A wrought iron gate blocked the bottom of the stairs. Conrad kicked the gate open. It was the only damn thing that had opened as planned so far.
There before him was a long sloping tunnel with a dirt floor. He broke out his flashlight and started sprinting, catching his sprained foot on a tree root and falling face down into the dirt. He picked himself up and started running. Suddenly it dawned on him that the topography beneath his feet was that of George Washington’s time.
Despite the nonsense of this hill’s alleged supernatural origin, Conrad sensed the logic of everything as he neared the end of the tunnel. As the city grew bigger, monument by monument, the entire American republic had been built upon Washington’s dream.
As he reached the bottom of the hill and the end of the tunnel, he was drenched in sweat, barely able to breathe. The path he had followed, illuminated a dozen feet at a time with the beam of his flashlight, came to an abrupt halt at a wall. There was a small marker with a symbol—the constellation of Virgo—and an iron gate, beyond which lay the vault.
Conrad stared at the star pattern for Virgo on the wall. He had seen one like this only once before in his life, at the bottom of the earth in Antarctica.
“The Beautiful Virgin,” he said aloud, and then heard himself laugh as he remembered old Herc. For all their genius, America’s founding fathers had peculiar fantasies. He slapped another Primasheet patch with a five-second timer on the gate and blew the vault open.
Dust filled the tunnel, forcing Conrad back. Suddenly he heard another explosion from behind and realized that security forces had set off his flash explosive. They were entering the tunnel. Conrad took a deep breath, choking on the dust, and ran headlong through the cloud and into the vault.
The vault was a large bunker similar to those beneath the Pentagon, dominated by a big stone table with an old model of the city on it. He recognized the White House and U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. But to the south was an enormous, never-built pyramid.
It’s a monument to America itself, Conrad realized. Roman numeral markings at the foundation of the pyramid struck him as odd at first glance.
But he had little time for closer inspection. At any moment security forces would be entering the tunnel outside.
A few feet beyond the table was what he was looking for: a golden celestial globe, like something out of Dutch master cartographer Wilhem Bleau’s studio in the sixteenth century.
This was the original globe that Washington kept in his study at Mount Vernon for years before it disappeared, Conrad knew instantly. Not the inferior papier-maché replacement from London that Washington later commissioned as America’s first president and which now stood on display in the estate’s museum.
Or at least Conrad prayed to God it was the real deal.
Conrad dropped to his knees and felt the smooth contours and constellations of the globe, marveling at its three-dimensional, holographic look. The artifact itself would fetch a small fortune at auction.
The corner of his eye caught a glint of metal on the table beside the globe. He looked over and saw a silver plate—the silver plate made and engraved by Caleb Bently, a Quaker silversmith, upon which the U.S. Capitol’s cornerstone was set.
That’s why the U.S. Geological Survey could never find the cornerstone with metal detectors. The Masons had taken the plate when they moved the globe.
He read the engraving on the silver plate:
This South East corner Stone of the Capitol of the United States of America in the City of Washington, was laid on the 18th day of September 1793, in the thirteenth year of American Independence, in the first year of the second term of the Presidency of George Washington, whose virtues in the civil administration of his country have been as conspicuous and beneficial, as his Military valor and prudence have been useful in establishing her liberties, and in the year of Masonry 5793, by the Grand Lodge of Maryland, several lodges under its jurisdiction, and Lodge No. 22, from Alexandria, Virginia.
THOMAS JOHNSON,
DAVID STUART,
Commissioners
DANIEL CARROLL,
JOSEPH CLARK, R.W.G.M.—P.T.
JAMES HOBAN,
STEPHEN HALLET
Architects
COLLEN WILLIAMSON,
M. Mason
Conrad’s hands began to shake as he slipped the silver plate into his coat pocket and looked at the globe.
The fate of the world is in your hands, he marveled, recalling Washington’s words. Let’s see what the world has to offer me.
He ran his finger along the 40th longitude of the globe, feeling for a seam. When he found it, he traced it to a spring-loaded latch. He pulled the latch and stared in amazement as the globe split open.
PART THREE
July 3
31
CONRAD RAN OUT OF THE VAULT at the same time two red laser beams shot through the dust at the end of the tunnel and federal agents in night goggles poured in. The agents started firing as soon as they spotted Conrad. The sound of the shots in the ancient tunnel was muffled, but Conrad felt the force of bullets whiz past his ear and plow into the wall behind him. He hurled a flash puck down the tunnel. It exploded with a bright light, blinding the agents temporarily and buying him a moment to escape.
Conrad ducked back inside the vault and searched for a second, secret exit. The Masons usually had one somewhere. He found it behind a wall-sized tracing board depicting the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple with two giant pillars on either side. The rich gold hue gave it the look of a Byzantine icon, and it was very heavy. Conrad needed to give it a good hard shove with his whole body to slide it even two feet across the floor. But when he did, an opening in the wall behind the board revealed a small spiral staircase.
This picture of the Temple portal was itself a portal.
