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The man’s eyes narrowed. “If I had wanted to hit the base of your spine, I would have hit it. I took a single shot trying to puncture your moped’s rear tire so I could stop you from running away. I was under orders to establish contact with you and figure out why the hell you were acting so erratically.”
Before Langdon could fully process his words, two more soldiers came through the door, moving toward his bed.
Walking between them was a woman.
An apparition.
Ethereal and otherworldly.
Langdon immediately recognized her as the vision from his hallucinations. The woman before him was beautiful, with long silver hair and a blue lapis lazuli amulet. Because she had previously appeared against a horrifying landscape of dying bodies, Langdon needed a moment to believe she was truly standing before him in the flesh.
“Professor Langdon,” the woman said, smiling wearily as she arrived at his bedside. “I’m relieved that you’re okay.” She sat down and took his pulse. “I’ve been advised that you have amnesia. Do you remember me?”
Langdon studied the woman for a moment. “I’ve had … visions of you, although I don’t remember meeting.”
The woman leaned toward him, her expression empathetic. “My name is Elizabeth Sinskey. I’m director of the World Health Organization, and I recruited you to help me find—”
“A plague,” Langdon managed. “Created by Bertrand Zobrist.”
Sinskey nodded, looking encouraged. “You remember?”
“No, I woke up in a hospital with a strange little projector and visions of you telling me to seek and find. That’s what I was trying to do when these men tried to kill me.” Langdon motioned to the soldiers.
The muscular one bristled, clearly ready to respond, but Elizabeth Sinskey silenced him with a wave.
“Professor,” she said softly, “I have no doubt you are very confused. As the person who pulled you into all this, I’m horrified by what has transpired, and I’m thankful you’re safe.”
“Safe?” Langdon replied. “I’m captive on a ship!” And so are you!
The silver-haired woman gave an understanding nod. “I’m afraid that due to your amnesia, many aspects of what I am about to tell you will be disorienting. Nonetheless, our time is short, and a lot of people need your help.”
Sinskey hesitated, as if uncertain how to continue. “First off,” she began, “I need you to understand that Agent Brüder and his team never tried to harm you. They were under direct orders to reestablish contact with you by whatever means were necessary.”
“Reestablish? I don’t—”
“Please, Professor, just listen. Everything will be made clear. I promise.”
Langdon settled back into the infirmary bed, his thoughts spinning as Dr. Sinskey continued.
“Agent Brüder and his men are an SRS team—Surveillance and Response Support. They work under the auspices of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.”
Langdon glanced over at the ECDC medallions on their uniforms. Disease Prevention and Control?
“His group,” she continued, “specializes in detecting and containing communicable-disease threats. Essentially, they are a SWAT team for the mitigation of acute, large-scale health risks. You were my main hope of locating the contagion Zobrist has created, and so when you vanished, I tasked the SRS team with locating you … I summoned them to Florence to support me.”
Langdon was stunned. “Those soldiers work for you?”
She nodded. “On loan from the ECDC. Last night, when you disappeared and stopped calling in, we thought something had happened to you. It was not until early this morning, when our tech support team saw that you had checked your Harvard e-mail account, that we knew you were alive. At that point our only explanation for your strange behavior was that you had switched sides … possibly having been offered large sums of money to locate the contagion for someone else.”
Langdon shook his head. “That’s preposterous!”
“Yes, it seemed an unlikely scenario, but it was the only logical explanation—and with the stakes being so high, we couldn’t take any chances. Of course, we never imagined you were suffering from amnesia. When our tech support saw your Harvard e-mail account suddenly activate, we tracked the computer IP address to the apartment in Florence and moved in. But you fled on a moped, with the woman, which increased our suspicions that you were now working for someone else.”
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