The Occurrence

  Advance Praise for

  The Occurrence

  “In The Occurrence, Desiderio delivers a haunting political thriller that stayed with me long after I turned the last page.”

  —LeVar Burton

  “An intelligent and captivating thriller. The Occurrence takes a true-to-life terrorist plot and then twists the story, forcing a reexamination of the reader’s faith. I dare you to read this and not come away with a different perspective on all that’s happening in the world today. A must-read!”

  —Chris Goff, Award-winning author of Dark Waters and Red Sky

  “A rare gem. Desiderio takes readers on an unforgettable journey where the past and present collide at the very heart of human existence. Flawed, compelling characters and a brilliantly fresh premise make The Occurrence a book that will stay with you long after the final page. Sharp, sage, sensational.”

  —K.J. Howe, International Bestselling Author of Skyjack

  A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

  The Occurrence:

  A Political Thriller

  © 2020 by Robert Desiderio

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-64293-300-0

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-301-7

  Cover art by Cody Corcoran

  Cover photo “Take Me with You” by Hammad Iqbal

  Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are

  the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  Post Hill Press

  New York • Nashville

  posthillpress.com

  Published in the United States of America

  For Judith

  A heart and soul of infinite space and love.

  Then. Now. And Always.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE: Up From Buried Light

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  PART TWO: Re-Entry

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART THREE: Convergence

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  PART FOUR: Surrender

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  PART FIVE: The Tablets

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  PART SIX: The Trial

  66

  67

  68

  PART SEVEN: The Cave of Memory

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  PART EIGHT: Guardians

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

  93

  94

  PART NINE: Into Buried Light

  95

  96

  97

  98

  99

  100

  101

  102

  103

  Acknowledgments

  PART ONE

  Up From

  Buried Light

  1

  Wednesday, September 9

  The desert wasn’t the only vast space of loneliness Dominique Valen had traveled—there was the space inside her, the longing to fill the emptiness she had as far back as she could remember. She knew there was more than her insular and hyper-focused world, but she could never shake, and never wanted to shake, the pull of foreign lands and their danger. She knew she was addicted to the adrenaline rush of being close to death. She also knew she was running away from something—from the truth of who she was, for she could never shake the opposite experience either—where she’d imagined herself belonging to a tribe. She’d dreamed of living among nomads in deserts with abilities to heal. It was a rich fantasy life. And while she believed it was a child’s fantasy, she believed there was a deeper truth in it. That’s why she was here, for almost two years now, sitting in her usual place by the metal-shuttered windows, inside the never-closed American Bar in the Green Zone, Mosul, Iraq, waiting to make her next move—either closer toward death or a healing—to end the loneliness.

  That’s when the scent of roses drifted in with the morning sun and shocked her from her reverie.

  Dominique first smelled roses that weren’t there when she was a child. Tuberculosis had brought her close to death when she was three years old in Pittsburgh. But she knew her soul wasn’t ready to leave and knew she would survive—because she smelled roses.

  Dominique knew the scent of roses was the presence of God. For whenever she’d been in danger it had come to her and she knew she’d be protected. It was something she’d never told anyone, because she believed she didn’t deserve it. That the roses came to her now, deepened her awareness and heightened the buzz that danger was closer than it had been since she’d first set foot in this land. It also reminded her that what had almost taken her life, as a child, had branded her with wanderlust and daring, and birthed in her the courage to use her pen as a fearless sword to speak truth to power. That was a confidence hard to shake. So was the fact that she believed she was a fraud. But now, at thirty-three, and as comfortable on a fashion runway as in a foxhole, she was one of the most magnetic and respected journalists in the world. So, she must’ve been doing something right all these years. Her life had been a pinball machine, blasting from one corner of the world, and her mind, to the other. Writing and alcohol helped ease the paradox. And the pain.

  She’d just sent her latest piece to The Washington Post and ordered a vodka tonic in a martini glass to celebrate. She knew the American military didn’t appreciate getting raked over her Pulitzer-Prized, journalistic coals, but that had never stopped her from telling the truth. Those coals also inflamed the White House when she began reporting they needed to take ISIS’s new leader, Abd al Hashim, as serious as fucking plague. His education and innate acumen to manipulate people and situations was just the tip of his violent extremism. They’d made the same miscalculation with bin Laden in the beginning, funding him against the Russians, thinking they could control him. Did they want to lose the war and their soul with this guy?

