The American was talking again. Probing. Maneuvering.
The killer almost laughed aloud.
Without breaking eye contact, the killer inched his hands across the ceiling of the van until he found what he was looking for. Staring dead ahead, he grasped it.
Then he made his play.
The motion was utterly unexpected. For an instant, Langdon thought the laws of physics had ceased to exist. The killer seemed to hang weightless in the air as his legs shot out from beneath him, his boots driving into the cardinal’s side and launching the chain-laden body out the door. The cardinal splashed down, sending up a sheet of spray.
Water dousing his face, Langdon realized too late what had happened. The killer had grasped one of the van’s roll bars and used it to swing outward. Now the Hassassin was sailing toward him, feet-first through the spray.
Langdon pulled the trigger, and the silencer spat. The bullet exploded through the toe of the Hassassin’s left boot. Instantly Langdon felt the soles of the Hassassin’s boots connect with his chest, driving him back with a crushing kick.
The two men splashed down in a spray of blood and water.
As the icy liquid engulfed Langdon’s body, his first cognition was pain. Survival instinct came next. He realized he was no longer holding his weapon. It had been knocked away. Diving deep, he groped along the slimy bottom. His hand gripped metal. A handful of coins. He dropped them. Opening his eyes, Langdon scanned the glowing basin. The water churned around him like a frigid Jacuzzi.
Despite the instinct to breathe, fear kept him on the bottom. Always moving. He did not know from where the next assault would come. He needed to find the gun! His hands groped desperately in front of him.
When Langdon’s fingers found metal a second time, he was certain his luck had changed. The object in his hand was no handful of coins. He gripped it and tried to pull it toward him, but when he did, he found himself gliding through the water. The object was stationary.
Langdon realized even before he coasted over the cardinal’s writhing body that he had grasped part of the metal chain that was weighing the man down. Langdon hovered a moment, immobilized by the sight of the terrified face staring up at him from the floor of the fountain.
Jolted by the life in the man’s eyes, Langdon reached down and grabbed the chains, trying to heave him toward the surface. The body came slowly… like an anchor. Langdon pulled harder. When the cardinal’s head broke the surface, the old man gasped a few sucking, desperate breaths. Then, violently, his body rolled, causing Langdon to lose his grip on the slippery chains. Like a stone, Baggia went down again and disappeared beneath the foaming water.
Langdon dove, eyes wide in the liquid murkiness. He found the cardinal. This time, when Langdon grabbed on, the chains across Baggia’s chest shifted… parting to reveal a further wickedness… a word stamped in seared flesh.
An instant later, two boots strode into view. One was gushing blood.
As a water polo player, Robert Langdon had endured more than his fair share of underwater battles. The competitive savagery that raged beneath the surface of a water polo pool, away from the eyes of the referees, could rival even the ugliest wrestling match. Langdon had been kicked, scratched, held, and even bitten once by a frustrated defenseman from whom Langdon had continuously twisted away.
Now, though, thrashing in the frigid water of Bernini’s fountain, Langdon knew he was a long way from the Harvard pool. He was fighting not for a game, but for his life. This was the second time they had battled. No referees here. No rematches. The arms driving his face toward the bottom of the basin thrust with a force that left no doubt that it intended to kill.
Langdon instinctively spun like a torpedo.
