by C. S. Graham
According to the CIA guys whose reports he’d studied, it was called the alpha state. The CIA had gotten interested in the whole topic years ago, when they’d discovered that people in the alpha state are twenty-five times as suggestible as people operating at normal, or beta, consciousness. A psychologist watching Patterson’s congregation would immediately recognize all the external signs of people entering a trance, their muscles relaxing, their eyes dilating, their bodies swaying back and forth.
Patterson watched his audience, too, so he knew exactly when he had them.
The music rose in a crescendo, then stopped.
“Hallelujah!” he shouted.
Five thousand joyous voices bellowed back at him. “Hallelujah!”
He leaned forward, as if imparting a secret. “Do you know what time it is, ladies and gentlemen?” He smiled. “No. Don’t look at your watches. I’m not talking about man’s time. I’m talking about the Lord’s time. And the Lord tells us that the time has come for us to stop just sitting around, praying to Him and waiting for Him to come. The time has come when the people of God must go on the warpath for Him. Make no mistake about it, our God is a War God. Those who claim to talk to you in the Lord’s name, who talk of peace and good works, they have it all wrong. They have misled the Lord’s people.”
Patterson let a sneering note of contempt color his voice. “That’s right: they have misled you! Jesus is not a Lord of peace. Jesus is not a lamb. Jesus is a lion. Do you know what a ‘host’ is? It’s an army! God is a warrior! Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!”
They were his now. Pumped, ready to fight—and highly suggestible. It was a talent some people had, just like a talent for playing the flute or basketball. Patterson’s talent was for controlling people. Once, he had been a used-car salesman. Now he was the pastor of one of the largest congregations on the East Coast. Over the past forty years he’d built up a massive worship complex he called Trinity Hills. His television program was watched by hundreds of millions worldwide. He had his own university, five houses in three different countries, two private jets (all tax deductible, since they were registered to his ministry), an oil refinery in Texas, and the leases to gold and diamond mines scattered across Africa. The Lord had smiled upon Warren Patterson. He had no doubt that he was one of the elect, one of God’s “Chosen Ones.”
“The time has come,” said Patterson, delivering his words in the same hypnotic forty-five to sixty beats per minute, “for God’s people to take up the cause of the Warrior God. Right now, God is calling all of us to serve his mission and make it ours. And what is our mission? To retake dominion over what is rightfully ours!”
“Hallelujah!” shouted his audience in a frenzy.
Patterson smiled. “Yes, my friends; the time has come for God’s church to listen to what he is really saying. It is time for us to leave behind the old ‘Gospel of Salvation’ and embrace the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom.’ God’s Kingdom is of this world! And God tells us that all men everywhere must be made obedient to His word. Everywhere.”
Patterson could see his assistant, Scott Weber, hovering just out of sight of the TV cameras. Scott was an intern from Liberty University. Tall and lanky, with a shock of blond hair and bad skin, he was nerdy and clumsy and naïve. But the kid was hardworking and eager to please, and his dad was the CEO of a major defense contractor. In other words, someone well worth cultivating.
Nodding almost imperceptibly to Scott, Patterson let his voice roll on. “The Bible tells us that for thousand of years now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been coming. Not peacefully. Not by good works. But by the swords of God’s warriors. Today, we are called to be God’s warriors. You and me. And you know what that means?”
Five thousand faces stared up at him, waiting to be told. To be led.
He said, “It means that the time has come when all men, everywhere, must be made to bow before King Jesus whether they want to or not. And that means ceding God control over every aspect of their lives. To do anything less is worse than a sin. It’s treason.” He held up both hands. “Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!”
He could feel it now. They were pumped. Excited. Ripe. At Patterson’s sign, a troop of blond, nubile young women dressed like angels floated onto the stage, their sweet voices raised in song. As ushers passed the collection plate, a voice rolled in the background at the same forty-five beats per minute. “Give to God. Give to God.”
Catching his assistant’s eye, Patterson slipped off the stage.
“Well?” he snapped. “Any word?”
“The EPA is saying the refinery violates forty-nine different environmental protection regulations. They won’t let it start back up.”
Patterson felt an angry rush of heat that left him shaking with rage. “Fucking sons of bitches. Of course it does! It always has. Why the hell should that make a difference now? Do you know how much I’m losing every fucking day that thing is shut down? Who wants a bribe now?”
Scott Weber’s nostrils flared on a quick, frightened breath. “The problem is President Pizarro, sir. He’s ordered the EPA to institute a new zero-tolerance rule.”
“Pizarro,” sneered Patterson. “Fucking little wetback shit.” He watched the ushers working the crowd. The collection was almost finished. Time to get back onstage. “Call the governor of Texas. He owes me. See what he can do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Carefully smoothing his silk tie, Patterson leaped back onstage. He raised his arms wide, the paternal smile back on his face as the music came to an end and the haul from the collection plates was tucked away. “Let us pray.”
Chapter 9
“I’m sorry I ruined your evening. Was your girlfriend mad?”
