Inferno (54 page)

Assuming that Sienna and Ferris would be arriving at any moment, Langdon turned his eyes to the entrance of the basilica before him. Sometimes accused of offering “an embarrassing surfeit of ingress,” the building’s lower facade was almost entirely taken up by a phalanx of five
recessed entrances whose clustered columns, vaulted archways, and gaping bronze doors arguably made the building, if nothing else, eminently welcoming.

One of Europe’s finest specimens of Byzantine architecture, St. Mark’s had a decidedly soft and whimsical appearance. In contrast to the austere gray towers of Notre-Dame or Chartres, St. Mark’s seemed imposing and yet, somehow, far more down-to-earth. Wider than it was tall, the church was topped by five bulging whitewashed domes that exuded an airy, almost festive appearance, causing more than a few of the guidebooks to compare St. Mark’s to a meringue-topped wedding cake.

High atop the central peak of the church, a slender statue of St. Mark gazed down into the square that bore his name. His feet rested atop a crested arch that was painted midnight blue and dotted with golden stars. Against this colorful backdrop, the golden winged lion of Venice stood as the shimmering mascot of the city.

It was beneath the golden lion, however, that St. Mark’s displayed one of its most famous treasures—four mammoth copper stallions—which at the moment were glinting in the afternoon sun.

The Horses of St. Mark’s
.

Poised as if prepared to leap down at any moment into the square, these four priceless stallions—like so many treasures here in Venice—had been pillaged from Constantinople during the Crusades. Another similarly looted work of art was on display beneath the horses at the southwest corner of the church—a purple porphyry carving known as
The Tetrarchs
. The statue was well known for its missing foot, broken off while it was being plundered from Constantinople in the thirteenth century. Miraculously, in the 1960s, the foot was unearthed in Istanbul. Venice petitioned for the missing piece of statue, but the Turkish authorities replied with a simple message:
You stole the statue—we’re keeping our foot
.

“Mister, you buy?” a woman’s voice said, drawing Langdon’s gaze downward.

A heavyset Gypsy woman was holding up a tall pole on which hung a collection of Venetian masks. Most were in the popular
volto intero
style—the stylized full-faced, white masks often worn by women during Carnevale. Her collection also contained some playful half-faced Colombina masks, a few triangle-chinned bautas, and a strapless Moretta. Despite her colorful offerings, though, it was a single, grayish-black mask at the top of the pole that seized Langdon’s attention, its menacing dead eyes seeming to stare directly down at him over a long, beaked nose.

The plague doctor
. Langdon averted his eyes, needing no reminder of what he was doing here in Venice.

“You buy?” the Gypsy repeated.

Langdon smiled weakly and shook his head.
“Sono molto belle, ma no, grazie.”

As the woman departed, Langdon’s gaze followed the ominous plague mask as it bobbed above the crowd. He sighed heavily and raised his eyes back to the four copper stallions on the second-floor balcony.

In a flash, it hit him.

Langdon felt a sudden rush of elements crashing together—Horses of St. Mark’s, Venetian masks, and pillaged treasures from Constantinople.

“My God,” he whispered. “That’s it!”

Robert Langdon was transfixed.

The Horses of St. Mark’s!

These four magnificent horses—with their regal necks and bold collars—had sparked in Langdon a sudden and unexpected memory, one he now realized held the explanation of a critical element of the mysterious poem printed on Dante’s death mask.

Langdon had once attended a celebrity wedding reception at New Hampshire’s historic Runnymede Farm—home to Kentucky Derby winner Dancer’s Image. As part of the lavish entertainment, the guests were treated to a performance by the prominent equine theatrical troupe Behind the Mask—a stunning spectacle in which riders performed in dazzling Venetian costumes with their faces hidden behind
volto intero
masks. The troupe’s jet-black Friesian mounts were the largest horses Langdon had ever seen. Colossal in stature, these stunning animals thundered across the field in a blur of rippling muscles, feathered hooves, and three-foot manes flowing wildly behind their long, graceful necks.

