Inferno (34 page)

Vayentha’s eyes bolted upward to the ornate ceiling.

“Rats in the attic?” the man with the camcorder joked nervously as the sound reverberated down.

Big rats
, Vayentha thought, gazing up at the circular painting in the center of the hall’s ceiling. A small cloud of dust was now filtering down from between the lacunars, and Vayentha could swear she saw a slight bulge in the canvas … almost as if someone were pushing on it from the other side.

“Maybe one of the officers dropped his gun off the viewing platform,” the man said, eyeing the lump in the painting. “What do you think they’re looking for? All this activity is very exciting.”

“A
viewing
platform?” Vayentha demanded. “People can actually go up there?”

“Sure.” He motioned to the museum entrance. “Just inside that door is a door that leads up to a catwalk in the attic. You can see Vasari’s truss work. It’s incredible.”

Brüder’s voice suddenly echoed again across the Hall of the Five Hundred. “So where the hell did they go?!”

His words, like his anguished yell a little earlier, had emanated from behind a lattice grate positioned high on the wall to Vayentha’s left. Brüder was apparently in a room behind the grate … a full story beneath the room’s ornate ceiling.

Vayentha’s eyes climbed again to the bulge in the canvas overhead.

Rats in the attic
, she thought.
Trying to find a way out
.

She thanked the man with the camcorder and drifted quickly toward the museum entrance. The door was closed, but with all the officers running in and out, she suspected that it was unlocked.

Sure enough, her instincts were correct.

Outside in the piazza, amid the chaos of arriving police, a middle-aged man stood in the shadows of the Loggia dei Lanzi, where he had been observing the activity with great interest. The man wore Plume Paris spectacles, a paisley necktie, and a tiny gold stud in one ear.

As he watched the commotion, he caught himself scratching at his neck again. The man had developed a rash overnight, which seemed to be getting worse, manifesting in small pustules on his jawline, neck, cheeks, and over his eyes.

When he glanced down at his fingernails, he saw they were bloody. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his fingers, also dabbing the bloody pustules on his neck and cheeks.

When he had cleaned himself up, he returned his gaze to the two black vans parked outside the palazzo. The closest van contained two people in the backseat.

One was an armed soldier in black.

The other was an older, but very beautiful silver-haired woman wearing a blue amulet.

The soldier looked as if he were preparing a hypodermic syringe.

Inside the van, Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey gazed absently out at the palazzo, wondering about how this crisis had deteriorated to such an extent.

“Ma’am,” a deep voice said beside her.

She turned groggily to the soldier accompanying her. He was gripping her forearm and holding up a syringe. “Just be still.”

The sharp stab of a needle pierced her flesh.

The soldier completed the injection. “Now go back to sleep.”

As she closed her eyes, she could have sworn she saw a man studying her from the shadows. He wore designer glasses and a preppie necktie. His face was rashy and red. For a moment she thought she knew him, but when she opened her eyes for another look, the man had disappeared.

In the darkness of the garret, Langdon and Sienna were now separated by a twenty-foot expanse of open air. Eight feet beneath them, the fallen plank had come to rest across the wooden framing that supported the canvas bearing Vasari’s
Apotheosis
. The large flashlight, still glowing, was resting on the canvas itself, creating a small indentation, like a stone on a trampoline.

“The plank behind you,” Langdon whispered. “Can you drag it across to reach this strut?”

Sienna eyed the plank. “Not without the other end falling into the canvas.”

Langdon had feared as much; the last thing they needed now was to send a two-by-six crashing through a Vasari canvas.

“I’ve got an idea,” Sienna said, now moving sideways along the strut, heading for the sidewall. Langdon followed on his beam, the footing becoming more treacherous with each step as they ventured away from the flashlight beam. By the time they reached the sidewall, they were almost entirely in darkness.

“Down there,” Sienna whispered, pointing into the obscurity below them. “At the edge of the frame. It’s got to be mounted to the wall. It should hold me.”

Before Langdon could protest, Sienna was climbing down off the strut, using a series of supporting beams as a ladder. She eased herself down onto the edge of the wooden lacunar. It creaked once, but held. Then, inching along the wall, Sienna began moving in Langdon’s direction as if she were inching across the ledge of a high building. The lacunar creaked again.

Thin ice
, Langdon thought.
Stay near shore
.

