The real show involved gratuitous, low-angle full shots of her legs and her flipping her long blonde hair while she blathered conservative social commentary—lower taxes, no more affirmative action, and guns for everybody. He knew she kept a loaded .357 Magnum in a Manolo Blahnik shoe box at the top of her bedroom closet upstairs. Of course, since she had about 200 shoe boxes, he could never be sure which one it was.
He craned his neck and looked up the stairs as a pair of long legs stepped into view. It was Brooke in a pair of strappy Jimmy Choos and a green Elie Saab evening gown that showed off her faultless figure to full effect.
“There you are,” she said, eyeing the pasta bowl and Sam Adams on the coffee table. “Where were you?”
“The graveyard,” Conrad said.
“I know, sweetie, I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Brooke walked over and kissed him on the lips. “But that’s why we planned to go out tonight, remember? To put the past behind you and to celebrate us and the future. The Olympics reception at the Chinese Embassy is tonight. Everybody from the network is going to be there.”
Conrad stared. He had completely forgotten.
“I just buried my father, Brooke,” Conrad said, his thoughts on the book under the sofa. “I’m not in a party mood.”
She frowned and her crystal blue eyes, which at times could look vacant, seemed to come into sharp focus like the automatic lens of a camera.
He expected her to say, “You hated your father,” but what came out was sugary sweet. She was great that way.
“I know it must be hard, Conrad,” she cooed. “But at least yours went out with a bang. My grandfather was a veteran who died in a retirement condo in Florida while he nodded off watching Errol Flynn in Night of the Dawn Patrol.”
“So you think I’m going to kick off watching Top Gun while you’re out?”
“No, you’re going to kick off being my Top Gun tonight,” she said with shining eyes. “If you’re lucky.”
Conrad smiled as he looked at her. Although she had quite a killer body now, with a kick-ass personality, Conrad had met her and dated her when they were but gawky teenagers at Sidwell Friends School after his father had dragged him to live in D.C. for two years. Now she was poised, confident, sexy, having filled out her curves and buffed her body to perfection. She seemed to have all the answers.
“Wake me up when you get back,” he told her.
Brooke sighed, picked up his raincoat from the bench and put it in the closet. She turned to the foyer mirror and started to apply more lipstick. “I might bring somebody home with me.”
“More the merrier.” Conrad turned the sound back on the TV. “Make sure she’s a brunette.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“Everybody does in time.”
She marched over and took the remote from him.
“Hey, I was looking for Top Gun.”
“The only thing you’re watching tonight is me.”
“But I was watching you.”
“In the flesh, Con. We’re staying home together.”
She leaned over, her cleavage practically enveloping his head, and kissed him full on the lips with passion. That she would stay home for him spoke volumes about her devotion, and her soft lips lifted his mood in spite of himself.
“What about the Chinese?” he asked.
She smiled. “We’ll order take-out.”
She took him by the hand and led him upstairs. Only once did he glance back at the book under the corner of the sofa.
4
CONRAD LAY ON HIS BACK IN BED, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Serena. Sex with Brooke had certainly released his pent-up energy, but he felt guilty as hell.
He looked over at Brooke. They had gone out together in high school, and she was the first girl he’d ever made love to. Now that his father was gone, she was the only connection to his past. After school, he had left her behind to go off on his digs and to other women, catching clips of her colorful commentaries now and then on NBC and later Fox.
Then Serena had made him forget his previous life entirely, made him forget everything the moment he first met her in South America.
It was only after Serena had deserted him after the disaster in Antarctica and he had come back to D.C. that he and Brooke reconnected. He had been jogging through Montrose Park just a few blocks away, as he did almost every morning. She was walking her dog. They practically collided in front of the park’s sphere-like sun dial. It was fate. Almost instantly, it seemed, she had brought him home with her. The dog must have known it had lost its place in Brooke’s heart to Conrad, because it ran away the day before he moved in. Ever since, it was like they had never been apart.
Until now. Until Serena had shown up at Arlington.
Conrad’s thoughts turned to Tom Sawyer downstairs and the incomplete message he had deciphered. Just one more word to finish it.
He looked at Brooke, watched her full breasts rise and fall rhythmically and was convinced she was asleep. He slipped out of bed and glanced out the bedroom window. The black SUV was gone, but that didn’t mean someone or something out there wasn’t watching or listening.
He quietly walked downstairs, where he headed for the living room and retrieved the book from under the sofa. He didn’t like hiding things from Brooke, mostly because he knew how much she hated it when he did. But he doubted he could bring up the book code without bringing up Serena—or looking like a liar if he failed to mention their encounter and she found out. And Brooke would. She always did.
He walked into the hallway bathroom, put the toilet lid down and sat with the book in the soft glow of the nightlight over the sink.
He looked up the last word from the book on Page 54: It was the word “land.” When he finished writing it down, Conrad stared down at the note in his hand and the complete message his father left him:
SUN SHINES OVER SAVAGE LAND
What the hell did that mean? Was it simply the misguided musing of an old, disillusioned former Apollo astronaut and much despised Air Force general? Or did it mean something more? It had to mean something more, because it was intended only for Conrad—just like the astrological symbols on the obelisk. But why? And what was with the stand-alone numeric code 763 from the back of the obelisk? It had no correlation to the book code.
