The Archangel Project

by C. S. Graham

  “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.”

  30

  At twelve-thirty, Tobie called her next door neighbor, Ambrose King.

  “Jesus Christ, October.” He yawned into the phone. “What time is it?”

  “It’s lunchtime for most of us, Ambrose. Listen, I’ve had to go out of town for a few days. Do you think you could check on Beauregard and see that he has enough to eat, and give him some fresh water?”

  “Sure. When you think you’ll be back?”

  “Hopefully in a day or two. Thanks Ambrose.”

  “Bingo,” said Hadley, sticking his head around the corner.

  Lance looked up from the city map he and Paul Fitzgerald had spread across the table.

  “We got her,” said Hadley. “She called her next door neighbor to ask him to take care of her cat.”

  “From a pay phone?”

  “Nope. From a prepaid cell.”

  “Huh. So she’s being clever. Just not clever enough.”

  “Our boys sent us something else, too,” said Hadley. “Dr. Elizabeth Vu from the math department just tried to call the girl’s old cell phone.”

  Lance frowned. “Vu? Isn’t she the statistician who was working with Youngblood?”

  “You got it.”

  “Maybe we should have paid more attention to her. Have Ross and O’Meara go check her out.” Lance pushed back his chair and stood up. It was about time they got a break. “In the meantime, pull the records on our girl’s new cell phone. Lets see who she’s talked to in the last twenty-four hours. And get the GPS coordinates. If she leaves it on, it’ll work like a homing beacon and lead us right to her.”

  Jax opened the door to let the G6 air out and leaned against the side. He was parked in the shade, but it was still hot. A light breeze had kicked up, smelling of sun-baked river silt, long-growing grass, and hot asphalt. He loosened his tie and tried for the fifth time that day to call Sibel. She wasn’t answering.

  Frustrated, he punched in Matt’s number.

  “Where’s that information you said you were sending on the girl?”

  “It’s coming. We should be able to get it out to you in a few minutes. We’ve been bus
y. There’s been a lot of chatter floating around the last few days, but it’s strangely hard to pin down.”

  Jax grunted. “Tell me about October Guinness.”

  There was a pause filled with the tapping of computer keys. Matt let out a low whistle. “She was in the Navy. A linguist. Speaks something like a dozen languages. Her stepfather’s a petroleum engineer and worked all over the place. Even did a stint in the Persian Gulf, which is where our girl learned her Arabic. The Navy sent her to Baghdad.”

  That must have been a surprise. “She was wounded?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “Someone mentioned the VA hospital.”

  “She caught a round in the leg. Laid her up for some time, mainly because it complicated an earlier knee injury. But that’s not the main reason she’s still going to the VA. They have her in therapy. And I don’t mean just physical therapy.”

  Jax squinted up at the spreading branches of the oak over his head, where a blue jay had started making an angry racket. “I don’t like the sound of this, Matt. Spit it out.”

  “She got a psycho discharge.”

  Jax slapped his hand against the roof of the car. “Oh, great.” He climbed in and slammed the door. “That’s just what I need.”

  Tobie had never tried remote viewing on her own.

  Several times in the past she’d had what she now understood were spontaneous viewing experiences. But even after she started working with Youngblood, she’d shied away from attempting on her own to duplicate the procedure he’d taught her. With his help, she’d been slowly coming to see her remote viewing ability as a talent rather than a curse. But the idea of deliberately doing it on her own still scared her.

  Now she had no choice.

  She drove to the zoo, found a place in the shade to leave the Bug, and walked through the trees toward the levee. The river breeze was kicking up, rustling the leaves of the live oaks overhead. A woman and two kids had spread a picnic blanket in the shade. Tobie could smell the sharp scent of their fried chicken, hear the children’s laughter, the mother’s soft voice. The woman glanced up, her gaze following Tobie as she kept walking.

  She found a hollow place behind the broad, twisted trunk of an oak that looked as if it had been there since the days of Lafitte and General Jackson and the War of 1812. She sat on the grass with a pad of paper and a pen beside her, crossed her legs like a Buddhist monk, and tried to relax.

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, keeping her spine straight. When she’d done sessions with Youngblood, he always gave her the targets. At first she would just focus on whoever had been sent to the target site. Then he started giving her more distant targets, designated by geographical coordinates. Once, he had a friend in Hawaii put a photograph in a sealed envelope and set it on his desk, and had her view that.

  Even Youngblood admitted he didn’t understand how it all worked. But Tobie knew the link between the target, the tasker, and the viewer was always there. Neither the tasker nor the viewer ever knew what the target was—that was important, so that the tasker wouldn’t inadvertently influence or coax the viewer’s report of what she or he was seeing. But the tasker had to be aware of the selected target, in the sense that he had to be able to say to the viewer, “Elizabeth is at the target site,” or, “The target is shown in the photograph sealed in an envelope and lying on a desk in Hawaii.” Lately he’d started simply giving her coordinates, saying things like, “Focus your attention on forty-five degrees, twenty-five minutes, fifty-two seconds North, and eighty-six degrees, fifteen minutes, twenty-two seconds West.”

  Would it work if she tried to set her own target?

  She knew the target she was seeking: the same office that had served as the target for Henry’s funding proposal. So how could she be sure she was really “seeing” it and not simply imagining it?