Jax studied the bedraggled woman who sat cross-legged beside his hearth. She’d had a shower and changed into a pair of Jax’s sweats and an old Yale sweatshirt that practically swallowed her. Now, her hair slowly drying into soft curls, she had her hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate laced with rum.
He said, “Well, I don’t think she was exactly happy, but she understands. I told her I had to get back to Langley.”
October looked up from blowing on her chocolate. “She knows what you do?”
“She’s a smart lady. It didn’t take her long to figure it out.” He watched October shiver as another chill ran through her. “So you’re telling me you don’t have a clue why this FBI agent—Kowalski, you said his name was?—suddenly went berserk and started killing everyone in sight?”
“No.”
“You’re sure he killed Special Agent Cox, too?”
“She was watching the viewing from the control room. If she’d been alive, I can’t believe she wouldn’t have tried to interfere.”
“Unless she was in on it.”
October shook her head and took a long sip of her chocolate. “Something pulled me out of my focus right before Kowalski burst into the room. I think it was the terror Cox experienced just as Kowalski killed her.”
Jax went to splash more cognac into his glass. He sipped it a moment in silence then glanced over at her. “You never told me you can sense that kind of stuff.”
A hint of color touched her pale cheeks. “I don’t think I’m unusual. I think most people would have felt it. The difference is, I’ve learned to trust the knowledge that comes to me from other sources.”
Other sources. Jax cleared his throat. He’d known October for more than six months now. He’d worked with her on two critical assignments. But this whole woo-woo business still made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he’d never seen remote viewing work, because he had. He knew all about the RV program the Army had run for years up at Fort Meade, and about the extensive research conducted by respected physicists at Stanford Research Institute in California. But despite it all, he still had a hard time believing that remote viewing was real. It was as if he kept hitting a mental disconnect. The entire principle behind RV—the idea that someone could sit quietly in a sec
luded room and reach out with their mind to touch, feel, smell, even taste an object thousands of miles away—simply flew in the face of everything he’d ever been taught about reality.
Yet he’d seen her do it.
He came to sit in the leather armchair beside the hearth, his forearms resting on his thighs, the cognac cradled in one hand. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try to reconstruct this. The Art Crimes Team brought you to D.C. to help track down a dozen or so of the most valuable antiquities stolen from Baghdad during the U.S. invasion.” He paused. “Isn’t that what you call frontloading?” Any information about a target given to a remote viewer before a viewing was known as frontloading. Too much frontloading could compromise the validity of a viewing.
She shook her head. “Not really. Any time you’re dealing with a pool of similar targets, the pattern will quickly become obvious to the viewer anyway.”
“So how many targets had you viewed before this guy tried to kill you?”
“Just two. We had a really good session this afternoon, so we decided to go ahead and do another viewing before we stopped for dinner. I was still working the second target when all hell broke loose.” She leaned forward. “The thing I don’t understand is, if I was the primary target, why didn’t Kowalski shoot me first, rather than Peter?”
“It’s standard military procedure: if you have two targets, you take out the one who’s the biggest threat to the success of your operation first—in this instance, that was Abrams.” Jax drained his glass and set it aside. “Could be this Kowalski is in some gazillionaire’s pocket. I understand some of the items taken from Iraq are worth tens of millions of dollars each. Altogether, we’re talking billions of dollars’ worth of loot. I can see some wealthy collector hearing that Cox was bringing in a remote viewer and deciding to shut you up before you could finger him.”
She studied him over the rim of her mug. She didn’t look convinced. “You think that’s what’s behind this? Greed?”
“What else could it be?”
Setting aside the chocolate, she pushed up from the floor and began to pace the room, her arms wrapped across her chest. “The second target was some kind of ancient manuscript. I don’t know what, exactly. But I got the impression the manuscript isn’t valuable only for itself, if you understand what I mean.”
“No.”
“I mean, the people who have it think it’s important because of what it says.”
“What it says? So what does it say?”
“I don’t know. I kept getting a weird collage of religious symbols—crosses and snakes. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Even Noah.”
“As in Noah and the ark?”
“I’m not sure. I was getting images of a flood, but I don’t think it was connected to Noah. Noah had something to do with the snow.”
Jax blinked. “Snow?”
She gave a rueful laugh. “I know it sounds like a jumbled mess. The problem is, I was interrupted before I could sort it all out.”
“Did you get anything on the location?”
“It was strange . . . like a log cabin, only huge—and very modern inside. I didn’t get anything about where it is or who owns it.”
“What else did you see?” he asked and then suffered another of those mental disconnects. I can’t believe I just asked that, like I believe in this shit. And yet, he realized that, at some fundamental level, he did believe that October’s talent was real. Even if he couldn’t understand it.
She raked her drying hair back from her face with splayed fingers. “I found myself drawn to two men who were standing near a private runway. One was an older man, but still energetic and vital. Quite tall, with white hair and brilliant green eyes. Very attractive, almost charismatic. He’s the one who was getting ready to board the jet that was waiting on the runway.” She paused. “I think it was a Gulfstream.”
