Rogue Oracle

by Unknown

  The announcer stuck her microphone in the face of a gray man in glasses. The banner at the bottom of the screen indicated that this was the airport administrator. “We do not suspect terrorist activity at this time. We’re merely exercising caution. All flights have been rerouted, and we’re doing our best to get travelers on their way …”

  Tara hit the mute button and reached for the phone to call Harry. “This thing at Dulles, is that you?”

  Harry groaned over the phone. “Yeah, that’s us. We think it’s residue from when our subject entered the country, but we’ve gotta play it safe.”

  Tara sighed in sympathy. This kind of incident was the kind that could ruin someone’s career. She just hoped it wasn’t Harry’s.

  “How’s Cassie?”

  “Sleeping.” She didn’t know what else to say, at this point.

  “Listen, about our unknown subject …” Harry began.

  “He’s dying,” Tara said automatically. Behind her closed eyes, she could see the body burning into the earth.

  “Damn. You’re good. Forensics says his DNA is degrading at an accelerated rate.”

  “I think he’s going to pull something before he goes. Something big.”

  “We’re narrowing down the list of suspects. I’ve got FAA pulling passports and Veriss has narrowed down the list of ex-operatives to re-interview. We think all of them worked on finding some missing fuel rods at Chernobyl.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you know when I get something else.”

  “By the way, I’ve got a couple of Marshals heading over there in a couple of hours to take you to a safe house. I’ve told them that Cassie’s a relative of one of the agents on our watch list. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.”

  “Thanks.” Tara hung up. She stared at the receiver, feeling like she was a step behind.

  “What’s going on?”

  Cassie peered out of the hallway. Her hair was mussed with sleep, but her eyes were wide with anxiety.

  “I talked with Harry. He’s going to be sending some Marshals over in a while to move us.”

  Cassie’s fingers gnawed the hem of her T-shirt. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” Tara admitted. “But I think it’ll be somewhere close. Harry said he’d catch up with us when he could.”

  “Okay, but”—Cassie gestured to the talking heads on the television—“what’s really going on?”

  Spoken like a true oracle. Tara debated how much to tell her about what was happening, decided that it would be good for the girl to have something else to focus on. “Harry and I are chasing a Chernobyl refugee who’s responsible for the disappearances of some intelligence agents. He’s been selling their secrets.”

  Cassie sat down on the couch. “That’s what my star chart meant.”

  “Yes.” Tara watched the emotions flicker across the girl’s face.

  The girl blew out her breath. “Is there anything I can do to help? I mean, I’m not … really good at this yet, or anything …”

  Tara smiled. It would be good to get the girl outside of herself. Maybe she was more resilient than she thought. “Tell me what the stars have to say.”

  “Can I cheat and use my computer?”

  “You can do anything you want.”

  Cassie dug through her bag for her laptop, booted it up. The screen glowed blue against her wan face, and she began tapping away at the keyboard. “Okay. This is what the sky looks like for us, right now, behind the blue in a transient chart.” She turned the screen to Tara. A circular pie was divided up into the twelve astrological houses, with arcane markings within those pieces of pie. “I’m worried about this.” She pointed to a series of symbols.

  “What’s that?”

  “Pluto. It’s still hanging out in retrograde, which bothers me, and it will be, for some time. The chart’s nearly identical to the chart for Chernobyl.”

  “Are you thinking that such a disaster could happen here?” Tara thought of the Tower.

  “I hope not. There are some differences, though. This is Chiron, the comet, and it’s also in retrograde.” Cassie pointed to a notation on the chart that looked like a key. “Chiron is the ‘wounded healer,’ and it’s hanging out in Scorpio. It represents a tie to the past, attempting to resolve or assimilate old wounds. In mythology, Chiron was half man, half beast. He sacrificed his life to allow mankind to save Prometheus and allow mankind to use fire.”

  “Assimilate,” Tara echoed. She paused, thinking of the World card. “Hold that thought.” She went to get her cards, fished out the World to set it before her. “This is the card I’ve been associating with our unknown subject.”

