Inferno

Vayentha waits at the gates of the Palazzo amid a tourist crowd, and one member acknowledges the museum has had a delayed opening. A lone police officer arrives, nonchalantly striding through the doors, and Vayentha wonders if she guessed wrong that Langdon would be there. She overhears a dispatch on the officer’s radio that he should hold and wait for backup, then spots Brüder’s drone hovering over the city towards her. Vayentha realizes that Brüder has come to the same conclusion about the Palazzo as she did, and is quickly closing in.

On the Mendacium, Knowlton admonishes himself for going against protocol by phoning the provost. He also recognizes that, given Zobrist’s high-profile suicide, the biochemist’s video will instantly go viral. 

Marta calls the office of Ignazio Busoni to demand an explanation for his complicity in the theft of the mask but can only reach a sobbing assistant, who tells Marta that Busoni died the previous night of a heart attack in an alleyway near the Palazzo.

When Marta tells the assistant she is currently with Langdon, the assistant asks to speak to him. Over the phone, the assistant plays a final message from Busoni, telling Langdon, “What you seek is safely hidden. The gates are open to you, but you must hurry. Paradise Twenty-five” (186). Langdon recognizes this as a clue, and begs Marta to let them go, but she refuses. Sienna, speaking fluent Italian, suddenly admits that she is not Langdon’s sister and that the pair have not been fully honest with Marta.

Sienna and Langdon explain everything to Marta, including their new fear that Zobrist may have done something terrible just before his death. Marta still refuses, and Brüder’s drone suddenly appears in the window outside, posturing as if it is about to open fire, though it does not. Sienna and Langdon use the distraction to escape.

Realizing the known exits from the Palazzo will likely be guarded by soldiers, Langdon leads Sienna deeper into the building, explaining that they will escape “through Armenia” (190).

Vayentha hides in the crowd as Brüder’s team enters the building, and she worries that both she and Langdon are trapped.

Langdon leads Sienna to the map of Armenia in the Hall of Geographical Maps, recalling a tour he was given of the building years before. He pulls at the frame of the map, and the canvas opens to a secret passageway that the pair climb into.

Brüder leads his men through the Palazzo looking for Langdon, his frustration reaching a boil.

Langdon and Sienna climb into a deeper chamber down the secret passage, hearing Brüder’s men breaking through the map of Armenia behind them. Sienna questions why they continue to go up when they must escape downward, and Langdon references the end of Inferno when Dante and Virgil escaped to the upper world by climbing through the center of the Earth. Sienna is confused, but Langdon suddenly locates a secret cupboard into a wide-open attic space.

Langdon and Sienna enter the attic, which consists of several high vaulting beams striding over the thin ceiling of the Hall of the Five Hundred, the ceiling itself a support structure for several Vasari paintings. As they traverse the thin beams, Langdon deduces that Busoni’s clue of “Paradise Twenty-five” is a reference to Canto 25 of Dante’s Paradiso, the third and final part of the Divine Comedy and that he will eventually need to get his hands on a copy of the epic poem. Halfway across the attic, one of the planks gives out under Langdon’s weight, and he barely catches hold of the truss in front of him to keep from falling. Sienna is trapped behind him.

Vayentha notices dust falling from the Vasari-painted ceiling and runs upstairs as she realizes Langdon and Sienna are in the attic.

Outside the Palazzo, an unnamed man in Plume Paris sunglasses stands amid the crowd and watches the events unfold with great interest. His skin begins to itch, and he scratches at a large rash he has developed overnight. His fingernails also begin to bleed.

In Brüder’s SUV, Dr. Sinskey spots the man in the sunglasses and wonders if she recognizes him, but a soldier injects her with a sedative.

Sienna tries to catch up with Langdon by traversing the beams near the edge of the attic, but Vayentha suddenly appears, so she hides.

Langdon attempts to distract Vayentha, still believing she is there to kill him as she levels a pistol at his chest, but she instead asks after Sienna and promises not to hurt him.

Realizing Langdon will never believe her in his current state, Vayentha readies to fire her gun, but Sienna suddenly leaps from the shadows and shoves her from the beam. She is initially caught by the cloth fabric of the ceiling, but it quickly tears and Vayentha falls through the canvas of The Apotheosis of Cosimo I, tumbling to the floor of the Hall of the Five Hundred far below and dying on impact.

Langdon reassures a distraught Sienna that she did the right thing, and the pair head to the exit.

Langdon and Sienna leave via the Duke of Athens staircase, narrow spiral stairs that run down the side of the Palazzo. At the bottom, realizing that there will still be soldiers outside, Sienna suddenly doffs her wig and places it on Langdon’s head, disguising him as an aging rockstar while she rolls back her sleeves to look like a punk. Langdon is shocked by her baldness and assumes she is ill but says nothing as they head out into the crowd unrecognized.

Meanwhile, the mysterious man in the Plume Paris sunglasses spots the pair and follows them, but he is barely able to keep his breath in the pursuit.

As they move through the city, Sienna further details Bertrand Zobrist’s public declarations to Langdon: He believed in the dangers of overpopulation, advocated for mass death as a solution, and at one point suggested the WHO disband and that Dr. Sinskey should kill herself. Langdon is appalled, but Sienna admits to agreeing with Zobrist’s basic assumption about overpopulation and despairs that humanity will always fail to address the problem correctly, as it is handicapped by a base instinct: denial. She challenges Langdon’s sensibilities by asking him if he would kill half of the population randomly with the flip of a switch if he knew it was the only way to save the species. An uncomfortable Langdon avoids answering, and Sienna points out his own propensity for denial.