As Sienna reached the halfway point, approaching the strut on which he stood in the darkness, Langdon felt a sudden renewed hope that they might indeed get out of here in time.

Suddenly, somewhere in the darkness ahead, a door slammed and he
heard fast-moving footsteps approaching along the walkway. The beam of a flashlight now appeared, sweeping the area, getting closer every second. Langdon felt his hopes sink. Someone was coming their way—moving along the main walkway and cutting off their escape route.

“Sienna, keep going,” he whispered, reacting on instinct. “Continue the entire length of the wall. There’s an exit at the far end. I’ll run interference.”

“No!” Sienna whispered urgently. “Robert, come back!”

But Langdon was already on the move, heading back along the strut toward the central spine of the garret, leaving Sienna in the darkness, inching across the sidewall, eight feet below him.

When Langdon arrived at the center of the garret, a faceless silhouette with a flashlight had just arrived on the raised viewing platform. The person halted at the low guardrail and aimed the flashlight beam down into Langdon’s eyes.

The glare was blinding, and Langdon immediately raised his arms in surrender. He could not have felt more vulnerable—balanced high above the Hall of the Five Hundred, blinded by a bright light.

Langdon waited for a gunshot or for an authoritative command, but there was only silence. After a moment the beam swung away from his face and began probing the darkness behind him, apparently looking for something … or someone else. As the beam left his eyes, Langdon could just make out the silhouette of the person now blocking his escape route. It was a woman, lean and dressed all in black. He had no doubt that beneath her baseball cap was a head of spiked hair.

Langdon’s muscles tightened instinctively as his mind flooded with images of Dr. Marconi dying on the hospital floor.

She found me. She’s here to finish the job
.

Langdon flashed on an image of Greek free divers swimming deep into a tunnel, far past the point of no return, and then colliding with a stony dead end.

The assassin swung her flashlight beam back down into Langdon’s eyes.

“Mr. Langdon,” she whispered. “Where is your friend?”

Langdon felt a chill.
This killer is here for both of us
.

Langdon made a show of glancing
away
from Sienna, over his shoulder into the darkness from which they’d come. “She has nothing to do with this. You want me.”

Langdon prayed that Sienna was now making progress along the wall. If she could sneak beyond the viewing platform, she could then quietly
cross back to the central boardwalk, behind the spike-haired woman, and move toward the door.

The assassin again raised her light and scanned the empty garret behind him. With the glare momentarily out of his eyes, Langdon caught a sudden glimpse of a form in the darkness behind her.

Oh God, no!

Sienna was indeed making her way across a strut in the direction of the central boardwalk, but unfortunately, she was only ten yards behind their attacker.

Sienna, no! You’re too close! She’ll hear you!

The beam returned to Langdon’s eyes again.

“Listen carefully, Professor,” the assassin whispered. “If you want to live, I suggest you trust me. My mission has been terminated. I have no reason to harm you. You and I are on the same team now, and I may know how to help you.”

Langdon was barely listening, his thoughts focused squarely on Sienna, who was now faintly visible in profile, climbing deftly up onto the walkway behind the viewing platform, entirely too close to the woman with the gun.

Run!
he willed her.
Get the hell out of here!

Sienna, however, to Langdon’s alarm, held her ground, crouching low in the shadows and watching in silence.

Vayentha’s eyes probed the darkness behind Langdon.
Where the hell did she go? Did they separate?

Vayentha had to find a way to keep the fleeing couple out of Brüder’s hands.
It’s my only hope
.

“Sienna?!” Vayentha ventured in a throaty whisper. “If you can hear me, listen carefully. You do not want to be captured by the men downstairs. They will
not
be lenient. I know an escape route. I can help you. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” Langdon challenged, his voice suddenly loud enough that anyone nearby could hear him. “You’re a killer!”

Sienna is nearby
, Vayentha realized.
Langdon is talking to her … trying to warn her
.

Vayentha tried again. “Sienna, the situation is complicated, but I can get you out of here. Consider your options. You’re trapped. You have no choice.”

“She has a choice,” Langdon called out loudly. “And she’s smart enough to run as far from you as possible.”

“Everything’s changed,” Vayentha insisted. “I have no reason to hurt either of you.”

“You killed Dr. Marconi! And I’m guessing you’re also the one who shot me in the head!”