The Archangel Project (10 page)

Dallas: 4 June 11:05
P.M
. Central time

The man Barid Hafezi knew only as “the Scorpion” parked
his Mercedes GL450 SUV in his wide faux-stone driveway and killed the engine. His name was Paul Fitzgerald, and he paused for a moment, as he often did, to admire his house's soaring Palladian windows and travertine steps. The place had cost him close to $800,000, and he was damned proud of it. It was ridiculously big for one guy, but his boys always came to stay with him for a month in the summer and a week at Christmas. It didn't feel too big then.

He opened the car door, the noise carrying in the dry Texas air. The streets were deserted at this hour, although the subdivision was always like this, at any time of day or night. When he'd been a kid growing up in a two-bedroom bungalow in Minneapolis, he and his three brothers spent virtually every waking minute outside, even in the middle of winter. But kids didn't play
outside anymore. They spent all their time inside, surfing the 'Net and playing video games. Even his own boys. He tried to interest them in fishing and camping and hunting, the things he'd learned to love growing up. But he could tell they weren't really interested.

Paul Fitzgerald let himself in the oak and leaded glass door that had cost him a cool ten grand, then paused to punch in the security system's code. He was aware of a heaviness deep within him, a kind of sadness that he couldn't seem to shake even though it made no sense and wasn't like him. The job was almost finished. He was set to fly into New Orleans for the last time tomorrow. He shrugged his shoulders. Maybe that was it. New Orleans. The place was damned depressing, ever since the storm.

Tossing his Stetson on a chair, Fitzgerald opened the fridge for a beer. He stood for a time sucking on the bottle and looking out at his backyard, with its high, gleaming white vinyl fence and in-ground pool. His latest bank statement lay open on the counter. He picked it up and smiled. Last year he'd taken the boys to Disney World for a week, but this year…this year he'd be able to take them anywhere they wanted to go.

McLean, Virginia: 5 June, 12:10
A.M
. Eastern time

Adelaide Meyer kicked off her crocodile pumps, poured herself an icy margarita from the pitcher her maid, Maria, had left in the fridge, and went to sink into the down-wrapped cushions of the white sectional sofa at one end of her living room.

In her youth, Adelaide hadn't been a particularly attractive woman. But she'd always been tall and thin, and by the time a woman hit her fifties, being tall and thin and having the time and money for self-indulgence was what really counted. Adelaide had more than enough money to pamper herself, and money buys time.

Reaching for the remote, she switched on a Bach CD and closed her eyes as the music surrounded her. She lived alone in a 10,000-square-foot house in one of Virginia's most exclusive areas; the help had their own quarters in a separate small cottage at the end of the garden. She had no children and had never married. She had, on occasion, taken lovers, but men for the most part bored her. Adelaide's passion was for money and power.

The daughter of a Texas oilman, she had been born to money. But while her fellow debs focused on marrying lawyers and money market managers, Adelaide focused on petroleum engineering. Graduating from Texas A&M, she went to work for her father's company just a week after turning twenty-two. It wasn't easy being a woman in the oil industry, driving out to rigs at the crack of dawn and dealing with roughnecks, or maneuvering around the good old boys in the boardroom. But Adelaide was smart, and she was determined. When her father dropped dead at the age of fifty-five, no one questioned her move to take over his company. And when she sold her company three years later to Keefe Corporation, they took her on as a vice president.

Now CEO of Keefe, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in the country. She had helped put the President in the White House, and he repaid her by funneling billions of dollars' worth of no-bid war
contracts in her direction—and making sure no one audited the books too closely.

The sound of the doorbell brought her head around. She heard voices in the foyer, Maria's softly accented tones mingling with the unmistakable New England vowels of Clark Westlake.

Adelaide took another sip of her drink as Maria led him into the room. “So what's so important you couldn't tell me about it on the phone, Clark? There's a pitcher of margaritas in the fridge. Want Maria to get you one?”

Clark didn't want a margarita. He waited until the maid had withdrawn, then said, “I've just come from T. J. Beckham's office. He's threatening to publicly accuse the President and the intelligence community of sexing up the threat from Iran.”

Adelaide shifted her weight against the sofa's plump cushions. “He can't go public with that kind of charge. He has nothing to back it up.”

“He said something about ‘contacts' in the intelligence community.”

