Covenant

by Dean Crawford

  A monument to power, and all of it before the eyes of a God they sullied with their arrogance. Patterson had been forced to cancel his press conference in light of the changing polls, and now found himself waiting on Senator Black’s doorstep like any other citizen, begging for a chance to be heard.

  As Patterson watched, a long black limousine pulled up outside the building and a tall man in a dark suit got out, surrounded by staff wearing earpieces and sunglasses. Senator Black strode into the Hart Senate Building surrounded by a maelstrom of journalists, broadsides of camera flashes and salvos of questions bombarding the senator’s entourage as they wound their way through the atrium below.

  Greater than God, Patterson thought to himself as Senator Black dismissed the wolves of the press with a bright smile, a wave, and a slick one-liner that dispersed the journalists with a trickle of laughter.

  Patterson stood, and watched as the elevator nearby signaled the senator’s imminent arrival.

  “Pastor,” the senator greeted him as he stepped from the elevator, his staff on either side of him, “I didn’t expect to see you before the rally tomorrow.”

  Patterson shook his hand, following Black into the suite and closing the door behind him.

  “Something came up.”

  They sat down on opposite sides of the senator’s desk.

  “What can I do for you?” Black asked.

  “I take it that you have seen the news?”

  Senator Black smiled at the pastor. “It would appear that the opinion polls have shifted considerably.”

  Patterson concealed a sudden ripple of displeasure that twisted deep within his belly.

  “In our favor, Senator?”

  Isaiah Black leaned back in his chair. “In mine.”

  Patterson watched as the senator tossed a newspaper onto the desk to face him. It was folded so that the opinion polls were uppermost. Patterson scanned them with a renewed sense of dismay.

  “The polls are unreliable, the people fickle.”

  Isaiah Black shook his head. “Yesterday they were reliable, according to you.”

  Patterson felt his features twist into something between a smile and a grimace.

  “It would be unwise to act with haste on such dismissable statistics.”

  The senator shook his head slowly.

  “The people are voting with their feet, Pastor. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and others are placing economic concerns, foreign policy, and climate change far above any theological interests. The mood of the nation is changing.”

  “Do you think that Texas, Alabama, and Ohio will do the same?” Patterson challenged.

  “No,” the senator responded. “And I don’t give a damn if they do or not, because the conservative vote remains in the minority. The point, Pastor, is that I’m in a dominant position in the primary campaign with or without your support.”

  Patterson lost the ability to maintain the grin slapped across his face.

  “Do you really think that you can afford to lose the voting block that I control? Can you afford to spout your arrogance when I could block your campaign in a half-dozen swing states? This is the voice of God that you’re turning your back on.”

  “It’s the people of America who are turning their backs, Pastor,” Black responded. “On you.”

  Patterson struggled to prevent himself from clenching his fists.

  “Go down to the Reflecting Pool, stand before the granite wall there, and see the images of our soldiers—Americans who fought for the ideals we preserve, who fought for God and for country and for us to be here in this land fighting for what we know to be true. Read the words imprinted there.”

  “‘Freedom is not free,’” Black recited the inscription.

  Patterson spoke softly, trying to let the weight of his words carry their importance.

  “‘If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.’ John, fifteen seven.”

  Senator Black smiled without passion.

  “‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.’ Revelation twenty-two seventeen.”

  The ripple of despair stirred painfully now within Patterson’s belly. The senator before him may be poised upon the brink of a victory that could see him in just a few short months become the most powerful man on the Earth, an ally that Patterson could not afford to lose. Unfortunately, the senator was clearly aware of that.

  “Do not quote so carelessly the words of the Good Book,” Patterson said, “if you are not prepared to follow them.”

  “It’s not my choice.” Senator Black smiled with supreme confidence. “My purpose is to serve the people of this country, and if they are supporting policies that you disagree with, then it is up to you to change, not the people you claim to represent.”

