Rogue Oracle Read online

  Tara crossed her arms. The Pythia’s talent was pyromancy. She could see the future in something as mundane as a match spark or as devastating as a house fire. The gas flames twitched yellow, curling in on each other.

  “Interesting,” the Pythia said.

  “What?” Tara couldn’t resist asking.

  The Pythia abruptly switched off the burner. “Beware the Chimera.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The Pythia shrugged, took a drag on her cigarette. “I don’t know yet. That’s just what the fire said to me.”

  Tara rolled her eyes and dragged her suitcase to the kitchen door. The Pythia called after her, cheerfully: “Call when you need us.”

  Tara banged the screen door shut behind her, muttering under her breath: “Not fucking likely.”

  TARA ALWAYS LOVED TRAVELING AT NIGHT, ESPECIALLY BY plane. There was something about the dimness of the cabin lights, the lack of crowds, and the glitter of lights in the darkness below that made her feel apart and insulated from the problems of the world.

  The commercial red-eye flight Harry had booked for them was nearly deserted. A group of hungover college girls was already asleep in coach, sprawled across empty seats. A salesman hunched over his laptop computer, sweat stains spreading underneath his arms. A mother held a sleeping infant on her lap, staring out the window. But Tara and Harry had business class all to themselves.

  The silence was awkward.

  For the first part of the flight, Tara busied herself with paging through Harry’s summary file of the case. Three former operatives had vanished, under odd circumstances. As Harry had said, they had all worked in various capacities for a project called Rogue Angel. The details of the project itself had been heavily redacted in black marker, but Tara gathered that the project’s goal had been to track inventories of nuclear components in the early 1990s. The project had met with little success, and had been scrapped in 1994.

  All of the missing had worked for Rogue Angel. But it was there the similarities ended.

  The first lost operative had been a retired CIA agent, Gerald Frost. His file photo showed him as a tanned, athletic, balding man. Gerald had spent a great deal of time traveling the countryside of the former USSR in the course of his work, and had apparently never gotten the bug out of his system. As a retiree, he’d returned to many of his old haunts as a tourist. An online travel agency had booked him on trips to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ukraine two years ago. Somewhere en route to Kiev, he’d vanished. His train ticket hadn’t been used. His cell phone and credit cards were later found, sold and resold on the black market. The State Department had assumed that he’d met with modern day highwaymen, and had not been able to trace his actual point of disappearance.

  One incident might be a fluke. But the others drew more attention. Frost’s former administrative assistant, Carrie Kirkman, disappeared six months later from her Las Vegas real estate office. She was recorded walking into the building by a security camera on a Friday morning, and never emerged. On Monday, her clothes and jewelry were found locked in her office.

  The pattern had repeated with the next victims. A retired intelligence agent, Carl Starkweather, vanished from a parking garage of a casino, with his clothes left in his trunk. Foul play was immediately suspected, but the ex-agent owed no one any money. His wife had taken out sizable life insurance policies on him, but she had an airtight alibi.

  And secrets were filtering back through the intelligence community. Old secrets, but marketable ones. CIA chatter had caught snippets of information about degraded uranium sold to Iran. And Russian patrols had caught a group of Taliban sympathizers digging around old mines in Siberia. When the men had been arrested, the patrol found a half-exhumed nuclear warhead.

  Tara closed the file. There was only so much the official reports could tell her. She gazed at Harry. He’d fallen asleep, his chin resting against his shoulder. She allowed herself the luxury of looking at his face for a moment, then reached down for her handbag.

  She pulled her cards out of her purse and lowered the tray table. Glancing around, she confirmed she was out of the other passengers’ line of sight. Tara thought of the disappearances of the operatives as she shuffled, then drew her cards. She laid them down on the table in a familiar order: six cards arranged in a cross, two cards in the center and four more surrounding them, with the cross flanked by four in a straight line on the right. The tray table was small, and this was a large spread, so the edges of the cards overlapped.

  “What do your cards say?”

