What is it I am missing?
The answer had come to him several months later. Andros was sitting alone in his villa, absently surfing channels in the middle of the night, when he stumbled across a program about the secrets of Freemasonry. The show was poorly done, posing more questions than answers, and yet he found himself intrigued by the plethora of conspiracy theories surrounding the brotherhood. The narrator described legend after legend.
Freemasons and the New World Order . . .
The Great Masonic Seal of the United States . . .
The P2 Masonic Lodge . . .
The Lost Secret of Freemasonry . . .
The Masonic Pyramid . . .
Andros sat up, startled.
Pyramid
. The narrator began recounting the story of a mysterious stone pyramid whose encrypted engraving promised to lead to lost wisdom and unfathomable power. The story, though seemingly implausible, sparked in him a distant memory . . . a faint recollection from a much darker time. Andros remembered what Zachary Solomon had heard from his father about a mysterious pyramid.
Could it be?
Andros strained to recall the details.
When the show ended, he stepped out onto the balcony, letting the cool air clear his mind. He remembered more now, and as it all came back, he began to sense there might be some truth to this legend after all. And if so, then Zachary Solomon—although long dead—still had something to offer.
What do I have to lose?
Three weeks later, his timing carefully planned, Andros stood in the frigid cold outside the conservatory of the Solomons’ Potomac estate. Through the glass, he could see Peter Solomon chatting and laughing with his sister, Katherine.
It looks like they’ve had no trouble forgetting Zachary,
he thought.
Before he pulled the ski mask over his face, Andros took a hit of cocaine, his first in ages. He felt the familiar rush of fearlessness. He pulled out a handgun, used an old key to unlock the door, and stepped inside. “Hello, Solomons.”
Unfortunately, the night had not gone as Andros had planned. Rather than obtaining the pyramid for which he had come, he found himself riddled with bird shot and fleeing across the snow-covered lawn toward the dense woods. To his surprise, behind him, Peter Solomon was giving chase, pistol glinting in his hand. Andros dashed into the woods, running down a trail along the edge of a deep ravine. Far below, the sounds of a waterfall echoed up through the crisp winter air. He passed a stand of oak trees and rounded a corner to his left. Seconds later, he was skidding to a stop on the icy path, narrowly escaping death.
My God!
Only feet in front of him, the path ended, plunging straight down into an icy river far below. The large boulder at the side of the path had been carved by the unskilled hand of a child:
On the far side of the ravine, the path continued on.
So where’s the bridge?!
The cocaine was no longer working.
I’m trapped!
Panicking now, Andros turned to flee back up the path, but he found himself facing Peter Solomon, who stood breathless before him, pistol in hand.
Andros looked at the gun and took a step backward. The drop behind him was at least fifty feet to an ice-covered river. The mist from the waterfall upstream billowed around them, chilling him to the bone.
“Zach’s bridge rotted out long ago,” Solomon said, panting. “He was the only one who ever came down this far.” Solomon held the gun remarkably steady. “Why did you kill my son?”
“He was nothing,” Andros replied. “A drug addict. I did him a favor.”
Solomon moved closer, gun aimed directly at Andros’s chest. “Perhaps I should do
you
the same favor.” His tone was surprisingly fierce. “You
bludgeoned
my son to death. How does a man do such a thing?”
“Men do the unthinkable when pushed to the brink.”
“You
killed
my son!”
“No,” Andros replied, hotly now. “
You
killed your son. What kind of man leaves his son in a prison when he has the option to get him out!
You
killed your son! Not me.”
“You know
nothing
!” Solomon yelled, his voice filled with pain.
You’re wrong,
Andros thought.
I know everything.
Peter Solomon drew closer, only five yards away now, gun leveled. Andros’s chest was burning, and he could tell he was bleeding badly. The warmth ran down over his stomach. He looked over his shoulder at the drop. Impossible. He turned back to Solomon. “I know more about you than you think,” he whispered. “I know you are not the kind of man who kills in cold blood.”
Solomon stepped closer, taking dead aim.
“I’m warning you,” Andros said, “if you pull that trigger, I will haunt you forever.”
“You already will.” And with that, Solomon fired.
As he raced his black limousine back toward Kalorama Heights, the one who now called himself Mal’akh reflected on the miraculous events that had delivered him from certain death atop that icy ravine. He had been
transformed forever. The gunshot had echoed only for an instant, and yet its effects had reverberated across decades. His body, once tanned and perfect, was now marred by scars from that night . . . scars he kept hidden beneath the tattooed symbols of his new identity.
I am Mal’akh.
This was my destiny all along.
He had walked through fire, been reduced to ashes, and then emerged again . . . transformed once more. Tonight would be the final step of his long and magnificent journey.
CHAPTER
58
The coyly
nicknamed explosive Key4 had been developed by Special Forces specifically for opening locked doors with minimal collateral damage. Consisting primarily of cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine with a diethylhexyl plasticizer, it was essentially a piece of C-4 rolled into paper-thin sheets for insertion into doorjambs. In the case of the library’s reading room, the explosive had worked perfectly.
Operation leader Agent Turner Simkins stepped over the wreckage of the doors and scanned the massive octagonal room for any signs of movement. Nothing.
