Conrad wiped the cup and then his hand. He took a sip and nodded his approval.
Danny calmed down, pulled out a cigarette, and started blowing smoke, eyeing him nervously.
Conrad said, "I thought you preferred hookah pipes to sticks."
"I got religion and gave up all that shit."
"Since when are cigarettes a sacrament?"
"Since Genesis says that when Rachel saw Isaac from afar 'she lit off her Camel.'" Danny blew smoke out of both nostrils. "So you're trying to figure out your old man's tombstone like the rest of them?"
"The rest?"
"Packard's people came to me asking about the stars on the tombstone weeks ago. How else do you think I knew about the constellations? You think I'm a psychic now, too?"
Conrad looked at the once-happy Danny and wondered what must have happened to him after the DOD's intelligence branch stole him from the CIA. It was all bullshit, of course. But the Russians, al-Qaeda, the Chinese and others often timed their rocket launches, terrorist attacks, and nuclear tests to significant dates. The head of the Russian rocket program had gone so far as to state on record that he believed astrology was a "hard science." And as long as America's enemies, both real and imagined, believed in hocus-pocus, the Pentagon figured they had better, too. They plotted every day and date, both historically and astrologically, visible and invisible, in order to predict threats and prepare accordingly.
Danny was a natural, coming from a long line of mystics who allegedly traced themselves back to the Persian Empire, to the Jews exiled to Babylon and taught by King Nebuchadnezzar and his staff of astrologers six centuries before Christ. It made all the Bible-thumper evangelicals in the Pentagon wet their pants to have "the real deal" on their side. The kicker was his name was Daniel, just like the prophet who spelled out the rise and fall of the world's future empires until the end of time itself.
Conrad said, "Danny, what happened to you?"
"You don't know?"
"No."
"You don't fucking know?"
Conrad shook his head. "I heard they had you working out dates and stuff, right? I figured you got tired of the grind and living in the heads of psychos living in caves halfway around the world."
Danny took the cigarette stump out of his mouth and dropped it to the wet pavement, stamping it out. He looked up at Conrad. "They were using my charts against special ops."
"I thought that was the idea, Danny. You think like the enemy and tell the brass, like that splinter Red Cell group of astrologers and psychics they use."
"No." Danny laughed bitterly and lit another cigarette. "They started using my charts to mount our special ops."
Conrad's jaw dropped. "American troops?"
"Like I'm giving 'em a regular meteorological report, only they launch an air strike when Mars is at the Dragon's Head, screw the full moon." Danny took another drag. "Admiral Temple told me they've been doing it since the Revolution. It's how we won the War of Independence. It's how we've won every stinking world war since. It's why the armed forces of the United States are invincible, Yeats."
"Invincible?"
Danny shrugged. "Stars say so."
Conrad said nothing, just watched Danny, a man clearly conflicted and depressed. In other words, after enough time at DARPA himself, Conrad was ready to believe him.
"At first, I thought they were bullshitting me, putting pressure on me. Then I decided to give them a bogus chart, just to see what happened. Next day I find out twenty Delta Force troops die, just like that. I get called in. Stars never wrong. I must have been. I promised I'd do better."
"But obviously you didn't."
Danny gave him the evil eye, offended.
Conrad glanced away at the trash bins all around them. They weren't exactly conversing in the situation room these days.
"So what was it, Danny? Another special op gone bad?"
Danny shook his head. "June 30, 2004," he said and then paused. "That's almost four years ago exactly. Holy shit! Now you turn up."
Conrad scratched his head. Four years ago Conrad was long gone from the Pentagon himself, off in the Andes doing his Ancient Riddles show. Then his father mysteriously resurfaced in his life, as was his pattern, and dragged him down to Antarctica.
"So what happened on June 30, 2004?"
Danny told him: "U.S. handover of Iraq."
Conrad blinked. "The Joint Chiefs had you chart the day the U.S. would return sovereignty to the Iraqis?"
"To the second: 10:26 a.m. in Baghdad, which was 2:26 a.m. here in D.C.," Danny said. "But then they fucked up. They got word of some assassination attempt in the works on the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi. So Paul Bremer, the coalition's civil administrator, bumps up the transfer and gives Allawi the leather-bound transfer document and a handshake two days ahead of schedule."
Conrad stared at him. "And you believe that's why we screwed up the occupation in Iraq?"
"Fuck, no. But some brass in the Pentagon did. Beats looking in the mirror, I guess. It's all fucked, man. Axis of Evil. Bullshit! We found shit in Iraq. Meanwhile, the nut jobs in Iran and North Korea are building nukes and passing them around to every lowlife terrorist group. They're gonna blow up the whole fucking world. Because we got our heads up our asses."
Conrad had heard enough to know where Danny stood on the issue. Now he needed to get from Danny what he came for, without sending the poor son of a bitch over the edge.
"Danny, listen to me." Conrad took a deep breath. "I need to find SENTINEL."
Danny looked at him like he was the boogie man. "Now you wanna do business with the Masons?"
"Maybe."
"You're fucking nuts! All of you!" Danny started turning circles, waving his arms like an inmate in some asylum. "The whole world is fucking nuts!"
"Look, I told you, Danny. You're the only one from the old days I can trust. You and Sentinel."
Danny stopped turning, his eyes looking the crazier for it.
"Yeah, well he's from your old man's days, the old-old days. I heard he's dead. Him and all his Masonic bullshit."
"Is he?"
Danny finally looked like he was calming down. "Maybe. I don't know."
"If he were still alive, where would I find him?"
"Some nursing home in Richmond, I think. Near the VA hospital."
"Really?"
"We can't all go out in a blaze of glory like your old man, Chief."
They said nothing for a moment. Conrad listened to the morning rush hour picking up on Wisconsin. The sky was getting lighter, though it was still drizzling. Then Danny seemed to regain his sanity and sight. He looked at Yeats in his rumpled suit and suddenly figured it out.
"Holy shit, Yeats. That was you yesterday at the Capitol?"
"Maybe."
Danny shook his head. "I could have told you it wouldn't work."
"The moon in the wrong house or something?"
"Something."
"How's tonight look?"
"Seriously?" Danny worked up a quick chart on another Starbucks napkin. "Problem with you is you don't even know your own birth date. That screws things up some. But based on all your personality quirks, we always figured you for a Pisces. Definitely a water sign."
A minute later Danny showed him the chart.
It was completely unintelligible to Conrad's eyes. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"You're fucked."
"Seriously?"
Danny nodded and stamped out his second cigarette. "So am I if I'm spotted with you."
Conrad pocketed the napkin and turned to go. "You never saw me."
"I wish," Danny said and disappeared back into the Starbucks.
22
THE SIX-STORY office building in Arlington that houses the headquarters of DARPA attracts scant attention from the commuters emerging from the nearby Metro station or the patrons of the neighboring fast food joints, gas stations, and multiplexes. Only the lone security guard at the entrance to the anonymous steel-and-glass office tower hints of something inside to passers-by, but something no more exciting than a nondescript local bank branch.