by Dan Brown
“You saw us?” Dr. Sinskey looked surprised. “Strangely, you’re right … they had medicated me.” She paused. “But only because I ordered them to.”
Langdon was now wholly confused. She told them to drug her?
“You may not remember this,” Sinskey said, “but as our C-130 landed in Florence, the pressure changed, and I suffered an episode of what is known as paroxysmal positional vertigo—a severely debilitating inner-ear condition that I’ve experienced in the past. It’s temporary and not serious, but it causes victims to become so dizzy and nauseated they can barely hold their heads up. Normally I’d go to bed and endure intense nausea, but we were facing the Zobrist crisis, and so I prescribed myself hourly injections of metoclopramide to keep me from vomiting. The drug has the serious side effect of causing intense drowsiness, but it enabled me at least to run operations by phone from the back of the van. The SRS team wanted to take me to a hospital, but I ordered them not to do so until we had completed our mission of reacquiring you. Fortunately, the vertigo finally passed during the flight up to Venice.”
Langdon slumped into the bed, unnerved. I’ve been running all day from the World Health Organization—the very people who recruited me in the first place.
“Now we have to focus, Professor,” Sinskey declared, her tone urgent. “Zobrist’s plague … do you have any idea where it is?” She gazed down at him with an expression of intense expectation. “We have very little time.”
It’s far away, Langdon wanted to say, but something stopped him. He glanced up at Brüder, a man who had fired a gun at him this morning and nearly strangled him a little while earlier. For Langdon, the ground had been shifting so quickly beneath him that he had no idea whom to believe anymore.
Sinskey leaned in, her expression still more intense. “We are under the impression that the contagion is here in Venice. Is that correct? Tell us where, and I’ll send a team ashore.”
Langdon hesitated.
“Sir!” Brüder barked impatiently. “You obviously know something … tell us where it is! Don’t you understand what’s about to happen?”
“Agent Brüder!” Sinskey spun angrily on the man. “That’s enough,” she commanded, then turned back to Langdon and spoke quietly. “Considering what you’ve been through, it’s entirely understandable that you’re disoriented, and uncertain whom to trust.” She paused, staring deep into his eyes. “But our time is short, and I’m asking you to trust me.”
“Can Langdon stand?” a new voice asked.
A small, well-tended man with a deep tan appeared in the doorway. He studied Langdon with a practiced calm, but Langdon saw danger in his eyes.
Sinskey motioned for Langdon to stand up. “Professor, this is a man with whom I’d prefer not to collaborate, but the situation is serious enough that we have no choice.”
Uncertain, Langdon swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood erect, taking a moment to get his balance back.
“Follow me,” the man said, moving toward the door. “There’s something you need to see.”
Langdon held his ground. “Who are you?”
The man paused and steepled his fingers. “Names are not important. You can call me the provost. I run an organization … which, I’m sorry to say, made the mistake of helping Bertrand Zobrist achieve his goals. Now I am trying to fix that mistake before it’s too late.”
“What is it you want to show me?” Langdon asked.
The man fixed Langdon with an unyielding stare. “Something that will leave no doubt in your mind that we’re all on the same side.”
CHAPTER 78
Langdon followed the tanned man through a maze of claustrophobic corridors belowdecks with Dr. Sinskey and the ECDC soldiers trailing behind in a single file. As the group neared a staircase, Langdon hoped they were about to ascend toward daylight, but instead they descended deeper into the ship.
Deep in the bowels of the vessel now, their guide led them through a cubicle farm of sealed glass chambers—some with transparent walls and some with opaque ones. Inside each soundproofed room, various employees were hard at work typing on computers or speaking on telephones. Those who glanced up and noticed the group passing through looked seriously alarmed to see strangers in this part of the ship. The tanned man gave them a nod of reassurance and pressed on.
What is this place? Langdon wondered as they continued through another series of tightly configured work areas.
Finally, their host arrived at a large conference room, and they all filed in. As the group sat down, the man pressed a button, and the glass walls suddenly hissed and turned opaque, sealing them inside. Langdon startled, having never seen anything like it.
“Where are we?” Langdon finally demanded.
“This is my ship—The Mendacium.”
“Mendacium?” Langdon asked. “As in … the Latin word for Pseudologos—the Greek god of deception?”
The man looked impressed. “Not many people know that.”
Hardly a noble appellation, Langdon thought. Mendacium was the shadowy deity who reigned over all the pseudologoi—the daimones specializing in falsehoods, lies, and fabrications.
The man produced a tiny red flash drive and inserted it into a rack of electronic gear at the back of the room. A huge flat-panel LCD flickered to life, and the overhead lights dimmed.
In the expectant silence, Langdon heard soft lapping sounds of water. At first, he thought they were coming from outside the ship, but then he realized the sound was coming through the speakers on the LCD screen. Slowly, a picture materialized—a dripping cavern wall, illuminated by wavering reddish light.
“Bertrand Zobrist created this video,” their host said. “And he asked me to release it to the world tomorrow.”
In mute disbelief, Langdon watched the bizarre home movie … a cavernous space with a rippling lagoon … into which the camera plunged … diving beneath the surface to a silt-covered tile floor on which was bolted a plaque that read IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER.
The plaque was signed: BERTRAND ZOBRIST.
The date was tomorrow.
My God! Langdon turned to Sinskey in the darkness, but she was just staring blankly at the floor, apparently having seen the film already, and clearly unable to watch it again.