  Tara started. Harry was awake, looking over her shoulder. He blinked away sleep, gesturing at the spread.

  She pursed her lips. She didn’t like reading in front of others. But Harry knew who and what she was. He knew about Delphi’s Daughters. Though he was a practical man, a man of science and the physical world, she appreciated that he attempted to suspend his disbelief, on occasion, to enter her world.

  “I don’t know, yet.”

  “You mind if I watch?” Harry asked. “I mean, I could leave you alone …” He gestured to the other empty seats in the dim cabin.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s all right. I’m just not used to the idea of reading around just anybody.” Not that Harry was “just anybody.” She bit her lip. “You know what I mean.”

  “Okay,” Harry said. He folded his hands in his lap. Though he wasn’t given to hocus-pocus, he seemed to be genuinely trying to understand how she worked. To understand her.

  Tara gestured to the cards. “This is what’s called a Celtic Cross spread. It’s one of the most commonly used spreads in Tarot. It’s intended to give a bird’s-eye view of the situation, past, present, and future. This part”—she gestured to the left side of the arrangement—“is the Cross. And the right side often symbolizes a staff.”

  She touched the card in the center of the Cross. “This is the card that represents the heart of the question, or the questioner.” She turned it over, revealing a figure dressed as a woman, standing in the middle of a laurel wreath. Surrounding her were a man, bird, ox, and lion. “This is the World. It represents completion, victory, synthesis, and eternal life. It’s the end of a journey or the hero’s quest.”

  “Like in fairy tales?”

  “Joseph Campbell popularized the idea of the hero’s journey as an eternal theme, populated with archetypes found in every culture. Many scholars believe that the Major Arcana cards of the Tarot also speak to that journey. The Major Arcana begins with the Fool, who passes through trials and wisdom, and finishes with the World.”

  Harry squinted at the card. “That’s a pretty manly looking chick in a dress.”

  Tara laughed. “That’s the Sacred Androgyne, a perfect creature that unites the male and female.”

  “Hm. Hermaphrodites in Tarot. Who knew?”

  “The card is really about union of everything … men, beasts, the four elements.” Tara flipped over the card turned crosswise over it. “This card crosses the question. This represents the obstacles facing the subject of the reading.” The Five of Cups depicted a man staring somberly at spilled chalices of wine. “This is a card of regret. If there’s a single person or group behind these disappearances, I’d hazard a guess that there’s a great deal of regret or grappling with conscience going on.”

  “A guilty hermaphrodite, okay.” Harry fidgeted in his chair.

  “Harry …” she began.

  He raised his hands. “Okay, okay. I’m trying to learn.”

  She plucked up the card above the World. “This crowns the question, represents the subject’s highest aim.” She flipped it over, showed him the Lovers. “Before you make any jokes about hermaphroditic love, this card means more than that. It’s about fusion, union, trust. Could mean that whoever’s behind this is missing some feeling of belonging. Or he or she could literally be missing a lover.” Tara tried to ignore the possibility that her own feelings could be clouding the reading. “The subject may be afraid of being alone.”r />
  She put the card back on the table without meeting Harry’s eyes, and moved to the card below the World. “This card represents the foundation of the situation.” Tara picked up the card beneath the World. “This goes to underlying motivations, events in the past that are still reaching into the present and influencing the question.” The Tower showed two people falling from a structure hit by lightning. “The Tower is a card of catastrophe, of natural disasters, storms, and general destruction of an old way of life.” Tara’s fingers walked upward to the Lovers card. “In the Tower, we see the Lovers falling to earth. I’m guessing that whoever’s behind your disappearances may have experienced an estrangement in the past, one he or she is still trying to correct.

  “In this reading, we’re seeing three Major Arcana cards in a row: the Lovers, the World, and the Tower. It suggests that the past is strongly affecting the ambitions of the person who’s behind these disappearances.”

  “Especially since whoever’s doing this is dealing in old secrets.”

