Page 37 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)

Langdon was relieved to see Sasha Vesna open her eyes. Several minutes had passed since the intense seizure gripped her, and she now appeared to be starting to reorient herself.

“Thank you…” Sasha whispered, looking up at him.

“I’m so sorry,” Langdon said. “I couldn’t find your medication in your purse.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “What I needed…it’s in a hidden pocket. I’m fine.”

Langdon helped her up to a seated position with her back against the pod, and Sasha gently worked her fingers and toes, as if trying to reclaim control of her body. The workspace was dead silent now, the cooling fans and warning beeps having stopped as soon as the EPR process was aborted.

Sasha leaned against the pod and seemed to drift off again, closing her eyes and doing deep breathing, as if she still needed time to reassimilate.

After ten seconds, her eyes opened, and Langdon was struck by the difference in her gaze, which was suddenly stronger and more focused, as if she had forced herself to bury her pain and press on.

“I need water, please,” Sasha said, her voice more assured now too.

“Of course.” Langdon jumped up, recalling that dry mouth was one of the most common post-seizure symptoms.

“My office…” She motioned toward the door. “My…water bottle.”

Langdon turned and hurried past a worktable, noticing a leather briefcase sitting on its surface.

Gessner’s case from the bar last night. He continued down the hall to the office suite, where he grabbed the magenta water bottle with the Cyrillic writing he had seen earlier.

It was almost empty, and on the way back, Langdon stopped to fill it in the laboratory restroom.

At the sink, holding his fingers under the stream and waiting for it to get cold, he stared at his tired reflection in the mirror, taking a moment to calm his nerves. Finding Gessner’s corpse had been horrifying, but her death had also amplified Langdon’s fears about Katherine’s safety.

Where is she now?

A series of thoughts suddenly haunted him.

He had spotted Gessner’s briefcase on a worktable near the pod and recalled her saying last night that she needed to return to the lab for some reason after drinks.

It was very possible that Gessner had been trapped in the pod already when Katherine arrived here for their 8 a.m. meeting.

Did Katherine come face-to-face with Gessner’s attacker?

As the water gurgled into the bottle, a flash of movement behind Langdon drew his attention. Before he could turn from the sink, an iron grip seized his forearm, twisted it backward, and pressed his head into the glass. The water bottle fell to the floor.

“Where are they?!” the man demanded, forcing his shoulder into Langdon’s back and holding his head against the mirror.

Langdon felt the barrel of a gun digging into his ribs, and in the mirror he glimpsed the brutish face of Lieutenant Pavel.

“Where are Gessner and Solomon?” the úZSI officer repeated, twisting Langdon’s arm more sharply behind him. “I know they are down here…along with another person who just arrived.”

“Katherine isn’t…here,” Langdon managed through clenched teeth. “And Gessner…is dead.”

“Bullshit!” Pavel shouted, sounding a lot like his boss.

Langdon wondered if Janá?ek was also on his way down here. “Why would I lie?” he grunted, fearing his arm was about to snap.

“Last chance,” the lieutenant growled, wrenching Langdon’s elbow impossibly tighter. “Tell me wher—”

There was a heavy metallic thud, and Pavel’s grip immediately went slack as he collapsed to the floor, his gun clattering away.

Langdon spun to see Sasha Vesna behind him, wielding the same fire extinguisher with which she had threatened him earlier.

Her expression was frightened as she stared down at the úZSI lieutenant curled motionless at her feet.

“I didn’t know what else to do…” she said. “He was hurting you!”

Langdon looked down at Pavel. No blood, but the man was definitely unconscious. “It’s…okay,” Langdon managed, gently taking the canister from Sasha with his aching arm and setting it down on the floor.

“Who is he?” she demanded.

“An úZSI lieutenant,” Langdon said, retrieving Pavel’s gun and putting it into the sink out of reach. “He’s going to need a doctor.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “It’s a posterior parietal trauma—he’ll be unconscious for a few minutes, then have a bad headache.”

Langdon reminded himself that Sasha worked for a brain scientist.

