“And then what?” Amato asked. “What did you and Rex decide?”
“In three weeks,” Pantera told them, “we go on a speaking tour and spread the word of God to all mankind.” He smiled and brought his arms upward. “The Enlightenment Tour.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Enlightenment Tour
Rex’s plan, as Constantine had expected, or “The Enlightenment Tour,” involved booking Pantera at a series of venues across the United States—outdoor stadiums, theatres, indoor arenas, parks, playhouses—to preach his message. The tour would be capped off by what was to be billed as “The Enlightenment Festival,” a happy gathering of his followers on a farmer’s field in upstate New York near Watkins Glen. In addition to Pantera’s sermons, motivational speakers and rock bands would be booked both before and after he gave them in a bold attempt to persuade the masses, just as Jesus had tried two thousand years ago, to reject the lives they were leading and become Citizens of the Kingdom of God on Earth. Of course, using Rex’s connections, Pantera’s sermons during the tour would be broadcast across the world.
The day after being informed of the Enlightenment Tour, Chief Bradley told Constantine that he should take no action at present. See what happens, he told him—assess Pantera’s impact. Determine whether the Enlightenment Tour would ignite the always-feared revolution of the masses in an attempt to install Pantera as the Messiah and Savior of the World—its King. Hopefully, instead, he’d be seen as a false prophet, like so many others before him.
“Has a date been set for the tour?” Chief Bradley asked a week later as Constantine was taking another of his evening “meditation” strolls in a wooded area along the perimeter of the remote farmland that Pantera had purchased in Grassy Creek, North Carolina. Pantera and his followers had settled there immediately after the Opal Show appearances.
“Soon,” Constantine told him. “Within the next couple of weeks, I believe.”
“What do you think, Agent Constantine?” Bradley asked. “Can he really sell his message en masse?”
Constantine sighed and thought for a time.
“What he has to say is compelling,” Constantine said, trying to provide a sincere assessment. “There’s a lot of unhappy, lost people out there whose lives seem empty and full of regret, with the prospect of death the only real outcome. So, sure, with Rex’s help and Pantera’s charisma and oratory skill, this movement could become something big. Spin out of control.”
Bradley sighed, seeming in agreement with that assessment.
“All right,” he told Constantine after a moment. “Let me take this to the director.”
Constantine and the chief remained quiet for a time. Finally, Constantine stopped walking and looked back in the direction of the farmhouse. He could see it through the trees—only a few lights were still on as Pantera and most of his fellow disciples had gone to bed. It had been another long day, and in the coming days, they’d be heading out for the start of what promised to be three grueling months of sermonizing and enlightening thousands of people in football stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters.
“What’s happening on that farm he bought?” Bradley asked.
“We’re still settling in,” Constantine said. “Setting things up. Four hundred people are tough to keep straight. Sanitation and food are constant problems.”
“So where does it start, this Enlightenment Tour?”
“Buffalo.”
“Buffalo?”
“New Era Cap Stadium,” Constantine told him. “Where the Buffalo Bills play football. Used to be called Ralph Wilson Stadium, the Ralph. It holds something like eighty thousand people. Tickets are going fast.”
“They expect a sellout?”
“That’s the hope.”
“Jesus,” Bradley said, then laughed to himself at the obvious irony in saying that. Then, he asked, “Still nothing on the Jesus connection?”
“Not yet,” Constantine said. “Rex is working on it.”
“That’s all this needs. More fuel on the fire that is Cristos Pantera.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mother Superior
Constantine still held out hope that eventually, Cristos Pantera’s bedazzlement would wear thin and he’d fade or fizzle out. If not, the Supremacy would take action to nip Pantera’s mission in the bud and he’d certainly be in the middle of it. How that would be arranged, he wasn’t sure—assassination, arrest on trumped-up charges, suicide while awaiting trial, illicit photos of him with a goat. There was almost nothing the Supremacy couldn’t pull off. Cristos Pantera would then become a mostly forgotten historical footnote.
