Soul Intent

Copyright © 2009 by Dennis Batchelder

Published by NetLeaves at Smashwords

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Ebook ISBN 978-0-9798056-3-9

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Title Page

Prologue

Acknowledgements

prologue

October 15, 1946

Nuremberg, Germany

Archibald Morgan withdrew his hand from the prisoner’s clammy grasp and wiped it on the sleeve of his brown robe. The deposit has been made, he said.

The prisoner, a large man in a larger baggy uniform, licked his lips and spoke in a whisper. Everything left was accepted? My gold and my papers?

All of it. Morgan dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small sheet of flimsy paper. Your depositary receipt.

The prisoner took it and used his finger to caress the listed items. Sleep well, my little darlings. He handed the receipt back to Morgan. Please destroy this. If the guards discovered it after they… His voice trailed off.

Neither of us would want that to happen. Morgan secreted the paper inside his robe. Good luck, sir.

I believe my luck has, how do you Americans put it? Run out. The man frowned. Keep everything safe for my return. His voice rose in volume. When I shall gaze upon the marble monument the Berliners erect in my memory.

The white-helmeted guard banged his stick on the door. The sound bounced off the stark walls. Enough already with that monument crap, he said. Keep the noise down, Nazi.

The prisoner bowed his head to the guard, then glanced at Morgan. Since the verdict two weeks ago, they have become unbearably rude, he whispered.

As the guard let Morgan out of the cell, the prisoner called out, I won’t forget this, Archibald Morgan. I shall find you once I return, and I shall reward you for your good work.

The Soul Identity overseer shuddered at the thought. He shuffled as fast as he dared out of Nuremberg Prison’s Cellblock C and almost tripped on his robe. He climbed the two flights of stairs, nodded at the soldier behind the desk, and escaped into the brisk October evening.

As far as Morgan was concerned, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering’s promises had fallen upon deaf ears. The Nazi general should rot in hell; his soul should never return.

He paused after he crossed the platz and stepped onto the sidewalk. Spotlights mounted on the Palais du Justice walls cast an array of sinister shadows in front of him. He had done his despicable duty. He alone had understood that the journey to a better world required distasteful compromises. Maybe someday Flora would also understand…

He shook his head. Enough. The journalists he had met in the Nuremberg Grand Hotel bar were giving four to one odds that the eleven condemned Nazis would hang before sunrise. He had finished the deposit just in time. His work was finally over—he could flee this war-torn country and return to his own battles in Sterling.

one

Present Day

Kent Island, Maryland

They exploit people who believe in reincarnation, Lester the reporter said. He glanced up at me, pen poised over his pad. Did I get that right?

I didn’t say that, Lester. If I squinted just right, the white streaks of scalp poking through his greasy combed-over hairdo looked like a bunch of tiny bananas.

Val sat next to me with her arms crossed. Her smile looked decidedly more forced than it did ten minutes ago, when this interview started.

The reporter gave me an oily smile. I’m sorry, Mr. Waverly. Maybe you could repeat it for me.

Soul Identity assists people who like the concepts behind reincarnation, I said. This was my fourth rendition.

He wrote that down again. Got it. Exploits people who like the concepts behind reincarnation.

I said assists. Not exploits. I pointed at him. You put all kinds of words in my mouth last year, and it’s not going to happen again. Either get it right, or get out.

He flashed that used-car salesman’s smile again. Assists. That’s what I said.

Val uncrossed her arms and rubbed her palms on her tanned legs, just below her white shorts. Let’s just show him how it works, Scott, she said.

You think that’s wise? I asked.

She shrugged. We’ve got only twenty minutes until your picnic, and Lester seems tireless in his search for dirt. She smiled at him. No offense.

He smiled back, showing off a gap between his front teeth. None taken, Ms. Nikolskaya.

Do you have a reader? I asked her.

I always have a reader. She dug into her purse and pulled out a yellow device about half the size of a matchbox car. It had a tiny lens on one end and a big button on its side.

