She looked at the sea of faces in the room, many of them familiar talking heads on TV who would have plenty to talk about if they only knew the truth.
“Sometimes I wonder if my evangelical friends in America have forgotten this. Are we people of faith in the halls of power? Or are we people who have faith in the halls of power? It’s an important distinction. One leads to an open, diverse society. The other leads to something like we have in Russia today, where the former KGB spy agency has effectively taken over the government. One begins to wonder if something like that could even happen here.”
She was thinking of the Alignment and the average American citizen. The Romans had bread and circuses. The Americans had TV and the Super Bowl. The members of the “chattering class” represented in this room were part of this Great American Conspiracy. But they also reported on it and thus shaped it. Which is why she had accepted this invitation in the first place.
“All of this underscores the primary role the Fourth Estate or free press performs in a democratic society, for it is you who inform the electorate and help us make sense of our world so that we, the people, can decide the fate of nations, not the other way around.”
It was over soon enough and she was standing before a line of appreciative journalists. And then Brooke Scarborough walked up.
Serena hadn’t seen her until now in the room, and never in person. She was much…taller than she expected, with very big hands that now clasped her own.
“Sister Serghetti,” Brooke said. “I think we have a mutual friend who is in trouble.”
Serena feigned ignorance, but knew from Brooke’s eyes that each woman completely understood the other.
“You’d tell me if you’ve seen Conrad, wouldn’t you?” Brooke pressed.
“Ms. Scarborough, I had assumed that you would be the first person Dr. Yeats would go to if he were in trouble. Are you no longer together?”
It was Brooke who feigned ignorance now, as she was forced to move off and let the person behind her say hello to “Mother Earth,” but even out of sight Serena could feel Brooke’s eyes watching her every move.
26
JEFFERSON BUILDING
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CONRAD LISTENED TO THE SOFT STRAINS of Mozart on his iPhone’s earbuds as he walked along Constitution Avenue in the rain. The dome of the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress gleamed proudly under dark skies tonight, its grandeur almost eclipsing that of the U.S. Capitol across the street. It was already a few minutes past midnight, which meant it was already July 3, and meant he was running out of time. He turned up the collar of his trench coat and walked into the researchers entrance.
The guard on duty looked up from his station and immediately recognized Conrad from all his previous, legitimate visits to the Library over the years. Conrad’s heart sank. Good ol’ Larry was shaking his shaved head, whistling the spooky theme song to Conrad’s old reality series Ancient Riddles of the Universe, which could be seen only in syndicated reruns on late-night TV and which said everything Conrad needed to know about Larry’s social life.
“The Library closed to the public at 5:30 p.m. and to researchers at 9:30 p.m., Dr. Yeats. Only congressmen or their staff allowed now. You know the rules.”
“Still a little wet behind the ears, Larry, as you can see.” He wiped his wet hair back and put on a smile, his gut churning at the thought that Larry might get hurt.
“If you’d just stick to the tunnels connecting all the buildings here, Dr. Yeats, you’d stay nice and dry on a night like this.” Larry, unable to resist, had to repeat the show’s tag line. “After all, ‘the truth is DOWN there.’”
“You know I’m claustrophobic, Larry. Besides, I needed some fresh air.”
“What you need is to get yourself a date,” Larry said. “Say, whatever happened to that blonde Nazi babe from Fox News Channel? She didn’t like your salute?”
“My salute’s just fine, Larry. It seems I have trouble following orders.”
Larry chuckled, but Conrad could tell he was disappointed. The guard’s head was filled with images of Conrad in Egyptian pyramids and Mayan temples, with beautiful graduate “researchers” assisting him on his digs—when they weren’t working auto shows. What on earth was an astro-archaeologist like Dr. Conrad Yeats, “the world’s foremost authority on megalithic architecture and the astronomical alignments of Earth’s oldest monuments,” doing roaming the musty hallways of Washington, D.C.?
Conrad emptied his pockets of his wallet and keychain and made a face.
“Let me guess,” Larry said. “You forget your user card again?”
Conrad nodded. In truth he had a bogus ID card with another name, which he obviously couldn’t use now. And even if he had his own ID, Larry wouldn’t be able to swipe it without all sorts of “apprehend and detain” directives popping up on his screen.
“I won’t be long in the stacks,” Conrad promised, looking at his watch. “Just give me twelve minutes.”
Larry looked doubtful as he handed him a clipboard. “Just give me your John Hancock and ID number.”
Conrad scribbled a signature, put down a bogus six-digit number and hoped that Larry would manually key it in later.
Larry took the clipboard without a glance. “Come on through.”
Conrad turned up the volume of his iPhone and approached the multisensor detection gate. Serena had told him this particular piece of music would throw off the new brainwave scanners the feds had installed around the Mall. As he passed through the gate, he watched Larry study the thermal-like images on the bank of monitors. It was the curious monitor at the end Conrad kept an eye on, which could detect what the feds called “hostile brainwave patterns.” The colors changed, and Conrad could see that Larry saw it, too. But Larry’s voice betrayed nothing, and his hand hadn’t reached for the silent alarm yet.
