His code name was HANS, and he was discovered by American troops in Antarctica in the 1940s during Operation Highjump, which was the massive U.S. invasion of Antarctica based on information gleaned from the Nazis in the waning days of World War II. Almost every major American base on the ice continent could trace its origins back to Highjump.
Hans was a corpse, the frozen corpse of a German officer who was part of a secret Nazi base in Antarctica established by the "Baron of the Black Order" himself, SS General Ludwig von Berg. It was at this base that Hitler's "Last Battalion" apparently stored biotoxins. These biotoxins had been smuggled out of the collapsing Third Reich on U-boats, along with senior Nazis, who then went on to establish new identities in Argentina.
Hans didn't talk much, but his diseased lung tissue had provided Seavers with the second most important discovery of his life: the Nazis had weaponized the 1918 Spanish flu that had killed more than fifty million humans. In the end, it also killed the Nazis safeguarding their ultimate doomsday weapon. But it breathed new life into Seavers' research and set him on his present course.
Specifically, Hans's frozen lung tissue had given Seavers the perfectly preserved live bird flu virus itself. The trouble had been converting it into an easily dispersible aerosol version. In the process Seavers also discovered a prion mutation in the corpse's brain cells. One drop of fluid drained from the tissue could create a dozen lethal injections. A simple prick by syringe or dart gun caused instant death from apparently natural disease. But it had to be used within 24 hours of extraction or it would lose its effectiveness. Hence his periodic visits to the Meat Locker.
Seavers smiled at his frozen friend. "We're going to have to make this one fast today, Hans," he said, looking forward to extracting some cells from Conrad Yeats.
23
MISSION SPRINGS NURSING HOME
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
IT WAS A THREE-HOUR car trip for Conrad and Serena, and Conrad could tell she had grave doubts about meeting this Master Mason known as Sentinel. But dressed in her traditional nun's attire, she said nothing as they walked through the front entrance of the Mission Springs Nursing Home. The home specialized in scooping up the half-dead human leftovers from the nearby VA hospital, keeping their juices and benefits going for a few weeks, and then dumping them in the grave.
The administrator at the nursing station, seeing clergy had come to visit, directed them down the hall to 208. They came to a room with the door partially open. Conrad gave it a rap with a knuckle. It opened wide and a big nurse with the name tag Brenda came out with a bottle of urine.
"We're all done, Father," Nurse Brenda said, noticing the white collar Conrad sported under his trench coat, courtesy of Serghetti Couture.
They entered the room and there was Reggie "Hercules" Jefferson, who had gone by the name Sentinel for as long as Conrad could remember. Herc, short for Hercules, was one of his father's few true friends from the Air Force, maybe his only one. Born in New Orleans, Herc's father was a bricklayer who became a Tuskegee Airman, one of the first African-Americans to fly for Uncle Sam.
Herc wanted to do even better and aspired to be an astronaut. But NASA wasn't ready for an African-American Apollo pilot, so he ended up flying Hercules C-131 transports on black ops missions for General Yeats. In time he, like most anybody associated with Conrad's old man, literally crashed and burned in an impossible landing that snapped his spinal cord and left him crippled for life at the age of 40.
That was thirty years ago.
Before Conrad could say a word, Herc said with a low, gravelly voice, "Took you long enough, son."
"I finally figured out that it was you who carved my father's tombstone."
"Just like your daddy wanted."
Herc was an unlikely Mason, not of the dead white male variety. His family claimed to have descended from a line of slave Masons since the Revolution. General Yeats believed it, having witnessed both Herc's encyclopedic knowledge of Masonic esoterica and his advanced skills as a stonecutter and site planner for forward-based military ops. As for Herc's claim that his family had blood ties to Founders like Washington and Jefferson, who allegedly had had affairs with female slaves, that seemed like wishful thinking to Conrad when he heard it from Uncle Herc as a boy. Looking at him in bed it seemed even more fanciful now.