“But how did he get down here?” Sasha demanded.

Langdon had no idea—maybe úZSI’s demolition team had arrived already and broken down the door. The alarms on the machinery had been loud, and Langdon might not have heard the incursion. And now I’m directly linked to an assault on an úZSI lieutenant.

“Sasha, I need to get to the U.S. embassy as soon as possible,” Langdon said, racing through the options in his head. “There’s a man there who has been helping me. Michael Harris.”

Sasha looked surprised. “I know Michael. He’s a close friend.”

“You know him?!” Langdon was startled that Harris had never mentioned he knew Brigita Gessner’s lab assistant.

“It’s not a friendship we advertise,” Sasha said. “U.S. government employee…full-blooded Russian…”

Of course, Langdon realized. Politics is perception. Considering the growing U.S.-Russian hostility, an embassy official spending time with a Russian lab assistant would certainly raise eyebrows.

“Regardless, we can’t go to the embassy from here,” she said. “It’s far too dangerous. úZSI will have it staked out, searching every car that approaches. We should text Michael and have him collect us at my apartment in an official embassy vehicle. It will be far safer.”

It occurred to Langdon that for a woman who had just suffered a major seizure, Sasha Vesna was thinking more clearly than he was.

To her apartment then, he thought, grateful for her help and hoping he would be able to make contact with Katherine shortly.

“Is there any way out of here other than through the front door?”

“No, that’s the only way out,” Sasha said, grabbing Pavel’s gun from the sink and putting it into her bag.

“Hold on,” Langdon said, alarmed. “I’m not sure stealing an úZSI weapon—”

“I’m not going to use it, but this agent will be conscious in a minute, and if he decides to come after us, I’d prefer he didn’t have a gun.”

Hard to argue with that, Langdon thought. Pavel was already groaning and starting to twitch.

Sasha retrieved her magenta water bottle, which had been squashed by Pavel’s boots in the struggle. She looked wistfully at the handwritten Russian text. “Brigita gave me this,” she said as they started down the hall. “To remind me to stay hydrated. I always forget. It says, Drink Water. ”

Sasha set the bottle just inside her office and led Langdon to the staircase, where they climbed in silence to the upper landing. He hoped Janá?ek was not waiting in the foyer. At the top, they reached the security door, which Langdon half expected to find blown off its hinges.

It was not.

Cautiously, Sasha peered out through the tiny window.

Apparently seeing nothing, she pushed open the door and looked around.

Motioning for Langdon to follow, she led the way out into the freezing-cold foyer, which was deserted.

As the stairwell door closed behind them, the security panel beeped contentedly and turned red.

Crunching across shattered glass, Langdon and Sasha exited the building onto the walkway. All was quiet. Janá?ek’s sedan was still parked in front, but the captain was nowhere to be seen.

Sasha thought a moment. “Follow me.”

She led Langdon to the right, away from the bastion, arriving at an opening in the retaining wall.

From there, they descended a stone staircase that deposited them on a wooded slope.

This portion of the ridge was far less steep than the precipice surrounding the bastion’s courtyard, and yet the snow underfoot was slippery, and he was already having trouble getting traction in his slick-soled shoes.

Langdon’s attire this morning—a Dale sweater and campus loafers—had been in anticipation of a visit to a science lab…

not an escape down a mountain. As Langdon began to fumble his way through the trees, he set his sights on reaching the bottom unscathed.

This embankment, he now realized, descended directly to Folimanka Park.

And from there, he hoped, a taxi to Sasha’s apartment.

From where The Golěm was located, he had a perfect view of the American professor slipping awkwardly down the wooded slope toward Folimanka Park. Robert Langdon’s unanticipated presence at the bastion this morning, along with that of úZSI, was one of numerous wrinkles in The Golěm’s plan.

His plan for entering Threshold would need to be slightly delayed, and yet a fresh opportunity had just presented itself.

An opportunity I have no intention of squandering.

Carefully, The Golěm descended the slippery ridge, confident that neither Langdon nor Sasha had any idea he was there.