Conrad sighed. There was no way she was going to bed with him tonight. “So you want to put names to faces.”
“No, I want to put faces to the names I’ve got.”
She explained that the Alignment had organized itself along the ranks of angels. There was the grandmaster at the top, surrounded by a council of thirty “knights.” In addition to possessing one of the original Judas coins, each knight had a divine name that described his or her nature and role within the organization.
“Sorath is the name of the grandmaster,” she told him. “Sorath is a fallen angel whose number, Rome believes, is 666. I have no idea who he is, but I assume he will be in Rhodes, where the Council of Thirty will be gathered for the first time in three hundred years.”
“Why now?” Conrad asked, although he knew that the recovery of the legendary technology of Atlantis in the Flammenschwert was certainly one factor. But he suspected it wasn’t the deciding factor.
Serena shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out when I get there.”
There was something she wasn’t telling him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “What about you, Serena? What’s your name?”
“Naamah,” she said, looking down. “The fallen angel of prostitution who is more pleasing to men than to God.”
Conrad decided he didn’t want to go there in this discussion. She was already scaring the hell out of him. “And Midas?”
“Well, he’s clearly inherited Baron von Berg’s rank,” she said. “His name is Xaphan—the fallen angel who keeps the fires of hell burning at full blast.”
“You got that right,” he said, and decided to tell her all about Baron von Berg’s lost submarine and the Flammenschwert.
She looked stunned, as if everything made sense to her now. “I know the legend of Greek fire and its use during the Crusades, but I never imagined that the Nazis had found a way to tap Atlantean technology.”
“Apparently, they did. I’ve seen the technology up close and personal.”
He could see she was lost in thought when something like a flash of lightning flickered across her soft brown eyes. “And what about Baron von Berg’s safe deposit box in Bern?” she asked. “What did you find inside?”
“This,” he said, and slapped down the Shekel of Tyre on the table. “See, I’ve got one, too.”
31
Serena stared at the coin on the table and fully grasped Midas’s predicament and her own. Midas had been claiming some sort of provisional status within the Thirty based on his control over Baron von Berg’s box, with the assumption that somehow, someday, he would possess its contents. Now Conrad had the coin and, technically, membership in the Alignment.
Until somebody like Midas or herself killed him for it.
“How did you get this?” she asked. “And why couldn’t Midas?”
Conrad explained the code in the metal plate from Baron von Berg’s skull, the self-destruct box in Bern, and how he’d circumvented all the security and escaped. He smiled and said, “So I guess we’re going to Rhodes.”
Serena was shaking inside. “I don’t think so, Conrad.”
“Names and faces, Serena. Names and faces. And, I’ll bet you, the designated target for the Flammenschwert.”
She couldn’t let it happen, she realized. But she didn’t want to fight him now. “We’ll need a plan,” she said. “A good one.”
“How about this one?” he said, and produced a long tube he had been keeping under the table. It was a roll file, and inside were architectural drawings of a massive fortress. He spread them across the table. “Look familiar?”
“The Palace of the Grandmaster,” she said. “Where did you get these?”
“Beneath the floorboards in the Magnolia Suite of the main villa.”
“Seriously, Conrad.”
“Seriously,” he told her. “This was the last residence of Mussolini before he was executed. Rhodes belonged to the Italians back then, and Il Duce had grand plans for his Palace of the Grandmaster.”
“It wasn’t his,” Serena said. “It was built by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in the seventh century.”
“True, but that palace was pretty much demolished by the explosion of Turkish gunpowder centuries later. Mussolini restored and modified it between 1937 and 1940. These are the plans of the architect Vittorio Mesturino.”
Serena didn’t like the direction of this conversation and had to change it, put Conrad back on his heels. “How could you possibly know there were blueprints beneath the floorboards in the Magnolia Suite?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “But the hotel staff told me that was the suite Mussolini slept in, and I knew from his other residences where he liked to hide documents.”
“Everybody missed it during the hotel’s renovation?”
“The beauty of preservation,” he explained. “The charm of this place is that most everything is as it was. Now look at the blueprint. There’s a secret council chamber under the palace that’s not shown in any contemporary floor plans. It’s directly beneath the large courtyard in the center of the palace. That’s where the Knights of the Alignment are going to meet.”
Serena stared at the blueprint and then looked up at Conrad, who was studying the schematics and clearly making plans in his head. Yet again his genius genuinely frightened her. She was a careful strategist, but Conrad was opportunistic to a fault, able to find an opening when all doors seemed closed and bullets were raining down. That wasn’t going to save him on Rhodes, though. Nothing would, if he actually stepped foot on the island.
“I think we should look it over after dessert,” she said. “I’m going to shower and change first. It’s been a very long day, and the week ahead is looking longer still.”
She excused herself and walked into the boathouse. It was lavishly appointed, and she half believed she was capable of going to bed with Conrad that night. It could be their last chance ever. She picked up her backpack from the bed and went into the marble bathroom with flower petals everywhere. She splashed water on her face, feeling the queasiness of betrayal.
She pulled out her Vertu phone from her backpack and placed a call. The voice on the other end said, “Well?”
“I’ve got him,” she said. “He’s yours.”
