WASHINGTON, D.C.
C
ONRAD, NOW WEARING
a white dress shirt and raincoat stolen from a doctor’s locker back at GWU Hospital, got out of the cab at Dupont Circle. He walked several blocks in the drizzling rain up Connecticut toward the Hilton, which even at 1 a.m. was swarming with cabs, limos, and security as visitors from around the world were checking in for the next morning’s Presidential Prayer Breakfast.
The way it was supposed to work, Conrad would walk into the lobby, ride the elevator to the tenth floor and go to room 1013, where Serena had already seen to it that he was checked in under an alias, Mr. Carlton Anderson. Then he was to call room service using the room phone and order a pastrami sandwich. Some mole on the staff under her control would then let her know that he had arrived safely and she would come to his room and see what he found in the globe and plot the best way to get it to the president at the prayer breakfast.
The problem, he immediately discovered upon entering the Hilton, was that his picture was on every TV screen in the hotel bar. News reports called him a “person of interest” in connection with a terrorist attack on the Library of Congress, in which a Capitol Policeman was slain. The FBI was pinning the blame on former Pentagon analyst–turned–Starbucks barista Danny Z, now an “Islamic extremist” and the “mastermind” behind the attack.
Those bastards
, Conrad thought.
He slipped into the mainstream of boisterous late-night patrons
and followed them past the gift shop to the elevator banks, which were packed with still more people. It was a mob, many of them smiling and making conversation.
Who are these people?
he wondered.
And why were they alarmingly cheerful at this hour?
Conrad stood in the middle of the mob, aware of a few glances from a couple of bodyguards around the president of some African country. He just had to grin and bear it.
It took three elevators before one opened with enough room for him. He stepped in, saw that every single button was lit up, and sighed. It would be a long ride up. At every floor it stopped, a couple of people would step off, and four more would be outside waiting to catch the elevator on the way down.
“Suck it up!” ordered a loud one from Texas, whose wife, a petite blonde, kept eyeing Conrad. “Always room for one more for Jesus!”
Finally, it was just him and the couple from Texas.
“Thought you could escape, huh?” the husband said, smiling. His nametag read Harold from Highland Park, Texas. “My wife says she knows you.”
Conrad stood there, flat-footed.
“She says you’re Pastor Jim. You wrote that book
A Church of One
.”
Conrad paused for a moment and smiled. “So you liked it?”
“No, but Meredith did,” Harold said, and turned toward his wife, whose lipoed waist and silicon breasts defied the laws of natural aging. She could have been anywhere from 30 to 50 years old, depending on where she was between her Botox injections. “See, honey, I told you we’d meet all the big shots here.”
“You look much younger than your picture,” she said and squeezed his arm enthusiastically. But her husband Harold didn’t seem to notice.
Conrad remembered something Serena always used to tell him and said, “Now don’t go looking at the outside, Meredith. The good Lord looks at the heart.”
She sighed. “So true, Pastor Jim.”
The elevator door opened on the tenth floor, and Conrad exhaled as he stepped off along with Harold and Meredith. He turned down
a hallway and walked briskly to Room 1013, hearing Meredith’s heels clack behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see the couple wave good night and enter their room across the hall. He looked both ways and then inserted the coded plastic key card Serena had given him to unlock the door.
Once inside he immediately picked up the phone on the nightstand and called room service. “I’d like a pastrami from your all-night menu. Thanks. Oh, and a Sam Adams.” Then he went to the bathroom and turned on the shower.
As the water heated up, Conrad removed the silver cornerstone plate from inside his raincoat. He rubbed his thumb over the dent from the bullet Seavers intended for his heart.
He placed the silver plate on the dresser next to a golden ticket that Serena had left for him. The embossed letters read:
57th Annual
Presidential Prayer Breakfast
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Next to the ticket was a 10 x 14 souvenir reproduction of
The Washington Family
portrait by Edward Savage. Apparently Mr. Anderson had taken a day trip to Mount Vernon and the new museum. There was even a sales slip from the gift shop.
Nice, Serena.
Then he took a shower and found a complete wardrobe hanging for him in the closet. Instead he put on a bathrobe and waited for Serena, hoping she’d really bring him that pastrami, because he was famished.
