Inferno: A Novel (43 page)

Seek and find?
Sinskey wondered.
That’s this lunatic’s message to me?
The phrase sounded like a direct challenge. The disturbing memory of the madman’s final words to her during their meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations replayed in her mind:
Then it appears our dance has begun
.

“You just went white,” Langdon said, studying her thoughtfully. “I take it this is not the message you were hoping for?”

Sinskey gathered herself, straightening the amulet on her neck. “Not exactly. Tell me … do you believe this map of hell is suggesting I
seek
something?”

“Yes.
Cerca trova
.”

“And does it suggest
where
I seek?”

Langdon stroked his chin as other WHO staff began gathering around, looking eager for information. “Not overtly … no, although I’ve got a pretty good idea where you’ll want to start.”

“Tell me,” Sinskey demanded, more forcefully than Langdon would have expected.

“Well, how do you feel about Florence, Italy?”

Sinskey set her jaw, doing her best not to react. Her staff members, however, were less controlled. All of them exchanged startled glances. One grabbed a phone and placed a call. Another hurried through a door toward the front of the plane.

Langdon looked bewildered. “Was it something I said?”

Absolutely
, Sinskey thought. “What makes you say Florence?”

“Cerca trova,”
he replied, quickly recounting a long-standing mystery involving a Vasari fresco at the Palazzo Vecchio.

Florence it is
, Sinskey thought, having heard enough. Obviously, it could not be mere coincidence that her nemesis had jumped to his death not more than three blocks from the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

“Professor,” she said, “when I showed you my amulet earlier and called it a caduceus, you paused, as if you wanted to say something, but then you hesitated and seemed to change your mind. What were you going to say?”

Langdon shook his head. “Nothing. It’s foolish. Sometimes the professor in me can be a little overbearing.”

Sinskey stared into his eyes. “I ask because I need to know I can trust you. What were you going to say?”

Langdon swallowed and cleared his throat. “Not that it matters, but you said your amulet is the ancient symbol of medicine, which is correct. But when you called it a caduceus, you made a very common mistake. The caduceus has two snakes on the staff and wings at the top. Your amulet has a single snake and no wings. Your symbol is called—”

“The Rod of Asclepius.”

Langdon cocked his head in surprise. “Yes. Exactly.”

“I know. I was testing your truthfulness.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I was curious to know if you would tell me the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might make me.”

“Sounds like I failed.”

“Don’t do it again. Total honesty is the only way you and I will be able to work together on this.”

“Work together? Aren’t we done here?”

“No, Professor, we’re not done. I need you to come to Florence to help me find something.”

Langdon stared in disbelief. “Tonight?”

“I’m afraid so. I have yet to tell you about the truly critical nature of this situation.”

Langdon shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what you tell me. I don’t want to fly to Florence.”

“Neither do I,” she said grimly. “But unfortunately our time is running out.”

The noon sun glinted off the sleek roof of Italy’s high-velocity Frecciargento train as it raced northward, cutting a graceful arc across the Tuscan countryside. Despite traveling away from Florence at 174 miles per hour, the “silver arrow” train made almost no noise, its soft repetitive clicking and gently swaying motion having an almost soothing effect on those who rode it.

For Robert Langdon, the last hour had been a blur.

Now, aboard the high-speed train, Langdon, Sienna, and Dr. Ferris were seated in one of the Frecciargento’s private
salottini
—a small, executive-class berth with four leather seats and a foldout table. Ferris had rented the entire cabin using his credit card, along with an assortment of sandwiches and mineral water, which Langdon and Sienna had ravenously consumed after cleaning up in the restroom next to their private berth.

As the three of them settled in for the two-hour train ride to Venice, Dr. Ferris immediately turned his gaze to the Dante death mask, which sat on the table between them in its Ziploc bag. “We need to figure out precisely where in Venice this mask is leading us.”

“And quickly,” Sienna added, urgency in her voice. “It’s probably our only hope of preventing Zobrist’s plague.”

“Hold on,” Langdon said, placing a defensive hand atop the mask. “You promised that once we were safely aboard this train you would give me some answers about the last few days. So far, all I know is that the WHO recruited me in Cambridge to help decipher Zobrist’s version of
La Mappa
. Other than that, you’ve told me nothing.”

Dr. Ferris shifted uncomfortably and began scratching again at the rash on his face and neck. “I can see you’re frustrated,” he said. “I’m sure it’s unsettling not to remember what happened, but medically speaking …” He glanced over at Sienna for confirmation and then continued. “I strongly recommend you not expend energy trying to recall specifics you can’t remember. With amnesia victims, it’s best just to let the forgotten past remain forgotten.”

“Let it be?!” Langdon felt his anger rising. “The hell with that! I need some answers! Your organization brought me to Italy, where I was shot and lost several days of my life! I want to know how it happened!”

“Robert,” Sienna intervened, speaking softly in a clear attempt to calm him down. “Dr. Ferris is right. It definitely would not be healthy for you to be overwhelmed by a deluge of information all at once. Think about the tiny snippets you
do
remember—the silver-haired woman, ‘seek and find,’ the writhing bodies from
La Mappa
—those images flooded into your mind in a series of jumbled, uncontrollable flashbacks that left you nearly incapacitated. If Dr. Ferris starts recounting the past few days, he will almost certainly dislodge other memories, and your hallucinations could start all over again. Retrograde amnesia is a serious condition. Triggering misplaced memories can be extremely disruptive to the psyche.”

The thought had not occurred to Langdon.

