Blasphemy wf-2

by Douglas Preston

  Eddy sat there, staring at Bia.

  “I know. Pretty surprising.” Bia removed a wallet from his back pocket. His big dusty hand slipped out a fifty and pushed it across the table. “No point in making a big deal over it.”

  Eddy could not move.

  Bia rose, put the wallet away. “If it happens again, just let me know and I’ll cover the loss. Like I said, there’s no point in the law getting involved. I’m not sure she’s all that compos mentis anyway.” He picked up his hat and fitted it back down over the sweat mark on his salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Thanks for your understanding, Pastor.”

  He turned to go, then paused. “And if you see Lorenzo, give me a holler, okay?”

  “Sure will, Lieutenant.”

  Pastor Russ Eddy watched as Lieutenant Bia walked out the front door and disappeared, then reappeared through the window, striding across his front yard, right over where the body was buried, his cowboy boots kicking up streamers of dust.

  His eye fell on the soiled fifty-dollar bill, and he felt sick. And then angry. Very angry.

  22

  FORD ENTERED HIS LIVING ROOM AND stood at the window, gazing at the crooked form of Nakai Rock rising above the cottonwoods. He had completed his assignment, and now he faced a decision: Should he report it?

  He flung himself into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. Kate was right: if the news got out, it would fatally damage the project. It would destroy their careers—Kate’s included. In the field of science, the whiff of a cover-up or a lie was a career killer.

  Satisfied? he asked himself again.

  He got up and angrily paced the room. Lockwood had known all along that he would find the answer by asking Kate. He’d been hired not because he was some brilliant ex–CIA agent turned PI, but because he just happened to have dated a certain woman twelve years ago. He should’ve walked out on Lockwood when he had the chance. But he’d been intrigued by the assignment. Flattered. And, if the truth be told, way too attracted to the idea of seeing Kate again.

  For a moment he longed for his life at the monastery, those thirty months when life seemed so simple, so clean. Living there, he’d almost forgotten the awful grayness of the world and the impossible moral choices it forced on you. But he never would have made a monk. He had gone into the monastery hoping it would give him back his certainty, his faith. But it had done just the opposite.

  He bent his head and tried to pray, but it was just words. Words spoken into silence.

  Maybe there wasn’t any such thing as right or wrong anymore—people did what they did. He made his decision. There was no way he was going to take a step that would damage Kate’s career. She had had enough hard knocks in her life. He would give them two days to track down the malware. And he would help them. He strongly suspected that the saboteur was a member of the team. No one else would have the access or the knowledge.

  Walking out the front door, Ford took a turn around the house as if taking the air, making sure Wardlaw wasn’t hanging around. Then he went into his bedroom, unlocked a filing cabinet, and removed his briefcase. He punched in the code to unlock it and tapped in the number.

  Lockwood answered so fast, Ford thought the science adviser must have been waiting by the phone.

  “News?” Lockwood asked breathlessly.

  “Not much.”

  A sharp sigh of exasperation from Lockwood. “You’ve had four days, Wyman.”

  “They simply can’t get Isabella to work. I’m beginning to think you’re wrong, Stan. They’re not hiding anything. It’s just like they say—they just can’t get the machine to work properly.”

  “Damn it, Ford, I don’t buy it!”

  He could hear Lockwood breathing hard on the other end. This was a career-breaker for him, too. But the fact was, he didn’t give a shit about the man. Let him go down. Kate was what mattered. If he could buy them a few more days to find the malware, there was no reason for Lockwood to ever know.

  Lockwood went on. “You heard about this preacher, Spates, and his sermon?”

  “Yes.”

  “This shortens the time frame. You have two, maybe three days, max, before we pull the plug. Wyman, you find out what they’re hiding—you hear me? Find it!”

  “I understand.”

  “You searched Volkonsky’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Find anything?”

  “Nothing special.”

  Silence from Lockwood, then, “I just got the preliminary forensic report on Volkonsky. Looking more and more like suicide.”

  “I see.”

  Ford heard a rustling of papers over the line.

