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Inferno

“How does someone that prominent stay hidden for so long?” Langdon asked.

“He had a lot of help. Professional help. Maybe even a foreign government.”

“What government would condone the creation of a plague?”

“The same governments that try to obtain nuclear warheads on the black market. Don’t

forget that an effective plague is the ultimate biochemical weapon, and it’s worth a

fortune. Zobrist easily could have lied to his partners and assured them his creation had a

limited range. Zobrist would be the only one who had any idea what his creation actually

did.”

Langdon fell silent.

“In any case,” Sinskey continued, “if not for power or money, those helping Zobrist

could have helped because they shared his ideology. Zobrist has no shortage of disciples

who would do anything for him. He was quite a celebrity. In fact, he gave a speech at

your university not long ago.”

“At Harvard?”

Sinskey took out a pen and wrote on the border of Zobrist’s photo—the letter H

followed by a plus sign. “You’re good with symbols,” she said. “Do you recognize this

one?”

H+

“H-plus,” Langdon whispered, nodding vaguely. “Sure, a few summers ago it was

posted all over campus. I assumed it was some kind of chemistry conference.”

Sinskey chuckled. “No, those were signs for the 2010 ‘Humanity-plus’ Summit—one of

the largest Transhumanism gatherings ever. H-plus is the symbol of the Transhumanist

movement.”

Langdon cocked his head, as if trying to place the term.

“Transhumanism,” Sinskey said, “is an intellectual movement, a philosophy of sorts,

and it’s quickly taking root in the scientific community. It essentially states that humans

should use technology to transcend the weaknesses inherent in our human bodies. In

other words, the next step in human evolution should be that we begin biologically

engineering ourselves.”

“Sounds ominous,” Langdon said.

“Like all change, it’s just a matter of degree. Technically, we’ve been engineering

ourselves for years now—developing vaccines that make children immune to certain

diseases … polio, smallpox, typhoid. The difference is that now, with Zobrist’s

breakthroughs in germ-line genetic engineering, we’re learning how to create inheritable

immunizations, those that would affect the recipient at the core germ-line level—making

all subsequent generations immune to that disease.”

Langdon looked startled. “So the human species would essentially undergo an

evolution that makes it immune to typhoid, for example?”

“It’s more of an assisted evolution,” Sinskey corrected. “Normally, the evolutionary

process—whether it be a lungfish developing feet or an ape developing opposable thumbs

—takes millennia to occur. Now we can make radical genetic adaptations in a single

generation. Proponents of the technology consider it the ultimate expression of Darwinian

‘survival of the fittest’—humans becoming a species that learns to improve its own

evolutionary process.”

“Sounds more like playing God,” Langdon replied.

“I agree wholeheartedly,” Sinskey said. “Zobrist, however, like many other

Transhumanists, argued strongly that it is mankind’s evolutionary obligation to use all the

powers at our disposal—germ-line genetic mutation, for one—to improve as a species.

The problem is that our genetic makeup is like a house of cards—each piece connected to

and supported by countless others—often in ways we don’t understand. If we try to

remove a single human trait, we can cause hundreds of others to shift simultaneously,

possibly with catastrophic effects.”

Langdon nodded. “There’s a reason evolution is a gradual process.”

“Precisely!” Sinskey said, feeling her admiration for the professor growing with each

passing moment. “We’re tinkering with a process that took aeons to build. These are

dangerous times. We now literally have the capacity to activate certain gene sequences

that will result in our descendants having increased dexterity, stamina, strength, even

intelligence—essentially a super-race. These hypothetical ‘enhanced’ individuals are what

Transhumanists refer to as posthumans, which some believe will be the future of our

species.”

“Sounds eerily like eugenics,” Langdon replied.

The reference made Sinskey’s skin crawl.

In the 1940s, Nazi scientists had dabbled in a technology they’d dubbed eugenics—an

attempt to use rudimentary genetic engineering to increase the birth rate of those with

certain “desirable” genetic traits, while decreasing the birth rate of those with “less

desirable” ethnic traits.

Ethnic cleansing at the genetic level.

“There are similarities,” Sinskey admitted, “and while it’s hard to fathom how one

would engineer a new human race, there are a lot of smart people who believe it is

critical to our survival that we begin that very process. One of the contributors to the

Transhumanist magazine H+ described germ-line genetic engineering as ‘the clear next

step,’ and claimed it ‘epitomized the true potential of our species.’ ” Sinskey paused.

“Then again, in the magazine’s defense, they also ran a Discover magazine piece called

‘The Most Dangerous Idea in the World.’ ”

“I think I’d side with the latter,” Langdon said. “At least from the sociocultural

standpoint.”

“How so?”

“Well, I assume that genetic enhancements—much like cosmetic surgery—cost a lot of

money, right?”

“Of course. Not everyone could afford to improve themselves or their children.”

“Which means that legalized genetic enhancements would immediately create a world

of haves and have-nots. We already have a growing chasm between the rich and the

poor, but genetic engineering would create a race of superhumans and … perceived

subhumans. You think people are concerned about the ultrarich one percent running the

world? Just imagine if that one percent were also, quite literally, a superior species—

smarter, stronger, healthier. It’s the kind of situation that would be ripe for slavery or

ethnic cleansing.”

Sinskey smiled at the handsome academic beside her. “Professor, you have very quickly

grasped what I believe to be the most serious pitfall of genetic engineering.”

“Well, I may have grasped that, but I’m still confused about Zobrist. All of this

Transhumanist thinking seems to be about bettering humankind, making us more

healthy, curing fatal diseases, extending our longevity. And yet Zobrist’s views on

overpopulation seem to endorse killing off people. His ideas on Transhumanism and

overpopulation seem to be in conflict, don’t they?”

Sinskey gave a solemn sigh. It was a good question, and unfortunately it had a clear

and troubling answer. “Zobrist believed wholeheartedly in Transhumanism—in bettering

the species through technology; however, he also believed our species would go extinct

before we got a chance to do that. In effect, if nobody takes action, our sheer numbers

will kill off the species before we get a chance to realize the promise of genetic

engineering.”

Langdon’s eyes went wide. “So Zobrist wanted to thin the herd … in order to buy more

time?”

Sinskey nodded. “He once described himself as being trapped on a ship where the

passengers double in number every hour, while he is desperately trying to build a lifeboat

before the ship sinks under its own weight.” She paused. “He advocated throwing half the

people overboard.”

Langdon winced. “Frightening thought.”

“Quite. Make no mistake about it,” she said. “Zobrist firmly believed that a drastic

curbing of the human population will be remembered one day as the ultimate act of

heroism … the moment the human race chose to survive.”

“As I said, frightening.”

“More so because Zobrist was not alone in his thinking. When Zobrist died, he became

a martyr for a lot of people. I have no idea who we’re going to run into when we arrive in

Florence, but we’ll need to be very careful. We won’t be the only ones trying to find this

plague, and for your own safety, we can’t let a soul know you’re in Italy looking for it.”

Langdon told her about his friend Ignazio Busoni, a Dante specialist, who Langdon

believed could get him into Palazzo Vecchio for a quiet after-hours look at the painting

that contained the words cerca trova, from Zobrist’s little projector. Busoni might also be

able to help Langdon understand the strange quote about the eyes of death.

Sinskey pulled back her long silver hair and looked intently at Langdon. “Seek and find,

Professor. Time is running out.”

Sinskey went to an onboard storeroom and retrieved the WHO’s most secure hazmat

tube—a model with biometric sealing capability.

“Give me your thumb,” she said, setting the canister in front of Langdon.

Langdon looked puzzled but obliged.

Sinskey programmed the tube so that Langdon would be the only person who could

open it. Then she took the little projector and placed it safely inside.

“Think of it as a portable lockbox,” she said with a smile.

“With a biohazard symbol?” Langdon looked uneasy.

“It’s all we have. On the bright side, nobody will mess with it.” Langdon excused

himself to stretch his legs and use the restroom. While he was gone, Sinskey tried to slip

the sealed canister into his jacket pocket. Unfortunately it didn’t fit.

He can’t be carrying this projector around in plain sight. She thought a moment and

then headed back to the storeroom for a scalpel and a stitch kit. With expert precision,

she cut a slit in the lining of Langdon’s jacket and carefully sewed a hidden pocket that

was the exact size required to conceal the biotube.

When Langdon returned, she was just finishing the final stitches.

The professor stopped and stared as if she had defaced the Mona Lisa. “You sliced into

the lining of my Harris Tweed?”

“Relax, Professor,” she said. “I’m a trained surgeon. The stitches are quite

professional.”

CHAPTER 68

VENICE’S SANTA LUCIA Train Station is an elegant, low-slung structure made of gray stone and

concrete. It was designed in a modern, minimalist style, with a facade that is gracefully

devoid of all signage except for one symbol—the winged letters FS—the icon of the state

railway system, the Ferrovie dello Stato.

Because the station is located at the westernmost end of the Grand Canal, passengers

arriving in Venice need take only a single step out of the station to find themselves fully

immersed in the distinctive sights, smells, and sounds of Venice.

For Langdon, it was always the salty air that struck him first—a clean ocean breeze

spiced by the aroma of the white pizza sold by the street vendors outside the station.

Today, the wind was from the east, and the air also carried the tang of diesel fuel from

the long line of water taxis idling nearby on the turgid waters of the Grand Canal. Dozens

of boat captains waved their arms and shouted to tourists, hoping to lure a new fare onto

their taxis, gondolas, vaporetti, and private speedboats.

Chaos on the water, Langdon mused, eyeing the floating traffic jam. Somehow, the

congestion that would be maddening in Boston felt quaint in Venice.

A stone’s throw across the canal, the iconic verdigris cupola of San Simeone Piccolo

rose into the afternoon sky. The church was one of the most architecturally eclectic in all

of Europe. Its unusually steep dome and circular sanctuary were Byzantine in style, while

its columned marble pronaos was clearly modeled on the classical Greek entryway to

Rome’s Pantheon. The main entrance was topped by a spectacular pediment of intricate

marble relief portraying a host of martyred saints.

Venice is an outdoor museum, Langdon thought, his gaze dropping to the canal water

that lapped at the church’s stairs. A slowly sinking museum. Even so, the potential of

flooding seemed inconsequential compared to the threat that Langdon feared was now

lurking beneath the city.

And nobody has any idea …

The poem on the back of Dante’s death mask still played in Langdon’s mind, and he

wondered where the verses would lead them. He had the transcription of the poem in his

pocket, but the plaster mask itself—at Sienna’s suggestion—Langdon had wrapped in

newspaper and discreetly sealed inside a self-serve locker in the train station. Although

an egregiously inadequate resting place for such a precious artifact, the locker was

certainly far safer than carrying the priceless plaster mask around a water-filled city.

“Robert?” Sienna was up ahead with Ferris, motioning toward the water taxis. “We

don’t have much time.”

Langdon hurried toward them, although as an architecture enthusiast, he found it

almost unthinkable to rush a trip along the Grand Canal. Few Venetian experiences were

more pleasurable than boarding vaporetto no. 1—the city’s primary open-air water bus—

preferably at night, and sitting up front in the open air as the floodlit cathedrals and

palaces drifted past.

No vaporetto today, Langdon thought. The vaporetti water buses were notoriously

slow, and water taxi would be a faster option. Unfortunately, the taxi queue outside the

train station looked interminable at the moment.

Ferris, in no apparent mood to wait, quickly took matters into his own hands. With a

generous stack of bills, he quickly summoned over a water limousine—a highly polished

Veneziano Convertible made of South African mahogany. While the elegant craft was

certainly overkill, the journey would be both private and swift—a mere fifteen minutes

along the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s Square.

Their driver was a strikingly handsome man in a tailored Armani suit. He looked more

like a movie star than a skipper, but this was, after all, Venice, the land of Italian

elegance.

“Maurizio Pimponi,” the man said, winking at Sienna as he welcomed them all aboard.

“Prosecco? Limoncello? Champagne?”

“No, grazie,” Sienna replied, instructing him in rapid-fire Italian to get them to St.

Mark’s Square as fast as he possibly could.

“Ma certo!” Maurizio winked again. “My boat, she is the fastest in all of Venezia …”

As Langdon and the others settled into plush seats in the open-air stern, Maurizio

reversed the boat’s Volvo Penta motor, expertly backing away from the bank. Then he

spun the wheel to the right and gunned the engines forward, maneuvering his large craft

through a throng of gondolas, leaving a number of stripe-shirted gondolieri shaking their

fists as their sleek black crafts bobbed up and down in his wake.

“Scusate!” Maurizio called apologetically. “VIPs!”

