Katherine’s voice was brimming with passion. “Just think about that. The one universal fear that drives so much of humankind’s destructive behavior…would evaporate. If we can hold on long enough to arrive at that paradigm shift without blowing ourselves up or destroying our planet, then our species may well turn a philosophical corner that ushers in an unimaginably peaceful future.”

  The ambassador fell silent, and Katherine sensed in her eyes a deep desire to feel encouraged despite all she had witnessed of the world. “How I hope you are right,” she whispered.

  Moments later, Robert finally materialized in the doorway.

  Nagel leaped to her feet. “How did it go?”

  He entered with a weary smile. “Ambassador, I believe it’s time you call the director.”

  It was late afternoon in Langley, Virginia, when Director Gregory Judd ended his second video call of the day with his former lead counsel, Heide Nagel.

  I was a fool to fire her, he thought—not because Nagel had come back to haunt him, but because she was so damned good at what she did. Few people cut through the bullshit like Nagel. While most attorneys lived in a black-and-white world ruled by the letter of the law, Nagel lived in the real world, as it truly was—a shifting, complicated landscape, rendered in shades of gray.

  With clarity, humility, and surprising emotional transparency, Nagel had shared with him the unexpected developments pertaining to Sasha Vesna, as well as the obvious implications for the inevitable reconstruction of Threshold. Like any good negotiator, Nagel had helped Judd arrive at her conclusion, while making it seem the idea had been his own.

  The director was not a scientist, but the CIA’s research into the human mind had certainly unveiled a reality unlike anything Judd had imagined as a younger man. Fortunately, Judd’s job was not to comprehend the nature of reality, but rather to harness its power to best serve his nation and to protect it.

  On occasion Judd allowed himself to dream about a future where programs like Threshold unveiled proof of the interconnection between all human minds, ushering in a global community bound not by fear and rivalry, but by empathy and understanding…a world where the concept of national security was a relic of the past.

  For the moment, however, there was work to be done.

  CHAPTER 136

  Outside the private terminal at Václav Havel Airport, Heide Nagel stood on the tarmac and felt the weight of the plan she had forced into motion.

  Asylum.

  It was the correct decision, she told herself. The only decision.

  Not far away, Scott Kerble sat behind the wheel of the idling embassy sedan, its trunk loaded with duffels full of Sasha’s hastily packed clothing and personal belongings. Sasha herself sat quietly in the backseat, still securely restrained in flex cuffs, looking dazed but calm as she played with the two Siamese cats in the pet carrier on the seat beside her.

  A small private jet emerged from the terminal hangar and turned toward them. It was the Citation Latitude on which Finch had arrived earlier. The pilots had received direct orders from the CIA director personally, commandeering a “ghost flight” for two unnamed passengers back to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

  No manifest.

  As Nagel watched the jet approach, she felt increasing trust in Director Judd. Even so, her years at the CIA had taught Nagel the perils of blind faith. In the world of national security, the bond of trust—even the deepest of loyalty—was routinely betrayed when the needs of the country outweighed the needs of a few of her citizens. Serving the greater good had a nobility to it, but Nagel had done her time.

  To cement her leverage, Nagel had taken four IronKey 256-bit encrypted hard drives from embassy storage, loaded each with a copy of Gessner’s interrogation video, and locked each with a requisite sixteen-character passkey, chosen tonight and known only to her. One of the drives was in her pocket, one was in her personal safe, and the other two were already sealed in diplomatic pouches en route to two attorney friends—one in Europe and one in the U.S.—along with instructions that the pouches were to be opened only in the event of Nagel’s untimely death or disappearance.

  A redundant, double-blind, dead man’s switch.

  The wild card in this situation was Sasha Vesna and the unusual condition that made her very difficult to predict or trust. The young Russian was in need of psychiatric care, to be sure, but with all she had endured in her life, she also deserved a home, friends, security, and a chance to live a somewhat normal life. Her protective alter personality had come forward only when people had harmed Sasha, and Nagel’s plan revolved around avoiding that.

