“They won’t find him,” Caleb said.
“We’ll have a dossier on the guy in an hour, everything from his favorite TV shows to how often he wet the bed as a kid. We’ve got his picture at all the airports, borders, etc. Anything he does, down to the color of socks he wears, we’ll know.”
“That’ll help,” Orlando said, “if we ever get our laundry mixed up with this nut, but my guess is that if he doesn’t want to be found, then the only chance of finding him is our way.”
“And,” said Phoebe, “we tried to find him for years after he left our group. And sorry, but we had better tools than you, and we couldn’t even get a glimpse. It’s like he was a ghost.”
“Or he had some help,” said Caleb.
“What do you mean?” Renée asked.
“Never mind. It’s just a thought. There may be things, or people, who are able to block what we can do, where we can see. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about it, but I thought that it was more like an excuse for failure. But maybe there’s something to it.”
“Anyway,” Phoebe cut in, “come on, Agent Wagner. Try it. You might have a knack for it. We’ve had successes with the most skeptical of volunteers.”
Renée sipped her coffee. “I don’t think I’ll have any—”
“That’s okay,” Caleb said, his voice wracked with suffering and pain just below the surface. “It’s fine if nothing happens. We normally work as a team, but our team, well, I’m sure you know all about what happened in Antarctica.”
“I know what was on the report, but as far as exactly what the hell happened down there I have no idea. Forgive me for asking this bluntly, but what are you people caught up in?”
“Just research,” Orlando said, hands raised defensively.
Caleb started to answer, but Renée was quicker. “And does ‘just research’ involve globe-trotting adventures into booby-trapped tombs, underwater shipwrecks and other Indiana-Jones-type shenanigans?”
Phoebe and Orlando grinned in spite of themselves and said at almost the same time: “Sometimes.”
Twenty minutes later they were drawing. Caleb had given them instructions, what he felt were vague enough so as not to lead anybody, but also give enough direction to focus them on where he thought Xavier might be.
I hope I’m wrong, he thought, after having them visualize Alexander, where he was now, and where he was headed. To focus on the destination, a place with a tomb.
That was all. To say any more might influence the process too much. What he had given them was enough.
He trusted Orlando and Phoebe, the best of the Morpheus Initiative members, to come up with the right answer, to remote view their destination and confirm his thinking. But for himself, he would attempt a different visionary destination. If he could, if it was at all possible. He was going to focus on Xavier himself. On Montross, the man, the psychic. The FBI might have their methods, but Caleb needed something more direct.
He needed a first-hand experience, a psychic get-to-know-you of his adversary. His wife’s murderer, his child’s abductor.
He wanted to see the man he was going to kill.
Phoebe finished her sketch first, then stared at it before turning her attention to her brother. Caleb was in a meditative pose, hands on his knees, eyes closed, brow furrowed in frustration. Orlando was drawing on his iPad, shading in what looked like a pillared structure on a hill.
“I still get weirded out,” she said, turning her sketch pad his way, “when we have the same damn visions.”
“Copycat,” Orlando said with a smirk.
Renée looked over from the other side of the table. “So, is this what it’s like?”
“More or less,” said Orlando. “Though usually we have a few more people here, and we can cross-reference details and see what elements get the most hits.”
Renée turned her pad around. “See, I don’t have any talent. I drew some kind of horse and buggy thing.” On her pad was a crude sketch of two horses pulling a cart with two people inside. “Guess my mind was just wandering, but that’s all I saw.”
“Interesting,” Phoebe noted. “You drew crowns on their heads.”
“I knew it.”
Phoebe looked up. Her brother’s eyes were open, with failure written over his face. But he managed a smile as he looked over Renée’s drawing. “She does have some talent.”
Renée stood up, backing away, still looking at her horses. “What are you talking about? I—”
Suddenly her cell phone rang. “Hang on, just a second.”
She put her ear to the iPhone. “Yeah, what do you got? Okay, I see. Hang on, I’ll call you back, we may have something here that can confirm that.”
She hung up. “NSA traced a coded satellite phone call from Antarctica shortly after the explosion at Fort Erickson. They couldn’t get much after decoding the call, but they confirmed a man’s voice — that of your very own Xavier Montross.”
“Did they get anything else?” Phoebe asked.
“Only a name. He was telling someone where to meet.” Renée looked at them steadily. “‘St. Peter’s’ was all they got.”
Caleb thought for a moment, nodding to himself. Then he pointed to Orlando. “We could do an online photo search match in various databases, comparing those drawings with other pictures, but it would take far too long. Adding the detail of the ‘horse and cart’ would help, but again, we don’t have the time. Orlando, just go to good old Wikipedia.”
“Cop-out,” Orlando said as he opened the tablet and used the keyboard.
“Look up ‘Mausoleum.’”
“Where is this going?” Renée asked, her face showing complete confusion.
Phoebe chuckled, shaking her head. “Don’t worry, you get used to Caleb’s roundabout way of getting us all to confirm what he already knows.” She moved back, then whispered to Caleb, “What’s wrong? Didn’t you get anything?”
Keeping his voice low, he said, “I couldn’t even bring about the start of anything. Something’s wrong.” His eyes were bloodshot, his face pale. Lowering his voice still further, he added, “I tried to see Xavier, went at it a couple different ways, with different questions, all focused. I should have seen something, but not a damn thing came up. Just a flickering green haze around a center of darkness.”
Phoebe frowned. “Do you think you’re being blocked? Maybe by the tablet?”
“Maybe, but I fear it’s something worse.”
“What’s worse?”
“Remember when we were kids? Remember Dad? What happened after he was gone, after I thought maybe it was my fault we couldn’t save him?”
“Yeah,” Phoebe said. “Your visions, they didn’t come again for years.”
Caleb sighed. “I need to try again. With a different target, something besides Xavier. Something I should be able to see. If I can’t,”—he met her stare, and she nearly cried seeing the loss, the guilt, so familiar, bubbling inside of his expression—“if I still can’t, then it’s her. It’s Lydia. I killed her, and this is my penance.”
“No, Caleb.”
Orlando cleared his throat, interrupting and bringing them back to the moment. “Ah, this is what he’s talking about.” He turned the screen so the others could all crowd around and see it. “Mausoleum. The word derives from the tomb of King Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria, whose large tomb, completed in 350 BCE, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And there’s a picture.”
Renée bent forward to stare at it. “It’s almost the same as what you’ve both drawn.”
They looked at the photo Orlando just enlarged: a huge structure set on a hill overlooking a bayside city, with it had a pyramidal step structure on top of a larger base and two more tiers surrounded by immense white columns and statues.