C
ONRAD DUG A CHANNEL
around the globe with his hands while Serena brushed the surface protruding from the dirt with a rag. Soon the outline of North America, etched across the northern hemisphere, came into view.
“Look!” Serena said excitedly. “This is clearly the terrestrial globe—it shows the land, not the stars. How do you open it?”
“Like this.” Conrad pushed the blade of his knife under the edge by the equator and pressed hard. There was a crack and the hemisphere began to move beneath his hand, opening like a lid to reveal a sealed wooden cylinder. “Here it is.”
They climbed out of the well and knelt on the dirt floor of the cave. Conrad removed a scroll from the wooden cylinder and began to unfold it.
“You’re smudging it with your dirty hands,” Serena scolded. “Let’s get out of here and look at it someplace safe.”
“Your hands are just as dirty as mine, Serena.” He refused to budge. “And no place is safe until we know what this thing says. Right here, Serena, right now. Information, not preservation.”
She flashed a light on the document. “I hate you.”
“Get in line, it’s a long one.” He angled the document to the light.
The paper was like the star map, almost a parchment. But this was no map. Rather, it was a formal document, written in English, with a bold sort of preamble. Certain dates and titles from 1783 had been amended and initialed in 1793.
“A Treaty of Peace,” he began to read, “concluded this Present Day ye eighteenth day of September One Thousand Seven Hundred & Ninety Three between the Regency of New Atlantis and its Subjects and George Washington President of the United States of North America and the Citizens of ye Said United States.” He looked at Serena. “The Regency of New Atlantis?”
“The Alignment,” Serena said. “A regency is simply a person or group selected to govern in place of a monarch or other ruler who is absent, disabled, or still in minority.”
“So they’re saying there’s some new Caesar waiting in the wings to take over the world?”
“We in the Church prefer to call him the Antichrist.”
The preamble was followed by a series of articles Conrad had a hard time following. He handed her the treaty and took the flashlight.
“You’re the linguist and expert on international treaties, Serena. What’s this New Atlantis?”
“The federal government,” Serena said, scanning the articles. “This treaty says that the federal government has the right to secede from the United States on July 4, 2008, and form its own entity, New Atlantis, the very superpower that Sir Francis Bacon predicted would arise in the New World through its technology and power. The United States of America would be dissolved and power would be returned to the states.”
“Holy shit. If it’s legal, this thing’s nuclear.”
“You mean neutron: the regimes would change, but D.C. and all public lands acquired by the federal government since its inception—about one-third of the country, mostly in the West—would remain as territories of New Atlantis, including all U.S. military bases both here and around the world. Meaning the New Atlantis would have the means to enforce its will on the former United States and the rest of the world.”
He shook his head. “The U.S. Supreme Court would never back it.”
“How could it?” she said. “If anything, this Charter is not only unconstitutional, it’s
anti-
constitutional. It clearly holds itself as both the precursor and successor to the U.S. Constitution. But it definitely looks genuine. As such, it’s an embarrassment to America and casts
doubts on its very founding at a time when its critics are wondering whether the world is better off without it. No wonder every president since Jefferson has been after this. What I can’t understand is why Washington would ever sign such a thing.”
She handed it back to Conrad, who looked at the bottom. There was an endorsement of the articles dated April 23, 1783, by George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. Lastly, there was a second endorsement dated almost a decade later, September 13, 1793. This was followed by the signature of President George Washington and the official seal of the United States of America—or rather the front of the seal. Opposite thereto were twelve signatures and the reverse or “New World Order” side of the seal.
One seal,
Conrad thought,
and two Americas.
“I can see why he’d sign it,” Conrad said, the years of American history drilled into him by his father kicking in. “Put yourself in Washington’s boots in 1783.”
“But to endorse it as president after the U.S. Constitution was ratified? What was he thinking?”
“He was thinking like most Americans that the federal government and its lands were all of a few square miles of marshland on the Potomac, dwarfed by the giant states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. He had no idea it would consume the continent as an empire with warships controlling the seven seas and military garrisons around the world and in space.”
Conrad looked at the two seals, the eagle and talons for the United States and the pyramid and Lucerific eye for the New Atlantis, and recalled what Brooke had said: The Alignment wasn’t merely a shadow government, it
was
the government. Or, rather,
the other side
of the federal government. It always had been; it just hadn’t come to light—yet.
“What’s wrong, Conrad?”