What’s that? Lester asked.

A camera, I said. Let Val take your picture, and we’ll use it to explain how everything works.

Lester licked his palm and used it to smooth his hair. He sat up straight on the couch, sucked in his gut, and attempted to pull tight the gap in his shirt where his belly hair poked through. Then he smiled at Val. Ready when you are.

She looked at him steadily. I’m taking a picture of your eyes, Lester. It’s not a portrait. She brought the reader to six inches in front of his right eye and clicked the button.

My eyes?

Keep still. Val held the reader in front of his left eye and clicked again. Okay, I’m done. She tossed me the reader. Work your magic.

I caught it and beckoned to Lester. Come with me as I uncover your soul. I followed that with the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth: Da-da-da-dum.

The three of us walked out of my living room and into the office.

Lester headed for the windows. You waste this scenery on your workplace? He gestured at the panoramic view of the Chesapeake Bay. Why not make this your living room?

Because this way we get to enjoy the view all day long. I flipped open the top of the reader, exposed its USB port, and plugged it into my laptop. Now watch carefully.

I clicked on my latest Soul Identity icon. Images of two brown eyes appeared on opposite sides of the screen.

Lester stood next to me. Those are my eyes? he asked.

I nodded. Pay attention.

The eye images cut away all but the two brown irises and pupils, then sprouted grid lines on their outside edges. The right iris rotated clockwise until it aligned with the left.

You’ve improved your program, Val said. She stood behind my chair, her arms on my shoulders.

I leaned my head back and looked up at her. Her red hair caught the sunlight. One hundred percent automated, I said.

She smiled, which upside-down looked like a frown.

Is this some kind of way to steal my identity? Lester asked.

I straightened up. So far it’s just a photo of your eyes. It’s not yet your soul identity.

The two irises moved toward each other, but instead of colliding, the left slid over the right. The screen filled with an enlarged view of the resulting single image.

Now it’ll calculate the differences between your two irises, I said.

A few dozen arcs, whorls, lines, and starbursts glowed on the screen, and the overlapped irises faded to a very light brown. The computer beeped.

I pointed at the image. And there you have it, I said to Lester. That’s your soul identity.

Is it like a fingerprint? he asked.

If you mean, is it unique, then yes, it’s the only one just like it in the whole wide world.

At least for now, Val said. But after you die, that identity will come back in somebody else’s eyes.

He turned to her. What does that mean?

She smiled. Your soul identity repeats. Before you were born, another person carried it in their eyes. And after you die, somebody else will get it.

He narrowed his eyes. Can you prove this?

She sighed. It’s a matter of faith, not proof.

He smiled and pulled out his pad. So Soul Identity is tricking people into thinking they’re reincarnated.

Hold on a second, Val said. It’s faith, but there’s some science behind it. We’ve read over fifty million sets of eyes, and we’ve never found two living people sharing the same soul identity.

He shrugged. So?

I spun in my chair to face him. Lester, you’re missing the point. These guys have been tracking soul identities for almost twenty-six hundred years. They have examples of identities repeating eight, ten, and even twelve times over the centuries. If you like reincarnation, you’ll love Soul Identity.

I still don’t get it. What’s there to love? he asked.

What they offer you, I said. Are you married?

He shook his head.

Any kids?

Nope.

So what happens to your wealth when you die?

I don’t care. I’ll be dead.

But if you knew you were coming back in the future, wouldn’t you want to give yourself a head start in your next life? I asked. Soul Identity can hold onto your money and memories until you reclaim them.

He scratched his head. You’re saying I could give my future life an unfair advantage? I could’ve used a leg up this time around.

Check with the folks at Soul Identity, I said. Maybe your previous soul carrier left you something.

I can do that?

He looked like somebody just told him he might have won the lottery. But I didn’t want to raise his hopes, or his greed level, too high; if he found nothing in his soul line collection, he’d pen a nasty piece about us.