Within seconds, Maurizio had pulled away from the congestion at Santa Lucia Station

and was skimming eastward along the Grand Canal. As they accelerated beneath the

graceful expanse of the Ponte degli Scalzi, Langdon smelled the distinctively sweet aroma

of the local delicacy seppie al nero—squid in its own ink—which was wafting out of the

canopied restaurants along the bank nearby. As they rounded a bend in the canal, the

massive, domed Church of San Geremia came into view.

“Saint Lucia,” Langdon whispered, reading the saint’s name from the inscription on the

side of the church. “The bones of the blind.”

“I’m sorry?” Sienna glanced over, looking hopeful that Langdon might have figured out

something more about the mysterious poem.

“Nothing,” Langdon said. “Strange thought. Probably nothing.” He pointed to the

church. “See the inscription? Saint Lucia is buried there. I sometimes lecture on

hagiographic art—art depicting Christian saints—and it just occurred to me that Saint

Lucia is the patron saint of the blind.”

“Sì, santa Lucia!” Maurizio chimed in, eager to be of service. “Saint for the blind! You

know the story, no?” Their driver looked back at them and shouted over the sound of the

engines. “Lucia was so beautiful that all men have lust for her. So, Lucia, for to be pure to

God and keep virginity, she cut out her own eyes.”

Sienna groaned. “There’s commitment.”

“As reward for her sacrifice,” Maurizio added, “God gave Lucia an even more beautiful

set of eyes!”

Sienna looked at Langdon. “He does know that makes no sense, right?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Langdon observed, picturing the twenty or so

famous Old Master paintings depicting Saint Lucia carrying her own eyeballs on a platter.

While there were numerous versions of the Saint Lucia tale, they all involved Lucia

cutting out her lust-inducing eyes and placing them on a platter for her ardent suitor and

defiantly declaring: “Here hast thou, what thou so much desired … and, for the rest, I

beseech thee, leave me now in peace!” Eerily, it had been Holy Scripture that had

inspired Lucia’s self-mutilation, forever linking her to Christ’s famous admonition “If thine

eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.”

Pluck, Langdon thought, realizing the same word was used in the poem. Seek the

treacherous doge of Venice who … plucked up the bones of the blind.

Puzzled by the coincidence, he wondered if perhaps this was a cryptic indication that

Saint Lucia was the blind person being referenced in the poem.

“Maurizio,” Langdon shouted, pointing to the Church of San Geremia. “The bones of

Saint Lucia are in that church, no?”

“A few, yes,” Maurizio said, driving skillfully with one hand and looking back at his

passengers, ignoring the boat traffic ahead. “But mostly no. Saint Lucia is so beloved, her

body has spread in churches all over the world. Venetians love Saint Lucia the most, of

course, and so we celebrate—”

“Maurizio!” Ferris shouted. “Saint Lucia is blind, not you. Eyes front!”

Maurizio laughed good-naturedly and turned forward just in time to handily avoid

colliding with an oncoming boat.

Sienna was studying Langdon. “What are you getting at? The treacherous doge who

plucked up the bones of the blind?”

Langdon pursed his lips. “I’m not sure.”

He quickly told Sienna and Ferris the history of Saint Lucia’s relics—her bones—which

was among the strangest in all of hagiography. Allegedly, when the beautiful Lucia

refused the advances of an influential suitor, the man denounced her and had her burned

at the stake, where, according to legend, her body refused to burn. Because her flesh had

been resistant to fire, her relics were believed to have special powers, and whoever

possessed them would enjoy an unusually long life.

“Magic bones?” Sienna said.

“Believed to be, yes, which is the reason her relics have been spread all over the world.

For two millennia, powerful leaders have tried to thwart aging and death by possessing

the bones of Saint Lucia. Her skeleton has been stolen, restolen, relocated, and divided

up more times than that of any other saint in history. Her bones have passed through the

hands of at least a dozen of history’s most powerful people.”

“Including,” Sienna inquired, “a treacherous doge?”

Seek the treacherous doge of Venice who severed the heads from horses … and

plucked up the bones of the blind.

“Quite possibly,” Langdon said, now realizing that Dante’s Inferno mentioned Saint

Lucia very prominently. Lucia was one of the three blessed women—le “tre donne

benedette”—who helped summon Virgil to help Dante escape the underworld. As the

other two women were the Virgin Mary and Dante’s beloved Beatrice, Dante had placed

Saint Lucia in the highest of all company.

“If you’re right about this,” Sienna said, excitement in her voice, “then the same

treacherous doge who severed the heads from horses …”

“… also stole the bones of Saint Lucia,” Langdon concluded.

Sienna nodded. “Which should narrow our list considerably.” She glanced over at Ferris.

“Are you sure your phone’s not working? We might be able to search online for—”

“Stone dead,” Ferris said. “I just checked. Sorry.”

“We’ll be there soon,” Langdon said. “I have no doubt we’ll be able to find some

answers at St. Mark’s Basilica.”

St. Mark’s was the only piece of the puzzle that felt rock solid to Langdon. The

mouseion of holy wisdom. Langdon was counting on the basilica to reveal the identity of

their mysterious doge … and from there, with luck, the specific palace that Zobrist had

chosen to release his plague. For here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits.

Langdon tried to push from his mind any images of the plague, but it was no use. He

had often wondered what this incredible city had been like in its heyday … before the

plague weakened it enough for it to be conquered by the Ottomans, and then by

Napoleon … back when Venice reigned gloriously as the commercial center of Europe. By

all accounts, there was no more beautiful city in the world, the wealth and culture of its

population unparalleled.

Ironically, it was the population’s taste for foreign luxuries that brought about its

demise—the deadly plague traveling from China to Venice on the backs of rats stowed

away on trading vessels. The same plague that destroyed an unfathomable two-thirds of

China’s population arrived in Europe and very quickly killed one in three—young and old,

rich and poor alike.

Langdon had read descriptions of life in Venice during the plague outbreaks. With little

or no dry land in which to bury the dead, bloated bodies floated in the canals, with some

areas so densely packed with corpses that workers had to labor like log rollers and prod

the bodies out to sea. It seemed no amount of praying could diminish the plague’s wrath.

By the time city officials realized it was the rats that were causing the disease, it was too

late, but Venice still enforced a decree by which all incoming vessels had to anchor

offshore for a full forty days before they would be permitted to unload. To this day, the

number forty—quaranta in Italian—served as a grim reminder of the origins of the word

quarantine.

As their boat sped onward around another bend in the canal, a festive red awning

luffed in the breeze, pulling Langdon’s attention away from his grim thoughts of death

toward an elegant, three-tiered structure on his left.

CASINÒ DI VENEZIA: AN INFINITE EMOTION.

While Langdon had never quite understood the words on the casino’s banner, the

spectacular Renaissance-style palace had been part of the Venetian landscape since the

sixteenth century. Once a private mansion, it was now a black-tie gaming hall that was

famous for being the site at which, in 1883, composer Richard Wagner had collapsed

dead of a heart attack shortly after composing his opera Parsifal.

Beyond the casino on the right, a Baroque, rusticated facade bore an even larger

banner, this one deep blue, announcing the CA’ PESARO: GALLERIA INTERNAZIONALE D’ARTE

MODERNA. Years ago, Langdon had been inside and seen Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece The

Kiss while it was on loan from Vienna. Klimt’s dazzling gold-leaf rendering of intertwined

lovers had sparked in him a passion for the artist’s work, and to this day, Langdon

credited Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro with arousing his lifelong gusto for modern art.

Maurizio drove on, powering faster now in the wide canal.

Ahead, the famous Rialto Bridge loomed—the halfway point to St. Mark’s Square. As

they neared the bridge, preparing to pass beneath it, Langdon looked up and saw a lone

figure standing motionless at the railing, peering down at them with a somber visage.

The face was both familiar … and terrifying.

Langdon recoiled on instinct.

Grayish and elongated, the face had cold dead eyes and a long beaked nose.

The boat slipped beneath the ominous figure just as Langdon realized it was nothing

more than a tourist showing off a recent purchase—one of the hundreds of plague masks

sold every day in the nearby Rialto Market.

Today, however, the costume seemed anything but charming.

CHAPTER 69

ST. MARK’S SQUARE LIES at the southernmost tip of Venice’s Grand Canal, where the sheltered

waterway merges with the open sea. Overlooking this perilous intersection is the austere

triangular fortress of Dogana da Mar—the Maritime Customs Office—whose watchtower

once guarded Venice against foreign invasion. Nowadays, the tower has been replaced by

a massive golden globe and a weather vane depicting the goddess of fortune, whose

shifting directions on the breeze serve as a reminder to ocean-bound sailors of the

unpredictability of fate.

As Maurizio steered the sleek boat toward the end of the canal, the choppy sea opened

ominously before them. Robert Langdon had traveled this route many times before,

although always in a much larger vaporetto, and he felt uneasy as their limo lurched on

the growing swells.

To reach the docks at St. Mark’s Square, their boat would need to cross an expanse of

open lagoon whose waters were congested with hundreds of craft—everything from

luxury yachts, to tankers, to private sailboats, to massive cruise liners. It felt as if they

were leaving a country road and merging onto an eight-lane superhighway.

Sienna seemed equally uncertain as she eyed the towering ten-story cruise liner that

was now passing in front of them, only three hundred yards off. The ship’s decks were

crawling with passengers, all packed against the railings, taking photos of St. Mark’s

Square from the water. In the churning wake of this ship, three others were lined up,

awaiting their chance to drive past Venice’s best-known landmark. Langdon had heard

that in recent years, the number of ships had multiplied so quickly that an endless line of

cruises passed all day and all night.

At the helm, Maurizio studied the line of oncoming cruise liners and then glanced to his

left at a canopied dock not far away. “I park at Harry’s Bar?” He motioned to the

restaurant famous for having invented the Bellini. “St. Mark’s Square is very short

walking.”

“No, take us all the way,” Ferris commanded, pointing across the lagoon toward the

docks at St. Mark’s Square.

Maurizio shrugged good-naturedly. “Your choice. Hold on!”

The engines revved and the limo began cutting through the heavy chop, falling into one

of the travel lanes marked by buoys. The passing cruise liners looked like floating

apartment buildings, their wakes tossing the other boats like corks.

To Langdon’s surprise, dozens of gondolas were making this same crossing. Their

slender hulls—at nearly forty feet in length and almost fourteen hundred pounds—

appeared remarkably stable in the rough waters. Each vessel was piloted by a sure-

footed gondolier who stood on a platform on the left side of the stern in his traditional

black-and-white-striped shirt and rowed a single oar attached to the right-hand gunwale.

Even in the rough water, it was evident that every gondola listed mysteriously to the left,

an oddity that Langdon had learned was caused by the boat’s asymmetrical construction;

every gondola’s hull was curved to the right, away from the gondolier, to resist the boat’s

tendency to turn left from the right-sided rowing.

Maurizio pointed proudly to one of the gondolas as they powered past it. “You see the

metal design on the front?” he called over his shoulder, motioning to the elegant

ornament protruding from the bow. “It’s the only metal on a gondola—called ferro di

prua—the iron of the prow. It is a picture of Venice!”

Maurizio explained that the scythelike decoration that protruded from the bow of every

gondola in Venice had a symbolic meaning. The ferro’s curved shape represented the

Grand Canal, its six teeth reflected the six sestieri or districts of Venice, and its oblong

blade was the stylized headpiece of the Venetian doge.

The doge, Langdon thought, his thoughts returning to the task ahead. Seek the

treacherous doge of Venice who severed the heads from horses … and plucked up the

bones of the blind.

Langdon raised his gaze to the shoreline ahead, where a small wooded park met the

water’s edge. Above the trees, silhouetted against a cloudless sky, rose the redbrick spire

of St. Mark’s bell tower, atop which a golden Archangel Gabriel peered down from a

dizzying three hundred feet.

In a city where high-rises were nonexistent as a result of their tendency to sink, the

towering Campanile di San Marco served as a navigational beacon to all who ventured

into Venice’s maze of canals and passageways; a lost traveler, with a single glance

skyward, would see the way back to St. Mark’s Square. Langdon still found it hard to

believe that this massive tower had collapsed in 1902, leaving an enormous pile of rubble

on St. Mark’s Square. Remarkably, the lone casualty in the disaster had been a cat.

Visitors to Venice could experience the city’s inimitable atmosphere in any number of

breathtaking locales, and yet Langdon’s favorite had always been the Riva degli

Schiavoni. The wide stone promenade that sat along the water’s edge had been built in

the ninth century from dredged silt and ran from the old Arsenal all the way to St. Mark’s

Square.

Lined with fine cafés, elegant hotels, and even the home church of Antonio Vivaldi, the

Riva began its course at the Arsenal—Venice’s ancient shipbuilding yards—where the

piney scent of boiling tree sap had once filled the air as boatbuilders smeared hot pitch

on their unsound vessels to plug the holes. Allegedly it had been a visit to these very

shipyards that had inspired Dante Alighieri to include rivers of boiling pitch as a torture

device in his Inferno.

