Through the Third Eye; Book 1 of Third Eye Trilogy

by Bob Frank

  “That’s what we thought. But let’s see if anyone steps up to claim credit. Get some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow. And call me if you remember more or if you want to talk.”

  As soon as the FBI agent left, Clay set out through the hospital to find Shali. One of the four police officers standing in the hallway helped him hobble over to her room. He saw that she was asleep, but when he reached over and stroked the back of her hand, she slowly lifted her blackened eyelids and glanced through the slits in her puffy eyes. Her smile showed that she was pleased to see him.

  Without opening her eyes any further, she said, “They destroyed it, didn’t they? Whoever they are, whatever they are, they destroyed it. They didn’t even know what the writings would say, but they felt threatened enough to do this. For Christ’s sake, we didn’t even know what the writings would say, so how could they possibly know?”

  Clay smiled through his pain. “Yes, but just rest for now. You need to rest. I just came down to see that you were alright.”

  “Two years of my life. Five years of your life, Clay. Gone. Everything we searched for, everything we found — it’s all gone, in seconds. Gone. Thousands of years of history: gone. Our three friends: gone. The innocent guards: gone.”

  Her despair was his inspiration. Clay gently clasped both of her nicked-up hands in his hands. “Shh, shh, shh. Hey, look, I’m the one that should be talking like that, not you. It was my idea to go find the damn things. I’m the one who said we should display it all at one time. I’m the one who didn’t listen to Pema when she said we should digitize the writings in Copper Canyon. If we would have had Copper Canyon do everything for us, we would be just fine; but now it’s all gone. I’m the dumb one. You’re supposed to be encouraging me to go on and find the other set of writings, you know.”

  They painfully smiled at each other’s attempts to comfort one another.

  “Don’t patronize me, guy. We got lucky in finding this set. Besides, we found no evidence that another set even exists.”

  “True, but there’s time to talk about this later. Go back to sleep and get some rest.”

  * * * ~~~ * * *

  Clay and Shali continued to recuperate over the next week. As the bruises on their bodies yellowed, their spirits got more upbeat, despite their remorse for the loss of the treasures and of their three Buddhist colleagues. Nothing turned up during the FBI’s intense investigation except confusing and misdirected leads. They had determined the bomb was made of a special grade of Italian-manufactured plastic explosives called T4. Two obvious but dead-end leads took them on probes of the American Petroleum Institute and the American Medical Association. But overall at that point the investigation found no substantive leads in the case.

  On the first day out of the hospital Clay headed to the FBI to get an update on the investigation. Shali went back to her apartment to call Pema for the first time since the bombing.

  “Pema? It’s Shali.”

  “Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice. We are just happy that you are both safe after that terrible night.”

  “Our three friends — ”

  “Don’t worry. We have taken care of everything. The Nepalese embassy has collected their remains and personal belongings. The logistics are all finished.”

  “And the writings?”

  “Shali, I know that you and Clay are feeling guilty. Please, do not feel that way; it was not your fault. First, I should have had it all digitized in Tibet, despite the risk. But more importantly, this was destined to happen. It did not matter what we did; it was going to happen.”

  “The prophecy?”

  “Yes.”

  Shali asked, “So what now?”

  “The writings are gone, so put that behind you. Just get better and heal yourself. But more importantly, you and Clay must be careful. You are in the public eye now, and whoever did this may not stop with the writings. They do not know how much you know, and you may still pose a threat to them.”

  “Did the authorities contact you?”

  “Yes. The American FBI called us. We met with Interpol agents in Kathmandu, and they told us everything that happened. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could tell them that could help the investigation.”

  “Do you think radical Muslims did this?”

  “Because of the Arabic graffiti? No. Someone did that to divert attention. Islamic extremists don’t really have that ax to grind.”

  “Did they tell you about the bomb material from Italy?”

  “Yes. They said it was plastic explosives called T4. The Interpol told us that in the late 1990s, by international treaty, Italy agreed to destroy its national stockpile of land mines. A military factory north of Rome had the government contract to destroy thousands of tons of Italian anti-personnel mines, but someone obviously stole some of the explosives before it was destroyed.”

  “Do you think the Vatican could be behind it?”

  “They would not be that foolhardy to use explosives that came from Italy. Besides, they could get explosives from anywhere, or, for that matter, they could make their own untraceable explosives. No, we believe the Italian explosives may have just been an attempt to point the finger at the Catholic Church.”

  “But why the diversions? Why not just leave it a mystery about who planted the bombs?”

  “Shali, we wish there were answers. Whoever they are, whatever they are, they have been doing this for a millennium. They just finally succeeded. But either way, it is too late. What is done is done. We knew this would happen, eventually. It is time to move on.”

  “Okay, but we are going to continue our search.”

  “I understand. Let’s stay in touch. Maybe we can help you at some point.” Before they hung up, Pema added, “Oh, and please tell Clay that he must ask the right questions.”

  * * * ~~~ * * *

  Shali met Clay for dinner that night in Arlington. She summarized her conversation with Pema and then turned the discussion to the investigation. “Did you learn anything from your meeting with the FBI, today?”

