Inferno
A world away.
The provost now returned to the conference room and urgently addressed Brüder. “Any
further word from the Venetian authorities?”
Brüder shook his head. “No trace. They’re looking, but Sienna Brooks has vanished.”
Langdon did a double take. They’re looking for Sienna?
Sinskey finished her phone call and also joined the conversation. “No luck finding her?”
The provost shook his head. “If you’re agreeable, I think the WHO should authorize the
use of force if necessary to bring her in.”
Langdon jumped to his feet. “Why?! Sienna Brooks is not involved in any of this!”
The provost’s dark eyes cut to Langdon. “Professor, there are some things I have to tell
you about Ms. Brooks.”
CHAPTER 79
PUSHING PAST THE crush of tourists on the Rialto Bridge, Sienna Brooks began running again,
sprinting west along the canal-front walkway of the Fondamenta Vin Castello.
They’ve got Robert.
She could still see his desperate eyes gazing up at her as the soldiers dragged him
back down the light well into the crypt. She had little doubt that his captors would quickly
persuade him, one way or another, to reveal everything he had figured out.
We’re in the wrong country.
Far more tragic, though, was her knowledge that his captors would waste no time
revealing to Langdon the true nature of the situation.
I’m so sorry, Robert.
For everything.
Please know I had no choice.
Strangely, Sienna missed him already. Here, amid the masses of Venice, she felt a
familiar loneliness settling in.
The feeling was nothing new.
Since childhood, Sienna Brooks had felt alone.
Growing up with an exceptional intellect, Sienna had spent her youth feeling like a
stranger in a strange land … an alien trapped on a lonely world. She tried to make
friends, but her peers immersed themselves in frivolities that held no interest to her. She
tried to respect her elders, but most adults seemed like nothing more than aging children,
lacking even the most basic understanding of the world around them, and, most
troubling, lacking any curiosity or concern about it.
I felt I was a part of nothing.
And so Sienna Brooks learned how to be a ghost. Invisible. She learned how to be a
chameleon, a performer, playing just another face in the crowd. Her childhood passion for
stage acting, she had no doubt, stemmed from what would become her lifelong dream of
becoming someone else.
Someone normal.
Her performance in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream helped her feel a part
of something, and the adult actors were supportive without being condescending. Her
joy, however, was short-lived, evaporating the moment she left the stage on opening
night and faced throngs of wide-eyed media people while her costars quietly skulked out
the back door unnoticed.
Now they hate me, too.
By the age of seven, Sienna had read enough to diagnose herself with deep
depression. When she told her parents, they seemed dumbfounded, as they usually were
by the strangeness of their own daughter. Nonetheless, they sent her to a psychiatrist.
The doctor asked her a lot of questions, which Sienna had already asked herself, and
then he prescribed a combination of amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide.
Furious, Sienna jumped off his couch. “Amitriptyline?!” she challenged. “I want to be
happier—not a zombie!”
The psychiatrist, to his great credit, remained very calm in the face of her outburst and
offered a second suggestion. “Sienna, if you prefer not to take pharmaceuticals, we can
try a more holistic approach.” He paused. “It sounds as if you are trapped in a cycle of
thinking about yourself and how you don’t belong in the world.”
“That’s true,” Sienna replied. “I try to stop, but I can’t!”
He smiled calmly. “Of course you can’t stop. It is physically impossible for the human
mind to think of nothing. The soul craves emotion, and it will continue to seek fuel for
that emotion—good or bad. Your problem is that you’re giving it the wrong fuel.”
Sienna had never heard anyone talk about the mind in such mechanical terms, and she
was instantly intrigued. “How do I give it a different fuel?”
“You need to shift your intellectual focus,” he said. “Currently, you think mainly about
yourself. You wonder why you don’t fit … and what is wrong with you.”
“That’s true,” Sienna said again, “but I’m trying to solve the problem. I’m trying to fit
in. I can’t solve the problem if I don’t think about it.”
He chuckled. “I believe that thinking about the problem … is your problem.” The doctor
suggested that she try to shift her focus away from herself and her own problems …
turning her attention instead to the world around her … and its problems.
That’s when everything changed.
She began pouring all of her energy not into feeling sorry for herself … but into feeling
sorry for other people. She began a philanthropic initiative, ladled soup at homeless
shelters, and read books to the blind. Incredibly, none of the people Sienna helped even
seemed to notice that she was different. They were just grateful that somebody cared.
Sienna worked harder every week, barely able to sleep because of the realization that
so many people needed her help.
“Sienna, slow down!” people would urge her. “You can’t save the world!”
What a terrible thing to say.
Through her acts of public service, Sienna came in contact with several members of a
local humanitarian group. When they invited her to join them on a monthlong trip to the
Philippines, she jumped at the chance.
Sienna imagined they were going to feed poor fishermen or farmers in the countryside,
which she had read was a wonderland of geological beauty, with vibrant seabeds and
dazzling plains. And so when the group settled in among the throngs in the city of Manila
—the most densely populated city on earth—Sienna could only gape in horror. She had
never seen poverty on this scale.
How can one person possibly make a difference?
For every one person Sienna fed, there were hundreds more who gazed at her with
desolate eyes. Manila had six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and a horrifying sex
trade, whose workers consisted primarily of young children, many of whom had been sold
to pimps by parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would be fed.
Amid this chaos of child prostitution, panhandlers, pickpockets, and worse, Sienna
found herself suddenly paralyzed. All around her, she could see humanity overrun by its
primal instinct for survival. When they face desperation … human beings become animals.
For Sienna, all the dark depression came flooding back. She had suddenly understood
mankind for what it was—a species on the brink.
I was wrong, she thought. I can’t save the world.
Overwhelmed by a rush of frantic mania, Sienna broke into a sprint through the city
streets, thrusting her way through the masses of people, knocking them over, pressing
on, searching for open space.
I’m being suffocated by human flesh!
As she ran, she could feel the eyes upon her again. She no longer blended in. She was
tall and fair-skinned with a blond ponytail waving behind her. Men stared at her as if she
were naked.
When her legs finally gave out, she had no idea how far she had run or where she had
gone. She cleared the tears and grime from her eyes and saw that she was standing in a
kind of shantytown—a city made of pieces of corrugated metal and cardboard propped up
and held together. All around her the wails of crying babies and the stench of human
excrement hung in the air.
I’ve run through the gates of hell.
“Turista,” a deep voice sneered behind her. “Magkano?” How much?
Sienna spun to see three young men approaching, salivating like wolves. She instantly
knew she was in danger and she tried to back away, but they corralled her, like predators
hunting in a pack.
Sienna shouted for help, but nobody paid attention to her cries. Only fifteen feet away,
she saw an old woman sitting on a tire, carving the rot off an old onion with a rusty knife.
The woman did not even glance up when Sienna shouted.
When the men seized her and dragged her inside a little shack, Sienna had no illusions
about what was going to happen, and the terror was all-consuming. She fought with
everything she had, but they were strong, quickly pinning her down on an old, soiled
mattress.
They tore open her shirt, clawing at her soft skin. When she screamed, they stuffed her
torn shirt so deep into her mouth that she thought she would choke. Then they flipped
her onto her stomach, forcing her face into the putrid bed.
Sienna Brooks had always felt pity for the ignorant souls who could believe in God amid
a world of such suffering, and yet now she herself was praying … praying with all her
heart.
Please, God, deliver me from evil.
Even as she prayed, she could hear the men laughing, taunting her as their filthy hands
hauled her jeans down over her flailing legs. One of them climbed onto her back, sweaty
and heavy, his perspiration dripping onto her skin.
I’m a virgin, Sienna thought. This is how it is going to happen for me. Suddenly the
man on her back leaped off her, and the taunting jeers turned to shouts of anger and
fear. The warm sweat rolling onto Sienna’s back from above suddenly began gushing …
spilling onto the mattress in splatters of red.
When Sienna rolled over to see what was happening, she saw the old woman with the
half-peeled onion and the rusty knife standing over her attacker, who was now bleeding
profusely from his back.
The old woman glared threateningly at the others, whipping her bloody knife through
the air until the three men scampered off.
Without a word, the old woman helped Sienna gather her clothes and get dressed.
“Salamat,” Sienna whispered tearfully. “Thank you.”
The old woman tapped her ear, indicating she was deaf.
Sienna placed her palms together, closed her eyes, and bowed her head in a gesture of
respect. When she opened her eyes, the woman was gone.
Sienna left the Philippines at once, without even saying good-bye to the other
members of the group. She never once spoke of what had happened to her. She hoped
that ignoring the incident would make it fade away, but it seemed only to make it worse.
Months later, she was still haunted by night terrors, and she no longer felt safe anywhere.
She took up martial arts, and despite quickly mastering the deadly skill of dim mak, she
still felt at risk everywhere she went.
Her depression returned, surging tenfold, and eventually she stopped sleeping
altogether. Every time she combed her hair, she noticed that huge clumps were falling
out, more hair every day. To her horror, within weeks, she was half bald, having
developed symptoms that she self-diagnosed as telegenic effluvium—a stress-related
alopecia with no cure other than curing one’s stress. Every time she looked in the mirror,
though, she saw her balding head and felt her heart race.
I look like an old woman!
Finally, she had no choice but to shave her head. At least she no longer looked old. She
simply looked ill. Not wanting to look like a cancer victim, she purchased a wig, which she
wore in a blond ponytail, and at least looked like herself again.
Inside, however, Sienna Brooks was changed.
I am damaged goods.
In a desperate attempt to leave her life behind, she traveled to America and attended
medical school. She had always had an affinity for medicine, and she hoped that being a
doctor would make her feel like she was being of service … as if she were doing
something at least to ease the pain of this troubled world.
Despite the long hours, school had been easy for her, and while her classmates were
studying, Sienna took a part-time acting job to earn some extra money. The gig definitely
wasn’t Shakespeare, but her skills with language and memorization meant that instead of
feeling like work, acting felt like a sanctuary where Sienna could forget who she was …
and be someone else.
Anybody else.
Sienna had been trying to escape her identity since she could first speak. As a child,
she had shunned her given name, Felicity, in favor of her middle name, Sienna. Felicity
meant “fortunate,” and she knew she was anything but.
Remove the focus on your own problems, she reminded herself. Focus on the problems
of the world.
Her panic attack in the crowded streets of Manila had sparked in Sienna a deep concern
about overcrowding and world population. It was then that she discovered the writings of
Bertrand Zobrist, a genetic engineer who had proposed some very progressive theories
about world population.
He’s a genius, she realized, reading his work. Sienna had never felt that way about
another human being, and the more of Zobrist she read, the more she felt like she was
looking into the heart of a soul mate. His article “You Can’t Save the World” reminded
Sienna of what everyone used to tell her as a child … and yet Zobrist believed the exact
opposite.
You CAN save the world, Zobrist wrote. If not you, then who? If not now, when?
Sienna studied Zobrist’s mathematical equations carefully, educating herself on his
predictions of a Malthusian catastrophe and the impending collapse of the species. Her
intellect loved the high-level speculations, but she felt her stress level climbing as she
saw the entire future before her … mathematically guaranteed … so obvious … inevitable.
Why doesn’t anyone else see this coming?
Though she was frightened by his ideas, Sienna became obsessed with Zobrist,
watching videos of his presentations, reading everything he had ever written. When
Sienna heard that he had a speaking engagement in the United States, she knew she had
to go see him. And that was the night her entire world had changed.
A smile lit up her face, a rare moment of happiness, as she again pictured that magical
evening … an evening she had vividly recalled only hours earlier while sitting on the train
with Langdon and Ferris.
Chicago. The blizzard.
January, six years ago … but it still feels like yesterday. I am trudging through
snowbanks along the windswept Magnificent Mile, collar upturned against the blinding
whiteout. Despite the cold, I tell myself that nothing will keep me from my destination.
Tonight is my chance to hear the great Bertrand Zobrist speak … in person.
The hall is nearly deserted when Bertrand takes the stage, and he is tall … so very tall
… with vibrant green eyes that seem to hold all the mysteries of the world.
“To hell with this empty auditorium,” he declares. “Let’s go to the bar!” And then we
are there, a handful of us, in a quiet booth, as he speaks of genetics, of population, and
of his newest passion … Transhumanism.
As the drinks flow, I feel as if I’m having a private audience with a rock star. Every time
Zobrist glances over at me, his green eyes ignite a wholly unexpected feeling inside me …
the deep pull of sexual attraction.
