“This is Pablo, our server,” Sergeant Randolph explained. “We had an extra seat and in the spirit of this event invited him to join us in prayer.”
“Goddamn you, where is he?” he said, drawing sharp glances from nearby tables.
“Relax, Dr. Seavers,” she said, eyes like daggers. “Where’s he going to go? He’s not armed and you’ve got an army of security people down here.”
Seavers snapped his head and scanned the ballroom for Yeats as the Irish lilt of Bono’s voice swelled to an unearthly decibel level. No sign of him, only servers with coffee and breakfast items heading into and out of the kitchen entrance.
“The kitchen,” he barked.
B
Y THE TIME
S
ERENA FOLLOWED
the president out of the ballroom after his remarks to the attendees, it appeared from the anxious faces of the Secret Service agents in the hallway that her prayer had been answered and that Conrad had escaped.
“I heard you did a good job with the opening prayer, Sister Serghetti,” the president said as she followed him and his Secret Service detail past the portraits of previous leaders. “Wish I had heard it myself.”
“I simply recited the official prayer that George Washington offered for the United States of America in the year 1783,” she said. “It was printed in the program.”
The president frowned and said nothing more until they entered the gold room, where Packard was waiting beside an American flag and a small spiral stairwell that led to a secret outside door and the president’s waiting limousine.
“You’ve got sixty seconds before I step outside,” the president said.
Packard broke the news. “That item we’ve been searching for is waiting for you in the Oval Office, but it’s empty,” he said, providing no particulars with Serena present. “Brooke Scarborough is dead. Conrad Yeats killed her and is at large on the premises. Seavers is sweeping everything room-by-room.”
The president looked at her. “And I’m to understand that the Vatican has been helping Dr. Yeats?”
“No, Mr. President, but I have,” she said boldly, seeing the shock in Packard’s face. “You should, too. And he did not kill Brooke Scarborough.”
She slipped her hand inside her blouse and removed Washington’s letter to Stargazer. Packard looked like he was going to pass out at the very sight of it.
“I had hoped to press my case with you once I had everything, Mr. President, but I’m afraid I don’t.” She handed him the letter. “But you have everything I do, sir.”
The president looked it over and handed it to Packard. “DARPA will analyze this?”
“Right away, Mr. President.”
Serena watched Packard slip it inside his dress uniform pocket. She doubted it would ever see the fluorescent light of a lab at DARPA or anywhere else if Packard were foolish enough to pass it along to Max Seavers.
She said, “What you’ll find out, Mr. President, is that Dr. Yeats is simply following the orders of George Washington, commander-in-chief.”
“I’m the commander-in-chief, Sister Serghetti,” the president said emphatically.
“What I’m trying to say is that he believes he is serving the highest interests of the republic. If you could offer him immunity from prosecution, he might come in and give you whatever he took from the globe.”
“I appreciate that, Sister Serghetti, and maybe yesterday we could have cut him some kind of deal,” the president said. “But now that he’s been caught detonating explosives on U.S. landmarks, slaying federal agents, and has murdered the daughter of one of America’s most prominent senators, well, I don’t think even I can help him. I swore an oath to protect America.”
“No, Mr. President, you swore an oath to protect the Constitution.”
The president was not pleased with her impudence. “I’ll say a prayer for Conrad Yeats, Sister Serghetti. God bless you.”
“And you, Mr. President.”
With that, the president marched up the spiral staircase behind
two Secret Service agents. He was followed by Packard, who looked back at her with undisguised animosity. She saw a square of light thrown on the curving wall and heard the roar of running engines outside before the thud from an unseen door left her alone in the room.
She pulled out her cell phone and pressed a button. Benito answered. “Bring the car around. We’re leaving.”
I
NSIDE THE
H
ILTON’S UNDERGROUND
parking garage, two policemen stood on either side of the service door as dozens of waiters carried crates of fruit, muffins, and croissants from the prayer breakfast to awaiting vans, which in turn would deliver the food to local homeless shelters.
One of those waiters was Conrad Yeats. He carried not one but two boxes of ice-packed fruit on his shoulders to the nearest van, but he never went back inside. Using the vehicle line to shield himself from the policemen, he walked out into the garage in search of Benito so he could hitch a ride in Serena’s limo with the Vatican emblem and secret cargo compartment.
