Tucci bolted upright as she unfolded it on his desk. "Where did you get this?"
"From Stargazer," she said, and watched a flicker of recognition at the code name registered in Tucci's horrified eyes.
"Conrad Yeats," he muttered, putting his knowledge of her long-standing and controversial relationship with Conrad together with his knowledge of the Yeats family's long-standing history in American politics and the Masons. "Yeats is Stargazer. But, of course. I should have known."
"What matters is that it's the genuine article," Serena said, sensing she was on the verge of getting more out of this meeting with Tucci than she ever imagined.
Tucci grabbed a magnifier and leaned over the map. The upper left corner had the word WASHINGTONOPLE, the original name for George Washington's namesake city.
"Mother of God!" Tucci exclaimed, truly awed.
He then passed the magnifier over the city radiants. The ornate, crown-like seal with the initials TB must have jumped into view, because he snapped his head back in wonder.
"That's the seal used by the English papermaker Thomas Budgen for paper he manufactured from 1770 until 1785," Serena told him, letting him know she had done her own analysis on the map.
"I know what it is," he said sharply.
Serena said, "I always thought L'Enfant's original blueprint for Washington, D.C., was either on display or in preservation at the Library of Congress."
"That one is a later draft that Washington submitted to Congress in 1791," Tucci said automatically. "What you have brought me is the original terrestrial blueprint for America's capital city, which L'Enfant's own handwriting here says is based on an earlier star map drawn by Washington's chief astronomer, Benjamin Banneker."
Tucci sank back in his chair and stared at her, his eyes sizing her up for the first time. It was obvious that he had underestimated her, and she could actually see the wheels turning in his head as he contemplated just how much she knew that she wasn't telling him, and just how much she knew that he knew.
"What else did the pontiff tell you before he died, Sister Serghetti?" Tucci asked. "I've heard the rumors. A fifth Fatima? A revelation of the Apocalypse?"
"Many things, Your Eminence," she said. "But today I come to discuss only one."
She could see the white flag of surrender waving in his eyes. "And so he still protects you."
"God alone is my refuge and strength," she demurred.
Tucci removed a leather binder from the center drawer of his desk, and out of the binder withdrew a single sheet of parchment that looked very much of the same stock as the map she had shown him. He passed it across the desk to her.
"This is what you wanted to see, Sister Serghetti."
Serena Serghetti slowly read the handwritten testimony of Pierre L'Enfant that had been signed by John Carroll. Her heart began to race long before she reached the last paragraph.
"L'Enfant claims that the relic that the Alignment found in Jerusalem through its proxies, the Knights Templar, was a celestial globe," she said, translating from the French as she studied the confession.
"Yes," said Tucci. "The globe once stood upon one of two pillars in King Solomon's temple. Masonic lore says that this globe was hollow and contained ancient scrolls detailing the history of human civilization and its sciences before the Great Flood, and thus before the Book of Genesis."
Serena read on.
L'Enfant claimed that the Alignment brought the globe to America through the Masons in order to use the ancient knowledge it contained to establish a new world order. By no coincidence, the globe came into the direct possession of General George Washington, perhaps America's most visibly prominent Mason and a Grand Master in the order.
But then Washington discovered that his Masons, and perhaps even his armies, were in fact controlled by the Alignment, whose vision of a new world order had little in common with the cause of freedom. Rather, they saw the United States as a blunt weapon they could use to smash the world's dynasties and pave the way for resurrecting Atlantis and its ancient faith in the stars and fate.
Washington knew he couldn't expose and destroy the Alignment without criminalizing the Masons and jeopardizing the fledgling United States itself. So immediately upon becoming America's first president in 1789, Washington secretly instructed L'Enfant to use astronomical charts drawn by his chief astronomer, Benjamin Banneker, to align the proposed capital city of Washington, D.C., to the constellation Virgo-as a warning sign for future Americans. His hope was that in time the American people would be free enough and strong enough to reject the Alignment's agenda.
L'Enfant concluded his confession by saying that he did not know the significance of the specific date in the distant future that Washington chose for the conjunction of monuments and stars, only that Washington buried the celestial globe containing the horrible secret he had discovered somewhere under the Federal Triangle.
Serena looked up from the text at Cardinal Tucci, seated in his massive throne-like chair with a Bleau globe on either side, one terrestrial and the other celestial. She stared at the celestial globe.
"Impossible," Serena said in disbelief. "Washington's celestial globe has been on display in his study at Mount Vernon for more than 200 years."
But Tucci looked sure as ever. "That globe is an inferior replacement made in England during the 1790s. Its surface, which is only papier-mache, has been flaking so badly in recent years that it's been moved to the new museum at the estate for preservation. The original globe, according to L'Enfant, was made of bronze or copper and etched with the constellations. Washington buried it someplace under the American capitol sometime before he died."
Serena shifted uncomfortably in her seat as she glanced again at L'Enfant's confession.
