Page 140 of The Secret of Secrets

“I know, Scott, I’m sorry,” she said, arriving and rushing past him. “I just needed some air.”

“Where’s your vehicle?!”

“Everything’s fine. Really. Follow me.”

Kerble had been Ambassador Nagel’s lead security detail for two years now, and he had never known her to be careless or difficult—or erratic. The death of Michael Harris had clearly shaken her deeply.

After climbing the stairs to the ambassador’s office, Kerble waited as Nagel dumped her coat, grabbed a bottle of water, and then, to his surprise, began typing on her computer, meticulously consulting a paper she had extracted from her coat pocket. Finally, the computer swooshed with an outbound email.

Your attaché is dead, and you’re sending an email?

“Okay, Scott,” she said, turning her full attention to him. “I trust the envelope’s clean?”

“Full scan,” he assured her, having already run it through the embassy’s safety protocol for incoming mail. “No foreign substances.” He extracted the envelope from his breast pocket and laid it in front of her.

Nagel picked it up. “A basket of kittens?”

“Ma’am?”

“The killer wrote to me on kitten stationery?!” She pointed to the logo of a basket of kittens on the envelope.

“Yes, ma’am. He took the stationery from Ms. Vesna’s apartment. She seems to like cats.”

Nagel grabbed her letter opener and carefully ran the blade under the envelope’s seam. Then she pulled out a sheet of matching stationery, which had been folded once.

Sergeant Kerble couldn’t see what the letter said, nor could he read the ambassador’s reaction, but the message was apparently short.

Moments after laying eyes on the letter, she laid it facedown on her desk and walked to the window. After ten full seconds of silence, she turned and faced Kerble.

“Thank you. I’m going to need some privacy.”

Chapter 89

The entrance to the Folimanka Shelter’s “renovation project” was precisely where Ambassador Nagel had said it would be—discreetly situated in an industrial section of the city, bordered by commuter train tracks, a busy street, and the southwestern corner of Folimanka Park.

Surrounded by a metal fence, the small triangle of land on which the entrance sat was known as Ostrčilovo Square. The triangular “square” had served many purposes over the years—a failed playground, a makeshift skate park, and, most recently, a recycling drop-off center. For the past few years, however, it had served as the Army Corps of Engineers’ staging ground for a “refurbishment” of Folimanka’s failing 1950s bomb shelter.

Katherine felt rising nerves as Langdon drove alongside the high barricade—a solid, eight-foot wall on which signage warned:

VSTUP ZAKÁZÁN / ZUTRITT VERBOTEN / ENTRY FORBIDDEN

At the end of the wall, Langdon turned left and drove slowly along the second leg of the triangle, where a large informational placard had been erected with diagrams and text outlining what was happening within the walls:

Projekt Obnovy Parku Folimanka / Folimanka Park Recovery Project

A fortified access gate along the wall was closed, with only a small section of the gate panel affording a view of what lay beyond. Two soldiers in black fatigues were patrolling a freshly paved access road that descended into a wide, arched tunnel that disappeared beneath Folimanka Park. The mouth of the tunnel was blocked by retractable steel bollards.

“That’s some robust security for a restoration project,” Langdon said, craning his neck as they drove by.

A secret government project…hiding in plain sight.

Katherine stole a final glance at the entry tunnel as they passed it. Other than the nondescript guards outside the entrance, she saw no trucks, no personnel, nothing. It seemed the ambassador might have been correct that Threshold was currently inactive.

Langdon turned left and drove along the third and final leg of the enclosure, which ran parallel with the western edge of Folimanka Park.

Here we go, Katherine thought, still marveling at the remarkable entry plan that Langdon had outlined earlier. His plan was rooted in a single, startling idea.

Threshold has a secret entrance.