Agent Díaz

Agent Díaz is a member of Spain's Guardia Real, the elite security force tasked with protecting the royal family and royal property. On the night of Edmond Kirsch's assassination, Díaz is assigned to the security detail for Ambra Vidal, the future queen consort of Spain, who is hosting the event at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. He and his partner, Agent Fonseca, are present in the domed auditorium when Kirsch is shot dead by Admiral Luis Ávila.

Pursuit of the Assassin

Immediately after the gunshot, Díaz scrambles through the fleeing crowd toward the spot on the sidewall where he saw the flash of the shot. He finds a slit cut in the fabric wall of the dome and tears it open, climbing out into a maze of scaffolding. He catches a glimpse of a tall man in a white military uniform sprinting toward an emergency exit. Díaz gives chase, weaving through the electronics outside the dome and bursting through a door into a cement stairwell. He sees the fugitive two floors below, spiraling downward at breakneck speed, and races after him, leaping five stairs at a time. When Díaz reaches the ground floor and throws himself at the exit doors, they open only an inch and jam to a stop; the outer handles have been bound shut by a loop of rosary beads. Unable to break the Vectran-fiber string, he fires a bullet into the rosary, shattering it, but by the time the doors fly open, the assassin is gone.

Later Actions and Death

After the assassination, Díaz and Fonseca are ordered to pursue Ambra Vidal and Robert Langdon, who have fled the museum. They track them to Barcelona, where Díaz and Fonseca board a helicopter and locate the pair on the rooftop of Casa Milà. Díaz helps rescue them from local police who have been misled by a false kidnapping story. He and Fonseca then accompany Langdon and Ambra to the Sagrada Família basilica, where they descend into the crypt to retrieve a password from a William Blake book. While waiting in the darkened sanctuary, Díaz receives a phone call from Commander Diego Garza, who warns him that the kidnapping story was false and instructs him to keep Ambra safe. As Díaz reaches inside his blazer to return the phone, two pale hands emerge from the blackness behind him, clamp down on his head, and wrench it hard to one side. His neck snaps, and he dies instantly. The killer is Admiral Ávila, who has infiltrated the church. Father Beña later discovers Díaz's body, his head twisted grotesquely 180 degrees backward, his gun missing from its holster.