It is a wholly new sensation for me.
And then we are alone.
“Thank you for tonight,” I say to him, feeling a little tipsy. “You’re an amazing teacher.”
“Flattery?” Zobrist smiles and leans closer, our legs touching now. “It will get you
everywhere.”
The flirtation is clearly inappropriate, but it is a snowy night in a deserted Chicago
hotel, and it feels as if the entire world has stopped.
“So what do you think?” Zobrist says. “Nightcap in my room?”
I freeze, knowing I must look like a deer in the headlights. I don’t know how to do this!
Zobrist’s eyes twinkle warmly. “Let me guess,” he whispers. “You’ve never been with a
famous man.”
I feel myself flush, fighting to hide a surge of emotions—embarrassment, excitement,
fear. “Actually, to be honest,” I say to him, “I’ve never been with any man.”
Zobrist smiles and inches closer. “I’m not sure what you’ve been waiting for, but please
let me be your first.”
In that moment all the awkward sexual fears and frustrations of my childhood
disappear … evaporating into the snowy night.
Then, I am naked in his arms.
“Relax, Sienna,” he whispers, and then, with patient hands, he coaxes from my
inexperienced body a torrent of sensations that I have never imagined existed.
Basking in the cocoon of Zobrist’s embrace, I feel as if everything is finally right in the
world, and I know my life has purpose.
I have found Love.
And I will follow it anywhere.
CHAPTER 80
ABOVEDECKS ON THE Mendacium, Langdon gripped the polished teak railing, steadied his
wavering legs, and tried to catch his breath. The sea air had grown colder, and the roar
of low-flying commercial jets told him they were nearing the Venice Airport.
There are some things I have to tell you about Ms. Brooks.
Beside him at the railing, the provost and Dr. Sinskey remained silent but attentive,
giving him a moment to get his bearings. What they had told Langdon downstairs had left
him so disoriented and upset that Sinskey had brought him outside for some air.
The sea air was bracing, and yet Langdon felt no clearer in his head. All he could do
was stare vacantly down at the churning wake of the ship, trying to find a shred of logic
to what he had just heard.
According to the provost, Sienna Brooks and Bertrand Zobrist had been longtime lovers.
They were active together in some kind of underground Transhumanist movement. Her
full name was Felicity Sienna Brooks, but she also went by the code name FS-2080 …
which had something to do with her initials, and the year of her one-hundredth birthday.
None of it makes any sense!
“I knew Sienna Brooks through a different source,” the provost had told Langdon, “and
I trusted her. So, when she came to me last year and asked me to meet a wealthy
potential client, I agreed. That prospect turned out to be Bertrand Zobrist. He hired me to
provide him a safe haven where he could work undetected on his ‘masterpiece.’ I
assumed he was developing a new technology that he didn’t want pirated … or maybe he
was performing some cutting-edge genetic research that was in conflict with the WHO’s
ethics regulations … I didn’t ask questions, but believe me, I never imagined he was
creating … a plague.”
Langdon had only been able to nod vacantly … bewildered.
“Zobrist was a Dante fanatic,” the provost continued, “and he therefore chose Florence
as the city in which he wanted to hide. So my organization set him up with everything he
needed—a discreet lab facility with living quarters, various aliases and secure
communication avenues, and a personal attaché who oversaw everything from his
security to buying food and supplies. Zobrist never used his own credit cards or appeared
in public, so he was impossible to track. We even provided him disguises, aliases, and
alternate documentation for traveling unnoticed.” He paused. “Which he apparently did
when he placed the Solublon bag.”
Sinskey exhaled, making little effort to hide her frustration. “The WHO has been trying
to keep tabs on him since last year, but he seemed to have vanished off the face of the
earth.”
“Even hiding from Sienna,” the provost said.
“I’m sorry?” Langdon glanced up, clearing the knot in his throat. “I thought you said
they were lovers?”
“They were, but he cut her off suddenly when he went into hiding. Even though Sienna
was the one who sent him to us, my agreement was with Zobrist himself, and part of our
deal was that when he disappeared, he would disappear from the whole world, including
Sienna. Apparently after he went into hiding, he sent her a farewell letter revealing that
he was very ill, would be dead in a year or so, and didn’t want her to see him
deteriorate.”
Zobrist abandoned Sienna?
“Sienna tried to contact me for information,” the provost said, “but I refused to take her
calls. I had to respect my client’s wishes.”
“Two weeks ago,” Sinskey continued, “Zobrist walked into a bank in Florence and
anonymously rented a safe-deposit box. After he left, our watch list got word that the
bank’s new facial-recognition software had identified the disguised man as Bertrand
Zobrist. My team flew to Florence and it took a week to locate his safe house, which was
empty, but inside we found evidence that he had created some kind of highly contagious
pathogen and hidden it somewhere else.”
Sinskey paused. “We were desperate to find him. The following morning, before
sunrise, we spotted him walking along the Arno, and we immediately gave chase. That’s
when he fled up the Badia tower and jumped to his death.”
“He may have been planning to do that anyway,” the provost added. “He was
convinced he did not have long to live.”
“As it turned out,” Sinskey said, “Sienna had been searching for him as well. Somehow,
she found out that we had mobilized to Florence, and she tailed our movements, thinking
we might have located him. Unfortunately, she was there in time to see Zobrist jump.”
Sinskey sighed. “I suspect it was very traumatic for her to watch her lover and mentor fall
to his death.”
Langdon felt ill, barely able to comprehend what they were telling him. The only person
in this entire scenario whom he trusted was Sienna, and these people were telling him
that she was not who she claimed to be? No matter what they said, he could not believe
Sienna would condone Zobrist’s desire to create a plague.
Or would she?
Would you kill half the population today, Sienna had asked him, in order to save our
species from extinction?
Langdon felt a chill.
“Once Zobrist was dead,” Sinskey explained, “I used my influence to force the bank to
open Zobrist’s safe-deposit box, which ironically turned out to contain a letter to me …
along with a strange little device.”
“The projector,” Langdon ventured.
“Exactly. His letter said he wanted me to be the first to visit ground zero, which nobody
would ever find without following his Map of Hell.”
Langdon pictured the modified Botticelli painting that shone out of the tiny projector.
The provost added, “Zobrist had contracted me to deliver to Dr. Sinskey the contents of
the safe-deposit box, but not until after tomorrow morning. When Dr. Sinskey came into
possession of it early, we panicked and took action, trying to recover it in accordance with
our client’s wishes.”
Sinskey looked at Langdon. “I didn’t have much hope of understanding the map in time,
so I recruited you to help me. Are you remembering any of this, now?”
Langdon shook his head.
“We flew you quietly to Florence, where you had made an appointment with someone
you thought could help.”
Ignazio Busoni.
“You met with him last night,” Sinskey said, “and then you disappeared. We thought
something had happened to you.”
“And in fact,” the provost said, “something did happen to you. In an effort to recover
the projector, we had an agent of mine named Vayentha tail you from the airport. She
lost you somewhere around the Piazza della Signoria.” He scowled. “Losing you was a
critical error. And Vayentha had the nerve to blame it on a bird.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A cooing dove. By Vayentha’s account, she was in perfect position, watching you from
a darkened alcove, when a group of tourists passed. She said a dove suddenly cooed
loudly from a window box over her head, causing the tourists to stop and block Vayentha
in. By the time she could slip back into the alley, you were gone.” He shook his head in
disgust. “Anyway, she lost you for several hours. Finally, she picked up your trail again—
and by this time you had been joined by another man.”
Ignazio, Langdon thought. He and I must have been exiting the Palazzo Vecchio with
the mask.
“She successfully tailed you both in the direction of the Piazza della Signoria, but the
two of you apparently saw her and decided to flee, going in separate directions.”
That makes sense, Langdon thought. Ignazio fled with the mask and hid it in the
baptistry before he had a heart attack.
“Then Vayentha made a terrible mistake,” the provost said.
“She shot me in the head?”
“No, she revealed herself too early. She pulled you in for interrogation before you
actually knew anything. We needed to know if you had deciphered the map or told Dr.
Sinskey what she needed to know. You refused to say a word. You said you would die
first.”
I was looking for a deadly plague! I probably thought you were mercenaries looking to
obtain a biological weapon!
The ship’s massive engines suddenly shifted into reverse, slowing the vessel as it
neared the loading dock for the airport. In the distance, Langdon could see the
nondescript hull of a C-130 transport plane fueling. The fuselage bore the inscription
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION.
At that moment Brüder arrived, his expression grim. “I’ve just learned that the only
qualified response team within five hours of the site is us, which means we’re on our
own.”
Sinskey slumped. “Coordination with local authorities?”
Brüder looked wary. “Not yet. That’s my recommendation. We don’t have an exact
location at the moment, so there’s nothing they could do. Moreover, a containment
operation is well beyond the scope of their expertise, and we run the real risk of their
doing more damage than good.”
“Primum non nocere,” Sinskey whispered with a nod, repeating the fundamental
precept of medical ethics: First, do no harm.
“Lastly,” Brüder said, “we still have no word on Sienna Brooks.” He eyed the provost.
“Do you know if Sienna has contacts in Venice who might assist her?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” he replied. “Zobrist had disciples everywhere, and if I know
Sienna, she’ll be using all available resources to carry out her directive.”
“You can’t let her get out of Venice,” Sinskey said. “We have no idea what condition
that Solublon bag is currently in. If anyone discovers it, all that would be needed at this
point is a slight touch to burst the plastic and release the contagion into the water.”
There was a moment of silence as the gravity of the situation settled in.
“I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news,” Langdon said. “The gilded mouseion of holy
wisdom.” He paused. “Sienna knows where it is. She knows where we’re going.”
“What?!” Sinskey’s voice rose in alarm. “I thought you said you didn’t have a chance to
tell Sienna what you’d figured out! You said all you told her is that you were in the wrong
country!”
“That’s true,” Langdon said, “but she knew we were looking for the tomb of Enrico
Dandolo. A quick Web search can tell her where that is. And once she finds Dandolo’s
tomb … the dissolving canister can’t be far away. The poem said to follow the sounds of
trickling water to the sunken palace.”
“Damn it!” Brüder erupted, and stormed off.
“She’ll never beat us there,” the provost said. “We have a head start.” Sinskey sighed
heavily. “I wouldn’t be so sure. Our transport is slow, and it appears Sienna Brooks is
extremely resourceful.”
As The Mendacium docked, Langdon found himself staring uneasily at the cumbersome
C-130 on the runway. It barely looked airworthy and had no windows. I’ve been on this
thing already? Langdon didn’t remember a thing.
Whether it was because of the movement of the docking boat, or growing reservations
about the claustrophobic aircraft, Langdon didn’t know, but he was suddenly hit by an
upsurge of nausea.
He turned to Sinskey. “I’m not sure I feel well enough to fly.”
“You’re fine,” she said. “You’ve been through the wringer today, and of course, you’ve
got the toxins in your body.”
“Toxins?” Langdon took a wavering step backward. “What are you talking about?”
Sinskey glanced away, clearly having said more than she intended.
“Professor, I’m sorry. Unfortunately, I’ve just learned that your medical condition is a
bit more complicated than a simple head wound.”
Langdon felt a spike of fear as he pictured the black flesh on Ferris’s chest when the
man collapsed in the basilica.
“What’s wrong with me?” Langdon demanded.
Sinskey hesitated, as if uncertain how to proceed. “Let’s get you onto the plane first.”
CHAPTER 81
LOCATED JUST EAST of the spectacular Frari church, the Atelier Pietro Longhi has always been
one of Venice’s premier providers of historical costumes, wigs, and accessories. Its client
list includes film companies and theatrical troupes, as well as influential members of the
public who rely on the staff’s expertise to dress them for Carnevale’s most extravagant
balls.
The clerk was just about to lock up for the evening when the door jingled loudly. He
glanced up to see an attractive woman with a blond ponytail come bursting in. She was
breathless, as if she’d been running for miles. She hurried to the counter, her brown eyes
wild and desperate.
“I want to speak to Giorgio Venci,” she had said, panting.
Don’t we all, the clerk thought. But nobody gets to see the wizard.
Giorgio Venci—the atelier’s chief designer—worked his magic from behind the curtain,
speaking to clients very rarely and never without an appointment. As a man of great
wealth and influence, Giorgio was allowed certain eccentricities, including his passion for
solitude. He dined privately, flew privately, and constantly complained about the rising
number of tourists in Venice. He was not one who liked company.
