Strangely, it was a sign that bore a single word that now stopped Langdon dead in his tracks.
Brüder halted, too, turning. “What’s wrong?”
Langdon pointed.
On the sign, accompanied by a directional arrow, was the name of a fearsome Gorgon — an infamous female monster.
MEDUSA⇒
Brüder read the sign and shrugged. “So what?”
Langdon’s heart was pounding. He knew Medusa was not only the fearsome snake-haired spirit whose gaze could turn anyone who looked at her to stone, but was also a prominent member of the Greek pantheon of subterranean spirits … a specific category known as the chthonic monsters.
She’s pointing the way, Langdon realized, breaking into a run along the boardwalk. Brüder could barely keep up with him as Langdon zigzagged into the darkness, following the signs for Medusa. Finally, he reached a dead end at a small viewing platform near the base of the cistern’s rightmost wall.
There before him was an incredible sight.
Rising out of the water was a colossal carved marble block — the head of Medusa — her hair writhing with snakes. Making her presence here even more bizarre was the fact that her head had been placed on her neck upside down.
Inverted as the damned, Langdon realized, picturing Botticelli’s Map of Helland the inverted sinners he had placed in the Malebolge.
Brüder arrived breathless beside Langdon at the railing, staring out at the upside-down Medusa with a look of bewilderment.
Langdon suspected that this carved head, which now served as a plinth supporting one of the columns, had probably been pillaged from elsewhere and used here as an inexpensive building supply. The reason for Medusa’s inverted position was no doubt the superstitious belief that the inversion would rob her of her evil powers. Even so, Langdon could not shake off the barrage of haunting thoughts that assailed him.
Dante’sInferno. The finale. The center of the earth. Where gravity inverts itself. Where up becomes down.
His skin now prickling with foreboding, Langdon squinted through the reddish haze that surrounded the sculpted head. Most of Medusa’s serpent-infested hair was submerged underwater, but her eyes were above the surface, facing to the left, staring out across the lagoon.
Fearfully, Langdon leaned over the railing and turned his head, letting his gaze follow the statue’s out into the familiar empty corner of the sunken palace.
In an instant, he knew.
This was the spot.
Zobrist’s ground zero.
CHAPTER 92
Agent Brüder lowered himself stealthily, sliding beneath the railing and dropping down into the chest-deep water. As the rush of cool liquid permeated his clothing, his muscles tensed against the chill. The floor of the cistern was slippery beneath his boots, but it felt solid. He stood a moment, taking stock, watching the concentric circles of water rippling away from his body like shock waves across the lagoon.
For a moment Brüder didn’t breathe. Move slowly, he told himself. Create no turbulence.
Above him on the boardwalk, Langdon stood at the railing, scanning the surrounding boardwalks.
“All set,” Langdon whispered. “Nobody sees you.”
Brüder turned and faced the huge upside-down head of Medusa, which was brightly lit by a red spotlight. The inverted monster looked even larger now that Brüder was down at her level.
“Follow Medusa’s gaze across the lagoon,” Langdon whispered. “Zobrist had a flair for symbolism and dramatics … I wouldn’t be surprised if he placed his creation directly in the lethal sight line of Medusa.”
Great minds think alike.Brüder felt grateful that the American professor had insisted on making the descent with him; Langdon’s expertise had guided them almost immediately to this distant corner of the cistern.
As the strains of the Dante Symphony continued to reverberate in the distance, Brüder took out his waterproof Tovatec penlight and submerged it beneath the water, flipping the switch. A bright halogen beam pierced the water, illuminating the cistern floor before him.
Easy, Brüder reminded himself. Don’t disturb a thing.
Without another word, he began his careful journey out into the lagoon, wading in slow motion through the water, moving his flashlight methodically back and forth like an underwater minesweeper.
At the railing, Langdon had begun to feel an unsettling tightness in his throat. The air in the cistern, despite the humidity, tasted stale and oxygen-depleted to him. As Brüder waded carefully out into the lagoon, the professor reassured himself that everything would be fine.
We arrived in time.
It’s all intact.
Brüder’s team can contain this.
Even so, Langdon felt jumpy. As a lifelong claustrophobe, he knew he would be anxious down here under any circumstances. Something about thousands of tons of earth hovering overhead … supported by nothing but decaying pillars.
He pushed the thought from his mind and took another glance behind him for anyone taking undue interest.
Nothing.
The only people nearby were standing on various other boardwalks, and they were all looking in the opposite direction, toward the orchestra. No one seemed to have noticed Brüder slowly wading across the water in this deep corner of the cistern.
Langdon returned his gaze to the SRS team leader, whose submerged halogen beam still oscillated eerily in front of him, lighting the way.
As Langdon looked on, his peripheral vision suddenly picked up movement to his left — an ominous black form rising out of the water in front of Brüder. Langdon wheeled and stared into the looming darkness, half expecting to see some kind of leviathan rearing up from beneath the surface.
Brüder had stopped short, apparently having seen it, too.
In the far corner, a wavering black shape rose some thirty feet up the wall. The ghostly silhouette looked nearly identical to that of the plague doctor who’d appeared in Zobrist’s video.
It’s a shadow, Langdon realized, exhaling. Brüder’s shadow.
The shadow had been cast as Brüder moved past a submerged spotlight in the lagoon, exactly, it seemed, as Zobrist’s shadow had done in the video.
“This is the spot,” Langdon called out to Brüder. “You’re close.”
Brüder nodded and continued inching his way out into the lagoon. Langdon moved along the railing, staying even with him. As the agent moved farther and farther away, Langdon stole another quick glance toward the orchestra to make sure Brüder had not been noticed.
Nothing.
As Langdon again returned his gaze to the lagoon, a glint of reflected light caught his eye on the boardwalk at his feet.
He looked down and saw a tiny puddle of red liquid.
Blood.
Strangely, Langdon was standing in it.
Am I bleeding?
Langdon felt no pain, and yet he frantically began searching himself for some injury or possible reaction to an unseen toxin in the air. He checked his nose for a possible bleed, his fingernails, his ears.
Baffled as to where the blood had come from, Langdon glanced around, confirming that he was indeed alone on the deserted walkway.
Langdon looked down at the puddle again, and this time he noticed a tiny rivulet flowing along the boardwalk and collecting in the low spot at his feet. The red liquid, it seemed, was coming from somewhere up ahead and trickling down an incline in the boardwalk.
Someone is injured up there, Langdon sensed. He glanced quickly out at Brüder, who was nearing the center of the lagoon.