Marion thanked the guy, signaled Billy to follow, and pulled out of the station.
She drove in silence, glancing over at Daniel several times. He was looking straight ahead, tight-lipped, as if searching for something along the dim streets. A panorama of flashing lights from fire trucks, police vans, and media vehicles announced the beginning of trouble. Cops and other uniformed types swarmed all over the area. Smoke bombs and the after-stench of tear gas-smudged the sky; the thrum of a huge crowd resonated in the air, rising and falling like an endless chorus of summer cicadas. The distant echo of a bullhorn carried a distinctly hostile voice, perhaps a labor leader.
At the front gates, a forklift held a big pallet high. Behind the lift soared a set of high steel-reinforced gates; looming above everything, like a Martian machine from The War of the Worlds, stood the superstructure of a water tower with the word YUSANG branded across its oblate swell. Two men stood atop the lift’s pallet, high above the crowd, getting them worked up. Police in riot gear and firemen with crowd-control hoses scuffled with the edges of the large, seething mass of bodies that surrounded the entrance to the auto plant. People were screaming and shouting at the cops. Fistfights broke out sporadically. Paramedics wheeled a gurney along the edge of the crowd, its bloody passenger half-hanging off the cart.
“Oh man, this looks like shit,” said Daniel.
“I’ve seen worse,” she said. “Remember the food riots in the Bronx?”
Daniel rolled his eyes. “Who doesn’t?”
“C’mon. If Peter’s out there, we’ve got to find him.” Marion popped the trunk latch, opened her door.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No.” Walking around to the trunk, Marion retrieved her mini-camcorder from its shockproof case. She clipped her press credentials to the lapel of her jacket, then handed Dan a portable quartz lighting rig. “You’ve just become a news-rat,” she said.
He smiled, glanced briefly at the handles and controls for the lights. “Pretty ballsy, Marion.”
“Thank you,” she said, grinning. “Now, let’s go.”
Billy pulled alongside the Mazda, raised his goggles. “Woooeee!” he yelled. “Looks like my kind of par-tay!”
“Knock it off, Billy,” said Marion. “We’re here to find Peter and get out. You hear me?” She spoke sternly.
“Hey, just kidding, Marion,” he said. “I’m reformed, remember?”
“So you tell me. Listen, Billy, just find Peter, okay?”
“I’ll do my best,” he said, wheeling his bike to lean against the nearest light pole.
“Laureen, you better stay here at the car where it’s safe.”
“Fuck you, Billy! I ain’t gonna miss nothin’ cuz o’ you sayin’ so.”
Billy shrugged and led her toward the crowd. So much for chivalry, Marion thought.
“Okay, let’s move in, toward the action,” she told Dan. “Keep your lights at low power and we’ll make like we’re shooting.”
“We’re not?”
“Not necessary. We just have to look good.”
As they moved closer to the gates, Marion saw more and more devastation. The tactical police squads had been busy knocking heads and shooting off their weapons. Though the violence had for the moment subsided, it seemed ready at any moment to sweep through the crowd in ocean-like swells. The TV equipment made Dan and Marion practically invisible to cops and demonstrators alike. It was a common phenomenon. The camera gave her carte blanche. Everybody wanted to be on TV—for whatever the reason—and if they screwed around with you, they might blow their only chance.
The guy on the bullhorn incited the protestors to storm the front gates. Catch-phrases about power and control sprayed over the crowd like lighter fluid over hot coals. The air almost crackled with tension. Things were on an ugly upswing, and Marion hoped her camera-armor would protect her and Dan as they moved into the edge of the mass of factory workers. As she looked around at some of their faces, trying to personalize them, to draw individuals from the blob-like mass, she was surprised to see so many women in the ranks.
Suddenly, they came upon Billy and Laureen. An anonymous arm reached out and grabbed Laureen’s shoulder, holding her while another man fondled her nearest breast. She wheeled and spit at the molester, kicking him between the legs. His scream was lost in the general din of the crowd, as he was pulled back into the shifting pack. Laureen stood her ground and glared defiantly around her.
