The Archangel Project Read online

  The Archangel Project

  C.S. Graham

  To the people of New Orleans

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1

  “Let me see the sketches.”

  2

  “At the end of our last session, we explored the…

  3

  Once upon a time, Dr. Henry Youngblood had been considered…

  4

  “Let me introduce you to my associates,” said Palmer, one…

  5

  Tobie was leaving Colonel McClintock’s study when she felt her…

  6

  Tourak Rahmadad snagged a bag of potato chips, popped open…

  7

  Most people who knew October Guinness looked upon her decision…

  8

  Fire engines and police cars clogged the street, their flashing…

  9

  Lance Palmer considered himself one of the good guys. As…

  10

  Pushing aside the memories of Iraq, Tobie got in her…

  11

  The rolling hills and gently wooded glens to the west…

  12

  Clark Westlake took the steps to the Executive Office Building…

  13

  Tobie was spooning Pet Promise Wild Salmon Formula into Beauregard’s…

  14

  Tobie tore through the darkened, wind-tossed side garden.

  15

  Jax Alexander lived in a narrow brick town house overlooking…

  16

  Division Thirteen had its offices deep in the bowels of…

  17

  “Hey, lady! This is a private bus.”

  18

  Halfway down the block, Tobie pulled in close to the…

  19

  Deep within the shadows of a spreading oak tree, Tobie…

  20

  Barid Hafezi stood in the doorway to his daughter’s darkened…

  21

  The Coliseum Street Guest House lay on a narrow, cobble-lined…

  22

  The man Barid Hafezi knew only as “the Scorpion” parked…

  23

  The next morning, the sun came up like a big…

  24

  “You’re not going to like this,” said Hadley, tossing a…

  25

  Michael Hadley was in a foul mood. His eye hurt.

  26

  Jax found the house at 5815 Patton Street silent and…

  27

  In Jax’s experience, if you wanted to know what was…

  28

  Bob Randolph was the kind of man who was born…

  29

  Paul Fitzgerald walked out of the New Orleans Armstrong Airport…

  30

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

  31

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

  32

  Byblos Restaurant on Magazine was one of Tobie’s favorite cafés,…

  33

  “How did they find me?” Tobie asked Gunner.

  34

  Tobie considered herself a typical all-American chicken-shit. She was not…

  35

  The Orleans Marina lay in that part of the city…

  36

  Jax pulled his rented G6 into the marina’s narrow strip…

  37

  “You can put that thing away,” said Jax, keeping his…

  38

  Hadley rolled the Suburban to a stop in the shade…

  39

  Barid Hafezi was in his office at the University of…

  40

  Back at the Hilton, Jax took a long shower and…

  41

  “How you doing, Jason?” said Clark Westlake to the man…

  42

  Homicide detective William P. Ahearn stood at the water’s edge,…

  43

  The target was easy enough to find: an old yellow…

  44

  Jax was cleaning his gun at the table by the…

  45

  Joe’s Crab Shack was basically a long, covered pier with…

  46

  Lance Palmer stood in the center of their suite at…

  47

  Every respectable hypnotist in New Orleans had long since locked…

  48

  Just to the west of New Orleans and its suburbs…

  49

  “So did it work?” Jax asked, pushing through the drunken…

  50

  His name was Michael Crowley, and when the call came…

  51

  Jax slithered head first down the steps. He could feel…

  52

  “I don’t think Neosporan is meant for gunshot wounds,” said…

  53

  Bubba Dupuis–as he introduced himself–was a great bear of a…

  54

  “Why all the Korans?” asked Tobie as Jax pulled back…

  55

  A second Crown Victoria tore up the ramp from the…

  56

  “I should have remembered that brass sign,” said October, pushing…

  57

  Lance stood at the window, his gaze on the heavy…

  58

  “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea for you to…

  59

  October was clutching a big Nordstrom bag when Jax picked…

  60

  “If I came up with a scheme to trigger the…

  61

  Jax spun around just as the barrel of a silenced…

  62

  Once, Ed Devereaux had been a warrant officer in the…

  63

  “I was just reading something about the museum in my…

  64

  A light drizzle was falling when the Gulfstream touched down…

  65

  “Hey, Gunner,” said Tobie, when he answered his phone. “It’s…

  66

  Lance Palmer kept one hand inside his jacket, the handle…

  67

  A crowd of latecomers still clogged the entrance to the…

  68

  Tobie sprinted up the stairs, her breath sawing in and…

  69

  Adelaide Meyer sloshed a measure of Russian vodka into a…

  70

  Every morning of his life, T. J. Beckham rose at…

  About the Author

  Other Books by C.S. Graham

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The government remote viewing programs, their history, and the various historical incidents described in this story are real, as are the books mentioned in relation to them. These programs, known as Grill Flame, Sun Streak, Center Lane, and Star Gate (among others), were officially terminated in 1995-96 and some of their relevant material declassified. Only declassified information has been divulged in this story. For an entertaining look at the programs’ history, we suggest Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson.

