert. Dr. Brooks leaned over him, hovering like an angel. “Please, Mr. Langdon,” she whispered. “Head trauma is delicate in the first twenty-four hours. You need to rest, or you could do serious damage.” A voice crackled suddenly on the room’s intercom. “Dr. Marconi?” The bearded doctor touched a button on the wall and replied, “S??” The voice on the intercom spoke in rapid Italian. Langdon didn’t catch what it said, but he did catch the two doctors exchanging a look of surprise. Or is it alarm? “Momento,” Marconi replied, ending the conversation. “What’s going on?” Langdon asked. Dr. Brooks’s eyes seemed to narrow a bit. “That was the ICU receptionist. Someone’s here to visit you.” A ray of hope cut through Langdon’s grogginess. “That’s good news! Maybe this person knows what happened to me.” She looked uncertain. “It’s just odd that someone’s here. We didn’t have your name, and you’re not even registered in the system yet.” Langdon battled the sedatives and awkwardly hoisted himself upright in his bed. “If someone knows I’m here, that person must know what happened!” Dr. Brooks glanced at Dr. Marconi, who immediately shook his head and tapped his watch. She turned back to Langdon. “This is the ICU,” she explained. “Nobody is allowed in until nine A.M. at the earliest. In a moment Dr. Marconi will go out and see who the visitor is and what he or she wants.” “What about what I want?” Langdon demanded. Dr. Brooks smiled patiently and lowered her voice, leaning closer. “Mr. Langdon, there are some things you don’t know about last night … about what happened to you. And before you speak to anyone, I think it’s only fair that you have all the facts. Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re strong enough yet to—” “What facts!?” Langdon demanded, struggling to prop himself higher. The IV in his arm pinched, and his body felt like it weighed several hundred pounds. “All I know is I’m in a Florence hospital and I arrived repeating the words ‘very sorry …’ ” A frightening thought now occurred to him. “Was I responsible for a car accident?” Langdon asked. “Did I hurt someone?!” “No, no,” she said. “I don’t believe so.” “Then what?” Langdon insisted, eyeing both doctors furiously. “I have a right to know what’s going on!” There was a long silence, and Dr. Marconi finally gave his attractive young colleague a reluctant nod. Dr. Brooks exhaled and moved closer to his bedside. “Okay, let me tell you what I know … and you’ll listen calmly, agreed?” Langdon nodded, the head movement sending a jolt of pain radiating through his skull. He ignored it, eager for answers. “The first thing is this … Your head wound was not caused by an accident.” “Well, that’s a relief.” “Not really. Your wound, in fact, was caused by a bullet.” Langdon’s heart monitor pinged faster. “I beg your pardon!?” Dr. Brooks spoke steadily but quickly. “A bullet grazed the top of your skull and most likely gave you a concussion. You’re very lucky to be alive. An inch lower, and …” She shook her head. Langdon stared at her in disbelief. Someone shot me? Angry voices erupted in the hall as an argument broke out. It sounded as if whoever had arrived to visit Langdon did not want to wait. Almost immediately, Langdon heard a heavy door at the far end of the hallway burst open. He watched until he saw a figure approaching down the corridor. The woman was dressed entirely in black leather. She was toned and strong with dark, spiked hair. She moved effortlessly, as if her feet weren’t touching the ground, and she was headed directly for Langdon’s room. Without hesitation, Dr. Marconi stepped into the open doorway to block the visitor’s passage. “Ferma!” the man commanded, holding out his palm like a policeman. The stranger, without breaking stride, produced a silenced handgun. She aimed directly at Dr. Marconi’s chest and fired. There was a staccato hiss. Langdon watched in horror as Dr. Marconi staggered backward into the room, falling to the floor, clutching his chest, his white lab coat drenched in blood. CHAPTER 3 FIVE MILES OFF the coast of Italy, the 237-foot luxury yacht The Mendacium motored through the predawn mist that rose from the gently rolling swells of the Adriatic. The ship’s stealth-profile hull was painted gunmetal gray, giving it the distinctly unwelcoming aura of a military vessel. With a price tag of over 300 million U.S. dollars, the craft boasted all the usual amenities—spa, pool, cinema, personal submarine, and helicopter pad. The ship’s creature comforts, however, were of little interest to its owner, who had taken delivery of the yacht five years ago and immediately gutted most of these spaces to install a lead-lined, military-grade, electronic command center. Fed by three dedicated satellite links and a redundant array of terrestrial relay stations, the control room on The Mendacium had a staff of nearly two dozen—technicians, analysts, operation coordinators—who lived on board and remained in constant contact with the organization’s various land-based operation centers. The ship’s onboard security included a small unit of military-trained soldiers, two missile-detection systems, and an arsenal of the latest weapons available. Other support staff—cooks, cleaning, and service—pushed the total number on board to more than forty. The Mendacium was, in effect, the portable office building from which the owner ran his empire. Known to his employees only as “the provost,” he was a tiny, stunted man with tanned skin and deep-set eyes. His unimposing physique and direct manner seemed well suited to one who had made a vast fortune providing a private menu of covert services along the shadowy fringes of society. He had been called many things—a soulless mercenary, a facilitator of sin, the devil’s enabler—but he was none of these. The provost simply provided his clients with the opportunity to pursue their ambitions and desires without consequence; that mankind was sinful in nature was not his problem. Despite his detractors and their ethical objections, the provost’s moral compass was a fixed star. He had built his reputation—and the Consortium itself—on two golden rules. Never make a promise you cannot keep. And never lie to a client. Ever. In his professional career, the provost had never broken a promise or reneged on a deal. His word was bankable—an absolute guarantee—and while there were certainly contracts he regretted having made, backing out of them was never an option. This morning, as he stepped onto the private balcony of his yacht’s stateroom, the provost looked across the churning sea and tried to fend off the disquiet that had settled in his gut. The decisions of our past are the architects of our present. The decisions of the provost’s past had put him in a position to negotiate almost any minefield and always come out on top. Today, however, as he gazed out the window at the distant lights of the Italian mainland, he felt uncharacteristically on edge. One year ago, on this very yacht, he had made a decision whose ramifications now threatened to unravel everything he had built. I agreed to provide services to the wrong man. There had been no way the provost could have known at the time, and yet now the miscalculation had brought a tempest of unforeseen challenges, forcing him to send some of his best agents into the field with orders to do “whatever it took” to keep his listing ship from capsizing. At the moment the provost was waiting to hear from one field agent in particular. Vayentha, he thought, picturing the sinewy, spike-haired specialist. Vayentha, who had served him perfectly until this mission, had made a mistake last night that had dire consequences. The last six hours had been a scramble, a desperate attempt to regain control of the situation. Vayentha claimed her error was the result of simple bad luck—the untimely coo of a dove. The provost, however, did not believe in luck. Everything he did was orchestrated to eradicate randomness and remove chance. Control was the provost’s expertise—foreseeing every possibility, anticipating every response, and molding reality toward the desired outcome. He had an immaculate track record of success and secrecy, and with it came a staggering clientele—billionaires, politicians, sheikhs, and even entire governments. To the east, the first faint light of morning had begun to consume the lowest stars on the horizon. On the deck the provost stood and patiently awaited word from Vayentha that her mission had gone exactly as planned. CHAPTER 4 FOR AN INSTANT, Langdon felt as if time had stopped. Dr. Marconi lay motionless on the floor, blood gushing from his chest. Fighting the sedatives in his system, Langdon raised his eyes to the spike-haired assassin, who was still striding down the hall, covering the last few yards toward his open door. As she neared the threshold, she looked toward Langdon and instantly swung her weapon in his direction … aiming at his head. I’m going to die, Langdon realized. Here and now. The bang was deafening in the small hospital room. Langdon recoiled, certain he had been shot, but the noise had not been the attacker’s gun. Rather, the bang had been the slam of the room’s heavy metal door as Dr. Brooks threw herself against it and turned the lock. Eyes wild with fear, Dr. Brooks immediately spun and crouched beside her blood-soaked colleague, searching for a pulse. Dr. Marconi coughed up a mouthful of blood, which dribbled down his cheek across his thick beard. Then he fell limp. “Enrico, no! Ti prego!” she screamed. Outside, a barrage of bullets exploded against the metal exterior of the door. Shouts of alarm filled the hall. Somehow, Langdon’s body was in motion, panic and instinct now overruling his sedatives. As he clambered awkwardly out of bed, a searing hot pain tore into his right forearm. For an instant, he thought a bullet had passed through the door and hit him, but when he looked down, he realized his IV had snapped off in his arm. The plastic catheter poked out of a jagged hole in his forearm, and warm blood was already flowing backward out of the tube. Langdon was now fully awake. Crouched beside Marconi’s body, Dr. Brooks kept searching for a pulse as tears welled in her eyes. Then, as if a switch had been flipped inside her, she stood and turned to Langdon. Her expression transformed before his eyes, her young features hardening with all the detached composure of a seasoned ER doctor dealing with a crisis. “Follow me,” she commanded. Dr. Brooks grabbed Langdon’s arm and pulled him across the room. The sounds of gunfire and chaos continued in the hallway as Langdon lurched forward on unstable legs. His mind felt alert but his heavily drugged body was slow to respond. Move! The tile floor felt cold beneath his feet, and his thin hospital johnny was scarcely long enough to cover his six-foot frame. He could feel blood dripping down his forearm and pooling in his palm. Bullets continued to slam against the heavy doorknob, and Dr. Brooks pushed Langdon roughly into a small bathroom. She was about to follow when she paused, turned around, and ran back toward the counter and grabbed his bloody Harris Tweed. Forget my damned jacket! She returned clutching his jacket and quickly locked the bathroom door. Just then, the door in the outer room crashed open. The young doctor took control. She strode through the tiny bathroom to a second door, yanked it open, and led Langdon into an adjoining recovery room. Gunfire echoed behind them as Dr. Brooks stuck her head out into the hallway and quickly grabbed Langdon’s arm, pulling him across the corridor into a stairwell. The sudden motion made Langdon dizzy; he sensed that he could pass out at any moment. The next fifteen seconds were a blur … descending stairs … stumbling … falling. The pounding in Langdon’s head was almost unbearable. His vision seemed even more blurry now, and his muscles were sluggish, each movement feeling like a delayed reaction. And then the air grew cold. I’m outside. As Dr. Brooks hustled him along a dark alley away from the building, Langdon stepped on something sharp and fell, hitting the pavement hard. She struggled to get him back to his feet, cursing out loud the fact that he had been sedated. As they neared the end of the alley, Langdon stumbled again. This time she left him on the ground, rushing into the street and yelling to someone in the distance. Langdon could make out the faint green light of a taxi parked in front of the hospital. The car didn’t move, its driver undoubtedly asleep. Dr. Brooks screamed and waved her arms wildly. Finally the taxi’s headlights came on and it moved lazily toward them. Behind Langdon in the alley, a door burst open, followed by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. He turned and saw the dark figure bounding toward him. Langdon tried to get back to his feet, but the doctor was already grabbing him, forcing him into the backseat of an idling Fiat taxi. He landed half on the seat and half on the floor as Dr. Brooks dove on top of him, yanking the door shut. The sleepy-eyed driver turned and stared at the bizarre duo that had just tumbled into his cab—a young, ponytailed woman in scrubs and a man in a half-torn johnny with a bleeding arm. He clearly was about ready to tell them to get the hell out of his car, when the side mirror exploded. The woman in black leather sprinted out of the alley, gun extended. Her pistol hissed again just as Dr. Brooks grabbed Langdon’s head, pulling it down. The rear window exploded, showering them with glass. The driver needed no further encouragement. He slammed his foot down on the gas, and the taxi peeled out. Langdon teetered on the brink of consciousness. Someone is trying to kill me? Once they had rounded a corner, Dr. Brooks sat up and grabbed Langdon’s bloody arm. The catheter was protruding awkwardly from a hole in his flesh. “Look out the window,” she commanded. Langdon obeyed. Outside, ghostly tombstones rushed by in the darkness. It seemed somehow fitting that they were passing a cemetery. Langdon felt the doctor’s fingers probing gently for the catheter and then, without warning, she wrenched it out. A searing bolt of pain traveled directly to Langdon’s head. He felt his eyes rolling back, and then everything went black. CHAPTER 5 THE SHRILL RING of his phone drew the provost’s gaze from the calming mist of the Adriatic, and he quickly stepped back into his stateroom office. It’s about time, he thought, eager for news. The computer screen on his desk had flickered to life, informing him that the incoming call was from a Swedish Sectra Tiger XS personal voice-encrypting phone, which had been redirected through four untraceable routers before being connected to his ship. He donned his headset. “This is the provost,” he answered, his words slow and meticulous. “Go ahead.” “It’s Vayentha,” the voice replied. The provost sensed an unusual nervousness in her tone. Field agents rarely spoke to the provost directly, and even more rarely did they remain in his employ after a debacle like the one last night. Nonetheless, the provost had required an agent on-site to help remedy the crisis, and Vayentha had been the best person for the job. “I have an update,” Vayentha said. The provost was silent, his cue for her to continue. When she spoke, her tone was emotionless, clearly an attempt at professionalism. “Langdon has escaped,” she said. “He has the object.” The provost sat down at his desk and remained silent for a very long time. “Understood,” he finally said. “I imagine he will reach out to the authorities as soon as he possibly can.” Two decks beneath the provost, in the ship’s secure control center, senior facilitator Laurence Knowlton sat in his private cubicle and noticed that the provost’s encrypted call had ended. He hoped the news was good. The provost’s tension had been palpable for the past two days, and every operative on board sensed there was some kind of high-stakes operation going on. The stakes are inconceivably high, and Vayentha had better get it right this time. Knowlton was accustomed to quarterbacking carefully constructed game plans, but this particular scenario had disintegrated into chaos, and the provost had taken over personally. We’ve moved into uncharted territory. Although a half-dozen other missions were currently in process around the world, all of them were being serviced by the Consortium’s various field offices, freeing the provost and his staff aboard The Mendacium to focus exclusively on this one. Their client had jumped to his death several days ago in Florence, but the Consortium still had numerous outstanding services on his docket—specific tasks the man had entrusted to this organization regardless of the circumstances—and the Consortium, as always, intended to follow through without question. I have my orders, Knowlton thought, fully intending to comply. He exited his soundproofed glass cubicle, walking past a half-dozen other chambers—some transparent, some opaque—in which duty officers were handling other aspects of this same mission. Knowlton crossed through the thin, processed air of the main control room, nodding to the tech crew, and entered a small walk-in vault containing a dozen strongboxes. He opened one of the boxes and retrieved its contents—in this case, a bright red memory stick. According to the task card attached, the memory stick contained a large video file, which the client had directed them to upload to key media outlets at a specific time tomorrow morning. Tomorrow’s anonymous upload would be simple enough, but in keeping protocol for all digital files, the flowchart had flagged this file for review today—twenty-four hours prior to delivery—to ensure the Consortium had adequate time to perform any necessary decryption, compiling, or other preparation that might be required before uploading it at the precise hour. Nothing left to chance. Knowlton returned to his transparent cubicle and closed the heavy glass door, blocking out the outside world. He flipped a switch on the wall, and his cubicle instantly turned opaque. For privacy, all of the glass-walled offices aboard The Mendacium were built with “suspended particle device” glass. The transparency of SPD glass was easily controlled by the application or removal of an electric current, which either aligned or randomized millions of tiny rodlike particles suspended within the panel. Compartmentalization was a cornerstone of the Consortium’s success. Know only your own mission. Share nothing. Now, ensconced in his private space, Knowlton inserted the memory stick into his computer and clicked the file to begin his assessment. Immediately his screen faded to black … and his speakers began playing the soft sound of lapping water. An image slowly appeared onscreen … amorphous and shadowy. Emerging from the darkness, a scene began to take shape … the interior of a cave … or a giant chamber of some sort. The floor of the cavern was water, like an underground lake. Strangely, the water appeared to be illuminated … as if from within. Knowlton had never seen anything like it. The entire cavern shone with an eerie reddish hue, its pale walls awash with tendril-like reflections of rippling water. What … is this place? As the lapping continued, the camera began to tilt downward and descend vertically, directly toward the water until the camera pierced the illuminated surface. The sounds of rippling disappeared, replaced by an eerie hush beneath the water. Submerged now, the camera kept descending, moving down through several feet of water until it stopped, focusing on the cavern’s silt-covered floor. Bolted to the floor was a rectangular plaque of shimmering titanium. The plaque bore an inscription. IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER. Engraved at the bottom of the plaque was a name and a date. The name was that of their client. The date … tomorrow. CHAPTER 6 LANGDON FELT FIRM hands lifting him now … urging him from his delirium, helping him out of the taxi. The pavement felt cold beneath his bare feet. Half supported by the slender frame of Dr. Brooks, Langdon staggered down a deserted walkway between two apartment buildings. The dawn air rustled, billowing his hospital gown, and Langdon felt cold air in places he knew he shouldn’t. The sedative he’d been given in the hospital had left his mind as blurred as his vision. Langdon felt like he was underwater, attempting to claw his way through a viscous, dimly lit world. Sienna Brooks dragged him onward, supporting him with surprising strength. “Stairs,” she said, and Langdon realized they had reached a side entrance of the building. Langdon gripped the railing and trudged dizzily upward, one step at a time. His body felt ponderous. Dr. Brooks physically pushed him now. When they reached the landing, she typed some numbers into a rusted old keypad and the door buzzed open. The air inside was not much warmer, but the tile floors felt like soft carpet on the soles of his feet compared to the rough pavement outside. Dr. Brooks led Langdon to a tiny elevator and yanked open a folding door, herding Langdon into a cubicle that was about the size of a phone booth. The air inside smelled of MS cigarettes—a bittersweet fragrance as ubiquitous in Italy as the aroma of fresh espresso. Ever so slightly, the smell helped clear Langdon’s mind. Dr. Brooks pressed a button, and somewhere high above them, a series of tired gears clunked and whirred into motion. Upward … The creaky carriage shimmied and vibrated as it began its ascent. Because the walls were nothing but metal screens, Langdon found himself watching the inside of the elevator shaft slide rhythmically past them. Even in his semiconscious state, Langdon’s lifelong fear of cramped spaces was alive and well. Don’t look. He leaned on the wall, trying to catch his breath. His forearm ached, and when he looked down, he saw that the sleeve of his Harris Tweed had been tied awkwardly around his arm like a bandage. The remainder of the jacket was dragging behind him on the ground, frayed and filthy. He closed his eyes against his pounding headache, but the blackness engulfed him again. A familiar vision materialized—the statuesque, veiled woman with the amulet and silver hair in ringlets. As before, she was on the banks of a bloodred river and surrounded by writhing bodies. She spoke to Langdon, her voice pleading. Seek and ye shall find! Langdon was overcome with the feeling that he had to save her … save them all. The half-buried, upside-down legs were falling limp … one by one. Who are you!? he called out in silence. What do you want?! Her luxuriant silver hair began fluttering in a hot wind. Our time grows short, she whispered, touching her amulet necklace. Then, without warning, she erupted in a blinding pillar of fire, which billowed across the river, engulfing them both. Langdon shouted, his eyes flying open. Dr. Brooks eyed him with concern. “What is it?” “I keep hallucinating!” Langdon exclaimed. “The same scene.” “The silver-haired woman? And all the dead bodies?” Langdon nodded, perspiration beading on his brow. “You’ll be okay,” she assured him, despite sounding shaky herself. “Recurring visions are common with amnesia. The brain function that sorts and catalogs your memories has been temporarily shaken up, and so it throws everything into one picture.” “Not a very nice picture,” he managed. “I know, but until you heal, your memories will be muddled and uncataloged—past, present, and imagination all mixed together. The same thing happens in dreams.” The elevator lurched to a stop, and Dr. Brooks yanked open the folding door. They were walking again, this time down a dark, narrow corridor. They passed a window, outside of which the murky silhouettes of Florence rooftops had begun emerging in the predawn light. At the far end of the hall, she crouched down and retrieved a key from beneath a thirsty-looking houseplant and unlocked a door. The apartment was tiny, the air inside hinting at an ongoing battle between a vanilla-scented candle and old carpeting. The furniture and artwork were meager at best—as if she had furnished it at a yard sale. Dr. Brooks adjusted a thermostat, and the radiators banged to life. She stood a moment and closed her eyes, exhaling heavily, as if to collect herself. Then she turned and helped Langdon into a modest kitchenette whose Formica table had two flimsy chairs. Langdon made a move toward a chair in hopes of sitting down, but Dr. Brooks grabbed his arm with one hand and opened a cabinet with her other. The cabinet was nearly bare … crackers, a few bags of pasta, a can of Coke, and a bottle of NoDoz. She took out the bottle and dumped six caplets into Langdon’s palm. “Caffeine,” she said. “For when I work night shifts like tonight.” Langdon put the pills in his mouth and glanced around for some water. “Chew them,” she said. “They’ll hit your system faster and help counteract the sedative.” Langdon began chewing and instantly cringed. The pills were bitter, clearly meant to be swallowed whole. Dr. Brooks opened the refrigerator and handed Langdon a half-empty bottle of San Pellegrino. He gratefully took a long drink. The ponytailed doctor now took his right arm and removed the makeshift bandage that she’d fashioned out of his jacket, which she laid on the kitchen table. Then she carefully examined his wound. As she held his bare arm, Langdon could feel her slender hands trembling. “You’ll live,” she announced. Langdon hoped she was going to be okay. He could barely fathom what they’d both just endured. “Dr. Brooks,” he said, “we need to call somebody. The consulate … the police. Somebody.” She nodded in agreement. “Also, you can stop calling me Dr. Brooks—my name is