"The handwriting holds up to analysis," Tucci said. "Whether it's true or the blatherings of a madman is another thing entirely."
Tucci was known for playing things very close to his vestments. He was not known for wild speculation or outright disinformation. If he was sharing this information with her, it was because he believed it to be accurate.
"So L'Enfant says he followed Washington's instructions to lay out the city of Washington, D.C., so that key monuments would lock with key stars at a specific date in the future," Serena said. "A doomsday warning, if you will. And what's going to happen on that date is revealed by the celestial globe Washington buried."
"Or by what's inside the globe," Tucci said. "Not since the War of 1812 has anyone in Rome believed L'Enfant's confession. But if this map you've shown me is real and Stargazer is real, there can be little doubt that L'Enfant's confession is true. Which means America is in grave peril. Look at the end date."
She stared down at the date: July 4, 2008.
"So you see, Sister Serghetti, Stargazer has six days to stop the alignment of the monuments with the stars or the United States of America will cease to exist."
Serena said, "You mean stop the organization we call the Alignment."
"They are one and the same, Sister Serghetti," Tucci said. "If anything is going to happen in heaven and on earth in six days, you can be sure the Alignment will make it happen. They have been gathering strength for centuries. This conjunction of landmarks and stars-this metamorphosis of America into something its founders never intended-is their raison d'etat. Their twisted sense of destiny is searching for any moral or legal justification to use the United States to unleash their will on this world and wipe out their enemies en masse."
Serena couldn't hide her shock or skepticism. "By what power, Your Eminence?"
"Perhaps by some new technology or weapon of mass destruction or some natural wonder that can be exploited," Tucci said. "I don't know. Like I told you, I'm a historian and not an eschatologist. But there is one thing that I do know about America in Bible prophecy."
"What's that?" Serena asked.
"It isn't there," he said. "It's as if America never existed."
Serena grew very still, the utter insanity
of everything sinking in still deeper.
"So Washington set up the alignment of monuments as a warning to Americans in the future," she said slowly. "And Stargazer-Dr. Yeats-is a kind of ultimate 'sleeper' that Washington essentially sent into the future to stop the Alignment."
"Crazy, I know," Tucci said. "And all from the lips of Pierre L'Enfant, the pompous architect of the American capital who spent his last penniless days wandering the boulevards he laid out and bemoaning the changes from his grand designs."
"So you think L'Enfant was a delusional l'enfant."
"I did until you gave me the original L'Enfant map along with Washington's orders for Stargazer."
Serena looked Tucci in the eye, to avoid any doubt. "You want me and Dr. Yeats to go under the capitol of the New World Order to dig up this globe and save America from the Alignment."
"No," he said firmly. "I want you to bring the globe back to Rome."
Serena stared at him, feeling a tingle of fear creep up the back of her neck.
"The world is a better place because of the United States of America," Tucci said. "But world civilizations come and go. The Church is forever. If America should collapse as an imperial power or morph into something else, we must be prepared to confront a new New World Order."
"But Conrad…Dr. Yeats."
"Is never to see the inside of that globe should you come upon it," Tucci said. "Not if you want to save America, or him."
10
ABBEY OF OUR LADY OF LETTERS
WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NEW YORK
WHILE SERENA had run off to Rome with his map, Conrad was in hiding at her safe house way out in the hills of Westchester County, two hours north of New York City. Here at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Letters, the brethren wore robes, sang Gregorian chants, and ran an Internet retailer called TonedMonks.com, which sold discounted printer cartridges and other office supplies to churches and charities.
According to the literature picked up by the school groups and tourists that visited the abbey by day, TonedMonks.com was the brainchild of the honorary abbot, "Father McConnell," a member of the Catholic lay leadership organization known as the Knights of Columbus. In his former life McConnell had been a billionaire Wall Street hedge fund manager who decided it was far better to have something to live for than enough to live on.
The real story, however, was in a dimly lit, dank crypt beneath the abbey, where Conrad was working around the clock with a team of researchers to crack the codes from his father's tombstone and Washington's letter to Robert Yates.
The abbey and its front, TonedMonks.com, apparently did for Serena and the Vatican what venture capital fund In-Q-Tel did for the CIA: fund new technology to advance the kingdom, in this case the Kingdom of God. The abbey's specialty was document analysis. Serena ran the nuns and a secret archive of historical documents out of nearby Mount Saint Mary's, a local Dominican college on the Hudson where she taught on occasion, while McConnell ran the brothers and analysis in these crypts beneath this abbey.
The monks also made a mean espresso, and by his third day code-cracking Conrad was sleepless, fatigued, and jittery as he reviewed his progress on the screen before him.
He clicked on his digital chart table and reviewed the three constellations of Bootes, Leo, and Virgo. Using a digital pen he connected the alpha stars from each constellation-Arcturus, Regulus, and Spica-to draw a triangle.