“I’m sorry,” the clerk said with a practiced smile. “I’m afraid Signor Venci is not here.
Perhaps I can help you?”
“Giorgio’s here,” she declared. “His flat is upstairs. I saw his light on. I’m a friend. It’s
an emergency.”
There was a burning intensity about the woman. A friend? she claims. “Might I tell
Giorgio your name?”
The woman took a scrap of paper off the counter and jotted down a series of letters
and numbers.
“Just give him this,” she said, handing the clerk the paper. “And please hurry. I don’t
have much time.”
The clerk hesitantly carried the paper upstairs and laid it on the long altering table,
where Giorgio was hunched intently at his sewing machine.
“Signore,” he whispered. “Someone is here to see you. She says it’s an emergency.”
Without breaking off from his work or looking up, the man reached out with one hand
and took the paper, reading the text.
His sewing machine rattled to a stop.
“Send her up immediately,” Giorgio commanded as he tore the paper into tiny shreds.
CHAPTER 82
THE MASSIVE C-130 transport plane was still ascending as it banked southeast, thundering out
across the Adriatic. On board, Robert Langdon was feeling simultaneously cramped and
adrift—oppressed by the absence of windows in the aircraft and bewildered by all of the
unanswered questions swirling around in his brain.
Your medical condition, Sinskey had told him, is a bit more complicated than a simple
head wound.
Langdon’s pulse quickened at the thought of what she might tell him, and yet at the
moment she was busy discussing containment strategies with the SRS team. Brüder was
on the phone nearby, speaking with government agencies about Sienna Brooks, following
up on everyone’s attempts to locate her.
Sienna …
Langdon was still trying to make sense of the claim that she was intricately involved in
all of this. As the plane leveled out from its ascent, the small man who called himself the
provost walked across the cabin and sat down opposite Langdon. He steepled his fingers
beneath his chin and pursed his lips. “Dr. Sinskey asked me to fill you in … make an
attempt to bring clarity to your situation.”
Langdon wondered what this man could possibly say to make any of this confusion
even remotely clear.
“As I began to say earlier,” the provost said, “much of this started after my agent
Vayentha pulled you in prematurely. We had no idea how much progress you had made
on Dr. Sinskey’s behalf, or how much you had shared with her. But we were afraid if she
learned the location of the project our client had hired us to protect, she was going to
confiscate or destroy it. We had to find it before she did, and so we needed you to work
o n our behalf … rather than on Sinskey’s.” The provost paused, tapping his fingertips
together. “Unfortunately, we had already shown our cards … and you most certainly did
not trust us.”
“So you shot me in the head?” Langdon replied angrily.
“We came up with a plan to make you trust us.”
Langdon felt lost. “How do you make someone trust you … after you’ve kidnapped and
interrogated him?”
The man shifted uncomfortably now. “Professor, are you familiar with the family of
chemicals known as benzodiazepines?”
Langdon shook his head.
“They are a breed of pharmaceutical that are used for, among other things, the
treatment of post-traumatic stress. As you may know, when someone endures a horrific
event like a car accident or a sexual assault, the long-term memories can be permanently
debilitating. Through the use of benzodiazepines, neuroscientists are now able to treat
post-traumatic stress, as it were, before it happens.”
Langdon listened in silence, unable to imagine where this conversation might be going.
“When new memories are formed,” the provost continued, “those events are stored in
your short-term memory for about forty-eight hours before they migrate to your long-
term memory. Using new blends of benzodiazepines, one can easily refresh the short-
term memory … essentially deleting its content before those recent memories migrate, so
to speak, into long-term memories. A victim of assault, for example, if administered a
benzodiazepine within a few hours after the attack, can have those memories expunged
forever, and the trauma never becomes part of her psyche. The only downside is that she
loses all recollection of several days of her life.”
Langdon stared at the tiny man in disbelief. “You gave me amnesia!”
The provost let out an apologetic sigh. “I’m afraid so. Chemically induced. Very safe.
But yes, a deletion of your short-term memory.” He paused. “While you were out, you
mumbled something about a plague, which we assumed was on account of your viewing
the projector images. We never imagined that Zobrist had created a real plague.” He
paused. “You also kept mumbling a phrase that sounded to us like ‘Very sorry. Very
sorry.’ ”
Vasari. It must have been all he had figured out about the projector at that point.
Cerca trova. “But … I thought my amnesia was caused by my head wound. Somebody
shot me.”
The provost shook his head. “Nobody shot you, Professor. There was no head wound.”
“What?!” Langdon’s fingers groped instinctively for the stitches and the swollen injury
on the back of his head. “Then what the hell is this!” He raised his hair to reveal the
shaved area.
“Part of the illusion. We made a small incision in your scalp and then immediately
closed it up with stitches. You had to believe you had been attacked.”
This isn’t a bullet wound?!
“When you woke up,” the provost said, “we wanted you to believe that people were
trying to kill you … that you were in peril.”
“People were trying to kill me!” Langdon shouted, his outburst drawing gazes from
elsewhere in the plane. “I saw the hospital’s doctor—Dr. Marconi—gunned down in cold
blood!”
“That’s what you saw,” the provost said evenly, “but that’s not what happened.
Vayentha worked for me. She had a superb skill set for this kind of work.”
“Killing people?” Langdon demanded.
“No,” the provost said calmly. “Pretending to kill people.”
Langdon stared at the man for a long moment, picturing the gray-bearded doctor with
the bushy eyebrows who had collapsed on the floor, blood gushing from his chest.
“Vayentha’s gun was loaded with blanks,” the provost said. “It triggered a radio-
controlled squib that detonated a blood pack on Dr. Marconi’s chest. He is fine, by the
way.”
Langdon closed his eyes, dumbstruck by what he was hearing. “And the … hospital
room?”
“A quickly improvised set,” the provost said. “Professor, I know this is all very difficult
to absorb. We were working quickly, and you were groggy, so it didn’t need to be perfect.
When you woke up, you saw what we wanted you to see—hospital props, a few actors,
and a choreographed attack scene.”
Langdon was reeling.
“This is what my company does,” the provost said. “We’re very good at creating
illusions.”
“What about Sienna?” Langdon asked, rubbing his eyes.
“I needed to make a judgment call, and I chose to work with her. My priority was to
protect my client’s project from Dr. Sinskey, and Sienna and I shared that desire. To gain
your trust, Sienna saved you from the assassin and helped you escape into a rear
alleyway. The waiting taxi was also ours, with another radio-controlled squib on the rear
windshield to create the final effect as you fled. The taxi took you to an apartment that
we had hastily put together.”
Sienna’s meager apartment, Langdon thought, now understanding why it looked like it
had been furnished from a yard sale. And it also explained the convenient coincidence of
Sienna’s “neighbor” having clothing that fit him perfectly.
The entire thing had been staged.
Even the desperate phone call from Sienna’s friend at the hospital had been phony.
Sienna, eez Danikova!
“When you phoned the U.S. Consulate,” the provost said, “you phoned a number that
Sienna looked up for you. It was a number that rang on The Mendacium.”
“I never reached the consulate …”
“No, you didn’t.”
Stay where you are, the fake consulate employee had urged him. I’ll send someone for
you right away. Then, when Vayentha showed up, Sienna had conveniently spotted her
across the street and connected the dots. Robert, your own government is trying to kill
you! You can’t involve any authorities! Your only hope is to figure out what that projector
means.
The provost and his mysterious organization—whatever the hell it was—had effectively
retasked Langdon to stop working for Sinskey and start working for them. Their illusion
was complete.
Sienna played me perfectly, he thought, feeling more sad than angry. He had grown
fond of her in the short time they’d been together. Most troubling to Langdon was the
distressing question of how a soul as bright and warm as Sienna’s could give itself over
entirely to Zobrist’s maniacal solution for overpopulation.
I can tell you without a doubt, Sienna had said to him earlier, that without some kind of
drastic change, the end of our species is coming … The mathematics is indisputable.
“And the articles about Sienna?” Langdon asked, recalling the Shakespeare playbill and
the pieces about her staggeringly high IQ.
“Authentic,” the provost replied. “The best illusions involve as much of the real world as
possible. We didn’t have much time to set up, and so Sienna’s computer and real-world
personal files were almost all we had to work with. You were never really intended to see
any of that unless you began doubting her authenticity.”
“Nor use her computer,” Langdon said.
“Yes, that was where we lost control. Sienna never expected Sinskey’s SRS team to find
the apartment, so when the soldiers moved in, Sienna panicked and had to improvise.
She fled on the moped with you, trying to keep the illusion alive. As the entire mission
unraveled, I had no choice but to disavow Vayentha, although she broke protocol and
pursued you.”
“She almost killed me,” Langdon said, recounting for the provost the showdown in the
attic of the Palazzo Vecchio, when Vayentha raised her handgun and aimed point-blank at
Langdon’s chest. This will only hurt for an instant … but it’s my only choice. Sienna had
then darted out and pushed her over the railing, where Vayentha plunged to her death.
The provost sighed audibly, considering what Langdon had just said. “I doubt Vayentha
was trying to kill you … her gun fires only blanks. Her only hope of redemption at that
point was to take control of you. She probably thought if she shot you with a blank, she
could make you understand she was not an assassin after all and that you were caught
up in an illusion.”
The provost paused, thinking a bit, and then continued. “Whether Sienna actually
meant to kill Vayentha or was only trying to interfere with the shot, I won’t venture to
guess. I’m beginning to realize that I don’t know Sienna Brooks as well as I thought.”
Me neither, Langdon agreed, although as he recalled the look of shock and remorse on
the young woman’s face, he sensed that what she had done to the spike-haired operative
was very likely a mistake.
Langdon felt unmoored … and utterly alone. He turned toward the window, longing to
gaze out at the world below, but all he could see was the wall of the fuselage.
I’ve got to get out of here.
“Are you okay?” the provost asked, eyeing Langdon with concern.
“No,” Langdon replied. “Not even close.”
He’ll survive, the provost thought. He’s merely trying to process his new reality.
The American professor looked as if he had just been snatched up off the ground by a
tornado, spun around, and dumped in a foreign land, leaving him shell-shocked and
disoriented.
Individuals targeted by the Consortium seldom realized the truth behind the staged
events they had witnessed, and if they did, the provost certainly was never present to
view the aftermath. Today, in addition to the guilt he felt at seeing firsthand Langdon’s
bewilderment, the man was burdened by an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the
current crisis.
I accepted the wrong client. Bertrand Zobrist.
I trusted the wrong person. Sienna Brooks.
Now the provost was flying toward the eye of the storm—the epicenter of what might
well be a deadly plague that had the potential to wreak havoc across the entire world. If
he emerged alive from all this, he suspected that his Consortium would never survive the
fallout. There would be endless inquiries and accusations.
Is this how it all ends for me?
CHAPTER 83
I NEED AIR, Robert Langdon thought. A vista … anything.
The windowless fuselage felt as if it were closing in around him. Of course, the strange
tale of what had actually happened to him today was not helping at all. His brain
throbbed with unanswered questions … most of them about Sienna.
Strangely, he missed her.
She was acting, he reminded himself. Using me.
Without a word, Langdon left the provost and walked toward the front of the plane.
The cockpit door was open, and the natural light streaming through it pulled him like a
beacon. Standing in the doorway, undetected by the pilots, Langdon let the sunlight
warm his face. The wide-open space before him felt like manna from heaven. The clear
blue sky looked so peaceful … so permanent.
Nothing is permanent, he reminded himself, still struggling to accept the potential
catastrophe they were facing.
“Professor?” a quiet voice said behind him, and he turned.
Langdon took a startled step backward. Standing before him was Dr. Ferris. The last
time Langdon had seen the man, he was writhing on the floor of St. Mark’s Basilica,
unable to breathe. Now here he was in the aircraft leaning against the bulkhead, wearing
a baseball cap, his face, covered in calamine lotion, a pasty pink. His chest and torso
were heavily bandaged, and his breathing was shallow. If Ferris had the plague, nobody
seemed too concerned that he was going to spread it.
“You’re … alive?” Langdon said, staring at the man.
Ferris gave a tired nod. “More or less.” The man’s demeanor had changed dramatically,
seeming far more relaxed.
“But I thought—” Langdon stopped. “Actually … I’m not sure what to think anymore.”