“We found ’im!” yelled Billy.
“Where?” Marion’s voice sounded weak and thin, in the midst of all the noise.
“Right up front. He’s arguing with some of the guys with the horn.”
How had Peter reached the scene so fast? Later she would learn he’d coaxed a ride from a county police officer, but at that moment, she couldn’t imagine how he’d worked his way into the very center of the action so quickly.
“Great. Just great,” said Dan. “How’re we going to get him outta here?”
“We’ve got to try,” said Marion. “Key those lights up to the max, and the zoom mike too, and follow me.”
As they shoved through the workers, the mike began to pick up the words of Peter and the labor leaders.
“…and who the fuck are you anyhow?” said one man, who wore a white hard hat.
“I’m your friend,” Peter said, smiling.
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” said the second protest leader. He tilted back his Beech-Nut baseball cap, and jumped down from the forklift pallet to confront Peter. “Ten bucks sez yer one o’ them Fed infiltrators. So get lost, buddy, afore you lose some of them pretty teeth.”
The crowd thrummed about her but Marion concentrated on the conversation echoing in her headphones.
Peter placed his hand on Beech-Nut’s shoulder. “But I am your friend. You do believe me, don’t you?”
It was the touch that did it. Or maybe it was just Peter’s tone of voice. Whatever, Marion noticed a sudden change in his adversary’s demeanor.
“Yeah, okay. What, uh, what can I do for you?”
“Help me up there with your buddy.” A moment later he climbed up to join the guy in the white hard hat.
Marion and Dan had eased through the pack of workers, who, for the most part, backed off to let the camera get as close as possible. Most of them made a point of looking directly into the lens and the lights. Some things never change, she thought. A new voice boomed over the bullhorn—Peter’s.
It was funny. She’d never been much for churches or sermons or preaching, but there was something about Peter’s voice, or his delivery, or the cadence of his words—she wasn’t sure—something that made people pay attention. What he was saying didn’t seem to be as important as how he was saying it. Even though Marion was focusing her attention on maneuvering through the crowd, a part of her still listened to him, as though she tuned to his words automatically, naturally.
He was telling the workers things they didn’t want to hear, but they couldn’t stop listening. Marion decided to switch on the camera. She had a feeling something interesting was happening. Clearly, Peter was influencing the mob. Almost as soon as he’d opened his mouth, the general restiveness of the crowd began to lessen. Within sixty seconds, everyone was paying attention.
How did he do it?
“Each one of you knows as well as I: violence is not going to solve any of your problems,” he said, with just enough authority in his voice to make the words count.
Initially, when the crowd realized he wasn’t up there to incite them to gut the Yusang plant and its managers, they had yelled for him to be silent, to go away. But their roar stopped almost immediately…because it was Peter speaking to them. There was something scary about his effect on people. Marion considered the implications of this as she let her camcorder roll. His power was hypnotic, pervasive, and utterly compelling.
“You must ask yourselves what you are really doing here. Risking your family’s security and your own health and safety? F
or what? Because you don’t want to be part of a corporate fitness program? What are you afraid of? Feeling better? Living longer? Being more productive?”
Marion listened, and watched the crowd’s reaction. She was puzzled. Peter wasn’t saying anything earth-shaking; his logic, while solid, was neither unassailable nor overwhelming. Yet they were rapt. As he spoke, Marion sensed an element of control lurking just beneath the surface of his words. It was as scary as it was impressive. People were calming down, lowering fists and protest signs.
Everything was going fine until the carbomb went off.
Later, Marion learned from Billy that the bomb-makers, after hearing Peter’s words, had decided to defuse the device and remove it from the Yusang Security cruiser. But somebody had pulled the wrong wire…
Like a desert flower blooming in the night, the patrol car erupted in an orange, concussive blossom. The explosion stunned everyone; the crowd was showered with hot shrapnel and body parts.
