The Occurrence

  He cherished being here, in this space of openness and respect.

  “Would you like to see your daughter now?”

  As she passed him on their way out, he wanted to touch her in gratitude for her gentleness, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Thank you.”

  41

  Jhana-Merise waited for her father by the olive tree in the convent courtyard. Its trunk gnarled upward and its strong arms reached toward the sky. The sweet pungent flavor of the ripening olive fruit filled the air, and their deep purple color vibrated against the red of the setting sun.

  There had always been something in her eyes that reflected a deeper wisdom. She was growing up fast, but he wanted to hold onto the little girl.

  He held tight to the flood of love in his heart. He didn’t want to overwhelm her.

  There were many things he had wanted to tell her, but he didn’t want to burden her with his life.

  He saw her watching him with gentle grace in the courtyard. The pressure on his heart released and gave him an unfamiliar peace.

  She nestled her head into his chest. He folded his arms around her.

  “I heard you speak to me before you were born,” he said.

  She looked up at him, her eyes bright.

  “I heard you answer, Daddy.”

  Perhaps she was a savior, he thought. She’d saved him.

  In the intimacy of the late afternoon she told him about her dreams of two sisters, and how a voice spoke to her and said, Help them to see. She told her father she’d confided this to Sister Helen, who said it meant there was much work to be done.

  Jhana-Merise told her father of another dream she had. It was of the terrorist, Abd al Hashim. He was teaching her about the signs in a butterfly’s wings.

  Vincente was unnerved by this.

  “My life is not my own anymore, Father. Unseen hands are guiding me. You know that. You’ve known that a long time.”

  His body vibrated with a new dread.

  She told him she not only had dreamt of Hashim, but also of a young boy, and that they would be part of a group to help unlock a code within a sacred tablet in the desert. A tablet buried a long time ago, waiting to be awakened.

  Vincente trembled at the thought of a mystery so huge and dangerous. A mystery with which his daughter seemed to be on intimate terms.

  Jhana-Merise explained the providence of Arama leading them here, and of Sister Helen’s connection to them—the convent a way-station on their way to America.

  “America?” Vincente said, confused and alarmed. “How can we go to America?”

  “Sister Helen will provide all that we need. She’s helped us before. We’ve been here before. You and mother taught me that. It’s what you said to her when you first met.”

  He remembered joking upon meeting his future wife for the first time that the reason they were so connected was they must’ve known each other in a previous life. It was forward of him to say such a thing in a culture steeped in an insular dogma. And that his future wife hadn’t laughed, at what he thought was a brazen attempt at romance, struck him at a deep level of the possible truth in what he’d said, or at least that she believed it. And because he was falling in love with her, he believed it, too.

  In the early days of their marriage Vincente and his wife had studied the history of past lives, even coming to believe the supposition with which he first flirted with her. And, after her death, he’d placed even more faith in its tenants, wanting, needing it to be real in order that he might see her again.

  And now, with his daughter waiting for him to accept what she believed lie ahead, he could no longer deny that he, too, was being guided by the same unseen hands.

  “What you seek will challenge all the precepts for which the religion we know has been based.”

  “Yes. It will challenge all those beliefs, Father.

  PART FOUR

  Surrender

  42

  Wednesday, September 23

  It was sunrise, and the air was heavy with an early-approaching fall. Parked behind the fence of the neighborhood playground across the street from Dominique’s apartment, Nazir and Taliq watched as the light in Dominique’s bedroom clicked on.

  It was an odd experience for Nazir, to observe life from a quiet family neighborhood and not the killing fields of his youth. He’d been thrown from the blood and heat of battle into a world of patience and surveillance, hoping Dominique would lead him to Hashim.

  From their rented dark blue Nissan, Taliq watched a black sedan a half block down the street.

  Nazir watched Dominique’s silhouette go by the curtains as she passed, hurriedly, through the rooms.

  Dominique rushed out of her apartment. A cab was waiting.

  Nazir was about to pull out and follow. Taliq grabbed the wheel. “Wait,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Taliq nodded in the direction of the black sedan.

  “Someone else is watching her, too.”

  The black sedan pulled out and followed the cab.

  “Go ahead, but not too close,” Taliq said.

  Nazir was annoyed at Taliq’s officious attitude, but he’d seen the other car and Nazir hadn’t. He followed both vehicles at a distance.

  43

  Dominique got out of the cab and made her way up the sidewalk to Senator Ledge’s home. Julian watched from inside through an opening in the foyer curtains. Further up the street he saw the lights of the black government sedan go out.

  He opened the front door. The entrance into the house was dark—its atmosphere of a mausoleum.

  “What the hell is going on that you’re being so mysterious about?”

  He pulled her inside and shut the door.

  “Hashim is gone. He left the cottage sometime in the last thirty-six hours and hasn’t come back.”

  “I knew this was madness.”