  A bubble of panic rose within her. She pushed it down. She needed to be receptive, to believe in herself, otherwise this wasn’t going to work. She closed her eyes, concentrated on the gentle touch of the wind against her face. But all she could see was flames dancing against a night sky. The dark vibrating shadow of helicopter gunships looming overhead. A little girl screaming and a mother’s frantic face as she ran—

  Tobie opened her eyes, her breath coming hard and fast, fingers raking her hair back from her hot forehead. She stared up the slope of the river levee, where the mother was now playing Frisbee with her children.

  It wasn’t going to work, October thought, her panic in full flight. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t remote view that office again. Not reliably. She couldn’t even remember what else she’d drawn in those quick, largely unintelligible sketches she made during her session with Youngblood. So what was she supposed to do now?

  She was just pushing to her feet when the phone in her bag began to ring.

  31

  Tobie flipped open her phone and heard Gunner’s voice.

  “Don’t say my name.”

  She took a moment to digest this. “All right. But why?”

  “I think it’s better. I’m calling from a pay phone.”

  She leaned back against the rough tree trunk. “Why?”

  “It occurred to me they might have pulled your old phone records. If they look at who you’ve called in the past, they could tap my phone.”

  “That’s against the law.”

  “Nothing’s against the law anymore, Tobie. Not if you’re the Administration—or close to them. And Keefe is very close to the Administration. These people are scary, Tobie. I’ve got some stuff you need to see. Do you remember where to meet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you make it for two o’clock?”

  She glanced at her watch. She could grab something for lunch and still make it to City Park in plenty of time. “I’ll be there,” she said, and hung up.”

  Homicide Detective William P. Ahearn of the New Orleans Police Department stood in the middle of Dr. Henry Youngblood’s living room and shook his head. File cabinets had been yanked open and searched, but the twenty dollar bill tucked beneath a bowl on the entrance table hadn’t been touched. The professor’s computer hard drive was gone, but his DVD player was still there, as was a nice little Yamaha CD player.

  “I don’t like this case,” Ahearn said to his partner, Sergeant Trish Pullman. “Nothing makes any sense.”

  Trish reached out to straighten one of the pictures on the wall, the kind of automatic gesture typical of a woman used to picking up behind three teenage sons, but stopped herself when Ahearn said quietly, “Crime scene, Trish.”

  She flashed him a wry grin. “Sorry.”

  He went to stand beside a pile of jumbled books. “What were they looking for?”

  “It obviously wasn’t money.”

  “No. And it’s not a coincidence either,” said Ahearn as his phone began to ring. He flipped it open. “What you got?”

  “I thought you might be interested in this one, Lieutenant. A report just came in on a burglary on Patton Street, off Nashville.”

  “And why did you think that might interest me, exactly?”

  “The house belongs to October Guinness, the woman who witnessed last night’s explosion. From what I hear, the place has been ransacked.”

  Ahearn’s gaze met his partner’s. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Lance frowned down at the computer printout in his hands. The Pontiac G6 had been rented to someone named Jason Aldrich from Virginia. Only, Jason Aldrich didn’t exist.

  “Who is this guy? And what’s his interest in October Guinness?”

  “We’re still checking,” said Hadley.

  Fitzgerald stuck his head around the doorway from the other room. “A call just came through from Lopez. He spotted the girl at a Lebanese restaurant. Uptown.”

  Lance stood up and grabbed his suit jacket. “Tell him to keep her in sight but not to approach her yet. I’m on my way.”

  32

  Byblos Restaurant on
Magazine was one of Tobie’s favorite cafés, a quirky Lebanese place with a tin ceiling and wooden floors that looked as if it might once have been a dime store. She ate an eggplant and crab cake, then ordered baklava to go, since City Park was on the other side of New Orleans near the lake and she was running out of time. Leaving Byblos, she drove up Magazine to Louisiana Avenue, planning to take Claiborne over to Carrollton. She didn’t notice the black Suburban until she was halfway between Camp and Chestnut.

  She wasn’t sure how long the Suburban had been behind her. She only spotted it because she was nervous enough about her stolen plates that she kept glancing in her rearview mirror, looking for cops. At first she thought she was just being paranoid. The Suburban wasn’t exactly on her tail; it was just there, holding steady some two or three cars back.

  She eased up on the gas. The red pickup that had been right behind her moved over into the left hand lane and passed her, followed by a white Toyota.

  The Suburban hung back.

  Tobie pressed on the accelerator and wove in and out of traffic for one block, two. The Suburban kept pace with her, never edging up too close, but not falling behind either.

  “Shit,” she whispered, her hands tightening on the wheel.

  At the corner of Washington and Magnolia she hung a quick right, drove a block, then darted left. She zigzagged across Broad and under the Pontchartrain Expressway, hoping to lose her shadow at a light. But the guys in the Suburban were good.

  She fought back the urge to floor the accelerator and try to outrun them. The last thing she needed was to bring the police down on her. If you let these people get you boxed in, the Colonel had told her, you’re dead.

  So what the hell was she supposed to do?

  Her throat dry, her breath coming in quick little pants, Tobie forced herself to hold to the speed limit. She wound through streets of ghostly abandoned houses that still bore faint, ugly brown waterlines and the orange spray-painted markings of the rescue teams. By now she was hopelessly lost. Most of the city’s street signs had been lost in the storm and many of them were still down.