CHAPTER 78
Langdon followed the tanned man through a maze of claustrophobic corridors belowdecks with Dr. Sinskey and the ECDC soldiers trailing behind in a single file. As the group neared a staircase, Langdon hoped they were about to ascend toward daylight, but instead they descended deeper into the ship.
Deep in the bowels of the vessel now, their guide led them through a cubicle farm of sealed glass chambers—some with transparent walls and some with opaque ones. Inside each soundproofed room, various employees were hard at work typing on computers or speaking on telephones. Those who glanced up and noticed the group passing through looked seriously alarmed to see strangers in this part of the ship. The tanned man gave them a nod of reassurance and pressed on.
What is this place? Langdon wondered as they continued through another series of tightly configured work areas.
Finally, their host arrived at a large conference room, and they all filed in. As the group sat down, the man pressed a button, and the glass walls suddenly hissed and turned opaque, sealing them inside. Langdon startled, having never seen anything like it.
“Where are we?” Langdon finally demanded.
“This is my ship—The Mendacium.”
“Mendacium?” Langdon asked. “As in … the Latin word for Pseudologos—the Greek god of deception?”
The man looked impressed. “Not many people know that.”
Hardly a noble appellation, Langdon thought. Mendacium was the shadowy deity who reigned over all the pseudologoi—the daimones specializing in falsehoods, lies, and fabrications.
The man produced a tiny red flash drive and inserted it into a rack of electronic gear at the back of the room. A huge flat-panel LCD flickered to life, and the overhead lights dimmed.
In the expectant silence, Langdon heard soft lapping sounds of water. At first, he thought they were coming from outside the ship, but then he realized the sound was coming through the speakers on the LCD screen. Slowly, a picture materialized—a dripping cavern wall, illuminated by wavering reddish light.
“Bertrand Zobrist created this video,” their host said. “And he asked me to release it to the world tomorrow.”
In mute disbelief, Langdon watched the bizarre home movie … a cavernous space with a rippling lagoon … into which the camera plunged … diving beneath the surface to a silt-covered tile floor on which was bolted a plaque that read IN THIS PLACE, ON THIS DATE, THE WORLD WAS CHANGED FOREVER.
The plaque was signed: BERTRAND ZOBRIST.
The date was tomorrow.
My God! Langdon turned to Sinskey in the darkness, but she was just staring blankly at the floor, apparently having seen the film already, and clearly unable to watch it again.
The camera panned left now, and Langdon was baffled to see, hovering beneath the water, an undulating bubble of transparent plastic containing a gelatinous, yellow-brown liquid. The delicate sphere appeared to be tethered to the floor so it could not rise to the surface.
What the hell? Langdon studied the distended bag. The viscous contents seemed to be slowly swirling … smoldering almost.
When it hit him, Langdon stopped breathing. Zobrist’s plague.
“Stop the playback,” Sinskey said in the darkness.
The image froze—a tethered plastic sac hovering beneath the water—a sealed cloud of liquid suspended in space.
“I think you can guess what that is,” Sinskey said. “The question is, how long will it remain contained?” She walked up to the LCD and pointed to a tiny marking on the transparent bag. “Unfortunately, this tells us what the bag is made of. Can you read that?”
Pulse racing, Langdon squinted at the text, which appeared to be a manufacturer’s trademark notice: Solublon®.
“World’s largest manufacturer of water-soluble plastics,” Sinskey said.
Langdon felt his stomach knot. “You’re saying this bag is … dissolving?!”
Sinskey gave him a grim nod. “We’ve been in touch with the manufacturer, from whom we learned, unfortunately, that they make dozens of different grades of this plastic, dissolving in anywhere from ten minutes to ten weeks, depending on the application. Decay rates vary slightly based on water type and temperature, but we have no doubt that Zobrist took those factors into careful account.” She paused. “This bag, we believe, will dissolve by—”
“Tomorrow,” the provost interrupted. “Tomorrow is the date Zobrist circled in my calendar. And also the date on the plaque.”
Langdon sat speechless in the dark.
“Show him the rest,” Sinskey said.