  “I also looked into some of the research you asked me to. As for Cecchini . . . The cult was called Heaven’s Gate. You probably remember, back in ‘97, that cult whose members committed mass suicide, thinking their souls were going to board an alien spaceship that was approaching Earth behind Comet Hale-Bopp? Cecchini joined the cult back in ’95, stayed in it less than a year, and left before the mass suicide.”

  “Any evidence he still believes it? The guy seems a bit like an automaton.”

  “The cult doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s no evidence he believes it. He’s had a normal life since—if a bit of a loner. Doesn’t drink or smoke, no girlfriends to speak of, few if any friends. Focused everything on his career. The man’s a brilliant physicist—totally dedicated to his work.”

  “And Chen?”

  “Her dossier says her father was an illiterate laborer who died before she and her mother emigrated from China. Not so. He was a physicist with the Chinese nuclear-weapons-testing facility out at Lop Nor. And he’s still alive, back in China.”

  “How’d the false information get in the dossier?”

  “Immigration files—and from the interview with Chen herself.”

  “So she’s lying.”

  “Maybe not. Her mother took her out of China when she was two. Could be her mother’s the liar. But there could be an innocent explanation for the falsehood: the mother wouldn’t have gotten a visa to come to America if she’d told the truth. Chen may not even know her father’s alive. No evidence she’s passing information.”

  “Hmm.”

  “We’re running out of time, Wyman. You keep pushing. I know they’re hiding something big—I just know it.”

  Lockwood rang off.

  Ford went back to the window and stared again toward Nakai Rock. Now he was one of them—hiding the secret. But unlike them, he had more than one secret.

  23

  AT ELEVEN TWENTY, PASTOR RUSS EDDY sped along the brand-new asphalt road that cut across the top of Red Mesa in his battered 1989 F-150 pickup. The wind blowing through his open windows fanned the pages of the King James Bible on the seat beside him, and his blood pounded with a sense of confusion, anger, and anxiety. So it wasn’t Lorenzo after all. Still, he’d been drunk, he’d been insolent—and he’d blasphemed the Lord in the most heinous way. Eddy had had nothing to do with his death—he’d killed himself. But in the end, it was all God’s plan. And God knew what He was doing.

  God moves in mysterious ways.

  He said it to himself again and again. All his life he had awaited the call—the revelation of God’s purpose for him. It had been a long, difficult journey. God had tested him as sorely as Job, taken from him his wife and child in divorce, taken his career, his money, his self-respect.

  And now this thing with Lorenzo. Lorenzo had blasphemed God and Jesus using the most horrific words of vileness, and before his very eyes God had smote him dead. Before his very eyes. But Lorenzo hadn’t been the thief: Eddy had accused him unjustly. What did it mean? Where was God’s will in all this? What was God’s plan for him?

  God moves in mysterious ways.

  The pickup coughed and rattled along the shining black asphalt, took a broad curve, passed between sandstone bluffs—and there below him lay a collection of adobe houses half-hidden among cottonwoods. To the right, about a mile
off, lay the two new runways of the airstrip and a set of hangars. Beyond that, at the edge of the mesa, was the Isabella complex itself, surrounded by a double set of chain-link fences.

  Most of Isabella, he knew, was deep below ground. The entrance must be inside the fenced-off area.

  Dear Heavenly Father, please guide me, he prayed.

  Eddy drove down into the little green valley. There was a log building at the far end, which must be the old Nakai Rock Trading Post. Two men and a woman were walking toward it. Others moved about near the door. God had gathered them together for him.

  He took a deep breath, slowed the pickup, and parked in front of the building. A hand-painted sign above the door read, NAKAI ROCK TRADING POST, 1888.

  Through the screen door, he counted eight people inside. He knocked on the wooden frame. No answer. He knocked louder. The man at the front of the room turned, and Russ was struck by his eyes. They were so blue, they seemed to jolt you with electricity.

  Hazelius. It had to be.

  Russ whispered a quick prayer and stepped inside.

  “What can I do for you?” the man asked.

