Inferno: A Novel (44 page)

Treachery, as defined by Dante, was the act of betraying a loved one. History’s most notorious example of the sin had been Judas’s betrayal of his beloved Jesus, an act Dante considered so vile that he had Judas banished to the inferno’s innermost core—a region named Judecca, after its most dishonorable resident.

“Okay,” Ferris said, “so we’re looking for a doge who committed an act of treachery.”

Sienna nodded her agreement. “That will help us limit the list of possibilities.” She paused, eyeing the text. “But this next line … a doge who ‘severed the heads from horses’?” She raised her eyes to Langdon. “Is there a doge who cut off horses’ heads?”

The image Sienna evoked in his mind reminded Langdon of the gruesome scene from
The Godfather
. “Doesn’t ring a bell. But according to this, he also ‘plucked up the bones of the blind.’ ” He glanced over at Ferris. “Your phone has Internet, right?”

Ferris quickly pulled out his phone and held up his swollen, rashy fingertips. “The buttons might be difficult for me to manage.”

“I’ve got it,” Sienna said, taking his phone. “I’ll run a search for Venetian
doges, cross-referenced with headless horses and the bones of the blind.” She began typing rapidly on the tiny keyboard.

Langdon skimmed the poem another time, and then continued reading aloud.

“I’ve never heard of a
mouseion
,” Ferris said.

“It’s an ancient word meaning a temple protected by muses,” Langdon replied. “In the days of the early Greeks, a
mouseion
was a place where the enlightened gathered to share ideas, and discuss literature, music, and art. The first mouseion was built by Ptolemy at the Library of Alexandria centuries before the birth of Christ, and then hundreds more cropped up around the world.”

“Dr. Brooks,” Ferris said, glancing hopefully at Sienna. “Can you look and see if there’s a mouseion in Venice?”

“Actually there are dozens of them,” Langdon said with a playful smile. “Now they’re called museums.”

“Ahhh …” Ferris replied. “I guess we’ll have to cast a wider net.”

Sienna kept typing into the phone, having no trouble multitasking as she calmly took inventory. “Okay, so we’re looking for a museum where we can find a doge who severed the heads from horses and plucked up the bones of the blind. Robert, is there a particular museum that might be a good place to look?”

Langdon was already considering all of Venice’s best-known museums—the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Ca’ Rezzonico, the Palazzo Grassi, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Museo Correr—but none of them seemed to fit the description.

He glanced back at the text.

Langdon smiled wryly. “Venice does have one museum that perfectly qualifies as a ‘gilded mouseion of holy wisdom.’ ”

Both Ferris and Sienna looked at him expectantly.

“St. Mark’s Basilica,” he declared. “The largest church in Venice.”

Ferris looked uncertain. “The church is a museum?”

Langdon nodded. “Much like the Vatican Museum. And what’s more,
the interior of St. Mark’s is famous for being adorned, in its entirety, in solid gold tiles.”

“A
gilded mouseion
,” Sienna said, sounding genuinely excited.

Langdon nodded, having no doubt that St. Mark’s was the gilded temple referenced in the poem. For centuries, the Venetians had called St. Mark’s La Chiesa d’Oro—the Church of Gold—and Langdon considered its interior the most dazzling of any church in the world.

“The poem says to ‘kneel’ there,” Ferris added. “And a church is a logical place to kneel.”

Sienna was typing furiously again. “I’ll add St. Mark’s to the search. That must be where we need to look for the doge.”

Langdon knew they would find no shortage of doges in St. Mark’s—which was, quite literally, the basilica of the doges. He felt encouraged as he returned his eyes to the poem.

Trickling water?
Langdon wondered.
Is there water under St. Mark’s?
The question, he realized, was foolish. There was water under the entire city. Every building in Venice was slowly sinking and leaking. Langdon pictured the basilica and tried to imagine where inside one might kneel to listen for trickling water.
And once we hear it … what do we do?

Langdon returned to the poem and finished reading aloud.

“Okay,” Langdon said, disturbed by the image, “apparently, we follow the sounds of trickling water … to some kind of sunken palace.”

Ferris scratched at his face, looking unnerved. “What’s a chthonic monster?”

“Subterranean,” Sienna offered, her fingers still working the phone. “ ‘Chthonic’ means ‘beneath the earth.’ ”

“Partly, yes,” Langdon said. “Although the word has a further historic implication—one commonly associated with myths and monsters.
Chthonics
are an entire category of mythical gods and monsters—Erinyes,
Hecate, and Medusa, for example. They’re called chthonics because they reside in the underworld and are associated with hell.” Langdon paused. “Historically, they emerge from the earth and come aboveground to wreak havoc in the human world.”

There was a long silence, and Langdon sensed they were all thinking the same thing.
This chthonic monster … could only be Zobrist’s plague
.

“Anyway,” Langdon said, trying to stay on track, “we’re obviously looking for an underground location, which at least explains the last line of the poem referencing ‘the lagoon that reflects no stars.’ ”

“Good point,” Sienna said, glancing up now from Ferris’s phone. “If a lagoon is subterranean, it couldn’t reflect the sky. But does Venice have subterranean lagoons?”