As the minutes passed with no Serena and no pastrami, he found his eyes drifting back to the souvenir copy of Edward Savage’s portrait
The Washington Family
. He had used it to find the globe. Perhaps it held some secret to the meaning of the contents of the globe, namely, the star map.
But the only thing new he noticed in the portrait was the column—or rather, two columns on either side of the panoramic view of the Potomac. Mount Vernon, of course, had no columns like that.
He remembered the giant Masonic board depicting King
Solomon’s Temple in the secret chamber beneath the Jefferson Building. It, too, had similar columns. But something about those pillars was different from Savage’s. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was sure of it.
Then it hit him: The columns at the entrance of King Solomon’s Temple had two orbs on top of them.
Two globes.
The Savage portrait hinted at it all along. That’s why there were two suns on the celestial map.
There’s a second globe!
But, of course, he realized. They always came in pairs.
Old Herc must have known there were two. Why didn’t he tell me?
He looked again at the Savage portrait, realizing that if there were two suns representing two globes, there were probably two landmarks designating their location. If Martha Washington’s fan pinpointed the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol in the east, then perhaps…yes, young Eustice—a virgin, no less, at least in symbol—was holding the L’Enfant map at the western horizon. Her fingers pinched the horizon just behind the starburst in the guard of Washington’s sword—surely a symbol of the sun.
That would place the location of the landmark somewhere in…Georgetown.
Only there was no celestial landmark in Georgetown, at least none that Conrad knew of, and he knew them all, or so he thought.
Conrad sat quietly, running through any correlation he could think of when he heard a knock at the door.
He rose to his feet and walked over to the door. He looked out the peephole to see Brooke standing in the hallway.
His heart stopped.
“I know you’re in there, Conrad,” she said. “I saw you in the lobby. Please let me in. Everybody’s been looking for you, and I’ve been worried sick.”
Conrad, his mind racing ahead to Serena’s impending arrival and the resulting fireworks, realized it was better to have Brooke inside the room than outside, so he opened the door.
Brooke came in wearing an expensive but modest dress that still
managed to show off her amazing figure. Her eyes swept the room, resting on the silver cornerstone plate on the dresser. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.
“Thank God you’re OK, Conrad. Where the hell have you been? What’s going on? The police have been asking questions, the FBI, and now your face is plastered all over the news. My news director called me and asked me if I had seen you and said you were about to join America’s Most Wanted.”
“You’d never believe me.”
“Try me.”
“The feds think I attacked the U.S. Capitol and Library of Congress and killed some people.”
Her eyes widened. “And did you?”
“Well, yes. But I didn’t kill the people they say I did.”
“You just killed different people?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God, Conrad. You better tell me everything.”
G
ODDAMN YOU,
Y
EATS.
Minutes after refusing treatment at the hospital, Max Seavers was back at the Library of Congress. He ordered it sealed in the name of national security. Kicking over what was left in the secret chamber Yeats had discovered, he nursed his bandaged stump of a finger and examined the split-open celestial globe in the corner.
The globe was an incredible work in its own right, Seavers thought, and looked like it had been fashioned from a single block of fiery bronze or copper.
But the globe was empty.
Yeats had gotten away with whatever was inside.
Until now Seavers had convinced himself that the Alignment’s quest for the celestial globe was a distraction from its mission. But now that Conrad Yeats had cut off his finger and gashed his head, he was furious. The smooth, unruffled veneer he had cultivated since his days at Stanford had been punctured forever. Never again could he do a handshake deal with somebody without the knowledge that he was missing something, even if it was only the tip of a finger. For that he would always hate Yeats.
Worse, Seavers knew he would have to report his failure to Osiris, something he had never had to do before.
Seavers stared at the globe in morbid fascination for a full minute before he heard footsteps and turned. It was the wide-eyed black
cop, Sergeant Wanda Randolph, nipping at him like some federal terrier with two of her R.A.T.S. The Marines shouldn’t have let her in.
“Sir, we’ve got a problem.”
Once again, he’d have to set her back on her heels. “You lost the suspect again, Sergeant?”
