Damage control, he told himself. There’s still time for me to solve this.

  Alex’s hacking skills were robust, as was the case for most techs working in systems security. Given a few hours and a little luck, he had a fighting chance of sorting out who had hacked PRH. Then, depending on what he discovered, he might even find a clever way to hack them right back.

  CHAPTER 16

  Wedged into the backseat of the Škoda Octavia sedan, Robert Langdon felt boxed in. In front of him, Captain Janáček had rammed his own seat as far back as possible, and Langdon now had his knees to his chest, fending off mounting claustrophobia. The vents were blowing stiflingly hot air, mixed with the captain’s cigarette smoke, and Langdon was glad he had worn only his Dale sweater and not his bulky Patagonia “puffer.”

  Janáček was on his phone again, talking in hushed Czech as the car raced southward along the banks of the Vltava. The captain’s thick-necked driver was a twentysomething lieutenant in a navy-blue ÚZSI jumpsuit and tilted military beret. He looked more like a bodybuilder or professional wrestler than a law enforcement agent, and he was now serpentining in and out of traffic with only one hand on the steering wheel, as if trying to impress his boss.

  As the car sped southward along the river on Masarykovo nábřeží, Langdon felt nauseous and forced his gaze out the window into the open spaces.

  They had just passed a small island in the Vltava River, on which stood the bright yellow Neo-Renaissance Žofín Palace. In stark contrast to the ancient palace, Prague’s most famous ultramodern structure was ahead on the left. The Dancing House consisted of two small towers leaning into each other as if they were dancing. Architect Frank Gehry referred to his towers as Fred and Ginger, which seemed a stretch of the imagination, but considering London’s skyline now boasted The Gherkin, The Walkie-Talkie, and The Cheesegrater, perhaps Prague’s two dancing film stars could be considered a blessing.

  Langdon had long been impressed by Prague’s passion for art of the avant-garde. Some of the world’s most progressive collections were housed here at the DOX Center, Trade Fair Palace, and Museum Kampa. Unique to Prague, however, were its amateur “pop-up” installations that routinely materialized around the city and, for a few lucky ones—like The Lennon Wall and The Hanging Umbrella People—were so admired as to be adopted permanently.

  “Professor,” Janáček said, turning abruptly to face Langdon, causing his seatback to dig farther into Langdon’s knees. “When we arrive at Crucifix Bastion, I will be separating you from Ms. Solomon. I intend to question her without you present. I don’t want you two coordinating your stories.”

  “Our stories?” Langdon repeated, trying to keep the irritation from his voice. “Everything I told you is absolutely true.”

  “That is good to know. Then you have nothing to worry about.” Janáček had already spun around to face front.

  Langdon was concerned about Katherine’s impending encounter with Janáček. The captain seemed to have made up his mind that the two Americans—or at the very least Katherine—had somehow orchestrated this bizarre series of events for personal gain.

  Utter madness.

  Even so, no matter how many ways Langdon examined the situation, he saw no explanation for her dream foretelling the scene on Charles Bridge.

  She didn’t tell anyone about her vision…and we went straight back to bed.

  The only remaining explanation, as incomprehensible as Langdon found it, was that Katherine had experienced an actual precognitive dream…her own Titanic premonition.

  The challenge for Langdon was that he had never believed in precognition. Throughout his career, he had encountered the subject in ancient texts, but he had always dismissed the notion of clairvoyance, arguing that precognition by any name—prophecy, soothsaying, augury, divination, astrology—was history’s oldest delusion.

  For as long as humans had been keeping track of the past, they had longed to see the future. Prophets like Nostradamus, the Oracle of Delphi, and the Mayan astrologers had been revered as demigods. Even to this day, a steady stream of well-educated people consulted palm readers, fortune tellers, psychics, and modern-day astrological guides.

  Knowing the future is a human obsession.

  Langdon’s history students often asked him about Nostradamus, arguably the most famous “seer” of all time. The prophet’s enigmatic poems seemed to predict, among other things, the French Revolution, Hitler’s rise, and the collapse of the World Trade Center. Langdon admitted to his class that a handful of the prophet’s quatrains contained what seemed like shocking references to future events, but he always reminded them that Nostradamus wrote “Copiously, Cryptically, and Commonly.” That was to say, the prophet wrote a copious collection of 942 separate poems, using cryptic and ambiguous language, and predicted commonplace events like wars, natural disasters, and power struggles.

  “It’s no surprise we see occasional points of congruence,” Langdon told them. “We all want to believe in magic or something beyond this world, so our minds often trick us into seeing things that are not really there.”

  To illustrate his point, every year Langdon began his freshman seminar by asking each student to submit his or her precise date and time of birth. A week later, he handed everyone a sealed envelope with their names on it and told them he had given their birth information to a well-known astrologer and asked for readings. When the students opened their envelopes, they invariably gasped in disbelief at how accurate the astrologer’s readings had been.

  Then Langdon told them to swap papers with another student. To their surprise, they learned that all the “astrological readings” he had distributed were identical. The readings simply felt accurate because they included common personal beliefs:

  You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.

  You pride yourself on being an independent thinker.