The smell was rank as Conrad ran up the spiral staircase and into a sewer tunnel. He was a hundred yards down, sloshing through God knows what, when he found a stairwell to street level. A moment later he burst out a metal door and found himself not in some alley between a couple of federal buildings like he had hoped, but inside a small book bay in the Main Reading Room of the Jefferson Building.
Damn.
He could feel his heart pounding in the silence of the cathedral-like room. Father Time and his clock said it was a quarter past midnight. The life-size statues of history’s greatest thinkers looked down on him from near the top of the dome. The room was empty. Not even a lone Library or Congressional staffer was around here this time of night. Security cameras would catch him the second he stepped out from the alcove and into the open.
His only choice was to turn left and run along the stacks of books through the exit to the yellow corridor which led back to the researchers’ entrance. Overhead he noticed what looked like a large metal duct running along the ceiling of the corridor. It was the conveyor belt that distributed books throughout the Library and U.S. Capitol complex.
He followed the beltway to two metal doors, which automatically slid open to reveal a large processing room. Large bins of books surrounded a conveyor belt on which blue bins carried books to an elevator-like chute. They were too small to carry a person. There was no escape.
He pulled out the parchment he had taken from inside the celestial globe and gazed at it. On one side was a strange sort of celestial chart or star map. The other side was blank save for a signature at the bottom—President George Washington.
He stared at it intently to burn it into his memory. Then he folded it several times over and removed a book from a bin—Obelisks, of all things. He carefully inserted the star map into the spine of the book and placed it back in a blue bin. Glancing at the code key sticker on the wall, he tapped a four-digit code into the chute’s keypad and sent the book on its way to join the millions of others in the Library of Congress, the world’s largest.
As he watched it disappear he heard the doors slide open from behind and turned to see Larry the security guard stagger in,
gun waving at him.
“Hands up where I can see them, Professor Yeats.” His voice broke above the low hum of the processing equipment.
“Larry,” Conrad said, slowly raising his arms. “This isn’t how it looks.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But it looks pretty bad. You can’t just go around stealing books.”
“Larry, it’s not a book. It’s something very different.”
The doors opened again and Max Seavers stormed in with a gun pointed at him.
“Excellent job, officer.”
Larry nodded, his eyes on Conrad. Then Conrad watched in horror as Seavers turned his gun to the security guard and shot him in the head.
“Larry!” Conrad shouted, but the bullet had already blown splinters of skull fragments and brain against the machinery. Stunned, Conrad watched the security guard crumple to the floor.
Seavers bent down and picked up Larry’s gun. “So you found the globe, Yeats.”
Conrad put this reference to the globe together with the brazen slaying he just witnessed and instantly knew that Max Seavers was not acting on behalf of the United States but the Alignment. And Seavers knew he knew.
“Yeah, it’s in front of the Cartography Room,” he said, referring to a public display globe in the basement of the Library’s Madison Building. “I can show you if you want.”
“Your file said you were a cool one in a tight spot,” Seavers said with a hint of admiration. “There might even be a place for you in our organization if you hand over whatever you found inside.”
“Oh, so they didn’t tell you? I bet the Alignment’s having second thoughts about you already. What happens to you when you can’t deliver what I stole?”
That seemed to touch a nerve. Seavers pointed Larry’s gun at him. “I’m thinking this poor son of a bitch you killed got a lucky shot off as he went down and hit you in the heart.”
“Really? Because I’m thinking I have a better chance of walking out of here alive with what I know than you do with what you don’t. And all your billions won’t save you.”
“No, but maybe this will,” said Seavers as he extended his gun to Conrad’s chest and fired.
The bullet pushed Conrad back against the conveyor belt, knocking two blue bins to the floor. He slid down, breathing hard as Seavers marched over.
Conrad lay there, the world spinning around. Then he felt Seavers’s hands patting him down. He opened his eyes a crack to see Seavers remove the silver cornerstone plate from Conrad’s inside coat pocket.
As Seavers stared at it in wonder, a small piece of metal fell from it into his hand. Seavers studied it before realizing it was the slug from his gun, and that the silver plate had stopped it cold.
Conrad grabbed Seavers’s balls and squeezed hard. Seavers winced and fell back, then swung Larry’s gun at him.
Conrad slammed Seavers’s hand against the conveyor belt and the gun went off. They wrestled as Conrad tried to pry it loose from Seavers’s grip. Again he slammed the back of Seavers’s hand against the belt. This time the fingers loosened and the gun dropped onto the belt.
Seavers tried to grab it, but Conrad tackled him from behind, driving him into the machinery. Seavers tried to strike back, but seemed to have caught his finger in some gears. With a shout Seavers pulled out his bloody hand, sending a severed finger flying through the air.
The finger landed on the conveyor belt, Seavers helplessly watching it make its way to the inner recesses of the Library.
Conrad grabbed his hair and slammed his head against the conveyor belt. Seavers crashed to the floor, out cold.
Conrad quickly fetched the severed finger from the belt before it disappeared and put it in his pocket. At some point, if he ever survived the night, it might prove useful when the police ran the ballistics on who shot Larry.
He then pried loose the silver cornerstone plate from Seavers’s other hand and stood up and stared at the two bodies on the floor, aware of shouts outside growing louder.
