Inferno (24 page)

This morning, however, Langdon and Sienna were moving through the corridor at a run, eager to put as much distance as possible between themselves and their pursuers at the other end. Langdon wondered how long it would take for the bound guard to be discovered. As the tunnel stretched out before them, Langdon sensed it leading them closer with every step to what they were searching for.

Cerca trova … the eyes of death … and an answer as to who is chasing me
.

The distant whine of the surveillance drone was far behind them
now. The farther they progressed into the tunnel, the more Langdon was reminded of just how ambitious an architectural feat this passageway had been. Elevated above the city for nearly its entire length, the Vasari Corridor was like a broad serpent, snaking through the buildings, all the way from the Pitti Palace, across the Arno, into the heart of old Florence. The narrow, whitewashed passageway seemed to stretch for eternity, occasionally turning briefly left or right to avoid an obstacle, but always moving east … across the Arno.

The sudden sound of voices echoed ahead of them in the corridor, and Sienna skidded to a stop. Langdon halted, too, and immediately placed a calm hand on her shoulder, motioning to a nearby viewing portal.

Tourists down below
.

Langdon and Sienna moved to the portal and peered out, seeing that they were currently perched above the Ponte Vecchio—the medieval stone bridge that serves as a pedestrian walkway into the old city. Below them, the day’s first tourists were enjoying the market that has been held on the bridge since the 1400s. Today the vendors are mostly goldsmiths and jewelers, but that has not always been the case. Originally, the bridge had been home to Florence’s vast, open-air meat market, but the butchers were banished in 1593 after the rancid odor of spoiled meat had wafted up into the Vasari Corridor and assaulted the delicate nostrils of the grand duke.

Down there on the bridge somewhere, Langdon recalled, was the precise spot where one of Florence’s most infamous crimes had been committed. In 1216, a young nobleman named Buondelmonte had rejected his family’s arranged marriage for the sake of his true love, and for that decision he was brutally killed on this very bridge.

His death, long considered “Florence’s bloodiest murder,” was so named because it had triggered 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 pledge, and brought such evil!

To this day, three separate plaques—each quoting a different line from Canto 16 of Dante’s
Paradiso
—could be found near the murder site. One of them was situated at the mouth of the Ponte Vecchio and ominously declared:

Langdon raised his eyes now from the bridge to the murky waters it spanned. Off to the east, the lone spire of the Palazzo Vecchio beckoned.

Even though Langdon and Sienna were only halfway across the Arno River, he had no doubt they had long since passed the point of no return.

Thirty feet below, on the cobblestones of the Ponte Vecchio, Vayentha anxiously scanned the oncoming crowd, never imagining that her only redemption had, just moments before, passed directly overhead.

Deep in the bowels of the anchored vessel
The Mendacium
, facilitator Knowlton sat alone in his cubicle and tried in vain to focus on his work. Filled with trepidation, he had gone back to viewing the video and, for the past hour, had been analyzing the nine-minute soliloquy that hovered somewhere between genius and madness.

Knowlton fast-forwarded from the beginning, looking for any clue he might have missed. He skipped past the submerged plaque … past the suspended bag of murky yellow-brown liquid … and found the moment that the beak-nosed shadow appeared—a deformed silhouette cast upon a dripping cavern wall … illuminated by a soft red glow.

Knowlton listened to the muffled voice, attempting to decipher the elaborate language. About halfway through the speech, the shadow on the wall suddenly loomed larger and the sound of the voice intensified.

Knowlton paused the video.
The mathematics of Malthus?
A quick Internet search led him to information about a prominent nineteenth-century English mathematician and demographist named Thomas Robert
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
:

With his heart pounding, Knowlton glanced back at the paused image of the beak-nosed shadow.

Mankind, if unchecked, functions like a cancer
.

Unchecked
. Knowlton did not like the sound of that.

With a hesitant finger, he started the video again.

The muffled voice continued.

The Palazzo Vecchio resembles a giant chess piece. With its robust quadrangular facade and rusticated square-cut battlements, the massive rooklike building is aptly situated, guarding the southeast corner of 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. Ammannati’s muscular
Neptune
stands naked atop four sea horses, a symbol of Florence’s dominance in the sea. A replica of Michelangelo’s
David
—arguably the world’s most admired male nude—stands in all his glory at the palazzo entrance.
David
is joined by
Hercules
and
Cacus
—two more colossal naked men—who, in concert with a host of Neptune’s satyrs, bring to more than a dozen the total number of exposed penises that greet visitors to the palazzo.

Normally, Langdon’s visits to the Palazzo Vecchio had begun here on the Piazza della Signoria, which, despite its overabundance of phalluses, had always been one of his favorite plazas in all of Europe. No trip to the piazza was complete without sipping an espresso at Caffè Rivoire, followed by a visit to the Medici lions in the Loggia dei Lanzi—the piazza’s open-air sculpture gallery.

Today, however, Langdon and his companion planned to enter the Palazzo Vecchio via the Vasari Corridor, much as Medici dukes might have done in their day—bypassing the famous Uffizi Gallery and following the corridor as it snaked above bridges, over roads, and through buildings, leading directly into the heart of the old palace. Thus far, they had heard no trace of footsteps behind them, but Langdon was still anxious to exit the corridor.

And now we’ve arrived
, Langdon realized, eyeing the heavy wooden door before them.
The entrance to the old palace
.

The door, despite its substantial locking mechanism, was equipped with a horizontal push bar, which provided emergency-exit capability while preventing anyone on the other side from entering the Vasari Corridor without a key card.

Langdon placed his ear to the door and listened. Hearing nothing on the other side, he put his hands against the bar and pushed gently.

The lock clicked.

As the wooden portal creaked open a few inches, Langdon peered into the world beyond. A small alcove. Empty. Silent.

With a small sigh of relief, Langdon stepped through and motioned for Sienna to follow.

We’re in
.

Standing in a quiet alcove somewhere inside the Palazzo Vecchio, Langdon waited a moment and tried 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 those of civic employees bustling in and out of offices, getting ready for the day.

Langdon and Sienna inched toward the hallway and peered around the corner. Sure enough, at the end of the hallway was an atrium in which a dozen or so government employees stood around sipping morning
espressi
and chatting with colleagues before work.

“The Vasari mural,” Sienna whispered, “you said it’s in the Hall of the Five Hundred?”

Langdon nodded and pointed across the crowded atrium toward a portico that opened into a stone hallway. “Unfortunately, it’s through that atrium.”

“You’re sure?”

Langdon nodded. “We’ll never make it through without being seen.”

“They’re government workers. They’ll have no interest in us. Just walk like you belong here.”

Sienna reached up and gently smoothed out Langdon’s Brioni suit jacket and adjusted his collar. “You look very presentable, Robert.” She gave him a demure smile, adjusted her own sweater, and set out.

Langdon hurried after her, both of them striding purposefully toward the atrium. As they entered, Sienna began talking to him in rapid Italian—something about farm subsidies—gesticulating passionately as she spoke. They kept to the outer wall, maintaining their distance from
the others. To Langdon’s amazement, not one single employee gave them a second glance.

When they were beyond the atrium, they quickly pressed onward toward the hallway. Langdon recalled the Shakespeare playbill.
Mischievous Puck
. “You’re quite an actress,” he whispered.

“I’ve had to be,” she said reflexively, her voice strangely distant.

Once again, Langdon sensed there was more heartache in this young woman’s past than he knew, and he felt a deepening sense of remorse for having entangled her in his dangerous predicament. He reminded himself that there was nothing to be done now, except to see it through.