Prayer

by Philip Kerr

  “Why? Because you ceased to believe in God?”

  “Do you?”

  “Do I believe in God? Hmm. What kind of God? The God of Jesus? Some bearded, grandfatherly figure who holds the whole world in the palm of his big hand like some heavenly Santa Claus? Slow to anger, abounding in love and compassion?” Van Der Velden smiled a wry sort of smile as if that image amused him and took off his glasses. “Or the God of Moses? I assume you must have read enough of the Old Testament to know what that particular God is like, Agent Martins. He’s a very different proposition. What does Deuteronomy say? For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. The kind of muscular God who hardens the pharaoh’s heart against allowing the Israelites to leave Egypt just so that he can destroy the whole Egyptian army—‘that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.’”

  “I take it that’s the kind of God you believe in.”

  “Oh, yes. And obviously so did Miss Allitt. Or Miss Begleiter, as I suppose I should now call her. She believed. She believed very much. She was certain that what we’re doing here is real. Or did you really think that there was some more scientific explanation for what happened to Mr. Osborne and those other godless men?”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “If there was, then surely the FBI would have found it. Instead, you’re here, sniffing around like a baffled dog without the slightest clue about what you’re up against. By the way, if I were you, I really wouldn’t go around saying he doesn’t exist. God doesn’t like that. It might be better for you if you stopped saying such misguided things.”

  “Take my advice, Van Der Velden, and stick to Sunday sermons. The people you preach to are more gullible than I am.”

  “You think I’m just another cracker-barrel evangelist, like your own pastor at Lakewood, Mr. Osteen. But you won’t think that when the angel of death comes for your soul tomorrow evening.” He bowed his head for a moment, pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes. Then he said, “Amen.” After a deep exhalation, he opened his eyes again and nodded.

  “Threatening a federal officer with death is a serious crime.” I smiled.

  “Oh, it’s no threat. You will die as I said you will die. Tomorrow evening at midnight. If you’ve made any plans for Tuesday, I would change them now if I were you.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Normally, I allow the enemies of the Lord longer than twenty-four hours to get used to the idea. It amuses me to think of them trying to be rational in the face of something as extraordinary as God’s avenging angel. But I’ve decided to make an exception in your case. Whatever trouble you can stir up will be forgotten by your colleagues when your body is found. It goes without saying that I’ll have an unbeatable alibi. I’ll be leading a prayer meeting tomorrow evening in front of five hundred people. As a matter of fact, we’ll be praying about you.” He paused. “But I certainly wouldn’t take any comfort from that.”

  “I’m to be killed by the Lord’s winnowing fork, is that it? That’s one exhibit I’d like to see in a court of law.”

  Van Der Velden became less playful all of a sudden, tired of my incessant mockery; the perfect smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed malevolently.

  “I’m sorry you remain so skeptical, Agent Martins,” he said. “But as the hours elapse between now and midnight tomorrow, I think you’ll find you will start to feel a lot less sanguine about any of this. In the beginning—which is any time from now on—you’ll experience psychological breakdown; your mind will be beset with doubt and uncertainty about the things lurking in the shadows that formerly you took for granted were not there; then you will feel horror as irrational fear grips your soul. Fear of the dark, a reluctance to switch out the light before you sleep. Whatever happened to common sense? Are you alone as you thought you were? What was that noise you heard? Why did that curtain move? Is there someone there? Could someone be downstairs?”

  “Someone or something?”

  Van Der Velden laughed. “You say a lot more than you know. At least more than you know right now. Because the psychological breakdown that awaits is nothing like the real ordeal before you. The physical one. To be killed by a demon from hell is no easy thing. Perhaps it’s the worst thing there is.”

  “I thought you said it was God who was going to kill me.”

  “Oh, but he is. God is going to kill you through the medium of his own archangel of death, Azrael. Azrael is a fallen angel. A demon over which God has power like everything else. You know, for an FBI Special Agent, you seem oddly ill informed about all this. Or weren’t you paying attention to Miss Begleiter? How did she put it? God uses such beings as Azrael to carry out his dirty work?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Do you think so? Or are you just saying that because you would prefer to believe I’m crazy, because that makes it a lot easier to dismiss what I’m telling you? Come now, Agent Martins. We both know I’m as sane as you are. Although perhaps that’s not saying very much. Because I have the distinct impression that this investigation of yours might already have hit the buffers and caused you some difficulties at work. Perhaps you’ve already been accused of being a little crazy yourself. Well, who could blame your colleagues for being even more skeptical than you about these things? Yes, that would explain a great deal. Such as why you’re out on a limb and working on your own. And why you’re no longer living at home. I telephoned the people at Lakewood and gave them some story about how you’d turned up here asking to join our membership. They told me about you and your wife.”

