The Atlantis Prophecy

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 Serena ran the nuns and a secret archive of historical documents out of nearby Mount Saint Mary's, a local Dominican college on the Hudson where she taught on occasion, while McConnell ran the brothers and analysis in these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.

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.

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:

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:

"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."