CHAPTER 85

ROBERT LANGDON GAZED blankly out the window of the van as it sped along the waterfront highway connecting Atatü rk Airport to the center of Istanbul. The Swiss officials had somehow facilitated a modified customs process, and Langdon, Sinskey, and the others in the group had been en route in a matter of minutes.

Sinskey had ordered the provost and Ferris to remain aboard the C-130 with several WHO staff members and to continue trying to track the whereabouts of Sienna Brooks.

While nobody truly believed Sienna could reach Istanbul in time, there were fears she might phone one of Zobrist’s disciples in Turkey and ask for assistance in realizing Zobrist’s delusional plan before Sinskey’s team could interfere.

Would Sienna really commit mass murder? Langdon was still struggling to accept all that had happened today. It pained him to do so, but he was forced to accept the truth. You never knew her, Robert. She played you.

A light rain had begun to fall over the city, and Langdon felt suddenly weary as he listened to the repetitive swish of the windshield wipers. To his right, out on the Sea of Marmara, he could see the running lights of luxury yachts and massive tankers powering to and from the city port up ahead. All along the waterfront, illuminated minarets rose slender and elegant above their domed mosques, silent reminders that while Istanbul was a modern, secular city, its core was grounded in religion.

Langdon had always found this ten-mile strip of highway one of the prettiest drives in Europe. A perfect example of Istanbul’s clash of old and new, the road followed part of Constantine’s wall, which had been built more than sixteen centuries before the birth of the man for whom this avenue was now named—John F. Kennedy. The U. S. president had been a great admirer of Kemal Atatü rk’s vision for a Turkish republic springing from the ashes of a fallen empire.

Providing unparalleled views of the sea, Kennedy Avenue wound through spectacular groves and historic parks, past the harbor in Yenikapi, and eventually threaded its way between the city limits and the Strait of Bosporus, where it continued northward all the way around the Golden Horn. There, high above the city, rose the Ottoman stronghold of Topkapi Palace. With its strategic view of the Bosporus waterway, the palace was a favorite among tourists, who visited to admire both the vistas and the staggering collection of Ottoman treasure that included the cloak and sword said to have belonged to the Prophet Muhammad himself.

We won’t be going that far, Langdon knew, picturing their destination, Hagia Sophia, which rose out of the city center not far ahead.

As they pulled off Kennedy Avenue and began snaking into the densely populated city, Langdon stared out at the crowds of people on the streets and sidewalks and felt haunted by the day’s conversations.

Overpopulation.

The plague.

Zobrist’s twisted aspirations.

Even though Langdon had understood all along exactly where this SRS mission was headed, he had not fully processed it until this moment. We are going to ground zero. He pictured the slowly dissolving bag of yellow-brown fluid and wondered how he had let himself get into this position.

The strange poem that Langdon and Sienna had unveiled on the back of Dante’s death mask had eventually guided him here, to Istanbul. Langdon had directed the SRS team to Hagia Sophia, and knew there would be more to do once they arrived.

Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom,
and place thine ear to the ground,
listening for the sounds of trickling water.
Follow deep into the sunken palace …
for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits,
submerged in the bloodred waters …
of the lagoon that reflects no stars.

Langdon again felt troubled to know that the final canto of Dante’s Inferno ended in a nearly identical scene: After a long descent through the underworld, Dante and Virgil reach the lowest point of hell. Here, with no way out, they hear the sounds of trickling water running through stones beneath them, and they follow the rivulet through cracks and crevices … ultimately finding safety.

Dante wrote: “A place is there below … which not by sight is known, but by the sound of a rivulet, which descends along the hollow of a rock … and by that hidden way, my guide and I did enter, to return to the fair world. ”

Dante’s scene had clearly been the inspiration for Zobrist’s poem, although in this case, it seemed Zobrist had flipped everything upside down. Langdon and the others would indeed be following the sounds of trickling water, but unlike Dante, they would not be heading away from the inferno … but directly into it.

