The Atlantis Prophecy

6

CONRAD DIDN'T RECOGNIZE the tail until the young male attendant in the first-class compartment of the Acela Express came by to present a choice of hot or cold breakfasts. Conrad chose the bran flakes. The only other passenger in the compartment, a man who looked like an NFL linebacker crammed into a suit, ordered the Big Bob Egg Scramble.

That's how Conrad knew he was a federal agent. Only a fed on the taxpayer's dime would go first-class and order the Big Bob Egg Scramble, which sounded like Amtrak's version of a shrimp cocktail.

So much for the privacy he had sought by upgrading from business class after the attendant told him the first-class car was empty: Apparently none of the other passengers thought the Egg Scramble was worth the extra $80.

Except Big Bob a few seats back.

Conrad swore to himself and looked out the giant picture window at the barren pastures of Pennsylvania flashing by. The Acela Express was the fastest train on the continent, racing at speeds up to 150 miles an hour between Washington, D.C., and New York City. Conrad had hoped to reach Serena before lunch and make it back to Brooke by dinner without anybody knowing. Obviously, he wasn't moving fast enough.

Because there sat Big Bob, smiling at the attendant as he took a couple of tubs of cream and three blue packets of artificial sweetener with his coffee and pretended to peruse the Wall Street Journal until his Egg Scramble arrived.

Conrad got up from his seat and, without looking back, walked down the aisle to one of two bathrooms at the end of the car closest to the locomotive.

Conrad closed the door and braced himself. "Acela" was one of those names made up by some New York branding company that combined the words "acceleration" and "excellence." The secret to the Acela's speed was its ability to tilt in curves without slowing down or spooking passengers. Conrad could feel a slight tilt coming on now as he looked at himself in the mirror and thought about what he was doing.

He couldn't involve Brooke in any of this, for her own sake. At least that's what he told himself. Maybe he just didn't want her to know he was involved at all with Serena. But Brooke was a big girl. She knew he had never made her any promises. She probably also knew, better than he perhaps, just how slim the odds were of his ever getting together with Serena.

Facing the mirror, he slowly unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the envelope he had taped to himself. He removed the map from inside and flipped it over to look at the text:

All his father had translated was the alphanumeric salutation-To the chosen descendent of Robert Yates in the Year of Our Lord 2008-and the numeric signature-General George Washington. Perhaps his father thought that was enough information for him to crack the rest of the cipher. Or perhaps his father could never figure it out.

All Conrad really knew about Robert Yates was that his father's side of the family had adopted the "Yeats" spelling to distance themselves from Robert Yates, who was one of America's more controversial Founding Fathers. Besides helping to draft the first Constitution for the State of New York, he represented New York as a key delegate at the convention in Philadelphia to draft the U.S. Constitution.

That's where things got ugly.

For it soon became clear to all that the Constitutional Convention, under the leadership of George Washington, wasn't tweaking the Articles of Confederation among the thirteen states as advertised. It was creating a new, centralized power: the federal government. A new sovereignty with the power to levy taxes and maintain an army.

That's when Robert Yates berated Washington, stormed out of the proceedings, and did everything in his power to defeat ratification of the U.S. Constitution, going so far as to run for New York governor in 1789. He failed. But in 1790 he became Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court, and for the rest of his life was one of America's fiercest and most outspoken defenders of state rights and critics of federal authority.

Even the grave couldn't silence Yates. In 1821, twenty years after his death, his notes from the Constitutional Convention were published under the title Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled…for the Purpose of Forming the Constitution of the United States. By then, of course, the Louisiana Purchase had doubled the number of states in America, and the notion of still questioning the constitutionality of the federal government became, well, embarrassing for the family.

That's about the time, Conrad recalled, that his father's branch of the family stopped calling itself "Yates" and joined their cousins by spelling their surname "Yeats."

At least that's what Conrad could recall. He never paid much attention to the Yeats family tree growing up because he was adopted.

