The Occurrence

by Robert Desiderio

  “And how did it know you, Miss Valen?”

  Dominique knew there was no going back. That awareness gave her the confidence to tell him everything.

  “I was part of the group who planted it there.”

  The president looked at Bruton.

  “You believe all this, Charles?”

  “I believe what I’ve heard, so far, sir, yes.”

  “Say I believe you, Miss Valen,” the president said with an edge of doubt. “What did this language of energy say to you?”

  Dominique spoke from a knowing far beyond her human intelligence.

  “We must be willing to look at and dismantle the denial of our history, and descend into that truth and grapple with it, and take responsibility for the evils we’ve done.”

  “You’re talking reincarnation and karma.”

  “I am, sir. What happens in the world is a direct descendant from our lives before.”

  “And the tablet speaks to a rectification?”

  “The tablet identifies the trajectory of our souls, and tracks our incarnations, and in turn allows us the chance to see who we’ve been and what we’ve done. And in that knowing we have a chance to unravel those knotted lives and take responsibility for the sum of our actions. And that correction points to a rebalancing of our soul’s purpose, the true purpose of why we’re here.”

  “That’s quite a task.”

  “It would be, sir.”

  And while her nearness to death had imprinted in her a certain courage, a chill invaded her bones.

  “Why were you the one the tablet revealed this to?”

  “I discovered I was part of the group who placed it in the desert thousands of years ago. But I’m not the only one who can access it.”

  She was heartened when the president seemed to be taking all this in stride. Perhaps the secrets his position had been privy to through the centuries gave him a context to be open to extreme anomalies.

  “Who else is part of this group?”

  “The others who survived the warehouse.”

  “Julian Ledge, Hashim, and Nazir Siraj?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  No one else survived?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But there are others, who weren’t in the warehouse, who are part of this group?”

  The president waited for her to continue.

  “If you value their safety, Miss Valen, we need to know. ISIS, or whatever the hell they’re called now, will not stop until they destroy every one of you, and whoever else they deem may have a connection to the stones and the tablet.”

  The weight of all she’d unleashed hit her with the force of a firestorm.

  “This isn’t some expedition, finding artifacts that will some day appear in a museum. One isn’t placed in a position as I’ve been placed, and not made aware of many things best left known to only a few. We’ve known of the stones for a long time. That tablet has been lore. Until now. You’ve opened a Pandora’s box, Miss Valen.”

  Dominique’s grip on the stone tightened.

  “It’s ironic,” the president continued, “that a discovery meant to save the world puts us in the most danger should that knowledge fall into the wrong hands.”

  “But the tablet is meant to serve, sir.”

  “You’ve missed the point, Miss Valen. It’s clear from what you’ve said that the tablet is a technology for tapping into the trajectory of souls, and using that power to transform history. That power can also be abused.”

  “But it can only be accessed through absolute love.”

  “And, what is absolute love? Tell me.”

  “It’s beyond words, sir.”

  “And if it’s not true—that it can only be accessed through this indefinable thing—if it can be manipulated, then what?”

  A block of fear seared through her with that possibility.

  “It’s not a history lesson that’s brought us here, Miss Valen. It’s a lesson in how to achieve mastery, over ourselves, and each other. Until you, the tablet has been myth. But from what you’ve told me I believe that’s no longer true. And as much as it pains me to say it, I believe Abd al Hashim could be a way out of what looms. And that’s why you’re here.”

  She had no idea where this meeting was going, and held tighter to the stone in her hand.

  “Hashim knows the collective mind of his people much better than anyone, since he was responsible for shaping it into the Islamic State we know now. Mister Bruton will arrange transport and protection. You’ll be able to talk with him in private. We need to know the scope of their operations, beyond what he told Judge Littelton, and we need to know the heart and soul of how they think, in order to be ahead of whatever they plan. For whatever reasons, you’ve been placed in an invaluable position to shape what’s to come. And I trust your commitment to the truth, and our country, will continue to drive you. Dress warm. You’ll need it.”

  The president walked to the door, stopped and turned back.

  “Before you leave, you will tell Mister Bruton who the others are.”

  She knew that was an order.

  The president left the room.

  Bruton handed Dominique a pad and pen and watched as she wrote down the names of the others.

  She handed the pad back to Bruton and said, “I will talk with Hashim. But we will never reach the level of evolution the tablet speaks of until everyone reveals the scope of their operations, and the heart and soul of how they think. That includes all of us.”

  “It’s a good thing you kept that to yourself while he was here. We take this step by step now. It’s no longer just your odyssey.”

  81

  Catherine Book flagged a cab down on K Street when her mobile rang. She answered. Dominique told her of meeting with the president and that he’d asked for all the names of those involved for their protection. She asked if Catherine would be willing to use her cottage as a “safe house” for Jhana-Merise, Vincente, Arama, and Nazir.

  Catherine was surprised Nazir would be with them.