Langdon’s gaze moved to the right, tracing the Riva along the waterfront, and coming

to rest on the promenade’s dramatic ending. Here, at the southernmost edge of St.

Mark’s Square, the vast expanse of pavement met the open sea. During Venice’s golden

age, this stark precipice had been proudly dubbed “the edge of all civilization.”

Today, the three-hundred-yard-long stretch where St. Mark’s Square met the sea was

lined, as it always was, with no fewer than a hundred black gondolas, which bobbed

against their moorings, their scythelike bow ornaments rising and falling against the

white marble buildings of the piazza.

Langdon still found it hard to fathom that this tiny city—just twice the size of Central

Park in New York—had somehow risen out of the sea to become the largest and richest

empire in the west.

As Maurizio powered the boat closer, Langdon could see that the main square was

absolutely mobbed with people. Napoleon had once referred to St. Mark’s Square as “the

drawing room of Europe,” and from the looks of things, this “room” was hosting a party

for far too many guests. The entire piazza looked almost as if it would sink beneath the

weight of its admirers.

“My God,” Sienna whispered, gazing out at the throngs of people.

Langdon wasn’t sure whether she was saying this out of fear that Zobrist might have

chosen such a heavily populated location to release his plague … or because she sensed

that Zobrist might actually have had a point in warning about the dangers of

overpopulation.

Venice hosted a staggering number of tourists every year—an estimated one-third of 1

percent of the world’s population—some twenty million visitors in the year 2000. With the

additional billion added to the earth’s population since that year, the city was now

groaning under the weight of three million more tourists per year. Venice, like the planet

itself, had only a finite amount of space, and at some point would no longer be able to

import enough food, dispose of enough waste, or find enough beds for all those who

wanted to visit it.

Ferris stood nearby, his eyes turned not toward the mainland, but out to sea, watching

all the incoming ships.

“You okay?” Sienna asked, eyeing him curiously.

Ferris turned abruptly. “Yeah, fine … just thinking.” He faced front and called up to

Maurizio: “Park as close to St. Mark’s as you can.”

“No problem!” Their driver gave a wave. “Two minutes!”

The limo had now come even with St. Mark’s Square, and the Doge’s Palace rose

majestically to their right, dominating the shoreline.

A perfect example of Venetian Gothic architecture, the palace was an exercise in

understated elegance. With none of the turrets or spires normally associated with the

palaces of France or England, it was conceived as a massive rectangular prism, which

provided for the largest possible amount of interior square footage in which to house the

doge’s substantial government and support staff.

Viewed from the ocean, the palace’s massive expanse of white limestone would have

been overbearing had the effect not been carefully muted by the addition of porticos,

columns, a loggia, and quatrefoil perforations. Geometric patterns of pink limestone ran

throughout the exterior, reminding Langdon of the Alhambra in Spain.

As the boat pulled closer to the moorings, Ferris seemed concerned by a gathering of

people in front of the palace. A dense crowd had gathered on a bridge, and all of its

members were pointing down a narrow canal that sliced between two large sections of

the Doge’s Palace.

“What are they looking at?” Ferris demanded, sounding nervous.

“Il Ponte dei Sospiri,” Sienna replied. “A famous Venetian bridge.”

Langdon peered down the cramped waterway and saw the beautifully carved, enclosed

tunnel that arched between the two buildings. The Bridge of Sighs, he thought, recalling

one of his favorite boyhood movies, A Little Romance, which was based on the legend

that if two young lovers kissed beneath this bridge at sunset while the bells of St. Mark’s

were ringing, they would love each other forever. The deeply romantic notion had stayed

with Langdon his entire life. Of course, it hadn’t hurt that the film also starred an

adorable fourteen-year-old newcomer named Diane Lane, on whom Langdon had

immediately developed a boyhood crush … a crush that, admittedly, he had never quite

shaken.

Years later, Langdon had been horrified to learn that the Bridge of Sighs drew its name

not from sighs of passion … but instead from sighs of misery. As it turned out, the

enclosed walkway served as the connector between the Doge’s Palace and the doge’s

prison, where the incarcerated languished and died, their groans of anguish echoing out

of the grated windows along the narrow canal.

Langdon had visited the prison once, and was surprised to learn that the most terrifying

cells were not those at water level, which often flooded, but those next door on the top

floor of the palace proper—called piombi after their lead-tiled roofs—which made them

torturously hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. The great lover Casanova

had once been a prisoner in the piombi; charged by the Inquisition with adultery and

spying, he had survived fifteen months of incarceration only to escape by beguiling his

keeper.

“Sta’ attento!” Maurizio shouted to the pilot of a gondola as their limo slid into the

berth the gondola was just vacating. He had found a spot in front of the Hotel Danieli,

only a hundred yards from St. Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace.

Maurizio threw a line around a mooring post and leaped ashore as if he were

auditioning for a swashbuckling movie. Once he had secured the boat, he turned and

extended a hand down into the boat, offering to help his passengers out.

“Thanks,” Langdon said as the muscular Italian pulled him ashore.

Ferris followed, looking vaguely distracted and again glancing out to sea.

Sienna was the last to disembark. As the devilishly handsome Maurizio hoisted her

ashore, he fixed her with a deep stare that seemed to imply that she’d have a better time

if she ditched her two companions and stayed aboard with him. Sienna seemed not to

notice.

“Grazie, Maurizio,” she said absently, her gaze focused on the nearby Doge’s Palace.

Then, without missing a stride, she led Langdon and Ferris into the crowd.

CHAPTER 70

APTLY NAMED AFTER one of history’s most famed travelers, the Marco Polo International

Airport is located four miles north of St. Mark’s Square on the waters of the Laguna

Veneta.

Because of the luxuries of private air travel, Elizabeth Sinskey had deplaned only ten

minutes earlier and was already skimming across the lagoon in a futuristic black tender—

a Dubois SR52 Blackbird—which had been sent by the stranger who had phoned earlier.

The provost.

For Sinskey, after being immobilized in the back of the van all day, the open air of the

ocean felt invigorating. She turned her face to the salty wind and let her silver hair

stream out behind her. Nearly two hours had passed since her last injection, and she was

finally feeling alert. For the first time since last night, Elizabeth Sinskey was herself.

Agent Brüder was seated beside her along with his team of men. None of them said a

word. If they had concerns about this unusual rendezvous, they knew their thoughts were

irrelevant; the decision was not theirs to make.

As the tender raced on, a large island loomed up to them on the right, its shoreline

dotted with squat brick buildings and smokestacks. Murano, Elizabeth realized,

recognizing the illustrious glassblowing factories.

I can’t believe I’m back, she thought, enduring a sharp pang of sadness. Full circle.

Years ago, while in med school, she had come to Venice with her fiancé and stopped to

visit the Murano Glass Museum. There, her fiancé had spied a beautiful handblown mobile

and innocently commented that he wanted to hang one just like it someday in their

baby’s nursery. Overcome with guilt for having kept a painful secret far too long,

Elizabeth finally leveled with him about her childhood asthma and the tragic

glucocorticoid treatments that had destroyed her reproductive system.

Whether it had been her dishonesty or her infertility that turned the young man’s heart

to stone, Elizabeth would never know. But one week later, she left Venice without her

engagement ring.

Her only memento of the heartbreaking trip had been a lapis lazuli amulet. The Rod of

Asclepius was a fitting symbol of medicine—bitter medicine in this case—but she had

worn it every day since.

My precious amulet, she thought. A parting gift from the man who wanted me to bear

his children.

Nowadays, the Venetian islands carried no romance for her at all, their isolated villages

sparking thoughts not of love but of the quarantine colonies that had once been

established on them in an effort to curb the Black Death.

As the Blackbird tender raced on past Isola San Pietro, Elizabeth realized they were

homing in on a massive gray yacht, which seemed to be anchored in a deep channel,

awaiting their arrival.

The gunmetal-gray ship looked like something out of the U.S. military’s stealth

program. The name emblazoned across the back offered no clue as to what kind of ship it

might be.

The Mendacium?

The ship loomed larger and larger, and soon Sinskey could see a lone figure on the rear

deck—a small, solitary man, deeply tanned, watching them through binoculars. As the

tender arrived at The Mendacium’s expansive rear docking platform, the man descended

the stairs to greet them.

“Dr. Sinskey, welcome aboard.” The sun-drenched man politely shook her hand, his

palms soft and smooth, hardly the hands of a boatman. “I appreciate your coming. Follow

me, please.”

As the group ascended several decks, Sinskey caught fleeting glimpses of what looked

like busy cubicle farms. This strange ship was actually packed with people, but none were

relaxing—they were all working.

Working on what?

As they continued climbing, Sinksey could hear the ship’s massive engines power up,

churning a deep wake as the yacht began moving again.

Where are we going? she wondered, alarmed.

“I’d like to speak to Dr. Sinskey alone,” the man said to the soldiers, pausing to glance

at Sinskey. “If that’s okay with you?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Sir,” Brüder said forcefully, “I’d like to recommend Dr. Sinskey be examined by your

onboard physician. She’s had some medical—”

“I’m fine,” Sinskey interjected. “Truly. Thank you, though.”

The provost eyed Brüder a long moment and then motioned to a table of food and

drink being set up on the deck. “Catch your breath. You’re going to need it. You’ll be

going back ashore very shortly.”

Without further ado, the provost turned his back on the agent and ushered Sinskey into

an elegant stateroom and study, closing the door behind him.

“Drink?” he asked, motioning to a bar.

She shook her head, still trying to take in her bizarre surroundings. Who is this man?

What does he do here?

Her host was studying her now, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. “Are you aware

that my client Bertrand Zobrist referred to you as ‘the silver-haired devil’?”

“I have a few choice names for him as well.”

The man showed no emotion as he walked over to his desk and pointed down at a

large book. “I’d like you to look at this.”

Sinskey walked over and eyed the tome. Dante’s Inferno? She recalled the horrifying

images of death that Zobrist had shown her during their encounter at the Council on

Foreign Relations.

“Zobrist gave this to me two weeks ago. There’s an inscription.”

Sinskey studied the handwritten text on the title page. It was signed by Zobrist.

My dear friend, thank you for helping me find the path.

The world thanks you, too.

Sinskey felt a chill. “What path did you help him find?”

“I have no idea. Or rather, until a few hours ago I had no idea.”

“And now?”

“Now I’ve made a rare exception to my protocol … and I’ve reached out to you.”

Sinskey had traveled a long way and was in no mood for a cryptic conversation. “Sir, I

don’t know who you are, or what the hell you do on this ship, but you owe me an

explanation. Tell me why you harbored a man who was being actively pursued by the

World Health Organization.”

Despite Sinskey’s heated tone, the man replied in a measured whisper: “I realize you

and I have been working at cross-purposes, but I would suggest that we forget the past.

The past is the past. The future, I sense, is what demands our immediate attention.”

With that, the man produced a tiny red flash drive and inserted it into his computer,

motioning for her to sit down. “Bertrand Zobrist made this video. He was hoping I would

release it for him tomorrow.”

Before Sinskey could respond, the computer monitor dimmed, and she heard the soft

sounds of lapping water. Emerging from the blackness, a scene began to take shape …

the interior of a water-filled cavern … like a subterranean pond. Strangely, the water

appeared to be illuminated from within … glowing with an odd crimson luminescence.

As the lapping continued, the camera tilted downward and descended into the water,

focusing in on the cavern’s silt-covered floor. Bolted to the floor was a shiny rectangular

plaque bearing an inscription, a date, and a name.

IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE,

THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER.

The date was tomorrow. The name was Bertrand Zobrist.

Elizabeth Sinskey felt herself shudder. “What is this place?!” she demanded. “ Where is

this place?!”

In response, the provost showed his first bit of emotion—a deep sigh of disappointment

and concern. “Dr. Sinskey,” he replied, “I was hoping you might know the answer to that

same question.”

One mile away, on the waterfront walkway of Riva degli Schiavoni, the view out to sea

had changed ever so slightly. To anyone looking carefully, an enormous gray yacht had

just eased around a spit of land to the east. It was now bearing down on St. Mark’s

Square.

The Mendacium, FS-2080 realized with a surge of fear.

Its gray hull was unmistakable.

The provost is coming … and time is running out.

CHAPTER 71

SNAKING THROUGH HEAVY crowds on the Riva degli Schiavoni, Langdon, Sienna, and Ferris

hugged the water’s edge, making their way into St. Mark’s Square and arriving at its

southernmost border, the edge where the piazza met the sea.

Here the throng of tourists was almost impenetrable, creating a claustrophobic crush

around Langdon as the multitudes gravitated over to photograph the two massive

columns that stood here, framing the square.

The official gateway to the city, Langdon thought ironically, knowing the spot had also

been used for public executions until as late as the eighteenth century.

