Inferno (Page 64)

He turned now to his left, where a narrow ascending staircase was blocked by a chain swag. A sign above the stairs warned: USCITA VIETATA.

Langdon headed for the stairs.

“No!” Sienna warned. “It says ‘No Exit.’ ”

“Thanks,” Langdon said with a wry smile. “I can read the Italian.”

He unhooked the chain swag, carried it back to the secret door, and quickly used it to immobilize the rotating wall—threading the chain through the door handle and around a nearby fixture so the door could not be pulled open from the other side.

“Oh,” Sienna said sheepishly. “Good thinking.”

“It won’t keep them out for long,” Langdon said. “But we won’t need much time. Follow me.”

When the map of Armenia finally crashed open, Agent Brüder and his men streamed down the narrow corridor in pursuit, heading for the wooden door at the far end. When they burst through, Brüder felt a blast of cold air hit him head-on, and was momentarily blinded by bright sunlight.

He had arrived on an exterior walkway, which threaded along the rooftop of the palazzo. His eye traced the path, which led directly to another door, some fifty yards away, and reentered the building.

Brüder glanced to the left of the walkway, where the high, vaulted roof of the Hall of the Five Hundred rose like a mountain. Impossible to traverse. Brüder turned now to his right, where the walkway was bordered by a sheer cliff that plummeted down into a deep light well. Instant death.

His eyes refocused straight ahead. “This way!”

Brüder and his men dashed along the walkway toward the second door while the surveillance drone circled like a vulture overhead.

When Brüder and his men burst through the doorway, they all slid to an abrupt stop, nearly piling up on one another.

They were standing in a tiny stone chamber that had no exit other than the door through which they had just come. A lone wooden desk stood against the wall. Overhead, the grotesque figures depicted in the chamber’s ceiling frescoes seemed to stare down at them mockingly.

It was a dead end.

One of Brüder’s men hurried over and scanned the informational placard on the wall. “Hold on,” he said. “This says there’s a finestra in here—some kind of secret window?”

Brüder looked around but saw no secret window. He marched over and read the placard himself.

Apparently this space had once been the private study of Duchess Bianca Cappello and included a secret window—una finestra segrata—through which Bianca could covertly watch her husband deliver speeches down below in the Hall of the Five Hundred.

Brüder’s eyes searched the room again, now locating a small lattice-covered opening discreetly hidden in the sidewall. Did they escape through there?

He stalked over and examined the opening, which appeared to be too small for someone of Langdon’s size to get through. Brüder pressed his face to the grid and peered through, confirming for certain that nobody had escaped this way; on the other side of the lattice was a sheer drop, straight down several stories, to the floor of the Hall of the Five Hundred.

So where the hell did they go?!

As Brüder turned back in to the tiny stone chamber, he felt all of the day’s frustration mounting within him. In a rare moment of unrestrained emotion, Agent Brüder threw back his head and let out a bellow of rage.

The noise was deafening in the tiny space.

Far below, in the Hall of the Five Hundred, tourists and police officers all spun and stared up at the latticed opening high on the wall. From the sounds of things, the duchess’s secret study was now being used to cage a wild animal.

Sienna Brooks and Robert Langdon stood in total darkness.

Minutes earlier, Sienna had watched Langdon cleverly use the chain to seal the rotating map of Armenia, then turn and flee.

To her surprise, however, instead of heading down the corridor, Langdon had gone up the steep staircase that had been marked USCITA VIETATA.

“Robert!” she whispered in confusion. “The sign said ‘No Exit’! And besides, I thought we wanted to go down!”

“We do,” Langdon said, glancing over his shoulder. “But sometimes you need to go up … to go down.” He gave her an encouraging wink. “Remember Satan’s navel?”

What is he talking about? Sienna bounded after him, feeling lost.

“Did you ever read Inferno?” Langdon asked.

Yes … but I think I was seven.

An instant later, it dawned on her. “Oh, Satan’s navel!” she said. “Now I remember.”

It had taken a moment, but Sienna now realized that Langdon was referring to the finale of Dante’s Inferno. In these cantos, in order to escape hell, Dante has to climb down the hairy stomach of the massive Satan, and when he reaches Satan’s navel—the alleged center of the earth—the earth’s gravity suddenly switches directions, and Dante, in order to continue climbing down to purgatory … suddenly has to start climbing up.

Sienna remembered little of the Inferno other than her disappointment in witnessing the absurd actions of gravity at the center of the earth; apparently Dante’s genius did not include a grasp of the physics of vector forces.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Langdon opened the lone door they found there; on it was written: SALA DEI MODELLI DI ARCHITETTURA.

Langdon ushered her inside, closing and bolting the door behind them.

The room was small and plain, containing a series of cases that displayed wooden models of Vasari’s architectural designs for the interior of the palazzo. Sienna barely noticed the models. She did, however, notice that the room had no doors, no windows, and, as advertised … no exit.