If assassination was the method chosen for Pantera’s elimination, Constantine knew he’d be the trigger man. The Network would use some lone-nut patsy long under their control to take the blame, but it would be Constantine who’d do the killing. They’d done that before countless times throughout history, with patsies like Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan coming to mind.
Constantine wanted no part of it. Assassinating Cristos Pantera was truly not something he wanted to do. Indeed, over the past weeks, he’d become quite fond of the man—enamored with him to some degree, an admirer. But, he was no rookie like Renata Singh. If ordered, he would carry out it out no questions asked. At least that was what he told himself that night.
After his call with Chief Bradley, Constantine strolled back to the farmhouse, zipping up his light spring jacket as he walked. Even in early June, the nights still got rather chilly high up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As he approached the farmhouse, he noticed the lights were on in the kitchen at the back of the sprawling six-bedroom structure. He also noticed a late-model SUV parked on the gravel driveway directly in front of the farmhouse. They had a visitor.
The area around the farmhouse was quiet, eerily so. Pantera’s followers were asleep on the buses or in the many tents that had sprung up in what had used to be a cornfield. From a distance, Constantine thought it looked like an old American Indian village with campfires smoldering among the teepees.
Constantine heard voices from the kitchen as he entered the front door and stepped into the wide foyer. He recognized Pantera’s voice, but not the other—a woman’s. After a moment listening to the muffled voices, he decided to see who was there.
As he walked into the kitchen, he saw Pantera sitting at the old oak kitchen table. Across from him sat an attractive woman in her mid-fifties. Constantine immediately recognized her from the reports he had read while at the Orlando Hyatt Hotel only a couple months back, which now seemed like an eternity ago.
“Oh, hello, Donald,” Pantera said when he saw Constantine. “Say hello to my mother.”
Pantera’s mother nodded and smiled as Constantine hesitantly walked over. He bowed slightly and shook her hand. So finally, the mother was there.
“Jane Smith,” she said.
He almost said, I know. Instead, he said, “Donald Summers.”
She was petite and attractive, with a fair, open face and freckles dotting her nose and forehead. Her hair had morphed from the reddish-brown in the photographs Constantine had seen into a witchy purplish gray that laid across her slender shoulders. Her blue eyes were kind, twinkly and intelligent, with crow’s feet at the edges. She had a simple, farm-girl communal look, like some flower child transported out of the late 1960s—a benign, smiling hippie from that era come to spice up the modern world with peace and love.
Constantine immediately decided that Pantera had inherited little of her looks. His complexion was darker, for one thing, and he was much taller—not slight or airy. His face was square and sharply drawn, and darkly handsome. Pantera had the same color eyes, that deep blue, but they looked out in a sharper, deeper, more invasive way. Must have gotten his father’s looks, Constantine thought. A chip off old Julian Pantera’s block.
Jane Smith wore a simple floral dress with a tan shawl draped around her shoulders, and she sat smiling up at Constantine as he
considered her presence. He had wondered where the woman had been all these weeks.
“So you’re the twelfth,” she said to Constantine. “Cristos says he is most impressed with you.”
“My only wish is to serve him and the mission well,” Constantine said. He smiled and tried to deflect attention from himself by asking how her trip had gone.
“My trip?” she asked and shrugged. “It was fine.” She looked across at Pantera and winked. “A boy needs his mother.”
“Yes.” Pantera smiled, then added softly, “A boy needs his mother to nag him.”
Jane laughed, patted his arm, and said, “I don’t nag you, Cristos, I teach you. And it now appears you need my wisdom more than ever. I have left you to yourself long enough.”
Pantera nodded to a chair at the kitchen table and told Constantine, “Sit. Join us. You’re up late. Taking your nighttime walk?”
It was by now well-known that “Donald” enjoyed his solitary evening strolls to meditate, clear his mind. If they only knew the real purpose.
“Yes, Master,” Constantine said.
“Master?”
Pantera shot his mother a glance and told her with a shrug, “That’s what they call me.”
