The Harvest

by John David Krygelski

  Mario turned to the open, massive front doors and, wielding the screwdriver, removed the screws holding the door latches. As the last of the hardware fell from the doors, Bonavente turned to the cameras and assembled parishioners. “Elohim asked us why these doors and the doors of all of our houses of God around the world were locked…why we had installed security alarms within these blessed chambers. He asked if it was our intent to keep out those who may need the solace and inspiration they might find within. We found we did not have a good answer.

  “As we gather here today and I remove these latches, bishops and pastors and priests at every Catholic Church on Earth are also removing the latches to their churches. We are also turning off and tearing out the alarms. It is my promise, as well as the promise of His Holiness, that no soul in need of comfort shall ever be turned away from a single one of our churches. No cry for help shall go unheeded. No person craving the counsel of a priest, no matter the hour or the day, shall be turned away. No troubled spirit wishing to confess his or her sins shall ever again be denied that wish.”

  Pausing, Mario turned back and looked at the beautiful edifice of St. Patrick’s. Seizing both of the already opened doors, he flung them wide, turning back to the gathering. “Our doors, as are our arms, are open and ready to protect and embrace each and every one of you. And they will never be closed again.”

  א

  “Good morning and welcome to this segment of our ongoing coverage,” said Kathy Crocker. “As he has every day, Barry Thorndike is joining us this morning. Barry, do you have any comments on the live announcement we’ve just witnessed from Cardinal Bonavente?”

  “Thank you, Kathy. Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. In my personal opinion this is long overdue. As Cardinal Bonavente mentioned in his statement, the decision was a result of the meeting between Elohim and the Pope. We’ve all been curious as to the nature and content of that meeting, and this is the first glimpse we’ve received into it. It appears, based upon the single input we’ve gotten now, that it was something of a course correction for the Church, from Elohim.

  “The Catholic Church is run by human beings and has been as susceptible to the pressures and influences from society as everyone else. As a reaction to the crime rates, we have all cocooned, increasing the level of security within our own homes. It appears Elohim has reminded the Church that they do not have this option. He apparently has reminded the Pope that locking their doors at all times except for services is contrary to the stated mission of the institution. I suspect that this will be the first of other changes we will see coming from the Vatican.

  “Kathy, as a side note, I had an opportunity to speak with a member of Cardinal Bonavente’s staff late yesterday and was told that in the last forty-eight hours, they have been deluged with requests from men who wish to join the priesthood.”

  “That’s fascinating, Barry,” Crocker answered. “Did they happen to mention any numbers? How many requests have they received?”

  “With everything going on right now, they haven’t had a chance to get a handle on this unexpected development, but he did mention that it was in the thousands.”

  “Wow! Amazing! Well, thank you for your perspective on this. I was about to describe our next story as one of our top stories, but with events occurring at such a rapid pace, we have so many top stories right now that it’s difficult to prioritize them. An event which certainly has captured the attention of the world today was the mob-killing of television evangelist, Dick Beaman. We were able to speak with some of the top people within his former organization last night and early this morning and made some surprising discoveries. As our guest this morning, we have the producer of Dick Beaman’s weekly televised program and one of the people present in the control room during the attack last night, Ron Grant. Good morning, Ron.”

  “Kathy, it’s not a particularly good morning for me today.”

  “Of course. It must have been quite an ordeal for you and your staff last night.”

  “That would be an understatement.”

  “Ron, what exactly can you tell us about the mysterious mark on Mr. Beaman’s hand?”

  “Well, Kathy, I can tell you the mark Dick held up for the camera at the end of the, uh, program last night was not the mark I saw just an hour before we went on the air.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dick Beaman had Elohim’s mark. I saw it, as did several other staffers. In fact, we have it on tape.”

  “That’s what I understand. We would like to show the tape now. Ron, could you please explain for our audience when it was recorded.”

  “Certainly. We always do a taped rehearsal of the program earlier the same day. This is the tape of that rehearsal.”

  Kathy Crocker watched as her monitor displayed the same scene millions had watched the day before, except this time there was no audience. Ron Grant narrated, “We’re starting the tape at the point in the program just before Dick revealed his mark.”

  The screen showed Beaman standing on the raised platform, the crystal crucifix shimmering behind him, as he was saying, “I stand before all of you today to share my decision. With the monumental struggle upon which you are about to engage, because of my love for each and every one of you here in this cathedral as well as the millions watching from their homes, I have chosen not to abandon you.”

  The scene seemed surreal to the viewers, as Beaman’s voice echoed off the empty walls of the cathedral. Both Crocker and Ron Grant watched quietly as Beaman raised his arms and opened his fist, proclaiming, “FOR I HAVE THE MARK! YET I WILL STAY!” The camera had, in preparation for the moment, zoomed in for a close-up of Beaman’s right hand. As he opened it, clearly visible on his palm was the now-familiar mark of Elohim. The news director froze the picture on the image, which lingered on the screens of the viewers for several moments before he cut back to Kathy.

