Packard nodded. “And the number 763?”
“We confirmed it’s the Major’s code.”
“The Major’s code?”
“Major Tallmadge,” Carson said. “He was George Washington’s spy chief during the Revolution, although by the time he created this alphanumeric cipher system he was a colonel.”
Packard said, “So Yeats is using a code more than 200 years old?”
“He’s using, in effect, the DOD’s very first code, Mr. Secretary.”
“And what exactly does 763 stand for?” Packard demanded. “Should I be quaking in my boots like the president?”
The Pentagon’s top intelligence chief said nothing, although the look in his eyes implied that, yes, they should all be quaking in their boots. “In general terms, sir, 763 is the numeric code for headquarters. Specifically, in this context, it clearly means this.”
Carson wrote a name on a sheet of paper and slipped it to the SecDef. The SecDef picked it up and stared. “Oh, gawd,” he groaned, and was about to crumple it up and toss it into his wastebasket until he thought better of it. “You mean the president’s paranoia might have some basis in fact?”
“General Yeats seemed to think so, sir.”
Seavers, unable to read the text on the paper Packard was holding, cleared his throat. “The president is paranoid about what, Mr. Secretary? I’m afraid I’m lost here.”
“We all are if this prophecy is true.” Packard pulled out a lighter and touched it to the corner of the paper.
Seavers sat forward on the edge of his seat and watched the paper burn. This stage of the briefing was news to him. “What prophecy?”
Packard said, “Let’s just say we think George Washington buried something under the Mall, and every U.S. president since Jefferson has been trying to dig it up, all under the guise of building or restoring monuments over the past three centuries.”
“Buried what?” Seavers pressed.
“Something very embarrassing,” Packard told him. “Not just for this Administration, but for every president since Washington. Something that casts doubt on the American experiment itself, its origins and destiny. We have to stop it from coming to light.”
Seavers could feel Packard studying him, clearly conflicted. Packard had brought him to DARPA to develop new vaccines and create the perfect soldier, impervious to chemical and biological weapons. That was his reputation as one of the world’s greatest minds in genetic research. Coded tombstones and buried artifacts were not his forte.
Unless he knows about my great-grandfather, Seavers thought, and suddenly wondered if there had been more to his appointment at DARPA than he had given Packard credit for.
“Mr. Secretary,” he said, breaking the silence, “it would help me a great deal to know what exactly you think Washington buried.”
“A globe, Seavers.”
“A globe?”
“A celestial globe,” Packard said. “Probably about two feet in diameter. The kind of floor globe you find on a stand in the library of lavish estates.”
“Like those Old World bar globes you open and inside you find liquor?”
Packard glared at him. “This has nothing to do with the Old World, Seavers.”
Seavers could only shrug. “But how important can this globe truly be?”
Packard was adamant. “Nothing could be more important to the national security of the United States of America.”
Seavers nodded to show he understood the gravity of the situation. “And you think Dr. Yeats has a shot at finding it?”
“He found the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol, didn’t he?” Packard began to pace back and forth behind his desk, obviously wrestling with some decision. “Seavers, I want you to find this thing before Yeats does. Or let him lead you to it, I don’t care. But if he does, he’ll uncover a secret he’s not authorized to know. Nobody is.”
Seavers glanced at Carson, who looked shocked that Packard had assigned him the task, and said, “You’ll give me what I need to do this job, Mr. Secretary?”
“The president has authorized me to have the entire resources of the federal government at your disposal,” Packard said. “You’ve got the gizmos, I’ll give you some muscle, your own black ops domestic response team.” Packard looked at Carson. “Norm, your ass is covered. Just give Seavers whatever intel he needs to find Yeats. It’s embarrassing that he’s walking around D.C., which has more security cameras than galaxies in the heavens, and we still can’t find him.”
“I’ll track down Yeats and whatever it is he’s looking for.” Seavers looked at Packard and Carson. “And Dr. Yeats can take whatever he knows to the grave and join his father.”
“General Yeats may have been a four-star bastard, but I always tried to treat his son like my own. So I hope it doesn’t come to that, gentlemen,” Packard said. “But if it does, Conrad Yeats sure as hell isn’t going to be buried at Arlington with full military honors.”
19
MONTROSE PARK
ROCK CREEK NATIONAL PARK
IT WAS SET FOR 6 P.M. However things went down at the Capitol, Serena was to rendezvous with Conrad in Montrose Park at the edge of the vast Rock Creek National Park north of Georgetown. But it was half past six already, and there was no sign of Conrad. She was worried sick.
Carrying a backpack and dressed like a college coed in a white tank top, sunglasses, shorts, and flip-flops, Serena strolled past the tennis courts, picnic tables, and playground in search of what Conrad told her would be “an unmistakable celestial marker.”
And suddenly there it was: the Sarah Rittenhouse armillary, a sundial of sorts. Actually, on closer inspection, it was a classic Greek celestial sphere comprised of three interlocking rings that represented the motion of the stars encircling the earth. The outermost band of the ecliptic featured the raised constellations of the zodiac. Piercing through the rings was an arrow that pointed to true north.
