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Two hours later, they stood on Constitution Avenue, a street that, until two years ago, had been known as B Street. A Marble Statue of Abraham Lincoln loomed over them. It was much smaller than the Lincoln Memorial. From the base of the pedestal to the top of Lincoln’s head, it could be no more than fifteen feet tall.
“I don’t remember seeing this statue before,” Alex said.
“It’s not very well known,” Stone said. “Hasn’t been here more than ten years.” He turned to Moses. “Where is the tunnel entrance you mentioned?”
Moses had told them about a series of interconnected tunnels, drains, and passageways that ran beneath Washington D.C. Some of them had been used by slaves, and today they served as a means of escape in the event someone needed to hide in a hurry.
Moses pointed to a nearby manhole. “Through the storm drain.” He looked around to make sure no one was watching, but at this late hour the streets were almost empty. Then, he removed the cover and dropped down into the tunnel.
“How about I wait here and keep watch?” Alex cast a nervous glance down into the hole.
“Waste of time. We’ll be out of earshot in half a minute,” Moses called from the darkness.
“Do I need to give you a push?” Stone kidded.
“No.” Alex heaved a sigh and followed his friend.
Stone brought up the rear, replacing the manhole cover behind them.
They crawled through mud and stagnant water for about a hundred feet until Moses called a halt. He shined his flashlight beam to the left, where large cracks ran down the side of the drain.
“This part can be moved,” he explained. “Just got to give it a good push.”
“Stone can do it,” Alex said. “He’s the brawn, I’m the brains.”
“Remind me which one of us put salt in his coffee instead of sugar... twice,” Stone said.
“That has nothing to do with intelligence. My mind was merely concentrating on more important matters.”
“Some time in a monastery would teach you to focus,” Stone said.
“A monastery? Is that where you were all those years?”
Stone didn’t answer. After leaving the service, he had fallen out of touch with the people he cared about most. He neither liked to talk about it nor knew how to explain what he had done and why. Trinity never stopped trying to catch him off guard with unexpected questions about his “lost years”, but Alex usually left the subject alone.
He worked his fingers into the cracks and pulled. A section of wall slid forward. He squeezed through feet first and dropped down into a brick-lined passageway. The air was damp and chilly and smelled like old socks, but the ceiling was high enough for him to stand.
“How many places can you get to from here?” Alex asked.
“A whole mess,” Moses said. “Ford’s Theater, Lincoln Memorial, even the capitol building.”
While Alex worried aloud about the condition of the crumbling bricks, Stone committed every turn to memory, made a mental note of each side passage.
They finally halted at a T-junction. Moses looked around. “I ain’t been here before, but I’m told the way up to the temple is behind the eye.”
“What does that mean?” Alex asked.
Moses shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
Stone looked around, examining each brick in turn. Finally, he spotted an anomaly—a brick with an indentation at the center. He wiped away the grime to reveal a triangle with an eye at the center.
“The Eye of Providence,” he said. “The symbol of the Illuminati.” He pressed the brick and a section of wall slid down into the ground. Dusty stairsteps wound upward.
“Want me to wait here for you?” Moses asked.
“I’d like for you to go back to Riverbend and keep an eye on Trinity in case Kane is foolish enough to send his goons after us again.”
They bade one another goodbye, then Stone and Alex climbed the stairs. After a short climb, they found themselves at a trapdoor.
“What do you think is on the other side?” Alex asked. “What happens if we pop up in the middle of some weird ritual?”
“If that happens, we play dumb, say we got lost in an underground passageway. Should that not work, you hightail it out of there and I’ll cover your back. But it’s the middle of the night. Hopefully, the temple will be empty.”
He gave the door a push.
Nothing.
A little more force and with a rusty squeak that sounded like a scream in the quiet night, the trapdoor opened. Alex flicked on his flashlight to reveal stacks of old crates, coated in a layer of dust.
“It’s some kind of storeroom, but it looks like it hasn’t been touched for some time,” Stone said.
“All the better for us.”
The storeroom door opened into a small office. When they stepped inside and closed the door, they discovered it was cleverly hidden behind a bookcase that moved on invisible wheels as the door swung back. With a click, the door locked into place.
“Why conceal a storeroom entrance?” Alex asked.
“The Freemasons love secrets and mysteries. Perhaps someone installed it for their own amusement.” Stone scratched his chin, thinking. “The House of the Temple is not quite twenty years old. That means someone knew about the secret passageway and installed the trapdoor for access.”
“Elements of the Illuminati within the ranks of the Masons?” Alex asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
Despite their stealth, their footsteps echoed in the marble-lined hallways. They passed through the Temple Room. Moonlight shone through the oculus a hundred feet above them, illuminating the altar at the center of the chamber. They reached the library in short order. The door was locked but Alex picked it with ease.
The numbers Lincoln had overheard led them to a shelf in the back corner. The book in question was titled Gods and Kings of Ancient Egypt. Alex flipped through it.
“I don’t see anything in here. I guess they aren’t call numbers after all.”
Stone climbed up, examined the spot where the book had been. He saw nothing. He rapped on it but it felt solid. He frowned. If they aren’t call numbers, what are they?
He closed his eyes and carefully ran his fingers across the smooth wooden shelf. When he had first been taken to the monastery, he had been locked in a pitch-black room, where he was trained to utilize his other senses. They had been sharpened to a fine point. He had refined his sense of touch until he could make out a word inscribed on a single grain of rice.
There it was! The slightest imperfection in the surface. It was a raised circle no larger than a penny. He shined his light on it and saw it was expertly camouflaged by a knot in the wood. He pressed it, and a tiny compartment opened in the wall behind the shelf. He removed a small object wrapped in cloth. He removed the cloth to reveal a tiny marble figurine carved in exquisite detail. It had the body of a human and the head of a crocodile. It clutched a knife and flail in its clawed hands.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“It’s an ushabti,” Stone said. “A figurine placed in an Egyptian tomb to act as a servant in the afterlife.”
“Why would Orion put it here instead of leaving it in his secret office?”
“Maybe he suspected his secret office wasn’t so secret.” Stone scratched his chin. “But who was he hiding it from?”