The Occurrence

  “Thank you for doing whatever you can.”

  Robinson picked up his briefcase and moved out.

  Keyser lingered.

  Hashim could see he was trying to figure him out.

  “You coming?” Robinson called, before the guard opened the door for him to leave.

  “Give me a minute,” Keyser answered.

  “I’ll be in the car. Don’t take all day,” Robinson said, and walked out.

  Keyser and Hashim were alone.

  “What’s your deal?” Keyser asked.

  “I don’t know that you would understand.”

  “Try me.”

  In his car in the Attica parking lot, Robinson was on the phone with the Attorney General. He told him of Hashim’s change of mind, to not be brought into a court.

  The secret hope the government had was that the jihadi leader would never be captured alive, making a trial unnecessary—but they had to deal with reality. They discussed that while some of the prosecutors believed the image of Hashim sitting, chained, in a courtroom would be an eye-opening visual for those who thought he was invincible, there were others who were conflicted at the extraordinary difficulties posed by this scenario, and maintained there would be no way to provide adequate security. More important, it would be near impossible to select an unbiased jury. And there were those who thought it would send a horrible message to the world to not hold a trial because of those threats.

  “The hell with what he wants,” the Attorney General said on the other end of the mobile. “He’s going to trial.”

  Keyser came out of the prison and made his way to the car. He got in the passenger side and shut the door.

  Robinson looked at him. He could see Keyser was shaken.

  “What the fuck happened?” Robinson asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “That’s no answer. What did he say?”

  “Forget it. It’s crazy.”

  “We’re not moving until you tell me. Or I’ll go back in there and find out. I’m not playing games.”

  Keyser was uncomfortable with what he was being forced to say.

  “You can tell me, or the Attorney General.”

  He turned on the ignition.

  Keyser turned it off.

  “He told me what happened in the warehouse.”

  “What did he say?”

  “You won’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  Keyser told him about the swirling light and the butterfly and the sound.

  Robinson howled.

  “Did you just make that shit up?”

  The look on Keyser’s face was dead serious.

  “He’s fucking with you, man. And you’re crazy if you think anyone is going to believe it. And you’re nuts if you do.”

  PART FIVE

  The Tablets

  58

  Sunday, September 27

  Senator Ledge never thought he’d contact Jack Dean again. Decades earlier, Dean had claimed to have information relating to an object he said the government called, “The Tablet.” Dean had top security clearance at the time. But after it had been discovered he was about to reveal to a larger audience what he knew…he was discredited and dismissed from service.

  The senator knew of a similar scenario around that same time. A number of other governments were involved in the study of various aspects of the paranormal. The mission: to evaluate through reverse engineering how vulnerable to psychic spying U.S. intelligence agencies and their secrets were. This was done to such a degree of accuracy that Department of Defense and Army officials decided to change the emphasis from assessing vulnerabilities to collecting intelligence information via the paranormal against America’s Cold War adversaries. The senator also knew that years after that, before the first book written by a psychic spy was about to go to print, this secret Department of Defense program got cancelled and the book debunked before its release. The senator knew why. He knew the media attention had the potential to blow the lid off government secrets regarding its history of paranormal inquiries.

  Dean and Ledge had been friends. But as soon as all that came down, Ledge got as far away as he could from his reputation being tainted. Career trumped friendship. But ever since Julian’s return, Jack Dean hadn’t been far from Ledge’s mind.

  Ledge made his way up the stone steps to Dean’s red brick, Baltimore City Row Home, and rang the bell.

  Dean answered the door, a cane in hand. He looked older than Ledge remembered. But the tweed jacket on his broad shoulders, Ledge didn’t forget.

  “You’ve aged much better than I,” Dean said, full voiced and pompous. He’d always spoken loud and with authority. “Come on in, Paul.”

  Ledge followed Dean into the living room.

  “How’s Emily?” Ledge asked.

  “She’s in Milan for a trade show.”

  “She’s still doing well. Good for her.”

  “Me too. She saved me when I tried to take my life all those years ago. Isn’t that what your children are supposed to do? What friends are supposed to do?”

  The accusation made Ledge bristle.

  “But let that be water under our burnt bridge,” Dean added.

  “If you want me to leave, Jack…”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  He struggled to sit on the sofa.

  Ledge moved to help.

  Dean waved him off.

  Ledge sat down and smiled.

  “Missed me, huh?” Dean said.

  “You have a way of never going away, Jack.”

  “Yep. A way that’s assured my isolation. I could be the King of Molokai.”

  “What?”

  “It’s where they toss the lepers.”

  He adjusted on the sofa with difficulty.

  “Fucking arthritis.”

  He took in a deep breath and let out a low growl. “So…”

  Dean folded his arms and waited.

  Ledge hesitated, unsure how to begin.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you know, Paul. Or, do you think I’d think you’re crazy?”

  “I don’t know you’d ever think anyone was crazy, Jack.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. We’ve got bad blood between us. So what? You wouldn’t be here unless you needed my help. Consider yourself lucky I’m alive.”