But still no Conrad.
She set her sunglasses atop her brushed back hair for a moment and adjusted the volume of her iPod as she waited, pretending to admire the armillary. It stood on a marble pedestal and according to the plaque was dedicated in 1956 in memory of some society woman named Sarah Rittenhouse.
“Sarah Rittenhouse was some matronly preservationist who saved this park from nasty developers back in the early 1900s,” said a voice from behind her. “Reminds me of somebody I know.”
She turned to see Conrad in a dress shirt and suit pants, a hardcover book clutched in his hand. He looked like a university professor. “So where’s the globe?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” He stared at the celestial armillary. “This is where I first saw Brooke after you disappeared on me. She was walking her dog.”
“We have all of three days to stop the Alignment,” Serena said, frustrated. “Did you find the globe?”
“No, but I know where it is.”
She started walking briskly away from the armillary, where they might be seen if they stood together too long. “You told me the globe was in the cornerstone of the Capitol.”
“It was,” he said, guiding them down a cobblestone walkway called “Lovers Lane” to the ravines of Rock Creek Park. “The Masons moved it for safekeeping.”
“But it was already safe in the cornerstone, right?”
“Not after the British burned the Capitol down to its foundations during the War of 1812. I think the Masons felt they had to move it before the Alignment got to it. At least that’s my guess.”
“Your guess?” she repeated, unable to disguise her dismay. “And where do you guess the Masons moved it?”
“Under the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress.”
Serena shook her head. “That site was never in L’Enfant’s original plans for the city.”
“No, but the cosmic radiant cuts right through the Capitol dome to the Library’s Great Hall.”
Serena had heard enough. Time was running out and they had nothing. “You and your blasted radi
ant, Conrad! We could follow it around the world a dozen times and still never find the globe.”
“But the Masons knew that,” he said, and stopped them in their tracks near a stream that she assumed was the eponymous Rock Creek. “They knew they were ‘going off the grid,’ so to speak. So they left clues for Stargazer in the form of zodiacs.”
“Zodiacs?”
“The Jefferson Building is a hive of them,” he said. “Scholars have counted seven zodiacs, but the docents have counted eleven. I counted fifteen.”
Serena stared at him. “Wait a minute. When did you count the zodiacs?”
“This afternoon.”
She nearly screamed. “I’m out of my bloody mind wondering if you’re alive, and you’re loitering around the Jefferson Building after breaking into the U.S. Capitol across the street?”
“Calm down,” he said, looking around and taking her by the arm. “I was already there, so I took advantage of the opportunity.”
Serena angrily twisted her arm out of his grip. “Well, if you found the accommodations so comfortable, why didn’t you just spend the night?”
“I thought of it. But I couldn’t crack the zodiacs. Then I saw the central arch to the east of the main zodiac in the Great Hall. The top of the arch is inscribed with the names of those responsible for the construction of the Library, starting with Brigadier General Thomas Lincoln Casey.”
Serena huffed. “And Casey is important because?”
“He was a Mason like Washington and L’Enfant,” Conrad said. “He not only supervised the completion of the Washington Monument, but he also built the Library of Congress from the ground up.”
They were deep in the ravines of the park now, and Serena was wondering where Conrad was leading them.
“So you believe that Casey and the Masons built the entire Library of Congress as some kind of cosmological citadel to protect the celestial globe?”
“I do.”
“It’s a nice theory, Conrad, but we need hard evidence to link Casey to the last known resting place of the globe. You said it was the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol.”
“It was,” he said. “And after the British destroyed the original north wing of the Capitol in 1814, it was Casey who wrote up the damage report for the Architect of the Capitol at the time, then Benjamin Henry Latrobe.”
Serena knew the name of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. He had designed America’s first cathedral in Baltimore for Archbishop John Carroll with input from Thomas Jefferson. Suddenly Conrad didn’t seem so crazy.
“So that’s when you think Casey and the Masons removed the globe from the ruins of the Capitol.”
“Exactly.”
“You were busy at the Library.” She jabbed at the old hardcover book he held—Elements of Astronomy by Simon Newcomb. “Did you check out that book?”
“I’ll bring it back when I break into the Library.”
There wasn’t much Serena could say at that point. There was no going back, and Conrad was determined to go forward. “So who is Simon Newcomb?”
“He was an admiral in the U.S. Navy and probably America’s most brilliant astronomer of the 19th century,” Conrad explained. “And years before Casey became Chief of the Army Corps of Engineers and built the Library of Congress, he was Newcomb’s assistant. Amazing how everything connects, isn’t it?”
“So you think by reading Newcomb’s popular astronomy guide you’ll tap the minds of the people who built the Library of Congress.”
“That’s the idea” he said. “Once D.C. started deviating from the original L’Enfant plan, the Masons had to find a way of communicating outside the hard landscape of astronomical alignments. So they resorted to symbols in the form of zodiacs. If I can reconcile the zodiacs with the Library’s extensive renovation plans on file, I bet I can find a sealed-off access tunnel somewhere that will lead us to the globe.”