32
WHEN THE U.S. CAPITOL POLICE burst into the processing room on the main level of the Jefferson Building, Sergeant Wanda Randolph found three bodies on the floor: Max Seavers, a security guard with bloody hair matted across his face, and a third man with a bullet hole in his shaved head—obviously the perpetrator who detonated the explosives.
A few minutes later, outside the researchers entrance on 2nd Street, she watched the coroner zip up the corpse of the stranger when Officer Carter, one of her R.A.T.’S., walked up.
“So who is he?” she asked.
“They’re telling me his name is Dr. Conrad Yeats,” Carter reported. “But I couldn’t run the security feeds through the facial recognition software to confirm, because somebody up there pulled them.”
Wanda could feel her blood begin to boil. “Did they make that secret tunnel in the subbasement disappear, too?”
“No, but there’s a detachment of Marines down there now.”
“Marines?”
“Sealed the tunnel off and won’t let us in.”
She looked on as two emergency technicians used backboards to immobilize an unconscious Max Seavers before placing him on a stretcher and securing him in the ambulance for transport to George Washington University Hospital.
“This is our turf, Carter, not theirs.”
“Sure, and you can bring that up with the president next time you lunch with him,” Carter said. “Meanwhile, what do we do?”
The EMTs moved the big stretcher with Seavers to the side and put the folding one with the security guard on the bench seat next to him in the back of the ambulance. An attending paramedic was on hand to check his wound.
“That guard is our only chance of finding out what really happened in the processing room,” she said. “I’ll see what I can get out of him before he goes into surgery. You keep working the DOD detail. They can sweep the tunnel clean but they can’t seal it off forever.”
The ambulance was getting ready to go. The first EMT had gone behind the wheel and the second one was about to close the doors in the back.
Wanda sprinted up before the doors shut and flashed her card from the ERMET. “I’m a certified EMT-2 and need to talk to the security guard if he comes to,” she said to the attending EMT. “What’s his status?”
“Looks like he’s lost a lot of blood, but I couldn’t find the entry wound. I was going to clean him up some more on the way over and start a transfusion.”
“And Dr. Seavers?”
“Lost a finger and consciousness. Possible concussion from a nasty blow to the back of the head.”
“I’ll handle it. You stay in touch with the ER up front with the driver,” she said as the EMT closed the doors on her.
The ambulance shot out down 2nd to Pennsylvania with its lights full on and siren blaring. Wanda, seated on an uncomfortable, foam-padded vinyl seat with one hand on a stainless steel grab handle, looked down at the guard.
He lay on a fold-out stretcher, held with three straps and a white blanket. She adjusted the light blue pillow behind his head.
The guard stirred and she held his hand. His hair was matted with blood.
“He shot me,” he groaned, eyes still closed.
“I know,” she told him. “His name was Conrad Yeats. But you killed him. They just zipped up his body and sent him to the morgue.”
“No, him.”
He lifted his finger and pointed to Max Seavers in the other gurney, who was just beginning to stir with consciousness.
“Max Seavers?”
The guard nodded and seemed to pass out again by the time the ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance on 23rd Street. The ER at George Washington University Hospital, just blocks from downtown D.C.’s monuments and government complexes, was a Level 1 Trauma Center. It was where President Ronald Reagan was rushed after being shot in 1981, the year Wanda was born, and it was where she herself had been sent on more than one occasion for smoke inhalation and suspected carbon monoxide poisoning from th
e subterranean tunnels she frequently explored beneath the city.
A reception team was waiting to transfer the guard and Seavers to the ER. The security guard was carried in first while Wanda helped the hospital paramedics roll a moaning Max Seavers into the ER.
Seavers seemed to be regaining strength quickly, and Wanda bent her ear to listen to what he was trying to say. Then she noticed his bloody finger stump pointing to the empty gurney inside the ER.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “The guard made it out alive, too. Probably in surgery already.”
Seavers’s eyes widened and he bolted upright, startling her and the attending ER technician. He angrily pulled the IV drip out of his forearm and looked around.
“You stupid bitch,” he said to her, his eyes on fire. “That was Yeats in the ambulance. He pulled a switch!”
She ran out of the ER and saw a discarded, bloody uniform stuffed into a trash bin. The security guard from the Library of Congress was gone.
33
HILTON HOTEL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
CONRAD, NOW WEARING a white dress shirt and raincoat stolen from a doctor’s locker back at GWU Hospital, got out of the cab at Dupont Circle. He walked several blocks in the drizzling rain up Connecticut toward the Hilton, which even at 1 a.m. was swarming with cabs, limos, and security as visitors from around the world were checking in for the next morning’s Presidential Prayer Breakfast.
The way it was supposed to work, Conrad would walk into the lobby, ride the elevator to the tenth floor and go to room 1013, where Serena had already seen to it that he was checked in under an alias, Mr. Carlton Anderson. Then he was to call room service using the room phone and order a pastrami sandwich. Some mole on the staff under her control would then let her know that he had arrived safely and she would come to his room and see what he found in the globe and plot the best way to get it to the president at the prayer breakfast.
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