avenues, and a personal attaché who oversaw everything from his security to buying food and supplies. Zobrist never used his own credit cards or appeared in public, so he was impossible to track. We even provided him disguises, aliases, and alternate documentation for traveling unnoticed.” He paused. “Which he apparently did when he placed the Solublon bag.”
Sinskey exhaled, making little effort to hide her frustration. “The WHO has been trying to keep tabs on him since last year, but he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.”
“Even hiding from Sienna,” the provost said.
“I’m sorry?” Langdon glanced up, clearing the knot in his throat. “I thought you said they were lovers?”
“They were, but he cut her off suddenly when he went into hiding. Even though Sienna was the one who sent him to us, my agreement was with Zobrist himself, and part of our deal was that when he disappeared, he would disappear from the whole world, including Sienna. Apparently after he went into hiding, he sent her a farewell letter revealing that he was very ill, would be dead in a year or so, and didn’t want her to see him deteriorate.”
Zobrist abandoned Sienna?
“Sienna tried to contact me for information,” the provost said, “but I refused to take her calls. I had to respect my client’s wishes.”
“Two weeks ago,” Sinskey continued, “Zobrist walked into a bank in Florence and anonymously rented a safe-deposit box. After he left, our watch list got word that the bank’s new facial-recognition software had identified the disguised man as Bertrand Zobrist. My team flew to Florence and it took a week to locate his safe house, which was empty, but inside we found evidence that he had created some kind of highly contagious pathogen and hidden it somewhere else.”
Sinskey paused. “We were desperate to find him. The following morning, before sunrise, we spotted him walking along the Arno, and we immediately gave chase. That’s when he fled up the Badia tower and jumped to his death.”
“He may have been planning to do that anyway,” the provost added. “He was convinced he did not have long to live.”
“As it turned out,” Sinskey said, “Sienna had been searching for him as well. Somehow, she found out that we had mobilized to Florence, and she tailed our movements, thinking we might have located him. Unfortunately, she was there in time to see Zobrist jump.” Sinskey sighed. “I suspect it was very traumatic for her to watch her lover and mentor fall to his death.”
Langdon felt ill, barely able to comprehend what they were telling him. The only person in this entire scenario whom he trusted was Sienna, and these people were telling him that she was not who she claimed to be? No matter what they said, he could not believe Sienna would condone Zobrist’s desire to create a plague.
Or would she?
Would you kill half the population today, Sienna had asked him, in order to save our species from extinction?
Langdon felt a chill.
“Once Zobrist was dead,” Sinskey explained, “I used my influence to force the bank to open Zobrist’s safe-deposit box, which ironically turned out to contain a letter to me … along with a strange little device.”
“The projector,” Langdon ventured.
“Exactly. His letter said he wanted me to be the first to visit ground zero, which nobody would ever find without following his Map of Hell.”
Langdon pictured the modified Botticelli painting that shone out of the tiny projector.
The provost added, “Zobrist had contracted me to deliver to Dr. Sinskey the contents of the safe-deposit box, but not until after tomorrow morning. When Dr. Sinskey came into possession of it early, we panicked and took action, trying to recover it in accordance with our client’s wishes.”
Sinskey looked at Langdon. “I didn’t have much hope of understanding the map in time, so I recruited you to help me. Are you remembering any of this, now?”
Langdon shook his head.
“We flew you quietly to Florence, where you had made an appointment with someone you thought could help.”
Ignazio Busoni.
“You met with him last night,” Sinskey said, “and then you disappeared. We thought something had happened to you.”
“And in fact,” the provost said, “something did happen to you. In an effort to recover the projector, we had an agent of mine named Vayentha tail you from the airport. She lost you somewhere around the Piazza della Signoria.” He scowled. “Losing you was a critical error. And Vayentha had the nerve to blame it on a bird.”