Page 77 of The Secret of Secrets

I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier…

The line was still ringing, and the Indian couple looked increasingly impatient as they held open the elevator door and waited to descend.

“Sweetie!” Langdon blurted suddenly, pretending someone had answered. “Where are you?! I’m at Petřín Tower and—” He fell silent, as if listening, and then gasped dramatically. “Wait, what?! Slow down. Just talk to me…”

Langdon indicated he needed a moment of privacy, and without waiting for consent, he turned his back on the couple and walked around the platform, out of sight behind the shaft, immediately launching a web browser.

Katherine may have tried to reach me this morning…

He had been so caught up in the chaos of the morning that he had not been thinking clearly, but the red notification badges on the woman’s apps were now reminding him of those same notifications on his own laptop. Email. For years before this trip, Katherine and Langdon had always communicated that way. Katherine called it old-school, but Langdon despised the implied urgency of texting, so they defaulted to email.

If Katherine had tried to reach him this morning by phone or text with no reply, he realized, she would likely have sent him an email that he could read on his laptop.

I never checked mine this morning!

Langdon quickly navigated to gmail.com and signed into his account. His inbox started to load, displaying very slowly. Come on!

The elevator door was buzzing, apparently protesting being held open for so long.

Finally, the screen refreshed, and Langdon’s inbox appeared.

You Have 31 Unread Messages.

He cursed his overflowing inbox and rapidly scanned the list of incoming messages from colleagues, friends, and assorted spam. As he neared the bottom of the list, he was losing hope.

Then he saw it. Yes!

From: Katherine Solomon

The time stamp was 7:42 a.m. this morning—after Katherine had left the hotel but before her meeting with Gessner.

Strangely, the subject line was blank.

Heart racing, Langdon tapped to open the message, but when it displayed, it was also blank. There’s nothing here? An instant later, he noticed the icon indicating there was a graphic attached to the message. She sent a photo? He stabbed at the icon, and the cursor began spinning again as the image loaded. The phone showed only one bar of service.

“Sir?” a voice demanded nearby.

Langdon looked up and saw the young man coming around the elevator shaft.

“What are you doing?!” the man demanded. “You said you had to make a call! Are you looking through her—”

“No!” Langdon said. “I need to check an incoming message. I’m sorry. It’s very important.” He held up the blank screen. “It’s just loading. I’ll give it back in a second.”

“I’d like it back now, sir,” the man said, walking toward him.

The elevator continued buzzing.

Load, goddammit!

The wind whipped harder, and the woman began calling for her husband.

“Sir!” The man held out his hand for the phone.

“Please…one second,” Langdon said as the cursor spun. “I really need to see—”

“Now!” the young man demanded. “You have no righ—”

“Here it is!” Langdon shouted as the image finally materialized before him.