Inferno: A Novel (35 page)

Sienna looked suddenly hopeful. “And you think they have an ancient copy of
The Divine Comedy
on display?”

Langdon chuckled. “No, but I know they have a gift shop that sells huge posters with the entire text of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
printed in microscopic type.”

She gave him a slightly appalled glance.

“I know. But it’s better than nothing. The only problem is that my eyes are going, so you’ll have to read the fine print.”

“È chiusa,”
an old man called out, seeing them approach the door.
“È il giorno di riposo.”

Closed for the Sabbath?
Langdon felt suddenly disoriented again. He looked at Sienna. “Isn’t today … Monday?”

She nodded. “Florentines prefer a Monday Sabbath.”

Langdon groaned, suddenly recalling the city’s unusual weekly calendar. Because tourist dollars flowed most heavily on weekends, many Florentine merchants chose to move the Christian “day of rest” from Sunday to Monday to prevent the Sabbath from cutting too deeply into their bottom line.

Unfortunately, Langdon realized, this probably also ruled out his other option: the Paperback Exchange—one of Langdon’s favorite Florentine
bookshops—which would definitely have had copies of
The Divine Comedy
on hand.

“Any other ideas?” Sienna said.

Langdon thought a long moment and finally nodded. “There’s a site just around the corner where Dante enthusiasts gather. I bet someone there has a copy we can borrow.”

“It’s probably closed, too,” Sienna warned. “Almost every place in town moves the Sabbath away from Sunday.”

“This place wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing,” Langdon replied with a smile. “It’s a church.”

Fifty yards behind them, lurking among the crowd, the man with the skin rash and gold earring leaned on a wall, savoring this chance to catch his breath. His breathing was not getting any better, and the rash on his face was nearly impossible to ignore, especially the sensitive skin just above his eyes. He took off his Plume Paris glasses and gently rubbed his sleeve across his eye sockets, trying not to break the skin. When he replaced his glasses, he could see his quarry moving on. Forcing himself to follow, he continued after them, breathing as gently as possible.

Several blocks behind Langdon and Sienna, inside the Hall of the Five Hundred, Agent Brüder stood over the broken body of the all-too-familiar spike-haired woman who was now lying sprawled out on the floor. He knelt down and retrieved her handgun, carefully removing the clip for safety before handing it off to one of his men.

The pregnant museum administrator, Marta Alvarez, stood off to one side. She had just relayed to Brüder a brief but startling account of what had transpired with Robert Langdon since the previous night … including a single piece of information that Brüder was still trying to process.

Langdon claims to have amnesia
.

Brüder pulled out his phone and dialed. The line at the other end rang three times before his boss answered, sounding distant and unsteady.

“Yes, Agent Brüder? Go ahead.”

Brüder spoke slowly to ensure that his every word was understood. “We are still trying to locate Langdon and the girl, but there’s been another development.” Brüder paused. “And if it’s true … it changes everything.”

The provost paced his office, fighting the temptation to pour himself another Scotch, forcing himself to face this growing crisis head-on.

Never in his career had he betrayed a client or failed to keep an agreement, and he most certainly had no intention of starting now. At the same time he suspected that he might have gotten himself tangled up in a scenario whose purpose diverged from what he had originally imagined.

One year ago, the famous geneticist Bertrand Zobrist had come aboard
The Mendacium
and requested a safe haven in which to work. At that time the provost imagined that Zobrist was planning to develop a secret medical procedure whose patenting would increase Zobrist’s vast fortune. It would not be the first time the Consortium had been hired by paranoid scientists and engineers who preferred working in extreme isolation to prevent their valuable ideas from being stolen.

With that in mind, the provost accepted the client and was not surprised when he learned that the people at the World Health Organization had begun searching for him. Nor did he give it a second thought when the director of the WHO herself—Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey—seemed to make it her personal mission to locate their client.

The Consortium has always faced powerful adversaries
.

As agreed, the Consortium carried out their agreement with Zobrist, no questions asked, thwarting Sinskey’s efforts to find him for the entire length of the scientist’s contract.

Almost
the entire length.

Less than a week before the contract was to expire, Sinskey had somehow located Zobrist in Florence and moved in, harassing and chasing him until he committed suicide. For the first time in his career, the provost had failed to provide the protection he had agreed to, and it haunted him … along with the bizarre circumstances of Zobrist’s death.

He committed suicide … rather than being captured?

What the hell was Zobrist protecting?

In the aftermath of his death, Sinskey had confiscated an item from Zobrist’s safe-deposit box, and now the Consortium was locked in a head-to-head battle with Sinskey in Florence—a high-stakes treasure hunt to find …

To find what?

The provost felt himself glance instinctively toward the bookshelf and the heavy tome given to him two weeks ago by the wild-eyed Zobrist.

The Divine Comedy
.

