Mind Invaders: Recent Episodes
Dave Hunt
THE COLD WAR FOR PSYCHIC DOMINION HEATS UP!
Ken Inman experienced an exhilaration beyond his wildest imagination. He had made contact! Excitedly he listened:
“We’ve been watching your development—we’re here to help you take the next step. Open up. There’s nothing to fear.”
Spine-tingling action follows this incredible breakthrough in mind research. Opening doors to the unlimited vistas of the mind, the Archons share their gift of psychic power, promising a new era of peace. But then governments get involved...
Carla recovered consciousness about a quarter of a mile away from the installation when Ken pulled over to let the first fire engine—with siren wailing at ear-splitting amplitude—roar past. She opened her eyes, looked around in terror for a moment, then realized that they were safe and on the way home. He had to pull over and stop to let another fire engine go by, and Carla took hold of his arm. He turned and their eyes met. She was crying again, but now she was smiling through the tears.
“Look at me, Ken,” she said between sobs. “Something happened to me— something wonderful. Can you tell?”
“Are you telling me... ?”
Ken had been growing uneasy as the afternoon progressed. It was now after 5 o’clock. What was happening out there? Was it enough just to pray, or was there something he had to do as well? Decisively he rose from his knees and announced to the rest, “I’ve got to leave. I just know I’m supposed to get out to the installation as soon as possible. I don’t know what I may be getting into or why the Lord is directing me to do this, so please pray for me! You know the guards have my picture and instructions not to let me in.”
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished representatives of the world’s nations, select members of the media,” Leighton began at last, “it is a great honor and joy to welcome each of you here today to this most important occasion in the long and too-often tragic history of our race. We are gathered just to the south of San Francisco where, in 1945, hopeful delegates from less than half of the nations we represent met to lay the foundation for the United Nations. Today we lay the foundation for something far more significant—not just an organization of nations that remain hopelessly separated by national rivalries, but a New World Order that will make all people and all nations equal and one. When we have proven ourselves to be united and at peace, then we will qualify to apply for entrance into an intergalactic community of civilizations that have evolved far beyond us and who stand ready to share technology and supernatural powers that will give us undreamed of access to the vast universe of space and its limitless resources.
It was June 14—a day never to be forgotten. This date, conveners of World Congress 666 were determined, would go down in history as the day of the key event that laid the foundation for a New Age of unbroken world peace and economic and ecological wholeness. They were confident also that it would always be remembered and cherished as the day that the planet was rescued from an almost certain holocaust. For residents of an area famous for its fog, it would certainly be remembered as one of the most beautiful June days in history. The unusual weather provided the dignitaries from all over the world flying into San Francisco’s International Airport a crystal-clear and sweeping view—from the Pacific Ocean and Golden Gate Bridge, over Nob Hill and the skyscrapers along Market Street, across the Oakland Bay Bridge to Berkeley, and on into the Walnut Creek area, over which Mount Diablo could be seen towering in the distance like some brooding giant.
It was late that night when Carla returned to Ken’s house. She had gone back to the base to try to reason with Viktor—without success. Ken had waited up for her, and together they sat at the kitchen table to talk—the first time he’d been available to do that in nearly a week.
“I really like Viktor,” said Ken, “but I’ve never seen anyone so stubborn. Did he tell you what he intends to do?”
Ken was at the restaurant when Carla arrived. While they waited for Jordan and Viktor, she filled Ken in on what had happened—who Kay Morris was and the close call she and Viktor had had that afternoon and how they’d been rescued in the nick of time by an FBI agent named Anne White.
“I know her very well,” said Ken. “We’ve dated a few times.”
“Really? She’s quite attractive,” said Carla.
“A very nice person. You’d like her,” said Ken. “Her real name is Anne Bartkowski, but she goes by “White’ on special assignments like that.” “How do you know her and Don Jordan?”
An hour later, when Carla picked up her office phone, it was an extremely excited Leighton who was on the other end.
“You won’t believe what’s been going on back here in Washington!” he bubbled. “I want you to get Kay and Viktor, and the three of you go into my office where I can talk to you all at once on the speaker. I’ll call back in ten minutes.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you, Frank. Kay, uh—she isn’t here any more. She’s... dead.”
The next few days passed quickly and uneventfully. Absorbed in getting her new secretary oriented and catching up on back phone calls, Carla had little time to devote to long-standing doubts and conflicts. They had only been put aside temporarily, however—not silenced. Disappointingly, Ken had been of little help lately in sorting them out. He seemed, in fact, to be avoiding her. On the few occasions their schedules had brought them into contact over breakfast or a late- night cup of tea, he had been uncharacteristically reluctant to carry on their discussions of the past. She couldn’t understand that. Did it mean that he’d given up on her? A few days ago that would have pleased her, but now it bothered her greatly. She felt neglected.