“I know why the Alignment signed this and why Washington had to go along at the time. And it’s obvious why every president aware of its existence has tried to keep it from coming to light, if only to preserve the Union. But to a large extent the Alignment has already succeeded beyond its wildest dreams and the federal government is
so strong—taxes to boot—that in a
de facto
way America IS the New Atlantis. So, aside from some historical or perverse moral justification, what possible reason could the Alignment have for risking its agenda to grab the treaty?”
“I can think of twelve, Conrad.”
She showed him the signatures of those representing the Regency of the New Atlantis.
Conrad looked through the signatures. Members of Congress, American patriots, Founding Fathers who supported a strong federal government. “Holy shit. These names.”
“Some of the most famous in America, along with some I’ve never heard of,” she said. “These are the ancestors of those who are going to make the Atlantis prophecy happen one way or another. This is what Washington was trying to warn us about, and to do it he used L’Enfant’s layout of the city and Savage’s portrait in the National Gallery and the letter to Robert Yates for you to open more than two centuries later. To lead us to this Newburgh Treaty and its signatories. So we could know the families, trace them to the present day and have a fair idea of who its leaders are.”
Conrad said, “Which means if we can find their descendants today…”
“We can find out who is behind what’s going to happen—who Seavers is really working for—and stop them.” Serena paused as she scanned the treaty, her face pale.
Something had struck her, and Conrad realized it wasn’t in the body of the charter. Rather, it was one of the signatures.
Conrad brushed off bits of loose dirt that had fallen onto the treaty from the ceiling. He looked at the names again, starting with Alexander Hamilton, and one in particular, the designated Consul General of the Regency, jumped out at him: John Marshall.
Conrad’s mind whirred. Marshall, a lawyer at the time of the Revolution, became chief justice of the Supreme Court within a year of Washington’s death and over the next 30 years did more than anybody else to expand the powers of the federal government. Then he made the connection:
Marshall was also a cousin of Thomas Jefferson and, as such, the sitting president’s great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side.
“Holy shit!” he said as the walls began to shake violently. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Serena grabbed her backpack as the roof of the cave started to collapse. Suddenly smoke filled the cave. Then everything went black.
C
ONRAD WOKE UP IN COMPLETE DARKNESS,
a black hood over his head, chilled to the bone. He sensed he was deep underground and could feel the low rumble of large, powerful machinery nearby. Something very sharp was pressing on his chest.
“Serena?” he called out.
He heard a laugh. It belonged to Max Seavers. “You’re an inspiration, Yeats, I’ll give you that.”
Then the black hood came off and Conrad looked up to see Seavers standing over him, pointing an ornate dagger at his chest. Conrad tried to move, but his arms and legs were strapped to a restraint chair, bolted to the floor of a windowless room with stone walls and a metal door.
“Do you like my dagger, Yeats?” Seavers said, pushing the point into Conrad’s sternum. “Your old friend Herc gave it to me before he died and joined Danny Z in the Great Beyond. He said it once belonged to a legendary 33rd Degree Mason of the Scottish Rite or some such, and that the Masons used the dagger in rituals to initiate candidates into a perverse system of levels or degrees by which they replicate themselves. Apparently the candidate for the First Degree is hooded and brought into the Lodge. There, at the point of a dagger, he undergoes ritual questioning. Welcome to my Lodge, Yeats. Maybe you can work all the way up the ranks like Herc.”
As he struggled to get his bearings, Conrad remembered what Brooke had told him about the weaponized bird flu virus Seavers
was going to release, and what Serena said about Seavers hosting the Chinese at the Washington Monument for the fireworks.
“The Fourth of July concert on the Mall,” Conrad said. “You’re going to release your contagion on Chinese officials during the fireworks. At the only moment in history that the monuments will be directly below their designated stars.”
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Seavers said as he walked out of sight behind him. “I was surprised to discover there’s actually some science behind what you allegedly do for a living as an astro-archaeologist. The stars in the sky rotate like some giant odometer every 26,000 years or so. Washington one-upped the Egyptians by ordering his chief architect L’Enfant to align the sites of as-yet-constructed monuments not to the position of the key stars of their day, but to their positions on this day, July 4, 2008, when the Regency of New Atlantis could make its claim and dissolve the United States.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Seavers.”
Seavers obliged. “When my masters in the Alignment thrust this great responsibility upon me, I knew that I had to make it special for them, seeing as they actually believe in mystical astrological signs and all. So I took a page from your book and decided to coordinate our strike with the heavens.”
