Langdon’s arms shot skyward. For God’s sake!

  Janáček ended his call and nodded calmly at his lieutenant, saying something to him in Czech.

  Pavel lowered the gun and holstered it.

  “What the hell is he doing?!” Langdon shouted at Janáček.

  “His job,” the captain replied. “Are you trying to leave us?”

  “Leave?!” he replied angrily. “No, I was…”

  “You were what?”

  Langdon hesitated a moment, reconsidering his words. “I was just going to the restroom,” he lied, returning to his seat. “On second thought, it can wait.”

  The Golěm donned his sunglasses as he strode across the cobbles of Old Town Square toward the taxi stand. Despite his lack of sleep, he felt energized, his thoughts firmly focused on what would be required to carry out his liberating act of vengeance.

  Last night, Gessner had confessed a dark truth, revealing that her colleagues had secretly constructed a sprawling, cavernous facility deep beneath the city of Prague. They call it Threshold. The scope of the project was astounding, and yet it was the facility’s precise location that had most amazed The Golěm.

  Right in the heart of the city.

  Hundreds of people walk over it every day…with no idea it’s there.

  When The Golěm demanded Gessner tell him how to get inside, she tried to resist but, overwhelmed with pain, quickly revealed the answer: Threshold could be accessed only by someone who knew where the entrance was hidden…and also possessed a highly specialized RFID key card.

  It took The Golěm only a few minutes of brutality to extract both. When he left Gessner to die, he possessed the information he required…and also her personal RFID key card.

  Unfortunately, he later discovered that the neuroscientist had managed to withhold one critical piece of information from him: the key card alone was not sufficient to gain access.

  Defeated and exhausted, The Golěm had trudged homeward through the darkness, the useless key card in his pocket. Partway home, however, he realized there might be a solution to his problem. The more he considered it, the more confident he became. By dawn, he was fully certain.

  I require a second item.

  Fortunately, The Golěm knew precisely where this item was located at this very moment—in Gessner’s private lab, high on the ridgeline overlooking the city.

  “Bastion u Božích muk,” he said as he climbed into a cab. “Take me to Crucifix Bastion.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Lieutenant Pavel felt a smug bemusement to know he had frightened Robert Langdon so deeply that the man had forgone his trip to the restroom. The American was now sitting on a couch and staring blankly into space.

  Having a gun in your face will scramble your thoughts.

  Partly out of spite, Pavel walked around the corner, down the hall, into the restroom. Leaving the door wide open so Langdon could hear, he urinated loudly and then flushed.

  As he exited the restroom, Pavel saw Janáček rounding the corner into the hallway.

  “I’m going for a cigarette,” the captain said.

  Pavel had worked with Janáček long enough to know the captain smoked wherever he damn well pleased. He was probably going to make a private phone call. There were a lot of those with Janáček.

  “The demolition team will be here in thirty minutes,” Janáček said, “to blow through that.” He pointed to the steel portal that protected the stairs down to the lab.

  A single controlled blast, Pavel agreed, surveying the lab door. And the lower level will be accessible.

  The shattered front doorframe was still leaning against the lab door as an alarm, but Pavel sensed nobody would be exiting today by their own accord. They had already defied a direct order from Captain Janáček…which left them precious few options.

  “I’ll wait for the team outside,” Janáček said. “Stay here and make sure nobody exits the lab. And Langdon should never leave your sight.”

  He snapped his heels. Understood.

  Pavel had been Janáček’s right-hand man for nearly five years now. Lesser known in the police force, however, was the fact that Pavel was Oldřich Janáček’s nephew. When Pavel was only nine, his father was killed in a fluke accident—struck by a tourist on a motorbike. When Pavel’s mother descended into an abusive alcoholic haze, Pavel began spending most of his time on the streets making his living by committing local robberies, then convincing the neighborhood storekeepers to pay him for protection.

