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Despite his detractors and their ethical objections, the provost’s moral compass was a fixed star. He had built his reputation—and the Consortium itself—on two golden rules.
Never make a promise you cannot keep.
And never lie to a client.
Ever.
In his professional career, the provost had never broken a promise or reneged on a deal. His word was bankable—an absolute guarantee—and while there were certainly contracts he regretted having made, backing out of them was never an option.
This morning, as he stepped onto the private balcony of his yacht’s stateroom, the provost looked across the churning sea and tried to fend off the disquiet that had settled in his gut.
The decisions of our past are the architects of our present.
The decisions of the provost’s past had put him in a position to negotiate almost any minefield and always come out on top. Today, however, as he gazed out the window at the distant lights of the Italian mainland, he felt uncharacteristically on edge.
One year ago, on this very yacht, he had made a decision whose ramifications now threatened to unravel everything he had built. I agreed to provide services to the wrong man. There had been no way the provost could have known at the time, and yet now the miscalculation had brought a tempest of unforeseen challenges, forcing him to send some of his best agents into the field with orders to do “whatever it took” to keep his listing ship from capsizing.
At the moment the provost was waiting to hear from one field agent in particular.
Vayentha, he thought, picturing the sinewy, spike-haired specialist. Vayentha, who had served him perfectly until this mission, had made a mistake last night that had dire consequences. The last six hours had been a scramble, a desperate attempt to regain control of the situation.
Vayentha claimed her error was the result of simple bad luck—the untimely coo of a dove.
The provost, however, did not believe in luck. Everything he did was orchestrated to eradicate randomness and remove chance. Control was the provost’s expertise—foreseeing every possibility, anticipating every response, and molding reality toward the desired outcome. He had an immaculate track record of success and secrecy, and with it came a staggering clientele—billionaires, politicians, sheikhs, and even entire governments.
To the east, the first faint light of morning had begun to consume the lowest stars on the horizon. On the deck the provost stood and patiently awaited word from Vayentha that her mission had gone exactly as planned.
CHAPTER 4
FOR AN INSTANT, Langdon felt as if time had stopped.
Dr. Marconi lay motionless on the floor, blood gushing from his chest. Fighting the sedatives in his system, Langdon raised his eyes to the spike-haired assassin, who was still striding down the hall, covering the last few yards toward his open door. As she neared the threshold, she looked toward Langdon and instantly swung her weapon in his direction … aiming at his head.
I’m going to die, Langdon realized. Here and now.
The bang was deafening in the small hospital room.
Langdon recoiled, certain he had been shot, but the noise had not been the attacker’s gun. Rather, the bang had been the slam of the room’s heavy metal door as Dr. Brooks threw herself against it and turned the lock.
Eyes wild with fear, Dr. Brooks immediately spun and crouched beside her blood-soaked colleague, searching for a pulse. Dr. Marconi coughed up a mouthful of blood, which dribbled down his cheek across his thick beard. Then he fell limp.
“Enrico, no! Ti prego!” she screamed.
Outside, a barrage of bullets exploded against the metal exterior of the door. Shouts of alarm filled the hall.
Somehow, Langdon’s body was in motion, panic and instinct now overruling his sedatives. As he clambered awkwardly out of bed, a searing hot pain tore into his right forearm. For an instant, he thought a bullet had passed through the door and hit him, but when he looked down, he realized his IV had snapped off in his arm. The plastic catheter poked out of a jagged hole in his forearm, and warm blood was already flowing backward out of the tube.
Langdon was now fully awake.
Crouched beside Marconi’s body, Dr. Brooks kept searching for a pulse as tears welled in her eyes. Then, as if a switch had been flipped inside her, she stood and turned to Langdon. Her expression transformed before his eyes, her young features hardening with all the detached composure of a seasoned ER doctor dealing with a crisis.
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