The Archangel Project

by C. S. Graham

  “No. What do you think? That I know every hired thug in the country?”

  “I don’t really know anything about you, do I? You might have seen my file, but I haven’t seen yours.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

  She didn’t crack a smile. “Is it? Tell me about the death squads in Colombia.”

  He shifted gears. “What do you know about Colombia?”

  “Bubba mentioned it.”

  “Bubba has a big mouth.”

  “So what happened?”

  He shrugged. “I was up in the mountains, recruiting agents. As part of gaining the mestizos’ trust, we were training some of the villagers in self-defense. The idea was to help them fight back against the rebels.”

  “And?”

  “One morning I was out working with a couple dozen men from a village when it was hit by a right-wing paramilitary death squad. They just swept in and started machine-gunning people. Men. Women. Kids. Everyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I don’t know. Maybe one of the men from the village had the nerve to start a labor union at the local Coca-Cola bottling factory. Or maybe some general wanted to drive them off their land so he could grow coca on it. It happens all the time.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I had some old AK-47s I was teaching the men to shoot. I handed them out and we attacked, whooping and shouting like crazy. The death squad thought we were a rebel force and ran.”

  She kept her gaze on his face. “And this guy Ross?”

  “He was with the death squad. I recognized him because I’d seem him before. He was one of the Special Forces people around the ambassador.”

  “You mean the American ambassador to Colombia?”

  “That’s right. Gordon Chandler. I went to the embassy and confronted him with the asshole’s Special Forces beret.”

  “And?”

  “And he told me it was none of my business.”

  “So you punched him?”

  “I lost my temper.”

  A crooked smile touched her lips.

  “What?” he said.

  But she just shook her head and turned away to gaze out the window.

  They drove in silence for some time.

  She continued sitting ramrod straight, her arms wrapped across her chest. There was a coiled quality about her, and suddenly he understood what it was about.

  “You’re nervous about this remote viewing, aren’t you?” he said.

  She swung her head to look at him. The late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the car window fell across her face and brought out the warm highlights in her hair, honey-touched with strands of caramel and sun-streaked flaxen. “Yes.”

  “Are you usually nervous?”

  “No. But I’ve never tried to do a viewing that was this important before. What if I can’t do it? What if all I’m accessing is my imagination and it’s all wrong?”

  “Then we’ll just have to figure out what’s going on some other way.”

  “What other way?” she asked, her gaze hard on his face.

  But he didn’t have an answer, and she knew it.

  New Orleans: 6 June 12:25 P.M. Central time

  Tourak Rahmadad decided to stop by Mona’s Café on Carrollton for lunch. Normally he loved eating the oyster po’boys and gumbo and crawfish étouffe that had made New Orleans cuisine famous. But not today. Today he wanted stewed lamb and baba ghanoush. Today he wanted comfort. He wanted to be reminded of home.

  But the tendrils of nervousness in his gut made it hard to eat. He glanced at his watch. Six and a half more hours. He pushed his plate away and watched one of the old dull green streetcars clatter past on the grassy strip of the neutral ground.

  He’d thought Dr. Hafezi might call to wish him luck, to tell him he’d do fine. But Hafezi hadn’t called. Tourak had everything he needed. He had his press pass, his equipment. He knew what he had to do and how to do it. But Hafezi had always been so supportive, so encouraging. Tourak knew a vague sense of disappointment he tried to shake off.

  He supposed it was possible Dr. Hafezi hadn’t called because he knew he could trust Tourak, knew he would do a good job. Tourak sucked in a deep breath. He could do it. He just had to keep telling himself that.

  He’d make his mother proud.

  62

  Silver Spring, Maryland: 6 June 2:30 P.M. Eastern time

  Once, Ed Devereaux had been a warrant officer in the Army. He’d spent his entire career in intel, running agents in Southeast Asia and monitoring Soviet troop movements from Germany. Then he caught an assignment as a remote viewer at Fort Meade.

  This was back in the seventies, when the program had the support of people like General Stubblebine, commander of the Army Intelligence Command. According to Matt, Devereaux had never been one of the best viewers, although he’d done respectable work. His wife died of breast cancer six months before he retired in 1981. Six months after that, he’d gone to become a priest.

  Devereaux lived now in a white frame rectory on a leafy street in Silver Spring. He met them at the door, a small man with thinning gray hair and a gentle smile.

  “Come in, come in,” he said, opening the door. “I have everything set up for you.” He led them toward a room at the back of the house. “I hope you’ll understand my need to keep quiet about this. Somehow, I doubt my parishioners would be comfortable with the knowledge that their priest once walked on fire and attended spoon bending parties.”

  “Henry told me about the spoon bending parties,” said October as they followed the priest down a short hall. “He said he could never do it. Could you?”

  “Not very well, I’m afraid. But I saw people do it.” He put his hands together. “Now…there’s a couch if you like to do your viewing lying down, or I’ve set up a table, if you prefer that.”

  “I’ll sit at the table. Do you have a pencil and a pad?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  She pulled out a chair and sat, while he scurried to assemble paper and a couple of pencils that he laid before her. “I also have Hemi-Sync tapes from the Monroe Institute, if you’d like to—”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need them.”