  I need to give Sasha a safe haven, she thought. As safe as possible under the circumstances.

  The ambassador felt eager to get Sasha airborne and out of Prague. Within the hour, a literal army would be landing from the U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, to begin “restoration” of the blast site. As Nagel understood it, the debris in the crater would be pulverized using targeted microexplosions and covered with a layer of poured concrete. Atop that would be a layer of gravel, followed by topsoil and then sod. If all went to plan, within weeks, the lawns of Folimanka Park would look like they’d never been disturbed.

  Buried and gone, she thought. Only a handful of people would ever know Threshold had even existed.

  As the Citation taxied closer, Kerble got out of the car and joined Nagel. “Ma’am, Ms. Vesna seems quite content. Shall I load the bags?”

  “Thanks, Scott,” Nagel replied. “I appreciate your traveling with her—obviously keep some form of restraint intact until you transfer her. The director’s team will meet you on the ground and take over.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “The director assured me he’ll be there in person when Sasha lands. If you could please give him this?” Nagel pulled the encrypted hard drive from her pocket and handed it to Kerble. “He’ll know what’s on it. Tell him it’s one of four, and if he wants to confirm the contents, he can call me for the password.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Kerble slid the drive into his pocket and turned to go.

  “Actually,” Nagel said, reconsidering, “better yet, just tell him it’s the first letter of every word in his favorite Kissinger quote.”

  Kerble looked bemused and headed off to get the bags.

  As Nagel walked toward the plane, she hoped Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon were feeling more confident about their situation. They were both perfectly safe now, especially as one of the most powerful men in the country could not risk anything happening to either of them. Nagel had shared with Judd some of Katherine’s thinking on TMT and the future, and he was so intrigued that he asked if Nagel thought Dr. Solomon might be persuaded to join the Threshold team.

  No chance in hell, she told Judd, albeit in slightly more politic language, reminding him of everything Katherine had endured at the hands of the agency. Besides, she may choose to rewrite her book.

  Sasha Vesna often felt as if she’d awoken from a deep sleep and missed something important. Normally days like today—with an unusually large number of blank spots in her memory—were unsettling to her. At the moment, however, despite remembering only murky snippets of the day’s events, Sasha felt unusually at peace. Her inner voice, the one she had learned to trust, kept whispering that everything was going to be fine…wonderful, in fact.

  Half an hour ago, Sasha had emerged from a thick fog to find herself restrained in the backseat of a warm sedan with Harry and Sally beside her in their carrier. A man in a uniform was driving, and a woman who had introduced herself as the U.S. ambassador was in the passenger seat, turned fully, looking back at Sasha and carefully explaining what was happening.

  Strangely, Sasha felt no panic at being restrained, nor to be in the sudden company of strangers. Instead, she felt prepared for this moment, her inner voice reassuring her that all of this was for her own benefit…and safety.

  The ambassador had apologized for the handcuffs and the rushed departure, offering a detailed explanation. Sasha had understood very little—something about an opportunity for political asylum, State Department regulations, flying over international waters—but none of it mattered to her. All she heard was one thing.

  I’m going to America.

  The voice in her head urged her to be thankful and cooperative, but Sasha did not need to be told. Going to America had been Sasha’s fantasy since she was a little girl, losing herself in romantic movies. She wondered if someday she might even make it to New York City to see Central Park, Katz’s Deli, and the Empire State Building.

  Exactly how all this had transpired, Sasha was unclear, and she wondered if maybe it was related to all the diligent work she had done for Dr. Gessner. All Sasha knew for sure was that the U.S. ambassador had made it possible.

  She is someone I can trust, Sasha sensed. A new friend.

