While small, the audience was larger in Weldon than it had been in Waterboro. Afterwards, eight members from that audience showed up at the campground to listen to Pantera’s evening sermon. Six of them stayed. No one came to taunt them.
By Constantine’s count, Pantera’s followers, including the inner circle, had increased to one hundred and seventy-six as the two RVs and two buses chugged out of the driveway from the Interstate Inn Campground on the morning of the fifth day and headed north again, up Interstate 95. Their next stop, only a two-and-a-half-hour drive, was the Aquia Pines Camp Resort in Stafford, Virginia, just south of the Marine Corps training base at Quantico. They stayed there another four days before heading north again.
The caravan got stuck for almost three hours in traffic in the loop around Washington, DC. Finally, free of it, they drove straight through Baltimore and, after driving another thirty miles or so up I-95, they pulled into the Bar Harbor RV Park and Marina along the Bush River, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay, near Churchville, Maryland.
The third morning at the Bar Harbor camp, Amato and the other ex-bikers took a census and announced during a meeting of the inner circle immediately afterwards that the number of followers, counting them, had swollen to two hundred and seventeen. Word was somehow getting out, Amato said, that “the Master’s” sermons in small local towns around the RV camps seemed better attended now than had happened earlier in the trip, and more people were crashing their camp afterwards. The Facebook presence, Pantera’s daily tweets, and the website launched a few days previously by Jonathan Walsh were also helping to attract converts.
“And,” Amato added, “we are just about to hit some pretty big cities in the next few weeks.”
“Maybe we ought to go into Baltimore,” said Renata. “See what happens.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Amato said. “We need to buy us another bus, maybe two.”
“How’s the balance sheet?” Avery asked Stu Goldstein.
With a shrug, Goldstein answered, “We’ve got enough for another bus.”
“Enough of this,” Pantera said with obvious anger in his voice. Constantine had already noted his quietness that morning, his seeming distraction. “As I’ve said, what will be, will be. You cannot plan the changing of people’s minds. You cannot plot the salvation of souls. Enough!”
Every member of the inner circle fell silent. They sat stone-faced, mouths open, eyes wide, stunned and stung by Pantera’s seeming rebuke. Even Constantine was taken aback by the venom in his tone. Was the man simply tired, or was he genuinely sick of all the scuttlebutt among his inner circle about what was next on his ministry’s agenda for changing the world? The meeting broke up on that sour note.
Later that morning, Pantera announced that he would follow Renata’s advice and preach in Baltimore that afternoon. He told her to find a suitable public place for it and after a fifteen-minute search on the Internet, she told him, “Patterson Park looks good. We can go to the Pagoda. It’s a neat old building, looks oriental. You can preach from its balcony.” She smiled. “You’ll be even more impressive up there.”
A couple hours later, he had Renata gather up Constantine, Amato, and Avery, and the five of them squeezed into the Taurus for the forty-five-minute ride to Patterson Park in southeast Baltimore. They found a parking spot and ambled to the Pagoda. Pantera and Amato climbed a winding staircase to the second level and stepped out into a balcony overlooking the lawn stretching out below it. A few joggers and people strolling the park or walking dogs saw Pantera up there, a long-haired, good-looking guy with intense blue eyes wearing a long, pristine white robe. “Jesus,” they may have thought, and then stopped jogging or walking to stare up at him.
And then he started speaking.
Pantera’s sermon that afternoon was especially stirring, Constantine thought. The preacher had told a story, another parable that subtly suggested to the listener what he or she needed to do in order to obtain true meaning in their lives and gain salvation. As always, Pantera ended the sermon with, “Enter the Kingdom of God and be saved.”
Fifteen people who heard him that afternoon showed up at the campground that evening to hear more. Of those, eleven remained. His following was growing daily and was certainly impressive. Still, Constantine doubted that, at this rate, Pantera’s movement could approach a tipping point and have the revolutionary effect on the thinking of the masses to pose a real threat to the Supremacy. It still seemed to him that the Network analysts, and Renata Singh, had grossly overestimated Pantera’s potential.
