The Sign

by Raymond Khoury

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “Nope.” She smiled. “My body clock’s so out of whack I don’t even know what day it is.”

  “It’s the day after Christmas,” Matt said with a knowing smile.

  “Really?” She grinned and looked around. “Not exactly a white one this year, huh?”

  Matt nodded. Took another sip. Said, “You should get some rest. You’re about to have the most intense few months of your life. Of anyone’s life.”

  “What, even worse than the last few days?” she quipped.

  “Oh yeah.” He shrugged. “That was a cakewalk.”

  “Some cakewalk,” she said, dreamily. She caught his glance, then looked away, staring through the scenery around them, her mind wandering off.

  “What?” he prodded.

  She shrugged. After a quiet moment, she said, “It seems like such a waste, don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “All those people, at the stadium. Around the world. Hanging on his every word. Singing. Praying. Did you ever hear anything like that in your life?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “They were loving it. They loved believing in him. They were lifted by it. I know, it’s primitive and it’s cultish and it’s even a bit creepy, but somehow, some part of me thought it was beautiful. For a moment there, they were all happy. They’d forgotten about their problems and their jobs and their mortgages and everything that was wrong in their lives. They were happy and they were hopeful. He gave them all hope.”

  “False hope,” Matt corrected.

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked, as much to herself as to him.

  “Hope isn’t real by definition, is it? It’s just a state of mind, right?” She shrugged, falling back to earth. “If it wasn’t for all those self-serving leeches using him . . . twisting everything for their own purposes. Using something as beautiful and as inspirational as that to fill their own pockets and grab more power . . .” She looked at him forlornly. “Such a waste, you know?”

  “Same-old same-old.” He shrugged. “It’s the way of the world.”

  She nodded ruefully. Stood there quietly for a moment, then asked, “So what are you going to do? You’re part of this story too, you know. People are going to want to hear your side of it.”

  He cocked his head at her with a pleased look on his face and said, “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought I might get me a ghostwriter,” he mused. “Knock out a book about it. Something punchy. Like something that guy who wrote The Perfect Storm would write. Maybe flog the movie rights to some studio for a cool mil.” He flashed her a grin.

  “Yeah, well, get in line, bub,” she countered.

  He let out a slight chuckle. Turned to look at her. It suddenly occurred to him that she was a great-looking girl. Great-looking and, with all the rest of it, everything any man could ask for. And much as he wanted to put the whole nightmare of the last week behind him, the thought of it keeping them involved in each other’s lives for a while longer had taken over as the preferred option.

  But they had to get through the tough part first.

  “When are you going to hit the button?” he asked her.

  Her face tightened at the uncomfortable thought. “I don’t know. How about we let everyone out there enjoy a few more hours of peace. Christmas was only yesterday . . .”

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow,” she nodded.

  They dunked their empty cans in the trash and trudged back to their rooms. They were outside Father Jerome’s door when it cracked open. The old priest was standing there, holding it open, a knot of concentration etched across his forehead.

  “I’m sorry, did we wake you?” Gracie said.

  “No,” he said. He didn’t look like he’d slept at all, and seemed deeply consumed by his thoughts. He studied them for a beat, then said, “Can you get everyone together? I’ve been thinking about everything that’s happened, and . . . We need to talk.”

  Chapter 82

  Houston, Texas

  The sky was still as balmy and clear as it had been on the big day itself. A relative calm had reasserted itself over the city, even though the air was still heavy with expectation. There hadn’t been any fresh news about Father Jerome in over twenty-four hours, and the city was trying to carry on with life while awaiting the next moment of revelation.

  The first people to see the ball of light pulsating over the reflecting pool were the families and couples and joggers who were out enjoying a day in the park. It was small and spherical, maybe twenty feet across, and was hovering innocuously around a couple of hundred feet up over the south end of the long, rectangular ceremonial pool, by the Pioneer Memorial obelisk, at the northern tip of Hermann Park. Curious onlookers gravitated toward it, scanning the grounds around them with wary eyes. They soon spotted the man underneath it, the one in the black cassock and the richly embroidered hood. The light was hovering over him as he walked slowly away from the obelisk.

  The onlookers converged on him, calling others over, pointing him out. The park was hugely popular and was surrounded by some of Houston’s most beloved attractions: the zoo, the Garden Center, the Museum of Natural Science with its cylindrical butterfly greenhouse, and the iconic Miller Outdoor Theatre. Given the weather and the holiday, there were a lot of people out there, and it didn’t take long for most of them to swarm in on the frail old man who was walking innocently along the edge of the tranquil body of water. They spoke to him, greeted him, and threw hesitant questions at him, but he didn’t answer or meet their eyes. He just nodded enigmatically and kept ambling quietly, seemingly lost in his thoughts. They kept a respectful distance, staying back a few yards from him. Those who breeched that private zone were told off by others and made to pull back. Throughout, Father Jerome kept moving, slowly, until he made his way up the ceremonial steps to the platform that looked down over the pond.