Ferris gave him an empathetic smile. “You’ve heard a lot of lies today. I thought I’d
take a moment to apologize. As you may have guessed, I don’t work for the WHO, and I
didn’t go to recruit you in Cambridge.”
Langdon nodded, too tired to be surprised by anything at this point. “You work for the
provost.”
“I do. He sent me in to offer emergency field support to you and Sienna … and help you
escape the SRS team.”
“Then I guess you did your job perfectly,” Langdon said, recalling how Ferris had shown
up at the baptistry, convinced Langdon he was a WHO employee, and then facilitated his
and Sienna’s transportation out of Florence and away from Sinskey’s team. “Obviously
you’re not a doctor.”
The man shook his head. “No, but I played that part today. My job was to help Sienna
keep the illusion going so you could figure out where the projector was pointing. The
provost was intent on finding Zobrist’s creation so he could protect it from Sinskey.”
“You had no idea it was a plague?” Langdon said, still curious about Ferris’s strange
rash and internal bleeding.
“Of course not! When you mentioned the plague, I figured it was just a story Sienna
had told you to keep you motivated. So I played along. I got us all onto the train to
Venice … and then, everything changed.”
“How so?”
“The provost saw Zobrist’s bizarre video.”
That could do it. “He realized Zobrist was a madman.”
“Exactly. The provost suddenly comprehended what the Consortium had been involved
in, and he was horrified. He immediately demanded to speak to the person who knew
Zobrist best—FS-2080—to see if she knew what Zobrist had done.”
“FS-2080?”
“Sorry, Sienna Brooks. That was the code name she chose for this operation. It’s
apparently a Transhumanist thing. And the provost had no way to reach Sienna except
through me.”
“The phone call on the train,” Langdon said. “Your ‘ailing mother.’ ”
“Well, I obviously couldn’t take the provost’s call in front of you, so I stepped out. He
told me about the video, and I was terrified. He was hoping Sienna had been duped as
well, but when I told him you and Sienna had been talking about plagues and seemed to
have no intention of breaking off the mission, he knew Sienna and Zobrist were in this
together. Sienna instantly became an adversary. He told me to keep him abreast of our
position in Venice … and that he was sending in a team to detain her. Agent Brüder’s
team almost had her at St. Mark’s Basilica … but she managed to escape.”
Langdon stared blankly at the floor, still able to see Sienna’s pretty brown eyes gazing
down at him before she fled.
I’m so sorry, Robert. For everything.
“She’s tough,” the man said. “You probably didn’t see her attack me at the basilica.”
“Attack you?”
“Yes, when the soldiers entered, I was about to shout out and reveal Sienna’s location,
but she must have sensed it coming. She drove the heel of her hand straight into the
center of my chest.”
“What?!”
“I didn’t know what hit me. Some kind of martial-arts move, I guess. Because I was
already badly bruised there, the pain was excruciating. It took me five minutes to get my
wind back. Sienna dragged you out onto the balcony before any witnesses could reveal
what had happened.”
Stunned, Langdon thought back to the elderly Italian woman who had shouted at
Sienna—“L’hai colpito al petto!”—and made a forceful motion of her fist on her own chest.
I can’t! Sienna had replied. CPR will kill him! Look at his chest!
As Langdon replayed the scene in his mind, he realized just how quickly Sienna Brooks
thought on her feet. Sienna had cleverly mistranslated the old woman’s Italian. L’hai
colpito al petto was not a suggestion that Sienna apply chest compressions … it was an
angry accusation: You punched him in the chest!
With all the chaos of the moment, Langdon had not even noticed.
Ferris gave him a pained smile. “As you may have heard, Sienna Brooks is pretty
sharp.”
Langdon nodded. I’ve heard.
“Sinskey’s men brought me back to The Mendacium and bandaged me up. The provost
asked me to come along for intel support because I’m the only person other than you
who spent time with Sienna today.”
Langdon nodded, distracted by the man’s rash. “Your face?” Langdon asked. “And the
bruise on your chest? It’s not …”
“The plague?” Ferris laughed and shook his head. “I’m not sure if you’ve been told yet,
but I actually played the part of two doctors today.”
“I’m sorry?”
“When I showed up at the baptistry, you said I looked vaguely familiar.”
“You did. Vaguely. Your eyes, I think. You told me that’s because you were the one
who recruited me in Cambridge …” Langdon paused. “Which I know now is untrue, so …”
“I looked familiar because we had already met. But not in Cambridge.” The man’s eyes
probed Langdon’s for any hint of recognition. “I was actually the first person you saw
when you woke up this morning in the hospital.”
Langdon pictured the grim little hospital room. He had been groggy and his eyesight
was compromised, so he was pretty certain that the first person he saw when he awoke
was a pale, older doctor with bushy eyebrows and a shaggy graying beard who spoke
only Italian.
“No,” Langdon said. “Dr. Marconi was the first person I saw when—”
“Scusi, professore,” the man interrupted with a flawless Italian accent. “Ma non si
ricorda di me?” He hunched over like an older man, smoothing back imaginary bushy
eyebrows and stroking a nonexistent graying beard. “Sono il dottor Marconi.”
Langdon’s mouth fell open. “Dr. Marconi was … you?”
“That’s why my eyes looked familiar. I had never worn a fake beard and eyebrows, and
unfortunately had no idea until it was too late that I was severely allergic to the bonding
cement—a latex spirit gum—which left my skin raw and burning. I’m sure you were
horrified when you saw me … considering you were on alert for a possible plague.”
Langdon could only stare, recalling now how Dr. Marconi had scratched at his beard
before Vayentha’s attack left him lying on the hospital floor, bleeding from the chest.
“To make matters worse,” the man said, motioning to the bandages around his chest,
“my squib shifted while the operation was already under way. I couldn’t get it back into
position in time, and when it detonated, it was at an angle. Broke a rib and left me badly
bruised. I’ve been having trouble breathing all day.”
And here I thought you had the plague.
The man inhaled deeply and winced. “In fact, I think it’s time for me to sit down again.”
As he departed, he motioned behind Langdon. “It looks like you have company anyway.”
Langdon turned to see Dr. Sinskey striding up the cabin, her long silver hair streaming
behind her. “Professor, there you are!”
The director of the WHO looked exhausted, and yet strangely, Langdon detected a
fresh glint of hope in her eyes. She’s found something.
“I’m sorry to have left you,” Sinskey said, arriving beside Langdon. “We’ve been
coordinating and doing some research.” She motioned to the open cockpit door. “I see
you’re getting some sunlight?”
Langdon shrugged. “Your plane needs windows.”
She gave him a compassionate smile. “On the topic of light, I hope the provost was
able to shed some for you on recent events?”
“Yes, although nothing I’m pleased about.”
“Nor I,” she concurred, glancing around to make sure they were alone. “Trust me,” she
whispered, “there will be serious ramifications for him and for his organization. I will see
to it. At the moment, however, we all need to remain focused on locating that container
before it dissolves and the contagion is released.”
Or before Sienna gets there and helps it dissolve.
“I need to talk to you about the building that houses Dandolo’s tomb.”
Langdon had been picturing the spectacular structure ever since he realized it was their
destination. The mouseion of holy wisdom.
“I just learned something exciting,” Sinskey said. “We’ve been on the phone with a
local historian,” she said. “He has no idea why we’re inquiring about Dandolo’s tomb, of
course, but I asked him if he had any idea what was beneath the tomb, and guess what
he said.” She smiled. “Water.”
Langdon was surprised. “Really?”
“Yes, it sounds like the building’s lower levels are flooded. Over the centuries the water
table beneath the building has risen, submerging at least two lower levels. He said there
are definitely all kinds of air pockets and partially submerged spaces down there.”
My God. Langdon pictured Zobrist’s video and the strangely lit underground cavern on
whose mossy walls he had seen the faint vertical shadows of pillars. “It’s a submerged
room.”
“Exactly.”
“But then … how did Zobrist get down there?”
Sinskey’s eyes twinkled. “That’s the amazing part. You won’t believe what we just
discovered.”
At that moment, less than a mile off the coast of Venice, on the slender island known as
the Lido, a sleek Cessna Citation Mustang lifted off the tarmac of Nicelli Airport and
streaked into the darkening twilight sky.
The jet’s owner, prominent costume designer Giorgio Venci, was not on board, but he
had ordered his pilots to take their attractive young passenger wherever she needed to
go.
CHAPTER 84
NIGHT HAD FALLEN on the ancient Byzantine capital.
All along the banks of the Sea of Marmara, floodlights flickered to life, illuminating a
skyline of glistening mosques and slender minarets. This was the hour of the akşam, and
loudspeakers across the city reverberated with the haunting intonations of the adhān, the
call to prayer.
La-ilaha-illa-Allah.
There is no god but the God.
While the faithful scurried to mosques, the rest of the city carried on without a glance;
raucous university students drank beer, businessmen closed deals, merchants hawked
spices and rugs, and tourists watched it all in wonder.
This was a world divided, a city of opposing forces—religious, secular; ancient, modern;
Eastern, Western. Straddling the geographic boundary between Europe and Asia, this
timeless city was quite literally the bridge from the Old World … to a world that was even
older.
Istanbul.
While no longer the capital of Turkey, it had served over the centuries as the epicenter
of three distinct empires—the Byzantine, the Roman, and the Ottoman. For this reason,
Istanbul was arguably one of the most historically diverse locations on earth. From
Topkapi Palace to the Blue Mosque to the Castle of the Seven Towers, the city is teeming
with folkloric tales of battle, glory, and defeat.
Tonight, high in the night sky above its bustling masses, a C-130 transport plane was
descending through a gathering storm front, on final approach to Atatürk Airport. Inside
the cockpit, buckled into the jump seat behind the pilots, Robert Langdon peered out
through the windshield, relieved that he had been offered a seat with a view.
He was feeling somewhat refreshed after having had something to eat and then dozing
at the rear of the plane for nearly an hour of much-needed rest.
Now, off to his right, Langdon could see the lights of Istanbul, a glistening, horn-shaped
peninsula jutting into the blackness of the Sea of Marmara. This was the European side,
separated from its Asian sister by a sinuous ribbon of darkness.
The Bosporus waterway.
At a glance, the Bosporus appeared as a wide gash that severed Istanbul in two. In
fact, Langdon knew the channel was the lifeblood of Istanbul’s commerce. In addition to
providing the city with two coastlines rather than one, the Bosporus enabled ship passage
from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, allowing Istanbul to serve as a way station
between two worlds.
As the plane descended through a layer of mist, Langdon’s eyes intently scanned the
distant city, trying to catch a glimpse of the massive building they had come to search.
The site of Enrico Dandolo’s tomb.
As it turned out, Enrico Dandolo—the treacherous doge of Venice—had not been buried
in Venice; rather, his remains had been interred in the heart of the stronghold he had
conquered in 1202 … the sprawling city beneath them. Fittingly, Dandolo had been laid to
rest in the most spectacular shrine his captured city had to offer—a building that to this
day remained the crown jewel of the region.
Hagia Sophia.
Originally built in A.D. 360, Hagia Sophia had served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral
until 1204, when Enrico Dandolo and the Fourth Crusade conquered the city and turned it
into a Catholic church. Later, in the fifteenth century, following the conquest of
Constantinople by Fatih Sultan Mehmed, it had become a mosque, remaining an Islamic
house of worship until 1935, when the building was secularized and became a museum.
A gilded mouseion of holy wisdom, Langdon thought.
Not only was Hagia Sophia adorned with more gold tile than St. Mark’s, its name—
Hagia Sophia—literally meant “Holy Wisdom.”
Langdon pictured the colossal building and tried to fathom the fact that somewhere
beneath it, a darkened lagoon contained a tethered, undulating sac, hovering
underwater, slowly dissolving and preparing to release its contents.
Langdon prayed they were not too late.
“The building’s lower levels are flooded,” Sinskey had announced earlier in the flight,
excitedly motioning for Langdon to follow her back to her work area. “You won’t believe
what we just discovered. Have you ever heard of a documentary film director named
Göksel Gülensoy?”
Langdon shook his head.
“While I was researching Hagia Sophia,” Sinskey explained, “I discovered that a film
had been made about it. A documentary made by Gülensoy a few years back.”
“Dozens of films have been made about Hagia Sophia.”
“Yes,” she said, arriving at her work area, “but none like this.” She spun her laptop so
he could see it. “Read this.”
Langdon sat down and eyed the article—a composite of various news sources including
t h e Hürriyet Daily News—discussing Gülensoy’s newest film: In the Depths of Hagia
Sophia.
