When Dana exited back into the living room, the dimpled woman was waiting for her, staring over the barrel of a menacing matte-black handgun that was aimed directly at Dana’s forehead.

  My God!

  “I’m going to ask you once,” the woman said with an eerie calm. “What are you doing here?” Her accent was American.

  The steadiness of the woman’s voice, as well as that of her weapon hand, suggested she was no stranger to firing a gun. Dana had never had a gun trained on her, and the experience was sobering.

  “I’m…looking for…Michael Harris,” she heard herself say.

  The gun remained leveled. “He’s not here.”

  Dana had noticed the embassy sedan was no longer in front of the hotel when she entered, but she assumed Michael had asked his driver to park elsewhere so as not to draw attention.

  “You need to leave immediately,” the woman said. “This is not your concern.”

  “It is very much my concern,” Dana replied, finding her voice. “I am an employee of the U.S. embassy, and you’re aiming a gun at me. Moreover, it appears you’re searching the hotel room of two American citizens.”

  “As I said,” she repeated, stepping forward with the gun still leveled. “This is not your concern.”

  Who in the world are you?! Dana knew she had only one card to play. She glanced out the bay window toward Charles Bridge and said, “I know what happened on that bridge this morning. Where’s your crown of thorns?”

  The woman with the gun did not so much as flinch. She took yet another step toward Dana. “Whoever you are,” she said firmly, “I would strongly recommend you return to the embassy and speak to your ambassador before you mention this to anyone at all.”

  “First, tell me where Michael Harris is.”

  “Your ambassador sent him over to provide me access to this suite, which he did, and then he left. That’s all I know about him.” She motioned toward the exit. “Now leave. And close the door on your way out.”

  Field Officer Susan Housemore waited until the door had clicked shut before she lowered her weapon and placed it into the discreet holster at the small of her back. Then she pulled out her phone and placed a secure call to Mr. Finch in London.

  Across town, in the backseat of the embassy car roaring toward Crucifix Bastion, Michael Harris was relieved to have completed the ambassador’s bizarre errand at the Four Seasons. The contact he had been ordered to “assist” had accepted Harris’s discreet room key handoff without even making eye contact.

  Serious professional.

  As Crucifix Bastion appeared ahead, Harris was pleased to see no signs of a demo team or any additional ÚZSI vehicles. The ambassador’s call to Janáček had clearly stopped the man cold, and Harris was eager to meet up again with Robert Langdon, as promised.

  As Harris exited the sedan, however, he hesitated. The lab’s front door appeared to be shattered and wide open. What the hell happened here?! As Harris hurried toward the door, an ÚZSI agent lurched through the opening, clutching his head. Harris recognized him as the muscular lieutenant driving Janáček’s car this morning at the Four Seasons.

  Harris ran over to steady the man. “Are you okay? What happened?!” And why is the front door destroyed?

  “Katherine Solomon,” the man stammered. “She…hit me…”

  The claim made no sense. “You’re sure it was Dr. Solomon?”

  “I saw her in the mirror…tall…blond…”

  Definitely not Katherine Solomon. Harris knew there was only one tall blonde with access to this lab—Gessner’s assistant, Sasha Vesna—and he found it hard to imagine Sasha was capable of violence. “Where is Robert Langdon?”

  “He ran…with her.”

  The story sounded delusional, and yet Harris now noticed a series of footprints departing the front walkway…as if headed for the woods. Langdon fled?!

  “Did you see anyone else inside?” Dr. Gessner?

  “No…I came straight up to report this to my captain.” The lieutenant motioned to the far end of the courtyard. “He’s out there.”

  Harris looked out toward the ridge, but Janáček was nowhere to be seen. “I don’t see him.”

  “He went out there to make a phone call…”

  Harris was not surprised. He was probably doing damage control after he spoke to the ambassador. “You should really sit down, Lieutenant.”

  The man was already moving toward the ridgeline, and Harris scooped up a handful of snow, hurrying to catch up. “Here. Hold this on your head.”

