The Lost Symbol

at the rear of the lab, katherine saw her brother’s white lab coat hanging on its hook along with her own. reflexively, she pulled out her phone to check for messages. nothing. a voice echoed again in her memory. That which your brother believes is hidden in D.C. . it can be found. Sometimes a legend that endures for centuries. . endures for a reason.

«No,» Katherine said aloud. «It can’t possibly be real.»

Sometimes a legend was just that — a legend.

CHAPTER 16

Security chief

trent anderson stormed back toward the capitol rotunda, fuming at the failure of his security team. one of his men had just found a sling and an army-surplus jacket in an alcove near the east portico.

The goddamn guy walked right out of here!

Anderson had already assigned teams to start scanning exterior video, but by the time they found anything, this guy would be long gone.

Now, as Anderson entered the Rotunda to survey the damage, he saw that the situation had been contained as well as could be expected. All four entrances to the Rotunda were closed with as inconspicuous a method of crowd control as Security had at its disposal — a velvet swag, an apologetic guard, and a sign that read THIS ROOM TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR CLEANING. the dozen or so witnesses were all being herded into a group on the eastern perimeter of the room, where the guards were collecting cell phones and cameras; the last thing anderson needed was for one of these people to send a cell-phone snapshot to cnn.

One of the detained witnesses, a tall, dark-haired man in a tweed sport coat, was trying to break away from the group to speak to the chief. The man was currently in a heated discussion with the guards.

«I’ll speak to him in a moment,» Anderson called over to the guards. «For now, please hold everyone in the main lobby until we sort this out.»

Anderson turned his eyes now to the hand, which stood at attention in the middle of the room. For the love of God. In fifteen years on security detail for the Capitol Building, he had seen some strange things. But nothing like this.

Forensics had better get here fast and get this thing out of my building.

Anderson moved closer, seeing that the bloody wrist had been skewered on a spiked wooden base to make the hand stand up. Wood and flesh, he thought. Invisible to metal detectors. The only metal was a large gold ring, which Anderson assumed had either been wanded or casually pulled off the dead finger by the suspect as if it were his own.

anderson crouched down to examine the hand. it looked as if it had belonged to a man of about sixty. the ring bore some kind of ornate seal with a two-headed bird and the number 33. anderson didn’t recognize it. what really caught his eye were the tiny tattoos on the tips of the thumb and index finger.

A goddamn freak show.

«Chief?» One of the guards hurried over, holding out a phone. «Personal call for you. Security switchboard just patched it through.»

Anderson looked at him like he was insane. «I’m in the middle of something here,» he growled.

The guard’s face was pale. He covered the mouthpiece and whispered. «It’s CIA.»

Anderson did a double take. CIA heard about this already?!

«It’s their Office of Security.»

Anderson stiffened. Holy shit. He glanced uneasily at the phone in the guard’s hand.

In Washington’s vast ocean of intelligence agencies, the CIA’s Office of Security was something of a Bermuda Triangle — a mysterious and treacherous region from which all who knew of it steered clear whenever possible. With a seemingly self-destructive mandate, the OS had been created by the CIA for one strange purpose — to spy on the CIA itself. Like a powerful internal-affairs office, the OS monitored all CIA employees for illicit behavior: misappropriation of funds, selling of secrets, stealing classified technologies, and use of illegal torture tactics, to name a few.

They spy on America’s spies.

With investigative carte blanche in all matters of national security, the OS had a long and potent reach. Anderson could not fathom why they would be interested in this incident at the Capitol, or how they had found out so fast. Then again, the OS was rumored to have eyes everywhere. For all Anderson knew, they had a direct feed of U.S. Capitol security cameras. This incident did not match OS directives in any way, although the timing of the call seemed too coincidental to Anderson to be about anything other than this severed hand.