Inferno (57 page)

To the Gypsy’s surprise, the chair was followed by a pretty woman with a blond ponytail who was apparently being hoisted from within and was now clambering through the window into the tiny opening.

The blond woman scrambled to her feet and immediately looked up, clearly startled to see the Gypsy staring down at her through the grate. The blond woman raised a finger to her lips and gave a tight smile. Then she unfolded the chair and climbed onto it, reaching up toward the grate.

You’re far too short
, the Gypsy thought.
And just what are you doing?

The blond woman climbed back down off the chair and spoke to someone inside the building. Although she barely had room to stand in the narrow well beside the chair, she now stepped aside as a second person—a tall, dark-haired man in a fancy suit—heaved himself up out of the basilica basement and into the crowded shaft.

He, too, looked up, making eye contact with the Gypsy through the iron grate. Then, in an awkward twist of limbs, he exchanged positions with the blond woman and climbed up on top of the rickety chair. He was taller, and when he reached up, he was able to unlatch the security bar beneath the grate. Standing on tiptoe, he placed his hands on the
grate and heaved upward. The grate rose an inch or so before he had to set it down.

“Può darci una mano?”
the blond woman called up to the Gypsy.

Give you a hand?
the Gypsy wondered, having no intention of getting involved.
What are you doing?

The blond woman pulled out a man’s wallet and extracted a hundred-euro bill, waving it as an offering. It was more money than the vendor made with her masks in three days. No stranger to negotiation, she shook her head and held up two fingers. The blond woman produced a second bill.

Disbelieving of her good fortune, the Gypsy shrugged a reluctant yes, trying to look indifferent as she crouched down and grabbed the bars, looking into the man’s eyes so they could synchronize their efforts.

As the man heaved again, the Gypsy pulled upward with arms made strong from years of carrying her wares, and the grate swung upward … halfway. Just as she thought they had it, there was a loud crash beneath her, and the man disappeared, plummeting back down into the well as the folding chair collapsed beneath him.

The iron grate grew instantly heavier in her hands, and she thought she would have to drop it, but the promise of two hundred euros gave her strength, and she managed to heave the grate up against the side of the basilica, where it came to rest with a loud clang.

Breathless, the Gypsy peered down into the well at the twist of bodies and broken furniture. As the man got back up and brushed himself off, she reached down into the well, holding out her hand for her money.

The ponytailed woman nodded appreciatively and raised the two bills over her head. The Gypsy reached down, but it was too far.

Give the money to the man
.

Suddenly there was a commotion in the shaft—angry voices shouting from inside the basilica. The man and woman both spun in fear, recoiling from the window.

Then everything turned to chaos.

The dark-haired man took charge, crouching down and firmly ordering the woman to place her foot into a cradle formed by his fingers. She stepped in, and he heaved upward. She skimmed up the side of the shaft, stuffing the bills in her teeth to free her hands as she strained to reach the lip. The man heaved, higher … higher … lifting her until her hands curled over the edge.

With enormous effort, she heaved herself up into the square like a woman climbing out of a swimming pool. She shoved the money into the
Gypsy’s hands and immediately spun around and knelt at the edge of the well, reaching back down for the man.

It was too late.

Powerful arms in long black sleeves were reaching into the well like the thrashing tentacles of some hungry monster, grasping at the man’s legs, pulling him back toward the window.

“Run, Sienna!” shouted the struggling man. “Now!”

The Gypsy saw their eyes lock in an exchange of pained regret … and then it was over.

The man was dragged roughly down through the window and back into the basilica.

The blond woman stared down in shock, her eyes welling with tears. “I’m so sorry, Robert,” she whispered. Then, after a pause, she added, “For everything.”

A moment later, the woman sprinted off into the crowd, her ponytail swinging as she raced down the narrow alleyway of the Merceria dell’Orologio … disappearing into the heart of Venice.

The soft sounds of lapping water eased Robert Langdon gently back to consciousness. He smelled the sterile tang of antiseptics mixed with salty sea air and felt the world swaying beneath him.

Where am I?

