The Babylonian Codex

by C. S. Graham

  He laughed. “I don’t think I ever demolished a taxicab.” From the distance came the wail of a siren. He caught her arm and pulled her toward the Toyota. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  They took I-95 North, into Maryland. As they drove, Tobie gave Jax a quick rundown on what the Assyrian priest had told her about the Babylonian Codex, while Jax filled her in on Noah Bosch and the dominionists.

  At the end of it, he said, “It’s beginning to sound like you nailed it. I don’t know what the hell a bunch of ancient Iraqi artifacts or a biblical manuscript can possibly have to do with the assassination of Vice President Bill Hamilton, but it’s pretty obvious they’re all linked.” He frowned. “Somehow.”

  “So what’s these guys’ next step?” said Tobie. “Kill President Pizarro?”

  Jax thought about it a moment, then shook his head. “What does that gain them? The Speaker of the House is Canadian, and the president pro tempore of the Senate is from Pizarro’s own party.”

  “Maybe they think that with Hamilton and Pizarro dead, they can force a new election.”

  “Maybe. But there’s no guarantee the results of a new election would be any more to their liking. Whatever they’re plotting, I can’t see them leaving the end to chance.”

  She twisted around in her seat to face him. “What if they think they can influence the selection of the new vice president? Get someone in the number two slot who’s more to their liking—or who’s under their control—and then kill Pizarro?”

  “I suppose that’s possible.” Jax took the exit at Calverton and turned toward the northwest. “We need to find out exactly who we’re dealing with. Fast.”

  Major Kjos met them in the book-lined study of his century-old farmhouse on the outskirts of Olney. He was a trim, rosy-cheeked man of medium height, with Viking-blue eyes behind wire-framed bifocals and a shock of thick blond hair just beginning to fade to white.

  “Come in, come in. Have a seat,” he said, indicating a worn chesterfield sofa facing an enormous fireplace. A roaring fire chased away the winter’s chill. “Dr. Rosenthal tells me you have some questions about dominionism.” His eyes crinkled into a smile. “He also tells me I’m not to ask you any questions—not even your names.”

  “We appreciate your agreeing to see us on such short notice,” said Jax as he settled beside Tobie on the sofa.

  “Someone needs to be paying attention to these people.” The retired Lutheran chaplain sank into an old mission rocker beside the hearth. “They’ve been flying under the radar for far too long.”

  Jax rested his forearms on his knees and leaned forward. “Rosenthal says dominionism has become a powerful force within the U.S. military. Is that true?”

  “It’s worse in some branches than in others. But yes, it’s become a serious cause for concern. Fervent, intolerant religious beliefs and nuclear bombs are a dangerous combination.” Kjos folded his hands together and rested them on his lap. “Are you familiar with Mikey Weinstein?”

  Jax shook his head.

  “He’s a former JAG officer who once served in the White House under President Reagan. He had two kids at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and he became so alarmed when he realized what was going on there that he started the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. It’s dedicated to helping American service men and women fight back against what has effectively become a pervasive, coercive atmosphere of proselytizing in our armed forces.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “When you’ve got a deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence at the Pentagon going around the country giving speeches to churches and saying that the U.S. military is recruiting a spiritual army of warriors for God’s kingdom, it’s pretty damn bad.”

  “He really said that?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Tobie said, “But that’s just one man.”

  “I wish he were the only one. A few years ago one of these outfits made a video in which they had flag rank officers—that’s generals and admirals—standing in uniform in the Pentagon talking about exercising biblical leadership to raise up a ‘godly’ military. They should have been court-martialed. Instead, they were promoted. We’ve had officers riffed from the military because they didn’t attend prayer breakfasts; soldiers serving in Iraq disciplined by their sergeants because they refused to join in imprecatory prayers with their squadrons before launching attacks on Iraqi villages. In just a few years, the Foundation has collected thousands of complaints from service people stationed all around the world.”

  “You mean, from non-Christians in the military?”

  “Actually, no. Ninety-six percent of the complaints come from Christians. About three quarters of those are traditional protestants—Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians; the rest are Catholics. You see, this isn’t a Christian-Jewish-Muslim issue, or a Republican-Democrat issue. This is about a concerted effort being made by people who basically have no respect for either our institutions or anyone who doesn’t conform to their ideology. Essentially, we’re talking about the American version of the Taliban. If we let them take over our military and government . . .” Kjos blew out a long, worried breath. “Well, let’s just say that as far as I’m concerned, this is more of a threat to the United States than al-Qa’ida ever could be. The real danger of the twenty-first century is fundamentalism, and it doesn’t matter which holy book these fanatics are clutching. When you’re talking about people who are intolerant—who think they have a monopoly on truth and goodness—everyone else is the enemy.”

  Jax glanced at Tobie, but said nothing.

  Kjos peeled his glasses off his face and began polishing them with a handkerchief he pulled from his back pocket. “I know it sounds like something from a bad thriller—scary theocons infiltrating the government and military as part of a plan to take over the country. Which is probably why no one can believe it’s actually happening.”