  The man took the ball of snow and pressed it to the back of his skull as he walked. “He was out here on the phone…but he never came back in.”

  Harris saw a tangle of footprints on the ridgeline, as if Janáček had been pacing or perhaps had been joined by someone else, but the area was now deserted. As the two men neared the edge, the lieutenant stopped and retrieved a metallic object from the ground. He dusted it off, his eyes wide with concern. “This is his phone!” he exclaimed.

  Why would Janáček have left his phone?

  Tentatively, they moved the final few yards to the edge of the ravine and peered over the ridge. The scene below was grisly. At the bottom of the chasm, grotesquely sprawled and broken on the rocks, lay a body in a dark suit. The man’s head was encircled with red snow that radiated several feet in all directions. Even from this height, Harris had no doubt he was dead…and no doubt who he was.

  My God…Janáček jumped?

  Beside Harris, the lieutenant turned away and bellowed like a wounded animal. His voice echoed with the pain of true loss…and uncontrollable rage.

  CHAPTER 36

  Langdon lowered his head against the wind as he and Sasha Vesna descended the wooded slope away from the bastion. The dense tree cover provided enough dry ground that Langdon was able to descend more gracefully than anticipated, sliding several times on the slick snow but maintaining a steady pace.

  By the time they emerged from the woods into Folimanka Park, Langdon’s loafers were caked with snow and his feet were frozen. A scattering of pedestrians dotted the pathways, heads down, making their way to work.

  Without speaking, Sasha led them quickly across the park, heading due south. As they passed Folimanka Fountain, Sasha spoke under her breath. “I’m convinced Katherine never entered the bastion this morning…the display on the EPR pod showed Brigita had been in that pod since late last night, which is far longer than anyone could survive.”

  Langdon hoped this meant Katherine had arrived at the lab, received no answer at the buzzer, and simply returned to the hotel. She and I might have crossed paths, he told himself, trying to ignore the nagging sensation that something with Katherine was indeed very wrong. He felt terrified by the prospect of losing her.

  For the past three days, he and Katherine hadn’t spent a moment apart, and it amazed Langdon that after nearly thirty-five years, their casual friendship had ignited into such a natural, passionate romance, catching them both off guard.

  Langdon had savored the days together. He took Katherine to see the bizarrely fetishistic Infant Jesus of Prague statue, which was ritualistically undressed and dressed in different outfits like some kind of sacred Barbie Doll. He showed her the mysterious 165-pound Devil’s Bible, the largest book in the world, whose terrifying legend involved an adulterous monk, the skins of 160 donkeys, and death by “immurement”…and even dared Katherine to taste the local tlačenka—“meat jelly”—which she agreed was surprisingly delicious despite being made of pig’s heads.

  Katherine had also been on an adrenaline ride these last few days, having just finished her manuscript. With a mixture of enthusiasm and coy reserve, she had told Langdon about it in general, playfully rebuffing his attempts to learn more about the details of the book in order not to ruin the surprises for him. But mainly, Langdon recalled, she had fretted about whether readers and book reviewers would be open to new ideas.

  “Let’s face it—the human mind hates change,” she had said yesterday while sipping espresso at the stylish La Boheme Café. “And the mind despises abandoning existing beliefs.”

  Langdon smiled. That’s why religions endure for millennia despite mountains of evidence contradicting their beliefs.

  “Thirty years ago,” Katherine complained, “physicists proved that communication between two entangled particles is instantaneous…and yet we’re still teaching Einstein’s mantra that ‘nothing travels faster than the speed of light’!”

  The original experiment, as Langdon recalled, involved using a magnet to reverse the polarity of one entangled particle, resulting in the polarity of its “twin” particle reversing instantly—whether it was in the same room or miles away. Upping the ante, Chinese scientists had later performed the same experiment using satellites to demonstrate that two entangled particles remained “instantaneously connected” over a distance of twelve hundred kilometers. Science Magazine ran the cover story “China Shatters ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ Record,” referring to the phrase coined by Albert Einstein in the mid-1930s to describe the phenomenon.