  Ledge stared at the man he had called friend, ashamed he’d abandoned him all those years ago.

  “Your son and the journalist found something in the warehouse, didn’t they?”

  “They found a couple of things.”

  Dean rested both hands atop his cane. He did look like a king.

  “It’s a force that won’t be stopped. Something happened after the drone made its mysterious reversal to the warehouse. That’s what brought Hashim here.”

  Ledge was shocked Dean could know this top-secret information.

  “I didn’t burn all my bridges. Tell me what you know.”

  “You seem to know what I know.”

  “Not bad for an old guy who’s been banished from your world, huh? Okay. Do with this what you will.”

  Ledge watched Dean settle into his professorial mode.

  “It’s believed that carved into the tablet are instructions from ancient Sumerians whose civilization began almost overnight in 3800 BC. This is what you ran away from all those years ago. Their code has been unbreakable because it’s supposed to lead to a portal that opens to a higher consciousness. A consciousness humans aren’t ready to possess.”

  “And, how do you know this, Jack?”

  “Because I didn’t panic. Now, let’s start with cuneiforms.”

  Ledge studied this brave, solitary ancient in a tweed jacket.

  “Cuneiforms aren’t all that rare. Many have been found but never translated until a Sumerian scholar—”

  “Zecharia Sitchin,” Ledge interjected. They were nothing if not competitive.

  “You’ve done some homework since then.”

  “Yes.�
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  “Good for you. Well. Not until Sitchin published his first translations in a series of books did anyone take him seriously. Because what he’d translated revealed precise information on a range of topics that couldn’t have been possible to know for a civilization at the beginning stages of its development, since there was no predecessor to follow. You with me so far?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Well. Sitchin claimed the Sumerians had detailed knowledge of the planets, and an understanding of complex medical procedures. Where did they get this knowledge? Sitchin claimed all this wisdom had come from a race of people called the Anunnaki, ‘those who from heaven to Earth came.’ The Bible speaks of the Elohim, which means God, or ‘those who came from the sky.’ The Qur’an talks of the Djinn, who are said to be made of a smokeless and scorching fire. Like the scorching fire a drone makes upon detonation.”

  “And the cuneiform from the warehouse?” Ledge asked.

  “The one the journalist found?”

  “Yes.”

  “A breadcrumb leading the way to what Sitchin discovered in his work—reference to a tablet embedded in the earth a long time ago that would never be found, and its code never broken, until the people who had planted it came together again.”

  “You’re talking reincarnation.”

  “I’m talking the reincarnation of a group.”

  “Have you had direct contact with this tablet? Are you part of this group, Jack?”

  “You’re missing the point, Paul. You always miss the point.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m the messenger. That’s all I’ve ever been. The reason you’re here is because your son and the others who survived already have had some kind of contact. They’re part of that group and are struggling to remember what to do with it. This knowledge is what got me banished all those years ago. As I was in the process to prove it, that secret defense program was dismantled, and there was no longer a place for me. But your son and that journalist, and likely Hashim and the young boy who survived, have been transformed. You had that chance once and turned away.”

  The spell of denial Ledge had been under all those years had been dissolving since his son’s return. He thought being with Dean would ease his guilt for running away. Instead, it placed him right back into the belly of a complex and unshakable force.

  59

  Bruton sat in his office at the Pentagon. The meeting with Ledge earlier in the week brought back the pain of his son’s death. It also made it hard to deny the endless wars in the Middle East as anything but a waste of lives.

  Bruton was aware that Dean had been convinced the tablet was in the desert, and that Dean believed it was the secret reason for America’s invasion into a land that had no hand in 9/11.

  There were many things, including the otherworldly, the American military would never loosen its grip on when it came to the drive for dominance in the world theatre.

  Bruton knew that soon after Saddam Hussein was elevated to power in 1979, he started construction on a sophisticated network of underground tunnels and bunkers. These elaborate constructions were said to be motivated by the threat of an Iranian missile strike, but they were designed as a way to access the tablet, when a psychic told Saddam where she believed it was. She was wrong.

  Bruton remembered his dread when Dominique’s articles first began to crack open a door to the possible deeper cause for the U.S. invasion. No one outside his inner circle, not even Dominique, had any idea she was writing about the tablet.

  While he was more than six thousand miles from the warehouse when the drone hit, something that day had reached out and pulled him toward images of a violent life he’d led before.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d entertained the reality of a past life. Too many things seemed familiar to him to dismiss as simple déjà vu. For one, the inexplicable comfort he’d had in his seat of power. He’d been able to rise to this position against tremendous resistance. And while he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he’d always believed there was a metaphysical hand that had helped choreograph his rise.

  The desert lured many who’d been told precious secrets lay there. Buried for centuries. Telling of powers they could not comprehend, but desired more than life. It brought the most daring and most vain. Few returned.