  “Is there a problem with that?” Dominique asked.

  “No. Nazir had been staying at the cottage and left. He was afraid of putting me in danger. I didn’t want him to go. I’m glad he’s okay. I welcome them all. When do you need them there?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “How’s tonight?”

  “That’d be great. And you won’t mind if a few security guys rotate round the clock for protection? President’s orders.”

  “I understand. Will you be with them?”

  “At some point.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. There’s something I need to do.”

  Catherine saw the cabbie’s impatient eyes staring at her in the rearview mirror waiting for her to tell him where she wanted to go. “Virginia Beach,” she said.

  82

  Moonlight made the buildings seem like a series of spooky triangular crop circles.

  Dominique shivered looking out the small window of the government prop plane as it descended over the United States super maximum-security unit, known as the Alcatraz of the Rockies.

  The plane landed in the middle of nowhere, on ground that shimmered with a skin of white snow. The landscape was set against the silhouette of a mountain range shaped like a hill of elephants.

  ADX Florence Prison was in Fremont County, Colorado. The surface of Mars, with cylindrical turrets and razor wire fences, came to her mind as the plane landed. This was a place where dreams of rehabilitation were superseded by the architecture of control. ADX wasn’t designed for humanity. It was here Hashim had been brought. And here where Dominique would speak with him. She’d been told by the warden—in a cold delivery that was a perfect match for the arctic freeze of the place—that he was to extend all courtesy to her and that her conversation with Hashim would be private.

  A thickset guard carried a folding chair. H
e led an armed escort of three men to a semi-enclosed “rec-yard” with a series of steel cages. To Dominique it looked like a kennel. The cages were all empty except for the farthest. Hashim stood there, the dim light of a single bulb overhead. Dominique saw Hashim look up as she and her escorts moved across the frozen yard toward him.

  Dominique saw in Hashim’s razor-sharp posture that he still carried his dignity…in spite of the orange jump suit he wore being too large. A reminder the inmates were small and engulfed by a power greater than themselves, she thought.

  The door to the cage screeched across the concrete as the thickset guard opened it. Dominique winced.

  “It’s music to my ears,” Hashim said with a hint of a smile.

  The guard opened the chair and placed it inside the cage. “I’ll be right over there, ma’am.”

  He moved to the other end of the area, leaving the cage door opened.

  “That’s as hospitable as it gets. I’m glad they told you to dress for the weather,” he said, looking at the heavy down parka she wore.

  “Aren’t you cold in just that?”

  “You get used to it.”

  She looked up at the stars through the fenced-in roof. She knew these same seeds of light gazed down at humans across the globe.

  “Yes. There’s beauty even here. When you have the chance to see it.”

  He looked up at the stars with her.

  “It’s surreal landing in this place.”

  “Try living here.”

  “They treating you all right?”

  “You’re here.”

  “They allowing you to write?”

  She could see he wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “Catherine told me about the poem you gave her. ‘There are stories we carry inside…’”

  “‘…That have slipped beyond the veil of consciousness and wait until a certain time,’’’ he answered.

  The damp chill reached her bones. But it was more than the cold heart of this place. It was for the merciless glaucoma that had dimmed the world, and created the need for places like this—for the cruel world they’d all helped to create.

  “Poetry has always been important to me,” he said, pulling her from her melancholy. “No one seems interested in exploring that.”

  “A window to the soul?”

  “Nobody’s born wanting to kill. It’s incremental.”

  “So, lead with culture? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It has strategic value—empathy.”

  She moved in close to him and whispered, “I need a way into your thinking. Their thinking.”

  “I figured that’s why they sent you. Others have found the tablet, haven’t they?”

  “They know the area where it is, but haven’t gotten to it. Special Forces killed the first wave that came to the warehouse. The second wave died in a sandstorm.”

  “There will be others.”

  “We know.”

  Hashim took a step out of the cage.

  “Five feet, no more,” the guard ordered.

  Hashim waved his hand in acknowledgment. He turned back to Dominique.

  “How we live is important to getting a deeper understanding of our thinking. There was no speech of bin Laden’s in which he didn’t recite poetry.”

  “I know. And the raid in Abbottabad found books by Bob Woodward and Noam Chomsky.”

  “His cabinet of curiosities. No one is looking at the fact Zarqawi wept. And Muhammad Omar acted on dreams. But Ahlam al-Nasr. She’s who you need to study now. She’s the poet of jihad.”

  “I’m not here about poetry.”

  “You’re here to learn how we think. The key is in our tears, our dreams, and our words.”

  She realized she’d gotten caught in her drive to make sense of the mystery and the search, when a pivotal answer was in the deeper truth of what he said.

  “The president listened to you?”

  “Yes. Even the parts I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought me mad to say.”

  “But he didn’t think you mad, did he?”

  “It didn’t seem that way. Tears, dreams, and poetry may be a harder sell.”

