by Peter James
No wonder God was concerned, Ross thought.
It reminded him of something that the Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist, Max Planck, once said: Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
Was science replacing the Church by stealth? Playing the long game?
Another wave of tiredness sapped him, despite his nervous energy, and he yawned. He set the alarm on his watch for an hours’ time, reclined his seat the few inches it would go, then closed his eyes.
But all he could think of, and all he could see behind his closed lids, was Imogen walking past on Melrose.
What was she doing?
Was she having an affair? It was awful, he thought, that he didn’t really care if she was. That didn’t say much about the state of their relationship, he knew.
Even if she was, she wouldn’t have been dumb enough to have flown to the same city he was in, surely? Unless she was spying on him?
She knew where he was staying and hadn’t contacted him. She hadn’t taken his call – twice. Hadn’t called him back either.
After the alarm rang, he climbed out of the car, utterly mystified, locked it, then made his way back towards the Fairfax Lounge.
127
Monday, 20 March
It had clouded over in the past hour, and a wind had got up, tugging hard at Ross’s jacket as he crossed the street to the bar. With no sunlight shining on it, the place looked even gloomier and less inviting than earlier.
He pushed open the heavy door and entered. Most of the ceiling lights were now on, but the weak bulbs in the dusty shades cast only a faint glow. The television was showing a ball game, although no one was watching it, and Dolly Parton’s voice was coming through the crackly sound system. The grumpy old bartender had smartened up and was wearing a crimson tuxedo with a bow tie. He stood still, hands on the bar surface, with seemingly nothing to do except glower at the world. Another bartender of a similar vintage, a small, slight man, identically attired, was stirring a long spoon in a silver cocktail shaker.
Two business suits sat at a banquette, phones clamped to their ears. Both had Martini glasses in front of them. The only other customers were a middle-aged man, also in a suit, with a provocatively dressed redhead. They sat at the bar engrossed in each other. The man wore a ring, Ross noticed; the woman sported a couple of rocks but not on her wedding finger. He wondered what their story was.
Another barman carried a bright green cocktail to the woman and a beer to the man, then approached him.
‘Yes, sir, good evening, sir?’
Ross could have done with a stiff drink, but he had no idea how long he might have to wait and he didn’t want to risk making himself more tired. ‘Could I have a water?’
The bartender frowned, disapprovingly. ‘Tap?’
‘No, bottled, please.’
‘Still or with gas?’
‘Do you have Evian?’
This seemed, mysteriously, to hit the right spot and instantly the old man brightened. ‘Evian. We sure do. Slice of lime with it?’
‘Perfect, thank you.’
‘OK, you got it.’
‘Would you happen to know – will Mike Delaney show up tonight?’ Ross asked.
‘There’s only two folks know the answer to that, sir. Mr Delaney and the Lord God Almighty himself.’ Then he leaned down, glanced conspiratorially over his shoulder at his colleagues as if to make sure they weren’t listening, and in a lowered voice said, ‘Sir, if it’s a magic show you’re after, word is that the hottest place in town is Black Rabbit Rose on North Hudson. I’m afraid our Mr Delaney – you know – he’s a little tame perhaps by today’s standards.’ Then he touched his lips. ‘But I didn’t tell you that, sir. OK, sir, you got it, one Evian water with a slice of lime, coming up!’
A handful more customers trickled in during the next hour. Ross munched on the peanuts the bartender brought with his drink, had a second Evian, then went to the gents. When he returned to his seat he was really struggling again to keep awake.
His thoughts turned to dinner, later, with Sally. He was going to be great company if he was like this, he thought. Got to perk up!
Where was Imogen dining tonight, he wondered? With whom? What would be the chances of them ending up in the same restaurant?
Well, hey, that would make for an interesting conversation.
He sipped his drink and as he put the glass back down he noticed a tall, elderly man with a slight stoop walking across the bar. Dressed in a fraying grey suit, scuffed boots and a black shirt with rhinestone buttons, he had a long face beneath a mane of thinning grey hair, a large nose and cheeks that were mapped with thin red veins.
He was approaching the two business suits, who looked to be in deep discussion, their phones on the table in front of them. On their second Martinis now, or maybe their third.
As he reached them, he fanned out a deck of cards in his right hand. ‘Take a card, sir,’ he said to one of them. ‘Any card you like.’ He had a courtly, engaging voice with a Californian accent.
One of the suits waved the magician away, dismissively. The old man raised an arm apologetically and moved on towards Ross, with an agility that seemed to belie his age.
128
Monday, 20 March
Ross began to shake, his nerves out of control. He took several deep breaths in rapid succession as the realization hit him that this was the moment his entire life might have been building up to.
I’ve recently been given absolute proof of God’s existence – and I’ve been advised there is a writer, a respected journalist called Ross Hunter, who could help me to get taken seriously.
He was seldom lost for words, but at this moment he was. Remembering his plan just in time, he discreetly hovered his hand over his phone and tapped the Voice Memos app, activating the recorder.