Adelaide arched an eyebrow. “And you believed him?”

Clark walked to the French doors overlooking the floodlit outdoor pool. “You don't?”

“There are still some disloyal discontents, particularly in the CIA. But most have been squeezed out and the few that are left have been discredited. They're nothing to worry about.”

Clark gave a soft laugh. “I'm not so sure it's a good idea to piss off a bunch of spooks. They were mad as hell about being made to look like they were to blame for the fiasco we walked into in Iraq.”

“And what did they do about that?”

He cast her a wry smile. “Nothing.”

Adelaide took another slow sip of her drink, her gaze on the man pacing restlessly up and down her living room. He was an extraordinarily good-looking man, tall and fit, with a wonderful smile. But he was obviously weak. Funny she had never realized that about him before. When he'd called to tell her he was on his way over, she considered telling him about that troublesome remote viewing session. Now she was glad she hadn't. The last thing he needed was one more thing to make him goosey. Besides, that little hiccup would be dealt with soon.

A sudden thought occurred to her and she frowned. “Have you told the President about this?”

Clark swung around to look at her, his eyes widened in a way that made him look considerably less attractive. “Are you kidding? Of course not.”

She nodded. No one told the President bad news, or even potentially bad news. Bob Randolph could be very nasty to anyone unwise enough to threaten the presidential image of perfection and invincibility. The man believed all his own sound bites.

Clark came to sink into a nearby chair. “I probably shouldn't have included the CIA's report on the Iranian chatter in Beckham's briefing.”

“No. You needed to give him a full briefing. The last thing you want to do is arouse suspicion by deviating from normal procedures.”

“But if he suspects—”

Adelaide laughed and stood up. “Relax, Clark, and have a margarita. We won't have to put up with him much longer.”

New Orleans: 5 June 7:05
A.M
. Central time

The next morning, the sun came up like a big orange ball in a
clear blue sky, and the city of New Orleans steamed.

Jax pulled his rented Pontiac G6 in close to the curb and parked. Beside him, what was left of Tulane University's Psych Annex smoldered behind lines of yellow crime scene tape that flapped lazily in the warm breeze coming off the river.

Jax opened his car door. Crime scene tape meant crime. Maybe this wasn't going to be a simple case of gas explosion—accidental death—investigation closed after all. So much for his tickets to tonight's performance of
Turandot
at the Kennedy Center's Opera House—and any hope of changing Sibel's mind about the future of their relationship.

A New Orleans city cop with the massive jowls and ponderous belly of a dedicated beer lover reluctantly
left the steps he'd been leaning against and ambled over. “I'm sorry, sir. There's no parking here. You're gonna have to move your car.”

Jax flashed the man a friendly smile and held up an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms badge. The badge looked real because it was—just like the ones from the FBI and the Office of Homeland Security, and the press corps card Jax also carried. He even had an IRS ID he used when he really wanted to scare people.

“Agent Jason Aldrich, ATF.” He nodded to the fire-scorched pile beside them. “What can you tell me about this?”

The patrolman stood up straighter and stuck his thumbs in his waistband to hitch up blue trousers pulled low by the combined weight of holster, handcuff case, ammunition pouch, radio, and collapsible combat baton. “You'll want to be talking to Lieutenant Ahearn. He can tell ya what you need to know.” He turned his head and yelled, “Hey, Lieutenant. We got the ATF here.”

A lean, small-framed man with sandy hair and a sprinkling of freckles across a sunburned nose had been standing beside the blackened remnants of what had once been a red Miata. He now turned, pale eyes squinting against the brightness of the sun as he waited for Jax to come up to him.

Lieutenant Ahearn was not as impressed with Jax's ATF badge as the patrolman had been, although he was careful to veil his hostility and surprise behind a show of cooperation. “Everything's preliminary at this point, I'm afraid,” he said in the crisp, peculiarly cropped
New Orleans accent that sounded more like the Bronx or Jersey than the mint-julep-sippin' South.

“I understand that,” said Jax. “And I don't want you thinking we've any interest in taking over your investigation, because that's not the way it is. We're just wondering what you've found about this fire that makes you think it's suspicious.”

“Suspicious?” The lieutenant blinked. His short blond eyelashes and eyebrows were so fair they virtually disappeared against his white skin. “Well, I don't know how things are up in Washington, D.C., but down here, we find a man with a couple of bullet holes in his head in a burned-out building, and we tend get suspicious.”