“Is that what you call killing, what, a billion Chinese and a third of the world’s population?”
“It’s written in the stars, sport. Today the sun begins a 28-day path across the skies from Washington, D.C., to Beijing, where it will experience a total eclipse at dusk on August 1, exactly seven days before the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. My time-delayed virus on Earth mirrors the sun’s path in the heavens like some cosmic fireball. As above, so below. By the time they light the Olympic torch, the first symptoms of the global human-to-human bird flu pandemic will appear, igniting international chaos and cries to build a new Great Wall to quarantine China. Poetic, isn’t it?”
“You’re deranged.”
Conrad craned his neck to see a dozen syringes, needles, and tubes laid out on a table along with rolls of adhesive tape, bags of saline solution, handcuffs, and leg irons. He shivered. “Are you really going to use all that on me, or is it just for effect?”
Seavers put on a pair of surgical gloves, selected a vial and held it up to the fluorescent light. “This is for somebody else.”
As he spoke, the door opened and two lab technicians rolled Serena in on a gurney. She was strapped down flat and showed little movement.
“You bastard!” Conrad snarled.
Seavers slid the vial into a syringe gun and put it to Serena’s neck.
“This is a special formula of the bird flu virus minus the incubation inhibitor,” Seavers said. “Tell me where you put that star map you stole from the celestial globe or I pull the trigger and Sister Serghetti is the first to die.”
“Don’t you dare, Conrad,” Serena warned from the gurney. “You know all those stories through the ages about Christian martyrs? This is one of them. But if you cave to this bastard, he’ll just off us and it’s plain murder. We’ll be as much his victims as the ones who get the bird flu.”
Not if we survive
, Conrad thought, and he wondered why Seavers wanted the star map. It only led to the terrestrial globe and the Newburgh Treaty, which Seavers already possessed. “It’s inside a book at the Library of Congress.”
“Shut up!” Serena screamed.
Seavers dug the syringe gun into Serena’s carotid. “Tell me the title of the book, sport.”
Conrad shifted in his restraining chair. In pressing the point of the dagger to his chest, Seavers had nicked one of the straps. Conrad felt it would tear and snap with enough force, but that he still wouldn’t be able to free his hands or feet.
“It’s in a book called
Obelisks
,” Conrad said, hearing the desperation in his voice and seeing the disappointment in Serena’s eyes.
“You bloody fool,” Serena said in defeat. “I hope you’ve made your peace with God.”
“You know I did,” Conrad said. “In Antarctica. But not with you.”
“And you won’t in this lifetime, you wanker,” she said. “But when I wake up in the next and see the face of Jesus, I want to see yours, too.” She began to utter something in Latin.
Seavers began to laugh. “Are you performing last rites for your beloved Yeats?”
“For you, Seavers,” she said. “Because there’s no air conditioning where you’re going.”
“Now, now, Sister Serghetti,” Seavers said, in a soothing tone Conrad found very creepy. “Even Jesus forgave his enemies when he was dying on the cross.”
“Well, you can go to hell, Seavers!” she screamed. “You have no excuses. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
Max Seavers’s face screwed up into a twisted mask of pure hatred, and Conrad anxiously watched him walk to the instrument table and return with a roll of duct tape.
“That mouth.” He tore off some tape and slapped it across Serena’s lips. “Somebody in Rome should have shut you up a long time ago.”
Then he plunged the syringe gun into her neck again, this time deep enough that Conrad could see a trickle of blood.
“Give me the call number for the book, sport, or I shoot.”
“I don’t know the call number,” Conrad said, panicking as he saw Serena struggle, her eyes wide and her cries muffled. “But it’s an old book and there can’t be more than a couple of copies in special collections. I’m telling you the truth.”
“We’ll see when I come back from my previously scheduled engagement,” Seavers said, and pulled the trigger.
Serena’s neck twitched like she’d taken a bullet.
“No!” Conrad shouted.
Seavers laid the syringe gun down, studying Serena as he spoke to Conrad. “She’ll be fully infected within a few hours unless I administer the vaccine. But once she starts showing symptoms nothing can save her, not even my own vaccine, and she’ll be dead by dusk. So you better pray to her God that I find that map. Or you’ll watch her die before your eyes, and then I’ll kill you.”
With that, Seavers walked out past two Marines posted outside the door, which rumbled shut and locked with a thud.