He brought me up here to show me models?

Sienna shot an anxious glance at the miniature and saw the secret staircase descending all the way from the top of the palace down to street level, stealthily hidden between the inner and outer walls of the building.

“I can see the stairs, Robert,” Sienna said testily, “but they are on the complete opposite side of the palace. We’ll never get over there!”

“A little faith,” he said with a lopsided grin.

A sudden crash emanating from downstairs told them that the map of Armenia had just been breached. They stood stone-still as they listened to the footfalls of soldiers departing down the corridor, none of them ever thinking that their quarry would climb higher still … especially up a tiny staircase marked NO EXIT.

When the sounds below had subsided, Langdon strode with confidence across the exhibit room, snaking through the displays, heading directly for what looked like a large cupboard in the far wall. The cupboard was about one yard square and positioned three feet off the floor. Without hesitation, Langdon grabbed the handle and heaved open the door.

Sienna recoiled with surprise.

The space within appeared to be a cavernous void … as if the cupboard door were a portal into another world. Beyond was only blackness.

“Follow me,” Langdon said.

He grabbed a lone flashlight that was hanging on the wall beside the opening. Then, with surprising agility and strength, the professor hoisted himself up through the opening and disappeared into the rabbit hole.

CHAPTER 46

La soffitta, Langdon thought. The most dramatic attic on earth.

The air inside the void smelled musty and ancient, as if centuries of plaster dust had now become so fine and light that it refused to settle and instead hung suspended in the atmosphere. The vast space creaked and groaned, giving Langdon the sense that he had just climbed into the belly of a living beast.

Once he had found solid footing on a broad horizontal truss chord, he raised his flashlight, letting the beam pierce the darkness.

Spreading out before him was a seemingly endless tunnel, crisscrossed by a wooden web of triangles and rectangles formed by the intersections of posts, beams, chords, and other structural elements that made up the invisible skeleton of the Hall of the Five Hundred.

This enormous attic space was one Langdon had viewed during his Nebbiolo-fogged secret passages tour a few years ago. The cupboardlike viewing window had been cut in the wall of the architectural-model room so visitors could inspect the models of the truss work and then peer through the opening with a flashlight and see the real thing.

Now that Langdon was actually inside the garret, he was surprised by how much the truss architecture resembled that of an old New England barn—traditional king post–and-strut assembly with “Jupiter’s arrow point” connections.

Sienna had also climbed through the opening and now steadied herself on the beam beside him, looking disoriented. Langdon swung the flashlight back and forth to show her the unusual landscape.

From this end, the view down the length of the garret was like peering through a long line of isosceles triangles that telescoped into the distance, extending out toward some distant vanishing point. Beneath their feet, the garret had no floorboards, and its horizontal supporting beams were entirely exposed, resembling a series of massive railroad ties.

Langdon pointed straight down the long shaft, speaking in hushed tones. “This space is directly over the Hall of the Five Hundred. If we can get to the other end, I know how to reach the Duke of Athens Stairway.”

Sienna cast a skeptical eye into the labyrinth of beams and supports that stretched before them. The only apparent way to advance through the garret would be to jump between the struts like kids on a train track. The struts were large—each consisting of numerous beams strapped together with wide iron clasps into a single powerful sheaf—plenty large enough to balance on. The challenge, however, was that the separation between the struts was much too far to leap across safely.

“I can’t possibly jump between those beams,” Sienna whispered.

Langdon doubted he could either, and falling would be certain death. He aimed the flashlight down through the open space between the struts.

Eight feet below them, suspended by iron rods, hung a dusty horizontal expanse—a floor of sorts—which extended as far as they could see. Despite its appearance of solidity, Langdon knew the floor consisted primarily of stretched fabric covered in dust. This was the “back side” of the Hall of the Five Hundred’s suspended ceiling—a sprawling expanse of wooden lacunars that framed thirty-nine Vasari canvases, all mounted horizontally in a kind of patchwork-quilt configuration.

Sienna pointed down to the dusty expanse beneath them. “Can we climb down there and walk across?”

