The Archangel Project (12 page)

Arlington, Virginia: 5 June, 1:20
P.M
. Eastern time

Bob Randolph was the kind of man who was born to be
president. Tall, athletic, and good-looking, with a shock of gently graying blond hair and a boyish smile, he came from a family that had already produced one president, some half a dozen U.S. senators, and a raft of governors, representatives, and federal judges. True, he'd never done anything productive in his life, but he'd managed to steer clear of any scandals that couldn't be either covered up or just flatly denied.

He also played a mean game of golf. T. J. Beckham had grown up hunting coons and fishing for bass rather than playing tennis at the club, sailing off Cape Cod, and dallying with pretty girls on all the most prestigious golf courses in the country. But everyone who was anyone in Washington played golf, so he had set himself to learn, and succeeded pretty darn well. T. J. Beckham tried not to be a prideful man,
but he did pride himself on his determination, just as he prided himself on his loyalty. When he was selected as vice president after the death of Chuck Devine, Beckham set himself to be a faithful veep. He knew the office of vice president carried no authority and that his role was to serve. Yet his role was to serve not only his president and his party, but also his country. And lately he'd begun to realize that there were times when a man had to choose where his ultimate loyalty lay.

Trailed by a gaggle of Secret Service men, they were walking toward the third green of the Army and Navy Country Club when Beckham said suddenly, “I've tried, Mr. President, but I just can't keep my mouth shut any longer on how I feel about what you're doing.”

Bob Randolph glanced over at him. Randolph was neither the most brilliant nor the best educated man to sit in the White House, but he was an expert on reading and manipulating people. He was also sly and self-centered to the point of being amoral—a combination Beckham had always found both vicious and dangerous. “What's the matter, T.J.? You don't like the way I'm swinging my nine iron?”

Randolph's smile was a winning one, and he used it now. Beckham resisted the urge to smile back and simply let the moment slip away. He shook his head. “It's my job to support you, and I have tried. But I don't think what you're doing is right. and I'm being pushed real hard by my conscience to stand up and speak out before it's too late.”

“You going to join the long list of people telling me how
not
to fight the war in the Middle East, T.J.? Is that it?”

“No, Mr. President. I think you're trying to manipulate this country into another war. You've moved a second carrier group into the Persian Gulf. You've got the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense out there rattling their sabers on everything from Fox News to
Larry King Live,
and it seems like every time I pick up the
Wall Street Journal
or turn on the TV, there's some hysterical new piece about Iran. Now, I may be from Kentucky, but I'm not naive enough to think all these people aren't pushing your agenda.”

Bob Randolph kept his smile in place, but his blue eyes were snapping. “What do you want me to do, T.J.? Let those crazy mullahs go nuclear?”

“The Iranians haven't done anything they're not allowed to do under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” Beckham reminded him. “At least they signed the treaty—unlike some of our allies. And if they wanted to, they could back out of it. Just like we backed out of the ABM Treaty.”

Randolph thrust his head forward in a way that made him look considerably less presidential. “What? You saying you trust them? We're talking about
Arabs
here, T.J. Those people learn to lie and cheat before they learn to walk.”

“Actually, Mr. President, the Iranians are Persians, not Arabs. And after spending thirty years on the Hill, I'd say neither the Arabs nor the Persians have cornered the market on lying and cheating.”

“I'm afraid you're forgetting what's at stake here, T.J. I'm not going to have another 9/11. Not on my watch. These are evil men we're talking about, and if we don't fight them over there, we're going to be fighting them
here. Better Tehran than Topeka, I say.”

“Mr. President, Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. It's been thirty years since the Iranian Republic came into being after the fall of the Shah, and they've never attacked anyone. How many countries have we attacked in the last thirty years?”

Randolph swung to face him. “What's that supposed to mean, T.J.? It's a heavy responsibility this country bears, and I'll be the first to admit it. But we bear it with pride. It's our moral obligation to keep the light of freedom alive—not just for ourselves, but for the world. We can't turn our backs on the struggles of the people in the Middle East, just like we can't ignore the threat these mullahs pose to us. And we certainly can't show weakness by backing down from evil regimes that—”

Beckham swiped one hand through the air with a grunt of disgust. “For Pete's sake, Bob. You're not on a stump making a speech. This is me you're talking to, and you won't get me to shut up by mouthing the same old easy platitudes about freedom and democracy. I've seen those two words used to justify the killing of far too many innocent people in my life. Freedom and democracy have nothing to do with your plans for Iran and we both know it.”