  “Are you familiar with the magazine, Dabiq?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a glossy ISIS periodical that focuses on issues of unity, truth-seeking, community, and jihad.”

  “Sounds lovely.”

  “It portrays the Islamic State as they see themselves, as I used to see it. Boasting victories and painting romantic images of the restoration of an Islamic golden age, and heralding a new caliphate based on holy war.”

  “Charming.”

  “Dabiq is also a town in Syria. It’s supposed to be the location for one of the final battles according to Muslim myth.”

  “The apocalypse?”

  “Yes. One of the magazine’s monthly issues was called ‘Just Terror.’ That’s who you’ll be dealing with—in case you forgot—when you attempt to tell them we share a spiritual DNA that the tablet speaks of.”

  “Can you help me?”

  “I can’t give you a lesson plan on how to transform the way we’ve been taught to think.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Whatever there is, if anything, I don’t want to go back to that dark place inside. And, even if it were possible, I couldn’t do it from here.”

  “From where could you do it?”

  “I’d have to be in the heart of it again. And I’d be killed the moment they knew I was there.”

  “Not if they believed your surrender was a ruse.”

  Hashim chuckled.

  “You have an active imagination, Miss Valen. You expect too much. No one would believe me.”

  “But if they did?”

  “I don’t imagine your Secret Service would relish the idea of setting up all that deception for me. Is this why your president sent you? To turn me into your spy?”

  “He sent me to ask for your help. How that might be accomplished was never discussed.”

  She remembered before all this, before the warehouse, when she was sitting in that Mosul bar, wanting, hoping one day to be able to plumb the depths of Hashim’s mind, to put him in her journalist’s crosshairs, to know what made him tick—to find a way into him and his culture, and extract a grain of their essence that might give her a way to shift their drive from blood and vengeance to healing. Perhaps that she’d been unable to extract a grain of reconciliation from her own countrymen fueled her passion to find it in the enemy. She’d been looking for a way through that wall a long time.

  “The tablet isn’t magic, Miss Valen. There is no magic there.”

  “I know. But it is a road map.”

  She watched Hashim compute the complications in the plan she’d set before him.

  “Is Nazir still in America?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “You would need to send him in first, since, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t been tainted by my actions. He’d need to see what chance I have to influence anyone still in power. That is, if they were to believe there was no surrender, and if you could get me out of here.”

  “You think he’d do that?”

  “You would need to be the one to ask him. You do know this is a long shot.”

  “If we don’t try, we’ll continue to pick each other off the minute anyone gets close to the tablet.”

  “Yes. For all its power, it can still unleash the worst in us.”

  “Evil is the greatest source of transformation.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “In the energy of the tablet.”

  “And you’re telling me this, why?”

  “I believe you are our source for that transformation.”

  “Because of the evil I’ve done.”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe I have control over which way ISIS goes?”

  “I have to believe it. Otherwise, why are we here? Why have we been brought together?”

  He reached out and
held her hand.

  Her mind said to pull away, yet instinct kept her from moving.

  Prisoners weren’t allowed to touch anyone, but Hashim had blocked the guard’s view.

  This was the first time they’d touched since the warehouse, when they’d held hands and stopped the ground from opening under them. Her hope was that they could stop the ground from swallowing up the world. But she was afraid.

  “How do you expect a culture to change when you still fear me?”

  She locked in on him and held tighter to his hand, as if the complexities that lingered might evaporate in the intimacy.

  “You must erase those traces of fear still clenched to your DNA before you ask anyone else to do the same. It will not be easy. It will be impossible. Because beheadings aren’t something jihadists cherry-pick from medieval tradition. They’re at the heart of that tradition. I will do what I can to help you change that, even if it means my life…which I know it will.”

  83

  Tuesday, October 13

  Dawn streamed in through the blinds. Jhana-Merise opened her eyes. She got out of bed in one of the guest rooms of the cottage. She went into the kitchen. Vincente looked up at her and said, “We can’t keep imposing on these kind people.”

  “We need to be here, Father.”

  With anyone else that answer would be presumptuous. But he knew his daughter’s humility was the source of her zeal.

  Vincente’s mind weighed with the fact they’d been in America almost three weeks, much longer than he’d anticipated. And it terrified him they would fail in the mission to help bring enemies together, and Jhana-Merise, and they all would be harmed.

  Vincente believed more in God of late. It was a different God. Not the God of his youth taught by priests and nuns. Not the God of the church. He believed there was a greater power not resting in one place—like air, invisible, but sustaining life. This was the power his daughter had grasped. A power she offered him in the form of her life force and passion. But he was scared. Scared for all of them who’d been brought together. Yet he knew he was here to protect them, even in the doubt and concern that lingered. The extent of that protection was unknown. He’d been there for his daughter. Could he be there for the others? He looked at her with tired and worried eyes, unable and unwilling to keep his unease from her.