Despite his broken appearance, the conjuror exuded a strangely powerful presence. Ross’s skin was tingling as he grew closer. The man’s hazel eyes seemed much younger than the rest of him and they shone, filled with zeal and magnetism, from behind glasses with bent frames.
Closer up now, Ross could see the resemblance to the much younger person in the poster on the wall across the room. It was there, clearly, inside the shell of this old man. As if he were wearing a suit and a mask, but there was someone else inside.
Ross felt a strange, powerful aura, the sensation of being sucked into an airlock. He found himself wanting to kneel in front of him.
‘Mike Delaney?’ he asked, his voice sounding disembodied.
‘That’s me, sir,’ the man replied, fanning out a deck of cards in a shaking hand. There was alcohol on his breath. ‘Sir,’ he asked, ‘may I show you a trick?’
Ross could see the young eyes twinkling through the mask. Twinkling with humour, with mischief. Twinkling with a shared secret.
He felt the hairs rising on the nape of his neck. He shivered, awed and excited, but at the same time feeling he was dreaming. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be.
But he was here. Delaney standing in front of him.
The man with Jesus Christ’s DNA.
Delaney continued smiling, eyes boring into him as if reading his mind. Encouraging him. And almost without realizing, Ross began to feel an immense sense of calm. Of wellbeing. Of energy.
‘Sir, may I show you a trick?’ the man repeated.
You are showing me one, Ross wanted to say. You are showing me something incredible. Instead, returning the man’s smile, he pointed at his glass of Evian. ‘Could you change that into wine?’
Their eyes locked. Ross had the strange sensation of being drawn into them, deep in through the lenses of his glasses, deep into the pupils, deep into the man’s very soul. He saw the trembling smile. Despite his frail, threadbare appearance, there was something quite majestic and commanding about him.
About the presence inside the shell, behind the mask.
‘Pinot Noir or Merlot, sir, or perhaps a nice Chablis?’
‘Did you give
them a choice last time?’ Ross responded.
Delaney frowned, fleetingly, then smiled again, even more warmly. Ross was feeling a strange sensation of complete and utter wellbeing. All his tiredness had gone, and he was now as wide awake as it was possible to feel. Then he suddenly broke into a cold sweat and felt giddy, as if the room was moving around him.
‘Very good,’ Delaney said, approvingly. ‘But I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way from England for a free glass of wine, did you, Mr Hunter?’
It surprised him that Delaney knew his name. He smiled, shaking his head. ‘I was hoping for a little more than that.’
‘I’ve been kind of expecting you. The old guy came to see you, right?’
Ross nodded. The whole room seemed to be rotating round him. ‘Dr Cook.’
‘Dr Harry F. Cook.’
Inside the young man inhabiting the old man’s shell, it seemed there was an even younger man. And a younger man still inside that, as if it were another shell. As if he were staring into the souls of an infinite number of beings, each inside the other, like Russian dolls. Drawing him in. Enveloping him. Protecting him inside this airlock.
‘Why him?’ Ross asked. He felt a catch in his throat. ‘Why did you choose him?’
‘Why anyone else?’ Delaney replied, simply.
There was a moment of silence between the two men as they just looked at each other. Ross felt strangely comfortable. It was as though no one else beyond them existed at this moment.
‘Will you join me, Mr Delaney, let me get you a drink?’ Ross suggested.
Delaney perched down beside Ross on the curved banquette, keeping a space between them. ‘I can’t stop too long, they don’t like it, you see, they want me moving around, working the tables. But I guess it’s pretty quiet right now, so we can talk a while.’
Ross ordered him a Jim Beam, and a beer for himself. Then as the bartender walked away, he turned back to Delaney. Despite his shabby appearance, he smelled clean, freshly showered.
‘I feel like I’m in some kind of dream,’ Ross said. ‘I – I just – just want to ask you –’ He fell into a long silence, unsure how to say what he wanted to. There were so many questions he wanted to ask him. About the past, about the future.
‘I know who I am,’ Delaney said, ‘if that’s the question.’ He looked at Ross. ‘That’s what you want to ask me, isn’t it?’
Ross stared back into his eyes, mesmerized. ‘Why Harry Cook?’ he asked again. ‘Why did you choose a modest, humble old guy like him when you could have chosen –’ He fell silent again, lost for words.
‘When we could have communicated in all other kinds of ways? Found someone more savvy? More media friendly? Who would anyone have believed? Not the Pope, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, not any of the imams, the Sikh leaders, the Hindu Brahmans, the rabbis. All of them already have their faith, they know. It’s not them who need to believe. They’re not going to stop humankind going over the precipice.’
The warning words, The Great Imposter, kept coming into Ross’s mind. Was he sitting here with an old fraud, Mr Ten-Billion-to-One who happened to have the same DNA as Christ?
Or the genuine article?
He was having difficulty believing Delaney was real. That it wasn’t just his imagination in some kind of wild overdrive. But as he looked back at the man he felt the magnetism. As if he were staring into infinity. As if he were staring into the souls of everyone who had ever lived on this planet.
But how does he know about Harry Cook? How does he know my name?