  She leaned her elbows on the table, the bartender mixing her drink, just as Julian Ledge pushed open the steel bar doors. He strode toward her, past the white plastic tables filled with Green Zone archetypes: broad-shouldered security contractors with dates in tight tops and high heels, a handful of diplomats in blazers, a construction worke
r wearing a fishing vest that read Baghdaddy.

  Julian’s rough, handsome face lit with an infectious smile when he saw Dominique. But she knew the ravages of battle had scarred him, and coarsened a heart struggling to reach out. Still, she had affection for him; affection she never could articulate from her isolated realm. But she trembled with the thought that those walls were about to come down.

  The bartender—a burned-out local—placed Dominique’s vodka tonic on the Trust Me, I Love Iraq coaster in front of her.

  Julian eyed the martini glass. “Just sent your piece to the Post, huh?”

  Dominique managed a bitter-sweet smile and sipped the drink while the bartender handed Julian his regular—a bottle of Sanabel Lager.

  “I heard about your brother and the other journalists,” Julian said.

  She’d been at the thin line that separated life from death so many times, she fought against becoming hardened down to someone she didn’t recognize. But that protective shell couldn’t hold back her anger.

  “We all know the fucking risks.”

  “That’s pretty hard.”

  “I don’t need a humanity lesson,” she said, her fist tensed. “He was one of ten journalists Hashim slaughtered.”

  “So. You have no plans to leave here, I suspect.”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “We’re each here for our own reasons,” Julian said, and raised the bottle of lager.

  “To Philip. And the ten.”

  Dominique bowed her head in love and respect.

  “They sent him back to Pittsburgh in a body bag three days ago.”

  Julian settled into the chair next to her. He kissed the tears on her cheek.

  Thunder exploded like a roadside bomb.

  She took Julian’s hand, and they moved out of the bar through the rain, to the hotel across the alley.

  The thunderstorm subsided, but the rain’s drumbeat enveloped the hotel room. Dominique and Julian lay in bed. She surprised herself when she told him she loved the rain. How it quieted her and got her in touch with her soul. In the year they’d been sleeping together she’d never talked about her soul. She knew it was foolish now, but something about smelling the roses, in the middle of a war zone, had rocked her as much as it warned her. She turned away.

  He turned her back to him, his body taut and electric. He slid on top of her and entered her again. This was his answer to everything—take charge, penetrate, avoid any deeper intimacy.

  She used his body to escape, too.

  A short time later, Julian had fallen asleep, but Dominique’s eyes were wide open. And as the late afternoon sun pressed its way through the curtains, thoughts of her brother and the other journalists jackhammered in her mind. She wanted now, more than ever, to get inside the head of the man who’d orchestrated the executions. That’s why she’d been in Iraq for almost two years. Fuck the healing. She wanted to put Hashim in her journalist crosshairs, to know what made him tick, and help take him down. Rage overwhelmed her. She screamed at a God who allowed all this horror, shocking Julian out of his deep sleep.

  She screamed again when the balcony doors shattered, spraying shards of glass into the room.

  Four dark-skinned men burst in.

  Before Julian could grab his Beretta on the nightstand, three of the invaders dragged him naked from the bed and held him down, pummeling his face with their fists.

  Dominique watched as one of the men grabbed Julian’s pants and shirt and tossed them at him.

  Half-conscious and wobbling from the beating, Julian got dressed while one of the men put a gun to his head. Another of the men put a swatch of tape over Julian’s mouth, wrapped tape around both of his hands and feet, and jammed a hood over his head.

  Dominique catapulted from the bed and clawed her way onto the back of the fourth man, who spun around and slammed her against the wall. She was dazed from the impact, but stood her ground, defiant.

  He stared at her naked body. She spit in his face and screamed something in Arabic that infuriated him, and he grabbed her throat.

  Pure instinct drove Julian in the direction of Dominique’s voice, but he was pistol-whipped across the back of his head and crashed to the floor.

  Terrified, Dominique dug her nails into the man’s face to break free from his grip, but he rammed her against the wall again.

  One of the other men tossed her clothes at her and snapped orders in broken English.

  Her hands trembled, as she struggled to dress.

  When she was clothed, one of the men put a swatch of tape over her mouth, wrapped tape around both of her hands and feet, and jammed a hood over her head.

  She peered through the filthy burlap but only saw shadows.

  The next thing she knew, she was being dragged down the stairs and into the fading sunlight, toward the sound of a strained motor running.

