Page 28 of The Secret of Secrets

You pride yourself on being an independent thinker.

You feel doubt at times that you have made the right decision.

Langdon explained that eagerness to find personal truth in general statements was known as the Barnum effect—so named for the sideshow “personality tests” that P. T. Barnum had employed to fool so many circusgoers into believing he had psychic powers.

The ÚZSI sedan swerved hard left, pulling Langdon from his thoughts as the car began ascending the vast wooded landscape of Folimanka Park, a sprawling public space on the outskirts of central Prague.

High atop the hill, Langdon was just able to make out the stone rampart of Crucifix Bastion perched on the ridgeline above them. He had never visited the small fortress, which had been in ruins for many years and had been renovated only fairly recently, but he now knew far more than he cared to about the reconstruction—having been regaled relentlessly last night by the bastion’s proud new tenant.

Dr. Brigita Gessner.

The Czech neuroscientist was on the board of the Charles University Lecture Series and had personally invited Katherine to be last night’s presenter. After the lecture, Gessner had joined Katherine and Langdon for a drink in the hotel bar. But rather than congratulating Katherine, Gessner had barely mentioned the brilliant lecture, boasting instead about her own work and her incredible new private lab.

“The bastion is quite small, but it’s a sublime little location for a research facility,” Gessner had gushed. “The old fortress sits atop a ridge with unparalleled views of the city, and its thick stone walls offer superb shielding from electromagnetic interference, making it ideal for my delicate work in neuroimaging.”

Gessner went on to boast that her success in the field of brain imaging technology and neuroinformatic networks had given her total autonomy in her research—both financially and programmatically—and now she spent her time working on “whatever I damn well please, in an extremely private setting.”

As the ÚZSI sedan emerged from the trees, the sight of the lab looming on the cliff brought with it an unexpected pang of concern for Katherine’s safety.

For some reason, Langdon felt a sudden sense of danger.

He hoped it was not precognition.

Chapter 17

Jonas Faukman blew in his cupped hands as he walked east along Fifty-Second Street, which was deserted at this hour. The night was bitingly cold, and the manuscript felt heavy in his backpack. Thankfully, the twenty-four-hour FedEx office was just a block ahead, across Seventh Avenue.

Faukman was still struggling to make sense of why anyone would target only Katherine’s book. The PRH database contained countless other more obvious targets—guaranteed blockbusters by big-name authors on whom the PRH bottom line depended. It made no sense. Faukman was starting to wonder if maybe this hack was not book piracy at all, but rather…something else.

Twenty yards ahead of Faukman, a black van had pulled to the curb and stopped, idling. Faukman instinctively slowed, feeling uneasy on the empty street at this hour. A moment later, however, he realized his paranoia was misplaced; the van’s driver hopped out, whistling happily and reading a clipboard. Without so much as a glance at Faukman, he strode off in the opposite direction.

Faukman relaxed and continued past the van.

Up ahead, the departing driver stopped and looked up at the building numbers, checked the clipboard again, and turned around, walking back the way he had come. “Johnny!” he called toward the van. “What was the address on that email? I don’t see any souvlaki restaurant here!”

“It’s one block farther,” Faukman offered, pointing. “Just past Seventh—”

From behind him, a fist collided with Faukman’s right kidney, and a black bag swooped down over his head. Before Faukman could even process what was happening, two sets of powerful hands lifted him off his feet and heaved him into the van. He landed roughly on the hard floor, the impact knocking the wind out of him. The door slammed shut, and within seconds, he felt the van accelerating rapidly.

Gasping and unable to see, the terrified editor tried to catch his breath and take stock of his situation. Faukman had edited enough thrillers to know what happened when a character was blindfolded and thrown into the back of a van.

It was never good.

Three blocks away, in Random House Tower, Alex Conan had now dialed all of Faukman’s contact numbers—office, home, cell—but had failed to get an answer anywhere.

Where the hell did he go?!

We’re in the middle of a crisis!

Faukman, it seemed, had simply turned off his phone and wandered out into the night—perhaps to On the Rocks, a nearby whiskey bar frequented by neurotic editors trying to calm their nerves at all hours of the night.

So far, Alex had made no headway identifying the hackers. He had combed through the wreckage but had dislodged nothing of interest. I need a finer-toothed comb, he knew. His next pass would require a proprietary forensic algorithm tooled to scan for specific artifacts unique to the missing manuscript—keywords, concepts, names—but to do that, he needed to talk to Faukman.

Or…he realized. I could call Katherine Solomon directly?

PRH protocol prohibited that call, requiring all communication with authors to flow exclusively through each author’s editor—the trusted soul who had learned how to navigate the writer’s quirks, eccentricities, and insecurities.

Screw it, Alex thought. Not only was it critical that he learn more about Katherine’s book, but he believed Katherine had a right to know that someone had targeted her manuscript, especially if it meant she might be in personal danger herself.