Page 206 of The Secret of Secrets

He gazed out the bay window, realizing his bizarre dream was not all that surprising. His brain was probably still trying to sort through the trauma of his frantic leap from this very window into the frigid water. Dreams had always fascinated Langdon, and he’d been shocked today when Katherine claimed to have discovered what caused them.

Incredibly, her experiments had revealed that a dreaming brain was similar to a dying brain. In both instances, GABA levels plummeted, thus lowering the brain’s filters, opening the door to wider bandwidths of information. The influx of unfiltered data was the reason dreams manifested as such illogical jumbles of images and ideas. Furthermore, it explained why, within seconds after waking, even the most vivid dreams began to fade despite our desperate attempts to remember them. The brain reset, GABA levels increased, and filters reengaged…purging the information and once again regulating our perception of reality.

Dying felt a lot like dreaming, she had explained, describing how in dreams we often perceived ourselves as weightless, massless beings, with the ability to move through obstacles, fly through the air, or shift locations—in essence, we became a consciousness without a physical form. The bardo body, Langdon thought, recalling its description from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In many cultures, the dream body was held sacred for its perceived ability to pass back and forth between the realms of life and death.

As consciousness becomes untethered, our powers of perception grow.

Langdon was still standing at the window when every phone in the suite suddenly began to ring at once. He rushed to the living room extension and picked up the receiver, hoping the call had not awoken Katherine.

“Mr. Langdon, this is the night manager,” announced the familiar voice. “I’m sorry if I woke you. I tried knocking, but there was no answer.”

The pounding in my dream. “Yes, is everything…okay?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the manager replied, clearly alarmed. “There’s a Marine Kerble here from the U.S. embassy. He says it is critical the ambassador see you immediately.”

In a locked conference room in the U.S. embassy, The Golěm gazed down at the restraints on his wrists. I will not let Sasha see herself bound, he thought. She endured enough of that during her years in the institution. The Golěm had yet to release Sasha back into the forefront of his mind since he had left the rubble of Threshold, but that moment was fast approaching.

Everything is going to plan.

Despite Sasha being effectively incarcerated at the moment, The Golěm remained confident the ambassador would become a sympathetic ally to her.

Gessner’s confession revealed all I needed to know.

“Ambassador Nagel knows nothing!” Gessner had insisted. “She would be horrified to know what is happening down here—she’s only in Prague because Finch tricked her into her job. He needed a diplomat as an ally!”

I need one too, The Golěm had decided.

And so he had reached out to her.

Please help Sasha.

No doubt the ambassador was trying to sort out precisely what “helping Sasha” would entail, but it would not take her long to realize there existed only one workable scenario. The Golěm had planted the idea ever so delicately, and it had already taken hold.

Minutes ago, the ambassador had uttered the only word The Golěm wanted to hear.

Asylum.

Chapter 132

Heide Nagel had spent her entire professional life in service to her country. Trained to think always of the greater good, she rarely thought solely of herself. At the moment, however, thinking of herself was precisely what Nagel was doing.

She had already made the decision to resign as ambassador and leave Prague. It was what she wanted to do years ago, but now, very suddenly, her world was transformed. Finch was gone, and she possessed the leverage to weather even the most violent political storm.

To Nagel’s surprise, however, the assurance of survival brought her no solace…only a gnawing emptiness that had been growing for the past several hours.

My life has to be focused on something more than just…surviving.

And then Sasha Vesna walked through the embassy’s front door.

Katherine Solomon felt like it was only minutes ago that she was lost in a deeply satisfied dreamworld, only to be yanked back into the harsh light of reality.

What are we doing here?!

Sergeant Kerble had just delivered them to the office of Ambassador Nagel, who was standing at her bar pouring three cups of coffee into fine china emblazoned with the official embassy seal. “Again, I’m sorry for calling so late,” she said, “but I’m afraid there have been some major developments in the last hour, and I need to bring you up to speed right away. The information is both urgent…and highly sensitive.”

“You’re telling us here?” Langdon asked. “I thought you no longer trusted the embassy’s privacy.”

“I don’t,” Nagel replied, “but everything has changed. The information I’m about to share with you is something I will have no choice but to share with the CIA director as well.” The ambassador turned from the bar, carrying a tray with the coffees toward the sitting area in the corner. “If he’s listening, so be it.”