“Your iPhone, Dr. Yeats.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Conrad removed his earbuds and handed the iPhone to Larry. “You want the fedora and bullwhip, too?”
“Hee, hee.”
Larry passed the phone through the detector, but Conrad only motioned to pick it up along with his wallet and keychain.
“You have yourself a good evening, Dr. Yeats. Don’t go reading so many old books you scare yourself shitless.”
“Too late,” Conrad said as he walked away.
“Hey, Dr. Yeats,” Larry called after him. “You forgot your—”
Conrad turned, pressed the remote on his keychain and heard the crack of the iPhone explode behind him. Larry started coughing, and Conrad waited for the invisible knockout gas to work. But it didn’t. Larry staggered a bit, down but not out. He was reaching for his radio to call for help.
Damn sufentanyl, Conrad thought. So much of its effect depended on the biology of the individual.
Holding his breath, Conrad marched over to Larry and gave him a good, sharp chop to the back of the neck, knocking him out the old-fashioned way.
“Sorry, Larry.”
Conrad removed Larry’s radio transceiver along with his iPhone and earbuds and walked away. He looked at his watch as he entered a low hallway with yellow walls and white trim. Larry would be up in a few minutes if he wasn’t discovered sooner.
Conrad’s twelve minutes had just been cut in half.
27
JONES POINT PARK
VIRGINIA
ACROSS THE POTOMAC at Jones Point near Alexandria, Max Seavers looked over schematics at his makeshift command post inside the old lighthouse while the special warfare dive team searched the seawall below for the original foundation stone.
According to the crippled vet they broke under torture, the Masons had moved Washington’s globe from the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol to an even more auspicious location “back in time”: the very first boundary stone that Washington laid for the Federal District itself.
Seavers’s own research confirmed that it was Daniel Carroll, the man who sold Washington Capitol Hill, who
laid the stone here with Washington and an old black astronomer named Benjamin Banneker.
Today Jones Point is a big municipal park under the shadow of a giant bridge. For several years the bridge had proved to be a security headache for the feds, but it also proved to be a perfect cover for Seavers and his special ops team of Marines.
They were part of an elite 86-man unit known as Detachment One, oriented toward amphibious raids, at night, under limited visibility. “Extreme circumstances” were their theater of war, and they were trained and equipped to carry out special missions including embassy evacuations, airfield seizures, underwater demolitions, and down-pilot rescues within six hours of notice.
Normally, they fell under Naval Special Warfare Squadron One, which operated out of the U.S. Special Operations Command.
Now they were under his command.
The lighthouse door opened and a Marine stepped inside from the rain, which was picking up now.
“The dive team found the foundation stone, sir. It’s embedded in the seawall.”
“Bring it up,” Seavers ordered.
28
CONRAD PASSED UNDER A THICK ARCH and entered the Great Hall. He felt a tight knot in his stomach as he stepped onto the huge zodiac embedded in the marble floor and faced east toward the Commemorative Arch leading back to the former entrance to the Main Reading Room. He was acutely aware of the six security cameras, two visible and four hidden, all watching him. But what he was looking for was invisible and in a moment he would be, too.
Conrad looked back over his shoulder, due west, toward the library’s main entrance. Were it open, he would see the gleaming dome of the U.S. Capitol. And were it visible to the naked eye, he would see a radiant from the center of that dome pass through the zodiac on which he was standing, cutting through the signs of Pisces and Virgo and projecting to a point beyond the arcade at the east side of the Great Hall.
Conrad followed the radiant under the archway to the other side. The air smelled like bubble gum—the peculiar odor of the antiseptics they used to scrub the floor. To his right and left were two working antique elevators used by the Library staff. Above each elevator was a mural by the American Symbolist painter Elihu Vedder, one depicting the effects of good government and the other the effects of bad government.
The message was clear: America faced two possible and diametrically opposite fates.
The fresco above the staff elevator to the right showed America in all her glory, with full leaves in bloom and fruit in season—a land flowing with milk and honey. The fresco over the service elevator to his left depicted a barren America, bare trees, and a bomb with a lit fuse under the rubble of overturned marble and monuments.
Conrad considered the two opposing fates.
He walked to the staff elevator beneath America the beautiful and pressed a black button. The doors opened to reveal an ornate cage with a marble tile floor, brass bars, and glass. Conrad stepped inside and looked at the column of five buttons: 2nd Floor, 1st Floor, Ground, Basement, Cellar. He glimpsed the horror of America the damned before the doors closed and the elevator began its descent.
When the elevator doors opened again in the musty cellar of the Library, Conrad could see the staff elevator on the opposite side of the gray linoleum floor, just a few yards away. He was about to step out when he heard something down the corridor, out of his field of vision. He stayed in the car and pulled out a telescoping rod with a mirror, carefully sticking it out of the elevator at floor level. The mirror showed another security guard coming his way, probably to use the elevator.
Conrad retreated to the back of the elevator and took out the radio he lifted from Larry at the researcher’s entrance. He pressed the Channel 6 button and waited.
There was a crackle down the hall. The sound of approaching footsteps stopped. A voice said, “Kramer here.”
