The Secret of Secrets: A Novel (Robert Langdon Book 6) - 116

Seconds before the blast, with sirens at full volume, Langdon and Katherine had shouted for help as the fortified garage door slid closed and sealed them inside. Desperate to be heard, Langdon yanked open the driver’s door of a nearby sedan and began honking the horn, but even that was barely audible over the noise.

It didn’t matter anymore. Langdon now felt a palpable shift in the air…a sudden pressure in his ears, accompanied by the first wave of a deep, guttural howl.

Whatever was happening at Threshold…was happening now. Langdon hoped this garage was far enough away from the core of the facility to avoid the blast.

“Get in front!” Katherine shouted as she pulled open the sedan’s back door and climbed in. Langdon jumped in behind the steering wheel, both of them slamming their doors in unison. “Get down and buckle your—”

The car windows exploded, and a torrent of frigid wind whipped through the car. With the force of a passing high-speed train, a hurricane tore through the garage, extinguishing all light and lifting the sedan like a toy. In an instant, they were upside down in the darkness, their car tumbling side over side across the garage floor.

“Katherine!” Langdon shouted into the deafening storm, holding on to the steering wheel and trying to brace himself as best he could as the car rolled sidelong. A barrel roll in a fighter jet was said to be the least jarring of maneuvers because the centripetal force held you in your seat. Langdon now realized it was true…at least for a couple of moments.

Then came the impact.

The sedan collided with something immovable and jolted to an abrupt halt.

Langdon launched from his seat and crash-landed on his chest… somewhere. Dazed and in total darkness, he felt startlingly cold. His brain took a quick inventory of his body, gauging the pain merely as cuts and bruises rather than torn limbs. The fury of the explosion had subsided as quickly as it came. The warning sirens had fallen silent too.

Langdon’s ears were ringing, and with no light, he felt entirely disoriented. A biting cold had descended around them, although Langdon sensed he was still inside the car.

“Katherine?” Langdon ventured.

The voice that replied was weak but very close. “Here.”

Langdon felt a wave of relief. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not…sure,” she managed. “You’re…crushing me.”

Langdon now realized he was lying directly on top of her. Carefully, he shifted his weight to one side, rolling off her. His shoulder landed painfully on pieces of broken safety glass, and he shifted again, finding a clean area on which to support himself. As he got his bearings, he realized the car in which they had taken refuge was upside down, and they were now lying against its roof.

Wriggling forward, Langdon felt his way through the darkness until his hands found the frame of a shattered window. The opening felt too small for him to pass through, and he continued groping his way around the interior of the car until he located a larger opening—the windshield or rear window. Grasping one side, he heaved himself forward, slithering through the opening onto the hard floor of the garage.

The floor was slippery and cold with a layer of what felt like frost. On hands and knees, Langdon turned around and reached back through the opening.

“Katherine, over here,” he said as calmly as he could, anxious to know whether she was injured. “Can you find my hand? Are you hurt?”

He could hear her movement in the darkness, and he kept speaking to her, guiding her in his direction. Finally, their hands touched. Katherine’s fingers were cold, her hands trembling in shock. Gently, he eased her toward him, helping her out of the car. She immediately got to her feet and wrapped her arms around him, holding tight.

As they embraced, Langdon felt a sense of déjà vu—holding her once again in cold darkness, a feeling of overwhelming relief to know she was safe.

“My bag…” she whispered. “I lost it…the binder…”

“Forget it,” he said, holding her tighter. We’re alive. That’s all that matters.

Langdon had no idea what had just happened or how extensive the damage was, but he suspected the U.S. government would be answering myriad questions in the coming days. With luck, he and Katherine might now be the least of the CIA’s concerns.

Finch is most likely gone, Langdon thought, feeling little sorrow for the loss. The pang of sadness and guilt that Langdon felt was for the other lost soul—the man in the golem’s mask of clay—the creature who had literally risen out of the earth to save their lives.

Finch had demanded the intruder’s identity, and the creature had calmly replied: You have betrayed Sasha’s trust…I am her protector.

Langdon thought about Sasha Vesna, wondering where she was, and even whether she was still alive somewhere in this city. He had decided that if he and Katherine got out of here in one piece, they would find Sasha and help her. Not only did Sasha deserve and need it, but Langdon and Katherine owed a debt of gratitude to the man who had just saved their lives. Sasha’s protector, he had called himself. If he is gone, helping Sasha is our moral imperative.

“Look,” Katherine whispered, placing her hand on his shoulder and turning him in the darkness. “Over there.”

Langdon squinted into blackness, seeing nothing. “Where?”

“Straight ahead,” she said, turning him slightly to the right.

Now he saw it.

In the distance, barely visible through the haze of settling dust, a faint sliver of daylight glimmered in the blackness.

On any normal day, an earthquake rattling Prague would have been high on the list of concerns for Ambassador Nagel. At the moment, however, the tremor she had just felt seemed trivial in comparison to her conversation with CIA Director Judd.

“Remove her handcuffs,” the director had ordered the Marine guards as soon as the connection had been established. “Stand post outside the room. Nobody in or out.”

The guards obeyed, and once Nagel was uncuffed and alone, Judd had lowered his voice and said, “Finch is a loose cannon. Consider this protective custody.”

With no further explanation, the CIA director had launched into a monologue, attempting to justify everything Nagel had heard in Gessner’s horrifying confession. Now, having made his argument, Judd leaned forward toward the camera, his expression both pleading and deadly serious.

“We’re in an arms race, Heide,” he said, “and our adversaries are growing more powerful and aggressive every day. The plans being formulated against the U.S. are very real and potentially catastrophic, and we need to know about them before they happen. Threshold represents the advantage our intelligence community requires to help our country survive the coming storm. If we fail to take an inside track in the technology of the human mind, someone else will …and rather than being the watchers, we will be the watched.”

The age-old argument, Nagel thought. Someone is going to do it, so it had better be us.

The most dangerous and ethically questionable scientific endeavor in history—building an atomic bomb—had been launched on a similar justification. And outside of ethical or political argument, it was true that the United States’ being first to have the bomb had ended a devastating war and cemented the U.S. as a superpower for the next half century…a persuasive example of the ends justifying the means. But this was a different landscape.

Nagel could not begin to imagine how this video would play on the world stage. Not only did it reveal the existence of a shocking classified technology, but it lifted the veil on an appalling and unforgivable truth; the CIA performed testing on kidnapped Russian psychiatric patients, one of whom, Dmitri Sysevich, had apparently perished in the program. The CIA would be crucified top down…starting with the director.

“As you probably guessed,” Judd said, “In-Q-Tel was not involved with Threshold in any way. I placed Finch in their London office as credible cover and for operational support, but he clearly overstepped.” The director looked regretful. “I should never have granted him so much power.”

A loud knock on the door drew Nagel’s attention, and one of the embassy guards stuck his head in.

“Madam Ambassador?” he said, looking shaken. “I apologize for the interruption. We have an emergency call for you.”

I’m already on one! she wanted to yell. “Who is it?”

“Sergeant Kerble,” the Marine said. “He says there’s been a massive underground explosion in Folimanka Park.”