  “That is certainly Elohim’s mark.”

  “It is. Dick was incredibly proud that he was one of the Chosen. He showed it to all of us. He also agonized over his decision. But he told us that he had an obligation to remain with his followers, that they would need his help.”

  “Ron, what you do think happened to the mark?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is that Elohim gave Dick Beaman the mark, and, I guess, maybe because Dick decided to turn down the invitation, he was punished.”

  “You think Elohim changed the mark to the ‘666’ which we all saw last night? Do you think he changed it just because Dick Beaman was going to refuse to go to Heaven?”

  “I’m not saying He did, and I’m not saying He didn’t. I just can’t think of any other explanation.”

  א

  Turbo, whose real name was Delbert McClanahan, switched off the news broadcast and reached for his cell phone, punching the numbers for directory assistance.

  א

  As was her custom, Ricki Darling briskly walked into Margo Jackson’s office without announcement. Margo, reading the summaries of reports from field agents assigned to follow up leads on the Times Square incident, looked up at her. “Ricki, please tell me you have something.”

  Dropping a single page on the Assistant Director’s desk, Ricki explained, “Two of the e-mail addresses are, as you guessed, Kaval’s aides. The third might be a surprise.”

  There were times Ricki’s flair for the dramatic was irritating to Margo. This was one of them. Picking up the paper, she glanced at the list, and her irritation was replaced instantly with incredulity and excitement. “Stavros!”

  “One and the same,” answered Darling, pleased with the response.

  “Son of a…. This is going to make some waves!”

  “You think?”

  Margo pressed the intercom button for Bill Burke’s office.

  א

  Suri Kaval’s personal attendant awoke him gently. “Sir, we’re about fifteen minutes from Prague.”

  He opened his eyes and thanked her, picking up the cup of coffee she had brought and si
pping it loudly. His first waking thoughts were to wonder if the fools at the FBI had gotten their hands on his e-mail. With satisfaction he visualized William Stavros’ indignation and outrage when the imperialist thugs showed up at his office with their search warrant. If only he could be a fly on the wall, he thought, and watch his fellow conspirator rant and rave as they ransacked his personal effects. Kaval resigned himself to only being able to play out the scene in his mind.

  Stavros, he reflected, had served his purposes well. His wealth and his passion were convenient assets to be utilized. His fanaticism as well as his desire to control everything had played perfectly into Kaval’s hand. Suri never ceased to be amazed how someone as intelligent and cynical as Stavros could have been so gullible, swallowing each saccharine morsel of anti-U.S. propaganda, as an altar boy would take each word from a priest as coming directly from God.

  Kaval, through Stavros, had accomplished a major restructuring of the political landscape in the United States. Although Stavros believed, at Kaval’s urging, that they were creating a new and enlightened political party, interested in only the health, safety, and well-being of all people, especially children, the reality was quite different. In fact, Suri thought, what they had created was an ugly, adversarial, nasty, and mean-spirited movement in the culture of the United States – a movement which was fanatically, obsessively intolerant of all who disagreed, which found fault in every action performed by the United States, which believed that the United States was the cause of nearly all of the problems on Earth and that if its government would only drop all of the nationalistic, imperialistic, and isolationistic practices, the world could be utopian.

  Together he and Stavros had managed to create a philosophical construct which made it seem cruel and xenophobic for the people of the U.S. to cling to their own language, their own traditions, their own beliefs. The two of them had even managed, Kaval reflected with satisfaction, to make it seem evil for the United States to defend itself when attacked. All of this was accomplished under the guise of not offending others, not making others uncomfortable.

  They had been so easy to manipulate, he thought – an entire country of people, whose minds were filled with the idealistic, illogical concepts of the hippie movement of the 1960s, actually believing that the sappy lyrics of “Imagine,” the John Lennon song, could be a literal blueprint for the world to follow. Reality, Kaval contemplated, was a concept with which modern U.S. citizens were never comfortable. No massive military force was required to neuter the might of the United States. All it took was television, showing the U.S. people the reality of using their own troops and equipment against others. In reality, battles and wars were not won with precision; they were won by inflicting widespread and indiscriminate horror upon the other side, such hideous and unimaginable horror that the enemy was either completely broken by the onslaught or so traumatized that it could not conceive of angering the same opponent again.