“The security tapes from the processing room where you were shot, sir. They’re gone. Without them we can’t verify your story.”
“Why don’t you stop trying to cover your ass and start looking for Yeats, Sergeant. While you’re at it, maybe you could find my finger, too.”
He saw the fury in her eyes, which he actually thought made her more attractive.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
The sergeant turned and vanished into the tunnel.
Seavers waited until she was gone before he turned his gaze to the Masonic mural depicting King Solomon’s Temple on the opposite side of the chamber. The two pillars in front with the orbs atop caught his eye. Like a gateway.
He walked over and ordered two of his Marines from Detachment One over. They lifted the mural away to reveal a small alcove with a Mason’s compass symbol to the side. He pushed it and the wall slid open.
So this was how that son of a bitch Yeats got away.
Whatever cool he still possessed disappeared as he ran through the damp tunnel like a madman, even though he knew the chance of catching up to Yeats was nil. A minute later Seavers emerged through a metal door into an alcove in the corner of the ghostly, empty Main Reading Room.
He stopped and looked around. And it suddenly hit him that the silver plate and whatever else Yeats may have taken could still be in the Library, buried somewhere among the thousands of stacks with millions of books. Even if he found Yeats, it could take days or weeks to find whatever the Alignment wanted, if ever.
He looked up at the statues of the world’s great teachers ringing the dome looking down at him. He could almost hear their jeers at his failure.
Suddenly all the anger, the frustration and fury building inside
him burst forth. In that moment he knew he would do whatever it took to get back whatever Yeats stole from him—starting with his own dignity.
You goddamn bastard, Yeats. I’m going to slice you alive and make you eat your own brain.
He listened to the deafening silence around him, feeling only his raging pulse. And vibrating cell phone.
He had a text message from Brooke:
YEATS AT THE HILTON.
ROOM 1013.
Seavers smiled. He wouldn’t be making that call to Osiris after all.
“M
Y FATHER ALWAYS SAID
your father was one sick bastard,” said Brooke, who sat on the bed after Conrad finished the pastrami sandwich that room service finally delivered and recounted the events since his father’s funeral. Everything except Serena, which admittedly was leaving out a lot. “You can’t actually believe you’re a sleeper agent sent by George Washington into the future to save America? This isn’t about the future of the republic, Conrad. This is about your father continuing to mess with your mind from the grave.”
Conrad paced back and forth, aware of Brooke looking at him like a crazy person and all the while expecting a knock on the door from Serena.
“Brooke, this is what I know: Washington entrusted a secret to Robert Yates, a secret passed down through the generations to my foster father, who then spent the better part of my childhood training me to unlock it. And I also know that the L’Enfant map, the celestial globe, and the people trying to kill me are for real.”
“Who is trying to kill you, Conrad?”
“I told you, the Alignment.”
She sighed. “A mystical group of warriors who use the stars to chart the rise of their master civilization?”
“Yeah, and Max Seavers is one of them.”
She blinked. “The head of DARPA?”
“Yep. This belongs to him.” Conrad showed her the finger of Max Seavers.
“Oh, my God!” She stared at it in horror and looked like she was about to vomit. “What have you done?”
“Relax, he’s alive.” Conrad pocketed the finger in his bathrobe. “Which is more than I can say about the guard he shot in the head.”
Brooke sat still on the bed, her eyes darting back and forth as if she was processing everything he was telling her. He realized just how crazy it sounded. But at some point he was going to have to deal with the feds, and Brooke through her father, Senator Scarborough, was his best shot for exoneration. Unless, of course, he wanted to spend the rest of his days hiding out in a monastery and refurbishing toner cartridges.
“Show me this document you found inside this globe.”
“I hid it somewhere.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have it with you?”
“No, but it had a kind of star map on one side and George Washington’s signature at the bottom of the other side.”
“And this is the reason you walked out on me and got mixed up in this crazy conspiracy? Some map and a signature?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I think the star map was originally drawn in invisible ink. But it’s what’s on the other side that got me into trouble.”
“But you said there’s nothing on the other side, just a signature.”
