"You mean driving from their homes which had no running water or electricity in the first place?" he said. "Sounds like progress to me."
Serena glanced sideways at him as she walked. "And the destruction of the ancient temples, their history?"
"Obviously the Chinese don't care about their ancient temples as much as you do, Serena. That's because the Chinese are looking to the future. They know that in time some other civilization is going to do the same thing to their Olympic Park that they're doing to those ancient temples."
She came to a halt. "I wonder if you'd feel the same way if these temples were the ones about to be destroyed?" She pointed out toward the Manhattan skyline-away from Conrad in the media area.
Max Seavers followed her finger and smiled. "If it was some act of God-like the tsunami, I'd be devastated. But if it was our government doing the submerging, for the betterment of the country, like the Chinese, then yes. Have you seen this?"
Serena realized he was referring to the nearby display of a model city in the lobby. It was the official Olympic Venue Construction Plan for Beijing. A nameplate read "Axis of Human Civilization." More PR.
"Impressive, Serena, isn't it?"
Serena looked at the model of the city's new Central Axis. The Chinese had successfully constructed a 25-kilometer-long boulevard connecting the new Olympic Park in the north with the Imperial Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the city center. She noted a stretch of avenue labeled "thousand-year path."
"It's certainly audacious, Max," she said. "This Beijing axis looks like the New Berlin that Hitler never got to build."
Max chuckled. "Funny you should say that. Because it was designed by Albert Speer Jr., the son of the architect who designed the New Berlin for Hitler's grandiose empire, the 'world capital Germania,' the capital of the so-called Thousand Year Reich."
Serena said, "You're joking."
"No." Max shook his head. "Charming old man, incredibly gifted. Tried to hire him myself for SeaGen's corporate headquarters in La Jolla, but the Chinese outbid me."
Serena stared at the model city. "Is Speer trying to copy his father or outdo him?"
"That's what the German news magazine Die Welt asked when the plan was unveiled," he said. "But it's all nonsense, of course. The Chinese insist Speer's design simply fulfills their own intentions of creating a central axis, and that the idea was laid out in the planning of the imperial capital centuries ago. I think the real point of interest is where the elder Speer found his inspiration for the New Berlin in the first place."
Serena shrugged. "You've got me, Max."
"Pierre L'Enfant's design for the National Mall in Washington, D.C.," he said. "What's more, Speer maintained that L'Enfant's plan was itself based on earlier source maps going back to ancient Egypt and Atlantis. That's Doctor Yeats's specialty, isn't it?"
Serena wasn't going to bite. Nothing good could come out of lingering here even a moment longer.
"Atlantis?" she asked, giving him a dubious look. "Now don't get all mystic on me, Max. We need you to keep those vaccines coming."
With that she turned and briskly walked away, exhaling slowly. As she approached the media line by the entrance, she was aware of Conrad in the pack. She walked right past him without a glance to the waiting limousine and got in. Benito closed the door, slid behind the wheel and drove away.
8
FURIOUS TO SEE Serena pressing the flesh with none other than that pseudo-philanthropist-billionaire Max Seavers, and feeling helpless because he couldn't risk being seen, Conrad walked out of the U.N., weaving between the flagpoles in front until he was far enough away to hail a cab and climb inside.
"Christie's," he said as the driver pulled away from the curb and into the lunch hour traffic. The driver glanced at him in the mirror and asked where Christie lived. "Rockefeller Center. She's an auction house."
Conrad didn't know where else to go until he could reach Serena, and he didn't want to tell the driver to just "drive." Worst case, there was a cute assistant curator at Christie's that he had seen off and on whenever he was in New York. Ironically enough, her name was Kristy. Maybe she could make some sense of the map, or at least its monetary value, and refer him to somebody outside the federal government who could help him decode the text.
Conrad took out the cell phone he had lifted off the body of the assassin aboard the Acela. He had tossed his own phone under the tracks before leaving the platform at Penn Station. The question was whether anybody had found the bodies yet and been sharp enough to start tracking this phone. Probably not. Hopefully not.
He keyed in Serena's number from memory and listened to it ring on the other end.
The driver's phone beeped at the same time. "Yeah?" he said.
Conrad heard the cabbie loud and clear-on his phone.
"Yeah?" the cabbie repeated.
A cold shudder passed through Conrad's body. He stared at the phone's display and realized he had redialed the last number the assassin called. Conrad looked up at the rearview mirror in time to see the slits of the driver's eyes widen.
"You're one of them," Conrad said and pointed the gun he lifted from the dead Marine at the driver's head.
Too late Conrad noticed the driver had only one hand on the wheel and ducked as a bullet burst from the front seat and shattered the rear window.
Conrad pumped a bullet into the back of the driver's seat. The bullet shattered the driver's spine and he slumped forward onto the steering wheel, his arms loose at his side.
Conrad felt sick to his stomach. He tapped the driver on the back of the head. The man's head rolled to the side, revealing a trickle of blood running down his neck.
The cab suddenly accelerated wildly.
Conrad lunged over the seat and put his arms over the corpse to reach the steering wheel, but the car was careening out of control.
A flash in the rearview mirror caught his eye and he looked back through the blown-out rear windshield to see an unmarked Ford Explorer with federal plates and red lights coming up from behind. Suddenly Conrad's shock turned to rage. He wrenched the steering wheel toward the road and the cab shot off.
The federal car gave chase, but Conrad quickly turned the wheel while pulling the brake lever, sliding the cab sideways with a long skid. Then he turned it against the street direction, driving straight toward the Explorer.
The driver of the Explorer didn't have a chance to remove his seat belt and pull out a gun. And he couldn't swerve in time before Conrad drove the cab head-on into the black SUV. Conrad's face slammed into the corpse on impact and bounced back in time for him to see the airbags inflate in the federal car.
He heard sirens closing in a minute later. He staggered out of the cab, his ears still ringing from the crash. Or was that the sound of police sirens growing louder? There was a squeal of brakes. A voice called, "Hey!"
It was Serena calling from the open window of a Mercedes limousine. She kicked open the rear door with the Vatican emblem on it and motioned him inside.
Conrad paused for a second, thunderstruck. She was a vision from heaven. Her lips were moving but he couldn't hear anything. He dove into the back, the door slamming shut behind him as the limousine peeled away.
"Anything else you want to destroy, Conrad, or are we finished for now?" said Serena as Benito swung them into traffic on First Avenue.
He stared at her, incredulous. In her black Armani suit and white silk blouse, she looked completely unruffled.
"I'm fine, thanks."
"Too bad I can't say the same for that poor Amtrak attendant and Marine the police band says you killed," she said softly. "Please tell me the Alignment was responsible."