  “It’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” said Jax. “To accuse people who talk about wanting this country to be more ‘godly’ of actually plotting to take over the government?”

  Kjos settled his glasses back on his face. “Have you read the Book of Revelation?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Yes,” said Jax.

  Kjos smiled. “It’s a strange, beautiful, and very misunderstood book. In the early centuries of the church, a number of bishops argued against including it in the canon because of the difficulty of interpreting its symbolism and its potential for abuse. Martin Luther found the portrayal of God in Revelation so horrible that he didn’t think it belonged in the Bible, and even John Calvin was of much the same opinion. It presents a very Manichaean, dualistic division of the world into good and evil, where everyone is either an agent of God or a tool of Satan. It also contains a strange portrait of Jesus—not as the Lamb of Peace but as an almost primitive sky god.”

  Jax said, “I thought Manichaeism was denounced as heretical in the early years of the church.”

  “It was. But it never really went away. And now it’s been grafted onto this strange, retrograde warrior cult of aggressive nationalism and masculinity. These people don’t want any part of the Lord of peace or the Jesus of the Gospels. Basically, they worship Jesus as some kind of divinely anointed Rambo. To listen to them, you’d think the Bible is like a cafeteria from which they can pick and choose what they want. They ignore the Sermon on the Mount and the passages where Jesus talks about compassion and condemns worldly wealth, and focus on their own bizarre, bloody interpretation of Revelation—and the most violent parts of the Old Testament, of course.”

  Tobie leaned forward. “But why is Revelation so important?”

  “Probably because it’s so mystical that it lends itself to being twisted to mean virtually anything you want it to mean. These people will tell you they believe the Bible should be read literally. But for some reason when it comes to Revelation, that approach breaks down. I mean, they don’t believe a literal
beast is going to appear at the end of the world—they think the beast is a symbol for someone else. Two hundred years ago a lot of people thought the beast was Napoleon. Sixty years ago, it was Hitler. Then the communists.”

  “Or the Catholic Church,” said Jax.

  Kjos nodded. “The Catholic Church is a perennial favorite. Now it’s more often the UN or Muslims. There’s always someone who can be labeled the Other, the enemy. Listen to their rhetoric; it’s very militaristic. They talk about spiritual warfare and prayer warriors. They march and blow trumpets. Give the graduates of their schools real swords.”

  “But it’s all just . . . symbolism, isn’t it?”

  “Is it? What about the Bible Boot Camps, where they give their kids paramilitary training? I’d say that’s a little more than symbolic. They talk about raising up a ‘Joshua Generation’ to take over the world by force. The focus is very much on violence and revenge. The problem is, when you tell people they’ve been chosen by God and everyone they don’t like is going to hell, it feeds their feelings of superiority. It sanctifies their hatred and rage, and gives them a sense of purpose—in this case, taking over the United States and using it as a platform from which to cleanse the world of evil.”

  Kjos pushed to his feet and went to pull a book from one of his shelves. “Ever hear of a guy named Warren Patterson?”

  “Yes,” said Jax.

  “No,” said Tobie.

  Kjos held out the slim blue volume. “His megachurch is just outside Baltimore. Trinity Hills. His last book sold over thirty million copies. Think about that. Thirty million. He has his own TV network, his own university. An oil refinery in Texas. Even a few diamond mines in Africa. The man started out as a used-car salesman. Now he’s worth something like half a billion dollars, and what he’s selling is a vision of churches, states, and corporations forming partnerships to pave the way for Christ’s return. It’s like a blueprint for revolution by stealth.”

  “What’s the book called?” asked Tobie, reaching for it.

  “Faith Multipliers.”

  She took the book in her hands and flipped it over. The entire back cover was taken up by a photograph of a smiling, white-haired man with a handsome tanned face and brilliant green eyes.

  “What is it?” Jax asked, watching her. “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s him.”

  “You know him?” said Kjos.

  She looked up, her gaze meeting Jax’s. “I’ve seen him,” she said, choosing her words carefully.

  Chapter 33

  Duane Davenport and Special Agent Brockman stood side by side, unspeaking, as they rode the elevator up to the ICU at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. Last Davenport had heard, Captain Peter Abrams was still in a coma. But after watching the tapes, Davenport had decided not to wait to see if the Lord planned to take Abrams naturally.

  They found two guards standing in the corridor outside Abrams’s door: a naval lieutenant and a chief petty officer. Both men wore holstered sidearms.

  Davenport flashed his FBI badge and went to brush past them into the room.

  The lieutenant stepped into his path. “I’m sorry, sir. No one is allowed into the Captain’s room except for naval medical staff. And even then, one of us goes in with them.”

  Davenport drew up short, his nostrils flaring with indignation. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Duane Davenport. Head of the FBI Criminal Investigative Division.” Davenport jerked his head toward the bed. “This man is the only witness to the murder of an FBI agent.”

  The lieutenant stood with his hands behind his back, his stare stony. “Sir, I have orders that no one goes in this room except for medical staff.”

  Davenport leaned toward him, his jaw tight, his voice ugly. “Believe me, it won’t be good for your career if I have to go over your head to the Center Commander.”