“So if he’s the Master, as you call him,” she asked Constantine, “are you his slave?”
“Not master in that sense, of course,” Constantine answered. “As our teacher. It’s simply a title of respect.”
“But it makes you sound like a sycophant,” she said. “Like the others. All of you, yes men.”
“She means you are all too ready to kiss my behind,” Pantera added, then turned to her. “She says my closest friends are too enamored with me and therefore blind to what’s best for the mission.”
“Well, it is a dangerous thing to be surrounded by yes-men.” She sighed. “And another thing, what’s this talk about you being the son of God?”
He shot her a stern look. “I never claimed that. I said I was the messiah and certain people, the press mostly, have confused it, twisted it around.”
“That’s what people always do, especially the media,” she told him. “You must choose your words carefully, Cristos. I told you that. They only need the smallest excuse to cut you down.”
“You see?” he asked, turning back to Constantine. “She loves putting me in my place.”
“Only when you need it,” she snapped back.
“And that’s why she’s here,” he told Constantine. “To keep me honest. It was Mother who put me on this road in the first place.”
“It’s your destiny,” she reminded him, her expression serious as she reached over and took hold of his arm. “It’s part of an ancient plan. You are the Messiah. The one who has come to put things right.”
Pantera nodded, and in that moment, looked exhausted.
“Well, whatever I am,” he said, “it seems to be working. The word is getting out. People are awakening. Just look around you, at the people on this farm. They’ve given up everything to join me. Like Donald here.”
“Yes,” his mother agreed, “and that’s what scares me. Your success. Your rise has been too fast. You’re becoming dangerous, a real threat. They already sent one of their agents to watch you, and they’re certainly watching you still. It could be one of your followers out there. Or worse, in here.”
She turned to Constantine as if she knew what he really was, asking, “What do you think, Donald?”
Constantine arranged his face in a thoughtful frown, as if only now considering the issue. Could she have guessed my true identity? After a moment, he decided on a course to take and turned toward her.
“I agree,” he said. “The Master must be careful.” He looked at Pantera. “He must be vigilant and not underestimate the strength and resolve of those he wishes to overthrow.”
Pantera shrugged, as if to say there was nothing he could do about that. Turning to her son again, with more certainly and virulence in her voice, she told him, “They’re watching you. Monitoring the situation. And once this tour of yours takes off, goes viral, as the young people say, and your disciples and followers number in the thousands, the millions perhaps, then they will come at you. You will leave them no choice. They will try and take you down. They will…” And then she sighed and looked away, and after a moment, swallowed. Finally, she looked back at Pantera with tears welling in her eyes. “They will crucify you.”
“That’s what happens to messiahs,” Pantera said, trying to smile.
“Don’t make light of it, Cristos,” she said. “Please.”
They fell silent for a time. Constantine felt uncomfortable to be sitting there at such a poignant and private time between mother and son, even though it gave him an opportunity to assess their relationship.
Eventually, Jane looked squarely at him and asked, “What do you think of Renata, Donald? Do you trust her? My son, I fear, has been blinded by love. Or lust.”
“Mother…”
“No, let him answer.” She turned back to Constantine. “What’s your impression of her? You know her background? She was recruited by the dark forces ruling mankind to spy on Cristos. But now she claims to have been awakened by Cristos to the Word of God and has come over to the forces of good. Did you know any of this?”
Constantine looked over at Pantera, then back at her, and considering his words carefully, said, “A little. That she worked for the CIA or something. But the Master changed her, like he changed the rest of us.”
Jane Smith looked to Pantera and asked, “Is she? Has she changed?”
“Yes, Mother,” Pantera told her, “she has renounced her old life and has accepted the truth of the Word. She has become a Daughter of Man and now lives with us in the Kingdom of God. And beyond that, I love her and she loves me.”
“But how do you know that it’s not an act?” his mother pressed.
“Because, I know,” was all Pantera would say.