Conrad stared at the binding of Tom Sawyer, which lay open on the last page he had looked up. Something about it bothered him.
Conrad noted a slit where the binding separated. He opened it wider and realized there was a hidden pocket of some sort inside the cover of the book. He flipped through the rest of the book. All the other pages were fine and there was no other break in the binding. This secret slot was meant to hide something.
He carried the book into Brooke’s study and found a letter opener in the drawer of her colonial rolltop desk. He folded the book back at page 54 and reached in with the letter opener to drag out an envelope.
It was yellowed with age. The word STARGAZER was written in faded bold script across it.
Conrad opened the envelope carefully and removed a folded document from inside. Unfolding it, he realized there was text on one side and some kind of map on the other.
Conrad instantly recognized the topography of the Potomac. He also recognized the layout. It was a terrestrial blueprint for Washington, D.C. In the upper left corner was the moniker WASHINGTONOPLE. In another corner was a watermark: TB.
Serena had to see this.
More fascinating still was the text on the other side of the map. It was a coded letter of some kind, and someone—his father, he assumed, based on the handwriting—had deciphered the salutation and signature. It was dated September 25, 1793.
The body of the letter was written in an alphanumeric code he didn’t recognize. Probably a Revolutionary War–era military code. But the translated salutation was plain to see, and his hand trembled when he saw the signature. It was from General George Washington, and it began:
To Robert Yates and his chose
n descendent in the Year of Our Lord 2008….
5
THAT MORNING CONRAD FOUND Brooke downstairs at the breakfast table scanning five newspapers while the morning news shows blared on the TV, which she had split into six screens to follow the major broadcast and cable networks simultaneously. She was having her usual half grapefruit and Wasa cracker along with her coffee—some diet that she religiously followed from a Beverly Hills doctor to the stars. It required her to take a tiny scale with her wherever she went to weigh her food—no more than three ounces of anything at a time, no less than four hours apart.
“You’re up early,” she said as she poured him some coffee. “The Post ran a nice obit on your dad.”
She showed him the picture and headline: Body of Former Air Force General Found in Antarctica Laid to Rest.
Conrad glanced at the photo of his dad, circa 1968, back in his “Right Stuff” days with NASA, a genuine American icon.
“I figured I might as well get a jump on the documentary for the Discovery Channel,” he told Brooke. “You know, put the past behind and look ahead. So I’m going in early this morning to the offices in Maryland. See if Mercedes goes for it.”
“Just see that she doesn’t go for you, Con,” Brooke said without looking up from her newspapers. “That one, unfortunately, isn’t a nun.”
Conrad paused, wondering if he had talked about Serena in his sleep. But then he noticed Serena on four channels of the TV screen. She was talking about the state of human rights in China on the eve of the Olympics, as well as China’s status as the world’s biggest polluter because of its high carbon emissions. The two other channels had segments about the bird flu, which had landed in North America and caused some poultry deaths but had not yet jumped to human-to-human contagion. That, of course, the expert with the mask on TV droned, was only a matter of time.
“I’ll be careful,” he laughed and kissed her goodbye.
Outside on the front steps, he looked out and noticed no suspicious vehicles. No spy types lurking in the shadows. He hurried down the sidewalk toward 31st Street and hailed a cab. He climbed inside and said, “Union Station.”
Brooke watched Conrad disappear around the corner, then went into her study and stopped. Something was off. She scanned the shelves and noted a gap on the third shelf that caused some books to slant. Conrad had removed and replaced a book. The book, she suddenly realized, the one everybody had been looking for.
So he cracked the book code.
She walked over to the bookcase, removed Tom Sawyer, and flipped through the pages. She was about to put the book back and call it in when she noticed a break in the binding. There was a slit, revealing some sort of hidden pocket. She swore.
Hands shaking, she went to the kitchen and returned with a razor blade. Carefully she traced the inside cover until she formed a kind of flap. Ever so gently she peeled it back to reveal the empty pocket and, inside the flap, a smudge trace of writing. An imprint of some kind.
In a fog of dread she marched into the foyer and held up the book to the mirror, barely able to force herself to look. There in the mirror the word shone clear: STARGAZER.
“Holy shit,” she gasped.
The map had been in her house all along, inside the book, right under her nose, and she had missed it.
She speed-dialed a local number in Georgetown on her coded cell phone. She identified herself to the agent who answered.
“This is SCARLETT,” she said. “I’ve got a Priority One message for OSIRIS.”
6
CONRAD DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE TAIL until the young male attendant in the first-class compartment of the Acela Express came by to present a choice of hot or cold breakfasts. Conrad chose the bran flakes. The only other passenger in the compartment, a man who looked like an NFL linebacker crammed into a suit, ordered the Big Bob Egg Scramble.
That’s how Conrad knew he was a federal agent. Only a fed on the taxpayer’s dime would go first-class and order the Big Bob Egg Scramble, which sounded like Amtrak’s version of a shrimp cocktail.