  The United States once knew this fact, Kaval thought, as it participated in the wars against Germany and Japan. Germany was nearly annihilated from the constant bombing by the United States and its allies. There was not even a feeble attempt to protect the women and children, no desire to save the historic landmarks of the enemy or to be respectful of the physical manifestations of the nation’s heritage. Indeed, to some degree, it was the loss of many of these things that prompted the Germans to surrender. And Japan, Kaval knew, for generations to come, would not psychologically or emotionally recover from the reality of the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Those were victories. And those victories caused Germany and Japan to resolve never to fight the United States again. Those were the last examples of true, effective warfare fought by the United States. Every military effort since 1945 had been crippled by the weak stomach of the public. The arbitrary lines drawn and the restrictive rules of engagement implemented for the Korean and Viet Nam wars made it impossible to effectuate a true victory. The attempt to fight in Iraq, killing and maiming only combatants, was absurd when none of the combatants wore uniforms. Why would they don a uniform, Suri wondered, when doing that would be tantamount to painting a target on their own chests?

  For Suri, there was much irony in the events of the past two decades. He delighted in encouraging and nurturing the concept of “diversity,” knowing full well, and even alluding to it in his final speech, that diversity, by its very definition, would create divisiveness. Multiculturalism was the solvent which dissolved the binding glue of a society, leaving it splintered and without the will to effectively oppose an outside force.

  Suri Kaval was quite satisfied with his work in the United States. It was now a country of anger and disgust, imbued with self-directed hatred, rather than a country of pride and self-confidence. It was now a country of enclaves, each loyal only to itself – a country where the liberals and conservatives, smokers and nonsmokers, fat and thin, gay and straight, bicycle riders and car drivers, religious and atheists, men and women, blacks, whites, browns, and reds all placed themselves above the whole, above the country. Their loyalties were to themselves first, their small groups second, their families third, and perhaps selectively for a cause they personally agreed with, they would associate themselves with the United States.

  ‘It’s funny,’ he thought with amusement, ‘how important perspective can be.’ Not that long ago, for the vast majority of people within the United States, the thought of being a United States citizen instilled pride. Today, for most, it brought shame, shame to the degree that millions within that once powerful country could not even proclaim that identity aloud and were angry and derisive toward those who did.

  Suri Kaval felt the wheels of the jet gently touch the tarmac as his thoughts returned to today. His work was nearly done. The internal strife, the recriminations, the further segmenting of this once powerful and monolithic nation would continue as the details of William Stavros’ participation in the Times Square attack were carefully, meticulously released. No overt military-style attack would be needed. There would not even be an internal civil war. The U.S. would succumb to a cancer that had been planted and cultivated within its national character – a cancer that would consume the underlying scaffolding of nationalism, leaving behind only a fragmented and uninspired husk.

  When Elohim arrived just a few days ago, Kaval thought back, his first reaction to that arrival was one of fury. It did not take long, as “His” plan was revealed, for Kaval to recognize his good fortune. So many of the men and women who would be obstacles to his own plan, those whom Kaval would have destroyed or assassinated if not for the sheer number of them, were about to voluntarily depart. Tomorrow night! It was tantamount to all of the key officers and enlisted being stripped from a military force on the eve of a battle.

  Kaval had worried, at first, that Elohim would intervene. There was a brief, agonizing period in those initial few hours when Kaval believed that his deepest thoughts had been plumbed by Elohim, that the fate of the young man, Sheffield, was his destiny as well. When the avenging angel did not arrive, Suri realized that Elohim’s stated intention not to interfere might be sincere. Yet, he knew he could not proceed on his plans without testing Elohim’s resolve. The smaller attacks in Europe as well as the major attack in Times Square served that purpose. Fully prepared to lose the men and the infrastructure needed to carry out the attacks, Suri, to his delight, watched as the killings proceeded without the hand of Elohim stopping them.

  He now knew he was safe and unfettered, able to proceed toward his ultimate goal. The killings had been on a grand enough scale to prove that. There would be no Heavenly visit, no anointed sword to cut him down, nothing to stop him from triggering the final demise of the United States and its allies. The others, of course, would all topple immediately once their benefactor and protector fell into disarray. Kaval felt the jet come to a stop and glanced out his window, seeing the steps rolling up to the side of his plane. A small group waited several yards away for his ar
rival. He began to gather his things.

  א

  “There had been no mark,” Elohim told Reese, “placed by me.”

  “I saw it,” countered Reese. “So did many others.”

  “What you saw on Beaman’s hand was not my mark.”

  Reese hesitated momentarily. He was, once again, in the private quarters at the State Department, sitting at the small dining table across from Elohim. Dick Beaman had been the first topic of conversation brought up by Reese. Realizing the truth, Reese stated, “He put the mark on himself.”

  Elohim nodded.

  “The replacement of it…the appearance of the three sixes?”

  “That was I.”

  Reese stared deeply into Elohim’s blue eyes, trying to read them. He finally said, “There are people out there who believe that the original mark was Yours, that You took it away as punishment because he had decided to stay behind.”