16. Frost Angel
Katz and I joined Lurking Man outside the cafe’s barrier while Agent Clay paid the bill.
“This is Special Agent Jokl from the New York field office,” said Katz. “TJ, meet Doctor James Arklow. I’m calling him Arklow because he says Doctor’s only for respectable clients.”
‘TJ’ took my hand with a roundhouse smack-and-grab. He had blue eyes, an earnest face, fair hair that stuck up at the front, and a sort of bubbly exuberance that gave him the air of an overgrown kid. But the hardness of training was in his grip. I figured he was a few years older than Katz.
“Good to meet you …”
“Just TJ,” said TJ, grinning.
“… TJ. What’s your beat when you aren’t browsing at Ollie’s?”
Ollie’s was the bookstore across the street from my friend’s apartment. I kept my tone friendly. Better the FBI than Atomkrieg, sure, but I wasn’t thrilled about being watched.
TJ screwed up his face. “Oh man, you marked me. How far back?”
“A week.”
“Damn! Protection’s not my thing. Doesn’t help that everything’s out on the street now, you know? Can’t hide indoors anywhere.”
“Hiding indoors makes you pale,” said Katz.
“Okay, whose idea was staking me out?” I asked.
“Land’s,” said TJ. “Says you’re a ‘valuable asset’—way he talks. Wanted me and Victor—that’s my partner—to drop by sometimes and check for bad dudes.”
“But protection’s not your thing.”
“Daffy and Land are keeping this close to the vest.”
“Huh.”
“Meet my buddy Victor Lobo. Victor, James Arklow,”
It startled me to realize that Victor Lobo was standing near my shoulder. I hadn’t seen or heard him arrive.
Agent Lobo was shorter than Katz but thicker. Nondescript suit and no tie. His broad face was Hispanic, with a hint of something else in it—Asian, perhaps. When I shook hands, I peered into his face longer than was polite. The longer I stared, the more sure I became that I’d seen him before.
With the hand that wasn’t clasped in mine, he raised a paper bag. “Brought sandwiches,” he said, voice slow and soft.
Then it hit me. “You brought that takeout Mexican up to my place!”
Victor grinned.
The grin brought another shock of memory. “The burger, too! And the Indian food. You’re the—”
Victor’s grin broadened. “Yeah, you remember now—I was your doorman sometimes.”
It was true—yet I’d hardly noticed him.
“See,” said TJ, “Victor’s the one who’s good at that shit. If he doesn’t want to be noticed …” he finished by making a sliding movement with his hand.
I let go of Victor’s hand and didn’t comment. But it irked me more than being spied on. I was supposed to be good at noticing.
Agent Clay came out with a coffee in his paw. He handed it to me and flashed that blinding grin. “Agents … James … shall we?”
The Bureau car was a Ford Explorer, spacious enough that Special Agent Clay, seated in the back, had room for his legs. He’d insisted I take the front passenger seat. Agents TJ and Lobo were ahead of us in a tan Jeep Cherokee with two whip antennas on the roof.
Our destination was Cold Spring, a town an hour and change northward up the Hudson River valley. Just then, we were cruising along the FDR, between the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. Traffic wasn’t too bad. Katz looked like she could spare some attention.
“Seems you’ve known TJ a while,” I said, to get the ball rolling.
“Yeah, his folk and mine go way back. I’ve only got sisters, so he was my substitute big bro. He’s why I thought of applying to the FBI, though he tried to talk me out of it.”
She sounded less guarded now than she had two weeks back. Maybe I’d earned some trust. Maybe she was feeling less rattled.
“Hey, what’d TJ say against the Bureau?” asked Clay, from the back.
“That it recruits science and tech grads, then cages them and pays in chicken feed. He’s right about the pay, but I’ve avoided the cage—so far.” She glanced at me.
I figured it would be hard to keep Katz in a cage. I told her about the connection between Lem Barston and me.
*"*That’s *super-*interesting," said Katz.
I couldn’t tell from her response whether she’d already known. For sure, Land would have seen it.
She continued. “We charged Barston, but he isn’t talking. His lawyer wasn’t kidding about suing the Bureau.”
“Bucking for a plea bargain,” rumbled Clay.
“Anything useful from his social media channels?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Katz, glancing at me. “Frost Angel was there.”
“Frost Angel?”
“That’s what we’re calling whoever’s posting the pictures with the frost-like detail—like Lohman’s angel pictures. Daffy wanted ‘Jack Frost’, but Land talked him out of it.”
I smiled at that. “Frost Angel. Okay. And he, she, or it was posting pictures to Barston, too?”
“I’m getting there,” said Katz. “Unfortunately, we don’t know as much about Barston’s social media use as we do about Lohman’s. By the time we got a court order, somebody’d erased his laptop. We got into his phone, but he used a Tor Browser app for privacy. Plus, I lost access to Pythia while Daffy and Krome duked it out about me.”
“They’re both ambitious as hell,” grumbled Clay. “Two years ago, it was a three-way tussle between Daffy, Krome, and my SAC in Counterterrorism over who’d get to host Pythia field ops. Krome wanted field agents of his own, and Daffy wanted social threat monitoring in his department. In the end, Daffy got Pythia ops and poached Agent Land away from us. It pissed off my boss.”
Katz swiveled her head to glance back at Clay. “I didn’t know that!”
I was tiring of holding my breath. “You said you found something …” I reminded her.
“Yeah. Tech ops used Lohman’s angel pictures to train a Pythia to find pictures with that frost-on-glass effect. Then I had it scan the archives of all the alt right message boards. I got lots of hits—lots of those Frost Angel picture-messages.”
She’d said ‘a’ Pythia*,* like there was more than one. She’d said that before, too.
“We found some on a neo-Nazi site called Iron Storm, which Barston reads. The last of them arrived exactly three minutes after that photo of you did, and both the day before we met.”
Bingo.
“Could you read the picture-message?”
“Agent Clay did.”
“It was easy to read,” said Clay. “The picture was composed of a string of neo-Nazi code runes. Neo-Nazi codes aren’t about secrecy; they’re meant to create a sort of mystical, quasi-religious aura. Those guys take themselves seriously—know what I mean?”
“I’ve some idea.”
“The message went like this: Kristall Knights, heart-wounded, blood soaks the soil. Knight-commander Jason, heart-speared, snake-bitten, blood soaks the soil. Call vengeance upon Boethius, race-traitor, lover of Jews, lover of Blacks, lover of faggots. Blood and honor, call vengeance!”
In the expectant silence that followed, the hairs on my neck pricked and a shiver ran down my spine. My face got hot.
“The message said ‘Boethius’?” I asked. “You sure about that?”
“Yes, sir,” said Clay.
Boethius. That was the alias the FBI had given me while I helped them with the Kristall Knights operation. Boethius was supposed to be the only name for me in their files, so that nothing would ever, even accidentally, connect me to that work.
Katz was looking at me slant-eyed while she drove.
“Any chance you let that out?” asked Clay, quietly.
“No chance.”
“You know the implication,” said Katz, also quietly.
“That someone in the Bureau did,” murmured Clay.