The Trike chase
The Trike chase is the moment when Robert Langdon and Sienna Brooks, having barely escaped the SRS team's assault on Sienna's apartment, find themselves trapped between a police roadblock at the Porta Romana and approaching sirens, and are forced to improvise a desperate flight on a three-wheeled moped. The sequence transforms their situation from one of concealment to one of open flight, and it is the first time Langdon witnesses the full, lethal determination of the forces hunting him.
Escape from the Apartment Building
After the SRS team storms Sienna's apartment building, she and Langdon flee through the basement carport, where she retrieves a silver Trike—a three-wheeled moped that looks like the ungainly offspring of an Italian Vespa and an adult tricycle—from a corner packed with scooters and motorcycles. She finds a key in a small magnetized case hidden beneath the front fender, inserts it, and revs the engine. Langdon, still groggy from the sedative he was given at the hospital, climbs on behind her. Sienna tells him to hold on, grabbing his hands and wrapping them around her slender waist, and guns the Trike up the exit ramp. The vehicle has more power than Langdon would have imagined, and they nearly leave the ground as they launch out of the garage into the early-morning light, about fifty yards from the main entrance.
The First Shot
The brawny soldier standing guard in front of the building turns at once and sees them tearing away. He raises his weapon and takes careful aim. A single shot rings out, ricocheting off the Trike's back fender and barely missing the base of Langdon's spine. Sienna makes a hard left at an intersection, and Langdon feels himself sliding, fighting to keep his balance. She shouts for him to lean toward her, and he centers himself again as she races the Trike down a larger thoroughfare. They have driven a full block before Langdon begins breathing again.
The Black Van and the Silver-Haired Woman
Three blocks later, as they approach a major intersection, horns blare up ahead. A sleek black van—identical to the soldiers' van from the apartment building—rounds the corner on two wheels, fishtailing into the intersection and accelerating directly toward them. Sienna swerves hard to the right and slams on the brakes, skidding to a stop out of sight behind a parked delivery truck. She nestles the Trike up to the rear bumper and kills the engine. They huddle low and wait, breathless. The van roars past without hesitation, but Langdon catches a fleeting glimpse of someone inside: an attractive older woman wedged between two soldiers, her eyes sagging and her head bobbing as if she were delirious or drugged. She wears an amulet and has long silver hair that falls in ringlets. Langdon's throat clenches; it is the woman from his visions.
The Roadblock at the Porta Romana
Sienna continues along the Viale Machiavelli, but as they approach the Porta Romana—the ancient stone gateway that serves as the entrance to old Florence—she screeches to a stop. A long line of cars idles at a full stop; traffic in the rotary has been halted by a police barricade, and more police cars are arriving. Armed officers are walking from car to car, asking questions. A sweaty cyclist pedaling toward them on a recumbent bike shouts back that the Carabinieri—the Italian military police—have set up a roadblock. Sirens wail in the distance behind them, and Sienna's face is masked with fear. They are trapped in the middle, with no intersecting road, park, or driveway in sight—only private residences on one side and a high stone wall on the other.
The Porta-Potty and the Art Students
Sienna guns the bike up onto the sidewalk and into a deserted construction site, parking behind a portable cement mixer that offers barely enough concealment for the Trike alone. They rush toward a small portable toolshed nestled in the bushes against the stone wall, only to find it is a chemical toilet, chained and padlocked. Langdon pulls her around behind it, forcing them into the narrow space between the toilet and the wall. A group of art students from the Florence Art Institute—which lies on the other side of the stone wall—ambles toward them, chatting and lighting cigarettes. Langdon and Sienna crouch lower to stay out of sight. As they do, Langdon is struck by a curious thought: the half-buried sinners with their legs in the air from his visions of the Malebolge. The smell of human waste and the sight of the recumbent bicyclist's bare legs flailing in front of him trigger a flash of insight. He realizes that the ten letters on the modified Map of Hell—CATROVACER—are not a random code but a scrambled message that, when the levels of the Malebolge are restored to their proper order, spells "cerca trova"—"seek and find." This is the breakthrough that tells him where he is supposed to go: the Palazzo Vecchio.
Infiltrating the Crowd
Langdon slips away from the Porta-Potty and approaches the group of art students, pretending to be a lost tourist asking for directions to the Art Institute. Sienna emerges unseen and joins him; Langdon introduces her as his sister, an art teacher. The group migrates toward the police at the Porta Romana, and Langdon merges to the middle, slouching low to stay out of sight. As they reach the Art Institute's main gate, a familiar black van skids into the Porta Romana. Without a word, Langdon and Sienna seize the moment, slipping through the gate with the students. The entry road to the Istituto Statale d'Arte is startlingly beautiful, lined with massive oak trees that arch in from either side, framing a huge, faded yellow building with a triple portico. Langdon knows that the Boboli Gardens lie just beyond the high wall to his left, and he realizes that if they can gain entrance to the gardens, they can bypass the Porta Romana undetected and make their way across to the Palazzo Pitti, from which the bridge to the old city is a stone's throw away. Sienna, with a coy smirk, asks the students if they ever sneak into the gardens to smoke weed and fool around. The tattooed kid points her to a shed behind the parking lot, where an old platform allows them to climb up on the roof and jump down on the other side of the wall. Sienna glances back at Langdon with a patronizing smile and says, "Come on, brother Bob. Unless you're too old to jump a fence?"
