Chapter 4
The Anti-Christ
The morning news showed a world in chaos. The devastation was beyond what anyone ever imagined. Governments were scrambling to evaluate the costs of the damage. After reviewing the final report, the heads of the European Union (EU); and in addition, the United States, Britain, Canada, and Israel were getting ready to gather around a video conference call for a crisis management meeting.
At the Vatican, Andre Montplier, the founder and leader of the New World Peace Force (NWPF), created from the EU, met with his EU members. He watched each ambassador sitting ashen-faced and grim with stoic-shocked looks of despair. They sat around an ancient table made hundreds of years ago for only Bishops and Cardinals. He chuckled at the irony. After his own headquarters in Paris and Rome were nuked years ago, he put a bid on reestablishing new offices in Rome. The fallout prevented anyone from over a hundred miles from venturing close to Rome. He asked the new Pope to let him lease the facility from the church. They all laughed at him. Yet, he got the last laugh. He was given a 50-year lease for only a million a year—they were working the scam this time—they thought.
Andre immediately hired a group of scientists and a vast armada of industrial chemists to develop a chemical spray and scrubber to de-fallout an area around the Vatican the shape of a triangle, six miles on each side. It was a surprising success. He patented the formula in the name of NWPF and was selling it for a small fortune. After Andre started moving his offices into his sacred triangle, the Pope tried to back out of the lease and regain the Vatican. He lost in international court, and Andre finished moving all his ambassadors directly under the Vatican's roof just two months ago.
Angelica approached Andre as he sat at the head of the table and placed a loving hand on his shoulder. She was letting him know how much rested on this. This was an important time in both their lives. Andre felt her touch and immediately started hearing other peoples' thoughts coming from around the table. This happened to him a lot lately. He felt his blood surging, and his heart beat wildly. A sense of great authority and power came over him. He reached up and patted her hand gently. Andre couldn't imagine leading this group without her. Angelica was always there, her hand on his shoulder, just like today.
They were an uncommon match. Andre was terribly bald with exceptionally short legs, which made him walk in a staccato, bouncy fashion; although, it made him look exceptionally energetic. He was so plain looking that he looked alarmingly dull. Whereas, Angelica was tall and slender, and her face was set off by her dark hair and riveting black eyes. She could have been a model for any top magazine. Her obsessive affection and devotion to Andre, were not only noticeable, but attracted much enviable attention.
She had known Andre since they were kids. She was his childhood friend, eventually his girlfriend, and now for the last year and half, his wife. Even as a child, she played with inquisitive and special ways. She always asked him disturbing questions and made him think twice about even the simplest decisions.
She would speak to him with childish, practical frankness, "You will be a great and powerful man one day, Andre."
She seemed to be planting her own thoughts deep into his, especially when it came to his future—his destiny. Her words were always so well placed. They were perfect mind fodder, becoming seeds of greater and more deliberate ideas the older he grew. Her ideas were saturated with cynical attitudes that flowed easily from him now. He couldn't tell the two apart—his ideas or hers.
She had a special skeptism towards Godly things and people, but an affinity towards world religion and world eye-opening tolerance of all faiths, beliefs, and lifestyles, with an open-arm acceptance for all life's perversions. She was impassioned against any kind of exclusiveness, which especially included Christian believers. Her secular almost unrighteous disregard for God kept him from following more pious ways even when he wanted to. Because of her influence, he didn't buy into Godly things quite as easily. Even as a child, he examined everything with the sarcastic eyes of an adult when he wasn't one.
At 11, his own room was plastered with maps of the world. That Christmas, Angelica bought him an earth-globe ball. When she gave it to him, she said, "The world is yours, Andre. Think it. Believe it. Take it. Just figure out how. I'll be there to help you—my hand on your shoulder." He never forgot it. It burned its way into his mind and heart. It was the look on her face like the look at a sacred coronation. He spent hours staring at his maps and tossing the globe while running his hands over it, then caressing it, admiring it, and ultimately believing what she said.
He wondered why there couldn't be a world government; and kept thinking, there would. In his fantasies, he thought he would be the one to bring it all together. He could save the world from its own disorganized and disjointed mess. As a child, he drew lines on the maps around the same countries that now surrounded his conference table—those very same ones.
For some reason, Angelica continued to poison his mind about Israel. She seemed to hate Israel. Her attitude was a typical Mecca model, which was make peace; get strong; annihilate. She fought hard to keep him from establishing trade relations with Israel. Although, for some reason, she backed his negotiations of the peace treaty that allowed the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem for the return of all the pre-1967, Syrian and Golan Heights territory to the Arabs. In fact, the rebuilding of the temple was her idea. Andre received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
What made his efforts so frustrating, and ultimately deadly, were the Arab extremists who used hand-placed, nuclear devices near his corporate offices in Paris and Rome. At that time, he was lucky. He hadn't been at ground zero, but he was near enough that he wished he'd never backed the Israel-Arab negotiations. He was almost killed from the Paris explosion. He flat-lined for so long that it was considered a miracle he survived. His head injury was so massive it took 50 operations to reconstruct his face and skull. He now had a sparkling glass eye that provided a startling, bright reflection if the sun hit it just right.