Of course, all that could change by the sudden occurrence of something that would ignite that potential. What that something was, Constantine couldn’t venture a guess.
Chapter Fifteen
Eyewitness News
Constantine woke early the next morning before any of the others and sat at the kitchen table, rereading the report he had filed with his handler the night before during his nightly “meditative” walk. Essentially, he had informed his superiors that nothing had altered his view that Pantera posed a minimal threat. Of course, that could change if the Jesus lineage was proven. But, as Pantera had told him, that seemed an impossible task. After closing the report, he decided to take a walk around the grounds.
He opened the side door of the RV and stepped out into the chilly spring dawn. A gray fog hugged the hills and woods surrounding the camp, where he had taken his solitary walk the night before, and the horizon was lit by a dull, grimy haze as the Sun slowly rose on its way to a bright, warm late April morning. Constantine yawned as he scanned his surroundings, longing for the day when he’d be reassigned to a place where real threats to the Supremacy could be investigated and quashed.
In the next moment, he saw what appeared to be a television news van slowly crunching along the camp’s gravel access road toward Pantera’s RVs and buses. The vehicle came to a stop and a cameraman lugging a large, portable video camera stepped out into the chilly morning air. He was followed by a diminutive, pretty Asian reporter.
Constantine stood a few feet from the side door of Pantera’s RV and watched as the cameraman hoisted a satellite antenna on the back of the van and the reporter scanned the camp. Squinting, he read the writing on the side of the van: “Eyewitness News, Channel 5, WKKT, Baltimore.”
Most of Pantera’s followers were still sleeping at that early hour, either on the buses or in the tents that had popped up around them, and still others huddled inside sleeping bags scattered about on the ground. Several campfires gently smoldered in various spots between the tents and sleeping bags.
After a time, the reporter spotted Constantine standing by Pantera’s RV and headed toward him. He saw that she was holding a microphone, ready for an interview.
“Hello, sir!” she called out as she approached. “Have a moment?”
The cameraman was following behind her, and they stopped within a few feet of Constantine.
“I’m Darla Chen with Channel 5 Eyewitness News,” the reporter said. She was holding the microphone loosely in her right hand, down by her right thigh. “I was wondering if the man who gave the sermon in Patterson Park yesterday afternoon is available. We’d like to interview him. Tell us, tell people, what he’s trying to do.” She looked about the dormant camp a moment and shivered. Then, she turned back to Constantine and added, “You know, find out what this is all about.”
Constantine shrugged, not sure what to say. He looked back at the RV just as the side door opened, and out stepped Pantera. He was wearing his preaching outfit, the long, flowing white robe, and his glimmering hair was neatly combed as it fell to his shoulders. Right behind Pantera was Renata Singh. They walked past Constantine and approached Darla Chen and the cameraman. The reporter turned to the cameraman and gestured for him to start shooting.
“You want to know what this is all about?” Pantera said.
“Yes, I do,” she confirmed. “Our viewers do. Why are you giving these sermons? What are you trying to accomplish? What’s you
r point?”
“My point?” Pantera looked straight into the camera and flashed a kindly smile. “My point is to awaken you. To save you and your viewers. To save the world.”
“You’re an evangelist, then?” Chen asked. “Like an apostle?”
“No,” Pantera said with another smile. “I’m not an apostle.” He paused a moment, then turned to look straight into the camera.
“I’m the Messiah,” he said, “come to save the world.”
Chapter Sixteen
In the News
Pantera’s confident claim, “I’m the Messiah, come to save the world,” played on Channel 5 Eyewitness News during the five, six, and eleven o’clock broadcasts, and then found its way onto the Internet. Clips from his latest sermon that same afternoon in Pagoda Park, filmed by Darla Chen’s cameraman, also appeared online.
