Inferno: A Novel (69 page)

Sienna looked ready to bolt at any instant.

“Please listen,” Langdon said, softening his tone. “I know you’ve been through a lot, and I know you’re scared, but you need to think of the big picture. Bertrand created this virus.
You
tried to stop it.”

“But I failed.”

“Yes, and now that the virus is out, the scientific and medical communities will need to understand it fully. You’re the
only
person who knows anything at all about it. Maybe there’s a way to neutralize it … or do something to prepare.” Langdon’s penetrating gaze bore into her. “Sienna, the world
needs
to know what you know. You can’t just disappear.”

Sienna’s slim frame was shaking now, as if the floodgates of sorrow and uncertainty were about to burst wide. “Robert, I … I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Look at me.” She put a hand on her bald scalp. “I’ve turned into a monster. How can I possibly face—”

Langdon stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. He could feel her body trembling, feel her frailty against his chest. He whispered softly in her ear.

“Sienna, I know you want to run, but I’m not going to let you. Sooner or later you need to start trusting
someone
.”

“I can’t …” She was sobbing. “I’m not sure I know how.”

Langdon held her tighter. “You start small. You take that first tiny step. You trust
me
.”

The sharp clang of metal on metal rang through the fuselage of the windowless C-130 transport, causing the provost to jump. Outside, someone was banging the butt of a pistol against the aircraft’s hatch and demanding entry.

“Everyone stay seated,” the C-130 pilot commanded, moving toward the door. “It’s the Turkish police. They just drove out to the plane.”

The provost and Ferris exchanged a quick glance.

From the flurry of panicked calls among the WHO staff on board, the provost sensed that their containment mission had failed.
Zobrist carried out his plan
, he thought.
And my company made it possible
.

Outside the hatch, authoritative-sounding voices began shouting in Turkish.

The provost jumped to his feet. “Don’t open the door!” he ordered the pilot.

The pilot stopped short, glaring at the provost. “Why the hell not?”

“The WHO is an international relief organization,” the provost replied, “and this plane is sovereign territory!”

The pilot shook his head. “Sir, this plane is parked at a Turkish airport, and until it leaves Turkish airspace, it is subject to the laws of the land.” The pilot moved to the exit and threw open the hatch.

Two uniformed men stared in. Their humorless eyes showed not the slightest hint of leniency. “Who is the captain of this aircraft?” one of them demanded in a heavy accent.

“I am,” the pilot said.

An officer handed the pilot two sheets of paper. “Arrest documents. These two passengers must come with us.”

The pilot skimmed the pages and glanced over at the provost and Ferris.

“Call Dr. Sinskey,” the provost ordered the WHO pilot. “We’re on an international emergency mission.”

One of the officers eyed the provost with an amused sneer. “Dr.
Elizabeth
Sinskey? Director of the World Health Organization?
She
is the one who ordered your arrest.”

“That can’t be,” the provost replied. “Mr. Ferris and I are here in Turkey trying to
help
Dr. Sinskey.”

“Then you are not doing a very good job,” the second officer replied. “Dr. Sinskey contacted us and named you both as conspirators in a bioterrorism plot on Turkish soil.” He pulled out handcuffs. “You both are coming to headquarters for questioning.”

“I demand an attorney!” the provost shouted.

Thirty seconds later, he and Ferris were shackled, muscled down the gangway, and shoved roughly into the backseat of a black sedan. The sedan raced away, skimming across the tarmac to a remote corner of the airport, where it stopped at a chicken-wire fence that had been cut and pulled apart to allow their car to pass. Once through the perimeter fence, the car bounced across a dusty wasteland of broken airport machinery and came to a halt near an old service building.

The two uniformed men got out of the sedan and scanned the area. Apparently satisfied that they had not been followed, they stripped off their police uniforms and tossed them aside. Then they helped Ferris and the provost out of the car and removed their handcuffs.

The provost rubbed his wrists, realizing that he would not do well in captivity.

