Knowing (41 page)

“Come on!” Saul said with urgency.

Jane removed the binder from the drawer and moved back to the chair. She placed it on her lap, still staring at the three letters.

“The Project went through different names,” Saul explained. “First it was called Project Bennu. That’s the Ancient Egyptian bird that’s similar to our Phoenix. It was the sacred bird of Heliopolis. It’s also a symbol of the rising and setting sun. Next, they changed the name to Project IEB.”

“What does IEB stand for?” Jane asked.

“It’s not an acronym. IEB means ‘heart.’ That’s another reference to ancient Egypt. They believed our heart was the center of all consciousness. Upon death, instead of saying someone ‘passed away,’ they’d say his ‘heart departed.’”

Jane carefully threaded the pieces together. “So, if the heart is truly the center of consciousness and if your heart doesn’t die with you, but is transplanted instead…”

He waited. “Go on…”

“Then you can live on in someone else’s body.”

“No. Your consciousness lives on.”

Jane nodded. “Well, I can’t argue with that. But why is that such a bad thing? From what I’ve seen, it can be life changing for the recipient. And Gabe’s heart? Well, who in the hell wouldn’t want his heart?”

He nodded. “Yes.
Who
in
hell
would want it?” He leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “Open the binder. You’ll find the third and final name for their Project.”

Jane’s stomach churned as she turned the front cover over and read the black typed lettering on the front page. “PROJECT GABRIEL.” She looked up at Saul.

“
He
was their project,” Saul stated. “From the moment they recruited him, Gabriel was
always
their project. To them, he was perfection. A god among men. They put a lot of time and money into this one. And they always got whatever they wanted.
Except
for this time.
This
time, Harlan got what they desired the most.”

Jane stared at Saul, suddenly understanding. “And now they want it back.”

Saul nodded.

Jane felt dizzy and wondered if she would pass out.

“You’ll be fine,” Saul interjected. “Let it pass.” He regarded her with a stern eye. “You’ve got work to do. Use your mind to get over your matter.” Saul leaned forward. “
Did you hear me
?”

Jane came back into herself and steadied her nerves. God, if she ever needed a cigarette, it was now.

“Hold off on the nicotine for the time being,” Saul offered, prying once more into her head.

Jane looked down at the binder. “There were two distinct things Gabe found. The second one was this binder. What was the first thing?”

Saul sat back. “That’s what Gabriel was working on when he was killed. He was very close to delivering it but there were still pieces he couldn’t pull together. That’s where you come in. You must follow through with everything you’ve been given, in the
exact
order in which it was given to you.”

“Wait, wait, you said he was very close to ‘delivering it.’ What does that mean?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Jesus Christ! You gotta help me! This is not a fucking joke to me!”

“It’s not a joke to me either!” he yelled. “But Gabriel chose you and Harlan to play this out to its conclusion.”

Irritation rose up. “You know, when I hear that Gabe delegated all of this in some cosmic court, I feel like I’ve lost complete control of my life!”

He shrugged. “So what? Deal with it. If he didn’t think you were capable of what you have to do, he never would have given you the job. Situations will unfold and everything will become evident to you as it occurs.”

She bored into his eyes. “You know everything that is going to happen, don’t you?”

“Not everything.”

“Tell me what you know.”

He jabbed his finger at Jane. “It’s
yours to do
, not mine!”

Jane ran her fingers through her dyed hair. A thousand images and words crashed inside her head, all competing for her attention. Then, one comment came to the fore. It was Monroe’s odd statement about “the medicine man next to Haas.” She looked at Saul and then turned her attention to the table next to him on his left side. Three books stood upright. The one closest to Saul was authored by Werner Haas.

“It’s about damn time,” Saul stated, turning to his left and handing the book to Jane.

Jane turned to the back cover and felt her heart fall. The black and white photo of Werner Haas was the old man Gabe assassinated. “Why did he kill him?”

“It was just another job. But then everything changed when he realized he’d killed the man who was hired to design
his
death and, shall we say, rebirth.”