  Clay said, “There is still no evidence to connect any group or person to this insane destruction. The whole site is clean.”

  “How do they think the explosives were planted?”

  “They have a theory. When the grad students were putting the writings into the new glass cases, some of them noticed fresh window putty in the edges around the display glass; it was probably the plastic explosives, and every case could have been lined with it. The FBI suspects it was planted while the cases were stored in the warehouse over those few weeks. There was very little security there. If the theory is correct, it is understandable why there was total destruction of the scrolls and books without complete destruction of the building itself. They found no substantive evidence of the detonation device, just a few suspicious bits and pieces. The explosion was probably triggered by a cell phone call.”

  “Did they come up with anything regarding the Arabic writing?”

  “Nothing. The press jumped on it and stirred up a hornet’s nest. You’ve read the papers.”

  The two of them looked at each other without a word. In just the short time since the bombing, there was a revival of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim fervor across the U.S. Paranoia was boiling over with 9/11 anti-Islamic sentiment. It was as if everyone on the street was on a witch hunt for Muslims and Arabs. Right wing groups called for expansion of military operations back into Afghanistan and to forcefully move troops into northern Pakistan, whether welcomed or not. Since the bombing was in the U.S. capital, the U.S. Senate called for new Congressional hearings on terrorist activities. Political editorials in India claimed the ancient writings were historical Indian artifacts targeted for destruction by a radical Pakistani government. Anti-Pakistani sentiments bubbled over in India. That entire region became a political powder-keg in hardly a week’s time.

  Shali finally replied, “But there is no proof that Arab terrorists did this.” She gestured with open palms, “So what’s next
for us?”

  Clay hesitated. “There is nothing left to do in Washington, so let’s take the next few weeks off to recuperate. I think I’ll visit some family, and then I’m going to Maui to chill out on the beach for a week. Let’s keep in touch, and I’ll meet you back in Silicon Valley in a couple of weeks. You’re welcome to join me on the beach.”

  “I think I’ll spend that extra week with my family. I’ve been away quite a while, and after almost getting blown to pieces, I might appreciate them more.” A slight curve of her lip showed a smile beneath her bruised cheeks. “Besides, if I came over to Hawaii, you wouldn’t be able to control yourself; you know what happens then.”

  “Me, control myself? Hmph. You’re the one with the problem holding up our bargain.”

  Part III - Forging into the Future

  Chapter 28

  Palo Alto, California

  After two weeks of recuperation, Clay and Shali returned to their homes in Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco. Because they had booked their flights to get into San Francisco Airport at the same time, they linked up and shared a taxi back to Silicon Valley. Clay was dropped off first at his large double condo in Palo Alto, near the downtown train station, and Shali continued on to her townhouse, a few miles away in downtown Mountain View.

  Clay opened the door to his condo, and saw something he had hoped never to see. He checked the adjoining condo he used as the office to run his business. The same. Still in shock, he called Shali.

  “Hello, Clay? I figured you would be calling.”

  “Well, did you get a surprise, too?”

  “Let me guess: everything in your place has been turned upside down or has gone missing? Every drawer dumped out?”

  “Yup. You, too? Who the hell are these people? Everything I had that looked like it might have any kind of information is gone. They even took the PLR books off my shelf.” Clay, recovering from the shock, tried to lighten the mood. “Hey, and I had autographed PLR books by Brian Weiss, Michael Newton and Tom Silver. Now, how am I going to replace those?”

  They nervously laughed together, covering the pain caused by their personal lives being violated by some faceless, nameless organization.

  Clay continued, “They took all of my computers and backups. It’s a good thing it’s all encrypted.”

  “It is also good that almost everything was on the computers and not on paper. Your paranoid, spooky army intelligence experience paid off this time.”

  Clay smiled. “Fortunately, it’s all worthless to them without our computer token chips and our secret pass codes. Since everything is backed up on-line, we just need to get some new computers, and then we’ll be up and running in a few days.”

  “No rush. We’ve got our laptop databases for the time being.”

  “Shali, we have to call the local cops, but we should get in touch with our FBI contact first. This has got to be the same people who planted that bomb. I’ll call the agent now and get back to you in little bit. You should go check into a hotel. Don’t touch anything until the FBI or police have done their magic.”

  * * * ~~~ * * *

  A week later, they both had their houses put back together and had new sophisticated security alarms installed. Shali met at Clay’s office condo to plan their next steps.

  Shali said, “It looks like the local authorities and the FBI did a thorough job of investigating the break-ins, but again they didn’t find a single trace of evidence. Nothing.”

  Clay nodded. “These people are pros for sure. Clearly, somebody wanted to know what we have been doing and how we are doing it. From now on, we need to be extra cautious about everything.”

  “The security sweeps you ordered for both of our places also turned up nothing. The guy said they will come back twice a week for the next couple of months.”

  Clay pointed at several dots on his ceilings and walls. “The security company did a good job on the hidden cameras. We can monitor the video on my smartphone via the Internet. Pretty cool.”