Conrad felt another tilt and acceleration as the Acela took a curve. He taped the map with the text under the phone shelf and buttoned up his shirt. Somehow he had to elude Big Bob and reach Serena.

He pulled out his Vertu cell phone and was tempted to dial Serena's private number to arrange a pickup at Penn Station. But he slipped it back into his pocket, figuring that somehow Big Bob's friends would be listening. Ditto for any text messages.

Instead he would have to use one of the train's onboard phone booths in the dining car. And for that, he'd need a credit or debit card, and it would have to belong to somebody else.

When Conrad emerged from the lavatory, breakfast had been served on the extra large tray tables. He walked past his seat, which still said OCCUPIED on the LED readout in the overhead bin console, picked up his coffee, and went straight up to Big Bob, who had already scarfed down half his Egg Scramble.

Conrad said, "Looks like you overdid it with the Tabasco sauce."

Big Bob glanced down at the orange smudge on his tie and swore. He dabbed it with his napkin as the train took another curve.

Conrad went with it, swaying enough to spill his coffee on Big Bob. The guy bolted in his seat, knocking the tray table up and hitting his head on the overhead bin.

"Gosh, I'm sorry," said Conrad, steadying Big Bob as he slipped his hand inside the guy's suit and lifted his wallet.

Big Bob said, "What's the matter with you?"

"Let me get something from the snack car for you," Conrad said, slipping the wallet into his own pocket and walking away. "My apologies."

Conrad approached two pneumatically operated sliding glass doors. They whooshed aside like the deck of the Starship Enterprise, and he passed through the spacious and quiet intercar passageway into business class.

Both business cars were half full, maybe forty passengers each, most busying themselves with their newspapers, laptops, and iPods when they weren't cursing at their BlackBerries and mobile phones for cutting out in the middle of conversations.

He passed through two more sliding doors to reach the snack car. About a dozen patrons were in the lounge area, perched uncomfortably on the high and low stool seating. A plasma TV on the wall flashed highlights of the weekend in sports.

At the far end of the snack car was a business center with a fax machine, copier, and two onboard Railfones, one of them in an enclosed booth. Conrad stepped inside. The Railfone didn't accept coins or bills and required payment by a major credit card. Fortunately, Conrad had a Visa card with the name Derrick Kopinski, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, aka "Big Bob."

Conrad dialed Serena's number and looked at Kopinski's ID card while the other end rang. The driver's license had him in Oceanside, CA. That meant Kopinski had until recently been stationed out of Camp Pendleton. Kopinski was a Marine. Probably green at the Pentagon. Definitely DOD, one of SecDef Packard's men. An E-9 Special pay grade.

Besides forty dollars in cash, Kopinski's wallet included a picture of his wife and kids in a Sears portrait, for sure. She looked like Goose's wife from Top Gun, a young Meg Ryan. Very nice. Same with the kids, who fortunately looked more like their mother. Even a little baby baptism card. Eastern Orthodox. And coupons for Starbucks coffee, McDonald's Extra Value meals, and Dunkin' Donuts. Lots of Dunkin' Donuts coupons. Jeez, they didn't pay this guy enough.

The call finally connected and Conrad got a voicemail from Serena speaking French that asked him to leave a voice or text message. Before he could punch in anything the signal cut out and the call was dropped.

Conrad hung up and paused for a moment. He removed the envelope from his body and taped it to the underside of the shelf beneath the phone. Then he buttoned up and stepped out of the booth.

Back in first class, Sergeant Major Kopinski was waiting for him. As soon as the glass doors opened, Conrad saw him standing there, jacket open to reveal a shoulder-holstered gun. The stain on his tie looked even bigger.

"I want my wallet, Dr. Yeats."

"Yes, sir." Conrad handed it over and looked back to make sure they were out of view of the business car and alone in first class. They were.

"This mission can't be what you intended for your life when you enlisted in the Marines, Sergeant Major," Conrad said. "You tell Packard to give you a real assignment."

