The Archangel Project (27 page)

Tobie sprinted up the stairs, her breath sawing in and out
with terror and a surging rush of adrenaline. She hit the first floor balcony, nearly stumbling as her knee buckled for a moment, then held.

She was dodging the elevator shaft, headed for the second flight of stairs, when she spotted a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall near a restroom and some drinking fountains. A half-formed idea in her head, she swerved to yank open the small door and wrench out the canister. She was expecting it to set off an alarm. It didn't.

She turned back toward the second flight of stairs just as a man burst out the exit door ahead of her, a slim Latino with a pencil mustache. He came at her with his teeth barred. Clutching the fire extinguisher with both hands, she swung it at him. The end of the canister whacked against the side of his head. He stumbled back and landed on his rump. She dashed past him, up the second flight of stairs.

Careening around the elevator shaft, she darted out onto the viewing platform, then stopped, her chest jerking wildly with her breathing. She'd thought she would be able to spray fire retardant foam onto the face of the light canister, but she saw now that it was mounted too high. She'd never hit it.

She was aware of the sound of running feet, pounding up the stairs, slapping across the gallery. She spun around, her body pressing up against the railing as she frantically scrabbled with the extinguisher's safety pin. Pointing the hose, she squeezed the handle, a sulfurous powder shooting out the nozzle in an arc that filled the air with an acrid smell as it slapped against the cockpit window.

Rough hands grabbed her from behind, snatched her back from the railing, yanked the fire extinguisher from her hands. “Get down! Now!” someone screamed in her ear. They shoved her to her knees, the concrete scraping her bare skin.

And then, in the sudden, breathless silence, she heard it: an audible click. A small red beam of light appeared on the yellow powder obscuring the window of the C47's cockpit.

“What the hell is that?” said the big black agent with his Sig shoved against the base of her skull.

“It's an infrared signal,” she said, sucking in a breath that shook her entire frame. “There's a bomb in the Skytrooper.”

McLean, Virginia: 6 June, 8:30
P.M
. Eastern time

Adelaide Meyer sloshed a measure of Russian vodka into a
glass and downed it in one long pull, her gaze on the fifty-inch plasma TV at the end of the room. The reports coming out of New Orleans were confused, the screen filled with flashing blue and red lights splashed across the World War II Museum's towering glass and concrete facade.

She didn't exactly understand what had happened or why. All she knew was that the Vice President was still alive and Lance Palmer, who should have been reporting to her right now, was dead.

She poured herself another drink. She wasn't the kind of woman to panic. She sucked in a deep breath, inhaling alcohol fumes and what smelled suspiciously like her own body odor. She was sweating. She knocked back the second drink and zapped off the TV.

Whatever the potential damage from this debacle,
it could be contained. She was certain of that. With enough money and power, anything could be contained.

She'd told Westlake that all the threads led back to her, but that wasn't exactly true. There was still one slender thread that ran to Clark Westlake and from there to the President himself. Oh, not that Randolph had ever come out and exactly said what he wanted done. That's not the way these things were handled in the Oval Office. He'd simply looked over at Westlake one frosty morning when they were doing their daily three mile run around the White House gardens and said, “The liberal press and the bleeding hearts on the Hill are becoming a serious threat to our agenda, Clark. Nine/eleven shut them up for a while, but they're back at it again, and too many of the good people of this country are starting to listen to them. They don't understand that America has a destiny. A destiny and a responsibility. Nine/eleven let this country go into Iraq and take care of Saddam, but without something similar, I'm afraid our plans for Iran are going to be derailed. I trust I make myself clear?”

And Westlake had blinked and said, “Yes, Mr. President.”

Adelaide turned toward her library, to the safe she'd had built into the wall behind her desk. “Call Lopez,” she told her maid, Maria. “I want the Learjet ready in an hour. I'll be flying to Dallas tonight.”

“Yes, Meez Meyer.”

Adelaide punched in the combination and yanked open the safe door, her fist closing around the small
memo recorder she kept there. It wasn't enough to convict or impeach, but it could embarrass. And politicians didn't like to be embarrassed.

She shoved some papers into a soft-sided briefcase, but she didn't need to pack. She had another house in Dallas. It was where she'd been born. She was going home.