Sienna.” Langdon nodded. “Thanks. I’m Robert.” It seemed the bond they’d just forged fleeing for their lives warranted a first-name basis. “You said you’re British?” “By birth, yes.” “I don’t hear an accent.” “Good,” she replied. “I worked hard to lose it.” Langdon was about to inquire why, but Sienna motioned for him to follow. She led him down a narrow corridor to a small, gloomy bathroom. In the mirror above the sink, Langdon glimpsed his reflection for the first time since seeing it in the window of his hospital room. Not good. Langdon’s thick dark hair was matted, and his eyes looked bloodshot and weary. A shroud of stubble obscured his jaw. Sienna turned on the faucet and guided Langdon’s injured forearm under the ice-cold water. It stung sharply, but he held it there, wincing. Sienna retrieved a fresh washcloth and squirted it with antibacterial soap. “You may want to look away.” “It’s fine. I’m not bothered by—” Sienna began scrubbing violently, and white-hot pain shot up Langdon’s arm. He clenched his jaw to prevent himself from shouting out in protest. “You don’t want an infection,” she said, scrubbing harder now. “Besides, if you’re going to call the authorities, you’ll want to be more alert than you are now. Nothing activates adrenaline production like pain.” Langdon held on for what felt like a full ten seconds of scrubbing before he forcefully yanked his arm away. Enough! Admittedly, he felt stronger and more awake; the pain in his arm had now entirely overshadowed his headache. “Good,” she said, turning off the water and patting his arm dry with a clean towel. Sienna then applied a small bandage to his forearm, but as she did so, Langdon found himself distracted by something he had just noticed—something deeply upsetting to him. For nearly four decades, Langdon had worn an antique collector’s edition Mickey Mouse timepiece, a gift from his parents. Mickey’s smiling face and wildly waving arms had always served as his daily reminder to smile more often and take life a little less seriously. “My … watch,” Langdon stammered. “It’s gone!” Without it, he felt suddenly incomplete. “Was I wearing it when I arrived at the hospital?” Sienna shot him an incredulous look, clearly mystified that he could be worried about such a trivial thing. “I don’t remember any watch. Just clean yourself up. I’ll be back in a few minutes and we’ll figure out how to get you some help.” She turned to go, but paused in the doorway, locking eyes with him in the mirror. “And while I’m gone, I suggest you think very hard about why someone would want to kill you. I imagine it’s the first question the authorities will ask.” “Wait, where are you going?” “You can’t talk to the police half naked. I’m going to find you some clothes. My neighbor is about your size. He’s away, and I’m feeding his cat. He owes me.” With that, Sienna was gone. Robert Langdon turned back to the tiny mirror over the sink and barely recognized the person staring back at him. Someone wants me dead. In his mind, he again heard the recording of his own delirious mumblings. Very sorry. Very sorry. He probed his memory for some recollection … anything at all. He saw only emptiness. All Langdon knew was that he was in Florence, having suffered a bullet wound to the head. As Langdon stared into his own weary eyes, he half wondered if he might at any moment wake up in his reading chair at home, clutching an empty martini glass and a copy of Dead Souls, only to remind himself that Bombay Sapphire and Gogol should never be mixed. CHAPTER 7 LANGDON SHED HIS bloody hospital gown and wrapped a towel around his waist. After splashing water on his face, he gingerly touched the stitches on the back of his head. The skin was sore, but when he smoothed his matted hair down over the spot, the injury all but disappeared. The caffeine pills were kicking in, and he finally felt the fog beginning to lift. Think, Robert. Try to remember. The windowless bathroom was suddenly feeling claustrophobic, and Langdon stepped into the hall, moving instinctively toward a shaft of natural light that spilled through a partially open door across the corridor. The room was a makeshift study of sorts, with a cheap desk, a worn swivel chair, assorted books on the floor, and, thankfully … a window. Langdon moved toward daylight. In the distance, the rising Tuscan sun was just beginning to kiss the highest spires of the waking city—the campanile, the Badia, the Bargello. Langdon pressed his forehead to the cool glass. The March air was crisp and cold, amplifying the full spectrum of sunlight that now peeked up over the hillsides. Painter’s light, they called it. At the heart of the skyline, a mountainous dome of red tiles rose up, its zenith adorned with a gilt copper ball that glinted like a beacon. Il Duomo. Brunelleschi had made architectural history by engineering the basilica’s massive dome, and now, more than five hundred years later, the 375-foot-tall structure still stood its ground, an immovable giant on Piazza del Duomo. Why would I be in Florence? For Langdon, a lifelong aficionado of Italian art, Florence had become one of his favorite destinations in all of Europe. This was the city on whose streets Michelangelo played as a child, and in whose studios the Italian Renaissance had ignited. This was Florence, whose galleries lured millions of travelers to admire Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Leonardo’s Annunciation, and the city’s pride and joy—Il Davide. Langdon had been mesmerized by Michelangelo’s David when he first saw it as a teenager … entering the Accademia delle Belle Arti … moving slowly through the somber phalanx of Michelangelo’s crude Prigioni … and then feeling his gaze dragged upward, inexorably, to the seventeen-foot-tall masterpiece. The David’s sheer enormity and defined musculature startled most first-time visitors, and yet for Langdon, it had been the genius of David’s pose that he found most captivating. Michelangelo had employed the classical tradition of contrapposto to create the illusion that David was leaning to his right, his left leg bearing almost no weight, when, in fact, his left leg was supporting tons of marble. The David had sparked in Langdon his first true appreciation for the power of great sculpture. Now Langdon wondered if he had visited the masterpiece during the last several days, but the only memory he could conjure was that of awakening in the hospital and watching an innocent doctor murdered before his eyes. Very sorry. Very sorry. The guilt he felt was almost nauseating. What have I done? As he stood at the window, his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of a laptop computer sitting on the desk beside him. Whatever had happened to Langdon last night, he suddenly realized, might be in the news. If I can access the Internet, I might find answers. Langdon turned toward the doorway and called out: “Sienna?!” Silence. She was still at the neighbor’s apartment looking for clothes. Having no doubt Sienna would understand the intrusion, Langdon opened the laptop and powered it up. Sienna’s home screen flickered to life—a standard Windows “blue cloud” background. Langdon immediately went to the Google Italia search page and typed in Robert Langdon. If my students could see me now, he thought as he began the search. Langdon continually admonished his students for Googling themselves—a bizarre new pastime that reflected the obsession with personal celebrity that now seemed to possess American youth. A page of search results materialized—hundreds of hits pertaining to Langdon, his books, and his lectures. Not what I’m looking for. Langdon restricted the search by selecting the news button. A fresh page appeared: News results for “Robert Langdon.” Book signings: Robert Langdon to appear … Graduation address by Robert Langdon … Robert Langdon publishes Symbol primer for … The list was several pages long, and yet Langdon saw nothing recent—certainly nothing that would explain his current predicament. What happened last night? Langdon pushed on, accessing the Web site for The Florentine, an English-language newspaper published in Florence. He scanned the headlines, breaking-news sections, and police blog, seeing articles on an apartment fire, a government embezzling scandal, and assorted incidents of petty crime. Anything at all?! He paused at a breaking-news blurb about a city official who, last night, had died of a heart attack in the plaza outside the cathedral. The official’s name had yet to be released, but no foul play was suspected. Finally, not knowing what else to do, Langdon logged on to his Harvard e-mail account and checked his messages, wondering if he might find answers there. All he found was the usual stream of mail from colleagues, students, and friends, much of it referencing appointments for the coming week. It’s as if nobody knows I’m gone. With rising uncertainty, Langdon shut down the computer and closed the lid. He was about to leave when something caught his eye. On the corner of Sienna’s desk, atop a stack of old medical journals and papers, sat a Polaroid photograph. The snapshot was of Sienna Brooks and her bearded doctor colleague, laughing together in a hospital hallway. Dr. Marconi, Langdon thought, racked with guilt as he picked up the photo and studied it. As Langdon replaced the photo on the stack of books, he noticed with surprise the yellow booklet on top—a tattered playbill from the London Globe Theatre. According to the cover, it was for a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream … staged nearly twenty-five years ago. Scrawled across the top of the playbill was a handwritten message in Magic Marker: Sweetheart, never forget you’re a miracle. Langdon picked up the playbill, and a stack of press clippings fell out onto the desk. He quickly tried to replace them, but as he opened the booklet to the weathered page where the clippings had been, he stopped short. He was staring at a cast photo of the child actor portraying Shakespeare’s mischievous sprite Puck. The photo showed a young girl who could not have been more than five, her blond hair in a familiar ponytail. The text below her photo read: A star is born. The bio was a gushing account of a child theater prodigy—Sienna Brooks—with an off-the-chart IQ, who had, in a single night, memorized every character’s lines and, during initial rehearsals, often cued her fellow cast members. Among this five-year-old’s hobbies were violin, chess, biology, and chemistry. The child of a wealthy couple in the London suburb of Blackheath, the girl was already a celebrity in scientific circles; at the age of four, she had beat a chess grand master at his own game and was reading in three languages. My God, Langdon thought. Sienna. That explains a few things. Langdon recalled one of Harvard’s most famous graduates had been a child prodigy named Saul Kripke, who at the age of six had taught himself Hebrew and read all of the works of Descartes by the age of twelve. More recently, Langdon recalled reading about a young phenom named Moshe Kai Cavalin, who, at age eleven, had earned a college degree with a 4.0 grade-point average and won a national title in martial arts, and, at fourteen, published a book titled We Can Do. Langdon picked up another press clipping, a newspaper article with a photo of Sienna at age seven: CHILD GENIUS DISPLAYS 208 IQ. Langdon had been unaware that IQs even went that high. According to the article, Sienna Brooks was a virtuoso violinist, could master a new language in a month, and was teaching herself anatomy and physiology. He looked at another clipping from a medical journal: THE FUTURE OF THOUGHT: NOT ALL MINDS ARE CREATED EQUAL. This article had a photo of Sienna, now maybe ten years old, still a towhead, standing beside a large piece of medical apparatus. The article contained an interview with a doctor, who explained that PET scans of Sienna’s cerebellum revealed that it was physically different from other cerebella, in her case a larger, more streamlined organ capable of manipulating visual-spatial content in ways that most human beings could not begin to fathom. The doctor equated Sienna’s physiological advantage to an unusually accelerated cellular growth in her brain, much like a cancer, except that it accelerated growth of beneficial brain tissue rather than dangerous cancer cells. Langdon found a clipping from a small-town newspaper. THE CURSE OF BRILLIANCE. There was no photo this time, but the story told of a young genius, Sienna Brooks, who had tried to attend regular schools but was teased by other students because she didn’t fit in. It talked about the isolation felt by gifted young people whose social skills could not keep up with their intellects and who were often ostracized. Sienna, according to this article, had run away from home at the age of eight, and had been smart enough to live on her own undiscovered for ten days. She had been found in an upscale London hotel, where she had pretended to be the daughter of a guest, stolen a key, and was ordering room service on someone else’s account. Apparently she had spent the week reading all 1,600 pages of Gray’s Anatomy. When authorities asked why she was reading medical texts, she told them she wanted to figure out what was wrong with her brain. Langdon’s heart went out to the little girl. He couldn’t imagine how lonely it must be for a child to be so profoundly different. He refolded the articles, pausing for one last look at the photo of the five-year-old Sienna in the role of Puck. Langdon had to admit, considering the surreal quality of his encounter with Sienna this morning, that her role as the mischievous, dream-inducing sprite seemed strangely apt. Langdon only wished that he, like the characters in the play, could now simply wake up and pretend that his most recent experiences were all a dream. Langdon carefully replaced all the clippings on the proper page and closed the playbill, feeling an unexpected melancholy as he again saw the note on the cover: Sweetheart, never forget you’re a miracle. His eyes moved down to the familiar symbol adorning the cover of the playbill. It was the same early Greek pictogram that adorned most playbills around the world—a 2,500-year-old symbol that had become synonymous with dramatic theater. Le maschere. Langdon looked at the iconic faces of Comedy and Tragedy gazing up at him, and suddenly he heard a strange humming in his ears—as if a wire were slowly being pulled taut inside his mind. A stab of pain erupted inside his skull. Visions of a mask floated before his eyes. Langdon gasped and raised his hands, sitting down in the desk chair and closing his eyes tightly, clutching at his scalp. In his darkness, the bizarre visions returned with a fury … stark and vivid. The silver-haired woman with the amulet was calling to him again from across a bloodred river. Her shouts of desperation pierced the putrid air, clearly audible over the sounds of the tortured and dying, who thrashed in agony as far as the eye could see. Langdon again saw the upside-down legs adorned with the letter R, the half-buried body pedaling its legs in wild desperation in the air. Seek and find! the woman called to Langdon. Time is running out! Langdon again felt the overwhelming need to help her … to help everyone. Frantic, he shouted back to her across the bloodred river. Who are you?! Once again, the woman reached up and lifted her veil to reveal the same striking visage that Langdon had seen earlier. I am life, she said. Without warning, a colossal image materialized in the sky above her—a fearsome mask with a long, beaklike nose and two fiery green eyes, which stared blankly out at Langdon. And … I am death, the voice boomed. CHAPTER 8 LANGDON’S EYES SHOT open, and he drew a startled breath. He was still seated at Sienna’s desk, head in his hands, heart pounding wildly. What the hell is happening to me? The images of the silver-haired woman and the beaked mask lingered in his mind. I am life. I am death. He tried to shake the vision, but it felt seared permanently into his mind. On the desk before him, the playbill’s two masks stared up at him. Your memories will be muddled and uncataloged, Sienna had told him. Past, present, and imagination all mixed together. Langdon felt dizzy. Somewhere in the apartment, a phone was ringing. It was a piercing, old-fashioned ring, coming from the kitchen. “Sienna?!” Langdon called out, standing up. No response. She had not yet returned. After only two rings, an answering machine picked up. “Ciao, sono io,” Sienna’s voice happily declared on her outgoing message. “Lasciatemi un messaggio e vi richiamer?.” There was a beep, and a panicked woman began leaving a message in a thick Eastern European accent. Her voice echoed down the hall. “Sienna, eez Danikova! Where you?! Eez terrible! Your friend Dr. Marconi, he dead! Hospital going craaazy! Police come here! People telling them you running out trying to save patient?! Why!? You don’t know him! Now police want to talk to you! They take employee file! I know information wrong—bad address, no numbers, fake working visa—so they no find you today, but soon they find! I try to warn you. So sorry, Sienna.” The call ended. Langdon felt a fresh wave of remorse engulfing him. From the sounds of the message, Dr. Marconi had been permitting Sienna to work at the hospital. Now Langdon’s presence had cost Marconi his life, and Sienna’s instinct to save a stranger had dire implications for her future. Just then a door closed loudly at the far end of the apartment. She’s back. A moment later, the answering machine blared. “Sienna, eez Danikova! Where you?!” Langdon winced, knowing what Sienna was about to hear. As the message played, Langdon quickly put away the playbill, neatening the desk. Then he slipped back across the hall into the bathroom, feeling uncomfortable about his glimpse into Sienna’s past. Ten seconds later, there was a soft knock on the bathroom door. “I’ll leave your clothes on the doorknob,” Sienna said, her voice ragged with emotion. “Thank you so much,” Langdon replied. “When you’re done, please come out to the kitchen,” she added. “There’s something important I need to show you before we call anyone.” Sienna walked tiredly down the hall to the apartment’s modest bedroom. Retrieving a pair of blue jeans and a sweater from the dresser, she carried them into her bathroom. Locking her eyes with her own reflection in the mirror, she reached up, grabbed a clutch of her thick blond ponytail, and pulled down hard, sliding the wig from her bald scalp. A hairless thirty-two-year-old woman stared back at her from the mirror. Sienna had endured no shortage of challenges in her life, and although she had trained herself to rely on intellect to overcome hardship, her current predicament had shaken her on a deeply emotional level. She set the wig aside and washed her face and hands. After drying off, she changed her clothes and put the wig back on, straightening it carefully. Self-pity was an impulse Sienna seldom tolerated, but now, as the tears welled up from deep within, she knew she had no choice but to let them come. And so she did. She cried for the life she could not control. She cried for the mentor who had died before her eyes. She cried for the profound loneliness that filled her heart. But, above all, she cried for the future … which suddenly felt so uncertain. CHAPTER 9 BELOWDECKS ON THE luxury vessel The Mendacium, facilitator Laurence Knowlton sat in his sealed glass cubicle and stared in disbelief at his computer monitor, having just previewed the video their client had left behind. I’m supposed to upload this to the media tomorrow morning? In his ten years with the Consortium, Knowlton had performed all kinds of strange tasks that he knew fell somewhere between dishonest and illegal. Working within a moral gray area was commonplace at the Consortium—an organization whose lone ethical high ground was that they would do whatever it took to keep a promise to a client. We follow through. No questions asked. No matter what. The prospect of uploading this video, however, had left Knowlton unsettled. In the past, no matter what bizarre tasks he had performed, he always understood the rationale … grasped the motives … comprehended the desired outcome. And yet this video was baffling. Something about it felt different. Much different. Sitting back down at his computer, Knowlton restarted the video file, hoping a second viewing might shed more light. He turned up the volume and settled in for the nine-minute show. As before, the video began with the soft lapping of water in the eerie water-filled cavern where everything was bathed in a numinous red light. Again the camera plunged down through the surface of the illuminated water to view the silt-covered floor of the cavern. And again, Knowlton read the text on the submerged plaque: IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER. That the polished plaque was signed by the Consortium’s client was disquieting. That the date was tomorrow … left Knowlton increasingly concerned. It was what followed, however, that had truly set Knowlton on edge. The camera now panned to the left to reveal a startling object hovering underwater just beside the plaque. Here, tethered to the floor by a short filament, was an undulating sphere of thin plastic. Delicate and wobbling like an oversize soap bubble, the transparent shape floated like an underwater balloon … inflated not with helium, but with some kind of gelatinous, yellow-brown liquid. The amorphous bag was distended and appeared to be about a foot in diameter, and within its transparent walls, the murky cloud of liquid seemed to swirl slowly, like the eye of a silently growing storm. Jesus, Knowlton thought, feeling clammy. The suspended bag looked even more ominous the second time around. Slowly, the image faded to black. A new image appeared—the cavern’s damp wall, dancing with the rippling reflections of the illuminated lagoon. On the wall, a shadow appeared … the shadow of a man … standing in the cavern. But the man’s head was misshapen … badly. Instead of a nose, the man had a long beak … as if he were half bird. When he spoke, his voice was muffled … and he spoke with an eerie eloquence … a measured cadence … as if he were the narrator in some kind of classical chorus. Knowlton sat motionless, barely breathing, as the beaked shadow spoke. I am the Shade. If you are watching this, then it means my soul is finally at rest. Driven underground, I must speak to the world from deep within the earth, exiled to this gloomy cavern where the bloodred waters collect in the lagoon that reflects no stars. But this is my paradise … the perfect womb for my fragile child. Inferno. Soon you will know what I have left behind. And yet, even here, I sense the footfalls of the ignorant souls who pursue me … willing to stop at nothing to thwart my actions. Forgive them, you might say, for they know not what they do. But there comes a moment in history when ignorance is no longer a forgivable offense … a moment when only wisdom has the power to absolve. With purity of conscience, I have bequeathed to you all the gift of Hope, of salvation, of tomorrow. And yet still there are those who hunt me like a dog, fueled by the self-righteous belief that I am a madman. There is the silver-haired beauty who dares call me monster! Like the blind clerics who lobbied for the death of Copernicus, she scorns me as a demon, terrified that I have glimpsed the Truth. But I am not a prophet. I am your salvation. I am the Shade. CHAPTER 10 “HAVE A SEAT”, Sienna said. “I have some questions for you.” As Langdon entered the kitchen, he felt much steadier on his feet. He was wearing the neighbor’s Brioni suit, which fit remarkably well. Even the loafers were comfortable, and Langdon made a mental note to switch to Italian footwear when he got home. If I get home, he thought. Sienna was transformed—a natural beauty—having changed into formfitting jeans and a cream-colored sweater, both of which complemented her lithe figure. Her hair was still pulled back in a ponytail, and without the authoritative air of medical scrubs, she seemed more vulnerable somehow. Langdon noticed her eyes were red, as if she had been crying, and an overwhelming guilt again gripped him. “Sienna, I’m so sorry. I heard the phone message. I don’t know what to say.” “Thanks,” she replied. “But we need to focus on you at the moment. Please sit down.” Her tone was firmer now, conjuring memories of the articles Langdon had just read about her intellect and precocious childhood. “I need you to think,” Sienna said, motioning for him to sit. “Can you remember how we got to this apartment?” Langdon wasn’t sure how it was relevant. “In a taxi,” he said, sitting down at the table. “Someone was shooting at us.” “Shooting at you, Professor. Let’s be clear on that.” “Yes. Sorry.” “And do you remember any gunshots while you were in the cab?” Odd question. “Yes, two of them. One hit the side mirror, and the other broke the rear window.” “Good, now close your eyes.” Langdon realized she was testing his memory. He closed his eyes. “What am I wearing?” Langdon could see her perfectly. “Black flats, blue jeans, and a cream V-neck sweater. Your hair is blond, shoulder length, pulled back. Your eyes are brown.” Langdon opened his eyes and studied her, pleased to see his eidetic memory was functioning normally. “Good. Your visual cognitive imprinting is excellent, which confirms your amnesia is fully retrograde, and you have no permanent damage to the memory-making process. Have you recalled anything new from the last few days?” “No, unfortunately. I did have another wave of visions while you were gone, though.” Langdon told her about the recurrence of his hallucination of the veiled woman, the throngs of dead people, and the writhing, half-buried legs marked with the letter R. Then he told her about the strange, beaked mask hovering in the sky. “ ‘I am death’?” Sienna asked, looking troubled. “That’s what it said, yes.” “Okay … I guess that beats ‘I am Vishnu, destroyer of worlds.’ ” The young woman had just quoted Robert Oppenheimer at the moment he tested the first atomic bomb. “And this beak-nosed … green-eyed mask?” Sienna said, looking puzzled. “Do you have any idea why your mind might have conjured that image?” “No idea at all, but that style of mask was quite common in the Middle Ages.” Langdon paused. “It’s called a plague mask.” Sienna looked strangely unnerved. “A plague mask?” Langdon quickly explained that in his world of symbols, the unique shape of the long-beaked mask was nearly synonymous with the Black Death—the deadly plague that swept through Europe in the 1300s, killing off a third of the population in some regions. Most believed the “black” in Black Death was a reference to the darkening of the victims’ flesh through gangrene and subepidermal hemorrhages, but in fact the word black was a reference to the profound emotional dread that the pandemic spread through the population. “That long-beaked mask,” Langdon said, “was worn by medieval plague doctors to keep the pestilence far from their nostrils while treating the infected. Nowadays, you only see them worn as costumes during Venice Carnevale—an eerie reminder of a grim period in Italy’s history.” “And you’re certain you saw one of these masks in your visions?” Sienna asked, her voice now tremulous. “A mask of a medieval plague doctor?” Langdon nodded. A beaked mask is hard to mistake. Sienna was knitting her brow in a way that gave Langdon the sense she was trying to figure out how best to give him some bad news. “And the woman kept telling you to ‘seek and find’?” “Yes. Just as before. But the problem is, I have no idea what I’m supposed to seek.” Sienna let out a long slow breath, her expression grave. “I think I may know. And what’s more … I think you may have already found it.” Langdon stared. “What are you talking about?!” “Robert, last night when you arrived at the hospital, you were carrying something unusual in your jacket pocket. Do you recall what it was?” Langdon shook his head. “You were carrying an object … a rather startling object. I found it by chance when we were cleaning you up.” She motioned to Langdon’s bloody Harris Tweed, which was laid out flat on the table. “It’s still in the pocket, if you’d like to have a look.” Uncertain, Langdon eyed his jacket. At least that explains why she went back for my jacket. He grabbed his bloodstained coat and searched all the pockets, one by one. Nothing. He did it again. Finally, he turned to her with a shrug. “There’s nothing here.” “How about the secret pocket?” “What? My jacket doesn’t have a secret pocket.” “No?” She looked puzzled. “Then is this jacket … someone else’s?” Langdon’s brain felt muddled again. “No, this is my jacket.” “You’re certain?” Damned certain, he thought. In fact, it used to be my favorite Camberley. He folded back the lining and showed Sienna the label bearing his favorite symbol in the fashion world—Harris Tweed’s iconic orb adorned with thirteen buttonlike jewels and topped by a Maltese cross. Leave it to the Scots to invoke the Christian warriors on a piece of twill. “Look at this,” Langdon said, pointing out the hand-embroidered initials—R.L.—that had been added to the label. He always sprang for Harris Tweed’s hand-tailored models, and for that reason, he always paid extra to have them sew his initials into the label. On a college campus where hundreds of tweed jackets were constantly doffed and donned in dining halls and classrooms, Langdon had no intention of getting the short end of an inadvertent trade. “I believe you,” she said, taking the jacket from him. “Now you look.” Sienna opened the jacket farther to reveal the lining near the nape of the back. Here, discreetly hidden in the lining, was a large, neatly fashioned pocket. What the hell?! Langdon was certain he had never seen this before. The pocket consisted of a hidden seam, perfectly tailored. “That wasn’t there before!” Langdon insisted. “Then I’m imagining you’ve never seen … this?” Sienna reached into the pocket and extracted a sleek metal object, which she set gently in Langdon’s hands. Langdon stared down at the object in utter bewilderment. “Do you know what this is?” Sienna asked. “No …” he stammered. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” “Well, unfortunately, I do know what this is. And I’m fairly certain it’s the reason someone is trying to kill you.” Now pacing his private cubicle aboard The Mendacium, facilitator Knowlton felt an increasing disquiet as he considered the video he was supposed to share with the world tomorrow morning. I am the Shade? Rumors had circulated that this particular client had suffered a psychotic break over the last few months, but this video seemed to confirm those rumors beyond any doubt. Knowlton knew he had two choices. He could either prepare the video for delivery tomorrow as promised, or he could take it upstairs to the provost for a second opinion. I already know his opinion, Knowlton thought, having never witnessed the provost take any action other than the one promised a client. He’ll tell me to upload this video to the world, no questions asked … and he’ll be furious at me for asking. Knowlton returned his attention to the video, which he rewound to a particularly unsettling spot. He started the playback, and the eerily illuminated cavern reappeared accompanied by the sounds of lapping water. The humanoid shadow loomed on the dripping wall—a tall man with a long, birdlike beak. In a muffled voice, the deformed shadow spoke: These are the new Dark Ages. Centuries ago, Europe was in the depths of its own misery—the population huddled, starving, mired in sin and hopelessness. They were as a congested forest, suffocated by deadwood, awaiting God’s lightning strike—the spark that would finally ignite the fire that would rage across the land and clear the deadwood, once again bringing sunshine to the healthy roots. Culling is God’s Natural Order. Ask yourself, What followed the Black Death? We all know the answer. The Renaissance. Rebirth. It has always been this way. Death is followed by birth. To reach Paradise, man must pass through Inferno. This, the master taught us. And yet the silver-haired ignorant dares call me monster? Does she still not grasp the mathematics of the future? The horrors it will bring? I am the Shade. I am your salvation. And so I stand, deep within this cavern, gazing out across the lagoon that reflects no stars. Here in this sunken palace, Inferno smolders beneath the waters. Soon it will burst into flames. And when it does, nothing on earth will be able to stop it. CHAPTER 11 THE OBJECT IN Langdon’s hand felt surprisingly heavy for its size. Slender and smooth, the polished metal cylinder was about six inches long and rounded at both ends, like a miniature torpedo. “Before you handle that too roughly,” Sienna offered, “you may want to look at the other side.” She gave him a taut smile. “You say you’re a professor of symbols?” Langdon refocused on the tube, turning it in his hands until a bright red symbol rolled into view, emblazoned on its side. Instantly, his body tensed. As a student of iconography, Langdon knew that precious few images had the power to instill instantaneous fear in the human mind … but the symbol before him definitely made the list. His reaction was visceral and immediate; he placed the tube on the table and slid back his chair. Sienna nodded. “Yeah, that was my reaction, too.” The marking on the tube was a simple trilateral icon. This notorious symbol, Langdon had once read, was developed by Dow Chemical in the 1960s to replace an array of impotent warning graphics previously in use. Like all successful symbols, this one was simple, distinctive, and easy to reproduce. Cleverly conjuring associations with everything from crab pincers to ninja hurling knives, the modern “biohazard” symbol had become a global brand that conveyed danger in every language. “This little canister is a biotube,” Sienna said. “Used for transporting dangerous substances. We see these occasionally in the medical field. Inside is a foam sleeve into which you can insert a specimen tube for safe transport. In this case …” She pointed to the biohazard symbol. “I’m guessing a deadly chemical agent … or maybe a … virus?” She paused. “The first Ebola samples were brought back from Africa in a tube similar to this one.” This was not at all what Langdon wanted to hear. “What the hell is it doing in my jacket! I’m an art history professor; why am I carrying this thing?!” Violent images of writhing bodies flashed through his mind … and hovering over them, the plague mask. Very sorry … Very sorry. “Wherever this came from,” Sienna said, “this is a very high-end unit. Lead-lined titanium. Virtually impenetrable, even to radiation. I’m guessing government issue.” She pointed to a postage-stamp-size black pad flanking the biohazard symbol. “Thumbprint recognition. Security in case it’s lost or stolen. Tubes like this can be opened only by a specified individual.” Although Langdon sensed his mind now working at normal speed, he still felt as if he were struggling to catch up. I’ve been carrying a biometrically sealed canister. “When I discovered this canister in your jacket, I wanted to show Dr. Marconi privately, but I didn’t have an opportunity before you woke up. I considered trying your thumb on the pad while you were unconscious, but I had no idea what was in the tube, and—” “MY thumb?!” Langdon shook his head. “There’s no way this thing is programmed for me to open it. I don’t know anything about biochemistry. I’d never have anything like this.” “Are you sure?” Langdon was damned sure. He reached out and placed his thumb on the finger pad. Nothing happened. “See?! I told—” The titanium tube clicked loudly, and Langdon yanked his hand back as if it had been burned. Holy shit. He stared at the canister as if it were about to unscrew itself and start emitting a deadly gas. After three seconds, it clicked again, apparently relocking itself. Speechless, Langdon turned to Sienna. The young doctor exhaled, looking unnerved. “Well, it seems pretty clear that the intended carrier is you.” For Langdon, the entire scenario felt incongruous. “That’s impossible. First of all, how would I get this chunk of metal through airport security?” “Maybe you flew in on a private jet? Or maybe it was given to you when you arrived in Italy?” “Sienna, I need to call the consulate. Right away.” “You don’t think we should open it first?” Langdon had taken some ill-advised actions in his life, but opening a hazardous materials container in this woman’s kitchen would not be one of them. “I’m handing this thing over to the authorities. Now.” Sienna pursed her lips, mulling over options. “Okay, but as soon as you make that call, you’re on your own. I can’t be involved. You definitely can’t meet them here. My immigration situation in Italy is … complicated.” Langdon looked Sienna in the eye. “All I know, Sienna, is that you saved my life. I’ll handle this situation however you want me to handle it.” She gave a grateful nod and walked over to the window, gazing down at the street below. “Okay, this is how we should do it.” Sienna quickly outlined a plan. It was simple, clever, and safe. Langdon waited as she turned on her cell phone’s caller-ID blocking and dialed. Her fingers were delicate and yet moved purposefully. “Informazioni abbonati?” Sienna said, speaking in a flawless Italian accent. “Per favore, pu? darmi il numero del Consolato americano di Firenze?” She waited and then quickly wrote down a phone number. “Grazie mille,” she said, and hung up. Sienna slid the phone number over to Langdon along with her cell phone. “You’re on. Do you remember what to say?” “My memory is fine,” he said with a smile as he dialed the number on the slip of paper. The line began to ring. Here goes nothing. He switched the call to speaker and set the phone on the table so Sienna could hear. A recorded message answered, offering general information about consulate services and hours of operation, which did not begin until 8:30 A.M. Langdon checked the clock on the cell. It was only 6 A.M. “If this is an emergency,” the automated recording said, “you may dial seven-seven to speak to the night duty officer.” Langdon immediately dialed the extension. The line was ringing again. “Consolato americano,” a tired voice answered. “Sono il funzionario di turno.” “Lei parla inglese?” Langdon asked. “Of course,” the man said in American English. He sounded vaguely annoyed to have been awoken. “How can I help you?” “I’m an American visiting Florence and I was attacked. My name is Robert Langdon.” “Passport number, please.” The man yawned audibly. “My passport is missing. I think it was stolen. I was shot in the head. I’ve been in the hospital. I need help.” The attendant suddenly woke up. “Sir!? Did you say you were shot? What was your full name again, please?” “Robert Langdon.” There was a rustling on the line and then Langdon could hear the man’s fingers typing on a keyboard. The computer pinged. A pause. Then more fingers on the keyboard. Another ping. Then three high-pitched pings. A longer pause. “Sir?” the man said. “Your name is Robert Langdon?” “Yes, that’s right. And I’m in trouble.” “Okay, sir, your name has an action flag on it, which is directing me to transfer you immediately to the consul general’s chief administrator.” The man paused, as if he himself couldn’t believe it. “Just hold the line.” “Wait! Can you tell me—” The line was already ringing. It rang four times and connected. “This is Collins,” a hoarse voice answered. Langdon took a deep breath and spoke as calmly and clearly as possible. “Mr. Collins, my name is Robert Langdon. I’m an American visiting Florence. I’ve been shot. I need help. I want to come to the U.S. Consulate immediately. Can you help me?” Without hesitation, the deep voice replied, “Thank heavens you’re alive, Mr. Langdon. We’ve been looking for you.” CHAPTER 12 THE CONSULATE KNOWS I’m here? For Langdon, the news brought an instantaneous flood of relief. Mr. Collins—who had introduced himself as the consul general’s chief administrator—spoke with a firm, professional cadence, and yet there was urgency in his voice. “Mr. Langdon, you and I need to speak immediately. And obviously not on the phone.” Nothing was obvious to Langdon at this point, but he wasn’t about to interrupt. “I’ll have someone pick you up right away,” Collins said. “What is your location?” Sienna shifted nervously, listening to the interchange on speakerphone. Langdon gave her a reassuring nod, fully intending to follow her plan exactly. “I’m in a small hotel called Pensione la Fiorentina,” Langdon said, glancing across the street at the drab hotel that Sienna had pointed out moments ago. He gave Collins the street address. “Got it,” the man replied. “Don’t move. Stay in your room. Someone will be there right away. Room number?” Langdon made one up. “Thirty-nine.” “Okay. Twenty minutes.” Collins lowered his voice. “And, Mr. Langdon, it sounds like you may be injured and confused, but I need to know … are you still in possession?” In possession. Langdon sensed the question, while cryptic, could have only one meaning. His eyes moved to the biotube on the kitchen table. “Yes, sir. I’m still in possession.” Collins exhaled audibly. “When we didn’t hear from you, we assumed … well, frankly, we assumed the worst. I’m relieved. Stay where you are. Don’t move. Twenty minutes. Someone will knock on your door.” Collins hung up. Langdon could feel his shoulders relaxing for the first time since he’d woken up in the hospital. The consulate knows what’s going on, and soon I’ll have answers. Langdon closed his eyes and let out a slow breath, feeling almost human now. His headache had all but passed. “Well, that was all very MI6,” Sienna said in a half-joking tone. “Are you a spy?” At the moment Langdon had no idea what he was. The notion that he could lose two days of memory and find himself in an unrecognizable situation felt incomprehensible, and yet here he was … twenty minutes away from a rendezvous with a U.S. Consulate official in a run-down hotel. What’s happening here? He glanced over at Sienna, realizing they were about to part ways and yet feeling as if they had unfinished business. He pictured the bearded doctor at the hospital, dying on the floor before her eyes. “Sienna,” he whispered, “your friend … Dr. Marconi … I feel terrible.” She nodded blankly. “And I’m sorry to have dragged you into this. I know your situation at the hospital is unusual, and if there’s an investigation …” He trailed off. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m no stranger to moving around.” Langdon sensed in Sienna’s distant eyes that everything had changed for her this morning. Langdon’s own life was in chaos at the moment, and yet he felt his heart going out to this woman. She saved my life … and I’ve ruined hers. They sat in silence for a full minute, the air between them growing heavy, as if they both wanted to speak, and yet had nothing to say. They were strangers, after all, on a brief and bizarre journey that had just reached a fork in the road, each of them now needing to find separate paths. “Sienna,” Langdon finally said, “when I sort this out with the consulate, if there’s anything I can do to help you … please.” “Thanks,” she whispered, and turned her eyes sadly toward the window. As the minutes ticked past, Sienna Brooks gazed absently out the kitchen window and wondered where the day would lead her. Wherever it was, she had no doubt that by day’s end, her world would look a lot different. She knew it was probably just the adrenaline, but she found herself strangely attracted to the American professor. In addition to his being handsome, he seemed to possess a sincerely good heart. In some distant, alternate life, Robert Langdon might even be someone she could be with. He would never want me, she thought. I’m damaged. As she choked back the emotion, something outside the window caught her eye. She bolted upright, pressing her face to the glass and staring down into the street. “Robert, look!” Langdon peered down into the street at the sleek black BMW motorcycle that had just rumbled to a stop in front of Pensione la Fiorentina. The driver was lean and strong, wearing a black leather suit and helmet. As the driver gracefully swung off the bike and removed a polished black helmet, Sienna could hear Langdon stop breathing. The woman’s spiked hair was unmistakable. She produced a familiar handgun, checked the silencer, and slid it back inside her jacket pocket. Then, moving with lethal grace, she slipped inside the hotel. “Robert,” Sienna whispered, her voice taut with fear. “The U.S. government just sent someone to kill you.” CHAPTER 13 ROBERT LANGDON FELT a swell of panic as he stood at the apartment window, eyes riveted on the hotel across the street. The spike-haired woman had just entered, but Langdon could not fathom how she had gotten the address. Adrenaline coursed through his system, disjointing his thought process once again. “My own government sent someone to kill me?” Sienna looked equally astounded. “Robert, that means the original attempt on your life at the hospital also was sanctioned by your government.” She got up and double-checked the lock on the apartment door. “If the U.S. Consulate has permission to kill you …” She didn’t finish the thought, but she didn’t have to. The implications were terrifying. What the hell do they think I did? Why is my own government hunting me?! Once again, Langdon heard the two words he had apparently been mumbling when he staggered into the hospital. Very sorry … very sorry. “You’re not safe here,” Sienna said. “We’re not safe here.” She motioned across the street. “That woman saw us flee the hospital together, and I’m betting your government and the police are already trying to track me down. My apartment is a sublet in someone else’s name, but they’ll find me eventually.” She turned her attention to the biotube on the table. “You need to open that, right now.” Langdon eyed the titanium device, seeing only the biohazard symbol. “Whatever’s inside that tube,” Sienna said, “probably has an ID code, an agency sticker, a phone number, something. You need information. I need information! Your government killed my friend!” The pain in Sienna’s voice shook Langdon from his thoughts, and he nodded, knowing she was correct. “Yes, I’m … very sorry.” Langdon cringed, hearing those words again. He turned to the canister on the table, wondering what answers might be hidden inside. “It could be incredibly dangerous to open this.” Sienna thought for a moment. “Whatever’s inside will be exceptionally well contained, probably in a shatterproof Plexiglas test tube. This biotube is just an outer shell to provide additional security during transport.” Langdon looked out the window at the black motorcycle parked in front of the hotel. The woman had not yet come out, but she would soon figure out that Langdon was not there. He wondered what her next move would be … and how long it would take before she was pounding on the apartment door. Langdon made up his mind. He lifted the titanium tube and reluctantly placed his thumb on the biometric pad. After a moment the canister pinged and then clicked loudly. Before the tube could lock itself again, Langdon twisted the two halves against each other in opposite directions. After a quarter turn, the canister pinged a second time, and Langdon knew he was committed. Langdon’s hands felt sweaty as he continued unscrewing the tube. The two halves turned smoothly on perfectly machined threads. He kept twisting, feeling as if he were about to open a precious Russian nesting doll, except that he had no idea what might fall out. After five turns, the two halves released. With a deep breath, Langdon gently pulled them apart. The gap between the halves widened, and a foam-rubber interior slid out. Langdon laid it on the table. The protective padding vaguely resembled an elongated Nerf football. Here goes nothing. Langdon gently folded back the top of the protective foam, finally revealing the object nestled inside. Sienna stared down at the contents and cocked her head, looking puzzled. “Definitely not what I expected.” Langdon had anticipated some kind of futuristic-looking vial, but the content of the biotube was anything but modern. The ornately carved object appeared to be made of ivory and was approximately the size of a roll of Life Savers. “It looks old,” Sienna whispered. “Some kind of …” “Cylinder seal,” Langdon told her, finally permitting himself to exhale. Invented by the Sumerians in 3500 B.C., cylinder seals were the precursors to the intaglio form of printmaking. Carved with decorative images, a seal contained a hollow shaft, through which an axle pin was inserted so the carved drum could be rolled like a modern paint roller across wet clay or terra-cotta to “imprint” a recurring band of symbols, images, or text. This particular seal, Langdon guessed, was undoubtedly quite rare and valuable, and yet he still couldn’t imagine why it would be locked in a titanium canister like some kind of bioweapon. As Langdon delicately turned the seal in his fingers, he realized that this one bore an especially gruesome carving—a three-headed, horned Satan who was in the process of eating three different men at once, one man in each of his three mouths. Pleasant. Langdon’s eyes moved to seven letters carved beneath the devil. The ornate calligraphy was written in mirror image, as was all text on imprinting rollers, but Langdon had no trouble reading the letters—SALIGIA. Sienna squinted at the text, reading it aloud. “Saligia?” Langdon nodded, feeling a chill to hear the word spoken aloud. “It’s a Latin mnemonic invented by the Vatican in the Middle Ages to remind Christians of the Seven Deadly Sins. Saligia is an acronym for: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, and acedia.” Sienna frowned. “Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.” Langdon was impressed. “You know Latin.” “I grew up Catholic. I know sin.” Langdon managed a smile as he returned his gaze to the seal, wondering again why it had been locked in a biotube as if it were dangerous. “I thought it was ivory,” Sienna said. “But it’s bone.” She slid the artifact into the sunlight and pointed to the lines on it. “Ivory forms in a diamond-shaped cross-hatching with translucent striations; bones form with these parallel striations and darkened pitting.” Langdon gently picked up the seal and examined the carvings more closely. The original Sumerian seals had been carved with rudimentary figures and cuneiform. This seal, however, was much more elaborately carved. Medieval, Langdon guessed. Furthermore, the embellishments suggested an unsettling connection with his hallucinations. Sienna eyed him with concern. “What is it?” “Recurring theme,” Langdon said grimly, and motioned to one of the carvings on the seal. “See this three-headed, man-eating Satan? It’s a common image from the Middle Ages—an icon associated with the Black Death. The three gnashing mouths are symbolic of how efficiently the plague ate through the population.” Sienna glanced uneasily at the biohazard symbol on the tube. Allusions to the plague seemed