  So, it was naked power play. Patterson found himself pinned between third and fourth base with a ball in the air, nowhere to run, and not really sure how it had happened.

  “A man of true principle stands rigidly by his beliefs,” he muttered.

  “As have I,” Senator Black replied evenly, before sighing and offering his trademark ultraviolet smile. “Kelvin, we’re not moving forward here. You need me now, not the other way around. You might be able to swing voters down in places like Oklahoma and Arkansas, but not enough to influence the whole country. And what would you gain if you did? A presidency even more opposed to your moral convictions. Compromise is what you need.”

  “Conviction is what we all need,” Patterson said through gritted teeth, his eyes bulging as he strained against his disbelief at the senator’s ignorance. “How can I stand against my own congregation?”

  “You’d be standing with them, Kelvin,” Black soothed. “They’re the ones doing the voting, remember? They’re the ones who are setting the polls. Like it or not, they’re speaking for their nation, and if you believe that they’re wrong, then perhaps it is you who knows nothing of God.” Black smiled again. “You’ve said it yourself, many times, that what happens here on Earth is God’s will. Maybe He’s trying to tell you something.”

  Patterson squirmed beneath the senator’s patrony. How such a man could dare to speak with any authority on the Almighty was beyond him. How could any mortal man know the mind of God when …

  Patterson’s vision blurred. The impact of his thoughts slammed through the field of his awareness like a scimitar through crystal. Suddenly, he sat in a sphere of perfect loneliness as he considered what his mind’s eye had seen. Everything seemed clearer than it ever had. Ignorance. It is I who knows nothing.

  I know nothing of God. No man knows anything of God. Blind faith is empty.

  “Pastor?”

  Patterson blinked at the sound of Black’s voice, looking up and remembering that the senator was still there, watching him now with a concerned gaze. “Are you all right, Pastor?”

  “I just need a while, to think.”

  “Of course,” Black said, standing.

  Patterson stood on weakened legs and shook the senator’s hand, barely hearing his words and trying to ignore the nausea twisting his throat. He turned, leaving the suite and closing the door behind him to stand in the corridor outside.

  I know nothing of God. Nothing. He closed his eyes. I must learn of God. I must learn of God. If ever he had been at a crossroads in his life, then this was it. For the first time in history man had the chance to reach out and touch the divine, and he, Kelvin Patterson, had the power to do so in his hands. Now was the time. There would be no other, ever. Lives were being lost in order to achieve a greater good.

  Patterson looked at his watch, straightened his tie, and lifted his chin in defiance of himself. There would be no further delays, no further hubris or doubt.

  “If you can’t find your way to God, Isaiah, then I’ll make sure God finds His way to you.”

  EVANGELICAL COMMUNITY INSTITUTE

  IVY CITY, WASHINGTON DC

  Officer Leon Gomez sat in an uncomfo
rtable wooden chair at the end of a long corridor, staring at the featureless white wall before him and cursing silently, as he had done for the past three hours.

  Assigned to guard a goddamn mental case. He had been given some tough assignments in his time, scouting through the District’s meanest neighborhoods in the dead of night for gang leaders and homicide suspects, but he’d have taken any one of them over sitting on his ass waiting for nothing to happen. Like most all cops, boredom was Gomez’s worst enemy. No doubt he’d been stuck with this shit because he was a Latino. Wouldn’t have seen the lily-whites sending one of their own down here with his thumb shoved up his ass to sit around and—

  Gomez broke his reverie to smile at a cute nurse who glided past into an office to his left. To his right, the corridor extended down to a dead end and housed twelve private rooms in which the patients spent their lives painting, drawing, licking windows, or doing whatever the hell it was they did. Jesus, he could have been on patrol. The weather was good and it made the girls get their long legs out, strutting around in shorts and miniskirts or power suits, depending on where you were patrolling.