New Orleans: 7 June 2:00
A.M
. Central time

Lieutenant William P. Ahearn stared at the young woman who sat at the end of the interrogation table, her crossed arms hugging her chest. He and Trish had been grilling her for six hours now, and she was still telling them the same story. It was the biggest crock of bullshit he had ever heard anyone spin. They'd had time to look into her background in the last few hours, and what they found was not good. The girl was a real psycho case.

“All right, Miss Guinness,” he said, pulling out the chair opposite her and sitting down. “Let's try it again, shall we? Only, leave out the part about the crystal balls and Ouija boards, would you?”

She fixed him with a hard brown stare he found unexpectedly intelligent and lucid. “You people own a computer? Get on Wikipedia and look up remote viewing.”

Ahearn met Trish's gaze.

She pushed up from her chair and stretched. “I'll go do it. I need a break anyway.”

“And while you're out there,” he called after her,
“check and see how Bullock is doing with the smartass. Last I heard, he was still claiming to be a CIA agent.”

“He is a CIA agent,” said Guinness calmly.

Ahearn glanced over at her. “Right. At the moment, we're still trying to figure out what the asshole's real name is.”

Every morning of his life, T. J. Beckham rose at 5:00
A.M
. He
spent twenty minutes doing the series of push-ups and sit-ups they'd taught him in the Army when he was still a green kid from the hills of Kentucky. He shaved and showered, and then he liked to sit down to breakfast, usually orange juice, oatmeal, and blueberries, although on special occasions he allowed himself to splurge.

This was a special occasion. Besides, he was expecting company.

“They're here, sir,” said one of his aides.

Beckham set aside his morning briefing papers and pushed to his feet. “Show them in, then leave us. All of you.”

The young woman looked tired and apprehensive. Jax Alexander just looked tired.

“I understand I owe you my life,” said Beckham. “Simply saying thank-you sounds so inadequate, but, well…thank you. I'm sorry if you spent an uncomfortable night in the local lockup. It took us
longer than it should have to figure out what was going on.”

“At least they drew the line at pulling out our fingernails,” said Alexander.

“There was a time I might have laughed at that statement, Mr. Alexander. Not these days.” He held out his hand toward a nearby cloth-covered table spread with domed silver serving plates and glistening pitchers of juice and milk. “Please join me. I don't know if they told you or not, but you were right. There were several pounds of plastic explosives in the cockpit of the C47, very carefully sealed and sanitized, and probably placed there months ago, which is why the security sweep didn't pick it up. I'm told the chemical signature they look for would have dissipated by now. However, I'm afraid some of the other information you gave us proved to be less accurate. There were no bodies in the street around the corner from the museum.”

Miss Guinness looked up from scooting in her chair but said nothing.

“Please help yourself,” said Beckham, handing her a plate of toast. He turned to Mr. Alexander. “You might be interested to know that the young gentleman with the camera you tackled—a Mr. Tourak Rahmadad—claims to have been ignorant of any bomb. It seems he's a journalism student and was there simply taking video footage for a documentary. It was his first such assignment, and I gather he was rather nervous. He admits to having been a member of something called Jamaat Noor Allah, but he claims their sole purpose was to study the Koran. Interestingly enough, his fingerprints were found on a Koran in Miss Guinness's bag.”

“Interesting,” said Mr. Alexander, giving nothing away.

“There was some talk of sending him down to Gitmo,” Beckham continued smoothly, “but I've intervened. He'll be deported. It'll wreak havoc with his education, but at least he's alive. According to Matt von Moltke—you know Mr. von Moltke, I understand—his sole role in all this was probably to provide a dead Iranian at the scene of the explosion.”

“What about the Iranian professor?” asked Alexander, helping himself to eggs. “Is he still missing?”

“Dr. Barid Hafezi? I'm afraid so. We suspect he may also have fallen victim to a scheme to discredit his nation of origin.”

“And his wife?”

“Is being treated at one of the local hospitals. Unfortunately, she has no memory of how she came by her injuries.”

Miss Guinness made an incoherent noise.

Beckham handed her a platter. “Some fruit, Miss Guinness?”

She took two slices of melon and passed the platter on to Alexander.

Beckham said, “I don't suppose you've heard about the accident last night? An executive jet flying the CEO of Keefe from D.C. to Dallas exploded in midair. Five casualties were reported: the pilot and Miss Adelaide Meyer, and three employees of Global Tactical Solutions—Paul Fitzgerald, Lance Palmer, and Michael Hadley.”

