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:
SUN SHINES OVER SAVAGE LAND
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…
5
THAT MORNING Conrad found Brooke downstairs at the breakfast table scanning five newspapers while the morning news shows blared on the TV, which she had split into six screens to follow the major broadcast and cable networks simultaneously. She was having her usual half grapefruit and Wasa cracker along with her coffee-some diet that she religiously followed from a Beverly Hills doctor to the stars. It required her to take a tiny scale with her wherever she went to weigh her food-no more than three ounces of anything at a time, no less than four hours apart.
'You're up early,' she said as she poured him some coffee. 'The Post ran a nice obit on your dad.'
She showed him the picture and headline: Body of Former Air Force General Found in Antarctica Laid to Rest.
Conrad glanced at the photo of his dad, circa 1968, back in his 'Right Stuff' days with NASA, a genuine American icon.
'I figured I might as well get a jump on the documentary for the Discovery Channel,' he told Brooke. 'You know, put the past behind and look ahead. So I'm going in early this morning to the offices in Maryland. See if Mercedes goes for it.'
'Just see that she doesn't go for you, Con,' Brooke said without looking up from her newspapers. 'That one, unfortunately, isn't a nun.'
Conrad paused, wondering if he had talked about Serena in his sleep. But then he noticed Serena on four channels of the TV screen. She was talking about the state of human rights in China on the eve of the Olympics, as well as China's status as the world's biggest polluter because of its high carbon emissions. The two other channels had segments about the bird flu, which had landed in North America and caused some poultry deaths but had not yet jumped to human-to-human contagion. That, of course, the expert with the mask on TV droned, was only a matter of time.
'I'll be careful,' he laughed and kissed her goodbye.
Outside on the front steps, he looked out and noticed no suspicious vehicles. No spy types lurking in the shadows. He hurried down the sidewalk toward 31st Street and hailed a cab. He climbed inside and said, 'Union Station.'
Brooke watched Conrad disappear around the corner, then went into her study and stopped. Something was off. She scanned the shelves and noted a gap on the third shelf that caused some books to slant. Conrad had removed and replaced a book. The book, she suddenly realized, the one everybody had been looking for.
So he cracked the book code.
She walked over to the bookcase, removed Tom Sawyer, and flipped through the pages. She was about to put the book back and call it in when she noticed a break in the binding. There was a slit, revealing some sort of hidden pocket. She swore.
Hands shaking, she went to the kitchen and returned with a razor blade. Carefully she traced the inside cover until she formed a kind of flap. Ever so gently she peeled it back to reveal the empty pocket and, inside the flap, a smudge trace of writing. An imprint of some kind.
In a fog of dread she marched into the foyer and held up the book to the mirror, barely able to force herself to look. There in the mirror the word shone clear: STARGAZER.
'Holy shit,' she gasped.
The map had been in her house all along, inside the book, right under her nose, and she had missed it.
She speed-dialed a local number in Georgetown on her coded cell phone. She identified herself to the agent who answered.
'This is SCARLETT,' she said. 'I've got a Priority One message for OSIRIS.'
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.
