Inferno Dan Brown

The visitor looked taken aback but acquiesced and listened intently.

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.

The visitor looked taken aback but acquiesced and listened intently.

Saligia is an acronym for: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, and acedia.”

He now flashed on an old adage from early Grecian free divers who hunted lobsters in the coral caves of the Aegean Islands.

...Langdon, and he almost pulled up before gathering himself again and forcing his way deeper into the bazaar. He could see Sienna just ahead, pushing through the masses with adamant force. She clearly was taking this ride to the end … wherever that might be for her. For a moment Langdon wondered why he was...

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.

To her horror, within weeks, she was half bald, having developed symptoms that she self-diagnosed as telegenic effluvium—a stress-related alopecia with no cure other than curing one’s stress.

...gunmetal gray, giving it the distinctly unwelcoming aura of a military vessel. With a price tag of over 300 million U.S. dollars, the craft boasted all the usual amenities—spa, pool, cinema, personal submarine, and helicopter pad. The ship’s creature comforts, however, were of little interest to its owner, who had taken delivery of the yacht five years ago...

...fused tapestry of previous works—primarily Byzantine enamel—all interwoven into a single Gothic frame. Adorned with some thirteen hundred pearls, four hundred garnets, three hundred sapphires, as well as emeralds, amethysts, and rubies, the Pala d’Oro was considered, along with the Horses of St. Mark’s, to be one of the finest treasures in Venice. Architecturally speaking, the word basilica...

“Grazie,” Langdon replied amiably as the guard motioned them all inside. They moved through a small foyer, where the guard disarmed a security system and then unlocked a second, heavier door. As the door swung open, he stepped aside, sweeping his arm out with a flourish. “Ecco il museo!”

Langdon and Sienna now hid anew.

a narrow antechamber that was common in Christian churches and served as an architectural buffer between the divine and the profane.

Believe me, Professor, if I had the plague, I would not be treating it with an over-the-counter antihistamine.”

...bulging, rusticated stonework lent the building an air of unyielding authority that was further accentuated by a powerful repetition of shuttered windows and arch-topped apertures. Traditionally, formal palaces were situated on high ground so that anyone in the gardens had to look uphill at the building. The Pitti Palace, however, was situated...

amazing that this slender structure could remain standing all these centuries, through earthquakes and bad weather, especially knowing how top-heavy it was, with its apex belfry supporting

aphorism “Seek and ye shall find.”

She gave him a slightly appalled glance.

An apparition.

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 Lord works in mysterious ways,” Langdon observed, picturing the twenty or so famous Old Master paintings depicting Saint Lucia carrying her own eyeballs on a platter. While there were numerous versions of the Saint Lucia tale, they all involved Lucia cutting out her lust-inducing eyes and placing them on a platter for her ardent suitor and defiantly declaring: “Here hast thou, what thou so much desired … and, for the rest, I beseech thee, leave me now in peace!”

All Langdon could see in the g l a s s was his own reflection—an ashen stranger, pale and weary, attached

...did little to hide them. Sienna and Langdon were clearly visible here. The thundering footsteps were nearly upon them now, and Langdon knew their assailants would appear on the staircase at any moment, with a direct view down this hall. “I need your jacket,” Sienna whispered as she yanked Langdon’s suit jacket off...

His clothing at the moment, Sinskey had to assume, was his classroom attire—a tweed jacket, khaki slacks, and loafers—which made sense considering the man had essentially been scooped off his campus with no warning.

Zobrist was a man who was attuned to symbolism, and creating a

They work under the auspices of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.”

a Gustave Doré lithograph that depicted a dark, tunneled entrance carved into the face of an austere cliff.

It was enclosed on either side by a phalanx of pruned holm oaks, which had been carefully trained since the 1600s to arch inward over the path, intertwining overhead and providing an awning of foliage.

Not lost on the provost was the fact that cooperating with Sinskey might help mitigate any punitive backlash he might suffer for his inadvertent involvement in this crisis.

“A clever little barb fashioned from a bone.

Waterloo and his exile, the horses were winched down from the Arc de Triomphe and shipped on a barge back to Venice, where they were reinstalled on the front balcony of St.

Ti prego!” she screamed. Outside, a barrage of bullets exploded against the metal exterior of the door. Shouts of alarm filled the hall. Somehow, Langdon’s body was in motion, panic and instinct now overruling his...

Some years later, at the behest of Cosimo I, the room was

...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...

Langdon’s tone was beseeching now.

...hair began fluttering in a hot wind. Our time grows short, she whispered, touching her amulet necklace. Then, without warning, she erupted in a blinding pillar of fire, which billowed across the river, engulfing them both. Langdon shouted, his eyes flying open. Dr. Brooks eyed him with concern. “What is it?”

Ferris blanched slightly.

blared.

“I’ve heard of denial,” Langdon quipped blithely, “but I don’t think it exists.”

With little or no dry land in which to bury the dead, bloated bodies floated in the canals, with some areas so densely packed with corpses that workers had to labor like log rollers and prod the bodies out to sea.

Langdon insisted, bluffing as best as he could.

...portico to observe something outside. Langdon peered through the crowd to the area in front of the palace. The Pitti’s grand entrance was as blunt and unwelcoming as he recalled it. Rather than a manicured lawn and landscaping, the front yard was a vast expanse of pavement that stretched across an entire hillside, flowing...

“Bullshit,” Sienna blurted. Everyone turned and stared at her, including Langdon. “Come on,” she said, smirking coyly at the students as she stroked her blond ponytail. “You’re telling me you guys don’t sneak into the gardens to smoke weed and fool around?”

The brawny soldier in front of the building turned at once to see Langdon and Sienna tearing away, their Trike letting out a high-pitched whine as she opened the throttle.

brazenness.

...favore!” a woman called in accented English. Vayentha turned to see a frilly orange pom-pom waving on a stick as a female tour guide attempted to herd her brood of duckling tourists across the Ponte Vecchio. “Above you is Vasari’s largest masterpiece!” the guide exclaimed with practiced enthusiasm, lifting her pom-pom into the air and...

Sienna yanked the door handle, but it didn’t budge.

I didn’t realize …” Langdon was racked by guilt. Sienna turned away, staring blankly at the bulbous stalagmite on the rear wall. Neither one of them said anything for nearly a minute. Langdon wondered if Sienna remembered the personal items that...

swelled near the top, bulging outward into a massive machicolated battlement.

The engines revved and the limo began cutting through the heavy chop, falling into one of the travel lanes marked by buoys.

...octagonal vault spanned more than eighty feet from side to side. It glistened and shimmered as if it were made of smoldering coals. Its burnished amber-gold surface reflected the ambient light unevenly from more than a million smalti tiles—tiny ungrouted mosaic pieces hand-cut from a glassy silica glaze—which were arranged...

Marta nudged Sienna and whispered, “Obviously, your brother is not interested in any of our other pieces, but as long as you’re here, you shouldn’t miss our bust of Machiavelli or the Mappa Mundi globe in the Hall of Maps.”

cajoling, but threatening.

...gate, there sat a tall hexagonal plinth of carved marble, which resembled a small altar or service table. The exterior was so intricately carved that it resembled a mother-of-pearl cameo. Atop the marble base sat a polished wooden top with a diameter of about three feet. Sienna looked uncertain as she followed Langdon over to it. As they...

THE MORNING SUN had fully risen now, casting long shadows down the narrow canyons that snaked between the

...in nine distinct levels, the Nine Rings of Hell, into which sinners were cast in accordance with the depth of their sin. Near the top, the lustful or “carnal malefactors” were blown about by an eternal windstorm, a symbol of their inability to control their desire. Beneath them the gluttons were forced to lie facedown in a vile...

High above, the morning light filtered down through an oculus in the ceiling, which had once held a giant glass ball filled with water in which bright red carp swam in the sunlight.

... dove in after her, bumping, pushing, craning his neck until he spotted her weaving down the bazaar’s western hallway to his left. Burgeoning casks of exotic spices lined the way—Indian curry, Iranian saffron, Chinese flower tea—their dazzling colors creating a tunnel of yellows, browns, and golds. With every step, Langdon smelled a new...

