The God Machine (22 page)

They headed up to Dupont, then to Scott and to Logan. At each circle, Koster made Petrov pull over and stop as he took precise readings with the locator.

“Why bother?” Sajan asked him. “If you already have the city laid out in your software, why take your own measurements?”

“I'm programming the Garmin to measure each way-point. That way we can calculate the exact number of degrees in each angle of each triangle in the pentagram. Then, I can superimpose the figure onto the map on my laptop to verify.” But the truth was, thought Koster, it just made him feel better to capture his own data, rather than relying on someone else's calculations.

It took them about forty minutes to record the first three points of the pentagram. When they were parked at Mount Vernon Square, as Koster was setting another waypoint, Petrov reached out and plucked at his sleeve.

“You have company, perhaps,” the Russian said.

“What do you mean?” said Sajan.

Petrov pointed his chin. A shiny black van was parked on the opposite side of the avenue. As soon as Koster spotted it, the van pulled out into traffic.

“What are you talking about?” Koster asked.

“Nothing,” said Petrov.

Minutes later, they cruised down New York, and the White House materialized before them. As he got out of the car, Koster wondered at the magnificent structure, remembering where it sat in the pentagram. Never again would he look at the White House as merely the seat of the Presidency. The structure, and its location, had taken on a completely new meaning. Koster worried about hidden cameras as he recorded his measurements. Then he dashed back to the car and told Petrov to head toward the Capitol.

“Why the Capitol?” asked Sajan.

Koster popped his laptop open. “The three most sacred symbols of Freemasonry are the Compass, the Square and the Rule, or straightedge. In Franklin's day, a professional compass had a round circle at the top. Now, look at the Capitol. You see how it's laid out? In the form of a circle?”

“You think the Capitol is the top of the Compass?”

“It must be. And the line running from the White House to the Capitol is one of the arms of the Compass. We're driving along it right now. Pennsylvania Avenue.”

They looked out the windows. The White House was receding from view behind them. Up ahead, the Capitol drew closer and closer, the impressive dome gleaming white in the early morning light. All along the avenue, work crews were beginning to set up for the Fourth of July celebrations, only two days away. The city would soon be impassable.

Sajan turned back toward the laptop. “If Pennsylvania is one arm of the Compass, and the Capitol is the top, then…” She ran her hand along the map. “… then Maryland Avenue must be the other. Except that Maryland doesn't go through.”

“That's true. But if you follow it down along the old Southern railroad track, and out past the Tidal Basin…”

“Yes, I see it,” Sajan said. “All the way to the Jefferson Memorial. That's the tip of the other arm of the Com pass.”

“And if that's the Compass, then the Square must cross over it. In most pictorial representations, they're laid on top of each other, pointing in opposite directions, with the angle of the Square positioned directly on the line bisecting the arms of the Compass.” He used the software package to draw lines along both Louisiana and Washington Avenues, extending them far beyond the suggestion of the streets on the map. When he had finished, they could clearly see the form of the Square. “And the Rule or straightedge?” Sajan asked.

“Franklin's journal suggests it begins at the Capitol. Draw a line back from the Capitol until it intersects the perpendicular line coming down, north to south, from the White House. Right there.” He pointed at the map on the screen. “At the Washington Memorial. You can
even continue the line from the Capitol west all the way to the Lincoln Memorial.”

“And if you go north past the White House,” Sajan said, sounding excited, “the line runs up Sixteenth Street…”

“… directly to the Supreme Council Thirty-third Degree Temple,” Koster finished for her. “Thirteen blocks north of the White House.”

“It fits, Joseph. What's next?”

“We need to drive east to mark the arms of the Square, and then round to the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. We'll end at the Washington Monument. That will give us our waypoints.”

It took them the better part of an hour and a half to reach each point on the map. The further they traveled, the more Koster became convinced of his figures. The Masonic symbols matched the layout of the city exactly. Sajan was right. It fit. It had to be more than coincidence.