32
Conrad sat on the bed, anxiously waiting for Serena to emerge from the bathroom and wondering exactly what he’d see. There wasn’t a lot of room in her little backpack for a change of clothes or a nightgown. But in every previous do-or-die moment of physical intimacy between them, she’d always managed to surprise him and leave him wanting.
“Conrad?” she called from the bathroom. “How did you find out which box was von Berg’s?”
“It was etched beneath the metal plate in his skull.”
“What was the code?”
“ARES, the god of war.”
“Makes sense,” she called out. “And the box number?”
“1740.”
There was no response.
Conrad paused, wondering if he should say anything. Then he looked up to see Serena step out of the bathroom wearing only his white dress shirt, which managed to both hide and highlight her irresistible figure. He swallowed hard and stood up as she approached him.
She stood barely an inch away from his face, looking up at him. Their bodies did not touch, but he felt an unmistakable exchange of sexual energy between them.
“Do you really think it’s a weapon forged from the technology of Atlantis?” she asked.
“I think it really turns water to fire on some molecular level, and that von Berg had a connection to Antarctica, which might have a connection with Atlantis.”
“You’re the one with the DNA of angels, Conrad. The Alignment and Americans both think you’ve got traces of Nephilim blood.”
The Nephilim, according to the sixth chapter of Genesis, were the offspring of the mysterious “sons of God”—fallen angels, according to some theologians—who bred with women. Their civilization was wip
ed off the face of the earth by the Great Flood, which the Bible said was God’s wrath upon a corrupted humanity.
“You say Nephilim and I say Atlantean,” Conrad said. “But at the end of the day, we all share the same ancestral DNA.”
“Some more than others.”
Conrad shrugged. “Hasn’t helped me yet.”
“But it helped me back in D.C.,” she reminded him. “Your blood provided the vaccine that saved me from the Alignment’s military-grade flu virus.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “We’ve already swapped bodily fluids.”
Serena’s warm gaze embraced him even as she maintained her one-inch distance. It was all Conrad could do to keep from grabbing her.
“Why did you come back, Conrad?” she asked him. “After what I did to you?”
“I knew there were other forces at work, Serena,” he told her. “I had to find out what they were.”
Her face looked sad, defeated. “And then what?” she pressed him. “What were your plans for our future—if we had one?”
“You mean if you weren’t a member of the Alignment? Or a nun?”
“Technically, I’m not a nun. I had to give up my role with the Carmelites for the Dei. And since the Dei doesn’t recognize women as such, I’m pretty much a lay leader in the Church.”
Conrad felt a glimmer of hope. “That’s wonderful,” he blurted, grasping her hand. “The best news yet.”
“So how many children do you want, Conrad?” she asked, obviously trying to scare him. She was no wallflower. “You’ll have to take care of them, you know.”
“Me?” he asked.
“Just because I’m not a nun doesn’t mean I’ll be giving up the Lord’s work traveling to the farthest corners of the earth to help the helpless.”
“Okay with me,” he said, playing along. “The ruins I explore tend to be in the same places. You can just strap the little guys to your back and swing from trees all you want.”
“What’s wrong with little girls, Conrad?”
“Nothing,” he said. “But biologically, aren’t I the one to decide that? Guess there’s only one way to find out.” He gently pulled her closer to him, and his voice turned tender. “You’re the only thing I have to show for my life, Serena. Everything else is dust. That Hebrew slave settlement I found by the pyramids in Giza. Gone. Atlantis in Antarctica. Gone. The only thing I ever recovered were the globes, and you and Uncle Sam stole them from me.”
“I’m so sorry, Conrad. I really am.”
“No, you don’t understand, Serena. I’m okay with it. I don’t need to make any great discoveries. We can make our own. You’re what I’ve been searching for all my life. I knew it the moment I saw you. And I don’t ever want to lose you.”
Her eyes sparkled with tears. She threw her arms around his neck and turned her lovely mouth up to his and kissed him.
His whole body and spirit seemed to come alive as they embraced. He couldn’t believe this was about to happen.
“Please forgive me, Conrad, for all I’ve done to you,” she said, kissing him again. “For what I’m going to do to you.”
His head was swimming in ecstasy. Or was it something else? He opened his eyes and saw the room spinning behind Serena’s blurred face.
“I hate you,” he groaned as whatever drug she had applied to her lips took hold of his body.
“Forgive me,” she whispered as she kissed him generously, passionately, until he blacked out.
33
1740!” Conrad shouted, and bolted upright in bed.
He opened his eyes. He was inside an Airstream trailer with a loud but familiar hum around him. The air was cold, and there was a woman sitting next to him, but it wasn’t Serena. It was Wanda Randolph, the former U.S. Capitol Police officer who had taken shots at him in the tunnels beneath the U.S. Capitol.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re on U.S. soil now, so to speak,” she said, and smiled. “Everything’s okay.”
He looked at the wires and electrodes attached to his body. “The hell it is,” he said, and with his right arm struck Wanda in the head and knocked her against the Airstream’s wall. He pulled off the wires, opened the trailer door, ran out into a cavernous hangar, and looked for an exit.