...he thought a bullet had passed through the door and hit him, but when he looked down, he realized his IV had snapped off in his arm. The plastic catheter poked out of a jagged hole in his forearm, and warm blood was already flowing backward out of the tube. Langdon was now fully awake. Crouched beside...

depicting Cosimo I encircled by cherubs on a heavenly cloud—now showed a jagged dark tear that cut through its center.

I’m Signora Alvarez, she silently chided.

Sienna looked equally surprised and chimed in immediately.

manipulating human stem cells to breeding chimeras … blended species that don’t exist in nature.

choreographed attack scene.”

On his most recent research trip to Venice, St. Mark’s Square had been under a foot of water, and he had walked from the Hotel Danieli to the basilica on wooden planks propped between cinder blocks and inverted buckets.

To the city cistern.”

...against the metal exterior of the door. Shouts of alarm filled the hall. Somehow, Langdon’s body was in motion, panic and instinct now overruling his sedatives. As he clambered awkwardly out of bed, a searing hot pain tore into his right forearm. For an instant, he thought a bullet had passed through the door and hit him, but...

clandestine world that existed behind the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio—a secret

I’m not bothered by—” Sienna began scrubbing violently, and white-hot pain shot up Langdon’s arm. He clenched his jaw to prevent himself from shouting out in protest. “You don’t want an infection,” she said, scrubbing harder now. “B

... possibility, anticipating every response, and molding reality toward the desired outcome. He had an immaculate track record of success and secrecy, and with it came a staggering clientele—billionaires, politicians, sheikhs, and even entire governments. To the east, the first faint light of morning had begun to consume the lowest stars...

...Was that why she was trying to catch my eye earlier? Sienna suddenly skidded to a stop and leaned out over the elegant balustrade, peering down into a cloistered corner of St. Mark’s Square far below. “Damn it,” she said. “We’re higher up than I thought.”

Every time she combed her hair, she noticed that huge clumps were falling out, more hair every day.

...Vegas on the Bosporus, Langdon moaned, powering past. He saw Sienna far ahead, and she was no longer running. She was stopped on the dock in an area cluttered by private powerboats, pleading with one of the owners. Don’t let her aboard! As he closed the gap, he could see that Sienna’s appeal was directed at...

In the cocoon of Zobrist’s embrace, I feel as if everything is right in the world.

How I long for more time … but time is the one commodity even my vast fortunes cannot afford.

...from the arriving police. They hurried through the cortile and past the café, where a buzz was spreading, tourists rubbernecking in an attempt to locate the source of the commotion. Sienna was amazed the authorities had found them so quickly. The drone must have disappeared because it had already spotted us. ...

confection,

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

Now Langdon wondered if he had visited the masterpiece during the last several days, but the only memory he could conjure was that of awakening in the hospital and watching

If he had a deadly disease and knew he was contagious, he wouldn’t be reckless enough to be out infecting the world.”

...Langdon thought. This has to be where Ignazio hid the mask before he died. He recalled Ignazio’s desperate phone message, and for a chilling moment, Langdon pictured the corpulent man clutching his chest, lurching across the piazza into an alley, and making his final phone call after leaving the mask safely inside the baptistry. The gates are...

Langdon stood at the rim of the baptismal font and stared down at the pale yellow death mask, whose wrinkled countenance gazed blankly upward.

The envious must climb with their eyes sewn shut so they cannot covet; the prideful must carry huge stones on their backs to bend them low in a humble manner; the gluttonous must climb without food or water, thereby suffering excruciating hunger; and the lustful must ascend through hot flames to purge themselves of passion’s heat.”

cremated.

Here, with no way out, they hear the sounds of trickling water running through stones beneath them, and they follow the rivulet through cracks and crevices … ultimately finding safety.

instantly cringed.

...alone. “Follow me,” Sienna said, rushing toward a small portable toolshed nestled in the bushes against the stone wall. That’s not a toolshed, Langdon realized, his nose crinkling as they got closer. That’s a Porta-Potty. As Langdon and Sienna arrived outside the construction workers’

administrator had arrived beside him at the grate, immediately covering her mouth in mute terror at the sight below—a crumpled figure surrounded

Culling is God’s Natural Order.

The original Sumerian seals had been carved with rudimentary figures and cuneiform.

Make no mistake about it,” she said. “Zobrist firmly believed that a drastic curbing of the human population will be remembered one day as the ultimate act of heroism …

“Okay, Sienna,” Marta said curtly. “The mask is right this way.”

“Sounds eerily like eugenics,” Langdon replied. The reference made Sinskey’s skin crawl. In the 1940s, Nazi scientists had dabbled in a technology they’d dubbed eugenics—an attempt to use rudimentary genetic engineering to increase the birth rate of those with certain “desirable” genetic traits, while decreasing the birth rate...

The victim’s legs dangled from Satan’s mouth in a way that resembled the flailing legs of the half-buried

Dante’s poem, Langdon was now reminded, was not so much about the misery of hell as it was about the power of the human spirit to endure any challenge, no matter how daunting.

After a dazed beat, he staggered back a step, steadying himself on one of the stanchions.

With wide S-curves that serpentine through lushly wooded landscapes of hedges and deciduous trees, the drive is a favorite among cyclists and Ferrari enthusiasts.

As a species, humans were like the rabbits that were introduced on certain Pacific islands and allowed to reproduce unchecked to the point that they decimated their ecosystem and finally went extinct.

Langdon was barely listening, his thoughts focused squarely on Sienna, who was now faintly visible in profile, climbing deftly up onto the walkway behind the viewing platform, entirely too close to the woman with the gun.

Dejected, Langdon raised his eyes to the ceiling of stalactites hanging ominously overhead.

As they accelerated beneath the graceful expanse of the Ponte degli Scalzi, Langdon smelled the distinctively sweet aroma of the local delicacy seppie al nero—squid in its own ink—which was wafting out of the canopied restaurants along the bank nearby.

In his mind, he again heard the recording of his own delirious mumblings.

It definitely would not be healthy for you to be overwhelmed by a deluge of information all at once.

She gave him a demure smile, adjusted her own sweater, and set out.

“Ah, yes!” the lanky man derided. “And an even bigger army of Catholic missionaries marched in on your heels and told the Africans that if they used the condoms, they’d all go to

For every one person Sienna fed, there were hundreds more who gazed at her with desolate eyes.

...overcrowded, warmer environments. Geneva was more than a thousand feet above sea level, and hardly a suitable place to start a pandemic. No matter how much Zobrist despises me. So the question remained—why was Langdon going there? The American professor’s bizarre travel destination was yet another entry in the growing list of his inexplicable behaviors that...

... with the opportunity to pursue their ambitions a n d desires without consequence; that mankind was sinful in nature was not his problem. Despite his detractors and their ethical objections, the provost’s moral compass was a fixed star. He had built his reputation—and the Consortium itself—on two golden rules. Never make a promise you...

Sienna expertly maneuvered the Trike through each arching curve as they left behind the dingy residential neighborhood and moved into the clean, cedar-laden air of the city’s upscale west bank.

...corrupt politicians in boiling pitch … the hypocrites wearing heavy leaden cloaks … the thieves bitten by snakes … the fraudulent counselors consumed by fire … the sowers of discord hacked apart by demons … and finally, the liars, who are diseased beyond recognition.”

Here, discreetly hidden in the lining, was a large, neatly fashioned pocket.

If Dr. Ferris starts recounting the past few days, he will almost certainly dislodge other memories, and your hallucinations could start all over again.

Langdon strained to connect these disparate elements, but at the moment nothing was making sense.

As the officers neared Vayentha, one of their radios blared—a routine all-points bulletin from dispatch.

...an option. This morning, as he stepped onto the private balcony of his yacht’s stateroom, the provost looked across the churning sea and tried to fend off the disquiet that had settled in his gut. The decisions of our past are the architects of our present. The decisions of the provost’s past had put him in...