to be occurring with more frequency this morning than Langdon cared to admit, and so it was with reluctance that he acknowledged a further connection. “Saligia is representative of the collective sins of mankind … which, according to medieval religious indoctrination—” “Was the reason God punished the world with the Black Death,” Sienna said, completing his thought. “Yes.” Langdon paused, momentarily losing his train of thought. He had just noticed something about the cylinder that struck him as odd. Normally, a person could peer through a cylinder seal’s hollow center, as if through a section of empty pipe, but in this case, the shaft was blocked. There’s something inserted inside this bone. The end caught the light and shimmered. “There’s something inside,” Langdon said. “And it looks like it’s made of glass.” He flipped the cylinder upside down to check the other end, and as he did so, a tiny object rattled inside, tumbling from one end of the bone to the other, like a ball bearing in a tube. Langdon froze, and he heard Sienna let out a soft gasp beside him. What the hell was that?! “Did you hear that sound?” Sienna whispered. Langdon nodded and carefully peered into the end of the canister. “The opening appears to be blocked by … something made of metal.” The cap of a test tube, maybe? Sienna backed away. “Does it look … broken?” “I don’t think so.” He carefully tipped the bone again to reexamine the glass end, and the rattling sound recurred. An instant later, the glass in the cylinder did something wholly unexpected. It began to glow. Sienna’s eyes opened wide. “Robert, stop! Don’t move!” CHAPTER 14 LANGDON STOOD ABSOLUTELY still, his hand in midair, holding the bone cylinder steady. Without a doubt, the glass at the end of the tube was emitting light … glowing as if the contents had suddenly awoken. Quickly, the light inside faded back to black. Sienna moved closer, breathing quickly. She tilted her head and studied the visible section of glass inside the bone. “Tip it again,” she whispered. “Very slowly.” Langdon gently turned the bone upside down. Again, a small object rattled the length of the bone and stopped. “Once more,” she said. “Gently.” Langdon repeated the process, and again the tube rattled. This time, the interior glass shimmered faintly, glowing again for an instant before it faded away. “It’s got to be a test tube,” Sienna declared, “with an agitator ball.” Langdon was familiar with the agitator balls used in spray-paint cans—submerged pellets that helped stir the paint when the can was shaken. “It probably contains some kind of phosphorescent chemical compound,” Sienna said, “or a bioluminescent organism that glows when it’s stimulated.” Langdon was having other ideas. While he had seen chemical glow sticks and even bioluminescent plankton that glowed when a boat churned up its habitat, he was nearly certain the cylinder in his hand contained neither of these things. He gently tipped the tube several more times, until it glowed, and then held the luminescent end over his palm. As expected, a faint reddish light appeared, projected onto his skin. Nice to know a 208 IQ can be wrong sometimes. “Watch this,” Langdon said, and began shaking the tube violently. The object inside rattled back and forth, faster and faster. Sienna jumped back. “What are you doing!?” Still shaking the tube, Langdon walked over to the light switch and flipped it off, plunging the kitchen into relative darkness. “It’s not a test tube inside,” he said, still shaking as hard as he could. “It’s a Faraday pointer.” Langdon had once been given a similar device by one of his students—a laser pointer for lecturers who disliked wasting endless AAA batteries and didn’t mind the effort of shaking their pointer for a few seconds in order to transform their own kinetic energy into electricity on demand. When the device was agitated, a metal ball inside sailed back and forth across a series of paddles and powered a tiny generator. Apparently someone had decided to slide this particular pointer into a hollow, carved bone—an ancient skin to sheathe a modern electronic toy. The tip of the pointer in his hand was now glowing intensely, and Langdon gave Sienna an uneasy grin. “Showtime.” He aimed the bone-sheathed pointer at a bare space on the kitchen wall. When the wall lit up, Sienna drew a startled breath. It was Langdon, however, who physically recoiled in surprise. The light that appeared on the wall was not a little red laser dot. It was a vivid, high-definition photograph that emanated from the tube as if from an old-fashioned slide projector. My God! Langdon’s hand trembled slightly as he absorbed the macabre scene projected on the wall before him. No wonder I’ve been seeing images of death. At his side, Sienna covered her mouth and took a tentative step forward, clearly entranced by what she was seeing. The scene projected out of the carved bone was a grim oil painting of human suffering—thousands of souls undergoing wretched tortures in various levels of hell. The underworld was portrayed as a cutaway cross section of the earth into which plunged a cavernous funnel-shaped pit of unfathomable depth. This pit of hell was divided into descending terraces of increasing misery, each level populated by tormented sinners of every kind. Langdon recognized the image at once. The masterpiece before him—La Mappa dell’Inferno—had been painted by one of the true giants of the Italian Renaissance, Sandro Botticelli. An elaborate blueprint of the underworld, The Map of Hell was one of the most frightening visions of the afterlife ever created. Dark, grim, and terrifying, the painting stopped people in their tracks even today. Unlike his vibrant and colorful Primavera or Birth of Venus, Botticelli had crafted his Map of Hell with a depressing palate of reds, sepias, and browns. Langdon’s crashing headache had suddenly returned, and yet for the first time since waking up in a strange hospital, he felt a piece of the puzzle tumble into place. His grim hallucinations obviously had been stirred by seeing this famous painting. I must have been studying Botticelli’s Map of Hell, he thought, although he had no recollection of why. While the image itself was disturbing, it was the painting’s provenance that was now causing Langdon an increasing disquiet. Langdon was well aware that the inspiration for this foreboding masterpiece had originated not in the mind of Botticelli himself … but rather in the mind of someone who had lived two hundred years before him. One great work of art inspired by another. Botticelli’s Map of Hell was in fact a tribute to a fourteenth-century work of literature that had become one of history’s most celebrated writings … a notoriously macabre vision of hell that resonated to this day. Dante’s Inferno. Across the street, Vayentha quietly climbed a service staircase and concealed herself on the rooftop terrace of the sleepy little Pensione la Fiorentina. Langdon had provided a nonexistent room number and a fake meeting place to his consulate contact—a “mirrored meet,” as it was called in her business—a common tradecraft technique that would enable him to assess the situation before revealing his own location. Invariably, the fake or “mirrored” location was selected because it lay in perfect view of his actual location. Vayentha found a concealed vantage point on the rooftop from which she had a bird’s-eye view of the entire area. Slowly, she let her eyes climb the apartment building across the street. Your move, Mr. Langdon. At that moment, on board The Mendacium, the provost stepped out onto the mahogany deck and inhaled deeply, savoring the salty air of the Adriatic. This vessel had been his home for years, and yet now, the series of events transpiring in Florence threatened to destroy everything he had built. His field agent Vayentha had put everything at risk, and while she would face an inquiry when this mission was over, right now the provost still needed her. She damned well better regain control of this mess. Brisk footsteps approached behind him, and the provost turned to see one of his female analysts arriving at a jog. “Sir?” the analyst said, breathless. “We have new information.” Her voice cut the morning air with a rare intensity. “It appears Robert Langdon just accessed his Harvard e-mail account from an unmasked IP address.” She paused, locking eyes with the provost. “Langdon’s precise location is now traceable.” The provost was stunned that anyone could be so foolish. This changes everything. He steepled his hands and stared out at the coastline, considering the implications. “Do we know the status of the SRS team?” “Yes, sir. Less than two miles away from Langdon’s position.” The provost needed only a moment to make the decision. CHAPTER 15 “L’INFERNO DI DANTE”, Sienna whispered, her expression rapt as she inched closer to the stark image of the underworld now projected on her kitchen wall. Dante’s vision of hell, Langdon thought, rendered here in living color. Exalted as one of the preeminent works of world literature, the Inferno was the first of three books that made up Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy—a 14,233-line epic poem describing Dante’s brutal descent into the underworld, journey through purgatory, and eventual arrival in paradise. Of the Comedy’s three sections—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—Inferno was by far the most widely read and memorable. Composed by Dante Alighieri in the early 1300s, Inferno had quite literally redefined medieval perceptions of damnation. Never before had the concept of hell captivated the masses in such an entertaining way. Overnight, Dante’s work solidified the abstract concept of hell into a clear and terrifying vision—visceral, palpable, and unforgettable. Not surprisingly, following the poem’s release, the Catholic Church enjoyed an enormous uptick in attendance from terrified sinners looking to avoid Dante’s updated version of the underworld. Depicted here by Botticelli, Dante’s horrific vision of hell was constructed as a subterranean funnel of suffering—a wretched underground landscape of fire, brimstone, sewage, monsters, and Satan himself waiting at its core. The pit was constructed in nine distinct levels, the Nine Rings of Hell, into which sinners were cast in accordance with the depth of their sin. Near the top, the lustful or “carnal malefactors” were blown about by an eternal windstorm, a symbol of their inability to control their desire. Beneath them the gluttons were forced to lie facedown in a vile slush of sewage, their mouths filled with the product of their excess. Deeper still, the heretics were trapped in flaming coffins, damned to eternal fire. And so it went … getting worse and worse the deeper one descended. In the seven centuries since its publication, Dante’s enduring vision of hell had inspired tributes, translations, and variations by some of history’s greatest creative minds. Longfellow, Chaucer, Marx, Milton, Balzac, Borges, and even several popes had all written pieces based on Dante’s Inferno. Monteverdi, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Puccini composed pieces based on Dante’s work, as had one of Langdon’s favorite living recording artists—Loreena McKennitt. Even the modern world of video games and iPad apps had no shortage of Dante-related offerings. Langdon, eager to share with his students the vibrant symbolic richness of Dante’s vision, sometimes taught a course on the recurring imagery found in both Dante and the works he had inspired over the centuries. “Robert,” Sienna said, shifting closer to the image on the wall. “Look at that!” She pointed to an area near the bottom of the funnel-shaped hell. The area she was pointing to was known as the Malebolge—meaning “evil ditches.” It was the eighth and penultimate ring of hell and was divided into ten separate ditches, each for a specific type of fraud. Sienna pointed more excitedly now. “Look! Didn’t you say, in your vision, you saw this?!” Langdon squinted at where Sienna was pointing, but he saw nothing. The tiny projector was losing power, and the image had begun to fade. He quickly shook the device again until it was glowing brightly. Then he carefully set it farther back from the wall, on the edge of the counter across the small kitchen, letting it cast an even larger image from there. Langdon approached Sienna, stepping to the side to study the glowing map. Again Sienna pointed down toward the eighth ring of hell. “Look. Didn’t you say your hallucinations included a pair of legs sticking out of the earth upside down with the letter R?” She touched a precise spot on the wall. “There they are!” As Langdon had seen many times in this painting, the tenth ditch of the Malebolge was packed with sinners half buried upside down, their legs sticking out of the earth. But strangely, in this version, one pair of legs bore the letter R, written in mud, exactly as Langdon had seen in his vision. My God! Langdon peered more intently at the tiny detail. “That letter R … that is definitely not in Botticelli’s original!” “There’s another letter,” Sienna said, pointing. Langdon followed her outstretched finger to another of the ten ditches in the Malebolge, where the letter E was scrawled on a false prophet whose head had been put on backward. What in the world? This painting has been modified. Other letters now appeared to him, scrawled on sinners throughout all ten ditches of the Malebolge. He saw a C on a seducer being whipped by demons … another R on a thief perpetually bitten by snakes … an A on a corrupt politician submerged in a boiling lake of tar. “These letters,” Langdon said with certainty, “are definitely not part of Botticelli’s original. This image has been digitally edited.” He returned his gaze to the uppermost ditch of the Malebolge and began reading the letters downward, through each of the ten ditches, from top to bottom. C … A … T … R … O … V … A … C … E … R “Catrovacer?” Langdon said. “Is this Italian?” Sienna shook her head. “Not Latin either. I don’t recognize it.” “A … signature, maybe?” “Catrovacer?” She looked doubtful. “Doesn’t sound like a name to me. But look over there.” She pointed to one of the many characters in the third ditch of the Malebolge. When Langdon’s eyes found the figure, he instantly felt a chill. Among the crowd of sinners in the third ditch was an iconic image from the Middle Ages—a cloaked man in a mask with a long, birdlike beak and dead eyes. The plague mask. “Is there a plague doctor in Botticelli’s original?” Sienna asked. “Absolutely not. That figure has been added.” “And did Botticelli sign his original?” Langdon couldn’t recall, but as his eyes moved to the lower right-hand corner where a signature normally would be, he realized why she had asked. There was no signature, and yet barely visible along La Mappa’s dark brown border was a line of text in tiny block letters: la verit? ? visibile solo attraverso gli occhi della morte. Langdon knew enough Italian to understand the gist. “ ‘The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death.’ ” Sienna nodded. “Bizarre.” The two of them stood in silence as the morbid image before them slowly began to fade. Dante’s Inferno, Langdon thought. Inspiring foreboding pieces of art since 1330. Langdon’s course on Dante always included an entire section on the illustrious artwork inspired by the Inferno. In addition to Botticelli’s celebrated Map of Hell, there was Rodin’s timeless sculpture of The Three Shades from The Gates of Hell … Stradanus’s illustration of Phlegyas paddling through submerged bodies on the river Styx … William Blake’s lustful sinners swirling through an eternal tempest … Bouguereau’s strangely erotic vision of Dante and Virgil watching two nude men locked in battle … Bayros’s tortured souls huddling beneath a hail-like torrent of scalding pellets and droplets of fire … Salvador Dal?’s eccentric series of watercolors and woodcuts … and Dor?’s huge collection of black-and-white etchings depicting everything from the tunneled entrance to Hades … to winged Satan himself. Now it seemed that Dante’s poetic vision of hell had not only influenced the most revered artists throughout history. It had also, apparently, inspired yet another individual—a twisted soul who had digitally altered Botticelli’s famous painting, adding ten letters, a plague doctor, and then signing it with an ominous phrase about seeing the truth through the eyes of death. This artist had then stored the image on a high-tech projector sheathed in a freakishly carved bone. Langdon couldn’t imagine who would have created such an artifact, and yet, at the moment, this issue seemed secondary to a far more unnerving question. Why the hell am I carrying it? As Sienna stood with Langdon in the kitchen and pondered her next move, the unexpected roar of a high-horsepower engine echoed up from the street below. It was followed by a staccato burst of screeching tires and car doors slamming. Puzzled, Sienna hurried to the window and peered outside. A black, unmarked van had skidded to a stop in the street below. Out of the van flowed a team of men, all dressed in black uniforms with circular green medallions on their left shoulders. They gripped automatic rifles and moved with fierce, military efficiency. Without hesitation, four soldiers dashed toward the entrance of the apartment building. Sienna felt her blood go cold. “Robert!” she shouted. “I don’t know who they are, but they found us!” Down in the street, Agent Christoph Br?der shouted orders to his men as they rushed into the building. He was a powerfully built man whose military background had imbued him with an emotionless sense of duty and respect for the command chain. He knew his mission, and he knew the stakes. The organization for whom he worked contained many divisions, but Br?der’s division—Surveillance and Response Support—was summoned only when a situation reached “crisis” status. As his men disappeared into the apartment building, Br?der stood watch at the front door, pulling out his comm device and contacting the person in charge. “It’s Br?der,” he said. “We’ve successfully tracked Langdon through his computer IP address. My team is moving in. I’ll alert you when we have him.” High above Br?der, on the rooftop terrace of Pensione la Fiorentina, Vayentha stared down in horrified disbelief at the agents dashing into the apartment building. What the hell are THEY doing here?! She ran a hand through her spiked hair, suddenly grasping the dire consequences of her botched assignment last night. With the single coo of a dove, everything had spiraled wildly out of control. What had begun as a simple mission … had now turned into a living nightmare. If the SRS team is here, then it’s all over for me. Vayentha desperately grabbed her Sectra Tiger XS communications device and called the provost. “Sir,” she stammered. “The SRS team is here! Br?der’s men are swarming the apartment building across the street!” She awaited a response, but when it came, she heard only sharp clicks on the line, then an electronic voice, which calmly stated, “Disavowal protocol commencing.” Vayentha lowered the phone and looked at the screen just in time to see the comm device go dead. As the blood drained from her face, Vayentha forced herself to accept what was happening. The Consortium had just severed all ties with her. No links. No association. I’ve been disavowed. The shock lasted only an instant. Then the fear set in. CHAPTER 16 “HURRY, ROBERT!” SIENNA urged. “Follow me!” Langdon’s thoughts were still consumed by grim images of Dante’s underworld as he charged out the door into the hall of the apartment building. Until this instant, Sienna Brooks had managed the morning’s substantial stress with a kind of detached poise, but now her calm demeanor had grown taut with an emotion Langdon had yet to see in her—true fear. In the hallway, Sienna ran ahead, rushing past the elevator, which was already descending, no doubt summoned by the men now entering the lobby. She sprinted to the end of the hall and, without looking back, disappeared into the stairwell. Langdon followed close behind, skidding on the smooth soles of his borrowed loafers. The tiny projector in the breast pocket of his Brioni suit bounced against his chest as he ran. His mind flashed on the strange letters adorning the eighth ring of hell: CATROVACER. He pictured the plague mask and the strange signature: The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death. Langdon strained to connect these disparate elements, but at the moment nothing was making sense. When he finally came to a stop on the staircase landing, Sienna was there, listening intently. Langdon could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs from below. “Is there another exit?” Langdon whispered. “Follow me,” she said tersely. Sienna had kept Langdon alive once already today, and so, with little choice but to trust the woman, Langdon took a deep breath and bounded down the stairs after her. They descended one floor, and the sounds of approaching boots grew very close now, echoing only a floor or two below them. Why is she running directly into them? Before Langdon could protest, Sienna grabbed his hand and yanked him out of the stairwell along a deserted hallway of apartments—a long corridor of locked doors. There’s nowhere to hide! Sienna flipped a light switch and a few bulbs went out, but the dim hallway did little to hide them. Sienna and Langdon were clearly visible here. The thundering footsteps were nearly upon them now, and Langdon knew their assailants would appear on the staircase at any moment, with a direct view down this hall. “I need your jacket,” Sienna whispered as she yanked Langdon’s suit jacket off him. She then forced Langdon to crouch on his haunches behind her in a recessed doorframe. “Don’t move.” What is she doing? She’s in plain sight! The soldiers appeared on the staircase, rushing upward but stopping short when they saw Sienna in the darkened hallway. “Per l’amore di Dio!” Sienna shouted at them, her tone scathing. “Cos’? questa confusione?” The two men squinted, clearly uncertain what they were looking at. Sienna kept yelling at them. “Tanto chiasso a quest’ora!” So much noise at this hour! Langdon now saw that Sienna had draped his black jacket over her head and shoulders like an old woman’s shawl. She had hunched over, positioning herself to obstruct their view of Langdon crouched in the shadows, and now, utterly transformed, she hobbled one step toward them and screamed like a senile old woman. One of the soldiers held up his hand, motioning for her to return to her apartment. “Signora! Rientri subito in casa!” Sienna took another rickety step, shaking her fist angrily. “Avete svegliato mio marito, che ? malato!” Langdon listened in bewilderment. They woke up your ailing husband? The other soldier now raised his machine gun and aimed directly at her. “Ferma o sparo!” Sienna stopped short, cursing them mercilessly as she hobbled backward, away from them. The men hurried on, disappearing up the stairs. Not quite Shakespearean acting, Langdon thought, but impressive. Apparently a background in drama could be a versatile weapon. Sienna removed the jacket from her head and tossed it back to Langdon. “Okay, follow me.” This time Langdon followed without hesitation. They descended to the landing above the lobby, where two more soldiers were just entering the elevator to go upstairs. On the street outside, another soldier stood watch beside the van, his black uniform stretched taut across his muscular body. In silence, Sienna and Langdon hurried downstairs toward the basement. The underground carport was dark and smelled of urine. Sienna jogged over to a corner packed with scooters and motorcycles. She stopped at a silver Trike—a three-wheeled moped contraption that looked like the ungainly offspring of an Italian Vespa and an adult tricycle. She ran her slender hand beneath the Trike’s front fender and removed a small magnetized case. Inside was a key, which she inserted, and revved the engine. Seconds later, Langdon was seated behind her on the bike. Precariously perched on the small seat, Langdon groped at his sides, looking for handgrips or something to steady himself. “Not the moment for modesty,” Sienna said, grabbing his hands and wrapping them around her slender waist. “You’ll want to hold on.” Langdon did exactly that as Sienna gunned the Trike up the exit ramp. The vehicle had more power than he would have imagined, and they nearly left the ground as they launched out of the garage, emerging into the early-morning light about fifty yards from the main entrance. The brawny soldier in front of the building turned at once to see Langdon and Sienna tearing away, their Trike letting out a high-pitched whine as she opened the throttle. Perched on the back, Langdon peered back over his shoulder toward the soldier, who now raised his weapon and took careful aim. Langdon braced himself. A single shot rang out, ricocheting off the Trike’s back fender, barely missing the base of Langdon’s spine. Jesus! Sienna made a hard left at an intersection, and Langdon felt himself sliding, fighting to keep his balance. “Lean toward me!” she shouted. Langdon leaned forward, centering himself again as Sienna raced the Trike down a larger thoroughfare. They had driven a full block before Langdon began breathing again. Who the hell were those men?! Sienna’s focus remained locked on the road ahead as she raced down the avenue, weaving in and out of the light morning traffic. Several pedestrians did double takes as they passed, apparently puzzled to see a six-foot man in a Brioni suit riding