Serena looked Tucci in the eye, to avoid any doubt. "You want me and Dr. Yeats to go under the capitol of the New World Order to dig up this globe and save America from the Alignment."
"No," he said firmly. "I want you to bring the globe back to Rome."
Serena stared at him, feeling a tingle of fear creep up the back of her neck.
"The world is a better place because of the United States of America," Tucci said. "But world civilizations come and go. The Church is forever. If America should collapse as an imperial power or morph into something else, we must be prepared to confront a new New World Order."
"But Conrad…Dr. Yeats."
"Is never to see the inside of that globe should you come upon it," Tucci said. "Not if you want to save America, or him."
10
WHILE SERENA had run off to Rome with his map, Conrad was in hiding at her safe house way out in the hills of Westchester County, two hours north of New York City. Here at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Letters, the brethren wore robes, sang Gregorian chants, and ran an Internet retailer called TonedMonks.com, which sold discounted printer cartridges and other office supplies to churches and charities.
According to the literature picked up by the school groups and tourists that visited the abbey by day, TonedMonks.com was the brainchild of the honorary abbot, "Father McConnell," a member of the Catholic lay leadership organization known as the Knights of Columbus. In his former life McConnell had been a billionaire Wall Street hedge fund manager who decided it was far better to have something to live for than enough to live on.
The real story, however, was in a dimly lit, dank crypt beneath the abbey, where Conrad was working around the clock with a team of researchers to crack the codes from his father's tombstone and Washington's letter to Robert Yates.
The abbey and its front, TonedMonks.com, apparently did for Serena and the Vatican what venture capital fund In-Q-Tel did for the CIA: fund new technology to advance the kingdom, in this case the Kingdom of God. The abbey's specialty was document analysis. Serena ran the nuns and a secret archive of historical documents out of nearby Mount Saint Mary's, a local Dominican college on the Hudson where she taught on occasion, while McConnell ran the brothers and analysis in these crypts beneath this abbey.
The monks also made a mean espresso, and by his third day code-cracking Conrad was sleepless, fatigued, and jittery as he reviewed his progress on the screen before him.
He clicked on his digital chart table and reviewed the three constellations of Bootes, Leo, and Virgo. Using a digital pen he connected the alpha stars from each constellation-Arcturus, Regulus, and Spica-to draw a triangle.
He then called up a second window on his desktop, a scan of the terrestrial L'Enfant map, and placed it next to the celestial map. He used his digital pen to connect the three key markers on the terrestrial map labeled "Presidential Palace," "Congressional House," and "equestrian statue to honor Washington." Those were the early monikers for the White House, U.S. Capitol, and Washington Monument.
These, too, formed a triangle.
As he suspected all along, the star map mirrored key landmarks on the ground. The White House was aligned to the star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes, the U.S. Capitol to the star Regulus in the constellation Leo, and the Washington Monument to the star Spica in the constellation Virgo.
But a triangle pointed nowhere.
That's what had stumped Conrad at the beginning. In the past he had used star maps to help find a specific location on earth-a secret chamber under the left paw of the Sphinx in Egypt, for example, or the Shrine of the First Sun in Atlantis. But this star map might as well be a circle, an endless loop. A star map was supposed to point to a specific location on earth.
Or a date in history.
That's when it all clicked for Conrad: These three key monuments along the Mall were not only each aligned to certain stars, but collectively to a celestial clock, to a single moment in time and space that any astronomer-or astro-archaeologist-conversant with the precession of equinoxes would know comes along only once every twenty-six thousand years.
It took him a few hours to work the astronomical calculations and correlate them with the astrology of L'Enfant's day, always a tedious task. That was because astrology was a bogus science, based on discredited beliefs. But it was upon those beliefs that ancient pyramids and monuments were once built. So not only did Conrad need to know some hard science, he had to reconcile it with the flawed worldview of a structure's builders during a particular era in history.
Finally, he was done.
Conrad typed in the password to launch his program and watched the screen. The triangles of the celestial and terrestrial maps slowly began to merge, the former on top of the latter. As they did, a digital calendar at the top of the desktop screen flashed like a cosmic odometer.
"Behold, the secret design of Washington, D.C.," he announced to himself.
He stared intently as the terrestrial and celestial triangles became one and the calendar clock froze at 07.04.2008.
July 4, 2008.
Conrad let out a breath. That was only five days away.
What's going to happen in five days?
"I'm wondering the same thing," said a voice from behind.
Conrad turned to see the abbot, Father McConnell, looking over his shoulder. Conrad must have spoken aloud. That or he was going crazy, which by the looks of his surroundings was becoming more plausible by the day.
"So you broke the astrological code, Dr. Yeats."
"The first level," Conrad said. "There's more to everything than meets the eye."
"There always is, son."
Conrad asked, "When is Serena coming back to return my terrestrial L'Enfant map with the Stargazer text on the back?"
"Tomorrow. Meanwhile, I found something for you from the archives at Mount Saint Mary's."
McConnell showed him a text written by Pierre L'Enfant in March of 1791, just after arriving to begin his preliminary survey. His work, L'Enfant wrote, would be like "turning a savage wilderness into a garden of Eden."
Conrad said, "So you think Washington's use of the term savage is referring to the original L'Enfant map Serena took, and that the map will show us the way to whatever we're supposed to find?"
"That's my bet," McConnell said. "But you don't look so sure."
"I think that's partly right. I get the impression that this savage is a person, but we'll need more to go on."
"Then we'll keep looking and leave you alone." McConnell walked away.
Conrad felt like he was getting his second wind after his breakthrough with the star map code. He was afraid he'd lose momentum if he stopped.
He turned his attention to the coded letter to Stargazer. The digital scan he had taken of the text remained a jumble of numbers.
763.618.1793
634.625. ghquip hiugiphipv 431. Lqfilv Seviu 282.625. siel 43. qwl 351. FUUO. 179 ucpgiliuv erqmqaciu jgl 26. recq 280.249. gewuih 707.5.708. jemcms. 282.682.123.414.144. qwl qyp nip 682.683.416.144.625.178. Jecmwli ncabv rlqxi 625.549.431. qwl gewui. 630. gep 48. ugelgims 26. piih 431. ligqnniphcpa 625.217.101.5. uigligs 2821.69. uq glcvcgem 5. hepailqwu eu 625 iuvefmcubnipv 431. qwl lirwfmcg. 280. qyi 707.625. yqlmh 5.708.568.283.282. biexip. 625. uexeqi 683. ubqy 707.625. yes.
711
He tried to use what little translation his father had given him to figure out the rest, but didn't have enough to go on. He ran the message through every old military code Washington used as president and then commander-in-chief, all to no avail.
Finally, he tried something else: an obscure Revolutionary-era military code. It was a secret numerical substitution code invented in 1783 by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, America's first spy chief. Tallmadge substituted strings of numbers for words that Washington would insert into secret communiques. "New York," for example, became the number 727 in Tallmadge code.