Kopinski nodded, then to Conrad's dismay started convulsing. Kopinski's eyes rolled back in their sockets and something green began to leak out his nostrils.

Then he saw a tiny dart in the Marine's neck as the head tilted to the side unnaturally and the heavy body crumpled to the floor with a thud. He was dead. Conrad spun around to see the glass doors into first class wide open and the attendant pointing some sort of dart gun at him.

"You just killed a federal agent," Conrad said.

"Hand it over," the assassin said. "Slowly."

Conrad reached into his pocket and pulled out Kopinski's wallet.

"Forget the wallet." The assassin stepped forward, still pointing the gun.

"Who are you?" Conrad asked.

"The Grim Reaper, as far as you're concerned." The assassin waved the dart gun at him. "Turn around."

Conrad turned to face the picture window. More bland pastures passing by. He felt the assassin pat him down.

"Take off your boots."

Conrad removed his boots.

The assassin looked at them and then back at him. "Unbutton your shirt."

"I'm not that kind of guy."

The assassin tapped the point of his dart gun on Conrad's chest. "Open your damn shirt."

Conrad could see the guy's eyes were on fire, meaning business. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open to show nothing but his chest. "I work out, as you can see."

"Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"Whatever you took from that little book of yours."

Conrad said, "If you people did anything to hurt Brooke, I'll kill you."

"You should be worried about what we're going to do to you."

The assassin whipped the butt of the gun against the side of Conrad's head, and lightning flashed across Conrad's field of vision. The searing pain made it a struggle for him to stay standing.

"Give it to me," the assassin ordered, "or I'll open your ass to look for it."

"You know, that's just where I've got it." Conrad, his head throbbing, began to unbuckle his belt. "You look like the kind of guy who'd like to search for it there."

Conrad bent over, his butt up to the assassin's face, his own face inches over poor Kopinski on the floor, the guy's Egg Scramble and Tabasco sauce all over his shirt. He thought of the guy's wife and kids. A Marine, for Christ's sake. And this little shit behind him killed him.

"Now take a good, hard look," Conrad said. "You don't want to miss anything."

Conrad dropped his pants with one hand and reached into Kopinski's jacket with the other. He suddenly straightened up and turned around, his pants around his ankles. The assassin's eyes were looking down where they shouldn't, missing Conrad's arm swinging up with Kopinski's gun.

"Surprise," said Conrad and shot him in the stomach.

The bullet blew the assassin against the wall, and he crumpled to the floor in a fetal position.

Conrad looked back through both sets of glass doors into the other car to make sure nobody heard the shot, then leaned over and dug the pistol into the guy's neck. "Who are you people?"

The assassin's mouth broke into a wide, wicked grin. Conrad saw the cyanide capsule between his teeth. But before he could bite down on the suicide pill, Conrad smashed his front teeth with the butt of the pistol. The assassin started choking on his teeth and swallowed the capsule.

"Gonna take you a little longer to die now," Conrad told him. "And you don't have to. You can still get some medical help. But only if you tell me who you people are."

The assassin only glared at him.

"I see you still have a few teeth left." Conrad held up the pistol for another blow. "I think I can fix that."

The assassin didn't flinch, even as he coughed up some blood. "You'll be dead by sunset."

Conrad bent closer. "Says who?"

"The Alignment," the assassin gasped through his bloody teeth, and then slumped over, dead.

Conrad ripped open the man's uniform and found a BlackBerry device. There was nothing else on him except the strange dart gun on the floor. Conrad took the BlackBerry and tucked Kopinski's gun behind his back.

He dragged both corpses to the port galley in the first-class car, where he found the body of the real attendant. He stood and looked at all three bodies and shook his head. He'd have all of twenty minutes tops before they were found after they pulled into New York. He looked at his watch. It was 10:30. They were due in Penn Station in a half hour.

Back in the snack car, he had to wait five minutes to use the Railfone booth. He slid inside, felt beneath the metal shelf counter and pulled out the envelope with the map inside that he had taped to the underside. Then he called Serena.