Constantine found himself curious to see how the two women would interact now that they were under the same roof. Pantera’s followers had started calling Renata “Mother Superior” to differentiate her from the mother of Cristos Pantera. They would soon refer to Jane Smith as “Mother Jane,” and give her an exalted, almost saintly status that they felt she deserved.
Certain enemies of Pantera and his ministry, Constantine knew, still referred to Renata Singh as “Pantera’s slut.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Son of the Son of the Son…
Late in the afternoon the next day, Spartacus Rex’s black stretch limo turned into Pantera’s new compound in Grassy Creek and stopped in front of the old, hulking farmhouse at the center of it. Rex exited the back compartment and strode toward the house ahead of his two massive bodyguards. They stomped up onto the wide wooden porch and, without knocking, walked straight in. Rex didn’t have to knock—he had become, in a sense, Pantera’s thirteenth disciple.
Constantine was sitting in the kitchen, sipping coffee and checking Facebook on his smartphone, when he heard Rex call out, “Hey, Cristos! You around?” from the front foyer. He walked out into the living room and told Rex, “He’s up taking a nap.”
Pantera took a half-hour snooze every afternoon to recharge his mind, and Renata Singh usually went up with him. In the next moment, however, Pantera was coming downstairs with Renata behind him.
“Mister Rex,” Pantera said as he strode up to Rex. They hugged and slapped each other on the back in a brief greeting. Then, Pantera stepped back and asked, “And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
Rex had been calling several times a day over the past three weeks since Pantera’s second The Opal Show! appearance, getting this and that ready for the Enlightenment Tour, informing him of the latest venues added, the rock bands and speakers booked to supplement Pantera’s sermons. Though Rex assured Pantera that he was to be the whole show, he told him these other “acts” were needed to increase its overall entertainment value. Constantine surmised that the surprise visi
t must be something beyond these details, something that couldn’t be discussed over the phone.
“It got confirmed, man,” Rex said, laughing and holding up his arms in celebration. “Your DNA’s a match! You really are the son of the son of the son of God. Jesus is like your great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa.”
Constantine, of course, wasn’t surprised and held a poker face. He’d have to break the news to Bradley as soon as possible that Rex had somehow dug up proof confirming Pantera’s Jesus connection, and that he’d probably already put out a press release. It would make Pantera and the Enlightenment Tour all the more happening. Establishing the Jesus connection would take care of lagging sales at certain venues. The entire tour would likely be sold out.
“Maybe we should have called it the ‘Second Coming Tour,’” Rex said.
“I’m not the second coming,” Pantera stated firmly.
“What’s the proof, Mister Rex?” Constantine asked. “I mean, how do you prove something like that?”
“Well, hold onto that, Mister Rex,” Pantera said. “I’d like to get everyone else together for this news.”
Pantera sent Constantine to round up the other members of the inner circle. Ten minutes later, they were all sitting on the three couches or cross-legged on the floor of the living room, looking up at Pantera and Rex in the center of the room. Mother Jane had taken a seat on the floor with an I-told-you-so look.
Pantera solemnly broke the news that he was descended from Jesus, that Spartacus Rex had confirmed what before had been an odd rumor. Then he turned the meeting over to Rex to explain how.
Rex gave them a brief but understandable synopsis, in his own street-talk vernacular. He had handed over the swab of Pantera’s saliva and blood sample to three reliable staff members to see if they could connect the dots to Jesus. Their initial research led them to several reliable articles and a couple bestselling books written by biblical scholars, claiming that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Abdes Pantera. That research led them to a certain Professor Marcus Banyan, the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Charlestown State University. Banyan’s writings had led them to the bones of Jesus found in Jerusalem, in the so-called “Jesus Cave,” and to those of the Roman centurion Abdes Pantera, found in an obscure grave in Germany. According to Banyan, DNA samples taken from these two sets of bones matched, proving that Abdes Pantera had fathered Jesus, not some carpenter named Joseph, and certainly not God.
The Messiah Page 10
