The Last American Wizard (29 page)

“The ceremonial bowl itself contained an etching of a male principle pentagram with three unicursal hexagrams, one in each of the points that wasn’t in the down position. Mystically speaking, of course.”

“Of course,” Steve said with a heavy sarcasm that Barnaby completely
ignored.

They were back in the BMW and Hans, after once again extruding plastic covers to protect his precious leather seats from bloodstains, was driving back to the alien ambassador’s residence. As they left the Illuminati’s underground fortress, Ace had turned and tossed the sword up in the air in the general direction of the statue of Joan of Arc. The sword soared at least fifty yards and the mounted knight reached out, caught it, and flourished it aloft. Ace bowed
deeply.

Now Barnaby was explaining, in great depth, what the NSA computers had divined from the markings cut into the floor of the Illuminati’s ritual chamber. “What’s interesting is what wasn’t there.”

“A minibar?” Steve
asked.

“No. There wasn’t an enneagram gateway structure that would have allowed the Rose ankh to transmit the etheric energy out to the object. If you consider that the Enochian Senior had been constructed along with the proper Lunar Mansions and a mystikon for each point of the Pentagram of the Masculine
Aspect–”

“Hold it,” Steve said sharply. “I’m picking a definite whiff of bullshit. Does the combined intelligence of half the silicon on the planet have any idea what these Extra-Long-Life Light Bulbs were up to? Yes or No,
please.”

“No, not really.” the computer said in a subdued
voice.

Ace spoke from the front seat. “What about the NSAVOG?”

“You had to throw in another word?” Steve said resentfully.
“I don’t understand the ones he’s already
using.”

“Heard of ‘tiger team’?” Ace asked. “That a bit easier for you to understand? It’s the National Security Agency Vulnerability Analysis and Operations Group. Generally, they spend their time trying to break into their own computers, but I’d imagine on an operation as important as this, the Director would have them working on outliers, alternates, known bad answers, anything but the obvious logical concepts that the rest of the team is
working.”

“Yes, the black hats are on the case. We’ve even given all the hackers currently serving prison sentences a temporary parole and put them to work with the more malevolent computers,” Barnaby admitted. “So far, they’ve asked for the entire content of the Library of Congress’s Black Stacks to be converted into readable text. They got their hands on the
Necronomicon
–the real one we found on Iwo Jima, not that joke that Lovecraft dreamed up. They’ve ingested
The King in Yellow
and everything else in the British Museum’s Lost Wing
,
the Saudi Royal Family’s personal collection of
grimoires
—”

“Stop. We get it. They’re well read,” Steve said. “Did they
find
anything?”

“Yes, well.” Barnaby seemed hesitant. “Their best guess is that the sacrifice was intended to give life to an object. It’s difficult because all the texts differ, and most, if not all, are completely fabricated–which doesn’t necessarily mean they’re incorrect. One team used an old holographic memory technology and they say that it allows them to see the ‘shadow’ formed by the missing information. The problem is that what they see–or rather, what they don’t see–doesn’t make any sense.”

“Imagine that,” Steve said. “Holographic computer? Didn’t Tony Stark build one of those in
Iron
Man
?”

“Yes, but it’s not an irrational theory,” Barnaby said. “A holographic negative records every part of the picture it’s taking in every part of the storage available
so–”

The LCD panel on the BMW’s dash beeped loudly and
flashed.

Something alive they make. Only question what is.

Ace read this aloud and then nodded. “Hans is making sense. Do we have any more information to work
with?”

Carlos said, “Well, the guy you kept alive said something, right?”

“‘Eidolon’,” Ace said. “Now you can do something useful, Barnaby. What’s that
mean?

“Image, idol, double, apparition, phantom, ghost.”

“How about statue?” Steve
asked.

“That would fit if it came to life,” Barnaby said. “Which fits the rest of the incantation. It would help if we knew which
sculpture we’re talking about. It’s not like this city is suffering a shortage.”

“Wait a second,” Steve said. “What was the missing image that the black hats said made no
sense?”

“A penny,” Barnaby said. “That’s why it makes no sense.”

“Wait. Maybe, it does.” Steve started to sit up from where he was lying across the backseat and almost fainted, so he quickly sank back. “Hamilton Jones said two things after he damn near stopped my heart this morning. One was that….let me get it straight…‘the light in the darkness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.’”

Send Money vibrated in Carlos’s hand. Steve nodded. “Yeah, that probably refers to you, Send, but it’s the other part that I completely missed until Barnaby mentioned the penny. Hamilton said, ‘Beware the man sitting by the river.’ The back of every penny shows the Lincoln Memorial. Wouldn’t it be logical that the “man sitting by the river’ is the statue of Lincoln in that
ginormous chair right on the banks of the
Potomac?

“When has logic played a part in anything that happened during the past two days?” Ace
asked.

“Well, if anyone in the group has another conclusion that fits what we can laughingly call the ‘facts,’ let’s hear it.” Steve paused. “No? OK, let’s press on until a better answer materializes. How
big is that thing,
anyway?”

“Twenty-eight feet standing and…well, it’s thirty-eight thousand tons, but that counts the chair,” Barnaby
answered.

“And you said the chatter was of a new mega-logos event? think that a three-story marble Abraham Lincoln could kill a couple of hundred thousand people without too much effort.”

“Forget about going home, folks.” Steve lay back and said, “Hans, take us to the White House or the Alabaster Palace or whatever they’re calling it today.
Bitte.
We need to have a chat with the
president.”