  The declassified 1986 Defense Intelligence Agency Training Manual for Remote Viewing is real and is available on the Internet.

  The remote viewing sessions described in this book are as accurate as we can make them. For a more complete and authoritative analysis of the process, see Joseph McMoneagle’s Mind Trek.

  The September 2000 policy document of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) described in this book is real.

  The U.S. contingency plan herein referred to as “the Armageddon Plan” is also real, although it is not known by that name.

  Division Thirteen is a figment of the authors’ imagination.

  The spelling “al-Qa’ida” is a more accurate transliteration of the Arabi
c word than the more familiar “Al Qaeda” typically seen in the Western press.

  1

  Washington, D.C.: 4 June, 1:05 P.M. Eastern time

  “Let me see the sketches.”

  Lance Palmer passed the folder to the elegant, Armani-clad woman who rode beside him in the limousine. He watched, silent, as she slipped on a pair of reading glasses and flipped through the folder’s contents. She frowned at the crude representation of an encircled K emblazoned against a dark background, then paused again to stare at a vintage World War II C47 Skytrooper that seemed to soar through the air.

  Hurriedly rendered in pencil on page after page of cheap loose-leaf, the drawings didn’t look important. But these sketches—and the person who drew them—had the power to destroy some of the most important people in Washington and bring down a president.

  Adelaide Meyer raised her gaze to Lance’s face. “You’re certain these sketches are from a remote viewing session and not the result of a security leak?”

  “I’m certain.” Remote viewing had been the object of intense scientific and governmental investigation for more than sixty years, but most people still had a hard time accepting it as real. Lance would probably have been suspicious himself if he hadn’t worked with remote viewers in the Army.

  Through the tinted, water-flecked window beside him, he caught a glimpse of the Lincoln Memorial as it swept past, its normal horde of tourists thinned by the storm lashing the city. Adelaide Meyer peeled the glasses off her face and rubbed the bridge of her nose. At fifty-three, she was CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations, a sprawling conglomerate with interests in everything from the construction and defense industries to oil. She was also, through a series of subsidiaries and holding companies, Lance Palmer’s boss.

  “When you came to me with this proposal, I never expected it to turn into such a disaster.”

  Lance set his jaw. Thirteen years in Army Special Operations taught a man to accept responsibility for his mistakes. “It’s a problem,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “But it’s not a disaster. It can be contained. Right now these sketches are meaningless.”

  Adelaide Meyer fit her reading glasses back on her face. She was slim and reasonably attractive for a woman her age, but in all other respects she was a woman cut in much the same mold as Madeline Albright and Maggie Thatcher: a hard-as-nails broad with the mind of a Rhodes scholar and the ethical standards of a serial killer.

  “They won’t be meaningless in forty-eight hours.” Flipping back through the drawings, she paused again at the crude sketch of the old C47. Lance felt his ulcer burn. She looked up. “Who knows about this?”

  “Henry Youngblood. The woman who did the remote viewing. I think that’s all.”

  Adelaide Meyer kept her eyebrows plucked into razor thin, unnatural arcs. As Lance watched, one eyebrow arched even higher in a parody of a smile that had been known to make prime ministers ill. “You think? We don’t pay you to think, Mr. Palmer. We pay you to know. And to do.”

  “If there’s anyone else, we’ll find them.”

  She closed the folder, drummed her fingers on the gold-embossed burgundy cover. “This woman; who is she?”

  “Probably a student. We’ve pulled a list of the people who’ve been working with Youngblood from the university’s records.”

  Her fingers stopped their drumming. “You don’t know her name?”

  “The only one who knows that is Youngblood. But he’ll tell us. Don’t worry.” Lance’s organization was very good at extracting information. They’d perfected their interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and a dozen other detention facilities the American people didn’t want to hear about.

  “See to it that he does.” Adelaide Meyer punched the button on the limousine’s intercom and spoke to her driver. “Mr. Palmer will be leaving us. There should be a taxi stand at the next corner.” The limo slowed.

  “I want this cleaned up.” She reached for the morning copy of the Wall Street Journal and snapped it open. “I want it cleaned up and I want it cleaned up fast. Or I’ll have someone else do it. And I can guarantee you won’t be happy with that.” Over the top of the newspaper, her gaze met Lance’s for one telling moment. “Understood?”