So I smiled and said, Of course you can. The chances of having a recorded past are slim, but you can at least plan for a bright future.

Lester scratched his chin, and after a minute he nodded his head. I’ll do that.

Val handed him a card as she let him out the front door. Give Madame Flora a call, she said. She’ll get you started.

As I straightened up the office for the party, I thought about how easy it was to seduce Lester with Soul Identity’s promise.

Like everybody in the world, Lester’s identity in his eyes will remain unique as long as he is alive, and then after he dies, somebody else will be born with it. That new person and Lester will share a soul line, and they each will take their turn being the carrier of the line. Soul Identity’s first job is to keep these identities and soul lines connected—they maintain the bridges between Lester’s past and future carriers.

Their second job is to be the world’s largest bank. Once they calculate Lester’s identity, they check to see if any previous carriers have left him any money, memories, and lessons in his soul line collection, stored in Soul Identity’s depositary. Soul Identity invests the money on his soul line’s behalf. They’ve been doing this for almost twenty-six hundred years. They have several million soul lines, and they’re managing over two trillion dollars’ worth of investments.

Over the past year, I’ve noticed quite a range in the way Soul Identity members think about their soul lines. Some become deeply religious: they attribute a grand plan to God, and they bask in the glory of how special they are. Others treat it as their proof of immortality. Neither of these approaches sits well with me. I prefer the way Val sees it—she hopes to pass on her memories and lessons to others who’d feel she was significant. This makes her relevant far into the future.

I sighed. I didn’t think Lester was searching for relevancy. He probably was just gold digging.

two

Present Day

Kent Island, Maryland

My parents arrived five minutes after Lester bolted in search of his destiny. They wore shorts, our company polo shirts, and sandals. Dad carried a stack of red folders, and Mom wheeled a large cooler up to the front door.

She poked her head inside. Yoo-hoo! You guys decent?

Of course we are, I said. I pulled the door open. Come on in.

Are the girls here? she asked.

Not yet, Val said. She reached for the handle on the cooler. Let me take this to the kitchen.

Dad followed Mom inside. He dropped the red folders on his desk. He went to the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer. Then he and I headed out back.

You got any bait? he asked.

It’s all ready, I said. We walked out to the end of the dock, and I chopped two bloodworms in half. We baited, cast out, set the rods into their holders, and parked ourselves on the bench.

Bluefish are running, I read online this morning, he said.

I grunted.

He drained his beer. Something bugging you?

I nodded. Lester the reporter just left. He was back digging up dirt on Soul Identity.

What’d he want, an anniversary story?

I can’t believe it’s been a year already.

Dad smiled. His exposé was yellow journalism at its worst.

Last summer our tiny security company contracted with Soul Identity, and we helped save them from insolvency while we unraveled an insider attack. That took a little more than a week, and it took me a little less than a week to fall for Valentina Nikolskaya, the gorgeous redhead in charge of writing the software Soul Identity used.

At the time I had thought Soul Identity was some kind of wacky, New Age cult. But they’re not. They don’t force any religious accoutrements on top of their identification and depositary. They let people focus on spiritual questions without having to cater to any one group’s thoughts on what the Almighty or the Everlasting is all about. Instead of acting like another religion, they foster personal spiritual thinking.

At least now they do. Some time in the last decade they had stopped paying attention to personal growth, and they left themselves open to a nasty insider attack. It came from someone they thought was a leader: Andre Feret. He started his own religion called WorldWideSouls, and he conned many Soul Identity members into transferring their deposits to his new church. Val and I helped to catch and expose him as a fraud. Now Feret rots at the bottom of a Venetian canal, WorldWideSouls languishes at a fraction of its former size, and Soul Identity flourishes as a place where spiritual thinking is encouraged.