  “Eh. Like the song goes, ‘Dude looks like a lady.’”

  “Yeah. Maybe he is literally both male and female.” The light of intuition began to shine in Tara’s eyes. She felt like she was on the right track. “We keep finding multiple sets of DNA at the sites of the disappearances. He’s assimilating the others, somehow. Absorbing them and their secrets.”

  “The moon is in the house of Scorpio,” Cassie confirmed. “That’s the house of secrets.”

  Tara pulled the Moon card from her deck, showing the serene moon goddess shining over the land. In Tarot, this was the card of deception. The card she’d associated with Norman Lockley. Her intuition buzzed in the back of her head; this felt significant. She reached for the phone, dialed Harry’s number. Before he could say anything, she blurted:

  “Harry, I think you need to check on Norman Lockley.”

  VERISS DIDN’T APPRECIATE BEING SIDELINED BY BLUNT instruments like Agent Li, people who had no understanding or appreciation for his talents. Li was giving him busy work, not giving him credit for what he knew, and what he could discover. Agents could be like that, whether in NCTC, Special Projects, or any other division. They could be arrogant, single-minded, and threatened by knowledge. People feared what they didn’t understand.

  But Veriss would make them understand. He wouldn’t let Li take credit for his leads. Veriss was tired of being “support personnel,” of serving behind the scenes while men like Li took the credit for being heroes. Li was busy with that airport debacle, wouldn’t notice if Veriss vanished for a couple of hours.

  Veriss stood on Norman Lockley’s doorstep, rang the bell. He’d crack this case wide open, show them his value.

  The doorbell echoed inside the house. Veriss glanced back at the Marshals eating cheeseburgers in their car on the curb. They’d waved him on when he’d shown them his credentials. Veriss didn’t get to show his creds nearly often enough, and he enjoyed displaying them. “Give him a few minutes,” one of them had told him. “The old guy’s slow.”

  Veriss waited. He heard scraping and shuffling inside. Impatiently, he rang the bell again, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and his heels. He was eager to start questioning the guy. Was the guy in the can? What was taking him so long?

  The door opened a crack, and Veriss looked down. In shadow, he saw Norman’s profile. The old man was in a wheelchair. No wonder it took him so long.

  “Norman Lockley?”

  “Yes.” The old man’s voice sounded like gravel in a can.

  Veriss pressed his shiny National Counterterrorism Center credentials up against the screen. “Sam Veriss, NCTC. Can I come in and ask you some questions?”

  The old man hesitated. Veriss heard the squeak of a wheelchair as the man moved away from the door into shadow.

  “Come in,” he said. “And shut the door behind you.”

  The air conditioner was cranked up very, very cold. And all the blinds were drawn in Lockley’s house. Veriss’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, sun shadows dazzling his vision. He turned to close the door.

  “Could you lock it, please?” the old man asked weakly. “A person in my condition can’t be too careful.”

  “Of course.” Veriss glanced at the old man. Lockley’s back was to him, wheeling away. The old man wore a blanket around him like a s
hroud. Bizarre, in summer.

  Veriss flipped the deadbolt shut. The sound was deafening in the air-conditioned silence of Lockley’s house. No television was on, no radio. Just the sterile hum of the air conditioner and the refrigerator.

  Lockley squeaked away into the kitchen. Veriss followed the frail old man, taking his notebook out of his pocket. His list of questions covered the paper from right margin to left. He hoped he’d left enough room to fill in the answers. He clicked his ballpoint pen, scanning the list. He was excited by the prospect of being in the field, of collecting data straight from the source.

  “What is it that you do for NCTC?” Lockley asked conversationally. His pronunciation was awkward, as if his dentures were loose.

  “I’m an intelligence analyst. I work on analyzing patterns in data networks and predicting future results.”

  “Interesting. I imagine you see many different things in your work.”

  “Lots of data. Not to brag, but I’m one of the foremost experts in my field.”

  “Wonderful.” The old man’s enthusiasm seemed genuine. “Just wonderful. I’d love to know what you know.”