  The limousine pulled in close to the curb, sending water from the gutter surging over the sidewalk. Lance opened the door. “Perfectly,” he said, and stepped out into the lashing rain.

  The rain beat against his shoulders, ran down his cheeks in cool rivulets. He stood and watched the limousine speed away toward Capitol Hill. Then he nodded to the nearest taxi driver. “Reagan Airport,” he said, and slid into the backseat.

  He put a call through to his wife, Jessica. “I’m afraid I’m going to be late tonight, honey. Tell Jason I’m sorry about missing his game.” He listened to Jess make the requisite noises, then said, “I should be home by midnight. If not, I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  Lance closed his phone. He had just over forty-eight hours, but he didn’t expect this little clean-up operation to take anywhere near that long. He was very good at what he did.

  2

  New Orleans, Louisiana: 4 June, 5:40 P.M. Central time

  “At the end of our last session, we explored the possibility that you might be setting extraordinarily high standards for yourself. Have you been thinking about that?”

  October Guinness glanced at the psychiatrist seated on a gently worn leather chair beside the study’s empty fireplace and laughed. “My sister’s an electrical engineer making over a hundred thou a year, my brother has his own accounting firm, and I’m a college dropout. You’re the only person I know who thinks I set unusually high standards for myself.”

  Colonel F. Scott McClintock had thick silver hair and kindly gray eyes set deep in a tanned face scored with lines left by years of smiling and squinting into the sun. But at the moment, he was not smiling. Templing his fingers, he tapped them against his lips before saying, “You compare yourself to your brother and sister?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Everyone else does.”

  As soon as Tobie said it, she regretted it. It was exactly the kind of offhand remark McClintock picked up on. She watched him jot down a quick note, probably part of the growing itinerary for another session labeled “Family Issues” or something like that. After five months of coming here every other week, she was beginning to understand how the Colonel worked.

  He was semiretired now, after nearly forty years as a clinical psychiatrist. Most of those years had been spent in the Army. He still worked with patients from the local VA hospital as a volunteer. Since Hurricane Katrina smashed the VA’s facility on Perdido Street, he’d taken to seeing his few remaining patients here, in the study of his big old Victorian just off St. Charles.

  “We haven’t talked yet about the reason you dropped out of college,” he said in that soft voice of his. “Maybe now would be a good time to touch on it.”

  Tobie shifted in her chair. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  There was a pause. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, a subtle sign that he was disappointed. While Colonel McClintock analyzed October Guinness, Tobie in turn analyzed the Colonel and his methods. She figured it was only fair.

  “All right,” he said. “Do you want to talk about why you joined the Navy?”

  “That’s easy. My stepdad told me that if I dropped out of college, he wouldn’t pay for me to go back. I joined the military so I’d be able to get the GI Bill, and I chose the Navy because I didn’t think they’d send me to Iraq.”

  It was the truth—as far as it went. But it also avoided several key issues, including the fact that her real father, Patrick Guinness, had been in the Navy when he died. But Tobie didn’t see any reason to give the Colonel more fodder for his Family Issues session than he already had.

  “You didn’t want to go to Iraq?” said the Colonel.

  “Are you kidding? The only people who actually want to go to Iraq are either seriously
delusional or very, very scary individuals.”

  “It didn’t occur to you that your skills as a linguist might be found useful?”

  Tobie laughed. As an expat’s brat growing up around the world, she’d been fluent in Arabic by the age of eight. “Yeah. But I thought they’d assign me to the Pentagon, or to some nice safe ship parked out in the Persian Gulf. I didn’t expect them to send me to Baghdad.”

  Sometimes she wondered what her life would be like if she’d been born and raised in one place rather than being yanked around the world by her parents. Any kid who grows up in Qatar and Frankfurt, Paris and Jakarta, is inevitably going to be strange—even when all their sensory input is firmly planted in the here and now.

  But Tobie had spent her childhood bringing home report cards with teachers’ notes that read, “October spends far too much of her time in class daydreaming…” Every year, her mother would sigh and get the same worried, baffled expression on her face. Meredith Guinness-Bennett’s two oldest children were studious, hardworking, normal. But Tobie, by far the youngest, was always a problem, drawing strange pictures when she should have been studying, and running with the local kids rather than hanging out with the other expats’ children. They were habits that left her with a passable drawing ability and a knack for picking up languages. But while her sister had been student body president and her brother captain of the football team, Tobie never quite fit in anywhere, even though she’d learned early to hide the things she saw, the things she knew.