“Have we found a modern Jesus?” said the attractive black anchor leading off the segment at ten past five. “That’s what we’re wondering after a preacher proclaimed himself to be, like Jesus did over two thousand years ago, the Messiah who’s come to save the world. He’s been traveling up the East Coast along Interstate 95 since late winter, and yesterday, he arrived right here in Baltimore. Our very own Darla Chen caught up with him this morning.”
She turned to Darla Chen, who was sitting next her at the anchor desk.
“Darla, what can you tell us about this self-proclaimed messiah?”
“Well, Susan, we received a report from one of our interns about a man he happened to see preaching near the Pagoda in Patterson Park yesterday afternoon. He was demanding that people change their lives and join his crusade to change the world. The intern was pretty impressed by this preacher, so we went out this morning to where he’s staying with about two hundred followers at the Bar Harbor RV Campground to interview him.
“During my interview with him this morning,” Darla went on, “I asked him why he was out there preaching, and that’s when he told me this.”
She replayed the brief interview from that morning, showing Pantera standing in front of his RV. Wearing his long, white robe, he gave his “I’m the Messiah” declaration.
When the clip ended, Darla went on, “This afternoon, we went out to Patterson Park to see this self-proclaimed messiah preach. He attracted a small but attentive audience and, as you will see, he’s an accomplished orator with a stirring message.”
There was another short clip of Pantera preaching that afternoon from the pagoda at Patterson Park. He was at his best, in his long, white robe, lifting his arms to Heaven, his eyes intense as he told his audience to give up whatever they were doing with their lives, that it was meaningless, and to join him in entering the Kingdom of God.
“Does he have a name, this preacher?” Susan asked.
“Yes,” Darla said. “Cristos Pantera.”
“Cristos?” Susan said with an amused look. “That’s awfully close to Christ.”
“Yes it is, Susan.”
“So, is this man for real, Darla?” the anchor asked with a slight smile. “Is he truly the messiah? Or just another false prophet?”
Darla smiled as she looked to the camera and said, “I guess only time will tell, Susan.”
“That was lame,” Renata said as she clicked off the small TV that sat on a ledge in the corner of the RV after the five o’clock segment. “Must be a slow news day. Almost made a joke of him, of us.”
“Well, press is press,” Amato said. “I didn’t find it so bad. And there’s been a definite uptick in visitors this evening.”
“And internet traffic,” Stu Goldstein added. “Or so Jonathan tells me.”
“Where’s the Master?” Amato asked. “Didn’t he want to see the report?”
“No,” Renata said. “Said he didn’t need to see it. He’s out for a walk. Said he needed to collect his thoughts.”
“So do you think he’s what he says he is, what he told that news lady today?” Constantine asked. “The messiah?”
Without hesitation, she shot him an icy look and said, “Yes, of course. Don’t you?”
Chapter Seventeen
Necessary Action
After the nine o’clock sermon, Pantera retired to his room with Renata. Amato had his head in a section of the local newspaper at the kitchen table, while Avery was sitting across from him staring forward with a glum expression. Constantine had been on his bunk, thinking about the news coverage Pantera had gotten and agreed with Amato. Press is press. Couldn’t hurt the movement.
At around 9:30 p.m., Constantine pushed himself off the bunk. On his way out of the RV, he told Amato and Avery, “I’m heading out for my walk.”
Amato grunted, but Avery looked up and said, “Just called my father. Know what he said?” Constantine looked at him, shrugging slightly. “You’re dead to me,” Avery went on, giving a wan smile.
“Well, you are,” Amato said from behind the paper. “But remember why and forgive him for it. He’s still caught up in his world and can’t see the light. That’s all it is. He’s fooled by the illusion, by the lie of his life.”
Avery nodded glumly.
Constantine had opened the door but before stepping out, he said to Avery, “Maybe someday he’ll understand and wake up to what’s real. Like Nick said.”