“What was the other guy like?”
“Slightly shorter. Very solid build. Dark beard. I think the log cabin place is his.”
Jax took a deep drink. “Okay. So what drew you to these guys?”
“I sensed great power and wealth emanating from both of them. And incredible arrogance.”
“Men who are powerful and wealthy usually are arrogant,” Jax said dryly. “You just described virtually everyone in Washington, D.C., who doesn’t live in a ghetto.”
She gave a soft laugh, but shook her head. “It’s more than that. It’s . . . it’s like a pathological conviction of righteousness. These people are planning to remake the world.” She paused, as if reconsidering. “No, that’s not exactly right. They’ve already planned what they’re going to do. Now they’re putting their plan into action.”
Jax stared at her. “What did you do? Read their minds?”
She gazed back at him silently.
Feeling suddenly hot and uncomfortable, he pushed up from his chair and went to stand on the far side of the room. “Jesus Christ. You’re not telling me you read minds, are you? Please tell me you don’t read minds.”
“No,” she said slowly. “Not exactly.”
“Then what? Exactly.”
A flicker of light and movement drew her gaze to the flat-screen TV mounted on the far wall. He had left the picture on with the sound muted. “It’s not like I’m reading people’s minds when I remote view them,” she said slowly. “It’s just that I . . . I feel their emotions. And sometimes they communicate their thoughts to me—particularly if they’re obsessing about something.”
“I call that reading their minds. Can you do that sort of thing all the time or only during a viewing?”
“Only when I’m doing a viewing,” she said glibly. Too glibly. “And even then, it’s not like these people’s minds are open books to me. I just get flashes. Impressions.”
He narrowed his eyes, studying her pale, scratched face. “So what is this plan of theirs?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I said, it was all wrapped up in this weird religious symbolism. But I kept getting images of snow—a snow-covered European-style village that reminded me of the footage they’ve been showing all day of Davos.”
Jax held himself very still. “October? What are you saying?”
She stared at him with wide, dark eyes. “I think these people killed the Vice President.”
Chapter 10
“But that’s not possible, October,” Jax said gently. “The pre-liminary results of the autopsy were released about an hour ago. Vice President Hamilton died of a massive heart attack.”
“You can provoke a heart attack, can’t you? Even in a healthy person? Can’t you?”
“So that it can’t be determined in an autopsy? Not that I know of.”
“But it might be possible?”
“Theoretically? I suppose so. But why would anyone want to kill Bill Hamilton? The guy was put on the ticket to woo white Southern voters. President Pizarro is the one with the real power.”
“You don’t understand. Getting rid of Hamilton was just the beginning. They’re planning something else.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. It was all such a weird jumble.”
Jax found himself torn between an instinctive rejection of everything he was hearing and an uncomfortable awareness of just how right she’d been in the past. He said, “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“It’s not anything I can pin down. Sometimes . . . knowledge just comes.” She swung toward the door. “We need to get this to the Secret Service, fast. Do you know who—”
“Hang on,” he said, catching her arm and pulling her back around. “What do you think you’re going to do? Go to the Secret Service and tell them—what? That you got the ‘impression’ while doing a remote viewing that two men you can’t identify are planning to do something—you don’t know what—just that it involves snakes and crosses and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?”
She stared back at him, her eyes wide and dark, her voice low. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
> “I’m not saying that.” Jax blew out a long, troubled breath. “The problem is, you have nothing to back up what you’re saying, except for a remote viewing session that no one in the government is going to believe is real.”
“The Vice President is dead!”
“Yes. But we can’t prove the men you saw had anything to do with that. You know your interpretation of what you see is sometimes a little wonky.”
“Wonky? So if what I saw was so ‘wonky,’ then why the hell did those men try to kill me?”
“We don’t know they did. One specific FBI agent tried to kill you,” he corrected. “And right now, as far as the government is concerned, when it comes to what happened tonight, it’s your word against his.”
She stared at Jax, and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was: that with that psycho discharge in her files, no one would believe a word she said.
“Until we have a better idea who we’re dealing with here, I think you need to—”
He realized she was no longer looking at him. “That’s her,” said October, nodding toward the television. A newsbreak with a photograph of a woman had just flashed across the screen. “Elaine Cox. Turn it up.”
Jax scrambled for the remote and took the TV off mute.
“The FBI lost one of its own today,” announced a reporter with thick dark hair and striking features. She was standing in front of an office complex ablaze with lights. Police cars and ambulances, their red and blue emergency lights flashing, packed the rain-drenched parking lot around her. “Special Agent Elaine Cox, an eighteen-year veteran of the Bureau and mother of three was gunned down this evening here at the Warton Office Park in northern Virginia.”
“I didn’t know she had kids,” said October softly.
“Also killed was Billy Crouch, a security guard employed by Capital Protections. A United States naval officer, whose identity is being withheld, has been rushed to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where he is listed in critical condition.”
