Текст книги "Inferno"

Автор книги: Dan Brown

Соавторы: Dan Brown
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 36 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 13 страниц]

Langdon changed slides. “How would you like to have thison your book jacket?”

Ne’er walked the earth a greater man than he.

– Michelangelo

A murmur of surprise rustled through the crowd.

“Yes,” Langdon said, “that’s the same Michelangelo you all know from the Sistine Chapel and the David. In addition to being a master painter and sculptor, Michelangelo was a superb poet, publishing nearly three hundred poems – including one titled ‘Dante,’ dedicated to the man whose stark visions of hell were those that inspired Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. And if you don’t believe me, read the third canto of Dante’s Infernoand then visit the Sistine Chapel; just above the altar, you’ll see this familiar image.”

Langdon advanced slides to a frightening detail of a muscle-bound beast swinging a giant paddle at cowering people. “This is Dante’s hellish ferryman, Charon, beating straggling passengers with an oar.”

Langdon moved now to a new slide – a second detail of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment—a man being crucified. “This is Haman the Agagite, who, according to Scripture, was hanged to death. However, in Dante’s poem, he was crucified instead. As you can see here in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo chose Dante’s version over that of the Bible.” Langdon grinned and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Don’t tell the pope.”

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.

Even so, she felt a fresh chill sweep through her body.

It had been instinct that urged her to flee the hotel rooftop unseen the moment she saw Brüder’s team arrive, and she wondered if that instinct had saved her.

Nobody knows where I am now.

As Vayentha sped northward on the sleek straightaway of the Viale del Poggio Imperiale, she realized what a difference a few hours had made for her. Last night she had been worried about protecting her job. Now she was worried about protecting her life.

CHAPTER 20

Florence was once a walled city, its primary entrance the stone gateway of the Porta Romana, built in 1326. While most of the city’s perimeter walls were destroyed centuries ago, the Porta Romana still exists, and to this day, traffic enters the city by funneling through deep arched tunnels in the colossal fortification.

The gateway itself is a fifty-foot-tall barrier of ancient brick and stone whose primary passageway still retains its massive bolted wooden doors, which are propped open at all times to let traffic pass through. Six major roads converge in front of these doors, filtering into a rotary whose grassy median is dominated by a large Pistoletto statue depicting a woman departing the city gates carrying an enormous bundle on her head.

Although nowadays it is more of a snarled traffic nightmare, Florence’s austere city gate was once the site of the Fiera dei Contratti – the Contracts Fair – at which fathers sold their daughters into a contracted marriage, often forcing them to dance provocatively in an effort to secure higher dowries.

This morning, several hundred yards short of the gateway, Sienna had screeched to a stop and was now pointing in alarm. On the back of the Trike, Langdon looked ahead and immediately shared her apprehension. In front of them, a long line of cars idled at a full stop. Traffic in the rotary had been halted by a police barricade, and more police cars were now arriving. Armed officers were walking from car to car, asking questions.

That can’t be for us, Langdon thought. Can it?

A sweaty cyclist came pedaling toward them up the Viale Machiavelli away from the traffic. He was on a recumbent bike, his bare legs pumping out in front of him.

Sienna shouted out to him. “Cos’ è successo?”

“E chi lo sa!”he shouted back, looking concerned. “Carabinieri.”He hurried past, looking eager to clear the area.

Sienna turned to Langdon, her expression grim. “Roadblock. Military police.”

Sirens wailed in the distance behind them, and Sienna spun in her seat, staring back up the Viale Machiavelli, her face now masked with fear.

We’re trapped in the middle, Langdon thought, scanning the area for any exit at all – an intersecting road, a park, a driveway – but all he saw were private residences on their left and a high stone wall to their right.

The sirens grew louder.

“Up there,” Langdon urged, pointing thirty yards ahead to a deserted construction site where a portable cement mixer offered at least a little bit of cover.

Sienna gunned the bike up onto the sidewalk and raced into the work area. They parked behind the cement mixer, quickly realizing that it offered barely enough concealment for the Trike alone.

“Follow me,” Sienna said, rushing toward a small portable toolshed nestled in the bushes against the stone wall.

