Inferno: (Robert Langdon Book 4)

in them now—the wild zeal of a madman.
    “My name is Bertrand Zobrist,” he said, staring into the camera. “And this is my face, unveiled and naked for the world to see. As for my soul … if I could hold aloft my flaming heart, as did Dante’s Lord for his beloved Beatrice, you would see I am overflowing with love. The deepest kind of love. For all of you. And, above all, for one of you.”
    Zobrist stepped closer still, gazing deep into the camera and speaking softly, as if to a lover.
    “My love,” he whispered, “my precious love. You are my beatitude, my destroyer of all vices, my endorser of all virtue, my salvation. You are the one who lay naked at my side and unwittingly helped me across the abyss, giving me the strength to do what I now have done.”
    Sinskey listened with repulsion.
    “My love,” Zobrist continued in a doleful whisper that echoed in the ghostly subterranean cavern in which he spoke. “You are my inspiration and my guide, my Virgil and my Beatrice all in one, and this masterpiece is as much yours as it is mine. If you and I, as star-crossed lovers, never touch again, I shall find my peace in knowing that I have left the future in your gentle hands. My work below is done. And now the hour has come for me to climb again to the world above … and rebehold the stars.”
    Zobrist stopped talking, and the word stars echoed a moment in the cavern. Then, very calmly, Zobrist reached out and touched the camera, ending his transmission.
    The screen went black.
    “The underground location,” the provost said, turning off the monitor. “We don’t recognize it. Do you?”
    Sinskey shook her head. I’ve never seen anything like it. She thought of Robert Langdon, wondering if he had made any more headway in deciphering Zobrist’s clues.
    “If it’s of any help,” the provost said, “I believe I know who Zobrist’s lover is.” He paused. “An individual code-named FS-2080.”
    Sinskey jumped up. “FS-2080?!” She stared at the provost in shock.
    The provost looked equally startled. “That means something to you?”
    Sinskey gave an incredulous nod. “It most certainly does.”
    Sinskey’s heart was pounding. FS-2080 . While she didn’t know the identity of the individual, she certainly knew what the code name stood for. The WHO had been monitoring similar code names for years.
    “The Transhumanist movement,” she said. “Are you familiar with it?”
    The provost shook his head.
    “In the simplest terms,” Sinskey explained, “Transhumanism is a philosophy stating that humans should use all available technologies to engineer our own species to make it stronger. Survival of the fittest.”
    The provost shrugged as if unmoved.
    “Generally speaking,” she continued, “the Transhumanist movement is made up of responsible individuals—ethically accountable scientists, futurists, visionaries—but, as in many movements, there exists a small but militant faction that believes the movement is not moving fast enough. They are apocalyptic thinkers who believe the end is coming and that someone needs to take drastic action to save the future of the species.”
    “And I’m guessing,” the provost said, “that Bertrand Zobrist was one of these people?”
    “Absolutely,” Sinskey said. “A leader of the movement. In addition to being highly intelligent, he was enormously charismatic and penned doomsday articles that spawned an entire cult of zealots for Transhumanism. Today, many of his fanatical disciples use these code names, all of which take a similar form—two letters and a four-digit number—for example, DG-2064, BA-2105, or the one you just mentioned.”
    “FS-2080.”
    Sinskey nodded. “That could only be a Transhumanist code name.”
    “Do the numbers and letters have meaning?”
    Sinskey motioned to his computer. “Pull up your browser. I’ll show you.”
    The provost looked uncertain but went to his computer and launched a search engine.
    “Search for ‘FM-2030,’ ” Sinskey said, settling in behind him.
    The provost typed FM-2030 , and thousands of Web pages appeared.
    “Click any of them,” Sinskey said.
    The provost clicked the top hit, which returned a Wikipedia page showing a picture of a handsome Iranian man— Fereidoun M. Esfandiary —whom it described as an author, philosopher, futurist, and forefather of the Transhumanist movement. Born in 1930, he was credited with introducing Transhumanist philosophy to the multitudes, as well as