The provost retrieved the book and carried it back to his desk, where
he dropped it with a heavy thud. With unsteady fingers, he opened the cover to the first page and again read the inscription.

First off
, the provost thought,
you and I were never friends
.

He read the inscription three more times. Then he turned his eyes to the bright red circle his client had scrawled on his calendar, highlighting tomorrow’s date.

The world thanks you?

He turned and gazed out at the horizon a long moment.

In the silence, he thought about the video and heard the voice of facilitator Knowlton from his earlier phone call.
I thought you might want to preview it before upload … the content is quite disturbing
.

The call still puzzled the provost. Knowlton was one of his best facilitators, and making such a request was entirely out of character. He knew better than to suggest an override of the compartmentalization protocol.

After replacing
The Divine Comedy
on the shelf, the provost walked to the Scotch bottle and poured himself half a glass.

He had a very difficult decision to make.

Known as the Church of Dante, the sanctuary of Chiesa di Santa Margherita dei Cerchi is more of a chapel than a church. The tiny, one-room house of worship is a popular destination for devotees of Dante who revere it as the sacred ground on which transpired two pivotal moments in the great poet’s life.

According to lore, it was here at this church, at the age of nine, that Dante first laid eyes on Beatrice Portinari—the woman with whom he fell in love at first sight, and for whom his heart ached his entire life. To Dante’s great anguish, Beatrice married another man, and then died at the youthful age of twenty-four.

It was also in this church, some years later, that Dante married Gemma Donati—a woman who, even by the account of the great writer and poet Boccaccio, was a poor choice of wife for Dante. Despite having children, the couple showed little signs of affection for each other, and after Dante’s exile, neither spouse seemed eager to see the other ever again.

The love of Dante’s life had always been and would always remain the departed Beatrice Portinari, whom Dante had scarcely known, and yet whose memory was so overpowering for him that her ghost became the muse that inspired his greatest works.

Dante’s celebrated volume of poetry
La Vita Nuova
overflows with flattering verses about “the blessed Beatrice.” More worshipful still,
The Divine Comedy
casts Beatrice as none other than the savior who guides Dante through paradise. In both works, Dante longs for his unattainable lady.

Nowadays, the Church of Dante has become a shrine for the brokenhearted who suffer from unrequited love. The tomb of young Beatrice herself is inside the church, and her simple sepulchre has become a pilgrimage destination for both Dante fans and heartsick lovers alike.

This morning, as Langdon and Sienna wound their way through old Florence toward the church, the streets continued to narrow until they became little more than glorified pedestrian walkways. An occasional
local car appeared, inching through the maze and forcing pedestrians to flatten themselves against the buildings as it passed.

“The church is just around the corner,” Langdon told Sienna, hopeful that one of the tourists inside would be able to help them. He knew their chances of finding a good Samaritan were better now that Sienna had taken back her wig in exchange for Langdon’s jacket, and both had reverted to their normal selves, transforming from rocker and skinhead … to college professor and clean-cut young woman.

Langdon was relieved once again to feel like himself.

As they strode into an even tighter alleyway—the Via del Presto—Langdon scanned the various doorways. The entrance of the church was always tricky to locate because the building itself was very small, unadorned, and wedged tightly between two other buildings. One could easily walk past it without even noticing. Oddly, it was often easier to locate this church using not one’s eyes … but one’s
ears
.

One of the peculiarities of La Chiesa di Santa Margherita dei Cerchi was that it hosted frequent concerts, and when no concert was scheduled, the church piped in recordings of those concerts so visitors could enjoy the music at any time.

As anticipated, as they advanced down the alleyway, Langdon began to hear the thin strains of recorded music, which grew steadily louder, until he and Sienna were standing before the inconspicuous entrance. The only indication that this was indeed the correct location was a tiny sign—the antithesis of the bright red banner at the Museo Casa di Dante—that humbly announced that this was the church of Dante and Beatrice.

When Langdon and Sienna stepped off the street into the dark confines of the church, the air grew cooler and the music grew louder. The interior was stark and simple … smaller than Langdon recalled. There was only a handful of tourists, mingling, writing in journals, sitting quietly in the pews enjoying the music, or examining the curious collection of artwork.

With the exception of the Madonna-themed altarpiece by Neri di Bicci, almost all of the original art in this chapel had been replaced with contemporary pieces representing the two celebrities—Dante and Beatrice—the reasons most visitors sought out this tiny chapel. Most of the paintings depicted Dante’s longing gaze during his famous first encounter with Beatrice, during which the poet, by his own account, instantly fell in love. The paintings were of widely varying quality, and most, to Langdon’s taste, seemed kitschy and out of place. In one such rendering, Dante’s iconic red cap with earflaps looked like something
Dante had stolen from Santa Claus. Nonetheless, the recurring theme of the poet’s yearning gaze at his muse, Beatrice, left no doubt that this was a church of painful love—unfulfilled, unrequited, and unattained.