Jane flipped through the pages of the book. It was a scientific tome that was far too complex. “Who was this Haas?”

“He was a Belgium scientist living and working in Scotland. He’d long been ostracized from his post at the University due to his controversial ideas. They even wiped his name from all the scientific literature he took part in.”

“Why?”

“He wasn’t a traditional scientist. Instead of following the conventional heroes, he was drawn to the likes of Nikola Tesla. Haas studied energy, just like Tesla, but the type of energy Haas was interested in couldn’t be photographed in a thunderbolt of light. He was obsessed by the energy you cannot see but that exists nonetheless. And as he became increasingly demented in old age, his experiments caught the company’s attention. He was just the kind of twisted genius they needed for their research. But as brilliant as Haas was, he should have known his alliance would end badly. All loose ends have to be swept up, you know?”

Jane nodded. “All witnesses need to die.” She glanced at the book again. “This is way over my head, Saul. Can you at least give me a nutshell explanation of what this old guy was into?”

Saul leaned toward Jane. “He theorized that the energy from one person could be given to another. It wasn’t a gigantic, speculative leap. While academia doesn’t accept it, real life examples exist where transplant patients often feel strange or different after their surgery, feeling the cellular energy of their donor. Using that as his foundation, he accepted that there was a clear transference of awareness and perception from one body to another. Haas sought to develop a way that could capture that consciousness in its purest form and transfer it to another human being.”

“My God, he sounds like a geriatric Frankenstein.”

“Haas would have loved that association. I think he’d lost his soul at the end. I’m not sure you can do what he did if you have a shred of conscience left.”

“If Haas was so evil, why in the hell did Gabe use his name?”

“Maybe to remind him of the kind of evil he walked away from? Or perhaps to draw your attention to that name?”

Jane turned to the side, desperately trying to patch together a plan. “What do you know about the Congo?”

“I know it’s a place where hope doesn’t exist and where people are looked on like cattle. Bred and slaughtered at the whim of those in charge.”

“And when they die, nobody cares,” Jane surmised. “Nobody misses them because even their families are killed alongside them.”

“Commodity is the word you’re searching for. We’re all commodities to them. We’re only as useful as what we can offer them. As destructively brilliant as Haas was, he wasn’t above them. They used him and when they were done, they eliminated him.”

Jane considered it. “But Gabe wasn’t only a commodity to them. They obviously didn’t want to eliminate him completely. Through his heart, they could still benefit from him. Just exactly what are they expecting to get from that heart?”

“Everything. Look at your friend, Harlan. If he was a different person, if he was more aware, if he had an understanding of how to manipulate that heart inside him, he could potentially be a very powerful man.”

“
Potentially
. It’s all theory, Saul.”

“Not necessarily. You’ve been given enough proof that what I’m telling you is accurate. And the company never worried about having to support their theories. They don’t have any corporations to answer to or investors to impress. It’s a game for them but they take that game
very
seriously. They will continue to take as many lives as necessary to achieve whatever they want.”

“And you’re trying to tell me that Gabe had enough ammo to stop their train?”

“Not completely.” He considered his words carefully. “He wanted to shine the light on them because the more light you push into the darkness, the less power it will have. And through that, the dominos can begin to fall until there’s so much light on the truth that it can’t be ignored any longer. Gabriel’s intention was to push over the first domino.”

“And now that’s
my
job?”

“Consider yourself the domino pusher.”

Jane felt every wall in that underground cavern closing in on her. “What if I say no? What if I choose to disappear?”

Saul sat back and observed her. “You could do that. You could run and keep running. But it wouldn’t be freedom you’d be feeling.”

“I’m fucked either way?”

He smiled. “Something like that.” He reached into the side table’s top drawer and pulled out a deck of Tarot cards. “Do you know the allegory of The Fool that’s told through the Tarot?”

“No.”

