Knowing (34 page)

From what Jane could tell, it appeared that a sidewalk philosopher was now living inside Monroe. “Fine. Explain why you have those photos hidden away.”

“I was doing a job for Romulus and needed some codes. I got sent a link that wasn’t encrypted. That never happened before. Somebody slipped up, I guess. But I saw what I had and it was like a door swung open and I ran right through it and hacked into their system. I knew alarms would go off somewhere so I blew through what I could, transferred the data, yada, yada, yada, and got outta there. From the files I was able to steal, I could only decode three. Two of them were no big deal.” He pointed to the envelope. “That was the third file. There were no dates on it so I have no clue when they were taken.” He rubbed his face, obviously in great distress over the photographs. “I only showed those to two people…You’re the second one.”

“And what did Gabe say?”

“That he had no information about it. But that he was going to check it out. Look, part of what he and I used to do is help destabilize governments or groups or powerful officials. And lots of people die when you do that and it’s awful and gruesome. But this? If this was done to destabilize another fucking tribal whatever in the armpit of Africa, it wouldn’t look like that! You would have bodies heaped into mounds and a chaotic mess of gunshot wounds, high-impact attacks, machete slashes, decapitations, and on and on. What do we have here? We have a handful of later shots where you can see the elders of the tribe in the background, laying every which way on the ground but no close ups of them. From what I could tell when I zoomed in on the shots of the older people, none of them had their heads cracked open. But when you really look at the photos of those young kids, I think their heads were cracked open surgically.”

Jane scowled. “Jesus Christ, Monroe. You’re saying they were alive when this ‘surgery’ happened?”

“Yep. That’s what I’m saying.”

“For what purpose?!”

“There’s only one season to pick apples. But when it comes to organ harvesting, every day yields a new, fresh crop.”

Now the philosopher was becoming obscure. “What the fuck—?”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” he asked offhandedly. “We are no longer people. We are potential harvesting machines. Parts is parts and we are the sum of our parts. And some parts hold more value than others. And the younger you are, the more likely those parts will be healthier and less likely to have significant problems.”

Jane pointed to the envelope. “Brains? I’ve never heard of a brain transplant.”

“I haven’t either.”

Jane waited, expecting him to continue. “And?”

“Well?”

“No,” Jane stated with a sweep of her hand. “You can’t sell that to me. No way!”

“Well, if they’re not transplanting it, there’s only two things I can think of. Either they are selling it for food,” he said cringing, “or they’re working with the cells or the tissue in some sort of medical experiment. And since Romulus isn’t hurting financially, I don’t believe they are selling it for food.”

Jane pondered for a long minute. A strange memory suddenly crept into her consciousness. “You know, when I was a kid, I read one of those ghastly fables that told the story of an ancient warrior who cut open the chest of a still dying soldier and ate his beating heart. There was something about consuming his soul along with the warrior’s courage that sprung through his heart at the moment of his death.” Jane considered it. “It was believed that a golden light entered his body as his soul ascended and that if you could capture the tail of that light within the still beating heart and eat it, you would hold the light of God’s immortality and be able to travel through all the worlds that parallel our universe. Immortality and the ability to space travel at will. That was what they craved in that fable. So, what type of power does Romulus crave?”

“Nothing short of everything,” Monroe shrugged. “Complete and utter power and control over everyone and every living thing. And they are willing to go as long as it takes for it to happen. They’re in no rush. As long as they keep the world off balance, they’re happy.”

“Okay. What does it take to strong arm that kind of ultimate power away from the people?”

“Not sure.”

Jane cocked her head to the side. “You capture the hearts and minds of the populace. Then you turn on them. And through one, you destroy the other. Through rejection of the heart, you kill the mind. Through sole submission of the mind, you kill the heart.”

He nodded. “They steal your mind through your heart. Control one and they’ll make you doubt the other.”