Avery nodded unenthusiastically as Constantine stepped out into the warm night. The camp was quiet for the most part, with the now-two hundred and twenty or so followers gathered around three or four large campfires, quietly laughing or telling stories and sipping beers, or huddled under blankets on the buses or in their tents.
Constantine strode toward the Bush River. After entering the woods and brush at the perimeter of the camp, he took out his smartphone and called his handler as directed in a text message that he’d received around seven that evening. Before placing the call, he had not spoken with his handler. His communications with the Network had been solely via his brief daily text reports. The handler answered after the first ring.
“Summers,” Constantine stated. He gave the seven digit and letter passcode.
“The chief would like a word,” his handler informed him.
Constantine frowned, wondering what was so important that the regional chief would want to speak with him. There was a beep as the handler transferred the call. Then, Chief Bradley was on the line.
“So the press has finally taken notice,” Bradley said.
True, Constantine thought. That had been a significant development, another variable for the statistical analysts to ponder that perhaps had ratcheted up Pantera’s threat level.
“It wasn’t exactly favorable,” Constantine pointed out. “It made him like just another bizarre cult leader.”
“That wasn’t entirely the director’s impression,” Bradley said.
“The director saw it?”
“Yes,” Bradley said. “And he’s concerned. Said he’s seen the pattern before. It’s like a virus spreading, he says. Starts small, with only a few infections, then it slowly and geometrically spreads. Before you know it, it’s an epidemic, the changing of minds en masse. Plus, the projections of certain analysts are giving him heartburn.”
“Well, I still think the threat’s overstated,” Constantine said. “I grant you, the man can preach. But, I mean, the guy has what, two hundred and twenty followers, tops.” He let out a sigh and added, “Though, I have to admit, the guy scares me a little. As I said, he can preach. And he has this aura. He can affect your way of thinking. But he hardly seems ripe to start a full-blown revolution. Seems like we have bigger fish to fry.”
“And we’re frying them,” Bradley said. “But for some reason, the analysts are starting to worry and that worries the director, and me. So we feel the need to stay on top of it, ahead of it, you might say. And to be ready to take action, if need be.”
The kind of the action they were talking about, Constantine knew, would eliminate the preacher and his threat equations.
“I highly doubt that’ll become necess
ary,” Constantine said.
“But should it,” Bradley said, “be ready.”
“Of course,” Constantine quickly replied. In the next moment, he asked, “Is there anything in his background, something that could be used to discredit him? A skeleton in his closet?”
“No, nothing,” the chief said. “He’s squeaky clean and believe me, we’ve looked. Brought up by his flower-child hippie mother in some commune until his late teens. Home-schooled and all that. Didn’t attend college and worked in minor jobs…car mechanic, construction, that sort of thing…until he started his ministry last summer. No evidence of drug abuse, gambling, sexual deviance, nothing. As I said, he’s squeaky clean. We could start making up stories, but that could backfire. No, I’m afraid discrediting him is not an option. Not at this point, anyway.” He sighed, then asked, “Anything on the Jesus connection?”
“Nothing yet,” Constantine said. “He’s reluctant to publicize the connection without solid proof. So, he’s chosen to leave it alone for now.”
“Yes, for now,” Bradley said. “Well, should that blow up in our faces, all the more reason to be ready to pursue whatever action the director may order.”
Constantine sighed and said, “Yes, sir, of course. Whatever action.”
Now, he was certain. At any moment, he could receive an order to take that action. And it could only mean one thing: crucify Cristos Pantera.
Chapter Eighteen
Spartacus Rex
Constantine woke just before eight the next morning and brewed a pot of coffee. Nick Amato joined him a few minutes later and toasted bagels for them. Constantine poured two cups of coffee and brought them over to the kitchen table. Amato was there a moment later with bagels slathered with cream cheese.
The Messiah Page 7