Saul went through the deck, pulling out the twenty-two Major Arcana cards. He laid them out on the coffee table. “The first card is The Fool. The story that continues through the successive cards involves his spiritual journey. He meets his teachers,” Saul pointed to the The Magician and The High Priestess cards. “Later in his journey, he finds love,” he said as he pointed to The Lovers. “As he evolves on his journey, he discovers his power and his strength. But then he has his dark night of the soul.” Saul touched The Hanged Man card. “And from that, a purely spiritual death,” he pointed to The Death card. “He learns temperance before he encounters The Devil, the evil within all of us. From there, his world crumbles. And the towers of ego he’s built collapse in total destruction.” He held up The Tower card. “His life is obliterated. The slate is wiped clean. At that point, he could choose to die. But instead, The Fool selects the spiritual path. The Tower Card is the sixteenth card in the deck. The seventeenth card is The Star.”

Jane picked it up. The illustration showed a woman bent on one knee over a body of water, holding two vessels of water. One foot is firmly in the water and one is on the earth. Her right hand pours the water into the pond while her left hand pours water onto the ground. Seven white stars and one larger yellow star hover above her head. “What does this mean?”

“There are a lot of interpretations. But I see it as a portentous card. It speaks of renewed hope and purpose. Rebirth. Some believe it represents the beginning of higher consciousness or the pathway that leads to that place. It’s the first card toward the end of The Fool’s journey that moves him closer to the light.” He dealt The Moon and then The Sun cards. “And finally to the sun. After that, there is Judgement and, finally, The World.” He lay the cards out and sat back. “But the higher enlightenment begins with the seventeenth card.”

“So what does seventeen mean?”

“You seeing it a lot?”

“Lately, yeah.”

“I don’t know that it means anything by itself. It’s what it attaches to that seems to have the deeper context. King Tutankhamen was wrapped in seventeen sheets. The Parthenon is seventeen columns long. Beethoven wrote seventeen string quartets. In the Bible, the seventeenth book is the shortest. In the exact middle of the Bible, you’ll find the 117th Psalm, which is also the shortest. The Great Flood started on the seventeenth of the month and Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat on the seventeenth. There are seventeen muscles in the tongue. Japanese Haiku contains seventeen syllables. The U.S. Navy had seventeen battleships in service when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The White House is on the seventeenth street in Washington and there are seventeen methods of strangulation. Those are just a handful of examples I can offer you. It’s not a magical number but whatever it touches, in whatever shape or form, seems to carry with it a lingering echo that is not quickly forgotten.”

Jane stared at The Star card. “Enlightenment.” She looked at Saul. “It’s not for the queasy or the narrow minded, is it?”

“Sure it is. It’s for everyone. And all you have to realize is that it is already present within you and just needs the proper spark to ignite your mind.” He leaned closer with an uncompromising expression. “Enlightenment is our birthright. And God help you if you let them take it from you.”

His words chilled Jane. “Can I take the binder with me?”

“No. You don’t need it. You already know that part of their plan. Your job is to complete the second part. And you only have days to do it.”

“How many days?”

“Two or three at the most.”

Jane turned away, defeat filling every pore.

“
Yes
,” Saul stressed. “You
can
do this. You can’t give up.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand, protecting it in his. “They can’t win. Did you hear me? I was part of their sickness. I know what they dream about and, believe me, it’s a nightmare.”

“If it’s even possible, I could
maybe
stop one of the sick experiments. But from what I understand, Romulus has their hand in every facet of the world. Anything I help bring out will be a drop in the bucket. They’ll just shove it under the rug and keep moving forward with the thousand other plans they’ve got going.”

“You’re not supposed to stop everything. All you have to do is get the information to the right people so that the light can finally be shed on these pricks.”

She sighed. “I don’t know, Saul. I’m kinda tired of feeling used, you know?”

“The difference is you’re being used for a good purpose.”

“Uh-huh. Notice how the word ‘used’ is still in there?”

He peered into Jane’s eyes, hypnotically securing her gaze. “How do I compel you?”

“Tell me the truth.”

He smiled. “Interesting choice of words there. Truth? Whose version do you want?”