Wildcard Page 7

  Osarseph had no such hopes for Octavian. A hardline Roman to his core, Octavian, if allowed to rule, would enforce Roman law—and, worse, Roman religion—throughout his reach. The prophesies had warned of a religion that would rise from Rome to dominate the world. Though by no means a superstitious man, Osarseph could feel in his bones the tingling of those prophecies emerging on this warm autumn morning.

  Antony had hoped for a land battle, his army against Octavian’s. Antony was the better general, and his nineteen legions were better trained and more experienced than Octavian’s largely home-guard force. Weeks before, he had sent his twelve thousand cavalry on a raid to cut off Octavian’s water supply and force his army into battle. The raid had come to naught, and the campaign had ground to a stalemate.

  A stalemate that had favored Octavian’s lies, for now Antony’s own troops were hearing rumors of a Roman general who had abandoned Rome for Egypt and a queen-sorceress who held him in thrall. Day by day, desertion and disease bled Antony’s once-proud legions. Finally he had been left with no choice but to meet Octavian in a sea battle. That battle was now proving why it had been Antony’s last resort. His fleet was simply no match for Octavian’s.

  “You must prepare to escape, my queen,” Osarseph said.

  Cleopatra—intelligent, charming, attractive despite her hooked nose, perhaps the most powerful woman the world had ever known—nodded slowly. “So it appears. Tell them to prepare my flagship, with sails at the ready.”

  She turned to Antony. “We must go, my love. There is nothing left here to be won. We will fight that man at another time, in another place.”

  Antony seemed poised to refuse, though in the end he gave the orders. “You get away first. If they catch you, Octavian will kill you. I will stay with my men until you are safely away.”

  “No,” she said. “We go together. As we have always gone. Together.”

  “I will permit no other course,” Antony said. “I must see to my men. Arrange for their withdrawal. Many have abandoned me, but I will not abandon those who have stayed by my side. They deserve my loyalty, as they give theirs.”

  Osarseph knew this was not a battle Cleopatra could or would win. Antony was a soldier to his soul, and he would not leave his men leaderless. “Come, my queen. Let us away, and quickly.”

  By the time they boarded her flagship, the captains had finalized the details of the breakout. Octavian’s ships, though greater in number, did not carry sails into battle. The excess weight merely slowed the oared vessels. But Antony and Cleopatra had insisted their captains be ready to raise sail. A freshening afternoon wind would be their deliverance.

  If only for today.

  Osarseph had no illusions that this was more than a temporary escape. Octavian would buy off Antony’s legions, then hunt the couple to the ends of the earth, if necessary, to secure his primacy in Rome. And with that would come the end of Egypt. The Guardians would return to the shadows, forced yet again to wait for the course of events to offer opportunity.

  The time would come. The prophesies guaranteed that. And with opportunity would come a new age for the world. Osarseph would not see that time. His grandsons, who were just now being groomed for the mysteries they would one day master, would not see that time. Instead, he and they would do what those who’d come before had done.

  Preserve the mysteries.

  Protect the Light.

  And wait.

  8

  Washington, D.C.

  Tom Lawton might have banged his head on the desk, if head-banging would have shaken loose the ideas that were lurking at the edges of his mind. But it would only give him a headache and clarify nothing.

  A review of the candidates’ political platforms had revealed only minor differences, which wasn’t surprising. Most of the Democratic candidates had the same stance on economic and social issues. The only real bone of contention was the situation in the Middle East, where Lawrence favored strengthening U.S. ties with Arab states, working with other nations to address human rights and economic issues, and hunting down terrorists covertly. Rice took a more direct approach, pushing for direct U.S. intervention in states that harbored terrorist camps, and driving what he called “the engine of democracy.”

  As Tom saw it, reasonable arguments could be made on both sides, and when push came to shove, their positions had more common ground than differences. It didn’t seem like the kind of issue that would motivate an assassination.

  Back to the quarter million bucks. Reaching for the mouse, he began a deep background check on the members of Dixon’s militia, hoping he would find something he had overlooked earlier.

  It was possible he needed to look back further than the last few years. Certainly there was nothing in the last three years that made any of Dixon’s cohorts sound alarming. Nobody in the area had filed any reports about them with the police. A brief look at them by the FBI office in Boise had resulted in nothing of interest. The investigation had been terminated after only three days for lack of anything worth pursuing. It seemed they were just a bunch of good ol’ boys who liked to play army on weekends when the weather wasn’t too bad and their various businesses allowed them time off.

  In fact, probably the most interesting thing about them was that they were all upstanding members of their communities. Two owned ranches, another sold real estate, a fourth owned an insurance agency and the fifth was a district manager for a lumber company.

  This whole militia gig, on the face of it, sounded more like rich boys playing soldier to massage their male egos. Except for Dixon, the should-have-been general. And a quarter million bucks.

  Only when he looked deeper did an odd pattern emerge. None of these men were Idaho natives. In fact, while they had all moved to the area at different times over the last ten years, they had all sprung from places like Boston, New York, Philadelphia.

