The Archangel Project (23 page)

Washington, D.C.: 6 June 10:35
A.M
. Eastern time

“It probably wouldn't be a good idea for you to show up at
Langley,” said Jax Alexander as they walked away from the airport's valet parking window. “Not with that APB out on you.” He glanced over at her. “How about if I drop you at Tysons Corner?”

The air outside the terminal was hot and breathless, and reeked of jet fuel and engine oil. Tobie lifted her hair off her sticky neck and arched her back. “What? Are you suggesting I need a change of clothes? I've only been wearing these for two days, and it's not like it's the middle of summer or anything.”

He laughed. An attendant driving a black 650i BMW convertible with cream leather seats pulled up and got out to hand Jax the keys.

“This is yours?” She tossed her messenger bag in next to his garment bag. “What are you? A double agent pass
ing secrets on the sly to the Russians or something?”

“Nah. The Chinese pay better.” He started to close the trunk, then hesitated, his gaze sharpening on her face. “Are you all right?”

In point of fact, she felt like hell. She felt like she hadn't eaten or slept in a week, but she was too jittery to do either. She was scared and confused, and she'd never felt more alone in her life. All she wanted to do was crawl under the covers of her own bed and hug her cat—or maybe stroll down Magazine Street to Gunner and Pia's shop, and smile while she listened to Gunner rant about conspiracies and government corruption. She wanted her old life back, her old self back. And she wasn't sure she was ever going to have either again.

“Sure,” she said. “I'm fine.”

 

Gordon Chandler was at his broad cherry desk, his head bent over some papers, when Jax walked into the DCI's office in the Old Headquarters Building. From here he could look out over a stand of beech and maple in full leaf beneath a smog-smudged June sun.

“You wanted to see me?”

The DCI's head came up, his eyes narrowing. He was a tall man, with the pale coloring and long, thin bones of a New Englander. Like the President, he'd graduated from Andover and Harvard and moved comfortably between executive boardrooms, public office, and plum government appointments ever since.

He didn't wait for Jax to close the door before he exploded. “Jesus Christ. What the hell have you been doing, Alexander? We send you down to New Orleans
to look into a suspicious death and the next thing I know, I've got a one man World War III on my hands.”

Jax stood just inside the door, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “According to the rules of engagement, we're allowed to use deadly force to preserve our own life or to protect the life of someone else.”

Chandler swiped one hand through the air like someone brushing aside an annoying gnat. “I don't need you to quote me the rules of engagement. It's your job to keep yourself out of these kinds of situations. Instead, you seem to create them. I want you to go over to the armory and turn in your weapon. Then I want you to sit down and write up a detailed report on everything that's happened from the time you got off the plane in New Orleans until the minute you walked into my office this morning. Your report will be reviewed by the Office of Professional Standards. I suspect they'll come back with a recommendation for disciplinary action. In fact, I'll be surprised if you're still with the Agency at the end of all this.”

His eyes remained hard, but a tight smile curved his lips. “Now get out of my office.”

 

Jax went down to the armory and turned in his Beretta. Then he went over to Division Thirteen to leave Fitzgerald's hard drive with Matt.

“It's password protected,” he told Matt. “See if one of our geeks can figure out a way into it, would you? And were you able to set up something with one of the guys from the old remote viewing programs?”

“Not until two-thirty,” said Matt, handing him an address. “There never were that many of these guys, and
most of them seem to have moved out to the land of fruits and nuts.”

Jax grinned. Matt wasn't a fan of California. “So who's this guy?”

“His name's Ed Devereaux. He's a priest now. Lives in Silver Spring up in Maryland. He only agreed to do it because he used to work with Youngblood. I had to tell him everything we know about the prof's death.” He handed Jax another address. “This is the information on Fitzgerald's ex. She's a scholar at the Foundation for a Freer Society on South Glebe Road.” Matt gave Jax a hard look. “So what'd the Director want?”

Jax turned toward the door. “He said I'm doing a helluva job and to keep it up.”

“You're shitting me.”

Jax laid a splayed hand across his heart and opened his eyes wide in a parody of innocence. “Would I do that?”

“Yes.”

October was clutching a big Nordstrom bag when Jax picked
her up from Tysons Corner, then headed toward South Glebe Road. “We can't meet with the remote viewing guy until two-thirty,” he told her, “which gives us time to talk to Sadira Gazsi first.”