The cops and the plant security people tried to maintain control. While the mob stood transfixed by the horror of the moment, a squad of tactical police fanned out behind the trailing edge of the crowd. Plant security trained their own riot gear on the leading edge, and the firemen opened up with their hoses. It was a synchronized operation, like a blitzkrieg.
A volley of rubber riot-slugs peppered the crowd. Water cannons body-slammed the workers to the ground. It was like being caught in a hurricane at Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“Oh no!” cried Dan. “The bastards!” He shouted Peter’s name, but his voice was lost in the white noise and confusion of the sneak attack.
“We’ve got to get him!” yelled Marion, trying to push forward. The pack of bodies around her allowed no movement.
Plant security forces opened up with a second, heavy fusillade of rubber bullets, pummeling the front wave of the workers senseless. Up front, Peter and White Hard Hat looked down at the mayhem in apparent helplessness.
Locked into the center of the mob, Marion and Dan were somewhat insulated from the heaviest assaults of water and bullets, but there was no chance for escape. The vast sea of bodies surged and eddied in all directions; she and Dan had no choice but to be carried along on the ever-changing currents. She’d lost track of Billy and Laureen, and now even Dan was being pulled away from her.
Anger whipped through the mob like a forest fire. They stormed the gates. Weapons appeared in the workers’ hands. Like a huge amoeba, the mob surged toward the gates—and Peter. It was as though they blamed him for the turn of events; he’d become the first object of their attack. Marion knew they were going to kill him.
Looking through the lens of her camcorder, she saw Peter standing on the raised pallet with his hands outstretched. He shouted—and though he had no bullhorn, she could somehow hear his words.
Everybody could.
“No! You must stop this!”
Like a sonic boom rolling across an Indiana cornfield, his voice echoed over the mob. Cops, guardsmen, workers—all turned toward this single man as he commanded them to be still.
And they were still.
For an instant, it was so quiet, so utterly and deathly quiet, Marion felt her flesh go cold.
Then Peter raised his arms and lightning flashed. Out of nowhere a rainstorm swept down like an attack of the Valkyries. Everything was drenched instantly. The fire hoses were still blasting away, but nobody cared. People went crazy. Close to Peter, someone fired a shot into the air. Others followed. Brickbats flew toward the platform where Peter stood defiantly above the crowd.
Flashes of lightning kept freeze-framing the scene in hard black-and-white tabloid shots. Marion was almost lifted off her feet as the crush of bodies moved in concert toward the plant’s gates. Somehow she kept the camcorder rolling. A bolt of lightning grounded at the water tower, creating a spectacular display of yellow-white sparks.
Thunder cascaded; the crowd paused for an instant, reeling from the combined forces of rain and wind.
“You’re going to stop this!” Somehow, Peter’s booming voice rolled across the riot like a prairie fire. “NOW!”
Dan had struggled back to Marion’s side. He wrestled with his light-rig, trying to protect it from the mob. Lightning crashed again. A hand grabbed for the camera and Marion wheeled to smack it away. Someone yelled, pointing at the gate. All around her, people began looking up—their faces expressing something between fear and awe.
“Oh my God…” she heard Dan mutter behind her.
Saint Elmo’s fire danced about the water tower as if it were the mast of a storm-lashed clipper. Turning, she saw Peter, still astride the forklift pallet. Lightning framed him in stark contrast to the rain-slashed night.
Though the lightning flash faded, Peter, shockingly, remained lined in light. He glowed with a fire that coruscated madly about his body. He stood rigid, arms outstretched in a cruciform posture, above the crowd. The glow grew stronger, and for an instant Marion thought he rose above the platform. The crowd gasped collectively. It was the sound of awe on the edge of panic.