Atop one of the gateway’s columns he could see a bizarre statue of St. Theodore,

posing proudly with his slain dragon of legendary repute, which always looked to Langdon

much more like a crocodile.

Atop the second column stood the ubiquitous symbol of Venice—the winged lion.

Throughout the city, the winged lion could be seen with his paw resting proudly on an

open book bearing the Latin inscription Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus (May Peace Be

with You, Mark, My Evangelist). According to legend, these words were spoken by an

angel upon St. Mark’s arrival in Venice, along with the prediction that his body would one

day rest here. This apocryphal legend was later used by Venetians to justify plundering

St. Mark’s bones from Alexandria for reburial in St. Mark’s Basilica. To this day, the

winged lion endures as the city’s symbol and is visible at nearly every turn.

Langdon motioned to his right, past the columns, across St. Mark’s Square. “If we get

separated, meet at the front door of the basilica.”

The others agreed and quickly began skirting the edges of the crowd and following the

western wall of the Doge’s Palace into the square. Despite the laws forbidding feeding

them, the celebrated pigeons of Venice appeared to be alive and well, some pecking

about at the feet of the crowds and others swooping into the outdoor cafés to pillage

unprotected bread baskets and torment the tuxedoed waiters.

This grand piazza, unlike most in Europe, was shaped not in the form of a square but

rather in that of the letter L. The shorter leg—known as the piazzetta—connected the

ocean to St. Mark’s Basilica. Up ahead, the square took a ninety-degree left turn into its

larger leg, which ran from the basilica toward the Museo Correr. Strangely, rather than

being rectilinear, the square was an irregular trapezoid, narrowing substantially at one

end. This fun-house-type illusion made the piazza look far longer than it was, an effect

that was accentuated by the grid of tiles whose patterns outlined the original stalls of

fifteenth-century street merchants.

As Langdon continued on toward the elbow of the square, he could see, directly ahead

in the distance, the shimmering blue glass dial of the St. Mark’s Clock Tower—the same

astronomical clock through which James Bond had thrown a villain in the film Moonraker.

It was not until this moment, as he entered the sheltered square, that Langdon could

fully appreciate this city’s most unique offering.

Sound.

With virtually no cars or motorized vehicles of any kind, Venice enjoyed a blissful

absence of the usual civic traffic, subways, and sirens, leaving sonic space for the

distinctly unmechanical tapestry of human voices, cooing pigeons, and lilting violins

serenading patrons at the outdoor cafés. Venice sounded like no other metropolitan

center in the world.

As the late-afternoon sun streamed into St. Mark’s from the west, casting long shadows

across the tiled square, Langdon glanced up at the towering spire of the campanile, which

rose high over the square and dominated the ancient Venetian skyline. The upper loggia

of the tower was packed with hundreds of people. Even the mere thought of being up

there made him shiver, and he put his head back down and continued through the sea of

humanity.

Sienna could easily have kept up with Langdon, but Ferris was lagging behind, and Sienna

had decided to split the difference in order to keep both men in sight. Now, however, as

the distance between them grew more pronounced, she looked back impatiently. Ferris

pointed to his chest, indicating he was winded, and motioned for her to go on ahead.

Sienna complied, moving quickly after Langdon and losing sight of Ferris. Yet as she

wove her way through the crowd, a nagging feeling held her back—the strange suspicion

that Ferris was lagging behind intentionally … as if he were trying to put distance

between them.

Having learned long ago to trust her instincts, Sienna ducked into an alcove and looked

out from the shadows, scanning the crowd behind her and looking for Ferris.

Where did he go?!

It was as if he were no longer even trying to follow them. Sienna studied the faces in

the crowd, and finally she saw him. To her surprise, Ferris had stopped and was crouched

low, typing into his phone.

The same phone he told me had a dead battery.

A visceral fear gripped her, and again she knew she should trust it.

He lied to me on the train.

As Sienna watched him, she tried to imagine what he was doing. Secretly texting

someone? Researching behind her back? Trying to solve the mystery of Zobrist’s poem

before Langdon and Sienna could do so?

Whatever his rationale, he had blatantly lied to her.

I can’t trust him.

Sienna wondered if she should storm over and confront him, but she quickly decided to

slip back into the crowd before he spotted her. She headed again toward the basilica,

searching for Langdon. I’ve got to warn him not to reveal anything else to Ferris.

She was only fifty yards from the basilica when she felt a strong hand tugging on her

sweater from behind.

She spun around and found herself face-to-face with Ferris.

The man with the rash was panting heavily, clearly having dashed through the mob to

catch up with her. There was a frantic quality about him that Sienna hadn’t seen before.

“Sorry,” he said, barely able to breathe. “I got lost in the crowd.”

The instant Sienna looked in his eyes, she knew.

He’s hiding something.

When Langdon arrived in front of St. Mark’s Basilica, he was surprised to discover that his

two companions were no longer behind him. Also of surprise to Langdon was the absence

of a line of tourists waiting to enter the church. Then again, Langdon realized, this was

late afternoon in Venice, the hour when most tourists—their energy flagging from heavy

lunches of pasta and wine—decided to stroll the piazzas or sip coffee rather than trying to

absorb any more history.

Assuming that Sienna and Ferris would be arriving at any moment, Langdon turned his

eyes to the entrance of the basilica before him. Sometimes accused of offering “an

embarrassing surfeit of ingress,” the building’s lower facade was almost entirely taken up

by a phalanx of five recessed entrances whose clustered columns, vaulted archways, and

gaping bronze doors arguably made the building, if nothing else, eminently welcoming.

One of Europe’s finest specimens of Byzantine architecture, St. Mark’s had a decidedly

soft and whimsical appearance. In contrast to the austere gray towers of Notre-Dame or

Chartres, St. Mark’s seemed imposing and yet, somehow, far more down-to-earth. Wider

than it was tall, the church was topped by five bulging whitewashed domes that exuded

an airy, almost festive appearance, causing more than a few of the guidebooks to

compare St. Mark’s to a meringue-topped wedding cake.

High atop the central peak of the church, a slender statue of St. Mark gazed down into

the square that bore his name. His feet rested atop a crested arch that was painted

midnight blue and dotted with golden stars. Against this colorful backdrop, the golden

winged lion of Venice stood as the shimmering mascot of the city.

It was beneath the golden lion, however, that St. Mark’s displayed one of its most

famous treasures—four mammoth copper stallions—which at the moment were glinting in

the afternoon sun.

The Horses of St. Mark’s.

Poised as if prepared to leap down at any moment into the square, these four priceless

stallions—like so many treasures here in Venice—had been pillaged from Constantinople

during the Crusades. Another similarly looted work of art was on display beneath the

horses at the southwest corner of the church—a purple porphyry carving known as The

Tetrarchs. The statue was well known for its missing foot, broken off while it was being

plundered from Constantinople in the thirteenth century. Miraculously, in the 1960s, the

foot was unearthed in Istanbul. Venice petitioned for the missing piece of statue, but the

Turkish authorities replied with a simple message: You stole the statue—we’re keeping

our foot.

“Mister, you buy?” a woman’s voice said, drawing Langdon’s gaze downward.

A heavyset Gypsy woman was holding up a tall pole on which hung a collection of

Venetian masks. Most were in the popular volto intero style—the stylized full-faced, white

masks often worn by women during Carnevale. Her collection also contained some playful

half-faced Colombina masks, a few triangle-chinned bautas, and a strapless Moretta.

Despite her colorful offerings, though, it was a single, grayish-black mask at the top of

the pole that seized Langdon’s attention, its menacing dead eyes seeming to stare

directly down at him over a long, beaked nose.

The plague doctor. Langdon averted his eyes, needing no reminder of what he was

doing here in Venice.

“You buy?” the Gypsy repeated.

Langdon smiled weakly and shook his head. “Sono molto belle, ma no, grazie.”

As the woman departed, Langdon’s gaze followed the ominous plague mask as it

bobbed above the crowd. He sighed heavily and raised his eyes back to the four copper

stallions on the second-floor balcony.

In a flash, it hit him.

Langdon felt a sudden rush of elements crashing together—Horses of St. Mark’s,

Venetian masks, and pillaged treasures from Constantinople.

“My God,” he whispered. “That’s it!”

CHAPTER 72

ROBERT LANGDON WAS transfixed.

The Horses of St. Mark’s!

These four magnificent horses—with their regal necks and bold collars—had sparked in

Langdon a sudden and unexpected memory, one he now realized held the explanation of

a critical element of the mysterious poem printed on Dante’s death mask.

Langdon had once attended a celebrity wedding reception at New Hampshire’s historic

Runnymede Farm—home to Kentucky Derby winner Dancer’s Image. As part of the lavish

entertainment, the guests were treated to a performance by the prominent equine

theatrical troupe Behind the Mask—a stunning spectacle in which riders performed in

dazzling Venetian costumes with their faces hidden behind volto intero masks. The

troupe’s jet-black Friesian mounts were the largest horses Langdon had ever seen.

Colossal in stature, these stunning animals thundered across the field in a blur of rippling

muscles, feathered hooves, and three-foot manes flowing wildly behind their long,

graceful necks.

The beauty of these creatures left such an impression on Langdon that upon returning

home, he researched them online, discovering the breed had once been a favorite of

medieval kings for use as warhorses and had been brought back from the brink of

extinction in recent years. Originally known as Equus robustus, the breed’s modern name,

Friesian, was a tribute to their homeland of Friesland, the Dutch province that was the

birthplace of the brilliant graphic artist M. C. Escher.

As it turned out, the powerful bodies of the early Friesian horses had inspired the

robust aesthetic of the Horses of St. Mark’s in Venice. According to the Web site, the

Horses of St. Mark’s were so beautiful that they had become “history’s most frequently

stolen pieces of art.”

Langdon had always believed that this dubious honor belonged to the Ghent Altarpiece

and paid a quick visit to the ARCA Web site to confirm his theory. The Association for

Research into Crimes Against Art offered no definitive ranking, but they did offer a concise

history of the sculptures’ troubled life as a target of pillage and plunder.

The four copper horses had been cast in the fourth century by an unknown Greek

sculptor on the island of Chios, where they remained until Theodosius II whisked them off

to Constantinople for display at the Hippodrome. Then, during the Fourth Crusade, when

Venetian forces sacked Constantinople, the ruling doge demanded the four precious

statues be transported via ship all the way back to Venice, a nearly impossible feat

because of their size and weight. The horses arrived in Venice in 1254, and were installed

in front of the facade of St. Mark’s Cathedral.

More than half a millennium later, in 1797, Napoleon conquered Venice and took the

horses for himself. They were transported to Paris and prominently displayed atop the Arc

de Triomphe. Finally, in 1815, following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and his exile, the

horses were winched down from the Arc de Triomphe and shipped on a barge back to

Venice, where they were reinstalled on the front balcony of St. Mark’s Basilica.

Although Langdon had been fairly familiar with the history of the horses, the ARCA site

contained a passage that startled him.

The decorative colars were added to the horses’ necks in 1204 by the Venetians to conceal where the heads had

been severed to facilitate their transportation by ship from Constantinople to Venice.

The doge ordered the heads cut off the Horses of St. Mark’s? It seemed unthinkable to

Langdon.

“Robert?!” Sienna’s voice was calling.

Langdon emerged from his thoughts, turning to see Sienna pushing her way through

the crowd with Ferris close at her side.

“The horses in the poem!” Langdon shouted excitedly. “I figured it out!”

“What?” Sienna looked confused.

“We’re looking for a treacherous doge who severed the heads from horses!”

“Yes?”

“The poem isn’t referring to live horses.” Langdon pointed high on the facade of St.

Mark’s, where a shaft of bright sun was illuminating the four copper statues. “It’s referring

to those horses!”

CHAPTER 73

ON BOARD THE Mendacium, Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey’s hands were trembling. She watched the

video in the provost’s study, and although she had seen some terrifying things in her life,

this inexplicable movie that Bertrand Zobrist had made before his suicide left her feeling

as cold as death.

On the screen before her, the shadow of a beaked face wavered, projected on the

dripping wall of an underground cavern. The silhouette continued speaking, proudly

describing his masterpiece—the creation called Inferno—which would save the world by

culling the population.

God save us, Sinskey thought. “We must …” she said, her voice quavering. “We must

find that underground location. It may not be too late.”

“Keep watching,” the provost replied. “It gets stranger.”

Suddenly the shadow of the mask grew larger on the wet wall, looming hugely before

her, until a figure stepped suddenly into the frame.

Holy shit.

Sinskey was staring at a fully outfitted plague doctor—complete with the black cloak

and chilling beaked mask. The plague doctor was walking directly toward the camera, his

mask filling the entire screen to terrifying effect.

“ ‘The darkest places in hell,’ ” he whispered, “ ‘are reserved for those who maintain

their neutrality in times of moral crisis.’ ”

Sinskey felt goose bumps on her neck. It was the same quotation that Zobrist had left

for her at the airline counter when she had eluded him in New York a year ago.