Furthermore, he had detected a faint odor to the mask—a familiar scent that divulged why the plaster on the back was so much whiter than the front … and the difference had nothing to do with aging or sunlight.

—the tourist entrance—where a bored-looking docent was smoking a cigarette and rebuffing inquiring tourists by pointing to the sign on the entrance: APERTURA 1300–1700.

...models, and for that reason, he always paid extra to have them sew his initials into the label. On a college campus where hundreds of tweed jackets were constantly doffed and donned in dining halls and classrooms, Langdon had no intention of getting the short end of an inadvertent trade. “I believe you,” she said, taking the jacket...

“My love,” Zobrist continued in a doleful whisper that echoed in the ghostly subterranean cavern in which he spoke. “You are my inspiration and my guide, my Virgil and my Beatrice all in one, and this masterpiece is as much yours as it is mine.

...dei Contratti—the Contracts Fair—at which fathers sold their daughters into a contracted marriage, often forcing them to dance provocatively in an effort to secure higher dowries. This morning, several hundred yards short of the gateway, Sienna had screeched to a stop and was now pointing in alarm. On the back of the Trike, Langdon...

refreshed after having had something to eat and then dozing at the rear of the plane for nearly an hour of much-needed rest.

“I’m in a small hotel called Pensione la Fiorentina,” Langdon said, glancing across the street at the drab hotel that Sienna had pointed out moments ago. He gave Collins the street address. “Got it,” the man replied. “Don’t move.

The wide stone promenade that sat along the water’s edge had been built in the ninth century from dredged silt and ran from the old Arsenal all the way to St. Mark’s Square.

The drug has the serious side effect of causing intense drowsiness, but it enabled me at least to run operations by phone from the back of the van.

“Sounds eerily like eugenics,” Langdon replied. The reference made Sinskey’s skin crawl. In the 1940s, Nazi scientists had dabbled in a technology they’d dubbed eugenics—an attempt to use rudimentary genetic engineering to increase the birth rate of those with certain “desirable” genetic traits, while decreasing the birth rate of those with “less desirable”...

...Mankind, if unchecked, functions like a plague, a cancer … our numbers intensifying with each successive generation until the earthly comforts that once nourished our virtue and brotherhood have dwindled to nothing … unveiling the monsters within us … fighting to the death to feed our young. This is Dante’s nine-ringed hell. This is what awaits. ...

The church was one of the most architecturally eclectic in all of Europe.

Built in the shape of an L, the sprawling complex has eighty-eight vaulted rooms divided into hundreds of stalls, where local merchants zealously hawk a mind-boggling array of edible pleasures from around the world—

Langdon pointed out the window at the commanding edifice in the distance.

To her horror, within weeks, she was half bald, having developed symptoms that she self-diagnosed as telegenic effluvium—a stress-related alopecia with no cure other than curing one’s stress.

Next, in a move that elicited shouts of horror from Mirsat, Langdon placed his palms flat on the tomb and prostrated himself.

“Still meaningless …” “Cer catrova,” Langdon repeated. After a pause, he said the words again, eliding them together. “C

...“in-house,” but Langdon’s escape had left little choice but to enlist local police support and set up roadblocks. An agile motorbike on the labyrinthine streets of Florence would easily elude Brüder’s vans, whose heavy polycarbonate windows and solid, puncture-proof tires made them impenetrable but lumbering. The Italian police had a reputation for being uncooperative with...

Strangely, the only party awaiting their arrival was the driver of a large white van that bore the emblem of a bright red, equal-armed cross.

Admittedly, the color difference was more emphatic than Langdon would have imagined, but this side was most certainly the same age as the front.

Brüder would have preferred to solve this crisis “in-house,” but Langdon’s escape had left little choice but to enlist local police support and set up roadblocks. An agile motorbike on the labyrinthine streets of Florence would easily elude Brüder’s vans, whose heavy polycarbonate windows and solid, puncture-proof tires...

The David’s sheer enormity and defined musculature startled most first-time visitors, and yet for Langdon, it had been the genius of David’s pose that he

...tiny rodlike particles suspended within the panel. Compartmentalization was a cornerstone of the Consortium’s success. Know only your own mission. Share nothing. Now, ensconced in his private space, Knowlton inserted the memory stick into his computer and clicked the file to begin his ...

...a rift between two powerful political factions—the Guelphs and Ghibellines —who had then waged war ruthlessly for centuries against each other. Because the ensuing political feud had brought about Dante’s exile from Florence, the poet had bitterly immortalized the event in his Divine Comedy: O Buondelmonte, through another’s counsel, you fled your wedding...

...away. Langdon, many years ago, while in the throes of researching a book on art history, had paused in this church to leave a note in the basket, entreating Dante’s muse not to grant him true love, but to shed on him some of the inspiration that had enabled Dante to write his massive tome. Sing in...

The envious must climb with their eyes sewn shut so they cannot covet; the prideful must carry huge stones on their backs to bend them low in a humble manner; the gluttonous must climb without food or water, thereby suffering excruciating hunger; and the lustful must ascend through hot flames to purge themselves of passion’s heat.”

“A fitting epithet,” Sienna replied quietly. In years past, Langdon had consulted Ignazio on artifacts and history relating to Il Duomo—the basilica for which he was responsible —but a visit...

...was the result of simple bad luck—the untimely coo of a dove. The provost, however, did not believe in luck. Everything he did was orchestrated to eradicate randomness and remove chance. Control was the provost’s expertise— foreseeing every possibility, anticipating every response, and molding reality toward the desired outcome. He...

erudite,

...weaving, until he finally vaulted over the final guardrail onto the grassy banks of the sea. Although he could still see her, Sienna was a long way ahead, eschewing the taxi stand and idling buses and heading directly for the docks, where Langdon saw all manner of boats moving in and out— tourist barges, water...

The envious must climb with their eyes sewn shut so they cannot covet; the prideful must carry huge stones on their backs to bend them low in a humble manner; the gluttonous must climb without food or water, thereby suffering excruciating hunger; and the lustful must ascend through hot flames to purge themselves of passion’s heat.”

exhilarated to discover that the plague’s death rate of one in three seemed to be the precise ratio required to start winnowing the human population at a manageable rate.”

within a few hours after the attack, can have those memories expunged forever, and the trauma never becomes part of her psyche.

...had contained the modified map of Dante’s inferno, a chilling thought struck him: the eerie little projector had been created by someone … and Bertrand Zobrist—a biochemist and Dante fanatic—now seemed to be a logical candidate. The father of genetic germ-line manipulation. Langdon sensed pieces of the puzzle now falling into place. Regrettably, the picture coming into...

Yes, fertility,” Sienna replied. “Bertrand used the term ‘chthonic monster’ to represent the ominous threat of our own fecundity.

Pushing the thought from his mind, Langdon stepped out onto the narrow board with a feigned self-assurance that he hoped would calm any worries Sienna might secretly be harboring.

filigree in favor of an unusually flamboyant mix of colors, the structure was pure Gothic—classic, robust, and enduring.

With an interior veneer consisting of several million ancient gold tiles, many of the dust particles hovering in the air were said to be actual flecks of gold.

Capitol—a humble reminder that fledgling America had adopted far more from Italy than merely the concept of a republic.

By then with other voice, with other fleece,

The officers barely flinched, but Vayentha’s ears pricked up.

...finally reached the waterfront, he turned left and dashed along the boardwalk, drawing startled looks from tourists who were queued up waiting to board a flotilla of gaudily decorated dinner barges, complete with mosquelike domes, faux-gold flourishes, and blinking neon trim. Las Vegas on the Bosporus, Langdon moaned, powering past. He saw Sienna...

...upside-down legs were falling limp … one by one. Who are you!? he called out in silence. What do you want?! Her luxuriant silver hair began fluttering in a hot wind. Our time grows short, she whispered, touching her amulet necklace. Then, without warning, she erupted in a blinding pillar of fire, which billowed across the...

