She pulled out her cell phone and pressed a button. Benito answered. “Bring the car around. We’re leaving.”
40
INSIDE THE HILTON’S UNDERGROUND parking garage, two policemen stood on either side of the service door as dozens of waiters carried crates of fruit, muffins, and croissants from the prayer breakfast to awaiting vans, which in turn would deliver the food to local homeless shelters.
One of those waiters was Conrad Yeats. He carried not one but two boxes of ice-packed fruit on his shoulders to the nearest van, but he never went back inside. Using the vehicle line to shield himself from the policemen, he walked out into the garage in search of Benito so he could hitch a ride in Serena’s limo with the Vatican emblem and secret cargo compartment.
The garage was alive with activity now that the president had left and the senators, congress members, and foreign dignitaries were free to leave as well. The limousines and SUVs were already lining up to pick up their VIPs in front of the hotel entrance.
“Conrad Yeats?” a voice called from the shadows.
Conrad cursed himself for having ended up in a well-lit place in the garage. He turned to see a young brunette whose face he recognized but whose name he had forgotten. She was in her mid-20s, an aide to a female senator from California.
“Hi, there!” he said, faking excitement as he walked over to her.
She frowned at his generic response. “It’s Lisa from San Francisco,” she said. “And what are you of all people doing at a prayer breakfast?”
“Mending my ways, Lisa.”
He pulled out a knife he had taken from the kitchen and put it to her side as she gasped. He hated himself for doing this to her, but he had no choice.
“OK, I confess,” he whispered in her ear. “I haven’t really changed. If you scream or make a sound, I’ll kill you. You’ve seen the TV reports. You know I will.”
“Please,” she begged him. “I’ll be better for you next time. You can wear the fedora and I’ll learn to like the whip.”
“Quiet,” he said, jabbing the knife in the fold of her skin. “You’re going to help me get out of here, Lisa. Nod if you understand.”
Lisa nodded.
Seavers stationed himself outside the main entrance of the Hilton and watched the VIPs get into their taxis, limousines, and SUVs. The prayer breakfast was over, incident-free as far as its guests were concerned. The announcement about Brooke Scarborough’s death would not reach them until they were on their way back to Kansas or Iowa or wherever the hell they came from. By then, of course, the Alignment’s agenda would be unstoppable.
The only X factor, he thought with rage, was the elusive Yeats.
Seavers watched the junior senator from California and her aide get into her limousine and drive off as a sleeker limousine with a Vatican flag pulled up. He turned his head to see Serena Serghetti emerge from the front entrance and make her way to the open rear door and climb in.
Seavers motioned two Secret Service agents to the limousine. They halted the driver and swept the underside of the car with long, extended mirrors.
The rear door opened and Serena stepped back out and watched the scene. And because she did, a small crowd behind her did also.
“Lose something, Max?” she asked, putting on a great show of being held up. “I confess I brought out a couple of chocolate croissants for Benito. He loves them so.”
“Tell your driver to open the trunk,” Seavers demanded, and walked to the back as two agents drew their guns.
He was aware of the scene he was causing with the curious dignitaries, but he didn’t care, even when a press photographer started taking pictures. He knew he couldn’t force her to open up—the car had diplomatic plates, after all—but if she didn’t the world would know she was hiding something, and so would he.
Her swarthy driver came out and, getting the nod from Serena, opened the trunk. Besides a garment bag and small suitcase, it was empty.
Serena put her hands on her hips and an amused expression on her face for the cameras. “You want to search those, too, Max?”
Seavers turned red with rage when one of his agents came up. “Sir, we found something,” he said and led Seavers to the rear seat of the cabin.
Seavers then waved the good Sister over from her photo op and pointed into the limousine. “Open that seat compartment or I’ll tear it open with a knife. Your choice.”
“Max.” She turned serious. “You do understand that in some countries I’ve been forced to smuggle out missionaries and political prisoners. If you let the press and public know about this, then some of those prisoners will lose their last option.”
“Your choice, Serena.”
She leaned into the back of the limousine and felt for a hidden latch that released the flap beneath the rear seat. As it opened, she was pushed back by one of the Secret Service agents.
“Step back, please, ma’am,” he said and pointed his gun into the secret compartment.
But it was empty.
Seavers burned inside as Serena turned to face him with her beatific smile. “Told you, Max.”
Aware of the television cameras, he leaned over and whispered. “Your friend the fugitive is a murderer and an American traitor. You don’t want anything to do with him.”
“No, Max. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. You can keep your vaccines.” She got inside and nodded to Benito to go.
Seavers watched the limousine drive off and turned to the Secret Service agent who had examined the secret compartment. “Did you place the GPS nano tracker on her person?”
“Yes, sir. Stuck it under her shoulder when we hustled her down to the holding room. She’ll never know.”
“Have a team follow her signal,” Seavers ordered. “At some point she’s bound to lead us to Yeats.”
Serena leaned back in her seat and breathed a sigh of relief as Benito turned the limousine onto Connecticut.
“You OK, signorina?”
