make this right. He’d wanted to tell Liza about himself for the longest time, but had never been able to muster up the courage to do it. Now, he wondered if it was too late. A voice came out of the phone, and he raised it to his face.
“Hello?”
“You are one hard man to track down,” Garrison said. “I’ve got a big problem, and I need your help.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Wolfe isn’t who we thought he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to talk about this over the phone,” the FBI agent said. “I’ll come by your place in ten minutes. Be outside on the curb waiting for me. I’ll explain everything then.”
Peter wasn’t ready for this. He needed to find Liza, and talk things out with her. His personal life had taken enough hits in the past few days, and couldn’t take much more.
“Hold on a second,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on. I have a life, you know.”
“The city is still in danger,” Garrison said.
Peter heard his own sharp intake of breath. He glanced at the window, and saw the rain coming down hard outside. The storm had returned with a vengeance.
“See you in ten,” he said.
46
Peter threw on some clothes, grabbed an umbrella, and went outside his brownstone to wait for the FBI agent’s arrival. His heart was pumping furiously, the images of the Friday night seance still fresh in his mind. Cars burning, people dropping like flies, and Wolfe standing in the middle of it like the Grim Reaper, assessing the carnage. That was the threat he’d seen during his journey to the other side; now that Wolfe was dead, the threat should have passed as well. For Garrison to be telling him otherwise made him shiver uncontrollably.
If there was one constant in his life, it was his ability to predict the future. He’d never been wrong, and could not understand how he’d called this one so badly. He glanced at his watch. “Come on,” he said impatiently.
Garrison pulled up in his Lincoln, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Peter went around to the passenger side and jumped in. The car took off before his door was closed.
“How can the city still be in danger?” Peter asked.
“There’s an envelope on the backseat you need to see,” Garrison said. “Take a look at what’s inside. Then I’ll explain.”
Peter retrieved a manila envelope off the rear seat, and dumped its contents onto his lap. Out fell a man’s wallet, passport, an ancient Zippo lighter, and some loose change. The wallet and passport were darkly stained, and he realized they were covered in dried blood.
“Are these Wolfe’s?” Peter asked.
“They are,” Garrison replied. “The police found them on his body last night. I decided to take a hard look at them, in the hopes I might discover how Wolfe was planning to launch his attack on the city. The wallet contained a plastic hotel-room key. We’re trying to track the location right now. There’s also a snapshot of a woman named Rita Tomavich, who’s an assassin for the Israeli government. We’re looking for her, too. The thing that caught my eye was the passport. Open it up.”
Peter flipped through the passport. Wolfe was well traveled, and the pages were filled with colorful stamps from a variety of foreign countries, including Spain, the Philippines, a number of countries in Africa, and Saudi Arabia. Wolfe had murdered three psychics in the Saudi city of Riyadh a few days before an attack on the city, and Peter wondered if that played into this.
“Is this the problem?” Peter asked, pointing at the stamps from Saudi Arabia.
“Very good,” Garrison said. “How did you know?”
“I guessed.”
“You’re a hell of a guesser. Look at the dates when Wolfe arrived and departed from the Riyadh airport. They’re next to the stamps.”
The dates were printed in tiny letters, and Peter had to stare. “Let’s see. It says here that Wolfe arrived in Riyadh on November third, and left on November seventh. Is that significant?”
“Yes. Want to take a stab at it?”
Garrison was making a game out of it, although not in a playful way. Peter thought hard, and finally gave up.
“I don’t have a clue. What does it mean?”
“The attack on the oil pipeline in Riyadh took place on November ninth,” Garrison said. “Wolfe was long gone before it took place.”
“Maybe he slipped back into the country, and carried out the attack.”
“Not likely. Flip the page.”
Peter did as instructed. The next page contained a pair of colorful stamps for Rio de Janeiro. Wolfe had arrived in Rio on November ninth, and left on November fourteenth. Wolfe had been on the other side of the world when the attack in Riyadh took place.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Peter said.
Traffic ground to a halt. Garrison threw the car into park, and turned in his seat. “My theory about Wolfe was that he killed three psychics in Riyadh, and then carried out an attack on the oil pipeline. That theory isn’t valid anymore. Someone else attacked that pipeline.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.”
“Maybe this is a mistake, and the dates on the stamps are wrong. Have you considered that?” Peter asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“And?”
“I struck out. I stayed up last night checking all the other cities stamped in Wolfe’s passport. In every one, prominent psychics were murdered during his time there, just like in Riyadh, and just like here. Wolfe was sent to those cities to murder psychics. And in every city, a horrible attack of some kind took place a few days after he departed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Damn sure. Wolfe had nothing to do with the attacks in those cities, and wasn’t going to conduct an attack on New York. Someone else was. The fact that Wolfe is dead doesn’t mean the threat is over.”
“But I already looked into the future,” Peter said. “Wolfe was the one.”
“The spirits gave you bad information,” Garrison said. “Ask them again.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“The spirits tell you what they want, and that’s it. There are no refunds.”
The line of cars in front of them inched ahead. Garrison threw the Lincoln into drive, and the vehicle lurched forward. The veins were popping on the side of his forehead. He looked like a man ready to lose control. He took a right at the next intersection, and Peter realized he was circling back to the brownstone.
“Head south,” Peter said.
“Why should I do that?” the FBI agent asked through clenched teeth.
“Because I’m going to help you figure this thing out.”
“How? You just said the spirits wouldn’t help.”
“No, but I can.”
“How do you plan on doing that?”
He’d told Garrison more about himself than he would have liked, but was never going to tell him about the demon. The men who ran the Order of Astrum had the same demon inside of them. In that regard, their powers were no greater than his. Peter suspected that if he put his mind to it, he’d be able to figure out what they were up