  I was on the edge of mentioning that I’d seen Ruth in his church the previous Sunday, but I hardly wanted to get her into trouble; I had no reason to do her a favor. But then she was more susceptible to the pastor’s kind of suggestion than I was, and she was also the mother of my son.

  “You know,” he said, “you should thank me. No, really, you should. Not many people are given the fantastic opportunity I’m about to give you, my poor deluded friend. I’m going to restore your faith in the existence of God. Overnight. Because he’s there, Agent Martins, he’s there. He’s always been there, but you were just too frigging dumb to realize it.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Pastor.”

  “You’re being sarcastic, of course. But I don’t do any of this for myself, you know. Really, I don’t. Everything I do I do out of fear of God. Real fear. It’s the one thing that people never understand about God. That he’s capable of some really terrible things. Not that it should be a great mystery. It’s all in the Bible. Perhaps, at the end—your end—you will understand that, too.”

  “You actually believe this bullshit, don’t you?”

  “Already the Lord’s angel of death is leaving hell to come for you. That is what I believe. That is what you will believe. And you will die before tomorrow night at twelve as sure as we’re standing here talking right now.”

  I’m not exactly sure how Van Der Velden managed it. Perhaps there was an odorless narcotic gas that I inhaled in the elevator. Or maybe there was some electronic means of bringing about the same result—a hologram or a projection—I don’t know. But there had to be a simple and straightforward explanation for what happened as I retraced my echoing steps through that empty modern church, although, to be honest, there were none that left me feeling even half convinced.

  Walking toward the huge main door, I was absolutely certain that none of the flip-down seats on either side of the gently sloping gangway ahead of me was occupied; then, almost in the blink of an eye, it seemed that one seat was filled after all. My own double take at this discovery was enough to stop me in my tracks as momentarily I was almost convinced that my mind was playing tricks on me and, for several seconds, I just stood there dumbly, looking straight at the only vaguely defined figure now occupying a seat immediately by the exit.

  Just as peculiar as the suddenness of the strange f
igure’s appearance was the odd way he or she—it was hard to be sure either way—seemed to shimmer like a heat mirage. We’re used to these in Texas. Sometimes the air above the blacktop shifts like a belly dancer. Inside an air-conditioned church, however, this must have had another explanation: I was suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, perhaps. That’s easy when the summer days are over a hundred degrees.

  For a moment, I rubbed my eyes, the way you do when you think you’re seeing things that aren’t there. The next second I heard my own name whispered behind me, close up to my ear. Turning quickly, I expected to see someone standing behind me; but finding no one there, I decided I must have imagined it—and when I turned back to look for the person in the seat beside the exit and found him no longer there, I had to consider the possibility that I had only imagined that, too.

  The strangest sensation now overtook me as I suddenly wanted to get out of Van Der Velden’s church as quickly as possible and into the bright light and hot certainty of the baking Texas sun. I hurried toward the door, increasingly anxious to be outside. But I paused beside the chair that I was almost certain had for just a second been occupied by some ill-defined figure and found my left hand reaching to flip the seat down as if some trace of the mysterious occupant might remain.

  Almost immediately I snatched my hand away, for the seat was hot—as hot as a saucepan on a stove—and if I’d ever doubted this, there was the evidence of the continuing pain in my fingertips, which for a long time afterward remained as red as if I had actually burned them on a hot iron. This was, of course, impossible because the seat—made of wood and wool and the presumably flammable stuffing that made it comfortable to sit on—could only have been as hot as it felt to the touch if it had been on fire. The seat must have been impregnated with some kind of acid that burned skin and flesh without corroding the upholstery.

  Holding my hand, I glanced around angrily.

  “That’s a good trick, Van Der Velden,” I said aloud, assuming that the pastor was watching and listening via some secret camera high up in the roof, and presumably also enjoying my obvious alarm and discomfort. “But it’s still a trick and it doesn’t convince me you’re anything but a cut-rate Elmer Gantry. D’you hear? I’m not buying the idea that your little bit of David Blaine street magic might be the real thing.”

  I waited for some response, but none came.

  “Fucking asshole,” I said, pushing open the big church door.

  These were brave words. Because I could hardly deny the pain I was feeling in my own hand or the persistence of the memory of my own name being whispered by someone who wasn’t there and, if I’m honest, I can hardly deny that I was very relieved that the door to the church was not locked.

