The Atlantis Prophecy

23

IT WAS A THREE-HOUR car trip for Conrad and Serena, and Conrad could tell she had grave doubts about meeting this Master Mason known as Sentinel. But dressed in her traditional nun's attire, she said nothing as they walked through the front entrance of the Mission Springs Nursing Home. The home specialized in scooping up the half-dead human leftovers from the nearby VA hospital, keeping their juices and benefits going for a few weeks, and then dumping them in the grave.

The administrator at the nursing station, seeing clergy had come to visit, directed them down the hall to 208. They came to a room with the door partially open. Conrad gave it a rap with a knuckle. It opened wide and a big nurse with the name tag Brenda came out with a bottle of urine.

"We're all done, Father," Nurse Brenda said, noticing the white collar Conrad sported under his trench coat, courtesy of Serghetti Couture.

They entered the room and there was Reggie "Hercules" Jefferson, who had gone by the name Sentinel for as long as Conrad could remember. Herc, short for Hercules, was one of his father's few true friends from the Air Force, maybe his only one. Born in New Orleans, Herc's father was a bricklayer who became a Tuskegee Airman, one of the first African-Americans to fly for Uncle Sam.

Herc wanted to do even better and aspired to be an astronaut. But NASA wasn't ready for an African-American Apollo pilot, so he ended up flying Hercules C-131 transports on black ops missions for General Yeats. In time he, like most anybody associated with Conrad's old man, literally crashed and burned in an impossible landing that snapped his spinal cord and left him crippled for life at the age of 40.

That was thirty years ago.

Before Conrad could say a word, Herc said with a low, gravelly voice, "Took you long enough, son."

"I finally figured out that it was you who carved my father's tombstone."

"Just like your daddy wanted."

Herc was an unlikely Mason, not of the dead white male variety. His family claimed to have descended from a line of slave Masons since the Revolution. General Yeats believed it, having witnessed both Herc's encyclopedic knowledge of Masonic esoterica and his advanced skills as a stonecutter and site planner for forward-based military ops. As for Herc's claim that his family had blood ties to Founders like Washington and Jefferson, who allegedly had had affairs with female slaves, that seemed like wishful thinking to Conrad when he heard it from Uncle Herc as a boy. Looking at him in bed it seemed even more fanciful now.

Conrad said, "The globe's not in the cornerstone of the Capitol building."

"Of course not. Casey moved it after the War of 1812. I could have told you that, boy."

Conrad sighed. "You could have come to the funeral."

"On these legs? Besides, your old man and I never thought I'd make it this far. We thought you'd be on your own. Had to build a message into the tombstone and hope you'd be smart enough to figure it out. Guess you ain't."

"So how long have you been waiting for me?"

"How long since the Griffter died?"

Four years, thought Conrad, ashamed for having not even thought of Uncle Herc until now. Conrad could see that Herc had expected him to pay a visit as soon as his dad died. But Conrad had been wrapped up in his own worries following the death and destruction in Antarctica. Little did he know that poor Herc had been waiting here all this time, scratching sores in the bed his father had put him in.

There wasn't much Conrad could say, so naturally Serena said it for him, getting directly to the business at hand. "Hello, Uncle Herc. I'm-"

"I know who you are, Sister Serghetti," old Herc said. "Pleased to meet you."

"We figure the globe is buried beneath the Library of Congress," she said. "Casey and his son Edward, who was responsible for the interiors, appear to have left clues in the form of zodiacs as a map. But Doctor Yeats can't crack the secret, and we hoped you could."

Her bold Australian accent immediately perked up old Herc, and he smiled at Conrad approvingly. "She's a handful, ain't she?"

Conrad glanced at Serena. "That she is. Now, about the globe-"

But Herc asked Serena, "So you think we Masons are all devil worshippers?"

"I think you worship knowledge," she said without batting an eyelash. "The danger comes in ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of truth."

"We ain't a religion, Sister Serghetti. We promote enlightenment, not salvation."

"Thereby making an idol of enlightenment," she countered. "The very temptation that Lucifer offered Eve in the Garden of Eden."

"So you do think we worship the devil."

She smiled. "In a roundabout way, yes."

Conrad said nothing as a heavy silence filled the room.

"You know, Yeats, your girl reminds me of another lady named Anne Royall," Hercules finally said. "She was America's first prominent female journalist, a real rabble-rouser screaming about government corruption and all in the 1800s."

"Anne Royall?" Conrad repeated.

"Yeah, she used to live on B Street near 2nd Street and the Capitol back in her day," Herc said. "Her husband, Captain William Royall, was a Freemason. For years their basement was used as a secret meeting place for Masons dedicated to preserving the federal city's alignment with the heavens. But in time they couldn't even preserve the house. Got torn down by the Army Corps of Engineers."

Conrad could feel a tingle racing up his spine. Something was coming. He could see it in old Herc's eyes. "Why did the Army Corps of Engineers tear down Anne Royall's old house?"

Herc smiled. "Casey had to raze it to make room for the Library of Congress and the laying of its northeast foundation stone in 1890."

There it was. He looked at Serena, who got it, too: The Masons moved the globe to the basement of Anne Royall's house. Then they built the Library on top of it. The house was gone, but not the basement. It was buried under the Library of Congress.

Then Conrad thought of something and frowned. "The radiant I've been tracking cuts across the Library's Great Hall in a southeasterly direction. Shouldn't the basement be somewhere under the northeastern corner of the building?"

Hercules nodded. "It is, but the access tunnel is in the southeast corner."

"What access tunnel?" Serena pressed.

"Go get me my file, and I'll show you."

Conrad and Serena looked around the small room and saw only a wooden dresser with an old picture of Herc and Conrad's father from their glory days.

"It's inside the back."

Conrad walked over, removed the backing from the picture and peeled out a very old and thin schematic that had been folded several times over. He brought it over to Herc, who motioned for him to unfold it.

"Ain't hardly readable, but I can interpret."

It took a minute, but when Conrad was done he and Serena found themselves looking at plans, elevations, and details from the Jefferson Building. They were stamped "Edward Pearce Casey, Architect, 171 Broadway, New York" and signed by Bernard Green "Superintendent amp; Engineer" for the Library of Congress.

"See, the radiant crosses the sign Virgo across the zodiac on the floor of the Great Hall," Hercules pointed out with a gnarled finger. "At the end of the day, when it comes to the federal district, it's all about Virgo. The whole city is aligned to the Blessed Virgin in the sky."

"I beg to differ," Serena said. "The astral virgin is Isis, not Mary, despite attempts by Vatican astronomers to Christianize her in the Middle Ages. As such, the zodiacs are part of a deterministic philosophy of astrology that worships fate, not free will. And there can be no human rights without the recognition of free will."

"Maybe it means all that to some people," Herc said. "But to Masons the Virgin represents the hearth and home, the milk of the breast and the promise of the harvest. Like the New World to the Founders."

"Well, then your stars are sexist."

Herc seemed delighted with Serena. "You got a point, Sister. Anytime you deal with God or the stars, it seems you gotta have a Virgin. Very important." He looked at Conrad. "You ain't gonna pull this thing off without a virgin, son, and now you've got two of them-one in the heavens and one real live wire here on earth."