“Now that I’m breathing, yes. But I don’t know where Conrad is.”
Benito looked up in the mirror. “He was in that limo ahead of us back at the Hilton.”
“No, there was a senator in that limo. I saw her get in.”
“But Dr. Yeats was driving,” Benito said. “He found me in the underground garage and told me to give you a message.”
Serena sat on the edge of her seat. “Give it to me.”
“He said he will meet you at Sarah’s house.”
As Conrad drove the senator’s limousine, he listened carefully to the senator gossip with Lisa about some of the individual speakers at the breakfast even as she expressed being moved by the event itself. Lisa said very little. He had warned her that he was strapped with explosives and that any attempt to alert the senator or send a text message from her cell phone would blow them all up.
It worked until they crossed Washington Circle.
“What’s that knocking?” the senator asked Lisa.
Conrad could see Lisa squirm in his rearview mirror.
“Could be the 87 octane level of the gas, ma’am,” he told the senator, pulling into a Union gas station across the street from the Ritz-Carlton. “Let me check, maybe top off the tank with some premium.”
“You should have done this earlier,” the senator barked as he stepped out in his chauffeur’s uniform and walked to the pump.
A minute later, the knocking got even louder inside the limousine.
The senator looked out the window and couldn’t see the driver. “Find out where he is, Lisa.”
But her aide started breaking down in tears for no reason.
“I don’t have time for this today, Lisa.”
The senator opened her own door and saw the gasoline hose in the limousine’s gas tank, but no driver. The knocking, she realized, seemed to be coming from the trunk. She stepped out and walked to the trunk and opened it.
There was her driver, tied up and gagged.
By the time Seavers and his men ar
rived at the gas station, two D.C. cops were questioning the senator’s aide, who apparently knew Yeats from their previous, albeit brief, relationship and provided a detailed description. An ATM camera across the street at the SportsClub fitness center, meanwhile, had captured Yeats on video.
Where are you going, Yeats? Seavers wondered as he climbed into his SUV and they drove off. To the second globe perhaps? To meet your lovely Serena?
“You set it up so I can track the nun on my own phone?” he asked the driver, a Marine named Landford from Detachment One.
“Yes, sir,” Landford replied. “Check your Google Maps.”
Seavers looked at his cell phone and followed the red blip that represented Sister Serghetti. It was moving up R Street past Montrose Park. Then it stopped.
He looked closely at the screen and clicked the zoom button. Slowly the fuzzy pixels sharpened and he realized he was staring down at a statue of some kind. He clicked on the image and a Web page automatically popped up with a picture of the Sarah Rittenhouse Armillary.
The armillary, he realized, staring at the image of the sun dial-like sphere on its marble pedestal. The second globe that Brooke had told him about, the one Yeats was after now, could be buried beneath the armillary!
“We’re here, sir,” said the driver in the mirror.
Seavers looked out his window to see the armillary a mere 20 or so feet away from the street, potentially holding a treasure but in plain daylight for all to see.
But there was no sign of Serena or Yeats.
He looked back down at his phone. The red dot—the GPS tracker—was still stationary, still blinking next to the armillary.
“She must be under the armillary,” he said. “There must be another entrance, a sewer line or something beneath the monument. Get the drill team from Jones Point over here and send a plainclothes unit to sweep the park.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Landford said, hanging up his phone. “We picked up a call from the National Park Service station inside the park. An officer nabbed a man in a chauffeur’s uniform fitting our APB.”
A few minutes later Seavers entered a small, damp NPS station, which stunk from the dung of the horses in the stables. The watch officer escorted Seavers to a small holding cell, where the man in the chauffeur’s uniform sat in the corner.
“Yeats!” Seavers shouted.
The head looked up and Seavers found himself looking into the wrinkled, warted face of a homeless man who had traded his rags for a suit.
“You imbeciles!” Seavers shouted to the watch officer.
But the watch officer was talking on his radio. “Copy that,” he said, and switched it off before addressing Seavers. “Looks like your man stole one of our horses, too.”
41
CONRAD LEFT HIS POLICE HORSE at the old Peirce Mill. He then walked along the creek at the bottom of the ravine in the direction of the cave. That cave, he was now convinced, would lead him directly to the final resting place of the terrestrial globe beneath the Sarah Rittenhouse Armillary.
As he crossed the creek, exhausted but determined, he thought of Washington’s crossing at Valley Forge and the courage that saw America through the Revolution. It was that same courage and resolve which must have driven Washington on the fateful night in these woods when he stood up to the Alignment to save the republic.
George Washington galloped through the woods on his horse in the rain. It was almost three o’clock in the morning when he cleared the trees and came to an abrupt halt by the wharf in Georgetown.
Slowly Washington led Nelson to the old stone house, listening to the old war horse’s hoofs clapping lightly in the night. He tied him to a hitching post and walked to the front door, anonymous in his civilian raincoat and hat. Even so, he could not hide his regal bearing as an officer and gentleman.
He knocked on the door three times. He paused a moment and again knocked. He tried the latch and the door opened on its own. Washington stooped to enter, his towering 6-foot-3-inch frame filling the doorway, and stepped inside.