Only moments before, it seemed, he had been locked in a death struggle against powerful hands that were dragging him out of the light well and back into the crypt. Now, strangely, he no longer felt the cold stone floor of St. Mark’s beneath him … instead he felt a soft mattress.

Langdon opened his eyes and took in his surroundings—a small, hygienic-looking room with a single portal window. The rocking motion continued.

I’m on a boat?

Langdon’s last recollection was of being pinned to the crypt floor by one of the black-clad soldiers, who hissed angrily at him, “Stop trying to escape!”

Langdon had shouted wildly, calling for help as the soldiers tried to muffle his voice.

“We need to get him out of here,” one soldier had said to another.

His partner gave a reluctant nod. “Do it.”

Langdon felt powerful fingertips expertly probing the arteries and veins on his neck. Then, having located a precise spot on the carotid, the fingers began applying a firm, focused pressure. Within seconds, Langdon’s vision began to blur, and he felt himself slipping away, his brain being starved of oxygen.

They’re killing me
, Langdon thought.
Right here beside the tomb of St. Mark
.

The blackness came, but it seemed incomplete … more of a wash of grays punctuated by muted shapes and sounds.

Langdon had little sense of how much time had passed, but the world was now starting to come back into focus for him. From all he could tell, he was in an onboard infirmary of some sort. His sterile surroundings
and the scent of isopropyl alcohol created a strange sense of déjà vu—as if Langdon had come full circle, awakening as he had the previous night, in a strange hospital bed with only muted memories.

His thoughts turned instantly to Sienna and her safety. He could still see her soft brown eyes gazing down at him, filled with remorse and fear. Langdon prayed that she had escaped and would find her way safely out of Venice.

We’re in the wrong country
, Langdon had told her, having realized to his shock the actual location of Enrico Dandolo’s tomb. The poem’s mysterious mouseion of holy wisdom was not in Venice after all … but a world away. Precisely as Dante’s text had warned, the cryptic poem’s meaning had been hidden “beneath the veil of verses so obscure.”

Langdon had intended to explain everything to Sienna as soon as they’d escaped the crypt, but he’d never had the chance.

She ran off knowing only that I failed
.

Langdon felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

The plague is still out there … a world away
.

From outside the infirmary, he heard loud boot steps in the hall, and Langdon turned to see a man in black entering his berth. It was the same muscular soldier who had pinned him to the crypt floor. His eyes were ice cold. Langdon’s instinct was to recoil as the man approached, but there was nowhere to run.
Whatever these people want to do to me, they can do
.

“Where am I?” Langdon demanded, putting as much defiance into his voice as he could muster.

“On a yacht anchored off Venice.”

Langdon eyed the green medallion on the man’s uniform—a globe of the world, encircled by the letters
ECDC
. Langdon had never seen the symbol or the acronym.

“We need information from you,” the soldier said, “and we don’t have much time.”

“Why would I tell you anything?” Langdon asked. “You almost killed me.”

“Not even close. We used a judo demobilization technique called
shime waza
. We had no intention of harming you.”

“You
shot
at me this morning!” Langdon declared, clearly recalling the clang of the bullet on the fender of Sienna’s speeding Trike. “Your bullet barely missed the base of my spine!”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “If I had
wanted
to hit the base of your spine, I would have hit it. I took a single shot trying to puncture your
moped’s rear tire so I could stop you from running away. I was under orders to establish contact with you and figure out why the hell you were acting so erratically.”

Before Langdon could fully process his words, two more soldiers came through the door, moving toward his bed.

Walking between them was a woman.

An apparition.

Ethereal and otherworldly.

Langdon immediately recognized her as the vision from his hallucinations. The woman before him was beautiful, with long silver hair and a blue lapis lazuli amulet. Because she had previously appeared against a horrifying landscape of dying bodies, Langdon needed a moment to believe she was truly standing before him in the flesh.

“Professor Langdon,” the woman said, smiling wearily as she arrived at his bedside. “I’m relieved that you’re okay.” She sat down and took his pulse. “I’ve been advised that you have amnesia. Do you remember me?”