Lester the reporter got involved because some of Feret’s WorldWideSouls goons had shot at my parents, Val, and me. We escaped on my boat, but while we were out of town in India, Iceland, and Italy, Lester’s paper ran wild with speculations on a mob invasion of Kent Island. His exaggerated tales of mayhem brought in more work for our security consulting firm, but it also made my number one client nervous about our notoriety.

If he writes any more dirt, Archie’s gonna be pissed, I said. Archibald Morgan was Soul Identity’s octogenarian executive overseer.

My cell phone rang, and I glanced at the caller ID. Speak of the devil, I said as I thumbed the answer button. Archie, we were just talking about you.

Scott, I require your immediate services, Archie said. Can you come to Sterling right away?

I threw the call on speakerphone so Dad could hear. We’re in the middle of our company picnic, and then Val and I were going to celebrate our first year together with a week off somewhere. Not that I had planned anything yet, but I should have. What’s the emergency?

Our depositary has been robbed! Archie’s voice shrieked out of the phone.

Soul Identity’s huge investment pool made its depositary quite a target. It explained why they preferred anonymity over notoriety.

The whole depositary? I asked, glancing over at Dad.

Heavy breathing over the phone.

Archie?

I may have overstated the problem, he said.

I looked at Dad, and he shrugged. We waited until Archie continued.

During the Nuremberg trials in 1946, I helped a Nazi general establish his soul line collection. Today I happened to look inside the account, and the items I helped him deposit are missing.

Does the account have a current carrier? I asked.

It does not.

Has anybody opened the collection since 1946?

The depositary has no records of any activity.

I scratched my head. A soul line collection was broken into sometime in the last sixty-four years, and you want me to solve it?

I want you to find out who broke in and how they did it, and then make sure they cannot do it again, he said.

I glanced at Dad as I spoke into the phone. You do realize how cold the trail could be.

A big sigh over the speaker. Of course I do. But you must realize how important this is. Please come to Sterling, Scott. I need your help.

He did pay the bills, and a depositary break-in, no matter how long ago it happened, sounded interesting. How about we fly up in the morning? I asked.

I will await your arrival, he said, the relief evident in his voice.

I disconnected and turned to Dad. I never would have guessed that Soul Identity deposited Nazi money, I said.

You’d better not tell Lester.

Val came down the dock. Have you seen the girls? she asked.

I cupped my hands around my eyes to reduce the glare bouncing off the water, and I tracked the closest boat heading south from the Bay Bridge. That’s them coming now.

You let them use your boat? Dad asked.

They needed to get their diving credentials re-certified, I said. They’ve been taking it out all week.

Let’s hope they sail better than they cook, he said. He got up and lowered the boatlift into the water.

While Dad readied the lift, I told Val about Archie’s call. He’s acting kind of strange, I said. I told him we’d fly up tomorrow.

She smiled. I’d love to meet with my team again before our big launch.

Then I’ll book us a room at the guest house.

Rose and Marie waved to us and brought the boat close to the dock. Rose sat in the cockpit, and Marie stood at the bow, a coil of rope in her hands. The twins wore huge sunglasses and tiny bikinis. They each sported an official company baseball hat, their long dark hair pulled back into ponytails through the hats’ fasteners.

That’s quite the summer uniform, Dad said. What if we distributed a company calendar featuring the twins? It would be great advertising for the business.

Rose and Marie worked part-time with us, mostly on weekend assignments, as this fit into their freshman-year university schedule. Their exotic Gypsy beauty, happy laughter, and earnest acting made them perfect for their assignments.

Rose steered the boat into the slip, and Dad raised the boatlift.

Marie jumped onto the dock. Sorry we’re late, Scott, she said. We had to drive Grandma to the airport this morning.

She’s taking a vacation? I asked.

She shook her head. Mr. Morgan asked her to come up to Sterling. Some problem with an old account from the forties that they both worked on.

Madame Flora, the twins’ grandmother, operated a palm reading joint here on Kent Island. She recruited Soul Identity members, earning commissions when they matched existing soul lines. My parents and I met her and the twins last year as we started our Soul Identity work.