It was enclosed on either side by a phalanx of pruned holm oaks, which had been carefully trained since the 1600s to arch inward over the path, intertwining overhead and providing an awning of foliage.

“Grazie,” Langdon replied amiably as the guard motioned them all inside. They moved through a small foyer, where the guard disarmed a security system and then unlocked a second, heavier door. As the door swung open, he stepped aside, sweeping his arm out with a flourish. “Ecco il museo!”

Frantic, he shouted back to her across the bloodred river.

...that the sleeve of his Harris Tweed had been tied awkwardly around his arm like a bandage. The remainder of the jacket was dragging behind him on the ground, frayed and filthy. He closed his eyes against his pounding headache, but the blackness engulfed him again. A familiar vision materialized—the statuesque, veiled woman...

The sounds of pandemonium echoed through the darkness as frenzied tourists and musicians shoved their way toward the exit and disappeared up the stairs.

“All cameras out, per favore!” a woman called in accented English. Vayentha turned to see a frilly orange pom-pom waving on a stick as a female tour guide attempted to herd her brood of duckling tourists across the Ponte Vecchio. “Above you is...

She tried to make friends, but her peers immersed themselves in frivolities that held no interest to her.

his three chins gushing a bloody froth

The furniture and artwork were meager at best—as if she had furnished it at a yard sale.

The fuselage bore the inscription WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION.

Most believed the “black” in Black Death was a reference to the darkening of the victims’ flesh through gangrene and subepidermal hemorrhages, but in fact the word black was a reference to the profound emotional dread that the pandemic

As they approached the campanile, they passed a line of caricature artists standing at their easels sketching garish cartoons of tourists

for that faith, Peter garlanded my brow.

...inspect the models of the truss work and then peer through the opening with a flashlight and see the real thing. Now that Langdon was actually inside the garret, he was surprised by how much the truss architecture resembled that of an old New England barn—traditional king post-and-strut assembly with “Jupiter’s arrow point” connections. Sienna had also...

appeared as a wide gash that severed Istanbul in two.

Admittedly, Langdon, on his first trip to Florence, had found the architecture almost gaudy.

Langdon stared at the gaunt face and wild green eyes, realizing that he was finally seeing the face of the man who was at the center of this crisis.

“The Imperial Doorway,” Mirsat whispered, his voice almost giddy with enthusiasm. “I

The gig definitely wasn’t Shakespeare, but her skills with language and memorization meant that instead of feeling like work, acting felt like a sanctuary where Sienna could forget who she was … and be someone else.

This suspended gold dust, combined with the bright sunlight that streamed through the large western window, made for a vibrant atmosphere that helped the faithful attain both spiritual wealth and, provided they inhaled deeply, a more worldly enrichment in the form of gilding their lungs.

At the heart of the skyline, a mountainous dome of red tiles rose up, its zenith adorned with a gilt copper ball that glinted like a beacon.

Gingerly, he reached up with his free arm and touched his scalp, trying to locate the source of his headache.

Langdon knew enough Italian to understand the gist.

...Its burnished amber-gold surface reflected the ambient light unevenly from more than a million smalti tiles—tiny ungrouted mosaic pieces hand-cut from a glassy silica glaze—which were arranged in six concentric rings in which scenes from the Bible were depicted. Adding stark drama to the lustrous upper portion of the room, natural light pierced...

A glimmer of promise, Langdon thought, making his way up the aisle until he was even with the couple.

At the heart of the skyline, a mountainous dome of red tiles rose up, its zenith adorned with a gilt copper ball that glinted like a beacon.

...out her hand for the iPhone, apparently having reconsidered her loan. Langdon barely heard her. In the split second before he had touched the screen, his eye had glossed over a line of text … seeing it a second time. I shall return as poet and put on, at my baptismal font, the laurel crown; ...

Sienna roughly searched Ferris’s pockets and pulled out his wallet and phone, which she slipped into her own pocket, standing over him now with an accusatory glower.

The back of Langdon’s head throbbed, a gnawing pain.

By recording this very message I have succumbed to Pride’s goading pull … eager to ensure that the world would know my work.

The only exit Sienna saw was a vehicle gateway on the left, which was sealed by a massive wrought-iron grate that looked like it dated back to the original palace in the days of marauding

...the mysterious stranger who had summoned her there. The shadowy man paced at the front of the room— a lanky silhouette against the grisly projected image of the naked and dying throngs inspired by Dante’s Inferno. “Someone needs to fight this war,” the figure concluded, “or this is our future.

A recording began to play, and Langdon heard his own groggy voice, repeatedly

Precariously perched on the small seat, Langdon groped at his sides, looking for handgrips or something to steady himself.

Overhead, the grotesque figures depicted in the chamber’s ceiling frescoes seemed to stare down at them mockingly.

...fall gently back to earth and knew they were getting close. They had reached the end of La Cerchiata’s leafy tunnel and dashed across an open lawn into a grove of cork trees. Now they were looking out at the Boboli’s most famous spouting fountain—Stoldo Lorenzi’s bronze of Neptune clutching his three-pronged trident. Irreverently known by...

“I give you Mount Purgatory,” Langdon announced. “And sadly, this grueling, nine-ringed ascent is the only route from the depths of inferno to the glory of paradise.

...in a titanium canister like some kind of bioweapon. As Langdon delicately turned the seal in his fingers, he realized that this one bore an especially gruesome carving—a three-headed, horned Satan who was in the process of eating three different men at once, one man in each of his three mouths. Pleasant....

Security guard Ernesto Russo grumbled in frustration.

Brüder took a quick look down, gave a noncommittal grunt, and then raised his eyes back to the room.

...gone exactly as planned. CHAPTER 4 FOR AN INSTANT, Langdon felt as if time had stopped. Dr. Marconi lay motionless on the floor, blood gushing from his chest. Fighting the sedatives in his system, Langdon raised his eyes to the spike-haired assassin, who was still striding down the hall, covering the last few...

Klimt’s dazzling gold-leaf rendering of intertwined lovers had sparked in him a passion for the artist’s work, and to this day, Langdon credited Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro with arousing his lifelong gusto for modern art.

Strangely, though, her landing was softer than she’d imagined … as if she had been caught by a cloth hammock,

...Malthus, who had famously predicted an eventual global collapse due to overpopulation. Malthus’s biography, much to Knowlton’s alarm, included a harrowing excerpt from his book An Essay on the Principle of Population: The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,...

“Historically, they emerge from the earth and come aboveground to wreak havoc in the human world.”

It seemed unlikely, and yet something told her the police bulletin regarding the Palazzo Vecchio was a cue she should heed.

At the helm, Maurizio studied the line of oncoming cruise liners and then glanced to his left at a canopied dock not far away.

Most believed the “black” in Black Death was a reference to the darkening of the victims’ flesh through gangrene and subepidermal hemorrhages, but in fact the word black was a reference to the profound emotional dread that the pandemic

...light of dawn. I pass behind the palazzo with its crenellated tower and one-handed clock … snaking through the early-morning vendors in Piazza di San Firenze with their hoarse voices smelling of lampredotto and roasted olives. Crossing before the Bargello, I cut west toward the spire of the Badia and come up hard against the iron gate at...

...resembled the one he recalled from his tour. How much Nebbiolo did I drink that day? Rather than a sturdy, tourist-worthy structure, he was looking at a hodgepodge of loose planks that had been laid perpendicularly across the beams to create a rudimentary catwalk—more of a tightrope than a bridge. Apparently, the sturdy tourist walkway that...

“In ancient mythology,” Langdon offered, “a hero in denial is the ultimate manifestation of hubris and pride.

Berlioz, she guessed from the idiosyncratic

The Ebola virus impaired the blood’s ability to coagulate, resulting in unstoppable hemorrhaging.

...a college campus where hundreds of tweed jackets were constantly doffed and donned in dining halls and classrooms, Langdon had no intention of getting the short end of an inadvertent trade. “I believe you,” she said, taking the jacket from him. “Now you look.”

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.