Not unless you want to fall through a Vasari canvas into the Hall of the Five Hundred.

“Actually, there’s a better way,” Langdon said calmly, not wanting to frighten her. He began moving down the strut toward the central backbone of the garret.

On his previous visit, in addition to peering through the viewing window in the room of architectural models, Langdon had explored the garret on foot, entering through a doorway at the other end of the attic. If his wine-impaired memory served him, a sturdy boardwalk ran along the central spine of the garret, providing tourists access to a large viewing deck in the center of the space.

However, when Langdon arrived at the center of the strut, he found a boardwalk that in no way resembled the one he recalled from his tour.

How much Nebbiolo did I drink that day?

Rather than a sturdy, tourist-worthy structure, he was looking at a hodgepodge of loose planks that had been laid perpendicularly across the beams to create a rudimentary catwalk—more of a tightrope than a bridge.

Apparently, the sturdy tourist walkway that originated at the other end extended only as far as the central viewing platform. From there, the tourists evidently retraced their steps. This jerry-rigged balance beam that Langdon and Sienna now faced was most likely installed so engineers could service the remaining attic space at this end.

“Looks like we’re walking the plank,” Langdon said, eyeing the narrow boards with uncertainty.

Sienna shrugged, unfazed. “No worse than Venice in flood season.”

Langdon realized she had a point. On his most recent research trip to Venice, St. Mark’s Square had been under a foot of water, and he had walked from the Hotel Danieli to the basilica on wooden planks propped between cinder blocks and inverted buckets. Of course, the prospect of possibly getting one’s loafers wet was a far cry from that of plunging through a Renaissance masterpiece to one’s death.

Pushing the thought from his mind, Langdon stepped out onto the narrow board with a feigned self-assurance that he hoped would calm any worries Sienna might secretly be harboring. Nonetheless, despite his confident exterior, his heart was pounding as he moved across the first plank. As he neared the middle, the plank bowed beneath his weight, creaking ominously. He pressed on, faster now, finally reaching the other side and the relative safety of the second strut.

Exhaling, Langdon turned to shine the light for Sienna and also offer any coaxing words she might need. She apparently needed none. As soon as his beam illuminated the plank, she was skimming along its length with remarkable dexterity. The board barely bent beneath her slender body, and within seconds she had joined him on the other side.

Encouraged, Langdon turned back and headed out across the next plank. Sienna waited until he had crossed and could turn around and shine the light for her, and then she followed, staying right with him. Settling into a steady rhythm, they pressed on—two figures moving one after the other by the light of a single flashlight. From somewhere beneath them, the sound of police walkie-talkies crackled up through the thin ceiling. Langdon permitted himself a faint smile. We’re hovering above the Hall of the Five Hundred, weightless and invisible.

“So, Robert,” Sienna whispered. “You said Ignazio told you where to find the mask?”

“He did … but in a kind of code.” Langdon quickly explained that Ignazio had apparently not wanted to blurt out the mask’s location on the answering machine, and so he had shared the information in a more cryptic manner. “He referenced paradise, which I assume is an allusion to the final section of The Divine Comedy. His exact words were ‘Paradise Twenty-five.’ ”

Sienna glanced up. “He must mean Canto Twenty-five.”

“I agree,” Langdon said. A canto was the rough equivalent of a chapter, the word harkening back to the oral tradition of “singing” epic poems. The Divine Comedy contained precisely one hundred cantos in all, divided into three sections.

Inferno 1–34

Purgatorio 1–33

Paradiso 1–33

Paradise Twenty-five, Langdon thought, wishing his eidetic memory were strong enough to recall the entire text. Not even close—we need to find a copy of the text.

“There’s more,” Langdon continued. “The last thing Ignazio said to me was: ‘The gates are open to you, but you must hurry.’ ” He paused, glancing back at Sienna. “Canto Twenty-five probably makes reference to a specific location here in Florence. Apparently, someplace with gates.”

Sienna frowned. “But this city probably has dozens of gates.”