On the LCD screen, the video image refreshed, the camera now panning along the glowing waters and cavernous darkness. Langdon had no doubt that this was the location referenced in the poem. The lagoon that reflects no stars.
The scene conjured images of Dante’s visions of hell … the river Cocytus flowing through the caverns of the underworld.
Wherever this lagoon was located, its waters were contained by steep, mossy walls, which, Langdon sensed, had to be man-made. He also sensed that the camera was revealing only a small corner of the massive interior space, and this notion was supported by the presence of very faint vertical shadows on the wall. The shadows were broad, columnar, and evenly spaced.
Pillars, Langdon realized.
The ceiling of this cavern is supported by pillars.
This lagoon was not in a cavern, it was in a massive room.
Follow deep into the sunken palace …
Before he could say a word, his attention shifted to the arrival of a new shadow on the wall … a humanoid shape with a long, beaked nose.
Oh, dear God …
The shadow began speaking now, its words muffled, whispering across the water with an eerily poetic rhythm.
“I am your salvation. I am the Shade.”
For the next several minutes, Langdon watched the most terrifying film he had ever witnessed. Clearly the ravings of a lunatic genius, the soliloquy of Bertrand Zobrist—delivered in the guise of the plague doctor—was laden with references to Dante’s Inferno and carried a very clear message: human population growth was out of control, and the very survival of mankind was hanging in the balance.
Onscreen, the voice intoned:
“To do nothing is to welcome Dante’s hell … cramped and starving, weltering in Sin. And so boldly I have taken action. Some will recoil in horror, but all salvation comes at a price. One day the world will grasp the beauty of my sacrifice.”
Langdon recoiled as Zobrist himself abruptly appeared, dressed as the plague doctor, and then tore off his mask. 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. Zobrist began professing his love to someone he called his inspiration.
“I have left the future in your gentle hands. My work below is done. And now the hour has come for me to climb again to the world above … and rebehold the stars.”
As the video ended, Langdon recognized Zobrist’s final words as a near duplicate of Dante’s final words in the Inferno.
In the darkness of the conference room, Langdon realized that all the moments of fear he had experienced today had just crystallized into a single, terrifying reality.
Bertrand Zobrist now had a face … and a voice.
The conference room lights came up, and Langdon saw all eyes trained expectantly on him.
Elizabeth Sinskey’s expression seemed frozen as she stood up and nervously stroked her amulet. “Professor, obviously our time is very short. The only good news so far is that we’ve had no cases of pathogen detection, or reported illness, so we’re assuming the suspended Solublon bag is still intact. But we don’t know where to look. Our goal is to neutralize this threat by containing the bag before it ruptures. The only way we can do that, of course, is to find its location immediately.”
Agent Brüder stood up now, staring intently at Langdon. “We’re assuming you came to Venice because you learned that this is where Zobrist hid his plague.”
Langdon gazed out at the assembly before him, faces taut with fear, everyone hoping for a miracle, and he wished he had better news to offer them.
“We’re in the wrong country,” Langdon announced. “What you’re looking for is nearly a thousand miles from here.”
Langdon’s insides reverberated with the deep thrum of The Mendacium’s engines as the ship powered through its wide turn, banking back toward the Venice Airport. On board, all hell had broken loose. The provost had dashed off, shouting orders to his crew. Elizabeth Sinskey had grabbed her phone and called the pilots of the WHO’s C-130 transport plane, demanding they be prepped as soon as possible to fly out of the Venice Airport. And Agent Brüder had jumped on a laptop to see if he could coordinate some kind of international advance team at their final destination.
A world away.
The provost now returned to the conference room and urgently addressed Brüder. “Any further word from the Venetian authorities?”
Brüder shook his head. “No trace. They’re looking, but Sienna Brooks has vanished.”
Langdon did a double take. They’re looking for Sienna?
Sinskey finished her phone call and also joined the conversation. “No luck finding her?”
The provost shook his head. “If you’re agreeable, I think the WHO should authorize the use of force if necessary to bring her in.”
Langdon jumped to his feet. “Why?! Sienna Brooks is not involved in any of this!”
The provost’s dark eyes cut to Langdon. “Professor, there are some things I have to tell you about Ms. Brooks.”