Storming Heaven
Page 11
Beamon rolled his eyes. There was no way to live in Flagstaff and not hear about that at least once a day. “This is the year that Kneiss is going to take his seat at the right hand of God. On Good Friday, right? Translation: They can’t keep the old fart alive any longer. He must be, what? About a hundred and fifty?”
Michaels shrugged. “He’s pretty old. I don’t think he’s been seen in public for years.”
“Does Kneiss have any living relatives other than Jennifer?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
Beamon downed the last of the lukewarm coffee in his cup and walked across the office to get a refill. “I don’t know, Chet. It’s worth following up on, though. What if some Kneissian zealot found out about Jennifer? Kneiss has scheduled his own death for a month from now and this guy goes nuts. Can’t handle it. Figures Jennifer’s the next best thing.”
“You never know,” Michaels said enthusiastically. “Religion can get people to do things they’d never normally do.”
“Tell you what, Chet. Why don’t you quietly gather some information on the church? Just stuff available publicly, no inquiries. See if we can put a scenario together that makes sense.” Beamon wiped up a small spill with his last paper towel as Michaels stood and gathered up his folders. “Oh, and Chet? Let’s not talk about this with anyone just yet. If the papers get hold of this I’ll have every weirdo in Arizona camped out on my front lawn.”
17
BEAMON SWUNG HIS CAR INTO A LOVINGLY shoveled driveway next to an old but well-maintained Ford Explorer. Almost a half-hour late, he hurried toward the small white house, patting his pockets to confirm that he had brought his pad and pen. The door opened before he had a chance to knock.
“Mark Beamon. How was it that I knew you’d be late?”
He’d only met Marjorie Dunham once, years ago—at a retirement party for a mutual friend—but she hadn’t changed a bit. Her light brown hair was still cut straight and off the shoulder and her face was almost completely unlined. If he remembered her right, the smooth skin was probably the result of breaking into a smile only about once a year.
“I’m from Texas,” Beamon said, trying to sound apologetic. “Haven’t learned to maneuver in the Arizona arctic zone yet.”
“Uh-huh. Well, come in before you freeze.”
Beamon used a boulder next to the door to kick the snow off his boots and stepped into the modest entryway of her home. A moment later, two labradors pounced on him.
“They like you,” Marjorie said. “Most guests, they just rip their throats out.”
Beamon rubbed the two dogs’ heads vigorously and padded off behind the woman in stocking feet. The labs followed along right behind him, having identified him as an easy mark for a good head scratch.
“Have a seat,” Marjorie said, pointing to a worn sofa against the wall and pulling a rather uncomfortable-looking chair up to face him.
The dogs curled up at his feet as he sank into the old couch and looked around the cluttered but obviously well-organized den.
“So I hear you’ve already managed to turn my old office completely upside down,” she said.
Beamon sighed and shook his head. Until about a month and a half ago, Marjorie had been the supervisor of the FBI’s Flagstaff office. When she’d retired, they’d turned it into a bogus ASAC position and thrown it to him as a bone. “Not me. Layman and the director are behind that. At first I thought they were just trying to make my getting an office look respectable—but now I think they’re trying to kill me with paint fumes.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said humorlessly. “So what can I do for you? I know you can’t be having problems figuring out my filing system.”
“No, D. seems to be pretty much on top of things. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the Church of the Evolution.”
“Really. What are you doing with the Church?”
Beamon had thought long and hard about how to answer that question on the drive over. “Nothing very interesting. We’ve got a lead on a guy who might be embezzling from them. When I started digging into it I found out how completely ignorant I am about the church and I figured you could help me out. You were here, what? Five years?”
“Six. I would have thought you’d be wrapped up in this Jennifer Davis thing,” she said, obviously probing for gossip.
“Oh, I am. But with the church as politically connected as they are around here, I can’t exactly ignore their problems.”
“Well, that’s probably wise. What do you know about the church?”
“I’m embarrassed to say almost nothing.”
“Do you know any of the church’s followers?”
“Don’t think so.”
Beamon didn’t really see that he had much in common with the Kneissians. He found their fresh-scrubbed optimism and well-pressed look a little irritating, if the truth were to be known. The human equivalent of Wonder Bread.
“So you don’t even know what its members believe?”
He shrugged. “That this Kneiss guy is God and he’s going to die next month and rule over heaven or something?”
“Hardly,” Marjorie said. “The premise of the religion is that every two thousand years God sends a messenger to earth to teach humanity about Him and His will.”
“And Albert Kneiss is that messenger?”
She nodded. “Each messenger was at one time human and is chosen to serve God for some period of time before he or she is sent to his or her reward. The—call him an archangel if you like—that appears to us now as Albert Kneiss also appeared two thousand years ago as Jesus. Before that he had other names, but no record has survived of his prior incarnations beyond a few mentions in the Kneissian Bible.”