  She was squeezed into a vehicle with the sweat of men around her, and the press of metal to her side.

  Someone was shoved into the vehicle next to her. She knew from his musk that it was Julian.

  Dominique shivered as the vehicle crossed into the desert and cold bitter sand seeped inside. She knew this wasn’t random. And as strong and defiant as she’d been through the years spent in Iraq, she never fooled herself into thinking this wouldn’t be the end game.

  She couldn’t stop the knot in her stomach from crooking violently.

  She retched but nothing came out.

  In the foul darkness she thought of the God she’d howled at. And despite her rage at the heavens, she needed to believe she was being protected still.

  Dominique wanted to share this with Julian, but the tape on her mouth prevented the words from coming out. If she could speak, what would she say to him? She didn’t know.

  What did she know? What did all of what she knew matter now?

  Sorrow poured through her, and in the swamp of regret she leaned into Julian beside her, and asked God for forgiveness, because she’d never loved, had never given of herself. Life on the edge had precluded others. Now, she was out of time.

  The air in the vehicle was thick with the scent of sweat and gunpowder. And in her anguish and regret, the smell of roses cut through her.

  2

  It was midnight in the Church of Santa Catalina in Cuzco, Peru. The church was built on a revered Inca site called, “Acllahuasi, House of the Chosen Ones.” It was built during the seventeenth century to honor women dedicated to working for the Incas, an indigenous tribe dating back to the thirteenth century. Erupting volcanoes and earthquakes could not dissuade the church’s founders from honoring these women and the “Virgin of the Remedies.”

  Religious beliefs ran bone-deep in this land. Handed down for centuries, they gave a resonance impossible to dispute, one reason being that the “Virgen de los Remedios” had inspired a Catholic Order at the end of the twelfth century that proceeded to free slaves from bondage.

  Father Manuel entered from the sacristy. He shuffled across the pearl colored floor, dwarfed by Solomonic columns worthy of Bernini, past the magnificent altar of golden cedar still emitting traces of ancient perfume.

  Manuel was an old man. A gentle man whose soul vibrated at a frequency that gave him endless, sleepless nights. He walked the floors of his church to meditate on the majesty of God. The solitude and this nearness to his Lord calmed his unsettled yearning to be useful until the day he died.

  He was shocked when he saw Jhana-Merise Salva kneeling in front of the carved wooden statue of the Virgin. It was too late for her to be here, and alone.

  The young girl held a rose between her praying hands.

  Manuel listened.

  She whispered the word “Edubba.”

  From his study of ancient texts, he knew it was a Sumerian word meaning: “House of Tablets.” But he had no idea what it meant coming from the mouth of one so young. How she knew that word was a mystery.

  He waited for her to acknowledge his presence, but she spoke only to the statue w
ith different words now, in a language he didn’t know.

  “Jhana-Merise,” he whispered.

  But she was in a world of her own.

  She placed the rose at the feet of the carved wooden virgin.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and a jolt of electricity shot through him. He jerked back.

  Jhana-Merise turned—her face beamed with pure radiant light.

  “Nos es Unus,” she said.

  “Yes. We are One,” Manuel said, excited, acknowledging her words and his internal truth.

  Jhana-Merise opened her arms as if welcoming the world—and fainted.

  Manuel caught her in his arms and looked up at the statue—expecting it—wanting it to be alive. But the empty wooden eyes of the icon gazed back, as if staring into an unending void.

  From the doorway of his daughter’s hospital room in Cuzco, Vincente Salva watched Manuel as he prayed over Jhana-Merise, who laid unconscious in bed in Hospital Regionale. An IV dripped fluid into her.

  “What happened?” Vincente demanded.

  “Jhana-Merise is a special one. Su hija es especial,” Manuel answered.

  “The doctor said she’s in a coma,” Vincente said, controlling his anger. He didn’t appreciate the priest’s singular zeal.

  Manuel moved to Vincente.

  “Senor Salva. Nos es Unus. Nos es Unus. We are One.”

  Vincente stopped the priest with a raised hand. It was a hand that had laid a thousand bricks, and now worked the coffee fields.

  “What happened in the church?” He ordered the priest to tell him.

  “She was speaking to the statue of the Blessed Virgin.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She was talking to the Blessed Virgin, and the Holy Mother touched her.”

  “What do you mean touched her?” Vincente said, grabbing Manuel’s arm.

  “Your daughter is a special one.”

  “Get out,” Vincente snapped, and released Manuel from his grasp.