“Who?”

“Paul Fitzgerald's ex. She's a scholar at a local think tank.”

October hugged the Nordstrom bag to her chest and stared longingly into the distance. “I found this great little pink sundress on sale. I was thinking I'd get a chance to change my clothes. Maybe even take a shower.”

“You look fine,” he said, although it was a lie. She looked like she'd spent the last thirty-six hours being chased through storm-wrecked neighborhoods and jetting around the country.

Amusement crinkled her eyes. “I look like shit.” She
sighed and set the bag aside. “Why should this Sadira Gazsi talk to us?”

“Because we're going to tell her we're from the FBI and we're investigating her husband's disappearance.”

“But he's dead.”

The light at the intersection turned green and Jax hit the gas. “You think she knows that?”

 

The Foundation for a Freer Society stood near the intersection of Arlington Boulevard and South Glebe Road. Jax parked his BMW on the outer edge of the think tank's lot. He always liked to minimize the potential for contact with banging doors and bumping baby carriages.

“You didn't tell me she was Dr. Sadira Gazsi,” said October when they were in the brass and teakwood elevator on their way up to the foundation's fourth floor. “What's her Ph.D. in?”

“Political science. Georgetown. She came here as a child after the fall of the Shah back in the late seventies. Her father was some bigwig in the SAVAK.”

“Yikes,” said October. The SAVAK was the Shah's secret police force. Set up by the CIA back in the fifties and trained by the Israeli Mossad, the SAVAK were modeled after Hitler's SS. Journalists, academics, and labor leaders were their favorite targets, although their spies were everywhere. No one was safe from the SAVAK's long, bloody reach. Their brutal, grisly torture of men, women, and children had continued unchecked for more than twenty years. “Sounds like a scary lady.”

“She's not her father. She wrote her doctoral disserta
tion on U.S. funding of right-wing dictatorships and its contribution to radicalism and terrorism in the modern age.”

“You're kidding. So what was she doing married to a guy like Fitzgerald?”

“She married him when she was working on her master's and he was in ROTC. She went back to graduate school after the divorce.”

October regarded him with something close to horror. “My God. How do you know all this stuff?”

He bounced his eyebrows up and down and leaned toward her to say in a heavy fake accent, “Vee have our vays.”

 

Dr. Sadira Gazsi was a tall, slim woman somewhere in her thirties, elegantly but quietly dressed in an unstructured silk jacket and straight skirt. She was typing at her computer when a secretary showed them in, but she paused and swung toward them with a smile that faltered at the sight of Jax's FBI credentials.

“Missing?” she said, looking from Jax to October when he explained the reason for their visit. “Paul?”

Jax tucked away his FBI badge and assumed a serious expression nicely blended with compassion and concern. “I'm afraid so, ma'am. When was the last time you heard from him?”

Dr. Gazsi put up one hand to her forehead and sucked in a breath that shook her chest. “Last Friday, I guess. He usually calls the boys every weekend.” She hesitated, then added, “We have two sons.”

Jax nodded in sympathy. “Any idea where your ex-husband might have gone?”

“Me? No. You'd have better luck with the people he works for.”

“It was GTS who reported him missing. Although I'll be frank with you, Dr. Gazsi, I don't think they're telling us everything. Do you know what Paul has been doing for them?”

She shook her head, her shoulder-length hair dark and wispy against her pale cheeks. “Not exactly. He was in D.C. about a month or so ago, on business. He stayed over the weekend to visit with the kids and take them to the Air and Space Museum. It's one of the boys' favorite places.”

Jax pulled out a notebook and made a show of writing the information down. “He never said what he was here for?”

“No.” She went to stand beside the window overlooking Arlington Station. “That night, we all went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. It's the boys' favorite. I must admit, I found some of the things Paul said that night…worrisome.”

“Worrisome? How is that, Dr. Gazsi?”

She swung to face them, her arms crossing at her chest as she leaned back against the windowsill. “Paul has always been extremely conservative in his political views, but since 9/11, he's become patriotic to the point of being jingoistic, even racist. That night, he talked a lot about how the people in the U.S. were being lulled—that they hadn't really learned their lesson after 9/11 and they were going to need to learn it all over again.”

“What do you think he meant by that?”