  The asshole didn’t even blink. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid you’ll find that not even Admiral Donateli can authorize your entry. My orders come from the office of the chief of Naval Operations.”

  Davenport forced himself to swallow a welling of rage. It might be difficult, but there were ways. “I’ll be back,” he told the lieutenant and swung away.

  “Do we know anyone in the office of the chief of Naval Operations?” Brockman asked as they walked back down the hall.

  “We must,” he said.

  He was reaching for his phone when the call came through from the D.C. police, telling him that Kowalski and Welsh were dead.

  Chapter 34

  “So which one is he?” Jax asked, turning the rented sedan out onto the highway and heading toward Baltimore. “The one with the house on the lake?”

  October shook her head. “The other one. The guy with the Gulfstream.” She flipped through the copy of Faith Multipliers that Kjos had given them. “If I remember the jargon from my basic training days, a ‘force multiplier’ is a factor that dramatically increases the combat effectiveness of a military force. These guys really like using military terms, don’t they?”

  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. Nothing. “Patterson is obviously pretty good at multiplying. His megachurch boasts a congregation of something like thirty thousand.”

  She turned the book over to stare again at the handsome, smiling man on the back cover. “I’ve never understood how some of these guys become so huge. Why them and not—say—Pastor Kjos?”

  “Part of it’s what they say—they seem to have perfected the technique of making people feel good about themselves. But it’s also because of the way they say it. They’re very charismatic people with hypnotic voices and delivery styles. For some it’s natural, but the techniques can also be learned. They’ve basically taken the old revival-tent formula and augmented it with some advanced neuroscientific studies on trance induction and state generation. There’s a guy in California who’s made a fortune out of showing other churches how to increase their donations by eighty percent, mainly by using carefully staged lighting and sound effects.”

  “Praise the Lord and pass the collection plate.”

  “Exactly.” Jax flipped open his phone and put in a call to Matt.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” said Matt quietly.

  Jax said, “One quick question: Is our Irish friend still looking into a certain diamond-mine owner?”

  There was a pause. “He is.”

  “Have him meet us in the parking lot in half an hour.”

  Jax closed his phone and handed it to October. “Here; yank the battery, would you? We’ll toss it in the trash as soon as we stop.”

  She fiddled with the battery unit, looking for the lock. “Who’s ‘our Irish friend’?”

  “Sean O’Reilly. MI6.”

  She looked up in surprise. “The British are investigating Warren Patterson?”

  “They are indeed. I first heard about Patterson when he was mixed up in some ugly things that were going on in Latin America. But lately he seems to have moved on from funding death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala, and shifted his focus to Africa. He’s gotten very buddy-buddy with the head nasties of places like Uganda and Sierra Leone. A little assassination here, a little regime change there—you get the idea.”

  “Nice.”

  “It gets better. He has a special affinity for strong men who can promise to grant him mining leases, especially for gold and diamonds. He caught MI6’s attention when his name surfaced as part of a failed coup involving British mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea.”

  “Good Lord.”

  Jax pulled off at the next exit. “I don’t think the good Lord has anything to do with it.”

  She stared up at the three massive white crosses crowning the far hill and frowned. “Where exactly are we going?”

  “To church.” He turned into the rest stop at the base of the slope. “But first Mildred needs to put on her Sunday go-to-meetin’ clothes.”


  She groaned. “Not the gray wig and the walker!”

  Jax grinned. “Unless you’d rather show up at a fundamentalist church dressed as a Muslim fundamentalist?”

  Sean O’Reilly proved to be a short, leprechaun-like Irishman from Belfast, with wavy dark hair and a sharp-featured face and dancing gray eyes. Dressed in a very proper suit with a white shirt and conservative tie, he was waiting for them beside a stand of oaks, their branches etched starkly against the cold late-afternoon sky.

  “Matt tells me you’re interested in our man Warren,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks and hunching his shoulders against the wind. “What’s up?”

  “We’re still trying to figure that out,” said Jax. “How’s the investigation coming?”

  “It’s going nowhere fast.” O’Reilly shivered. “These guys have a lot in common with Scientology and the Moonies; only the deep pockets are allowed into the inner circle, and they know how to keep their mouths shut. I’m winding things up and heading back to London tomorrow. You’re lucky you caught me.”

  Jax stared across the sea of cars toward Trinity Hills’s massive, limestone-sheathed sanctuary. The setting sun threw long shadows across the parklike grounds and lit up the compound’s white walls with a golden glow.

  In addition to the sanctuary, he could see a bookstore, a fitness complex, a theater, an office building, and a large, glassed-in bus stop with a sign that read, SHUTTLE TO TRINITY HILLS UNIVERSITY CAMPUS. The church itself looked more like an auditorium or a municipal building than a place of worship. There was no steeple, no spire, no bell tower, no religious icons of any kind except for the three stark, giant crosses that towered over everything from the top of the hill.

  “This place is huge,” said October, leaning over her walker. Even with the wig and some skillfully applied makeup, she didn’t make a particularly convincing old lady. The posture and attitude were all wrong. She was hopeless when it came to going undercover.