‘So who is capable of stopping – as you put it – humankind falling over the precipice, Mr Delaney?’ Before giving him a chance to reply, Ross went on. ‘Dr Cook told me God believed that if we could have faith reaffirmed, it would help steer us back onto an even keel. But in the Middle Ages almost everyone had religious faith. That didn’t stop all the centuries of terrible wars, the Holocaust, the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why would it make it any different now?’
Delaney smiled, wistfully, momentarily turning back into a single person, an old man, the skin creasing around his eyes. ‘Perhaps because too many people are listening to a handful of arrogant, influential people. Smart scientists and the cognoscenti, all with their hubris, who believe there cannot be anything more important than themselves in the universe. These same people who are so certain, yet still cannot explain how the world began. They talk convincingly of the Big Bang. But they can’t explain how it actually happened. Two bits of dust collided and set it off? So who put those two bits of dust there? That’s the subject they always duck. Along with the question why. Why did anyone put those two bits of dust there? No one can answer that, Mr Hunter, because the only possible answer is someone bigger than man.’
‘Someone or something?’ Ross tested.
Delaney held him with his gaze. The person inside him held him with his gaze, too. And the person inside that. ‘A higher intelligence, Mr Hunter. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s an urban legend, but in 1899, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office recommended to Congress that the Patent Office be closed because, he informed them, everything that could be invented had now been invented and there would be no new discoveries. Think about it. That was before an aeroplane had ever flown, before computers, before the internet, before almost everything modern there is in the world.’
‘A genuine man of vision, if it’s true,’ Ross said with a grin. ‘But you have to admit the Church doesn’t have a great record of being helpful to scientists. In 1633 Galileo was found guilty of heresy by the Inquisition for saying the world went round the sun. Has religion tried to be too protectionist and anti-science?’
‘Maybe.’ Delaney sipped his whiskey. ‘Maybe Christianity tried to hold on to old beliefs too long and instead of embracing science, turned it away. And the irony is that science is asking questions that only religion can answer, but to accept those answers would mean admitting defeat for the scientists.’
‘What questions, specifically, do you think?’ Ross asked.
‘Do you know about quantum entanglement theory?’
‘No.’
‘Very simplified, if you split a subatomic particle into two, put one half in a lab in London and the other in a lab on the far side of the world – say Sydney – then you flip the one in London over, instantly the one in Sydney will flip too. Einstein was fascinated by this and he came up with his own name for it: Spooky Action at a Distance.’
Ross smiled again and sipped his beer. He still could not believe this conversation was really happening. He felt drawn deeper and deeper into the myriad eyes inside eyes.
‘Another thing no one can explain, Mr Hunter, is magnetism. No one can actually tell you what causes it. Scientists know what it does, but that’s all. Are you really going to explain how that happens, and how for example Quantum Entanglement Theory happens, through nothing more than evolution from the primal swamp? I don’t think so. Of course evolution exists. But evolution is a part of existence. It is a consequence of life, not a primary cause.’
Delaney drank some more of his whiskey, and looked levelly at Ross. ‘You’re not sure about me, are you?’
‘Honestly? If you really are who I think you are, I don’t understand why you haven’t made your presence known before. Why have you waited over two thousand years?’
Delaney was silent for some moments. Then very quietly, so quietly Ross could barely hear him above the music and ambient noise, he said, ‘So tell me, who do you think I am?’
‘You have a DNA match to a tooth believed to have been one of Jesus Christ’s and to DNA recovered from what I think may be the Holy Grail.’
‘You think that is accidental, Ross?’
He smiled at the man’s use of his first name, as if they were becoming more intimate now. ‘No.’
Delaney smiled back and the two men’s eyes locked. Ross felt a current of electricity between them. An understanding. A bond.
‘You need to unde
rstand I’m not the Son of God,’ Delaney said, his voice still very quiet. ‘Yes, I have the same DNA. I’m the forerunner, sent here to blend in and report. To see if humankind is ready for the Second Coming.’
‘The Nicene Creed,’ Ross replied. ‘Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end.’
‘Word perfect!’
‘And?’
‘They are not ready.’
‘Who do you mean by they?’ Ross asked.
‘Everyone with his or her own vested interests. Nothing has changed in over two millennia. Vanity, greed and fear are the drivers the world over. Always have been. Jesus was killed for all those reasons. People were afraid of what they might lose because of him. The Jewish religious leaders felt if He truly was the Messiah, He would be a threat to their authority. The Romans accused Him of claiming to be a king, which was a direct challenge to their emperor. Pontius Pilate genuinely believed He might be the Son of God, but he was a self-serving politician and a weak appeaser. So he washed his hands of responsibility, letting the mob decide – when he could have saved Jesus.’
Ross stared at him, wondering again. Are you real? Can you possibly be real?
As if reading his mind, Delaney said, ‘You’re doubting, aren’t you? You are asking yourself, could this shabby old guy possibly be real? I’ve tried to live an ordinary life – well, as ordinary as possible. I know I’m different, but I’m clear what my role is.’
Ross felt his skin tingling, as if charged with static. It was weird, not unpleasant, energizing him as if he were standing in a hot shower. Delaney was grinning at him, knowingly.
