They're gauging my reaction.
Conrad felt a surge of fight-or-flight in his veins, but he kept a poker face for the rest of the service. Afterward, the funeral party dispersed, and a few tourists drifted down the hillside from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to watch from a distance as the horses clomped away with the empty caisson. Only he and Packard were left at the grave, along with a younger man who looked vaguely familiar to Conrad.
"Conrad, I'd like you to meet Max Seavers," Packard said. "He's your father's acting replacement at DARPA."
DARPA stood for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was the Pentagon's research and development organization. Among other things, DARPA took credit for inventing stealth technology, the global positioning system, and the Internet. DARPA's mission was to maintain America's technological superiority and to prevent any other power on earth from challenging that superiority. That mission is what sent his father and, ultimately, Conrad to Antarctica four years ago.
Conrad looked at Seavers and remembered now where he had seen the sandy locks, the dimpled jaw, and the piercing blue eyes before. Seavers, barely 30, was the Bill Gates of biotech and a fixture in business magazines. A few years ago Seavers had turned over his day job running his big pharma company, SeaGen, in order to devote himself to "a higher calling" by developing and distributing vaccines to fight disease in Third World countries. Now, it appeared, he had been called to public service.
"A younger and, hopefully, wiser DARPA, I see," Conrad said, offering his hand.
Seavers's iron grip as they shook hands felt like ice. And his gaze conveyed all the warmth of a scientist in a white lab coat studying a microscopic specimen of bacteria at the bottom of a petri dish.
"We still take America's technological superiority seriously, Dr. Yeats." Seavers spoke in a baritone voice that sounded too deep for his age. "And we could always use a man with your unique skills."
"And what skills would those be?"
"Cut the bullshit, Yeats." Packard glanced both ways to see if anybody was within earshot, leaned over and rasped. "Tell us the meaning of this."
"Meaning of what?"
"This." Packard pointed to the obelisk. "What's the deal?"
"I'm supposed to know?"
"Damn right you're supposed to know. Those astrological signs. The numbers. You're the world's foremost astro-archaeologist."
It sounded funny coming out of Packard's mouth: astro-archaeologist. But that's what he was these days, an archaeologist who used the astronomical alignments of pyramids, temples, and other ancient landmarks to date their construction and the civilizations that erected them. His specialty hadn't made him rich yet. But over the years it had given him his own now-canceled reality TV show called Ancient Riddles, exotic adventures with young female fans, and the expertise to spend an obscene amount of other people's moneymostly Uncle Packard's.
"Hey, your people handled all the funeral arrangements," Conrad said. "Couldn't your brilliant cryptologists at the Pentagon crack it?"
Seavers steamed but said nothing.
Conrad sighed. "For all we know, Mr. Secretary, this obelisk is probably another sick joke to send us around the world looking for clues that ultimately lead to a statue of Dad giving us all the finger."
"You know him better than that, son."
"Obviously a lot better than you did, sir, if you and your code breakers can't figure it out. Why do you even care?"
Packard glowered at him. "Your father was a test pilot, an astronaut, and the head of DARPA. If it involves him, it's vital to national security."
"Dr. Serghetti is the real expert on this sort of thing," Conrad said. "But I'm looking around and don't see any sign of her."
"And see that you don't, son," Packard said. "This is a state secret. And Sister Serghetti is an agent of a foreign power."
Conrad blinked. "So now the Vatican is a foreign power?"
"I don't see the pope taking orders from the president, do you?" Packard said. "You are to share nothing with that girl. And I expect you to report any attempt by her to reestablish contact with you."
If only, Conrad thought, as Packard walked away with Max Seavers.
It had started to drizzle, and Conrad watched the pair march down the hill to the secret service detail, which welcomed them with two open umbrellas and escorted them to the convoy of limousines, town cars, and SUVs. Conrad counted nine vehicles parked on the narrow road. Before the funeral procession he had counted eight.
One by one the cars left, until a single black limousine remained. He was certain it wasn't the cab he called for. He'd give it another two minutes to show up before he walked down to the main gate and hailed another.
Conrad studied the obelisk in the rain.
"Now what have you gotten me into, Dad?"
Whatever answers he was looking for, however, had apparently died with his father four years ago.
He turned again toward the road and splashed toward the limousine to tell Packard's boys to take the day off.
Conrad felt a strange electricity in the air even before he recognized beefy Benito behind the wheel. Then the window came down and he saw Serena Serghetti sitting in back. His blood jumped.
"Don't just stand there, mate," she told him in her bold Australian accent. "Get in."