That’s not a toolshed, Langdon realized, his nose crinkling as they got closer. That’s a Porta-Potty.

As Langdon and Sienna arrived outside the construction workers’ chemical toilet, they could hear police cars approaching from behind them. Sienna yanked the door handle, but it didn’t budge. A heavy chain and padlock secured it. Langdon grabbed Sienna’s arm and pulled her around behind the structure, forcing her into the narrow space between the toilet and the stone wall. The two of them barely fit, and the air smelled putrid and heavy.

Langdon slid in behind her just as a jet-black Subaru Forester came into view with the word CARABINIERI emblazoned on its side. The vehicle rolled slowly past their location.

The Italian military police, Langdon thought, incredulous. He wondered if these officers also had orders to shoot on sight.

“Someone is dead serious about finding us,” Sienna whispered. “And somehow they did.”

“GPS?” Langdon wondered aloud. “Maybe the projector has a tracking device in it?”

Sienna shook her head. “Believe me, if that thing were traceable, the police would be right on top of us.”

Langdon shifted his tall frame, trying to get comfortable in the cramped surroundings. He found himself face-to-face with a collage of elegantly styled graffiti scrawled on the back of the Porta-Potty.

Leave it to the Italians.

Most American Porta-Potties were covered with sophomoric cartoons that vaguely resembled huge breasts or penises. The graffiti on this one, however, looked more like an art student’s sketchbook – a human eye, a well-rendered hand, a man in profile, and a fantastical dragon.

“Destruction of property doesn’t look like this everywhere in Italy,” Sienna said, apparently reading his mind. “The Florence Art Institute is on the other side of this stone wall.”

As if to confirm Sienna’s statement, a group of students appeared in the distance, ambling toward them with art portfolios under their arms. They were chatting, lighting cigarettes, and puzzling over the roadblock in front of them at the Porta Romana.

Langdon and Sienna crouched lower to stay out of sight of the students, and as they did so, Langdon was struck, most unexpectedly, by a curious thought.

The half-buried sinners with their legs in the air.

Perhaps it was on account of the smell of human waste, or possibly the recumbent bicyclist with bare legs flailing in front of him, but whatever the stimulus, Langdon had flashed on the putrid world of the Malebolge and the naked legs protruding upside down from the earth.

He turned suddenly to his companion. “Sienna, in our version of La Mappa, the upside-down legs were in the tenth ditch, right? The lowest level of the Malebolge?”

Sienna gave him an odd look, as if this were hardly the time. “Yes, at the bottom.”

For a split second Langdon was back in Vienna giving his lecture. He was standing onstage, only moments from his grand finale, having just shown the audience Doré’s engraving of Geryon – the winged monster with a poisonous stinging tail that lived just above the Malebolge.

“Before we meet Satan,” Langdon declared, his deep voice resonating over the loudspeakers, “we must pass through the ten ditches of the Malebolge, in which are punished the fraudulent – those guilty of deliberate evil.”

Langdon advanced slides to show a detail of the Malebolge and then took the audience down through the ditches one by one. “From top to bottom we have: the seducers whipped by demons … the flatterers adrift in human excrement … the clerical profiteers half buried upside down with their legs in the air … the sorcerers with their heads twisted backward … the corrupt politicians in boiling pitch … the hypocrites wearing heavy leaden cloaks … the thieves bitten by snakes … the fraudulent counselors consumed by fire … the sowers of discord hacked apart by demons … and finally, the liars, who are diseased beyond recognition.” Langdon turned back to the audience. “Dante most likely reserved this final ditch for the liars because a series of lies told about him led to his exile from his beloved Florence.”

“Robert?” The voice was Sienna’s.

Langdon snapped back to the present.

Sienna was staring at him quizzically. “What is it?”

“Our version of La Mappa,” he said excitedly. “The art has been changed!” He fished the projector out of his jacket pocket and shook it as best as he could in the close quarters. The agitator ball rattled loudly, but all the sirens drowned it out. “Whoever created this image reconfigured the order of the levels in the Malebolge!”

When the device began to glow, Langdon pointed it at the flat surface before them. La Mappa dell’Infernoappeared, glowing brightly in the dim light.