  “Really? I always did.” He took the seat opposite her while Jax stood in the doorway, watching and listening.

  She sat very straight, her eyes closing as she took a long breath. Jax could see her visibly relaxing, her breathing becoming deep and slow, her lashes resting thick and dusky against her golden cheeks.

  “Good, Tobie,” said Devereaux, watching her closely. “Relax. Focus your attention on the Skytrooper.”

  Her eyes flickered open. “You mean the photograph?”

  “No. Not the photograph. The airplane in the photograph. That’s the target.”

  She closed her eyes again, her breath flaring her nostrils. “I see it. The fuselage is dark. Not shiny. I think it’s dark because it’s painted. Except for the underbelly. That’s light. I can see a row of windows, but they’re…empty.”

  “Can you go into the plane?”

  She nodded, her chest rising gently with each slow breath. “Curving walls. Cold. I’m not getting anything more. Just…fear.”

  “That’s okay. Step back from the airplane and look at it again. Do you see any kind of insignia?”

  “A star? A circle? I can’t be sure.”

  “Good. Take another step back, Tobie. Tell me what you see around the airplane.”

  “I see a large flat expanse reflecting the light. It’s a sheet of water, I think, behind the plane…” She paused. “Except that it has grids.” Picking up the pencil, she began to sketch rapidly, barely looking at the paper, as if the images were simply flowing to her hand. “No. Not water. It’s a window. A huge window, or maybe a modern building with glass sides. It’s like the plane is flying in front of it.”

  Jax knew a frisson of alarm. Oh, God, he thought. Airplanes and skyscrapers.

  “There’s a big round tube,” she said. “
It runs up and across.” She drew the tube running up, then across, as if it were dangling in the sky.

  “A tube?”

  “Just a tube. I’m not getting anything else.”

  “Okay, Tobie. Describe the surface you’re standing on.”

  Jax watched as a quiver of concentration passed across her face. He couldn’t understand what she was seeing, or how. But in that moment he had no doubt that what she was doing was real.

  “Concrete,” she said. “I’m standing on a semicircle of concrete. Hard. Gray. There’s a railing in front of me, then it drops off. It’s like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff.”

  “Turn around and tell me what you see.”

  “A black cylinder. A row of black cylinders.” She sketched them, one above the other, their function unclear. “They’re not guns, they’re too big around and short. But they’re pointed at the plane.”

  “What’s behind the cylinders?”

  “It’s gray.” She hesitated, then shook her head, the ends of her hair brushing across her slim shoulders. “I’m not getting anything.”

  “Okay. Turn around so you’re facing the airplane again, then take a step closer to the edge and look down. What do you see?”

  “Vehicles. Big green trucks. There are two of them…no, three. The first one is the biggest. It…it has only one wheel. A short, wide wheel. No, it’s not a wheel, it’s a tank tread. It’s a tank. I can see the machine gun mounted on the top.”

  Jax’s brows twitched together. Maybe they were off base completely. This was starting to sound more like Baghdad than New Orleans.

  “Good, Tobie,” said Devereaux. “What else?”

  “The second vehicle is smaller, and the third one is even smaller than that. There’s an anchor. But I don’t think it’s a boat. There’s something big and boxy beside it. Gray.” She shook her head. “I’m not getting anything else from it. Just…fear again. It’s as if the fear has bled into it, become a part of it.”

  “Okay, Tobie. Now turn around and look behind you. What do you see?”

  “Gray. It’s all gray. It’s like I’m in a big, gray, open space. I get the impression of concrete. More tubes. Girders. A building that isn’t finished yet, or maybe a warehouse.” Her pencil scratched quickly across the next page of the pad, sketching. “There’s another gun, bigger than a machine gun. It’s like an artillery field piece, but it’s old. It’s—”

  She broke off, her chair skittering across the floor as she surged to her feet. “I know what it is. It’s not a warehouse. It’s a museum. I’m inside a museum.” She snatched up one of the sketches. “These tubes are air-conditioning ducts.” She laid the pad down on the table, her gaze lifting to Jax’s, her face oddly pale. “It’s the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. But they don’t have a Skytrooper there. They have only two planes, one’s a British Spitfire and the other’s a naval torpedo bomber, an Avenger. They have them suspended from the ceiling on cables. But there’s no Skytrooper.”

  Jax pushed away from the door frame. “Maybe they changed their display.”

  “Are you kidding? Those things weigh tons. They don’t change them.”

  Jax was aware of Ed Devereaux, his gaze flicking from one to the other. “Isn’t that the place they used to call the D-Day Museum?” asked the priest.

  “Yes,” said October. “They changed the name after Katrina.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “What’s the date today?”

  “The sixth of June,” said Jax. “D-Day.”

  63

  “I was just reading something about the museum in my retired officer magazine,” said Devereaux, turning to rummage through a stack of magazines on a nearby end table. “There’s an American Legion convention in New Orleans this week and they’re holding a reception for Medal of Honor winners in the World War II Museum.”

  October stared at him. “When?”

  “Today, I think.” He pulled a magazine out of the pile. “Here it is. At six. T. J. Beckham will be in town to deliver the convention’s keynote address and he’s scheduled to make an appearance at the reception tonight.”

