Morris and Chastain Investigations: Play With Fire & Midnight at the Oasis

by Justin Gustainis

  “No, not really,” she said. “I believe they’re considered a separate species – wouldn’t you say so, Colleen?”

  Colleen made a face. “As usual, the various sources don’t agree. Some of the traditions lump djinns in with demons, but you’re right, Libby. Most of them don’t.”

  “I’ve been reading the same stuff that Colleen has,” Fenton said. “At least, I do when I can make sense of it. Way I figure it, the smart money holds that djinns are supernatural creatures, very powerful, but they don’t live forever, the way demons do. Some of the sources say their lifespan is double that of a human’s, others say that it’s closer to five hundred years. But they are mortal.”

  “If it bleeds, we can kill it,” Morris muttered.

  Libby turned to him. “Sorry?”

  Morris shook his head slightly. “Just quoting an old movie.”

  “Well,” Libby said to Fenton, “now you know how much we know about afreets – which amounts to not a whole heck of a lot. Does that end the conversation, or do you want to tell us why you asked, anyway?”

  “Oh, we’ll tell you,” Fenton said. “Partly because it would be good for us to get your thoughts on the case, and partly because we hope you’ll take the case.”

  “What you and Quincey know about afreets is still more than most people,” Colleen said. “And you two are more qualified to take on an investigation like this than anyone else we know.”

  “Slow down, the both of you,” Morris said. “Investigation of what? Has somebody seen an afreet shopping in the kitchenware department at Macy’s, or something?”

  “Wish it was that simple,” Fenton said. “What we’re trying to do is put together a puzzle. We only have a few pieces so far, so we don’t know what it’s gonna look like. But what we can see right now looks... troubling.”

  “Then maybe you’d better show us the pieces you do have,” Libby said.

  “Be delighted to,” Fenton said. He emptied his coffee cup, and sat back. “One of the pieces comes to us courtesy of U.S. counterintelligence,” Fenton said. “The information I’m about to give you comes care of the CIA, our very own FBI, and, the NSA.”

  “NSA?” Libby said. “I’m not familiar with that one.”

  “NSA is the National Security Agency,” Colleen said. “Not very cloak-and-dagger, those guys. They sit down there at Fort Meade, Maryland, with about a zillion computers, monitoring communications traffic from all over the world.”

  “Didn’t they cause something of a ruckus during the Bush Administration?” asked Morris. “The second one, I mean. For listening to people’s conversations without warrants?”

  “They only need a warrant if either half of a communication exchange – the sender or receiver – is in the U.S.,” Fenton said. “But, yeah, for a while there I guess they didn’t bother, even though the special FISA court that grants warrant applications has never, ever said ‘No.’”

  “But everything’s above-board and legal these days,” Colleen said, managing to keep a perfectly straight face as she did so.

  “Absolutely,” Fenton said. He didn’t crack a smile, either. “But the point is, one of NSA’s missions is to monitor what’s called ‘terrorist chatter’ – phone, text, and internet messages among people who are on somebody’s list of bad guys.”

  “Considering how many bad guys there are out there, that must amount to a hell of a lot of data,” Morris said.

  “It sure does,” Colleen said. “But the computers are pretty good at separating the wheat from the chaff. Usually.”

  “And most of the wheat goes to the CIA for translation and analysis,” Fenton said. “And lately, they’ve been finding some interesting patterns.”

  “Interesting in what way?” Libby asked.

  “You have to understand,” Fenton said, “that these guys – meaning jihadists – talk in code, even on networks they believe to be secure.” He grinned. “Just as well for them, of course, since nothing is all that secure, any more. Anyway, for the last six months or so, a phrase has begun cropping up in some of their most ‘secure’ communications: ‘midnight at the oasis.’”

  Morris and Libby looked at each other in puzzlement. After a moment Morris, who was older, said, “Wasn’t that a pop song over here, back in the ’eighties? Sung by Maria somebody.”

