And she knew one other thing: If the Emerald Tablet was hidden among all those thousands of stones, they were screwed. Plain and simple.
Given the stupefied expression on Caedmon’s face, he’d just come to the same conclusion.
“I’m awestruck,” he murmured, his head tilted as he gazed upward. “It’s quite the tour de force.”
“In order to tour the tour de force, we need to get some tickets. This way.” Grabbing his hand, Edie pulled Caedmon toward the national park kiosk.
A few minutes later, supplied with tickets and a map, they set off. As they neared the entrance, Edie groaned, the line to get inside the monument snaking halfway around the base.
Unfolding the map, Caedmon held it in front of him. “I see a marker for something called the Jefferson Pier. Any idea what that is?”
“I’ve lived in D.C. eighteen years, labored an entire summer for the Tourmobile company, and I have never heard of the Jefferson Pier.” Coming to a full stop, Edie examined the map.
“Right there.” Leaning over her shoulder, Caedmon pointed to a small speck on the northwest quadrant of the monument grounds, approximately three hundred yards from their current position.
Glancing at the line of waiting tourists, Edie made a suggestion. “Let’s temporarily bypass the monument and head over to the Jefferson Pier. I suspect the line will shrink the closer we get to the lunch hour.”
“Lead the way.”
She did, veering away from the pavement. Several minutes into the hike, shading her eyes with her hand, Edie scanned the monument grounds. When she caught sight of a familiar Smoky the Bear hat, she exuberantly waved her arm.
“What are you doing?”
“Flagging a Park Service ranger. We have no idea what we’re looking for. These guys know everything about the Mall.”
Returning her wave, the uniformed ranger adjusted course and headed in their direction.
Edie read the gold-plated name badge affixed to the right side of the ranger’s shirt. Jermaine Walker.
“Hi, Ranger Walker! We’re lost,” she blurted, cutting right to the chase. “Could you please tell us where the Jefferson Pier is located?”
The ranger, a mustachioed black man who wore his drab green-and-gray uniform with surprising panache, good-naturedly smiled. “Had you’d gotten any closer, you might have stumbled over top of it. The Jefferson Pier is right over there.” He pointed to a stubby granite block situated some thirty feet from where they stood.
“That?” Edie didn’t even try to mask her keen disappointment. She glanced at Caedmon, who, in turn, shrugged his shoulders.
“So sorry to have bothered you,” Caedmon apologized to the ranger. “We thought the Jefferson Pier might be something of more, er, historic significance.”
“I know. It bewilders a lot of folks who see it on the map and mistakenly head this way searching for the Jefferson Memorial.” Ranger Walker started to walk toward the granite lump; Caedmon and Edie had no choice but to tag along. “What they don’t know is that the pier is highly significant.”
Standing in front of the two-foot-high post capped with a pyramidal top, Edie had her doubts. It looked like someone inadvertently plunked a parking barrier in the middle of the expansive monument grounds.
“If you’re interested in Washington lore, there’s an inscription on the other side.”
“Indeed?” Caedmon had to bend at the waist in order to read the chiseled lettering. “ ‘Position of Jefferson Pier erected December 18, 1804.’ Fascinating,” he deadpanned, straightening to his full height.
“Actually, it is,” the ranger was quick to inform them. “In 1793, President Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, as point man for the capital construction project. Very much a micromanager, Jefferson surveyed a north-south meridian through the new city, personally driving a wooden stake on this very spot to mark the newly surveyed meridian.” Ranger Walker spoke in the kind of singsongy voice reserved for rote recitation. “In 1804, President Jefferson replaced the wood post with a stone pier.”
“The inscription on the pier has obviously been defaced.” Caedmon pointed to a gouged-out trench beneath the date. “As though someone purposefully chiseled away part of the inscription.”
The ranger shrugged. “Vandals and graffiti artists, what can I say?”
Edie squinted her eyes to tighten her long-distance vision. “If you head due north from this pier, the meridian passes right through the middle of the White House.”
“That’s correct,” Ranger Walker verified with a nod. “The meridian runs parallel to Sixteenth Street from one end of the city to the other. “And”—he leaned close, as though imparting a great secret—“I hear tell the Freemasons call it ‘the Corridor of Light.’ Not exactly sure why. Might have something to do with the House of the Temple that they built up there on Sixteenth Street.”
Neither Caedmon nor Edie responded to Ranger Walker’s last remark, both of them well aware that six days ago a brutal murder had taken place at that very location.
“As you no doubt recall, Edie, a meridian is a line of longitude.”
“And it just so happens that Jefferson’s meridian is exactly at seventy-seven degrees longitude,” Ranger Walker chimed in.
Hearing that, Edie and Caedmon simultaneously swung their heads toward the innocuous granite pier.
The seventy-seventh meridian!
God’s line of longitude.
CHAPTER 72
Christos!
They were doing nothing but walking. Endless blocks of walking, trudging, trekking. Moving from one location to another with nothing to show for the effort.
Standing at the souvenir kiosk on the edge of the monument grounds, Saviour watched as the Brit and his woman began walking toward Constitution Avenue. Here we go again. Mercurius said that Aisquith had embarked on a sacred quest. A sacred quest, my ass.
In no hurry to set off—with the tracking device, he could follow at his leisure—Saviour examined the array of souvenirs being sold at outrageously inflated prices. His gaze alighted on a ten-inch-high metal replica of the Washington Monument. Welded onto the front of the miniature obelisk was an outdoor thermostat.
“How much for these two?” he brusquely asked the vendor, picking up a blue baseball cap in his other hand.
“Twenty-four ninety-five.”
Christos! For a baseball cap and a shitty souvenir!
He wordlessly handed over a twenty and a five. Furious that the malaka had just swindled him, he barely refrained from throwing the nickel change at the other man’s chest.
Slapping the baseball cap on his head, Saviour tucked his souvenir under his arm and strode across the neatly trimmed expanse of lawn toward the stubby stone ballast. The granite monolith had garnered Aisquith and the woman’s attention. In fact, they’d been so interested, they consulted with a third party. A third party who presently stood a few feet away from the squat stone.
Saviour affixed a guileless expression on his face and approached. His gaze immediately alighted on the gleaming gold badge pinned above the black man’s left shirt pocket. U.S. Park Ranger. Then he glanced at the gold name tag pinned above the right pocket. Jermaine Walker. Although he wore a uniform, the ranger carried no weapon.