Inferno

Langdon and Sienna slip deeper into the cavern until they hit a dead end. The drone deactivates at the entrance, and a trio of soldiers begin descending toward them. One stands guard while the other two peel off and knock on the gray door.

Ernesto, a guard, answers the door and confirms he will let no one through and that there are no other secret exits out of the Gardens.

The soldiers get word that a group of tourists claim to have seen Sienna and Langdon asking after the western costume gallery, and two of them leave. Langdon and Sienna overhear the one remaining, Brüder, speaking on the phone and confirming tracking them via Langdon’s logging into his Harvard account on Sienna’s computer. Sienna seems momentarily betrayed by this but says nothing. Brüder also confirms that he knows Sienna’s name. Brüder eventually leaves, and Sienna leads Langdon back to the locked door. She knocks, and Ernesto opens, but he is immediately incapacitated by Sienna via her application of pressure points. He wakes up some time later, realizing Langdon and Sienna have slipped past him.

Still drugged in the van, Dr. Sinskey continues to reminisce about her conversation with the Shade two years prior. She and the Shade go back and forth on the question of overpopulation, and he produces a graph of supposedly correlating data he claims signifies that human overpopulation is slowly destroying the planet, and that the population must be immediately and forcibly declined to avoid a total environmental catastrophe.

Sinskey, horrified by what she sees as the Shade’s ready endorsement of the mass murder of billions, takes a picture of him and says she will be adding his identity to a list of potential bioterrorists attached to several law enforcement organizations. He calmly accepts this, but he implies that they are now enemies.

After slipping past Ernesto, Langdon and Sienna enter the Vasari Corridor—a miles long, private passageway connecting the Pitti Palace to the Palazzo Vecchio, their destination. Vasari designed and oversaw the construction of the Corridor during the time of the Medicis, who sought a way to move between their two estates in Florence without intermingling with the public, as the Medicis feared potential assassins in the city. The Corridor, elevated above the ground, moves through and around several buildings as it crosses the Arno and makes its way toward the Palazzo Vecchio, at one point even opening to a balcony within a church, where the Medicis could attend mass in relative privacy.

As Langdon and Sienna cross the Ponte Vecchio via the Corridor, Vayentha stands on the bridge below them, unaware of their passing overhead.

Knowlton continues reviewing the Shade’s video, noting the mysterious figure’s reference to Malthus, an infamous philosopher who predicted global catastrophe if overpopulation was left unchecked, even going so far as to advocate for increased poverty as a way of culling the masses. Knowlton grows ever more trepidatious at the Shade’s implications.

Langdon and Sienna eventually reach the terminus of the Vasari Corridor, finding themselves within the Palazzo Vecchio in the heart of the old city.

They find themselves walking through active government offices, but their proper attire and Sienna’s careful application of Italian allows them to bypass the working officials unnoticed. They reach the entrance to the Hall of the Five Hundred, which is closed, but Langdon tricks a custodian into allowing them in after hours.

Entering the vast Hall, Langdon and Sienna locate Vasari’s massive painting, Battle of Marciano, and Langdon immediately begins scanning it for his hoped-for clue.

Meanwhile, back in the Boboli Gardens, Brüder finishes searching the costume gallery and furiously realizes he has lost his quarry.

Sienna inspects the Battle, repeating the clue “the truth can only be seen through the eyes of death” to herself, but finds nothing of note. Langdon also ponders the clue and recalls a jewel-encrusted skull having once been kept in the Palazzo, but he cannot see how it could help.

Meanwhile, the janitor who allowed them into the Hall grows suspicious with their inspection of the painting and calls for a superior. A pregnant woman arrives and joyfully recognizes Langdon, but Langdon cannot remember ever meeting her.

The woman introduces herself as Marta Alvarez, and Sienna introduces herself to Marta as Langdon’s sister. Marta asks if Langdon has returned to see what he had been viewing the night before but does not call the object by its name. He politely asks Marta to lead him and his “sister” Sienna back to the object, and Marta reveals that the item in question is the plaster death mask of Dante Alighieri.

On the Mendacium, the provost speaks to Knowlton, who recommends to the provost that he review the unnamed client’s video before its upload, as Knowlton is concerned with its content. The provost admonishes Knowlton for going against the Consortium’s compartmentalization protocol.

Vayentha, still on the bridge, continues anxiously wondering whether the Consortium will send someone to kill her as part of her disavowal, but she realizes from the continuing commotion that Brüder has not found Langdon either.

Sinskey recalls receiving a note from the Shade after their meeting: the epigraph of the novel, Dante’s quote of “The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of great moral crisis.”

Marta leads Langdon and Sienna to a roped-off upstairs gallery holding Dante’s mask, noting Langdon’s strange behavior to herself. It seems to her that Langdon is just meeting her for the first time, yet he had just seen her the night before with Marta’s admired colleague, Ignazio Busoni, the curator of Il Duomo, a nearby cathedral and the most famous fixture of Florence’s skyline. Langdon and Busoni had stared intently at the death mask for half an hour.

On their way to the mask’s display, Marta attempts to divert Langdon and Sienna with some other famous pieces in the gallery, including an early edition of the Divine Comedy. Sienna aggressively pushes Marta to move them along to the mask, causing Marta to grow even more suspicious.

They then reach the desired display, and Marta panics as they discover the mask is gone.

Marta immediately phones the Florentine police, but they have been caught up in the manhunt for Langdon and will take some time to get an officer to her. Marta rushes to the security office to view camera footage that might identify the thieves, with Langdon and Sienna in tow.

On the Ponte Vecchio, Vayentha overhears a police radio dispatch calling for nearby officers to go to the Palazzo along with the name Dante Alighieri. She pieces together that the dispatch must relate to Langdon, as “the fiasco that had all but destroyed her career—had occurred in the alleyways just outside the Palazzo Vecchio” (172). Wondering how Langdon and Sienna had managed to sneak by her, she overhears a tour guide mentioning the Vasari Corridor, realizes what has happened, and rushes into the old city.