  At nineteen, when Pavel was arrested, his mother was nowhere to be found, and her older brother Oldřich intervened on behalf of a nephew he barely knew. A rising officer at ÚZSI, Oldřich Janáček had been impressed enough with Pavel’s guts and ingenuity to offer the boy a simple choice: Go to prison and spend your life with criminals…or attend ÚZSI training, and I will show you how to catch them.

  It was tough love, but the choice was simple, and Pavel worked hard to become a dutiful servant of the law. Despite graduating only in the middle of his ÚZSI class, Pavel was promoted quickly through the ranks. Pavel was now a lieutenant, an unusually high post for an officer in his late twenties, and he addressed his uncle solely as Captain Janáček.

  I owe him everything, Pavel knew. Janáček had become the father whom Pavel had lost, and the young lieutenant idolized his captain’s fearlessness and resolve. Sometimes enforcing the law requires being above the law. Captain Janáček lived by that motto and often trusted Pavel to cover any tracks the captain left while pushing the envelope in an investigation…as he had done this morning.

  He knows I will protect him to the end.

  Pavel now stood in the foyer and watched as Captain Janáček exited the building into the bastion’s snowy courtyard—a long, rectangular expanse enclosed by a low stone wall to protect visitors from the dizzying drop off the ridge. As the captain wound his way through the potted evergreens on the lawn, he placed a call and took up a position at the far end of the courtyard, gazing out at the Prague skyline.

  Pavel took the opportunity to check his own phone for messages, hoping he might have a notification from his new app, Dream Zone—the virtual dating platform that had taken Europe by storm. Pavel had never imagined chatting with computer-generated women would hold his interest, and yet, like so many men, he had become addicted to the sexy conversation threads, revealing photos, and fantasy storylines.

  Eleven notifications.

  He smiled, pleased to have something to read while he waited. Phone in hand, Pavel headed back to the atrium to babysit Langdon, but as he entered, he was surprised to see the couch where Langdon had been sitting was now empty. Pavel turned left and right, scanning every corner of the space. He ran into Gessner’s office but found that too was empty.

  Pavel’s confusion turned quickly to panic. Frantically, he dashed around the room, searching behind couches and chairs. Where the hell did he go?!

  Robert Langdon seemed to have evaporated into thin air.

  Less than twenty feet away, Langdon stood motionless in the darkened alcove hidden behind the Paul Evans wall sculpture. Moments ago, finding himself alone, Langdon had jumped up from the couch and hurried over to the artwork to study it more closely. As he’d thought, the steel bar above the piece was not a stabilizing bracket at all.

  It was a glide track.

  Like a very expensive barn door.

  Langdon had firmly grabbed the right-hand edge of the sculpture and heaved it to the left. The massive sculpture slid effortlessly, balanced on high-precision ball-bearing rollers. Hidden behind it, as Langdon had anticipated, was an opening. He quickly stepped through, and the spring-loaded slider closed silently behind him.

  Now, as his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit space, Langdon could hear Lieutenant Pavel rushing around the reception room and cursing loudly.

  The alcove behind the sculpture was equally well-appointed and serene, with rich wood paneling and a marble pillar on which a cluster of faux candles flickered. The candlelight illuminated a brushed metal door.

  A private elevator.

  This seemed a far more fitting entrance to Gessner’s small lab than the service stairwell, and Langdon now saw that the elevator door was secured by an illuminated keypad.

  Apparently, Gessner had not been bluffing about securing her lab with an ingenious passcode. Now all Langdon had to do was figure out what it was.

  CHAPTER 23

  Jonas Faukman had experienced plenty of terrifying moments before—leaping out of a helicopter with no parachute, nearly drowning at the hand of a cunning psychopath, dodging bullets while clinging to a steep rooftop—but those scenarios had all played out in the pages of the suspense novels he had edited.

  Now the terror was real.

  The bag on his head was making it increasingly difficult to breathe, and his hands were bound behind his back. He was lying on the hard metal floor of a vehicle that had been moving fast on a highway for at least ten minutes. He heard the phone in his coat pocket buzz several times, but he had no way to reach it.

