Page 120 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)
Langdon and Katherine burst into the hallway outside the domed suite, having barely managed to unlock the RFID scanner with Finch’s card before it deactivated and blinked red in Langdon’s hand.
In unison, they turned right, racing together toward stairs at the end of the hallway. It seemed a good bet that these stairs were a faster way out than the circuitous route by which they’d entered.
In the chaotic flash of spinning security lights, they reached the door at the end of the hall and hurried into a drab concrete stairwell.
Bounding up steps two at a time, Langdon could still hear the hollow voice of the clay-covered creature who had just helped them escape.
This entire facility is about to explode.
How or why that would happen, Langdon had no idea, but judging from the sirens and emergency lighting, something in Threshold had definitely gone catastrophically wrong—most likely by the man’s own hand.
One of the by-products of fear, Langdon knew—especially the fear of death —was total clarity of purpose. Despite the tangle of questions in his head about what had just transpired in the dome, Langdon’s brain had muted that noise and tuned itself to one, solitary channel.
Survival.
He led the way to the upper landing, where he and Katherine arrived breathless at a metal door marked Admin .
Without hesitation, Langdon pushed through, and they found themselves in a carpeted, oak-paneled corridor.
Gone were the cold, sterile edges of the operations facility; this looked more like the corporate offices of a sophisticated Cambridge law firm.
They ran down the hall, past conference rooms, offices, and into a sprawling cubicle farm.
Here Katherine stopped short, reaching out and stopping Langdon as well.
At the far end of the room, a professionally dressed woman was urgently gathering items off her cubicle.
Apparently, Threshold had not been entirely deserted today.
Just then, two young men in suits rushed over to join her, motioning for her to follow. They all ran off without looking back.
Follow them, Langdon thought. They must know the way out.
Once they were out of sight, Langdon and Katherine headed in their direction, which he suspected was toward the main entrance they had seen earlier on the edge of Folimanka Park.
Langdon eyed the classified binder sticking out of Katherine’s shoulder bag and hoped the emergency evacuation would create enough chaos that they could slip away undetected.
If we get out in time, he thought as the sirens wailed overhead.
“There!” Katherine shouted, pointing to a glowing Exit sign at the end of the hallway.
They pushed through the doors and found themselves in a security room similar to the one they’d passed through earlier—with a metal detector, X-ray conveyer, and body scan.
Fortunately, it was unmanned, and Langdon and Katherine rushed through, emerging into what appeared to be a large underground parking garage, mostly empty except for several construction vehicles, a few cars, and some large machinery on flatbeds.
Fifty yards ahead, Langdon saw what he had feared they might never see again.
Daylight.
At the far end of the parking lot, the bunker’s arched opening led up the inclined driveway.
The three employees they had just seen inside were now hurrying up the slope and disappearing from view.
Langdon and Katherine ran toward the opening, but as they did, the daylight began to fade… the opening beginning to taper.
They’re closing the door!
“Wait!” Langdon shouted, his voice swallowed by the cacophony of alarms. “WAIT!”
He could see they would never make it. Still twenty yards away, the shaft of daylight dwindled to a sliver and then disappeared entirely as the portal slid shut with a resounding thud, sealing them inside.
Three stories below, strapped down like some violent psychiatric patient, Mr. Finch had stopped struggling. He could only stare upward in disbelief through the translucent cover of the EPR pod and watch the muted shapes of emergency lights sweeping across the dome above.
This facility-wide alarm sequence confirmed for Mr. Finch two inescapable realities. First, his attacker’s final words had been true. I closed your helium valves…and sealed your vent. And second, Threshold and everything in it were about to be destroyed.
The SMES is overheating.
Installing the superconducting magnetic energy storage system had been Finch’s brainchild—a way to discreetly disguise Threshold’s energy consumption spikes during operations that would require vast amounts of power.
Rather than drawing the attention of local utilities, Threshold pulled inconspicuous amounts of low power from the grid around the clock, building it up in the superconducting coils for use whenever they needed it.
Constant, uninterruptable power.
It was technology that was extremely stable and safe. That was, unless someone decided to weaponize it, which held true for most technologies.
There are no fail-safes for espionage.
Finch now understood he was going to die, and he forced himself to accept that fact with the same detached coolness he had called upon to handle every decision and crossroads in his life.
Having now realized the true identity of his killer, he felt like he was trapped in some kind of classical myth.
A monster returns to destroy its creator.
The irony of Prague’s historical golem was not lost on him.
As Finch pictured the SMES downstairs, he knew it was only a matter of seconds. What was about to happen would be cataclysmic.
A pressure bomb…detonated deep underground.
The last sound Finch perceived before his eardrums imploded was the isolated crackle and shattering of the pod’s lid above him.
As his point of view accelerated upward toward the domed ceiling, he was uncertain whether his spirit was rocketing from his body, or if the entire dome floor was rushing skyward.
Either way, he felt no pain…only a vague detachment as his physical body was torn to pieces by the howling white wind.
The concussion wave erupted from its subterranean prison with unfathomable force.
In less than a tenth of a second, it tore through the floor of the domed chamber and spread laterally through the lower level of Threshold, leveling the quantum computing lab before exploding upward into the RTD lab, medical center, and surgery space, obliterating them all.
The billowing cloud of gas, still expanding, pushed out in all directions, seeking the path of least resistance.
An instant later, that path was found.
It took a lot to rattle a U.S. Marine.
Even so, Sergeant Scott Kerble felt as off-balance as he’d felt in his entire career. The spectacle unfolding before him was unlike anything he had ever witnessed or even imagined possible.
Having located the ambassador’s SUV parked discreetly among some trees on the access road to Crucifix Bastion, Kerble had been standing on the ridgeline, puzzling over the situation, when he felt the ground shudder violently beneath his feet.
Earthquake had been his first instinct, but the trembling was just a single jolt, accompanied by a deep roar within the earth. As Kerble glanced down at the snowy expanse of Folimanka Park far below him, he realized he was witnessing something else entirely.
In slow motion, the center of the park seemed to be rising up, straining skyward in a vast, bulbous mound, as if a colossal subterranean beast were trying to break free.
The snow was shedding down the sides of the hill as the ground continued climbing higher.
Then, with a thunderous crack, a violent geyser of white gas rocketed through the surface of the earth, projecting hundreds of feet into the air.
Stupefied, Kerble staggered backward as the pillar of vapor climbed into the sky over the park. The deafening howl from below lasted only seconds before subsiding…followed by the impact of the mountain of earth collapsing back on itself.
He inched forward in disbelief and surveyed the devastation. A deep crater had opened where the center of Folimanka Park had once been. The gaping hole contained a twisted heap of rubble and rising dust.
A moment later, a deathly cold wafted up from the park.
And then, as if by magic, the air around him crystallized and filled with snowflakes as fine as confectioners’ sugar.