Page 126 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Robert Langdon stepped warily into the luminescent flat, trying to make sense of the scene before him.

The upstairs apartment appeared to be lit entirely by black lights, its desolate interior infused by a ghostly purple haze.

The walls, floors, and ceilings were painted solid black.

In the corner was a cheap chair and table on which sat a glass that appeared to be half-full of water.

Does someone actually live here?

Langdon needed only a moment to conclude that the mysterious occupant must be Dmitri Sysevich. The realization brought a host of unanswered questions, but Langdon was fairly certain, at least, that the man would not be returning.

He is most likely buried under Threshold.

Sasha probably had no idea her apartment shared a key with the abandoned space upstairs. Dmitri, however, almost certainly knew. Sasha’s self-proclaimed protector…had direct access to Sasha’s locked apartment. The thought made Langdon’s skin crawl.

“Sasha?” he called out, moving deeper. “It’s Robert Langdon! Are you here?”

Silence. The air tasted stale, and the floors creaked as he and Katherine moved.

“Sasha?!” Katherine shouted.

The layout of this flat was different from Sasha’s, although it was equally meager.

Methodically, Langdon and Katherine searched the space.

The kitchen was barren, the refrigerator empty except for two large bottles of Poděbradka mineral water.

The small walk-in closet outside the bedroom contained only a rod with three empty hangers.

Langdon was starting to think this flat was less of a residence than some kind of bizarre occasional refuge.

“The bedroom has no lights,” Katherine said, flipping the switch up and down.

Langdon joined her at the bedroom door. “Sasha?”

Getting no reply, he moved past Katherine into the blackness, inching blindly across the room with outstretched arms, hoping to feel a window and perhaps a way to open the shutters. Halfway into the room, he felt himself step on something soft on the floor—a cushion or mat of some sort.

The hiss of a sulfur match sizzled behind him, and Langdon turned to see Katherine crouching before a low table and lighting a series of candles.

As the light grew brighter, Langdon could see the table was some kind of shrine that consisted of three candles and an arrangement of dried flowers.

Above them on the wall hung a woman’s photo.

Langdon recognized the blond woman instantly. “My God…that’s Sasha,” he said to Katherine, walking toward the eerie display, realizing that Dmitri’s affection for Sasha had bordered on…obsession. Her protector, he thought, still trying to put the pieces together.

“Look,” Katherine said, pointing to a large mat on the center of the floor.

“I guess he slept here sometimes.”

“I don’t think so, Robert. That’s not for sleeping. There’s no pillow. No sheets. And…there’s a ball gag. ”

Sure enough, there on the mat, Langdon saw a buckled leather head strap affixed to a black plastic ball. The soft neoprene orb was perforated like a wiffle ball so the person being gagged could still breathe. “So, this is some kind of…sex room?” he said.

“I don’t think that gag is for sex, ” she said. “I think it’s for protecting the teeth and tongue during an epileptic seizure.”

Surprised, Langdon pictured the PATI seizure mouth guard in his classroom’s first-aid kit. This perforated ball would serve the same purpose.

“Dmitri must have used this room as a safe place to experience an epileptic event,” Katherine said. “Pillows pose a suffocation threat, and sheets can get tangled. This would be a safe environment. Especially if he was wearing a ball gag.”

Langdon found it odd that someone who possessed Gessner’s epilepsy wand would not choose to thwart every seizure.

Then again, some epileptics claimed seizures brought about a mental clarity and bliss that were well worth the physical trauma.

Dmitri’s epilepsy wand, it seemed, offered the best of both worlds.

He could choose where and when to receive his seizures…

doing so in a safe, controlled environment.

Regardless, all Langdon knew for certain was Sasha didn’t seem to be here.

With only the bathroom left to check, Langdon headed down the hall while Katherine blew out the candles in the bedroom.

Sure enough, he found the bathroom and tub empty; if Dmitri had hidden Sasha somewhere, it was not in this apartment.

The bathroom’s light fixture, like the rest of those in the flat, was equipped with a black-light bulb, which caused the white sink and tub to luminesce. Strangely, the mirror over the sink had been removed, leaving only bare screw holes in the wall.

Next to the sink, on a shelf, Langdon found a hand mirror, a palette knife, a mixing bowl, and a stack of white rubber skullcaps.

He also found three canisters of theatrical makeup called UltraMud, whose label bore a frightening photo of an actor’s face encased in thick cracked mud. The effect was all too familiar.