“I think the rest of that side was written in dissolvable ink. Washington sometimes signed iffy contracts in an ink that would dissolve after a while, effectively making them disappear.”
“And you found this invisible-visible parchment in a golden celestial globe?”
“It looked more like copper, really, but yes. And I think the star map leads to the other globe.”
Her eyes widened. “There’s another globe?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know where just yet. I can’t believe I was so stupid. There are always two—a celestial globe and a terrestrial globe. Even the old Mason knew it, I could see it in his eyes, but he said nothing.”
He was aware of her looking at him in shock and awe. Shock at his lunacy and awe that he apparently thought it was true.
“Do you hear yourself, Conrad? How am I or my father or
anybody else supposed to believe you? Show me something other than chopped-off fingers to back up your story, Conrad!”
“How about this?”
He showed her the silver cornerstone plate. The markings captured her attention immediately. He recalled her family had some Masonic background.
“This is the cornerstone plate, Conrad. You actually found the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol.”
“I told you I did.”
She looked up at him, hope in her eyes. “No, you don’t understand.
This
is a legitimate story. This is something you unveil on July 4, a piece of Americana. I’ll get you to tell your story on Fox. Whatever crazy-ass stuff you add, well, nobody can deny you found this.”
“Or that I was the one responsible for the incidents at the Capitol and Library of Congress.”
“Let me work on this, work with my dad, bring you in somehow.”
“Bring me in? You make me sound like a dog you’re afraid is going to come in out of the rain and crap on your carpet.”
“If the paw fits, Conrad. Now get dressed.”
Conrad walked into the closet and removed his bathrobe. He slipped the finger from Max Seavers into his expensive suit pants and put one leg in after the other.
“Say, Brooke,” he called out. “What was his name?”
“Whose name?” she answered from the bedroom, sounding preoccupied, like she was on the phone.
“Your dog’s name.”
“His name was Rusty,” she called back absently as she spoke quietly in the bedroom.
That’s right, he thought, remembering that day in the park. Her dog was named after some early American scientist her father admired—David Rusthouse or something like that.
Conrad slid his belt through the last loop of his pants, eager to bolt. Any minute Serena would walk in and find him with Brooke, and then he would have still more explaining to do. But the reality was that after what happened at the Library of Congress tonight,
nobody was going to believe anything he had to say. Not Serena nor the feds.
His only hope was to find that second globe. To do that he had to find some kind of landmark in Washington, D.C., that aligned with the setting sun, just like in the starburst on George Washington’s sword at the western edge of the L’Enfant map in the Savage portrait.
The problem was that the land at the western edge of the district was developed as residential housing or preserved like Rock Creek Park. In other words, there were no obvious monuments or landmarks he could think of.
And then it hit him.
Ritty.
The name of Brooke’s dog wasn’t Rusty.
It was Ritty.
As in David Rittenhouse, a famous astronomer during the founding of America who worked closely with Ben Franklin and Benjamin Banneker.
As in Sarah Rittenhouse, the grand dame who two centuries later “saved” Montrose Park in Georgetown from development.
But what was Sarah Rittenhouse
really
trying to preserve the parkland for?
Conrad felt his pulse explode:
The terrestrial globe!
The armillary dedicated to Sarah Rittenhouse was in fact the landmark he was looking for—a monument to the terrestrial globe that Washington buried somewhere below!
How could I have missed it?
Then he knew the answer: In his mind he had always associated the armillary sphere with Brooke’s dog, who was urinating on the memorial’s base that day he followed the canine back to Brooke’s shapely legs and they reconnected.
He quickly tucked in his shirt, and then froze.
How could Brooke forget her own dog’s name?
Suddenly their meeting in the park—their entire “reconnection”—smelled like a setup from the start. She must have known that he liked to jog in the park and simply put herself in his path. The irony was that he must have jogged past that armillary
a thousand times and never imagined its secret. And neither, he guessed, did Brooke.
Brooke had stopped talking in the bedroom.
From behind Conrad could hear the
click
of a slider. Slowly he turned and saw her pointing an automatic pistol at him.
“I’m sorry, Conrad.” She shook her head. “That fucking dog.”