Inferno

Langdon and Sienna roll the Trike toward a military blockade that is blocking the bridge across the Arno. Abandoning the vehicle, they hide in the communal toilet of a nearby construction site adjacent to an arts college.

As they each ponder how to bypass the blockade, Langdon once again recalls the altered Botticelli painting from the Faraday pointer and suddenly realizes the pits of the Malebolge were placed in the wrong order—the letters were never meant to spell out “catrovacer” at all. He tells Sienna he knows where they need to go and that she should follow his lead.

Langdon cons a group of passing students from the arts college into thinking he and Sienna are visiting professors from abroad, blending with the group and entering the campus grounds undetected. Langdon tells Sienna the letters of “catrovacer” are tied to a centuries-old art mystery.

He then tells her of the legacy of the Medicis, an immensely wealthy Florentine family who controlled the city in the 15th century, revolutionized banking and art, fostered a young Michelangelo, and influenced European politics at large. He tells her the arts college itself had been originally built as a massive stable for the Medici family horses with the adjacent Boboli Gardens being built between the stable and the Palazzo Pitti, the family’s duchy seat. He tells her how he hopes to pass through the Gardens to circumvent the police roadblock. The students tell Langdon and Sienna the only public entrance to the Gardens is on the far side, but Sienna tricks them into revealing a secret entrance on the college wall.

Perspective shifts to the silver-haired woman, Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey, leader of the World Health Organization (WHO). Barely conscious, Dr. Sinskey realizes she is in the van with the soldiers, and she needs medical attention but will not receive it until the present crisis is resolved.

Dr. Sinskey recalls a meeting with the still-unnamed Shade two years prior at a conference in New York. The Shade had invited her to a private one-on-one meeting and shown her images of Doré’s engravings of Hell with the rivers filled with bodies.

The Shade also displayed a graph showing the exponential growth of the human population over time and derided her and the WHO’s work to address this problem, claiming she has done little more than send contraceptives to African nations, a gesture that was strongly countered by religious organizations, such as the Roman Catholic Church. The Shade speaks of plagues as nature’s cleansing device for overpopulation, and a disturbed Dr. Sinskey assures him that the WHO will be able to effectively contain most potential pandemics. To her surprise, the Shade chides her for celebrating this.

Dr. Sinskey asks the Shade what he thinks the ideal human population is, and he answers four billion people. Surprised, she notes that the current population is seven billion, so it is too late to contain population growth as he wished. The Shade ominously claims it is not.

Langdon and Sienna move through the Boboli Gardens, and Langdon explains to Sienna that when the 10 pits of the Malebolge from the altered Botticelli painting are placed in the correct order, the letters spell out “cerca trova,” Italian for “seek and find.” Langdon recognizes the phrase as being famously hidden in the background of Giorgio Vasari’s The Battle of Marciano, which is hanging in the Hall of the Five Hundred in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. He also realizes that he was not muttering “very sorry” when he arrived at the hospital earlier, but instead “Vasari.”

Sienna spots a small flying machine rising over the wall of the Gardens and realizes their pursuers are sending out drones to look for them.

Vayentha, still fleeing the Consortium, finds herself trapped by the roadblock. Spotting SRS soldiers showing pamphlets with Langdon’s face on it to nearby drivers, she realizes Langdon has eluded Brüder. She decides she may yet be able to retain her good standing with the Consortium and resolves to find Langdon herself. She turns her motorcycle toward the Ponte alle Grazie, a bridge to the old city north of the blockade, believing Langdon might cross there.

Langdon is relieved to know that he had not done anything to warrant his muttering “very sorry” the night before and contemplates turning himself in to the local police, but Sienna dissuades him. Sienna additionally reveals to Langdon that, upon his arrival to the hospital, he had initially said, “I hold the key to finding it…if I fail, then all is death” (115). She claims to have assumed he was referring to the object hidden in his jacket. Langdon spots a way out of the Gardens towards the Pitti Palace, and the two make their way in that direction.

Brüder, meanwhile, believes he has trapped Sienna and Langdon in the Gardens and briefly remarks on the unhappiness of Dr. Sinskey, still drugged in the van.

Langdon and Sienna make their way toward the Pitti Palace, a hub of considerable power in the medieval era. The Gardens slope downhill toward the Palace and are pocked with tall groves of trees, paths, and fountains. As they approach the Palace, they spot a squadron of police cars parked at the Garden’s exit and several officers climbing the Garden towards them with their guns unholstered.

Realizing their exit is blocked off, Langdon suddenly leads Sienna toward the east wall.

Hoping to throw off the police, Sienna makes a point of asking a group of tourists about a costume gallery on the west side of the Gardens. Langdon leads them along the east wall to an alcove with a statue of a dwarf on a turtle, where he spots a hidden staircase. At the bottom of the stairs, they find themselves in a grotto and Langdon spots the gray door he sought, which he’d hoped would be unlocked. Unfortunately, it is not, and the two duck behind a stalactite just as the drone is heard closing in on them.