  Sitting alone with her cats in the warmth of the sedan, Sasha waited for the cobwebs to begin clearing from her mind. She watched the Marine load her bags into the plane, and she realized there was nothing left for her in Prague anymore. Without Brigita, Sasha had no job, no place to live, no—

  Sasha suddenly flashed on the other thing she was leaving behind—Michael Harris. I never said goodbye! Strangely, her memories of Michael seemed to be dissolving with startling speed, as if he were already a lover from her distant past. First loves are important, she recalled a romantic movie once saying. Because they open our hearts for what’s to come.

  But what is to come? Sasha wondered, sensing for the first time in her life that she was entering a world of limitless possibilities. The quiet voice was again whispering within her mind. Don’t question your past, Sasha, it told her. Look toward your future.

  The voice was one she heard often. According to Michael, it was her own intuition, her higher self, her subconscious. Everyone had a voice within, he assured her, a part of one’s soul that whispered, reassured, and guided. Sasha would write Michael a letter once she got settled. Then again, maybe it was just best to let it go. Recently she had experienced a sense that they might be nearing the end of their romantic connection.

  “Ms. Vesna?” a voice called outside the window. The Marine had returned and opened her door. “They’re ready for you.” He unstrapped her seat belt and helped her out of the car. Then he reached back into the car and gently lifted out the pet carrier. “Let’s get Harry and Sally settled on board, shall we?”

  She nodded appreciatively. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You can call me Scott,” the man said, glancing over with a smile. “I’ll be flying with you today. Shall I call you Sasha?”

  “Of course!” she exclaimed, feeling a rising excitement as they neared the jet. At the bottom of the staircase, the ambassador stood alone, apparently waiting to say goodbye.

  “Sergeant Kerble,” the ambassador said as they arrived, “perhaps you could get those two fine felines out of the cold and then come back for Ms. Vesna?”

  “Absolutely, ma’am,” he said, carrying Harry and Sally up the stairs and disappearing into the cabin.

  The ambassador studied Sasha with concern. “I know this is all very sudden and a lot to absorb. Are you okay?”

  Sasha was trying to hold herself steady in an unexpected rush of gratitude, bewilderment, excitement, and disbelief. The ambassador had repeatedly promised that everything would begin to make more sense in the coming days. She also promised to join Sasha very soon in the United States—a thought that brought Sasha a deep sense of tranquility.

  “I’m…okay,” Sasha managed. “Still very foggy. But I know you’ve been so kind to me.” She was suddenly on the verge of tears. “How can I ever thank you?”

  The ambassador looked emotional now too. “Believe it or not, Sasha…you already have.”

  As Sasha broke down, the ambassador stepped forward and gave her a long hug that reminded Sasha of the hugs her mother used to give when she was only four or five…before she was a damaged girl. Sasha had not been hugged like that in many, many years.

  CHAPTER 137

  The winter sun had just risen over Prague, its muted rays glinting off the skyline of snow-covered spires.

  Langdon was feeling anxious about the final piece of unfinished business he needed to resolve before he and Katherine flew out this afternoon. He wondered how she would react when he explained the delicate situation.

  I almost told her earlier, he thought, but despite a sincere desire to share what had happened, Langdon had never quite found the right moment. Enjoy your breakfast, he reassured himself. It will all work out.

  Ninety minutes ago, after some weighty final discussions with the ambassador and an uncertain farewell with Sasha, Langdon and Katherine had exited the embassy and, at Nagel’s personal recommendation, walked a mere twenty paces across the cobblestone plaza to the Alchymist Hotel for their famed “prosecco breakfast.”

  The hotel made its home in an impeccably restored sixteenth-century Baroque mansion whose large inner courtyard, every winter, was converted into an ice-skating rink that glistened beneath a canopy of twinkling lights. The dining room decor was fanciful, with crimson upholstered chairs, glittering Murano chandeliers, and “Corinthian twist” gold pillars that looked like a storybook movie set.