So much for the privacy he had sought by upgrading from business class after the attendant told him the first-class car was empty: Apparently none of the other passengers thought the Egg Scramble was worth the extra $80.
Except Big Bob a few seats back.
Conrad swore to himself and looked out the giant picture window at the barren pastures of Pennsylvania flashing by. The Acela Express was the fastest train on the continent, racing at speeds up to 150 miles an hour between Washington, D.C., and New York City. Conrad had hoped to reach Serena before lunch and make it back to Brooke by dinner without anybody knowing. Obviously, he wasn’t moving fast enough.
Because there sat Big Bob, smiling at the attendant as he took a couple of tubs of cream and three blue packets of artificial sweetener with his coffee and pretended to peruse the Wall Street Journal until his Egg Scramble arrived.
Conrad got up from his seat and, without looking back, walked down the aisle to one of two bathrooms at the end of the car closest to the locomotive.
Conrad closed the door and braced himself. “Acela” was one of those names made up by some New York branding company that combined the words “acceleration” and “excellence.” The secret to the Acela’s speed was its ability to tilt in curves without slowing down or spooking passengers. Conrad could feel a slight tilt coming on now as he looked at himself in the mirror and thought about what he was doing.
He couldn’t involve Brooke in any of this, for her own sake. At least that’s what he told himself. Maybe he just didn’t want her to know he was involved at all with Serena. But Brooke was a big girl. She knew he had never made her any promises. She probably also knew, better than he perhaps, just how slim the odds were of his ever getting together with Serena.
Facing the mirror, he slowly unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the envelope he had taped to himself. He removed the map from inside and flipped it over to look at the text:
763.618.1793
634.625. ghquip hiugiphipv 431. Lqfilv Seviu 282.625. siel 43. qwl 351. FUUO.
179 ucpgiliuv erqmqaciu jgl 26. recq 280.249. gewuih 707.5.708. jemcms. 282.682.123.414.144. qwl qyp nip 682.683.416.144.625.178. Jecmwli ncabv rlqxi 625.549.431. qwl gewui. 630. gep 48. ugelgims 26. piih 431. ligqnniphcpa 625.217.101.5. uigligs 2821.69. uq glcvcgem 5. hepailqwu eu 625. iuvefmcubnipv 431. qwl lirwfmcg.
280. qyi 707.625. yqlmh 5.708.568.283.282. biexip. 625. uexeqi 683. ubqy 707.625. yes.
711
All his father had translated was the alphanumeric salutation—To the chosen descendent of Robert Yates in the Year of Our Lord 2008—and the numeric signature—General George Washington. Perhaps his father thought that was enough information for him to crack the rest of the cipher. Or perhaps his father could never figure it out.
All Conrad really knew about Robert Yates was that his father’s side of the family had adopted the “Yeats” spelling to distance themselves from Robert Yates, who was one of America’s more controversial Founding Fathers. Besides helping to draft the first Constitution for the State of New York, he represented New York as a key delegate at the convention in Philadelphia to draft the U.S. Constitution.
That’s where things got ugly.
For it soon became clear to all that the Constitutional Convention, under the leadership of George Washington, wasn’t tweaking the Articles of Confederation among the thirteen states as advertised. It was creating a new, centralized power: the federal government. A new sovereignty with the power to levy taxes and maintain an army.
That’s when Robert Yates berated Washington, stormed out of the proceedings, and did everything in his power to defeat ratification of the U.S. Constitution, going so far as to run for New York governor in 1789. He failed. But in 1790 he became Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, and for the rest of his life was one of America’s fiercest and most outspoken defenders of state rights and critics of federal authority.
Even the grave couldn’t si
lence Yates. In 1821, twenty years after his death, his notes from the Constitutional Convention were published under the title Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled…for the Purpose of Forming the Constitution of the United States. By then, of course, the Louisiana Purchase had doubled the number of states in America, and the notion of still questioning the constitutionality of the federal government became, well, embarrassing for the family.
That’s about the time, Conrad recalled, that his father’s branch of the family stopped calling itself “Yates” and joined their cousins by spelling their surname “Yeats.”
At least that’s what Conrad could recall. He never paid much attention to the Yeats family tree growing up because he was adopted.
Conrad felt another tilt and acceleration as the Acela took a curve. He taped the map with the text to his chest and buttoned up his shirt. Somehow he had to elude Big Bob and reach Serena.
He pulled out his Vertu cell phone and was tempted to dial Serena’s private number to arrange a pickup at Penn Station. But he slipped it back into his pocket, figuring that somehow Big Bob’s friends would be listening. Ditto for any text messages.
Instead he would have to use one of the train’s onboard phone booths in the dining car. And for that, he’d need a credit or debit card, and it would have to belong to somebody else.
When Conrad emerged from the lavatory, breakfast had been served on the extra large tray tables. He walked past his seat, which still said OCCUPIED on the LED readout in the overhead bin console, picked up his coffee, and went straight up to Big Bob, who had already scarfed down half his Egg Scramble.
Conrad said, “Looks like you overdid it with the Tabasco sauce.”
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