The President's affable charm slipped away, leaving in its place something that was no longer genial and no longer attractive. “You want reality, T.J.? I'll tell you what's reality. Twenty years ago this world was divided between us and the Soviets. Well, we whipped their sorry Commie asses, and now we're not just top dog, we're the only dog on the block. The world is ours. Ours, and ours alone. The empires of the past were
nothing compared to what we have. The United States was ordained by God to rule the world, and I'm not about to let Him down.”

T.J. studied the younger man's face. “God told you that, did he?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. He did.”

“You scare me,” said Beckham, and he turned and walked off the green without looking back.

New Orleans: 5 June 12:25
P.M
. Central time

Paul Fitzgerald walked out of the New Orleans Armstrong
Airport into a blast of muggy heat. He was wearing a leather-banded Stetson and a custom-made pair of alligator boots, and within ten seconds of stepping into the muggy heat, he could already feel himself start to sweat.

New Orleans was not one of his favorite places. It was a great town for partying, for getting drunk and getting some ass. But the place had been a mess even before Katrina, full of homosexuals and liberals and welfare cheats with way too much 'tude. Now the people in this place were just plain nuts. He supposed watching your house, your friends and family, your entire
city
drown, could do that to you. They were putting the place back together, slowly. But Fitzgerald knew from the trips he'd made down here recently that huge swaths of the city were still virtual ghost
towns, full of stray dogs and cats and eerily dark at night. He would be glad when this assignment was finished.

“Hey, man,” said Michael Hadley, popping the hatch on the dark Suburban.

The guy was a mess, the side of his face swollen and discolored. “What the hell happened to you?” said Fitzgerald. He tossed his bag in the back, slammed the hatch, and slid into the front seat. “What's going on down here?”

Hadley hit the gas. “I'm going to let Palmer explain that to you.”

 

Jax thumbed through his various forms of credentials and decided to approach Dr. Elizabeth Vu with a version of the truth. He told her that he worked for the U.S. government and was looking into Youngblood's murder.

She stared at him for a moment with the slow, silent assessment of an intelligent woman. “What can I do for you, Mr. Alexander?” she said, settling back in her desk chair and inviting him to sit.

Jax took the seat opposite hers. “We're investigating the possibility that Dr. Youngblood's project on remote viewing might have had something to do with his death.”

She was an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties: small and fine-boned and slim, with long black hair and striking Asian features. But her face was pale, her eyes swollen and red. Jax remembered what Chantal over at the psych department had said about Dr. Vu being “sweet” on Youngblood.

“How much do you know about remote viewing, Mr. Alexander?”

“I've read some of the literature.”

“And you think it's all either a delusion or one big fraud. Don't you?”

Jax smiled. “And you don't?”

“I was skeptical, at first. Who wouldn't be? I was sure the stats would prove Henry wrong, that the results of what he called ‘successful viewing' were no more accurate than random coincidence.”

“And?”

“The stats proved me wrong.” She brought up her hands to lace them together before her. “I know why you're smiling. You think the experimental procedure must be sloppy. That it's all pseudoscience. It's not. It's a carefully defined technique. Some of the first people who worked on this for the government were a couple of physicists.
Physicists.
How much more scientific can you get than that? One was a specialist in nanotechnology, the other in lasers and infrared. Remote viewing works. I don't know how or why, but it does.”

“Have you ever tried it?”

She leaned forward. “As a matter of fact, yes. When Henry's research funding started running low, I volunteered to do some sessions with him.”

“And?”

“For his training sessions, Henry used the standard technique with a pool of local sites—things like the Superdome, the Huey P. Long Bridge, the sea lions at Audubon Zoo—specific, easily identifiable sites each written down on a separate five-by-seven-inch card and sealed inside double envelopes. One person would be designated the target, a second person the viewer.”

Jax nodded. He'd glanced through some of the books Matt had given him.

“Henry and the viewer would go into his soundproofed room, while the person selected as the target would randomly pick one of the sealed envelopes, open it, and drive out to the designated site. At a prearranged time, the viewer would start the session.”

She paused, a faint tinge of color touching her pale cheeks. “I know what you're imagining. Crystal balls and Ouija boards and all that nonsense. But it wasn't like that at all. I simply sat in that room, went through a series of relaxation techniques, and then closed my eyes and let the images come.”

“So what did you see?”

“The first time? Flashing lights. A whirling circle. What I imagined were pistons going up and down. I described it. Sketched it out. It made no sense to me.”