  “And it’s been decades,” Katherine continued, “since we’ve proven repeatedly that human thought, when focused, can quite literally alter one’s body chemistry. And yet…the notion of remote healing is skeptically debunked by medical experts as voodoo.”

  An obdurate mind can be an immovable mountain, Langdon thought, always amazed how many people still fervently believed humans came from Adam and Eve despite the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution.

  “I’ve got a student with a one forty-eight IQ,” Langdon recounted, “who insists the earth is six thousand years old. So, I took her down the hall to the geology department and showed her a three-million-year-old fossil. She simply shrugged and said, ‘I believe God placed that fossil on earth as a trick…to test my faith.’ ”

  Katherine laughed. “If you think religious zealots are irrationally tied to their worldviews, you should meet the tenured academics of higher education.”

  “I’m a tenured academic of higher education!”

  “And you’ve always been a skeptic, Robert. Old-fashioned, but cute.”

  “Old-fashioned?” Langdon cocked his head. “I’m younger than you are…hate to remind you.”

  “Careful…” she said, flashing a devastating smile. “You took my undergrad seminar twice, lover boy, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my slideshow you were staring at.”

  Langdon laughed out loud. “Guilty as charged.”

  “The point is, nobody likes change,” she continued. “And stodgy academics have a tendency to cling to the comfort of their existing beliefs long after their models are clearly obsolete. For this reason, establishing a new scientific paradigm—like that of human consciousness—becomes an exceptionally frustrating and slow process.”

  Langdon thought of Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describing how paradigm shifts occurred only when a critical mass of incompatible phenomena had been attained. Katherine was clearly hoping her book would add substantial weight to that ongoing quest for a critical mass.

  “Your manuscript…” Langdon said. “You still haven’t told me specifically what your big breakthrough is.”

  Katherine smiled. “Patience. I think you’ll find it all quite fascinating—but I’d rather you read it and give me feedback.”

  A car horn blared, and the warm memories of the café evaporated, returning Langdon to the cold of Folimanka Park. Shivering, he followed Sasha out of the park through an iron gate, pleased to see a line of yellow Škoda sedans idling at a taxi stand.

  They climbed into the first cab, Langdon very grateful for the warm interior. Sasha gave the driver an address, and the cab pulled out onto Sekaninova Street.

  Then she pulled out her phone and placed a call on speaker.

  Michael Harris’s familiar voice answered. “Sasha?!”

  “Michael!” she exclaimed, her voice distraught. “Something terrible happened to Brigita!” Sasha weepily relayed their grim discovery.

  “I’m so sorry,” Harris said, sounding stunned. “I had no idea. I’m here at the bastion now.”

  Damn, we just missed him, Langdon realized.

  “ÚZSI is here too,” Harris added. “They have no idea Brigita is dead.”

  Pavel must not have seen the body.

  “Sasha,” Harris said, “did you attack an ÚZSI officer?!”

  She hesitated, startled. “He attacked Robert Langdon! I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Langdon?” Harris demanded. “Is he with you?”

  “Yes, he wanted to take a taxi to the embassy, but—”

  “Bad idea. ÚZSI will intercept.”

  “I know. So I’m taking him—”

  “Don’t say it on the phone!” Harris interrupted. “I know where you’re going. Tell Harry and Sally I said hello. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Maybe twenty minutes. Stay off the phone.”

  The call ended.

  “Harry and Sally?” Langdon asked.

  “My cats. He didn’t want me to say we’re going to my apartment.”

  Smart. “Sounds like you know him well.”

  She nodded, looking almost embarrassed. “A couple of months now.”

  “And obviously you trust him,” Langdon said.

  “I do.” Sasha’s eyes welled with sudden emotion. “He’ll know how to help you.”