behind a slender woman. Langdon and Sienna had traveled three blocks and were approaching a major intersection when horns blared up ahead. A sleek black van rounded the corner on two wheels, fishtailing into the intersection, and then accelerating up the road directly toward them. The van was identical to the soldiers’ van back at the apartment building. Sienna immediately swerved hard to her right and slammed on the brakes. Langdon’s chest pressed hard into her back as she skidded to a stop out of sight behind a parked delivery truck. She nestled the Trike up to the rear bumper of the truck and killed the engine. Did they see us!? She and Langdon huddled low and waited … breathless. The van roared past without hesitation, apparently never having seen them. As the vehicle sped by, however, Langdon caught a fleeting glimpse of someone inside. In the backseat, an attractive older woman was wedged between two soldiers like a captive. Her eyes sagged and her head bobbed as if she were delirious or maybe drugged. She wore an amulet and had long silver hair that fell in ringlets. For a moment Langdon’s throat clenched, and he thought he’d seen a ghost. It was the woman from his visions. CHAPTER 17 THE PROVOST STORMED out of the control room and marched along the long starboard deck of The Mendacium, trying to gather his thoughts. What had just transpired at the Florence apartment building was unthinkable. He circled the entire ship twice before stalking into his office and taking out a bottle of fifty-year-old Highland Park single malt. Without pouring a glass, he set down the bottle and turned his back on it—a personal reminder that he was still very much in control. His eyes moved instinctively to a heavy, weathered tome on his bookshelf—a gift from a client … the client whom he now wished he’d never met. A year ago … how could I have known? The provost did not normally interview prospective clients personally, but this one had come to him through a trusted source, and so he had made an exception. It had been a dead calm day at sea when the client arrived aboard The Mendacium via his own private helicopter. The visitor, a notable figure in his field, was forty-six, clean-cut, and exceptionally tall, with piercing green eyes. “As you know,” the man had begun, “your services were recommended to me by a mutual friend.” The visitor stretched out his long legs and made himself at home in the provost’s lushly appointed office. “So, let me tell you what I need.” “Actually, no,” the provost interrupted, showing the man who was in charge. “My protocol requires that you tell me nothing. I will explain the services I provide, and you will decide which, if any, are of interest to you.” The visitor looked taken aback but acquiesced and listened intently. In the end, what the lanky newcomer desired had turned out to be very standard fare for the Consortium—essentially a chance to become “invisible” for a while so he could pursue an endeavor far from prying eyes. Child’s play. The Consortium would accomplish this by providing him a fake identity and a secure location, entirely off the grid, where he could do his work in total secrecy—whatever his work might be. The Consortium never inquired for what purpose a client required a service, preferring to know as little as possible about those for whom they worked. For a full year, at a staggering profit, the provost had provided safe haven to the green-eyed man, who had turned out to be an ideal client. The provost had no contact with him, and all of his bills were paid on time. Then, two weeks ago, everything changed. Unexpectedly, the client had made contact, demanding a personal meeting with the provost. Considering the sum of money the client had paid, the provost obliged. The disheveled man who arrived on the yacht was barely recognizable as the steady, clean-cut person with whom the provost had done business the year before. He had a wild look in his once-sharp green eyes. He looked almost … ill. What happened to him? What has he been doing? The provost had ushered the jittery man into his office. “The silver-haired devil,” his client stammered. “She’s getting closer every day.” The provost glanced down at his client’s file, eyeing the photo of the attractive silver-haired woman. “Yes,” the provost said, “your silver-haired devil. We are well aware of your enemies. And as powerful as she may be, for a full year we’ve kept her from you, and we will continue to do so.” The green-eyed man anxiously twisted strands of greasy hair around his fingertips. “Don’t let her beauty fool you, she is a dangerous foe.” True, the provost thought, still displeased that his client had drawn the attention of someone so influential. The silver-haired woman had tremendous access and resources—not the kind of adversary the provost appreciated having to deflect. “If she or her demons locate me …” the client began. “They won’t,” the provost had assured him. “Have we not thus far hidden you and provided you everything you’ve requested?” “Yes,” the man said. “And yet, I will sleep easier if …” He paused, regrouping. “I need to know that if anything happens to me, you will carry out my final wishes.” “Those wishes being?” The man reached into a bag and pulled out a small, sealed envelope. “The contents of this envelope provide access to a safe-deposit box in Florence. Inside the box, you will find a small object. If anything happens to me, I need you to deliver the object for me. It is a gift of sorts.” “Very well.” The provost lifted his pen to make notes. “And to whom shall I deliver it?” “To the silver-haired devil.” The provost glanced up. “A gift for your tormentor?” “More of a thorn in her side.” His eyes flashed wildly. “A clever little barb fashioned from a bone. She will discover it is a map … her own personal Virgil … an escort to the center of her own private hell.” The provost studied him for a long moment. “As you wish. Consider it done.” “The timing will be critical,” the man urged. “The gift should not be delivered too soon. You must keep it hidden until …” He paused, suddenly lost in thought. “Until when?” the provost prodded. The man stood abruptly and walked over behind the provost’s desk, grabbing a red marker and frantically circling a date on the provost’s personal desk calendar. “Until this day.” The provost set his jaw and exhaled, swallowing his displeasure at the man’s brazenness. “Understood,” the provost said. “I will do nothing until the circled day, at which time the object in the safe-deposit box, whatever it may be, will be delivered to the silver-haired woman. You have my word.” He counted the days on his calendar until the awkwardly circled date. “I will carry out your wishes in precisely fourteen days from now.” “And not one day before!” the client admonished feverishly. “I understand,” the provost assured. “Not a day before.” The provost took the envelope, slid it into the man’s file, and made the necessary notations to ensure that his client’s wishes were followed precisely. While his client had not described the exact nature of the object in the safe-deposit box, the provost preferred it this way. Detachment was a cornerstone of the Consortium’s philosophy. Provide the service. Ask no questions. Pass no judgment. The client’s shoulders softened and he exhaled heavily. “Thank you.” “Anything else?” the provost had asked, eager to rid himself of his transformed client. “Yes, actually, there is.” He reached into his pocket and produced a small, crimson memory stick. “This is a video file.” He laid the memory stick in front of the provost. “I would like it uploaded to the world media.” The provost studied the man curiously. The Consortium often mass-distributed information for clients, and yet something about this man’s request felt disconcerting. “On the same date?” the provost asked, motioning at the scrawled circle on his calendar. “Same exact date,” the client replied. “Not one moment before.” “Understood.” The provost tagged the red memory stick with the proper information. “So that’s it, then?” He stood up, attempting to end the meeting. His client remained seated. “No. There is one final thing.” The provost sat back down. The client’s green eyes were looking almost feral now. “Shortly after you deliver this video, I will become a very famous man.” You are already a famous man, the provost had thought, considering his client’s impressive accomplishments. “And you will deserve some of the credit,” the man said. “The service you have provided has enabled me to create my masterpiece … an opus that is going to change the world. You should be proud of your role.” “Whatever your masterpiece is,” the provost said with growing impatience, “I’m pleased you have had the privacy required to create it.” “As a show of thanks, I’ve brought you a parting gift.” The unkempt man reached into his bag. “A book.” The provost wondered if perhaps this book was the secret opus the client had been working on for all this time. “And did you write this book?” “No.” The man heaved a massive tome up onto the table. “Quite to the contrary … this book was written for me.” Puzzled, the provost eyed the edition his client had produced. He thinks this was written for him? The volume was a literary classic … written in the fourteenth century. “Read it,” the client urged with an eerie smile. “It will help you understand all I have done.” With that, the unkempt visitor had stood up, said good-bye, and abruptly departed. The provost watched through his office window as the man’s helicopter lifted off the deck and headed back toward the coast of Italy. Then the provost returned his attention to the large book before him. With uncertain fingers, he lifted the leather cover and thumbed to the beginning. The opening stanza of the work was written in large calligraphy, taking up the entire first page. INFERNO Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost. On the opposing page, his client had signed the book with a handwritten message: My dear friend, thank you for helping me find the path. The world thanks you, too. The provost had no idea what this meant, but he’d read enough. He closed the book and placed it on his bookshelf. Thankfully, his professional relationship with this strange individual would be over soon. Fourteen more days, the provost thought, turning his gaze to the wildly scrawled red circle on his personal calendar. In the days that followed, the provost felt uncharacteristically on edge about this client. The man seemed to have come unhinged. Nonetheless, despite the provost’s intuition, the time passed without incident. Then, just before the circled date, there occurred a rapid series of calamitous events in Florence. The provost tried to handle the crisis, but it quickly accelerated out of control. The crisis climaxed with his client’s breathless ascent up the Badia tower. He jumped off … to his death. Despite his horror at losing a client, especially in this manner, the provost remained a man of his word. He quickly began preparing to make good on his final promise to the deceased—the delivery to the silver-haired woman of the contents of a safe-deposit box in Florence—the timing of which, he had been admonished, was critical. Not before the date circled in your calendar. The provost gave the envelope containing the safe-deposit-box codes to Vayentha, who had traveled to Florence to recover the object inside—this “clever little barb.” When Vayentha called in, however, her news was both startling and deeply alarming. The contents of the safe-deposit box had already been removed, and Vayentha had barely escaped being detained. Somehow, the silver-haired woman had learned of the account and had used her influence to gain access to the safe-deposit box and also to place an arrest warrant on anyone else who showed up looking to open it. That was three days ago. The client had clearly intended the purloined object to be his final insult to the silver-haired woman—a taunting voice from the grave. And yet now it speaks too soon. The Consortium had been in a desperate scramble ever since—using all its resources to protect its client’s final wishes, as well as itself. In the process, the Consortium had crossed a series of lines from which the provost knew it would be hard to return. Now, with everything unraveling in Florence, the provost stared down at his desk and wondered what the future held. On his calendar, the client’s wildly scrawled circle stared up at him—a crazed ring of red ink around an apparently special day. Tomorrow. Reluctantly, the provost eyed the bottle of Scotch on the table before him. Then, for the first time in fourteen years, he poured a glass and drained it in a single gulp. Belowdecks, facilitator Laurence Knowlton pulled the little red memory stick from his computer and set it on the desk in front of him. The video was one of the strangest things he had ever seen. And it was precisely nine minutes long … to the second. Feeling uncharacteristically alarmed, he stood and paced his tiny cubicle, wondering again whether he should share the bizarre video with the provost. Just do your job, Knowlton told himself. No questions. No judgment. Forcing the video from his mind, he marked his planner with a confirmed task. Tomorrow, as requested by the client, he would upload the video file to the media. CHAPTER 18 VIALE NICCOL? MACHIAVELLI has been called the most graceful of all Florentine avenues. With wide S-curves that serpentine through lushly wooded landscapes of hedges and deciduous trees, the drive is a favorite among cyclists and Ferrari enthusiasts. Sienna expertly maneuvered the Trike through each arching curve as they left behind the dingy residential neighborhood and moved into the clean, cedar-laden air of the city’s upscale west bank. They passed a chapel clock that was just chiming 8 A.M. Langdon held on, his mind churning with mystifying images of Dante’s inferno … and the mysterious face of a beautiful silver-haired woman he had just seen wedged in between two huge soldiers in the backseat of the van. Whoever she is, Langdon thought, they have her now. “The woman in the van,” Sienna said over the noise of the Trike’s engine. “You’re sure it was the same woman from your visions?” “Absolutely.” “Then you must have met her at some point in the past two days. The question is why you keep seeing her … and why she keeps telling you to seek and find.” Langdon agreed. “I don’t know … I have no recollection of meeting her, but every time I see her face, I have an overwhelming sense that I need to help her.” Very sorry. Very sorry. Langdon suddenly wondered if maybe his strange apology had been directed to the silver-haired woman. Did I fail her somehow? The thought left a knot in his gut. For Langdon, it felt as if a vital weapon had been extracted from his arsenal. I have no memory. Eidetic since childhood, Langdon’s memory was the intellectual asset he relied on most. For a man accustomed to recalling every intricate detail of what he saw around him, functioning without his memory felt like attempting to land a plane in the dark with no radar. “It seems like your only chance of finding answers is to decipher La Mappa,” Sienna said. “Whatever secret it holds … it seems to be the reason you’re being hunted.” Langdon nodded, thinking about the word catrovacer, set against the backdrop of writhing bodies in Dante’s Inferno. Suddenly a clear thought emerged in Langdon’s head. I awoke in Florence … No city on earth was more closely tied to Dante than Florence. Dante Alighieri had been born in Florence, grew up in Florence, fell in love, according to legend, with Beatrice in Florence, and was cruelly exiled from his home in Florence, destined to wander the Italian countryside for years, longing soulfully for his home. You shall leave everything you love most, Dante wrote of banishment. This is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. As Langdon recalled those words from the seventeenth canto of the Paradiso, he looked to the right, gazing out across the Arno River toward the distant spires of old Florence. Langdon pictured the layout of the old city—a labyrinth of tourists, congestion, and traffic bustling through narrow streets around Florence’s famed cathedral, museums, chapels, and shopping districts. He suspected that if he and Sienna ditched the Trike, they could evaporate into the throngs of people. “The old city is where we need to go,” Langdon declared. “If there are answers, that’s where they’ll probably be. Old Florence was Dante’s entire world.” Sienna nodded her agreement and called over her shoulder, “It will be safer, too—plenty of places to hide. I’ll head for Porta Romana, and from there, we can cross the river.” The river, Langdon thought with a touch of trepidation. Dante’s famous journey into hell had begun by crossing a river as well. Sienna opened up the throttle, and as the landscape blurred past, Langdon mentally scanned through images of the inferno, the dead and dying, the ten ditches of the Malebolge with the plague doctor and the strange word—CATROVACER. He pondered the words scrawled beneath La Mappa—The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death—and wondered if the grim saying might be a quote from Dante. I don’t recognize it. Langdon was well versed in Dante’s work, and his prominence as an art historian who specialized in iconography meant he was occasionally called upon to interpret the vast array of symbols that populated Dante’s landscape. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, he had given a lecture on Dante’s Inferno about two years earlier. “Divine Dante: Symbols of Hell.” Dante Alighieri had evolved into one of history’s true cult icons, sparking the creation of Dante societies all around the world. The oldest American branch had been founded in 1881 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. New England’s famous Fireside Poet was the first American to translate The Divine Comedy, his translation remaining among the most respected and widely read to this day. As a noted student of Dante’s work, Langdon had been asked to speak at a major event hosted by one of the world’s oldest Dante societies—Societ? Dante Alighieri Vienna. The event was slated to take place at the Viennese Academy of Sciences. The event’s primary sponsor—a wealthy scientist and Dante Society member—had managed to secure the academy’s two-thousand-seat lecture hall. When Langdon arrived at the event, he was met by the conference director and ushered inside. As they crossed the lobby, Langdon couldn’t help but notice the five words painted in gargantuan letters across the back wall: WHAT IF GOD WAS WRONG? “It’s a Lukas Troberg,” the director whispered. “Our newest art installation. What do you think?” Langdon eyed the massive text, uncertain how to respond. “Um … his brushstrokes are lavish, but his command of the subjunctive seems sparse.” The director gave him a confused look. Langdon hoped his rapport with the audience would be better. When he finally stepped onstage, Langdon received a rousing round of applause from a crowd that was standing room only. “Meine Damen und Herren,” Langdon began, his voice booming over the loudspeakers. “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome.” The famous line from Cabaret drew appreciative laughter from the crowd. “I’ve been informed that our audience tonight contains not only Dante Society members, but also many visiting scientists and students who may be exploring Dante for the first time. So, for those in the audience who have been too busy studying to read medieval Italian epics, I thought I’d begin with a quick overview of Dante—his life, his work, and why he is considered one of the most influential figures in all of history.” More applause. Using the tiny remote in his hand, Langdon called up a series of images of Dante, the first being Andrea del Castagno’s full-length portrait of the poet standing in a doorway, clutching a book of philosophy. “Dante Alighieri,” Langdon began. “This Florentine writer and philosopher lived from 1265 to 1321. In this portrait, as in nearly all depictions, he wears on his head a red cappuccio—a tight-fitting, plaited hood with earflaps—which, along with his crimson Lucca robe, has become the most widely reproduced image of Dante.” Langdon advanced slides to the Botticelli portrait of Dante from the Uffizi Gallery, which stressed Dante’s most salient features, a heavy jaw and hooked nose. “Here, Dante’s unique face is once again framed by his red cappuccio, but in this instance Botticelli has added a laurel wreath to his cap as a symbol of expertise—in this case in the poetic arts—a traditional symbol borrowed from ancient Greece and used even today in ceremonies honoring poet laureates and Nobel laureates.” Langdon quickly scrolled through several other images, all showing Dante in his red cap, red tunic, laurel wreath, and prominent nose. “And to round out your image of Dante, here is a statue from the Piazza di Santa Croce … and, of course, the famous fresco attributed to Giotto in the chapel of the Bargello.” Langdon left the slide of Giotto’s fresco on the screen and walked to the center of the stage. “As you are no doubt aware, Dante is best known for his monumental literary masterpiece—The Divine Comedy—a brutally vivid account of the author’s descent into hell, passage through purgatory, and eventual ascent into paradise to commune with God. By modern standards, The Divine Comedy has nothing comedic about it. It’s called a comedy for another reason entirely. In the fourteenth century, Italian literature was, by requirement, divided into two categories: tragedy, representing high literature, was written in formal Italian; comedy, representing low literature, was written in the vernacular and geared toward the general population.” Langdon advanced slides to the iconic fresco by Michelino, which showed Dante standing outside the walls of Florence clutching a copy of The Divine Comedy. In the background, the terraced mountain of purgatory rose high above the gates of hell. The painting now hung in Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore—better known as Il Duomo. “As you may have guessed from the title,” Langdon continued, “The Divine Comedy was written in the vernacular—the language of the people. Even so, it brilliantly fused religion, history, politics, philosophy, and social commentary in a tapestry of fiction that, while erudite, remained wholly accessible to the masses. The work became such a pillar of Italian culture that Dante’s writing style has been credited with nothing less than the codification of the modern Italian language.” Langdon paused a moment for effect and then whispered, “My friends, it is impossible to overstate the influence of Dante Alighieri’s work. Throughout all of history, with the sole exception perhaps of Holy Scripture, no single work of writing, art, music, or literature has inspired more tributes, imitations, variations, and annotations than The Divine Comedy.” After listing the vast array of famous composers, artists, and authors who had created works based on Dante’s epic poem, Langdon scanned the crowd. “So tell me, do we have any authors here tonight?” Nearly one-third of the hands went up. Langdon stared out in shock. Wow, either this is the most accomplished audience on earth, or this e-publishing thing is really taking off. “Well, as all of you authors know, there is nothing a writer appreciates more than a blurb—one of those single-line endorsements from a powerful individual, designed to make others want to buy your work. And, in the Middle Ages, blurbs existed, too. And Dante got quite a few of them.” Langdon changed slides. “How would you like to have this on your book jacket?” Ne’er walked the earth a greater man than he. —Michelangelo A murmur of surprise rustled through the crowd. “Yes,” Langdon said, “that’s the same Michelangelo you all know from the Sistine Chapel and the David. In addition to being a master painter and sculptor, Michelangelo was a superb poet, publishing nearly three hundred poems—including one titled ‘Dante,’ dedicated to the man whose stark visions of hell were those that inspired Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. And if you don’t believe me, read the third canto of Dante’s Inferno and then visit the Sistine Chapel; just above the altar, you’ll see this familiar image.” Langdon advanced slides to a frightening detail of a muscle-bound beast swinging a giant paddle at cowering people. “This is Dante’s hellish ferryman, Charon, beating straggling passengers with an oar.” Langdon moved now to a new slide—a second detail of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment—a man being crucified. “This is Haman the Agagite, who, according to Scripture, was hanged to death. However, in Dante’s poem, he was crucified instead. As you can see here in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo chose Dante’s version over that of the Bible.” Langdon grinned and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Don’t tell the pope.” The crowd laughed. “Dante’s Inferno created a world of pain and suffering beyond all previous human imagination, and his writing quite literally defined our modern visions of hell.” Langdon paused. “And believe me, the Catholic Church has much to thank Dante for. His Inferno terrified the faithful for centuries, and no doubt tripled church attendance among the fearful.” Langdon switched the slide. “And this leads us to the reason we are all here tonight.” The screen now displayed the title of his lecture: DIVINE DANTE: SYMBOLS OF HELL. “Dante’s Inferno is a landscape so rich in symbolism and iconography that I often dedicate an entire semester course to it. And tonight, I thought there would be no better way to unveil the symbols of Dante’s Inferno than to walk side by side with him … through the gates of hell.” Langdon paced out to the edge of the stage and surveyed the crowd. “Now, if we’re planning on taking a stroll through hell, I strongly recommend we use a map. And there is no map of Dante’s hell more complete and accurate than the one painted by Sandro Botticelli.” He touched his remote, and Botticelli’s forbidding Mappa dell’Inferno materialized before the crowd. He could hear several groans as people absorbed the various horrors taking place in the funnel-shaped subterranean cavern. “Unlike some artists, Botticelli was extremely faithful in his interpretation of Dante’s text. In fact, he spent so much time reading Dante that the great art historian Giorgio Vasari said Botticelli’s obsession with Dante led to ‘serious disorders in his living.’ Botticelli created more than two dozen other works relating to Dante, but this map is his most famous.” Langdon turned now, pointing to the upper left-hand corner of the painting. “Our journey will begin up there, aboveground, where you can see Dante in red, along with his guide, Virgil, standing outside the gates of hell. From there we will travel downward, through the nine rings of Dante’s inferno, and eventually come face-to-face with …” Langdon quickly flashed to a new slide—a giant enlargement of Satan as depicted by Botticelli in this very painting—a horrific, three-headed Lucifer consuming three different people, one in each mouth. The crowd gasped audibly. “A glance at coming attractions,” Langdon announced. “This frightening character here is where tonight’s journey will end. This is the ninth ring of hell, where Satan himself resides. However …” Langdon paused. “Getting there is half the fun, so let’s rewind a bit … back up to the gates of hell, where our journey begins.” Langdon moved to the next slide—a Gustave Dor? lithograph that depicted a dark, tunneled entrance carved into the face of an austere cliff. The inscription above the door read: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE. “So …” Langdon said with a smile. “Shall we enter?” Somewhere tires screeched loudly, and the audience evaporated before Langdon’s eyes. He felt himself lurch forward, and he collided with Sienna’s back as the Trike skidded to a stop in the middle of the Viale Machiavelli. Langdon reeled, still thinking about the gates of hell looming before him. As he regained his bearings, he saw where he was. “What’s going on?” he demanded. Sienna pointed three hundred yards ahead to the Porta Romana—the ancient stone gateway that served as the entrance to old Florence. “Robert, we’ve got a problem.” CHAPTER 19 AGENT BR?DER STOOD in the humble apartment and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Who the hell lives here? The decor was sparse and jumbled, like a college dorm room furnished on a budget. “Agent Br?der?” one of his men called from down the hall. “You’ll want to see this.” As Br?der made his way down the hall, he wondered if the local police had detained Langdon yet. Br?der would have preferred to solve this crisis “in-house,” but Langdon’s escape had left little choice but to enlist local police support and set up roadblocks. An agile motorbike on the labyrinthine streets of Florence would easily elude Br?der’s vans, whose heavy polycarbonate windows and solid, puncture-proof tires made them impenetrable but lumbering. The Italian police had a reputation for being uncooperative with outsiders, but Br?der’s organization had significant influence—police, consulates, embassies. When we make demands, nobody dares question. Br?der entered the small office where his man stood over an open laptop and typed in latex gloves. “This is the machine he used,” the man said. “Langdon used it to access his e-mail and run some searches. The files are still cached.” Br?der moved toward the desk. “It doesn’t appear to be Langdon’s computer,” the tech said. “It’s registered to someone initialed S.C.—I should have a full name shortly.” As Br?der waited, his eyes were drawn to a stack of papers on the desk. He picked them up, thumbing through the unusual array—an old playbill from the London Globe Theatre and a series of newspaper articles. The more Br?der read, the wider his eyes became. Taking the documents, Br?der slipped back into the hall and placed a call to his boss. “It’s Br?der,” he said. “I think I’ve got an ID on the person helping Langdon.” “Who is it?” his boss replied. Br?der exhaled slowly. “You’re not going to believe this.” Two miles away, Vayentha hunkered low on her BMW as it fled the area. Police cars raced past her in the opposite direction, sirens blaring. I’ve been disavowed, she thought. Normally, the soft vibration of the motorcycle’s four-stroke engine helped calm her nerves. Not today. Vayentha had worked for the Consortium for twelve years, climbing the ranks from ground support, to strategy coordination, all the way to a high-ranked field agent. My career is all I have. Field agents endured a life of secrecy, travel, and long missions, all of which precluded any real outside life or relationships. I’ve been on this same mission for a year, she thought, still unable to believe the provost had pulled the trigger and disavowed her so abruptly. For twelve months Vayentha had been overseeing support services for the same client of the Consortium—an eccentric, green-eyed genius who wanted only to “disappear” for a while so he could work unmolested by his rivals and enemies. He traveled very rarely, and always invisibly, but mostly he worked. The nature of this man’s work was not known to Vayentha, whose contract had simply been to keep the client hidden from the powerful people trying to find him. Vayentha had performed the service with consummate professionalism, and everything had gone perfectly. Perfectly, that was … until last night. Vayentha’s emotional state and career had been in a downward spiral ever since. I’m on the outside now. The disavowal protocol, if invoked, required that the agent instantly abandon her current mission and exit “the arena” at once. If the agent were captured, the Consortium would disavow all knowledge of the agent. Agents knew better than to press their luck with the organization, having witnessed firsthand its disturbing ability to manipulate reality into whatever suited its needs. Vayentha knew of only two agents who had been disavowed. Strangely, she had never seen either of them again. She had always assumed they had been called in for their formal review and fired, required never to make contact again with Consortium employees. Now, however, Vayentha was not so sure. You’re overreacting, she tried to tell herself. The Consortium’s methods are far more elegant than cold-blooded murder. Even so, she felt a fresh chill sweep through her body. It had been instinct that urged her to flee the hotel rooftop unseen the moment she saw Br?der’s team arrive, and she wondered if that instinct had saved her. Nobody knows where I am now. As Vayentha sped northward on the sleek straightaway of the Viale del Poggio Imperiale, she realized what a difference a few hours had made for her. Last night she had been worried about protecting her job. Now she was worried about protecting her life. CHAPTER 20 FLORENCE WAS ONCE a walled city, its primary entrance the stone gateway of the Porta Romana, built in 1326. While most of the city’s perimeter walls were destroyed centuries ago, the Porta Romana still exists, and to this day, traffic enters the city by funneling through deep arched tunnels in the colossal fortification. The gateway itself is a fifty-foot-tall barrier of ancient brick and stone whose primary passageway still retains its massive bolted wooden doors, which are propped open at all times to let traffic pass through. Six major roads converge in front of these doors, filtering into a rotary whose grassy median is dominated by a large Pistoletto statue depicting a woman departing the city gates carrying an enormous bundle on her head. Although nowadays it is more of a snarled traffic nightmare, Florence’s austere city gate was once the site of the Fiera dei Contratti—the Contracts Fair—at which fathers sold their daughters into a contracted marriage, often forcing them to dance provocatively in an effort to secure higher dowries. This morning, several hundred yards short of the gateway, Sienna had screeched to a stop and was now pointing in alarm. On the back of the Trike, Langdon looked ahead and immediately shared her apprehension. In front of them, a long line of cars idled at a full stop. Traffic in the rotary had been halted by a police barricade, and more police cars were now arriving. Armed officers were walking from car to car, asking questions. That can’t be for us, Langdon thought. Can it? A sweaty cyclist came pedaling toward them up the Viale Machiavelli away from the traffic. He was on a recumbent bike, his bare legs pumping out in front of him. Sienna shouted out to him. “Cos’ ? successo?” “E chi lo sa!” he shouted back, looking concerned. “Carabinieri.” He hurried past, looking eager to clear the area. Sienna turned to Langdon, her expression grim. “Roadblock. Military police.” Sirens wailed in the distance behind them, and Sienna spun in her seat, staring back up the Viale Machiavelli, her face now masked with fear. We’re trapped in the middle, Langdon thought, scanning the area for any exit at all—an intersecting road, a park, a driveway—but all he saw were private residences on their left and a high stone wall to their right. The sirens grew louder. “Up there,” Langdon urged, pointing thirty yards ahead to a deserted construction site where a portable cement mixer offered at least a little bit of cover. Sienna gunned the bike up onto the sidewalk and raced into the work area. They parked behind the cement mixer, quickly realizing that it offered barely enough concealment for the Trike alone. “Follow me,” Sienna said, rushing toward a small portable toolshed nestled in the bushes against the stone wall. That’s not a toolshed, Langdon realized, his nose crinkling as they got closer. That’s a Porta-Potty. As Langdon and Sienna arrived outside the construction workers’ chemical toilet, they could hear police cars approaching from behind them. Sienna yanked the door handle, but it didn’t budge. A heavy chain and padlock secured it. Langdon grabbed Sienna’s arm and pulled her around behind the structure, forcing her into the narrow space between the toilet and the stone wall. The two of them barely fit, and the air smelled putrid and heavy. Langdon slid in behind her just as a jet-black Subaru Forester came into view with the word CARABINIERI emblazoned on its side. The vehicle rolled slowly past their location. The Italian military police, Langdon thought, incredulous. He wondered if these officers also had orders to shoot on sight. “Someone is dead serious about finding us,” Sienna whispered. “And somehow they did.” “GPS?” Langdon wondered aloud. “Maybe the projector has a tracking device in it?” Sienna shook her head. “Believe me, if that thing were traceable, the police would be right on top of us.” Langdon shifted his tall frame, trying to get comfortable in the cramped surroundings. He found himself face-to-face with a collage of elegantly styled graffiti scrawled on the back of the Porta-Potty. Leave it to the Italians. Most American Porta-Potties were covered with sophomoric cartoons that vaguely resembled huge breasts or penises. The graffiti on this one, however, looked more like an art student’s sketchbook—a human eye, a well-rendered hand, a man in profile, and a fantastical dragon. “Destruction of property doesn’t look like this everywhere in Italy,” Sienna said, apparently reading his mind. “The Florence Art Institute is on the other side of this stone wall.” As if to confirm Sienna’s statement, a group of students appeared in the distance, ambling toward them with art portfolios under their arms. They were chatting, lighting cigarettes, and puzzling over the roadblock in front of them at the Porta Romana. Langdon and Sienna crouched lower to stay out of sight of the students, and as they did so, Langdon was struck, most unexpectedly, by a curious thought. The half-buried sinners with their legs in the air. Perhaps it was on account of the smell of human waste, or possibly the recumbent bicyclist with bare legs flailing in front of him, but whatever the stimulus, Langdon had flashed on the putrid world of the Malebolge and the naked legs protruding upside down from the earth. He turned suddenly to his companion. “Sienna, in our version of La Mappa, the upside-down legs were in the tenth ditch, right? The lowest level of the Malebolge?” Sienna gave him an odd look, as if this were hardly the time. “Yes, at the bottom.” For a split second Langdon was back in Vienna giving his lecture. He was standing onstage, only moments from his grand finale, having just shown the audience Dor?’s engraving of Geryon—the winged monster with a poisonous stinging tail that lived just above the Malebolge. “Before we meet Satan,” Langdon declared, his deep voice resonating over the loudspeakers, “we must pass through the ten ditches of the Malebolge, in which are punished the fraudulent—those guilty of deliberate evil.” Langdon advanced slides to show a detail of the Malebolge and then took the audience down through the ditches one by one. “From top to bottom we have: the seducers whipped by demons … the flatterers adrift in human excrement … the clerical profiteers half buried upside down with their legs in the air … the sorcerers with their heads twisted backward … the corrupt politicians in boiling pitch … the hypocrites wearing heavy leaden cloaks … the thieves bitten by snakes … the fraudulent counselors consumed by fire … the sowers of discord hacked apart by demons … and finally, the liars, who are diseased beyond recognition.” Langdon turned back to the audience. “Dante most likely reserved this final ditch for the liars because a series of lies told about him led to his exile from his beloved Florence.” “Robert?” The voice was Sienna’s. Langdon snapped back to the present. Sienna was staring at him quizzically. “What is it?” “Our version of La Mappa,” he said excitedly. “The art has been changed!” He fished the projector out of his jacket pocket and shook it as best as he could in the close quarters. The agitator ball rattled loudly, but all the sirens drowned it out. “Whoever created this image reconfigured the order of the levels in the Malebolge!” When the device began to glow, Langdon pointed it at the flat surface before them. La Mappa dell’Inferno appeared, glowing brightly in the dim light. Botticelli on a chemical toilet, Langdon thought, ashamed. This had to be the least elegant place a Botticelli had ever been displayed. Langdon ran his eyes down through the ten ditches and began nodding excitedly. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “This is wrong! The last ditch of the Malebolge is supposed to be full of diseased people, not people upside down. The tenth level is for the liars, not the clerical profiteers!” Sienna looked intrigued. “But … why would someone change that?” “Catrovacer,” Langdon whispered, eyeing the little letters that had been added to each level. “I don’t think that’s what this really says.” Despite the injury that had erased Langdon’s recollections of the last two days, he could now feel his memory working perfectly. He closed his eyes and held the two versions of La Mappa in his mind’s eye to analyze their differences. The changes to the Malebolge were fewer than Langdon had imagined … and yet he felt like a veil had suddenly been lifted. Suddenly it was crystal clear. Seek and ye shall find! “What is it?” Sienna demanded. Langdon’s mouth felt dry. “I know why I’m here in Florence.” “You do?!” “Yes, and I know where I’m supposed to go.” Sienna grabbed his arm. “Where?!” Langdon felt as if his feet had just touched solid ground for the first time since he’d awoken in the hospital. “These ten letters,” he whispered. “They actually point to a precise location in the old city. That’s where the answers are.” “Where in the old city?!” Sienna demanded. “What did you figure out?” The sounds of laughing voices echoed on the other side of the Porta-Potty. Another group of art students was passing by, joking and chatting in various languages. Langdon peered cautiously around the cubicle, watching them go. Then he scanned for police. “We’ve got to keep moving. I’ll explain on the way.” “On the way?!” Sienna shook her head. “We’ll never get through the Porta Romana!” “Stay here for thirty seconds,” he told her, “and then follow my lead.” With that, Langdon slipped away, leaving his newfound friend bewildered and alone. CHAPTER 21 “SCUSI!” ROBERT LANGDON chased after the group of students. “Scusate!” They all turned, and Langdon made a show of glancing around like a lost tourist. “Dov’? l’Istituto statale d’arte?” Langdon asked in broken Italian. A tattooed kid puffed coolly on a cigarette and snidely replied, “Non parliamo italiano.” His accent was French. One of the girls admonished her tattooed friend and politely pointed down the long wall toward the Porta Romana. “Pi? avanti, sempre dritto.” Straight ahead, Langdon translated. “Grazie.” On cue, Sienna emerged unseen from behind the Porta-Potty and walked over. The willowy thirty-two-year-old approached the group and Langdon placed a welcoming hand on her shoulder. “This is my sister, Sienna. She’s an art teacher.” The tattooed kid muttered, “T-I-L-F,” and his male friends laughed. Langdon ignored them. “We’re in Florence researching possible spots for a teaching year abroad. Can we walk in with you?” “Ma certo,” the Italian girl said with a smile. As the group migrated toward the police at the Porta Romana, Sienna fell into conversation with the students while Langdon merged to the middle of the group, slouching low, trying to stay out of sight. Seek and ye shall find, Langdon thought, his pulse racing with excitement as he pictured the ten ditches of the Malebolge. Catrovacer. These ten letters, Langdon had realized, stood at the core of one of the art world’s most enigmatic mysteries, a centuries-old puzzle that had never been solved. In 1563, these ten letters had been used to spell a message high on a wall inside Florence’s famed Palazzo Vecchio, painted some forty feet off the ground, barely visible without binoculars. It had remained hidden there in plain sight for centuries until the 1970s, when it was spotted by a now-famous art diagnostician, who had spent decades trying to uncover its meaning. Despite numerous theories, the significance of the message remains an enigma to this day. For Langdon, the code felt like familiar ground—a safe harbor from this strange and churning sea. After all, art history and ancient secrets were far more Langdon’s realm than were biohazard tubes and gunfire. Up ahead, additional police cars had begun streaming into the Porta Romana. “Jesus,” the tattooed kid said. “Whoever they’re looking for must have done something terrible.” The group arrived at the Art Institute’s main gate on the right, where a crowd of students had gathered to watch the action at the Porta Romana. The school’s minimum-wage security guard was halfheartedly glancing at student IDs as kids streamed in, but he was clearly more interested in what was happening with the police. A loud screech of brakes echoed across the plaza as an all-too-familiar black van skidded into the Porta Romana. Langdon didn’t need a second look. Without a word, he and Sienna seized the moment, slipping through the gate with their new friends. The entry road to the Istituto Statale d’Arte was startlingly beautiful, almost regal in appearance. Massive oak trees arched gently in from either side, creating a canopy that framed the distant building—a huge, faded yellow structure with a triple portico and an expansive oval lawn. This building, Langdon knew, had been commissioned, like so many in this city, by the same illustrious dynasty that had dominated Florentine politics during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. The Medici. The name alone had become a symbol of Florence. During its three-century reign, the royal house of Medici amassed unfathomable wealth and influence, producing four popes, two queens of France, and the largest financial institution in all of Europe. To this day, modern banks use the accounting method invented by the Medici—the dual-entry system of credits and debits. The Medici’s greatest legacy, however, was not in finance or politics, but rather in art. Perhaps the most lavish patrons the art world has ever known, the Medici provided a generous stream of commissions that fueled the Renaissance. The list of luminaries receiving Medici patronage ranged from da Vinci to Galileo to Botticelli—the latter’s most famous painting, Birth of Venus, the result of a commission from Lorenzo de’ Medici, who requested a sexually provocative painting to hang over his cousin’s marital bed as a wedding gift. Lorenzo de’ Medici—known in his day as Lorenzo the Magnificent on account of his benevolence—was an accomplished artist and poet in his own right and was said to have a superb eye. In 1489 Lorenzo took a liking to the work of a young Florentine sculptor and invited the boy to move into the Medici palace, where he could practice his craft surrounded by fine art, great poetry, and high culture. Under Medici tutelage, the adolescent boy flourished and eventually went on to carve two of the most celebrated sculptures in all of history—the Piet? and the David. Today we know him as Michelangelo—a creative giant who is sometimes called the Medici’s greatest gift to humankind. Considering the Medici’s passion for art, Langdon imagined the family would be pleased to know that the building before him—originally built as the Medici’s primary horse stables—had been transformed into the vibrant Art Institute. This tranquil site that now inspired young artists had been specifically chosen for the Medici’s stables because of its proximity to one of the most beautiful riding areas in all of Florence. The Boboli Gardens. Langdon glanced to his left, where a forest of treetops could be seen over a high wall. The massive expanse of the Boboli Gardens was now a popular tourist attraction. Langdon had little doubt that if he and Sienna could gain entrance to the gardens, they could make their way across it, bypassing the Porta Romana undetected. After all, the gardens were vast and had no shortage of hiding places—forests, labyrinths, grottoes, nymphaea. More important, traversing the Boboli Gardens would eventually lead them to the Palazzo Pitti, the stone citadel that once housed the main seat of the Medici grand duchy, and whose 140 rooms remained one of Florence’s most frequented tourist attractions. If we can reach the Palazzo Pitti, Langdon thought, the bridge to the old city is a stone’s throw away. Langdon motioned as calmly as possible to the high wall that enclosed the gardens. “How do we get into the gardens?” he asked. “I’d love to show my sister before we tour the institute.” The tattooed kid shook his head. “You can’t get into the gardens from here. The entrance is way over at Pitti Palace. You’d have to drive through Porta Romana and go around.” “Bullshit,” Sienna blurted. Everyone turned and stared at her, including Langdon. “Come on,” she said, smirking coyly at the students as she stroked her blond ponytail. “You’re telling me you guys don’t sneak into the gardens to smoke weed and fool around?” The kids all exchanged looks and then burst out laughing. The guy with the tattoos now looked utterly smitten. “Ma’am, you should totally teach here.” He walked Sienna to the side of the building and pointed around the corner to a rear parking lot. “See that shed on the left? There’s an old platform behind it. Climb up on the roof, and you can jump down on the other side of the wall.” Sienna was already on the move. She glanced back at Langdon with a patronizing smile. “Come on, brother Bob. Unless you’re too old to jump a fence?” CHAPTER 22 THE SILVER-HAIRED WOMAN in the van leaned her head against the bulletproof window and closed her eyes. She felt like the world was spinning beneath her. The drugs they’d given her made her feel ill. I need medical attention, she thought. Even so, the armed guard beside her had strict orders: her needs were to be ignored until their task had been successfully completed. From the sounds of chaos around her, it was clear that would be no time soon. The dizziness was increasing now, and she was having trouble breathing. As she fought off a new wave of nausea, she wondered how life had managed to deliver her to this surreal crossroads. The answer was too complex to decipher in her current delirious state, but she had no doubt where it had all begun. New York. Two years ago. She had flown to Manhattan from Geneva, where she was serving as the director of the World Health Organization, a highly coveted and prestigious post that she had held for nearly a decade. A specialist in communicable disease and the epidemiology of epidemics, she had been invited to the UN to deliver a lecture assessing the threat of pandemic disease in third-world countries. Her talk had been upbeat and reassuring, outlining several new early-detection systems and treatment plans devised by the World Health Organization and others. She had received a standing ovation. Following the lecture, while she was in the hall talking to some lingering