“Right.”
The chorus leader turned back to Will. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys, tossing them through theair. Will caught them and gave the man a questioning look.
“This gentleman knows what you’re driving. So you’ll want to take my car. It’s next to the van outside, a rental, in my name.Take it wherever you need to go. I’ll cover the cost.”
Will looked at Leigh. She looked completely lost, like she had no idea what was happening. To be fair, neither did Will, notreally.
“Thank you,” Will said, looking back at the chorus director. “We’ll leave you the keys for ours, on the driver’s seat. Sellit, do whatever you want with it. We appreciate the help, more than you know.”
He looked at the silent chorus members, and the Celica man, and then down at the wig, hat, and sunglasses still clutched inhis hand.
“Why?” he asked.
The director blinked, surprised.
“Don’t you know? I mean, if you don’t know, then why did you come here, right now . . .”
“Just tell me,” Will said. “It was one of the warnings, right?”
“Yes. We were on tour, in Wisconsin. We tour a lot. The route we were taking would have had us on the Hoan Bridge in Milwaukeeright at the minute it collapsed. I mean, give or take, sure, but the odds were damn good. Only reason we weren’t is becauseyou told us it would fall. Way we see it”—here he gestured at the rest of the chorus—“you saved all our lives. Helping youout here seems like the least we can do.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Guess so.”
He turned and went to the exit, Leigh at his side.
“Please,” Celica man said as they passed, from within the ring of singers, “just one thing. Let me ask you just one thing.”
Outside, Will and Leigh gathered their belongings from the Town Car and transferred them to their new vehicle, a late-modellight blue Nissan sedan. Will left the Lincoln’s keys on its driver’s seat, then they got in the sedan and drove away, backto I-80 West.
That lasted for about two miles, until Leigh abruptly pulled over to the side of the expressway, slamming on the brakes andsliding to a stop. She looked at Will, her eyes wide, her face ashen.
“How?” she said. “How?”
Will nodded. He reached for the Oracle notebook and opened it, flipping to the front, to the fourth page. He ran his fingerdown the list of predictions, stopping about two-thirds of the way through. He held the notebook up for Leigh to read.
JULY 21, 11:07 A.M.—A MAN REVEALS HIMSELF IN A LAUNDROMAT.
Chapter 37
“So the Oracle’s in Ohio?” the president asked.
Daniel Green tapped the end of a pen against his desk, a dark, elaborately carved thing built from the timbers of the HMSResolute. Queen Victoria had presented the desk to the United States in 1880, and every president since Hayes had used it in the OvalOffice, with the notable exceptions of Johnson, Nixon, and Ford.
Anthony Leuchten, sitting in an armchair on the other side of the desk, knew the president hated the thing, but he was superstitiousenough not to want to be lumped in with the guys who hadn’t used it.
“Yes,” Leuchten said. “Or he was. The Coach is on it, though. We’ll know where he is, wherever he goes.”
“The Coach,” the president said, his tone sour. “Okay. What’s Mr. Dando doing?”
“Nothing, as far as we can tell. Just driving. No new predictions, nothing. He’s with the reporter.”
“Huh. Okay. Let’s keep our distance. We have a deal with the man, after all. What about the other two? The Sheikhs?”
“They’ve left the United States. Chartered a jet with an onboard medical suite, hired doctors, and flew on out.”
The president narrowed his eyes.
“We let them go?”
“We can’t hold them. They’re covered under the, ah, arrangement with the Oracle. They don’t seem to want to cause any trouble.Hamza Sheikh is focusing his energy on making sure Reverend Branson spends the rest of his life in prison. As for that, sir . . .it looks like the New York D.A.’s office is seriously considering issuing an indictment.”
Leuchten hesitated. Ever since the fiasco in Quantico, he’d felt wrong, like his instincts were on the fritz somehow. He couldstill see the strings, but he no longer felt like he could touch them, much less pull them.
For the first time in his life, he felt the allure of letting someone else make the important decisions.
“Should we intervene?” Leuchten said. “I know you and Branson are close. We could exert influence on his case. Behind thescenes, of course.”
The president frowned, his pen tapping out an irregular rhythm against his desk.
“No,” he said, the pen going still. “I warned that asshole to stay away from the Oracle. He deserves what he gets.
“Anything else?” Green said. “This has been a long day. The doctor will be here in about fifteen minutes, and I need a littlerecharge time.”
The president had asked for a daily cancer screening ever since the meeting with the Oracle, and it was taking its toll. Notthe physical invasion of the blood tests, but the wait for the results. So far, all negative, but one day they wouldn’t be,and the weight of that knowledge was pulling Green down, a little more each day. The price of the future.
“One last thing,” Leuchten said. “The situation in Central Asia. I have an update.”
“Qandustan?” the president asked. “I saw something about it in the security briefing this morning. It’s still developing,right?”
Leuchten nodded.
“Yes. I’ll briefly summarize for you, sir. We have a warlord—Törökul,” he said, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar pronunciation.“He’s the leader of a tribe, an ethnic minority that has a history of squabbling with anyone and everyone in the area overthe past several hundred years. He’s apparently managed to organize his people, and he’s come out from the hills with a smallarmy and invaded the capital—a place called Uth.
“It’s street-fighting. Ugly, bloody stuff. Törökul says he just wants control over a mosque with some historical significanceto his tribe, but based on what the CIA pulled together on this guy,
