WASHINGTON, D.C.
Malachi slowed down the stolen Range Rover as he reached the 1600 block of Constitution Avenue in northwest D.C. Something had caught his attention—a giant flaming sword ensconced in a granite monument about twenty yards off the road. He quickly pulled over and parked. It was just past 6:00 A.M. on Sunday morning, and this usually crowded area of the city was uncharacteristically empty. It was too cold and too early for the tourists.
Malachi sat for a long while in the idling vehicle, transfixed by the flaming sword and the large expanse of grass behind it. Yes, this all seemed so familiar to him now. He’d been here before.
With her.
With his gaze still fixed on the flaming sword, Malachi alighted from the Range Rover and donned his black leather coat. It was a cold, damp morning with dark clouds gathering low to the ground. He buttoned his coat to the top and flipped up his collar against the wind. As an afterthought, he patted his right pocket and felt the hard outline of his pistol. He might need this today. With his other hand, he felt a hard lump in his left coat pocket—the object he’d retrieved from the Thurmond lab. The purpose of his mission.
Malachi lit a cigarette and looked around in all directions. Vehicular traffic on Constitution Avenue was extremely light, and the sidewalks on both sides of the wide avenue were entirely empty. Across Constitution Avenue, the Washington Monument rose high into the sky, nearly poking into the swirling storm clouds overhead. Malachi considered the monument for a moment, intrigued by its pagan significance. A white Egyptianesque obelisk keeping constant watch over the nation’s capital. Then he turned his attention back to the wide expanse of grass to his right: the Ellipse—formally called President’s Park—a large, oval park situated between the south side of the White House and Constitution Avenue. He took a long drag of his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. This felt right. The Ellipse, the White House, the flaming sword.
Finally, it was all coming together.
Malachi blew out a stream of smoke and tossed his cigarette to the ground. Then, looking all around and seeing no one on the sidewalk or in the park, he quickly made his way to the granite memorial that housed the giant, flaming sword of gold that had caught his attention from the road. Below the sword were three large words, deeply inscribed in granite and highlighted in gold leaf:
To Our Dead
Malachi recognized this as the Second Division Memorial, honoring members of the Second U.S. Infantry Division who died in World War I, World War II, and Korea.
He’d been here before.
Standing alone a few feet from the steps of the memorial, he carefully studied its unusual layout. The main portion of the monument was constructed of thick granite slabs, arranged so as to leave a large rectangular opening resembling a doorway in the middle. Beyond this open doorway were the manicured grounds of the Ellipse and the White House. But the doorway itself was blocked . . . by the giant, flaming sword held aloft by a disembodied hand. The sword and the hand were covered in bright gold leaf, making them stand out brilliantly against the somber granite backdrop of the memorial. It was a stunning visual effect, meant to reflect the Second Division’s bravery in repelling the German army during World War I. Yet Malachi knew there was a deeper significance to this flaming sword. It took a few minutes, but it finally came to him in the form of a Bible verse:
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
This verse was from the book of Genesis, just after Adam and Eve had been cast out of the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. As Malachi now recalled, the flaming sword was put in place by God to protect the Garden of Eden from further trespass by man.
Man had taken enough from the garden.
Malachi now gazed north beyond the flaming sword. He could just barely see the top of the White House in the distance. An American flag on the roof was waving furiously in the stiff morning breeze. Was that his destination?
Still uncertain about his final plan, Malachi ventured onward toward the White House. He walked with both hands in his pockets, chin down against the wind, virtually alone on the Ellipse at this early hour. Gradually, he followed the Ellipse road to the right until he found himself on Fifteenth Street, heading north. This street was a bit busier than the Ellipse, though still generally free of pedestrian traffic. As he walked, Malachi thought about the note that had been left for him in Thurmond, which he still had not entirely solved. Go to the “Third Church,” it had instructed. And ask for “Qaset.”
Malachi mulled over these instructions as he walked steadily up Fifteenth Street. Was the White House the Third Church? And if so, who was Qaset?
Malachi still had not solved these questions when he passed by a guard shack at Fifteenth and Pennsylvania Avenue, one of the main access points to the White House grounds. On instinct, he stopped and stared. He was now under the watchful gaze of two armed Secret Service agents inside the guard shack, just a few feet away. Malachi turned and approached the men.
“Can I help you?” asked one of the armed guards, a tall man in a white-and-black uniform.
Malachi became acutely aware of the pistol in his coat pocket. This will end badly if I make a mistake, he realized. He was also keenly aware that his appearance probably made him seem very suspicious to these guards. He was a middle-aged man in filthy clothes, with a three-day-old beard and badly trimmed hair. And this was the White House—home of the most powerful man in the world. Be careful, he told himself.
“Sir?” said the guard with growing concern in his voice.
“Um, yes,” Malachi replied. “Could you tell me where I can find Qaset?”
The guard looked confused. “Cassette? Is that what you said?”
“No. Qaset with a Q.” Malachi spelled the word out: “Q-A-S-E-T.”