  “You don’t quite win the trivia context,” Colleen said, “but you’re pretty close. There was a song popular on the charts here in 1974 called ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ by a woman called Maria Muldaur. It was her only hit song.”

  “So what are you telling us?” Morris said. “That the jihadists are listening to golden oldies now?”

  “Possible, but unlikely,” Fenton told him. “Most of the guys giving us trouble in the Middle East these days weren’t even born in 1974. We’ve researched the song, the writer, and the artist, and haven’t turned up a damn thing that would link any of them to some dude, or woman, whose last words are likely to be ‘Allahu akbar.’”

  “The phrasing could be coincidental,” Colleen said. “I mean, considering the part of the world we’re talking about. But in any case, it’s clearly code. We can be fairly certain that if somebody’s planning something nasty, it won’t take place at midnight, and the location won’t be a watering hole in the fucking desert somewhere.”

  “A reasonable conclusion,” Libby said. “But what’s this got to do with afreets?”

  Fenton leaned forward. “Well, here’s the thing: the translators have identified another word that has been showing up in the chatter, usually in the same sentence with ‘midnight at the oasis,’ and that one is ‘dromedary.’”

  “A dromedary’s a type of camel, isn’t it?” Libby said. “It seems of a piece with the ‘oasis’ reference.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Fenton said. “Entirely consistent. But this is where we had some luck. You remember that raid a team of Navy SEALs conducted in Pakistan a while back – when they took out –”

  “– the most wanted man in the world,” Morris said. “’Course I remember – it was a huge news story. So?”

  “So, the SEALs,” Fenton said, “being highly-trained, intelligent guys, took back with them everything in that house that wasn’t nailed down – and probably a few things that were. The CIA people have been going through it with fine-toothed combs ever since.”

  “And here’s where the luck part comes in,” Colleen said. “One of the computer disks the SEALs brought back was apparently some kind of codebook. The file had been corrupted, so they weren’t able to get all of it, but they did retrieve some interesting bits and pieces. And one of those was the information that ‘dromedary’ was their code for ‘afreet.’”

  Morris nodded slowly. “Okay, so you now have a link in terrorist chatter between ‘midnight at the oasis,’ whatever that is, and a powerful kind of djinn.” He spread his hands a little. “But I’m still not sure what all the fuss is about, guys. Talk is cheap, and I reckon that’s true whether the dialogue is in English or Arabic. It’s probably just some jihadist’s fantasy.”

  “I might be inclined to agree with you, Quincey,” Fenton said. “But there’s one piece of this puzzle that you haven’t seen yet, and I think it makes all the difference.”

  “Four nights ago,” Colleen said, “one or more thieves broke into the museum of the Oriental Institute in Chicago. Despite the name, this place specializes in the Middle East, not the Far East. Part of the museum’s research center is something called the Archaeological Iron Storage Research Project. My understanding is that’s where they store the really old metal objects, under ideal conditions of temperature and humidity. If you’ve got an artifact that’s five thousand years old, you don’t want it deteriorating any more than it already has.”

  “Do they actually have some?” Morris asked. “Five thousand-year-old relics, I mean.”

  “I believe they do,” Colleen said. “And some that may be even older still – although now they’ve got one fewer than they used to.”


  “Somebody got in there and ripped one off,” Libby said.

  “You got it,” Colleen said. “Somebody who was able to get past a lot of fairly sophisticated alarms without leaving any trace at all.”

  Libby tilted her head a little. “Magic?”

  “It seems likely,” Colleen said. “But there’s more.”

  “The magician, or maybe one of his buddies, likes to use a knife,” Fenton said. “He cut the throats of two guards from behind. And once they’d bled out, he arranged the bodies so that they were facing toward Mecca.”

  Morris and Chastain exchanged looks, but said nothing.

  “And here’s the kicker,” Colleen said. “Only one thing was taken from that room. Although not all the experts who’ve examined it agree, most of them are of the opinion that it was a fragment of the actual Seal of Solomon.”

