Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon flee deeper into Petschek Villa and descend to an empty, Roman-style underground swimming pool, only to realize it is a dead end. Above them, Ambassador Heide Nagel’s footsteps close in as she quickly deduces their limited escape routes.

Nagel arrives alone, dramatically tears up the unsigned NDAs they left behind, signals them to stay silent, and calls Everett Finch on speakerphone. While Langdon and Katherine listen, Nagel lies that they are safe in the library and that both NDAs are signed and secured, that the manuscript was burned and only scraps remain, and that ÚZSI has stood down around Crucifix Bastion.

On the call, Finch dismisses concern about Michael Harris, focuses on ensuring the manuscript is truly gone, and orders Nagel to send a Marine security team to Crucifix Bastion to secure Gessner’s lab and prevent leaks. Nagel agrees and ends the call.

To avoid being overheard, Nagel brings Langdon and Katherine into the pool’s utility room and explains the truth: Finch works for the CIA and formerly ran its Directorate of Science and Technology. Nagel admits she also worked for the CIA as an attorney and confirms the agency’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel (“Q”), funds sensitive technologies outside normal oversight.

Nagel says Finch believes Katherine’s manuscript threatens one of Q’s most important investments, giving him broad latitude to silence her via an extremely general, “blanket verbal” NDA that could permanently shut down the book depending on what Finch says. Nagel can only add that the threatened investment involves a top-secret CIA facility in Prague with a code name: Threshold.