“I know,” the plague doctor continued, “that there are those who call me monster.” He

paused, and Sinskey sensed his words were directed at her. “I know there are those who

think me a heartless beast who hides behind a mask.” He paused again, stepping closer

still to the camera. “But I am not faceless. Nor am I heartless.”

With that, Zobrist pulled off his mask and lowered the hood of his cloak—his face laid

bare. Sinskey stiffened, staring into the familiar green eyes she had last seen in the

darkness of the CFR. His eyes in the video had the same passion and fire, but there was

something else in them now—the wild zeal of a madman.

“My name is Bertrand Zobrist,” he said, staring into the camera. “And this is my face,

unveiled and naked for the world to see. As for my soul … if I could hold aloft my flaming

heart, as did Dante’s Lord for his beloved Beatrice, you would see I am overflowing with

love. The deepest kind of love. For all of you. And, above all, for one of you.”

Zobrist stepped closer still, gazing deep into the camera and speaking softly, as if to a

lover.

“My love,” he whispered, “my precious love. You are my beatitude, my destroyer of all

vices, my endorser of all virtue, my salvation. You are the one who lay naked at my side

and unwittingly helped me across the abyss, giving me the strength to do what I now

have done.”

Sinskey listened with repulsion.

“My love,” Zobrist continued in a doleful whisper that echoed in the ghostly

subterranean cavern in which he spoke. “You are my inspiration and my guide, my Virgil

and my Beatrice all in one, and this masterpiece is as much yours as it is mine. If you and

I, as star-crossed lovers, never touch again, I shall find my peace in knowing that I have

left the future in your gentle hands. My work below is done. And now the hour has come

for me to climb again to the world above … and rebehold the stars.”

Zobrist stopped talking, and the word stars echoed a moment in the cavern. Then, very

calmly, Zobrist reached out and touched the camera, ending his transmission.

The screen went black.

“The underground location,” the provost said, turning off the monitor. “We don’t

recognize it. Do you?”

Sinskey shook her head. I’ve never seen anything like it. She thought of Robert

Langdon, wondering if he had made any more headway in deciphering Zobrist’s clues.

“If it’s of any help,” the provost said, “I believe I know who Zobrist’s lover is.” He

paused. “An individual code-named FS-2080.”

Sinskey jumped up. “FS-2080?!” She stared at the provost in shock.

The provost looked equally startled. “That means something to you?”

Sinskey gave an incredulous nod. “It most certainly does.”

Sinskey’s heart was pounding. FS-2080. While she didn’t know the identity of the

individual, she certainly knew what the code name stood for. The WHO had been

monitoring similar code names for years.

“The Transhumanist movement,” she said. “Are you familiar with it?”

The provost shook his head.

“In the simplest terms,” Sinskey explained, “Transhumanism is a philosophy stating

that humans should use all available technologies to engineer our own species to make it

stronger. Survival of the fittest.”

The provost shrugged as if unmoved.

“Generally speaking,” she continued, “the Transhumanist movement is made up of

responsible individuals—ethically accountable scientists, futurists, visionaries—but, as in

many movements, there exists a small but militant faction that believes the movement is

not moving fast enough. They are apocalyptic thinkers who believe the end is coming and

that someone needs to take drastic action to save the future of the species.”

“And I’m guessing,” the provost said, “that Bertrand Zobrist was one of these people?”

“Absolutely,” Sinskey said. “A leader of the movement. In addition to being highly

intelligent, he was enormously charismatic and penned doomsday articles that spawned

an entire cult of zealots for Transhumanism. Today, many of his fanatical disciples use

these code names, all of which take a similar form—two letters and a four-digit number—

for example, DG-2064, BA-2105, or the one you just mentioned.”

“FS-2080.”

Sinskey nodded. “That could only be a Transhumanist code name.”

“Do the numbers and letters have meaning?”

Sinskey motioned to his computer. “Pull up your browser. I’ll show you.”

The provost looked uncertain but went to his computer and launched a search engine.

“Search for ‘FM-2030,’ ” Sinskey said, settling in behind him.

The provost typed FM-2030, and thousands of Web pages appeared.

“Click any of them,” Sinskey said.

The provost clicked the top hit, which returned a Wikipedia page showing a picture of a

handsome Iranian man—Fereidoun M. Esfandiary—whom it described as an author,

philosopher, futurist, and forefather of the Transhumanist movement. Born in 1930, he

was credited with introducing Transhumanist philosophy to the multitudes, as well as

presciently predicting in vitro fertilization, genetic engineering, and the globalization of

civilization.

According to Wikipedia, Esfandiary’s boldest claim was that new technologies would

enable him to live to be a hundred years old, a rarity for his generation. As a display of

his confidence in future technology, Fereidoun M. Esfandiary changed his name to FM-

2030, a code name created by combining his first and middle initials along with the year

in which he would turn one hundred. Sadly, he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at age

seventy and never reached his goal, but in honor of his memory, zealous Transhumanist

followers still paid tribute to FM-2030 by adopting his naming technique.

When the provost finished reading, he stood up and walked to the window, staring

blankly out at the ocean for a long moment.

“So,” he finally whispered, as if thinking aloud. “Bertrand Zobrist’s lover—this FS-2080—

is obviously one of these … Transhumanists.”

“Without a doubt,” Sinskey replied. “I’m sorry I don’t know exactly who this FS-2080 is,

but—”

“That was my point,” the provost interrupted, still staring out to sea. “I do know. I

know exactly who it is.”

CHAPTER 74

THE AIR ITSELF seems fashioned of gold.

Robert Langdon had visited many magnificent cathedrals in his life, but the ambience

of St. Mark’s Chiesa d’Oro always struck him as truly singular. For centuries it had been

claimed that simply breathing the air of St. Mark’s would make you a richer person. The

statement was intended to be understood not only metaphorically, but also literally.

With an interior veneer consisting of several million ancient gold tiles, many of the dust

particles hovering in the air were said to be actual flecks of gold. This suspended gold

dust, combined with the bright sunlight that streamed through the large western window,

made for a vibrant atmosphere that helped the faithful attain both spiritual wealth and,

provided they inhaled deeply, a more worldly enrichment in the form of gilding their

lungs.

At this hour, the low sun piercing the west window spread out over Langdon’s head like

a broad, gleaming fan, or an awning of radiant silk. Langdon could not help but draw an

awestruck breath, and he sensed Sienna and Ferris do the same beside him.

“Which way?” Sienna whispered.

Langdon motioned toward a set of ascending stairs. The museum section of the church

was on the upper level and contained an extensive exhibit devoted to the Horses of St.

Mark’s, which Langdon believed would quickly reveal the identity of the mysterious doge

who had severed the animals’ heads.

As they climbed the stairs, he could see that Ferris was struggling again with his

breathing, and Sienna caught Langdon’s eye, which she had been trying to do for several

minutes now. Her expression was cautionary as she nodded discreetly toward Ferris and

mouthed something Langdon couldn’t understand. Before he could ask her for

clarification, though, Ferris glanced back, a split second too late, for Sienna had already

averted her eyes and was staring directly at Ferris.

“You okay, Doctor?” she asked innocently.

Ferris nodded and climbed faster.

The talented actress, Langdon thought, but what was she trying to tell me?

When they reached the second tier, they could see the entire basilica spread out

beneath them. The sanctuary had been constructed in the form of a Greek Cross, far

more square in appearance than the elongated rectangles of St. Peter’s or Notre-Dame.

With a shorter distance from narthex to altar, St. Mark’s exuded a robust, sturdy quality,

as well as a feeling of greater accessibility.

Not to appear too accessible, however, the church’s altar resided behind a columned

screen topped by an imposing crucifix. It was sheltered by an elegant ciborium and

boasted one of the most valuable altarpieces in the world—the famed Pala d’Oro. An

expansive backdrop of gilded silver, this “golden cloth” was a fabric only in the sense that

it was a fused tapestry of previous works—primarily Byzantine enamel—all interwoven

into a single Gothic frame. Adorned with some thirteen hundred pearls, four hundred

garnets, three hundred sapphires, as well as emeralds, amethysts, and rubies, the Pala

d’Oro was considered, along with the Horses of St. Mark’s, to be one of the finest

treasures in Venice.

Architecturally speaking, the word basilica defined any eastern, Byzantine-style church

erected in Europe or the West. Being a replica of Justinian’s Basilica of the Holy Apostles

in Constantinople, St. Mark’s was so eastern in style that guidebooks often suggested it

as a viable alternative to visiting Turkish mosques, many of which were Byzantine

cathedrals that had been turned into Muslim houses of worship.

While Langdon would never consider St. Mark’s a stand-in for the spectacular mosques

of Turkey, he did have to admit that one’s passion for Byzantine art could be satisfied

with a visit to the secret suite of rooms just off the right transept in this church, in which

was hidden the so-called Treasure of St. Mark—a glittering collection of 283 precious

icons, jewels, and chalices acquired during the looting of Constantinople.

Langdon was pleased to find the basilica relatively quiet this afternoon. There were still

throngs of people, but at least there was room to maneuver. Weaving in and out of

various groups, Langdon guided Ferris and Sienna toward the west window, where

visitors could step outside and see the horses on the balcony. Despite Langdon’s

confidence in their ability to identify the doge in question, he remained concerned about

the step they’d have to take after that—locating the doge himself. His tomb? His statue?

This would probably require some form of assistance, considering the hundreds of statues

housed in the church proper, the lower crypt, and the domed tombs along the church’s

north arm.

Langdon spotted a young female docent giving a tour, and he politely interrupted her

talk. “Excuse me,” he said. “Is Ettore Vio here this afternoon?”

“Ettore Vio?” The woman gave Langdon an odd look. “Sì, certo, ma—” She stopped

short, her eyes brightening. “Lei è Robert Langdon, vero?!” You’re Robert Langdon, aren’t

you?

Langdon smiled patiently. “Sì, sono io. Is it possible to speak with Ettore?”

“Sì, sì!” The woman motioned for her tour group to wait a moment and hurried off.

Langdon and the museum’s curator, Ettore Vio, had once appeared together in a short

documentary about the basilica, and they had kept in touch ever since. “Ettore wrote the

book on this basilica,” Langdon explained to Sienna. “Several of them, actually.”

Sienna still looked strangely unnerved by Ferris, who stayed close while Langdon led

the group across the upper register toward the west window, from which the horses could

be seen. As they reached the window, the stallions’ muscular hindquarters became visible

in silhouette against the afternoon sun. Out on the balcony, wandering tourists enjoyed

close contact with the horses as well as a spectacular panorama of St. Mark’s Square.

“There they are!” Sienna exclaimed, moving toward the door that led to the balcony.

“Not exactly,” Langdon said. “The horses we see on the balcony are actually just

replicas. The real Horses of St. Mark’s are kept inside for safety and preservation.”

Langdon guided Sienna and Ferris along a corridor toward a well-lit alcove where an

identical grouping of four stallions appeared to be trotting toward them out of a backdrop

of brick archways.

Langdon motioned admiringly to the statues. “Here are the originals.”

Every time Langdon saw these horses up close, he couldn’t help but marvel at the

texture and detail of their musculature. Only intensifying the dramatic appearance of their

rippling skin was the sumptuous, golden-green verdigris that entirely covered their

surface. For Langdon, seeing these four stallions perfectly maintained despite their

tumultuous past was always a reminder of the importance of preserving great art.

“Their collars,” Sienna said, motioning to the decorative breast collars around their

necks. “You said those were added? To cover the seam?”

Langdon had told Sienna and Ferris about the strange “severed head” detail he had

read about on the ARCA Web site.

“Apparently, yes,” Langdon said, moving toward an informational placard posted

nearby.

“Roberto!” a friendly voice bellowed behind them. “You insult me!” Langdon turned to

see Ettore Vio, a jovial-looking, white-haired man in a blue suit, with eyeglasses on a

chain around his neck, pushing his way through the crowd. “You dare to come to my

Venice and not call me?”

Langdon smiled and shook the man’s hand. “I like to surprise you, Ettore. You look

good. These are my friends Dr. Brooks and Dr. Ferris.”

Ettore greeted them and then stood back, appraising Langdon. “Traveling with doctors?

Are you sick? And your clothing? Are you turning Italian?”

“Neither,” Langdon said, chuckling. “I’ve come for some information on the horses.”

Ettore looked intrigued. “There is something the famous professor does not already

know?”

Langdon laughed. “I need to learn about the severing of these horses’ heads for

transport during the Crusades.”

Ettore Vio looked as if Langdon had just inquired about the Queen’s hemorrhoids.

“Heavens, Robert,” he whispered, “we don’t speak of that. If you want to see severed

heads, I can show you the famed decapitated Carmagnola or—”

“Ettore, I need to know which Venetian doge cut off these heads.”