As Langdon began to read, he immediately realized why Sinskey was excited. The first
two words alone made Langdon glance up at her in surprise. Scuba diving?
“I know,” she said. “Just read.”
Langdon turned his eyes back to the article.
SCUBA DIVING BENEATH HAGIA SOPHIA: Documentary filmmaker Göksel Gülensoy and his exploratory scuba team have
located remote flooded basins lying hundreds of feet beneath Istanbul’s heavily touristed religious structure.
In the process, they discovered numerous architectural wonders, including the 800-year-old submerged graves
of martyred children, as wel as submerged tunnels connecting Hagia Sophia to Topkapi Palace, Tekfur Palace, and
the rumored subterranean extensions of the Anemas Dungeons.
“I believe what is beneath Hagia Sophia is much more exciting than what is above the surface,” Gülensoy
explained, describing how he had been inspired to make the film after seeing an old photograph of researchers
examining the foundations of Hagia Sophia by boat, paddling through a large, partialy submerged hal.
“You’ve obviously found the right building!” Sinskey exclaimed. “And it sounds like
there are huge pockets of navigable space beneath that building, many of them
accessible without scuba gear … which may explain what we’re seeing in Zobrist’s video.”
Agent Brüder stood behind them, studying the laptop screen. “It also sounds like the
waterways beneath the building spider outward to all kinds of other areas. If that
Solublon bag dissolves before we arrive, there will be no way to stop the contents from
spreading.”
“The contents …” Langdon ventured. “Do you have any idea what it is? I mean exactly?
I know we’re dealing with a pathogen, but—”
“We’ve been analyzing the footage,” Brüder said, “which suggests that it’s indeed
biological rather than chemical … that is to say, something living. Considering the small
amount in the bag, we assume it’s highly contagious and has the ability to replicate.
Whether it’s a waterborne contagion like a bacterium, or whether it has the potential to
go airborne like a virus once it’s released, we’re not sure, but either is possible.”
Sinskey said, “We’re now gathering data on water-table temperatures in the area,
trying to assess what kinds of contagious substances might thrive in those subterranean
areas, but Zobrist was exceptionally talented and easily could have engineered
something with unique capabilities. And I have to suspect that there was a reason Zobrist
chose this location.”
Brüder gave a resigned nod and quickly relayed his assessment of the unusual dispersal
mechanism—the submerged Solublon bag—the simple brilliance of which was just
starting to dawn on them all. By suspending the bag underground and underwater,
Zobrist had created an exceptionally stable incubation environment: one with consistent
water temperature, no solar radiation, a kinetic buffer, and total privacy. By choosing a
bag of the correct durability, Zobrist could leave the contagion unattended to mature for
a specific duration before it self-released on schedule.
Even if Zobrist never returned to the site.
The sudden jolt of the plane touching down jarred Langdon back to his jump seat in the
cockpit. The pilots braked hard and then taxied to a remote hangar, where they brought
the massive plane to a stop.
Langdon half expected to be greeted by an army of WHO employees in hazmat suits.
Strangely, the only party awaiting their arrival was the driver of a large white van that
bore the emblem of a bright red, equal-armed cross.
The Red Cross is here? Langdon looked again, realizing it was the other entity that
used the red cross. The Swiss embassy.
He unbuckled and located Sinskey as everyone prepared to deplane. “Where is
everyone?” Langdon demanded. “The WHO team? The Turkish authorities? Is everyone
already over at Hagia Sophia?”
Sinskey gave him an uneasy glance. “Actually,” she explained, “we have decided
against alerting local authorities. We already have the ECDC’s finest SRS team with us,
and it seems preferable to keep this a quiet operation for the moment, rather than
creating a possible widespread panic.”
Nearby, Langdon could see Brüder and his team zipping up large black duffel bags that
contained all kinds of hazmat gear—biosuits, respirators, and electronic detection
equipment.
Brüder heaved his bag over his shoulder and came over. “We’re a go. We’ll enter the
building, find Dandolo’s tomb, listen for water as the poem suggests, and then my team
and I will reassess and decide whether to call in other authorities for support.”
Langdon already saw problems with the plan. “Hagia Sophia closes at sunset, so
without local authorities, we can’t even get in.”
“We’re fine,” Sinskey said. “I have a contact in the Swiss embassy who contacted the
Hagia Sophia Museum curator and asked for a private VIP tour as soon as we arrive. The
curator agreed.”
Langdon almost laughed out loud. “A VIP tour for the director of the World Health
Organization? And an army of soldiers carrying hazmat duffels? You don’t think that might
raise a few eyebrows?”
“The SRS team and gear will stay in the car while Brüder, you, and I assess the
situation,” Sinskey said. “Also, for the record, I’m not the VIP. You are.”
“I beg your pardon?!”
“We told the museum that a famous American professor had flown in with a research
team to write an article on the symbols of Hagia Sofia, but their plane was delayed five
hours and he missed his window to see the building. Since he and his team were leaving
tomorrow morning, we were hoping—”
“Okay,” Langdon said. “I get the gist.”
“The museum is sending an employee to meet us there personally. As it turns out, he’s
a big fan of your writings on Islamic art.” Sinskey gave him a tired smile, clearly trying to
look optimistic. “We’ve been assured that you’ll have access to every corner of the
building.”
“And more important,” Brüder declared, “we’ll have the entire place to ourselves.”
CHAPTER 85
ROBERT LANGDON GAZED blankly out the window of the van as it sped along the waterfront
highway connecting Atatürk Airport to the center of Istanbul. The Swiss officials had
somehow facilitated a modified customs process, and Langdon, Sinskey, and the others in
the group had been en route in a matter of minutes.
Sinskey had ordered the provost and Ferris to remain aboard the C-130 with several
WHO staff members and to continue trying to track the whereabouts of Sienna Brooks.
While nobody truly believed Sienna could reach Istanbul in time, there were fears she
might phone one of Zobrist’s disciples in Turkey and ask for assistance in realizing
Zobrist’s delusional plan before Sinskey’s team could interfere.
Would Sienna really commit mass murder? Langdon was still struggling to accept all
that had happened today. It pained him to do so, but he was forced to accept the truth.
You never knew her, Robert. She played you.
A light rain had begun to fall over the city, and Langdon felt suddenly weary as he
listened to the repetitive swish of the windshield wipers. To his right, out on the Sea of
Marmara, he could see the running lights of luxury yachts and massive tankers powering
to and from the city port up ahead. All along the waterfront, illuminated minarets rose
slender and elegant above their domed mosques, silent reminders that while Istanbul
was a modern, secular city, its core was grounded in religion.
Langdon had always found this ten-mile strip of highway one of the prettiest drives in
Europe. A perfect example of Istanbul’s clash of old and new, the road followed part of
Constantine’s wall, which had been built more than sixteen centuries before the birth of
the man for whom this avenue was now named—John F. Kennedy. The U.S. president
had been a great admirer of Kemal Atatürk’s vision for a Turkish republic springing from
the ashes of a fallen empire.
Providing unparalleled views of the sea, Kennedy Avenue wound through spectacular
groves and historic parks, past the harbor in Yenikapi, and eventually threaded its way
between the city limits and the Strait of Bosporus, where it continued northward all the
way around the Golden Horn. There, high above the city, rose the Ottoman stronghold of
Topkapi Palace. With its strategic view of the Bosporus waterway, the palace was a
favorite among tourists, who visited to admire both the vistas and the staggering
collection of Ottoman treasure that included the cloak and sword said to have belonged
to the Prophet Muhammad himself.
We won’t be going that far, Langdon knew, picturing their destination, Hagia Sophia,
which rose out of the city center not far ahead.
As they pulled off Kennedy Avenue and began snaking into the densely populated city,
Langdon stared out at the crowds of people on the streets and sidewalks and felt haunted
by the day’s conversations.
Overpopulation.
The plague.
Zobrist’s twisted aspirations.
Even though Langdon had understood all along exactly where this SRS mission was
headed, he had not fully processed it until this moment. We are going to ground zero. He
pictured the slowly dissolving bag of yellow-brown fluid and wondered how he had let
himself get into this position.
The strange poem that Langdon and Sienna had unveiled on the back of Dante’s death
mask had eventually guided him here, to Istanbul. Langdon had directed the SRS team to
Hagia Sophia, and knew there would be more to do once they arrived.
Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom,
and place thine ear to the ground,
listening for the sounds of trickling water.
Folow deep into the sunken palace …
for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits,
submerged in the bloodred waters …
of the lagoon that reflects no stars.
Langdon again felt troubled to know that the final canto of Dante’s Inferno ended in a
nearly identical scene: After a long descent through the underworld, Dante and Virgil
reach the lowest point of hell. Here, with no way out, they hear the sounds of trickling
water running through stones beneath them, and they follow the rivulet through cracks
and crevices … ultimately finding safety.
Dante wrote: “A place is there below … which not by sight is known, but by the sound
of a rivulet, which descends along the hollow of a rock … and by that hidden way, my
guide and I did enter, to return to the fair world.”
Dante’s scene had clearly been the inspiration for Zobrist’s poem, although in this case,
it seemed Zobrist had flipped everything upside down. Langdon and the others would
indeed be following the sounds of trickling water, but unlike Dante, they would not be
heading away from the inferno … but directly into it.
As the van maneuvered through tighter streets and more densely populated
neighborhoods, Langdon began to grasp the perverse logic that had led Zobrist to choose
downtown Istanbul as the epicenter of a pandemic.
East meets West.
The crossroads of the world.
Istanbul had, at numerous times in history, succumbed to deadly plagues that killed off
enormous portions of its population. In fact, during the final phase of the Black Death,
this very city had been called the “plague hub” of the empire, and the disease was said to
have killed more than ten thousand residents a day. Several famous Ottoman paintings
depicted townspeople desperately digging plague pits to bury mounds of corpses in the
nearby fields of Taksim.
Langdon hoped Karl Marx was wrong when he said, “History repeats itself.”
All along the rainy streets, unsuspecting souls were bustling about their evening’s
business. A pretty Turkish woman called her children in to dinner; two old men shared a
drink at an outdoor café; a well-dressed couple walked hand in hand beneath an
umbrella; and a tuxedoed man leaped off a bus and ran down the street, sheltering his
violin case beneath his jacket, apparently late for a concert.
Langdon found himself studying the faces around him, trying to imagine the intricacies
of each person’s life.
The masses are made up of individuals.
He closed his eyes, turning from the window and trying to abandon the morbid turn his
thoughts had taken. But the damage was done. In the darkness of his mind, an unwanted
image materialized—the desolate landscape of Bruegel’s Triumph of Death—a hideous
panorama of pestilence, misery, and torture laying ruin to a seaside city.
The van turned to the right onto Torun Avenue, and for a moment Langdon thought
they had arrived at their destination. On his left, rising out of the mist, a great mosque
appeared.
But it was not Hagia Sophia.
The Blue Mosque, he quickly realized, spotting the building’s six fluted, pencil-shaped
minarets, which had multiple şerefe balconies and climbed skyward to end in piercing
spires. Langdon had once read that the exotic, fairy-tale quality of the Blue Mosque’s
balconied minarets had inspired the design for Cinderella’s iconic castle at Disney World.
The Blue Mosque drew its name from the dazzling sea of blue tiles that adorned its
interior walls.
We’re close, Langdon thought as the van sped onward, turning onto Kabasakal Avenue
and running along the expansive plaza of Sultanahmet Park, which was situated halfway
between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and famous for its views of both.
Langdon squinted through the rain-swept windshield, searching the horizon for the
outline of Hagia Sofia, but the rain and headlights made visibility difficult. Worse still,
traffic along the avenue seemed to have stopped.
Up ahead, Langdon saw nothing but a line of glowing brake lights.
“An event of some sort,” the driver announced. “A concert, I think. It may be faster on
foot.”
“How far?” Sinskey demanded.
“Just through the park here. Three minutes. Very safe.”
Sinskey nodded to Brüder and then turned to the SRS team. “Stay in the van. Get as
close as you can to the building. Agent Brüder will be in touch very soon.”
With that, Sinskey, Brüder, and Langdon jumped out of the van into the street and
headed across the park.
The broad-leaved trees in Sultanahmet Park offered a bit of cover from the worsening
weather as the group hurried along its canopied paths. The walkways were dotted with
signage directing visitors to the park’s many attractions—an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor,
the Serpent Column from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the Milion Column that
once served as the “point zero” from which all distances were measured in the Byzantine
Empire.