academics, a UN employee with a high-level diplomatic badge strode over and interrupted the conversation. “Dr. Sinskey, we have just been contacted by the Council on Foreign Relations. There is someone there who would like to speak to you. A car is waiting outside.” Puzzled and a bit unnerved, Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey excused herself and collected her overnight bag. As her limo raced up First Avenue, she began to feel strangely nervous. The Council on Foreign Relations? Elizabeth Sinskey, like most, had heard the rumors. Founded in the 1920s as a private think tank, the CFR had among its past membership nearly every secretary of state, more than a half-dozen presidents, a majority of CIA chiefs, senators, judges, as well as dynastic legends with names like Morgan, Rothschild, and Rockefeller. The membership’s unparalleled collection of brainpower, political influence, and wealth had earned the Council on Foreign Relations the reputation of being “the most influential private club on earth.” As director of the World Health Organization, Elizabeth was no stranger to rubbing shoulders with the big boys. Her long tenure at WHO, combined with her outspoken nature, had earned her a nod recently from a major newsmagazine that listed her among its twenty most influential people in the world. The Face of World Health, they had written beneath her photo, which Elizabeth found ironic considering she had been such a sick child. Suffering from severe asthma by age six, she had been treated with a high dose of a promising new drug—the first of the world’s glucocorticoids, or steroid hormones—which had cured her asthma symptoms in miraculous fashion. Sadly, the drug’s unanticipated side effects had not emerged until years later when Sinskey passed through puberty … and yet never developed a menstrual cycle. She would never forget the dark moment in the doctor’s office, at nineteen, when she learned that the damage to her reproductive system was permanent. Elizabeth Sinskey could never have children. Time will heal the emptiness, her doctor assured, but the sadness and anger only grew inside her. Cruelly, the drugs that had robbed her of her ability to conceive a child had failed to rob her of her animal instincts to do so. For decades, she had battled her cravings to fulfill this impossible desire. Even now, at sixty-one years old, she still felt a pang of hollowness every time she saw a mother and infant. “It’s just ahead, Dr. Sinskey,” the limo driver announced. Elizabeth ran a quick brush through her long silver ringlets and checked her face in the mirror. Before she knew it, the car had stopped, and the driver was helping her out onto the sidewalk in an affluent section of Manhattan. “I’ll wait here for you,” the driver said. “We can go straight to the airport when you’re ready.” The New York headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations was an unobtrusive neoclassical building on the corner of Park and Sixty-eighth that had once been the home of a Standard Oil tycoon. Its exterior blended seamlessly with the elegant landscape surrounding it, offering no hint of its unique purpose. “Dr. Sinskey,” a portly female receptionist greeted her. “This way, please. He’s expecting you.” Okay, but who is he? She followed the receptionist down a luxurious corridor to a closed door, on which the woman gave a quick knock before opening it and motioning for Elizabeth to enter. She went in, and the door closed behind her. The small, dark conference room was illuminated only by the glow of a video screen. In front of the screen, a very tall and lanky silhouette faced her. Though she couldn’t make out his face, she sensed power here. “Dr. Sinskey,” the man’s sharp voice declared. “Thank you for joining me.” The man’s tautly precise accent suggested Elizabeth’s homeland of Switzerland, or perhaps Germany. “Please sit,” he said, motioning to a chair near the front of the room. No introductions? Elizabeth sat. The bizarre image being projected on the video screen did nothing to calm her nerves. What in the world? “I was at your presentation this morning,” declared the silhouette. “I came a long distance to hear you speak. An impressive performance.” “Thank you,” she replied. “Might I also say you are much more beautiful than I imagined … despite your age and your myopic view of world health.” Elizabeth felt her jaw drop. The comment was offensive in all kinds of ways. “Excuse me?” she demanded, peering into the darkness. “Who are you? And why have you called me here?” “Pardon my failed attempt at humor,” the lanky shadow replied. “The image on the screen will explain why you’re here.” Sinskey eyed the horrific visual—a painting depicting a vast sea of humanity, throngs of sickly people, all climbing over one another in a dense tangle of naked bodies. “The great artist Dor?,” the man announced. “His spectacularly grim interpretation of Dante Alighieri’s vision of hell. I hope it looks comfortable to you … because that’s where we’re headed.” He paused, drifting slowly toward her. “And let me tell you why.” He kept moving toward her, seeming to grow taller with every step. “If I were to take this piece of paper and tear it in two …” He paused at a table, picked up a sheet of paper, and ripped it loudly in half. “And then if I were to place the two halves on top of each other …” He stacked the two halves. “And then if I were to repeat the process …” He again tore the papers, stacking them. “I produce a stack of paper that is now four times the thickness of the original, correct?” His eyes seemed to smolder in the darkness of the room. Elizabeth did not appreciate his condescending tone and aggressive posture. She said nothing. “Hypothetically speaking,” he continued, moving closer still, “if the original sheet of paper is a mere one-tenth of a millimeter thick, and I were to repeat this process … say, fifty times … do you know how tall this stack would be?” Elizabeth bristled. “I do,” she replied with more hostility than she intended. “It would be one-tenth of a millimeter times two to the fiftieth power. It’s called geometric progression. Might I ask what I’m doing here?” The man smirked and gave an impressed nod. “Yes, and can you guess what that actual value might look like? One-tenth of a millimeter times two to the fiftieth power? Do you know how tall our stack of paper has become?” He paused only an instant. “Our stack of paper, after only fifty doublings, now reaches almost all the way … to the sun.” Elizabeth was not surprised. The staggering power of geometric growth was something she dealt with all the time in her work. Circles of contamination … replication of infected cells … death-toll estimates. “I apologize if I seem naive,” she said, making no effort to hide her annoyance. “But I’m missing your point.” “My point?” He chuckled quietly. “My point is that the history of our human population growth is even more dramatic. The earth’s population, like our stack of paper, had very meager beginnings … but alarming potential.” He was pacing again. “Consider this. It took the earth’s population thousands of years—from the early dawn of man all the way to the early 1800s—to reach one billion people. Then, astoundingly, it took only about a hundred years to double the population to two billion in the 1920s. After that, it took a mere fifty years for the population to double again to four billion in the 1970s. As you can imagine, we’re well on track to reach eight billion very soon. Just today, the human race added another quarter-million people to planet Earth. A quarter million. And this happens every day—rain or shine. Currently, every year, we’re adding the equivalent of the entire country of Germany.” The tall man stopped short, hovering over Elizabeth. “How old are you?” Another offensive question, although as the head of the WHO, she was accustomed to handling antagonism with diplomacy. “Sixty-one.” “Did you know that if you live another nineteen years, until the age of eighty, you will witness the population triple in your lifetime. One lifetime—a tripling. Think of the implications. As you know, your World Health Organization has again increased its forecasts, predicting there will be some nine billion people on earth before the midpoint of this century. Animal species are going extinct at a precipitously accelerated rate. The demand for dwindling natural resources is skyrocketing. Clean water is harder and harder to come by. By any biological gauge, our species has exceeded our sustainable numbers. And in the face of this disaster, the World Health Organization—the gatekeeper of the planet’s health—is investing in things like curing diabetes, filling blood banks, battling cancer.” He paused, staring directly at her. “And so I brought you here to ask you directly why the hell the World Health Organization does not have the guts to deal with this issue head-on?” Elizabeth was seething now. “Whoever you are, you know damned well the WHO takes overpopulation very seriously. Recently we spent millions of dollars sending doctors into Africa to deliver free condoms and educate people about birth control.” “Ah, yes!” the lanky man derided. “And an even bigger army of Catholic missionaries marched in on your heels and told the Africans that if they used the condoms, they’d all go to hell. Africa has a new environmental issue now—landfills overflowing with unused condoms.” Elizabeth strained to hold her tongue. He was correct on this point, and yet modern Catholics were starting to fight back against the Vatican’s meddling in reproductive issues. Most notably, Melinda Gates, a devout Catholic herself, had bravely risked the wrath of her own church by pledging $560 million to help improve access to birth control around the world. Elizabeth Sinskey had gone on record many times saying that Bill and Melinda Gates deserved to be canonized for all they’d done through their foundation to improve world health. Sadly, the only institution capable of conferring sainthood somehow failed to see the Christian nature of their efforts. “Dr. Sinskey,” the shadow continued. “What the World Health Organization fails to recognize is that there is only one global health issue.” He pointed again to the grim image on the screen—a sea of tangled, cloying humanity. “And this is it.” He paused. “I realize you are a scientist, and therefore perhaps not a student of the classics or the fine arts, so let me offer another image that may speak to you in a language you can better understand.” The room went dark for an instant, and the screen refreshed. The new image was one Elizabeth had seen many times … and it always brought an eerie sense of inevitability. A heavy silence settled in the room. “Yes,” the lanky man finally said. “Silent terror is an apt response to this graph. Seeing it is a bit like staring into the headlight of an oncoming locomotive.” Slowly, the man turned to Elizabeth and gave her a tight, condescending smile. “Any questions, Dr. Sinskey?” “Just one,” she fired back. “Did you bring me here to lecture me or insult me?” “Neither.” His voice turned eerily cajoling. “I brought you here to work with you. I have no doubt you understand that overpopulation is a health issue. But what I fear you don’t understand is that it will affect the very soul of man. Under the stress of overpopulation, those who have never considered stealing will become thieves to feed their families. Those who have never considered killing will kill to provide for their young. All of Dante’s deadly sins—greed, gluttony, treachery, murder, and the rest—will begin percolating … rising up to the surface of humanity, amplified by our evaporating comforts. We are facing a battle for the very soul of man.” “I’m a biologist. I save lives … not souls.” “Well, I can assure you that saving lives will become increasingly difficult in the coming years. Overpopulation breeds far more than spiritual discontent. There is a passage in Machiavelli—” “Yes,” she interrupted, reciting her recollection of the famous quote. “ ‘When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere … the world will purge itself.’ ” She stared up at him. “All of us at the WHO are familiar with that quotation.” “Good, then you know that Machiavelli went on to talk about plagues as the world’s natural way of self-purging.” “Yes, and as I mentioned in my talk, we are well aware of the direct correlation between population density and the likelihood of wide-scale epidemics, but we are constantly devising new detection and treatment methods. The WHO remains confident that we can prevent future pandemics.” “That’s a pity.” Elizabeth stared in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?!” “Dr. Sinskey,” the man said with a strange laugh, “you talk about controlling epidemics as if it’s a good thing.” She gaped up at the man in mute disbelief. “There you have it,” the lanky man declared, sounding like an attorney resting his case. “Here I stand with the head of the World Health Organization—the best the WHO has to offer. A terrifying thought if you consider it. I have shown you this image of impending misery.” He refreshed the screen, again displaying the image of the bodies. “I have reminded you of the awesome power of unchecked population growth.” He pointed to his small stack of paper. “I have enlightened you about the fact that we are on the brink of a spiritual collapse.” He paused and turned directly toward her. “And your response? Free condoms in Africa.” The man gave a derisive sneer. “This is like swinging a flyswatter at an incoming asteroid. The time bomb is no longer ticking. It has already gone off, and without drastic measures, exponential mathematics will become your new God … and ‘He’ is a vengeful God. He will bring to you Dante’s vision of hell right outside on Park Avenue … huddled masses wallowing in their own excrement. A global culling orchestrated by Nature herself.” “Is that so?” Elizabeth snapped. “So tell me, in your vision of a sustainable future, what is the ideal population of earth? What is the magic number at which humankind can hope to sustain itself indefinitely … and in relative comfort?” The tall man smiled, clearly appreciating the question. “Any environmental biologist or statistician will tell you that humankind’s best chance of long-term survival occurs with a global population of around four billion.” “Four billion?” Elizabeth fired back. “We’re at seven billion now, so it’s a little late for that.” The tall man’s green eyes flashed fire. “Is it?” CHAPTER 23 ROBERT LANGDON LANDED hard on the spongy earth just inside the retaining wall of the Boboli Gardens’ heavily wooded southern edge. Sienna landed beside him and stood up, brushing herself off and taking in their surroundings. They were standing in a glade of moss and ferns on the edge of a small forest. From here, the Palazzo Pitti was entirely obscured from view, and Langdon sensed they were about as far from the palace as one could get in the gardens. At least there were no workers or tourists out this far at this early hour. Langdon gazed at a peastone pathway that wound gracefully downhill into the forest before them. At the point where the path disappeared into the trees, a marble statue had been perfectly situated to receive the eye. Langdon was not surprised. The Boboli Gardens had enjoyed the exceptional design talents of Niccol? Tribolo, Giorgio Vasari, and Bernardo Buontalenti—a brain trust of aesthetic talent that had created on this 111-acre canvas a walkable masterpiece. “If we head northeast, we’ll reach the palace,” Langdon said, pointing down the path. “We can mix there with the tourists and exit unseen. I’m guessing it opens at nine.” Langdon glanced down to check the time but saw only his bare wrist where his Mickey Mouse watch had once been strapped. He wondered absently if it was still at the hospital with the rest of his clothing and if he’d ever be able to retrieve it. Sienna planted her feet defiantly. “Robert, before we take another step, I want to know where we’re going. What did you figure out back there? The Malebolge? You said it was out of sequence?” Langdon motioned toward a wooded area just ahead. “Let’s get out of sight first.” He led her down a pathway that curled into an enclosed hollow—a “room,” in the parlance of landscape architecture—where there were some faux-bois benches and a small fountain. The air beneath the trees was decidedly colder. Langdon took the projector from his pocket and began shaking it. “Sienna, whoever created this digital image not only added letters to the sinners in the Malebolge, but he also changed the order of the sins.” He hopped up on the bench, towering over Sienna, and aimed the projector down at his feet. Botticelli’s Mappa dell’Inferno materialized faintly on the flat bench top beside Sienna. Langdon motioned to the tiered area at the bottom of the funnel. “See the letters in the ten ditches of the Malebolge?” Sienna found them on the projection and read from top to bottom. “Catrovacer.” “Right. Meaningless.” “But then you realized the ten ditches had been shuffled around?” “Easier than that, actually. If these levels were a deck of ten cards, the deck was not so much shuffled as simply cut once. After the cut, the cards remain in the correct order, but they start with the wrong card.” Langdon pointed down at the ten ditches of the Malebolge. “According to Dante’s text, our top level should be the seducers whipped by demons. And yet, in this version, the seducers appear … way down in the seventh ditch.” Sienna studied the now-fading image beside her and nodded. “Okay, I see that. The first ditch is now the seventh.” Langdon pocketed the projector and jumped back down onto the pathway. He grabbed a small stick and began scratching letters on a patch of dirt just off the path. “Here are the letters as they appear in our modified version of hell.” C A T R O V A C E R “Catrovacer,” Sienna read. “Yes. And here is where the ‘deck’ was cut.” Langdon now drew a line beneath the seventh letter and waited while Sienna studied his handiwork. C A T R O V A — C E R “Okay,” she said quickly. “Catrova. Cer.” “Yes, and to put the cards back in order, we simply uncut the deck and place the bottom on top. The two halves swap places.” Sienna eyed the letters. “Cer. Catrova.” She shrugged, looking unimpressed. “Still meaningless …” “Cer catrova,” Langdon repeated. After a pause, he said the words again, eliding them together. “Cercatrova.” Finally, he said them with a pause in the middle. “Cerca … trova.” Sienna gasped audibly and her eyes shot up to meet Langdon’s. “Yes,” Langdon said with a smile. “Cerca trova.” The two Italian words cerca and trova literally meant “seek” and “find.” When combined as a phrase—cerca trova—they were synonymous with the biblical aphorism “Seek and ye shall find.” “Your hallucinations!” Sienna exclaimed, breathless. “The woman with the veil! She kept telling you to seek and find!” She jumped to her feet. “Robert, do you realize what this means? It means the words cerca trova were already in your subconscious! Don’t you see? You must have deciphered this phrase before you arrived at the hospital! You had probably seen this projector’s image already … but had forgotten!” She’s right, he realized, having been so fixated on the cipher itself that it never occurred to him that he might have been through all of this already. “Robert, you said earlier that La Mappa points to a specific location in the old city. But I still don’t understand where.” “Cerca trova doesn’t ring any bells for you?” She shrugged. Langdon smiled inwardly. Finally, something Sienna doesn’t know. “As it turns out, this phrase points very specifically to a famous mural that hangs in the Palazzo Vecchio—Giorgio Vasari’s Battaglia di Marciano in the Hall of the Five Hundred. Near the top of the painting, barely visible, Vasari painted the words cerca trova in tiny letters. Plenty of theories exist as to why he did this, but no conclusive proof has ever been discovered.” The high-pitched whine of a small aircraft suddenly buzzed overhead, streaking in out of nowhere and skimming the wooded canopy just above them. The sound was very close, and Langdon and Sienna froze as the craft raced past. As the aircraft departed, Langdon peered up at it through the trees. “Toy helicopter,” he said, exhaling as he watched the three-foot-long, radio-controlled chopper banking in the distance. It sounded like a giant, angry mosquito. Sienna, however, still looked wary. “Stay down.” Sure enough, the little chopper banked fully and was now coming back their way, skimming the treetops, sailing past them again, this time off to their left above another glade. “That’s not a toy,” she whispered. “It’s a reconnaissance drone. Probably has a video camera on board sending live images back to … somebody.” Langdon’s jaw tightened as he watched the chopper streak off in the direction from which it had appeared—the Porta Romana and the Art Institute. “I don’t know what you did,” Sienna said, “but some powerful people are clearly very eager to find you.” The helicopter banked yet again and began a slow pass along the perimeter wall they had just jumped. “Someone at the Art Institute must have seen us and said something,” Sienna said, heading down the path. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.” As the drone buzzed away toward the far end of the gardens, Langdon used his foot to erase the letters he’d written on the pathway and then hurried after Sienna. His mind swirled with thoughts of cerca trova, the Giorgio Vasari mural, as well as with Sienna’s revelation that Langdon must have already deciphered the projector’s message. Seek and ye shall find. Suddenly, just as they entered a second glade, a startling thought hit Langdon. He skidded to a stop on the wooded path, a bemused look on his face. Sienna stopped, too. “Robert? What is it?!” “I’m innocent,” he declared. “What are you talking about?” “The people chasing me … I assumed it was because I had done something terrible.” “Yes, at the hospital you kept repeating ‘very sorry.’ ” “I know. But I thought I was speaking English.” Sienna looked at him with surprise. “You were speaking English!” Langdon’s blue eyes were now filled with excitement. “Sienna, when I kept saying ‘very sorry,’ I wasn’t apologizing. I was mumbling about the secret message in the mural at Palazzo Vecchio!” He could still hear the recording of his own delirious voice. Ve … sorry. Ve … sorry. Sienna looked lost. “Don’t you see?!” Langdon was grinning now. “I wasn’t saying ‘very sorry, very sorry.’ I was saying the artist’s name—Va … sari, Vasari!” CHAPTER 24 VAYENTHA HIT THE brakes hard. Her motorcycle fishtailed, screeching loudly as it left a long skid mark on the Viale del Poggio Imperiale, finally coming to an abrupt stop behind an unexpected line of traffic. The Viale del Poggio was at a standstill. I don’t have time for this! Vayentha craned her neck over the cars, trying to see what was causing the holdup. She had already been forced to drive in a wide circle to avoid the SRS team and all the chaos at the apartment building, and now she needed to get into the old city to clear out of the hotel room where she had been stationed for the last few days of this mission. I’ve been disavowed—I need to get the hell out of town! Her string of bad luck, however, seemed to be continuing. The route she had selected into the old city appeared to be blocked. In no mood to wait, Vayentha revved the bike off to one side of the traffic and sped along the narrow breakdown lane until she could see the snarled intersection. Up ahead was a clogged rotary where six major thoroughfares converged. This was the Porta Romana—one of Florence’s most trafficked intersections—the gateway to the old city. What the hell is going on here?! Vayentha now saw that the entire area was swarming with police—a roadblock or checkpoint of some sort. Moments later, she spotted something at the center of the action that left her baffled—a familiar black van around which several black-clad agents were calling out orders to the local authorities. These men, without a doubt, were members of the SRS team, and yet Vayentha could not imagine what they were doing here. Unless … Vayentha swallowed hard, scarcely daring to imagine the possibility. Has Langdon eluded Br?der as well? It seemed unthinkable; the chances of escape had been near zero. Then again, Langdon was not working alone, and Vayentha had experienced firsthand how resourceful the blond woman could be. Nearby, a police officer appeared, walking from car to car, showing a photo of a handsome man with thick brown hair. Vayentha instantly recognized the photo as a press shot of Robert Langdon. Her heart soared. Br?der missed him … Langdon is still in play! An experienced strategist, Vayentha immediately began assessing how this development changed her situation. Option one—flee as required. Vayentha had blown a critical job for the provost and had been disavowed because of it. If she were lucky, she would face a formal inquiry and probable career termination. If, however, she were unlucky and had underestimated the severity of her employer, she might spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder and wondering if the Consortium was lurking just out of sight. There is a second option now. Complete your mission. Staying on task was in direct opposition to her disavowal protocol, and yet with Langdon still on the run, Vayentha now had the opportunity to continue with her original directive. If Br?der fails to catch Langdon, she thought, her pulse quickening. And if I succeed … Vayentha knew it was a long shot, but if Langdon managed to elude Br?der entirely, and if Vayentha could still step in and finish the job, she would single-handedly have saved the day for the Consortium, and the provost would have no choice but to be lenient. I’ll keep my job, she thought. Probably even be promoted. In a flash, Vayentha realized that her entire future now revolved around a single critical undertaking. I must locate Langdon … before Br?der does. It would not be easy. Br?der had at his disposal endless manpower as well as a vast array of advanced surveillance technologies. Vayentha was working alone. She did, however, possess one piece of information that Br?der, the provost, and the police did not have. I have a very good idea where Langdon will go. Revving the throttle on her BMW, she spun it 180 degrees around and headed back the way she came. Ponte alle Grazie, she thought, picturing the bridge to the north. There existed more than one route into the old city. CHAPTER 25 NOT AN APOLOGY, Langdon mused. An artist’s name. “Vasari,” Sienna stammered, taking a full step backward on the path. “The artist who hid the words cerca trova in his mural.” Langdon couldn’t help but smile. Vasari. Vasari. In addition to shedding a ray of light on his strange predicament, this revelation also meant Langdon was no longer wondering what terrible thing he might have done … for which he had been profusely saying he was very sorry. “Robert, you clearly had seen this Botticelli image on the projector before you were injured, and you knew it contained a code that pointed to Vasari’s mural. That’s why you woke up and kept repeating Vasari’s name!” Langdon tried to calculate what all of this meant. Giorgio Vasari—a sixteenth-century artist, architect, and writer—was a man Langdon often referred to as “the world’s first art historian.” Despite the hundreds of paintings Vasari created, and the dozens of buildings he designed, his most enduring legacy was his seminal book, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, a collection of biographies of Italian artists, which to this day remains requisite reading for students of art history. The words cerca trova had placed Vasari back in the mainstream consciousness about thirty years ago when his “secret message” was discovered high on his sprawling mural in the Palazzo Vecchio’s Hall of the Five Hundred. The tiny letters appeared on a green battle flag, barely visible among the chaos of the war scene. While consensus had yet to be reached as to why Vasari added this strange message to his mural, the leading theory was that it was a clue to future generations of the existence of a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco hidden in a three-centimeter gap behind that wall. Sienna was glancing nervously up through the trees. “There’s still one thing I don’t understand. If you weren’t saying ‘very sorry, very sorry’ … then why are people trying to kill you?” Langdon had been wondering the same thing. The distant buzz of the surveillance drone was getting louder again, and Langdon knew the time had come for a decision. He failed to see how Vasari’s Battaglia di Marciano could possibly relate to Dante’s Inferno, or the gunshot wound he had suffered the night before, and yet he finally saw a tangible path before him. Cerca trova. Seek and find. Again Langdon saw the silver-haired woman calling out to him from across the river. Time is running out! If there were answers, Langdon sensed, they would be at the Palazzo Vecchio. He now flashed on an old adage from early Grecian free divers who hunted lobsters in the coral caves of the Aegean Islands. When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown … and pray for an exit. Langdon wondered if they had reached that point. He eyed the maze of garden pathways before them. If he and Sienna could reach the Pitti Palace and exit the gardens, then the old city was just a short walk across the most famous footbridge in the world—the Ponte Vecchio. It was always crowded and would provide good cover. From there, the Palazzo Vecchio was only a few blocks away. The drone hummed closer now, and Langdon felt momentarily overwhelmed by exhaustion. The realization that he had not been saying “very sorry” left him feeling conflicted about running from the police. “Eventually, they’re going to catch me, Sienna,” Langdon said. “It might be better for me to stop running.” Sienna looked at him with alarm. “Robert, every time you stop, someone starts shooting at you! You need to figure out what you’re involved in. You need to look at that Vasari mural and hope it jars your memory. Maybe it will help you learn where this projector came from and why you’re carrying it.” Langdon pictured the spike-haired woman coldly killing Dr. Marconi … the soldiers firing on them … the Italian military police gathering in the Porta Romana … and now a surveillance drone tracking them through the Boboli Gardens. He fell silent, rubbing his tired eyes as he considered his options. “Robert?” Sienna’s voice rose. “There’s one other thing … something that didn’t seem important, but now seems like it might be.” Langdon raised his eyes, reacting to the gravity in her tone. “I intended to tell you at the apartment,” she said, “but …” “What is it?” Sienna pursed her lips, looking uncomfortable. “When you arrived at the hospital, you were delirious and trying to communicate.” “Yes,” Langdon said, “mumbling ‘Vasari, Vasari.’ ” “Yes, but before that … before we got out the recorder, in the first moments after you arrived, you said one other thing I remember. You only said it once, but I’m positive I understood.” “What did I say?” Sienna glanced up toward the drone and then back at Langdon. “You said, ‘I hold the key to finding it … if I fail, then all is death.’ ” Langdon could only stare. Sienna continued. “I thought you were referring to the object in your jacket pocket, but now I’m not so sure.” If I fail, then all is death? The words hit Langdon hard. The haunting images of death flickered before him … Dante’s inferno, the biohazard symbol, the plague doctor. Yet again, the face of the beautiful silver-haired woman pleaded with him across the bloodred river. Seek and find! Time is running out! Sienna’s voice pulled him back. “Whatever this projector ultimately points to … or whatever you’re trying to find, it must be something extremely dangerous. The fact that people are trying to kill us …” Her voice cracked slightly, and she took a moment to regroup. “Think about it. They just shot at you in broad daylight … shot at me—an innocent bystander. Nobody seems to be looking to negotiate. Your own government turned on you … you called them for help, and they sent someone to kill you.” Langdon stared vacantly at the ground. Whether the U.S. Consulate had shared Langdon’s location with the assassin, or whether the consulate itself had sent the assassin, was irrelevant. The upshot was the same. My own government is not on my side. Langdon looked into Sienna’s brown eyes and saw bravery there. What have I gotten her involved in? “I wish I knew what we were looking for. That would help put all of this into perspective.” Sienna nodded. “Whatever it is, I think we need to find it. At least it would give us leverage.” Her logic was hard to refute. Still Langdon felt something nagging at him. If I fail, then all is death. All morning he’d been running up against macabre symbols of biohazards, plagues, and Dante’s hell. Admittedly, he had no clear proof of what he was looking for, but he would be naive not to consider at least the possibility that this situation involved a deadly disease or large-scale biological threat. But if this were true, why would his own government be trying to eliminate him? Do they think I’m somehow involved in a potential attack? It made no sense at all. There was something else going on here. Langdon thought again of the silver-haired woman. “There’s also the woman from my visions. I feel I need to find her.” “Then trust your feelings,” Sienna said. “In your condition, the best compass you have is your subconscious mind. It’s basic psychology—if your gut is telling you to trust that woman, then I think you should do exactly what she keeps telling you to do.” “Seek and find,” they said in unison. Langdon exhaled, knowing his path was clear. All I can do is keep swimming down this tunnel. With hardening resolve, he turned and began taking in his surroundings, trying to get his bearings. Which way out of the gardens? They were standing beneath the trees at the edge of a wide-open plaza where several paths intersected. In the distance to their left, Langdon spied an elliptical-shaped lagoon with a small island adorned with lemon trees and statuary. The Isolotto, he thought, recognizing the famous sculpture of Perseus on a half-submerged horse bounding through the water. “The Pitti Palace is that way,” Langdon said, pointing east, away from the Isolotto, toward the garden’s main thoroughfare—the Viottolone, which ran east–west along the entire length of the grounds. The Viottolone was as wide as a two-lane road and lined by a row of slender, four-hundred-year-old cypress trees. “There’s no cover,” Sienna said, eyeing the uncamouflaged avenue and motioning up at the circling drone. “You’re right,” Langdon said with a lopsided grin. “Which is why we’re taking the tunnel beside it.” He pointed again, this time to a dense hedgerow adjacent to the mouth of the Viottolone. The wall of dense greenery had a small arched opening cut into it. Beyond the opening, a slender footpath stretched out into the distance—a tunnel running parallel with the Viottolone. It was enclosed on either side by a phalanx of pruned holm oaks, which had been carefully trained since the 1600s to arch inward over the path, intertwining overhead and providing an awning of foliage. The pathway’s name, La Cerchiata—literally “circular” or “hooped”—derived from its canopy of curved trees resembling barrel stays or cerchi. Sienna hurried over to the opening and peered into the shaded channel. Immediately she turned back to him with a smile. “Better.” Wasting no time, she slipped through the opening and hurried off among the trees. Langdon had always considered La Cerchiata one of Florence’s most peaceful spots. Today, however, as he watched Sienna disappear down the darkened all?e, he thought again of the Grecian free divers swimming into corral tunnels and praying they’d reach an exit. Langdon quickly said his own little prayer and hurried after her. A half mile behind them, outside the Art Institute, Agent Br?der strode through a bustle of police and students, his icy gaze parting the crowds before him. He made his way to the makeshift command post that his surveillance specialist had set up on the hood of his black van. “From the aerial drone,” the specialist said, handing Br?der a tablet screen. “Taken a few minutes ago.” Br?der examined the video stills, pausing on a blurry enlargement of two faces—a dark-haired man and a blond ponytailed woman—both huddled in the shadows and peering skyward through a canopy of trees. Robert Langdon. Sienna Brooks. Zero doubt. Br?der turned his attention to the map of the Boboli Gardens, which was spread out on the hood. They made a poor choice, he thought, eyeing the garden layout. While it was sprawling and intricate, with plenty of hiding places, the gardens also appeared to be surrounded on all sides by high walls. The Boboli Gardens were the closest thing to a natural killbox that Br?der had ever seen in the field. They’ll never get out. “Local authorities are sealing all exits,” the agent said. “And commencing a sweep.” “Keep me informed,” Br?der said. Slowly, he raised his eyes to the van’s thick polycarbonate window, beyond which he could see the silver-haired woman seated in the back of the vehicle. The drugs they had given her had definitely dulled her senses—more than Br?der had imagined. Nonetheless, he could tell by the fearful look in her eyes that she still had a firm grasp on precisely what was going on. She does not look happy, Br?der thought. Then again, why would she? CHAPTER 26 A SPIRE OF water shot twenty feet in the air. Langdon watched it fall gently back to earth and knew they were getting close. They had reached the end of La Cerchiata’s leafy tunnel and dashed across an open lawn into a grove of cork trees. Now they were looking out at the Boboli’s most famous spouting fountain—Stoldo Lorenzi’s bronze of Neptune clutching his three-pronged trident. Irreverently known by locals as “The Fountain of the Fork,” this water feature was considered the central point of the gardens. Sienna stopped at the edge of the grove and peered upward through the trees. “I don’t see the drone.” Langdon no longer heard it either, and yet the fountain was quite loud. “Must have needed to refuel,” Sienna said. “This is our chance. Which way?” Langdon led her to the left, and they began descending a steep incline. As they emerged from the trees, the Pitti Palace came into view. “Nice little house,” Sienna whispered. “Typical Medici understatement,” he replied wryly. Still almost a quarter mile away, the Pitti Palace’s stone facade dominated the landscape, stretching out to their left and right. Its exterior of bulging, rusticated stonework lent the building an air of unyielding authority that was further accentuated by a powerful repetition of shuttered windows and arch-topped apertures. Traditionally, formal palaces were situated on high ground so that anyone in the gardens had to look uphill at the building. The Pitti Palace, however, was situated in a low valley near the Arno River, meaning that people in the Boboli Gardens looked downhill at the palace. This effect was only more dramatic. One architect had described the palace as appearing to have been built by nature herself … as if the massive stones in a landslide had tumbled down the long escarpment and landed in an elegant, barricade-like pile at the bottom. Despite its less defensible position in the low ground, the solid stone structure of the Pitti Palace was so imposing that Napoleon had once used it as a power base while in Florence. “Look,” Sienna said, pointing to the nearest doors of the palace. “Good news.” Langdon had seen it, too. On this strange morning, the most welcome sight was not the palace itself, but the tourists streaming out of the building into the lower gardens. The palace was open, which meant that Langdon and Sienna would have no trouble slipping inside and passing through the building to escape the gardens. Once outside the palace, Langdon knew they would see the Arno River to their right, and beyond that, the spires of the old city. He and Sienna kept moving, half jogging now down the steep embankment. As they descended, they traversed the Boboli Amphitheater—the site of the very first opera performance in history—which lay nestled like a horseshoe on the side of a hill. Beyond that, they passed the obelisk of Ramses II and the unfortunate piece of “art” that was positioned at its base. The guidebooks referred to the piece as “a colossal stone basin from Rome’s Baths of Caracalla,” but Langdon always saw it for what it truly was—the world’s largest bathtub. They really need to put that thing somewhere else. They finally reached the rear of the palace and slowed to a calm walk, mixing inconspicuously with the first tourists of the day. Moving against the tide, they descended a narrow tunnel into the cortile, an inner courtyard where visitors were seated enjoying a morning espresso in the palace’s makeshift caf?. The smell of fresh-ground coffee filled the air, and Langdon felt a sudden longing to sit down and enjoy a civilized breakfast. Today’s not the day, he thought as they pressed on, entering the wide stone passageway that led toward the palace’s main doors. As they neared the doorway, Langdon and Sienna collided with a growing bottleneck of stalled tourists who seemed to be assembling in the portico to observe something outside. Langdon peered through the crowd to the area in front of the palace. The Pitti’s grand entrance was as blunt and unwelcoming as he recalled it. Rather than a manicured lawn and landscaping, the front yard was a vast expanse of pavement that stretched across an entire hillside, flowing down to the Via dei Guicciardini like a massive paved ski slope. At the bottom of the hill, Langdon now saw the reason for the crowd of onlookers. Down in Piazza dei Pitti, a half-dozen police cars had streamed in from all directions. A small army of officers were advancing up the hill, unholstering their weapons and fanning out to secure the front of the palace. CHAPTER 27 AS THE POLICE entered the Pitti Palace, Sienna and Langdon were already on the move, retracing their steps through the interior of the palace and away from the arriving police. They hurried through the cortile and past the caf?, where a buzz was spreading, tourists rubbernecking in an attempt to locate the source of the commotion. Sienna was amazed the authorities had found them so quickly. The drone must have disappeared because it had already spotted us. She and Langdon found the same narrow tunnel through which they had descended from the gardens and without hesitation plunged back into the passageway and bounded up the stairs. The end of the staircase banked left along a high retaining wall. As they dashed along the wall, it grew shorter beside them, until finally they could see over it into the vast expanse of the Boboli Gardens. Langdon instantly grabbed Sienna’s arm and yanked her backward, ducking out of sight behind the retaining wall. Sienna had seen it, too. Three hundred yards away, on the slope above the amphitheater, a phalanx of police descended, searching groves, interviewing tourists, coordinating with one another on handheld radios. We’re trapped! Sienna had never imagined, when she and Robert Langdon first met, that it would lead to this. This is more than I bargained for. When Sienna had left the hospital with Langdon, she thought they were fleeing a woman with spiked hair and a gun. Now they were running from an entire military team and the Italian authorities. Their chances of escape, she was now realizing, were almost zero. “Is there any other way out?” Sienna demanded, short of breath. “I don’t think so,” Langdon said. “This garden is a walled city, just like …” He paused suddenly, turning and looking east. “Just like … the Vatican.” A strange glint of hope flickered across his face. Sienna had no idea what the Vatican had to do with their current predicament, but Langdon suddenly began nodding, gazing east along the back of the palace. “It’s a long shot,” he said, hustling her along with him now. “But there might be a different way to get out of here.” Two figures materialized suddenly before them, having rounded the corner of the retaining wall, nearly bumping into Sienna and Langdon. Both figures were wearing black, and for one frightening instant, Sienna thought they were the soldiers she had encountered at the apartment building. As they passed, though, she saw they were only tourists—Italian, she guessed, from all the stylish black leather. Having an idea, Sienna caught one of the tourists’ arms and smiled up at him as warmly as possible. “Pu? dirci dov’? la Galleria del costume?” she asked in rapid Italian, requesting directions to the palace’s famed costume gallery. “Io e mio fratello siamo in ritardo per una visita privata.” My brother and I are late for a private tour. “Certo!” The man grinned at them both, looking eager to help. “Proseguite dritto per il sentiero!” He turned and pointed west, along the retaining wall, directly away from whatever Langdon had been looking at. “Molte grazie!” Sienna chirped with another smile as the two men headed off. Langdon gave Sienna an impressed nod, apparently understanding her motives. If the police began questioning tourists, they might hear that Langdon and Sienna were headed for the costume gallery, which, according to the map on the wall before them, was at the far western end of the palace … as far as possible from the direction in which they were now headed. “We need to get to that path over there,” Langdon said, motioning across an open plaza toward a walkway that ran down another hill, away from the palace. The peastone walkway was sheltered on the uphill side by massive hedges, providing plenty of cover from the authorities now descending the hill, only a hundred yards away. Sienna calculated that their chances of getting across the open area to the sheltered path were very slim. Tourists were gathering there, watching the police with curiosity. The faint thrum of the drone became audible again, approaching in the distance. “Now or never,” Langdon said, grabbing her hand and pulling her with him out into the open plaza, where they began winding through the crowd of gathering tourists. Sienna fought the urge to break into a run, but Langdon held firmly on to her, walking briskly but calmly through the throng. When they finally reached the opening to the pathway, Sienna glanced back over her shoulder to see if they had been detected. The only police officers in sight were all facing the other way, their eyes turned skyward toward the sound of the incoming drone. She faced front and hurried with Langdon down the path. Before them now, the skyline of old Florence poked above the trees, visible directly ahead in the distance. She saw the red-tiled cupola of the Duomo and the green, red, and white spire of Giotto’s bell tower. For an instant, she could also make out the crenellated spire of the Palazzo Vecchio—their seemingly impossible destination—but as they descended the pathway, the high perimeter walls blotted out the view, engulfing them again. By the time they reached the bottom of the hill, Sienna was out of breath and wondering if Langdon had any idea where they were going. The path led directly into a maze garden, but Langdon confidently turned left into a wide gravel patio, which he skirted, staying behind a hedge in the shadows of the overhanging trees. The patio was deserted, more of an employee parking lot than a tourist area. “Where are we going?!” Sienna finally asked, breathless. “Almost there.” Almost where? The entire patio was enclosed by walls that were at least three stories tall. The only exit Sienna saw was a vehicle gateway on the left, which was sealed by a massive wrought-iron grate that looked like it dated back to the original palace in the days of marauding armies. Beyond the barricade, she could see police gathered in the Piazza dei Pitti. Staying along the perimeter vegetation, Langdon pushed onward, heading directly for the wall in front of them. Sienna scanned the sheer face for any open doorway, but all she saw was a niche containing what had to be the most hideous statue she had ever seen. Good God, the Medici could afford any artwork on earth, and they chose this? The statue before them depicted an obese, naked dwarf straddling a giant turtle. The dwarf’s testicles were squashed against the turtle’s shell, and the turtle’s mouth was dribbling water, as if he were ill. “I know,” Langdon said, without breaking stride. “That’s Braccio di Bartolo—a famous court dwarf. If you ask me, they should put him out back in the giant bathtub.” Langdon turned sharply to his right, heading down a set of stairs that Sienna had been unable to see until now. A way out?! The flash of hope was short-lived. As she turned the corner and headed down the stairs behind Langdon, she realized they were dashing into a dead end—a cul-de-sac whose walls were twice as high as the others. Furthermore, Sienna now sensed that their long journey was about to terminate at the mouth of a gaping cavern … a deep grotto carved out of the rear wall. This can’t be where he’s taking us! Over the cave’s yawning entrance, daggerlike stalactites loomed portentously. In the cavity beyond, oozing geological features twisted and dripped down the walls as if the stone were melting … morphing into shapes that included, to Sienna’s alarm, half-buried humanoids extruding from the walls as if being consumed by the stone. The entire vision reminded Sienna of something out of Botticelli’s Mappa dell’Inferno. Langdon, for some reason, seemed unfazed, and continued running directly toward the cave’s entrance. He’d made a comment earlier about Vatican City, but Sienna was fairly certain there were no freakish caverns inside the walls of the Holy See. As they drew nearer, Sienna’s eyes moved to the sprawling entablature above the entrance—a ghostly compilation of stalactites and nebulous stone extrusions that seemed to be engulfing two reclining women, who were flanked by a shield embedded with six balls, or palle, the famed crest of the Medici. Langdon suddenly cut to his left, away from the entrance and toward a feature Sienna had previously missed—a small gray door to the left of the cavern. Weathered and wooden, it appeared of little significance, like a storage closet or room for landscaping supplies. Langdon rushed to the door, clearly hoping he could open it, but the door had no handle—only a brass keyhole—and, apparently, could be opened only from within. “Damn it!” Langdon’s eyes now shone with concern, his earlier hopefulness all but erased. “I had hoped—” Without warning, the piercing whine of the drone echoed loudly off the high walls around them. Sienna turned to see the drone rising up over the palace and clawing its way in their direction. Langdon clearly saw it, too, because he grabbed Sienna’s hand and dashed toward the cavern. They ducked out of sight in the nick of time beneath the grotto’s stalactite overhang. A fitting end, she thought. Dashing through the gates of hell.