Inferno
About the Book
‘Seek and ye shall find.’
With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon
awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can
he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.
A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck
chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon’s knowledge of hidden passageways and
ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their
unknown pursuers.
With only a few lines from Dante’s dark and epic masterpiece, The Inferno, to guide
them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the most
celebrated artefacts of the Renaissance – sculptures, paintings, buildings – to find the
answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying
threat…
Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of history’s most ominous literary
classics, Inferno is Dan Brown’s most compelling and thought-provoking novel yet, a
breathless race-against-time thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go
until you close the book.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Fact
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Dan Brown
Copyright
FOR MY PARENTS …
Acknowledgments
My most humble and sincere thanks to:
As always, first and foremost, my editor and close friend, Jason Kaufman, for his
dedication and talent … but mainly for his endless good humor.
My extraordinary wife, Blythe, for her love and patience with the writing process, and
also for her superb instincts and candor as a front-line editor.
My tireless agent and trusted friend Heide Lange, for expertly navigating more
conversations, in more countries, on more topics than I will ever know. For her skills and
energy, I am eternally grateful.
The entire team at Doubleday for its enthusiasm, creativity, and efforts on behalf of my
books, with very special thanks to Suzanne Herz (for wearing so many hats … and
wearing them so well), Bill Thomas, Michael Windsor, Judy Jacoby, Joe Gallagher, Rob
Bloom, Nora Reichard, Beth Meister, Maria Carella, Lorraine Hyland, and also to the
unending support of Sonny Mehta, Tony Chirico, Kathy Trager, Anne Messitte, and Markus
Dohle. To the incredible people of the Random House sales department … you are
unrivaled.
My sage counsel Michael Rudell, for his pitch-perfect instincts on all matters, large and
small, as well as for his friendship.
My irreplaceable assistant Susan Morehouse, for her grace and vitality, and without
whom all things descend into chaos.
All of my friends at Transworld, in particular Bill Scott-Kerr for his creativity, support,
and good cheer, and also to Gail Rebuck for her superb leadership.
My Italian publisher Mondadori, especially Ricky Cavallero, Piera Cusani, Giovanni
Dutto, Antonio Franchini, and Claudia Scheu; and my Turkish publisher Altin Kitaplar,
particularly Oya Alpar, Erden Heper, and Batu Bozkurt, for the special services provided in
connection with the locations in this book.
My exceptional publishers around the world for their passion, hard work, and
commitment.
For their impressive management of the London and Milan translation sites, Leon
Romero-Montalvo and Luciano Guglielmi.
The bright Dr. Marta Alvarez González for spending so much time with us in Florence
and for bringing to life the city’s art and architecture.
The peerless Maurizio Pimponi for all he did to enhance our visit to Italy.
All the historians, guides, and specialists who generously spent time with me in
Florence and Venice, sharing their expertise: Giovanna Rao and Eugenia Antonucci at the
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Serena Pini and staff at the Palazzo Vecchio; Giovanna
Giusti at the Uffizi Gallery; Barbara Fedeli at the Baptistery and Il Duomo; Ettore Vito and
Massimo Bisson at St. Mark’s Basilica; Giorgio Tagliaferro at the Doge’s Palace; Isabella di
Lenardo, Elizabeth Carroll Consavari, and Elena Svalduz throughout all of Venice; Annalisa
Bruni and staff at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana; and to the many others whom I’ve
failed to mention in this abbreviated list, my sincere thanks.
Rachael Dillon Fried and Stephanie Delman at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates for
everything they do both here and abroad.
The exceptional minds of Dr. George Abraham, Dr. John Treanor, and Dr. Bob Helm for
their scientific expertise.
My early readers, who provided perspective along the way: Greg Brown, Dick and
Connie Brown, Rebecca Kaufman, Jerry and Olivia Kaufman, and John Chaffee.
The web-savvy Alex Cannon, who, along with the team at Sanborn Media Factory,
keeps things humming in the online world.
Judd and Kathy Gregg for providing me quiet sanctuary within Green Gables as I wrote
the final chapters of this book.
The superb online resources of the Princeton Dante Project, Digital Dante at Columbia
University, and the World of Dante.
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality
in times of moral crisis.
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, “Sì?”
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 richiamerò.”
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 finaly at rest.
Driven underground, I must speak to the world from deep within the earth, exiled to this gloomy cavern where
the bloodred waters colect in the lagoon that reflects no stars.
But this is my paradise … the perfect womb for my fragile child.
Inferno.
Soon you wil know what I have left behind.
And yet, even here, I sense the footfals of the ignorant souls who pursue me … wiling 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 al the gift of Hope, of salvation, of tomorrow.
And yet stil 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 cal 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 finaly ignite the fire that would rage across the land and clear the deadwood, once again bringing
sunshine to the healthy roots.
Culing is God’s Natural Order.
Ask yourself, What folowed the Black Death?
We al know the answer.
The Renaissance.
Rebirth.
It has always been this way. Death is folowed by birth.
To reach Paradise, man must pass through Inferno.
This, the master taught us.
And yet the silver-haired ignorant dares cal me monster? Does she stil not grasp the mathematics of the
future? The horrors it wil 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 wil burst into flames.
And when it does, nothing on earth wil 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,
può 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
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