“It never happened,” Ettore countered defensively. “I’ve heard the tales, of course, but

historically there is little to suggest that any doge committed—”

“Ettore, please, humor me,” Langdon said. “According to the tale, which doge was it?”

Ettore put on his glasses and eyed Langdon. “Well, according to the tale, our beloved

horses were transported by Venice’s most clever and deceitful doge.”

“Deceitful?”

“Yes, the doge who tricked everyone into the Crusades.” He eyed Langdon expectantly.

“The doge who took state money to sail to Egypt … but redirected his troops and sacked

Constantinople instead.”

Sounds like treachery, Langdon mused. “And what was his name?”

Ettore frowned. “Robert, I thought you were a student of world history.”

“Yes, but the world is large, and history is long. I could use some help.”

“Very well then, a final clue.”

Langdon was going to protest, but he sensed that he’d be wasting his breath.

“Your doge lived for nearly a century,” Ettore said. “A miracle in his day. Superstition

attributed his longevity to his brave act of rescuing the bones of Saint Lucia from

Constantinople and bringing them back to Venice. Saint Lucia lost her eyes to—”

“He plucked up the bones of the blind!” Sienna blurted, glancing at Langdon, who had

just had the same thought.

Ettore gave Sienna an odd look. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.”

Ferris looked suddenly wan, as if he had not yet caught his breath from the long walk

across the plaza and the climb up the stairs.

“I should add,” Ettore said, “that the doge loved Saint Lucia so much because the doge

himself was blind. At the age of ninety, he stood out in this very square, unable to see a

thing, and preached the Crusade.”

“I know who it is,” Langdon said.

“Well, I should hope so!” Ettore replied with a smile.

Because his eidetic memory was better suited to images rather than uncontextualized

ideas, Langdon’s revelation had arrived in the form of a piece of artwork—a famous

illustration by Gustave Doré depicting a wizened, blind doge, arms raised high overhead

as he incited a gathered crowd to join the Crusade. The name of Doré’s illustration was

clear in his mind: Dandolo Preaching the Crusade.

“Enrico Dandolo,” Langdon declared. “The doge who lived forever.”

“Finalmente!” Ettore said. “I fear your mind has aged, my friend.”

“Along with the rest of me. Is he buried here?”

“Dandolo?” Ettore shook his head. “No, not here.”

“Where?” Sienna demanded. “At the Doge’s Palace?”

Ettore took off his glasses, thinking a moment. “Give me a moment. There are so many

doges, I can’t recall—”

Before Ettore could finish, a frightened-looking docent came running over and ushered

him aside, whispering in his ear. Ettore stiffened, looking alarmed, and immediately

hurried over to a railing, where he peered down into the sanctuary below. After a

moment he turned back toward Langdon.

“I’ll be right back,” Ettore shouted, and then hurried off without another word.

Puzzled, Langdon went over to the railing and peered over. What’s going on down

there?

At first he saw nothing at all, just tourists milling around. After a moment, though, he

realized that many of the visitors were staring in the same direction, toward the main

entrance, through which an imposing group of black-clad soldiers had just entered the

church and was fanning out across the narthex, blocking all the exits.

The soldiers in black. Langdon felt his hands tighten on the railing.

“Robert!” Sienna called out behind him.

Langdon remained fixated on the soldiers. How did they find us?! “Robert,” she called

more urgently. “Something’s wrong! Help me!” Langdon turned from the railing, puzzled

by her cries for help.

Where did she go?

An instant later, his eyes found both Sienna and Ferris. On the floor in front of the

Horses of St. Mark’s, Sienna was kneeling over Dr. Ferris … who had collapsed in

convulsions, clutching his chest.

CHAPTER 75

I THINK HE’S having a heart attack!” Sienna shouted.

Langdon hurried over to where Dr. Ferris lay sprawled on the floor. The man was

gasping, unable to catch his breath.

What happened to him?! For Langdon, everything had come to a head in a single

moment. With the soldiers’ arrival downstairs and Ferris thrashing on the floor, Langdon

felt momentarily paralyzed, unsure which way to turn.

Sienna crouched down over Ferris and loosened his necktie, tearing open the top few

buttons of his shirt to help him breathe. But as the man’s shirt parted, Sienna recoiled

and let out a sharp cry of alarm, covering her mouth as she staggered backward, staring

down at the bare flesh of his chest.

Langdon saw it, too.

The skin of Ferris’s chest was deeply discolored. An ominous-looking bluish-black

blemish the circumference of a grapefruit spread out across his sternum. Ferris looked like

he’d been hit in the chest with a cannonball.

“That’s internal bleeding,” Sienna said, glancing up at Langdon with a look of shock.

“No wonder he’s been having trouble breathing all day.”

Ferris twisted his head, clearly trying to speak, but he could only make faint wheezing

sounds. Tourists had started gathering around, and Langdon sensed that the situation

was about to get chaotic.

“The soldiers are downstairs,” Langdon warned Sienna. “I don’t know how they found

us.”

The look of surprise and fear on Sienna’s face turned quickly to anger, and she glared

back down at Ferris. “You’ve been lying to us, haven’t you?”

Ferris attempted to speak again, but he could barely make a sound. Sienna roughly

searched Ferris’s pockets and pulled out his wallet and phone, which she slipped into her

own pocket, standing over him now with an accusatory glower.

At that moment an elderly Italian woman pushed through the crowd, shouting angrily

at Sienna. “L’hai colpito al petto!” She made a forceful motion with her fist against her

own chest.

“No!” Sienna snapped. “CPR will kill him! Look at his chest!” She turned to Langdon.

“Robert, we need to get out of here. Now.”

Langdon looked down at Ferris, who desperately locked eyes with him, pleading, as if

he wanted to communicate something.

“We can’t just leave him!” Langdon said frantically.

“Trust me,” Sienna said. “That’s not a heart attack. And we’re leaving. Now.”

As the crowd closed in, tourists began shouting for help. Sienna gripped Langdon’s arm

with startling force and dragged him away from the chaos, out into the fresh air of the

balcony.

For a moment Langdon was blinded. The sun was directly in front of his eyes, sinking

low over the western end of St. Mark’s Square, bathing the entire balcony in a golden

light. Sienna led Langdon to their left along the second-story terrace, snaking through the

tourists who had stepped outside to admire the piazza and the replicas of the Horses of

St. Mark’s.

As they rushed along the front of the basilica, the lagoon was straight ahead. Out on

the water, a strange silhouette caught Langdon’s eye—an ultramodern yacht that looked

like some kind of futuristic warship.

Before he could give it a second thought, he and Sienna had cut left again, following

the balcony around the southwest corner of the basilica toward the “Paper Door”—the

annex connecting the basilica to the Doge’s Palace—so named because the doges posted

decrees there for the public to read.

Not a heart attack? The image of Ferris’s black-and-blue chest was imprinted in

Langdon’s mind, and he suddenly felt fearful at the prospect of hearing Sienna’s diagnosis

of the man’s actual illness. Moreover, it seemed something had shifted, and Sienna no

longer trusted Ferris. Was that why she was trying to catch my eye earlier?

Sienna suddenly skidded to a stop and leaned out over the elegant balustrade, peering

down into a cloistered corner of St. Mark’s Square far below.

“Damn it,” she said. “We’re higher up than I thought.”

Langdon stared at her. You were thinking of jumping?!

Sienna looked frightened. “We can’t let them catch us, Robert.”

Langdon turned back toward the basilica, eyeing the heavy door of wrought iron and

glass directly behind them. Tourists were entering and exiting, and if Langdon’s estimate

was correct, passing through the door would deposit them back inside the museum near

the back of the church.

“They’ll have all the exits covered,” Sienna said.

Langdon considered their escape options and arrived at only one. “I think I saw

something inside that could solve that problem.”

Barely able to fathom what he was even now considering, Langdon guided Sienna back

inside the basilica. They skirted the perimeter of the museum, trying to stay out of sight

among the crowd, many of whom were now looking diagonally across the vast open

space of the central nave toward the commotion going on around Ferris. Langdon spied

the angry old Italian woman directing a pair of black-clad soldiers out onto the balcony,

revealing Langdon and Sienna’s escape route.

We’ll have to hurry, Langdon thought, scanning the walls and finally spotting what he

was looking for near a large display of tapestries.

The device on the wall was bright yellow with a red warning sticker: ALLARME

ANTINCENDIO.

“A fire alarm?” Sienna said. “That’s your plan?”

“We can slip out with the crowd.” Langdon reached up and grabbed the alarm lever.

Here goes nothing. Acting quickly before he could think better of it, he pulled down hard,

seeing the mechanism cleanly shatter the small glass cylinder inside.

The sirens and pandemonium that Langdon expected never came.

Only silence.

He pulled again.

Nothing.

Sienna stared at him like he was crazy. “Robert, we’re in a stone cathedral packed with

tourists! You think these public fire alarms are active when a single prankster could—”

“Of course! Fire laws in the U.S.—”

“You’re in Europe. We have fewer lawyers.” She pointed over Langdon’s shoulder. “And

we’re also out of time.”

Langdon turned toward the glass door through which they’d just entered and saw two

soldiers hurrying in from the balcony, their hard eyes scanning the area. Langdon

recognized one as the same muscular agent who had fired at them on the Trike as they

were fleeing Sienna’s apartment.

With precious few options, Langdon and Sienna slipped out of sight in an enclosed

spiral stairwell, descending back to the ground floor. When they reached the landing, they

paused in the shadows of the stairwell. Across the sanctuary, several soldiers stood

guarding the exits, their eyes intently sweeping the entire room.

“If we step out of this stairwell, they’ll see us,” Langdon said.

“The stairs go farther down,” Sienna whispered, motioning to an ACCESSO VIETATO

swag that cordoned off the stairs beneath them. Beyond the swag, the stairs descended

in an even tighter spiral toward pitch blackness.

Bad idea, Langdon thought. Subterranean crypt with no exit.

Sienna had already stepped over the swag and was groping her way down the spiral

tunnel, disappearing into the void.

“It’s open,” Sienna whispered from below.

Langdon was not surprised. The crypt of St. Mark’s was different from many other such

places in that it was also a working chapel, where regular services were held in the

presence of the bones of St. Mark.

“I think I see natural light!” Sienna whispered.

How is that possible? Langdon tried to recall his previous visits to this sacred

underground space and guessed that Sienna was probably seeing the lux eterna—an

electric light that remained lit on St. Mark’s tomb in the center of the crypt. With

footsteps approaching from above him, though, Langdon didn’t have time to think. He

quickly stepped over the swag, making sure he didn’t move it, and then he placed his

palm on the rough-hewn stone wall, feeling his way down around the curve and out of

sight.

Sienna was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Behind her, the crypt was barely

visible in the darkness. It was a squat subterranean chamber with an alarmingly low

stone ceiling supported by ancient pillars and brick-vaulted archways. The weight of the

entire basilica rests on these pillars, Langdon thought, already feeling claustrophobic.

“Told you,” Sienna whispered, her pretty face faintly illuminated by the hint of muted

natural light. She pointed to several small, arched transoms, high on the wall.

Light wells, Langdon realized, having forgotten they were here. The wells—designed to

bring light and fresh air into this cramped crypt—opened into deep shafts that dropped

down from St. Mark’s Square above. The window glass was reinforced with a tight

ironwork pattern of fifteen interlocking circles, and although Langdon suspected that they

could be opened from inside, they were shoulder height and would be a tight fit. Even if

they somehow managed to get through the window into the shaft, climbing out of the

shafts would be impossible, since they were ten feet deep and covered by heavy security

grates at the top.

In the dim light that filtered through the wells, St. Mark’s crypt resembled a moonlit

forest—a dense grove of trunklike pillars that cast long and heavy-looking shadows across

the ground. Langdon turned his gaze to the center of the crypt, where a lone light burned

at St. Mark’s tomb. The basilica’s namesake rested in a stone sarcophagus behind an

altar, before which there were lines of pews for those lucky few invited to worship here at

the heart of Venetian Christendom.

A tiny light suddenly flickered to life beside him and Langdon turned to see Sienna

holding the illuminated screen of Ferris’s phone.

Langdon did a double take. “I thought Ferris said his battery was dead!”

“He lied,” Sienna said, still typing. “About a lot of things.” She frowned at the phone

and shook her head. “No signal. I thought maybe I could find the location of Enrico

Dandolo’s tomb.” She hurried over to the light well and held the phone high overhead

near the glass, trying to get a signal.

Enrico Dandolo, Langdon thought, having barely had a chance to consider the doge

before having to flee the area. Despite their current predicament, their visit to St. Mark’s

had indeed served its purpose—revealing the identity of the treacherous doge who

severed the heads from horses … and plucked up the bones of the blind.