  “My name’s Russ Eddy. I’m the pastor of the Gathered in Thy Name Mission down in Blue Gap.” It came out in a rush. He felt foolish and self-conscious.

  With a warm smile the man detached himself from the chair he’d been leaning on and strode over. “Gregory North Hazelius,” he said with a hearty handshake. “Good to meet you, Russ.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Russ felt panic welling up. Where were the words he had rehearsed as the truck climbed the Dugway? Then his tongue found them. “I heard about the Isabella project, and I decided to come and tell you about my mission and offer you all the benefits of my spiritual assistance. We meet every Sunday at ten o’clock, over in Blue Gap, about two miles west of the water tower.”

  “Thank you very much, Russ,” said Hazelius, his voice warm and sincere.

  “We’ll visit you sometime soon—and perhaps you’d also enjoy a tour of Isabella one of these days. Unfortunately, right now we’re in a very important meeting. Perhaps you’d care to come back next week?”

  Heat crept up Russ’s face. “Well, sir, no, I don’t think so.” He swallowed. “You see, my flock and I, we’ve been concerned about what’s going on up here. I came to get some answers.”

  “I understand your concern, Russ, I really do.” Mr. Hazelius glanced at a man standing close to him—tall, angular, and ugly. “Pastor, let me introduce you to Wyman Ford, our community liaison person.”

  The man stepped forward, his hand extended. “Glad to meet you, Pastor.”

  Hazelius was already retreating.

  “I came to talk to him, not you,” said Eddy, the high-pitched voice he hated cracking with effort.

  Hazelius turned. “Excuse me, Pastor. We didn’t mean any disrespect. We’re a little tied up right now . . . . Could we meet tomorrow, same time?”

  “No, sir.”

  “May I respectfully ask why is it so important to deal with this now?”

  “Because I understand there’s been a . . . a sudden bereavement, and I think that needs to be addressed.”

  Hazelius gazed at him. “You’re referring to the death of Peter Volkonsky?” His voice had become quiet.

  “If that’s the man who took his own life, yes, I am, sir.”

  The man named Ford stepped forward again. “Pastor, I’d be happy to work with you on these issues. The problem is, right now Dr. Hazelius is about to direct another test of Isabella, and he doesn’t have the time he’d like to devote to you. But I could.”

  Eddy wasn’t going to let himself be bundled off to some PR lackey. “Like I said, I want to talk to him—not you. Isn’t he the one who claimed he was the smartest man on earth? The one who said the rest of us were morons? The one who built this machine to challenge the Word of God?”

  There was a short silence.

  “The Isabella project has nothing to do with religion,” said the PR man. “It’s strictly a scientific experiment.”

  Eddy felt his anger swelling—righteous, furious anger at Lorenzo, at his ex-wife, at the divorce court, at all the injustice in the world. This was how Jesus must have felt in the Temple, when he cast out the money changers.

  He pointed a trembling finger at Hazelius. “God will punish you anew.” “That’s quite enough—,” said the PR man, his voice sharp now, but Hazelius interrupted.

  “What do you mean by ‘anew’?”

  “I’ve been reading up on you. I know about your wife, who pornographically bared her body in Playboy magazine, who glorified herself, and lived deliciously, like the whore of Babylon. God punished you by taking her. Still, you did not repent.”

  The room went deathly silent. The PR man said, after a moment, “Mr. Wardlaw, please escort Mr. Eddy from the premises.”

  “No,” said Hazelius. “Not yet.” He turned to Eddy with a terrible smile that chilled the preacher’s soul. “Tell me, Russ. You’re the pastor of a mission near here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “To what denomination do you belong?”

  “We’re unaffiliated. Evangelical.”

  “But you are—what? Protestant? Catholic? Mormon?”

  “None of the above. We’re born-again, fundamentalist Christians.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That we’ve accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts as our Lord and Savior, and we’ve been born again through water and the spirit, the only true way to salvation. We believe every word of the Scriptures is the divine, unerring word of God.”

  “So you think Protestants and Catholics aren’t real Christians and God will send them to hell—am I correct?”