Sinskey’s eyes locked on Brüder, and she could tell that she and the trained SRS agent were picturing the same thing—a dark, humid cavern filled with stagnant water in which a pathogen was incubating.

The large flashlight, still glowing, was resting on the canvas itself, creating a small indentation, like a stone on a trampoline.

...job. And now that day has arrived. Every epic collapse, the provost believed, could be traced back to a single moment—a chance meeting, a bad decision, an indiscreet glance. In this case, he realized, that instant had come almost a dozen years before, when he agreed to hire a young med school student who was looking...

The humid breeze carried on it the strains of Liszt’s Dante Symphony as well as a familiar, yet ineffable scent … that of a massive crush of people congregated together in an enclosed space.

...walled cul-de-sac, stopping abruptly outside the cavern, where it now hovered at a standstill, only ten feet off the ground, facing the grotto, buzzing intensely like some kind of infuriated insect … awaiting its prey. Langdon pulled back and whispered the grim news to Sienna. “I think it knows we’re here.”

Instead of bringing a sense of relief, the revelation infused him with blunt fear.

...the Piazza della Signoria. The building’s unusual single spire, rising off center from within the square fortress, cuts a distinctive profile against the skyline and has become an inimitable symbol of Florence. Built as a potent seat of Italian government, the building imposes on its arriving visitors an intimidating array of masculine statuary. ...

Langdon nodded calmly as he studied the line of text—seven identical letters carefully inscribed in calligraphy across the inside of Dante’s forehead.

“The insidious nature of this virus,” Sienna continued, “is that none of us know it has infected us.

As a student of iconography, Langdon knew that precious few images had the power to instill instantaneous fear in the human mind … but the symbol before him definitely made the list.

For a man accustomed to recalling every intricate detail of what he saw around him, functioning without

...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...

Suddenly the man on her back leaped off her, and the taunting jeers turned to shouts of anger and fear.

“jilted” NetJets Citation Excel. Sinskey and the soldiers were now in pursuit, racing toward Venice, where, according to this man’s information, Langdon and his two traveling companions were at this very moment arriving by train. It was too late to summon the local authorities, but the man on the line claimed to know where Langdon was headed. St. Mark’s Square? Sinskey felt a chill as she imagined the crowds in Venice’s most populated area. “How do you know this?”

...to get his bearings. In front of them, a long hallway ran perpendicular to the alcove. To their left, in the distance, voices echoed up the corridor, calm and jovial. The Palazzo Vecchio, much like the United States Capitol Building, was both a tourist attraction and a governmental office. At this hour, the voices they heard were most likely...

Now, off to his right, Langdon could see the lights of Istanbul, a glistening, horn-shaped peninsula jutting into the blackness of the Sea of Marmara.

...a dozen years before, when he agreed to hire a young med school student who was looking for some extra money. The woman’s keen intellect, dazzling language skills, and knack for improvisation made her an instantaneous standout at the Consortium. Sienna Brooks was a natural. Sienna had ...

She was halfway through the doors when her burka snagged on a latch, halting her in her tracks, wedged in the middle of the doorway, mere inches from freedom.

I never imagined the lauded “genius of genetics” would be so charismatic or beguiling in person. Every time Zobrist glances over at me, his green eyes ignite a wholly unexpected feeling inside me …...

“Here, Dante’s unique face is once again framed by his red cappuccio, but in this instance Botticelli has added a laurel wreath to his cap as a symbol of expertise—

“Um … his brushstrokes are lavish, but his command of the subjunctive seems sparse.”

The text was small, but the dim lighting in the chapel made the illuminated screen more legible.

Vayentha knew it was a long shot, but if Langdon managed to elude Brüder entirely, and if Vayentha could still step in and finish the job, she would single-handedly have saved the day for the Consortium, and the provost would have no choice but to be lenient.

Then, moving with lethal grace, she slipped inside the hotel.

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.

complemented her lithe figure.

The humanoid shadow loomed on the dripping wall—a tall man with a long, birdlike beak.

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.

The man’s lugubrious trudge up the stairs indicated this was a routine response call—nothing like the chaotic search for Langdon at the Porta Romana.

The rhythm of the poem’s lilting terza rima rhyme scheme, along with the hum of the jet engines, had lulled him into a near-hypnotic state.

...set up roadblocks. An agile motorbike on the labyrinthine streets of Florence would easily elude Brüder’s vans, whose heavy polycarbonate windows and solid, puncture-proof tires made them impenetrable but lumbering. The Italian police had a reputation for being uncooperative with outsiders, but Brüder’s organization had significant influence—police, consulates, embassies. When...

... Dr. Brooks grabbed Langdon’s arm and pulled him across the room. The sounds of gunfire and chaos continued in the hallway as Langdon lurched forward on unstable legs. His mind felt alert but his heavily drugged body was slow to respond. Move! The tile floor felt cold beneath his feet, and his...

This was Florence, whose galleries lured millions of travelers to admire Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Leonardo’s Annunciation, and the city’s pride and joy—Il Davide.

If, however, she were unlucky and had underestimated the severity of her employer, she might spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder and wondering if the Consortium was lurking just out of sight.

The visitor stretched out his long legs and made himself at home in the provost’s lushly appointed office.

...them all. The half-buried, upside-down legs were falling limp … one by one. Who are you!? he called out in silence. What do you want?! Her luxuriant silver hair began fluttering in a hot wind. Our time grows short, she whispered, touching her amulet necklace. Then, without warning, she erupted in a blinding pillar of fire,...

Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.

Somehow, the congestion that would be maddening in Boston felt quaint in Venice.

The ponytailed doctor now took his right arm and removed the makeshift bandage that she’d fashioned out of his jacket, which she laid on the kitchen table.

...Venice stood as the shimmering mascot of the city. It was beneath the golden lion, however, that St. Mark’s displayed one of its most famous treasures— four mammoth copper stallions— which at the moment were glinting in the afternoon sun. The Horses of St. Mark’s. Poised as if prepared to leap down at any...

...peered through the crowd to the area in front of the palace. The Pitti’s grand entrance was as blunt and unwelcoming as he recalled it. Rather than a manicured lawn and landscaping, the front yard was a vast expanse of pavement that stretched across an entire hillside, flowing down to the Via dei Guicciardini like a massive paved...

...before it was uploaded to the media tomorrow. The content was irrelevant. Protocol is king. Knowlton still recalled the mantra taught to young facilitators when they started handling tasks for the organization. Don’t ask. Just task. Reluctantly, he placed the little red memory stick in the queue for...

The only exit Sienna saw was a vehicle gateway on the left, which was sealed by a massive wrought-iron grate that looked like it dated back to the original palace in the days of marauding

The furniture and artwork were meager at best—as if she had furnished it at a yard sale.

meandering visitors, but by the time they entered the deepest parts of the cistern, the number of people had thinned to nothing.

...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...

...who had made a vast fortune providing a private menu of covert services along the shadowy fringes of society. He had been called many things—a soulless mercenary, a facilitator of sin, the devil’s enabler—but he was none of these. The provost simply provided his clients with the opportunity to pursue their...

...redirected through four untraceable routers before being connected to his ship. He donned his headset. “This is the provost,” he answered, his words slow and meticulous. “Go ahead.”

In the light of the mezzanine windows, she couldn’t help but notice that Langdon did not look as striking as he had last night.

mingled,

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.

Centuries ago, Europe was in the depths of its own misery—the population huddled, starving, mired in sin and hopelessness.

Spiritual moats, Langdon often called them.

As Maurizio powered the boat closer, Langdon could see that the main square was absolutely mobbed with people.

Maurizio threw a line around a mooring post and leaped ashore as if he

“There’s so much you don’t know, but it’s all moot now.

mortified.

Your memories of the past few days may be muddled or missing, but you should

When he spoke, his voice was muffled … and he spoke with an eerie eloquence … a measured cadence … as if he were the narrator in some kind of classical chorus.

“While you were out, you mumbled something about a plague, which we assumed was on account of your viewing the projector images.

