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“No,” Langdon replied. “Not even close.”
He’ll survive, the provost thought. He’s merely trying to process his new reality.
The American professor looked as if he had just been snatched up off the ground by a tornado, spun around, and dumped in a foreign land, leaving him shell-shocked and disoriented.
Individuals targeted by the Consortium seldom realized the truth behind the staged events they had witnessed, and if they did, the provost certainly was never present to view the aftermath. Today, in addition to the guilt he felt at seeing firsthand Langdon’s bewilderment, the man was burdened by an overwhelming sense of responsibility for the current crisis.
I accepted the wrong client. Bertrand Zobrist.
I trusted the wrong person. Sienna Brooks.
Now the provost was flying toward the eye of the storm—the epicenter of what might well be a deadly plague that had the potential to wreak havoc across the entire world. If he emerged alive from all this, he suspected that his Consortium would never survive the fallout. There would be endless inquiries and accusations.
Is this how it all ends for me?
CHAPTER 83
I NEED AIR, Robert Langdon thought. A vista … anything.
The windowless fuselage felt as if it were closing in around him. Of course, the strange tale of what had actually happened to him today was not helping at all. His brain throbbed with unanswered questions … most of them about Sienna.
Strangely, he missed her.
She was acting, he reminded himself. Using me.
Without a word, Langdon left the provost and walked toward the front of the plane. The cockpit door was open, and the natural light streaming through it pulled him like a beacon. Standing in the doorway, undetected by the pilots, Langdon let the sunlight warm his face. The wide-open space before him felt like manna from heaven. The clear blue sky looked so peaceful … so permanent.
Nothing is permanent, he reminded himself, still struggling to accept the potential catastrophe they were facing.
“Professor?” a quiet voice said behind him, and he turned.
Langdon took a startled step backward. Standing before him was Dr. Ferris. The last time Langdon had seen the man, he was writhing on the floor of St. Mark’s Basilica, unable to breathe. Now here he was in the aircraft leaning against the bulkhead, wearing a baseball cap, his face, covered in calamine lotion, a pasty pink. His chest and torso were heavily bandaged, and his breathing was shallow. If Ferris had the plague, nobody seemed too concerned that he was going to spread it.
“You’re … alive?” Langdon said, staring at the man.
Ferris gave a tired nod. “More or less.” The man’s demeanor had changed dramatically, seeming far more relaxed.
“But I thought—” Langdon stopped. “Actually … I’m not sure what to think anymore.”
Ferris gave him an empathetic smile. “You’ve heard a lot of lies today. I thought I’d take a moment to apologize. As you may have guessed, I don’t work for the WHO, and I didn’t go to recruit you in Cambridge.”
Langdon nodded, too tired to be surprised by anything at this point. “You work for the provost.”
“I do. He sent me in to offer emergency field support to you and Sienna … and help you escape the SRS team.”
“Then I guess you did your job perfectly,” Langdon said, recalling how Ferris had shown up at the baptistry, convinced Langdon he was a WHO employee, and then facilitated his and Sienna’s transportation out of Florence and away from Sinskey’s team. “Obviously you’re not a doctor.”
The man shook his head. “No, but I played that part today. My job was to help Sienna keep the illusion going so you could figure out where the projector was pointing. The provost was intent on finding Zobrist’s creation so he could protect it from Sinskey.”
“You had no idea it was a plague?” Langdon said, still curious about Ferris’s strange rash and internal bleeding.
“Of course not! When you mentioned the plague, I figured it was just a story Sienna had told you to keep you motivated. So I played along. I got us all onto the train to Venice … and then, everything changed.”
“How so?”
“The provost saw Zobrist’s bizarre video.”
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