  He pulled her into the den, seething.

  “She has no fucking idea where he is?”

  “No. She had work to do in D.C., and left him alone there.”

  “I knew it. I knew it. He played us! She can’t ‘see’ where he is?”

  “She’s not a machine.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She’s not a machine.”

  “Jesus Christ. We’re fucked.”

  Julian pulled the damask curtain aside and trained his eyes on the black government sedan, the interior dome light was on. They weren’t trying to be invisible.

  “They’re going to follow us, you know, until they find out what we were hiding, or what we just fucking lost.”

  He wanted to break everything in the room. He picked up a paperweight from the desk and was about to hurl it into the wall.

  Dominique grabbed his arm.

  “That won’t solve anything.”

  She took the paperweight from him.

  “I don’t believe he played us, Julian.”

  “Yeah. Well… We can’t do this alone anymore. We’ve got to convince someone we’re not insane.”

  Senator Ledge walked in.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know we had a guest. Good morning, Miss Valen.”

  “Good morning, Senator.”

  “I need some papers and I’ll be on my way.”

  He went to the desk, opened a drawer, and collected a folder.

  Ledge recoiled when Julian touched his hand. His face flushed when he realized it was a gesture of need, not aggression.

  Julian looked to Dominique. They each knew what was about to come down.

  “Are you sure?” she asked Julian.

  Ledge was still, but not serene at the weight of her words.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice deep with concern.

  Judgment and anger still hung there for Julian with his father. But they needed help. And if Ledge couldn’t, or wouldn’t help them, their lives were over—either way.

  “We need to tell you what happened in
the desert.”

  The senator’s eyes fixed on his son. He was seeing a ghost. A ghost that would threaten more than the career the senator had been so desperate to save all those decades ago. And he knew this was what he’d longed for. Avoided. And feared. And with grave tenderness he said, “Tell me what happened.”

  44

  The Virginia Beach boardwalk was deserted. The tumble of waves and the caw of seagulls haunted the air of the late September morning.

  Hashim wasn’t clear what path to take and without that certain mooring, his mind wandered as he paced the waterfront.

  He’d imagined going to FBI Headquarters and surrendering. There were no lawyers involved when he imagined himself there. He would be alone.

  The Prophet Muhammad had called the inner struggle for faith the Greater Jihad. This was the jihad of the soul. That all focus had been on what was called the Lesser Jihad, and the grief of all the tortures and deaths he’d orchestrated through that belief, filled Hashim with anguish.

  He thought of all that annihilation and how he’d never been harmed. He knew he’d been in the CIA’s sights a long time—they’d tracked him closer than bin Laden, but were never able to kill him. They’d stared at him from halfway across the globe with high-powered technology and missed. He’d been watched as he’d walked through mud-walled compounds, his life within their grasp, yet they’d always failed. Why?

  A clear destiny descended.

  That he’d shared a piece of his youth in that poem with Catherine, a stranger, was another sign of that destiny unfolding. He had not shared that with anyone in his life. He’d never been in love, except for the love he’d had for Allah and his people. He saw now that was an aberrant love, and he’d led sensitive young men to violent ends with that love, and the promise of an afterlife where dark-eyed virgins, chaste as pearls, waited.

  And in the flood of remorse, he accepted his destiny. And knew it would end with the sacrifice of his life.

  45

  Senator Ledge entered Charles Bruton’s office at the Pentagon. The room looked every bit as stately as the Oval Office. Plush blue carpet, shined oak desk, the American flag behind it.

  The men shook hands.

  “I’m glad Julian came home okay,” Bruton said, a sorrow hung on him like lost faith.

  “Me too,” Ledge answered, a deep respect for that sorrow laced both words.

  “How’s Martha?” Bruton asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  Bruton moved to the oval table next to his desk and sat. He motioned for Ledge to do the same, but Ledge was too anxious to sit.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  Bruton leaned back in the chair and said, “So, what did you want to see me about?”

  Off what Julian and Dominique had told him, Ledge had planned the strategy of how he might broach the subject of their contact with Hashim, but a photo of Bruton’s son on the table caught him by surprise.

  “The pain never goes away,” Bruton said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re one of the lucky ones. Your son came home alive. Is that what’s bothering you? Guilt?”

  “That never goes away, either.”

  “Peace comes hard. And harder in these days of trying to manage ourselves and the world.”

  Ledge looked at him, his eyes crushed in thought. He went back over the arc of their friendship, searching for clues as to how to proceed and what to reveal. He and Bruton had shared political secrets, but the repercussions of what he was holding now were grim at best.

  Campaigning for his senate seat a fourth time, Ledge came back immediately when he’d found out that Bruton’s son had come home in a body bag from a CIA mission in Afghanistan. That deepened their bond. But would that bond withstand what Julian and Dominique had told the senator of Hashim? He wouldn’t know unless he took the chance.

