Page 34 of The Secret of Secrets

Fortunately, The Golěm knew precisely where this item was located at this very moment—in Gessner’s private lab, high on the ridgeline overlooking the city.

“Bastion u Božích muk,” he said as he climbed into a cab. “Take me to Crucifix Bastion.”

Chapter 22

Lieutenant Pavel felt a smug bemusement to know he had frightened Robert Langdon so deeply that the man had forgone his trip to the restroom. The American was now sitting on a couch and staring blankly into space.

Having a gun in your face will scramble your thoughts.

Partly out of spite, Pavel walked around the corner, down the hall, into the restroom. Leaving the door wide open so Langdon could hear, he urinated loudly and then flushed.

As he exited the restroom, Pavel saw Janáček rounding the corner into the hallway.

“I’m going for a cigarette,” the captain said.

Pavel had worked with Janáček long enough to know the captain smoked wherever he damn well pleased. He was probably going to make a private phone call. There were a lot of those with Janáček.

“The demolition team will be here in thirty minutes,” Janáček said, “to blow through that.” He pointed to the steel portal that protected the stairs down to the lab.

A single controlled blast, Pavel agreed, surveying the lab door. And the lower level will be accessible.

The shattered front doorframe was still leaning against the lab door as an alarm, but Pavel sensed nobody would be exiting today by their own accord. They had already defied a direct order from Captain Janáček…which left them precious few options.

“I’ll wait for the team outside,” Janáček said. “Stay here and make sure nobody exits the lab. And Langdon should never leave your sight.”

He snapped his heels. Understood.

Pavel had been Janáček’s right-hand man for nearly five years now. Lesser known in the police force, however, was the fact that Pavel was Oldřich Janáček’s nephew. When Pavel was only nine, his father was killed in a fluke accident—struck by a tourist on a motorbike. When Pavel’s mother descended into an abusive alcoholic haze, Pavel began spending most of his time on the streets making his living by committing local robberies, then convincing the neighborhood storekeepers to pay him for protection.

At nineteen, when Pavel was arrested, his mother was nowhere to be found, and her older brother Oldřich intervened on behalf of a nephew he barely knew. A rising officer at ÚZSI, Oldřich Janáček had been impressed enough with Pavel’s guts and ingenuity to offer the boy a simple choice: Go to prison and spend your life with criminals…or attend ÚZSI training, and I will show you how to catch them.

It was tough love, but the choice was simple, and Pavel worked hard to become a dutiful servant of the law. Despite graduating only in the middle of his ÚZSI class, Pavel was promoted quickly through the ranks. Pavel was now a lieutenant, an unusually high post for an officer in his late twenties, and he addressed his uncle solely as Captain Janáček.

I owe him everything, Pavel knew. Janáček had become the father whom Pavel had lost, and the young lieutenant idolized his captain’s fearlessness and resolve. Sometimes enforcing the law requires being above the law. Captain Janáček lived by that motto and often trusted Pavel to cover any tracks the captain left while pushing the envelope in an investigation…as he had done this morning.

He knows I will protect him to the end.

Pavel now stood in the foyer and watched as Captain Janáček exited the building into the bastion’s snowy courtyard—a long, rectangular expanse enclosed by a low stone wall to protect visitors from the dizzying drop off the ridge. As the captain wound his way through the potted evergreens on the lawn, he placed a call and took up a position at the far end of the courtyard, gazing out at the Prague skyline.

Pavel took the opportunity to check his own phone for messages, hoping he might have a notification from his new app, Dream Zone—the virtual dating platform that had taken Europe by storm. Pavel had never imagined chatting with computer-generated women would hold his interest, and yet, like so many men, he had become addicted to the sexy conversation threads, revealing photos, and fantasy storylines.

Eleven notifications.

He smiled, pleased to have something to read while he waited. Phone in hand, Pavel headed back to the atrium to babysit Langdon, but as he entered, he was surprised to see the couch where Langdon had been sitting was now empty. Pavel turned left and right, scanning every corner of the space. He ran into Gessner’s office but found that too was empty.

Pavel’s confusion turned quickly to panic. Frantically, he dashed around the room, searching behind couches and chairs. Where the hell did he go?!

Robert Langdon seemed to have evaporated into thin air.

Less than twenty feet away, Langdon stood motionless in the darkened alcove hidden behind the Paul Evans wall sculpture. Moments ago, finding himself alone, Langdon had jumped up from the couch and hurried over to the artwork to study it more closely. As he’d thought, the steel bar above the piece was not a stabilizing bracket at all.

It was a glide track.

Like a very expensive barn door.

Langdon had firmly grabbed the right-hand edge of the sculpture and heaved it to the left. The massive sculpture slid effortlessly, balanced on high-precision ball-bearing rollers. Hidden behind it, as Langdon had anticipated, was an opening. He quickly stepped through, and the spring-loaded slider closed silently behind him.

Now, as his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit space, Langdon could hear Lieutenant Pavel rushing around the reception room and cursing loudly.