  “Good point.” Her fingers rested on the card to the right of the World. “This card is behind the questioner, representing the recent past. Here, we have the Nine of Swords. The crying woman sitting up in her bed with nine swords hanging over it represents sleeplessness, worry. Swords represent the element of air, ideas.”

  Tara turned over the last card in the Cross, to the left of the World. “This is the immediate future influence, the Emperor.” The card showed a severe man crowned with laurel leaves, sitting on a throne. “A man involved with the rule of law is going to become involved in the situation. Someone who embodies the Apollo-like ideals of reason.”

  Tara turned to the staff, the row of cards to the right of the Cross. She turned over the bottom card, and her mouth turned down. “This card symbolizes the questioner.” It showed Strength, a woman serenely closing the jaws of a lion. Crimson drops of blood welled over her collarbone, where the lion had clawed her. This was a card Tara had, in the past, drawn to represent herself. Her hands self-consciously flitted to her throat.

  “That’s me,” was all she said. “The next card shows the environment around the question.” She turned over a card showing a knight holding a golden disk with a star engraved on it. He gazed at it pensively. “This is the Knight of Pentacles. He’s a practical, methodical person. Well grounded. Pentacles are associated with the stable element of earth.”

  “Does this relate to our subject?”

  “Unlikely. This is a card I associate with you.” She said it matter-of-factly, but wondered if the admission made his skin crawl.

  “You have a card for me?”

  “Not intentionally. It just sort of happened, over time.” She plunged ahead to the next card up. “This represents the inner emotions of our subject, his secret wishes and fears.” The Nine of Wands showed a wounded warrior leaning on a staff. He seemed to be scanning the horizon for the next threat. Wands were associated with fire. “This is a card of obstacles and adversity. Vigilance is recommended.”

  She turned over the last card. “This is the outcome, the Eight of Cups. See the figure fleeing in the night from the treasure of the eight stacked cups? This means that your subject is fleeing. He might abandon the effort of his own accord, or he might simply be one step ahead of you.”

  “Great.”

  Tara rested her elbows on the tray table. “Overall, I’d say that you’re dealing with a person who’s out for revenge for past wrongs. Someone who’s survived a great deal of calamity—perhaps a natural disaster, maybe something like 9/11. Some event that really made an indelible mark on the world stage. Your subject is feeling isolated, and is searching for completion. That could be in a relationship, like a lost love, or it could be as part of an organization. Maybe a terrorist one. The Nine of Wands suggests to me that he knows how to wait, and the Eight of Cups tells me he knows when to run. The World, with the Sacred Androgyne, indicates he may be able to disguise himself, or at least that he’s well traveled. He may not be a U.S. citizen.

  “From a numerology standpoint, the presence of two eights—Strength is the eighth card in the Major Arcana, and we have the Eight of Cups—brings up the underlying theme of karma, of mastery. He’s doing what he’s doing because of something in the past, perhaps as retribution.

  “The two nines in the spread imply your subject has issues with completion and attainment. He feels incomplete, unworthy. That may be something you can use to bait him.”

  Tara trailed off, lost in thought. Her mind churned, seeking connections between these symbols and others in the physical world.

  “Damn,” Harry said, quietly.

  She blinked, looked at him. Her face flamed, and she instantly regretted sharing the experience with him. “What?”

  “The more I learn about how you think, the more I wonder …” He shook his head. “It’s like the rest of us see light in the visible spectrum, and you see infrared and ultraviolet.”

  Hearing the rattle of the refreshment cart coming, Tara scooped up her cards and stowed them in her purse. “Growing up, as an oracle, I never had to explain. And the rest of the time, I hid it … so … I realize it doesn’t make much sense.”

  Harry shook his head. “It doesn’t need to make sense to me. It just needs to work.”

  Tara stared at her ghostly reflection in the window. She hoped that she could do this for him. He’d never asked her for anything, and she’d do everything in her power not to let him down.

  Chapter Three

  SPECIAL PROJECTS was not as she’d remembered it.

