Conrad was now clinging by his shot arm to a metal lightning rod that ran along the masonry wall, which was lined with tiny cracks.
He looked up at a square of starlight. Somehow Seavers had popped open the aluminum capstone at the top in order to release the aerosol form of the bird flu into the air. The square aperture framed the constellation Virgo, its alpha star Spica directly overhead, shimmering between bursts of fireworks and smoke.
The alignment, he thought. It’s happening right now. Seavers is actually going to release his global plague at the exact moment the Washington Monument locks with Virgo.
Conrad climbed up the lightning rod toward Seavers, who was trying to raise the canister through the opening, but the base of the capstone was too small.
“Don’t do it, Seavers!” Conrad shouted. “Think of all the people.”
“This isn’t a democracy, Yeats,” Seavers shouted as he tried to force the aerosol canister through the aperture. “Your vote doesn’t count. It never did. This is a republic. It was built to be run by elite overlords.”
“Like the Alignment?” Conrad reached behind his back and pulled out the Masonic dagger that Seavers had lifted from old Herc before he killed him.
“Do you want to know why George Washington and the Founding Fathers wanted a representative government? Because they were the representatives!” Seavers shouted, finally forcing the canister through the aperture and lifting his finger to push the button. “They’re the real Alignment. I’m the cure.”
“Got a cure for this?” Conrad said, and hurled the dagger across the air into Seavers’s neck.
Seavers screamed and released his grip on the canister, which clanked down the pyramidion and disappeared into the darkness. Seavers himself began to lose his balance as he pulled the dagger from his neck and stared in fascination at the blade’s Masonic markings coated with his own blood.
“Von Berg,” he wheezed, gurgling up blood.
“What?” Conrad demanded. “Who?”
But Seavers’s eyes rolled back into his head, his unconscious body wavering for a few seconds before it fell fifty feet to the observation deck below, killing him instantly.
Conrad reached up to the aluminum capstone, popped on its side like a hinge. It had been set atop the monument by Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, the same Mason responsible for the construction of the Library of Congress.
So close was Conrad that he could read the Latin letters engraved across the east face of the capstone, by design visible only to the heavens:
LAUS DEO
In Praise of God, Conrad repeated in English, and pulled it shut.
He climbed down the ladder and dropped down onto the floor of the observation deck. He leaned over Seavers’s corpse and saw the twisted smile on his face. He then reached inside Seavers’s jacket, removed the Newburgh Treaty, and pocketed it. He was about to pick up the canister of lethal virus when the thunder of boots rumbled up the stairwell and Sergeant Randolph in her flak jacket reached the observation deck.
“Drop the gun!” she shouted. “Hands in the air!”
Behind her popped up two more CPs with M-4s. A dozen more NPS officers clambered up behind them and surrounded him.
Conrad slowly laid the Glock on the floor and put his hands up. His left shoulder blazed with pain.
Sergeant Randolph kicked the gun away.
“Dang, Yeats,” she said. “You killed Max Seavers.”
“Before he was about to kill millions. That’s a canister of bird flu on the floor. He was about to release it over the Mall. You’re going to need a Haz-Mat team.”
“You’re going to need a doctor,” she said, looking at his blood-soaked shoulder.
Conrad shook his head. “No time,” he said. “Serena. You’ve got to get me back to her.”
“Sister Serghetti?” Sergeant Randolph said. “Don’t tell me you dragged her into this, too?”
Minutes later, while fireworks and cannons exploded over the Mall, Conrad and Randolph’s R.A.T.S. burst into the secret underground laboratories beneath L’Enfant Plaza and found the Alignment boardroom empty.
Serena was gone.
And so was the terrestrial globe.
The shock of her betrayal stabbed Conrad like a dagger through the heart.
51
THE WHITE HOUSE
JULY 5, 2008
IT WAS JUST BEFORE NINE the following evening when Conrad, his arm in a sling, was admitted in the Oval Office. The president was sitting on a sofa, sipping some Scotch, staring into the empty fireplace as a gentle rain drummed the windows behind him. To the right of the fireplace stood the celestial globe.
“You have the Newburgh Treaty, Dr. Yeats?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Conrad sat down on the opposite sofa, eyes fixed on the globe, thinking of Serena, and wondering where she had gone. Above the fireplace mantel was a portrait of George Washington. Conrad almost felt like Washington was studying him as closely as the current president was. He wondered if the president knew that the East Wing of the White House was designed by architect I.M. Pei as a triangle to mirror the federal triangle, based on the slope of Pennsylvania Avenue as it intersects with Constitution Avenue and 16th Street. But now was not the time to bring it up.
“I suppose the other globe is safe inside the Vatican by now,” the president said. “Somewhere even we can’t touch it. But these globes are meant to go together.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that, Mr. President,” Conrad said. “Sister Serghetti has already seen the signatures on the Treaty. The damage is done. I think we could make an exchange: the Treaty for the terrestrial globe.”
The president looked him in the eye. “How about the Treaty for your freedom, Yeats, so I don’t throw you in military lockup?”
Conrad handed it over.
