Lieutenant Pavel, still aching from being struck with a fire extinguisher, fixates on the sight of his uncle Captain Janáček’s body at the bottom of a ravine. Although embassy attaché Michael Harris believes Janáček jumped, Pavel is certain Janáček was murdered and concludes Robert Langdon is responsible, adding the death to Langdon’s growing list of alleged crimes against ÚZSI.

Back at Brigita Gessner’s bastion, Pavel rests on a couch in the reception room while Harris leaves for the U.S. embassy, claiming he will call ÚZSI headquarters about Janáček. Pavel distrusts him, believing Harris is only buying time for the embassy to shape a story before ÚZSI learns of the death, and Pavel anticipates the Americans will shield Langdon from consequences.

Determined to take matters into his own hands, Pavel decides he has a narrow window to handle Langdon before anyone else knows Janáček is dead. He considers how Janáček taught him to bend rules for the “greater good” and realizes he has an advantage: he possesses Janáček’s personal phone, recovered on the snowy ridge. Pavel believes that with “one little lie” using that phone, he can corner Langdon and leave him nowhere to hide.

At the U.S. embassy, Dana Daněk returns to her office furious after her confrontation at the Four Seasons and shaken by the “ghostly” woman from Charles Bridge who aimed a gun at her. Dana checks the facial-recognition search she launched using a screenshot of the woman, only to find it returns zero matches.

Dana concludes the only plausible explanation is digital “whitewashing” within the U.S.-controlled Echelon network, used to hide the identities of protected officials or operatives. She connects this to the red, white, and blue tulips she saw in the Royal Suite—an ambassadorial welcome gift for American VIPs—except Dana never arranged them and had never heard about them. Before she can dig further, the ambassador confronts her about going to the Four Seasons and following Harris, ending by scolding Dana: “This is precisely why we don’t sleep with coworkers.”