But the room to which Midas was escorted wasn't in any of the tourist guides or public blueprints registered with Greece; it was even closed to the VIPs of the summit. It was a chamber constructed beneath the palace. Closed to all but members of the Alignment, it was known as the Hall of Knights council room.
Midas entered the hall and waited for his escort to leave. Then a door slid open, and he walked into the adjoining chamber with the Aphrodite mask, prepared to hand the Flammenschwert to Uriel.
But Uriel wasn't there-only a single copper globe, split open, resting on a stand on top of a large round table. Inside the globe was an envelope, and next to the round table was a fireplace with a fire burning.
No surprise here, really. Midas had known the identity of Uriel, and vice versa, all along. They weren't supposed to be seen together in public, a rule Midas had violated at the disastrous Bilderberg party. But as this handoff was private, he hadn't been sure what to expect.
He looked at the globe. It was the first time he had seen one of them.
So this is the delivery device.
Not a missile. Not a warplane. But this old globe.
If it had been his choice, Midas would have held on to the Flammenschwert until its detonation. He certainly wouldn't have left it alone here. But the holier-than-thou Uriel didn't want to see the Flammenschwert, much less touch it. And Uriel was the only one who could get it into position and leave the dirty work of pulling the trigger to Midas.
He opened the envelope, read the handwritten note, tossed it into the fireplace, and watched it burn to ashes.
He removed the plaster back of the bronze Aphrodite mask and tossed it into the fireplace, too. Then he put his hand behind the sphere containing the Flammenschwert and turned the mask over until the sphere rested heavily in his hand. He lifted the mask with the other hand and placed it on the table. With both hands, he carefully placed the sphere containing the Flammenschwert inside the globe, where it fit snugly. He sealed the globe shut like a skin over the warhead sphere. The seam along the 40th parallel seemed to disappear.
The door on the other side of the chamber magically opened. He picked up Aphrodite's head, brushed it off, and walked out.
35
Conrad watched another F-16 take off from the tarmac and walked back up the rear ramp of the C-17 to Packard's office inside the 'silver bullet.' Packard had been on the phone ever since they'd landed on Crete. The Greek air base was home to the Hellenic Air Force's 115th Combat Wing, but the U.S. Naval Support Activity Souda Bay occupied over a hundred acres on the north side to support Sixth Fleet operations in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Conrad was waiting to hear if he would get any of that support now.
Packard, still on the phone, frowned at him and slid across his desk the leather binder containing Conrad's hastily prepared but well-documented report on the Three Globes Society and their relationship to the Freemasons of colonial America, the Nazis, and the contemporary Alignment. Conrad picked up the binder and saw Packard's notations in the margins. The most frequent words were 'insane,' 'crazy,' 'speculation,' and 'aha.' There were no comments on Conrad's outline of possible origins of the globes and whether they were originally housed in King Solomon's Temple, or perhaps some place older still.
Packard hung up the phone and looked at him. 'It's going to take a few hours, but I think we can clear you with Interpol so that police everywhere will stop shooting at you on sight.'
'You can't do that,' Conrad said. 'Midas would know that Serena lied to him about my demise. That alone would put her loyalty in doubt with the Alignment. I need an alias with ID to get me through all zones of security.'
Packard sighed. 'That's going to make it easier to nab the globes?'
'I don't need to steal anything. That's the beauty of it. I just need to see the three globes for myself. In and out.'
'Because you think they'll reveal where and possibly when the Alignment will detonate the Flammenschwert?' Packard asked skeptically. 'I'm not sure I'm ready to make that assumption.'
Conrad said, 'I think the leadership of the Alignment will use the message of the globes as some sort of mystical directive for their mystical weapon, even if they manipulate the meaning to suit their ends. So that message is invaluable regardless.'
'Serena's whip-smart, son. What makes you think she can't figure it out for herself?'
'Not on the spot, she can't. She hasn't had the time I've had with both globes. And she's a linguist, not an astro-archaeologist. She won't be able to figure out the celestial-terrestrial alignments between the globes, let alone translate them to real-world coordinates. Even if she could, you know they're not going to let her leave Rhodes alive once she's delivered the only leverage she's ever had with the Alignment.'
Packard licked a finger and flipped through the report again, clearly still agitated with himself and his analysts for having missed the possibility of the existence of a third globe. 'So let me get this straight: You think all three used to be in Solomon's Temple and were later buried beneath the Temple Mount when the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple. Furthermore, you think they may have been the Holy Grail that the Knights Templar were after when they started digging up the Temple Mount looking for Solomon's treasures during the Crusades.'
'I think they worked to pinpoint a location of some great treasure, but it may not have been gold.'
'Then what the hell else could it have been? And don't tell me the Ark of the Covenant.'
'Obviously, something of great value. In ancient Egypt and Tiahuanaco and Atlantis, that meant the secrets of First Time or the End Times.'
'The Alignment already has the secret of the End Times, son, and it's called the Flammenschwert. That's how they're going to end things for all of us. And that's why we need to find that weapon.' Packard's face reddened, and he threw the report down. 'I traded the globe for you and got nothing.'
There was something just a little too forced in Packard's voice, and Conrad suddenly understood.
'You bastard,' he said. 'You weren't that desperate to get me. You just wanted to give Serena the globe and make her think she worked for it. What did you do to it?'
Packard sighed. 'It's got a tracker.'
Conrad slapped his hand on the table, furious. 'Like the Alignment's not going to find it and kill her? Then they'll have the globes as well as the Flammenschwert, and you'll still have nothing.'
'I told you, son, she's our girl at this EU summit. Both she and Midas are invited. You and Uncle Sam aren't. Security is going to be extremely tight, and the Alignment is supposed to think you're dead. Anybody recognizes you, she's dead.'
'She's dead already.'
Packard seemed to be going back and forth in his head, weighing the risks and rewards. 'Well, I can't send U.S. troops, even Randolph, into this theater,' he said, as if thinking aloud. 'And when it comes to European summits, trust me, it's always theater.'
'So I'm in.'
'Hey, it's your head and hers,' Packard said. 'This doesn't come back to Uncle Sam. Just stay out of sight, if that's possible, and report as soon as you know anything.'
'I told you, I can do this without being seen, even by Serena. But I'll be watching her.'
'As will everybody else. So watch yourself.'
Ten minutes later, the twin engines and four blades of the Super Puma Eurocopter were winding up for takeoff as Wanda Randolph walked Conrad across the tarmac and gave him his identification badges.
'Your name is Firat Kayda, a military liaison with us in Turkey, and you're working the EU summit for the delegation from Ankara. It'll take you about an hour in the air from here to there.'
Conrad looked at the four Greek airmen in the chopper. They already seemed to be glaring at him, the Turk. 'Packard is truly determined to make everybody in this world hate me, isn't he?'
'Well, he tries,' said Wanda. 'At least this way, the Greeks won't be asking you too many questions on the