  In a positive tone, Shali said, “Well, now that all the databases are synchronized and backed up, and our bruises and cuts are healed, I think we’re about ready to go back to work. So where do we go from here?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. We’ve got a few options; each has its pros and cons.”

  “So shoot.”

  “First, we could try to pull the secrets that were hidden in the writings straight out of regression subjects. As both Pema and Yongten told us, if we ask the right questions from the right souls, we might get the knowledge directly from the source. Before we found the writings, we didn’t know what we were looking for, but at least now we’ve got an idea of the topics and categories. If we can dig out the secrets during regressions, we can package it on our own and skip the whole Sanskrit and sheepskin thing.”

  Shali reared her head back and pulled her arms as if she were reining in a horse. “Whoa, Tonto. We’ve got to be a bit practical. There were thousands of writings destroyed in Washington, written over perhaps more than a thousand year period by hundreds if not a thousand authors. Each of them spent dozens of years, if not their whole lives, gathering the knowledge they documented as their little piece of this huge base of knowledge. How many decades or centuries will it take the two of us to replicate that, Clay?” She raised her eyebrows and smiled to show that she knew she was being hard on him. “To pour a little salt on that wound: two things. First, few people are going to buy the validity of regressions or the PLR protocols as a means of verifying this knowledge. Second, there is no telling whether we could even get our subjects’ souls or guides to turn their cards over and give us the secrets. You know what happens every time we start digging into details. The souls and their guides hold back; they are always cautious about what they tell us. If they suspect we have ulterior motives, they clam up. You know they’re all interconnected. What if they put the word out on the proverbial soul street, and make us persona non grata? We’d get shut down.”

  The fifteen-second pause seemed to last fifteen minutes. Shali knew she had hit a sore spot.

  Clay got up and asked, “Tea?”

  “Sure, that would be nice.”

  Clay came back with two cups of tea. He sat down and took a sip from his cup. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  Shali leaned over and rubbed his forearm. She broke the silence, “What’s the next option, cowboy?

  “You are too practical, my lady.” He perked up and moved on. “Our second option is to start with the last three souls that led us to the writings in Tibet. We dig out the data just like before and look for another set of the writings, if another set exists. These three souls were in the same pod. There may be other souls in that pod who are incarnated today. Maybe some of them could help us find another set.”

  Shali nodded. “I hear you. Got more options?”

  “Yeah. We could ask Pema and Yongten to set us up with any previous custodians who are still living. If we regress them, maybe we will find they were custodians in a previous life too, perhaps for the other set of writings. Maybe we can find the other set of writings through them.”

  “And?”

  “Or we could take a more direct approach. We could just talk with the old custodians and document as much as possible about the knowledge they can recall. If we pick out the high points, we could replicate the writings’ most important aspects. That shouldn’t be thousands of books worth of information. You know how writers are, even the ancient ones. There’s a lot of fluff in those writings that don’t add much value and are just examples of an author’s literary freedom. A writer might take a hundred or a thousand pages to say what could be said in ten. We only want the plot right now. Once we get the foundation, we can supplement it with regression details from our last three targets in Jordan, Scotland and Panama.”

  “Alright. That’s an option. Any others?” she asked.

  “I’d like to regress both Yongten and Pema, or maybe some of those others we saw at the f
irst Tibetan monastery. Some past-life experiences must have compelled them to do what they did for those writings. I’m sure we could find something in their regressions. Maybe a combination of all of these approaches is what we need. We won’t know until we start digging in.”

  “Several things come to my mind. First, Yongten’s secret mystery club appears to be very well connected internationally. Why wouldn’t they already know where the second or third set is located? Why wouldn’t they just tell us so we can bring it forth?”

  Clay tilted his head and looked intently at Shali. “Hey, come on. We just got all of their ancient books blown to smithereens. They’ve been hiding this stuff for thousands of years, and in less than two months we managed to get it completely wiped out.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Even if they knew where a set was located, I can’t see them helping us find it. But more importantly, there is no evidence of another set of writings existing — it’s only been alluded to in our regressions. I don’t give us much chance of finding it through Yongten’s and Pema’s organization. We’ll probably have better luck on our own.”

  Clay’s voice shifted to a slow, remorseful tone. “How could we have been so careless?”

  Shali chided, “It is not our fault. Look at the prophecies Pema kept talking about. We don’t know what is in the prophecies yet, but Pema seemed to know about the bombing before it happened. We need to translate the seven surviving books and find out what is in the prophecies. I especially want to know whether it ends with the bombing or continues a little longer. Plus I would like to find out how we play in this prophecy game.”

  Clay nodded. “That should be a priority.”

  “Good. I’ll start work on translating the seven remaining books. I can’t read the Sanskrit fluently, so I’ll need help. Leave that to me though. You can start reviewing the transcripts and tapes of the regressions of our three pigs in a soul pod.”

  Counter to Shali’s perky attitude, Clay frowned. “There’s one thing that’s been on my mind about the prophecy. Were we supposed to die in that bombing? And if not, what is our role now? Do we just fade away or is there still a part for us?”