The Atlantis Prophecy

4

CONRAD LAY on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Serena. Sex with Brooke had certainly released his pent-up energy, but he felt guilty as hell.

He looked over at Brooke. They had gone out together in high school, and she was the first girl he'd ever made love to. Now that his father was gone, she was the only connection to his past. After school, he had left her behind to go off on his digs and to other women, catching clips of her colorful commentaries now and then on NBC and later Fox.

Then Serena had made him forget his previous life entirely, made him forget everything the moment he first met her in South America.

It was only after Serena had deserted him after the disaster in Antarctica and he had come back to D.C. that he and Brooke reconnected. He had been jogging through Montrose Park just a few blocks away, as he did almost every morning. She was walking her dog. They practically collided in front of the park's sphere-like sun dial. It was fate. Almost instantly, it seemed, she had brought him home with her. The dog must have known it had lost its place in Brooke's heart to Conrad, because it ran away the day before he moved in. Ever since it was like they had never been apart.

Until now. Until Serena had shown up at Arlington.

Conrad's thoughts turned to Tom Sawyer downstairs and the incomplete message he had deciphered. Just one more word to finish it.

He looked at Brooke, watched her full breasts rise and fall rhythmically and was convinced she was asleep. He slipped out of bed and glanced out the bedroom window. The black SUV was gone, but that didn't mean someone or something out there wasn't watching or listening.

He quietly walked downstairs, where he headed for the living room and retrieved the book from under the sofa. He didn't like hiding things from Brooke, mostly because he knew how much she hated it when he did. But he doubted he could bring up the book code without bringing up Serena-or looking like a liar if he failed to mention their encounter and she found out. And Brooke would. She always did.

He walked into the hallway bathroom, put the toilet lid down and sat with the book in the soft glow of the nightlight over the sink.

He looked up the last word from the book on Page 54: It was the word "land." When he finished writing it down, Conrad stared down at the note in his hand and the complete message his father left him:

What the hell did that mean? Was it simply the misguided musing of an old, disillusioned former Apollo astronaut and much despised Air Force general? Or did it mean something more? It had to mean something more, because it was intended only for Conrad-just like the astrological symbols on the obelisk. But why? And what was with the stand-alone numeric code 763 from the back of the obelisk? It had no correlation to the book code.

Conrad stared at the binding of Tom Sawyer, which lay open on the last page he had looked up. Something about it bothered him.

Conrad noted a slit where the binding separated. He opened it wider and realized there was a hidden pocket of some sort inside the cover of the book. He flipped through the rest of the book. All the other pages were fine and there was no other break in the binding. This secret slot was meant to hide something.

He carried the book into Brooke's study and found a letter opener in the drawer of her colonial rolltop desk. He folded the book back at page 54 and reached in with the letter opener to drag out an envelope.

It was yellowed with age. The word STARGAZER was written in faded bold script across it.

Conrad opened the envelope carefully and removed a folded document from inside. Unfolding it, he realized there was text on one side and some kind of map on the other.

Conrad instantly recognized the topography of the Potomac. He also recognized the layout. It was a terrestrial blueprint for Washington, D.C. In the upper left corner was the moniker WASHINGTONOPLE. In another corner was a watermark: TB.

Serena had to see this.

More fascinating still was the text on the other side of the map. It was a coded letter of some kind, and someone-his father, he assumed, based on the handwriting-had deciphered the salutation and signature. It was dated September 25, 1793.

The body of the letter was written in an alpha-numeric code he didn't recognize. Probably a Revolutionary War-era military code. But the translated salutation was plain to see, and his hand trembled when he saw the signature. It was from General George Washington, and it began:

To Robert Yates and his chosen descendent in the Year of Our Lord 2008…