“As it turns out, this phrase points very specifically to a famous mural that hangs in the Palazzo Vecchio—

...the way—Indian curry, Iranian saffron, Chinese flower tea—their dazzling colors creating a tunnel of yellows, browns, and golds. With every step, Langdon smelled a new aroma—pungent mushrooms, bitter roots, musky oils—all wafting through the air with a deafening chorus of languages from around the world. The result was an overwhelming rush of sensory stimuli … set against the...

I’m trying to reach a doctor, but …” There was another long pause, as if il Duomino were mustering his last bit of energy, and then … “Robert, listen carefully.

...the rabbit hole. CHAPTER 46 LA SOFFITTA , LANGDON thought. The most dramatic attic on earth. The air inside the void smelled musty and ancient, as if centuries of plaster dust had now become so fine and light that it refused to settle and instead hung suspended in the atmosphere. The vast...

despite your age and your myopic view of world health.”

Sienna opened the jacket farther to reveal the lining near the nape of the back.

They skirted the perimeter of the museum, trying to stay out of sight among the crowd, many of whom were now looking diagonally across the vast open space of the central nave toward the commotion going on around Ferris.

...gates are open to you. Langdon’s eyes remained fixed on the baptistry as he and Sienna snaked through the crowd. Sienna was moving now with such nimble eagerness that Langdon nearly had to jog to keep up. Even at a distance, he could see the baptistry’s massive main doors glistening in the sun. Crafted of...

Clearly nonplussed by his request, Sienna hurried off to the room’s right-hand wall in search of a map of Armenia.

fortress with a notched parapet and a three-hundred-foot

Marta nudged Sienna and whispered, “Obviously, your brother is not interested in any of our other pieces, but as long as you’re here, you shouldn’t miss our bust of Machiavelli or the Mappa Mundi globe in the Hall of Maps.”

...woman stepped toward him, and the pressure increased exponentially, starting the pain cycle all over again. He staggered backward, trying to pull his arm free, but his legs went numb and buckled beneath him, and he slumped to his knees. The rest happened in an instant. A tall man in a dark suit appeared in the open...

As before, the video began with the soft lapping of water in the eerie water-filled cavern where everything was bathed in a numinous red light.

The ferro’s curved shape represented the Grand Canal, its six teeth reflected the six sestieri or districts of Venice, and its oblong blade was the stylized headpiece of the Venetian doge.

...The man plunged headlong into the water. Moments later, he rose to the surface, sputtering and thrashing wildly, and shouting a string of what were no doubt Turkish obscenities. Sienna seemed detached as she tossed a flotation cushion into the water, moved to the helm of the boat, and pushed the dual throttles forward. The engines...

It talked about the isolation felt by gifted young people whose social skills could not keep up with their intellects and who were often ostracized.

Her long tenure at WHO, combined with her outspoken nature, had earned her a nod recently from a major newsmagazine that listed her among its twenty most influential people in the world.

Sometimes the professor in me can be a little overbearing.”

While admittedly less overtly poetic than Longfellow’s version, Mandelbaum’s translation tended to be far more comprehensible.

“termination age” from twenty-one to thirty, no doubt in an attempt to make the film more palatable to the box office’s crucial eighteen-to-twenty-five demographic. “S

Unlike his vibrant and colorful Primavera or Birth of Venus, Botticelli had crafted his Map of Hell with a depressing palate of reds, sepias, and browns.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a soggy pamphlet.

Most believed the “black” in Black Death was a reference to the darkening of the victims’ flesh through gangrene and subepidermal hemorrhages, but in fact the word black was a reference to the profound emotional dread that the pandemic

The sirens and pandemonium that Langdon expected never came.

Even now, at sixty-one years old, she still felt a pang of hollowness every time she saw a mother and infant.

fortress with a notched parapet and a three-hundred-foot

With the fury of a wildfire consuming a parched hay field, the rush of fear billowed out across the piazza until the entire crowd was craning their necks, looking upward, and pointing.

Zobrist may be a pariah in the medical community, but he probably has a legion of devout fans of his ideology—people who agree that a culling is a necessary evil to save the planet.

He led her down a pathway that curled into an enclosed hollow—a “room,” in the parlance of landscape architecture—where there were some faux-bois benches and a small fountain. The air beneath the trees was decidedly colder. Langdon took the projector from his pocket and began shaking it. “S

The crimson stone parquet was overlaid with a black grid, giving the twelve-thousand-square-foot expanse an air of solidity, depth, and balance.

RAIN WAS NOW pelting the ancient dome of Hagia Sophia.

Along the pathway, naked figures trudged upward in misery, enduring various penances on the way.

At the angel’s feet, a line of penitent sinners awaited admittance to the upward path.

Precariously perched on the small seat, Langdon groped at his sides, looking for handgrips or something to steady himself.

murder, and the rest—will begin percolating … rising up to the surface of humanity, amplified by our evaporating comforts.

“That long-beaked mask,” Langdon said, “was worn by medieval plague doctors to keep the pestilence far from their nostrils while treating the infected.

Langdon had been mesmerized by Michelangelo’s David when he first saw it as a teenager … entering the Accademia delle Belle Arti … moving slowly through the somber phalanx of Michelangelo’s crude Prigioni … and then feeling his gaze dragged upward,

coincidence of Sienna’s “neighbor” having clothing that fit him perfectly. The entire thing had been staged. Even the desperate phone call from Sienna’s friend at the hospital had been phony. Sienna, eez Danikova! “When you phoned the U.S.

The only reason their Red Bulls soccer team was having any success on the world stage was that they’d pilfered one of Europe’s best coaches.

placard on the wall.

In this portrait, as in nearly all depictions, he wears on his head a red cappuccio—a tight-fitting, plaited hood with earflaps—which, along with his crimson Lucca robe, has become the most widely reproduced image of Dante.”

Langdon had first been inside Lo Studiolo during a private secret passages tour of the palazzo a few years back and had been stunned to learn about the plethora of hidden doors, stairs, and passageways that honeycombed the palazzo, including several hidden behind paintings inside Lo Studiolo.

ensconced themselves on the far side of the statue’s narrow plinth, where they now waited, staring back at the single

“The rest of the text is very strange,” Langdon said, again rotating the mask and reading inward. “It talks about … severing the heads from horses … plucking up the bones of the blind.”

Langdon’s head was throbbing again as he frantically plumbed the depths of his memory.

...future hurls herself toward us, fueled by the unyielding mathematics of Malthus, we teeter above the first ring of hell … preparing to plummet faster than we ever fathomed. Knowlton paused the video. The mathematics of Malthus? A quick Internet search led him to information about...

“My boat, she is the fastest in all of Venezia …” As Langdon and the others settled into plush seats in the open-air stern, Maurizio reversed the boat’s Volvo Penta motor, expertly backing away from the bank. Then he spun the wheel to the right and gunned the engines forward, maneuvering his large craft through a throng of gondolas, leaving a number of stripe-shirted gondolieri shaking their fists as their sleek black crafts bobbed up and down in his wake. “S

...pretended to be whatever receptionist or contact the illusion required. The provost, however, had never wasted his time with such petty artifice. He dealt solely with large-scale deception, plying his trade for those who could afford to pay millions of dollars in order to receive the best service. Governments. Major corporations. The occasional ultrawealthy VIP....

portentously.

arched gently in from either side, creating a canopy that framed the distant building—a huge, faded yellow structure with a triple portico and an expansive oval lawn.

“Dr. Sinskey,” a portly female receptionist greeted her. “This way, please.

You think these public fire alarms are active when a single prankster could

While she prattled on beside him about how terrible she would feel if she lost her iPhone, Langdon pulled up Google’s search window and pressed the microphone button.

preamble,

The precarious planking on which they were walking led directly to a much sturdier structure with guardrails.

“Primum non nocere,” Sinskey whispered with a nod, repeating the fundamental precept of medical ethics: First, do no harm. “L

unsteady at the precipice.

Her tone was firmer now, conjuring memories of the articles Langdon had just read about her intellect and precocious childhood.