Finally, they emerged from the trees at the foot of a circular reflecting pool that
marked the center of the park. Langdon stepped into the opening and raised his eyes to
the east.
Hagia Sophia.
Not so much a building … as a mountain.
Glistening in the rain, the colossal silhouette of Hagia Sophia appeared to be a city
unto itself. Its central dome—impossibly broad and ribbed in silver gray—seemed to rest
upon a conglomeration of other domed buildings that had been piled up around it. Four
towering minarets—each with a single balcony and a silver-gray spire—rose from the
corners of the building, so far from the central dome that one could barely determine that
they were part of a single structure.
Sinskey and Brüder, who until this point had been maintaining a steady focused jog,
both pulled up suddenly, their eyes craning upward … upward … as their minds struggled
to absorb the full height and breadth of the structure looming before them.
“Dear God.” Brüder let out a soft groan of disbelief. “We’re going to be searching …
that?”
CHAPTER 86
I’M BEING HELD captive, the provost sensed as he paced the interior of the parked C-130
transport plane. He had agreed to go to Istanbul to help Sinskey avert this crisis before it
went completely out of control.
Not lost on the provost was the fact that cooperating with Sinskey might help mitigate
any punitive backlash he might suffer for his inadvertent involvement in this crisis. But
now Sinskey has me in custody.
As soon as the plane had parked inside the government hangar at Atatürk Airport,
Sinskey and her team had deplaned, and the head of the WHO ordered the provost and
his few Consortium staff members to stay aboard.
The provost had attempted to step outside for a breath of air but had been blocked by
the stone-faced pilots, who reminded him that Dr. Sinskey had requested that everyone
remain aboard.
Not good, the provost thought, taking a seat as the uncertainty of his future truly
began to settle in.
The provost had long been accustomed to being the puppet master, the ultimate force
that pulled the strings, and yet suddenly all of his power had been snatched from him.
Zobrist, Sienna, Sinskey.
They had all defied him … manipulated him even.
Now, trapped in the strange windowless holding cell of the WHO’s transport jet, he
began to wonder if his luck had run out … if his current situation might be a kind of
karmic retribution for a lifetime of dishonesty.
I lie for a living.
I am a purveyor of disinformation.
While the provost was not the only one selling lies in this world, he had established
himself as the biggest fish in the pond. The smaller fish were a different breed altogether,
and the provost disliked even to be associated with them.
Available online, businesses with names like the Alibi Company and Alibi Network made
fortunes all over the world by providing unfaithful spouses with a way to cheat and not
get caught. Promising to briefly “stop time” so their clients could slip away from husband,
wife, or kids, these organizations were masters at creating illusions—fake business
conventions, fake doctor’s appointments, even fake weddings—all of which included
phony invitations, brochures, plane tickets, hotel confirmation forms, and even special
contact numbers that rang at Alibi Company switchboards, where trained professionals
pretended to be whatever receptionist or contact the illusion required.
The provost, however, had never wasted his time with such petty artifice. He dealt
solely with large-scale deception, plying his trade for those who could afford to pay
millions of dollars in order to receive the best service.
Governments.
Major corporations.
The occasional ultrawealthy VIP.
To achieve their goals, these clients would have at their disposal all of the Consortium’s
assets, personnel, experience, and creativity. Above all, though, they were given
deniability—the assurance that whatever illusion was fabricated in support of their
deception could never be traced to them.
Whether trying to prop up a stock market, justify a war, win an election, or lure a
terrorist out of hiding, the world’s power brokers relied on massive disinformation
schemes to help shape public perception.
It had always been this way.
In the sixties, the Russians built an entire fake spy network that dead-dropped bad
intel that the British intercepted for years. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force manufactured an
elaborate UFO hoax to divert attention from a classified plane crash in Roswell, New
Mexico. And more recently, the world had been led to believe that weapons of mass
destruction existed in Iraq.
For nearly three decades, the provost had helped powerful people protect, retain, and
increase their power. Although he was exceptionally careful about the jobs he accepted,
the provost had always feared that one day he would take the wrong job.
And now that day has arrived.
Every epic collapse, the provost believed, could be traced back to a single moment—a
chance meeting, a bad decision, an indiscreet glance.
In this case, he realized, that instant had come almost a dozen years before, when he
agreed to hire a young med school student who was looking for some extra money. The
woman’s keen intellect, dazzling language skills, and knack for improvisation made her an
instantaneous standout at the Consortium.
Sienna Brooks was a natural.
Sienna had immediately understood his operation, and the provost sensed that the
young woman was no stranger to keeping secrets herself. Sienna worked for him for
almost two years, earned a generous paycheck that helped her pay her med school
tuition, and then, without warning, she announced that she was done. She wanted to
save the world, and as she had told him, she couldn’t do it there.
The provost never imagined Sienna Brooks would resurface nearly a decade later,
bringing with her a gift of sorts—an ultrawealthy prospective client.
Bertrand Zobrist.
The provost bristled at the memory.
This is Sienna’s fault.
She was party to Zobrist’s plan all along.
Nearby, at the C-130’s makeshift conference table, the conversation was becoming
heated, with WHO officials talking on phones and arguing.
“Sienna Brooks?!” one demanded, shouting into the phone. “Are you sure?” The official
listened a moment, frowning. “Okay, get me the details. I’ll hold.”
He covered the receiver and turned to his colleagues. “It sounds like Sienna Brooks
departed Italy shortly after we did.”
Everyone at the table stiffened.
“How?” one female employee demanded. “We covered the airport, bridges, train
station …”
“Nicelli airfield,” he replied. “On the Lido.”
“Not possible,” the woman countered, shaking her head. “Nicelli is tiny. There are no
flights out. It handles only local helicopter tours and—”
“Somehow Sienna Brooks had access to a private jet that was hangared at Nicelli.
They’re still looking into it.” He raised the receiver to his mouth again. “Yes, I’m here.
What do you have?” As he listened to the update, his shoulders slumped lower and lower
until finally he took a seat. “I understand. Thank you.” He ended the call.
His colleagues all stared at him expectantly.
“Sienna’s jet was headed for Turkey,” the man said, rubbing his eyes.
“Then call European Air Transport Command!” someone declared. “Have them turn the
jet around!”
“I can’t,” the man said. “It landed twelve minutes ago at Hezarfen private airfield, only
fifteen miles from here. Sienna Brooks is gone.”
CHAPTER 87
RAIN WAS NOW pelting the ancient dome of Hagia Sophia.
For nearly a thousand years, it had been the largest church in the world, and even now
it was hard to imagine anything larger. Seeing it again, Langdon was reminded that the
Emperor Justinian, upon the completion of Hagia Sophia, had stepped back and proudly
proclaimed, “Solomon, I have outdone thee!”
Sinskey and Brüder were marching with intensifying purpose toward the monumental
building, which only seemed to swell in size as they approached.
The walkways here were lined with the ancient cannonballs used by the forces of
Mehmet the Conqueror—a decorative reminder that the history of this building had been
filled with violence as it was conquered and then retasked to serve the spiritual needs of
assorted victorious powers.
As they neared the southern facade, Langdon glanced to his right at the three domed,
silolike appendages jutting off the building. These were the Mausoleums of the Sultans,
one of whom—Murad III—was said to have fathered over a hundred children.
The ring of a cell phone cut the night air, and Brüder fished his out, checking the caller
ID, and answered tersely: “Anything?”
As he listened to the report, he shook his head in disbelief. “How is that possible?” He
listened further and sighed. “Okay, keep me posted. We’re about to go inside.” He hung
up.
“What is it?” Sinskey demanded.
“Keep your eyes open,” Brüder said, glancing around the area. “We may have
company.” He returned his gaze to Sinskey. “It sounds like Sienna Brooks is in Istanbul.”
Langdon stared at the man, incredulous to hear both that Sienna had found a way to
get to Turkey, and also that, having successfully escaped from Venice, she would risk
capture and possible death to ensure that Bertrand Zobrist’s plan succeeded.
Sinskey looked equally alarmed and drew a breath as if preparing to interrogate Brüder
further, but she apparently thought better of it, turning instead to Langdon. “Which way?”
Langdon pointed to their left around the southwest corner of the building. “The
Fountain of Ablutions is over here,” he said.
Their rendezvous point with the museum contact was an ornately latticed wellhead
that had once been used for ritual washing before Muslim prayer.
“Professor Langdon!” a man’s voice shouted as they drew near.
A smiling Turkish man stepped out from under the octagonal cupola that covered the
fountain. He was waving his arms excitedly. “Professor, over here!”
Langdon and the others hurried over.
“Hello, my name is Mirsat,” he said, his accented English voice brimming with
enthusiasm. He was a slight man with thinning hair, scholarly-looking glasses, and a gray
suit. “This is a great honor for me.”
“The honor is ours,” Langdon replied, shaking Mirsat’s hand. “Thank you for your
hospitality on such short notice.”
“Yes, yes!”
“I’m Elizabeth Sinskey,” Dr. Sinskey said, shaking Mirsat’s hand and then motioning to
Brüder. “And this is Cristoph Brüder. We’re here to assist Professor Langdon. I’m so sorry
our plane was delayed. You’re very kind to accommodate us.”
“Please! Think nothing of it!” Mirsat gushed. “For Professor Langdon I would give a
private tour at any hour. His little book Christian Symbols in the Muslim World is a
favorite in our museum gift shop.”
Really? Langdon thought. Now I know the one place on earth that carries that book.
“Shall we?” Mirsat said, motioning for them to follow.
The group hurried across a small open space, passing the regular tourist entrance and
continuing on to what had originally been the building’s main entrance—three deeply
recessed archways with massive bronze doors.
Two armed security guards were waiting to greet them. Upon seeing Mirsat, the guards
unlocked one of the doors and swung it open.
“Sağ olun,” Mirsat said, uttering one of a handful of Turkish phrases Langdon was
familiar with—an especially polite form of “thank you.”
The group stepped through, and the guards closed the heavy doors behind them, the
thud resonating through the stone interior.
Langdon and the others were now standing in Hagia Sophia’s narthex—a narrow
antechamber that was common in Christian churches and served as an architectural
buffer between the divine and the profane.
Spiritual moats, Langdon often called them.
The group crossed toward another set of doors, and Mirsat pulled one open. Beyond it,
instead of the sanctuary he had anticipated seeing, Langdon beheld a secondary narthex,
slightly larger than the first.
An esonarthex, Langdon realized, having forgotten that Hagia Sophia’s sanctuary
enjoyed two levels of protection from the outside world.
As if to prepare the visitor for what lay ahead, the esonarthex was significantly more
ornate than the narthex, its walls made of burnished stone that glowed in the light of
elegant chandeliers. On the far side of the serene space stood four doors, above which
were spectacular mosaics, which Langdon found himself intently admiring.
Mirsat walked to the largest door—a colossal, bronze-plated portal. “The Imperial
Doorway,” Mirsat whispered, his voice almost giddy with enthusiasm. “In Byzantine times,
this door was reserved for sole use of the emperor. Tourists don’t usually go through it,
but this is a special night.”
Mirsat reached for the door, but paused. “Before we enter,” he whispered, “let me ask,
is there something in particular you would like to see inside?”
Langdon, Sinskey, and Brüder all glanced at one another.
“Yes,” Langdon said. “There’s so much to see, of course, but if we could, we’d like to
begin with the tomb of Enrico Dandolo.”
Mirsat cocked his head as if he had misunderstood. “I’m sorry? You want to see …
Dandolo’s tomb?”
“We do.”
Mirsat looked downcast. “But, sir … Dandolo’s tomb is very plain. No symbols at all. Not
our finest offering.”
“I realize that,” Langdon said politely. “All the same, we’d be most grateful if you could
take us to it.”
Mirsat studied Langdon a long moment, and then his eyes drifted upward to the mosaic
directly over the door, which Langdon had just been admiring. The mosaic was a ninth-
century image of the Pantocrator Christ—the iconic image of Christ holding the New
Testament in his left hand while making a blessing with his right.
Then, as if a light had suddenly dawned for their guide, the corners of Mirsat’s lips
curled into a knowing smile, and he began wagging his finger. “Clever man! Very clever!”
Langdon stared. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t worry, Professor,” Mirsat said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I won’t tell anyone
why you’re really here.”
Sinskey and Brüder shot Langdon a puzzled look.
