Inferno

Langdon and Sienna inspect the metal object they retrieved from Langdon’s hidden jacket pocket: a biometrically sealed vial marked with a biohazard sign, which, to Langdon’s shock, unlocks with his fingerprint. However, he does not open it out of fear of what may be inside. Langdon and Sienna discuss the risks involved in contacting the authorities, and Langdon eventually agrees to contact the American consulate in Firenze while following Sienna’s lead.

Sienna dials the consulate on her cellphone, and they reach a representative. To Langdon’s surprise, the representative confirms that the consulate knew he was in Italy and had been trying to find him, as they were concerned for his safety.

The consulate representative passes Langdon on to a Mr. Collins, who claims to be the consulate’s chief administrator. Again following Sienna’s suggestion, Langdon gives his location as being inside a hotel across the street from the apartment. Mr. Collins advises Langdon to stay put and says the consulate is sending someone to pick him up.

Langdon apologizes to Sienna for her involvement in the fiasco, and she admits to being worried about what will happen to her once Langdon is brought to safety. She then spots Vayentha arriving and entering the hotel, and Langdon concludes that she is working for someone in the American government who has sent her to kill him.

Deciding they have no choice, Langdon and Sienna open the biohazard-labeled canister in search of some clue. Inside, they find a “cylinder seal,” a tube used to roll an imprint not unlike a stamp. The seal is in the image of a three-headed devil devouring three men, and the word “saligia,” which Langdon recognizes as a popular Middle Ages acronym for the Latin names of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sienna also realizes the cylinder itself is made of bone not ivory as Langdon initially assumes. Langdon then feels something inside the hollow bone and shakes it, hearing a sound like metal but is surprised when Sienna hollers that the tube is beginning to glow.

While Sienna initially wonders if the tube contains some bioluminescent organism, Langdon recognizes it as a device a student of his once showed him: a Faraday pointer, a battery-less laser pointer activated by agitation. However, instead of emitting laser-light, the Faraday pointer projects an image of a painting familiar to Langdon: Sandro Botticelli’s La Mappa dell’Inferno, or Map of Hell.

The Map displays Hell, in cross-section, as a subterranean realm consisting of nine levels, narrowing as it descends. Langdon explains to Sienna that this rendition of the underworld is meant to reflect the version originally described by Dante Alighieri in his masterpiece, Inferno, the first of three parts of Dante’s larger Divine Comedy.

In the hotel across the street, Vayentha relays that Langdon gave the consulate a fake hotel room number and heads to the roof to get a better view of the surrounding area. She immediately begins to scan Sienna’s apartment building.

On The Mendacium, the provost, still monitoring Vayentha on her mission, receives word that Langdon logged into his Harvard account, meaning the IP address of Sienna’s computer and Langdon’s exact location are now traceable. He realizes that this changes all his plans, asks an assistant on the status of the “SRS” team, and when she states that they are only two miles out, he realizes he “needed only a moment to make the decision” (63).

Still poring over the Map, Langdon reflects on the history of Dante’s Inferno, including its wild success and popularity in the 14th century, its enduring vision of Hell, its influence up to the present day, and its vast number of adaptations into other media. As he inspects Botticelli’s famous painting, Sienna points to a small section of the eighth circle, the Malebolge, itself divided into 10 pits where Dante placed the fraudulent. She spots an upturned leg with the letter “R” written on its thigh, recognizing it from Langdon’s description of his visions. Langdon looks closer and realizes letters have been written on the suffering souls of each of the Malebolge’s 10 pits, spelling out the word “catrovacer.” This is not part of the original painting. He also spots another message written on the side of the Map, which reads, in Italian, “The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death” (66). Just then, Sienna spots a black van pulling up to the side of the apartment building, and four soldiers exit the van and immediately head inside.

Perspective then switches to one of the four soldiers, a man named Christoph Brüder, leader of Surveillance and Response Support (SRS), who is determined to find Langdon. He reflects on the fact that his team is only ever called in by his organization when a situation has reached crisis level, and the stakes in this case are high.

Atop the hotel, Vayentha worriedly calls the provost to ask why the SRS team has arrived but receives only a voice message telling her she has been disavowed by The Consortium, and she realizes she is on her own.

Langdon and Sienna leave the apartment and are almost intercepted in a hallway by the SRS team, but Sienna tricks the soldiers by holding Langdon’s jacket over her head, making it look like a shawl in the half-light, and pretending to be an old Italian woman. The SRS team bypass them.

Langdon and Sienna escape to the street, where Sienna hotwires a Trike, and the pair flee from the building, just as Brüder emerges and fires at them. The SRS team gives chase to the pair, but Sienna is able to hide them behind a delivery truck. As the black van speeds past, Langdon glimpses a silver-haired older woman in the back seat, squeezed uncomfortably between two soldiers, and recognizes her as the woman from his visions.

On The Mendacium, the provost reflects on the first time he met “the Shade” as a client who was referred to the Consortium by a mutual acquaintance. The Shade had asked to be kept hidden from the world, a service the Consortium was happy to provide, but the provost had been concerned once he discovered the Shade was being pursued by the silver-haired woman, who the provost realized was extremely well-connected and dangerous.

The Shade, fearing the silver-haired woman would find him even if the Consortium assisted him, asked the provost to deliver an object that he calls a “thorn in her side.” The object was stored in a safety deposit box in Florence, and it is heavily implied to be the Faraday pointer Langdon now carries (75). He also asks the provost to release the video Knowlton is currently reviewing. The provost had sent Vayentha to retrieve the “thorn” from the safety deposit box, but the silver-haired woman had found it first and nearly captured Vayentha. As he ponders the series of events, the provost has his first drink in 13 years.

Belowdecks, Knowlton reluctantly confirms on his digital planner that he will upload the video to the media the next day.

As Sienna drives Langdon through Florence, he instructs her to head toward the old city, across the Arno River, as he believes they will find more answers there.

Langdon recalls a lecture he gave at a Dante Society of America meeting regarding symbolism in the Divine Comedy. The lecture included an explanation that the meaning of the “comedy” vernacular in medieval Italian relates to the lower classes, Dante’s codification of modern Italian through his work, and the glowing endorsements the Divine Comedy and Dante himself received from artists, such as Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Gustave Doré, the latter of whose engraving of the Gates of Hell Langdon presented to the Dante Society. The engraving included the infamous inscription from the poem, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Langdon is shaken out of his reflection by Sienna gesturing toward the gate to the old city, noting to Langdon that they have a problem.