  You feel doubt at times that you have made the right decision.

  Langdon explained that eagerness to find personal truth in general statements was known as the Barnum effect—so named for the sideshow “personality tests” that P. T. Barnum had employed to fool so many circusgoers into believing he had psychic powers.

  The ÚZSI sedan swerved hard left, pulling Langdon from his thoughts as the car began ascending the vast wooded landscape of Folimanka Park, a sprawling public space on the outskirts of central Prague.

  High atop the hill, Langdon was just able to make out the stone rampart of Crucifix Bastion perched on the ridgeline above them. He had never visited the small fortress, which had been in ruins for many years and had been renovated only fairly recently, but he now knew far more than he cared to about the reconstruction—having been regaled relentlessly last night by the bastion’s proud new tenant.

  Dr. Brigita Gessner.

  The Czech neuroscientist was on the board of the Charles University Lecture Series and had personally invited Katherine to be last night’s presenter. After the lecture, Gessner had joined Katherine and Langdon for a drink in the hotel bar. But rather than congratulating Katherine, Gessner had barely mentioned the brilliant lecture, boasting instead about her own work and her incredible new private lab.

  “The bastion is quite small, but it’s a sublime little location for a research facility,” Gessner had gushed. “The old fortress sits atop a ridge with unparalleled views of the city, and its thick stone walls offer superb shielding from electromagnetic interference, making it ideal for my delicate work in neuroimaging.”

  Gessner went on to boast that her success in the field of brain imaging technology and neuroinformatic networks had given her total autonomy in her research—both financially and programmatically—and now she spent her time working on “whatever I damn well please, in an extremely private setting.”

  As the ÚZSI sedan emerged from the trees, the sight of the lab looming on the cliff brought with it an unexpected pang of concern for Katherine’s safety.

  For some reason, Langdon felt a sudden sense of danger.

  He hoped it was not precognition.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jonas Faukman blew in his cupped hands as he walked east along Fifty-Second Street, which was deserted at this hour. The night was bitingly cold, and the manuscript felt heavy in his backpack. Thankfully, the twenty-four-hour FedEx office was just a block ahead, across Seventh Avenue.

  Faukman was still struggling to make sense of why anyone would target only Katherine’s book. The PRH database contained countless other more obvious targets—guaranteed blockbusters by big-name authors on whom the PRH bottom line depended. It made no sense. Faukman was starting to wonder if maybe this hack was not book piracy at all, but rather…something else.

  Twenty yards ahead of Faukman, a black van had pulled to the curb and stopped, idling. Faukman instinctively slowed, feeling uneasy on the empty street at this hour. A moment later, however, he realized his paranoia was misplaced; the van’s driver hopped out, whistling happily and reading a clipboard. Without so much as a glance at Faukman, he strode off in the opposite direction.

  Faukman relaxed and continued past the van.

  Up ahead, the departing driver stopped and looked up at the building numbers, checked the clipboard again, and turned around, walking back the way he had come. “Johnny!” he called toward the van. “What was the address on that email? I don’t see any souvlaki restaurant here!”

  “It’s one block farther,” Faukman offered, pointing. “Just past Seventh—”

  From behind him, a fist collided with Faukman’s right kidney, and a black bag swooped down over his head. Before Faukman could even process what was happening, two sets of powerful hands lifted him off his feet and heaved him into the van. He landed roughly on the hard floor, the impact knocking the wind out of him. The door slammed shut, and within seconds, he felt the van accelerating rapidly.

  Gasping and unable to see, the terrified editor tried to catch his breath and take stock of his situation. Faukman had edited enough thrillers to know what happened when a character was blindfolded and thrown into the back of a van.

  It was never good.

  Three blocks away, in Random House Tower, Alex Conan had now dialed all of Faukman’s contact numbers—office, home, cell—but had failed to get an answer anywhere.

  Where the hell did he go?!

  We’re in the middle of a crisis!

  Faukman, it seemed, had simply turned off his phone and wandered out into the night—perhaps to On the Rocks, a nearby whiskey bar frequented by neurotic editors trying to calm their nerves at all hours of the night.

  So far, Alex had made no headway identifying the hackers. He had combed through the wreckage but had dislodged nothing of interest. I need a finer-toothed comb, he knew. His next pass would require a proprietary forensic algorithm tooled to scan for specific artifacts unique to the missing manuscript—keywords, concepts, names—but to do that, he needed to talk to Faukman.

  Or…he realized. I could call Katherine Solomon directly?

  PRH protocol prohibited that call, requiring all communication with authors to flow exclusively through each author’s editor—the trusted soul who had learned how to navigate the writer’s quirks, eccentricities, and insecurities.

  Screw it, Alex thought. Not only was it critical that he learn more about Katherine’s book, but he believed Katherine had a right to know that someone had targeted her manuscript, especially if it meant she might be in personal danger herself.

  With that in mind, Alex accessed Katherine Solomon’s author file, located her cell-phone number, and dialed. Faukman had mentioned Katherine was in Europe at the moment, meaning it was early morning for her, but if Alex woke her up, she’d understand this was an emergency.

