She sighed. "So true, Pastor Jim."
The elevator door opened on the tenth floor, and Conrad exhaled as he stepped off along with Harold and Meredith. He turned down a hallway and walked briskly to Room 1013, hearing Meredith's heels clack behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see the couple wave good night and enter their room across the hall. He looked both ways and then inserted the coded plastic key card Serena had given him to unlock the door.
Once inside he immediately picked up the phone on the nightstand and called room service. "I'd like a pastrami from your all-night menu. Thanks. Oh, and a Sam Adams." Then he went to the bathroom and turned on the shower.
As the water heated up, Conrad removed the silver cornerstone plate from inside his raincoat. He rubbed his thumb over the dent from the bullet Seavers intended for his heart.
He placed the silver plate on the dresser next to a golden ticket that Serena had left for him. The embossed letters read: 57th Annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast Thursday, July 3, 2008 Next to the ticket was a 10 x 14 souvenir reproduction of The Washington Family portrait by Edward Savage. Apparently Mr. Anderson had taken a day trip to Mount Vernon and the new museum. There was even a sales slip from the gift shop.
Nice, Serena.
Then he took a shower and found a complete wardrobe hanging for him in the closet. Instead he put on a bathrobe and waited for Serena, hoping she'd really bring him that pastrami because he was famished.
As the minutes passed with no Serena and no pastrami, he found his eyes drifting back to the souvenir copy of Edward Savage's portrait The Washington Family. He had used it to find the globe. Perhaps it held some secret to the meaning of the contents of the globe, namely, the star map.
But the only thing new he noticed in the portrait was the column-or rather, two columns on either side of the panoramic view of the Potomac. Mount Vernon, of course, had no columns like that.
He remembered the giant Masonic board depicting King Solomon's Temple in the secret chamber beneath the Jefferson Building. It, too, had similar columns. But something about those pillars was different from Savage's. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he was sure of it.
Then it hit him: The columns at the entrance of King Solomon's Temple had two orbs on top of them.
Two globes.
The Savage portrait hinted at it all along. That's why there were two suns on the celestial map.
There's a second globe!
But, of course, he realized. They always came in pairs.
Old Herc must have known there were two. Why didn't he tell me?
He looked again at the Savage portrait, realizing that if there were two suns representing two globes, there were probably two landmarks designating their location. If Martha Washington's fan pinpointed the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol in the east then perhaps…yes, young Eustice-a virgin, no less, at least in symbol-was holding the L'Enfant map at the western horizon. Her fingers pinched the horizon just behind the starburst in the guard of Washington's sword-surely a symbol of the sun.
That would place the location of the landmark somewhere in…Georgetown.
Only there was no celestial landmark in Georgetown, at least none that Conrad knew of, and he knew them all, or so he thought.
Conrad sat quietly, running through any correlation he could think of when he heard a knock at the door.
He rose to his feet and walked over to the door. He looked out the peephole to see Brooke standing in the hallway.
His heart stopped.
"I know you're in there, Conrad," she said. "I saw you in the lobby. Please let me in. Everybody's been looking for you, and I've been worried sick."
Conrad, his mind racing ahead to Serena's impending arrival and the resulting fireworks, realized it was better to have Brooke inside the room than outside, so he opened the door.
Brooke came in wearing an expensive but modest dress that still managed to show off her amazing figure. Her eyes swept the room, resting on the silver cornerstone plate on the dresser. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.
"Thank God you're OK, Conrad. Where the hell have you been? What's going on? The police have been asking questions, the FBI, and now your face is plastered all over the news. My news director called me and asked me if I had seen you and said you were about to join America's Most Wanted."
"You'd never believe me."
"Try me."
"The feds think I attacked the U.S. Capitol and Library of Congress and killed some people."
Her eyes widened. "And did you?"
"Well, yes. But I didn't kill the people they say I did."
"You just killed different people?"
"Yes."
"Oh, my God, Conrad. You better tell me everything."
34
Minutes after refusing treatment at the hospital, Max Seavers was back at the Library of Congress. He ordered it sealed in the name of national security. Kicking over what was left in the secret chamber Yeats had discovered, he nursed his bandaged stump of a finger and examined the split-open celestial globe in the corner.
The globe was an incredible work in its own right, Seavers thought, and looked like it had been fashioned from a single block of fiery bronze or copper.
But the globe was empty.
Yeats had gotten away with whatever was inside.
Until now Seavers had convinced himself that the Alignment's quest for the celestial globe was a distraction from its mission. But now that Conrad Yeats had cut off his finger and gashed his head, he was furious. The smooth, unruffled veneer he had cultivated since his days at Stanford had been punctured forever. Never again could he do a handshake deal with somebody without the knowledge that he was missing something, even if it was only the tip of a finger. For that he would always hate Yeats.
Worse, Seavers knew he would have to report his failure to Osiris, something he had never had to do before.
Seavers stared at the globe in morbid fascination for a full minute before he heard footsteps and turned. It was the wide-eyed black cop, Sergeant Wanda Randolph, nipping at him like some federal terrier with two of her R.A.T.S. The Marines shouldn't have let her in.
"Sir, we've got a problem."
Once again, he'd have to set her back on her heels. "You lost the suspect again, Sergeant?"
"The security tapes from the processing room where you were shot, sir. They're gone. Without them we can't verify your story."
"Why don't you stop trying to cover your ass and start looking for Yeats, Sergeant. While you're at it, maybe you could find my finger, too."
He saw the fury in her eyes, which he actually thought made her more attractive.
"Yes, sir," she said.
The sergeant turned and vanished into the tunnel.
Seavers waited until she was gone before he turned his gaze to the Masonic mural depicting King Solomon's Temple on the opposite side of the chamber. The two pillars in front with the orbs atop caught his eye. Like a gateway.
He walked over and ordered two of his Marines from Detachment One over. They lifted the mural away to reveal a small alcove with a Mason's compass symbol to the side. He pushed it and the wall slid open.
So this was how that son of a bitch Yeats got away.
Whatever cool he still possessed disappeared as he ran through the damp tunnel like a madman, even though he knew the chance of catching up to Yeats was nil. A minute later Seavers emerged through a metal door into an alcove in the corner of the ghostly, empty Main Reading Room.
He stopped and looked around. And it suddenly hit him that the silver plate and whatever else Yeats may have taken could still be in the Library, buried somewhere among the thousands of stacks with millions of books. Even if he found Yeats, it could take days or weeks to find whatever the Alignment wanted, if ever.