Jane suddenly understood the possibility that the hearts and the minds meme that began with the old man in her vision could actually represent two separate discoveries that Gabriel uncovered. Flashing back to the first vision she had where she followed behind Gabe and watched him kill the old man, he first examined the files on the man’s desk, separating out various files that he seized. He then turned and crossed to the file cabinets, removing the white binder with the IEB inscription. Jane had linked the two together prior to this point, but now she was open to the concept that there were two diverse issues at play here.

“You know the organ transplant business is
big
business with the elite around the world,” Monroe said matter-of-factly. “If they have the money, honey, they’ll hire someone to do the crime.”

“What kind of crime?”

“Stealing organs out of a body and selling it to the highest bidder. I set up a job once for a guy who was hired to get a young, healthy kidney for a diplomat.”

“Hang on.” Jane sat up and faced him. “If he’s not a surgeon, how’d he ‘get’ the kidney?”

“Oh, there was a surgeon there. We paid him off too. Unless he talked. They don’t like it when people argue with them. You do what you’re asked to do and you spend the rest of your life trying to forget it. Hey, Romulus isn’t the only one involved in organ harvesting. There are wealthy individuals who broker overseas deals. They find a young, strong man or woman who has the organ they need and they make a private agreement. Problem is, the donor is usually poor and destitute. So, getting some good money for a kidney looks like a decent trade. But what they don’t understand is that more times than not, they’ll be opened up and the surgeon gets what he needs and then does a hack job sewing him up or doesn’t give the person adequate drugs to prevent infection. Then the donor dies. But so what, right? They got what they wanted. Moving on. Nothing to see here, folks. It’s happening every day of the week, all over this fucked up world. Like I said, we’re just two-legged vehicles that carry spare parts for those who need an upgrade when their hardcore lifestyle turns on them.”

“That’s insane, Monroe.”

He leaned forward, his eyes equally insane. “I
know
that. I’m trying to get you to understand that these people are beyond cold blooded. They are soulless, Jane. They have more money than God, but they keep wanting more.
More of everything
. All they need is to keep us dumb, hopeless and stupid so they can keep the cream for themselves. You know, I’d feel sorry for Romulus if I didn’t want to see them all dead and burned up in a holy fire of retribution. It’s tough because I wish I could warn people and tell them what I’ve experienced. But I can’t. And they wouldn’t believe me anyway. It’s like teaching a goat to sing. It’s a waste of time and it annoys the goat.”

“You mean a pig?” Jane corrected him.

“Nah. A goat,” Monroe said with a wink toward Jane.

Jane wasn’t sure what to make of the goat comment but let it go. She let him know that she reviewed the remaining numbered postcards Gabe sent him and that she would take them with her and then return them.

“They belong to you and Harlan,” he said with precision. “That’s who Gabe meant them for.”

“I talked to a woman who received a postcard from Gabe before he left the company. It was a photo of tribal children from the Congo. Why would he send her that card?”

His interest showed. “Not sure. I think as he started to see more shit he didn’t agree with he wanted to expose it but he knew he couldn’t. So, maybe sending the postcards to the woman was his way of getting the info out there and off his chest.” He pretended to appear more casual than he was truly feeling. “Which woman are we talking about?”

“Nanette Larson.”

“Humph. Okay.” Suddenly, he became taciturn.

“’Humph. Okay?’ What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“Drop it,” he said with a sudden edge. “Gabe made it clear that nobody crossed the line into his personal life. With him, there were places you didn’t go.” He reclined on the chair, drawing one of his rifles closer to him. “There were dark holes and regrets that he built steel walls around. I think it had to do with love and family.” He caught himself. “Shit. I’ve said too much already.”

Jane observed Monroe and the way he fidgeted nervously with his rifle. It was obvious to her that he was about to split again. While his mind decided which personality to call up next, she decided to use his transitioning time to get cogent information. “He had a girlfriend, didn’t he?
More
than just a girlfriend, in fact.”

“I never said that.”

Jane sank back into her recliner. “Sure you did,” she said off handedly.

He turned toward her sharply. “I
never
said a word about Marion.”

Jane smiled and glanced his direction. “Until right then.”

Monroe bit down on his lip. “
Fuck
. I lost Situational Awareness again. Shit! This is why they keep me behind the computer and out of the main theater.”