  Bruton had studied the history of archaeological, multinational, and military interests in these lands. He knew Adrien Kurt had been involved in phenomenological events for which the military needed a rational explanation. That’s why he’d called him in when no regular channels were producing results in the wake of Julian and Dominique’s kidnapping. He trusted Kurt when Kurt wanted to bring in Catherine Book.

  Bruton had been a soldier. He’d seen the viscera and scars of war. Dying men pleading with God. He was one of them.

  He sank into his chair, desperate to revive the courage he’d deserted. The heat that had burned in Bruton’s mind now turned to an icy chill.

  He was tossed back to his near-death in the jungles of Vietnam, waiting for life to ebb from him, laying in a pool of blood on the wet jungle ground. He smelled the dampness and death of that day and realized he’d been running from it ever since, running from the unearthly tether that had connected him to the spirits of that jungle rain forest, as he hovered above himself, choosing life. Now, he was faced with another choice—whether or not to be part of whatever message might be deciphered in the tablet.

  60

  Monday, September 28

  Morning light squeezed through the blinds as Isabel surveyed her kitchen. She was struck at how neat and clean it looked. She hadn’t noticed in the three days since her sister had arrived that a sense of order had been restored to her apartment, if not her life. Dishes in the sink had been washed and stacked. The fridge had been absolved of food way past their “use by” date and replaced with fresh fruit and greens. The few plants she had were healthier and trimmed. Furniture and cabinets, dusted—Arama’s handiwork to help ingratiate herself and her guests into Isabel’s life after their unexpected, unwanted arrival. It was one of the controlling things Isabel didn’t miss about her sister, clean apartment be damned. She did appreciate she didn’t have to do it, but wouldn’t give Arama the satisfaction of her thanks.

  Isabel hadn’t slept much. She’d spent the weekend at the Department of Justice immersed in getting all the documents collated, bound, and ready for trial. She’d thrived on what her mind could uncouple and understand. The hours of due diligence and her expertise in criminal law had brought her to what she thought she’d wanted. Recognition.

  In the midst of her career’s rise she’d isolated herself from her past, her sister’s singular zeal, and from forging any meaningful relationships of her own. But something Arama said pushed its way forward in Isabel’s mind: “The uses of the heart are wiser than the most successful uses of the mind.” These were slogans that belonged on bumper stickers, but like everything Arama believed, had enough truth to disturb the stubborn mind. Like now. Isabel saw the reciprocal affection among Arama, Vincente. and his daughter, and Isabel’s first thought was how she could use Vincente to keep Arama’s childlike zeal contained. That’s when she saw Jhana-Merise enter the room.

  A finger of light from the blinds illuminated Jhana-Merise’s eyes. They reminded Isabel of her mother, the brightness she’d had before succumbing to depression and suicide in their town in the shadow of the sacred ruins of Machu Picchu. After her mother’s death Isabel saw nothing hallowed in that land. As far as she was concerned the devil rode on those mountain winds, not God. So, she left before the devil found her.

  “I know we’ve put you in a difficult position,” Jhana-Merise said, with the composure of one much older than her young years.

  “What do you hope will happen here?” Isabel asked. “Arama has spent much of her life living on dreams. I don’t imagine you do.”

  “We’re not here on a dream,” Jhana-Merise said. “We’re here because we’re connected.”

>   As a young girl Arama had introduced Isabel to the phenomenon of Ley Lines. These were hypothetical alignments of a number of places of geographical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths. It was said a powerful energy traveled through those lines. And like the chakras of the body, each point was connected and affected by what happened along those paths. Arama had told Isabel if you were to draw a line from their town of Cuzco up through a map of the world, one of the cities you’d go through would be Washington, D.C. “In this way we will always be connected,” Arama had said. “And you’ll always be below me,” Isabel had shot back, poking her sister for her misguided uses of enchantment. Isabel had concrete plans. And plans were never accomplished through magic.

  Isabel had been picking at a piece of skin on her thumb and now the cuticle was bleeding. She tucked her thumb under her fingers and folded her arms across her chest, as she and Jhana-Merise stood there in the growing sunlight.

  She hadn’t picked at her skin in a long time. It was something she did often after her mother’s death. That’s when religion swooped in to soothe the pain, and talked of resurrection, and that one day they would be together again, when all Isabel needed was to scream until the pain exhausted itself. But she didn’t scream, and had constructed a career and life as a barrier to that anguish.

  But with this young girl before her, and with wisdom beyond her age, Isabel couldn’t shake the feeling there were more than Ley Lines that had brought them together.

  61

  Dominique stared at the text on her computer screen. She’d finished writing another piece for The Washington Post, the first since she’d returned from Iraq.

  She’d read much about the core from which extremism comes. And wasn’t alone in the way she’d examined the paradox of “the two jihads.” The lesser, of the sword. The greater, of the soul.

  She knew it was a risk to speak of it, as it had been with others who’d dedicated themselves to grasping the causes of this particular brutality, and that there would be those who would take it as a defense of terrorism.