  Katherine’s cell phone rang four times and went to voicemail. Damn. He left her a brief message, introducing himself and asking if she would please call him immediately.

  He hung up and tried Faukman’s cell phone again.

  Nothing.

  It was then that he recalled Faukman mentioning that Solomon was traveling with another of his authors—Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Also in the PRH database, Alex thought, deciding it was worth a try.

  He accessed Langdon’s file and called that cell-phone number as well.

  Langdon’s line didn’t even ring—it went straight to voicemail.

  Alex hung up, feeling suddenly very alone.

  Where the hell is everyone?!

  CHAPTER 18

  In London, Finch had just received confirmation that his contingency plans were now in motion, in both Prague and New York. The news had arrived via a military-grade communication platform known as Signal, required for all field communications, as it provided end-to-end encryption of all texts and voice.

  Finch, an American, held a covert position within the European headquarters of a global organization known by insiders as “Q.” The firm’s enigmatic nickname derived from a character in James Bond novels—the technologist-inventor “Q” who created deadly innovations in service to Her Majesty the Queen.

  Like its fictional namesake, the real-world Q also developed advanced technologies in service to a higher power…though a power far more influential than any queen. The entity that had quietly founded Q back in 1999 wielded unprecedented influence around the world, and while its presence was rarely witnessed or even suspected, its actions regularly shifted the course of global events.

  At seventy-three years old, Everett Finch carried a chess master FIDE rating of 2374, rowed nine thousand meters daily on his erg machine, and finished breakfast by popping three hundred milligrams of Nuvigil, a nootropic mind-enhancement drug that turned his mind into a Formula One race car on a highway of minivans.

  Having spent the last decade in a position of power within Q’s formidable parent organization, Finch had been tapped three years ago for a confidential assignment within Q’s London office. He was also informed he would be spearheading the development of one of the most ambitious and secretive endeavors ever undertaken…by anyone, anywhere.

  Threshold.

  He was told the project required a certain flexibility with regard to legal and moral constraints, and Finch had been chosen for his expertise with “success-weighted ethical rubrics”—moral frameworks that prioritized success over purity of conscience.

  Finch was not surprised when his letter of appointment read:

  It is impossible to overstate the importance of Threshold. It warrants whatever extraordinary measures you deem necessary to ensure its success.

  Message received, Finch thought. There are no rules.

  Thirty minutes had passed since The Golěm had entered Hotel U Prince and descended to the subterranean Black Angel’s Bar. He had found the bar closed, with cleaning crew sweeping the floors, polishing the leather couches, and pulling cigarette butts from the rough-hewn ancient stone walls.

  Before being spotted by anyone, The Golěm continued past the bar, around the corner, to a closet-like space that contained a desk and two old computers whose faded displays glowed with the Black Angel’s logo. The bar’s offering of twenty-four-hour Internet to patrons was a quaint relic of the days when foreign cell phones barely worked in Prague, and tourists would choose to drink at Black Angel’s just to send an email.

  Earlier today, when The Golěm realized he required specific technical information to carry out his plan, he immediately thought of Black Angel’s. Nobody would be monitoring this machine.

  And now I’ve found what I came for, he thought, eyeing the technical information on the screen before him. Many of the details were beyond his understanding, but that did not matter; firing a gun did not require a degree in ballistic science…only access to a trigger.

  And that trigger had now been located.

  Gessner had revealed many secrets in the attempt to save her own life—among them, the presence of a surprisingly powerful piece of technology located within the deepest reaches of their underground lab, sealed inside an airtight vault with walls of reinforced concrete two meters thick.

  A piece of technology that could bring their entire world crashing down.

  With the information he had just obtained, he now knew exactly how to make that happen.

  The Golěm quickly cleared the browser’s search history and rebooted the computer. When he ascended and stepped back out into the square, he felt alive with the prospect of a revenge so bold that its shock waves would be felt thousands of miles from Prague…by all those responsible.

  CHAPTER 19

  Crucifix Bastion stands high atop a wooded ridgeline that defines the northern edge of Folimanka Park. In the mid-1300s, the towering crest caught the eye of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who decided it was the ideal location on which to build a fortification to overlook his beloved birth city of Prague, a flourishing gem of Christendom.

  Along the ridge, the emperor constructed a stone rampart topped by a small but robust fort. Its lofty perch reminded him of the mount on which Christ had been crucified, so he christened the fortification “Crucifix Bastion.”

  The ÚZSI sedan wound higher along the entry road, steadily climbing the ridge until it came to a stop in front of the bastion. Langdon looked out at the ancient fortress, impressed by the elegant modernist renovation.

  This is Gessner’s private lab? Clearly, the neuroscientist made a better living than Langdon had imagined.

  Janáček jumped out of the passenger seat and yanked Langdon’s door open, motioning impatiently for him to get out. Langdon quickly obliged, eager to exit the cramped vehicle and also increasingly anxious to see Katherine.

  The thuggish driver remained in the car as Janáček led Langdon through the falling snow toward the lab. In the dusting of white on the gravel pathway, Langdon saw several sets of muted footprints—some of them no doubt Katherine’s as she arrived to meet with Gessner.