The camera panned left now, and Langdon was baffled to see, hovering beneath the water, an undulating bubble of transparent plastic containing a gelatinous, yellow-brown liquid. The delicate sphere appeared to be tethered to the floor so it could not rise to the surface.
What the hell? Langdon studied the distended bag. The viscous contents seemed to be slowly swirling … smoldering almost.
When it hit him, Langdon stopped breathing. Zobrist’s plague.
“Stop the playback,” Sinskey said in the darkness.
The image froze—a tethered plastic sac hovering beneath the water—a sealed cloud of liquid suspended in space.
“I think you can guess what that is,” Sinskey said. “The question is, how long will it remain contained?” She walked up to the LCD and pointed to a tiny marking on the transparent bag. “Unfortunately, this tells us what the bag is made of. Can you read that?”
Pulse racing, Langdon squinted at the text, which appeared to be a manufacturer’s trademark notice: Solublon®.
“World’s largest manufacturer of water-soluble plastics,” Sinskey said.
Langdon felt his stomach knot. “You’re saying this bag is … dissolving?!”
Sinskey gave him a grim nod. “We’ve been in touch with the manufacturer, from whom we learned, unfortunately, that they make dozens of different grades of this plastic, dissolving in anywhere from ten minutes to ten weeks, depending on the application. Decay rates vary slightly based on water type and temperature, but we have no doubt that Zobrist took those factors into careful account.” She paused. “This bag, we believe, will dissolve by—”
“Tomorrow,” the provost interrupted. “Tomorrow is the date Zobrist circled
in my calendar. And also the date on the plaque.”
Langdon sat speechless in the dark.
“Show him the rest,” Sinskey said.
On the LCD screen, the video image refreshed, the camera now panning along the glowing waters and cavernous darkness. Langdon had no doubt that this was the location referenced in the poem. The lagoon that reflects no stars.
The scene conjured images of Dante’s visions of hell … the river Cocytus flowing through the caverns of the underworld.
Wherever this lagoon was located, its waters were contained by steep, mossy walls, which, Langdon sensed, had to be man-made. He also sensed that the camera was revealing only a small corner of the massive interior space, and this notion was supported by the presence of very faint vertical shadows on the wall. The shadows were broad, columnar, and evenly spaced.
Pillars, Langdon realized.
The ceiling of this cavern is supported by pillars.
This lagoon was not in a cavern, it was in a massive room.
Follow deep into the sunken palace …
Before he could say a word, his attention shifted to the arrival of a new shadow on the wall … a humanoid shape with a long, beaked nose.
Oh, dear God …
The shadow began speaking now, its words muffled, whispering across the water with an eerily poetic rhythm.
“I am your salvation. I am the Shade.”
For the next several minutes, Langdon watched the most terrifying film he had ever witnessed. Clearly the ravings of a lunatic genius, the soliloquy of Bertrand Zobrist—delivered in the guise of the plague doctor—was laden with references to Dante’s Inferno and carried a very clear message: human population growth was out of control, and the very survival of mankind was hanging in the balance.
Onscreen, the voice intoned:
“To do nothing is to welcome Dante’s hell … cramped and starving, weltering in Sin. And so boldly I have taken action. Some will recoil in horror, but all salvation comes at a price. One day the world will grasp the beauty of my sacrifice.”
Langdon recoiled as Zobrist himself abruptly appeared, dressed as the plague doctor, and then tore off his mask. Langdon stared at the gaunt face and wild green eyes, realizing that he was finally seeing the face of the man who was at the center of this crisis. Zobrist began professing his love to someone he called his inspiration.
“I have left the future in your gentle hands. My work below is done. And now the hour has come for me to climb again to the world above … and rebehold the stars.”
As the video ended, Langdon recognized Zobrist’s final words as a near duplicate of Dante’s final words in the Inferno.
In the darkness of the conference room, Langdon realized that all the moments of fear he had experienced today had just crystallized into a single, terrifying reality.
Bertrand Zobrist now had a face … and a voice.
The conference room lights came up, and Langdon saw all eyes trained expectantly on him.
Elizabeth Sinskey’s expression seemed frozen as she stood up and nervously stroked her amulet. “Professor, obviously our time is very short. The only good news so far is that we’ve had no cases of pathogen detection, or reported illness, so we’re assuming the suspended Solublon bag is still intact. But we don’t know where to look. Our goal is to neutralize this threat by containing the bag before it ruptures. The only way we can do that, of course, is to find its location immediately.”
Agent Brüder stood up now, staring intently at Langdon. “We’re assuming you came to Venice because you learned that this is where Zobrist hid his plague.”
Langdon gazed out at the assembly before him, faces taut with fear, everyone hoping for a miracle, and he wished he had better news to offer them.
“We’re in the wrong country,” Langdon announced. “What you’re looking for is nearly a thousand miles from here.”
Langdon’s insides reverberated with the deep thrum of The Mendacium’s engines as the ship powered through its wide turn, banking back toward the Venice Airport. On board, all hell had broken loose. The provost had dashed off, shouting orders to his crew. Elizabeth Sinskey had grabbed her phone and called the pilots of the WHO’s C-130 transport plane, demanding they be prepped as soon as possible to fly out of the Venice Airport. And Agent Brüder had jumped on a laptop to see if he could coordinate some kind of international advance team at their final destination.
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 n
ot 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.