Inferno (Page 107)

As Langdon continued on toward the elbow of the square, he could see, directly ahead in the distance, the shimmering blue glass dial of the St. Mark’s Clock Tower—the same astronomical clock through which James Bond had thrown a villain in the film Moonraker.

It was not until this moment, as he entered the sheltered square, that Langdon could fully appreciate this city’s most unique offering.

Sound.

With virtually no cars or motorized vehicles of any kind, Venice enjoyed a blissful absence of the usual civic traffic, subways, and sirens, leaving sonic space for the distinctly unmechanical tapestry of human voices, cooing pigeons, and lilting violins serenading patrons at the outdoor cafés. Venice sounded like no other metropolitan center in the world.

As the late-afternoon sun streamed into St. Mark’s from the west, casting long shadows across the tiled square, Langdon glanced up at the towering spire of the campanile, which rose high over the square and dominated the ancient Venetian skyline. The upper loggia of the tower was packed with hundreds of people. Even the mere thought of being up there made him shiver, and he put his head back down and continued through the sea of humanity.

Sienna could easily have kept up with Langdon, but Ferris was lagging behind, and Sienna had decided to split the difference in order to keep both men in sight. Now, however, as the distance between them grew more pronounced, she looked back impatiently. Ferris pointed to his chest, indicating he was winded, and motioned for her to go on ahead.

Sienna complied, moving quickly after Langdon and losing sight of Ferris. Yet as she wove her way through the crowd, a nagging feeling held her back—the strange suspicion that Ferris was lagging behind intentionally … as if he were trying to put distance between them.

Having learned long ago to trust her instincts, Sienna ducked into an alcove and looked out from the shadows, scanning the crowd behind her and looking for Ferris.

Where did he go?!

It was as if he were no longer even trying to follow them. Sienna studied the faces in the crowd, and finally she saw him. To her surprise, Ferris had stopped and was crouched low, typing into his phone.

The same phone he told me had a dead battery.

A visceral fear gripped her, and again she knew she should trust it.

He lied to me on the train.

As Sienna watched him, she tried to imagine what he was doing. Secretly texting someone? Researching behind her back? Trying to solve the mystery of Zobrist’s poem before Langdon and Sienna could do so?

Whatever his rationale, he had blatantly lied to her.

I can’t trust him.

Sienna wondered if she should storm over and confront him, but she quickly decided to slip back into the crowd before he spotted her. She headed again toward the basilica, searching for Langdon. I’ve got to warn him not to reveal anything else to Ferris.

She was only fifty yards from the basilica when she felt a strong hand tugging on her sweater from behind.

She spun around and found herself face-to-face with Ferris.

The man with the rash was panting heavily, clearly having dashed through the mob to catch up with her. There was a frantic quality about him that Sienna hadn’t seen before.

“Sorry,” he said, barely able to breathe. “I got lost in the crowd.”

The instant Sienna looked in his eyes, she knew.

He’s hiding something.

When Langdon arrived in front of St. Mark’s Basilica, he was surprised to discover that his two companions were no longer behind him. Also of surprise to Langdon was the absence of a line of tourists waiting to enter the church. Then again, Langdon realized, this was late afternoon in Venice, the hour when most tourists—their energy flagging from heavy lunches of pasta and wine—decided to stroll the piazzas or sip coffee rather than trying to absorb any more history.

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.