“Ken’s left for the office already,” his mother informed Carla when she entered the kitchen the next morning. Seeing the disappointment on Carla’s face, she added, “He works much too hard—always has, even when he was a boy. Forever some urgent project or other.”
“That’s one of the things that attracted me to him,” said Carla. “He was on a mission, going somewhere, not wasting his time but doing something worthwhile, goal-oriented.”
When Carla entered the kitchen late that morning, Ken was on the phone and his mother was squeezing orange juice. From a pot on the stove came the gentle “plop-plop” of oatmeal cooking. The wholesome fragrance, the homey sound, the instant welcoming hug that Mrs. Inman gave her lent a restorative normalcy to life.
When Carla entered the kitchen late that morning, Ken was on the phone and his mother was squeezing orange juice. From a pot on the stove came the gentle “plop-plop” of oatmeal cooking. The wholesome fragrance, the homey sound, the instant welcoming hug that Mrs. Inman gave her lent a restorative normalcy to life.
Ken was turning out the light in his study when he heard the stifled scream. He raced across the adjoining living room and down the hall toward Carla’s room. He flung open the door and burst in. The hooded figure leaning over the bed released Carla and turned quickly to meet this challenge.
There was no mistaking the tall figure, the full-length monk’s robe, and the deliberate, almost flowing movements. For one brief moment of confusion and indecision, Ken wondered how Del Sasso had gotten in. Then he understood...
After an early dinner in her room, Carla lay in bed flicking the television channels back and forth, trying to find something that held her interest, and hoping most of all that she would somehow doze off. Getting to sleep was becoming a nightly problem. At last she turned off the TV and lay in the dark, going over recent events and conversations and wrestling with her own thoughts.
When they had arrived back at the lab complex late that afternoon, no one had felt like doing anything further that day. The meeting with the Archons had been too emotionally draining, and their announcements so exhilarating. Frank had given everyone the evening off. Yet the sleep Carla needed so desperately eluded her.
The circle of unearthly creatures opened as suddenly as it had closed. Viktor and Carla watched in stunned bewilderment as their three colleagues walked slowly back toward them. The pyramid disappeared instantly, and the Nine vanished with it. When Leighton, Del Sasso, and Morris had resumed their original places facing the strange craft just in front of Viktor and Carla, they put their palms together and bowed nine times again. The vibrating “OM” faded and in its place a strange whirring sound arose and grew in volume. To their consternation, Viktor and Carla realized that the UFO had swung around to point in their direction. It was gathering speed and heading directly toward them.
“I see a Pulitzer prize in your future!” The sound of the exaggerated gypsy accent pompously intoned, caused Carla to look up from her computer with a start. Del Sasso was standing in the open doorway to her office, acting the consummate fortune-teller. “Yes, I see the world of journalism worshiping at your feet.”
“We lost four good and brave men,” intoned Leighton. “Men who believed in what we’re doing and gave their lives in the line of duty. We will not dishonor them and their memory—or the bereaved families they left behind—by abandoning the noble cause to which they had dedicated themselves. Let this be a time of solemn rededication to the high-minded ideals of international goodwill among all peoples and nations.”
Chernov and his men moved swiftly to get the surveillance camera back into place. Both corpses were dragged up next to the inside door, out of the camera’s normal viewing angle. One of the men put on a flak jacket that had been quickly stripped from a body. His hair and weight were similar to those of one of the dead men, and from the rear he could pass the periodic cursory look from the security control center inside. Quickly the camera was moved back. Then they waited. Two minutes seemed an eternity, but it was absolutely essential to protect the identity of their agent on the inside. When the last second had been counted—leaving the new “guard” peering out the small window toward the road—Chernov led his other two men into the complex, closing the door securely behind them.
The isolated stretch of access road was empty when Carla at last drove out to the main highway after leaving the installation. She had, of course, no knowledge of the deadly drama that had been acted out along that route earlier. Nor did she know that she had reached its juncture with the main road just minutes before the back-up FBI team assigned to escort her arrived. Consequently, the men sat waiting for nearly an hour before they were belatedly notified that she had already driven to Palo Alto.
While praying for Carla the next morning, Ken felt overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility for the part he had played in leading her into her present danger. After all, he had introduced her to the field of psychic research and encouraged her to ever-deeper involvement even when she’d had little interest in it herself and her editors at that time had not been supportive of this new direction her writing was taking. She wouldn’t be associated with Frank and heading for who could say what ultimate delusion or destruction at the hands of “the Nine” had it not been for his influence in the past. That realization became an overpowering burden.
