Inferno (Robert Langdon #4)

Inferno (Robert Langdon #4) Page 43

“My God,” Sienna whispered, gazing out at the throngs of people.

Langdon wasn’t sure whether she was saying this out of fear that Zobrist might have chosen such a heavily populated location to release his plague … or because she sensed that Zobrist might actually have had a point in warning about the dangers of overpopulation.

Venice hosted a staggering number of tourists every year—an estimated one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population—some twenty million visitors in the year 2000. With the additional billion added to the earth’s population since that year, the city was now groaning under the weight of three million more tourists per year. Venice, like the planet itself, had only a finite amount of space, and at some point would no longer be able to import enough food, dispose of enough waste, or find enough beds for all those who wanted to visit it.

Ferris stood nearby, his eyes turned not toward the mainland, but out to sea, watching all the incoming ships.

“You okay?” Sienna asked, eyeing him curiously.

Ferris turned abruptly. “Yeah, fine … just thinking.” He faced front and called up to Maurizio: “Park as close to St. Mark’s as you can.”

“No problem!” Their driver gave a wave. “Two minutes!”

The limo had now come even with St. Mark’s Square, and the Doge’s Palace rose majestically to their right, dominating the shoreline.

A perfect example of Venetian Gothic architecture, the palace was an exercise in understated elegance. With none of the turrets or spires normally associated with the palaces of France or England, it was conceived as a massive rectangular prism, which provided for the largest possible amount of interior square footage in which to house the doge’s substantial government and support staff.

Viewed from the ocean, the palace’s massive expanse of white limestone would have been overbearing had the effect not been carefully muted by the addition of porticos, columns, a loggia, and quatrefoil perforations. Geometric patterns of pink limestone ran throughout the exterior, reminding Langdon of the Alhambra in Spain.

As the boat pulled closer to the moorings, Ferris seemed concerned by a gathering of people in front of the palace. A dense crowd had gathered on a bridge, and all of its members were pointing down a narrow canal that sliced between two large sections of the Doge’s Palace.

“What are they looking at?” Ferris demanded, sounding nervous.

“Il Ponte dei Sospiri,” Sienna replied. “A famous Venetian bridge.”

Langdon peered down the cramped waterway and saw the beautifully carved, enclosed tunnel that arched between the two buildings. The Bridge of Sighs, he thought, recalling one of his favorite boyhood movies, A Little Romance, which was based on the legend that if two young lovers kissed beneath this bridge at sunset while the bells of St. Mark’s were ringing, they would love each other forever. The deeply romantic notion had stayed with Langdon his entire life. Of course, it hadn’t hurt that the film also starred an adorable fourteen-year-old newcomer named Diane Lane, on whom Langdon had immediately developed a boyhood crush … a crush that, admittedly, he had never quite shaken.

Years later, Langdon had been horrified to learn that the Bridge of Sighs drew its name not from sighs of passion … but instead from sighs of misery. As it turned out, the enclosed walkway served as the connector between the Doge’s Palace and the doge’s prison, where the incarcerated languished and died, their groans of anguish echoing out of the grated windows along the narrow canal.

Langdon had visited the prison once, and was surprised to learn that the most terrifying cells were not those at water level, which often flooded, but those next door on the top floor of the palace proper—called piombi after their lead-tiled roofs—which made them torturously hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. The great lover Casanova had once been a prisoner in the piombi; charged by the Inquisition with adultery and spying, he had survived fifteen months of incarceration only to escape by beguiling his keeper.

“Sta’ attento!” Maurizio shouted to the pilot of a gondola as their limo slid into the berth the gondola was just vacating. He had found a spot in front of the Hotel Danieli, only a hundred yards from St. Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace.

Maurizio threw a line around a mooring post and leaped ashore as if he were auditioning for a swashbuckling movie. Once he had secured the boat, he turned and extended a hand down into the boat, offering to help his passengers out.

“Thanks,” Langdon said as the muscular Italian pulled him ashore.

Ferris followed, looking vaguely distracted and again glancing out to sea.

Sienna was the last to disembark. As the devilishly handsome Maurizio hoisted her ashore, he fixed her with a deep stare that seemed to imply that she’d have a better time if she ditched her two companions and stayed aboard with him. Sienna seemed not to notice.