The garage was alive with activity now that the president had left and the senators, congress members, and foreign dignitaries were free to leave as well. The limousines and SUVs were already lining up to pick up their VIPs in front of the hotel entrance.
“Conrad Yeats?” a voice called from the shadows.
Conrad cursed himself for having ended up in a well-lit place in the garage. He turned to see a young brunette whose face he recognized but whose name he had forgotten. She was in her mid-20s, an aide to a female senator from California.
“Hi, there!” he said, faking excitement as he walked over to her.
She frowned at his generic response. “It’s Lisa from San Francisco,” she said. “And what are
you
of all people doing at a prayer breakfast?”
“Mending my ways, Lisa.”
He pulled out a knife he had taken from the kitchen and put it to her side as she gasped. He hated himself for doing this to her, but he had no choice.
“OK, I confess,” he whispered in her ear. “I haven’t really changed. If you scream or make a sound, I’ll kill you. You’ve seen the TV reports. You know I will.”
“Please,” she begged him. “I’ll be better for you next time. You can wear the fedora and I’ll learn to like the whip.”
“Quiet,” he said, jabbing the knife in the fold of her skin. “You’re going to help me get out of here, Lisa. Nod if you understand.”
Lisa nodded.
Seavers stationed himself outside the main entrance of the Hilton and watched the VIPs get into their taxis, limousines, and SUVs. The prayer breakfast was over, incident-free as far as its guests were concerned. The announcement about Brooke Scarborough’s death would not reach them until they were on their way back to Kansas or Iowa or wherever the hell they came from. By then, of course, the Alignment’s agenda would be unstoppable.
The only X factor, he thought with rage, was the elusive Yeats.
Seavers watched the junior senator from California and her aide get into her limousine and drive off as a sleeker limousine with a Vatican flag pulled up. He turned his head to see Serena Serghetti emerge from the front entrance and make her way to the open rear door and climb in.
Seavers motioned two Secret Service agents to the limousine. They halted the driver and swept the underside of the car with long, extended mirrors.
The rear door opened and Serena stepped back out and watched the scene. And because she did, a small crowd behind her did also.
“Lose something, Max?” she asked, putting on a great show of being held up. “I confess I brought out a couple of chocolate croissants for Benito. He loves them so.”
“Tell your driver to open the trunk,” Seavers demanded, and walked to the back as two agents drew their guns.
He was aware of the scene he was causing with the curious dignitaries, but he didn’t care, even when a press photographer started taking pictures. He knew he couldn’t force her to open up—the car had diplomatic plates, after all—but if she didn’t the world would know she was hiding something, and so would he.
Her swarthy driver came out and, getting the nod from Serena, opened the trunk. Besides a garment bag and small suitcase, it was empty.
Serena put her hands on her hips and an amused expression on her face for the cameras. “You want to search those, too, Max?”
Seavers turned red with rage when one of his agents came up. “Sir, we found something,” he said and led Seavers to the rear seat of the cabin.
Seavers then waved the good Sister over from her photo op and pointed into the limousine. “Open that seat compartment or I’ll tear it open with a knife. Your choice.”
“Max.” She turned serious. “You do understand that in some countries I’ve been forced to smuggle out missionaries and political prisoners. If you let the press and public know about this, then some of those prisoners will lose their last option.”
“Your choice, Serena.”
She leaned into the back of the limousine and felt for a hidden latch that released the flap beneath the rear seat. As it opened, she was pushed back by one of the Secret Service agents.
“Step back, please, ma’am,” he said and pointed his gun into the secret compartment.
But it was empty.
Seavers burned inside as Serena turned to face him with her beatific smile. “Told you, Max.”
Aware of the television cameras, he leaned over and whispered. “Your friend the fugitive is a murderer and an American traitor. You don’t want anything to do with him.”
“No, Max. I don’t want anything to do with
you
anymore. You can keep your vaccines.” She got inside and nodded to Benito to go.
Seavers watched the limousine drive off and turned to the Secret Service agent who had examined the secret compartment. “Did you place the GPS nano tracker on her person?”
“Yes, sir. Stuck it under her shoulder when we hustled her down to the holding room. She’ll never know.”