  What about helping you? Langdon hoped the embassy would be able to protect the Russian woman despite her attack on an ÚZSI lieutenant. He wished Sasha had asked Harris for any new information about Katherine, but the attaché seemed to trust the phones as little as Sasha did, and he probably wouldn’t have said anything anyway.

  I’ll speak to Harris shortly at Sasha’s home.

  Next to him, Sasha closed her eyes and settled into her seat. She began rocking her body gently, as if trying to comfort herself. She needs calm, he thought. She had just endured an epileptic seizure, as well as a physical battle with an ÚZSI officer, and was now putting herself at risk to shepherd Langdon to safety, all after witnessing the gruesome death of her mentor.

  Langdon checked his watch. Mickey Mouse’s outstretched arms indicated it was just past 9 a.m…. only a few hours since he had awoken peacefully with Katherine in his arms.

  It felt like a lifetime ago.

  CHAPTER 37

  Langdon’s body eagerly absorbed the taxi’s warmth. His bitter trek across Folimanka Park had left him chilled, and he now kicked off his snow-caked loafers and massaged his frozen toes. Beside him, Sasha remained silent, her eyes still closed.

  The woman on Charles Bridge continued to haunt him. Everything about the brief encounter felt otherworldly…the ghostly way she moved, the blank stare in her eyes, the smell of death, and the way she seemed not to hear him…as if she lived in a parallel reality.

  Ghost sightings were reported almost nightly in this necromantic city, most commonly the local spirit celebrities—the headless Templar Knight who haunted Charles Bridge seeking revenge for his execution…the White Lady of Prague Castle who walked the castle ramparts trying to escape imprisonment for allegedly practicing witchcraft…the earthen golem monster who still moved through the shadows near the Old Jewish Synagogue protecting the weak.

  Ghosts don’t exist, Langdon knew. And they certainly don’t leave footprints in the snow. Whatever had transpired on Charles Bridge was flesh and blood.

  Langdon had always enjoyed Prague’s supernatural lore, even while instinctively dismissing it. And this morning, his rational mind had cut through the mystical fog, arriving at a black-and-white conclusion. There existed only three viable explanations for the startling presence of the woman on Charles Bridge.

  First, the possibility that Katherine’s dream was indeed a miraculous precognitive vision of a future event. If that was true, Katherine had just experienced one of the most vividly accurate clairvoyant events anyone had ever reported. Probability near zero. Dismissed.

  The second explanation felt equally unlikely. Coincidence. A woman dressed in a halo, carrying a spear, and smelling of sulfur had just happened to cross the bridge a few hours after Katherine’s dream. Statistically impossible to the point of absurdity.

  The third scenario—while disturbing—seemed to be the only remaining rational explanation. According to Sherlock Holmes: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The improbable truth, in this instance, was that someone else had learned about Katherine’s dream…and had orchestrated the spectacle.

  A setup.

  But why?

  And how?

  The question of why remained a mystery, but the question of how seemed eerily plausible. While on book tour in Russia a few years back, Langdon had been warned that most luxury hotel rooms in Moscow were bugged by the government. Could Prague be similar? This city felt nothing like Moscow, and yet history cast a long shadow. Not too long ago, Prague had spent forty-five years behind the Iron Curtain, and aside from the all-too-brief “Prague Spring,” Soviet hard-liners had set the tone here with ubiquitous KGB surveillance. If there was one suite in Prague worthy of monitoring, it was the Four Seasons Royal Suite—top choice for billionaires, world leaders, and diplomats.

  Was someone listening when Katherine told me about her dream?

  If the suite was surveilled, Langdon cringed to imagine what private moments might have been overheard, or recorded, during these past few passionate days with her.

  But who would be listening? Janáček? ÚZSI?

  Whatever the motive to re-create the disturbing dream, Langdon had run that same route across Charles Bridge at the same time for three days now, and he’d told Katherine this morning he’d be back at seven.

  Clockwork.

  By that logic, he felt more confident it had all been a setup.

  And somehow, that felt scarier to him than the existence of any ghost.