Unfortunately, Langdon had no idea where Enrico Dandolo’s tomb was located, and

apparently neither did Ettore Vio. He knows every inch of this basilica … probably of the

Doge’s Palace, too. The fact that Ettore hadn’t immediately located Dandolo’s tomb

suggested to Langdon that the tomb was probably nowhere near St. Mark’s or the Doge’s

Palace.

So where is it?

Langdon glanced over at Sienna, who was now standing on a pew that she had moved

under one of the light wells. She unlatched the window, swung it open, and held Ferris’s

phone out into the open air of the shaft itself.

The outdoor sounds of St. Mark’s Square filtered down from above, and Langdon

suddenly wondered if maybe there was some way out of here after all. There was a line

of folding chairs behind the pews, and Langdon sensed that he might be able to hoist one

up into the light well. Maybe the upper grates unlatch from inside as well?

Langdon hurried through the darkness toward Sienna. He had taken only a few steps

when a powerful blow to his forehead knocked him backward. Crumpling to his knees, he

thought for an instant that he had been attacked. He had not, he quickly realized, cursing

himself for not anticipating that his six-foot frame far exceeded the height of vaults built

for the average human height of more than a thousand years ago.

As he knelt there on the hard stone and let the stars clear, he found himself gazing at

an inscription on the floor.

Sanctus Marcus.

He stared at it a long moment. It was not St. Mark’s name in the inscription that struck

him but rather the language in which it was written.

Latin.

After his daylong immersion in modern Italian, Langdon found himself vaguely

disoriented to see St. Mark’s name written in Latin, a quick reminder that the dead

language was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire at the time of St. Mark’s death.

Then a second thought hit Langdon.

During the early thirteenth century—the time of Enrico Dandolo and the Fourth Crusade

—the language of power was still very much Latin. A Venetian doge who had brought

great glory to the Roman Empire by recapturing Constantinople would never have been

buried under the name of Enrico Dandolo … instead his Latin name would have been

used.

Henricus Dandolo.

And with that, a long-forgotten image struck him like a jolt of electricity. Although the

revelation had come while he was kneeling in a chapel, he knew it was not divinely

inspired. More likely, it was nothing more than a visual cue that sparked his mind to make

a sudden connection. The image that leaped suddenly from the depths of Langdon’s

memory was that of Dandolo’s Latin name … engraved in a worn marble slab, embedded

in an ornate tile floor.

Henricus Dandolo.

Langdon could barely breathe as he pictured the doge’s simple tomb marker. I’ve been

there. Precisely as the poem had promised, Enrico Dandolo was indeed buried in a gilded

museum—a mouseion of holy wisdom—but it was not St. Mark’s Basilica.

As the truth settled in, Langdon clambered slowly to his feet.

“I can’t get a signal,” Sienna said, climbing down from the light well and coming toward

him.

“You don’t need one,” Langdon managed. “The gilded mouseion of holy wisdom …” He

took a deep breath. “I … made a mistake.”

Sienna went pale. “Don’t tell me we’re in the wrong museum.”

“Sienna,” Langdon whispered, feeling ill. “We’re in the wrong country.”

CHAPTER 76

OUT IN ST. MARK’S Square, the Gypsy woman selling Venetian masks was taking a break,

leaning against the outer wall of the basilica to rest. As always, she had claimed her

favorite spot—a small niche between two metal grates in the pavement—an ideal spot to

set down her heavy wares and watch the setting sun.

She had witnessed many things in St. Mark’s Square over the years, and yet the bizarre

event that now drew her attention was not transpiring in the square … it was happening

instead beneath it. Startled by a loud sound at her feet, the woman peered down through

a grate into a narrow well, maybe ten feet deep. The window at the bottom was open

and a folding chair had been shoved out into the bottom of the well, scraping against the

pavement.

To the Gypsy’s surprise, the chair was followed by a pretty woman with a blond

ponytail who was apparently being hoisted from within and was now clambering through

the window into the tiny opening.

The blond woman scrambled to her feet and immediately looked up, clearly startled to

see the Gypsy staring down at her through the grate. The blond woman raised a finger to

her lips and gave a tight smile. Then she unfolded the chair and climbed onto it, reaching

up toward the grate.

You’re far too short, the Gypsy thought. And just what are you doing?

The blond woman climbed back down off the chair and spoke to someone inside the

building. Although she barely had room to stand in the narrow well beside the chair, she

now stepped aside as a second person—a tall, dark-haired man in a fancy suit—heaved

himself up out of the basilica basement and into the crowded shaft.

He, too, looked up, making eye contact with the Gypsy through the iron grate. Then, in

an awkward twist of limbs, he exchanged positions with the blond woman and climbed up

on top of the rickety chair. He was taller, and when he reached up, he was able to

unlatch the security bar beneath the grate. Standing on tiptoe, he placed his hands on

the grate and heaved upward. The grate rose an inch or so before he had to set it down.

“Può darci una mano?” the blond woman called up to the Gypsy.

Give you a hand? the Gypsy wondered, having no intention of getting involved. What

are you doing?

The blond woman pulled out a man’s wallet and extracted a hundred-euro bill, waving

it as an offering. It was more money than the vendor made with her masks in three days.

No stranger to negotiation, she shook her head and held up two fingers. The blond

woman produced a second bill.

Disbelieving of her good fortune, the Gypsy shrugged a reluctant yes, trying to look

indifferent as she crouched down and grabbed the bars, looking into the man’s eyes so

they could synchronize their efforts.

As the man heaved again, the Gypsy pulled upward with arms made strong from years

of carrying her wares, and the grate swung upward … halfway. Just as she thought they

had it, there was a loud crash beneath her, and the man disappeared, plummeting back

down into the well as the folding chair collapsed beneath him.

The iron grate grew instantly heavier in her hands, and she thought she would have to

drop it, but the promise of two hundred euros gave her strength, and she managed to

heave the grate up against the side of the basilica, where it came to rest with a loud

clang.

Breathless, the Gypsy peered down into the well at the twist of bodies and broken

furniture. As the man got back up and brushed himself off, she reached down into the

well, holding out her hand for her money.

The ponytailed woman nodded appreciatively and raised the two bills over her head.

The Gypsy reached down, but it was too far.

Give the money to the man.

Suddenly there was a commotion in the shaft—angry voices shouting from inside the

basilica. The man and woman both spun in fear, recoiling from the window.

Then everything turned to chaos.

The dark-haired man took charge, crouching down and firmly ordering the woman to

place her foot into a cradle formed by his fingers. She stepped in, and he heaved upward.

She skimmed up the side of the shaft, stuffing the bills in her teeth to free her hands as

she strained to reach the lip. The man heaved, higher … higher … lifting her until her

hands curled over the edge.

With enormous effort, she heaved herself up into the square like a woman climbing out

of a swimming pool. She shoved the money into the Gypsy’s hands and immediately spun

around and knelt at the edge of the well, reaching back down for the man.

It was too late.

Powerful arms in long black sleeves were reaching into the well like the thrashing

tentacles of some hungry monster, grasping at the man’s legs, pulling him back toward

the window.

“Run, Sienna!” shouted the struggling man. “Now!”

The Gypsy saw their eyes lock in an exchange of pained regret … and then it was over.

The man was dragged roughly down through the window and back into the basilica.

The blond woman stared down in shock, her eyes welling with tears. “I’m so sorry,

Robert,” she whispered. Then, after a pause, she added, “For everything.”

A moment later, the woman sprinted off into the crowd, her ponytail swinging as she

raced down the narrow alleyway of the Merceria dell’Orologio … disappearing into the

heart of Venice.

CHAPTER 77

THE SOFT SOUNDS of lapping water eased Robert Langdon gently back to consciousness. He

smelled the sterile tang of antiseptics mixed with salty sea air and felt the world swaying

beneath him.

Where am I?

Only moments before, it seemed, he had been locked in a death struggle against

powerful hands that were dragging him out of the light well and back into the crypt. Now,

strangely, he no longer felt the cold stone floor of St. Mark’s beneath him … instead he

felt a soft mattress.

Langdon opened his eyes and took in his surroundings—a small, hygienic-looking room

with a single portal window. The rocking motion continued.

I’m on a boat?

Langdon’s last recollection was of being pinned to the crypt floor by one of the black-

clad soldiers, who hissed angrily at him, “Stop trying to escape!”

Langdon had shouted wildly, calling for help as the soldiers tried to muffle his voice.

“We need to get him out of here,” one soldier had said to another.

His partner gave a reluctant nod. “Do it.”

Langdon felt powerful fingertips expertly probing the arteries and veins on his neck.

Then, having located a precise spot on the carotid, the fingers began applying a firm,

focused pressure. Within seconds, Langdon’s vision began to blur, and he felt himself

slipping away, his brain being starved of oxygen.

They’re killing me, Langdon thought. Right here beside the tomb of St. Mark.

The blackness came, but it seemed incomplete … more of a wash of grays punctuated

by muted shapes and sounds.

Langdon had little sense of how much time had passed, but the world was now starting

to come back into focus for him. From all he could tell, he was in an onboard infirmary of

some sort. His sterile surroundings and the scent of isopropyl alcohol created a strange

sense of déjà vu—as if Langdon had come full circle, awakening as he had the previous

night, in a strange hospital bed with only muted memories.

His thoughts turned instantly to Sienna and her safety. He could still see her soft brown

eyes gazing down at him, filled with remorse and fear. Langdon prayed that she had

escaped and would find her way safely out of Venice.

We’re in the wrong country, Langdon had told her, having realized to his shock the

actual location of Enrico Dandolo’s tomb. The poem’s mysterious mouseion of holy

wisdom was not in Venice after all … but a world away. Precisely as Dante’s text had

warned, the cryptic poem’s meaning had been hidden “beneath the veil of verses so

obscure.”

Langdon had intended to explain everything to Sienna as soon as they’d escaped the

crypt, but he’d never had the chance.

She ran off knowing only that I failed.

Langdon felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

The plague is still out there … a world away.

From outside the infirmary, he heard loud boot steps in the hall, and Langdon turned to

see a man in black entering his berth. It was the same muscular soldier who had pinned

him to the crypt floor. His eyes were ice cold. Langdon’s instinct was to recoil as the man

approached, but there was nowhere to run. Whatever these people want to do to me,

they can do.

“Where am I?” Langdon demanded, putting as much defiance into his voice as he could

muster.

“On a yacht anchored off Venice.”

Langdon eyed the green medallion on the man’s uniform—a globe of the world,

encircled by the letters ECDC. Langdon had never seen the symbol or the acronym.

“We need information from you,” the soldier said, “and we don’t have much time.”

“Why would I tell you anything?” Langdon asked. “You almost killed me.”

“Not even close. We used a judo demobilization technique called shime waza. We had

no intention of harming you.”

“You shot at me this morning!” Langdon declared, clearly recalling the clang of the

bullet on the fender of Sienna’s speeding Trike. “Your bullet barely missed the base of my

spine!”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “If I had wanted to hit the base of your spine, I would have

hit it. I took a single shot trying to puncture your moped’s rear tire so I could stop you

from running away. I was under orders to establish contact with you and figure out why

the hell you were acting so erratically.”

Before Langdon could fully process his words, two more soldiers came through the

door, moving toward his bed.

Walking between them was a woman.

An apparition.

Ethereal and otherworldly.

Langdon immediately recognized her as the vision from his hallucinations. The woman

before him was beautiful, with long silver hair and a blue lapis lazuli amulet. Because she

had previously appeared against a horrifying landscape of dying bodies, Langdon needed

a moment to believe she was truly standing before him in the flesh.

“Professor Langdon,” the woman said, smiling wearily as she arrived at his bedside.

“I’m relieved that you’re okay.” She sat down and took his pulse. “I’ve been advised that

you have amnesia. Do you remember me?”

Langdon studied the woman for a moment. “I’ve had … visions of you, although I don’t

remember meeting.”

The woman leaned toward him, her expression empathetic. “My name is Elizabeth

Sinskey. I’m director of the World Health Organization, and I recruited you to help me find

—”

“A plague,” Langdon managed. “Created by Bertrand Zobrist.”

Sinskey nodded, looking encouraged. “You remember?”

“No, I woke up in a hospital with a strange little projector and visions of you telling me

to seek and find. That’s what I was trying to do when these men tried to kill me.”

Langdon motioned to the soldiers.

The muscular one bristled, clearly ready to respond, but Elizabeth Sinskey silenced him

with a wave.

“Professor,” she said softly, “I have no doubt you are very confused. As the person who

pulled you into all this, I’m horrified by what has transpired, and I’m thankful you’re safe.”

“Safe?” Langdon replied. “I’m captive on a ship!” And so are you!

The silver-haired woman gave an understanding nod. “I’m afraid that due to your

amnesia, many aspects of what I am about to tell you will be disorienting. Nonetheless,

our time is short, and a lot of people need your help.”

