Inferno: (Robert Langdon Book 4)

been the largest rotating globe of its era and was said to spin almost effortlessly with just the touch of a finger. Today the globe serves as more of a final stop for tourists who have threaded their way through the long succession of gallery rooms and reached a dead end, where they circle the globe and depart the way they came.
    Langdon and Sienna arrived breathless in the Hall of Maps. Before them, the Mappa Mundi rose majestically, but Langdon didn’t even glance at it, his eyes moving instead to the outer walls of the room.
    “We need to find Armenia!” Langdon said. “The map of Armenia!”
    Clearly nonplussed by his request, Sienna hurried off to the room’s right-hand wall in search of a map of Armenia.
    Langdon immediately began a similar search along the left-hand wall, tracing his way around the perimeter of the room.
    Arabia, Spain, Greece …
    Each country was portrayed in remarkable detail, considering that the drawings had been made more than five hundred years ago, at a time when much of the world had yet to be mapped or explored.
    Where is Armenia?
    Compared to his usually vivid eidetic memories, Langdon’s recollections of his “secret passages tour” here several years ago felt cloudy, duein no small part to the second glass of Gaja Nebbiolo he’d enjoyed with lunch prior to the tour. Fittingly, the word nebbiolo meant “little fog.” Even so, Langdon now distinctly recalled being shown a single map in this room—Armenia—a map that possessed a unique property.
    I know it’s in here , Langdon thought, continuing to scan the seemingly endless line of maps.
    “Armenia!” Sienna announced. “Over here!”
    Langdon spun toward where she was standing in the deep right-hand corner of the room. He rushed over, and Sienna pointed to the map of Armenia with an expression that seemed to say, “We found Armenia—so what?”
    Langdon knew they didn’t have time for explanations. Instead, he simply reached out, grabbed the map’s massive wooden frame, and heaved it toward him. The entire map swung into the room, along with a large section of the wall and wainscoting, revealing a hidden passageway.
    “All right, then,” Sienna said, sounding impressed. “Armenia it is.”
    Without hesitation, Sienna hurried through the opening, moving fearlessly into the dim space beyond. Langdon followed her and quickly pulled the wall closed behind them.
    Despite his foggy recollections of the secret passages tour, Langdon recalled this passageway clearly. He and Sienna had just passed, as it were, through the looking glass into the Palazzo Invisibile—the clandestine world that existed behind the walls of the Palazzo Vecchio—a secret domain that had been accessible solely to the then-reigning duke and those closest to him.
    Langdon paused a moment inside the doorway and took in their new surroundings—a pale stone hallway lit only by faint natural light that filtered through a series of leaded windows. The passageway descended fifty yards or so to a wooden door.
    He turned now to his left, where a narrow ascending staircase was blocked by a chain swag. A sign above the stairs warned: USCITA VIETATA .
    Langdon headed for the stairs.
    “No!” Sienna warned. “It says ‘No Exit.’ ”
    “Thanks,” Langdon said with a wry smile. “I can read the Italian.”
    He unhooked the chain swag, carried it back to the secret door, and quickly used it to immobilize the rotating wall—threading the chain through the door handle and around a nearby fixture so the door could not be pulled open from the other side.
    “Oh,” Sienna said sheepishly. “Good thinking.”
    “It won’t keep them out for long,” Langdon said. “But we won’t need much time. Follow me.”

    When the map of Armenia finally crashed open, Agent Brüder and his men streamed down the narrow corridor in pursuit, heading for the wooden door at the far end. When they burst through, Brüder felt a blast of cold air hit him head-on, and was momentarily blinded by bright sunlight.
    He had arrived on an exterior walkway, which threaded along the rooftop of the palazzo. His eye traced the path, which led directly to another door, some fifty yards away, and reentered the building.
    Brüder glanced to the left of the walkway, where the high, vaulted roof of the Hall of the Five Hundred rose like a mountain. Impossible to traverse . Brüder turned now to his right, where the walkway was bordered by a sheer cliff that plummeted down into a