  Eddy felt uneasy at this detour into fundamentalist dogma. But if that’s what the smartest man in the world wanted to talk about—it was fine with Eddy.

  “If they haven’t been born again—then, yes.”

  “Jews? Muslims? Buddhists? Hindus? The uncertain, the seekers, the lost? All damned?”

  “Yes.”

  “So most people on this little mud-ball out here in the outer arm of a minor galaxy are going to hell—except for you and a select few like-minded individuals?”

  “You have to understand—”

  “That’s why I’m asking you these questions, Russ—to understand. I repeat: Do you believe that God will send most people on earth to hell?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you know this for a fact?”

  “Yes. The Scriptures repeatedly confirm it. ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He that believed not shall be damned.’ ”

  Hazelius turned to the group. “Ladies and gentlemen: I give you an insect—no, a bacterium—who presumes to know the mind of God.”

  Eddy’s face flushed. His brain boiled with the effort to come up with a reply.

  The ugly man named Ford spoke to Hazelius. “Gregory, please, don’t ask for trouble.”

  “I’m merely asking questions, Wyman.”

  “What you’re doing is creating a problem.” The man turned again to the security officer. “Mr. Wardlaw? Once again I will ask you to escort Mr. Eddy from the premises.”

  The security officer said evenly, “Dr. Hazelius is in charge and I take my orders from him.” He turned. “Sir?”

  Hazelius did not speak.

  Eddy wasn’t finished with the speech he had prepared in his head on the drive up. He had mastered his anger, and he spoke with cold, cold certainty, facing those blue eyes squarely. “You think you’re the smartest man in the world. But how smart are you, really? You’re so smart, you think the world started in some accidental explosion, a Big Bang, and all the atoms just happened to come together to create life, with no help from God. How smart is that? I’ll tell you how smart it is: it’s so smart, it’ll send you to straight to hell. You’re part of the War on Faith, you and your godless theories. You people want to aba
ndon the Christian nation built up by our Founding Fathers and turn the country into a temple to feel-good secular humanism, where anything goes—homosexuality, abortion, drugs, premarital sex, pornography. But now you’re reaping what you’ve sown. Already there’s been a suicide. That’s where blasphemy and hatred of God lead you. Suicide. And God will visit his divine wrath on you again, Hazelius. ‘ Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord.’ ”

  Eddy halted, breathing hard. The scientist gazed at him strangely, his eyes glittering like a pair of frozen steel bearings.

  In a curiously strangled voice, Hazelius said, “It’s now time for you to leave.”

  Eddy didn’t answer. The beefy security guard stepped forward. “Come this way, pal.”

  “That’s not necessary, Tony. Russ here has recited his little speech. He knows it’s time to go.”

  The security guard took another step toward him anyway.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Eddy said hastily. “I can’t wait to get out of this godless place.”

  As the screen door shut behind him, Eddy heard the calm voice say, “The germ extends its flagellum to depart.”

  He turned, pressed his face against the wire mesh, and called, “‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ John 8:32.”

  He spun around and walked stiffly to his truck, the left side of his face twitching from humiliation and boundless, fulminating anger.

  24

  FORD WATCHED THE SKINNY FIGURE OF the pastor striding across the parking area toward an old beater of a pickup truck. A man like that, if he had a following, could do a lot of damage to the Isabella project. He was very sorry Hazelius had provoked him, and he felt that they hadn’t heard the end of this—not by a long shot.

  When he turned back, Hazelius was checking his watch as if nothing had happened.

  “We’re late,” the scientist said briskly, plucking his white lab coat from the hook. He glanced around. “Let’s go.” His eye fell on Ford. “I’m afraid you’ll be on your own for the next twelve hours.”

  “Actually,” said Ford, “I’d like to see a run.”

  Hazelius pulled on his coat and picked up his briefcase. “I’m so sorry, Wyman, that just won’t be possible. When we’re down in the Bunker on a run, everyone has his or her assigned role and it’s very tight. We just can’t have any extra people around. I hope you understand.”