By the time they got to the Washington Monument, it was noon. To the right, the obelisk glistened in the sunlight as they swung up Constitution Avenue and crawled to a stop in the parking area. Even though it was a weekday, the lot was crowded. Petrov stayed with the car while they made their way across the field to the tower. The memorial was surrounded by a circle of flags representing each state of the union. Each flapped in the breeze, vibrant and colorful against the pure granite of the obelisk and the crystal blue sky. Dozens of tourists gathered around the monument, snapping pictures, staring up at its peak. Koster picked up a brochure someone had tossed to the grass.

“‘The cornerstone was laid in 1848,’”
he read. He looked up at Sajan. “Long after the death of Ben Franklin. And yet,” he continued, looking back at the text, “it says here that the original architect set the height of the
tower at six hundred feet, but then it was reduced to five hundred fifty-five, so that the Egyptian proportions of ten times base to height could be maintained. And check this out. It was built using thirty-six thousand separate blocks of granite. The number thirty-six is derived from multiplying three by twelve. The capstone weighed exactly thirty-three hundred pounds. It has eight windows that together total thirty-nine square feet—three by thirteen. That's odd,” he added. “I know this was built much later than Franklin's day, but all of these numbers and dimensions are extremely significant in Masonic numerology. It even says that thirty-five of the memorial stones at the three-hundred-thirty-foot level were donated by Masonic lodges from all over the world. That's seven times five. I've been seeing these numbers again and again, all day long—thirty-nine, seventy-five.” Koster used the brochure to shield his eyes as he looked up at the obelisk. “Let's go up.”

They made their way to the main entrance on the other side of the obelisk. Several groups of tourists languished outside. There were Germans and Japanese, French and Australians, but mostly Americans. Come in for the Fourth of July, no doubt, Koster thought. There were families with small children, a cluster of veterans with their WWII badges, a nun and a troupe of elementary school students.

Koster had to stop and have his computer bag searched even though he put the whole thing through the metal detector. No one was taking any chances after 9/11.

The lobby's walls were covered with thick panels of glass, protecting the stone surfaces. There was a statue of George Washington in one corner, carved out of wood and so shiny with age that it looked to be made out of caramel. He was holding a cane in one hand and was resting the other on his coat on a pillar. There was a great brass relief of his likeness directly over the doors, his
head poised above branches, with his huge florid signature just underneath.

They moved to the elevator. A noisy group of schoolchildren spilled out, and they squeezed in with a small knot of tourists from Belgium. Or was it Holland? Koster couldn't be sure. It seemed to take forever to reach the Observation Level. The elevator emptied out onto a small narrow room, a corridor really, that ran around the shaft of the elevator, circumscribing the obelisk.

The walls felt like they were the paper thin at this height, though he knew they were solid granite. They arced in at the top, so that Koster and Sajan had to bend at the waist to avoid hitting their heads as they walked single file down the corridor. After a moment, they rounded the corner and came upon one of the rectangular windows.

There, far below, was the White House. It seemed tiny, like a toy, from this height. Koster stared out at the city to the north. It appeared to go on forever. He turned to Sajan. “You know, if you continue the east-west line from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, the Rule becomes an inverted T. One leg points toward the Supreme Council Temple, and the other two legs point toward the Capitol Building and the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Is that significant?”

“It could be. According to Masonic symbology, this is known as the Triple
Tau. Tau
is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, with a value of three hundred in the Greek system of numbers. The lower T is sometimes used as a symbol for the Golden ratio, though most people use the
phi
. The Triple Tau is also one of the premier symbols of Royal Arch Masonry. And it has a specific meaning in English, but I don't remember the cipher. Hold on a second.” He pulled out his computer and
propped it up on the shelf of the window. “I'll figure it out.”

Other tourists were trying to see past his screen. They clucked, hemmed and hawed, but Koster was far too engrossed to be thwarted. In a minute the crowd started to thin, and soon they were all by themselves in the corridor.

Koster laid out the phrasing. As usual he began with a simple substitution cipher. Nothing. Then he started to count up the letters and… He stopped.
Wait a minute
, he thought. He was using English. What if the words were in Hebrew or Greek? He started again.

“What was that?” Sajan asked.