  Veriss smiled, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Lockley, I’d like to ask you about your time with Project Rogue Angel. Some data anomalies have shown up in my analysis. Did you work on recovering the fuel rods from the Chernobyl site?”

  “I did.”

  “Our files indicate that the recovery efforts were unsuccessful. Do you have any theories about what may have happened to them?”

  The old man chuckled. “Several.”

  Veriss looked up from his paper to see Lockley standing before his wheelchair. Standing. Before he could react, Lockley lunged forward, thrusting Veriss against the kitchen wall. A spice rack crashed down, the bottles rattling and splitting against the floor with the sweet smell of cinnamon. Veriss flailed in the old man’s grip, which was shockingly strong around his throat. He only succeeded in tearing down a corner of the curtains covering the sliding glass door to the patio, startling birds. Daylight penetrated the dark house.

  Veriss struggled to breathe against the hands wrapped around his throat. In the light, he could see there was something wrong about the old man. The old man’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and Veriss could see a jumbled collection of pointed teeth. Panicked, Veriss clawed at the old man’s face. His fingers dug into Lockley’s skin … and the skin peeled away. Veriss registered that it wasn’t real skin … It was a mask. Beneath the smooth silicone surface, an uneven mass of lumpy skin was underpinned with warped cheekbones and a melted nose.

  Veriss cried out, but the hands around his throat closed inward. He could feel them digging into his skin, trying to steal his breath. But that wasn’t all he could feel them stealing. He could feel those fingers worming into his brain, chewing into his thoughts and rapaciously digesting what they found. All that data he’d carefully collected, all the formulas, all the obscure facts that he’d drawn connections to … it was being devoured by this monster. He could feel those fingers sifting through the facts, his memories, his emotions, like a librarian sifting through an old-fashioned card catalog.

  The monster drew him into an embrace. Veriss could feel his information, his life force, pouring into the creature. Blood began to gush from Veriss’s nose.

  I’d love to know what you know. The words didn’t come out of the monster’s twisted mouth, but Veriss still heard them rattling around the broken synapses of his brain.

  HARRY LEANED ON LOCKLEY’S DOORBELL AGAIN. NO ANSWER. He glowered at the dark windows, tapping his foot and jingling the change in his pocket. He had to get back to the airport or Aquila would have his ass in a sling. His boss wouldn’t appreciate him doing the bureaucratic equivalent of poking a hive of bees with a stick and running away.

  He glanced back at the curb and the U.S. Marshals waved at him from their car. They’d told him that Veriss had gone in to see the old man a few hours ago. Veriss’s rental car was still parked in the driveway. Harry was furious. Veriss had no business questioning a source without Harry’s say-so. He imagined Veriss and Lockley in the garage, playing with Lockley’s disguises. As soon as he got hold of him, Harry was going to jerk a knot in Veriss’s tail, send him back to Langley with Harry’s shoe jammed up his ass.

  Harry stabbed the doorbell again.

  Irritated, he strode down the wheelchair ramp and circled around the back of the house. Maybe the old man hadn’t heard the bell ringing. Veriss had no doubt heard it and was just being an ass.

  Harry clomped through the ornamental shrubs, disturbing some mulch. The old man’s bird feeders were arranged on the patio. Startled by Harry’s approach, a goldfinch flew away in a rattle of thistle seeds. The feeders were almost empty. The air conditioner was running at high power, leaking water out over the edge of the patio. Harry paused before the sliding glass door. The curtains were drawn, but for one side, where a panel dangled from the rod.

  His eyes narrowed. A sign of a struggle.

  His hand rested lightly on his gun as he crept to the back of the garage. The door was shut, but the knob was gone from the door. Harry’s pulse quickened, and he drew his weapon.

  Tara had been right. Something bad was going down at Lockley’s house.

  Harry gently pushed the garage door open. A wave of frigid air conditioning hit him. Harry listened, heard nothing. He swung inside the shade of the garage, gun lifted.