  From all Faukman could discern, he had been abducted by two men, both American by the sound of their voices, and they had rifled through his backpack.

  They have the manuscript.

  His fear was underscored by bewilderment.

  Why?

  The van suddenly pulled off the highway, wound along surface streets, and then abruptly stopped. When his captors finally ripped the bag off his head, Faukman found himself face-to-face with a powerfully built, thirtysomething man with a military buzz cut. Dressed all in black, the man had positioned himself alarmingly close, seated on a milk crate directly in front of Faukman, staring at him with ice-cold eyes.

  Petrified, Faukman looked past his captor and through the windshield. All he saw were trees and darkness. He could hear heavy machinery thrumming in the distance. Where the hell am I?

  Faukman’s second abductor—a slightly smaller man—was in the front passenger seat, typing on a laptop. The guy from the sidewalk with the clipboard.

  “Ready,” the guy on the laptop said.

  His partner with the buzz cut reached up to a video camera mounted on the van’s ceiling and swiveled it directly into Faukman’s face.

  Survival rule number one, Faukman reminded himself. Never show fear.

  “That’s a cool camera,” Faukman managed. “Are we making a TikTok?”

  The man glanced down, looking surprised by Faukman’s insolence.

  Faukman tried to sound calm. “Or are we just doing a ransom video to send to my family?”

  “You don’t have a family,” the man said flatly. “You’re not married, you work six days a week, and you haven’t left the country in more than four years.”

  Jesus! Who are these guys?

  Faukman’s first guess had been U.S. military, but it was hard to know these days. He had published a nonfiction book a few years back about the secret world of modern mercenaries—trained specialty contractors with mysterious names like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Wackenhut, and International Development Solutions.

  The truth was, these two operatives could be working for anyone.

  Buzzcut pulled a small tablet from his coat, scrolled through it, and then shoved it in Faukman’s face. “Do you recognize this place?”

  Faukman eyed the photo. It took him a moment to understand the visual. What the hell?! It was his own living room. From the looks of it, his airy apartment on the Upper East Side had been ransacked…artwork knocked off walls, bookshelves emptied, couches shredded, tables overturned.

  “What were we looking for?” Buzzcut said. “Take a guess.”

  Faukman eyed the man’s close-cropped hair. “A better barber?”

  Buzzcut lunged forward without warning and drove a mammoth fist into Faukman’s stomach. The editor doubled over, falling on his side, gasping for breath.

  “Try again,” the man said, yanking him back up onto his knees. “What were we looking for?”

  “I…don’t…know,” Faukman said, barely able to breathe.

  The man on the laptop studied some data that appeared on-screen and shook his head. “He’s lying.”

  “I will ask you one last time,” Buzzcut said. “And before you answer, let me introduce you to Avatar.” He pointed to the video camera overhead. “This is an AI engine that tracks your eye movement, facial microchanges, and postural shifts. It’s a state-of-the-art veracity analysis system.”

  Veracity analysis system? Faukman decided not to chide the thug for using a ten-dollar term for a five-dollar gizmo, but at least it explained the video camera.

  The man on the milk crate leaned forward until his face was uncomfortably close. “We know everything about you, Jonas. We know you work late at night, you go running in Central Park when you don’t have a business lunch, and you drink gin martinis with your authors at the White Horse Tavern. So don’t screw with me. Let me ask you one very simple question.”

  Faukman waited, his stomach still knotted in pain.

  “The manuscript we found in your backpack,” Buzzcut said. “Is that your only copy?”

  Faukman knew what answer they were hoping to hear. Unfortunately, telling the truth right now meant instantly losing his negotiating power…and, quite possibly, his life.

  Seeing precious few options, Faukman closed his eyes and pictured the hero from one of his most popular thriller series—a spy who consistently beat lie detectors using three simple steps, which Faukman now attempted to employ.

  First, he lowered his shoulders and released all tension in his abdomen.

  Second, he touched his index finger and thumb very lightly together and slowed his breathing.