  At a quiet window table overlooking the rink, Langdon and Katherine had finished a sumptuous breakfast that culminated in fig dumplings topped with edible gold flakes. Fully sated and having reflected at length on the morning’s events, they were now quietly sipping chicory melta and gazing out at the ice rink, where a young woman had just arrived and was lacing up her skates.

  “The skating nun?” Langdon offered, referencing their waiter’s ghost story about a nun who had died on this spot centuries ago and who materialized occasionally to skate peaceful patterns on the ice.

  “I think not,” Katherine replied as the young woman shed her coat to reveal a skimpy skating costume bejeweled in white sequins and silver beadwork.

  As the young woman stepped onto the ice, she seemed surprisingly off-balance for someone with such an elaborate outfit. Odd, Langdon thought, watching her stumble awkwardly to the middle of the rink, where she stopped, fluffed up her hair, raised a phone, and began taking selfies.

  “Mystery solved,” Langdon said. “Instagram skater.”

  “Our new reality,” Katherine said with a laugh.

  “Doesn’t it concern you?” he said, turning to her. “Young people broadcasting themselves nonstop to the world? I see it every day on campus. Even the world’s ‘best and brightest’ seem far more interested in the online world than the real one.”

  “That could be true,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “But first of all, it’s not just young people doing it. And second, I think you have to consider that the online world is a real world.”

  “A real world where love is expressed with emoticons and measured in ‘likes’?”

  “Robert, when you see someone glued to a phone, you see a person ignoring this world—rather than a person engrossed in another world…a world that, like this one, is made up of communities, friends, beauty, horror, love, conflict, right and wrong. It’s all there. The online world is not so different from our world…except for one stark difference.” Katherine smiled. “It’s nonlocal.”

  The comment caught him off guard.

  “The online world,” Katherine said, “is untethered from your location. You inhabit it as a bodiless mind…free from all physical restraints. You move effortlessly anywhere, see what you want, learn what you want, interact with other bodiless minds.”

  Langdon had never considered the Internet in that light, and it both startled and intrigued him. Online, I am a bodiless consciousness…

  “When we lose ourselves in the virtual world,” Katherine said, “we are giving ourselves a kind of nonlocal experience that, in many ways, parallels an out-of-body experience—we are detached, weightless, and yet connected to all things. Our filters are dropped…We can interact with the entire world through one screen and experience almost anything.”

  Langdon realized Katherine was exactly right.

  She drained the last of her melta and dabbed the linen napkin to her lips. “Anyhow, I wrote about all of this in my book. It’s an unusual idea, but I’ve come to believe that our current technological explosion is actually part of a spiritual evolution…a kind of training ground for the existence that, in the end, is our ultimate destiny…a consciousness, untethered from the physical world, and yet connected to all things.”

  Langdon sat back, thoroughly impressed by the trailblazing genius of Katherine’s ideas.

  “It all funnels into one larger concept,” Katherine said fervently. “Death is not the end. There’s more work to do, but science continues to discover evidence that there is indeed something beyond all this. That message is one we should be shouting from the mountaintops, Robert! It’s the secret of all secrets. Just imagine the impact it will have on the future of the human race.”

  “And that is why you still need to publish your book!”

  The comment elicited a frown from Katherine, snapping her back to reality, and Langdon wished he’d kept his thoughts to himself. Even so, he’d been excited to learn that the CIA director had agreed there would be no interference with any future publication of Katherine’s book—provided she remove a handful of sensitive paragraphs and, of course, omit her patent application. Katherine’s response to the good news had been subdued, which was not surprising considering she was still livid with the agency, not to mention daunted by the prospect of starting the writing process all over again.

  Langdon shifted, feeling restless that he’d upset her.

  “So,” he ventured quietly, “still want to see Prague Castle before we fly out?”

  Katherine glanced up, clearly eager to have something else to think about. “Absolutely. I barely saw anything the night of my lecture, and you said St. Vitus is not to be missed.”