Beamon rubbed the back of one of her dogs with his foot, trying to digest what Marjorie had told him. “So God sends Kneiss down here and he writes another Bible. Isn’t that redundant? What’s wrong with the one he wrote two thousand years ago?”
“That’s a little more complicated.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Let me see how I can explain this clearly … okay. It’s really just a matter of context. We,” she pointed to herself and then Beamon, “as humans are still too limited to truly understand the mind of God.”
“I’ll buy that.”
“But we’re not as limited as the people Jesus taught two thousand years ago,” she continued. “That is to say, as a group, we’re more enlightened than they were.”
“I’d argue that point,” Beamon said.
“Let me rephrase. We know more than they did—about ourselves and the world around us.”
“Okay, you’ve got me hooked again.”
“So when the archangel that we now know as Kneiss appeared as Jesus, he had to put the teachings of God into the current context. And that, uh, dumbing down of God’s message is what has created all the paradoxes and inaccuracies in the regular version of the Bible.”
Beamon’s rubbed his chin. “Okay, yeah. It works on the principle that you can’t explain the Big Bang to people who think flatulence is caused by evil spirits crawling up their behinds.”
Marjorie let a rare smile pass her lips, but it disappeared too quickly to cause wrinkles. “I’ve never heard it expressed quite that way, but you’re exactly right.”
“And so now Jesus has reappeared as Albert Kneiss,” Beamon started. “And he’s rewritten the Bible to take into account what we’ve learned in the last two thousand years.”
“Precisely. The spirit of Kneiss’s version of the Bible isn’t that different from the traditional Bible. But the way it’s laid out and the way it embraces current scientific, psychological and sociological thinking is radically different.”
“It’s pretty far flung now, isn’t it?” Beamon said.
“The church? Very much so. It’s increased its membership geometrically in the last decade or so. It’s up to around eleven million members now. Something like that.”
“Pretty impressive,” Beamon said.
“And are we watching them?” Beamon asked.
“We meaning the FBI? No. Why would we?”
There was no reason, Beamon knew. It was just that he had always been a little suspicious of large religious machines. Organizations bigoted by definition and full of millions of people whose motivations were very strong and, to him, very murky. “Remember a few years back when we busted those people at the IRS for browsing through people’s returns?” Beamon said. “Weren’t they Kneissians? Did we ever follow up?”
She shook her head. “Three of the four convicted were members of the church. But what if three of the four had been Catholic? Would we have gone after the Vatican?”
“I might have,” Beamon responded.
“Well, we didn’t. Very dangerous politically in a country that was founded on the principle of religious freedom.”
“What about the Germans?” Beamon asked. He’d read numerous articles about Germany’s persecution of the Kneissians. It seemed that having an organization as rich and powerful as the CotE operating independently within its borders wasn’t sitting well with its government.
“The Germans, for some reason, have become very paranoid about the church and blatantly persecute its members. It’s very disturbing—the parallels between their treatment of the jews during the war and the Kneissians now.”
“Would you know anyone, maybe at the German embassy, that I could call? I’d be interested in what they have to say.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Obviously, the Germans’ treatment of the church has been a public relations nightmare for them in the States. I doubt you’d find many of their officials interested in talking.”
“You’re probably right.” Beamon glanced at his watch and wrestled himself out of the sofa. “I’ve got to run, Marjorie. I really appreciate your time.” He breathed in deeply. “It smells like your dinner’s about ready.”
She rose from her seat and took his hand. “I was going to ask you to stay for dinner. My husband makes a wonderful veal parmesan.”
“I’d love to, but I can’t. You won’t be surprised to hear that I’m already late for my next meeting.”
“No, I guess I wouldn’t be. Be careful driving now.”
Beamon started out of the den but paused at the door, suddenly realizing that in their entire conversation, she had never used the word “they” when speaking about the church. He turned back to face her. “One other thing, Marjorie. Are you a member of the Church of the Evolution?”
She hesitated, crouching down and stroking her two dogs simultaneously. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
18
IT WAS NIGHTTIME. THE TALL WINDOWS surrounding the room looked dead. Black streaks against the stark white of the walls.
Just inside the door, Sara stopped and knelt down beside her. “There’s something I have to tell you, Jennifer. Are you listening?”
Jennifer nodded silently, her eyes moving to the machines grouped around the small bed and then to the old man lying motionless there.
“Do you know who he is?” Sara asked.
“No.”
“His name is Albert Kneiss. You recognize the name, don’t you?”
She did, but hearing it just added to the confusion that had continued to weaken her. She tried to concentrate, to process what she knew about Kneiss and his church. She’d lived in Flagstaff for most of her life; many of her friends—some of her best friends—were Kneissians.
“Yes,” she said finally.