  A movement caught his eye as a tall, loping, blond-haired man appeared, carrying a tray with a dozen foam cups of juice. Gomez glanced him over, recognizing him as an orderly he’d seen earlier leaving for his lunch break. As he strolled past he looked down at Gomez.

  “Evening, Officer.”

  Gomez nodded and smiled dutifully, watching as the orderly walked down the corridor to pause at each door and knock politely. The patients usually dropped a small latch on their doors for some semblance of privacy, although all of the doors were paneled with a plastic window through which an observer could maintain a watchful eye on the patient within. Most all of them were low risk, which made Gomez wonder why he was being asked to guard them. One by one, the doors would open and a patient’s furtive hand would appear to take the juice from the blond man, and then he would move on.

  Gomez, bored already, turned to look back at the nearby office where the cute nurse was chatting with a colleague. Something about a local restaurant. Gomez focused on the conversation, trying to catch the name of the place. Benson’s Grill? Barnie’s? He leaned forward in his chair to hear better.

  A crash from the corridor caused him to whirl to see the tray of drinks on the floor, the blond orderly pointing and shouting at him.

  “Fetch the nurse! Fetch the nurse!”

  Gomez leaped up, shouting for the nurse as he dashed down the corridor toward where the blond man was trying to force open one of the patient’s doors. As Gomez ran, the man leaned back and swung one thickly bunched fist, smashing it through the plastic window of the door. The plastic snapped in half and the orderly reached in and yanked open the latch from the inside. Gomez skidded alongside the orderly as he bolted into the room and then came to an abrupt halt.

  Inside, a young man lay flat on his back on the bed, a slick of vomit across his vein-laced face, his jet-black eyes staring wide and empty at the ceiling. A waft of putrefaction choked Gomez’s throat as he stared at the horrific lesions scarring the kid’s body. Across his chest were a scattering of pills, more of them on the floor and an empty pill bottle lying on the tiles. Gomez glanced at the name plate scrawled on the open door: Daniel Neville.

  The blond orderly, his features blanched and pale, reached down and picked up the empty bottle, showing it to Gomez. As the nurses flooded into the room, Gomez saw that the bottle of drugs was empty.

  JERUSALEM

  The Israeli Humvee in which Ethan sat handcuffed to a door handle was hardly a luxury vehicle, but in his exhausted state the rolling of the chassis on the road and the hum of the engine was almost comforting. He wound down a window and let the cool night air blow away some of the weariness aching through his bones.

  Along with Rachel he had been safely escorted across the Gazan border at Erez; the Israeli troops there were forewarned of their passing. Now, the glittering panorama of Jerusalem glowed against the horizon while above a thousand stars glistened like jewels adrift on a black sea. Ethan stared at them, hearing Hassim’s words whispering across the empty void above, of gargantuan stars and broiling elements, of supernovas and embryonic solar systems, of the cycle of life replayed endlessly across the tremendous ages that had passed and were yet to come, long after he had been cast back into the dusts from which he had been forged. Life, everywhere.

  Somehow, the traumas of his life seemed suddenly trivial against the epic backdrop of the universe. Even Joanna’s shadowy presence, her unknown fate looming over everything that he did, seemed inconsequential. Nothing matters. One day he would be nothing more than a footnote in history, or an image in a photograph, dead and forgotten along with his woes. Maybe he should just quit and get out of Israel before his time came to a premature end.

  But then he looked at Rachel, and remembered that science didn’t have an explanation for the human spirit, for courage, fortitude, or love.

  She sat beside him, her head nestled against a jacket folded up against the opposite window frame. She had fallen asleep within minutes of crossing the border an hour previously, and despite the hardship and trauma that she had endured over the last few days, her sleeping face was an image of serenity. No regrets. Her inner demons, doubts, fears, and insecurities were temporarily silenced by the solitude of a sleep that still eluded Ethan.

  He turned away and looked into the blackness of the Israeli night. Far out to the east, the first faint line of dawn was creeping toward them, broken ribbons of distant cloud black against the deep blue. He looked at his watch: 5:26 a.m.