Conrad paused to scope out the surrounding woodlands. Convinced they were not being watched, he stepped into some nearby brush. “Follow me.”
Serena followed him through the dense foliage, her hands up to keep the branches from her face, wondering what he wanted to show her. They were off any beaten trail now. Conrad stopped a couple of minutes later in front of a small cliff in the ravines, and parted a curtain of vines to reveal the mouth of a cave.
“I used to hide out here as a kid,” he told her. “There’s an old Indian well in the back. The cave collapsed at least a hundred years ago, so my dad and I used to come out here and dig it out, bit by bit. Every spring we’d plant shrubs to cover any trace of the path.”
Serena nodded. She wasn’t even sure if she could ever find it again herself if she had to. But this cave was certainly a better safe house for Tom Sawyer here than the penthouse, which was surely under surveillance now.
She said, “Tomorrow night I’m at the Hilton for the annual media dinner and then the Presidential Prayer Breakfast the following morning. The day after that is the Fourth of July.”
“I get it, game over,” Conrad said. “I’m going to have to hit the Library of Congress tomorrow night at the latest if we’re going to have any chance of nabbing the globe and making any kind of sense of it to stop the Alignment.”
“Stop them from what, Conrad?” she pressed. “If we know what they’re going to do, then maybe we don’t need the globe.”
“Oh, we need the globe,” Conrad assured her. “And I’m guessing the Alignment is going to do what it failed to do in 1783.”
“Stage a coup?” Serena asked. “American citizens would never sit still for it.”
Conrad shrugged. “What if it’s a coup and nobody knows it?”
Serena grew very quiet.
“Astrological symbols are quite different than astronomical alignments,” she said softly. “They’re open to all sorts of interpretations, not the clean lines and calculations you’re used to. Admiral Newcomb may not shed enough light for you to find the globe.”
“That’s OK,” Conrad said. “I know an old Mason who can help us.”
“A Mason?” Although Serena knew that most Masons were constructive “builders” of structures and people, their secret society had been corrupted by the Knights Templar, warriors, to say the least. Worse, it now seemed clear that the Alignment itself had infiltrated and controlled the Masons at one strategic point during the American Revolution. Who knew how many of their lieutenants and informants they had left behind in the brotherhood? “Can you trust this Mason?”
“My father did.”
“Like I said, can you trust him?”
“Serena, I can’t even completely trust you. But our options are limited at this point. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”
Serena looked at Conrad, still stung by his comment about her being untrustworthy, though of course she was, wasn’t she? “How are you going to find out?”
“I know someone who might know. I’ll contact him at his office at 5 a.m.”
“Your friend’s in the office at 5 a.m.?”
“Yep.”
“What are you going to do until then?”
“Camp out here,” he said, looking into the cave. “You want to spend the night with me in the catacombs?”
Little did Conrad know, she thought, but she would like nothing more in this life than to hide out with him in a cave and never come out. And if God and people and the world around them didn’t mean so much to her, she would.
“Tempting,” she said. “But at this point it’s best for both of us if I’m seen out and about and far away from you. If I can break away to join you and this Mason tomorrow, I will. But I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
He gave her a funny look. “You said the same thing at Lake Titicaca.”
Conrad was referring to when they first met years earlier in the Andes, and as she looked around these wild ravines she felt the same sense of mystery and foreboding.
“Well, you better have these.” She removed her backpack and gave him a toothbrush, lightwei
ght trench coat, and a change of clothing.
Conrad studied the underwear. “You know I prefer briefs.”
“Please watch yourself, Conrad,” she begged him. “This isn’t some boy’s adventure. Those are real bullets they’re firing at you.”
It was getting dark in the ravines now, and Serena turned to leave while she could still find her way out. As she began to weave between the twisted branches, she thought she heard Conrad whisper something. By the time she looked over her shoulder, he had disappeared into the darkness.
20
LATER THAT NIGHT Max Seavers stood naked in the bedroom of his Georgetown house and looked at himself in the mirror. There was much to admire—his golden hair, sapphire eyes, aquiline nose, and strong chin, not to mention his rock-hard six-pack abs. This was not the face of a monster. Moreover, it was what one couldn’t see in a mirror—his towering intellect, his genius—that was intrinsically noble.
Soon, he thought, everybody will see it.
He heard the shower in the bathroom turn off. He walked across the plush carpet to his bed, slipped under the sheets and waited for her. As he did, he mulled over the SecDef’s directive about finding this thing that Washington had buried and marveled at the absurdity of it all.
For it was in another country, in another time, that his own great-grandfather was asked to help run an organization quite similar to DARPA and to pursue similarly bizarre research for his boss, Adolf Hitler.
Before and during the Second World War, Hitler had German scientists and archaeologists roaming the earth for evidence of the biological superiority of the Aryan race. Few were hard-core Nazis, but fewer still were about to spurn the overtures of the Führer and his ax man Heinrich Himmler, who in exchange for keeping them out of concentration camps offered these academics the kind of funding and resources no university could match.
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