  “Hell.” Jax stared down at the printed schedule Devereaux had shoved into his hands. “They’re not just going to blow up a bunch of war heroes. They’re going to assassinate the Vice President of the United States.”

  “You need to phone this in right away,” said October as they strode across the church parking lot toward his car. “Get them to cancel the reception and warn the Vice President—”

  “Hold it, hold it,” Jax said, swinging to face her. “You do realize, don’t you, that we don’t have one shred of evidence that any of this is going to happen?”

  She turned toward him, her face shining with such determination and naiveté that it made his chest ache. “But if you tell them—”

  He wanted to laugh. “You think this will have credibility because it comes from me? I’m supposed to be sitting at a desk right now composing a report on the error of my ways.”

  Her eyes narrowed with a quick flare of anger. “Okay, so I’ll call it in myself.”

  “Oh, right. What are you going to say? ‘Hi, I’m October Guinness. You may have heard of me. I’m going to be featured on next week’s America’s Most Wanted.’”

  “I’ll make an anonymous call!”

  “That ought to increase your credibility. You’ll be just one more crank caller phoning in a bomb threat. Believe me, they get them all the time. If Beckham is going to be at the museum tonight, that means they’ve already swept the place for bombs. They’ll just ignore you.”

  “They must have missed it.”

  “How?”

  “What are you suggesting we do?” She swiped her arm through the air in disgust. “Just sit around and watch it unfold on television? If no one’s going to listen to us, then we need to go down there and try to stop this thing ourselves.”

  “And how exactly are we going to do that?”

  “I don’t know! But we need to do something.” She sucked in a quick breath that shuddered her chest, the sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the maple trees at the edge of the drive casting shifting patterns of shadow across her face. “One time, when I was in college, I saw someone I knew—a good friend. I was just sitting in French Lit class and suddenly I could see her. It wasn’t like you see someone who’s right there in front of you. It was more an image I held in my mind. She was crawling out her dorm window, standing on the ledge. It was a sunny day in early spring and I could see the breeze ruffling the curls around her face. But of course I didn’t believe I was really seeing her so I just sat there, listening to that lecture. She jumped.”

  Jax wanted to say something, but couldn’t.

  He watched the tendons of her throat work as she swallowed. “It happened again, when I was in Iraq. The outfit I was with became convinced this gathering in the western desert was a terrorist camp. I knew it wasn’t. I could see children chasing each other and laughing, a young girl dancing. I tried to tell my CO, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I had no evidence. There were no corroborating reports. He put me in his nutcase bag and called in an attack.”

  He studied her pale, set face. The heat of the afternoon had brought a sheen of perspiration to her cheeks and upper lip. “So you went out there to try to stop it,” he said softly, “and got yourself shot.”

  She nodded, her lips pressed into a tight line. “It was a wedding. Two big tribes. We killed something like 150 people, most of them women and children. I got there too late.”

  “October—” He reached for her, but she swung away, her brown eyes wide and hurting.

  “No. Don’t you understand? I didn’t believe in it then. I didn’t know about remote viewing, or what Dr. Youngblood used to call spontaneous viewing experiences. But now I do know. This is something I’ve seen under controlled conditions. And this time—maybe this time I can make a difference.”

  “But we don’t know where the bomb is.”

  “No. But eve
ryone has hunches—some weird, inexplicable ability to pick up on what we can’t see or know by what we call normal means. Some people have that ability more than others, maybe, but we all have it. It’s like when you’re looking for your keys and somehow you just know to pick up your brother’s coat and look under it.”

  “I suspect finding a bomb in a museum is a lot more complicated than remembering where I left my keys.”

  A warm breeze feathered stray wisps of her sun-streaked hair across her cheek, but she made no move to brush it back. He watched the features of her face harden. She’d reached a decision and there was no way he was going to talk her out of it. “If you don’t want to come with me, I’ll go by myself.”

  Jax sighed. “I’m coming. And I’m going to phone it in.” He reached for his cell and punched in Bubba’s number. “I just wanted to make sure you understood what we’re up against. This is why all the intel branches quit fooling with this shit. There’s no way to verify any of it, short of sticking your neck out and hoping nobody lops your head off.”

  Jax waited until they were airborne before putting in a call to Matt.

  He laid out the details of their conversation with Dr. Sadira Gazsi and the results of the remote viewing session. There was a long silence, then Matt blew out a hard sigh.

  “You can’t call this in, Jax. You got no evidence for any of it. Nobody’s going to believe it. All you’ll do is blow what’s left of your credibility.”

  “How about another anonymous tip?”

  “We can try it. The Secret Service is a bit jumpy because of that bomb factory the FBI found in the Ninth Ward. I hear they’re tightening security. But they’ve swept the museum, Jax. How could there be a bomb in there?”

  “What, Matt? You telling me now that you don’t believe in remote viewing?”

  “Sometimes it’s right on the money,” said Matt. “And sometimes it’s just flat out wrong.”

  Jax glanced over to where October sat, her head half turned away as she stared out the window. “Everything has fit so far,” he said.