Conrad kept the talk button pressed, to avoid the guard hearing his own voice coming out of the speaker. Conrad said in a soft voice, “Central Security. A sensor in the Asian Reading Room is acting up again. Need a visual check.”
“Copy,” Kramer said, backtracking in the opposite direction.
Conrad waited for the steps to die away before he crossed the cellar floor to the staff elevator on the opposite side and pried its doors open. He stuck his head into the shaft and looked up to see the bottom of the staff elevator stopped at the basement level overhead. Then he looked down and could see the bottom of the shaft six feet below. Feeling the doors pressing him on both sides, he jumped.
He landed on an iron grate embedded in the floor, heard a painful pop and immediately dropped to his knees. For a second he could have sworn he blew his Achilles tendon. But it was only an ankle sprain. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn’t slow him down.
He heaved on the grate with his fingers. The heavy iron bulkhead lifted an inch or two, revealing a narrow crawl space and steep well that dropped into nothingness. He slid the grate with a heavy scrape across the floor. He wanted to avoid severing a finger as he lowered it. But in doing so, he dropped it the last quarter inch and it fell with a deafening thud. He froze. Had any of the audio sensors in the floor above picked up the sound? He closed his eyes and waited for a few seconds. His pulse thundered in his ears. Nothing.
He opened his eyes and looked down into the well. He then heard a hum and looked up to see the elevator coming down on top of him. He quickly jumped into the crawl space.
He waited in the darkness until the elevator started back up. Then he reached up and with a strong tug pulled the grating shut. At one time the staff elevator could descend to this subcellar level. But years later the Architect of the Capitol decided it was an error, that the shaft was in fact unfinished and abandoned by Casey, so the Army Corps of Engineers ordered modifications that raised the floor. When the Library was closed for a 12-year renovation in the 1980s and 1990s for its centennial, the hollow was used only to house a modernized electrical power plant.
Conrad looked around, the light from the shaft overhead dimly illuminating his makeshift command center. His pocket sonar had confirmed a tunnel on the opposite side of the north wall of the well.
He could barely contain his excitement as he unrolled the Primasheet explosive from the lining of his jacket and stuck it on the wall. He then attached the wafer-thin cardboard backing and popped in the remote fuse.
He had honed his skills in demolition over the years through numerous illegal explorations of Egyptian and Mayan pyramids. But this was no Third World dust bin. This was the Library of Congress of the United States of America. And he was about to detonate an explosive device on American soil, in a sacred national institution, no less.
If he properly attached the Primasheet, the explosion would blow in one direction—into the tunnel on the other side of the wall. That was the beauty of it—you could shape, direct, even stand next to it with only a piece of cardboard in between. If you did it right.
If he was wrong, Conrad could burn the place down and himself with it. Actually, even if he was right, he could still die in a matter of minutes. But at least he would know why.
He stepped behind another wall, which his radar had proved rock solid, and looked at the remote detonator in his hand—his cell phone. He then made the sign of the cross, did a Hail Mary, and pressed speed dial button No. 2.
29
THE RAIN WAS DRIVING DOWN HARD at Jones Point as Seavers watched the crane plop the dripping foundation stone onto the ground. He marched over while the Detachment One divers shone lights on the sides and he examined the markings.
“This is it. Drill it.”
The demolitions diver came over with a drill and started boring a core sample. But a minute later he shook his head.
“It’s solid, sir. There’s nothing inside.”
Seavers felt the frustration rising inside him. “Then split it open.”
The divers looked at each other, as if some higher permission was necessary to open the original foundation stone
for the Capitol of the United States of America.
“Split the goddamn rock!” Seavers shouted.
The diver hit the drill and made four holes before he took a special pick and gave one big whack. Seavers heard the clink of the metal to stone, heard the crack spiderweb across the surface and watched as the stone crumpled open into solid chunks.
He could only stare as the wind and rain whipped off the Potomac.
The Mason lied! That goddamn cripple!
Just then his cell phone rang. It was his office. This was an official alert. The voice on the other end said, “Something’s going down at the Library of Congress, sir.”
Conrad Yeats!
Seavers shouted into the phone: “Seal the whole frickin’ Library, I don’t care if you have to kill all the Capitol Police to do it. Nobody gets out. Nobody. I’m on my way.”
30
THE BLAST HAD BLOWN Conrad back against the wall and the grating up the elevator shaft. The grating struck the bottom of the elevator car on the floor above, creating a series of sparks that set off a dozen different fire alarms and the sprinkler system. Then it came back down toward the well. Conrad crouched for cover as the grating landed with a deafening crash. He put his hands to his ringing ears and choked on particle-filled air.
When the dust settled, he could hear alarms blare overhead and his radio squawking like a duck. Every sector was rushing to the shaft. He stood up and, stepping through the debris, peered anxiously into the swirling dust through his goggles to see stone steps declining steeply into the earth.
He left behind another gas explosive with a sensor to slow his pursuers and started down the steps. The air coming up from the bottom of the passageway was cool and dank. Conrad felt a chill. The end of the stairs loomed abruptly from out of the shadows.
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