Langdon studied the woman for a moment. “I’ve had … visions of you, although I don’t remember meeting.”

The woman leaned toward him, her expression empathetic. “My name is Elizabeth Sinskey. I’m director of the World Health Organization, and I recruited you to help me find—”

“A plague,” Langdon managed. “Created by Bertrand Zobrist.”

Sinskey nodded, looking encouraged. “You remember?”

“No, I woke up in a hospital with a strange little projector and visions of
you
telling me to seek and find. That’s what I was trying to do when these men tried to kill me.” Langdon motioned to the soldiers.

The muscular one bristled, clearly ready to respond, but Elizabeth Sinskey silenced him with a wave.

“Professor,” she said softly, “I have no doubt you are very confused. As the person who pulled you into all this, I’m horrified by what has transpired, and I’m thankful you’re safe.”

“Safe?” Langdon replied. “I’m captive on a ship!”
And so are you!

The silver-haired woman gave an understanding nod. “I’m afraid that due to your amnesia, many aspects of what I am about to tell you will be disorienting. Nonetheless, our time is short, and a lot of people need your help.”

Sinskey hesitated, as if uncertain how to continue. “First off,” she began, “I need you to understand that Agent Brüder and his team never tried to harm you. They were under direct orders to reestablish contact with you by whatever means were necessary.”

“Reestablish? I don’t—”

“Please, Professor, just listen. Everything will be made clear. I promise.”

Langdon settled back into the infirmary bed, his thoughts spinning as Dr. Sinskey continued.

“Agent Brüder and his men are an SRS team—Surveillance and Response Support. They work under the auspices of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.”

Langdon glanced over at the ECDC medallions on their uniforms.
Disease Prevention and Control?

“His group,” she continued, “specializes in detecting and containing communicable-disease threats. Essentially, they are a SWAT team for the mitigation of acute, large-scale health risks. You were my main hope of locating the contagion Zobrist has created, and so when you vanished, I tasked the SRS team with locating you … 
I
summoned them to Florence to support me.”

Langdon was stunned. “Those soldiers work for you?”

She nodded. “On loan from the ECDC. Last night, when you disappeared and stopped calling in, we thought something had happened to you. It was not until early this morning, when our tech support team saw that you had checked your Harvard e-mail account, that we knew you were alive. At that point our only explanation for your strange behavior was that you had switched sides … possibly having been offered large sums of money to locate the contagion for someone else.”

Langdon shook his head. “That’s preposterous!”

“Yes, it seemed an unlikely scenario, but it was the only logical explanation—and with the stakes being so high, we couldn’t take any chances. Of course, we never imagined you were suffering from amnesia. When our tech support saw your Harvard e-mail account suddenly activate, we tracked the computer IP address to the apartment in Florence and moved in. But you fled on a moped, with the woman, which increased our suspicions that you were now working for someone else.”

“We drove right past you!” Langdon choked. “I saw you in the back of a black van, surrounded by soldiers. I thought you were a
captive
. You seemed delirious, like they had drugged you.”

“You saw us?” Dr. Sinskey looked surprised. “Strangely, you’re right … they
had
medicated me.” She paused. “But only because I ordered them to.”

Langdon was now wholly confused.
She told them to drug her?

“You may not remember this,” Sinskey said, “but as our C-130 landed
in Florence, the pressure changed, and I suffered an episode of what is known as paroxysmal positional vertigo—a severely debilitating inner-ear condition that I’ve experienced in the past. It’s temporary and not serious, but it causes victims to become so dizzy and nauseated they can barely hold their heads up. Normally I’d go to bed and endure intense nausea, but we were facing the Zobrist crisis, and so I prescribed myself hourly injections of metoclopramide to keep me from vomiting. The drug has the serious side effect of causing intense drowsiness, but it enabled me at least to run operations by phone from the back of the van. The SRS team wanted to take me to a hospital, but I ordered them not to do so until we had completed our mission of reacquiring you. Fortunately, the vertigo finally passed during the flight up to Venice.”