“You must feel quite disoriented,” Ferris added, “but at the moment we need your psyche intact so we can move forward. It’s imperative that we figure out what this mask is trying to tell us.”

Sienna nodded.

The doctors, Langdon noted silently, seemed to agree.

Langdon sat quietly, trying to overcome his feelings of uncertainty. It was a strange sensation to meet a total stranger and realize you had actually known him for several days.
Then again
, Langdon thought,
there is something vaguely familiar about his eyes
.

“Professor,” Ferris said sympathetically, “I can see that you’re not sure you trust me, and this is understandable considering all you’ve been through. One of the common side effects of amnesia is mild paranoia and distrust.”

That makes sense
, Langdon thought,
considering I can’t even trust my own mind
.

“Speaking of paranoia,” Sienna joked, clearly trying to lighten the mood, “Robert saw your rash and thought you’d been stricken with the Black Plague.”

Ferris’s puffy eyes widened, and he laughed out loud. “This rash? Believe me, Professor, if I had the plague, I would not be treating it with an over-the-counter antihistamine.” He pulled a small tube of medicine from his pocket and tossed it to Langdon. Sure enough, it was a half-empty tube of anti-itch cream for allergic reactions.

“Sorry about that,” Langdon said, feeling foolish. “Long day.”

“No worries,” Ferris said.

Langdon turned toward the window, watching the muted hues of the
Italian countryside blur together in a peaceful collage. The vineyards and farms were becoming scarcer now as the flatlands gave way to the foothills of the Apennines. Soon the train would navigate the sinuous mountain pass and then descend again, powering eastward toward the Adriatic Sea.

I’m headed for Venice
, he thought.
To look for a plague
.

This strange day had left Langdon feeling as if he were moving through a landscape composed of nothing but vague shapes with no particular details. Like a dream. Ironically, nightmares usually woke people up … but Langdon felt as if he had awoken
into
one.

“Lira for your thoughts,” Sienna whispered beside him.

Langdon glanced up, smiling wearily. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up at home and discover this was all a bad dream.”

Sienna cocked her head, looking demure. “You wouldn’t miss me if you woke up and found out I wasn’t real?”

Langdon had to grin. “Yes, actually, I
would
miss you a little.”

She patted his knee. “Stop daydreaming, Professor, and get to work.”

Langdon reluctantly turned his eyes to the crinkled face of Dante Alighieri, which stared blankly up from the table before him. Gently, Langdon picked up the plaster mask and turned it over in his hands, gazing down into the concave interior at the first line of spiral text:

Langdon doubted he qualified at the moment.

Nonetheless, he set to work.

Two hundred miles ahead of the speeding train,
The Mendacium
remained anchored in the Adriatic. Belowdecks, facilitator Laurence Knowlton heard the soft rap of knuckles on his glass cubicle and touched a button beneath his desk, turning the opaque wall into a transparent one. Outside, a small, tanned form materialized.

The provost
.

He looked grim.

Without a word, he entered, locked the cubicle door, and threw the switch that turned the glass room opaque again. He smelled of alcohol.

“The video that Zobrist left us,” the provost said.

“Yes, sir?”

“I want to see it. Now.”

Robert Langdon had now finished transcribing the spiral text from the death mask onto paper so they could analyze it more closely. Sienna and Dr. Ferris huddled in close to help, and Langdon did his best to ignore Ferris’s ongoing scratching and labored breathing.

He’s fine
, Langdon told himself, forcing his attention to the verse before him.

“As I mentioned earlier,” Langdon began, “the opening stanza of Zobrist’s poem is taken verbatim from Dante’s
Inferno
—an admonition to the reader that the words carry a deeper meaning.”

Dante’s allegorical work was so replete with veiled commentary on religion, politics, and philosophy that Langdon often suggested to his students that the Italian poet be studied much as one might study the Bible—reading between the lines in an effort to understand the deeper meaning.

“Scholars of medieval allegory,” Langdon continued, “generally divide their analyses into two categories—‘text’ and ‘image’ … text being the literal content of the work, and image being the symbolic message.”

“Okay,” Ferris said eagerly. “So the fact that the poem begins with this line—”

“Suggests,” Sienna interjected, “that our superficial reading may reveal only part of the story. The true meaning may be hidden.”

“Something like that, yes.” Langdon returned his gaze to the text and continued reading aloud.

“Well,” Langdon said, “I’m not sure about headless horses and the bones of the blind, but it sounds like we’re supposed to locate a specific doge.”

“I assume … a doge’s grave?” Sienna asked.

“Or a statue or portrait?” Langdon replied. “There haven’t been doges for centuries.”

The doges of Venice were similar to the dukes of the other Italian city-states, and more than a hundred of them had ruled Venice over the course of a thousand years, beginning in A.D. 697. Their lineage had ended in the late eighteenth century with Napoleon’s conquest, but their glory and power still remain subjects of intense fascination for historians.

“As you may know,” Langdon said, “Venice’s two most popular tourist attractions—the Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica—were built by the doges, for the doges. Many of them are buried right there.”

“And do you know,” Sienna asked, eyeing the poem, “if there was a doge who was considered to be particularly dangerous?”

Langdon glanced down at the line in question.
Seek the treacherous doge of Venice
. “None that I know of, but the poem doesn’t use the word ‘dangerous’; it uses the word ‘treacherous.’ There’s a difference, at least in the world of Dante. Treachery is one of the Seven Deadly Sins—the worst of them, actually—punished in the ninth and final ring of hell.”