Page 197 of The Secret of Secrets

Less than an hour ago, here at the bastion, a female operative had attacked him, and he could still see her startled expression as she desperately drove her hands up into The Golěm’s chest…and encountered the soft shape of Sasha’s breasts.

I am not as you think I am.

And then, his final challenge, downstairs in Threshold. Having lost his magnetic wand, The Golěm was hit by another seizure and frantically searched the domed chamber for a safe place to ride it out, finally opting for the padded interior of one of the EPR pods. It was a place he knew well.

I have died there many times.

The Golěm shuddered as he now recalled the true nature of Gessner’s experiments—pushing Sasha to the brink and pulling her back—over and over. At the time, he had believed in Gessner’s generosity and had done his best to absorb the pain of those events, to shield Sasha from the discomfort and fear. Fortunately, Sasha could not recall the many times Gessner had drugged her and wheeled her through Threshold to perform various experiments in the operating suite and pod room.

But I remember, The Golěm thought.

The faint wisps of recollection still haunted him.

Another life, he told himself. That was the past.

The future was getting close now, the future he had planned for Sasha, the future she deserved. Soon I will set her free and vanish. All that remained was to ascend from this subterranean world…and make his way to the United States embassy.

Chapter 124

Langdon stood in Sasha Vesna’s kitchen, still grappling with what he and Katherine had uncovered. Sasha’s two Siamese cats were twisting affectionately around his ankles, and the scent of Russian Caravan tea still hung in the air. Even so, her home felt utterly foreign to him now.

When I was here, I was probably not talking to the real Sasha.

The revelation was deeply disturbing, and yet Sasha’s psychological condition answered a lot of questions—The Golěm’s access to Crucifix Bastion…Sasha’s memory loss…the strange flat upstairs…and perhaps even why Langdon had been given a key to Sasha’s apartment and urged to return. Did he want me to find Harris’s body and deliver the envelope to the ambassador? Either way, the realization about Sasha’s identity was providing aspects of clarity.

Katherine joined him in the kitchen after looking around the apartment. “I wonder,” she ventured, “if Threshold chose epileptics as test subjects because of their natural predisposition to out-of-body experiences…or because epileptics provided Brigita the perfect cover to do brain surgery without raising suspicion.”

It was a good question, and Langdon imagined it might have been both. “Either way, it’s unforgivable. I suspect something went terribly wrong with Dmitri and he is dead, as his records suggested.”

A long silence hung between them as Langdon scanned the sweet, even childlike, decorations around the kitchen.

“And what about these two?” Katherine asked, crouching down and petting Sasha’s immaculately groomed cats. “When is the last time they were fed?”

True, Langdon thought. Someone will need to adopt them. He went to the cupboard beneath the sink and pulled out their bag of cat food.

“I’ll do it,” Katherine said, taking the bag. “You should make the call.”

Langdon went to the phone on the wall and dialed the number that Scott Kerble had given him. As the line began to ring, he wondered what he would say when Kerble asked about Sasha Vesna. We didn’t find her. She died in Threshold. By the way, she killed Michael Harris. Langdon was still trying to comprehend that Sasha could have deeply loved Harris at the same time her protector knew the truth about Harris and loathed him. Two people. One body.

Langdon recalled hearing once of a court case involving an alleged rapist, William Milligan, who had proven in a lie detector test that he had no recollection of his alleged crimes. As it turned out, Milligan was an unwitting sufferer of DID; one of his alters had committed the crimes without his knowledge. Milligan was acquitted and placed in a psychiatric facility.

Before modern psychiatric care, many of those exhibiting a split personality were taken to the only psychiatric professionals available—priests. The Church frequently diagnosed them with “demonic possession” and prescribed a common treatment plan: “exorcism.” To this day, the Rite of Exorcism was still performed regularly on individuals with mental disorders, and while Langdon had always been horrified by this, he had to admit that Katherine’s description of nonlocal consciousness added a new perspective.

Perhaps an exorcist is not trying to coax a demon out of a body…but rather trying to retune the body’s receiver to block the unwanted station.

“Kerble here,” a familiar voice said on the phone, pulling Langdon back to the moment.

“Hello, this is Robert Langdon.”

“We’ve been expecting your call, sir. Please hold for Ambassador Nagel.”

Langdon was surprised the ambassador was available to speak. I thought she was under arrest. It appeared something had shifted at the embassy.

“Professor,” the ambassador’s voice chimed in on the line. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re both safe. Scott told me it was…quite close.”

“I’m not sure it could have been any closer,” Langdon said. “And we heard you were arrested by the CIA director?”

“Yes, although Director Judd claimed the detainment was a temporary protective custody to ensure my safety.”