Botticelli on a chemical toilet, Langdon thought, ashamed. This had to be the least elegant place a Botticelli had ever been displayed. Langdon ran his eyes down through the ten ditches and began nodding excitedly.

“Yes!” he exclaimed. “This is wrong! The last ditch of the Malebolge is supposed to be full of diseased people, not people upside down. The tenth level is for the liars, not the clerical profiteers!”

Sienna looked intrigued. “But … why would someone change that?”

“Catrovacer,” Langdon whispered, eyeing the little letters that had been added to each level. “I don’t think that’s what this really says.”

Despite the injury that had erased Langdon’s recollections of the last two days, he could now feel his memory working perfectly. He closed his eyes and held the two versions of La Mappain his mind’s eye to analyze their differences. The changes to the Malebolge were fewer than Langdon had imagined … and yet he felt like a veil had suddenly been lifted.

Suddenly it was crystal clear.

Seek and ye shall find!

“What is it?” Sienna demanded.

Langdon’s mouth felt dry. “I know why I’m here in Florence.”

“You do?!”

“Yes, and I know where I’m supposed to go.”

Sienna grabbed his arm. “Where?!”

Langdon felt as if his feet had just touched solid ground for the first time since he’d awoken in the hospital. “These ten letters,” he whispered. “They actually point to a precise location in the old city. That’s where the answers are.”

“Where in the old city?!” Sienna demanded. “What did you figure out?”

The sounds of laughing voices echoed on the other side of the Porta-Potty. Another group of art students was passing by, joking and chatting in various languages. Langdon peered cautiously around the cubicle, watching them go. Then he scanned for police. “We’ve got to keep moving. I’ll explain on the way.”

“On the way?!” Sienna shook her head. “We’ll never get through the Porta Romana!”

“Stay here for thirty seconds,” he told her, “and then follow my lead.”

With that, Langdon slipped away, leaving his newfound friend bewildered and alone.

CHAPTER 21

“Scusi!”Robert Langdon chased after the group of students. “Scusate!”

They all turned, and Langdon made a show of glancing around like a lost tourist.

“Dov’è l’Istituto statale d’arte?”Langdon asked in broken Italian.

A tattooed kid puffed coolly on a cigarette and snidely replied, “Non parliamo italiano.”His accent was French.

One of the girls admonished her tattooed friend and politely pointed down the long wall toward the Porta Romana. “Più avanti, sempre dritto.”

Straight ahead, Langdon translated. “Grazie.”

On cue, Sienna emerged unseen from behind the Porta-Potty and walked over. The willowy thirty-two-year-old approached the group and Langdon placed a welcoming hand on her shoulder. “This is my sister, Sienna. She’s an art teacher.”

The tattooed kid muttered, “T-I–L-F,” and his male friends laughed.

Langdon ignored them. “We’re in Florence researching possible spots for a teaching year abroad. Can we walk in with you?”

“Ma certo,”the Italian girl said with a smile.

As the group migrated toward the police at the Porta Romana, Sienna fell into conversation with the students while Langdon merged to the middle of the group, slouching low, trying to stay out of sight.

Seek and ye shall find, Langdon thought, his pulse racing with excitement as he pictured the ten ditches of the Malebolge.

Catrovacer.These ten letters, Langdon had realized, stood at the core of one of the art world’s most enigmatic mysteries, a centuries-old puzzle that had never been solved. In 1563, these ten letters had been used to spell a message high on a wall inside Florence’s famed Palazzo Vecchio, painted some forty feet off the ground, barely visible without binoculars. It had remained hidden there in plain sight for centuries until the 1970s, when it was spotted by a now-famous art diagnostician, who had spent decades trying to uncover its meaning. Despite numerous theories, the significance of the message remains an enigma to this day.

For Langdon, the code felt like familiar ground – a safe harbor from this strange and churning sea. After all, art history and ancient secrets were far more Langdon’s realm than were biohazard tubes and gunfire.

Up ahead, additional police cars had begun streaming into the Porta Romana.

“Jesus,” the tattooed kid said. “Whoever they’re looking for must have done something terrible.”

The group arrived at the Art Institute’s main gate on the right, where a crowd of students had gathered to watch the action at the Porta Romana. The school’s minimum-wage security guard was halfheartedly glancing at student IDs as kids streamed in, but he was clearly more interested in what was happening with the police.