“Grazie, Maurizio,” she said absently, her gaze focused on the nearby Doge’s Palace.

Then, without missing a stride, she led Langdon and Ferris into the crowd.

CHAPTER 70

Aptly named after one of history’s most famed travelers, the Marco Polo International Airport is located four miles north of St. Mark’s Square on the waters of the Laguna Veneta.

Because of the luxuries of private air travel, Elizabeth Sinskey had deplaned only ten minutes earlier and was already skimming across the lagoon in a futuristic black tender—a Dubois SR52 Blackbird—which had been sent by the stranger who had phoned earlier.

The provost.

For Sinskey, after being immobilized in the back of the van all day, the open air of the ocean felt invigorating. She turned her face to the salty wind and let her silver hair stream out behind her. Nearly two hours had passed since her last injection, and she was finally feeling alert. For the first time since last night, Elizabeth Sinskey was herself.

Agent Brüder was seated beside her along with his team of men. None of them said a word. If they had concerns about this unusual rendezvous, they knew their thoughts were irrelevant; the decision was not theirs to make.

As the tender raced on, a large island loomed up to them on the right, its shoreline dotted with squat brick buildings and smokestacks. Murano, Elizabeth realized, recognizing the illustrious glassblowing factories.

I can’t believe I’m back, she thought, enduring a sharp pang of sadness. Full circle.

Years ago, while in med school, she had come to Venice with her fiancé and stopped to visit the Murano Glass Museum. There, her fiancé had spied a beautiful handblown mobile and innocently commented that he wanted to hang one just like it someday in their baby’s nursery. Overcome with guilt for having kept a painful secret far too long, Elizabeth finally leveled with him about her childhood asthma and the tragic glucocorticoid treatments that had destroyed her reproductive system.

Whether it had been her dishonesty or her infertility that turned the young man’s heart to stone, Elizabeth would never know. But one week later, she left Venice without her engagement ring.

Her only memento of the heartbreaking trip had been a lapis lazuli amulet. The Rod of Asclepius was a fitting symbol of medicine—bitter medicine in this case—but she had worn it every day since.

My precious amulet, she thought. A parting gift from the man who wanted me to bear his children.

Nowadays, the Venetian islands carried no romance for her at all, their isolated villages sparking thoughts not of love but of the quarantine colonies that had once been established on them in an effort to curb the Black Death.

As the Blackbird tender raced on past Isola San Pietro, Elizabeth realized they were homing in on a massive gray yacht, which seemed to be anchored in a deep channel, awaiting their arrival.

The gunmetal-gray ship looked like something out of the U.S. military’s stealth program. The name emblazoned across the back offered no clue as to what kind of ship it might be.

The Mendacium?

The ship loomed larger and larger, and soon Sinskey could see a lone figure on the rear deck—a small, solitary man, deeply tanned, watching them through binoculars. As the tender arrived at The Mendacium’s expansive rear docking platform, the man descended the stairs to greet them.

“Dr. Sinskey, welcome aboard.” The sun-drenched man politely shook her hand, his palms soft and smooth, hardly the hands of a boatman. “I appreciate your coming. Follow me, please.”

As the group ascended several decks, Sinskey caught fleeting glimpses of what looked like busy cubicle farms. This strange ship was actually packed with people, but none were relaxing—they were all working.

Working on what?

As they continued climbing, Sinksey could hear the ship’s massive engines power up, churning a deep wake as the yacht began moving again.

Where are we going? she wondered, alarmed.

“I’d like to speak to Dr. Sinskey alone,” the man said to the soldiers, pausing to glance at Sinskey. “If that’s okay with you?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Sir,” Brüder said forcefully, “I’d like to recommend Dr. Sinskey be examined by your onboard physician. She’s had some medical—”

“I’m fine,” Sinskey interjected. “Truly. Thank you, though.”

The provost eyed Brüder a long moment and then motioned to a table of food and drink being set up on the deck. “Catch your breath. You’re going to need it. You’ll be going back ashore very shortly.”

Without further ado, the provost turned his back on the agent and ushered Sinskey into an elegant stateroom and study, closing the door behind him.