  He looked again at Rachel. Ethan’s past was full of regrets packed, jammed, and shoehorned into every crevice of his existence until some had inevitably spilled out to contaminate his present. He regretted not attending college, regretted resigning his commission in the U.S. Marines and the animosity that had developed between himself and his father as a result, regretted becoming a journalist, regretted the risks he had undertaken and the risks he had exposed others to, and he regretted most of all losing Joanna in this brutal and uncaring corner of the world.

  And now he had let Rachel down too.

  Rachel yawned, sitting upright and peering out of the window. “Where are we?”

  “About ten miles from Jerusalem,” Ethan said.

  “You haven’t slept,” she observed.

  “Didn’t want to,” Ethan lied, and immediately wondered why.

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed slightly, almost playfully, and then it was as though she suddenly recalled where they were and why, and her features sagged. She looked at her makeshift pillow, probably wishing she could return to oblivion.

  “Hassim,” Ethan said to her in an effort to distract her. “Before he died he mentioned something called cargo cults. You know what they are?”

  Rachel ran her fingers through her long black hair and sighed.

  “There’s a few of them, mostly in the Pacific,” she said. “They’re Melanesians who encountered Westerners for the first time during World War II when U.S. Marines were advancing on the Japanese. What’s that got to do with Lucy?”

  “Just bear with me for a moment,” Ethan said. “Why do they call them cargo cults?”

  “Well, the occupying American forces built runways on the islands, brought in supplies using aircraft loaded with weapons, radios, medicine, and suchlike. They had a good relationship with the islanders. But when the war was over they left, taking their equipment with them and leaving the islanders alone again. What happened was that the islanders built mock runways complete with air control towers, hangars, and aircraft made of straw. They even sat in them wearing wooden radio earpieces, trying to make contact with the great gods and their powerful sky machines. They would have flaming torches at night on the runways to guide down the ‘airships,’ or march up and down with either salvaged or wooden rifles like parading troops, mimicking American dress styles and behavior.”

  “And all of it to bring the A
mericans back?” Ethan asked.

  “Pretty much.” Rachel nodded. “The practices eradicated any existing religious observances they previously had. The leaders of the cults promised their people that if they did all of this, then the ‘gods’ would return. It got the leaders power, and it gave the people hope that they were not alone anymore, that they were special.”

  Ethan shook his head in wonder.

  “Hassim Khan was right. The ancients didn’t have extraterrestrial help in building their megastructures: they built them themselves in an attempt to reestablish contact with their godlike visitors.” He looked at her. “How many cargo cults could there have been?”

  “In history? Thousands,” Rachel said. “The Nazca’s lines in Peru, depicting animals on such a scale that they’re only visible from the air, would be among the most likely candidates.”

  “Right,” Ethan agreed. “I’ve heard about them, and as icons visible from great heights they’d be perfect.”

  “Most of the pyramidal structures built by civilizations around the world could have served a similar purpose,” Rachel agreed, “and they’re everywhere, not just in Egypt. Mesopotamian ziggurats that were once colorfully painted, Nubian pyramids in Sudan, the Sula Temple in Java, the granite temples of the Chola Empire in India, others in Samoa and Greece and those of the Maya and Aztecs at Teotihuacan in South America. The pyramids in Egypt are the most famous, but few people realize that there is not a single hieroglyphic anywhere suggesting that they were burial sites for pharaohs, or that they were once covered with smooth white sandstone: they would have shone like beacons in sunlight, perhaps brightly enough to be visible from space. Virtually every religion on Earth could have started out as a sort of cargo cult and just grown from there.”

  “And pyramids would make sense as they’re a stable structure,” Ethan said. “I’ve read that we know they were built by human hands because the graves of the builders were found near the pyramids themselves in Egypt, complete with hieroglyphics recording their achievements.”