I wonder if there's a word for the number 763.
According to his database, there was: "Headquarters."
Suddenly the dateline at the top of the Stargazer letter made more sense:
Headquarters September 18 1793 But many words in the rest of the text didn't have a number code. For those words, he would have to use Tallmadge's letter-substitution cipher:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
e f g h i j a b c d o m n p q r k l u v w x y z s t
Conrad thought it a long shot since Washington was not the kind of spymaster to resort to sixteen-year-old codes on his deathbed. But he applied the letter-substitution cipher, and when he looked at the display of his digital chart table, the translation, clear as day, read:
Headquarters September 18 1793 To Robert Yates and his chosen descendent in the Year of Our Lord 2008:
My sincerest apologies for any pain I have caused you and your family. If we do not deceive our own men we will never deceive the enemy. Failure might prove the ruin of our cause. There can be scarcely any need of recommending the greatest caution and secrecy in a business so critical and dangerous as the establishment of our republic.
The fate of the world is in your hands, and your reward is in Heaven. The savage will show you the way.
General Washington Conrad was so excited he accidentally knocked his coffee mug off the table and it shattered on the floor. He didn't bother to pick up the pieces. He was too busy staring at the translation, pondering its implications.
He quickly got back to work. The word Headquarters appeared to be the Tallmadge translation for the mysterious number 763 engraved on his father's tombstone. That solved that mystery, only to raise another: What did Headquarters actually mean?
Then there was the date: September 18, 1793. That was a good six years before December 14, 1799, the night Washington died, and the night that Robert Yates first received Stargazer's orders. Had Washington written the letter years earlier and only released it on his deathbed? Or had he written the letter the night he died and the date carried some significance for Robert Yates?
The phrase "the fate of the world," meanwhile, looked like a double entendre to Conrad. He didn't know what "the world" meant but sensed it was important, and that the key to unlocking both it and the "reward in Heaven" was the "savage" Washington mentioned.
Sun sets over savage land.
He remembered the message his father left him from the tombstone along with the number 763 and the astrological symbols. It was almost as if his father wanted to draw special attention to the word "savage" in case Conrad never found the L'Enfant map.
So who is the savage? he was wondering when McConnell breathlessly walked up to him with a document.
"We pulled this from the archives," he said. "It's dated the night of Washington's death on December 14, 1799."
Conrad took the letter and looked at it closely. It was a letter addressed to Bishop John Carroll and purported to be an eyewitness account of George Washington's last hours at Mount Vernon as seen by Father Leonard Neale, a Jesuit from St. Mary's Mission across the Piscatawney River.
From what Conrad could tell from the report, Father Neale was distraught that he wasn't allowed to perform last rites or baptize Washington before he died. Neither were the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Baptists. Only the Masons would be allowed to bury the body, Neale noted, even though Washington hadn't set foot in a Masonic Lodge more than a couple of times in the last thirty years of his life, nor practiced Masonry outside of a few public cornerstone-laying ceremonies.
The reason, according to Tobias Lear, Washington's chief of staff, was that while Washington believed the republic owed its freedom to men and women of faith, he had seen the sectarian strife in Europe and wanted no part of it for America. As a result, he would not allow himself to be allied to any particular sect or denomination.
But it was what followed in Neale's account that riveted Conrad:
Lear told me that it was Washington's duty to the unity of the republic that he be complimentary to all groups and to favor none, in death as in life. When I protested and asked if such duty meant a death of civility without Christian hope, he said, "Aye, even so." As I took my leave and wept, I saw Lear escort to Washington's bed chamber a runaway slave, Hercules, whose food I had occasion to taste. I had little chance to ponder this strange sight as the cries of the servants rang out in the courtyard, "Massa Washington is dead!" I was nearly run over by three horsemen-the slave Hercules with two military escorts.
Conrad reread the text to be sure he got everything right. Then he looked at McConnell. "So you believe that Hercules delivered the Stargazer text with the L'Enfant map on the back to my ancestor Robert Yates.
You think Hercules is the savage?"
"Maybe." McConnell called up a portrait of Hercules.
Conrad looked at the picture of the slave with a proud look and fine clothing. There probably weren't too many slaves in those days who merited a portrait.
"Hercules may have delivered the Stargazer letter to my ancestor Robert Yates," Conrad said, excitedly. "But he's not the savage we're looking for."
Conrad called up another portrait, and McConnell did a double take.
The Washington Family was a gigantic life-size portrait of President Washington and his wife seated around a table at Mount Vernon with Mrs. Washington's adopted grandchildren. Spread across the table was a map of the proposed federal city. To the left of the family stood a celestial globe and to the right a black servant. In the background, open drapes between two columns framed a magnificent view of the mighty Potomac flowing to a distant, fiery sunset.
"This is hanging in the National Gallery of Art?" McConnell asked.
Conrad nodded. The map on the table was practically a live-scale model of the L'Enfant map to Stargazer. And the celestial globe and servant completed the picture.
"That slave isn't Hercules," McConnell said. "That's Washington's valet, William Lee. He's not the savage."
"No, he's not," Conrad said. "The painting is the savage."
McConnell looked confused. "Say what?"
Conrad clicked on the link with information about the painting and up popped the window:
Edward Savage
American, 1761-1817
The Washington Family, 1789-1796 oil on canvas, 213.6 x 284.2 cm (84 3/4 x 111 7/8 in.) Andrew W. Mellon Collection
1940.1.2
"The savage is the artist Edward Savage," Conrad said triumphantly. "And this painting is Washington's way of pointing us to whatever it is he wants us to find."
11
As the Gulfstream 550 began its descent over the Atlantic toward the northeastern tip of Long Island, Serena rubbed her tired eyes, opened her window shade, and took another look at the high-resolution printout of the Edward Savage portrait from the image that McConnell had e-mailed her. The original oil, which she had seen herself in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was larger-than-life, like America itself. Seven feet tall and nine feet wide, the picture was the only group portrait of the Washington family developed from live sittings.
"The savage will show you the way," she muttered to herself. "How could I have missed it?"
There was the celestial globe, plain as day, along with a map and clues to its final resting place. The answer was right in front of her, if she could just crack the portrait's secret. If the L'Enfant confession was to be believed, she and Conrad had four days to unravel this prophecy before America would go the way of Atlantis.