...underworld now projected on her kitchen wall. Dante’s vision of hell, Langdon t ho ug ht , rendered here in living color. Exalted as one of the preeminent works of world literature, the Inferno was the first of three books that made up Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy—a 14,233-line epic poem describing Dante’s brutal descent into the underworld,...

“That’s preposterous!”

...an author, philosopher, futurist, and forefather of the Transhumanist movement. Born in 1930, he was credited with introducing Transhumanist philosophy to the multitudes, as well as presciently predicting in vitro fertilization, genetic engineering, and the globalization of civilization. According to Wikipedia, Esfandiary’s boldest claim...

The officers barely flinched, but Vayentha’s ears pricked up.

dell’Inferno, had already revealed his proclivity for collaborating with the masters and modifying great works of art to suit his needs.

You must keep it hidden until …” He paused, suddenly lost in thought. “Until when?” the provost prodded. The man stood abruptly and walked over behind the provost’s desk, grabbing a red marker and frantically circling a date on the provost’s personal desk calendar. “Until this day.”

a narrow antechamber that was common in Christian churches and served as an architectural buffer between the divine and the profane.

The wide stone promenade that sat along the water’s edge had been built in the ninth century from dredged silt and ran from the old Arsenal all the way to St. Mark’s Square.

She pointed now to a writhing pair of legs, which protruded upside down from the earth, apparently belonging to some poor soul who had been buried headfirst to his waist.

disturbing, it was the painting’s provenance that was now causing Langdon an increasing disquiet.

‘When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere … the world will purge itself.’

...was once the site of the Fiera dei Contratti—the Contracts Fair—at which fathers sold their daughters into a contracted marriage, often forcing them to dance provocatively in an effort to secure higher dowries. This morning, several hundred yards short of the gateway, Sienna had screeched to a stop and was now pointing in alarm....

“You see the metal design on the front?” he called over his shoulder, motioning to the elegant ornament protruding from the bow. “It’s the only metal on a gondola—called ferro di prua—the iron of the prow.

It was enclosed on either side by a phalanx of pruned holm oaks, which had been carefully trained since the 1600s to arch inward over the path, intertwining overhead and providing an awning of foliage.

“invisible” for a while so he could pursue an endeavor far from prying eyes. Child’s play. The Consortium would accomplish this by providing him a fake identity and a secure location, entirely off the grid, where he could do his...

Puck.

He looked down and saw a tiny puddle of red liquid.

Nearby, a staircase rose up to an orator’s pulpit, which resembled the kind from which Christian sermons are delivered, but in fact was a minbar, the holy platform from which an imam leads Friday services.

Not lost on the provost was the fact that cooperating with Sinskey might help mitigate any punitive backlash he might suffer for his inadvertent involvement in this crisis.

‘When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere … the world will purge itself.’

The client had clearly intended the purloined object to be his final insult to

I am a purveyor of disinformation.

Her shouts of desperation pierced the putrid air, clearly audible over the sounds of the tortured and dying, who thrashed in agony as far as the eye could see.

—quaranta in Italian—served as a grim reminder of the origins of the word quarantine.

Similar to Vatican City’s famed Passetto, the Vasari Corridor was the quintessential secret passageway.

“I’ve heard of denial,” Langdon quipped blithely, “but I don’t think it exists.”

They were as a congested forest, suffocated by deadwood, awaiting God’s lightning strike—the spark that would finally ignite the fire that would rage across the land and clear the deadwood, once again bringing sunshine to the healthy roots.

“I’ll leave your clothes on the doorknob,” Sienna said, her voice ragged with emotion. “Thank you so much,” Langdon replied. “When you’re done, please come out to the kitchen,” she added. “There’s something important I need to show you before we call anyone.”

Langdon suddenly felt a ghostly pall envelop him, as if the long fingers of an unseen hand were reaching out of the earth and raking his flesh.

market, but the butchers were banished in 1593 after the rancid odor of spoiled meat had wafted up into

Langdon hoped his rapport with the audience would be better.

...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. ...

Langdon forced his aching mind to reel back to the last images he could recall—cold and dark—

If you want the oceans to replenish their fish, you need fewer people eating fish!”

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.

retrograde amnesia, which is very common in head trauma.

A single shot rang out, ricocheting off the Trike’s back fender, barely missing the base of Langdon’s spine.

It’s the kind of situation that would be ripe for slavery or ethnic cleansing.”

Here, with no way out, they hear the sounds of trickling water running through stones beneath them, and they follow the rivulet through cracks and crevices … ultimately finding safety.

When he finally stepped onstage, Langdon received a rousing round of applause from a crowd that was standing room only.

It was rendered in ruddy shades of brown

...After locking her helmet to the bike, she strode out onto the bridge and mixed with the early-morning tourists. A cool March breeze blew steadily up the river, ruffling Vayentha’s short spiked hair, reminding her that Langdon knew what she looked like. She paused at the stall of one of the bridge’s many vendors and...

rummaged through the contents of the

By all appearances, Sienna Brooks had risked her own life in order to sabotage the WHO’s containment

Having sapped everything possible from their environment, the algae quickly die and disappear without a trace.”

...the ground. Langdon turned his gaze to the center of the crypt, where a lone light burned at St. Mark’s tomb. The basilica’s namesake rested in a stone sarcophagus behind an altar, before which there were lines of pews for those lucky few invited to worship here at the heart of Venetian Christendom. A tiny light suddenly...

reappeared, now with a look of deepening suspicion at the sight of Langdon sauntering off to snoop at a locked door.

Do savants follow each other’s work?

She thought a moment and then headed back to the storeroom for a scalpel and a stitch kit.

threateningly at the others, whipping her bloody knife through the air until the three men scampered off.

Sienna shouted at them, her tone scathing.

caused confusion among tourists, and sure enough, just then a chunky woman in a Juicy Couture sweat suit pushed through the crowd, glanced at the placard, frowned at the wrought-iron gate, and scoffed,

His clothing at the moment, Sinskey had to assume, was his classroom attire—a tweed jacket, khaki slacks, and loafers—which made sense considering the man had essentially been scooped off his campus with no warning.

“That’s an ancient—” “ T h e whole back side has text!” she announced as she scoured the inside of the mask. “And it’s written in …” She paused, cocking her head to the left and rotating the mask to the right, as if trying to read sideways. “Written

Langdon’s gasp of revelation was audible, and Marta scowled at him, apparently thinking he was being overly dramatic in an attempt to frighten his sister.

... I AM THE Shade. Through the dolent city, I flee. Through the eternal woe, I take flight. Along the banks of the river Arno, I scramble, breathless … turning left onto Via dei Castellani, making my way northward, huddling in the shadows of the Uffizi. And still they pursue me. Their footsteps grow...

Scrawled across the top of the playbill was a handwritten message in Magic Marker: Sweetheart, never forget you’re a miracle.

It was followed by a staccato burst of screeching tires and car doors slamming.

A man in scrubs hurried in, apparently alerted by Langdon’s racing heart monitor.

While the faithful scurried to mosques, the rest of the city carried on

unmechanical tapestry of human voices, cooing pigeons, and lilting violins serenading patrons at the outdoor cafés.

He knew he needed to stay serene if he was going to keep his intentions hidden.

With wide S-curves that serpentine through lushly wooded landscapes of hedges and deciduous trees, the drive is a favorite among cyclists and Ferrari enthusiasts.

When the men seized her and dragged her inside a little shack, Sienna had no illusions about what was going to happen, and the terror was all-consuming.

“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,...

The struts were large—each consisting of numerous beams strapped together with wide iron clasps into a single powerful sheaf—plenty large enough to balance on.

an ancient skin to sheathe a modern electronic toy.

Even the mere thought of being up there made him shiver, and he put his head back down and continued through the sea of humanity.

It was at that moment that the drone’s shrill whine stopped.

shudder.

As a child, she had shunned her given name, Felicity, in favor of her middle name, Sienna.

simmering beneath the bloodred waters of the lagoon that reflects no stars.

...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...

evaporating the moment she left the stage on opening night and faced throngs of wide-eyed media people while her costars quietly skulked out the back door unnoticed.