  Curious, he looked up their parents and felt his hackles quiver even more. There was a congressman. A senator, a banker… Hell, all these men were blue bloods. They came from the kinds of families that produced successive generations of bankers, lawyers and politicians…not wanna-be soldiers who ran around the Idaho mountains with assault weapons.

  Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe Dixon had known some of them in his former life, and they’d each decided at one time or another that life in Idaho was better than life on the East Coast. More pristine. Quieter. Cleaner.

  Hell, it sounded good to Tom as he sat there staring bleary-eyed at a computer screen. A little mountain hideaway. Nothing but pine trees for miles. The silence of snow-muffled woods. Yeah, it would be a wonderful sort of lifestyle.

  Tom’s head was throbbing now, and he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. None of this was making sense. Five guys decide they want a quieter life? Sure. That they come together in a sort of militia? Possible. Why not? These days, people all over the country owned weapons and practiced military techniques, especially since 9/11. And most of them weren’t nuts. They were just afraid.

  And he was trying to nail spaghetti to a wall, simply because he was too stubborn to accept that he’d been sidelined and told to waste his time. Cripes, he ought to be punching out every day at four and playing racquetball or something. He’d been set loose to bark up the wrong tree. Right?

  Maybe. God, he was beginning to hate that word: maybe.

  The phone on his desk shrilled, and for a moment he wondered where he was. Slowly reconnecting to reality, he realized he’d dozed off in his chair. The clock on the wall said it was 7:45 a.m., and already he could hear stirrings in the outer offices.

  Shaking his head, he reached for the phone.

  “You will be taken off this case,” a woman’s voice said. She had a European accent. French? German?

  “What?” Tom asked. “Who is this?”

  “I will call you later. Look him in the eyes.”

  The woman hung up, and for a moment Tom wondered if he had dreamed the conversation. It made no sense. Why would he be taken off a ca
se when he was already so far on the fringe that he might as well be reading cereal boxes? And how would someone know what was about to happen with the FBI’s handling of agent assignments?

  He shook his head again and rubbed a hand over his face. A day’s worth of stubble had emerged on his chin, and his eyes felt as if they were coated with sandpaper. He dug into his desk and found the portable shaving kit he kept there for such occasions, then made his way to the rest room, trying to avoid eye contact with the freshly groomed, prim-and-proper agents who were just arriving.

  After shaving and washing his face, he at least felt closer to human. He was headed back to his office when he ran into Kevin Willis.

  “Tom,” Willis said, studying him closely. “What’d you do, stay here all night?”

  Tom nodded. “Running down the meaning of nothingness, in proper FBI fashion.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Well, I want to see you and Miriam when she gets here. We’ll go over what you have and see if it’s worth pursuing.”

  Tom heard the echoes of the phone call in Kevin’s words. He fought the anger rising within him. “Sure. No problem.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Kevin said.

  Then, before he could get suspended again, Tom went back to his desk and ordered up a background investigation on all the Secret Service agents who had been guarding Grant Lawrence, including known family and friends.

  An hour later, they had just finished briefing Kevin on their progress. Or, as their boss seemed to see it, the lack thereof. Willis had dismissed the Idaho connection with a wave of his hand.

  “It’s not case-related,” he said. “If it’s an illegal loan, it’s the IRS or FDIC’s problem. We can ship the file over to them, and if they decide it’s an issue, they’ll ask for one of our bean counters to pry open the can. But there’s no connection to the Lawrence shooting, apart from the fact that this guy Dixon married a woman whose brother was a college fraternity buddy of Harrison Rice’s. And that’s just not good enough.”

  Tom studied Kevin’s eyes and took a breath as he listened. A warning glance from Miriam said she had sized up her mentor and knew this was nonnegotiable. He nodded. “Okay. You’re right. It’s very thin.”

  “It’s invisible,” Willis said. “So what else have you found?”

  “Not a thing,” Miriam said, heading Tom off. “We’ve run through the usual collection of crazies. Yeah, a lot of people didn’t like Lawrence. I’m told he received over two dozen death threats, and the Secret Service is running those down. But the names don’t correlate to anyone in our watch-files. And I haven’t found anything to indicate that the people in our watch-files have done anything unusual in the past couple of months. We could be missing something, but if so, I’ve no idea where it is.”

  Willis paused for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Good job, both of you. Write up a report on this angle and have it for me by five, okay? It’ll be appended to the rest of the investigation, once that’s complete. And our asses are officially covered. No stone unturned and all that.”

  “That’s it?” Miriam asked.

  Willis shrugged. “I don’t see where there’s anything left to chase down. You’ve hit dead ends, except for Tom’s possible tax and banking violations. And like I said, that’s up to the IRS and FDIC to decide whether to investigate.”

  He flipped through a file on his desk for a moment, then looked up at Tom. “I’m also going to note that you did outstanding work, Agent Lawton. I don’t know if it’ll be enough to pull you off suspension for good, but I’ll do my best. We both know what happened in L.A. was a one-time thing. High stress. Operation goes sour. Heat of the moment. I can’t fault you as an agent, and I think you’re an asset to the Bureau.”

  Tom suppressed an instinctive curl of his lip. “What you’re saying is, I go back home and learn to like Jerry Springer.”