All during this ordeal, Angelica never left his side. She held his hand throughout, never sleeping, barely eating. Her stamina was a miracle in itself. She threw fits when they asked her to leave his side for even a minute. That's when his deep depression sunk in. He tentatively promised himself that he wouldn't return to politics but go into a law practice once he recovered. When Angelica found out, she almost went crazy. He had never seen her like that before. She was beside herself, and it was her influence alone that swayed him to stay in politics.
He loved—more craved—her so much that he couldn't imagine being without her. Her exceptionally sensuous, dark-tanned ways made him a slave to her insatiable sexual appetite. He became so addicted to her that he couldn't imagine being without her. Almost losing her was too much. It was this crisis that forced him to marry her. He would stay in politics if she would become his and only his. She was his property, lock- stock-and-barrel, and his addiction too. Her political drive propelled him and shoved him towards this old childhood vision—the world.
Although, he had a nagging and terrible sense that he was turning into a Judas, but he didn't know why. He drove himself crazy thinking about it, even to the extent that it drove him into heavy counseling. He kept wondering whether Judas was just God's pawn. Could he have changed his mind, or was he destined to the field of blood? What kind of God would make a person do something that would send them to hell? How could that be? What if Judas just had different plans than God? Why was he punished over a wrong opinion or idea? Could he really have changed and gone another direction? Was his decision to go back into politics his Judas decision? Was he faced with a turning point, and maybe, just maybe, he should go another direction? But, Angelica's hold on him was too powerful; he gave up and did what she wanted.
Andre felt that much of Angelica's hatred towards Israel came from her Iraqi roots, especially her Taliban heritage. She told him once that this peace was for his political benefit; but as far a
s she was concerned, it was equal to the agreement that Mohammed signed with the Quraysh. He discovered that she was talking about the non-belligerency agreement that Mohammed signed with the Quraysh tribe. Mohammed violated this agreement when he conquered Mecca and killed the leaders of the tribe two years later. In other words, the agreement was worthless.
He despised Israel for her American connection. When he looked at Israel, he thought about the U.S. When he thought about the U.S., he thought about Israel. Then, there was Israel's obstinate claims based on biblical and historical promises that God was somehow taking care of them. He doubted it. It was America, not God. America was their God. They just didn't want to admit it. How they continued to prosper with so many enemies around them was a mystery to him. He felt that sooner or later someone would succeed in destroying them. It was inevitable, a foregone conclusion. Now that the United States was in such economic shambles, he looked for someone to try.
Andre still remembered when oil reserves were in short supply and more valued than gold. That's when Israel hit the largest oil find in the history of mankind. It was enough to tempt Russia and its Arab Allies to attack Israel. Suddenly, Andre found himself defending Israel to protect EU assets. He figured, by defending Israel, he would at least end up building more favor from the U.S., whether he hated them or not.
All this was going on while Europe struggled with its Euro Dollar and finally succeeded in bringing the value up to an all-time high. The value had finally reached 6.66 on the European Exchange. It was the same number that was on a statue of Andre in front of the EU headquarters in Paris. The plaque called this 6.66 feat the sign of true greatness. Montplier was named The Greatest Ruling Statesman of the World.
Andre's political protest of the attack on Israel by the Russian-Muslim alliance was as far as he got. Before anyone could do anything to stop it, it was over. The U.S. fired nuclear missiles into the related homelands of every representative country attacking Israel. More people were killed in one day than in all the wars since the time of Christ. Israel, on its own, activated Operation Sampson by nuking their own country. The Russian-Muslim devastation was almost total, 84 percent. But, this happened only after Russian Typhoon submarines launched multiple volleys of nuclear missiles directly at the U.S., France, Germany, and Britain. For the U.S., their star wars program eliminated most of the missiles, but some got through. Washington D.C. and New York City were gone now. The two cities that thought they were finally safe, years after having the twin towers of the World Trade Center destroyed and part of the Pentagon blown up by Taliban terrorists, felt smugly secure again. Smug or not, this time their cities were gone, not just thousands of casualties.
Andre lovingly pulled Angelica into his lap, and she swallowed him up in a passionate kiss in front of the other EU members. She looked back at them while taunting them with her passionate intentions. She laughed at their drool and fixed looks while knowing they were wishing it was they instead. No one dared reprove them. After all, Andre was their king and Angelica his queen.
Two others faced Andre-type decisions, the Monarch of Austria, Count Takash, and the American President from Arizona, Terrone Conrad. Both of these men were sitting in similar places of power and influence. Behind both of them were their own wives with their hands on their shoulders too.
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