All Langdon could do was shrug as Mirsat heaved open the door and ushered them
inside.
CHAPTER 88
THE EIGHTH WONDER of the World, some had called this space, and standing in it now,
Langdon was not about to argue with that assessment.
As the group stepped across the threshold into the colossal sanctuary, Langdon was
reminded that Hagia Sophia required only an instant to impress upon its visitors the sheer
magnitude of its proportions.
So vast was this room that it seemed to dwarf even the great cathedrals of Europe.
The staggering force of its enormity was, Langdon knew, partly an illusion, a dramatic
side effect of its Byzantine floor plan, with a centralized naos that concentrated all of its
interior space in a single square room rather than extending it along the four arms of a
cruciform, as was the style adopted in later cathedrals.
This building is seven hundred years older than Notre-Dame, Langdon thought.
After taking a moment to absorb the breadth of the room’s dimensions, Langdon let his
eyes climb skyward, more than a hundred and fifty feet overhead, to the sprawling,
golden dome that crowned the room. From its central point, forty ribs radiated outward
like rays of the sun, extending to a circular arcade of forty arched windows. During
daylight hours, the light that streamed through these windows reflected—and re-reflected
—off glass shards embedded in the golden tile work, creating the “mystical light” for
which Hagia Sophia was most famous.
Langdon had seen the gilded ambience of this room captured accurately in painting
only once. John Singer Sargent. Not surprisingly, in creating his famous painting of Hagia
Sophia, the American artist had limited his palette only to multiple shades of a single
color.
Gold.
The glistening golden cupola was often called “the dome of heaven itself” and was
supported by four tremendous arches, which in turn were sustained by a series of
semidomes and tympana. These supports were then carried by yet another descending
tier of smaller semidomes and arcades, creating the effect of a cascade of architectural
forms working their way from heaven toward earth.
Moving from heaven to earth, albeit by a more direct route, long cables descended
straight down from the dome and supported a sea of gleaming chandeliers, which
seemed to hang so low to the floor that tall visitors risked colliding with them. In reality,
this was another illusion created by the sheer magnitude of the space, for the fixtures
hung more than twelve feet off the floor.
As with all great shrines, Hagia Sophia’s prodigious size served two purposes. First, it
was proof to God of the great lengths to which Man would go to pay tribute to Him. And
second, it served as a kind of shock treatment for worshippers—a physical space so
imposing that those who entered felt dwarfed, their egos erased, their physical being and
cosmic importance shrinking to the size of a mere speck in the face of God … an atom in
the hands of the Creator.
Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him. Martin Luther had spoken
those words in the sixteenth century, but the concept had been part of the mind-set of
builders since the earliest examples of religious architecture.
Langdon glanced over at Brüder and Sinskey, who had been staring upward and who
now lowered their eyes to earth.
“Jesus,” Brüder said.
“Yes!” Mirsat said excitedly. “And Allah and Muhammad, too!”
Langdon chuckled as their guide directed Brüder’s gaze to the main altar, where a
towering mosaic of Jesus was flanked by two massive disks bearing the Arabic names of
Muhammad and Allah in ornate calligraphy.
“This museum,” Mirsat explained, “in an effort to remind visitors of the diverse uses of
this sacred space, displays in tandem both the Christian iconography, from the days when
Hagia Sophia was a basilica, and the Islamic iconography, from its days as a mosque.” He
gave a proud smile. “Despite the friction between the religions in the real world, we think
their symbols work quite nicely together. I know you agree, Professor.”
Langdon gave a heartfelt nod, recalling that all of the Christian iconography had been
covered in whitewash when the building became a mosque. The restoration of the
Christian symbols next to the Muslim symbols had created a mesmerizing effect,
particularly because the styles and sensibilities of the two iconographies are polar
opposites.
While Christian tradition favored literal images of its gods and saints, Islam focused on
calligraphy and geometric patterns to represent the beauty of God’s universe. Islamic
tradition held that only God could create life, and therefore man has no place creating
images of life—not gods, not people, not even animals.
Langdon recalled once trying to explain this concept to his students: “A Muslim
Michelangelo, for example, would never have painted God’s face on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel; he would have inscribed the name of God. Depicting God’s face would be
considered blasphemy.”
Langdon had gone on to explain the reason for this.
“Both Christianity and Islam are logocentric,” he told his students, “meaning they are
focused on the Word. In Christian tradition, the Word became flesh in the book of John:
‘And the Word was made flesh, and He dwelt among us.’ Therefore, it was acceptable to
depict the Word as having a human form. In Islamic tradition, however, the Word did not
become flesh, and therefore the Word needs to remain in the form of a word … in most
cases, calligraphic renderings of the names of the holy figures of Islam.”
One of Langdon’s students had summed up the complex history with an amusingly
accurate marginal note: “Christians like faces; Muslims like words.”
“Here before us,” Mirsat went on, motioning across the spectacular room, “you see a
unique blending of Christianity with Islam.”
He quickly pointed out the fusion of symbols in the massive apse, most notably the
Virgin and Child gazing down upon a mihrab—the semicircular niche in a mosque that
indicates the direction of Mecca. Nearby, a staircase rose up to an orator’s pulpit, which
resembled the kind from which Christian sermons are delivered, but in fact was a minbar,
the holy platform from which an imam leads Friday services. Similarly, the daislike
structure nearby resembled a Christian choir stall but in reality was a müezzin mahfili, a
raised platform where a muezzin kneels and chants in response to the imam’s prayers.
“Mosques and cathedrals are startlingly similar,” Mirsat proclaimed. “The traditions of
East and West are not as divergent as you might think!”
“Mirsat?” Brüder pressed, sounding impatient. “We’d really like to see Dandolo’s tomb,
if we may?”
Mirsat looked mildly annoyed, as if the man’s haste were somehow a display of
disrespect to the building.
“Yes,” Langdon said. “I’m sorry to rush, but we’re on a very tight schedule.”
“Very well, then,” Mirsat said, pointing to a high balcony to their right. “Let’s head
upstairs and see the tomb.”
“Up?” Langdon replied, startled. “Isn’t Enrico Dandolo buried down in the crypt?”
Langdon recalled the tomb itself, but not the precise place in the building where it was
located. He had been picturing the dark underground areas of the building.
Mirsat seemed confounded by the query. “No, Professor, the tomb of Enrico Dandolo is
most certainly upstairs.”
What the devil is going on here? Mirsat wondered.
When Langdon had asked to see Dandolo’s tomb, Mirsat had sensed that the request
was a kind of decoy. Nobody wants to see Dandolo’s tomb. Mirsat had assumed what
Langdon really wanted to see was the enigmatic treasure directly beside Dandolo’s tomb
—the Deesis Mosaic—an ancient Pantocrator Christ that was arguably one of the most
mysterious pieces of art in the building.
Langdon is researching the mosaic, and trying to be discreet about it, Mirsat had
guessed, imagining that the professor was probably writing a secret piece on the Deesis.
Now, however, Mirsat was confused. Certainly Langdon knew the Deesis Mosaic was on
the second floor, so why was he acting so surprised?
Unless he is indeed looking for Dandolo’s tomb?
Puzzled, Mirsat guided them toward the staircase, passing one of Hagia Sophia’s two
famous urns—a 330-gallon behemoth carved out of a single piece of marble during the
Hellenistic period.
Climbing in silence now with his entourage, Mirsat found himself feeling unsettled.
Langdon’s colleagues did not seem like academics at all. One of them looked like a
soldier of some sort, muscular and rigid, dressed all in black. And the woman with the
silver hair, Mirsat sensed … he had seen her before. Maybe on television?
He was starting to suspect that the purpose of this visit was not what it appeared to
be. Why are they really here?
“One more flight,” Mirsat announced cheerily as they reached the landing. “Upstairs we
shall find the tomb of Enrico Dandolo, and of course”—he paused, eyeing Langdon—“the
famed Deesis Mosaic.”
Not even a flinch.
Langdon, it appeared, was not, in fact, here for the Deesis Mosaic at all. He and his
guests seemed inexplicably fixated on Dandolo’s tomb.
CHAPTER 89
AS MIRSAT LED the way up the stairs, Langdon could tell that Brüder and Sinskey were
worried. Admittedly, ascending to the second floor seemed to make no sense. Langdon
kept picturing Zobrist’s subterranean video … and the documentary film about the
submerged areas beneath Hagia Sophia.
We need to go down!
Even so, if this was the location of Dandolo’s tomb, they had no choice but to follow
Zobrist’s directions. Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom, and place thine ear
to the ground, listening for the sounds of trickling water.
When they finally reached the second level, Mirsat led them to the right along the
balcony’s edge, which offered breathtaking views of the sanctuary below. Langdon faced
front, remaining focused.
Mirsat was talking fervently about the Deesis Mosaic again, but Langdon tuned him out.
He could now see his target.
Dandolo’s tomb.
The tomb appeared exactly as Langdon remembered it—a rectangular piece of white
marble, inlaid in the polished stone floor and cordoned off by stanchions and chains.
Langdon rushed over and examined the carved inscription.
HENRICUS DANDOLO
As the others arrived behind him, Langdon sprang into action, stepping over the
protective chain and placing his feet directly in front of the tombstone.
Mirsat protested loudly, but Langdon continued, dropping quickly to his knees as if
preparing to pray at the feet of the treacherous doge.
Next, in a move that elicited shouts of horror from Mirsat, Langdon placed his palms
flat on the tomb and prostrated himself. As he lowered his face to the ground, Langdon
realized that he looked like he was bowing to Mecca. The maneuver apparently stunned
Mirsat, who fell mute, and a sudden hush seemed to pervade the entire building.
Taking a deep breath, Langdon turned his head to the right and gently pressed his left
ear to the tomb. The stone felt cold on his flesh.
The sound he heard echoing up through the stone was as clear as day.
My God.
The finale of Dante’s Inferno seemed to be echoing up from below.
Slowly, Langdon turned his head, gazing up at Brüder and Sinskey.
“I hear it,” he whispered. “The sounds of trickling water.”
Brüder vaulted the chain and crouched down beside Langdon to listen. After a moment
he was nodding intently.
Now that they could hear the water flowing downward, one question remained. Where
is it flowing?
Langdon’s mind was suddenly flooded with images of a half-submerged cavern, bathed
in an eerie red light … somewhere beneath them.
Folow deep into the sunken palace …
for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits,
submerged in the bloodred waters …
of the lagoon that reflects no stars.
When Langdon stood and stepped back over the stanchions, Mirsat was glaring up at
him with a look of alarm and betrayal on his face. Langdon stood almost a foot taller than
the Turkish guide.
“Mirsat,” Langdon began. “I’m sorry. As you can see, this is a very unusual situation. I
don’t have time to explain, but I have a very important question to ask you about this
building.”
Mirsat managed a weak nod. “Okay.”
“Here at Dandolo’s tomb, we can hear a rivulet of water flowing somewhere under the
stone. We need to know where this water flows.”
Mirsat shook his head. “I don’t understand. Water can be heard beneath the floors
everywhere in Hagia Sophia.”
Everyone stiffened.
“Yes,” Mirsat told them, “especially when it rains. Hagia Sophia has approximately one
hundred thousand square feet of rooftops that need to drain, and it often takes days. And
usually it rains again before the drainage is complete. The sounds of trickling water are
quite common here. Perhaps you are aware that Hagia Sofia sits on vast caverns of
water. There was a documentary even, which—”
“Yes, yes,” Langdon said, “but do you know if the water that is audible here at
Dandolo’s tomb flows somewhere specific?”
“Of course,” Mirsat said. “It flows to the same place that all the water shedding from
Hagia Sophia flows. To the city cistern.”
“No,” Brüder declared, stepping back over the stanchion. “We’re not looking for a
cistern. We’re looking for a large, underground space, perhaps with columns?”
“Yes,” Mirsat said. “The city’s ancient cistern is precisely that—a large underground
space with columns. Quite impressive actually. It was built in the sixth century to house
the city’s water supply. Nowadays it contains only about four feet of water, but—”
“Where is it!” Brüder demanded, his voice echoing across the empty hall.
“The … cistern?” Mirsat asked, looking frightened. “It’s a block away, just east of this
building.” He pointed outside. “It’s called Yerebatan Sarayi.”
Sarayi? Langdon wondered. As in Topkapi Sarayi? Signage for the Topkapi Palace had
been ubiquitous as they were driving in. “But … doesn’t sarayi mean ‘palace’?”
