Inferno (23 page)

The tall man advanced past them to the grating and examined the mechanism. “It’s a combination lock,” he called back to the woman, his accent American.

The woman knelt down next to Ernesto, her brown eyes like ice.
“Qual è la combinazione?”
she demanded.

“Non posso!”
he replied. “I’m not permitted—”

Something happened at the top of his spine, and Ernesto felt his entire body go limp. An instant later, he blacked out.

When he came to, Ernesto sensed he had been drifting in and out of consciousness for several minutes. He recalled some discussion … more stabs of pain … being dragged, perhaps? It was all a blur.

As the cobwebs cleared, he saw a strange sight—his shoes lying on the floor nearby with their laces removed. It was then that he realized he could barely move. He was lying on his side with his hands and feet bound behind him, apparently with his shoelaces. He tried to yell, but no sound came. One of his own socks was stuffed in his mouth. The true moment of fear, however, came an instant later, when he looked up and saw his television set playing the football match.
I’m in my office … INSIDE the grate?!

In the distance, Ernesto could hear the sound of running footsteps departing along the corridor … and then, slowly, they faded to silence.
Non è possibile!
Somehow, the blond woman had persuaded Ernesto to do the one thing he was hired never to do—reveal the combination for the lock on the entrance to the famed Vasari Corridor.

Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey felt the waves of nausea and dizziness coming faster now. She was slumped in the backseat of the van parked in front of the Pitti Palace. The soldier seated beside her was watching her with growing concern.

Moments earlier, the soldier’s radio had blared—something about a costume gallery—awakening Elizabeth from the darkness of her mind, where she had been dreaming of the green-eyed monster.

She had been back in the darkened room at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, listening to the maniacal ravings of the mysterious stranger who had summoned her there. The shadowy man paced at the front of the room—a lanky silhouette against the grisly projected image of the naked and dying throngs inspired by Dante’s
Inferno
.

“Someone needs to fight this war,” the figure concluded, “or
this
is our future. Mathematics guarantees it. Mankind is hovering now in a purgatory of procrastination and indecision and personal greed … but the rings of hell await, just beneath our feet, waiting to consume us all.”

Elizabeth was still reeling from the monstrous ideas this man had just laid out before her. She could stand it no longer and jumped to her feet. “What you’re suggesting is—”

“Our only remaining option,” the man interjected.

“Actually,” she replied, “I was going to say ‘criminal’!”

The man shrugged. “The path to paradise passes directly through hell. Dante taught us that.”

“You’re mad!”

“Mad?” the man repeated, sounding hurt. “Me? I think not. Madness is the WHO staring into the abyss and denying it is there. Madness is an ostrich who sticks her head in the sand while a pack of hyenas closes in around her.”

Before Elizabeth could defend her organization, the man had changed the image on the screen.

“And speaking of hyenas,” he said, pointing to the new image. “Here is
the pack of hyenas currently circling humankind … and they are closing in fast.”

Elizabeth was surprised to see the familiar image before her. It was a graph published by the WHO the previous year delineating key environmental issues deemed by the WHO to have the greatest impact on global health.

The list included, among others:

Demand for clean water, global surface temperatures, ozone depletion, consumption of ocean resources, species extinction, CO
₂
concentration, deforestation, and global sea levels.

All of these negative indicators had been on the rise over the last century. Now, however, they were all accelerating at terrifying rates.

Elizabeth had the same reaction that she always had when she saw this graph—a sense of helplessness. She was a scientist and believed in the usefulness of statistics, and this graph painted a chilling picture not of the distant future … but of the very
near
future.

At many times in her life, Elizabeth Sinskey had been haunted by her inability to conceive a child. Yet, when she saw this graph, she almost felt relieved she had not brought a child into the world.

This is the future I would be giving my child?

“Over the last fifty years,” the tall man declared, “our sins against Mother Nature have grown exponentially.” He paused. “I fear for the
soul of humankind. When the WHO published this graph, the world’s politicians, power brokers, and environmentalists held emergency summits, all trying to assess which of these problems were most severe and which we could actually hope to solve. The outcome? Privately, they put their heads in their hands and wept. Publicly, they assured us all that they were working on solutions but that these are complex issues.”