The beauty of these creatures left such an impression on Langdon that upon returning home, he researched them online, discovering the breed had once been a favorite of medieval kings for use as warhorses and had been brought back from the brink of extinction in recent years. Originally known as
Equus robustus
, the breed’s modern name, Friesian, was a tribute to their homeland of Friesland, the Dutch province that was the birthplace of the brilliant graphic artist M. C. Escher.

As it turned out, the powerful bodies of the early Friesian horses had inspired the robust aesthetic of the Horses of St. Mark’s in Venice. According to the Web site, the Horses of St. Mark’s were so beautiful that they had become “history’s most frequently stolen pieces of art.”

Langdon had always believed that this dubious honor belonged to the
Ghent Altarpiece
and paid a quick visit to the ARCA Web site to confirm his theory. The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art
offered no definitive ranking, but they did offer a concise history of the sculptures’ troubled life as a target of pillage and plunder.

The four copper horses had been cast in the fourth century by an unknown Greek sculptor on the island of Chios, where they remained until Theodosius II whisked them off to Constantinople for display at the Hippodrome. Then, during the Fourth Crusade, when Venetian forces sacked Constantinople, the ruling doge demanded the four precious statues be transported via ship all the way back to Venice, a nearly impossible feat because of their size and weight. The horses arrived in Venice in 1254, and were installed in front of the facade of St. Mark’s Cathedral.

More than half a millennium later, in 1797, Napoleon conquered Venice and took the horses for himself. They were transported to Paris and prominently displayed atop the Arc de Triomphe. Finally, in 1815, following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and his exile, the horses were winched down from the Arc de Triomphe and shipped on a barge back to Venice, where they were reinstalled on the front balcony of St. Mark’s Basilica.

Although Langdon had been fairly familiar with the history of the horses, the ARCA site contained a passage that startled him.

The doge ordered the heads cut off the Horses of St. Mark’s?
It seemed unthinkable to Langdon.

“Robert?!” Sienna’s voice was calling.

Langdon emerged from his thoughts, turning to see Sienna pushing her way through the crowd with Ferris close at her side.

“The horses in the poem!” Langdon shouted excitedly. “I figured it out!”

“What?” Sienna looked confused.

“We’re looking for a treacherous doge who severed the heads from horses!”

“Yes?”

“The poem isn’t referring to
live
horses.” Langdon pointed high on the facade of St. Mark’s, where a shaft of bright sun was illuminating the four copper statues. “It’s referring to
those
horses!”

On board
The Mendacium
, Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey’s hands were trembling. She watched the video in the provost’s study, and although she had seen some terrifying things in her life, this inexplicable movie that Bertrand Zobrist had made before his suicide left her feeling as cold as death.

On the screen before her, the shadow of a beaked face wavered, projected on the dripping wall of an underground cavern. The silhouette continued speaking, proudly describing his masterpiece—the creation called Inferno—which would save the world by culling the population.

God save us
, Sinskey thought. “We must …” she said, her voice quavering. “We
must
find that underground location. It may not be too late.”

“Keep watching,” the provost replied. “It gets stranger.”

Suddenly the shadow of the mask grew larger on the wet wall, looming hugely before her, until a figure stepped suddenly into the frame.

Holy shit
.

Sinskey was staring at a fully outfitted plague doctor—complete with the black cloak and chilling beaked mask. The plague doctor was walking directly toward the camera, his mask filling the entire screen to terrifying effect.

“ ‘The darkest places in hell,’ ” he whispered, “ ‘are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.’ ”

Sinskey felt goose bumps on her neck. It was the same quotation that Zobrist had left for her at the airline counter when she had eluded him in New York a year ago.

“I know,” the plague doctor continued, “that there are those who call me monster.” He paused, and Sinskey sensed his words were directed at her. “I know there are those who think me a heartless beast who hides behind a mask.” He paused again, stepping closer still to the camera. “But I am not faceless. Nor am I heartless.”