When Leighton returned to his office, he found Del Sasso in a relaxed and affable mood, sitting in an easy chair deep in conversation with Carla and Viktor. They had been probing him with pointed questions about the dangers of the incredible psychic power they had just seen him display. What if it got into the wrong hands? And how could that possibility, after all, be prevented if psychic power was simply a normal human potential and thus available equally to everyone? What a frightful world it would be if every person had such dangerous capabilities—a world of sorcerers zapping one another with unlimited powers of the mind!
When Leighton returned to his office, he found Del Sasso in a relaxed and affable mood, sitting in an easy chair deep in conversation with Carla and Viktor. They had been probing him with pointed questions about the dangers of the incredible psychic power they had just seen him display. What if it got into the wrong hands? And how could that possibility, after all, be prevented if psychic power was simply a normal human potential and thus available equally to everyone? What a frightful world it would be if every person had such dangerous capabilities—a world of sorcerers zapping one another with unlimited powers of the mind!
Carla could hardly contain her excitement as Leighton led them quietly into a large, high-ceilinged room. It seemed almost too much to believe that she had located Viktor Khorev and, on top of that, to have been so easily invited inside this top-secret psychic research installation that she was certain at the very least was being funded by the CIA—and more than likely was totally under its control!
The thick fog that had drifted over the hills from the coast during the night was vanishing under the warming rays of the morning sun. The few lingering wisps of vapor lent a momentary translucence to the air, giving the leaves and blossoms on trees and shrubs a delicate, glistening sheen. It was a morning of rare beauty—which only seemed to accentuate the bittersweet mood that gripped Ken.
“I can’t say that I’m exactly shattered. I’m too cynical for that. But it’s still disillusioning when your own government—or at least those who represent it —lie to you! That’s the sort of thing we expect from the Russians, but not from our own people!”
Angry and frustrated, Carla was speaking by phone to a close friend in New York, one of the senior editors of Time magazine.
Yelling a command in Russian , Chernov raced into the street. Because of the now-stalled traffic he was able to make much faster time than Viktor and had gained considerable ground on his quarry by the time he entered Rue Debarcadere. The two FSB officers jumped into the limousine and took off with tires screaming, but had to apply the brakes almost immediately. As they turned left into Port de Maillot to make their way around the traffic circle, their progress was impeded by the mass of autos and trucks backed up behind the five-car collision.
As one of the top parapsychology journalists in the field, Carla Bertelli had, of course, been looking forward to the Congress for months. She had planned to arrive early to relax for a few days in Paris, but a last-minute development had forced a change in itinerary that brought her into Paris the very morning the Congress opened. Eager to catch at least the closing minutes of the first day’s opening session, Carla had driven desperately from Orly Airport to the Palais des Congres in a driving rain.
During the hour-long early morning ride to Sheremetyevoz International Airport just north of Moscow on the Leningradsky highway, Colonel Chernov had a great deal to say to everyone else in the small bus, but he didn’t address one word to Viktor. It made him feel uncomfortably like an outsider—which indeed he was. They were supposed to be a delegation of top Russian parapsychologists led by internationally known Dr. Viktor Khorev. In fact, Chernov was in command, and out of the six “delegates” from the secret base, only Viktor and Pyotr were psychic researchers. The others were either military or Federal Security Service (FSB) officers. And Viktor had his suspicions about Pyotr.
Everything else was mere formality after Viktor’s acquiescence to the “correction” in the medical report. The Committee spent little time questioning Dr. Chevchenko, Dmitri, and the others, whose testimony added nothing to what was already known. When Colonel Chernov returned to be apprised of the Committee’s official findings, he strongly expressed once again the same suspicions that he had consistently presented in the past.
The committee overseeing Psychic Warfare Research had already been scheduled to meet for a full hearing to inquire into the cause of the previous deaths of two psychics. Now they had a third death on their hands. Understandably, the atmosphere was extremely tense. Viktor did his best to appear in command of himself (although a certain amount of nervousness was expected as a matter of respect) when he was called at last into the small conference room down the hall from the laboratory. It was a closed hearing, with only the four Russian Army officers present—two generals and two colonels— as judge and jury. So secret was the subject matter that not even a stenographer was included. The officers made their own notes as the hearing progressed, and, of course, it was all recorded on audiocassettes.