Koster didn't look up. Hebrew was probably the most likely, he decided. It could be the Atbash. “What's what?” he replied.

“That noise,” Sajan said. “That banging?”

Koster couldn't hear anything. “I don't know…” Then he heard it. It sounded like the slamming of doors.

“I'll go see,” said Sajan.

Koster turned back toward his screen. The Atbash was a simple substitution cipher for the Hebrew alphabet. It worked by substituting
aleph
, the first letter, for
tav
, the last;
beth
, the second letter, for
shin
, the one before last; and so on and so forth, in essence reversing the alphabet.

In the meantime, Sajan moved down the corridor. It was strangely empty now. Before it had been jam-packed with tourists. Koster glanced up as Sajan ambled further and further away. At the end of the corridor, she stopped.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something's jammed in the elevator. It looks like a newspaper.” She stepped out of sight.

If you used the Hebrew alphabet, Koster considered, the Triple Tau was decoded as the words,
“I am that I
am.”
He waited and watched but Sajan didn't reappear at the end of the corridor.

“Savita,” he said. Then he realized it was the first time he had used her first name. “Savita, where are you?”

“The newspaper's caught in the elevator doors,” she called. “Just a minute. I'm getting it out.”

The Triple Tau signified the
Clavis ad theosaurum
, the “key to a treasure,” or the
Theca ubi res pretiosa deponitur
, the “place where a precious thing is concealed.” Or a symbol for the Golden Ratio, he thought. And it hit him.

“Savita,” he cried out again.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I think that there's somebody else—”

“Savita, come back here. Right now!” Koster was suddenly filled with a grim sense of foreboding. Cold fingers clawed at his heart. He pushed the laptop away. “Savita!” He dashed down the corridor, moving sideways to avoid bumping the walls. “Savita!” he shouted, and she suddenly reappeared round the corner. She looked up at him with surprise in her eyes.

“What's the matter?” she said. “What's wrong?”

“Just come here.” He motioned her forward.

Sajan made her way down the corridor. “Did you figure it out?” she inquired.

Koster looked closely at her. He started to reach for her hand, then thought better of it. “I'm not sure,” he replied. He felt silly, embarrassed. “I think so.” What had come over him? He couldn't explain it. He had suddenly felt a great urge to protect her. Slowly, he made his way back toward the window.

“Well?” she said.

“The Tau is sometimes used as a symbol for the Golden Ratio, a mystical figure leveraged in the design of the Notre Dame cathedrals in France, the ones built by the Masons.” He swiveled the PC screen toward her.
“It's also used at Monticello, the house that Jefferson built. Anyway, when I run the ratio against the numbers we've been tracking, the angles of the triangles of the pentagram, plus the Masonic symbols of the Compass, Square and Rule, I end up with the same series of numbers: three times thirteen, or thirty-nine; plus seventy-five. But they're also associated with other numbers: fifty-six, fifty-two and ninety-five; and then eight, fifty and six. I can't figure it out.”

“Let me see,” said Sajan. She moved closer to the screen. There they were. The same numbers, over and over again: 39, 56, 52 and 95; 75, 8, 50 and 6. They just kept repeating. Then she laughed. “Give me your Garmin,” she told him.

“What for?” Koster asked, though he handed it over to her.

She began inputting numbers. “One of the benefits of being in the telecom chip business. You obsess over these things. The invisible network around us. The electrical matrix. GPS, Joseph. Practically every cell phone manufactured today is equipped with some sort of geo-positioning system, even if it's only for emergency use. The numbers—they're coordinates, Joseph. Degrees, minutes and seconds. And then fractions of seconds. Look at the numbers.”

Koster stared down at the screen. She was right. He felt like an idiot. He had been able to remember the Atbash. He'd seen the shapes of the Masonic symbols in the streets of the city. He'd drawn connections between the
tau
and the
phi
. But he'd missed the most obvious of symbols—the straight interpretation of numbers. Some times, as Freud said, a cigar was just a cigar… and a number was just a simple coordinate. “Latitude and longitude,” he said flatly.