It wasn’t long before Hans was twisting through the bomb barriers that blocked the Southwest entrance to the White
House.

“Their guns aren’t working, either.” Ace was watching the guards carefully. “See how they’ve got the pistols jammed deep in their holsters and no one is carrying one of the assault weapons they use as
backup.”

“They could just be hidden,” Steve pointed
out.

“Nope,” she said triumphantly. “Look, that girl in the back has a crossbow. Must be a hunter, and she brought it in when all the guns stopped
working.”

She pointed to a large wooden construction on the South Lawn. “Will ya look at that? They’re building a
trebuchet.”

“Hans.” Steve asked. “Can you get us through that gate? Without scratching your paint, of
course.”

The BMW again made its contemptuous engine growl and the LCD panel
read

“Then why don’t you just go ahead?” Steve said. “I don’t
think we’re ever going to argue our way past these
guys.”

“Wait a second,” Ace interrupted. “Let’s see if we can minimize the collateral damage. Hans, do you have an external sound
system?”

In response, a short microphone on a flex pole emerged from the center of the steering wheel and a loud
click
echoed off the walls of the Old Executive Office
Building.

Ace started talking, the acronyms flowing at a practiced military clip. “This is Master Chief Petty Officer Ace Morningstar. I’m
a
noncommissioned
team
leader
in
DEVGRU
on
temporary assignment to the OTN Command based at Fort Meyers. I’ve been assigned Social Security Number 615-23-2100 for the duration of the current emergency. Birth date is classified. Full name is classified. Confirm by phone at the Center for Cryptographic History (301) 688-2336, or enter the term ‘Ace Morningstar’ into any computer. We’re operating under BLIND AXE emergency procedures–yes, go ahead and look it up if you want, but it will just tell you to salute and forget we were ever
here.”

There was a snapping and clicking as the reactive armor of the Kabul Package deployed around the car. In seconds, the passengers could only see through narrow slits in the front and side windows– everything else was completely
covered.

Ace kept talking. “Now, I don’t thing you need to demonstrate the true condition of your kinetic weapons to the entire world, so why don’t you simply refrain from shooting us? I hope that the SWAT team on the roof had the chance to confirm that their Javelin FGM-148’s are as fubar as your side arms. I’m telling you right now that fire-and-forget is going to be fire-and-fucked from now
on.”

There was the sound of a shattering explosion from high to their right. “Dammit, Sergeant! I’m a goddamn Master Chief. Do you really think that I would turn against the United States or,
more importantly, that I wouldn’t know what I was talking about? Tell those idiots up there to stand down before they set the whole White House on
fire.”

Smoke was rising from the roof of the West Wing. Ace sighed and spoke again through the PA system. “OK, we are going
through these gates. Then we’re going to park up at the guardhouse by the West Wing and go in and talk to the president. Finally, I would seriously advise you not to piss off this vehicle. He tends to let personal feelings get in the way of strictly operational necessities when that custom metallic paint job gets
damaged.”

Ace took her hands off the steering wheel and said, “It’s all yours,
Hans.”

A searing red line erupted from the front hood and cut through the central gate lock and the two-inch-thick hardened steel posts that connected the gate into the sunken six-inch steel
baseplate.

The curved traffic barriers behind the gate were raised to their full extent–guaranteed to rip the transmission right out of a speeding car bomber. Hans drove very slowly up to the first, flicked the laser, and cut off a small piece from the top inner corner of the right-hand unit. After a long minute, the barriers lowered. Steve could see an enraged guard pounding on a control panel, but the computerized barrier had apparently decided on its own that today was not the day to be destroyed for God and
Country.

Steve wondered, “Where did a BMW get a weaponized
laser?”

The LCD screen flickered
again

Send Money
flickered.

“Ah,” Steve said. “Well, you sure as hell improved
it.”

It was clear by the time they reached the center of West Executive Drive and parked that someone had managed to verify Ace’s identity and authority. There was still a phalanx of Uniformed Division officers and Marines blocking the way up the stairs to the Oval Office, but there were no weapons in evidence and all the security personnel seemed a bit more
relaxed.

On the other hand, the media were going nuts. Camera crews were ripping their cameras off their tripods and racing over to record any potential confrontation. The tripods, in many cases, were trotting right after
them.

Steve would have felt more important if he hadn’t known that the guys who worked the White House were so bored, they’d tape an attack from massed squirrels if that was all there
was.

Steve eased himself out of the backseat, fully conscious of every cut and bruise. Ace and Carlos got out and directed almost- identical steely glares at the men in front of them. Steve noticed that some bright light officer in the Marines had ordered them to bring their ceremonial swords in, and they had them out of their scabbards and held in a reasonable semblance of
readiness.

Ace took a step up onto the sidewalk. The Marines tensed as they prepared to defend their
posts.

“All White House personnel will stand down immediately!” It was a beautiful woman’s voice but it cracked like a whip with the full power of command. “Please make way so that my guests can enter.”

As the crowd split to either side, Steve could see the familiar form of President Barbara Harlan. As she stepped down the stairs
to shake hands, he got a closer look and realized that Harlan’s chubby, pants-suited form had morphed into a tall, slender woman with long, flowing robes. A ghostly diadem of stars began to flicker into being over her head. She glanced up, saw it, and immediately swatted at it with an impatient
hand.