Inferno: (Robert Langdon Book 4)

provost said, “we wanted you to believe that people were trying to kill you … that you were in peril.”
    “People were trying to kill me!” Langdon shouted, his outburst drawing gazes from elsewhere in the plane. “I saw the hospital’s doctor—Dr. Marconi—gunned down in cold blood!”
    “That’s what you saw ,” the provost said evenly, “but that’s not what happened. Vayentha worked for me. She had a superb skill set for this kind of work.”
    “Killing people?” Langdon demanded.
    “No,” the provost said calmly. “ Pretending to kill people.”
    Langdon stared at the man for a long moment, picturing the gray-bearded doctor with the bushy eyebrows who had collapsed on the floor, blood gushing from his chest.
    “Vayentha’s gun was loaded with blanks,” the provost said. “It triggered a radio-controlled squib that detonated a blood pack on Dr. Marconi’s chest. He is fine, by the way.”
    Langdon closed his eyes, dumbstruck by what he was hearing. “And the … hospital room?”
    “A quickly improvised set,” the provost said. “Professor, I know this is all very difficult to absorb. We were working quickly, and you were groggy, so it didn’t need to be perfect. When you woke up, you saw what we wanted you to see—hospital props, a few actors, and a choreographed attack scene.”
    Langdon was reeling.
    “This is what my company does,” the provost said. “We’re very good at creating illusions.”
    “What about Sienna?” Langdon asked, rubbing his eyes.
    “I needed to make a judgment call, and I chose to work with her. My priority was to protect my client’s project from Dr. Sinskey, and Sienna and I shared that desire. To gain your trust, Sienna saved you from the assassin and helped you escape into a rear alleyway. The waiting taxi was also ours, with another radio-controlled squib on the rear windshield to create the final effect as you fled. The taxi took you to an apartment that we had hastily put together.”
    Sienna’s meager apartment , Langdon thought, now understanding why it looked like it had been furnished from a yard sale. And it also explainedthe convenient coincidence of Sienna’s “neighbor” having clothing that fit him perfectly.
    The entire thing had been staged.
    Even the desperate phone call from Sienna’s friend at the hospital had been phony. Sienna, eez Danikova!
    “When you phoned the U.S. Consulate,” the provost said, “you phoned a number that Sienna looked up for you. It was a number that rang on The Mendacium .”
    “I never reached the consulate …”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    Stay where you are , the fake consulate employee had urged him. I’ll send someone for you right away. Then, when Vayentha showed up, Sienna had conveniently spotted her across the street and connected the dots. Robert, your own government is trying to kill you! You can’t involve any authorities! Your only hope is to figure out what that projector means.
    The provost and his mysterious organization—whatever the hell it was—had effectively retasked Langdon to stop working for Sinskey and start working for them. Their illusion was complete.
    Sienna played me perfectly , he thought, feeling more sad than angry. He had grown fond of her in the short time they’d been together. Most troubling to Langdon was the distressing question of how a soul as bright and warm as Sienna’s could give itself over entirely to Zobrist’s maniacal solution for overpopulation.
    I can tell you without a doubt , Sienna had said to him earlier, that without some kind of drastic change, the end of our species is coming … The mathematics is indisputable.
    “And the articles about Sienna?” Langdon asked, recalling the Shakespeare playbill and the pieces about her staggeringly high IQ.
    “Authentic,” the provost replied. “The best illusions involve as much of the real world as possible. We didn’t have much time to set up, and so Sienna’s computer and real-world personal files were almost all we had to work with. You were never really intended to see any of that unless you began doubting her authenticity.”
    “Nor use her computer,” Langdon said.
    “Yes, that was where we lost control. Sienna never expected Sinskey’s SRS team to find the apartment, so when the soldiers moved in, Sienna panicked and had to improvise. She fled on the moped with you, trying to keep the illusion alive. As the entire mission unraveled, I had no choice but to disavow Vayentha,