  When Tara had been an agent, Special Projects had worked out of backrooms of nondescript office buildings in a dozen cities. Special Projects had kept a low profile then, making do with mismatched office furniture and scavenged equipment. SP HQ in Washington had been a redheaded bureaucratic stepchild, housed in the sub-subbasement of the Library of Congress in downtown Washington. The space had once been used for archives, but a pipe leak rendered it unusable for document storage. The place always smelled of mildew, and the supply cabinet was prone to pillaging by rogue librarians. Tara remembered being chased from the copy machine three floors up by an archivist wielding a heavy-duty stapler. He’d been a good shot, had dented the elevator door with the stapler he’d hurled at Tara’s head before she escaped.

  The building was familiar, the same one SP HQ had been in when she’d been an agent. There was more security at the door now; despite Harry’s creds, Tara had still been subjected to a full search and fingerprinting to get a temporary ID. She’d been impressed at the instant background check station behind the security desk, and with the screens showing surveillance camera footage from more than two dozen angles within the building.

  Standing in an elevator with Harry as it descended below street level, Tara adjusted the still-warm laminated badge on her lapel. “Do they still call Special Projects the ‘Little Shop of Horrors’?”

  Harry blinked. “No. I’ve never heard that.”

  Tara stared at her shoes. “Sorry. That’s what we called it when I worked here.”

  His face split open into a grin. “It fits.”

  “Are there still turf wars with the librarians?”

  “Yeah.” Harry sighed. “They stole our refrigerator a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Did you get even?”

  “Sort of. They didn’t realize that there was a severed head a forensics tech left in the fridge until they got it upstairs. We assembled a raiding party and took it back. In the process, we swiped a really sweet espresso machine.”

  Tara smothered a laugh with the back of her hand. “Some things never change.”

  The elevator doors opened to reveal a glass fishbowl, full of dark-suited fish swimming in blue light. Flat-screen computer monitors glowed on stainless steel desks, the hum of servers indistinguishable from the overhead fluorescent shop lights. Desks were clustered together like a newsroom bullpen. Glass partitions muffled sound and gave the illusion of privacy. Filched archi
val shelving lined the walls, stacked with evidence boxes. Cords had been duct-taped to the concrete floor to prevent tripping, and coffee was burning, somewhere. Underneath it all, Tara could still smell the old, pervasive scent of mildew.

  “You guys got some new toys,” Tara remarked.

  “Three cheers for the Homeland Security budget.” Harry jabbed a thumb at a glass-walled office. “Even paid for a sweet flat-screen TV for the boss to monitor the cable news.”

  “Who’s the new division chief?” The previous division chief had met a bad end. The official reports had said that he’d died in the performance of his duties, but Tara knew better.

  “Ron Aquila, from U.S. Marshals. You know him?”

  “No. Is he ex-Secret Service?”

  “Yeah. Seems okay, so far. A stand-up guy.” Harry pursed his mouth, and Tara reminded herself to ask Harry for more details, later.

  A short Hispanic man in the glass-walled office passed in front of the television, tapped on the glass, and beckoned to Harry.

  “Is that Aquila?”

  “Yeah. Come meet the boss.”

  Tara followed in Harry’s wake to the office, smoothing the front of her suit jacket. Returning to Special Projects made her nervous. It was like falling into an old pattern of the past all over again, one she’d tried to forget.

  Aquila circled around his desk to greet her. Tara noticed the desk did not match the steel and glass of the rest of the décor. It was an old, polished, wooden desk. Tara guessed it had come with him from Treasury. It suggested Aquila could be sentimental … or was simply intolerant of waste. It also suggested that he didn’t care much for what others thought, which was a good start.

  “Chief Aquila, this is Dr. Sheridan.” Harry made the introductions.

  Aquila shook Tara’s hand briskly. “I’ve read your work, Dr. Sheridan. I’m pleased that Agent Li brought you in to consult.”

  “It’s good to be back,” Tara lied. She bit back her mixed feelings about being thrust back into Special Projects’ work. She’d promised herself she’d be more cautious, this time.