by J. P. Sloan
I said, “What do you know about Pierre L’Enfant?”
He actually bounced up and down. “Oh, yeah! That’s exactly what I’ve been writing about on my blog!”
“You have a blog?” I didn’t have to actually be here?
“Come on!”
He grabbed his glass and led me to the first door off the kitchen, and down a short flight of stairs to his basement. I noted that Turner elected to remain behind. It was probably better that way.
George snatched a drop cord and clicked on a fluorescent light. I blinked at the harsh blue-white fixture and took in a scene of Lovecraftian insanity. Yarn ran over my head, connecting multiple corkboards of newspaper clippings, slate chalkboards and white marker boards, magazine cutouts of recognizable political leaders, and large birthday party-style letter cutouts spelling familiar words such as Illuminati and Israel.
“Huh?” he prodded, as he approached his computer. After entering a password, which was by my count over twenty characters long, George called up his own blog. A lithograph of a dapper little fop greeted my eyes. “Voila. Pierre Charles L’Enfant.”
To George’s credit, he pronounced the name in a very serviceable accent.
“That’s the man who laid out Washington D.C., huh?” I asked.
He tilted his hand with a dubious grunt. “He started the job. But he wasn’t on board with the Freemason Plan, know what I’m saying?”
“Not really, but I want to.”
“Okay, so not many people know this, but Pierre L’Enfant was actually a practicing hermeticist.”
I snickered. “That, I knew.”
“Then you also know that he planned the street grid of D.C. specifically to channel otherworldy energies to power the Freemasons’ rituals?”
I crossed my arms and let the crazy wash over me. George was closer to the truth than anyone might have given him credit for. He had the Masons wrong, clearly. But all he had to do was swap “Freemasons” with “Presidium” and he’d have a blog post that would get his ass black-bagged and floating in the Chesapeake for sure.
“Go on,” I urged.
“Take a look.” He stood up and gestured at a laminated map of the Baltimore-Washington area he had stapled to the wall, replete with thumbtacks and dry-erase commentary. “Right there. The Washington Monument. Phallic symbol. The reflecting pool. Vulvic symbol.”
“These came well after L’Enfant,” I suggested.
“Yeah, but the organization took the plan and ran with it. Besides, they canned his ass before they even broke ground.”
“They what?”
George bobbed his head in self-amusement as he turned and reached through stacks of paper to produce another lithograph, a meticulous hand-sketch of a very early District of Columbia with the Potomac and its Eastern Branch curling beneath.
“This is the official plat for D.C. It’s what everyone thinks L’Enfant submitted to Washington for the city grid.”
I took it in, then eyed George. “I’m guessing this isn’t the actual grid, then?”
“Nope.” He flipped the page over. “Here… is his actual plat.”
He handed me the page, and I held it to my face, scanning every detail. George had taken a colored pencil to the paper, illustrating what I figured was not only his point, but the very design I was hoping to find.
“A pentacle.”
George grimaced. “Actually, it’s called a pentagram.”
“So sorry.”
“And not just one. Sure, you got the White House Devil Siphon.” He traced the first of the pentacles with the tip of his finger. “Dupont, to Mount Vernon, to Washington Circle, to Logan Circle, and finally to the White House.”
I nodded, then looked to the right, at a second five-pointed star drawn in blue. “And this one?”
“The Legislative Glyph,” he announced. “I’m thinking about trademarking those, by the way. Siphon. Glyph. I’ve read up. No one’s called them that, yet.”
The apex of the blue pentacle began at a space of land that I assumed was somewhere around the current Lincoln Park, swept to Union Station, then jogged up into two points L’Enfant didn’t bother to mark, and finally dropped back into Seward Square.
“What are these two points,” I asked.
“Old Masonic lodges,” George whispered. “They’ve since moved, but at the time, there were plans for a kind of exodus of Freemasons to the New World. You know, a flight from religion. A New World Order? It’s on our money!”
He went to fish his wallet from his pocket, but I held out a hand.
“I get that. Novus Ordo Seclorum.” I inspected the blue pentacle closer. “This misses the Capitol Building, entirely.”
“The Capitol is at the base of the pentacle. It’s the receptacle. Notice how it’s facing East? It draws its power from the rising sun, or the old European Ways, and grants it to the Congress. The red pentacle, however… well, it draws power from the North, and deposits it into the hands of the President.”
“What’s so special about the North?”
He smirked. “Ultima thule?”
“Huh?”
“The Most North? Hyperborea! See? It’s all connected!”
I handed him the paper and took a step away to keep his excitement from spraying onto me. But the evidence was there. L’Enfant had indeed attempted to re-create Nouveau Marche in the Americas. This time, he created two separate power sources for two separate branches of government. He might have worked on the Judicial Branch, but was removed from the project before it was ready.
“So, wait. You said L’Enfant was fired. This was never built?”
“Nope. Washington fired him for being a burr under his wig. He began demanding more money. Made bizarre requests of the Masons. He was fringe even for the Satanists!”
“They weren’t… never mind. So, what happened to the plat?”
George sat in his computer chair and laced his hands behind his head. “They gave it to one of their own. A man by the name of Andrew Ellicott.”