Sinskey hesitated, as if uncertain how to continue. “First off,” she began, “I need you to

understand that Agent Brüder and his team never tried to harm you. They were under

direct orders to reestablish contact with you by whatever means were necessary.”

“Reestablish? I don’t—”

“Please, Professor, just listen. Everything will be made clear. I promise.”

Langdon settled back into the infirmary bed, his thoughts spinning as Dr. Sinskey

continued.

“Agent Brüder and his men are an SRS team—Surveillance and Response Support. They

work under the auspices of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.”

Langdon glanced over at the ECDC medallions on their uniforms. Disease Prevention

and Control?

“His group,” she continued, “specializes in detecting and containing communicable-

disease threats. Essentially, they are a SWAT team for the mitigation of acute, large-

scale health risks. You were my main hope of locating the contagion Zobrist has created,

and so when you vanished, I tasked the SRS team with locating you … I summoned them

to Florence to support me.”

Langdon was stunned. “Those soldiers work for you?”

She nodded. “On loan from the ECDC. Last night, when you disappeared and stopped

calling in, we thought something had happened to you. It was not until early this

morning, when our tech support team saw that you had checked your Harvard e-mail

account, that we knew you were alive. At that point our only explanation for your strange

behavior was that you had switched sides … possibly having been offered large sums of

money to locate the contagion for someone else.”

Langdon shook his head. “That’s preposterous!”

“Yes, it seemed an unlikely scenario, but it was the only logical explanation—and with

the stakes being so high, we couldn’t take any chances. Of course, we never imagined

you were suffering from amnesia. When our tech support saw your Harvard e-mail

account suddenly activate, we tracked the computer IP address to the apartment in

Florence and moved in. But you fled on a moped, with the woman, which increased our

suspicions that you were now working for someone else.”

“We drove right past you!” Langdon choked. “I saw you in the back of a black van,

surrounded by soldiers. I thought you were a captive. You seemed delirious, like they had

drugged you.”

“You saw us?” Dr. Sinskey looked surprised. “Strangely, you’re right … they had

medicated me.” She paused. “But only because I ordered them to.”

Langdon was now wholly confused. She told them to drug her?

“You may not remember this,” Sinskey said, “but as our C-130 landed in Florence, the

pressure changed, and I suffered an episode of what is known as paroxysmal positional

vertigo—a severely debilitating inner-ear condition that I’ve experienced in the past. It’s

temporary and not serious, but it causes victims to become so dizzy and nauseated they

can barely hold their heads up. Normally I’d go to bed and endure intense nausea, but we

were facing the Zobrist crisis, and so I prescribed myself hourly injections of

metoclopramide to keep me from vomiting. The drug has the serious side effect of

causing intense drowsiness, but it enabled me at least to run operations by phone from

the back of the van. The SRS team wanted to take me to a hospital, but I ordered them

not to do so until we had completed our mission of reacquiring you. Fortunately, the

vertigo finally passed during the flight up to Venice.”

Langdon slumped into the bed, unnerved. I’ve been running all day from the World

Health Organization—the very people who recruited me in the first place.

“Now we have to focus, Professor,” Sinskey declared, her tone urgent. “Zobrist’s plague

… do you have any idea where it is?” She gazed down at him with an expression of

intense expectation. “We have very little time.”

It’s far away, Langdon wanted to say, but something stopped him. He glanced up at

Brüder, a man who had fired a gun at him this morning and nearly strangled him a little

while earlier. For Langdon, the ground had been shifting so quickly beneath him that he

had no idea whom to believe anymore.

Sinskey leaned in, her expression still more intense. “We are under the impression that

the contagion is here in Venice. Is that correct? Tell us where, and I’ll send a team

ashore.”

Langdon hesitated.

“Sir!” Brüder barked impatiently. “You obviously know something … tell us where it is!

Don’t you understand what’s about to happen?”

“Agent Brüder!” Sinskey spun angrily on the man. “That’s enough,” she commanded,

then turned back to Langdon and spoke quietly. “Considering what you’ve been through,

it’s entirely understandable that you’re disoriented, and uncertain whom to trust.” She

paused, staring deep into his eyes. “But our time is short, and I’m asking you to trust

me.”

“Can Langdon stand?” a new voice asked.

A small, well-tended man with a deep tan appeared in the doorway. He studied

Langdon with a practiced calm, but Langdon saw danger in his eyes.

Sinskey motioned for Langdon to stand up. “Professor, this is a man with whom I’d

prefer not to collaborate, but the situation is serious enough that we have no choice.”

Uncertain, Langdon swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood erect, taking a

moment to get his balance back.

“Follow me,” the man said, moving toward the door. “There’s something you need to

see.”

Langdon held his ground. “Who are you?”

The man paused and steepled his fingers. “Names are not important. You can call me

the provost. I run an organization … which, I’m sorry to say, made the mistake of helping

Bertrand Zobrist achieve his goals. Now I am trying to fix that mistake before it’s too

late.”

“What is it you want to show me?” Langdon asked.

The man fixed Langdon with an unyielding stare. “Something that will leave no doubt

in your mind that we’re all on the same side.”

CHAPTER 78

LANGDON FOLLOWED THE tanned man through a maze of claustrophobic corridors belowdecks

with Dr. Sinskey and the ECDC soldiers trailing behind in a single file. As the group

neared a staircase, Langdon hoped they were about to ascend toward daylight, but

instead they descended deeper into the ship.

Deep in the bowels of the vessel now, their guide led them through a cubicle farm of

sealed glass chambers—some with transparent walls and some with opaque ones. Inside

each soundproofed room, various employees were hard at work typing on computers or

speaking on telephones. Those who glanced up and noticed the group passing through

looked seriously alarmed to see strangers in this part of the ship. The tanned man gave

them a nod of reassurance and pressed on.

What is this place? Langdon wondered as they continued through another series of

tightly configured work areas.

Finally, their host arrived at a large conference room, and they all filed in. As the group

sat down, the man pressed a button, and the glass walls suddenly hissed and turned

opaque, sealing them inside. Langdon startled, having never seen anything like it.

“Where are we?” Langdon finally demanded.

“This is my ship—The Mendacium.”

“Mendacium?” Langdon asked. “As in … the Latin word for Pseudologos—the Greek god

of deception?”

The man looked impressed. “Not many people know that.”

Hardly a noble appellation, Langdon thought. Mendacium was the shadowy deity who

reigned over all the pseudologoi—the daimones specializing in falsehoods, lies, and

fabrications.

The man produced a tiny red flash drive and inserted it into a rack of electronic gear at

the back of the room. A huge flat-panel LCD flickered to life, and the overhead lights

dimmed.

In the expectant silence, Langdon heard soft lapping sounds of water. At first, he

thought they were coming from outside the ship, but then he realized the sound was

coming through the speakers on the LCD screen. Slowly, a picture materialized—a

dripping cavern wall, illuminated by wavering reddish light.

“Bertrand Zobrist created this video,” their host said. “And he asked me to release it to

the world tomorrow.”

In mute disbelief, Langdon watched the bizarre home movie … a cavernous space with

a rippling lagoon … into which the camera plunged … diving beneath the surface to a silt-

covered tile floor on which was bolted a plaque that read IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE

WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER.

The plaque was signed: BERTRAND ZOBRIST.

The date was tomorrow.

My God! Langdon turned to Sinskey in the darkness, but she was just staring blankly at

the floor, apparently having seen the film already, and clearly unable to watch it again.

The camera panned left now, and Langdon was baffled to see, hovering beneath the

water, an undulating bubble of transparent plastic containing a gelatinous, yellow-brown

liquid. The delicate sphere appeared to be tethered to the floor so it could not rise to the

surface.

What the hell? Langdon studied the distended bag. The viscous contents seemed to be

slowly swirling … smoldering almost.

When it hit him, Langdon stopped breathing. Zobrist’s plague.

“Stop the playback,” Sinskey said in the darkness.

The image froze—a tethered plastic sac hovering beneath the water—a sealed cloud of

liquid suspended in space.

“I think you can guess what that is,” Sinskey said. “The question is, how long will it

remain contained?” She walked up to the LCD and pointed to a tiny marking on the

transparent bag. “Unfortunately, this tells us what the bag is made of. Can you read

that?”

Pulse racing, Langdon squinted at the text, which appeared to be a manufacturer’s

trademark notice: Solublon®.

“World’s largest manufacturer of water-soluble plastics,” Sinskey said.

Langdon felt his stomach knot. “You’re saying this bag is … dissolving?!”

Sinskey gave him a grim nod. “We’ve been in touch with the manufacturer, from whom

we learned, unfortunately, that they make dozens of different grades of this plastic,

dissolving in anywhere from ten minutes to ten weeks, depending on the application.

Decay rates vary slightly based on water type and temperature, but we have no doubt

that Zobrist took those factors into careful account.” She paused. “This bag, we believe,

will dissolve by—”

“Tomorrow,” the provost interrupted. “Tomorrow is the date Zobrist circled in my

calendar. And also the date on the plaque.”

Langdon sat speechless in the dark.

“Show him the rest,” Sinskey said.

On the LCD screen, the video image refreshed, the camera now panning along the

glowing waters and cavernous darkness. Langdon had no doubt that this was the location

referenced in the poem. The lagoon that reflects no stars.

The scene conjured images of Dante’s visions of hell … the river Cocytus flowing

through the caverns of the underworld.

Wherever this lagoon was located, its waters were contained by steep, mossy walls,

which, Langdon sensed, had to be man-made. He also sensed that the camera was

revealing only a small corner of the massive interior space, and this notion was supported

by the presence of very faint vertical shadows on the wall. The shadows were broad,

columnar, and evenly spaced.

Pillars, Langdon realized.

The ceiling of this cavern is supported by pillars.

This lagoon was not in a cavern, it was in a massive room.

Follow deep into the sunken palace …

Before he could say a word, his attention shifted to the arrival of a new shadow on the

wall … a humanoid shape with a long, beaked nose.

Oh, dear God …

The shadow began speaking now, its words muffled, whispering across the water with

an eerily poetic rhythm.

“I am your salvation. I am the Shade.”

For the next several minutes, Langdon watched the most terrifying film he had ever

witnessed. Clearly the ravings of a lunatic genius, the soliloquy of Bertrand Zobrist—

delivered in the guise of the plague doctor—was laden with references to Dante’s Inferno

and carried a very clear message: human population growth was out of control, and the

very survival of mankind was hanging in the balance.

Onscreen, the voice intoned:

“To do nothing is to welcome Dante’s hel … cramped and starving, weltering in Sin. And so boldly I have taken

action. Some wil recoil in horror, but al salvation comes at a price. One day the world wil grasp the beauty of my

sacrifice.”

Langdon recoiled as Zobrist himself abruptly appeared, dressed as the plague doctor,

and then tore off his mask. Langdon stared at the gaunt face and wild green eyes,

realizing that he was finally seeing the face of the man who was at the center of this

crisis. Zobrist began professing his love to someone he called his inspiration.

“I have left the future in your gentle hands. My work below is done. And now the hour has come for me to

climb again to the world above … and rebehold the stars.”

As the video ended, Langdon recognized Zobrist’s final words as a near duplicate of

Dante’s final words in the Inferno.

In the darkness of the conference room, Langdon realized that all the moments of fear

he had experienced today had just crystallized into a single, terrifying reality.

Bertrand Zobrist now had a face … and a voice.

The conference room lights came up, and Langdon saw all eyes trained expectantly on

him.

Elizabeth Sinskey’s expression seemed frozen as she stood up and nervously stroked

her amulet. “Professor, obviously our time is very short. The only good news so far is that

we’ve had no cases of pathogen detection, or reported illness, so we’re assuming the

suspended Solublon bag is still intact. But we don’t know where to look. Our goal is to

neutralize this threat by containing the bag before it ruptures. The only way we can do

that, of course, is to find its location immediately.”

Agent Brüder stood up now, staring intently at Langdon. “We’re assuming you came to

Venice because you learned that this is where Zobrist hid his plague.”

Langdon gazed out at the assembly before him, faces taut with fear, everyone hoping

for a miracle, and he wished he had better news to offer them.

“We’re in the wrong country,” Langdon announced. “What you’re looking for is nearly a

thousand miles from here.”

Langdon’s insides reverberated with the deep thrum of The Mendacium’s engines as the

ship powered through its wide turn, banking back toward the Venice Airport. On board, all

hell had broken loose. The provost had dashed off, shouting orders to his crew. Elizabeth

Sinskey had grabbed her phone and called the pilots of the WHO’s C-130 transport plane,

demanding they be prepped as soon as possible to fly out of the Venice Airport. And

Agent Brüder had jumped on a laptop to see if he could coordinate some kind of

international advance team at their final destination.

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