  “For a few more days, at least,” Willis said. “It’s hands down on this case.”

  “And me?” Miriam asked.

  Willis handed her the file. “You’re off to Guatemala. We’ve negotiated a deal with the government there to have our people involved in their investigation of the murder of our ambassador. Advice and counsel.”

  “I don’t speak Spanish,” Miriam said. “Don’t we have a bilingual agent we can send?”

  “We usually send someone from the Miami or Tampa offices, but right now we can’t,” Willis said, shaking his head. “I tried. Those that aren’t working the Lawrence case are on drug cases and Hispanic street crime have been sent over to INS to run down illegal immigration cases. Homeland security run amok. Besides, you have people skills. That’s important when you’re going to be looking over their shoulders.”

  “When do I leave?” she asked.

  He handed her a ticket. “Eight tomorrow morning. Sorry for the short notice. The deal just came through, and we want someone there while the trail is still warm enough to bother.”

  “Gotcha,” Miriam said, rising.

  “Good work, again,” Willis said as they reached the door. “I know it sounds glib, but you probably saved us a whole lot of PR headaches down the road.”

  So that was it, Tom thought, returning to his desk to box up the files. They’d saved the Bureau some PR face. Big, fat, hairy, fucking deal.

  “I hear Guatemala is pretty in the springtime,” he said to Miriam. “Nice vacation for you.”

  “C’mon, Tom,” she said. “We were chasing shadows and we knew it. What did you expect him to do? Put an agent on suspension and another who knew the victim personally in the middle of a high-profile investigation? It’s the way it had to be.”

  “I’d still like to run that money down,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It’s hands down, remember? Let it go. It’s not our job anymore.”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “I’m going home to pack.”

  He nodded. “I’ll finish boxing this stuff up and get it shipped back to the file mavens. See you tonight.”

  She nodded and left. Four minutes later, his phone rang. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he knew who it was before he answered.

  “Special Agent Anson is off to Guatemala,” the woman said. “And you are back on vacation.”

  “Suspension,” he said. “Not vacation.”

  “True. I’m sorry. And Kevin Willis never told you that he went to West Point, did he? Or that he and Wesley Dixon were classmates?”

  “What?” Tom asked, suddenly sitting forward, the hair on his neck rising. “How did you—”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” she said. “And you’re not going to find it out there. You’ll need to come out here. To Idaho.”

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “There will be a ticket waiting for you at the Delta counter at Dulles Airport. Tomorrow afternoon. The flight leaves at 2:15 p.m. I’ll meet you in Boise.”

  “Why should I…who…what the hell is this?”

  “A mess,” she said, her accent weighting the words. “A far bigger mess than you know.” She paused. “But before you leave, wait for the reports on the Secret Service protection team.”

  Then, with a click, she was gone.

  Languedoc, France

  81 A.D.

  Marie sat on the wooden bench her grandson had built for her and enjoyed the sunshine of the warm spring day. Her modest home, built of native stone, was surrounded by others like it. Her community.

  Sometimes she found it hard to believe that as a young woman with a young daughter she had found the courage to come to this outer bastion of the Roman Empire for no other purpose than to bring the Word. They had been safe in Egypt; there had been no other reason to come this far.

  Sometimes she found it equally difficult to believe how many disciples she, a mere woman, had found here. They surrounded her now like a loving family, caring for her needs as she aged. Wouldn’t Simon Peter be surprised?

  The thought made a little chuckle come to her lips, though she k
new it wasn’t quite charitable. Simon Peter had always resented that she was accorded as much respect as he, and at times more respect, as an apostle. It was during a bitter outburst after the crucifixion that Marie had known she must leave.

  She had done her duty and had spread the Word. And her daughter, Sara, had done as much and more, once she’d achieved adulthood.

  Marie hoped He would think they had tended the vineyard well.

  But her grandson…her heart quailed a little as she thought of him, now a man almost as old as her Lord when He had undertaken his ministry.

  Marie had always believed their work would continue here in the south of Gaul, near the warm waters of the Mediterranean. But for some time her grandson had been speaking of setting forth on a new ministry, to lands even farther away.

  She knew it was selfish of her to wish he would remain, selfish to shed even a private tear that she would never see him again. He was determined. He would go. And she must once again bear the terrible rending of her heart at the loss of a loved one.

  She ought to be proud of him and his desire to spread the teaching. She ought to give thanks to God that her daughter’s son had grown so brave and true to the faith.

  But inside, a quiet yet resentful voice questioned, Lord, haven’t I already given enough?

  Bowing her head, she awaited her grandson’s arrival. Awaited the words she knew in her heart he was going to say. Awaited yet again a final farewell.

  9

  Boise, Idaho

  Tom tried to remember the last time he’d been in the northern Rockies. It had been a lifetime ago, when his family had packed up the car for the trip to Yellowstone. He had just turned ten, and he recalled being awed by the huge expanse of blue sky that gave the region its nickname. Old Faithful had been a pungent, overcrowded surprise that he remembered mostly for having reeked of sulfur. In fact, the smell of sulfur was what he remembered most about that whole vacation.