A comedian, thought Jax, still smiling. “Any leads?”

The detective met his smile with a steely glare. “I think you'll need to go through channels to get that kind of information, Mr. Aldrich.”

Jax sighed. It was too hot for this. “Let me explain something to you…”

Half an hour later, having invoked the specter of six hundred incompetent idiots from Homeland Security descending on Ahearn's investigation, Jax sat in the G6 with the air conditioner running full blast and put a call through to Matt. “See what you've got on a woman named October Guinness…That's right, the lady listed in the police report as having called in the fire. Lives at 5815 Patton.” Jax glanced across the street at the brick house with Italianate arches on the corner where a middle-aged woman with madras shorts, long skinny legs, and a straw hat was setting a flat of begonias along the front edge of the shrubbery.

He heard Matt von Moltke's breath ease out in a long, troubled sigh. Matt always took this stuff way too personally. “Found something, did you?” he asked.

“'Fraid so.” Jax straightened his tie and thumbed through his wallet to find his press card. In his experience, middle-aged women who lived in big expensive houses were far more forthcoming with journalists than with ATF agents. “Looks like your man Youngblood ended up with a couple of bullets in his head.”

“And this woman? This October Guinness?”

Jax shut off the engine again and opened the door. “She was here when the building blew. According to the cops, she was working with him. Which may or may not mean anything. I'll let you know.”

 

Jax's conversation with the Uptown lady who lived in the raised cottage across from the Psych Annex was only vaguely informative.

She'd been in the back room watching television when the place blew, although she stood out on her front porch for a good forty-five minutes and watched the Annex burn. For much of that time she'd had company in the form of a young, pale-faced girl with big eyes and a tendency to start violently at loud noises. October, the girl had said her name was.

Jax gave the Uptown lady a business card that read:
JACOB ANDERSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS.
Then he went looking for October Guinness.

“You're not going to like this,” said Hadley, tossing a copy
of that morning's
Times-Picayune
onto the table.

Lance flipped open the newspaper and found himself staring at a headline that screamed,
TULANE PROFESSOR SHOT DEAD
. There was even a photo of the blackened ruins of the Psych Annex with the caption,
Police suspect fire linked to murder.

He muttered a crude expletive, then said it again when his cell phone rang. He flipped it open. “Palmer here.”

Adelaide Meyer's voice came through low and lethal. “Half the state of Louisiana consists of nice, out-of-the-way lakes and swamps filled with obligingly hungry alligators, yet you decide to turn this guy into a torch?”

Lance leaned back in his chair, his gaze meeting Hadley's. Hadley drew a pointed finger across his neck in a slicing motion and grinned.

“There've been some unexpected developments,” said Lance. “But it's nothing we can't handle.”

“Unexpected developments? You mean, as in arson and murder? You have less than thirty-six hours. Or have you forgotten?”

“It'll be over by nightfall,” said Lance.

He pushed up from the table and went to stand beside the hotel room's wide window overlooking the city. “Our girl's obviously smarter than we gave her credit for,” he said to Hadley. “Get on to headquarters. We're going to need some more backup down here. I want to see a copy of the last six months of her cell phone usage; let's get taps put on anyone and everyone she calls regularly. And run her credit card bills for the same period. I want to know where she shops, where she likes to eat. Let's see if we can find some kind of a pattern.”

Hadley started to turn away but stopped when Lance added, “And start looking at hotels in the city that take cash. She spent last night someplace. I want to know where.”

“I'll get on it,” said Hadley.

Lance leaned his hands on the windowsill and stared out over the sprawl of the half-ruined city. From here he could see the wide brown coil of the Mississippi River winding its way between the levees. He opened his cell phone and punched in a number.

“Fitzgerald?…Lance here. I'm in New Orleans. When were you planning to fly in?”

Paul Fitzgerald might dress like a Texan, but his voice still carried the flat intonations of his northern childhood. “This afternoon. Why?”

“Better make it this morning. I'll explain when you get here.”

“Trouble?”

“Maybe.”

Lance hung up, then put in another call to his wife. “Hi, honey; it's me. Looks like I might not make it home for another twenty-four hours. Tell the kids I miss them, would you?”