Mirsat nodded. “Yes. The name of our ancient cistern is Yerebatan Sarayi. It means
—the sunken palace.”
CHAPTER 90
THE RAIN WAS falling in sheets as Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey burst out of Hagia Sophia with
Langdon, Brüder, and their bewildered guide, Mirsat.
Follow deep into the sunken palace, Sinskey thought.
The site of the city’s cistern—Yerebatan Sarayi—was apparently back toward the Blue
Mosque and a bit to the north.
Mirsat led the way.
Sinskey had seen no other option but to tell Mirsat who they were and that they were
racing to thwart a possible health crisis within the sunken palace.
“This way!” Mirsat called, leading them across the darkened park. The mountain of
Hagia Sophia was behind them now, and the fairy-tale spires of the Blue Mosque
glistened ahead.
Hurrying beside Sinskey, Agent Brüder was shouting into his phone, updating the SRS
team and ordering them to rendezvous at the cistern’s entrance. “It sounds like Zobrist is
targeting the city’s water supply,” Brüder said, breathless. “I’m going to need schematics
of all conduits in and out of the cistern. We’ll run full isolation and containment protocols.
We’ll need physical and chemical barriers along with vacuum—”
“Wait,” Mirsat called over to him. “You misunderstood me. The cistern is not the city
water supply. Not anymore!”
Brüder lowered his phone, glaring at their guide. “What?”
“In ancient times, the cistern held the water supply,” Mirsat clarified. “But no longer.
We modernized.”
Brüder came to a stop under a sheltering tree, and everyone halted with him.
“Mirsat,” Sinskey said, “you’re sure that nobody drinks the water out of the cistern?”
“Heavens no,” Mirsat said. “The water pretty much just sits there … eventually filtering
down into the earth.”
Sinskey, Langdon, and Brüder all exchanged uncertain looks. Sinskey didn’t know
whether to feel relieved or alarmed. If nobody comes in regular contact with the water,
why would Zobrist choose to contaminate it?
“When we modernized our water supply decades ago,” Mirsat explained, “the cistern
fell out of use and became just a big pond in an underground room.” He shrugged.
“These days it’s nothing more than a tourist attraction.”
Sinskey spun toward Mirsat. A tourist attraction? “Hold on … people can go down there?
Into the cistern?”
“Of course,” he said. “Many thousands visit every day. The cavern is quite striking.
There are boardwalks over the water … and even a small café. There’s limited
ventilation, so the air is quite stuffy and humid, but it’s still very popular.”
Sinskey’s eyes locked on Brüder, and she could tell that she and the trained SRS agent
were picturing the same thing—a dark, humid cavern filled with stagnant water in which a
pathogen was incubating. Completing the nightmare was the presence of boardwalks
over which tourists moved all day long, just above the water’s surface.
“He created a bioaerosol,” Brüder declared.
Sinskey nodded, slumping.
“Meaning?” Langdon demanded.
“Meaning,” Brüder replied, “that it can go airborne.”
Langdon fell silent, and Sinskey could see that he was now grasping the potential
magnitude of this crisis.
An airborne pathogen had been on Sinskey’s mind as a possible scenario for some time,
and yet when she believed that the cistern was the city’s water supply, she had hoped
maybe this meant that Zobrist had chosen a water-bound bioform. Water-dwelling
bacteria were robust and weather-resistant, but they were also slow to propagate.
Airborne pathogens spread fast.
Very fast.
“If it’s airborne,” Brüder said, “it’s probably viral.”
A virus, Sinskey agreed. The fastest-spreading pathogen Zobrist could choose.
Releasing an airborne virus underwater was admittedly unusual, and yet there were
many life-forms that incubated in liquid and then hatched into the air—mosquitoes, mold
spores, the bacterium that caused Legionnaires’ disease, mycotoxins, red tide, even
human beings. Sinskey grimly pictured the virus permeating the cistern’s lagoon … and
then the infected microdroplets rising into the damp air.
Mirsat was now staring across a traffic-jammed street with a look of apprehension on
his face. Sinskey followed his gaze to a squat, red-and-white brick building whose single
door was open, revealing what looked to be a stairwell. A scattering of well-dressed
people seemed to be waiting outside under umbrellas while a doorman controlled the
flow of guests who were descending the stairs.
Some kind of underground dance club?
Sinskey saw the gold lettering on the building and felt a sudden tightness in her chest.
Unless this club was called the Cistern and had been built in A.D. 523, she realized why
Mirsat was looking so concerned.
“The sunken palace,” Mirsat stammered. “It seems … there is a concert tonight.”
Sinskey was incredulous. “A concert in a cistern?!”
“It’s a large indoor space,” he replied. “It is often used as a cultural center.”
Brüder had apparently heard enough. He dashed toward the building, sidestepping his
way through snarled traffic on Alemdar Avenue. Sinskey and the others broke into a run
as well, close on the agent’s heels.
When they arrived at the cistern entrance, the doorway was blocked by a handful of
concertgoers who were waiting to be let in—a trio of women in burkas, a pair of tourists
holding hands, a man in a tuxedo. They were all clustered together in the doorway, trying
to keep out of the rain.
Sinskey could hear the melodic strains of a classical music composition lilting up from
below. Berlioz, she guessed from the idiosyncratic orchestration, but whatever it was, it
felt out of place here in the streets of Istanbul.
As they drew closer to the doorway, she felt a warm wind rushing up the stairs,
billowing from deep inside the earth and escaping from the enclosed cavern. The wind
brought to the surface not only the sound of violins, but the unmistakable scents of
humidity and masses of people.
It also brought to Sinskey a deep sense of foreboding.
As a group of tourists emerged from the stairs, chatting happily as they exited the
building, the doorman allowed the next group to descend.
Brüder immediately moved to enter, but the doorman stopped him with a pleasant
wave. “One moment, sir. The cistern is at capacity. It should be less than a minute until
another visitor exits. Thank you.”
Brüder looked ready to force his way in, but Sinskey placed a hand on his shoulder and
pulled him off to one side.
“Wait,” she commanded. “Your team is on the way and you can’t search this place
alone.” She motioned to the plaque on the wall beside the door. “The cistern is
enormous.”
The informational plaque described a cathedral-size subterranean room—nearly two
football fields in length—with a ceiling spanning more than a hundred thousand square
feet and supported by a forest of 336 marble columns.
“Look at this,” Langdon said, standing a few yards away. “You’re not going to believe
it.”
Sinskey turned. Langdon motioned to a concert poster on the wall. Oh, dear God.
The WHO director had been correct in identifying the style of the music as Romantic,
but the piece that was being performed had not been composed by Berlioz. It was by a
different Romantic composer—Franz Liszt.
Tonight, deep within the earth, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra was performing
one of Franz Liszt’s most famous works—the Dante Symphony—an entire composition
inspired by Dante’s descent into and return from hell.
“It’s being performed here for a week,” Langdon said, scrutinizing the poster’s fine
print. “A free concert. Underwritten by an anonymous donor.”
Sinskey suspected that she could guess the identity of the anonymous donor. Bertrand
Zobrist’s flair for the dramatic, it seemed, was also a ruthless practical strategy. This
week of free concerts would lure thousands more tourists than usual down into the
cistern and place them in a congested area … where they would breathe the
contaminated air, then travel back to their homes both here and abroad.
“Sir?” the doorman called to Brüder. “We have room for a couple more.”
Brüder turned to Sinskey. “Call the local authorities. Whatever we find down there,
we’ll need support. When my team arrives, have them radio me for an update. I’ll go
down and see if I can get a sense of where Zobrist might have tethered this thing.”
“Without a respirator?” Sinskey asked. “You don’t know for a fact the Solublon bag is
intact.”
Brüder frowned, holding his hand up in the warm wind that was blowing out of the
doorway. “I hate to say this, but if this contagion is out, I’m guessing everyone in this city
is probably infected.”
Sinskey had been thinking the same thing but hadn’t wanted to say it in front of
Langdon and Mirsat.
“Besides,” Brüder added, “I’ve seen what happens to crowds when my team marches in
wearing hazmat suits. We’d have full-scale panic and a stampede.”
Sinskey decided to defer to Brüder; he was, after all, the specialist and had been in
situations like this before.
“Our only realistic option,” Brüder told her, “is to assume it’s still safe down there, and
make a play to contain this.”
“Okay,” Sinskey said. “Do it.”
“There’s another problem,” Langdon interjected. “What about Sienna?”
“What about her?” Brüder demanded. “Whatever her intentions may be here in
Istanbul, she’s very good with languages and possibly speaks some Turkish.”
“So?”
“Sienna knows the poem references the ‘sunken palace,’ ” Langdon said. “And in
Turkish, ‘sunken palace’ literally points …” He motioned to the “Yerebatan Sarayi” sign
over the doorway. “… here.”
“That’s true,” Sinskey agreed wearily. “She may have figured this out and bypassed
Hagia Sophia altogether.”
Brüder glanced at the lone doorway and cursed under his breath. “Okay, if she’s down
there and plans to break the Solublon bag before we can contain it, at least she hasn’t
been there long. It’s a huge area, and she probably has no idea where to look. And with
all those people around, she probably can’t just dive into the water unnoticed.”
“Sir?” the doorman called again to Brüder. “Would you like to enter now?”
Brüder could see another group of concertgoers approaching from across the street,
and nodded to the doorman that he was indeed coming.
“I’m coming with you,” Langdon said, following.
Brüder turned and faced him. “No chance.”
Langdon’s tone was unyielding. “Agent Brüder, one of the reasons we’re in this
situation is that Sienna Brooks has been playing me all day. And as you said, we may all
be infected already. I’m helping you whether you like it or not.”
Brüder stared at him a moment and then relented.
As Langdon passed through the doorway and began descending the steep staircase
behind Brüder, he could feel the warm wind rushing past them from the bowels of the
cistern. The humid breeze carried on it the strains of Liszt’s Dante Symphony as well as a
familiar, yet ineffable scent … that of a massive crush of people congregated together in
an enclosed space.
Langdon suddenly felt a ghostly pall envelop him, as if the long fingers of an unseen
hand were reaching out of the earth and raking his flesh.
The music.
The symphony chorus—a hundred voices strong—was now singing a well-known
passage, articulating every syllable of Dante’s gloomy text.
“Lasciate ogne speranza,” they were now chanting, “voi ch’entrate.”
These six words—the most famous line in all of Dante’s Inferno—welled up from the
bottom of the stairs like the ominous stench of death.
Accompanied by a swell of trumpets and horns, the choir intoned the warning again.
“Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch’entrate!”
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!
CHAPTER 91
BATHED IN RED light, the subterranean cavern resonated with the sounds of hell-inspired
music—the wail of voices, the dissonant pinch of strings, and the deep roll of timpani,
which thundered through the grotto like a seismic tremor.
As far as Langdon could see, the floor of this underground world was a glassy sheet of
water—dark, still, smooth—like black ice on a frozen New England pond.
The lagoon that reflects no stars.
Rising out of the water, meticulously arranged in seemingly endless rows, were
hundreds upon hundreds of thick Doric columns, each climbing thirty feet to support the
cavern’s vaulted ceiling. The columns were lit from below by a series of individual red
spotlights, creating a surreal forest of illuminated trunks that telescoped off into the
darkness like some kind of mirrored illusion.
Langdon and Brüder paused at the bottom of the stairs, momentarily stalled on the
threshold of the spectral hollow before them. The cavern itself seemed to glow with a
reddish hue, and as Langdon took it all in, he could feel himself breathing as shallowly as
possible.
The air down here was heavier than he’d imagined.
Langdon could see the crowd in the distance to their left. The concert was taking place
deep in the underground space, halfway back against the far wall, its audience seated on
an expanse of platforms. Several hundred spectators sat in concentric rings that had been
arranged around the orchestra while a hundred more stood around the perimeter. Still
others had taken up positions out on the near boardwalks, leaning on the sturdy railings
and gazing down into the water as they listened to the music.
Langdon found himself scanning the sea of amorphous silhouettes, his eyes searching
for Sienna. She was nowhere in sight. Instead he saw figures in tuxedos, gowns, bishts,
burkas, and even tourists in shorts and sweatshirts. The cross section of humanity,
gathered in the crimson light, looked to Langdon like celebrants in some kind of occult
mass.
If Sienna’s down here, he realized, it will be nearly impossible to spot her.
At that moment a heavyset man moved past them, exiting up the stairs, coughing as
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