  Third, he held in his mind’s eye a clear mental image of the truth he wished were true—in this case, an image of a dozen extra manuscripts sitting safely on his desk at Random House.

  He felt much calmer.

  “No,” Faukman said with as even a tone as possible. “The manuscript in my bag is not the only copy. There are many others.”

  Laptop studied his computer and almost immediately shook his head. “Lying.”

  Goddamn it, Jonas! It’s called fiction for a reason!

  Buzzcut raised a fist once more, preparing to punch him again in the gut.

  “Wait!” Faukman said. “I was talking about the digital copies on the PRH servers.”

  Buzzcut looked almost amused. “Mr. Faukman, we deleted all the digital copies, which is the reason you were rushing off to the copy center, was it not?”

  Faukman fell silent, heart racing wildly. He could hear loud machinery beyond the van, possibly the whine of industrial engines.

  “Let me make this very simple for you,” Buzzcut said. “Other than the one in your backpack and those from the PRH servers, do you know of any other versions of this manuscript—digital, hard copy, or otherwise?”

  Faukman shook his head. “No, the manuscript in my bag is the only remaining copy.”

  “Was the only remaining copy,” Buzzcut corrected. “We’ve already destroyed it.”

  Alone in the PRH security center, Alex Conan was aghast.

  This can’t be.

  He stabbed at his keyboard, refreshing the page, hoping the information before him was wrong, but the same chilling image kept appearing…and reappearing.

  God, no…

  Minutes earlier, with no sign of Faukman and having been unable to reach either Katherine Solomon or Robert Langdon, Alex had decided to take bold action.

  You have skills. You have access.

  Alex had employed both, and despite the dubious legality of his methods, he had managed to access information he was not supposed to have in order to track them down. A disturbing image now sat on his screen. Alex tried to conjure any benign explanation for what he was looking at, but his mind kept returning to the only logical conclusion…a chilling one.

  Whoever wants to kill this PRH book…has killed a PRH author.

  CHAPTER 24

  In the darkness of the hidden alcove, Langdon studied the alphanumeric keypad on Gessner’s private elevator, his mind already replaying their meeting with her last night.

  Gessner was humorless and severe, with pale skin, taut lips, and her hair pulled back tightly like a flamenco dancer. Langdon had disliked the neuroscientist from the moment they met. She had joined them at the Four Seasons bar, CottoCrudo, after Katherine’s lecture.

  “Dr. Gessner!” Katherine said warmly, leaping to her feet as the woman approached the quiet booth Langdon had chosen in back. “Thank you for joining us and, of course, for inviting me to lecture here in your exquisite city.”

  The woman offered a perfunctory smile in return. “Big audience tonight,” she said, her English slightly laced with a Czech accent. “You’ve made quite a name for yourself.”

  Katherine politely shrugged off the compliment and motioned to Langdon. “That’s very kind. And I’m sure you know my colleague, Professor Robert Langdon?”

  Langdon stood and extended his hand. “A pleasure.”

  Gessner ignored it, simply sliding into the booth with them. “I hope you haven’t ordered drinks yet,” she said. “I’ve asked them to bring over some local favorites.” She turned to Langdon. “Professor, I’ve ordered you the ‘Luce’—CottoCrudo’s signature concoction of Canadian whiskey, cherry bitters, maple syrup, and bacon.”

  Bacon? Langdon would have much preferred his usual Vesper martini with Nolet’s Reserve gin.

  “And for you, Katherine,” Gessner said, “I ordered Staroplzenecký—a local Bohemian absinthe. We joke that if you can still pronounce its name, you need to drink another.”

  A power play disguised as hospitality, Langdon suspected. There were few spirits stronger than Bohemian absinthe, and Katherine was a lightweight when it came to alcohol.

  “Generous of you,” Katherine said graciously. “I have so enjoyed being here and speaking in your magical city. It’s been quite an honor.” Langdon admired her poise, along with her elegant profile, softly framed by cascades of long dark hair.