 

Tobie was the first customer through the door of her bank when it opened at nine o'clock that morning. She filled out forms to withdraw $650 from her savings account—which essentially cleaned it out—and another hundred dollars from her checking account. Then she waited in line, her throat constricted with anxiety, until a bored teller with ebony skin and bright red hair called out, “Next.”

Tobie stood with her hands gripping the edge of the counter, her gaze darting warily about the bank lobby while the teller typed the account information into her terminal. Tobie half expected the woman to look up and say, “I'm sorry, your accounts have been closed,” or to see burly men with ominous bulges under their coats advancing toward her.

But then the woman was counting out the bills and stuffing them into a long white envelope. It wasn't until Tobie felt her breath gusting out in a long sigh that she even realized she'd been holding it. She shoved the envelope into her bag, said, “Thank you,” and walked rapidly toward the door.

A minute and a half after October Guinness walked out the double glass doors into the bright sunshine of a cloudless morning, the bank manager received a directive from Washington, D.C., freezing both her accounts.

 

Hoarding her resources, Tobie bought a bare minimum of toiletries and other necessities from the Rite Aid down the street, then headed for her friend Gunner Eriksson's antiques store near the corner of Magazine and Felicity.

Gunner called it an antiques store, but most of his business came from his furniture restoration business. The grime of centuries obscured the shop's front windows, nothing on the floor had prices, and half the stuff piled inside looked as if it'd been picked up off the curb when people were gutting their houses after the hurricane. Tobie had to lean her shoulder into the heavy old timber door and push hard even to get it to open.

A cowbell attached to the top of the door let out a melodious jingle. But the shop was empty.

“Hello?” she called, her voice echoing in the dusty stillness.

Gunner's El Salvadorian wife, Pia, appeared at the top of a long flight of stairs leading to their second-floor living quarters overhead. An artist, Pia also used the big open space as a potter's studio.

“Tobie! Thank God!” She clambered down the steps, a small, lithe woman with straight black hair that brushed against her slim shoulders. “We've been so worried about you, and you haven't been answering your phone. Are you all right? The FBI were here this morning looking for you. They said you were missing.”

“They were here?” Tobie spun toward the dusty window, her gaze darting up and down the street, panic clawing at her.
How had they known to look for her here?

Pia came up beside her. “They're gone now. Tobie, what's going on?”

Tobie's breath was coming in quick little pants. She rubbed her hands against her face, trying to calm down, trying to think.
If they knew who her friends were, where could she go?
“I don't know what's going on,” she said to Pia. “Some men came to my house last night claiming to be from the FBI and asking questions about Henry Youngbood. Then they tried to shoot me.”

Anyone else might have thought she had finally cracked. But Pia had grown up in a country were people frequently “disappeared” into government prisons, never to be seen again. “
Madre de Dios,”
she whispered.

“I need to talk to Gunner,” said Tobie. “Is he here?”

“No. He's at the Save Our Heritage demonstration in the French Quarter—”

“Where in the French Quarter?”

“Jackson Square. It's one of the few places in the Quarter you can plug in a PA system.” If there was a demonstration in New Orleans about anything, from the latest genocide in sub-Saharan Africa to the recent push to require all purveyors of liquor in the Quarter to put in bathrooms, Gunner was sure to be there with his public address system.

“If anyone else comes looking for me,” said Tobie, turning toward the door, “tell them you haven't seen me.”

Pia snagged her arm. “Tobie, wait. I don't understand. Why would the FBI want to kill you?”

“I don't know if they're really the FBI or not. It all has something to do with Dr. Youngblood.”

“You think these are the men who killed him?”

“Yes.”

Pia fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone. “Let me call Gunner. He can leave the—”

Tobie touched her friend's hand, stopping her. “No. I'll go there.”

Pia looked up, her straight brows twitching together, her soft dark eyes haunted by memories of the war-torn land of her childhood. “Don't you think you should stay here? If those men are out there looking for you—”

Tobie shook her head. “If they've been here once, they could come back.”

Pia reached up to wrap her arm around Tobie's neck in a quick hug. Tobie had never been hugged much as a child. Her mother was too nondemonstrative, too German. But Pia was always hugging her friends. She held Tobie close in a rush of warmth and affection. “Be careful. You know we're your friends,” she said. “If there's anything we can do…”

Tobie's arms tightened convulsively around her, then let her go. “I know. Thank you, Pia.”