I know his reputation too well; he’s better than that.
Sinskey had first met Robert Langdon four nights before in the gutted hull of a retasked C-130 transport plane, which served as the World Health Organization’s mobile coordination center.
It had been just past seven when the plane landed at Hanscom Field, less than fifteen miles from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sinskey was not sure what to expect from the celebrated academic whom she had contacted by phone, but she was pleasantly surprised when he strode confidently up the gangplank into the rear of the plane and greeted her with a carefree smile.
“Dr. Sinskey, I presume?” Langdon firmly shook her hand.
“Professor, it’s an honor to meet you.”
“The honor’s mine. Thanks for all you do.”
Langdon was a tall man, with urbane good looks and a deep voice. His clothing at the moment, Sinskey had to assume, was his classroom attire—a tweed jacket, khaki slacks, and loafers—which made sense considering the man had essentially been scooped off his campus with no warning. He also looked younger and far more fit than she’d imagined, which only served to remind Elizabeth of her own age. I could almost be his mother.
She gave him a tired smile. “Thank you for coming, Professor.”
Langdon motioned to the humorless associate whom Sinskey had sent to collect him. “Your friend here didn’t give me much chance to reconsider.”
“Good. That’s what I pay him for.”
“Nice amulet,” Langdon said, eyeing her necklace. “Lapis lazuli?”
Sinskey nodded and glanced down at her blue stone amulet, fashioned into the iconic symbol of a snake wrapped around a vertical rod. “The modern symbol for medicine. As I’m sure you know, it’s called a caduceus.”
Langdon glanced up suddenly, as if there was something he wanted to say.
She waited. Yes?
Apparently thinking better of his impulse, he gave a polite smile and changed the subject. “So why am I here?”
Elizabeth motioned to a makeshift conference area around a stainless-steel table. “Please, sit. I have something I need you to look at.”
Langdon ambled toward the table, and Elizabeth noted that while the professor seemed intrigued by the prospect of a secret meeting, he did not appear at all unsettled by it. Here is a man comfortable in his own skin. She wondered if he would appear as relaxed once he found out why he had been brought here.
Elizabeth got Langdon settled and then, with no preamble, she presented the object she and her team had confiscated from a Florence safe-deposit box less than twelve hours earlier.
Langdon studied the small carved cylinder for a long moment before giving her a quick synopsis of what she already knew. The object was an ancient cylinder seal that could be used for printmaking. It bore a particularly gruesome image of a three-headed Satan along with a single word: saligia.
“Saligia,” Langdon said, “is a Latin mnemonic for—”
“The Seven Deadly Sins,” Elizabeth said. “Yes, we looked it up.”
“Okay …” Langdon sounded puzzled. “Is there some reason you wanted me to look at this?”
“Actually, yes.” Sinskey took the cylinder back and began shaking it violently, the agitator ball rattling back and forth.
Langdon looked puzzled by her action, but before he could ask what she was doing, the end of the cylinder began to glow, and she pointed it at a smooth patch of insulation on the wall of the gutted plane.
Langdon let out a low whistle and moved toward the projected image.
“Botticelli’s Map of Hell,” Langdon announced. “Based on Dante’s Inferno. Although I’m guessing you probably already know that.”
Elizabeth nodded. She and her team had used the Internet to identify the painting, which Sinskey had been surprised to learn was a Botticelli, a painter best known for his bright, idealized masterpieces Birth of Venus and Springtime. Sinskey loved both of those works despite the fact that they portrayed fertility and the creation of life, which only served to remind her of her own tragic inability to conceive—the lone significant regret in her otherwise very productive life.
“I was hoping,” Sinskey said, “that you could tell me about the symbolism hidden in this painting.”
Langdon looked irritated for the first time all night. “Is that why you called me in? I thought you said it was an emergency.”
“Humor me.”
Langdon heaved a patient sigh. “Dr. Sinskey, generally speaking, if you want to know about a specific painting, you should contact the museum that contains the original. In this case, that would be the Vatican’s Biblioteca Apostolica. The Vatican has a number of superb iconographers who—”