Conrad said, "The globe's not in the cornerstone of the Capitol building."
"Of course not. Casey moved it after the War of 1812. I could have told you that, boy."
Conrad sighed. "You could have come to the funeral."
"On these legs? Besides, your old man and I never thought I'd make it this far. We thought you'd be on your own. Had to build a message into the tombstone and hope you'd be smart enough to figure it out. Guess you ain't."
"So how long have you been waiting for me?"
"How long since the Griffter died?"
Four years, thought Conrad, ashamed for having not even thought of Uncle Herc until now. Conrad could see that Herc had expected him to pay a visit as soon as his dad died. But Conrad had been wrapped up in his own worries following the death and destruction in Antarctica. Little did he know that poor Herc had been waiting here all this time, scratching sores in the bed his father had put him in.
There wasn't much Conrad could say, so naturally Serena said it for him, getting directly to the business at hand. "Hello, Uncle Herc. I'm-"
"I know who you are, Sister Serghetti," old Herc said. "Pleased to meet you."
"We figure the globe is buried beneath the Library of Congress," she said. "Casey and his son Edward, who was responsible for the interiors, appear to have left clues in the form of zodiacs as a map. But Doctor Yeats can't crack the secret, and we hoped you could."
Her bold Australian accent immediately perked up old Herc, and he smiled at Conrad approvingly. "She's a handful, ain't she?"
Conrad glanced at Serena. "That she is. Now, about the globe-"
But Herc asked Serena, "So you think we Masons are all devil worshippers?"
"I think you worship knowledge," she said without batting an eyelash. "The danger comes in ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of truth."
"We ain't a religion, Sister Serghetti. We promote enlightenment, not salvation."
"Thereby making an idol of enlightenment," she countered. "The very temptation that Lucifer offered Eve in the Garden of Eden."
"So you do think we worship the devil."
She smiled. "In a roundabout way, yes."
Conrad said nothing as a heavy silence filled the room.
"You know, Yeats, your girl reminds me of another lady named Anne Royall," Hercules finally said. "She was America's first prominent female journalist, a real rabble-rouser screaming about government corruption and all in the 1800s."
"Anne Royall?" Conrad repeated.
"Yeah, she used to live on B Street near 2nd Street and the Capitol back in her day," Herc said. "Her husband, Captain William Royall, was a Freemason. For years their basement was used as a secret meeting place for Masons dedicated to preserving the federal city's alignment with the heavens. But in time they couldn't even preserve the house. Got torn down by the Army Corps of Engineers."
Conrad could feel a tingle racing up his spine. Something was coming. He could see it in old Herc's eyes. "Why did the Army Corps of Engineers tear down Anne Royall's old house?"
Herc smiled. "Casey had to raze it to make room for the Library of Congress and the laying of its northeast foundation stone in 1890."
There it was. He looked at Serena, who got it, too: The Masons moved the globe to the basement of Anne Royall's house. Then they built the Library on top of it. The house was gone, but not the basement. It was buried under the Library of Congress.
Then Conrad thought of something and frowned. "The radiant I've been tracking cuts across the Library's Great Hall in a southeasterly direction. Shouldn't the basement be somewhere under the northeastern corner of the building?"
Hercules nodded. "It
is, but the access tunnel is in the southeast corner."
"What access tunnel?" Serena pressed.
"Go get me my file, and I'll show you."
Conrad and Serena looked around the small room and saw only a wooden dresser with an old picture of Herc and Conrad's father from their glory days.
"It's inside the back."
Conrad walked over, removed the backing from the picture and peeled out a very old and thin schematic that had been folded several times over. He brought it over to Herc, who motioned for him to unfold it.
"Ain't hardly readable, but I can interpret."
It took a minute, but when Conrad was done he and Serena found themselves looking at plans, elevations, and details from the Jefferson Building. They were stamped "Edward Pearce Casey, Architect, 171 Broadway, New York" and signed by Bernard Green "Superintendent amp; Engineer" for the Library of Congress.