The president calmly unfolded it and then pulled out a pair of reading glasses. For a crazy second Conrad wondered if the president would repeat Washington’s famous line from Newburgh:
“Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”
But the president simply looked over the Newburgh Treaty once, and then again. Finally, he sat back and stared at Conrad over his reading glasses. “Some of the signatures on this Treaty…it’s beyond shocking.”
“Like your ancestor John Marshall, Mr. President?” Conrad said. “It’s the sixth name down if you need help finding it.”
“I see it, thank you,” the president said tersely. “And no, Dr. Yeats, like you I had no idea of the extent of my family’s dealings with the Alignment. But as you discovered, when your roots go that far back in American history, it’s probably unavoidable. Some of these names will turn up modern-day Alignment figures. Some won’t. It will be a tricky but necessary ordeal to ferret them out. But we will.”
“Like Senator Scarborough?”
Conrad knew the FBI had raided Scarborough’s home in Virginia that morning. News reports said a federal grand jury was looking into his ties to a defense contractor—biotech billionaire Max Seavers.
“It appears Seavers funneled money to the senator,” the president said, sounding genuinely shocked. “Scarborough’s position in Congress, where he sits on the Armed Services Committee that controls the Pentagon budget, could have allowed him to influence the flow of contracts to Seavers’s company, or even Seavers’s appointment to DARPA.”
So that’s how it’s going down, Conrad thought. “So the only reason you wanted the Newburgh Treaty was to take names?”
“Hell no, Yeats,” the president said. “This is America. Nobody gives a damn what your ancestors did. Or shouldn’t. We’re judged by our fruits, not our roots. The sins of the fathers should not be visited on their sons. I should think you would appreciate that more than anybody else.”
Conrad sighed at this none-too-subtle reminder of Antarctica and his father General Yeats.
“It’s what the
Newburgh Treaty and the Alignment represent that threatens our security,” the president went on. “Science and technology have advanced more rapidly than the ability of politicians and generals to grasp their implications. That’s what Plato implied was the real problem with Atlantis. Not the cataclysm that supposedly destroyed it. If we don’t do any better in America, which Sir Francis Bacon prophesized to be the New Atlantis, we’ll suffer the same fate. Hell, just a few years back I used to sweat over mass extinction from some terrorist biotoxin. Max Seavers was on the brink of bottling it as a vaccine with the label ‘Made in the USA.’ Thank God you stopped him.”
“God?” Conrad repeated, wondering if the president really believed in America as “one nation under God” or was simply posing for Middle America at his prayer breakfast the other day.
The president gazed up at Washington over the fireplace.
“Washington’s greatness lay in his readiness to surrender power and embrace his faith,” the president said, a faraway look in his eyes. “He understood that true political freedom cannot exist without religious freedom. Sure, he bent over backwards not to favor any particular religion. But he instinctively grasped that Americans of religious faith are the true protectors of American liberty.”
“He also gave his spies bags of gold, Mr. President.”
The president paused for a moment, then pursed his lips and smiled at Yeats in a way that almost resembled a smirk. “You’ve done your part, Dr. Yeats, and America is grateful,” he said. “Big-time.”
The president put the Treaty down on the table beside him and picked up a box. “There’s more, don’t worry,” he said, holding the box out to him. “This is the Presidential Medal of Honor with Military Distinction. The incredible truth is that you successfully carried out the orders of the commander-in-chief.”
Conrad wasn’t sure if the president was referring to himself or George Washington. But he felt an honest-to-goodness surge of pride as he opened the box and looked at the medal. It was a golden disc with a great white star on top of a red enamel pentagon. In the center of the star was a gold circle with blue enamel bearing thirteen gold stars. The medal hung from a blue ribbon with white edge stripes, white stars, and a golden American eagle with spread wings.
The president said, “Secretary Packard insisted you deserved no less and wanted me to tell you that he wants you back at DARPA.”
“It’s Danny Z and old Herc who deserve this,” Conrad said, and closed the box. “Along with that poor soul you buried in my father’s tomb.”
The president only said, “Take a lesson from Sister Serghetti, son, and stop mourning for those you’re sure to follow shortly.”
“None of this changes the fact that we have one globe and the Vatican has the other,” Conrad pressed. “Or that you and Sister Serghetti and I saw the names on the Treaty with our own eyes.”
“That girl is going to do what she’s going to do,” the president said. “I have to do what I have to do.”
The president rose to his feet, picked up the Newburgh Treaty and stepped to the fireplace. He touched a lighter to the corner of the Treaty and placed the Treaty in the fireplace.
Conrad looked on as a corner curled into black and then burst into flame beneath the watchful eyes of George Washington. Within seconds more black holes like growing welts appeared all over the Treaty until it went up in smoke.
52
VATICAN CITY
STILL TORMENTED OVER HER sudden abandonment and betrayal of Conrad, a resolute Serena marched into the office of Cardinal Tucci in the Governorate with the terrestrial globe and a plainclothes security detail of six Swiss Guards. Much like the American president’s Secret Service, the centuries-old guards protected the pope both at home and abroad. Whether they would do the same for her now, well, she was about to find out.