“He was particularly infuriated by the growth of the antiwar movement. He said they needed to be shut up.
that the next time we go to war in the Middle East, we're not going to get bogged down the way we did in Iraq. He said next time we're going to hit the bastards with everything we've got.” Her lips pressed together tightly for a moment before she went on. “I didn't put it all together at the time, but later I wondered if he was talking about the Armageddon Plan.”

Jax looked up from his notepad. “The what?”

“It's a contingency plan that is to go into effect in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the U.S. It was drawn up by the United States Strategic Command a few years ago under very explicit orders from the White House. The idea is for a large-scale assault on Iran using both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Hundreds of sites are to be targeted, and estimates for Iranian civilian deaths run in the millions. But the most disturbing part of the plan is that it is to go into effect whether or not Iran is even involved in the terrorist attack that triggers it. Basically, the plan sets Iran up for an unprovoked nuclear attack.”

“You say it's called the Armageddon Plan?”

“That's not its official name,” said Dr. Gazsi. “It's just what the military officers tasked with drawing it up call it. They were frankly appalled by what they were asked to do. The consequences have the potential to be horrific. No one has used nuclear weapons since 1945. Just drawing up a plan like this sends an ominous message to the world.”

“But how many people know about it?”

“It's known in academic and diplomatic circles. The plan calls for the use of tactical nuclear weapons rather than strategic nukes, but the loss of life and environ
mental contamination would still be unimaginable. Plus, it's a line that once it's crossed, there's no going back. I don't think I want to live in a world where the use of nuclear weapons is an acceptable option.”

“Unfortunately,” said Jax, “a lot of people already see it as an acceptable option.”

“That's because they never think it through. Even without the nuclear option, an attack on Iran would have horrific consequences. Look what's happened because of our invasion of Iraq. We've destabilized the entire region. An American attack on Iran could topple every pro-Western government from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, to Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Plus, Iran would never simply absorb such a devastating attack and not retaliate. It's not in their nature. They'd hit back. They'd hit our troops in Iraq, they'd hit our allies in the Middle East, and they'd find a way to hit us here, in the States. Fifty years from now, our children would still be suffering the consequences. And think of the economic effects! An attack on Iran would send oil prices through the roof and devastate the world economy. And if China or Russia were to feel threatened by an attack on their back door and decided to step in…”

“Armageddon,” said Jax softly.

Dr. Gazsi's lips pressed together in a grim smile. “Exactly.”

Jax studied her pale, solemn face. “You said you found Paul's allusions to the Armageddon Plan worrisome; why is that, precisely?”

“Because he wasn't talking about it as if it were a possibility. He was talking about it as if it were something he knew was actually going to happen.” She pushed
away from the window. “After Paul left, Ben—he's our youngest—told me about something his dad said when they were in the Air and Space Museum. Paul was talking about how there's more than one way to serve your country and be a hero—ways that don't get made into movies or show up in museums.”

“Black ops,” said Jax.

Her eyelids flickered in surprise. “Yes. Except, Paul's not in the military anymore.”

“No.” Jax tucked away his notebook. “He's not. Tell me, Dr. Gazsi, have you ever heard of something called the Archangel Project?”

She thought a minute, then shook her head. “No. Sorry.”

Jax handed her one of his cards. “Thank you for your help. If you think of anything else that might be useful, please give me a call.”

She walked with them to the door. “You know, the scariest part of all of this is that there actually is a small group of fundamentalist, right-wing Christians in the Administration who I'd say are actively working to create a situation that could trigger Armageddon in the Middle East. They expect it to bring on the Rapture, and they're looking forward to it.”

“You mean the Rapture as in
Revelation
?” said Tobie. “Where the saved Christians are all supposed to be gathered up by God?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“I wish I were. There's a huge movement out there of people who not only expect it to happen at any moment, but are more than willing to help hurry things along.”

“You think fundamentalist Christians might be behind something?” said Jax.

She paused with one hand on the edge of her door frame. “I don't know. All I know is that religious fanatics of all kinds scare me, whether they wear robes and read the Koran, or quote the Bible and run teleministries.”

 

“Do you think she'll cry when she finds out Paul Fitzgerald is dead?” October asked as they walked down the corridor toward the elevators. “She doesn't sound as if she likes him much anymore.”

“She might not like him much anymore, but she loved him once.” Jax punched the button. “She'll cry.”