The Atlantis Prophecy

46

MORE THAN 20 security checkpoints had been set up around the National Mall in preparation for the day's Fourth of July parade and festivities, which slowed an impatient Seavers on his way to retrieve the star map from the Library of Congress. That map, together with the Newburgh Treaty, was his insurance policy just in case he pulled the trigger on the bird flu contagion and Osiris suddenly decided he was of no further use to the Alignment.

Sitting in the rear of the black SUV with a Marine driving, Seavers pulled out a laptop computer from his briefcase and called up the Library of Congress website. He typed in the name of the book on obelisks that Yeats had given him. It was in special collections on the second floor of the Jefferson Building. He jotted down the call number.

He then removed the folded Newburgh Treaty from the left breast pocket of his suit jacket and reviewed the signatures, some famous and others obscure. He typed the names into his laptop to cross them against current U.S. political leaders. He wanted to see where the genealogies matched ancestor with descendant. A far more detailed analysis would be required later on, he knew, but almost immediately several names popped up and surprised even him.

"Well, would you look at that?" he said to himself with a soft whistle.

First, there was the sitting U.S. president himself, a "man of faith" that Seavers would not have guessed in a million years. Could he be Osiris? The president's lineage didn't necessarily mean he was Alignment, only that it was likely.

Then there were the leading Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Both had blue-blood family ties to the Alignment, ensuring that whoever was elected in November would stick to the Alignment plan. These names he more readily accepted as leaders of the Alignment.

Finally, there was Senator Scarborough-a real shocker since Brooke had been led to believe otherwise. So had Seavers.

He could only imagine what Scarborough was feeling now that the senator most surely had been given news of his daughter's death. And Seavers could definitely thank his lucky stars that Conrad Yeats was taking the rap. As soon as he grabbed the star map he would call in the orders to kill Yeats, before anybody in the Alignment could interrogate him.

Seavers shut the laptop and looked out his window. It was going to be a hot and sticky day.

By the time he walked into the special collections room at the Jefferson Building, his shirt was soaked with sweat. The Library was closed to the public today but not to members of Congress and the executive branch. He flashed his ID to the lone female staffer at the desk, wrote out a request for the Obelisks book and waited. She returned with a copy.

He took the book to a cubicle and opened it. Nothing!

He returned to the desk and asked the woman for the second copy. She checked her computer and said, "It's still in the carts, we haven't shelved it yet."

As calmly as he could, Seavers said, "Well, do you think you could check the carts? Please."

She flinched at his intensity. "It may take me a few minutes. We only have a skeleton staff today."

Seavers said nothing, and quietly fumed for almost fifteen minutes before she returned with the book.

"Here you go," she chirped. "It was between-"

"Thank you," he said, cutting her off and taking the book to the opposite corner of the room, out of her line of sight.

He cracked the book open and found the paper folded lengthwise and tucked inside the spine, in the space between the cover and the binding. He unfolded it and saw Washington's signature on one side and the star map on the other.

Seavers reluctantly had to give Yeats credit for not only finding both globes but thinking clearly enough to hide the star map among the millions of books at the Library of Congress as a bargaining chip.

But now that chip was cashed.

Seavers pulled out his BlackBerry and made the call. "This is Seavers. Terminate prisoner 33."