  “Well, shit,” Morris said.

  “I take it you understand the significance, Quincey,” Colleen said.

  “They used to say Solomon could command demons, didn’t they?” Morris said somberly.

  “Them – and djinn as well,” Fenton said. “According to the Qur’an, anyway – which I’m inclined to regard as a reliable source in this instance.”

  “I begin to see your concern, guys,” Libby said. “Some of the connections are a bit tenuous, but it’s a reasonable assumption that some would-be terrorists have got themselves an afreet, and now also possess the means to control it.”

  “Especially since one of them apparently has some skill at magic,” Colleen said.

  “Even worse than that,” Morris said, “is the fact that you’re no longer dealing with a bunch of guys in Saudi Arabia or Yemen or someplace, whose phone calls the government’s listening to from seven thousand miles away.”

  “You got that right,” Fenton said with a grim nod. “These bastards are right fucking here.”

  “But why do you need Quincey and me?” Libby asked. “This sounds like the kind of thing you guys investigate all the time.”

  “Normally we would,” Fenton said. “But the Counter-Terrorism Division is all over this one. If they find us on the trail as well, our boss is going to have a hell of a problem explaining what Behavioral Science is doing there.”

  “And Goddess help them if they do manage to find these people,” Colleen said. “I mean, what’re they going to do against an afreet, which they don’t even believe exists? It’ll be a massacre.”

  “The afreet is kind of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction,” Fenton said. “So, will you guys take this on? I hate to use tired clichés like ‘Your country needs you...’”

  “But your country needs you,” Colleen said.

  Morris asked Fenton, “Does it need us badly enough to pay five hundred a day, plus expenses?”

  “Sure,” Fenton said. “We burn up more than that just turning the lights on for an hour.”

  Libby turned to Morris with a slight smile. “What do you say, cowboy? Time to saddle up and get back on the trail?”

  “I reckon it is,” Morris said. He was not smiling at all. “I reckon it is.”

  Nine

  MORRIS HELPED CARRY cups, saucers and plates (Libby had served some of her famous cheesecake) into the condo’s kitchen. As they loaded the dishwasher, Libby said, “So a group of terrorists have got themselves a pet afreet. Putting aside the question of what we’ll do about that when we find them –”

  “You don’t know?” Morris asked. “I was hoping you’d have that part all worked out by now.”

  “Me? I thought figuring out how to destroy the creatures of the night was your department,” she said, smiling.

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Morris rinsed off a plate and handed it to her. “Anyway, you were saying...”

  “I was saying that I don’t even know how the heck we’re going to find them. I’ve got a feeling that looking up ‘afreets’ in the Yellow Pages isn’t likely to be too helpful.”

  “You don’t think so?” He gave her the last coffee cup and turned off the water. “Well, so much for my plan.”

  Libby briefly assessed the half-full dishwasher, and closed the door. “But seriously, folks ...”

  “But, seriously, I think our FBI friends sometimes have a tad too much faith in our ability to pull the solutions to nasty problems out of... thin air.”

  She gave Morris another smile. “I thought for a second you were about to say ‘out of our ass.’”

  “I thought about it,” Morris said. “But I’m trying to be a little less vulgar when I talk.”

  “Good fucking luck with that,” she said.

  “With you as an inspiration, Libby, how can I fail?” Morris shook his head in mock despair. “But I still think Colleen and Dale might be expecting too much from us.”

  “Maybe that’s because we’ve always managed to overcome the forces of evil so far,” she said.

  “A streak of luck only lasts until it’s broken.”

  She looked at him. “What’s got you all morbid, all of a sudden?”

  Morris gave a shrug, but didn’t say anything. He appeared to be finding Libby’s garbage disposal to be of intense interest. Libby decided to wait him out.

  After a little while, Morris said, “I was going through my wallet last night – you know, throwing away some of the accumulated junk – and I came across an old business card.” He looked at Libby. “It was John Wesley Hester’s.”

