The Atlantis Prophecy

28

CONRAD PASSED UNDER a thick arch and entered the Great Hall. He felt a tight knot in his stomach as he stepped onto the huge zodiac embedded in the marble floor and faced east toward the Commemorative Arch leading back to the former entrance to the Main Reading Room. He was acutely aware of the six security cameras, two visible and four hidden, all watching him. But what he was looking for was invisible and in a moment he would be, too.

Conrad looked back over his shoulder, due west, toward the library's main entrance. Were it open, he would see the gleaming dome of the U.S. Capitol. And were it visible to the naked eye, he would see a radiant from the center of that dome pass through the zodiac on which he was standing, cutting through the signs of Pisces and Virgo and projecting to a point beyond the arcade at the east side of the Great Hall.

Conrad followed the radiant under the archway to the other side. The air smelled like bubble gum-the peculiar odor of the antiseptics they used to scrub the floor. To his right and left were two working antique elevators used by the Library staff. Above each elevator was a mural by the American Symbolist painter Elihu Vedder, one depicting the effects of good government and the other the effects of bad government.

The message was clear: America faced two possible and diametrically opposite fates.

The fresco above the staff elevator to the right showed America in all her glory, with full leaves in bloom and fruit in season-a land flowing with milk and honey. The fresco over the service elevator to his left depicted a barren America, bare trees, and a bomb with a lit fuse under the rubble of overturned marble and monuments.

Conrad considered the two opposing fates.

He walked to the staff elevator beneath America the beautiful and pressed a black button. The doors opened to reveal an ornate cage with a marble tile floor, brass bars, and glass. Conrad stepped inside and looked at the column of five buttons: 2nd Floor, 1st Floor, Ground, Basement, Cellar. He glimpsed the horror of America the damned before the doors closed and the elevator began its descent.

When the elevator doors opened again in the musty cellar of the Library, Conrad could see the staff elevator on the opposite side of the gray linoleum floor, just a few yards away. He was about to step out when he heard something down the corridor, out of his field of vision. He stayed in the car and pulled out a telescoping rod with a mirror, carefully sticking it out of the elevator at floor level. The mirror showed another security guard coming his way, probably to use the elevator.

Conrad retreated to the back of the elevator and took out the radio he lifted from Larry at the researcher's entrance. He pressed the Channel 6 button and waited.

There was a crackle down the hall. The sound of approaching footsteps stopped. A voice said, "Kramer here."

Conrad kept the talk button pressed, to avoid the guard hearing his own voice coming out of the speaker. Conrad said in a soft voice, "Central Security. A sensor in the Asian Reading Room is acting up again. Need a visual check."

"Copy," Kramer said, backtracking in the opposite direction.

Conrad waited for the steps to die away before he crossed the cellar floor to the staff elevator on the opposite side and pried its doors open. He stuck his head into the shaft and looked up to see the bottom of the staff elevator stopped at the basement level overhead. Then he looked down and could see the bottom of the shaft six feet below. Feeling the doors pressing him on both sides, he jumped.

He landed on an iron grate embedded in the floor, heard a painful pop and immediately dropped to his knees. For a second he could have sworn he blew his Achilles tendon. But it was only an ankle sprain. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn't slow him down.

He heaved on the grate with his fingers. The heavy iron bulkhead lifted an inch or two, revealing a narrow crawl space and steep well that dropped into nothingness. He slid the grate with a heavy scrape across the floor. He wanted to avoid severing a finger as he lowered it. But in doing so, he dropped it the last quarter inch and it fell with a deafening thud. He froze. Had any of the audio sensors in the floor above picked up the sound? He closed his eyes and waited for a few seconds. His pulse thundered in his ears. Nothing.

He opened his eyes and looked down into the well. He then heard a hum and looked up to see the elevator coming down on top of him. He quickly jumped into the crawl space.

He waited in the darkness until the elevator started back up. Then he reached up and with a strong tug pulled the grating shut. At one time the staff elevator could descend to this subcellar level. But years later the Architect of the Capitol decided it was an error, that the shaft was in fact unfinished and abandoned by Casey, so the Army Corps of Engineers ordered modifications that raised the floor. When the Library was closed for a 12-year renovation in the 1980s and 1990s for its centennial, the hollow was used only to house a modernized electrical power plant.

Conrad looked around, the light from the shaft overhead dimly illuminating his makeshift command center. His pocket sonar had confirmed a tunnel on the opposite side of the north wall of the well.

He could barely contain his excitement as he unrolled the Primasheet explosive from the lining of his jacket and stuck it on the wall. He then attached the wafer-thin cardboard backing and popped in the remote fuse.

He had honed his skills in demolition over the years through numerous illegal explorations of Egyptian and Mayan pyramids. But this was no Third World dust bin. This was the Library of Congress of the United States of America. And he was about to detonate an explosive device on American soil, in a sacred national institution no less.

If he properly attached the Primasheet, the explosion would blow in one direction-into the tunnel on the other side of the wall. That was the beauty of it-you could shape, direct, even stand next to it with only a piece of cardboard in between. If you did it right.

If he was wrong, Conrad could burn the place down and himself with it. Actually, even if he was right, he could still die in a matter of minutes. But at least he would know why.

He stepped behind another wall, which his radar had proved rock solid, and looked at the remote detonator in his hand-his cell phone. He then made the sign of the cross, did a Hail Mary, and pressed speed dial button No. 2.