“Good. That’s good, Jennifer.” Sara took her hand and gently caressed it. Jennifer’s mind told her that this woman was a liar—that she wanted to hurt her—but she couldn’t pull away. She was so lonely and Sara was all she had. In the little room that had become her universe, Jennifer was beginning to have trouble distinguishing minutes from hours and hours from days. Sara’s visits were becoming one of the only things that reminded her that time moved on and that there was a world outside.
“I know it’s hard for you, staying in that room all alone,” Sara said, seeming to read her mind. “But it’s very dangerous for you right now and it’s the best way for me to protect you. You understand that, don’t you? You understand that I just want to keep you safe?”
“Yes,” Jennifer mumbled, still trying to overcome the effects of her captivity and think clearly. What did this woman want? And why was she about to speak again with a man many people she knew thought was God?
Sara stood and steered Jennifer to the bedside of the old man. His breathing was even more labored than she remembered, each gasp punctuated by the quiet click of a machine next to him, making it obvious it was no longer a completely biological act.
Jennifer stood immobile as Sara inserted a syringe into the clear tube running into his arm. She watched the operation for a moment and then let her eyes wander from machine to machine, finally letting them fall on the papers taped to the back of the heart monitor. They were calendar pages.
Jennifer felt a weak rush of adrenaline as she shuffled silently to her right. Sara was completely absorbed in what she was doing, all her concentration locked on the old man’s face. The two pages of the calendar became readable as she took one more small step. They were for February and March.
She leaned forward at the waist, afraid to move any closer, and scanned the writing in the small squares, searching for anything that would tell her where she was and why. But it was only medication and cleaning schedules.
Jennifer took a step closer to the heart monitor as it stuttered and began to increase in tempo. The small clock built into the display read Thursday, February 27, 7:32 P.M.
Jennifer moved back to her original position, feeling a brief sense of elation at her small triumph, followed closely by a deadening sensation of despair. She had been there a week and a half.
The random fluttering of the old man’s eyes became more purposeful and Jennifer turned her full attention to him, watching the gray mask come to life as his eyes opened and cleared.
He took a few shallow but conscious breaths and once again reached out to offer his hand.
“Jennifer. You don’t know the peace the sight of you brings me.”
This time she moved toward him without prompting and slid her hand into his. Despite everything—the memories of her parents’ death, her loneliness and confusion—Jennifer felt a sense of calm spread through her as she looked into the ancient face.
The old man’s head rose almost imperceptibly from the pillow as he looked around the room. “Where are the others?”
Sara knelt next to the bed and put a hand gently on his shoulder. “There was a storm, Albert. No one can travel.”
The deep lines in the old man’s face rearranged themselves into an expression of deep thought for a moment. “Perhaps it would be best to wait, then. They all must hear. They all must understand.”
Sara’s hand moved from the old man’s shoulder to his nearly bare scalp. “I don’t think we can wait any longer. You’re becoming so weak. If what you have to say is important, you should say it now.”
“Sara. My Sara,” he said, smiling weakly and then looking back at Jennifer, who was standing transfixed, waiting for him to speak. She was finally going to find out what had happened to her. She could feel it.
“You’re right, of course,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve done more to deliver my message than I ever could have hoped. I’ll ask you to help me one more time.”
She kissed his cheek and moved away from them. As she passed by, though, she brushed against Jennifer in a way that suggested that she would be watching her closely.
“You know who I am, don’t you, Jennifer?”
She nodded s
lowly. “You’re Albert Kneiss. People think you were sent here by God.”
Another weak smile. “That’s right. God did send me here. To teach and make people better understand Him. And themselves.”
She concentrated on the face of the old man in front of her, breathing in the strong scent of dust and antiseptic cleaner that seemed to emanate from him. “You don’t look like an angel,” she heard herself say.
He breathed out audibly. The laugh of a man too weak to laugh. “No, I don’t suppose I do.”
Kneiss moved his free hand to a worn leather book lying next to him. “Take this. It’s yours now.”
Jennifer sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned across the old man, gently sliding the book from under his hand. She’d seen it many times before. On TV, in local bookstores, in the hands of her friends and neighbors. The gold letters on the front had been almost completely worn away by time but were still legible.
THE HOLY BIBLE
Kneiss Edition
Jennifer opened it and turned a few of the cracked and yellowed pages. Each was cluttered with notes scrawled through the margins in an elegant hand that must have been his.
“You probably didn’t know that I had a daughter, did you, Jennifer?”
She looked up from the book.
“Her name was Carol.”
“Carol,” Jennifer repeated quietly, as she carefully closed his Bible.
“And she, in turn, had a daughter,” the old man continued. “That daughter is you.”
Jennifer stood and backed slowly away from the bed, pulling her hand from his and letting the book fall to the floor.
Kneiss reached out to her again, but she just moved farther away. She had always been told that her real parents were dead and that she had no blood relatives. But she could see now that it had just been another lie. Her whole life was just one stacked on another. And now it was all coming down around her.