  “What if Hashim is here to surrender?”

  Bruton stared at Ledge, chuckled and said, “Surrender? Where did you get that idea?”

  Faced with the truth of why he was here, Ledge realized it had all happened fast and he wasn’t prepared to go through with saying it out loud, but he wanted to plant a seed.

  “You remember Jack Dean?”

  “I try to forget ex-CIA who insist on chasing ghosts,” Bruton answered. “Like the tablet he claimed was hidden in the desert over there. And you believed him enough at the time to have us go search for it.”

  “We were desperate to get any leverage we could against Saddam. But this isn’t one of Dean’s theories.”

  “Whose is it?”

  Ledge stared at the photo of Bruton’s son. It gave him time to think.

  He’d been convinced of what Julian and Dominique told him was the truth about Hashim, yet being here, he wasn’t ready for the barrage of questions and accusations Bruton would throw at him if he pursued it. He sidestepped the issue and sat down opposite Bruton.

  “We were good friends once. I’m not sure what happened to that.”

  “Life has many turns. And you were the one responsible for pulling away. Is that why you’re here? To mend the past?”

  “Maybe I came to ask forgiveness.”

  “You don’t need me to forgive you, Paul.”

  Ledge missed his friendship with Bruton. He was the one man he’d been able to talk with. But that closeness never gave way to him sharing with Bruton the fact he’d had experiences he couldn’t explain—experiences that placed in his life a chance to move the axis of the world away from violence.

  He was a young senator when his occurrence happened, placed into that position by forces outside the world he knew, to help the world of which he was a part. Fear had stopped him from taking that on, and created a void in his life—a void responsible for the growing dissolution in his marriage, and a void between he and his son.

  Julian was being given the chance to make that right, and Ledge knew he wouldn’t be able to escape his responsibility any longer.

  He came wanting to come clean, and tell Bruton about his past, and what his son and Dominique told him of what happened to them in the desert, and that Hashim was here to surrender.

  But what if Hashim came for something else?

  The one thing of which he was aware—Hashim was here. The reason would surface sooner or later.

  That unknown gripped the courage he wanted to have, and again kept him silent.

  46

  In front of the raw concrete monolithic structure on Pennsylvania Avenue, Hashim stood at the metal sign above the doors to the FBI that read: J. Edgar Hoover Building. A metallic taste was in his mouth. The bitterness of saliva upon his lips. But he was here. He had no idea if he would make a difference. And who would believe him? But he was compelled to be here.

  He knew Julian and Dominique couldn’t risk their lives to give witness. Any empathy they showed would condemn them. He knew he’d be in this alone. He’d come to that realization soon after their lives were spared in the attack in the Mosul desert. His journey to America had fueled his resolve that something this radical and expiatory was needed, in order to shift the unending violence. He also knew the blood and turmoil a surrender of this magnitude could create. But it was what had been placed before him, and he chose the path that led him here—and he stepped inside the front doors of the FBI.

  He held up his hands, told the guards who he was, and went down to his knees.

  Next thing he knew agents surrounded him.

  The barrels of six Glocks pointed at his head.

  47

  Hashim’s hands and feet were shackled, and his wrists chained to an unmovable metal desk. He was in a room in the pallid basement of the Hoover building. Across the room, a camera was directed toward him, its red light on.

  There were voices on the other side of the door. The door handle moved, then stopped, as if the person on the other side were thinking before entering.

  The door opened.

  T
he energy in the room shifted as Adrien Kurt walked in.

  “We’ll be right outside, Doctor Kurt,” one of the two armed military men said when they closed the door.

  Hashim stared at Kurt. There was something familiar about him.

  “I trust you were read your Miranda Rights,” Kurt said, as he sat across from Hashim.

  “Yes,” Hashim answered.

  “So, you understand that everything you say can and will be used against you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that everything you say here is being recorded?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. My name is Adrien Kurt. I’m a psychiatrist and here to determine whether or not you’re of sound mind.”

  “I understand.”

  Kurt leaned back in the metal chair. It scraped against the concrete floor.

  The two men studied each other. In spite of Kurt’s grim pose, Hashim saw a warmth in the eyes of the man across from him.

  “How did you get to America?” Kurt asked.

  “We have many ways to get what we need. Much like how your intelligence gets what it needs.”

  “And, you’re willing to give us that information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows you’re here?”

  “I would think everyone by now.”

  “Not everyone. Who knew you were leaving Mosul?”

  “No one. It was my decision alone.”

  “But you got a passport as ‘Nicolas Sandor.’”

  “Those who provided me with it did not know its purpose.”

  “So, no one knows why you came here?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, why are you here? And what’s the purpose of your surrender? If indeed that’s what it is.”

  Hashim’s nose was running and he tried to wipe it, but his hands couldn’t reach his face chained to the metal table.