  Lockley’s workshop had been tossed. The cupboard doors stood open, their contents spilling out on the floor. Masks and bits of latex had been knocked around, and brushes were strewn on the surfaces of Lockley’s tables. Harry scanned the half darkness. There was no telling in this jumble of materials what was missing and what remained. Broken bottles of paint and fixative gave the air an acrid odor. Harry knelt on the floor. The mixtures were half dry. This tumult had been recent. And frantic.

  Harry opened the kitchen door. The refrigerator and the air conditioner hummed. Sweat freeze-dried on Harry’s palms, wrapped around the butt of the gun. It had to be in the fifties in here. The last time Harry had entered a house with the air conditioning this low, it had been full of bodies. The assailant had turned up the AC to keep them from decomposing quickly.

  Harry’s nose twitched. He smelled cinnamon and spices from a broken spice rack. The kitchen had been tossed. A wall of decorative clocks behind the kitchen table had been smashed. Lockley’s wheelchair was parked beside the kitchen table, but the old man wasn’t inside.

  “Lockley?” he called out. If Lockley were still here, injured, Harry was sure that he was armed. No use risking being shot. If an assailant was here, he’d have to get past Harry to escape through the back, or get through the front door and expose himself to the Marshals. If they were even awake. “Veriss?” he said, as an afterthought.

  No one answered. Harry edged through the kitchen. No dog came bounding up to him. The kitchen curtains were torn, allowing only a dim shaft of light to penetrate the gloom. Over the sight of his gun, he peered into the empty living room, down the hallway. He nudged the doors open, one by one, checked under the beds and in the closets.

  No Lockley. No Veriss. No Diana. Just blood.

  Harry snatched his cell phone out of his pocket to call for backup. Maybe when more cars rolled into the driveway, the Marshals would wake up.

  He only hoped that the Marshals he’d sent to hide Cassie and Tara were more alert than these.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE MARSHALS Harry sent weren’t what Tara had expected.

  Tara stared through the peephole of Harry’s door at the two figures standing in the shade of the entryway. The man on the right was only slightly taller than Tara, a beer belly distending the stylized pattern of hibiscus flowers on his Hawaiian shirt. He wore a ginger-colored beard and sunglasses. The man on the left was tall, lanky, clean-shaven. A cowboy hat shaded his eyes, and he crossed his arms over a corduroy jacket obscuring the bulge of a gun. Both of the men seemed a
bit long in the tooth for this to be their first rodeo.

  “Hold your creds up to the door,” Tara insisted, her fingers sweating on the pistol at her hip.

  The man in the Hawaiian shirt flipped his ID out of his back pocket, shrugged. He held it up to the peephole. Tara couldn’t make out much through the fish-eye view, but it looked authentic enough. The lamination was yellowed and cracked with age.

  “Now him.”

  The Cowboy rolled his eyes and reached into his jacket pocket. Reflexively, Tara flinched at the gesture. He pressed his creds close to the fish-eye. He wasn’t wearing a hat in his cred photo.

  The Kahuna said: “Harry Li sent us. He said that you play a mean game of cards. You, uh, a poker player?”

  Tara smirked at the inside joke Harry had planted for her. “Not lately.”

  These guys looked like the C-Team. No wonder, since Harry had rustled up every other Marshal in the district to babysit ex-spies. Whoever they were, at least they weren’t Delphi’s Daughters. The Pythia would never suffer men with such questionable fashion sense.

  Tara’s fingers worked loose the deadbolt lock and loosened the safety chain. She tucked her pistol back in her holster and opened the door. Maggie stuck her nose through the door first. The dog sniffed over the two men like an anteater searching for snacks. Apparently satisfied that she smelled no sign of Delphi’s Daughters on them, Maggie turned around and let them into the apartment.

  The Kahuna’s sandals slapped on the carpet. He gave her a big grin and stuck his hand out. “Hi. I’m Steve Barney.”

  Tara took his hand. “Tara.”

  He pumped her hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  The Cowboy stood in the doorway and nodded. He scanned the area behind the entryway before crossing the threshold and closing the door behind him.