Serena stepped off the plane at the Montauk airstrip to find a sober McConnell waiting for her with a black Mercedes. Dressed in a dark business suit, he stood coolly in the late June heat and opened a door for her.
Serena rode in the back of the town car with McConnell while Benito drove them through the pristine woods and moorlands. The land had once belonged to the Montauk Indians until the federal government of the United States took it a century ago and built a now-abandoned military installation. All that was left of the base now were the ruins of an old, enormous SAGE radar dish and the airstrip. Private jets owned by wealthy men like McConnell could land without much attention.
'So how is our friend Dr. Yeats?' she asked.
'Popular.'
He handed her a printout of an FBI alert to various law enforcement agencies about Conrad's exploits last week. 'They're not accusing him of anything. He's only 'a person of interest' at this point. Meaning they don't want any cop shooting him, or even letting his name leak to the press. They just want their eyeballs peeled in case he pops back up on the grid.'
She looked at the picture of Conrad the FBI used. Somehow his face always came out looking far more menacing in photos than in person.
'Well, I can't wait to see him as a monk.'
'I'm afraid he won't give you that satisfaction. In the process of deciphering the letter to Stargazer, Dr. Yeats cracked the meaning of 763.'
Serena felt a pit in her stomach. 'Please tell me he's still at the abbey, Father.'
'I'm sorry.' McConnell shook his head.
Serena stared at him. 'You let him disappear on us?'
It was bad enough that Conrad probably suspected she had known about the Savage painting all along, which wasn't true, and that he couldn't trust her, which unfortunately, thanks to Cardinal Tucci, was true: her counter- mission was to let Conrad figure out the location of Washington's globe but take it herself back to Rome. It was the only way to protect him from the Alignment, she rationalized, even at the risk of him hating her forever.
'You know our mission statement requires that we can't keep anyone against his will, Sister Serghetti. But Dr. Yeats has little incentive to flee far from the only sanctuary he has right now. And a plainclothes security detail is following him.'
She held up the FBI alert. 'Others might be, too.'
'Don't worry. Dr. Yeats is in disguise.'
'Disguise?'
'You'll need one, too,' he said. 'It's in the bag on the floor.'
Serena looked down at the black bag and pulled out a white bonnet, blue blouse, and white puffy skirt. She couldn't hide her reaction at this reversal and knew she would have to confess it later.
'And just where in bloody hell did Conrad go?'
12
DRESSED IN BOOTS, britches, and a blue Continental Army coat, Yeats circled the large 25-foot-tall obelisk. It was made of fieldstone, like the Washington Monument, and built more than a hundred years ago by the Masons of Newburgh, New York, to commemorate Washington's greatest yet least known military victory.
For it was here at Newburgh and not at Yorktown that the last battle of the American Revolution took place. On this very spot Washington was offered the chance to be America's first king by his officers. But Washington refused the crown, which he considered anathema to the cause of liberty to which he and his soldiers had dedicated themselves. His officers then attempted America's first and only military coup.
Washington quelled the coup at the eleventh hour by appealing to their better instincts with a speech that came to be known as the Newburgh Address. Moved to tears, his officers reaffirmed their support for their commander-in-chief.
It was the Revolution's darkest hour and Washington's greatest victory.
At least that's what the history books say.
Today, this last encampment of the Continental Army is known as the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site, a state park just off the New York Thruway. Here interpreters in period dress reenact military exercises and show what everyday life was like for the camp's 7,000 troops and 500 women and children. Nobody on the staff at the visitors center gave much thought to the lone 'cast member' wandering about the 1,600-acre enclave and winding up in front of the obelisk memorial.
Except maybe one. A ruddy, middle-aged man dressed as a Redcoat had given Conrad a funny look inside the gracious Edmonston House when he asked for records of names of those who may have visited Washington at the encampment. There were none officially, but Conrad was allowed to peruse a few journals of the day kept by members of the military. It took hours, but he finally found an entry dated March 15, 1783, which mentioned Washington had a visitor, Robert Yates, in his base home shortly before addressing his mutinous troops.
But there was nothing about the nature of the visit that Conrad could find.
Now he stood outside, bending over to examine the inscription on the obelisk monument, trying to discern what business his nominal ancestor and George Washington had conducted under these extraordinary circumstances.
He found what he was looking for in an inscription on the granite tablet on the south face of the obelisk:
On this ground was erected the 'Temple' or new public building by the army of the Revolution 1782-83. The birthplace of the Republic.
The birthplace of the republic, he thought when a voice from behind said, 'My, don't you look fetching in breeches.'
He turned to see Serena dressed in a white bonnet, puffy white skirt, and busty blue blouse that simply could not safely contain her natural endowments.
'Don't you dare say a word,' she warned him. 'Or I'll introduce you to the pleasures of spending the rest of your life as a eunuch. Now, why are we here?'
Conrad walked her over to a long, rectangular log cabin with a line of small square windows, like a church without a steeple. Serena recognized it from her visitor's guide as a full-scale replica of the camp's original 'Temple of Virtue,' erected at Washington's command to serve as a chapel for the army and a lodge-room for the fraternity of Freemasons which existed among the officer corps. On the parade grounds beyond, a musket and artillery demonstration was underway. Every now and then she heard the boom of a canon.
'Picture the scene,' he said. 'The British are defeated at Yorktown. End of war, happy ending. All the same, things aren't looking so good in early 1783. The peace negotiations in Paris are dragging on and on. Congress is balking about the army's back pay, pensions, and land bounties. High-ranking officers led by Major General Horatio Gates, Washington's second-in-command and commandant of this Cantonment, threaten to ruin the cause of independence by mutiny.'
'Right, so he confronts them in the Temple of Virtue with his famous Newburgh Address,' she said, wishing right now she had Conrad's and Cardinal Tucci's encyclopedic knowledge of American history.
'Except the speech doesn't work and his words fall on deaf ears,' Conrad said. 'So with a sigh he removes from his pocket a letter from a member of Congress that he wants to read to them. But he has trouble reading it and reaches into another pocket and brings out a pair of new reading glasses, which he has never worn publicly. Then he says, 'Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.''
This much Serena knew from the visitors guide. 'Yes, and moved to tears by the unaffected drama of their venerated commander's spectacles, the officers vote to affirm their loyalty to Washington and Congress. The
