CHAPTER 27

AS THE POLICE entered the Pitti Palace, Sienna and Langdon were already on the move, retracing their steps through the interior of the palace and away from the arriving police. They hurried through the cortile and past the café, where a buzz was spreading, tourists rubbernecking in an attempt to locate the source of the commotion.

Sienna was amazed the authorities had found them so quickly. The drone must have disappeared because it had already spotted us.

She and Langdon found the same narrow tunnel through which they had descended from the gardens and without hesitation plunged back into the passageway and bounded up the stairs. The end of the staircase banked left along a high retaining wall. As they dashed along the wall, it grew shorter beside them, until finally they could see over it into the vast expanse of the Boboli Gardens.

Langdon instantly grabbed Sienna’s arm and yanked her backward, ducking out of sight behind the retaining wall. Sienna had seen it, too.

Three hundred yards away, on the slope above the amphitheater, a phalanx of police descended, searching groves, interviewing tourists, coordinating with one another on handheld radios.

We’re trapped!

Sienna had never imagined, when she and Robert Langdon first met, that it would lead to this. This is more than I bargained for. When Sienna had left the hospital with Langdon, she thought they were fleeing a woman with spiked hair and a gun. Now they were running from an entire military team and the Italian authorities. Their chances of escape, she was now realizing, were almost zero.

“Is there any other way out? ” Sienna demanded, short of breath.

“I don’t think so, ” Langdon said. “This garden is a walled city, just like …” He paused suddenly, turning and looking east. “Just like … the Vatican. ” A strange glint of hope flickered across his face.

Sienna had no idea what the Vatican had to do with their current predicament, but Langdon suddenly began nodding, gazing east along the back of the palace.

“It’s a long shot, ” he said, hustling her along with him now. “But there might be a different way to get out of here. ”

Two figures materialized suddenly before them, having rounded the corner of the retaining wall, nearly bumping into Sienna and Langdon. Both figures were wearing black, and for one frightening instant, Sienna thought they were the soldiers she had encountered at the apartment building. As they passed, though, she saw they were only tourists—Italian, she guessed, from all the stylish black leather.

Having an idea, Sienna caught one of the tourists’ arms and smiled up at him as warmly as possible. “Può dirci dov’è la Galleria del costume? ” she asked in rapid Italian, requesting directions to the palace’s famed costume gallery. “Io e mio fratello siamo in ritardo per una visita privata. ” My brother and I are late for a private tour.

“Certo! ” The man grinned at them both, looking eager to help. “Proseguite dritto per il sentiero! ” He turned and pointed west, along the retaining wall, directly away from whatever Langdon had been looking at.

“Molte grazie! ” Sienna chirped with another smile as the two men headed off.

Langdon gave Sienna an impressed nod, apparently understanding her motives. If the police began questioning tourists, they might hear that Langdon and Sienna were headed for the costume gallery, which, according to the map on the wall before them, was at the far western end of the palace … as far as possible from the direction in which they were now headed.

“We need to get to that path over there, ” Langdon said, motioning across an open plaza toward a walkway that ran down another hill, away from the palace. The peastone walkway was sheltered on the uphill side by massive hedges, providing plenty of cover from the authorities now descending the hill, only a hundred yards away.

Sienna calculated that their chances of getting across the open area to the sheltered path were very slim. Tourists were gathering there, watching the police with curiosity. The faint thrum of the drone became audible again, approaching in the distance.

“Now or never, ” Langdon said, grabbing her hand and pulling her with him out into the open plaza, where they began winding through the crowd of gathering tourists. Sienna fought the urge to break into a run, but Langdon held firmly on to her, walking briskly but calmly through the throng.

When they finally reached the opening to the pathway, Sienna glanced back over her shoulder to see if they had been detected. The only police officers in sight were all facing the other way, their eyes turned skyward toward the sound of the incoming drone.

She faced front and hurried with Langdon down the path.