Alexander met Beckham's gaze. “Matt told you we have Fitzgerald's computer hard drive at Langley?”

Beckham cleared his throat. “I'm afraid not. It seems to have disappeared from there.”

“Son of a bitch,”
swore Alexander, leaning back in his chair. “There's no way to tie any of this back to Keefe, is there?”

“Keefe?” Beckham reached for the milk pitcher. “No.”

“So who's going to be fed to the press? The finger's got to point at somebody.”

“The President and I had some discussion about this. Under the circumstances, I convinced him that it would be in the best interests of all concerned that this be identified as a domestic problem. Right now, speculation centers on a disgruntled Iraq War vet.” Beckham held the young man's gaze. “No foreign involvement. No conspiracy.”

“A lone bomber instead of a lone gunman? Is that what you're saying? All we need now is a grassy knoll.”

Beckham poured himself a glass of orange juice and glanced at the woman beside him. “You're very quiet, Miss Guinness.”

She looked up, her eyes hooded, careful. “I'm a linguist, sir. When it comes to international intrigue and power politics, I'm afraid I'm out of my depth.”

“You're also a very talented remote viewer.”

A shadow of surprise flickered across her features. “You're familiar with the old programs?”

“Oh, yes. Which is why I've arranged to have you recalled to active duty.”

“What?”
The look of horror on her face was almost comical. “Can you do that?”

He hid a smile. “I'm afraid so.”

“But—”

“You've been given a special, indefinite assignment to Division Thirteen in the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“She what?”
said Alexander.

“The CIA?”
echoed Miss Guinness. “But no one there believes in remote viewing. Not anymore.”

“That's not exactly true. No one knows better than the CIA the limitations of our spy satellites and the NSA's listening posts. A remote viewer has no limitations. He—or she—can send her mind anywhere in the world. It's cheap, and it's safe, and it works.”

“But it isn't reliably accurate,” she said. “Even an eighty percent accuracy rate means that twenty percent of the time I'm dead wrong.”

“Considering the Company's track record lately,” said Beckham dryly, “an eighty percent accuracy rate would be a big improvement.” He swung his head to look at the man beside him. “As for you, Mr. Alexander—George Chandler wanted to have you cashiered for disobeying orders, but I convinced him to give you another chance. I hear you're something of a loose cannon. In my experience, there are times when loose canons can be valuable.”

He picked up another serving platter and gave his guests a wide smile. “Now, who likes grits?”

 

Tobie waited until they were in the hall outside the Vice President's suite before she exploded. “They can't do this to me!” She swung to face Jax. “Can they do this to me?”

“I'd say so, yeah.”

She ran the splayed fingers of one hand through
her tangled hair. “What in the hell is Division Thirteen?”

Jax's eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Obviously more than I've been told. I think Matt has some explaining to do.”

 

Later that afternoon, Tobie bought a bouquet of daisies in the hospital gift shop and took the elevator up to visit Colonel McClintock.

She found him sitting up in bed, a massive bandage around the crown of his head and another on the side of his face. But his coloring looked good and he was reading a book that he set aside at her knock.

“Come in, Tobie. I've been wondering how you were doing.”

She came to stand at his bedside. “I killed two men,” she said.

His expression was professionally flat. “So I heard. Are you okay with that?”

“Not exactly. One of them had a couple of kids. A boy and a little six-year-old girl.”

“He made bad choices, Tobie.”

She nodded. When her throat opened up again, she said, “So, how are you?”

His features relaxed. “I've got a hard head. They're supposed to let me out of here tomorrow.”

“I can't tell you how sorry I am that I involved you in this…that I got you hurt.”

“What are you talking about, Tobie? I'm the one who involved you in remote viewing, remember?”

She laid the daisies on his bedside table. “I've been called up again. Had you heard?”

“Yes.” An unexpected smile lit his eyes. “I'm sorry. I know you didn't enjoy your military experience.”

“I've been given an indefinite assignment to the CIA. Something called Division Thirteen. You ever hear of them?”

Colonel McClintock shifted his weight, looking oddly discomfited. “As a matter of fact, yes. I hate to tell you this, Tobie, but I occasionally work for them myself.”