Forcing himself to stand up, Conrad put a hand to his shoulder, applying pressure on the gunshot wound. It felt like a heavy power drill, boring into him full blast. But he reached up, grabbed the ladder and pulled himself up with a gasp of pain.
'You've nothing to gain and everything to lose by stopping me,' Seavers's voice called down from the dark. 'Think about it. A new world order. No China. No religion…'
Conrad pointed his gun toward the sound of the voice. 'You mean no Serena, you bastard.'
Conrad paused. A thunderous boom outside from the cannons from the 1812 Overture sounded.
At that moment Seavers swung down from the dark feet first and struck Conrad in the shoulder full force, knocking the gun out of his hand. Conrad watched it clink against the wall and fall fifty feet to the floor of the observation deck.
Conrad was now clinging by his shot arm to a metal lightning rod that ran along the masonry wall, which was lined with tiny cracks.
He looked up at a square of starlight. Somehow Seavers had popped open the aluminum capstone at the top in order to release the aerosol form of the bird flu into the air. The square aperture framed the constellation Virgo, its alpha star Spica directly overhead, shimmering between bursts of fireworks and smoke.
The alignment, he thought. It's happening right now. Seavers is actually going to release his global plague at the exact moment the Washington Monument locks with Virgo.
Conrad climbed up the lightning rod toward Seavers, who was trying to raise the canister through the opening, but the base of the capstone was too small.
'Don't do it, Seavers!' Conrad shouted. 'Think of all the people.'
'This isn't a democracy, Yeats,' Seavers shouted as he tried to force the aerosol canister through the aperture. 'Your vote doesn't count. It never did. This is a republic. It was built to be run by elite overlords.'
'Like the Alignment?' Conrad reached behind his back and pulled out the Masonic dagger that Seavers had lifted from old Herc before he killed him.
'Do you want to know why George Washington and the Founding Fathers wanted a representative government? Because they were the representatives!' Seavers shouted, finally forcing the canister through the aperture and lifting his finger to push the button. 'They're the real Alignment. I'm the cure.'
'Got a cure for this?' Conrad said and hurled the dagger across the air into Seavers's neck.
Seavers screamed and released his grip on the canister, which clanked down the pyramidion and disappeared into the darkness. Seavers himself began to lose his balance as he pulled the dagger from his neck and stared in fascination at the blade's Masonic markings coated with his own blood.
'Von Berg,' he wheezed, gurgling up blood.
'What?' Conrad demanded. 'Who?'
But Seavers's eyes rolled back into his head, his unconscious body wavering for a few seconds before it fell fifty feet to the observation deck below, killing him instantly.
Conrad reached up to the aluminum capstone, popped on its side like a hinge. It had been set atop the monument by Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, the same Mason responsible for the construction of the Library of Congress.
So close was Conrad that he could read the Latin letters engraved across the east face of the capstone, by design visible only to the heavens:
LAUS DEO
In Praise of God, Conrad repeated in English, and pulled it shut.
He climbed down the ladder and dropped down onto the floor of the observation deck. He leaned over Seavers's corpse and saw the twisted smile on his face. He then reached inside Seavers's jacket, removed the Newburgh Treaty, and pocketed it. He was about to pick up the canister of lethal virus when the thunder of boots rumbled up the stairwell and Sergeant Randolph in her flak jacket reached the observation deck.
'Drop the gun!' she shouted. 'Hands in the air!'
Behind her popped up two more CPs with M-4s. A dozen more NPS officers clamored up behind them and surrounded him.
Conrad slowly lay the Glock on the floor and put his hands up. His left shoulder blazed with pain.
Sergeant Randolph kicked the gun away.
'Dang, Yeats,' she said. 'You killed Max Seavers.'
'Before he was about to kill millions. That's a canister of bird flu on the floor. He was about to release it over the Mall. You're going to need a Haz-Mat team.'
'You're going to need a doctor,' she said, looking at his blood-soaked shoulder.
Conrad shook his head. 'No time,' he said. 'Serena. You've got to get me back to her.'
'Sister Serghetti?' Sergeant Randolph said. 'Don't tell me you dragged her into this, too?'
Minutes later, while fireworks and cannons exploded over the Mall, Conrad and Randolph's R.A.T.S. burst into the secret underground laboratories beneath L'Enfant Plaza and found the Alignment boardroom empty.
Serena was gone.
And so was the terrestrial globe.
The shock of her betrayal stabbed Conrad like a dagger through the heart.
51
IT WAS JUST before nine the following evening when Conrad, his arm in a sling, was admitted in the Oval Office. The president was sitting on a sofa, sipping some Scotch, staring into the empty fireplace as a gentle rain drummed the windows behind him. To the right of the fireplace stood the celestial globe.
'You have the Newburgh Treaty, Dr. Yeats?'
'Yes, Mr. President.'
Conrad sat down on the opposite sofa, eyes fixed on the globe, thinking of Serena, and wondering where she had gone. Above the fireplace mantle was a portrait of George Washington. Conrad almost felt like Washington was studying him as closely as the current president was. He wondered if the president knew that the East Wing of the White House was designed by architect I.M. Pei as a triangle to mirror the federal triangle, based on the slope of Pennsylvania Avenue as it intersects with Constitution Avenue and 16th Street. But now was not the time to bring it up.
'I suppose the other globe is safe inside the Vatican by now,' the president said. 'Somewhere even we can't touch it. But these globes are meant to go together.'
'I wanted to talk to you about that, Mr. President,' Conrad said. 'Sister Serghetti has already seen the signatures on the Treaty. The damage is done. I think we could make an exchange: the Treaty for the terrestrial globe.'
The president looked him in the eye. 'How about the Treaty for your freedom, Yeats, so I don't throw you in military lockup?'
Conrad handed it over.
The president calmly unfolded it and then pulled out a pair of reading glasses. For a crazy second Conrad wondered if the president would repeat Washington's famous line from Newburgh:
'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.'
But the president simply looked over the Newburgh Treaty once, and then again. Finally, he sat back and stared at Conrad over his reading glasses. 'Some of the signatures on this Treaty…it's beyond shocking.'
'Like your ancestor John Marshall, Mr. President?' Conrad said. 'It's the sixth name down if you need help