“None that I know of,” Langdon replied. “But in a city built on water, there are probably endless possibilities.”

“What if the lagoon is indoors?” Sienna asked suddenly, eyeing them both. “The poem refers to ‘the darkness’ of ‘the sunken palace.’ You mentioned earlier that the Doge’s Palace is connected to the basilica, right? That means those structures have a lot of what the poem mentions—a mouseion of holy wisdom, a palace, relevance to doges—and it’s all located right there on Venice’s main lagoon, at sea level.”

Langdon considered this. “You think the poem’s ‘sunken palace’ is the Doge’s Palace?”

“Why not? The poem tells us first to kneel at St. Mark’s Basilica, then to follow the sounds of trickling water. Maybe the sounds of water lead next door to the Doge’s Palace. It could have a submerged foundation or something.”

Langdon had visited the Doge’s Palace many times and knew that it was absolutely massive. A sprawling complex of buildings, the palace housed a grand-scale museum, a veritable labyrinth of institutional chambers, apartments, and courtyards, and a prison network so vast that it was housed in multiple buildings.

“You may be right,” Langdon said, “but a blind search of that palace would take days. I suggest we do exactly as the poem tells us. First, we go to St. Mark’s Basilica and find the tomb or statue of this treacherous doge, and then we kneel down.”

“And then?” Sienna asked.

“And then,” Langdon said with a sigh, “we pray like hell that we hear trickling water … and it leads us somewhere.”

In the silence that followed, Langdon pictured the anxious face of Elizabeth Sinskey as he had seen it in his hallucinations, calling to him across the water.
Time is short. Seek and find!
He wondered where Sinskey was now … and if she was all right. The soldiers in black had no doubt realized by now that Langdon and Sienna had escaped.
How long until they come after us?

As Langdon returned his eyes to the poem, he fought off a wave of exhaustion. He eyed the final line of verse, and another thought occurred to him. He wondered if it was even worth mentioning.
The lagoon that reflects no stars
. It was probably irrelevant to their search, but he decided to share it nonetheless. “There’s another point I should mention.”

Sienna glanced up from the cell phone.

“The three sections of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
,” Langdon said. “
Inferno
,
Purgatorio
, and
Paradiso
. They
all
end with the exact same word.”

Sienna looked surprised.

“What word is that?” Ferris asked.

Langdon pointed to the bottom of the text he had transcribed. “The same word that ends
this
poem—‘stars.’ ” He picked up Dante’s death mask and pointed to the very center of the spiral text.

The lagoon that reflects no stars
.

“What’s more,” Langdon continued, “in the finale of the
Inferno
, we find Dante listening to the sound of trickling water inside a chasm and following it through an opening … which leads him out of hell.”

Ferris blanched slightly. “Jesus.”

Just then, a deafening rush of air filled the cabin as the Frecciargento plunged into a mountain tunnel.

In the darkness, Langdon closed his eyes and tried to allow his mind to relax.
Zobrist may have been a lunatic
, he thought,
but he certainly had a sophisticated grasp of Dante
.

Laurence Knowlton felt a wave of relief wash over him.

The provost changed his mind about watching Zobrist’s video
.

Knowlton practically dove for the crimson memory stick and inserted it into his computer so he could share it with his boss. The weight of Zobrist’s bizarre nine-minute message had been haunting the facilitator, and he was eager to have another set of eyes watch it.

This will no longer be on me
.

Knowlton held his breath as he began the playback.

The screen darkened, and the sounds of gently lapping water filled the cubicle. The camera moved through the reddish haze of the underground cavern, and although the provost showed no visible reaction, Knowlton sensed that the man was as alarmed as he was bewildered.

The camera paused its forward motion and tipped downward at the surface of the lagoon, where it plunged beneath the water, diving several feet to reveal the polished titanium plaque bolted to the floor.

The provost flinched ever so slightly. “Tomorrow,” he whispered, eyeing the date. “And do we know where ‘this place’ might be?”

Knowlton shook his head.

The camera panned left now, revealing the submerged plastic sack of gelatinous, yellow-brown fluid.

“What in God’s name?!” The provost pulled up a chair and settled in, staring at the undulating bubble, suspended like a tethered balloon beneath the water.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room as the video progressed. Soon the screen went dark, and then a strange, beak-nosed shadow appeared on the cavern wall and began talking in its arcane language.

The provost glanced up. “Inferno?”

Knowlton shrugged. “As I said, it’s disturbing.”

The provost returned his eyes to the screen, watching intently.

The beak-nosed shadow continued speaking for several minutes, talking of plagues, of the population’s need for purging, of his own glorious role in the future, of his battle against the ignorant souls who had been trying to stop him, and of the faithful few who realized that drastic action was the only way to save the planet.

Whatever this war was about, Knowlton had been wondering all morning if the Consortium might be fighting on the wrong side.

The voice continued.