Inferno: (Robert Langdon Book 4)

backward.
    What in the world? This painting has been modified.
    Other letters now appeared to him, scrawled on sinners throughout all ten ditches of the Malebolge. He saw a C on a seducer being whipped by demons … another R on a thief perpetually bitten by snakes … an A on a corrupt politician submerged in a boiling lake of tar.
    “These letters,” Langdon said with certainty, “are definitely not part of Botticelli’s original. This image has been digitally edited.”
    He returned his gaze to the uppermost ditch of the Malebolge and began reading the letters downward, through each of the ten ditches, from top to bottom.
    C … A … T … R … O … V … A … C … E … R
    “Catrovacer?” Langdon said. “Is this Italian?”
    Sienna shook her head. “Not Latin either. I don’t recognize it.”
    “A … signature, maybe?”
    “Catrovacer?” She looked doubtful. “Doesn’t sound like a name to me. But look over there.” She pointed to one of the many characters in the third ditch of the Malebolge.
    When Langdon’s eyes found the figure, he instantly felt a chill. Among the crowd of sinners in the third ditch was an iconic image from the Middle Ages—a cloaked man in a mask with a long, birdlike beak and dead eyes.
    The plague mask.
    “Is there a plague doctor in Botticelli’s original?” Sienna asked.
    “Absolutely not. That figure has been added.”
    “And did Botticelli sign his original?”
    Langdon couldn’t recall, but as his eyes moved to the lower right-hand corner where a signature normally would be, he realized why she had asked. There was no signature, and yet barely visible along La Mappa ’s dark brown border was a line of text in tiny block letters: la verità è visibile solo attraverso gli occhi della morte.
    Langdon knew enough Italian to understand the gist. “ ‘The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death.’ ”
    Sienna nodded. “Bizarre.”
    The two of them stood in silence as the morbid image before them slowly began to fade. Dante’s Inferno , Langdon thought. Inspiring foreboding pieces of art since 1330.
    Langdon’s course on Dante always included an entire section on the illustrious artwork inspired by the Inferno . In addition to Botticelli’s celebrated Map of Hell , there was Rodin’s timeless sculpture of The Three Shades from The Gates of Hell … Stradanus’s illustration of Phlegyaspaddling through submerged bodies on the river Styx … William Blake’s lustful sinners swirling through an eternal tempest … Bouguereau’s strangely erotic vision of Dante and Virgil watching two nude men locked in battle … Bayros’s tortured souls huddling beneath a hail-like torrent of scalding pellets and droplets of fire … Salvador Dalí’s eccentric series of watercolors and woodcuts … and Doré’s huge collection of black-and-white etchings depicting everything from the tunneled entrance to Hades … to winged Satan himself.
    Now it seemed that Dante’s poetic vision of hell had not only influenced the most revered artists throughout history. It had also, apparently, inspired yet another individual—a twisted soul who had digitally altered Botticelli’s famous painting, adding ten letters, a plague doctor, and then signing it with an ominous phrase about seeing the truth through the eyes of death. This artist had then stored the image on a high-tech projector sheathed in a freakishly carved bone.
    Langdon couldn’t imagine who would have created such an artifact, and yet, at the moment, this issue seemed secondary to a far more unnerving question.
    Why the hell am I carrying it?

    As Sienna stood with Langdon in the kitchen and pondered her next move, the unexpected roar of a high-horsepower engine echoed up from the street below. It was followed by a staccato burst of screeching tires and car doors slamming.
    Puzzled, Sienna hurried to the window and peered outside.
    A black, unmarked van had skidded to a stop in the street below. Out of the van flowed a team of men, all dressed in black uniforms with circular green medallions on their left shoulders. They gripped automatic rifles and moved with fierce, military efficiency. Without hesitation, four soldiers dashed toward the entrance of the apartment building.
    Sienna felt her blood go cold. “Robert!” she shouted. “I don’t know who they are, but they found us!”

    Down in the street, Agent Christoph Brüder shouted orders to his men as they rushed into the building. He was