The Occurrence

  “Yes, Mister President. He will.”

  She wanted also to say to him what she’d said to Bruton—that 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. But she decided to not do anything that would jeopardize how far she’d come.

  “Is there something else on your mind, Miss Valen?” the president asked.

  Bruton gave her a look that communicated he knew what she was thinking. The look said, don’t fuck this up now.

  “No, sir. Not at this time.”

  “Keep me posted, Charles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The president left the room.

  “It was wise you stopped yourself again,” Bruton said.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t put that quid pro quo in the space anymore with him, or you’ll find yourself in huge trouble.”

  “I’m not a fool, Charles. America’s never been good at giving this for that at a level that could change the world. And, we’ll never reach the level of evolution the tablet speaks of until everyone sees the evil they’ve committed, and gives up something they don’t want to reveal.”

  She turned to leave. He reached out to her. She stopped.

  “They’ll use anything to justify what they do.”

  “And we don’t?”

  Are you certain about the imam?”

  “Like I told the president, I’m betting my life on it.”

  “You’re betting your life on a lot of things.”

  “If I didn’t think it worth it, I would’ve chosen a safer line of work.”

  “We need to bring Catherine Book in on this, to keep an eye on all of what happens.”

  “I’ll talk with her.”

  “I already have.”

  97

  Tuesday, October 27

  The young driver of the pickup truck flipped down the visor as morning sun shot across the windshield. His passenger did the same.

  The truck fit in with the others on the road and drew no attention as it made its way through the streets of Fremont County, Colorado. It was the opposite of the armored entourage that brought Hashim here. The driver and the two men in the backseat were FBI. They wore work clothes and were armed. Hashim, in the passenger seat, was dressed like them, in a plaid shirt and wool cap over his head.

  It was late morning when the truck pulled up to the white line passenger drop off at Denver International.

  Two undercover agents who took over control of the situation greeted the FBI men and Hashim.

  “Where the fuck you guys taking him?”

  The agents ignored the question and moved with Hashim into the terminal.

  The flight was full. In the exit row in coach Hashim settled into the middle seat, the two undercover agents flanked him. They secured their seat belts, as the announcement came over the speakers that this flight was headed to Dulles airport in Washington, D.C., and if that wasn’t anyone’s destination to please let one of the flight attendants know so that they may leave the plane.

  Hashim smiled at the thought someone might be on the wrong flight.

  But as the plane rose in the sky, Hashim’s thoughts descended into the truth that had gripped him—he was the abhorrent darkness he had longed to destroy. He had refused to see the underbelly of those that had carved his hate—hate he had made his own. He had lived deep inside that world, and knew this would be his legacy. The paradox was that this darkness might be the door through which salvation came.

  98

  Wednesday, October 28

  In the back room of a computer tech shop, in a mini-mall under construction, Dominique, Nazir, the imam, and Hashim sat around a rectangular Formica table.

  Dominique had no idea where the meeting would take place until an hour before when Catherine remote viewed the unique storefront signage of the tech shop. Dominique also knew there would be undercover agents posing as construction workers in the empty storefront a few doors away.

  If the imam was suspicious, so was Dominique, who said as much, revealing her fear this might be a trap. The transparency made the imam smile. He assured her she was not in danger, at least from him. He was risking his life as much as she.

  The imam spoke of his brother and the sequence of events that led him to secure Issa’s safety inside the hospital. He spoke of how terrorism rose from pain and loss, from a world falling apart, and how this had cultivated the belief for purification, and led him and many others to turn spiritual longing into violence intended to cleanse the world and create a transcendent state.

  “We intoxicated them with love and spirituality for a dark purpose,” Hashim said.

  Nazir’s jaw clenched.

  Dominique knew this was a deeper level of experience for Nazir—for him having been indoctrinated by these men who’d preached hate, and now risked their lives for a chance at the opposite. She could feel the sting of his shame for having followed that dark path.

  Of all the places she’d been in the world, of all the conflicts she’d reported on, all the violence and killing she’d witnessed, Dominique was more terrified in this place than she’d been halfway across the world in war zones. Terrified it would come to nothing.

  In those foreign lands she’d faced certain death and survived. Here, she faced the possibility of shifting the tectonic plates of violence that had controlled the world ever since man realized he had a thirst for blood.

  To get herself to understand them, she’d put herself in the mental state to join them. She needed to immerse herself in that danger, and knew she wouldn’t survive in their world without it. She knew this daring, this baring was the reason she’d been trusted, why people were willing to tell her their secrets. It was in her bones, this availability to live in darkness. She’d sustained living in darkness, and at the same time trusted she’d recover when it was time to leave. But she didn’t want to recover from this. They were at the center of a huge possibility.

  In the beginning of her career she’d questioned the sanity of wanting to know evil, to be in it in order to know it. But every experience, every word she wrote, infused her with the insatiable need to know more.

