The crowd laughed.
“Dante’s Infernocreated a world of pain and suffering beyond all previous human imagination, and his writing quite literally defined our modern visions of hell.” Langdon paused. “And believe me, the Catholic Church has much to thank Dante for. His Infernoterrified the faithful for centuries, and no doubt tripled church attendance among the fearful.”
Langdon switched the slide. “And this leads us to the reason we are all here tonight.”
The screen now displayed the title of his lecture: DIVINE DANTE: SYMBOLS OF HELL.
“Dante’s Infernois a landscape so rich in symbolism and iconography that I often dedicate an entire semester course to it. And tonight, I thought there would be no better way to unveil the symbols of Dante’s Infernothan to walk side by side with him … through the gates of hell.”
Langdon paced out to the edge of the stage and surveyed the crowd. “Now, if we’re planning on taking a stroll through hell, I strongly recommend we use a map. And there is no map of Dante’s hell more complete and accurate than the one painted by Sandro Botticelli.”
He touched his remote, and Botticelli’s forbidding Mappa dell’Infernomaterialized before the crowd. He could hear several groans as people absorbed the various horrors taking place in the funnel-shaped subterranean cavern.
“Unlike some artists, Botticelli was extremely faithful in his interpretation of Dante’s text. In fact, he spent so much time reading Dante that the great art historian Giorgio Vasari said Botticelli’s obsession with Dante led to ‘serious disorders in his living.’ Botticelli created more than two dozen other works relating to Dante, but this map is his most famous.”
Langdon turned now, pointing to the upper left-hand corner of the painting. “Our journey will begin up there, aboveground, where you can see Dante in red, along with his guide, Virgil, standing outside the gates of hell. From there we will travel downward, through the nine rings of Dante’s inferno, and eventually come face-to-face with …”
Langdon quickly flashed to a new slide — a giant enlargement of Satan as depicted by Botticelli in this very painting — a horrific, three-headed Lucifer consuming three different people, one in each mouth.
The crowd gasped audibly.
“A glance at coming attractions,” Langdon announced. “This frightening character here is where tonight’s journey will end. This is the ninth ring of hell, where Satan himself resides. However …” Langdon paused. “Getting there is half the fun, so let’s rewind a bit … back up to the gates of hell, where our journey begins.”
Langdon moved to the next slide — a Gustave Doré lithograph that depicted a dark, tunneled entrance carved into the face of an austere cliff. The inscription above the door read: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.
“So …” Langdon said with a smile. “Shall we enter?”
Somewhere tires screeched loudly, and the audience evaporated before Langdon’s eyes. He felt himself lurch forward, and he collided with Sienna’s back as the Trike skidded to a stop in the middle of the Viale Machiavelli.
Langdon reeled, still thinking about the gates of hell looming before him. As he regained his bearings, he saw where he was.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
Sienna pointed three hundred yards ahead to the Porta Romana — the ancient stone gateway that served as the entrance to old Florence. “Robert, we’ve got a problem.”
CHAPTER 19
Agent Brüder stood in the humble apartment and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Who the hell lives here?The decor was sparse and jumbled, like a college dorm room furnished on a budget.
“Agent Brüder?” one of his men called from down the hall. “You’ll want to see this.”
As Brüder made his way down the hall, he wondered if the local police had detained Langdon yet. 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 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 we make demands, nobody dares question.
Brüder entered the small office where his man stood over an open laptop and typed in latex gloves. “This is the machine he used,” the man said. “Langdon used it to access his e-mail and run some searches. The files are still cached.”
Brüder moved toward the desk.
“It doesn’t appear to be Langdon’s computer,” the tech said. “It’s registered to someone initialed S.C. — I should have a full name shortly.”
As Brüder waited, his eyes were drawn to a stack of papers on the desk. He picked them up, thumbing through the unusual array — an old playbill from the London Globe Theatre and a series of newspaper articles. The more Brüder read, the wider his eyes became.
Taking the documents, Brüder slipped back into the hall and placed a call to his boss. “It’s Brüder,” he said. “I think I’ve got an ID on the person helping Langdon.”
“Who is it?” his boss replied.
Brüder exhaled slowly. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Two miles away, Vayentha hunkered low on her BMW as it fled the area. Police cars raced past her in the opposite direction, sirens blaring.
I’ve been disavowed, she thought.
Normally, the soft vibration of the motorcycle’s four-stroke engine helped calm her nerves. Not today.
Vayentha had worked for the Consortium for twelve years, climbing the ranks from ground support, to strategy coordination, all the way to a high-ranked field agent. My career is all I have.Field agents endured a life of secrecy, travel, and long missions, all of which precluded any real outside life or relationships.
I’ve been on this same mission for a year, she thought, still unable to believe the provost had pulled the trigger and disavowed her so abruptly.
For twelve months Vayentha had been overseeing support services for the same client of the Consortium — an eccentric, green-eyed genius who wanted only to “disappear” for a while so he could work unmolested by his rivals and enemies. He traveled very rarely, and always invisibly, but mostly he worked. The nature of this man’s work was not known to Vayentha, whose contract had simply been to keep the client hidden from the powerful people trying to find him.
Vayentha had performed the service with consummate professionalism, and everything had gone perfectly.
Perfectly, that was … until last night.
Vayentha’s emotional state and career had been in a downward spiral ever since.
I’m on the outside now.
The disavowal protocol, if invoked, required that the agent instantly abandon her current mission and exit “the arena” at once. If the agent were captured, the Consortium would disavow all knowledge of the agent. Agents knew better than to press their luck with the organization, having witnessed firsthand its disturbing ability to manipulate reality into whatever suited its needs.
Vayentha knew of only two agents who had been disavowed. Strangely, she had never seen either of them again. She had always assumed they had been called in for their formal review and fired, required never to make contact again with Consortium employees.
Now, however, Vayentha was not so sure.
You’re overreacting, she tried to tell herself. The Consortium’s methods are far more elegant than cold-blooded murder.