The two guards looked at each other and shrugged. “Sir, I suggest you try the White House Visitor Center.” The tall guard pointed to his right. “It’s at Fifteenth and E, and it opens at seven thirty. They should be able to answer all your questions.”
Malachi thanked the guard and quickly turned away. He’d pushed his luck far enough with these men. As he started to stroll in the direction of the visitor center, however, something suddenly clicked in his mind. Something the guard had said. He immediately stopped in this tracks, paused, and reversed direction.
He’d been wrong all along. The Third Church was not the White House. But now he knew exactly where it was.
“Where’s he going?” asked Mike Califano over the wireless radio. He was standing half a block away, in front of the Willard Hotel, watching every move Malachi made.
“The guards just directed him south,” said Ana through her concealed microphone. “Probably to the visitor center.” She was standing about fifty yards south on Fifteenth Street, between Pennsylvania and H. “Wait,” she said. “He just turned around. Now he’s heading north on Fifteenth. Mike, you got him?”
“I see him,” said Califano.
Suddenly, Bill McCreary’s voice came on the line. He was monitoring the entire operation from his office in Langley. “Stay with him,” he warned. “But don’t engage just yet. Let’s see where he goes.”
Malachi walked briskly north on Fifteenth Street, then turned left onto the wide walking street that runs behind the White House. When he reached a point adjacent to the north lawn of the White House, he quickly turned right and entered Lafayette Square Park.
“Got him?” asked Califano over the radio.
“Yep,” replied Ana. She was about thirty yards behind Malachi, walking nonchalantly and gazing in all directions like a tourist on an early morning stroll to see the White House. “He’s in the park now,” she said quietly over the radio. “Heading north.”
Malachi picked up his pace as he followed the redbrick walkways through Lafayette Park. He rounded the circular fence surrounding the Jackson memorial and paused for a moment, taking in the sight of General Andrew Jackson in full military regalia striking a majestic pose atop a rearing warhorse during the Battle of New Orleans. Magnificent, he thought. He was just about to turn when he noticed a woman at the edge of the park near the White House. Was that the same woman he’d seen back on Fifteenth Street? He considered that possibility for a few seconds, carefully studying her clothes and body type. Finally, he dismissed it. The Third Church beckoned.
And he was close.
“Shit, I think he saw me,” said Ana in a hushed tone over the radio. “He’s out of the park now. Just crossed H Street, and he’s heading north on Sixteenth.”
“Yeah, I see him,” said Califano, who had just arrived at the northeast corner of Lafayette Square. “Fall back so he doesn’t spot you again. I’ll close in from here.” Califano picked up his pace and walked briskly toward the corner of Sixteenth and H. To a casual observer, he looked like a lobbyist or diplomat, perhaps late for a Sunday power breakfast at the Hay-Adams. “Where the hell’s he going?” he whispered into his microphone.
“I don’t know,” said Ana, who was still lingering at the south end of the park.
McCreary’s voice cut in again. “Remember, stay close. But don’t engage until we see where he’s going.”
Malachi walked by the pale yellow church on the corner of Sixteenth and H and paused for a moment to admire its simple, Greek Revivalist design. He recognized this as St. John’s Episcopal Church, where every U.S. president since James Madison had attended services at least once. At the front of the church, six white columns supported an exquisitely proportioned triangular pediment. The steeple consisted of a three-tiered angular structure culminating in a gold-leafed dome topped by a weather vane. There was no cross atop this “church of presidents.”
Malachi turned and continued northward on Sixteenth Street. Past the Hay-Adams hotel with its stately columns and ornate Renaissance architecture. Past the AFL-CIO headquarters—a sleek, modern study in limestone and rectangles. Past the pricey apartments at the corner of Sixteenth and I Streets, a frequent home away from home for diplomats and powerful lobbyists.
Malachi stopped abruptly on the southwest corner of Sixteenth and I Streets and glanced quickly behind him. Was he being followed? He scanned the entire block that he’d just traveled, searching especially for the blond woman he’d seen in the park a few minutes earlier. But she was gone. He spotted a man in a tan overcoat who appeared to be making his way hastily toward the Hay-Adams hotel. Two doormen in top hats and tails in front of the hotel were preparing to greet him. Nothing out of the ordinary, Malachi decided.
He now turned his gaze across the intersection, and his pulse suddenly quickened.
He had arrived.
In a flurry, he reached into his pocket and extracted the cream-colored sheet of stationery that he’d retrieved from the buried canister in Thurmond. He unfolded it and reviewed the unusal cryptogram that had been baffling him for days:
This was it. He looked across the street at the building that was located precisely between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Streets and K and I Streets. He now recalled that Washington, D.C., has no J Street because, in the eighteenth century, the letters I and J were considered redundant, or at least confusingly similar. In any event, the building he was now staring at was located almost precisely where the octagon was on his sheet of stationery. He looked down again at the cryptogram, marveling at its clever simplicity. Then, once again, he looked up and gazed upon what was arguably the most controversial and enigmatic building in the entire city of Washington, D.C. An octagonal concrete bunker with no apparent windows or doors.
“The Third Church,” he said quietly to himself.