  She saw the three men looking at her.

  “Can we do this?” she asked.

  “There’s a secret network being formed throughout the Middle East that believes as we do here,” the imam answered.

  He spoke of how Issa had once lived among the mujahideen. He’d believed what they’d believed. And he realized it was misguided. He was not the only one who saw this, and began to talk to those kindred spirits of another way.

  “He had tapped into their souls,” the imam said. “But for some, that was too terrifying, and they wanted to destroy him. So, to keep him safe, I said he’d gone insane.”

  “You’ve believed as your brother has for a long time?” Nazir asked.

  “Yes. He opened me to many things. But I resisted. What happened to him wasn’t so different than what happened to you in the warehouse.”

  “Religion is supposed to heal, instead it has made a world of enemies,” Hashim said.

  Dominique laid a piece of cuneiform on the table.

  The imam picked up the stone.

  Dominique watched, as his eyes seemed to read the text carved into it. He seemed to understand the words.

  “Is this from the tablet?” the imam asked.

  “No. The tablet is in the catacombs under the warehouse. These stones are the path to it.”

  “This one speaks of an elevation where souls will meet,” the imam said.

  “And I believe many will be gathered to that elevation,” Hashim added. “But now, we must dig for the sorrow under the hate. Sorrow that has been masked by the tales of which we’ve been convinced—that power is all that matters. We’ve turned it into a virus, and haven’t been able to sustain anything but the violence. What we have cultivated is meant to spread spiritual dread.”

  This has been
our ideology,” the imam said. “And it must be transformed in the deepest part of our collective soul.”

  “How have you been able to hold onto that when you’ve lived so long in the world of violence? When you’ve orchestrated so much of it?” Dominique asked.

  “Not without our souls becoming darker,” Hashim answered.

  “There are others who hold these same two worlds inside,” the imam said.

  “How can we reach them?” Nazir asked, with a staggering depth of courage and curiosity that would help him lead an evolution.

  “You have already begun, my son,” the imam said.

  99

  Catherine’s cottage didn’t seem like much of a refuge to Dominique now. It was the middle of the night, and she’d shared with Julian her experience of the meeting. But he seemed deaf to what she had to say.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “You’re going to take away everything that lets them feel alive.”

  They were in the backyard, so as to not disturb the others in the house.

  “You’re not having doubts again, this deep into it, are you?”

  “Not doubts.”

  “What then?”

  “War sucks. But talk to most guys who come back alive, and they’ll tell you life is boring stateside. And regardless of what the imam and Hashim said about holding two worlds inside, you talk to those who are promised virgins, and tell them it’s a lie, and they’ll put a bullet in your head.”

  “It’s not all Lord of the Flies, Julian.”

  “Want to bet? The beast is only us. You want it to work. You want to see them underneath all that evil as capable of transformation…”

  “We are.”

  “An imam with a crazy brother who’s seen the light. Hashim manipulating you to get out of prison. A White House too easy to put you on the frontline.”

  “If this is still so hard for you, we’re lost.”

  “We’re walking through something we have no idea what it is. It’s unseeable, unknowable, and uncontrollable. I’m terrified. And you’re fooling yourself to think otherwise.”

  “I’m terrified, too. But the cost of not making this choice will continue to breed hate, bloodshed, and annihilation. It’s been carved into us for centuries. It is not inherent in our design. We’ve been brought together, because in a time long before this, we made a pledge. Don’t abandon that now.”

  “You’ve been pulled so far down this rabbit hole, I don’t know who you are now.”

  “Who are you, Julian? Who are you, now?”

  She could see her question was gutting him of the remnants of primordial armor he still wore.

  Dominique remembered dreaming of the birth of a new world, in that hospital bed in Pittsburgh. What it would be like? Would it end the violence and hatred? Would she be part of a transformation? Or would humanity descend into a dark, cold night, alone, and forever? She’d lived in these pitch-black questions a long time. The desert changed that.

  Every moment required a choice. She realized that as much as she’d pursued a life of truth on a razor’s edge, the drug of comfort and doubt had always been breathing at her back, too, would always be there, desperate to not have another life elude its Stygian grasp. So, she understood Julian’s dark night.

  She breathed what she first breathed in the warehouse after the bomb hit. What she breathed in the catacombs when they made their way toward the light at the end of the tunnel, and stood before the translucent wall.

  That language was in the pulse of this night. The same pulse that came from the tablet.

  Dominique had been running away from something—from the truth of who she was. And now she found it—belonging to a tribe. She’d dreamed of living among nomads in deserts with abilities to heal. Now, she lived in the deeper truth of that.

  It was a lifetime from 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.

  What happened from here would take her to places beyond any she knew. She wanted Julian to be with her.