“The car keys are under the mat,” one of the agents said, motioning to a white van parked nearby. “There’s a duffel in the backseat with everything you requested—travel documents, cash, prepaid phones, clothing, as well as a few other items we thought you might appreciate.”

“Thank you,” the provost said. “You guys are good.”

“Just well trained, sir.”

With that, the two Turkish men got back into the black sedan and drove off.

Sinskey was never going to let me walk away
, the provost reminded himself. Having sensed as much while flying to Istanbul, the provost had e-mailed an alert to the Consortium’s local branch, indicating that he and Ferris might need an extraction.

“You think she’ll come after us?” Ferris asked.

“Sinskey?” The provost nodded. “Absolutely. Although I suspect she has other concerns at the moment.”

The two men climbed into the white van, and the provost rummaged
through the contents of the duffel, getting their documentation in order. He pulled out a baseball cap and slipped it on. Wrapped inside the cap, he found a small bottle of Highland Park single malt.

These guys are good
.

The provost eyed the amber liquid, telling himself he should wait until tomorrow. Then again, he pictured Zobrist’s Solublon bag and wondered what tomorrow would even look like.

I broke my cardinal rule
, he thought.
I gave up my client
.

The provost felt strangely adrift, knowing that in the coming days the world would be blanketed with news of a catastrophe in which he had played a very significant role.
This would not have happened without me
.

For the first time in his life, ignorance no longer felt like the moral high ground. His fingers broke the seal on the bottle of Scotch.

Enjoy it
, he told himself.
One way or another, your days are numbered
.

The provost took a deep pull on the bottle, relishing the warmth in his throat.

Suddenly the darkness lit up with spotlights and the blue flashing strobes of police cars, which surrounded them on all sides.

The provost looked frantically in every direction … and then sat as still as stone.

No escape
.

As armed Turkish police officers approached the van, rifles extended, the provost took a final sip of Highland Park and quietly raised his hands over his head.

This time, he knew, the officers were not his own.

The Swiss Consulate in Istanbul is located at One Levent Plaza in a sleek, ultramodern skyscraper. The building’s concave, blue-glass facade resembles a futuristic monolith along the skyline of the ancient metropolis.

Nearly an hour had passed since Sinskey had left the cistern to set up a temporary command post in the consulate offices. The local news stations hummed with reports of the panicked stampede at the cistern’s final performance of Liszt’s Dante Symphony. No specifics had been reported yet, but the presence of an international medical team wearing hazmat suits had sparked wild speculation.

Sinskey stared out the window at the lights of the city and felt utterly alone. Reflexively, she reached to her neck for her amulet necklace, but there was nothing to grasp. The broken talisman now lay on her desk in two fractured halves.

The WHO director had just finished coordinating an array of emergency meetings to be held in Geneva in several hours. Specialists from various agencies were already en route, and Sinskey herself planned to fly there shortly to brief them. Mercifully, someone on the night staff had delivered a piping-hot mug of authentic Turkish coffee, which Sinskey had quickly drained.

A young man on the consulate staff peered in her open door. “Ma’am? Robert Langdon is here to see you.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “You can send him in.”

Twenty minutes earlier, Langdon had contacted Sinskey by phone and explained that Sienna Brooks had eluded him, having stolen a boat and fled out to sea. Sinskey had already heard this news from the authorities, who were still searching the area, but so far had come up empty-handed.

Now, as Langdon’s tall frame materialized in the doorway, she barely recognized him. His suit was dirty, his dark hair tousled, and his eyes looked weary and sunken.

“Professor, are you okay?” Sinskey stood up.

Langdon gave her a tired smile. “I’ve had easier nights.”

“Please,” she said, motioning to a chair. “Have a seat.”

“Zobrist’s contagion,” Langdon began without preamble as he sat down. “I think it may have been released a week ago.”

Sinskey gave a patient nod. “Yes, we’ve come to the same conclusion. No symptoms have been reported yet, but we’ve isolated samples and are already gearing up for intensive testing. Unfortunately, it could take days or weeks to get a real grip on what this virus is … and what it might do.”