With that, Zobrist pulled off his mask and lowered the hood of his cloak—his face laid bare. Sinskey stiffened, staring into the familiar
green eyes she had last seen in the darkness of the CFR. His eyes in the video had the same passion and fire, but there was something else in them now—the wild zeal of a madman.

“My name is Bertrand Zobrist,” he said, staring into the camera. “And this is my face, unveiled and naked for the world to see. As for my soul … if I could hold aloft my flaming heart, as did Dante’s Lord for his beloved Beatrice, you would see I am overflowing with love. The deepest kind of love. For all of you. And, above all, for
one
of you.”

Zobrist stepped closer still, gazing deep into the camera and speaking softly, as if to a lover.

“My love,” he whispered, “my precious love. You are my beatitude, my destroyer of all vices, my endorser of all virtue, my salvation. You are the one who lay naked at my side and unwittingly helped me across the abyss, giving me the strength to do what I now have done.”

Sinskey listened with repulsion.

“My love,” Zobrist continued in a doleful whisper that echoed in the ghostly subterranean cavern in which he spoke. “You are my inspiration and my guide, my Virgil and my Beatrice all in one, and this masterpiece is as much yours as it is mine. If you and I, as star-crossed lovers, never touch again, I shall find my peace in knowing that 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.”

Zobrist stopped talking, and the word
stars
echoed a moment in the cavern. Then, very calmly, Zobrist reached out and touched the camera, ending his transmission.

The screen went black.

“The underground location,” the provost said, turning off the monitor. “We don’t recognize it. Do you?”

Sinskey shook her head.
I’ve never seen anything like it
. She thought of Robert Langdon, wondering if he had made any more headway in deciphering Zobrist’s clues.

“If it’s of any help,” the provost said, “I believe I know who Zobrist’s lover is.” He paused. “An individual code-named FS-2080.”

Sinskey jumped up. “FS-2080?!” She stared at the provost in shock.

The provost looked equally startled. “That means something to you?”

Sinskey gave an incredulous nod. “It most certainly does.”

Sinskey’s heart was pounding.
FS-2080
. While she didn’t know the identity of the individual, she certainly knew what the code name stood for. The WHO had been monitoring similar code names for years.

“The Transhumanist movement,” she said. “Are you familiar with it?”

The provost shook his head.

“In the simplest terms,” Sinskey explained, “Transhumanism is a philosophy stating that humans should use all available technologies to engineer our own species to make it stronger. Survival of the fittest.”

The provost shrugged as if unmoved.

“Generally speaking,” she continued, “the Transhumanist movement is made up of responsible individuals—ethically accountable scientists, futurists, visionaries—but, as in many movements, there exists a small but militant faction that believes the movement is not moving fast enough. They are apocalyptic thinkers who believe the end is coming and that someone needs to take drastic action to save the future of the species.”

“And I’m guessing,” the provost said, “that Bertrand Zobrist was one of these people?”

“Absolutely,” Sinskey said. “A leader of the movement. In addition to being highly intelligent, he was enormously charismatic and penned doomsday articles that spawned an entire cult of zealots for Transhumanism. Today, many of his fanatical disciples use these code names, all of which take a similar form—two letters and a four-digit number—for example, DG-2064, BA-2105, or the one you just mentioned.”

“FS-2080.”

Sinskey nodded. “That could
only
be a Transhumanist code name.”

“Do the numbers and letters have meaning?”

Sinskey motioned to his computer. “Pull up your browser. I’ll show you.”

The provost looked uncertain but went to his computer and launched a search engine.

“Search for ‘FM-2030,’ ” Sinskey said, settling in behind him.

The provost typed
FM-2030
, and thousands of Web pages appeared.

“Click any of them,” Sinskey said.

The provost clicked the top hit, which returned a Wikipedia page showing a picture of a handsome Iranian man
—Fereidoun M. Esfandiary
—whom it described as an author, philosopher, futurist, and forefather of the Transhumanist movement. Born in 1930, he was credited with introducing Transhumanist philosophy to the multitudes, as well as presciently predicting in vitro fertilization, genetic engineering, and the globalization of civilization.