Before them now, the skyline of old Florence poked above the trees, visible directly ahead in the distance. She saw the red-tiled cupola of the Duomo and the green, red, and white spire of Giotto’s bell tower. For an instant, she could also make out the crenellated spire of the Palazzo Vecchio—their seemingly impossible destination—but as they descended the pathway, the high perimeter walls blotted out the view, engulfing them again.

By the time they reached the bottom of the hill, Sienna was out of breath and wondering if Langdon had any idea where they were going. The path led directly into a maze garden, but Langdon confidently turned left into a wide gravel patio, which he skirted, staying behind a hedge in the shadows of the overhanging trees. The patio was deserted, more of an employee parking lot than a tourist area.

“Where are we going?! ” Sienna finally asked, breathless.

“Almost there. ”

Almost where? The entire patio was enclosed by walls that were at least three stories tall. The only exit Sienna saw was a vehicle gateway on the left, which was sealed by a massive wrought-iron grate that looked like it dated back to the original palace in the days of marauding armies. Beyond the barricade, she could see police gathered in the Piazza dei Pitti.

Staying along the perimeter vegetation, Langdon pushed onward, heading directly for the wall in front of them. Sienna scanned the sheer face for any open doorway, but all she saw was a niche containing what had to be the most hideous statue she had ever seen.

Good God, the Medici could afford any artwork on earth, and they chose this?

The statue before them depicted an obese, naked dwarf straddling a giant turtle. The dwarf’s testicles were squashed against the turtle’s shell, and the turtle’s mouth was dribbling water, as if he were ill.

“I know, ” Langdon said, without breaking stride. “That’s Braccio di Bartolo—a famous court dwarf. If you ask me, they should put him out back in the giant bathtub. ”

Langdon turned sharply to his right, heading down a set of stairs that Sienna had been unable to see until now.

A way out?!

The flash of hope was short-lived.

As she turned the corner and headed down the stairs behind Langdon, she realized they were dashing into a dead end—a cul-de-sac whose walls were twice as high as the others.

Furthermore, Sienna now sensed that their long journey was about to terminate at the mouth of a gaping cavern … a deep grotto carved out of the rear wall. This can’t be where he’s taking us!

Over the cave’s yawning entrance, daggerlike stalactites loomed portentously. In the cavity beyond, oozing geological features twisted and dripped down the walls as if the stone were melting … morphing into shapes that included, to Sienna’s alarm, half-buried humanoids extruding from the walls as if being consumed by the stone. The entire vision reminded Sienna of something out of Botticelli’s Mappa dell’Inferno.

Langdon, for some reason, seemed unfazed, and continued running directly toward the cave’s entrance. He’d made a comment earlier about Vatican City, but Sienna was fairly certain there were no freakish caverns inside the walls of the Holy See.

As they drew nearer, Sienna’s eyes moved to the sprawling entablature above the entrance—a ghostly compilation of stalactites and nebulous stone extrusions that seemed to be engulfing two reclining women, who were flanked by a shield embedded with six balls, or palle, the famed crest of the Medici.

Langdon suddenly cut to his left, away from the entrance and toward a feature Sienna had previously missed—a small gray door to the left of the cavern. Weathered and wooden, it appeared of little significance, like a storage closet or room for landscaping supplies.

Langdon rushed to the door, clearly hoping he could open it, but the door had no handle—only a brass keyhole—and, apparently, could be opened only from within.

“Damn it! ” Langdon’s eyes now shone with concern, his earlier hopefulness all but erased. “I had hoped—”

Without warning, the piercing whine of the drone echoed loudly off the high walls around them. Sienna turned to see the drone rising up over the palace and clawing its way in their direction.

Langdon clearly saw it, too, because he grabbed Sienna’s hand and dashed toward the cavern. They ducked out of sight in the nick of time beneath the grotto’s stalactite overhang.

A fitting end, she thought. Dashing through the gates of hell.

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