A loud screech of brakes echoed across the plaza as an all-too-familiar black van skidded into the Porta Romana.

Langdon didn’t need a second look.

Without a word, he and Sienna seized the moment, slipping through the gate with their new friends.

The entry road to the Istituto Statale d’Arte was startlingly beautiful, almost regal in appearance. Massive oak trees arched gently in from either side, creating a canopy that framed the distant building – a huge, faded yellow structure with a triple portico and an expansive oval lawn.

This building, Langdon knew, had been commissioned, like so many in this city, by the same illustrious dynasty that had dominated Florentine politics during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.

The Medici.

The name alone had become a symbol of Florence. During its three-century reign, the royal house of Medici amassed unfathomable wealth and influence, producing four popes, two queens of France, and the largest financial institution in all of Europe. To this day, modern banks use the accounting method invented by the Medici – the dual-entry system of credits and debits.

The Medici’s greatest legacy, however, was not in finance or politics, but rather in art. Perhaps the most lavish patrons the art world has ever known, the Medici provided a generous stream of commissions that fueled the Renaissance. The list of luminaries receiving Medici patronage ranged from da Vinci to Galileo to Botticelli – the latter’s most famous painting, Birth of Venus, the result of a commission from Lorenzo de’ Medici, who requested a sexually provocative painting to hang over his cousin’s marital bed as a wedding gift.

Lorenzo de’ Medici – known in his day as Lorenzo the Magnificent on account of his benevolence – was an accomplished artist and poet in his own right and was said to have a superb eye. In 1489 Lorenzo took a liking to the work of a young Florentine sculptor and invited the boy to move into the Medici palace, where he could practice his craft surrounded by fine art, great poetry, and high culture. Under Medici tutelage, the adolescent boy flourished and eventually went on to carve two of the most celebrated sculptures in all of history – the Pietàand the David. Today we know him as Michelangelo – a creative giant who is sometimes called the Medici’s greatest gift to humankind.

Considering the Medici’s passion for art, Langdon imagined the family would be pleased to know that the building before him – originally built as the Medici’s primary horse stables – had been transformed into the vibrant Art Institute. This tranquil site that now inspired young artists had been specifically chosen for the Medici’s stables because of its proximity to one of the most beautiful riding areas in all of Florence.

The Boboli Gardens.

Langdon glanced to his left, where a forest of treetops could be seen over a high wall. The massive expanse of the Boboli Gardens was now a popular tourist attraction. Langdon had little doubt that if he and Sienna could gain entrance to the gardens, they could make their way across it, bypassing the Porta Romana undetected. After all, the gardens were vast and had no shortage of hiding places – forests, labyrinths, grottoes, nymphaea. More important, traversing the Boboli Gardens would eventually lead them to the Palazzo Pitti, the stone citadel that once housed the main seat of the Medici grand duchy, and whose 140 rooms remained one of Florence’s most frequented tourist attractions.

If we can reach the Palazzo Pitti, Langdon thought, the bridge to the old city is a stone’s throw away.

Langdon motioned as calmly as possible to the high wall that enclosed the gardens. “How do we get into the gardens?” he asked. “I’d love to show my sister before we tour the institute.”

The tattooed kid shook his head. “You can’t get into the gardens from here. The entrance is way over at Pitti Palace. You’d have to drive through Porta Romana and go around.”

“Bullshit,” Sienna blurted.

Everyone turned and stared at her, including Langdon.

“Come on,” she said, smirking coyly at the students as she stroked her blond ponytail. “You’re telling me you guys don’t sneak into the gardens to smoke weed and fool around?”

The kids all exchanged looks and then burst out laughing.

The guy with the tattoos now looked utterly smitten. “Ma’am, you should totally teach here.” He walked Sienna to the side of the building and pointed around the corner to a rear parking lot. “See that shed on the left? There’s an old platform behind it. Climb up on the roof, and you can jump down on the other side of the wall.”

Sienna was already on the move. She glanced back at Langdon with a patronizing smile. “Come on, brother Bob. Unless you’re too old to jump a fence?”