“Stop!” Wanda shouted, running up behind with a gun pointed at him.
He ran past a chopper and a tank to a large door and found the button to open it. Warning lights flashed and an alarm sounded. As the door slowly opened from the top down, Conrad realized where he was even before he saw the curvature of the Mediterranean Sea thirty thousand feet below.
There were more shouts and the thunder of boots on the metal flooring, and Conrad turned to see a team of U.S. airmen surround him with their guns drawn.
“Step away from the panel, sir,” an airman ordered.
Conrad knew he was going nowhere and stepped away.
The airmen holstered their guns and closed the door as Wanda escorted him back to the Airstream trailer, where Marshall Packard was waiting with some files.
“Good, you’re up,” Packard said.
“Where’s Serena?” Conrad demanded.
“On her way to Rhodes,” Packard said. “She exchanged you for our celestial globe. She was actually going to attempt to slip a forgery past the Alignment, which never would have worked. Now she can deliver the goods at the EU summit and be our eyes and ears inside the Alignment.”
Conrad shook his head. “You don’t need me, Packard. Why did you do it?”
“Your girl said she needed you off the playing field to convince the Alignment you’re dead, like she promised, and she had some bizarre notion that you might not play along,” Packard said. “So we’ll keep an eye on you.”
“Not a chance,” said Conrad. “You know she’s dead meat once she turns over those globes.”
“That’s a risk she’s willing to take to identify the remaining officers of the Alignment. Meanwhile, we’ve already seen both globes and know what the Alignment is getting. So there’s no downside for us.”
“You’re idiots,” Conrad said. “The globes work together. You have no idea what the Alignment has.”
“Enlighten me.”
“The number of Baron von Berg’s safe deposit box was for the date 1740.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re ahead of you, son,” Packard said. “The only thing that popped up in history for that year was the death in Rome of Pope Clement XII, who had forbidden Roman Catholics from belonging to Masonic lodges on pain of excommunication. Von Berg’s joke. Ha, ha.”
“Joke’s on you, Packard. That was also the year that the Masons in Berlin established the Royal Mother Lodge of the Three Globes. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I guess I needed Baron von Berg and his box number to finally make the connection.”
The color drained from Packard’s face. “Three globes?”
“That’s right,” Conrad said. “There were three of them all along. The Masons must have kept one in Europe and let the other two go to the New World. How much you want to bet that the Alignment has had the third globe all along? Now Serena is about to hand them the other two.”
“But for what purpose?” Packard demanded. “What the hell do three globes do that two globes can’t?”
“Reveal the target and timetable for detonating the Flammenschwert, that’s what,” Conrad said.
PART THREE
Rhodes
34
MANDRAKI HARBOR
RHODES
The early-morning sun glinted off the calm waters of Mandraki Harbor as Midas’s yacht, the Mercedes, motored past the long breakwater with its three windmills toward the medieval city of Rhodes. There, atop its highest point, its massive fortress walls dwarfing the city below, was the Palace of the Grandmaster.
At least the Mercedes could enjoy the intimacy of the harbor with its pleasure craft and seaside cafés, Midas thought as they entered the mouth of the harbor. The Midas would have required them to anchor f
arther away.
Much smaller than the Midas, the Mercedes was a mere 250-footer that he picked up in Cyprus the day after Mercedes’s funeral in Paris. He had planned to arrive in Rhodes in the Midas. It had taken two days to acquire a yacht large enough to take in a submersible. Midas had contacted his rogue submersible that had been roaming the deep with the Flammenschwert all this time. As soon as the captain emerged after five days underwater, Midas rewarded him with a bullet to the brain and dumped him overboard.
Now the Mercedes passed between the two defensive stone towers where the Colossus of Rhodes was said to have straddled the harbor. The giant statue had been one of the seven wonders of the ancient world before an earthquake in 226 B.C. brought it down into the sea a century after it was erected.
Midas left the deck and entered his stateroom to admire the magnificent sculpture in the center of the room—a bust of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love. The cover was brilliant. As an act of goodwill, Midas would be returning to the Greeks the bronze head of Aphrodite from the British Museum, which he had managed to exchange for several works of art he had purchased at auction from Sotheby’s on Bond Street. It had taken months of negotiations with the museum’s Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, but he needed this particular bust to both house the warhead and bring as a gift for the Greeks at the summit.
The beauty of the head of Aphrodite was that it was a sculptural mask of the Greek goddess of love, so the back was missing. That enabled Midas to fit the Flammenschwert warhead neatly inside. The fitted plaster piece on the back of the mask would be tossed once the transfer of the warhead had been made, and the mask could be handed off to the Greeks for display in the exhibition halls of the palace.
Midas ran his finger down the face of the serene mask. The deeply set eyes had come from a complete statue and dated back to the second or first century B.C. It was seventeen inches high, twelve inches wide, and eleven inches deep. The warhead was only six inches in diameter, inside of which were two pounds of Semtex plastic explosive and an initiator device. The detonator would explode the Semtex and ignite the metallic fire pellets of the Flammenschwert. The fire pellets, in turn, would ignite any water around it.
The Atlantis Revelation: A Thriller Page 14