"See, the radiant crosses the sign Virgo across the zodiac on the floor of the Great Hall," Hercules pointed out with a gnarled finger. "At the end of the day, when it comes to the federal district, it's all about Virgo. The whole city is aligned to the Blessed Virgin in the sky."
"I beg to differ," Serena said. "The astral virgin is Isis, not Mary, despite attempts by Vatican astronomers to Christianize her in the Middle Ages. As such, the zodiacs are part of a deterministic philosophy of astrology that worships fate, not free will. And there can be no human rights without the recognition of free will."
"Maybe it means all that to some people," Herc said. "But to Masons the Virgin represents the hearth and home, the milk of the breast and the promise of the harvest. Like the New World to the Founders."
"Well, then your stars are sexist."
Herc seemed delighted with Serena. "You got a point, Sister. Anytime you deal with God or the stars, it seems you gotta have a Virgin. Very important." He looked at Conrad. "You ain't gonna pull this thing off without a virgin, son, and now you've got two of them-one in the heavens and one real live wire here on earth."
24
HERC AWOKE with a start in his bed later that afternoon at the nursing home. He had dozed off after the Griffter's son and the nun had left. He lay still pondering everything they had discovered, wondering if he should have said more.
Because there was certainly a lot more he could have said.
Slowly he reached his shaking hand under his bed and pulled out an old dagger with Masonic letters. It had been passed down through the generations, and he was told it once belonged to George Washington. He wondered if that was true. The only reason he kept it under his bed these days was to make sure some orderly didn't steal it.
He had intended to give the dagger to the Griffter's kid but forgot. His memory was slipping, along with just about everything else.
He heard footsteps and slipped the dagger under his gown as two young orderlies appeared at his door with a wheelchair and Nurse Brenda chirped that it was time for his physical therapy.
As they wheeled him down the hall, he noticed that he was feeling a bit queasy. Damn nursing home food.
"I know you want to keep the feeding tube in, sweetie, but your mother is trying to tell you she wants to leave this earth," Nurse Brenda was telling the daughter of the woman down the hall as they passed by.
Forget the feeding tube, Herc thought, they just needed to give that woman some water. She was going to die of dehydration, not dementia.
Suddenly Hercules realized they had passed the physical therapy room, and when he looked ahead they pushed him through two double doors to the parking lot outside where an ambulance was waiting.
"Hey, where you taking me?" Herc said as the orderlies lifted him up and dropped him on a gurney inside the ambulance.
A blond doctor with a syringe inside welcomed Hercules as the doors closed and the ambulance moved off. "I'm disappointed we missed Dr. Yeats," the man said. "But maybe you could tell us where he's going?"
Herc said nothing, although his gown was wet. He must have pissed in his pants. That's because he saw the other guy strapped down in the ambulance-young Danny Z, his mouth gagged and eyes wide.
"Don't know who you talking about, Doctor. Now please tell me where we're going."
"For a ride, Mr. Hercules," the man said with some amusement. "If you help me, you might get off. If you don't, then I'm afraid you'll suffer the same fate as your friend here."
Danny Z started to scream as the doctor slipped a long needle into Danny's neck.
"A body is a terrible thing to waste," the doctor told Danny as he slowly pushed the syringe. "So I'm only going to melt your brain."
25
GEORGETOWN BALLROOM
WASHINGTON HILTON
"A FUNNY THING happened to me yesterday on my way to Capitol Hill."
There was laughter in the Georgetown Ballroom at the Hilton Hotel as Serena Serghetti addressed the Washington Press Corps at the annual Media Dinner on the eve of the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast.
"I was testifying about human rights in China, or lack thereof when it comes to your personal body parts and organ transplants, when I realized that the Chinese are right."