“These issues
are
complex!”

“Bullshit!” the man erupted. “You know damned well this graph depicts the
simplest
of relationships—a function based on a
single
variable! Every single line on this graph climbs in direct proportion to one value—the value that everyone is afraid to discuss. Global population!”

“Actually, I think it’s a bit more—”

“A bit more complicated? Actually, it’s not! There is nothing simpler. If you want more available clean water per capita, you need fewer people on earth. If you want to decrease vehicle emissions, you need fewer drivers. If you want the oceans to replenish their fish, you need fewer people eating fish!”

He glared down at her, his tone becoming even more forceful. “Open your eyes! We are on the brink of the end of humanity, and our world leaders are sitting in boardrooms commissioning studies on solar power, recycling, and hybrid automobiles? How is it that
you
—a highly educated woman of science—don’t see? Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease—they are the
symptoms
. The
disease
is overpopulation. And unless we face world population head-on, we are doing nothing more than sticking a Band-Aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumor.”

“You perceive the human race as a cancer?” Elizabeth demanded.

“Cancer is nothing more than a healthy cell that starts replicating out of control. I realize you find my ideas distasteful, but I can assure you that you will find the alternative far less tasteful when it arrives. If we do not take bold action, then—”

“Bold?!” she sputtered. “
Bold
is not the word you’re looking for. Try
insane
!”

“Dr. Sinskey,” the man said, his voice now eerily calm. “I called you here specifically because I was hoping that you—a sage voice at the World Health Organization—might be willing to work with me and explore a possible solution.”

Elizabeth stared in disbelief. “You think the World Health Organization is going to partner with you … exploring an idea like
this
?”

“Actually, yes,” he said. “Your organization is made up of doctors, and
when doctors have a patient with gangrene, they do not hesitate to cut off his leg to save his life. Sometimes the only course of action is the lesser of two evils.”

“This is quite different.”

“No. This is
identical
. The only difference is scale.”

Elizabeth had heard enough. She stood abruptly. “I have a plane to catch.”

The tall man took a threatening step in her direction, blocking her exit. “Fair warning. With or without your cooperation, I can very easily explore this idea on my own.”

“Fair warning,” she fired back. “I consider this a terrorist threat and will treat it as such.” She took out her phone.

The man laughed. “You’re going to report me for talking in hypotheticals? Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait to make your call. This room is electronically shielded. Your phone won’t have a signal.”

I don’t need a signal, you lunatic
. Elizabeth raised her phone, and before the man realized what was happening, she clicked a snapshot of his face. The flash reflected in his green eyes, and for a moment she thought he looked familiar.

“Whoever you are,” she said, “you did the wrong thing by calling me here. By the time I reach the airport, I will know who you are, and you will be on the watch lists at the WHO, the CDC, and the ECDC as a potential bioterrorist. We will have people on you day and night. If you try to purchase materials, we will know about it. If you build a lab, we will know about it. There is nowhere you can hide.”

The man stood in tense silence for a long moment, as if he were going to lunge at her phone. Finally, he relaxed and stepped aside with an eerie grin. “Then it appears our dance has begun.”

Il Corridoio Vasariano—the Vasari Corridor—was designed by Giorgio Vasari in 1564 under orders of the Medici ruler, Grand Duke Cosimo I, to provide safe passage from his residence at the Pitti Palace to his administrative offices, across the Arno River in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Similar to Vatican City’s famed Passetto, the Vasari Corridor was the quintessential secret passageway. It stretched nearly a full kilometer from the eastern corner of the Boboli Gardens to the heart of the old palace itself, crossing the Ponte Vecchio and snaking through the Uffizi Gallery in between.

Nowadays, the Vasari Corridor still served as a safe haven, although not for Medici aristocrats but for artwork; with its seemingly endless expanse of secure wall space, the corridor was home to countless rare paintings—overflow from the world-famous Uffizi Gallery, through which the corridor passed.

Langdon had traveled the passageway a few years before as part of a leisurely private tour. On that afternoon, he had paused to admire the corridor’s mind-boggling array of paintings—including the most extensive collection of self-portraits in the world. He had also stopped several times to peer out of the corridor’s occasional viewing portals, which permitted travelers to gauge their progress along the elevated walkway.