As Langdon scanned the rest of the room, his gaze caught on something luminescing in the wastebasket under the sink. It looked like a white washcloth had been wadded up and discarded. It also appeared to be covered in blood…a lot of blood.

Alarmed, Langdon lifted the basket and dumped the washcloth into the sink, immediately seeing he had been mistaken. Lying in the basin was a white skullcap, crumpled up and smeared with mud.

Not blood, he thought with relief. The purple light made it hard to discern color.

As he eyed the skullcap, however, he noticed something glinting in the light—a tiny fiber stuck on the rubber cap. The strand was so small that had it not been luminescing, Langdon would never have noticed it.

That can’t be what it looks like…

He reached down and carefully plucked the item off the cap, holding it up to the light. There was no doubt what he was looking at, but what Langdon could not fathom was what it was doing here.

This makes no sense at all.

Then he felt an unexpected dread. Unless…

Langdon’s classes on symbolism often included an adage: A shift in perspective will often reveal a hidden truth. This idea, in many ways, had defined Langdon’s career. His ability to view a puzzle from an unexpected angle had repeatedly enabled him to glimpse truths that others had missed.

Now, as he studied the tiny item pinched between his fingertips, Langdon feared he might be experiencing one of those moments.

Knocked off-balance by the sudden reorientation, Langdon put a hand on the sink to steady himself.

In his mind’s eye, he could see all the puzzle pieces he had assembled today.

They were suddenly shattering apart, tumbling through the air, the fragments recombining and falling back to earth.

One by one, the image in Langdon’s head reassembled into a new picture.

My God…how could I have missed this?

The idea before him was almost unimaginable, and yet instinctively he knew it had to be true. Like every pure truth, it answered every question…resolved every anomaly…and had been right in front of him all along.

“Nonlocal consciousness…” he whispered. “Katherine was right.”

“I missed it!” Langdon announced, rushing out of the bathroom and heading for the exit. “We need to go—I’ll explain later!”

Missed what?! Katherine wondered as she hurried after him. Wait!

When she reached the door, Robert was already thundering down the darkened staircase. When she caught up to him, he was in the foyer, kneeling on Sasha’s welcome mat outside her apartment. He seemed to be trying to feel for something under her door. What is he doing?! “Robert, we have a key if—”

“It wasn’t even possible !” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet, digging into his pocket, and pulling out a slip of paper that Katherine recognized as the note he had received earlier beneath Sasha’s door.

To Katherine’s bewilderment, Langdon tried repeatedly to slide the note under her door, failing each time to feed it beneath the tight doorjamb. The paper kept hitting the thick band of weather stripping that had been installed to keep out the cold.

“It wasn’t even possible,” Langdon repeated, finally standing up. “I saw the weather stripping earlier, but it didn’t register. There’s no way to insert this note under the door from out here!”

“I see that,” Katherine said, “but I don’t—”

“Don’t you see, Katherine? The note wasn’t delivered from outside…The person who left it was inside the apartment the whole time!”

A creeping chill overtook her. He was already hiding inside.

“In the hall closet…” she whispered, picturing the dark-haired Russian waiting for a quiet moment…

emerging from the closet…sliding the note partway under the door…

knocking loudly on the inside of the door…

. and immediately disappearing back into the closet.

It was a brilliant trick. Both Sasha and Robert were completely fooled.

“No,” Langdon said, his face now ashen. “Not in the closet.” He looked as disturbed as she could remember seeing him. “ Nobody was in the closet. The hiding place was…far more ingenious.” His voice was tremulous now. “I can’t believe I never saw any of this…”

“What didn’t you see? I don’t understand.”

Langdon stood up. “You talked about it in your lecture last night,” Langdon said, locking eyes with Katherine. “You described it as evidence of nonlocal consciousness…proof that our brains work as receivers, and if they are damaged, the signals can get confused…”

“You mean sudden savant syndrome?” she said. “Okay, but I don’t see—”

“No! What you described right after that!”

Katherine thought a moment, recalling the sequence of her speech, and suddenly it dawned on her what Langdon was referring to. She needed only an instant more to grasp what he was trying to tell her. “Oh…Robert…you can’t possibly think—”

“I found this in the bathroom,” he said, holding up something tiny, pinched between his thumb and index finger. “It was stuck on the inside of his dirty skullcap.”

Katherine saw what Langdon was holding.

If he was correct, then everything they had believed about the golem figure was dead wrong.