“Have a team follow her signal,” Seavers ordered. “At some point she’s bound to lead us to Yeats.”
Serena leaned back in her seat and breathed a sigh of relief as Benito turned the limousine onto Connecticut.
“You OK,
signorina
?”
“Now that I’m breathing, yes. But I don’t know where Conrad is.”
Benito looked up in the mirror. “He was in that limo ahead of us back at the Hilton.”
“No, there was a senator in that limo. I saw her get in.”
“But Dr. Yeats was driving,” Benito said. “He found me in the underground garage and told me to give you a message.”
Serena sat on the edge of her seat. “Give it to me.”
“He said he will meet you at Sarah’s house.”
As Conrad drove the senator’s limousine, he listened carefully to the senator gossip with Lisa about some of the individual speakers at the breakfast even as she expressed being moved by the event itself. Lisa said very little. He had warned her that he was strapped with explosives and that any attempt to alert the senator or send a text message from her cell phone would blow them all up.
It worked until they crossed Washington Circle.
“What’s that knocking?” the senator asked Lisa.
Conrad could see Lisa squirm in his rearview mirror.
“Could be the 87 octane level of the gas, ma’am,” he told the senator, pulling into a Union gas station across the street from the Ritz-Carlton. “Let me check, maybe top off the tank with some premium.”
“You should have done this earlier,” the senator barked as he stepped out in his chauffeur’s uniform and walked to the pump.
A minute later, the knocking got even louder inside the limousine.
The senator looked out the window and couldn’t see the driver. “Find out where he is, Lisa.”
But her aide started breaking down in tears for no reason.
“I don’t have time for this today, Lisa.”
The senator opened her own door and saw the gasoline hose in the limousine’s gas tank, but no driver. The knocking, she realized, seemed to be coming from the trunk. She stepped out and walked to the trunk and opened it.
There was her driver, tied up and gagged.
By the time Seavers and his men arrived at the gas station, two D.C. cops were questioning the senator’s aide, who apparently knew Yeats from their previous, albeit brief, relationship and provided a detailed description. An ATM camera across the street at the SportsClub fitness center, meanwhile, had captured Yeats on video.
Where are you going, Yeats?
Seavers wondered as he climbed into his SUV and they drove off.
To the second globe perhaps? To meet your lovely Serena?
“You set it up so I can track the nun on my own phone?” he asked the driver, a Marine named Landford from Detachment One.
“Yes, sir,” Landford replied. “Check your Google Maps.”
Seavers looked at his cell phone and followed the red blip that represented Sister Serghetti. It was moving up R Street past Montrose Park. Then it stopped.
He looked closely at the screen and clicked the zoom button. Slowly the fuzzy pixels sharpened and he realized he was staring down at a statue of some kind. He clicked on the image and a Web page automatically popped up with a picture of the Sarah Rittenhouse Armillary.
The armillary
, he realized, staring at the image of the sun dial-like sphere on its marble pedestal.
The second globe that Brooke had told him about, the one Yeats was after now, could be buried beneath the armillary!
“We’re here, sir,” said the driver in the mirror.
Seavers looked out his window to see the armillary a mere 20 or so feet away from the street, potentially holding a treasure but in plain daylight for all to see.
But there was no sign of Serena or Yeats.
He looked back down at his phone. The red dot—the GPS tracker—was still stationary, still blinking next to the armillary.
“She must be under the armillary,” he said. “There must be another entrance, a sewer line or something beneath the monument. Get the drill team from Jones Point over here and send a plainclothes unit to sweep the park.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Landford said, hanging up his phone. “We picked up a call from the National Park Service station inside the park. An officer nabbed a man in a chauffeur’s uniform fitting our APB.”
A few minutes later Seavers entered a small, damp NPS station, which stunk from the dung of the horses in the stables. The watch officer escorted Seavers to a small holding cell, where the man in the chauffeur’s uniform sat in the corner.
“Yeats!” Seavers shouted.
The head looked up and Seavers found himself looking into the wrinkled, warted face of a homeless man who had traded his rags for a suit.
“You imbeciles!” Seavers shouted to the watch officer.
But the watch officer was talking on his radio. “Copy that,” he said, and switched it off before addressing Seavers. “Looks like your man stole one of our horses, too.”