He motioned to the curb, where a valet had just delivered a slick, silver Bentley.

Slithering from the ears of Satan were two massive, writhing snakes, also in the process of consuming sinners, giving the impression that Satan had three heads, exactly as Dante described him in the final canto

“Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.”

... As the group migrated toward the police at the Porta Romana, Sienna fell into conversation with the students while Langdon merged to the middle of the group, slouching low, trying to stay out of sight. Seek and ye shall find, Langdon thought, his pulse racing with excitement as he pictured the ten ditches of the Malebolge....

...a blur … descending stairs … stumbling … falling. The pounding in Langdon’s head was almost unbearable. His vision seemed even more blurry now, and his muscles were sluggish, each movement feeling like a delayed reaction. And then the air grew cold. I’m outside. As Dr. Brooks hustled him along a dark alley away from...

“Bullshit,” Sienna blurted. Everyone turned and stared at her, including Langdon. “Come on,” she said, smirking coyly at the students as she stroked her blond ponytail. “You’re telling me you guys don’t sneak into the gardens to smoke weed and fool around?”

The guy with the tattoos now looked utterly smitten.

Here in this sunken palace, Inferno smolders beneath the waters.

The American professor looked as if he had just been snatched up off the ground by a tornado, spun around, and dumped in a foreign land, leaving him shell-shocked and disoriented.

The man gave a derisive sneer.

A tattooed kid puffed coolly on a cigarette and snidely replied, “Non parliamo italiano.”

Think about the tiny snippets you do remember—the silver-haired woman,

I’ve got to stop being such a snob about leather-bound books, he reminded himself.

reappeared, now with a look of deepening suspicion at the sight of Langdon sauntering off to snoop at a locked door.

Manila had six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and a horrifying sex trade, whose workers consisted primarily of young children, many of whom had been sold to pimps by parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would be fed.

...dei Cavalieri, the young man with whom Michelangelo had been in love for much of his life and to whom he composed over three hundred sonnets. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” Sienna whispered beside him, her voice suddenly quiet and reverent. “This is … beautiful.”

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...

Langdon had no idea what germ-line manipulation was, but it had an ominous ring, especially in light of the recent spate of images involving plagues and death.

The stunning array of individual scenes had spawned over the centuries something of a popularity contest among artists and art historians,

The font had a vertical central spindle that rose halfway up and flattened into a kind of small metal platter just above the water.

The warm sweat rolling onto Sienna’s back from above suddenly began gushing … spilling onto the mattress in splatters of red.

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.

Sinskey’s eyes locked on Brüder, and she could tell that she and the trained SRS agent were picturing the same thing—a dark, humid cavern filled with stagnant water in which a pathogen was incubating.

He looks out over the empty hall—only a dozen or so stalwart fans

We’d have full-scale panic and a stampede.”

We ask that you please stay outside the stanchions.”

The opening stanza of the work was written in large calligraphy, taking up the entire first page.

...baptism—although Langdon felt a rising hope that Dante’s death mask, through the unlikely series of events that had occurred last night, had finally found its way back in his stead. The baptistry, Langdon thought. This has to be where Ignazio hid the mask before he died. He recalled Ignazio’s desperate phone message, and for a chilling moment,...

The stench of death returned.

Then, very gently and methodically, he surveyed his sterile surroundings.

The statue before them depicted an obese, naked dwarf straddling a giant turtle.

“This is Dante’s hellish ferryman, Charon, beating straggling passengers with an oar.”

“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.”

A shroud of stubble obscured his jaw.

... The sudden motion made Langdon dizzy; he sensed that he could pass out at any moment. The next fifteen seconds were a blur … descending stairs … stumbling … falling. The pounding in Langdon’s head was almost unbearable. His vision seemed even more blurry now, and his muscles were sluggish, each movement feeling like a delayed...

...Mendacium was, in effect, the portable office building from which the owner ran his empire. Known to his employees only as “the provost,” he was a tiny, stunted man with tanned skin and deep-set eyes. His unimposing physique and direct manner seemed well suited to one who had made a vast fortune providing a private menu of...

His ankle rolled, and Langdon lurched forward, half stumbling, half running, trying to make a quick stutter step to regain his balance.

Only intensifying the dramatic appearance of their rippling skin was the sumptuous, golden-green verdigris that entirely covered their surface.

Sometimes accused of offering “an embarrassing surfeit of ingress,” the building’s lower facade was almost entirely taken up by a phalanx of five recessed entrances whose clustered columns, vaulted archways, and gaping bronze doors arguably made...

afforded their priests easy access to e m e r g e n c y swaddling cloths—the unpredictability of infants’ bladders a universal risk of christenings.

He turned now to his left, where a narrow ascending staircase was blocked by a chain swag.

...overhead. Her eyes turned instinctively skyward, and she spotted it at once—a small remote-controlled helicopter rising fast over the palace and swooping down over the treetops in the direction of the northeast corner of the Boboli Gardens. A surveillance drone, Vayentha thought with a surge of hope. If it’s in...

“This museum,” Mirsat explained, “in an effort to remind visitors of the diverse uses of this sacred space, displays in tandem both the Christian iconography, from the days when Hagia Sophia was a basilica, and the Islamic iconography, from its days as a mosque.”

Behind it, the tapered spire of the Badia tower rose above the surrounding structures.

As Langdon replaced the photo on the stack of books, he noticed with surprise the yellow booklet on top—a tattered playbill from the London Globe Theatre.

‘When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere … the world will purge itself.’

One of its fundamental tenets is that we as humans have a moral obligation

To the left of the plaque, barely visible on the lagoon floor, lay a limp tether.

“La polizia arriverà tra venti minuti!” the guard told Marta as he hung up with the police. “Venti minuti?!” she demanded. Twenty minutes?! “We’ve had a major art theft!”

Her shouts of desperation pierced the putrid air, clearly audible over the sounds of the tortured and dying, who thrashed in agony as far as the eye could see.

...or helping them find their true love, or even giving them the strength to forget a love who had passed away. Langdon, many years ago, while in the throes of researching a book on art history, had paused in this church to leave a note in the basket, entreating Dante’s muse not to grant him true love, but...

...guests excuse themselves to get back to reality. By midnight, I am seated all alone with Bertrand Zobrist. “Thank you for tonight,” I say to him, a little tipsy from one drink too many. “You’re an amazing teacher.”

Then she toddled off before anyone could explain.

Slender and smooth, the polished metal cylinder was about six inches long and rounded at both ends, like a miniature torpedo.

His suit was dirty, his dark hair tousled, and his eyes looked weary and sunken.

Sienna asked, her voice now tremulous.

Triage is always a messy process.

Stairs,” she said, and Langdon realized they had reached a side entrance of the building. Langdon gripped the railing and trudged dizzily upward, one step at a time. His body felt ponderous. Dr. Brooks physically pushed him now. When they reached the landing, she typed some numbers into...

She knew NetJets took customer privacy very seriously, and yet this alert trumped all of their corporate privacy regulations.

For Langdon, seeing these four stallions perfectly maintained despite their tumultuous past was always a reminder of the importance of preserving great art.

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.

Under Medici tutelage,

Here, tethered to the floor by a short filament, was an undulating sphere of thin plastic.

For the first time ever, I feel a yearning unfettered by shame.

...Italian mainland, he felt uncharacteristically on edge. One year ago, on this very yacht, he had made a decision whose ramifications now threatened to unravel everything he had built. I agreed to provide services to the wrong man. There had been no way the provost could have known at the time, and yet now...

Your eyes are mournful, and yet in them I sense a veneration for what I have accomplished.

A stone’s throw across the canal, the iconic verdigris cupola of San Simeone Piccolo rose into the afternoon sky.

The cramped space was nothing more than a converted vestment chamber with a bank of whirring hard drives and computer monitors.

His reaction was visceral and immediate; he placed the tube on the table and slid back his chair.

Brüder and his men dashed along the walkway toward the second door while the surveillance drone circled like a vulture overhead.