Conrad said nothing as a heavy silence filled the room.
'You know, Yeats, your girl reminds me of another lady named Anne Royall,' Hercules finally said. 'She was America's first prominent female journalist, a real rabble-rouser screaming about government corruption and all in the 1800s.'
'Anne Royall?' Conrad repeated.
'Yeah, she used to live on B Street near 2nd Street and the Capitol back in her day,' Herc said. 'Her husband, Captain William Royall, was a Freemason. For years their basement was used as a secret meeting place for Masons dedicated to preserving the federal city's alignment with the heavens. But in time they couldn't even preserve the house. Got torn down by the Army Corps of Engineers.'
Conrad could feel a tingle racing up his spine. Something was coming. He could see it in old Herc's eyes. 'Why did the Army Corps of Engineers tear down Anne Royall's old house?'
Herc smiled. 'Casey had to raze it to make room for the Library of Congress and the laying of its northeast foundation stone in 1890.'
There it was. He looked at Serena, who got it, too: The Masons moved the globe to the basement of Anne Royall's house. Then they built the Library on top of it. The house was gone, but not the basement. It was buried under the Library of Congress.
Then Conrad thought of something and frowned. 'The radiant I've been tracking cuts across the Library's Great Hall in a southeasterly direction. Shouldn't the basement be somewhere under the northeastern corner of the building?'
Hercules nodded. 'It is, but the access tunnel is in the southeast corner.'
'What access tunnel?' Serena pressed.
'Go get me my file, and I'll show you.'
Conrad and Serena looked around the small room and saw only a wooden dresser with an old picture of Herc and Conrad's father from their glory days.
'It's inside the back.'
Conrad walked over, removed the backing from the picture and peeled out a very old and thin schematic that had been folded several times over. He brought it over to Herc, who motioned for him to unfold it.
'Ain't hardly readable, but I can interpret.'
It took a minute, but when Conrad was done he and Serena found themselves looking at plans, elevations, and details from the Jefferson Building. They were stamped 'Edward Pearce Casey, Architect, 171 Broadway, New York' and signed by Bernard Green 'Superintendent amp; Engineer' for the Library of Congress.
'See, the radiant crosses the sign Virgo across the zodiac on the floor of the Great Hall,' Hercules pointed out with a gnarled finger. 'At the end of the day, when it comes to the federal district, it's all about Virgo. The whole city is aligned to the Blessed Virgin in the sky.'
'I beg to differ,' Serena said. 'The astral virgin is Isis, not Mary, despite attempts by Vatican astronomers to Christianize her in the Middle Ages. As such, the zodiacs are part of a deterministic philosophy of astrology that worships fate, not free will. And there can be no human rights without the recognition of free will.'
'Maybe it means all that to some people,' Herc said. 'But to Masons the Virgin represents the hearth and home, the milk of the breast and the promise of the harvest. Like the New World to the Founders.'
'Well, then your stars are sexist.'
Herc seemed delighted with Serena. 'You got a point, Sister. Anytime you deal with God or the stars, it seems you gotta have a Virgin. Very important.' He looked at Conrad. 'You ain't gonna pull this thing off without a virgin, son, and now you've got two of them-one in the heavens and one real live wire here on earth.'
24
HERC AWOKE with a start in his bed later that afternoon at the nursing home. He had dozed off after the Griffter's son and the nun had left. He lay still pondering everything they had discovered, wondering if he should have said more.
Because there was certainly a lot more he could have said.
Slowly he reached his shaking hand under his bed and pulled out an old dagger with Masonic letters. It had been passed down through the generations, and he was told it once belonged to George Washington. He wondered if that was true. The only reason he kept it under his bed these days was to make sure some orderly didn't steal it.
He had intended to give the dagger to the Griffter's kid but forgot. His memory was slipping, along with just about everything else.
He heard footsteps and slipped the dagger under his gown as two young orderlies appeared at his door with a wheelchair and Nurse Brenda chirped that it was time for his physical therapy.
As they wheeled him down the hall, he noticed that he was feeling a bit queasy. Damn nursing home food.
'I know you want to keep the feeding tube in, sweetie, but your mother is trying to tell you she wants to leave this earth,' Nurse Brenda was telling the daughter of the woman down the hall as they passed by.
Forget the feeding tube, Herc thought, they just needed to give that woman some water. She was going to die of dehydration, not dementia.
Suddenly Hercules realized they had passed the physical therapy room, and when he looked ahead they pushed him through two double doors to the parking lot outside where an ambulance was waiting.
'Hey, where you taking me?' Herc said as the orderlies lifted him up and dropped him on a gurney inside the ambulance.
A blond doctor with a syringe inside welcomed Hercules as the doors closed and the ambulance moved off. 'I'm disappointed we missed Dr. Yeats,' the man said. 'But maybe you could tell us where he's going?'
Herc said nothing, although his gown was wet. He must have pissed in his pants. That's because he saw the other guy strapped down in the ambulance-young Danny Z, his mouth gagged and eyes wide.
'Don't know who you talking about, Doctor. Now please tell me where we're going.'
'For a ride, Mr. Hercules,' the man said with some amusement. 'If you help me, you might get off. If you don't, then I'm afraid you'll suffer the same fate as your friend here.'
Danny Z started to scream as the doctor slipped a long needle into Danny's neck.
'A body is a terrible thing to waste,' the doctor told Danny as he slowly pushed the syringe. 'So I'm only going to melt your brain.'
25
'A FUNNY THING happened to me yesterday on my way to Capitol Hill.'
There was laughter in the Georgetown Ballroom at the Hilton Hotel as Serena Serghetti addressed the Washington Press Corps at the annual Media Dinner on the eve of the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast.
'I was testifying about human rights in China, or lack thereof when it comes to your personal body parts and organ transplants, when I realized that the Chinese are right.'
The room grew quiet, just a few forks clinking on plates as the journalists enjoyed their choice of beef or salmon. Meanwhile, here she stood as an ambassador for Christ covering up a federal crime in progress. The guilt was almost too much to bear.
'If a human lives for four score years and the state is forever, then the state should be able to do whatever is necessary for the so-called greater good,' she explained. 'But if it's the soul that is immortal, as that old Oxford don C. S. Lewis used to say, then it's the state that is passing away. Which means individual rights are
