“Me?” Langdon replied, startled. “No, I can’t possibly join you.”
“You can and you will,” Fonseca declared. “As will your computer toy,” he added, pointing to Langdon’s headset.
“I’m sorry,” Langdon responded, his tone hardening. “There is no way I can accompany you to Madrid.”
“That’s odd,” Fonseca replied. “I thought you were a Harvard professor?”
Langdon gave him a puzzled look. “I am.”
“Good,” Fonseca snapped. “Then I assume you’re smart enough to realize you have no choice.”
With that, the agent stalked off, returning to his phone call. Langdon watched him go. What the hell?
“Professor?” Ambra had stepped very close to Langdon and whispered behind him. “I need you to listen to me. It’s very important.”
Langdon turned, startled to see that Ambra’s expression was one of profound fear. Her mute shock seemed to have passed, and her tone was desperate and clear.
“Professor,” she said, “Edmond showed you enormous respect by featuring you in his presentation. For this reason, I’m going to trust you. I need to tell you something.”
Langdon eyed her, uncertain.
“Edmond’s murder was my fault,” she whispered, her deep brown eyes welling with tears.
“I beg your pardon?”
Ambra glanced nervously at Fonseca, who was now out of earshot. “The guest list,” she said, returning to Langdon. “The last-minute addition. The name that was added?”
“Yes, Luis Ávila.”
“I am the person who added that name,” she confessed, her voice cracking. “It was me!”
Winston was correct …, Langdon thought, stunned.
“I’m the reason Edmond was murdered,” she said, now on the verge of tears. “I let his killer inside this building.”
“Hold on,” Langdon said, placing a hand on her trembling shoulder. “Just talk to me. Why did you add his name?”
Ambra shot another anxious glance at Fonseca, who was still on the phone twenty yards away. “Professor, I received a last-minute request from someone I trust deeply. He asked me to add Admiral Ávila’s name to the guest list as a personal favor. The request came only minutes before the doors opened, and I was busy, so I added the name without thinking. I mean, he was an admiral in the navy! How could I possibly have known?” She looked again at Edmond’s body and covered her mouth with a slender hand. “And now …”
“Ambra,” Langdon whispered. “Who was it that asked you to add Ávila’s name?”
Ambra swallowed hard. “It was my fiancé … the crown prince of Spain. Don Julián.”
Langdon stared at her in disbelief, trying to process her words. The director of the Guggenheim had just claimed that the crown prince of Spain had helped orchestrate the assassination of Edmond Kirsch. That’s impossible.
“I’m sure the palace never expected I would learn the killer’s identity,” she said. “But now that I know … I fear I’m in danger.”
Langdon put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re perfectly safe here.”
“No,” she whispered forcefully, “there are things going on here that you don’t understand. You and I need to get out. Now!”
“We can’t run,” Langdon countered. “We’ll never—”
“Please listen to me,” she urged. “I know how to help Edmond.”
“I’m sorry?” Langdon sensed that she was still in shock. “Edmond can’t be helped.”
“Yes, he can,” she insisted, her tone lucid. “But first, we’ll need to get inside his home in Barcelona.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please just listen to me carefully. I know what Edmond would want us to do.”
For the next fifteen seconds, Ambra Vidal spoke to Langdon in hushed tones. As she talked, Langdon felt his heart rate climbing. My God, he thought. She’s right. This changes everything.
When she was finished, Ambra looked up at him defiantly. “Now do you see why we need to go?”
Langdon nodded without hesitation. “Winston,” he said into his headset. “Did you hear what Ambra just told me?”
“I did, Professor.”
“Were you already aware of this?”
“No.”
Langdon considered his next words very carefully. “Winston, I don’t know if computers can feel loyalty to their creators, but if you can, this is your moment of truth. We could really use your help.”
CHAPTER 27
AS LANGDON MOVED toward the podium, he kept one eye on Fonseca, who was still engrossed in his phone call to Uber. He watched as Ambra drifted casually toward the center of the dome, talking on her phone too—or at least pretending to talk—precisely as Langdon had suggested.
Tell Fonseca you decided to call Prince Julián.
As Langdon reached the podium, he reluctantly turned his gaze to the crumpled form on the floor. Edmond. Gently, Langdon pulled back the blanket that Ambra had placed over him. Edmond’s once bright eyes were now two lifeless slits below a crimson hole in his forehead. Langdon shuddered at the gruesome image, his heart pounding with loss and rage.
For an instant, Langdon could still see the young mop-haired student who had entered his class full of hope and talent—and had gone on to accomplish so much in so brief a time. Horrifically, tonight, someone had murdered this astonishingly gifted human being, almost certainly in an attempt to bury his discovery forever.