All the Colors of Night (Fogg Lake #2)(13)

A patient had escaped.





CHAPTER 6


Here’s what we know.” Victor pushed himself up out of the big leather desk chair and crossed the paneled office to the windows that looked down several stories to the fantasyland of the Strip. “As I told you on the phone, late yesterday afternoon Chandler visited a shop in Seattle called Swan Antiques. Over the years the Foundation has done a fair amount of business with Gwendolyn Swan, the owner. She’s got a feel for artifacts with a paranormal vibe.”

That was high praise coming from Victor Arganbright, North thought. He and Victor were not related by blood, but the Chastains and the Arganbrights had been close for three generations. The Arganbrights had always refused to believe that Griffin Chastain had betrayed his country and sold the secrets of the Bluestone Project. Like North and his father, they were convinced Griffin had been murdered because of his research work, but no one knew exactly what that research had involved. Left unspoken was the grim speculation that Griffin might have been working on paranormal weaponry. The one thing they knew for certain was that when Griffin had been recruited into the Bluestone Project he had been assigned a research partner—Crocker Rancourt.

In the wake of the destruction of the Bluestone Project, the Foundation had been established. Crocker Rancourt had been the first director. After his death, control of the organization had been passed down to his son, Stenson Rancourt, who in turn had planned to hand things off to his son, Harlan.

While in charge, the Rancourt family had run the Foundation as if it were their own private money-making fiefdom. They had ruled it like a mob family. That had come to a screeching halt five years earlier when Victor Arganbright and Lucas Pine had staged an internal coup that was most charitably characterized as a hostile takeover. Stenson Rancourt had died in a mysterious explosion. His body had been found in the wreckage. His son, Harlan, was presumed to have died in the fire as well, but his body had not been found.

Victor was in his early fifties. He had the bold profile and the amber eyes that were typical of the Arganbright men. He was a driven man, a man with a self-imposed mission. He was convinced the Foundation and, quite possibly, the nation faced a grave threat from the past. He feared the secrets of the old Bluestone Project were rising from the grave. Of all the mysteries connected to Bluestone, the secret lab code-named Vortex represented the greatest danger.

The problem for Victor was that Vortex and the other lost labs had been involved in clandestine research into the paranormal, a subject that was no longer taken seriously by reputable researchers, academic institutions or governments. Politicians and career military personnel ignored the subject for fear of being laughed out of their jobs. Admitting to a belief in the paranormal was a good way to terminate a career.

With the sole exception of the tiny, woefully underfunded Agency for the Investigation of Atypical Phenomena—a one-desk (currently unstaffed) operation buried deep in the basement of a building somewhere in Washington, DC—the US government had officially abandoned paranormal research in the latter half of the previous century. For all intents and purposes, the Foundation was on its own.

“You think Dad was attacked because of whatever it was he bought at Swan Antiques,” North said.

Victor hesitated. The energy in the atmosphere around him got a little more intense. “I don’t have any proof, but the timing makes me suspicious. If Chandler discovered a valuable artifact in the shop, it’s possible a raider followed him back to the hotel, attacked him and stole the object.”

“Hard to believe a raider would take the risk of assaulting someone directly affiliated with the Foundation,” North said. “They usually go out of their way to avoid getting on your psi-dar. The last thing a low-level operator wants is to become the target of a cleaner team.”

Raiders worked in the shadows of the paranormal trade. Most were small-time con artists who made a living selling fraudulent artifacts to gullible collectors. The more adventurous ones engaged in burglary and theft. For the most part they were opportunists who worked alone or with a partner. There were, however, a handful of more sophisticated rings run by smart, ruthless leaders. But even the big outfits usually took care to steer clear of the Foundation.

Victor turned around and began to prowl the large room. He paused from time to time to contemplate one of the myriad paintings that covered the walls. More paintings, framed and unframed, were stacked on the floor. Some of the art that littered the space was valuable; some was not. Some was old. Some was new.

Victor didn’t collect the pictures because he expected them to increase in value. He had picked them up over the years because he was obsessed with the subject matter. Each was a depiction of the Oracle of Delphi.

In most of the pictures the Oracle was shown in the traditional pose, draped in robes and seated on a three-legged stool that straddled a crack in the floor of a cavern. In that position she inhaled the vapors that wafted up through the opening, went into a trance and delivered prophecies. There had been a fee, of course, but it was up to the client to interpret the cryptic prophecies.

The Oracle had been an extremely popular attraction for the ancient city of Delphi and a source of great revenue. North figured the operation had probably worked a lot like modern-day Las Vegas. You paid your money and you took your chances.

“It’s possible we’re dealing with a new, unidentified raider crew,” Victor mused. “But it doesn’t have that feel.”