I sucked in a breath.
“You don’t say.”
“Yeah. L’Enfant ended up designing the state house for New York, one of the most haunted buildings in North America, before he died bankrupt and in disgrace.”
I stepped over to his laminated map, fingering the location of Gettysburg. I traced a line to Baltimore, then to Harper’s Ferry, and then down to Locust Grove, Virginia. No, it wasn’t working.
“This isn’t a pentacle,” I mumbled.
“Huh?”
“Oh. There have been a series of vandalisms, lately. All colonial-era buildings, or sites that were important at the founding of D.C. Each one was hit with a kind of occult bomb, let’s call it. I figured these were L’Enfant’s chosen sites, but if he lost his job under Washington then it couldn’t have been.”
In fact, the four points I had to date were too spread out to form a pentacle. If I squinted, I could make them into a hexagram, a six-pointed star. But even that was a stretch.
Fucking geomancy.
I turned to George. “Ellicott City. Was that named for Andrew Ellicott?”
He shrugged, then swiveled to his computer to type something in. After a short moment, he shook his head. “Not exactly. Close, though. It was a group holding from the three brothers. Joseph Ellicott, John, and Andrew. It was Joseph’s mill that operated there, so technically it was named after him.”
I wandered off a few steps.
“It’s close enough.”
My thoughts returned to the previous evening, where I had met Brown. At the Meyer Livery.
In Ellicott City.
He had told me just as we parted, that the truth was literally all around me. He clearly knew more about the identity of these chaos magicians than I had figured. Why would he keep the truth from me, if he wanted me to succeed?
The only answer that presented itself was that Brown needed me to learn the truth, but needed the Presidium to think he wasn’t involved. Of course not. T
hese attacks had come from within the Presidium, itself.
I thanked George profusely as Turner and I took our leave.
Turner gave me several looks as we drove back into the city.
“So?” he finally asked. “Did that do anything for us?”
“More than you realize,” I mumbled.
“And?”
“The problem here, Detective, is that the value of what I learned is utterly lost on anyone who doesn’t believe in the existence of the key players. So thus, I’ll have to satisfy you by saying that Santa’s sleigh does, in fact, run on the blood of reindeer.”
“Why don’t you try me, anyway?”
“We’re up against a civil war,” I stated.
“Hmm.”
He turned into the parking lot of a utility company, turned the car around, and put it into park as he checked something on his phone. I watched with interest, holding my tongue, as he typed a text, checked his email, and pocketed his phone.
After a swift moment of contemplation, he pulled back out onto the road, taking the on-ramp for the Jones Falls Expressway.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You and your boyfriend are always pissing on me because you think I can’t follow your conversations. But you know what? I know exactly what you believe in. Here’s a news flash… I have to connect all kinds of batshit dots in my line of work. I have to get into the heads of criminals on a daily basis. You think criminals have their heads screwed straight? They don’t. But I have to get in their heads if I’m supposed to stay a step in front of them. So, you say there’s a civil war going on, I’m assuming it’s this Presidium cult Durning dimed out two weeks ago. They’re in-fighting, and all of us are caught in the middle.”
I sucked in a breath, and ran a finger over my nose.
“Detective, I owe you several apologies.”
“And I don’t need you to like me,” he continued. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. So tuck it in, deal with it, and let’s go talk to this Brandon Carruthers fellow.”
urner said as he pulled off onto Cold Spring Lane, “I got the address of the old Tree of Life Studio, but I figured that wouldn’t help much since it shut down a month ago. Carruthers did, however, enter an address on his lease agreement, so that’s my first stop.”
I held up a hand. “Wait. What… what did you say?”
“I said he put his address―”
“Tree of Life?”
“Yeah. The art studio where that fucked-up statue was made. What’s going on?”
My head spun, and I gripped the inside door handle as several dozen facts finally clicked into place.
“I need a map. Of Maryland and D.C. I need it now.”
Turner buttoned his lip and moved for the nearest gas station. I jumped out and ran inside, searching for roadmaps. After securing one from behind the counter, I paid and hopped back out into the sunlight where Turner was leaning against his car with crossed arms.
“Is this going to make sense in a minute?” he asked.
“It’ll make sense to us both. Got a pen?”
He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled his Arrow pen, and tossed it to me.
I spread the roadmap across the hood of his car. The District of Columbia sat in the center. Just barely visible above the Mason-Dixon line were the outskirts of Gettysburg. I called it close enough and put a star on it. I then starred the approximate location of the Enoch Pratt library, Harper’s Ferry, and Locust Grove on the map. I then drew a triangle between the first three, then dragged a straight line down from Harper’s Ferry to Locust Grove.
Turner sniffled. “I hope you didn’t drink from George’s cup, because whatever he has may be catching.”
I held up a hand to shush him, then used my forearm as a crude straight edge to locate points south of Baltimore and east of both Harper’s Ferry and Locust Grove.
I plotted further points south of each. Marshall, VA. Port Tobacco, MD. Port Royal, VA. I drew lines connecting them in what was a familiar pattern to me, then I slapped my hand against the hood after circling Alexandria, VA.