“Yes, which is why we need to read Canto Twenty-five of Paradise.” He gave her a hopeful smile. “You don’t, by any chance, know the entire Divine Comedy by heart, do you?”

She gave him a dumb look. “Fourteen thousand lines of archaic Italian that I read as a kid?” She shook her head. “You’re the one with the freakish memory, Professor. I’m just a doctor.”

As they pressed on, Langdon found it sad somehow that Sienna, even after all they’d been through together, apparently still preferred to withhold the truth about her exceptional intellect. She’s just a doctor? Langdon had to chuckle. Most humble doctor on earth, he thought, recalling the clippings he’d read about her special skills—skills that, unfortunately but not surprisingly, did not include total recall of one of history’s longest epic poems.

In silence, they continued on, crossing several more beams. Finally, up ahead Langdon saw a heartening shape in the darkness. The viewing platform! The precarious planking on which they were walking led directly to a much sturdier structure with guardrails. If they climbed onto the platform, they could continue on along the walkway until they exited the garret through a doorway, which, as Langdon recalled, was very close to the Duke of Athens Stairway.

As they neared the platform, Langdon glanced down at the ceiling suspended eight feet below. So far all the lunettes beneath them had been similar. The upcoming lunette, however, was massive—far larger than the others.

The Apotheosis of Cosimo I, Langdon mused.

This vast, circular lunette was Vasari’s most precious painting—the central lunette in the entire Hall of the Five Hundred. Langdon often showed slides of this work to his students, pointing out its similarities to The Apotheosis of Washington in the U.S. Capitol—a humble reminder that fledgling America had adopted far more from Italy than merely the concept of a republic.

Today, however, Langdon was more interested in hurrying past the Apotheosis than in studying it. As he hastened his pace, he turned his head ever so slightly to whisper back to Sienna that they were nearly there.

As he did so, his right foot missed the center of the plank and his borrowed loafer landed half off the edge. His ankle rolled, and Langdon lurched forward, half stumbling, half running, trying to make a quick stutter step to regain his balance.

But it was too late.

His knees hit the plank hard, and his hands strained desperately forward, trying to reach the crossing strut. The flashlight went clattering into the dark space beneath them, landing on the canvas, which caught it like a net. Langdon’s legs pumped, barely propelling him to safety on the next strut as the plank fell away beneath him, landing with a crash eight feet below on the wooden lacunar surrounding the canvas of Vasari’s Apotheosis.

The sound echoed through the garret.

Horrified, Langdon scrambled to his feet and turned back toward Sienna.

In the dim glow of the abandoned flashlight, which lay on the canvas below, Langdon could see that Sienna was standing on the strut behind him, now trapped, with no way across. Her eyes conveyed what Langdon already knew. The noise of the falling plank had almost certainly given them away.

Vayentha’s eyes bolted upward to the ornate ceiling.

“Rats in the attic?” the man with the camcorder joked nervously as the sound reverberated down.

Big rats, Vayentha thought, gazing up at the circular painting in the center of the hall’s ceiling. A small cloud of dust was now filtering down from between the lacunars, and Vayentha could swear she saw a slight bulge in the canvas … almost as if someone were pushing on it from the other side.

“Maybe one of the officers dropped his gun off the viewing platform,” the man said, eyeing the lump in the painting. “What do you think they’re looking for? All this activity is very exciting.”

“A viewing platform?” Vayentha demanded. “People can actually go up there?”

“Sure.” He motioned to the museum entrance. “Just inside that door is a door that leads up to a catwalk in the attic. You can see Vasari’s truss work. It’s incredible.”

Brüder’s voice suddenly echoed again across the Hall of the Five Hundred. “So where the hell did they go?!”

His words, like his anguished yell a little earlier, had emanated from behind a lattice grate positioned high on the wall to Vayentha’s left. Brüder was apparently in a room behind the grate … a full story beneath the room’s ornate ceiling.

Vayentha’s eyes climbed again to the bulge in the canvas overhead.

Rats in the attic, she thought. Trying to find a way out.