  He stopped there and turned, looking out onto the wide open area before him, framed against the statue of Sam Houston and its monumental arch. The park police were quick to get involved; they reeled in as much backup as they could muster and soon set up a protective cordon around the platform. The news vans rushed over too. Before long, hundreds of people were spread across the grounds of the park, their eyes locked on the tiny figure with the sphere of shimmering light floating above him who just stood there and looked down on them in silence.

  Once everything was in place—the crowd, the coverage, the protection—he took a step forward and raised his hands to a wide, welcoming stance. A ripple of sh-sh-sh’s rolled over the crowd, and the entire park was shrouded in silence. Even the birds and the branches of the trees seemed to fall into line as any trace of noise seeped away from the ceremonial plaza and was replaced by an ominous stillness.

  Father Jerome’s eyes traveled slowly across the field of onlookers and back. He then tilted his head up to look at the sphere of light floating over him, nodded thoughtfully, clenched his fists with resolve, and addressed the crowd.

  “Friends,” he began, “something wonderful has been happening these past few days. Something amazing, something breathtaking and strange and surprising and . . . something I don’t quite understand,” he confessed. A murmur of surprise coursed through the crowd. “Because the honest truth is . . . I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what this is,” he said, pointing upward at the hovering ball of light. “I don’t know why it’s here. I don’t know why it chose me. What I do know, though, is that its meaning hasn’t been properly understood. Not by others. Certainly not by me. Not until last night. And now I think I do understand. I understand what it’s trying to tell us. And I’m here to share that with you.”

  KEENAN DRUCKER STOOD in his hotel room, openmouthed, staring at the TV screen, wondering what the hell was going on.

  He’d been on edge since he’d gotten news of Father Jerome’s disappearance from Reverend Darby’s mansion, and he’d
been worriedly anticipating a quick press blowout from Rydell and his new friends. The fact that it hadn’t happened threw him. He’d wondered why they hadn’t gone public, what Rydell was up to. And the sight on the screen before him, of Father Jerome walking through a park with a growing horde of followers congregating around him, wasn’t making things any clearer.

  He heard his suite’s doorbell ring, and crossed to see who was there, his mind still in thrall to the events taking place less than a mile away. He checked the peephole and stiffened at the sight that greeted him, then he composed himself and unlocked the door.

  “Jesus,” he said when he saw Maddox’s heavily bandaged arm and his sweaty face. “You didn’t tell me it was that bad.”

  Maddox pushed into the suite, ignoring the comment. “There’s a lot of commotion in the lobby. Have you seen what’s happening?” He’d barely said it when he saw the live coverage on the TV. He stepped closer to the screen, then turned to Drucker with a suspicious frown. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s not me,” Drucker protested. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Maddox studied him dubiously. “It’s not you?”

  “I’m telling you this has nothing to do with me,” Drucker insisted. “It’s got to be Rydell. He’s running things now. They got the priest out last night.”

  “The sign,” Maddox realized, filling in the gaps mentally. “I thought it was something you’d planned. Then I tried Dario’s phone and got some cop, and that didn’t add up.”

  “Dario’s dead,” Drucker confirmed.

  Maddox nodded. Things were unraveling even worse than he’d thought. He turned to the screen, his mind processing what he was seeing. “So what’s he up to? What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Rydell’s got the others convinced the global warming message is too important to kill.”

  “But he knows you can blow it all up for him,” Maddox remarked.

  “He can also take me down with him,” Drucker reminded Maddox, then added, “and you too, in case you forgot. He was the fall guy, remember? Without him, we’re out of options.” Then his face relaxed with a comforting realization. “They’re not going to expose him. They can’t. Not yet. Not before they figure out who they’re going to pin it on.” His face lit up. “Which gives us time. Time to figure out how to expose him without fingering ourselves as his puppet masters. Time to come up with another way out.”

  Maddox studied him for a beat, then came to a quick conclusion. If he was going to disappear—if he was going to live to fight another day—he had to make sure he didn’t leave anyone behind who could ruin things for him. Like a career politician who wouldn’t think twice about selling him out to save his own skin.

  But what he was seeing brought back to life a far more attractive option. One he thought had been wiped off his playbook.

  He pulled out an automatic before Drucker had time to blink and shoved it right up against the man’s forehead. “I already have. Sit down.”

  He herded Drucker backward and into an armchair facing the TV, then in one swift movement, he bent down, grabbed Drucker’s shaking hand with his gun hand, and arced it up so the silencer’s muzzle was jammed against Drucker’s mouth.

  Drucker stared at him, terrified and confused.

  “Thing is, right from the get-go, I never thought exposing Jerome was a good idea,” Maddox told him. “He’s much more useful this way. The truth is, we’re not out of options here, Keenan. You are.” And he pulled the trigger.

  The bullet ripped out the back of Drucker’s head and sent a gray and burgundy mess splattering across the wall behind him. Maddox placed the gun in Drucker’s limp hand, pressed Drucker’s fingers tightly against the grip and the trigger, then let it drop as it would have had Drucker been alone.

  Swift, Silent, Deadly. It was one hell of a good motto.

  He pulled out his cell phone and hit the well-worn speed-dial number. “I think we’re back in business. How’s our boy?” he asked.

  “He’s still put, at home,” his NSA contact told him. “Watching the live coverage from the park.”

