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Their first night together had been the first step of an incredible journey.

I became more than his lover. I became his disciple.

“Libertà Bridge,” Langdon said. “We’re almost there.”

FS-2080 nodded mournfully, staring out at the waters of the Laguna Veneta, remembering sailing here once with Bertrand … a peaceful image that dissolved now into a horrific memory from a week before.

I was there when he jumped off the Badia tower.

Mine were the last eyes he ever saw.

CHAPTER 67

The NetJets citation Excel bounced through heavy turbulence as it rocketed skyward out of Tassignano Airport and banked toward Venice. On board, Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey barely noticed the bumpy departure as she absently stroked her amulet and gazed out the window into empty space.

They had finally stopped giving her the injections, and Sinskey’s mind was already feeling clearer. In the seat beside her, Agent Brüder remained silent, probably pondering the bizarre turn of events that had just transpired.

Everything is upside down, Sinskey thought, still struggling to believe what she had just witnessed.

Thirty minutes ago, they had stormed the tiny airfield to intercept Langdon as he boarded the private jet he had summoned. Instead of finding the professor, however, they discovered an idling Citation Excel and two NetJets pilots pacing the tarmac and checking their watches.

Robert Langdon was a no-show.

Then came the phone call.

When the cell phone rang, Sinskey was where she had been all day — in the backseat of the black van. Agent Brüder entered the vehicle with a stupefied look on his face as he handed her his phone.

“Urgent call for you, ma’am.”

“Who is it?” she asked.

“He asked me to tell you only that he has pressing information to give you about Bertrand Zobrist.”

Sinskey grabbed the phone. “This is Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey.”

“Dr. Sinskey, you and I have never met, but my organization has been responsible for hiding Bertrand Zobrist from you for the last year.”

Sinskey sat bolt upright. “Whoever the hell you are, you’ve been harboring a criminal!”

“We’ve done nothing illegal, but that’s not—”

“The hell you haven’t!”

The man on the line took a long, patient breath, speaking very softly now. “You and I will have plenty of time to debate the ethics of my actions. I know you don’t know me, but I do know quite a bit about you. Mr. Zobrist has been paying me handsomely to keep you and others away from him for the past year. I am now breaching my own strict protocol by contacting you. And yet, I believe we have no choice but to pool our resources. Bertrand Zobrist, I fear, may have done something terrible.”

Sinskey could not fathom who this man was. “You’re just figuring this out now?!”

“Yes, that is correct. Just now.” His tone was earnest.

Sinskey tried to shake off the cobwebs. “Who are you?”

“Someone who wants to help you before it’s too late. I’m in possession of a video message created by Bertrand Zobrist. He asked me to release it to the world … tomorrow. I think you need to see it immediately.”

“What does it say?”

“Not on the phone. We need to meet.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Because I’m about to tell you where Robert Langdon is … and why he’s acting so strangely.”

Sinskey reeled at the mention of Langdon’s name, and she listened in astonishment to the outlandish explanation. This man seemed to have been complicit with her enemy for the last year, and yet, as she listened to the details, Sinskey’s gut told her she needed to trust what he was saying.

I have no choice but to comply.

Their combined resources made short work of commandeering the “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?”

“Not on the phone,” the man said. “But you should be aware that Robert Langdon is unwittingly traveling with a very dangerous individual.”

“Who?!” Sinskey demanded.

“One of Zobrist’s closest confidants.” The man sighed heavily. “Someone I trusted. Foolishly, apparently. Someone I believe may now be a severe threat.”

As the private jet headed for Venice’s Marco Polo Airport carrying Sinskey and the six soldiers, Sinskey’s thoughts returned to Robert Langdon. He lost his memory? He recalls nothing?The strange news, while explaining several things, made Sinskey feel even worse than she already did about involving the distinguished academic in this crisis.

I left him no choice.

Almost two days ago, when Sinskey recruited Langdon, she hadn’t even let him go back to his house for his passport. Instead, she had arranged for his quiet passage through the Florence Airport as a special liaison to the World Health Organization.

As the C-130 lumbered into the air and pointed east across the Atlantic, Sinskey had glanced at Langdon beside her and noticed he did not look well. He was staring intently at the sidewall of the windowless hull.

“Professor, you dorealize this plane has no windows? Until recently, it was used as a military transport.”

Langdon turned, his face ashen. “Yes, I noticed that the moment I stepped aboard. I’m not so good in enclosed spaces.”

“So you’re pretending to look out an imaginary window?”

He gave a sheepish smile. “Something like that, yes.”

“Well, look at this instead.” She pulled out a photo of her lanky, green-eyed nemesis and laid it in front of him. “This is Bertrand Zobrist.”

Sinskey had already told Langdon about her confrontation with Zobrist at the Council on Foreign Relations, the man’s passion for the Population Apocalypse Equation, his widely circulated comments about the global benefits of the Black Plague, and, most ominously, his total disappearance from sight over the past year.

“How does someone that prominent stay hidden for so long?” Langdon asked.

“He had a lot of help. Professional help. Maybe even a foreign government.”

“What government would condone the creation of a plague?”

“The same governments that try to obtain nuclear warheads on the black market. Don’t forget that an effective plague is the ultimate biochemical weapon, and it’s worth a fortune. Zobrist easily could have lied to his partners and assured them his creation had a limited range. Zobrist would be the only one who had any idea what his creation actually did.”

Langdon fell silent.

“In any case,” Sinskey continued, “if not for power or money, those helping Zobrist could have helped because they shared his ideology. Zobrist has no shortage of disciples who would do anything for him. He was quite a celebrity. In fact, he gave a speech at your university not long ago.”

“At Harvard?”

Sinskey took out a pen and wrote on the border of Zobrist’s photo — the letter Hfollowed by a plus sign. “You’re good with symbols,” she said. “Do you recognize this one?”

H+

“H-plus,” Langdon whispered, nodding vaguely. “Sure, a few summers ago it was posted all over campus. I assumed it was some kind of chemistry conference.”

Sinskey chuckled. “No, those were signs for the 2010 ‘Humanity-plus’ Summit — one of the largest Transhumanism gatherings ever. H-plus is the symbol of the Transhumanist movement.”

Langdon cocked his head, as if trying to place the term.

“Transhumanism,” Sinskey said, “is an intellectual movement, a philosophy of sorts, and it’s quickly taking root in the scientific community. It essentially states that humans should use technology to transcend the weaknesses inherent in our human bodies. In other words, the next step in human evolution should be that we begin biologically engineering ourselves.”