The room grew quiet, just a few forks clinking on plates as the journalists enjoyed their choice of beef or salmon. Meanwhile, here she stood as an ambassador for Christ covering up a federal crime in progress. The guilt was almost too much to bear.
"If a human lives for four score years and the state is forever, then the state should be able to do whatever is necessary for the so-called greater good," she explained. "But if it's the soul that is immortal, as that old Oxford don C. S. Lewis used to say, then it's the state that is passing away. Which means individual rights are paramount."
She was getting nervous as she saw the clock in the back of the room. Secret Service teams with dogs would be sweeping the hotel in a matter of hours and then the security would clamp down like a fortress, and nobody would be able to come in or go out until the president left the breakfast in the grand ballroom at 10 a.m. If Conrad didn't get back soon…
"The whole point of 'one nation under God' in the American pledge of allegiance is recognition that the government isn't God. Individual rights are the basis for the foundation of the United States, and much of this philosophy came from American preachers like Thomas Hooker, who argued for the 'priesthood of believers,' insisting that since the Holy Spirit resided in the heart of every person, each person should be able to vote and live their conscience. In short, we're the government. You and me and all the people."
She looked at the sea of faces in the room, many of them familiar talking heads on TV who would have plenty to talk about if they only knew the truth.
"Sometimes I wonder if my evangelical friends in America have forgotten this. Are we people of faith in the halls of power? Or are we people who have faith in the halls of power? It's an important distinction. One leads to an open, diverse society. The other leads to something like we have in Russia today, where the former KGB spy agency has effectively taken over the government. One begins to wonder if something like that could even happen here."
She was thinking of the Alignment and the average American citizen. The Romans had bread and circuses. The Americans had TV and the Super Bowl. The members of the "chattering class" represented in this room were part of this Great American Conspiracy. But they also reported on it and thus shaped it. Which is why she had accepted this invitation in the first place.
"All of this underscores the primary role the Fourth Estate or free press performs in a democratic society, for it is you who inform the electorate and help us make sense of our world so that we, the people, can decide the fate of nations, not the other way around."
It was over soon enough and she was standing before a line of appreciative journalists. And then Brooke Scarborough walked up.
Serena hadn't seen her until now in the room, and never in person. She was much…taller than she expected, with very big hands that now clasped her own.
"Sister Serghe
tti," Brooke said. "I think we have a mutual friend who is in trouble."
Serena feigned ignorance, but knew from Brooke's eyes that each woman completely understood the other.
"You'd tell me if you've seen Conrad, wouldn't you?" Brooke pressed.
"Ms. Scarborough, I had assumed that you would be the first person Dr. Yeats would go to if he were in trouble. Are you no longer together?"
It was Brooke who feigned ignorance now, as she was forced to move off and let the person behind her say hello to "Mother Earth," but even out of sight Serena could feel Brooke's eyes watching her every move.
26
JEFFERSON BUILDING
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
CONRAD LISTENED to the soft strains of Mozart on his iPhone's earbuds as he walked along Constitution Avenue in the rain. The dome of the Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress gleamed proudly under dark skies tonight, its grandeur almost eclipsing that of the U.S. Capitol across the street. It was already a few minutes past midnight, which meant it was already July 3, and meant he was running out of time. He turned up the collar of his trench coat and walked into the researchers entrance.
The guard on duty looked up from his station and immediately recognized Conrad from all his previous, legitimate visits to the Library over the years. Conrad's heart sank. Good ol' Larry was shaking his shaved head, whistling the spooky theme song to Conrad's old reality series Ancient Riddles of the Universe, which could be seen only in syndicated reruns on late-night TV and which said everything Conrad needed to know about Larry's social life.
"The Library closed to the public at 5:30 p.m. and to researchers at 9:30 p.m., Dr. Yeats. Only congressmen or their staff allowed now. You know the rules."
"Still a little wet behind the ears, Larry, as you can see." He wiped his wet hair back and put on a smile, his gut churning at the thought that Larry might get hurt.
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