The Secret of Secrets

At the Gessner Institute, Langdon is confronted by Sasha Vesna, Dr. Gessner’s lab assistant. She explains that the pod is a prototype developed by Gessner to give medical teams more time to treat critically injured patients. Vesna opens the pod to reveal that the body is not Katherine, but Gessner.

The shock of seeing Gessner’s body sends Vesna into a seizure. Upstairs, Pavel grows concerned when he cannot find Janáček and decides to find Solomon and Langdon personally. Meanwhile, Janáček, who was pushed forcibly off the cliffs, dies on the rocks below. It is revealed he was told to lie about the presence of a bomb at the hotel.

Daněk uses advanced surveillance footage to watch the crowned woman receive a call, pour liquid on her costume, and walk zombie-like past a man (implied to be Langdon) before stopping the act and shedding her costume after he ran off. Daněk watches in real time as the woman enters the Langdon’s hotel. Meanwhile, Harris also enters the hotel and lies in order to access Langdon’s room.

Gaining consciousness, Vesna recalls how Gessner pulled her and her friend Dmitri out of a Russian mental institute and offered to help cure her epilepsy with an implant activated by a mental wand. Gessner gave Vesna a home and stable income in exchange for studying her brain.

Faukman’s interrogators reveal that Solomon accessed the servers and printed a hard copy of the manuscript before her meeting with Gessner. They use AI software to confirm that Faukman has not communicated with Solomon. Faukman begins to suspect he is on a military base.

While fetching Vesna water, Langdon is attacked by Pavel. Vesna saves Langdon by knocking Pavel unconscious with a fire extinguisher. She offers to arrange for Harris to collect Langdon at her apartment. As they escape out of the facility, they are unknowingly followed by the Golem.

Daněk lies to staff at the Four Season and learns that Harris is in Langdon’s suite. Inside, she finds the woman from the Charles Bridge. The woman explains that Harris was ordered by the ambassador to give her entry to the suite, and she orders Daněk to leave at gunpoint. Meanwhile, at the Gessner Institute, Harris learns of Janáček’s death.

Langdon and Vesna escape into a cab. Vesna calls Harris, who stops her from sharing her plans on the phone and hints that he will meet them at her apartment. Langdon is shocked to find only two hours have passed since he woke next to Solomon.

Langdon decides that the most logical explanation for the woman on the Charles Bridge is that his suite at the Four Seasons was bugged, and someone overheard Solomon talking about his dream. Langdon finds the idea of a setup more disturbing than an actual ghost.

It is revealed that Susan Housemore is a Q agent working with Mr. Finch, who arranged the encounter on the bridge. Housemore removes a surveillance device hidden in a flower arrangement gifted to Solomon by the American ambassador.

As he tries to figure out how to escape capture, Faukman recalls his first meeting with Katherine Solomon. She promised to disprove current theories that consciousness existed in the body with hard evidence. The kidnappers return and announce they are taking Faukman to Prague.

Langdon recalls a moment during his encounter with Gessner when she accidentally revealed a black card with the word PRAGUE on it, the A replaced with a symbol called a Vel spear. Langdon doubts Gessner’s explanation that it is a key to her health club.

Langdon and Vesna wait for Harris at Vesna’s apartment. They hear a knock at the door but find only a note. When Langdon reads it, he runs out of the apartment, desperate to know who left it. The Golem waits unseen nearby, hoping that Langdon will fall for his trap.

It is revealed that Harris began a friendship with Vesna at the urging of the American ambassador. When Harris asked to stop surveilling her, fearing she was growing attached, the ambassador doubled Harris’s salary and insisted he continue. As he drives to Vesna’s apartment to meet Langdon, Harris vows never to see her again.

The Golem’s unsigned note claims that he has Katherine and demands that Langdon come to Petřín Tower. Langdon insists on leaving immediately, telling Vesna to wait until Harris arrives and then go straight to the American embassy to report everything.

Faukman’s kidnappers leave his restraints loosely tied, and he manages to remove them and escape using a nearby van. Faukman is unaware that the kidnappers, Auger and Chinburg, engineered his escape after bugging his phone and adding a tracker to the van.

Devastated by the death of his uncle, Pavel decides to personally track down Langdon, whom he believes is responsible. At the American embassy, Daněk is stunned when the facial recognition database returns no matches for the woman on the bridge. She is confronted by the ambassador, who chastises her for her relationship with Harris.

Pavel uses Janáček’s phone to send out an emergency alert with Langdon’s photo accusing him of killing a police officer. The taxi driver taking Langdon to Petřín Tower recognizes him and reports his location, which is relayed directly to Pavel.

When Katherine is not at the top of Petřín Tower, Langdon panics and borrows a phone to call the Four Seasons. The receptionist is terse and offers no information on Katherine. Suddenly remembering Katherine’s preference for email, he checks his account and finds something shocking.

When Harris arrives at Vesna’s apartment, he is attacked and killed by the Golem. It is revealed that the Golem has the same implant as Vesna, and that the Ether is his term for a pre-epileptic fog, which he controls with a metal wand. The Golem leaves a letter for American ambassador Heide Nagel on Harris’s body.

Langdon quickly decodes the image Katherine emailed him, a word in the mystical Enochian language; it was invented by Englishmen in Prague, who claimed it allowed them to communicate with spirits. Langdon is disappointed when the decrypted word is meaningless. Suddenly, a UZSI car arrives below.

Pavel arrives at the top of the tower and finds that Langdon has escaped using the tower’s outer stairs. He rides the elevator back down and waits, but Langdon jumps off the stairs and runs into a nearby park. He hides in a castle attraction but panics when he finds himself in a mirrored maze.

After the violence of Harris’s murder, the Golem returns to his apartment and the altar dedicated to the woman he has sworn to protect: Sasha Vesna. It is revealed that the Golem was raised in the same orphanage as Vesna and secretly killed her worst abuser in the home. The Golem lied about having Katherine in order to get Langdon out of the apartment; privately, he believes Katherine is likely dead.

Back in the US, Auger and Chinburg follow Faukman to nearby MetLife Stadium and listen in as he returns one of many calls from Alex Conan. Conan warns that the hackers are likely dangerous, and shares his fears that one of Random House’s authors is dead. Auger and Chinburg panic, wondering if their mission has gone awry.

Langdon manages to escape the mirrored maze, leaving Pavel inside trying to shoot his way out. Meanwhile, the Golem prepares to return to the Gessner Institute to retrieve something needed to access Gessner’s secret project, which he discovered while trying to prove that Gessner was not as generous as Vesna believed.

Dana Daněk is summoned by Ambassador Nagel, who forces her to sign a non-disclosure agreement by threatening to report Daněk’s relationship with Michael Harris. Daněk promises to forget what she saw at the Four Seasons, but Ambassador Nagel insists on explaining.

Langdon resolves the Enochian encryption by reversing the letters, and realizes that it refers to the Codex Gigas, the largest extant medieval manuscript. Solomon and Langdon had seen the manuscript in a local museum the day prior. Langdon hopes that Katherine is waiting for him at the museum.