Madame Flora’s involvement in Archie’s current predicament didn’t surprise me. The old Gypsy lady’s entanglements with the organization appeared to run deep.

Your grandmother’s been working with Archie for a long time, I said.

Rose hopped onto the deck. She told us she first met Mr. Morgan in Germany, right after World War II, she said.

It’s amazing how everybody’s so connected, Val said to me.

What did you girls make for the picnic? Dad asked.

Pasta salad, Rose said. Only Marie forgot to peel the onions before she chopped them up.

I was pulling out the little bits of onion paper all morning, bawling my eyes out, Marie said.

And I soaked the pasta all night long, but it never did get soft, Rose said. Good thing salad’s supposed to be crunchy.

I looked down at the dock, biting my lip and trying not to laugh. Then Rose poked Marie, and the two burst out in giggles.

What’s the joke? I asked.

We know you guys never trust our cooking, Marie said. We didn’t really make a pasta salad. We ordered pizza.

And our fourth annual company picnic was a success. Rose and Marie whipped us all at badminton, Dad and I held court at the barbeque, and Mom and Val cooked up a storm. We sat out under a large maple and told stories about the adventures we had over the past year. When we all were full, Dad got us arranged into a semicircle and handed each of us a red folder.

Why so formal? I asked.

It’s our annual report, Mom said. Your father worked on it most of the night.

Dad had us flip to the first page. Look at the graph, he said. Our business grew by seventeen hundred percent this year.

Your Soul Identity work made up almost half the increase, Mom said. But my testing business did even better.

Last fall Mom and the twins established a girls-only penetration testing service. The three went out on weekends to various banks and government facilities. They used low-tech hacking to break in, and they held seminars on making security improvements. Every now and then they’d invite Val, Dad, and me to join them on their escapades. Mom had made friends with a bunch of commercial insurance underwriters, and those guys fiercely promoted her services.

I flipped the page. How about our costs, Dad?

That’s even better news, he said. Our profits are way up. Even after tripling our bonuses, paying taxes, and buying new equipment, our five person company has a little over a million dollars in cash reserves.

Smiles all around.

Val raised her hand. Have you thought about donating to charity? It’s a great way to give something back to the community.

I shrugged. Honestly, no. I wasn’t that thrilled with the idea, either. I looked around the circle. What do you guys think?

It sounds like a good idea, Mom said, and everybody nodded.

If we do this, it has to be a charity that actually uses the money wisely, I said. Not some group that eats it up in administrative costs.

You could give us each fifty grand, and let us choose where to donate it, Dad said.

Everybody nodded again.

I know Grandma gives money to help the Roma in Croatia, Marie said. That’s where she grew up.

Those Gypsies don’t waste a dime, Rose said. We spent the summer after our junior year over there, helping them build a community center.

Rose and I will donate our portions to Grandma’s fund, Marie said.

Rose nodded.

I can support that, Mom said. She nudged Dad with her elbow. So can you.

It appears I can too, Dad said.

I looked at Val, and she nodded. Let’s make it unanimous, I said. I turned to the girls. Find out from your Grandma where we should send the check.

And see if you can get them to write us a press release, Dad said. A quarter of a million should buy us some good will.

three

Present Day

Kent Island, Maryland

The next morning Val and I caught the early flight from Baltimore to Providence. Ninety minutes later I drove the rental car up to the Soul Identity headquarters gates in Sterling, Massachusetts and whipped out my shiny gold membership card.

It’s my first time using this, I said to the guard.

After dragging my feet for almost a year, I had finally signed on as a full-fledged Soul Identity member. Bob, our local Soul Identity delivery person, dropped off my membership card and welcome package just last week.

Val reached out and straightened my collar. But you’re still wearing black.

Because it pays so much more. At headquarters, employees wore green and contractors wore black. My agreement had Soul Identity paying my outrageously high contractor wages around the clock while I was on assignment. "And because