The Atlantis Prophecy

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.

She looked closely at the Washington family sitting around a map of the federal city. According to Savage's catalogue, Washington's uniform and the papers beneath his hand were allusions to his "Military Character" and "Presidentship." With the L'Enfant map in front of her, Martha was "pointing with her fan to the grand avenue"-Pennsylvania Avenue. Their two adopted grandchildren, George Washington Parke Custis and Eleanor Parke Custis, along with a black servant, filled out the scene.

Well, it's no Mona Lisa.

However iconic today, The Washington Family was hardly accurate in its details, let alone any sort of masterpiece. In the seven long years it took to complete the portrait, Savage had never even seen Mount Vernon. That explained the two columns in the background. They didn't exist. As for members of the Washington family, Savage apparently took individual portraits of each family member in his studios in New York City in late 1789 and early 1790 after Washington's first inaugural. He then threw them all together in his imagined scene at Mount Vernon.

That would explain the awkward grouping of the family and their stiff poses. Each one stared off into every direction but the map on the table.

Conrad, however, had another explanation.

According to the report McConnell had e-mailed her, Conrad insisted that this bland portrait contained a great secret, one that Washington needed to get just right to preserve for centuries. And Conrad had demonstrated a simple test at the abbey to prove to the monks that the firm hand of George Washington was behind Savage's seemingly slapdash composition.

Repeating Conrad's experiment, she laid the picture flat on her tray table and with a marker drew two diagonal lines across opposite corners-one giant "X." Smack dab in the center of the portrait where the lines intersected was Washington's left hand resting on the L'Enfant map.

The controlling hand of George Washington.

This "secret geometry," Conrad argued, was a sure sign that Washington wanted to show that nothing about this portrait was left to chance. Rather, he was communicating an important message.

And she had to agree.

Conrad Yeats, you clever wanker.

The question, of course, was what that message could be. And clever as Conrad was, she knew he would never guess that "the fate of the world" Washington referred to in his letter to Stargazer was the location of the mysterious globe that America's first president had buried somewhere under his eponymous capital city.

Or would he? She had underestimated Conrad before only to regret it later.

Impossible, she concluded. Not without knowledge of the L'Enfant confession. Which she possessed and Conrad did not.

Using Conrad's experiment with Washington's left hand as a clue, she decided to take a fresh look at the portrait and what he was doing with his right hand. It was resting on the shoulder of his adopted grandson, a symbol of the next generation, who in turn rested his hand on the globe.

Just as interesting was what the boy was holding in his hand: a pair of compasses, Masonic symbols of the sacred triangle. It was as if he was about to measure something on the L'Enfant map.

An unbroken chain from the globe to the map, she marveled, with nobody to witness it save for the black servant.

Truly, Washington intended this portrait to work with the original L'Enfant map to lead Stargazer to the final resting place of the celestial globe.

All of which made Serena wonder about the more important question that Cardinal Tucci had warned her neither she nor Conrad should ever try to answer:

What was inside the globe?

Serena stepped off the plane at the Montauk airstrip to find a sober McConnell waiting for her with a black Mercedes. Dressed in a dark business suit, he stood coolly in the late June heat and opened a door for her.

Serena rode in the back of the town car with McConnell while Benito drove them through the pristine woods and moorlands. The land had once belonged to the Montauk Indians until the federal government of the United States took it a century ago and built a now-abandoned military installation. All that was left of the base now were the ruins of an old, enormous SAGE radar dish and the airstrip. Private jets owned by wealthy men like McConnell could land without much attention.

"So how is our friend Dr. Yeats?" she asked.

"Popular."

He handed her a printout of an FBI alert to various law enforcement agencies about Conrad's exploits last week. "They're not accusing him of anything. He's only 'a person of interest' at this point. Meaning they don't want any cop shooting him, or even letting his name leak to the press. They just want their eyeballs peeled in case he pops back up on the grid."

She looked at the picture of Conrad the FBI used. Somehow his face always came out looking far more menacing in photos than in person.

"Well, I can't wait to see him as a monk."

"I'm afraid he won't give you that satisfaction. In the process of deciphering the letter to Stargazer, Dr. Yeats cracked the meaning of 763."

Serena felt a pit in her stomach. "Please tell me he's still at the abbey, Father."

"I'm sorry." McConnell shook his head.

Serena stared at him. "You let him disappear on us?"

It was bad enough that Conrad probably suspected she had known about the Savage painting all along, which wasn't true, and that he couldn't trust her, which unfortunately, thanks to Cardinal Tucci, was true: her counter-mission was to let Conrad figure out the location of Washington's globe but take it herself back to Rome. It was the only way to protect him from the Alignment, she rationalized, even at the risk of him hating her forever.

"You know our mission statement requires that we can't keep anyone against his will, Sister Serghetti. But Dr. Yeats has little incentive to flee far from the only sanctuary he has right now. And a plainclothes security detail is following him."

She held up the FBI alert. "Others might be, too."

"Don't worry. Dr. Yeats is in disguise."

"Disguise?"

"You'll need one, too," he said. "It's in the bag on the floor."

Serena looked down at the black bag and pulled out a white bonnet, blue blouse, and white puffy skirt. She couldn't hide her reaction at this reversal and knew she would have to confess it later.

"And just where in bloody hell did Conrad go?"