warriors who trace their ancient knowledge to the survivors of Atlantis and use the stars to control world events to their own ultimate agenda? Please.'
'I didn't until now,' she said. 'But George Washington was a Mason. As was his chief architect, Pierre L'Enfant. As were fifty of the fifty-six signers of the American Declaration of Independence. Perhaps you could humor me and tell me what link the Masons have to the Alignment-if the Alignment were, in fact, an actual group.'
'Why, the Knights Templar, of course,' Tucci said, obliging her with a conspiratorial smile.
Tucci was referring to a tiny band of nine French Crusaders at the end of the first millennium who for nine years protected pilgrims visiting Jerusalem. Legend, Serena knew, suggested they were really searching for some priceless relic like the Holy Grail or a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Whatever it was, they apparently found it, because the Knights Templar over the next two centuries exploded in membership and money among Europe's nobility. The Church, threatened by the power and influence of its holy defenders, suddenly and expediently decided that the Knights Templar were conspiring to destroy it, and in 1307 launched a seven-year war that ended with the Grand Master of the Knights Templar being burned at the stake.
It was only last year, seven hundred years too late, that the Vatican issued a formal apology for its persecution, and Serena knew that Tucci was that apology's key architect.
Serena said, 'I thought the Church, through Dominus Dei, took care of the Knights Templar centuries ago.'
'Not quite,' said Tucci. 'A few Knights escaped to Britain and formed a new network called Freemasonry, once again hijacking another society, this one formed of the builders and bricklayers of the great cathedrals and palaces of Europe. It was only a matter of time before the Masons came to America, penetrated its elites like George Washington, and used their influence to establish a new country and, they hoped, a new world order.'
'So do you still consider the Masons to be a threat to the Church?'
'Hardly,' Tucci said. 'The Alignment long ago left the Masons, having moved on to controlling U.S. policy through the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and your friends at the United Nations.'
There was a twinkle in Tucci's eyes, a glimmer of triumph that he had succeeded in utterly humiliating her for her gullibility and in drawing their little meeting to a resounding close.
'We could go on all day about this, Sister Serghetti,' Tucci said. 'But like I told you, there is no such thing as the L'Enfant Confession. It's a myth.'
'So is this,' she said and produced the map Conrad gave her.
Tucci bolted upright as she unfolded it on his desk. 'Where did you get this?'
'From Stargazer,' she said, and watched a flicker of recognition at the code name registered in Tucci's horrified eyes.
'Conrad Yeats,' he muttered, putting his knowledge of her long-standing and controversial relationship with Conrad together with his knowledge of the Yeats family's long-standing history in American politics and the Masons. 'Yeats is Stargazer. But, of course. I should have known.'
'What matters is that it's the genuine article,' Serena said, sensing she was on the verge of getting more out of this meeting with Tucci than she ever imagined.
Tucci grabbed a magnifier and leaned over the map. The upper left corner had the word WASHINGTONOPLE, the original name for George Washington's namesake city.
'Mother of God!' Tucci exclaimed, truly awed.
He then passed the magnifier over the city radiants. The ornate, crown-like seal with the initials TB must have jumped into view, because he snapped his head back in wonder.
'That's the seal used by the English papermaker Thomas Budgen for paper he manufactured from 1770 until 1785,' Serena told him, letting him know she had done her own analysis on the map.
'I know what it is,' he said sharply.
Serena said, 'I always thought L'Enfant's original blueprint for Washington, D.C., was either on display or in preservation at the Library of Congress.'
'That one is a later draft that Washington submitted to Congress in 1791,' Tucci said automatically. 'What you have brought me is the original terrestrial blueprint for America's capital city, which L'Enfant's own handwriting here says is based on an earlier star map drawn by Washington's chief astronomer, Benjamin Banneker.'
Tucci sank back in his chair and stared at her, his eyes sizing her up for the first time. It was obvious that he had underestimated her, and she could actually see the wheels turning in his head as he contemplated just how much she knew that she wasn't telling him, and just how much she knew that he knew.
'What else did the pontiff tell you before he died, Sister Serghetti?' Tucci asked. 'I've heard the rumors. A fifth Fatima? A revelation of the Apocalypse?'
'Many things, Your Eminence,' she said. 'But today I come to discuss only one.'
She could see the white flag of surrender waving in his eyes. 'And so he still protects you.'
'God alone is my refuge and strength,' she demurred.
Tucci removed a leather binder from the center drawer of his desk, and out of the binder withdrew a single sheet of parchment that looked very much of the same stock as the map she had shown him. He passed it across the desk to her.
'This is what you wanted to see, Sister Serghetti.'
Serena Serghetti slowly read the handwritten testimony of Pierre L'Enfant that had been signed by John Carroll. Her heart began to race long before she reached the last paragraph.
'L'Enfant claims that the relic that the Alignment found in Jerusalem through its proxies, the Knights Templar, was a celestial globe,' she said, translating from the French as she studied the confession.
'Yes,' said Tucci. 'The globe once stood upon one of two pillars in King Solomon's temple. Masonic lore says that this globe was hollow and contained ancient scrolls detailing the history of human civilization and its sciences before the Great Flood, and thus before the Book of Genesis.'
Serena read on.
L'Enfant claimed that the Alignment brought the globe to America through the Masons in order to use the ancient knowledge it contained to establish a new world order. By no coincidence, the globe came into the direct possession of General George Washington, perhaps America's most visibly prominent Mason and a Grand Master in the order.
But then Washington discovered that his Masons, and perhaps even his armies, were in fact controlled by the Alignment, whose vision of a new world order had little in common with the cause of freedom. Rather, they saw the United States as a blunt weapon they could use to smash the world's dynasties and pave the way for resurrecting Atlantis and its ancient faith in the stars and fate.
Washington knew he couldn't expose and destroy the Alignment without criminalizing the Masons and jeopardizing the fledgling United States itself. So immediately upon becoming America's first president in 1789, Washington secretly instructed L'Enfant to use astronomical charts drawn by his chief astronomer, Benjamin Banneker, to align the proposed capital city of Washington, D.C., to the constellation Virgo-as a warning sign for future Americans. His hope was that in time the American people would be free enough and strong enough to reject the Alignment's agenda.
L'Enfant concluded his confession by saying that he did not know the significance of the specific date in the distant future that Washington chose for the conjunction of monuments and stars, only that Washington buried the celestial globe containing the horrible secret he had discovered somewhere under the Federal Triangle.
Serena looked up from the text at Cardinal Tucci, seated in his massive throne-like chair with a Bleau globe on either side, one terrestrial and the other celestial. She stared at the celestial globe.
'Impossible,' Serena said in disbelief. 'Washington's celestial globe has been on display in his study at Mount Vernon for more than 200 years.'
But Tucci looked sure as ever. 'That globe is an inferior replacement made in England during the 1790s. Its surface, which is only papier-mache, has been flaking so badly in recent years that it's been moved to the new museum at the estate for preservation. The original globe, according to L'Enfant, was made of bronze or copper and etched with the constellations. Washington buried it someplace under the American capitol sometime before he died.'
Serena shifted uncomfortably in her seat as she glanced again at L'Enfant's confession.
'The handwriting holds up to analysis,' Tucci said. 'Whether it's true or the blatherings of a madman is