As the van maneuvered through tighter streets and more densely populated neighborhoods, Langdon began to grasp the perverse logic that had led Zobrist to choose downtown Istanbul as the epicenter of a pandemic.

East meets West.

The crossroads of the world.

Istanbul had, at numerous times in history, succumbed to deadly plagues that killed off enormous portions of its population. In fact, during the final phase of the Black Death, this very city had been called the “plague hub” of the empire, and the disease was said to have killed more than ten thousand residents a day. Several famous Ottoman paintings depicted townspeople desperately digging plague pits to bury mounds of corpses in the nearby fields of Taksim.

Langdon hoped Karl Marx was wrong when he said, “History repeats itself. ”

All along the rainy streets, unsuspecting souls were bustling about their evening’s business. A pretty Turkish woman called her children in to dinner; two old men shared a drink at an outdoor café; a well-dressed couple walked hand in hand beneath an umbrella; and a tuxedoed man leaped off a bus and ran down the street, sheltering his violin case beneath his jacket, apparently late for a concert.

Langdon found himself studying the faces around him, trying to imagine the intricacies of each person’s life.

The masses are made up of individuals.

He closed his eyes, turning from the window and trying to abandon the morbid turn his thoughts had taken. But the damage was done. In the darkness of his mind, an unwanted image materialized—the desolate landscape of Bruegel’s Triumph of Death—a hideous panorama of pestilence, misery, and torture laying ruin to a seaside city.

The van turned to the right onto Torun Avenue, and for a moment Langdon thought they had arrived at their destination. On his left, rising out of the mist, a great mosque appeared.

But it was not Hagia Sophia.

The Blue Mosque, he quickly realized, spotting the building’s six fluted, pencil-shaped minarets, which had multiple ş erefe balconies and climbed skyward to end in piercing spires. Langdon had once read that the exotic, fairy-tale quality of the Blue Mosque’s balconied minarets had inspired the design for Cinderella’s iconic castle at Disney World. The Blue Mosque drew its name from the dazzling sea of blue tiles that adorned its interior walls.

We’re close, Langdon thought as the van sped onward, turning onto Kabasakal Avenue and running along the expansive plaza of Sultanahmet Park, which was situated halfway between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and famous for its views of both.

Langdon squinted through the rain-swept windshield, searching the horizon for the outline of Hagia Sofia, but the rain and headlights made visibility difficult. Worse still, traffic along the avenue seemed to have stopped.

Up ahead, Langdon saw nothing but a line of glowing brake lights.

“An event of some sort, ” the driver announced. “A concert, I think. It may be faster on foot. ”

“How far? ” Sinskey demanded.

“Just through the park here. Three minutes. Very safe. ”

Sinskey nodded to Brü der and then turned to the SRS team. “Stay in the van. Get as close as you can to the building. Agent Brü der will be in touch very soon. ”

With that, Sinskey, Brü der, and Langdon jumped out of the van into the street and headed across the park.

The broad-leaved trees in Sultanahmet Park offered a bit of cover from the worsening weather as the group hurried along its canopied paths. The walkways were dotted with signage directing visitors to the park’s many attractions—an Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, the Serpent Column from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and the Milion Column that once served as the “point zero” from which all distances were measured in the Byzantine Empire.

Finally, they emerged from the trees at the foot of a circular reflecting pool that marked the center of the park. Langdon stepped into the opening and raised his eyes to the east.

Hagia Sophia.

Not so much a building … as a mountain.

Glistening in the rain, the colossal silhouette of Hagia Sophia appeared to be a city unto itself. Its central dome—impossibly broad and ribbed in silver gray—seemed to rest upon a conglomeration of other domed buildings that had been piled up around it. Four towering minarets—each with a single balcony and a silver-gray spire—rose from the corners of the building, so far from the central dome that one could barely determine that they were part of a single structure.

Sinskey and Brü der, who until this point had been maintaining a steady focused jog, both pulled up suddenly, their eyes craning upward … upward … as their minds struggled to absorb the full height and breadth of the structure looming before them.

“Dear God. ” Brü der let out a soft groan of disbelief. “We’re going to be searching … that? ”

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