  “Good. Let me know if he moves. I need him to be home.” He glared at the screen, then slipped out the room, already calculating the quickest route to Hermann Park.

  Chapter 83

  Father Jerome stared at the crowd and hesitated, and felt a shiver spread across his lips and a tremble in his fingers. His forehead went sweaty as other thoughts started rising out of the caverns of his mind, fighting for attention. His eyes strayed, darting left and right nervously, clouded with uncertainty. Then a familiar voice echoed in his ears.

  “You’re doing great,” Gracie told him. “Just keep going. Remember everything we talked about. Think about what you really want to tell these people. Block everything else out and open up your heart to them, Father. We’re right behind you.”

  A ghost of a smile broke across his face, and he cast his gaze over the crowd, a renewed resolve blossoming within him. He bobbed his head in a slight gesture of confirmation, and pressed on.

  CROUCHED IN THE BACK of the van, Gracie put her binoculars down and turned to address Matt across the big drum of the LRAD.

  “This thing’s just incredible.” She grinned, patting it. “I want one.”

  “Why not. It is Christmastime, right?” Matt said with an easy smirk. Then his expression tightened and he said, “Let them know I’m going in. And keep your eyes on Father Jerome in case he wobbles again.” He popped the door open.

  “Good luck.” She smiled.

  He smiled back and said, “I’ll see you in a little while.” He pushed his cell phone’s earpiece into place and glanced across at Dalton, who was behind the wheel. They exchanged a tight nod, then Matt slipped out of the van and headed for the plaza.

  ACROSS THE FIELD from the plaza, tucked away behind the Miller Outdoor Theatre, Danny watched the proceedings through another set of binoculars while Rydell liaised with Gracie on the phone. The Navigator was parked nearby, tucked away in the service lot behind the theater, its rear door open. The launch tubes were huddled beside them, now freshly stacked with the last of the smart dust canisters.

  “Matt’s on his way,” Rydell told Danny.

  Danny nodded. “Launchers ready?”

  “They’re all set,” Rydell told him. “You sure you had enough time to write the new programs?”

  “They’ll be fine,” Danny said flatly.

  Their eyes met. An unspoken anger still festered behind Danny’s gaze. Rydell winced and said, “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  Danny shrugged, and said, “Let’s make sure we pull this off first,” then turned his attention back to Father Jerome. “Ready?”

  Rydell nodded. “Ready.”

  “Let ’em rip.”

  “WE’RE LIVING IN A FRACTURED WORLD,” Father Jerome announced. “Others have come before me. Blessed with revelations, with inspirations. With wise and noble thoughts that they tried to share with those around them. To help humanity. To give us food for thought. But all it’s done is turn man against man. Their wise and noble words and their selfless deeds have been misinterpreted, twisted, abused . . . hijacked by others for their own glorification. Institutions have been built in their names . . . great big temples of intolerance, each one of them claiming to be the true faith and pitting man against man. Turning their words into instruments of control. Instruments of hate. Instruments of war.”

  He paused, breathing in short, ragged bursts now, sensing the unease spreading among the crowd. He frowned and redoubled his concentration, pushing the conflicting thoughts back, and said, “We have to try and fix that.”

  Just then, the sphere of light spread out, growing outward until it dwarfed the piazza below it. The audience gasped, staring in wonderment as the sign pulsed and rippled with life before morphing into the sequence of geometric patterns it had previously displayed—only this time, it ended up settling on a different image. A cross. A large, blazin
g cross, burning in the sky over Hermann Park.

  A loud cheer and shouts of “Praise the Lord” and “Amen” burst through the throng of onlookers as the cross just held there—but their joy was cut short when the sign started morphing again. The crowd gasped once more as the sign seemed to ripple and stretch outward and around before settling into another sign. Not a cross, this time. A star. The Star of David. The crowd flinched with surprise, roiled by the change, confused and scared and caught off-balance—but the sign wasn’t done yet. It held that shape, then changed again. It didn’t stop. It kept going, shape-shifting into a rotating sequence of symbols associated with other religions—Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Bahaism—and kept going, reaching back into history, assuming representations of all kinds of religious movements stretching back through the spider cults of Peru to the sun gods of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and all the way back to the very dawn of civilization.

  The changes sped up, the symbol spinning from one shape to the other, faster and faster, a haphazard and dizzying light show. It sped up until the symbols became almost indistinguishable, the intensity almost blinding—and then, all of a sudden, it just vanished. Just died out. In the blink of an eye, and without any sound or warning, it was just gone.

  The crowd went silent, as if they were all robots and someone had hit a mute button. The stunned onlookers just stared around at each other, mystified, not knowing what to think—then the sign burst out in its former glory, assuming its familiar pattern, the shape that was first seen over the ice shelf, and just held it and shimmered above the priest’s head.

  “INTERESTING LIGHT SHOW YOU’RE PUTTING ON,” the voice rasped from behind them.

  Danny and Rydell turned and froze at the sight of Maddox approaching them from behind. He had a long, black case slung over his shoulder and held a gun in his left hand, his uninjured hand. A curious mix of anger and confusion lined his weary face.