“Hey, easy,” Turner grunted.
“That’s it. Egypt! L’Enfant wasn’t nuts. He just lost the internal divide.”
Turner rolled his eyes, sighed, then asked, “What internal divide?”
“The Nombre D’or. In the late 1700’s, they tried to use geomancy to create the center of a New World Order. But it never got off the ground, because of a schism in their philosophy between Egyptian Gnosticism, and the new wave of Enlightenment thinking that was all about developing new scientific methods.”
“Science and magic?”
“Yes. Exactly! That was what L’Enfant and his compatriots were trying to do in France. But the war with England pulled them abroad. L’Enfant thought he had a blank slate to work with. Washington and the other seed members of the Presidium had invited him specifically to hammer out the same pentacle node system they tried in France. Then something happened, and I think I know what.”
I pointed at the map.
“Know what that shape is?”
Turner shook his head.
“It’s the sephiroth.”
“What’s that mean?”
I explained, “It’s the Tree of Life, a geometric representation of Qabalistic cosmology. Each of these circles represents points of divine energy that bring energy into existence from a Higher Source. Boom, boom, boom,” I spat as I tapped circles with my pen. “It’s Qabala.”
“You’re going to have to rewind the tape for me.”
“Qabala is an ancient school of Hebrew mysticism. It’s one of the cornerstones of modern hermeticism.”
Turner shook his head. “But you said this Number Door cult―”
“Nombre D’or. French for Golden Ratio.”
“Whatever. These Number Door people were about science versus Egypt. Where’s this Qabala come into it?”
I handed Turner his pen before I dented it or his hood further. “It’s widely accepted that the Hebrews first developed the precursors to Qabala during the Egyptian captivity, drawing influence from the ancient polytheistic rites. They spun it into their own school of thinking, but the secret knowledge they uncovered most likely shares its DNA with Egyptian Gnosticism.”
“So,” Turner lowed as he pocketed his pen, “your modern day Presidium, these jag-offs that are supposed to run the country, are actually the Qabala people, and L’Enfant got the reach-around?”
I nodded. “L’Enfant lost the fight. He was angling to make D.C. in his image. But the other half of the Nombre D’or won. And I’ll bet you a bucket of wings that Andrew Ellicott was one of them.”
“What does that mean to me?” he asked.
“To you? Well, I’m working on that. But it means something to the Presidium. It means that the loyalists to L’Enfant and the New World Order have probably been hiding inside their ranks, biding their time until the Presidium was weak enough to attack. It means there’s no outside cabal trying to tear them down to make in-roads to North America.” I scowled. “And it means I probably owe Reed Malosi a gigantic apology.”
“He’s in good company.”
I folded up the map. “These sites were selected not by L’Enfant, but by Ellicott. The Presidium set up this geomantic energy siphon to power their hermetic dominance for the last two centuries and change. And now someone’s punching holes in them as a part of a multi-layered plan to overthrow the whole organization. If this is a L’Enfantine sect of the Presidium, then they can’t want the power source to collapse entirely.”
Turner snapped his fingers. “So they’re setting up their own hooziwatzits in the original design?”
I snickered. “I’ll make a practitioner out of you yet, Detective.”
He consulted his watch. “Ready for the Carruthers Experience yet, or are we going to grab some chicken while we’re here?”
“No, I really want to meet this guy.”
We hit the road again, and it wasn’t lon
g until Turner got us lost in the middle of Hampden. After a few U-turns, we ended up nestled between an organic food store and an abandoned bottling plant. A line of row houses ran down the hill from the plant, and down a side alley, I spotted a concrete masonry unit with a coat of beige paint tucked just behind the food store.
“I think that’s it,” he said. “No numbers. That’s against code, by the way.”
“Don’t think they were going for noticeable.” I quipped. “So, should you ring the bell, or should I?”
“Well, let’s give it a minute.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
After only about fifteen seconds of me starting to work on a new ulcer, wondering why Turner was trying to stall us, a car pulled up behind us and killed the engine.
I gripped the door handle, and twisted in my seat.
Turner held up a hand. “Now, don’t go crazy. He just asked me to keep him in the loop. And I didn’t―”
“Who asked you?”
“Who do you think?”
I spotted the car as the driver side door opened.
It was a Volvo.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
I stepped out of the car in time for Julian to reach the back of the Crown Vic.
He crossed his arms, and I just stood there like a man caught with his mistress.
“Hi, Julian.”
“That’s a hell of a coffee break, Dorian.”
“Look,” I offered with outstretched hands.
“No. I’m not going to let you push me away. Not like the others.”
I reached deep for a response, but ended up stuffing my hands into my pocket and dropping my chin.
“How long have you known me, Julian? Is this really that surprising to you?”
“Oh,” he spat with more attitude than I’ve seen from him before. “That’s an excuse? Sorry, but you brought me in, Dorian. I’m on the inside. You don’t just pull me in and shove me aside like I was some lackey. You need my help? I can’t help you if you―”
“I need to check you.”
He blinked rapidly, then took a step back.
My gut twisted. I was committing to this. Wasn’t it just paranoia? Did I really think Julian was capable of this level of deceit?