“Drink?” he asked, motioning to a bar.

She shook her head, still trying to take in her bizarre surroundings. Who is this man? What does he do here?

Her host was studying her now, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. “Are you aware that my client Bertrand Zobrist referred to you as ‘the silver-haired devil’?”

“I have a few choice names for him as well.”

The man showed no emotion as he walked over to his desk and pointed down at a large book. “I’d like you to look at this.”

Sinskey walked over and eyed the tome. Dante’s Inferno? She recalled the horrifying images of death that Zobrist had shown her during their encounter at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Zobrist gave this to me two weeks ago. There’s an inscription.”

Sinskey studied the handwritten text on the title page. It was signed by Zobrist.

My dear friend, thank you for helping me find the path.

The world thanks you, too.

Sinskey felt a chill. “What path did you help him find?”

“I have no idea. Or rather, until a few hours ago I had no idea.”

“And now?”

“Now I’ve made a rare exception to my protocol … and I’ve reached out to you.”

Sinskey had traveled a long way and was in no mood for a cryptic conversation. “Sir, I don’t know who you are, or what the hell you do on this ship, but you owe me an explanation. Tell me why you harbored a man who was being actively pursued by the World Health Organization.”

Despite Sinskey’s heated tone, the man replied in a measured whisper: “I realize you and I have been working at cross-purposes, but I would suggest that we forget the past. The past is the past. The future, I sense, is what demands our immediate attention.”

With that, the man produced a tiny red flash drive and inserted it into his computer, motioning for her to sit down. “Bertrand Zobrist made this video. He was hoping I would release it for him tomorrow.”

Before Sinskey could respond, the computer monitor dimmed, and she heard the soft sounds of lapping water. Emerging from the blackness, a scene began to take shape … the interior of a water-filled cavern … like a subterranean pond. Strangely, the water appeared to be illuminated from within … glowing with an odd crimson luminescence.

As the lapping continued, the camera tilted downward and descended into the water, focusing in on the cavern’s silt-covered floor. Bolted to the floor was a shiny rectangular plaque bearing an inscription, a date, and a name.

IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER.

The date was tomorrow. The name was Bertrand Zobrist.

Elizabeth Sinskey felt herself shudder. “What is this place?!” she demanded. “Where is this place?!”

In response, the provost showed his first bit of emotion—a deep sigh of disappointment and concern. “Dr. Sinskey,” he replied, “I was hoping you might know the answer to that same question.”

One mile away, on the waterfront walkway of Riva degli Schiavoni, the view out to sea had changed ever so slightly. To anyone looking carefully, an enormous gray yacht had just eased around a spit of land to the east. It was now bearing down on St. Mark’s Square.

The Mendacium, FS-2080 realized with a surge of fear.

Its gray hull was unmistakable.

The provost is coming … and time is running out.

CHAPTER 71

Snaking through heavy crowds on the Riva degli Schiavoni, Langdon, Sienna, and Ferris hugged the water’s edge, making their way into St. Mark’s Square and arriving at its southernmost border, the edge where the piazza met the sea.

Here the throng of tourists was almost impenetrable, creating a claustrophobic crush around Langdon as the multitudes gravitated over to photograph the two massive columns that stood here, framing the square.

The official gateway to the city, Langdon thought ironically, knowing the spot had also been used for public executions until as late as the eighteenth century.

Atop one of the gateway’s columns he could see a bizarre statue of St. Theodore, posing proudly with his slain dragon of legendary repute, which always looked to Langdon much more like a crocodile.

Atop the second column stood the ubiquitous symbol of Venice—the winged lion. Throughout the city, the winged lion could be seen with his paw resting proudly on an open book bearing the Latin inscription Pax tibi Marce, evangelista meus (May Peace Be with You, Mark, My Evangelist). According to legend, these words were spoken by an angel upon St. Mark’s arrival in Venice, along with the prediction that his body would one day rest here. This apocryphal legend was later used by Venetians to justify plundering St. Mark’s bones from Alexandria for reburial in St. Mark’s Basilica. To this day, the winged lion endures as the city’s symbol and is visible at nearly every turn.