For some time, hope for genuine cooperation between the West and Russia had pervaded the climate of international politics. That all the former communist nations in Eastern Europe had been accepted into NATO, made this hope seem reasonable. In the meantime, however, a covert and desperate rivalry between the CIA and FSB (successor to the KGB) that was never reported in the press had reached new intensity. If an outside observer had been able to look in on a certain clandestine psychic commando base secluded in the deep woods an hour north of Moscow, he would have found its activities and goals to be in complete contradiction to the peace initiatives being outwardly promoted by Russia ‘s new “democratic” leaders.
When Dr. Elliott stopped in alone on his late-evening rounds, he found Ken cheerful in spite of the new concerns that were weighing heavily upon him. Leighton had come by earlier with his lawyer and a notary public as witnesses to certify Ken’s shaky signature on the two copies of the contract. Ken was surprised that he now felt a great sense of relief. For Leighton, however, he felt an oppressive heaviness and concern. As for Carla, he knew her well enough to realize that there was little hope to salvage their relationship unless he renounced his newfound faith in Christ. That realization was almost more than Ken could bear. At the same time, however, he had a new joy that seemed to be independent of circumstances.
Do you have another copy of the tape?” asked Ken anxiously the moment Dr. Elliott and his wife stepped inside his room later that evening.
“Is there a problem?” asked Elliott, instantly apprehensive.
“Is that the tape you gave me?” Ken nodded toward the side table.
“Why, yes,” began Hal, picking it up and examining it. “It certainly looks like it. There’s the hospital label. Why? What’s wrong?”
“Leighton says it’s blank.” Ken’s eyes told the story.
I’m not happy about this, Frank. Not a bit!” said Ken for the third time.
The morning sun was streaming through the open window. Ken had been enjoying the sound of the birds outside and the scent of fresh-cut grass—and feeling ravenously hungry and impatient for breakfast Suddenly Frank had been standing beside his bed. He’d gotten permission from the RN on duty to drop in early before visiting hours. An emergency had affected Ken’s business, he’d told her, and he’d promised to take only five minutes—ten at the most.
It was a still-apprehensive but very excited Carla Bertelli that the charge nurse led into Ken’s room about an hour after the Elliotts had departed. They found the exhausted patient still sleeping soundly. “You may sit beside him and wait,” the nurse said softly, “but be careful not to awaken him. He needs all the rest he can get.”
When Dr. Elliott returned a few hours later, he was accompanied by a woman who was apparently not a nurse—at least she wasn’t in uniform. The doctor closed the door behind them. Then he pulled up two chairs and they both sat down next to the bed. “Ken,” he said to the patient “I want you to meet my wife, Karen. She works with me on cases like yours.”
“You are a nurse, then?” Ken liked her immediately. She exuded the same warmth and the same quiet confidence as Elliott—and her smile was contagious. “I’m an RN—long retired,” she responded.
When Ken awakened about eight o’clock the next morning, he felt as though he were ascending slowly out of a dark pit Mercifully, the mocking voices and hideous images seemed more memory than reality and faded away as the room in which he found himself came steadily into clearer focus. The sun was slanting in through a large window to his left. Its welcome rays were glinting from a metallic apparatus standing just to the right of his bed. He had difficulty turning his head far enough to see it clearly, but the realization slowly dawned that it was an intravenous pump—and that it was connected to him.
Prayer was a major part of Dr. Harold Elliott’s life—a fact that drew varied reactions from his colleagues, from shrugged shoulders to veiled hostility. This was not due to his critics’ lack of interest in alternative methods of healing. The hospital, in fact, sponsored seminars in everything from yoga to shamanistic visualization and was considered to be on the cutting edge of holistic medicine. The problem with Elliott was his polite but uncompromising insistence that the God revealed in the Bible was the only true God and that He alone could intervene miraculously, and then only as He graciously chose—there were no techniques that could guarantee miracles.
Upon leaving the lab, Ken instinctively drove toward the coastal hills. So many times he had gone there in the past to wander the woods and think tough problems through to a solution. This time, however, when he found himself on the winding mountain road that he knew so well, and facing the late-afternoon sun that was about to sink into the Pacific just beyond the range he was climbing, he could not remember how he'd gotten there...
THE COLD WAR FOR PSYCHIC DOMINION HEATS UP!
Ken Inman experienced an exhilaration beyond his wildest imagination. He had made contact! Excitedly he listened:
“We’ve been watching your development—we’re here to help you take the next step. Open up. There’s nothing to fear.”
Spine-tingling action follows this incredible breakthrough in mind research. Opening doors to the unlimited vistas of the mind, the Archons share their gift of psychic power, promising a new era of peace. But then governments get involved...