"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 arrived 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, revealing the ceremonial Masonic apron he was wearing, 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.
"Always the cipher, General," the assassin said. He reached for some glasses on a shelf and for a moment turned his back. "So what drink shall it be? Fate or free will? Destiny or liberty?"
"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 his 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."
Which was why Washington had chosen this hill as the heart of the new federal city, and why his hand-picked surveyors Ellicott and L'Enfant had oriented the proposed Congressional House to the star Regulus in the constellation of Leo-key to both Atlantis and Egypt-and the entire federal city to the constellation Virgo, like Rome.
Washington himself was ambivalent about astrology.
As a Mason, he felt it made sense that new cities and churches and public buildings be aligned to the stars, if only to acknowledge the necessity of heaven's blessings on so vast and corruptible an earthly enterprise as the founding of a new republic. And it made sense to him to cast astrological charts for the laying of cornerstones at the most opportunistic, astronomically favorable moments, such as the time set for the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol on this very hill at 1 p.m. later that day. The stars, after all, were more permanent fixtures in the heavens than the passing politics of men.
The officers of the Alignment, however, were no builders like the Masons, but rather warriors who traced their origins to Atlantis and who had infiltrated and manipulated the armies of various empires throughout the ages. They used the stars to wage war and destroy those they considered their enemies. Moreover, their astrology was not elective, like his, employed only to make the most of a favorable astrological climate. No. Their astrology was fixed, fatalistic, and filled with doom-a self-fulfilling prophecy. They never considered the irony that they were merely using the stars to justify their actions.
At strategic points in history, the Illuminati, the Masons, and even the Church had served as ignorant hosts to the infernal ranks of the Alignment, who had now set their sights on the federal government of the new United States. During the Revolution, even Washington himself had gone so far as to rely on certain officers trained in their arts to turn the tide of battle.
It was a mistake he had lived to regret.
They were waiting at the top-12 representatives of the Alignment on horseback with torches. They included officers, senators, and bankers Washington knew well, but clearly not as well as he had thought.
Washington rode up to the group, stationed around a trench dug for the laying of the cornerstone.
A few feet beyond the trench was the golden celestial globe.
The official Alignment negotiator, known by the pseudonym Osiris, ran his hands around the smooth contours and constellations of the globe until it cracked open to reveal the wooden axis that kept the two halves together. He pulled the globe apart and removed the axis. It was hollow.
"The treaty, General," he said.
Washington handed over the forgery he had brought with him from the old stone house, complete with his signature as president of the United States.
Osiris rolled it up into a scroll, placed it inside the axis and closed the globe. Then Osiris handed over the original treaty signed in Newburgh in 1783, back when Washington was commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and the United States of America and its Constitution did not yet exist.
Washington slipped the Newburgh Treaty into his pocket, then watched as the sealed globe with the forgery penned with dissolvable ink was lowered to the bottom of the trench into a hollow stone block. On the reverse side of the forgery was something the assassin back at the stone house missed: a star map in invisible ink that would reveal itself later should the globe ever see the light of day.
But that would be centuries from now, Washington thought.
Mortar was poured on top of the trench to seal it. Then a few spades of dirt to cover it. Come morning a silver plate marker would be placed at the bottom of the trench and on top of it the cornerstone to the U.S. Capitol.
"You have what you want," Washington told them. "Why not be rid of me?"
"You have been indispensable, sir. And we salute you. If only you were of more sturdy character, you would have let us crown you, and then you could have led us and America into her destiny this generation instead of forcing her to wait for another."
"America will prove you wrong," Washington said.
Four soldiers were posted to guard the celestial globe until the cornerstone-laying ceremony, and the 13 officers dispersed in every direction. Four each to the north, south, and east, and one lonely horseman, Washington, to the west.
***
It took Washington a half hour to reach the wild outskirts of the Federal District and make it to Peirce Mill along Rock Creek. He followed the winding waters through rocky ravines and dense, primeval woods. At the end of his journey was a cave, hidden among the dense ferns, shrubs, and other foliage. A shroud of gray moss and tangled vines over the entrance made it all but invisible.
Washington tied Nelson to a hickory tree, parted the curtain of tangled vines and stepped inside, where a flicker of light was visible in the distance. He followed the cave to the end, where a larger cavern or hollow appeared and a shaking Hercules, his most trusted slave, held a torch over an ancient Algonquin well surrounded by several barrels of gunpowder.
Washington gazed at Hercules and the round sackcloth by Hercules' buckled shoes. He bent down and removed the sackcloth to reveal another copper globe.
The globe was almost identical to the one he had just seen buried atop Jenkins Heights. But this one was terrestrial, originally paired with its sister but now separated for a special purpose. He stared at the unique topography the cartographer who crafted the globe had carved so long ago, marveling at it.
Washington moved his finger along the 40th parallel on the globe, feeling for the seam. He found the spring and the globe cracked open. He removed the signed document from his overcoat, placed it inside the globe and closed it up. Then he nodded to Hercules, who knotted some rope around it and lowered it down the well.
The Atlantis Prophecy a-2 Page 20