2
AS THE LIMOUSINE drove out the main gate at Arlington Cemetery, Conrad Yeats set aside the folded, starry flag that had draped his father's casket and stared at Serena Serghetti with a rage that surprised him. She was the only woman he ever truly loved, and she had made it clear to him on two separate occasions, each four years apart, that he was the only man she had ever loved. Conrad always had considered it a crime against humanity that God would create such an exquisite creature as Serena Serghetti and make her a nun, forever keeping them apart.
Now here she was again, Her Holiness, the picture of effortless, earth-tone elegance in a long, belted cardigan, plaid pants, and knee-high suede boots. A gold cross hung from the columned neck of her Edwardian top. She had pulled back her hair into a ponytail, revealing her high cheekbones, upturned nose, and pointed chin. She could have just come in from a polo match as easily as from the Vatican, where she was the Roman Catholic Church's top linguistand cryptologist.
As always, it was incumbent upon him to cast the first pebble and hope to see a ripple form across the smooth surface of her mirror-like calm.
"Ah, no medieval habit," he said. "So, you've finally come to your senses and quit that damn church."
She gave him that arch look of hersraised eyebrow and smirkbut her brown eyes, soft as ever, told him she would if she could. She regarded his newly cut hair, dark jacket, white dress shirt, and khaki trousers approvingly.
"You clean up nice yourself, Conrad, for an archaeologist. Maybe one day you'll even discover the razor blade." She reached over and ran her soft hand across the stubble on his face. "I came because of your father."
Conrad felt her warm fingertips linger for a moment on his cheek. "Making sure he's really dead?"
"I was with you when he vanished from the face of the Earth in Antarctica, remember?" She removed her hand. "Although it's a mystery to me how anybody found his body."
"Me, too," Conrad said. "Maybe that's him following us."
Conrad looked out the rear window of the limousine, aware of Serena following his gaze. A black Ford Expedition was tailing them. Based on his reception at his father's funeral, it was obvious to Conrad that Packard thought he knew more than he was letting onand was letting him know it.
"DOD cutouts," he said. "They're watching us."
"And we're watching them," Serena said, unruffled. "And God is watching over all of us. No worries. This passenger cabin is soundproof. They don't know who you're talking with now. When they trace the plates, they'll find a funeral home account rented out in your name for transportation to and from the service."
"I'm impressed," he said, "that you'd go to all this trouble to
see me."
"Hardly." She turned from the window and looked him in the eye, all business. "I'm here to help you figure out the warning on your father's tombstone."
"Warning?" he repeated. "You're here to warn me about my father's warning?"
"That's right."
He suspected she must have had some kind of agenda all along but still he could not hide his disappointment and, again, his anger. "I don't know how I could have imagined that you came to pay respect to my father or offer me consolation for my loss."
Serena said, "I don't believe in mourning for those we may quickly follow."
Conrad settled back in the seat and folded his arms. "So our lives are in danger?"
"Ever since Antarctica."
"And you decided to tell me this, what, four years later? After you ran back to the safe confines of the Church?"
"It was the only way to gather the resources I needed to protect you."
"Protect me? You're the one I need to be protected from!" He glanced back out the rear window at the black SUV, which was doing a terrible job of trying to remain invisible three cars back. "The U.S. secretary of defense is going to string me up by my balls if he finds out I'm talking to you."
"Not until you give him what he's looking for."
Conrad sighed. "And what's that?"
She unbuttoned her jacket and slipped her hand inside her blouse.
Conrad lifted an eyebrow as she removed a key, leaned over to the soft leather attaché on the floor between her legs, and began to unlock it.
"Focus, Conrad." She removed a folder and handed it to him. "Seen this?"
He switched on the overhead reading lamp to get a better look. Upon opening the folder, Conrad saw four photos, one for each face of his father's tombstone.
"You move fast, Serena, I'll give you that."
There was the epitaph on the north face, the astronomical symbols on the east face, the set of five numerical strings on the west face, and, finally, an inscription on the back or south face of the obelisk he had missed: the number 763.
"How'd you get these? I just saw the tombstone myself."
"Max Seavers and two Homeland Security officials showed me these photos two days ago in New York," she said. "The United Nations is in session and I'm in the States for a couple of weeks. They cornered me outside the General Assembly, took me to the office of the United States Ambassador and briefed me."
Conrad considered his conversation with Seavers and Packard back at the cemetery just minutes ago. Apparently it was OK for them to talk to Serena but not him. Why was that? "You've got diplomatic immunity, and U.N. Headquarters is international territory," he said. "You didn't have to go."
"I couldn't say no to Max."
"Oh, it's 'Max,' is it?"
"Before he put his personal fortune into a blind trust and stepped into your father's shoes at DARPA, Max Seavers donated millions in vaccines for my relief efforts in Africa and Asia, on top of the $2 billion he gave to the U.N."