“Leave this place,” Peter said, softly now, yet clearly audible despite the clamor of the storm and the crowd. He raised one hand, pointing toward the water tower, which exploded as if from a missile strike. But instead of super-heated water and sizzling chunks of shrapnel, the air was filled with petals of pink roses. Marion watched one delicate pink speck flutter down from an impossible height, tracking its descent, until it lightly brushed her cheek. There was a hint of fragrance and then nothing as it fell to wet, shining asphalt and disappeared.
The storm had vanished. The sky was clear. Stunned, Marion blinked, looked again at Peter—and everything had changed. The light, the aura, the rose petals—gone.
No one spoke. No one seemed capable of anything but wandering off, like zombies in a B movie, lost in the mysteries of their own thoughts. The huge mass of protestors turned away from the factory gates, colliding with each other, stumbling on.
Marion felt drained, sucked clean. What had just happened? Her heart was thumping crazily in her chest. If she hadn’t been white-knuckling the camcorder, her hands would be trembling. The night suddenly seemed heavy and oppressive as a mildewed blanket. Peter had disappeared into the darkness.
“Did you see that?” Dan asked quietly, breaking the silence.
“I think so,” she said, equally softly.
“Rose petals. I saw rose petals.” She could hear the shock in his voice.
Shaking her head, Marion turned back toward the car. Where, moments before, a mob had rampaged, bare concrete gleamed wetly.
Billy and Laureen ran up to them.
“He is Lord!” shouted Billy. “He is Lord!”
“Be quiet, Billy,” she said harshly. “Please be quiet.”
“But it’s true! And you know it.” Suddenly he fell silent.
All around them cars and vans slunk off into the night. Fire trucks rumbled away from the perimeter of the parking area. Reaching the car, Marion keyed open the trunk and stashed the TV gear. Dan helped, then put an arm around her shoulders.
“What are we getting into?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I just don’t know.”
Turning around, she saw Peter standing by the hood of the car. He had seemed to have just materialized there, and Marion felt a chill touch her between her shoulder blades.
Peter regarded his friends with a small grin that could only be called sheepish.
“You see,” he said, “I knew I could help.”
“Yeah, buddy!” said Billy.
“Should we leave?” Marion asked, gesturing at the rapidly emptying lot. A police patrol was rousting stragglers.
Peter shrugged. “Why not?”
Without another word, they climbed into the car. Billy and Laureen mounted their Harley and led the way north. Peter instantly fell asleep in the jump-seat of the Mazda, leaving Dan and Marion to their thoughts. She was too stunned, confused, and just plain
upset to do much talking. Dan seemed to want to unload, but he looked at her and remained silent.
Later that evening, after they’d returned to their campsite and bedded in for what was left of the night, Marion woke. She got up and sat on her front bumper and contemplated the endless spawn of stars in a now-clear sky.
She had begun to see where their adventure was heading. She knew it would only get harder and harder to ignore the signs and parallels. Comparisons would be obvious and well-deserved. She also knew she had the inside track on the most explosive story of the decade, maybe of all time.
She wondered if she had the strength and the courage to stick it out.
BOOK THREE
“Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
—Matthew 4:8-9
TWENTY-SEVEN
Bessemet, Alabama—Cooper
* * *
October 15, 1998
“Okay, boys and girls!” cried the Most Reverend Freemason Cooper. He adjusted his Sennheiser headset, careful not to disturb his carefully set and sprayed helmet of silver hair. “Let’s see what’s evil in the world tonight!”
Seven o’clock at the southern mansion of the Reverend was always a special occasion. Every weeknight Cooper and his aides gathered in his leather-and-oak-appointed study to watch the evening news. In an adjoining room, separated by a glass wall, but in full view of the assemblage, were four wall-mounted big-screen Sony TVs. Each set was tuned to a different network, and monitored by a “media-hawk,” as he called his four headphone-equipped assistants. The setup looked like a miniature NASA mission-control.
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