  Hester had been a British occult detective, and a friend of Morris’s. He’d died while investigating a case of demonic influence in England, as Morris had learned only a few weeks earlier.

  Libby was silent herself for a bit, then she said, “I kind of liked John Wesley. He was a good guy, for the most part.”

  Morris gave her a look. “For the most part?”

  “Well, there was that time in London when he had one Scotch too many and grabbed me on the ass.”

  “You mean a couple of years ago, when we went over there on that Castor thing? You didn’t say anything at the time.”

  She tossed her head, slightly. “Didn’t seem worth mentioning, at the time.”

  “Did you slap him? You should have.”

  “No, but I did threaten to turn him into a toad if he ever did it again. That seemed to do the trick.”

  “You never turned anybody into anything in your life, Libby,” Morris said with a frown.

  “True,” she said. “But John Wesley didn’t know that.”

  Morris chuckled. The chuckle quickly turned into a laugh, and that got Libby started. The two of them stood in her kitchen, mourning the dead by laughing their asses off.

  As Morris fetched out a handkerchief to dry his eyes, he said, “Oh, John Wesley. He could be an asshole, sometimes.”

  “A good man, nonetheless,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said.

  “He died doing the work he was born to do, Quincey. The same work your family’s been doing for – what – five generations?”

  “Yeah, five, if you count the guy who died outside Castle Dracula.”

  “You once called it ‘the family business,’ and you were right. It’s what you do. It’s what we do.”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”

  “And the reason we’ve survived this long has nothing to do with luck – it’s because we’re good at what we do. You and me, Quincey Jonathan Morris, we kick ass.”

  It was a full-on grin he gave her this time. “Yeah, you’re right, Elizabeth Catherine Chastain. Kicking ass is what we do.”

  She took in a big breath and let it out. “Then let’s find this fucking afreet, so we can kick its ass, too.”

  “Sounds like a plan – or it would, if we actually had a plan.”

  “I’ve got one – well, not a plan, but at least a starting point.”

  “That’s more than I’ve got, so let’s hear it.”

  She leaned against the range. “We travel so much, it’s hard to tap into any in
formal sources of information.”

  “There’s the Internet. We could just Google ‘afreet.’”

  “Yes, and I plan to. But that only gives us access to the public stuff. We both know that there’s some kinds of information that nobody’s going to post online. Ever. Fortunately, we have a friend who’s plugged into a lot of the private stuff. Or ‘the weird shit,’ as he likes to call it.”

  “Barry Love, everybody’s favorite occult private eye.”

  “None other. Barry might well have heard something useful – or if not, he probably knows somebody who does.”

  “It’s worth asking him, that’s for sure.” Morris reached for his phone, thought a moment, and put it back in his pocket. “No point in calling him. He doesn’t like talking on the phone unless he initiates the call. And he doesn’t have voice mail – I think he’s afraid someone will leave a curse along with his messages, or something.” He checked his watch. “He’s usually in his office late at night. Want to head over there with me, about ten?”

  Libby bit her lip for a second then said, “I can’t tonight, Quincey. I – I have a date.”

  Morris looked at her. In a flat voice he said, “Do you now.”

  Libby crossed her arms over her chest. “I have the right to a private life, Quincey.”

  “I know you do.”

  She made an attempt at a smile. “It’s just that I’m getting kind of tired getting myself off with the Hitachi all the time.”

  “That’s too much information, but I understand, Libby.”

  “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “It’s not like I’m getting in over my head. I know how to take care of myself.”

  “I’m sure you do. And I hope you will.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Okay, then.” Morris began to walk toward the kitchen door. “I’ll see if I can catch up with Barry tonight. Give me a call at the hotel tomorrow, and I’ll let you know what I find out, if anything. Okay?”

  “Of course. Let me –”

  “It’s all right,” Morris said. “I know my way out.”