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 linguist-and 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 hers-raised eyebrow and smirk-but 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 on-and 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 attache 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 cel
estial 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 anymore-or 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."
She raised her window and signaled her driver.
Conrad watched the limo drive away, aware of a black SUV slowly rounding the corner and parking across the street, its tinted windows too dark to see anybody inside.
3
CONRAD BOUNDED UP the front steps to Brooke's brownstone in two strides and unlocked the front door. She had given him the key to her place months before he agreed to move in with her, a decision made only after he had finally accepted that he would never get another chance with Serena Serghetti.
Inside the foyer, he threw his coat on the bench and began to disarm the alarm. His mind was already on the book that awaited him in the study, and he absently punched the wrong numeric code on the keypad.
As he cleared the alarm and put in the correct code, he wondered what kind of other surveillance besides the SUV outside the SecDef had on him. Probably audio but no video, he concluded, and even that from directional microphones in the SUV and not from any bugs in the house. Packard wouldn't risk the ire of Brooke's father, Senator Joseph Scarborough, who oversaw half of Packard's black ops appropriations from his seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Then again, Senator Scarborough had an even lower opinion of the man his daughter was living with than the Secretary of Defense. "Never did any woman see so much in a man with so little," the Senator once mused. He wouldn't overlook any opportunity to terminate their relationship.
Conrad walked into Brooke's study and placed the flag from the funeral on the fireplace mantle. He pulled out an old, brown cloth hardcover book from the third shelf.
The title was gilt stamped on the book's spine-The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. His father had given it to him when he was ten. It was the only thing his father had ever given him except pain and grief.
Conrad grabbed a pen and a pad of stationery that read Brooke Scarborough / The Fox on Fox Sports and dropped them with Tom Sawyer on the coffee table in the living room. He then went to the kitchen to heat up some leftover pasta from Café Milano before he sat down on the living room sofa with his bowl of carbs, bottle of Sam Adams, and Tom Sawyer.
He tore off three sheets from Brooke's notepad.
On the first sheet he wrote the number from the back of his father's tombstone: 763. He was clueless as to its meaning for now.
On the second sheet he wrote out the names of the constellations he had seen on the east face of the obelisk:
Bootes (Arcturus)
Leo (Regulus)
Virgo (Spica)
Next to each constellation, he wrote down the name of its anchor or "alpha star," which was usually the brightest to the naked eye as seen from Earth:
In theory, each alpha star had a terrestrial counterpart or landmark. In places like Giza or Teotihuacon, the ancients placed their pyramids or ziggurats to point to key stars in the heavens. The effect was an astronomically aligned city that mirrored the heavens on the ground. Symbolically, it was intended to achieve some kind of cosmic harmony between man and the gods. Practically, it created a secret "treasure map" to the city known only to its founders.
He quickly drew the alpha stars in relation to each other from memory and came up with a triangle:
That makes no sense at all.
The way it worked in places like the pyramids in Egypt and the Way of the Dead in South America, each landmark linked to a star would lead to another landmark and then another. In theory, you could follow the star map written across the heavens on the ground until you reached a fixed destination. Usually it was a monument or shrine of some kind whose true meaning and purpose would finally be revealed-along with whatever treasure or secret knowledge it contained.
Unfortunately, this triangle of stars was no map at all. It had no direction. In effect, it was an endless loop, going in circles. This, too, would take time to crack.
Finally, on the third sheet, he quickly scribbled out the numeric code-a sequence of five numerical strings-he had memorized:
155.1.6
142.8.1
48.7.5
111.2.8
54.3.4
Ah, finally something familiar.
From the looks of them, Conrad guessed the numbers were in "book code." Each string of three numbers represented a word. The first number was the page of the book.
The second was the line on that page. The third was the actual word on that line. So the five sets of numbers meant there were five words, which together formed a phrase or message. That message would be key to unlocking the meaning of the star coordinates.
The problem with book codes was that they were impossible to break-unless you had the book on which they were based, usually a specific book and edition possessed by both the sender and the recipient.
This has to be the book, Conrad thought as he picked up The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It was the only book his father ever gave him, and his father had taught him the cipher when Conrad was into codes as a Boy Scout at age ten, the same age as Tom Sawyer in the book.
Conrad sat back in the sofa and cracked open the front cover of the novel. It was an unauthorized, non-illustrated edition published in Toronto by Belford Brothers Publishers in July 1876, months before the authorized American edition came out. Conrad remembered how, like Tom Sawyer, he wanted to be a pirate as a child. And this edition was the "pirate" version that a furious Mark Twain claimed was stolen from the typesetters.
He glanced at the string of numbers he had copied down and flipped through the pages of the book. The first of the five strings-155.1.6-directed Conrad to page 155, line 1, word 6.
Conrad flipped to page 155 and deciphered the first number:
SUN
He quickly deciphered the next two numbers and stared at the note:
SUN SHINES OVER
The sun was probably a final, invisible celestial marker, and what it was shining over was the final terrestrial landmark-the location of something his father thought was so important.
He flipped to page 111. The next word was SAVAGE.
SUN SHINES OVER SAVAGE
He was about to flip to page 54 and the last word when he heard the bathroom door creak upstairs and he froze.
"Conrad?" a voice called out. "Is that you?"
Brooke! She had been home the whole time. He didn't expect her so early, but a glance at his watch told him she finished her show two hours ago.
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