Conrad looked at Serena and wondered: Did Seavers and Packard really think that he was going to spill national security secrets to a nun? Or were they worried that she was going to tell him something they didn't want him to know?
"So why did Saint Max show you these photos and what did you say?"
"He said that the DOD recovered your father's body in Antarctica, which as you can imagine came as quite a surprise to me," she said. "He also said once the burial arrangements at Arlington got under way, the designs your father left for his tombstone with the cemetery raised some eyebrows, and they certainly raised mine."
"Why's that?"
"Because your father chose to make his tombstone look like the Scepter of Osiris we found in Antarctica, and to engrave it with clues he knew that only you and I working together could make heads or tails of," she said. "The only problem is he submitted his designs to Arlington before Antarctica and our discovery."
They were driving over Memorial Bridge, and Conrad could see the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and U.S. Capitol Building lined up before them on one axis, with the White House to the north and Jefferson Memorial to the south forming another axis. It looked like a model city under the stormy skies, configured like a giant white marble cross on the wet green lawns and reflecting pools of the National Mall.
He handed the sketch back to her. "Big deal. So my father obviously knew what we were looking for in Antarctica. For all I know, you probably did too. What else is new?"
"Your father's tombstone, Conrad. He wanted us to figure it out together."
"Us?"
"Why else would he leave his clue in the form of an obelisk that only you and I could decipher? You saw those astrological signs. They're celestial markers. They have terrestrial counterparts on the ground, as you bloody well know. It's a star map to lead us to a specific landmark."
"You told Seavers this?"
"Of course not, Conrad. I told him I didn't have a clue. That you're the only one on the planet who can figure it out."
Conrad grinned. "That's what I told him just now back at Arlington, but about you."
Serena didn't grin back. "He wanted me to tell him if you tried to contact me," she said. "To let him know what you tell me and what we find out."
"Thanks for the heads-up, Serena," Conrad said, the anger he had been suppressing now rising again. "But what are 'we' supposed to find at the end of this treasure trail? The lost treasure of the Knights Templar? A sinister secret that could destroy the republic? Or maybe you've forgotten that besides the occasional Discovery Channel documentary, I now make my living as a technical advisor for Hollywood movies about these sorts of fantasies? That's because nobody wants to fund any real-world digs for me anymore. You saw to that when you kept your mouth shut after Antarctica and destroyed whatever reputation I had left as an archaeologist. So, Serena, what do you think my father wants 'us' to find?"
Serena listened to his outburst calmly. She had absorbed his fury like a palm tree planted firmly in the sands of some South Pacific island, bending gracefully in a monsoon only to rise taller in the sun afterward.
"I don't know," she said. "But it's obviously something important enough for the Pentagon to investigate. Something even my superiors in Rome won't reveal to me."
"Ooh, I have chills," Conrad deadpanned, although secretly he had been hooked from the second he saw the obelisk. "Guess the new pope isn't as fond of you as the old one, huh? But if you could just tell His Holiness the meaning of some cryptic ciphers on some dead American general's tombstone, then the Church would know what we'll find at the end of that celestial treasure trail and you'd be 'Mother Earth' again."
She frowned and said nothing, obviously not appreciating the dig.
"I have a deal to make with you, Conrad. You figure out the meaning of those astrological signs and numerical strings, and I'll help you figure out the meaning of 763."
"Or else?"
"Or else Max Seavers and the Pentagon will beat us to whatever secret your father left behind," she said, "at which point there's no reason to keep you around anymoreor the republic."
"The republic?" Conrad was incredulous. "What makes you think this has anything to do with the republic?"
"Fine," she said. "Then at least let me help you save your life. That's all you seem to care about these days." She gave him her card, which was blank except for a ten-digit number. "That's my private number, Conrad."
Conrad stared at it for a moment and didn't know which excited him more: seeing secret ciphers on his father's tombstone or securing Sister Serghetti's private number after all these years.
Serena said, "Call me if you figure something out."
Conrad realized the limo had stopped. He took her card and looked out to see that they were parked in front of Brooke's house at 3040 N Street. She knew where he lived.
"Too bad Ms. Scarborough couldn't make it to the funeral to offer her own condolences," Serena said.
And she also knew about Brooke.
She probably knew a whole hell of a lot more than that, too.
"Just because you chose to be a nun doesn't mean I have to live like a monk," he told her and stepped out of the car into the rain, angry that he felt it necessary to justify himself to her, and even angrier that her opinion meant so much to him.
"I'm sorry, Conrad," she said through her lowered window, a single drop of rain falling on her face like a tear. "God called me. And now he's called you."
The Atlantis Prophecy Page 3