The man he was to meet, his top forger, sat limply in a chair by the flickering fireplace, blood on his face and a bullet hole in his forehead. On the rough-hewn table before him were charts, maps, and documents.
“A treacherous affair, this new republic.” A voice spoke from the shadows. “Who knows where it will end?”
Washington grew very still, then slowly turned his head.
Several feet away, beneath a doorway, stood a mountainous silhouette. He was a bull of a man, with a ruddy face and white, curly hair. His eyes were black and soulless. The man drew a pistol from his coat and aimed the barrel directly at Washington. “You should not have tried to fool the Alignment.” His voice, though familiar, was not easy to place. “Now tell me where your copy of the treaty is.”
“There on the table,” Washington said warily. “I came to pick it up.”
“Liar.” The man emerged from the shadows.
“You!” Washington said, staring at one of his most loyal officers through the years. The man was a former Son of Liberty. A Patriot. One of the original members of the Culper Spy Ring who helped Washington beat the British in New York. His top assassin.
“This is a forgery,” the assassin said as he picked up a document from the table and waved it in Washington’s face.
Washington felt a surge of dread. He knows. How does he know?
“The ranks of the Alignment are everywhere. Its destiny and America’s are one.” The assassin leveled his gun at Washington’s chest. “Now sit down next to your friend.”
Washington did as he was told. Dawn was still hours away, and the room was very dark. He removed his hat and coat and set them on the table, and sat down opposite the assassin.
“A lot of good your brotherhood of builders did you,” the assassin sneered. “What match are they against the warriors of the Alignment?”
Washington watched as the assassin unfolded the forged document on the table and examined it by the light of the fire.
“Brilliant,” said the assassin approvingly. “This looks exactly like the amended and updated treaty you are to sign and exchange with the Alignment for the original treaty. Except that you used that special ink that becomes invisible after a few days, rendering your signature meaningless because the articles of this treaty will, in effect, disappear. By the time the Alignment would have discovered your treachery, you would have no doubt destroyed the original treaty. Was old Livingston here your man in the Alignment?”
Washington said nothing.
“You always did like to play the double spy game.” The assassin turned, holding the official treaty that Washington was supposed to sign. “And what did you intend to do with this?”
The assassin held up the amended treaty that Livingston had copied, the one that would have bound Washington and America to an unthinkable fate.
Washington stared at the fire wordlessly. That infernal treaty! he thought. I never should have signed the first one ten years ago.
“No matter,” said the assassin. “Your game is nearly up. Our friends will be here soon. They will decide if you attend your ceremony tomorrow.”
He was pointing to a flyer posted on the wall inviting all to join the president and members of Congress on a procession from Alexandria to the top of Jenkins Heights for the laying of the cornerstone of the new United States Capitol building.
Washington could feel a cold chill coming on, the life of the republic passing away.
“How about some ale?” Washington asked.
“So what drink shall it be? Fate or free will? Destiny or liberty?” He reached for some glasses on a shelf and for a moment turned his back.
“I choose freedom,” Washington said, leaning back in his chair until his feet came up toward the table. “I can’t help it.”
Washington rammed the table with his feet into the assassin’s back, driving him into the wall. Several glasses crashed to the floor. The assassin turned, his face a bloody mess as hi
s arm swung up with his pistol. Washington rose from his chair, his left hand deflecting the pistol as his right knee came up into the assassin’s groin. The assassin’s head jerked forward, his leg hooking behind Washington’s, sending them both crashing to the ground. As Washington went down with him, he reached for the wrist of the hand that held the pistol, smashing his fist into the side of the assassin’s neck, aware of the pistol exploding between them.
There was the distinct smell of burning flesh and the assassin lay still, dead.
Washington got to his feet, picked up the official treaty and tossed it into the fire. He signed the forgery and slipped it into his overcoat. Then he paused.
The rain had stopped outside.
“Blast it,” he cursed, realizing that he had to hurry for his rendezvous with the Alignment to exchange his forgery for their copy of the countersigned and amended treaty he first signed ten years ago. It was the only binding document left and, God willing, would shortly be in his possession.
In the center of the Federal District was a hill known as Jenkins Heights. Washington had always known it as Rome, because a century earlier a Maryland landowner named Francis Pope had a dream that a mighty empire to eclipse ancient Rome would one day rise on the banks of the Potomac, which he called the Tiber.
Washington, steeped in the history of the land he surveyed as a youth, knew the hill’s history stretched well before that, and he felt as if he were riding back in time as old Nelson climbed the hill for the exchange of treaties.
Long before Europeans colonized the New World, the Algonquin Indians held tribal grand councils at the foot of this hill. The Algonquin were linked by archaeology to the ancient Mayans and by legend to the descendents of Atlantis. The chiefs of their primary tribe, the Montauk Indians, were known as Pharaoh, like their ancient Egyptians cousins. And the word was spelled like it was in the old Arabic languages 10,000 years ago, meaning “Star Child” or “Children of the Stars.”
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