He then called up a second window on his desktop, a scan of the terrestrial L'Enfant map, and placed it next to the celestial map. He used his digital pen to connect the three key markers on the terrestrial map labeled "Presidential Palace," "Congressional House," and "equestrian statue to honor Washington." Those were the early monikers for the White House, U.S. Capitol, and Washington Monument.
These, too, formed a triangle.
As he suspected all along, the star map mirrored key landmarks on the ground. The White House was aligned to the star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes, the U.S. Capitol to the star Regulus in the constellation Leo, and the Washington Monument to the star Spica in the constellation Virgo.
But a triangle pointed nowhere.
That's what had stumped Conrad at the beginning. In the past he had used star maps to help find a specific location on earth-a secret chamber under the left paw of the Sphinx in Egypt, for example, or the Shrine of the First Sun in Atlantis. But this star map might as well be a circle, an endless loop. A star map was supposed to point to a specific location on earth.
Or a date in history.
That's when it all clicked for Conrad: These three key monuments along the Mall were not only each aligned to certain stars, but collectively to a celestial clock, to a single moment in time and space that any astronomer-or astro-archaeologist-conversant with the precession of equinoxes would know comes along only once every twenty-six thousand years.
It took him a few hours to work the astronomical calculations and correlate them with the astrology of L'Enfant's day, always a tedious task. That was because astrology was a bogus science, based on discredited beliefs. But it was upon those beliefs that ancient pyramids and monuments were once built. So not only did Conrad need to know some hard science, he had to reconcile it with the flawed worldview of a structure's builders during a particular era in history.
Finally, he was done.
Conrad typed in the password to launch his program and watched the screen. The triangles of the celestial and terrestrial maps slowly began to merge, the former on top of the latter. As they did, a digital calendar at the top of the desktop screen flashed like a cosmic odometer.
"Behold, the secret design of Washington, D.C.," he announced to himself.
He stared intently as the terrestrial and celestial triangles became one and the calendar clock froze at 07.04.2008.
July 4, 2008.
Conrad let out a breath. That was only five days away.
What's going to happen in five days?
"I'm wondering the same thing," said a voice from behind.
Conrad turned to see the abbot, Father McConnell, looking over his shoulder. Conrad must have spoken aloud. That or he was going crazy, which by the looks of his surroundings was becoming more plausible by the day.
"So you broke the astrological code, Dr. Yeats."
"The first level," Conrad said. "There's more to everything than meets the eye."
"There always is, son."
Conrad asked, "When is Serena coming back to return my terrestrial L'Enfant map with the Stargazer text on the back?"
"Tomorrow. Meanwhile, I found something for you from the archives at Mount Saint Mary's."
McConnell showed him a text written by Pierre L'Enfant in March of 1791, just after arriving to begin his preliminary survey. His work, L'Enfant wrote, would be like "turning a savage wilderness into a garden of Eden."
Conrad said, "So you think Washington's use of the term savage is referring to the original L'Enfant map Serena took, and that the map will show us the way to whatever we're supposed to find?"
"That's my bet," McConnell said. "But you don't look so sure."
"I think that's partly right. I get the impression that this savage is a person, but we'll need more to go on."
"Then we'll keep looking and leave you alone." McConnell walked away.
Conrad felt like he was getting his second wind after his breakthrough with the star map code. He was afraid he'd lose momentum if he stopped.
He turned his attention to the coded letter to Stargazer. The digital scan he had taken of the text remained a jumble of numbers.
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
He tried to use what little translation his father had given him to figure out the rest, but didn't have enough to go on. He ran the message through every old military code Washington used as president and then commander-in-chief, all to no avail.
Finally, he tried something else: an obscure Revolutionary-era military code. It was a secret numerical substitution code invented in 1783 by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, America's first spy chief. Tallmadge substituted strings of numbers for words that Washington would insert into secret communiques. "New York," for example, became the number 727 in Tallmadge code.
I wonder if there's a word for the number 763.
According to his database, there was: "Headquarters."
Suddenly the dateline at the top of the Stargazer letter made more sense:
Headquarters September 18 1793 But many words in the rest of the text didn't have a number code. For those words, he would have to use Tallmadge's letter-substitution cipher:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
e f g h i j a b c d o m n p q r k l u v w x y z s t
Conrad thought it a long shot since Washington was not the kind of spymaster to resort to sixteen-year-old codes on his deathbed. But he applied the letter-substitution cipher, and when he looked at the display of his digital chart table, the translation, clear as day, read:
Headquarters September 18 1793 To Robert Yates and his chosen descendent in the Year of Our Lord 2008:
My sincerest apologies for any pain I have caused you and your family. If we do not deceive our own men we will never deceive the enemy. Failure might prove the ruin of our cause. There can be scarcely any need of recommending the greatest caution and secrecy in a business so critical and dangerous as the establishment of our republic.
The fate of the world is in your hands, and your reward is in Heaven. The savage will show you the way.
General Washington Conrad was so excited he accidentally knocked his coffee mug off the table and it shattered on the floor. He didn't bother to pick up the pieces. He was too busy staring at the translation, pondering its implications.
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