“What was it supposed to be?”

“The carousel in City Park—what they call ‘the Flying Horses' down here.”

Jax was silent a moment. “A coincidence?”

“Mr. Alexander, I'm a statistician.” She picked up a pen from her desktop and began fiddling with it. “The problem most people have when attempting remote viewing is what Henry called ‘imagination overlay.' They try to interpret what they're seeing—like I did. I saw the poles of the horses going up and down and decided they must be pistons. That's where most people get it wrong. But with proper training that can be minimized. Anyone can do it.”

“Anyone?”

The corners of her eyes crinkled into a smile. “That's right. Even Doubting Thomas CIA agents.”

“I never said I was with the CIA.”

“You didn't need to. Henry told me once that the only people who go around saying they work for the U.S. government are CIA agents. Just like if someone says they work for the Department of Defense it usually means they're with NSA.”

Jax kept a straight face. “Really?”

“Yes. He also said the CIA never really lets anyone go. That's why you're here, isn't it?” She stood up and walked to the window overlooking the long expanse of lawn stretching out to St. Charles Avenue. “Who killed him, Mr. Alexander?”

Jax shifted in his chair, watching her. “I don't know. It would help if we knew who was funding his research.”

Turning, she leaned back against the window. “For the last month, Henry was funding his own research. He was scrounging around trying to find sponsors, putting in proposals all over the place. He had a few people interested, but nothing had come through yet.”

“Who was interested?”

“I'm not sure. He was trying both government and private corporations. But even companies that were receptive preferred that he keep quiet about it. Henry called it the giggle factor. People are embarrassed to admit they're interested in something that seems to veer outside the normal bounds of science.” She gave a wry smile. “Did you know that Church's Chicken funded some of the original remote viewing research back in the seventies?”

“You're kidding. Why?”

“Pure interest on the part of Mr. Church. But most people are motivated by greed. There's been some speculation that RV can be used for geological exploration.”

“How?”

“The technique with the index cards and local sites I described is used for training, or to accumulate a pool of results easily subjected to statistical analysis. Remote viewing can get much more sophisticated.”

“Yet you say anyone can do it?”

“With proper training and guidance, yes. But the results from most people are not reliable. They get some things right, other things wrong. Sometimes they miss entirely.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It's a talent. Just as certain people have better eyesight or hearing, certain people seem to have a gift for…” She hesitated.

“The paranormal?”

“That's a word I don't like to use. It's become too associated with the occult and the lunatic fringe. Henry liked the term ‘cognitive talent.'”

“How much of a difference are we talking about here?”

“When using the card target technique, a good, trained viewer is about sixty-five percent successful—considerably better than a guess but still not reliable enough to be useful. It's why the government abandoned the project back in the mid-nineties. The first people they had working in the project—people like Pat Price and Joseph McMoneagle—were very good. But then they found themselves being forced to use people like a senator's girlfriend and some Israeli charlatan who passed himself off as psychic. Their success
rate went way down. Henry was trying to identify criteria for selecting reliable remote viewers. He found one girl who's incredible.”

“She's reliably accurate?”

“Not entirely. No one is. But her success rate is very high. The images come to her quite clearly and with amazing detail. She has the ability to simply allow the information to flow in without any imagination overlay or attempted analysis. Sometimes she can even read words or numbers, which is something most people who try remote viewing can't do. Henry said it probably has something to do with the way our minds process information.”

“She was one of his students here at Tulane?”

“She's a student, yes, but not in Henry's department. She was actually recommended to him by someone at the VA hospital.”

“She's a veteran?”

Dr. Vu nodded. “She was wounded in some incident that occurred in the western deserts of Iraq. Friendly fire.”

“Do you remember her name?”

The woman gave him a long, penetrating look. “I'm not sure I should tell you that.”

“It was October Guinness, wasn't it?”

The statistician didn't say anything, but Jax knew by the widening of her eyes that he had guessed right.

He knew a deep level of disquiet. “Have you heard from her since Youngblood's death?”

“No. Why would she contact me?”

“Because she's in danger and she's running scared.” Jax pushed back his chair and stood. “We need to bring
her in. But that's not going to be an easy thing to do without spooking her. She doesn't know she can trust us. So if you do hear from her, will you contact me?”

Elizabeth Vu stayed where she was, her arms crossed at her chest. “How do I know she can trust you?”

Jax took out one of his cards—one of the ones that actually said
James A. X. Alexander
on it—and laid it on her desk. “You don't.”