“Kill the lights,” Simkins said.
A second agent found the wall panel, threw the switches, and plunged the room into darkness. In unison, all four men reached up and yanked down their night-vision headgear, adjusting the goggles over their eyes. They stood motionless, surveying the reading room, which now materialized in shades of luminescent green inside their goggles.
The scene remained unchanged.
Nobody made a dash for it in the dark.
The fugitives were probably unarmed, and yet the field team entered the room with weapons raised. In the darkness, their firearms projected four menacing rods of laser light. The men washed the beams in all directions, across the floor, up the far walls, into the balconies, probing the darkness. Oftentimes, a mere glimpse of a laser-sighted weapon in a darkened room was enough to induce instant surrender.
Apparently not tonight.
Still no movement.
Agent Simkins raised his hand, motioning his team into the space. Silently, the men fanned out. Moving cautiously up the center aisle, Simkins reached up and flipped a switch on his goggles, activating the newest addition to the CIA’s arsenal. Thermal imaging had been around for years, but recent advances in miniaturization, differential sensitivity, and dual-source integration had facilitated a new generation of vision
enhancing equipment that gave field agents eyesight that bordered on superhuman.
We see in the dark. We see through walls. And now . . . we see back in time.
Thermal-imaging equipment had become so sensitive to heat differentials that it could detect not only a person’s location . . . but their
previous
locations. The ability to see into the past often proved the most valuable asset of all. And tonight, once again, it proved its worth. Agent Simkins now spied a thermal signature at one of the reading desks. The two wooden chairs luminesced in his goggles, registering a reddish-purple color, indicating those chairs were warmer than the other chairs in the room. The desk lamp’s bulb glowed orange. Obviously the two men had been sitting at the desk, but the question now was in which direction they had gone.
He found his answer on the central counter that surrounded the large wooden console in the middle of the room. A ghostly handprint, glowing crimson.
Weapon raised, Simkins moved toward the octagonal cabinet, training his laser sight across the surface. He circled until he saw an opening in the side of the console.
Did they really corner themselves in a cabinet?
The agent scanned the trim around the opening and saw another glowing handprint on it. Clearly someone had grabbed the doorjamb as he ducked inside the console.
The time for silence was over.
“Thermal signature!” Simkins shouted, pointing at the opening. “Flanks converge!”
His two flanks moved in from opposite sides, effectively surrounding the octagonal console.
Simkins moved toward the opening. Still ten feet away, he could see a light source within. “Light inside the console!” he shouted, hoping the sound of his voice might convince Mr. Bellamy and Mr. Langdon to exit the cabinet with their hands up.
Nothing happened.
Fine, we’ll do this the other way.
As Simkins drew closer to the opening, he could hear an unexpected hum rumbling from within. It sounded like machinery. He paused, trying to imagine what could be making such a noise in such a small space. He inched closer, now hearing voices over the sound of machinery. Then, just as he arrived at the opening, the lights inside went out.
Thank you,
he thought, adjusting his night vision.
Advantage, us.
Standing at the threshold, he peered through the opening. What lay beyond was unexpected. The console was less of a cabinet than a raised
ceiling over a steep set of stairs that descended into a room below. The agent aimed his weapon down the stairs and began descending. The hum of machinery grew louder with every step.
What the hell is this place?
The room beneath the reading room was a small, industrial-looking space. The hum he heard was indeed machinery, although he was not sure whether it was running because Bellamy and Langdon had activated it, or because it ran around the clock. Either way, it clearly made no difference. The fugitives had left their telltale heat signatures on the room’s lone exit—a heavy steel door whose keypad showed four clear fingerprints glowing on the numbers. Around the door, slivers of glowing orange shone beneath the doorjamb, indicating that lights were illuminated on the other side.
“Blow the door,” Simkins said. “This was their escape route.”
It took eight seconds to insert and detonate a sheet of Key4. When the smoke cleared, the field-team agents found themselves peering into a strange underground world known here as “the stacks.”
The Library of Congress had miles and miles of bookshelves, most of them underground. The endless rows of shelves looked like some kind of “infinity” optical illusion created with mirrors.
A sign announced
TEMPERATURE-CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT
Keep this door closed at all times.
Simkins pushed through the mangled doors and felt cool air beyond. He couldn’t help but smile.
Could this get any easier?
Heat signatures in controlled environments showed up like solar flares, and already his goggles revealed a glowing red smear on a banister up ahead, which Bellamy or Langdon had grabbed on to while running past.
“You can run,” he whispered to himself, “but you can’t hide.”
As Simkins and his team advanced into the maze of stacks, he realized the playing field was tipped so heavily in his favor that he would not even need his goggles to track his prey
.
Under normal circumstances, this maze of stacks would have been a respectable hiding place, but the Library of Congress used motion-activated lights to save energy, and the fugitives’ escape route was now lit up like a runway. A narrow strip of illumination stretched into the distance, dodging and weaving as it went.
All the men ripped off their goggles. Surging ahead on well-trained legs, the field team followed the trail of lights, zigging and zagging through a
seemingly endless labyrinth of books. Soon Simkins began seeing lights flickering on in the darkness up ahead.
We’re gaining.