Page 55 of The Secret of Secrets

Sasha leaned against the pod and seemed to drift off again, closing her eyes and doing deep breathing, as if she still needed time to reassimilate. After ten seconds, her eyes opened, and Langdon was struck by the difference in her gaze, which was suddenly stronger and more focused, as if she had forced herself to bury her pain and press on.

“I need water, please,” Sasha said, her voice more assured now too.

“Of course.” Langdon jumped up, recalling that dry mouth was one of the most common post-seizure symptoms.

“My office…” She motioned toward the door. “My…water bottle.”

Langdon turned and hurried past a worktable, noticing a leather briefcase sitting on its surface. Gessner’s case from the bar last night. He continued down the hall to the office suite, where he grabbed the magenta water bottle with the Cyrillic writing he had seen earlier. It was almost empty, and on the way back, Langdon stopped to fill it in the laboratory restroom.

At the sink, holding his fingers under the stream and waiting for it to get cold, he stared at his tired reflection in the mirror, taking a moment to calm his nerves. Finding Gessner’s corpse had been horrifying, but her death had also amplified Langdon’s fears about Katherine’s safety.

Where is she now?

A series of thoughts suddenly haunted him. He had spotted Gessner’s briefcase on a worktable near the pod and recalled her saying last night that she needed to return to the lab for some reason after drinks. It was very possible that Gessner had been trapped in the pod already when Katherine arrived here for their 8 a.m. meeting.

Did Katherine come face-to-face with Gessner’s attacker?

As the water gurgled into the bottle, a flash of movement behind Langdon drew his attention. Before he could turn from the sink, an iron grip seized his forearm, twisted it backward, and pressed his head into the glass. The water bottle fell to the floor.

“Where are they?!” the man demanded, forcing his shoulder into Langdon’s back and holding his head against the mirror.

Langdon felt the barrel of a gun digging into his ribs, and in the mirror he glimpsed the brutish face of Lieutenant Pavel.

“Where are Gessner and Solomon?” the ÚZSI officer repeated, twisting Langdon’s arm more sharply behind him. “I know they are down here…along with another person who just arrived.”

“Katherine isn’t…here,” Langdon managed through clenched teeth. “And Gessner…is dead.”

“Bullshit!” Pavel shouted, sounding a lot like his boss.

Langdon wondered if Janáček was also on his way down here. “Why would I lie?” he grunted, fearing his arm was about to snap.

“Last chance,” the lieutenant growled, wrenching Langdon’s elbow impossibly tighter. “Tell me wher—”

There was a heavy metallic thud, and Pavel’s grip immediately went slack as he collapsed to the floor, his gun clattering away. Langdon spun to see Sasha Vesna behind him, wielding the same fire extinguisher with which she had threatened him earlier. Her expression was frightened as she stared down at the ÚZSI lieutenant curled motionless at her feet.

“I didn’t know what else to do…” she said. “He was hurting you!”

Langdon looked down at Pavel. No blood, but the man was definitely unconscious. “It’s…okay,” Langdon managed, gently taking the canister from Sasha with his aching arm and setting it down on the floor.

“Who is he?” she demanded.

“An ÚZSI lieutenant,” Langdon said, retrieving Pavel’s gun and putting it into the sink out of reach. “He’s going to need a doctor.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “It’s a posterior parietal trauma—he’ll be unconscious for a few minutes, then have a bad headache.”

Langdon reminded himself that Sasha worked for a brain scientist.

“But how did he get down here?” Sasha demanded.

Langdon had no idea—maybe ÚZSI’s demolition team had arrived already and broken down the door. The alarms on the machinery had been loud, and Langdon might not have heard the incursion. And now I’m directly linked to an assault on an ÚZSI lieutenant.

“Sasha, I need to get to the U.S. embassy as soon as possible,” Langdon said, racing through the options in his head. “There’s a man there who has been helping me. Michael Harris.”

Sasha looked surprised. “I know Michael. He’s a close friend.”

“You know him?!” Langdon was startled that Harris had never mentioned he knew Brigita Gessner’s lab assistant.

“It’s not a friendship we advertise,” Sasha said. “U.S. government employee…full-blooded Russian…”