  The air swelled with a vibration.

  She surrendered to that trembling, and an invisible fire emanated from within her, through Julian, and into the night.

  She reached for him.

  He took her hand.

  100

  Thursday, October 29

  Graced by the morning sun, the air swam with golden dust through Catherine’s front hall.

  Isabel, Jhana-Merise, Vincente, and Arama were there.

  Dominique and Julian came down the stairs and saw them.

  Dominique knew this part of their journey was done. She also knew she was part of a nervous system—with a heart and soul that experienced the same love—the same fear.

  “Pneuma,” Jhana-Merise said, as if reading Dominique’s mind.

  Vincente smiled. He’d stopped being surprised at the deep well of wisdom his daughter possessed.

  Arama and Isabel were learning to be sisters again—theirs would be a longer journey to each other.

  But all were at the center of this force now—at the core of that which is breathed.

  101

  Sunday, November 1

  Nazir stood in the skintight kitchen of his Mosul home with its bullet holes and battered concrete walls.

  A delicate silence passed between he and his grandmother.

  The nutmeg colored headscarf she wore still softened the wrinkles on her skin toughened by the sun, the desert wind, and life.

  She didn’t seem surprised that her grandson had returned to her.

  “I told you, you were spared for a reason, Nazir.”

  The air filled with that trembling sound.

  “Yes, Grandmother. Blood for blood is not God’s way. I know that now.”

  And as the late afternoon sun bathed the room in an Inca gold light, they embraced.

  102

  Hashim sat in his prison cell at ADX Florence, Colorado. His eyes closed in prayer.

  He knew he would be here until he died.

  Along with the isolation—his sentence—to not be part of the coming transformation, only its conduit.

  His atonement would be to remember the violence he’d perpetrated. Those faces and deaths would haunt him forever. His one solace: the knowledge he was part of an evolution for which he and the world hungered. That thought gave him a fragment of peace within the cold, concrete life now his.

  He prayed that what came in the next life for him would carry the purpose for which he’d become aware at the close of this one.

  And in the darkness of his hell, he heard a sound. But there was no one with whom he could share it.

  His sole companion was the chill that ran through him in this desolate place.

  103

  Monday, November 2

  Frost covered the ground and beaded the trees and stone in crystalline winter. In the cemetery where her brother was buried, Dominique sat on the stone bench in front of his grave.

  Her life hadn’t flashed before her in the warehouse, when she’d stared at Hashim’s serpent eyes, about to die—it did rush through her now as she let the weight of all that had happened fill her, in this place of the dead, with the dread of what might have been, and the choice made, to be part of the invisible fire that she and the others now carried in their lives.

  Her brother had a parallel destiny—committed to freedom. But he was in his grave. She was alive. She knew she would see him again. And knew they would recognize each other.

  They’d all been here before—brought together by a force they didn’t understand, but now knew they were in its white-hot pitch.

  This invisible fire waits, no matter the path. Past. Present. Future.

  In every breath—in every echo of memory—a choice—the risk of remembering who we are. The ultimate cost, no one knows. The choice makes no promises. But it can no longer be avoided.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful
to Bob Gersh and The Gersh Agency. Bob has been my friend, agent and champion from the moment I landed in LA as an actor. His belief in me all these years has made all the difference. And when I told him I wanted to write he embraced it. Thank you, Bob, for your endless support.

  Joe Veltre, my book agent at Gersh. Joe, your enthusiasm for the story I was telling, your guidance, and sending the manuscript out into the world made this possible. I’ll never forget the week of Thanksgiving when you emailed me and said, “We have a publisher!”

  Debby Englander, my editor at Post Hill Press. She read the manuscript Joe sent, and brought it to the publisher. Thank you, Debby, for your calm assurance and confidence in my work.

  And many thanks to the Post Hill Press team: Anthony Ziccardi, publisher. Heather King, managing editor. You made the ride smooth. Devon Brown, publicist, who helped shepherd this work into the world. And, Rachel Hoge, production editor. Rachel, your insightful notes, and powerful response to my manuscript brought tears to my eyes.

  Suzanne Williams at Shreve Williams Public Relations. Suzanne, your excitement with the idea of my story when we first talked, and the value you saw in it after reading it, thrilled me, and told me it was you I wanted to work with getting my novel into the hands of readers.

  Jennie Nash, the creator of Author Accelerator, a company that helps writers bring their work to life. If you’re a writer check them out. Jennie and her team are top notch.

  Kelly Hartog. Michelle Hazan. Michael Raymond, coaches at Author Accelerator, each of whom contributed to making this book the best it could be.

  Dawn Ius, a fantastic writer, and a friend. She’s also a coach at Author Accelerator. She encouraged me to drill down to the next level of this story, introduced me to the exciting world of ThrillerFest, and is working with me on my next book.