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“That’s internal bleeding,” Sienna said, glancing up at Langdon with a look of shock. “No wonder he’s been having trouble breathing all day.”
Ferris twisted his head, clearly trying to speak, but he could only make faint wheezing sounds. Tourists had started gathering around, and Langdon sensed that the situation was about to get chaotic.
“The soldiers are downstairs,” Langdon warned Sienna. “I don’t know how they found us.”
The look of surprise and fear on Sienna’s face turned quickly to anger, and she glared back down at Ferris. “You’ve been lying to us, haven’t you?”
Ferris attempted to speak again, but he could barely make a sound. Sienna roughly searched Ferris’s pockets and pulled out his wallet and phone, which she slipped into her own pocket, standing over him now with an accusatory glower.
At that moment an elderly Italian woman pushed through the crowd, shouting angrily at Sienna. “L’hai colpito al petto!” She made a forceful motion with her fist against her own chest.
“No!” Sienna snapped. “CPR will kill him! Look at his chest!” She turned to Langdon. “Robert, we need to get out of here. Now.”
Langdon looked down at Ferris, who desperately locked eyes with him, pleading, as if he wanted to communicate something.
“We can’t just leave him!” Langdon said frantically.
“Trust me,” Sienna said. “That’s not a heart attack. And we’re leaving. Now.”
As the crowd closed in, tourists began shouting for help. Sienna gripped Langdon’s arm with startling force and dragged him away from the chaos, out into the fresh air of the balcony.
For a moment Langdon was blinded. The sun was directly in front of his eyes, sinking low over the western end of St. Mark’s Square, bathing the entire balcony in a golden light. Sienna led Langdon to their left along the second-story terrace, snaking through the tourists who had stepped outside to admire the piazza and the replicas of the Horses of St. Mark’s.
As they rushed along the front of the basilica, the lagoon was straight ahead. Out on the water, a strange silhouette caught Langdon’s eye—an ultramodern yacht that looked like some kind of futuristic warship.
Before he could give it a second thought, he and Sienna had cut left again, following the balcony around the southwest corner of the basilica toward the “Paper Door”—the annex connecting the basilica to the Doge’s Palace—so named because the doges posted decrees there for the public to read.
Not a heart attack? The image of Ferris’s black-and-blue chest was imprinted in Langdon’s mind, and he suddenly felt fearful at the prospect of hearing Sienna’s diagnosis of the man’s actual illness. Moreover, it seemed something had shifted, and Sienna no longer trusted Ferris. Was that why she was trying to catch my eye earlier?
Sienna suddenly skidded to a stop and leaned out over the elegant balustrade, peering down into a cloistered corner of St. Mark’s Square far below.
“Damn it,” she said. “We’re higher up than I thought.”
Langdon stared at her. You were thinking of jumping?!
Sienna looked frightened. “We can’t let them catch us, Robert.”
Langdon turned back toward the basilica, eyeing the heavy door of wrought iron and glass directly behind them. Tourists were entering and exiting, and if Langdon’s estimate was correct, passing through the door would deposit them back inside the museum near the back of the church.
“They’ll have all the exits covered,” Sienna said.
Langdon considered their escape options and arrived at only one. “I think I saw something inside that could solve that problem.”
Barely able to fathom what he was even now considering, Langdon guided Sienna back inside the basilica. They skirted the perimeter of the museum, trying to stay out of sight among the crowd, many of whom were now looking diagonally across the vast open space of the central nave toward the commotion going on around Ferris. Langdon spied the angry old Italian woman directing a pair of black-clad soldiers out onto the balcony, revealing Langdon and Sienna’s escape route.
We’ll have to hurry, Langdon thought, scanning the walls and finally spotting what he was looking for near a large display of tapestries.
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