“It’s a vector virus,” Langdon said.

Sinskey cocked her head in surprise, startled to hear that he even knew the term. “I beg your pardon?”

“Zobrist created an airborne vector virus capable of modifying human DNA.”

Sinskey rose abruptly, knocking her chair over in the process.
That’s not even possible!
“What would ever make you claim such a thing?”

“Sienna,” Langdon replied quietly. “She told me. Half an hour ago.”

Sinskey leaned her hands on her desk and stared across at Langdon with sudden distrust. “She didn’t escape?”

“She certainly
did
,” he replied. “She was free, in a boat speeding out to sea, and she easily could have disappeared forever. But she thought better of it. She came back of her own volition. Sienna wants to help with this crisis.”

A harsh laugh escaped Sinskey’s lips. “Forgive me if I’m not inclined to trust Ms. Brooks, especially when she’s making such a far-fetched claim.”

“I believe her,” Langdon said, his tone unwavering. “And if she claims that this is a vector virus, I think you’d better take her seriously.”

Sinskey felt suddenly exhausted, her mind struggling to analyze Langdon’s words. She moved to the window and stared out.
A DNA-altering viral vector?
As improbable and horrifying as the prospect sounded, she had to admit there was an eerie logic to it. After all, Zobrist was a genetic engineer and knew firsthand that the smallest mutation in a single gene could have catastrophic effects on the body—cancers, organ failure, and blood disorders. Even a disease as abhorrent as cystic fibrosis—which drowns its victim in mucus—was caused by nothing more than a minuscule hiccup in a regulator gene on chromosome seven.

Specialists had now started treating these genetic conditions with rudimentary vector viruses that were injected directly into the patient. These noncontagious viruses were programmed to travel through the patient’s body and install replacement DNA that fixed the damaged sections. This new science, however, like all sciences, had a dark side. The effects
of a vector virus could be either favorable or destructive … depending on the engineer’s intentions. If a virus were maliciously programmed to insert
damaged
DNA into healthy cells, the results would be devastating. Moreover, if that destructive virus were somehow engineered to be highly contagious and airborne …

The prospect made Sinskey shudder.
What genetic horror has Zobrist dreamed up? How does he plan to thin the human herd?

Sinskey knew that finding the answer could take weeks. The human genetic code contained a seemingly infinite labyrinth of chemical permutations. The prospect of searching its entirety in hopes of finding Zobrist’s one specific alteration would be like looking for a needle in a haystack … without even knowing on what planet that particular haystack was located.

“Elizabeth?” Langdon’s deep voice pulled her back.

Sinskey turned from the window and looked at him.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, still seated calmly. “Sienna wanted to destroy this virus as much as you did.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Langdon exhaled, standing now. “I think you should listen to me. Shortly before his death, Zobrist wrote a letter to Sienna, telling her what he had done. He outlined exactly what this virus would do … how it would attack us … how it would achieve his goals.”

Sinskey froze.
There’s a letter?!

“When Sienna read Zobrist’s description of what he had created, she was horrified. She wanted to stop him. She considered his virus so dangerous that she didn’t want
anybody
to gain access to it, including the World Health Organization. Don’t you see? Sienna has been trying to
destroy
the virus … not release it.”

“There’s a letter?” Sinskey demanded, her focus now singular. “With
specifics?
”

“That’s what Sienna told me, yes.”

“We
need
that letter! Having specifics could save us months in understanding what this thing is and knowing how to handle it.”

Langdon shook his head. “You don’t understand. When Sienna read Zobrist’s letter, she was
terrified
. She burned it immediately. She wanted to be sure nobody—”

Sinskey smacked her hand down on the desk. “She destroyed the one thing that could help us prepare for this crisis? And you want me to trust her?”

“I know it’s asking a lot, in light of her actions, but rather than castigating
her, it might be helpful to remember that Sienna has a unique intellect, including a rather startling capacity for recall.” Langdon paused. “What if she can re-create enough of Zobrist’s letter to be helpful to you?”