The mysterious “M” in Harlan’s notebook now had a full name. “You know Marion?”

He sat up and draped his legs over the chair. “Drop it, Jane!”

She observed him again and rested her head against the back of the chair. “Interesting. She’s very special, isn’t she?”

“I mean it!” His voice sounded manic. “Stop it!” He began rocking back and forth. “Please. I’m not kidding. This is not funny.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, holding her hand in the air. “It’s dropped.” She watched him and waited for the next inhabitant to take him over. Within seconds, his visage altered and he had the appearance of a square jawed, tough army grunt. She pulled her leather satchel toward her, along with the burlap bag and the black notebook. “I need you to look through this bag and notebook for me. See if you pick up on anything important with your keen military eye.”

Monroe spilled the contents of the burlap bag onto the floor of the porch. He laid them out in a straight line and stared at them. Picking up the bottle of sandalwood oil, he opened it and gave it a good sniff before putting a drop of it on his arm and massaging it in. He lifted up the
Yogi
book and smiled. “This guy was intriguing.”

“You’ve read it?”

He nodded. “That’s affirmative. Gabe gave me a copy. He talks about the spiritual mind. He who controls the mind, controls everything. You give away your mind, and you become nothing but a pawn for them to play with.” He picked up the Easter card with the Angel Gabriel. “Now, that is a good one, Gabe. Nicely done.”

Jane watched him peruse the items one by one. There were no questions about why Harlan collected all of this or whether Jane was “imagining” it meant something. There was just pure acceptance and for the first time since her journey began, she didn’t feel crazy. The irony didn’t escape her that a crazy guy helped her feel normal. Right at that moment, she didn’t care what alter was operating inside the poor man. “Thank you,” she softly said.

He looked up at her. “For what?”

“For believing me. You have no clue what that means to me.”

“You’re welcome.” He continued looking at the items. “You know, that’s how they keep their power, Jane. What they do is so mind-boggling and improbable that you’d have to be crazy to believe it’s really happening. And yet? It’s going on right now, somewhere in this world. Somebody is being sacrificed so someone else can prosper.” He picked up the pinecone and the bag of pine nuts. “Redundancy. It’s like code. You look for stuff like that.” He regarded the pinecone as if it were a skull in a lab setting.

“Gabe would only drink pine needle beer, imported from Scotland.”

“Another sync. So what does a pinecone mean? Pine nuts? Pine beer? They’re just symbols that represent something else. But it’s the power we give to those symbols that makes them so compelling.” He lifted up the lapis stone with the Eye of Horus engraved in gold paint and stuck it up to his eye, giving him a very distorted visage. “It’s repetitive.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something about this bag of stuff is repeating itself.” He slid
The Q
magazine out of the way, along with the Easter card. He focused on the key and set that to the side. Picking up the Eco-Goddesses brochure and Blue Heron card, he tossed them to the side, followed by the Patsy Cline tape. But then he retrieved the cassette and placed it next to the pinecone, pine nuts and lapis. Staring at the tiny bottle of sandalwood oil, he gently set it next to the pinecone. Finally, he laid the
Yogi
book next to the pine nuts. “The pinecone pile is a repetitive code. Yeah, yeah, okay, he’s being repetitive for a reason. That’s how Gabe operated. When he was explaining something to me, he’d tell it to me three different ways with three different analogies. Eventually, it made sense. I think that’s what you have here.” He opened the notebook and flipped through the pages.

“See anything in there that stands out?”

Monroe turned the pages. He came up on the page that was filled with the number seventeen and the number thirty-three below it, both with a single accent mark after the number. “Humph.”

“I met a nurse from the hospital where Harlan was in recovery after his surgery. She had a tat on her wrist of a dove and “17:33” underneath it. But I can’t believe that she was a big enough player in this to earn a whole page in that damn notebook.”

Monroe stared at the page as if he were deciphering the most complex computer code. “Like I said, Gabe often told the same story more than one way. If you take off the accent marks, you could read it this way. Gabe was born on the seventeenth of February and he died when he was thirty-three.”