Cardinal Tucci was seated in practically the same position she had last seen him days earlier, deep in his leather chair between two Bleau globes, echoes of the globes that Conrad had uncovered. Tucci held a glass of red wine in his hand. The silver Roman coin around his neck caught the morning light from the window beside him, warning her that he was the head of Dominus Dei.
She said, “A bit early in the morning for that, Your Eminence.”
“Sister Serghetti, I see you brought me the globe,” Tucci replied, “along with an entourage.”
Serena turned to the captain of the guards and said, “I’d like a private audience with His Eminence for a moment. Wait outside.”
As the guards withdrew and closed the door behind them, Tucci took another sip of his wine. “I take it you disobeyed my direct orders and opened the globe?”
“I did, Your Eminence. Both of them.”
“I see.”
“So do I,” Serena said. “And I see your mother’s family in Boston among the names at the bottom of the Newburgh Treaty. You’re Osiris. And Dominus Dei is the Alignment’s cell within the Church. It always has been. Long before the Knights Templar. It’s the Church that’s in danger, not just America.”
“Is that what you told Dr. Yeats?” Tucci said dismissively. “I’m sure he appreciated your sentiments. Tell me, did you sleep with him on your adventure?”
Serena pointed her finger at him. “You are the wolf in sheep’s clothing, Tucci! You don’t love the Church. You’ve never loved the Church. You and your kind have only used the Church for yourselves, to build a worldly empire for the Alignment.”
“Well, if you bother to look around, Sister Serghetti, you’ll find that there are plenty of others like me. Where God builds a church, the Devil builds a chapel, you know. I take it by the guards that you’ve told the Holy See?”
“I have, Your Eminence, and this is one chapel I’m closing.”
“Only to build the Antichrist’s cathedral.” Tucci finished his wine. “Indeed, the federal city of the future, the world’s capital city, is going up soon. Something to make Washington and the new Beijing pale in comparison.”
“What are you getting at?” she demanded.
“America is inconsequential in the sweep of history—it doesn’t even merit a mention in the Book of Revelation,” Tucci said. “It was the globes all along and not the Newburgh Treaty that the international Alignment was interested in.”
“The globes?”
“They’re necessary to begin the construction of the Third Temple,” Tucci said in triumph. “By uncovering the globes you have now ensured the rise of the last master civilization.”
“You’re insane,” she said.
“Soon you’ll be, too.” He placed his empty wineglass down and nodded toward the door. “Shall we call your guards?”
Serena took a step toward the door and caught a blur of movement in the corner of her eye. She whirled around in time to see Tucci rush toward the window and hurl himself through the glass with a thunderous crash. She heard a scream outside, ran to the sill and looked down to see Tucci sprawled on the pavement below, two uniformed Swiss Guards pointing up at her in the window.
“No!” she gasped.
She heard the door behind her fling open as the guards burst in. She turned from the window to see the captain staring. But not at the broken window and terrible scene outside. He was staring at the Dominus Dei pendant on the floor. She stared at it, too. The chain was unbroken, as if Tucci had removed it first before he had leapt to his death.
“Is everything all right, Sister Serghetti?” he asked her.
“Cardinal Tucci is dead, Captain. Obviously everything is not all right.”
Her heart was pounding as she watched the captain pick up the medallion off the floor with great reverence and hand it to her. He was practically genuflecting, as if he now answered to her.
Somehow he has it in his head that I’m the new head of the Dei.
She took the chain and stared at the ancient Roman coin. Only the pope could nominate the head of the Dei, she knew. But then she recalled the jokes of conspiracy buffs in the College of the Cardinals who
said that it was Dei all these centuries who picked the popes.
“Cardinal Tucci was not well,” the captain said suddenly, as if forming his story for the Vatican’s press release about the incident. He clearly knew more than he was letting on. “Arrhythmia, you know. It is a shame his heart should fail while looking out the window.”
“Thank you, Captain. You are dismissed.”
“Very well,” he said and knelt to kiss the medallion now wrapped around her fingers. “I will post guards outside your door and leave you to your privacy.”
She watched him close the door behind him and sat down in Tucci’s chair, suddenly feeling like a prisoner in a cell full of secrets.
She stared at the medallion in her hands, realizing that it was her only way out now. To protect the Church she would have to root out the Alignment, even if it meant joining the Dei. She mourned for Conrad, but knew in her heart that she couldn’t abandon the Church to these predators. She had to find out what the Dei was up to.
I do those things I don’t want to do, and don’t do those things I want to do, she thought, paraphrasing St. Paul. What a wretched woman I am.
Slowly she put the chain with the Dominus Dei medallion around her neck, feeling the silver Roman coin press heavily on her heart.
EPILOGUE
THE DAY AFTER
ARLINGTON CEMETERY
THE RAIN CAME DOWN even harder as Conrad approached his father’s tombstone in the dark of night, consumed by an obsession for the truth that the burning of the Newburgh Treaty had only inflamed.
He shined a light on the three-foot-tall obelisk and again read the inscription beneath the engraved cross:
GRIFFIN W. YEATS
BRIG GEN
US AIR FORCE
BORN
MAY 4 1945
KILLED IN ACTION
EAST ANTARCTICA
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