  TWENTY-ONE

  In the parking lot, under the big blue sky, I breathed a little more easily. The heat on my face seemed reassuringly normal, but only just. There were times when the heat of Texas felt like hell and the grass broke up when you walked upon it and the air was filled with the humid breath of a million different souls and human will was shut down to nothing much more than an animal’s impulse to find the mercy of some shade. Perhaps in this place of all places, where only a few miles away men with slide rules and ancient computers had sent other men to the moon, the heat was meant to bow the heads of men and keep them humble. But I stared right back up at the angel over the door of the church, full of loathing; and if I could have reached it, I would have spat in his eye.

  I walked quickly to my car—the last one left on the lot—keen to be away from the Izrael Church. It would have been obvious to Van Der Velden and his followers that this was my car. For one thing, it wasn’t a very nice car, and a cursory inspection would have revealed the pass on the windshield that allowed me entry to a space underneath the Bureau on Justice Park Drive. So, before I drove away, I checked my car for a bomb—the way we’d been trained to do at the Academy—before putting it in gear and driving, slowly, away. It seemed unlikely that Van Der Velden would try to kill me so close to his church, but you never can tell; better safe than sorry.

  In any other circumstances I might have wanted to check my car for tracking devices, too, although that would have meant driving all the way back to the office in Houston and leaving the car in the FBI garage with the resident electronics technician. But this was a very different situation; I wanted Van Der Velden’s people to know where I was so that they might make an attempt to kill me at home in Galveston. Because now I was intent on being ready to receive visitors. After what Van Der Velden had said, surely he had to try to kill me. The only question that remained was exactly how he was going to do it. If all of this sounds commendably hard-headed and practical, it was. In spite of everything I’d been led to believe, I had to think there was a perfectly logical explanation for everything that had occurred and was yet to occur. To that extent, I was still behaving like the brick agent I was trained to be.

  That was what I thought; and yet I felt something different. It was like I was on a seesaw of rational thoughts and irrational ones, although, in truth, there were only a few of these that were probably nothing other than a normal reaction to being threatened. I have to admit that there was also a very small, superstitious part of me that was half inclined to believe there really was an angel of death or a demon called Azrael, and that because of the pastor’s silent prayer, this supernatural being would kill me before midnight the following night. Yes, the time limit I had been given made me feel odd, too. The best way to describe all of this is to say that I have an imagination like anyone else.

  In this preoccupied state of mind I drove back onto the Gulf Freeway.

  But worse was to come.

  As I throttled back to seventy miles per hour, it seemed that in my rearview mirror I could see something red begin to appear in the sky behind me. At first I thought I was looking at a series of distant airborne objects—balloons, or even something more sophisticated; after all, the Johnson Space Center was just a few miles to the east, and while almost all NASA flights had taken place in Florida at Cape Canaveral, you always had the impression when you were anywhere near the JSC that you might see something unusual in the sky.

  It was another minute before I realized that what I was actually looking at were the red letters of a message and that far from being written on the sky they were actually taking shape on my rear window. It was several more seconds before the words fully materialized on the glass and I was able to read them.

  YOU WILL DIE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.

  The next moment I was loudly summoned from my contemplation of the message as a truck horn blasted me back to full concentration. I had drifted badly out of my lane. I swerved quickly—too quickly—and narrowly missed a collision with another truck on the passenger’s side. Several tire-squealing, heart-stopping seconds passed before I had the car fully under control again.

  When I’d stopped swearing at the massive rear wheels of the truck and calmed down a bit, my anger gave way to a cold sweat of fear at this near disaster. I quickly turned off at the next exit, by which time the message had disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared; I pulled up on the side of the road, and leaped out of the car and tried to make out any trace of the letters on my window. But there was none, not so much as a smear; and in the hope that I might send them for some forensic tests to determine the chemical Fitzgerald must have used—he could easily have applied the message to my rear window while I was talking to Nelson Van Der Velden—I spent the next few minutes rubbing sheets of paper and pieces of tissue on the glass—inside and outside. I even rubbed some tissues on the rearview mirror in case Fitzgerald had somehow tampered with this.

  Yet somewhere inside my brain I knew all this activity was probably futile; I knew a little about this kind of thing from my time at Quantico—enough to know there wasn’t any kind of chemical writing that could appear on glass and then vanish without a trace.

  A little reluctantly
—what other surprises lay ahead for me on the drive back to Galveston?—I got back into the car and drove on. A few miles on, I stopped at a gas station where I bought some cigarettes and groceries. While the clerk added up my bill, I went into the men’s room and tried to pull myself together.

  Inside the cubicle I suddenly knew I was not alone in the washroom. It wasn’t that I heard the door open or heard someone moving around. I felt it, as if someone had opened a large refrigerator, alarming and subtle at the same time; and so immediate was the effect in my blood that it almost felt as if I’d been strapped onto a crucifix-shaped gurney and injected with sodium thiopental in the execution chamber at Huntsville. Still sitting on the john, I leaned forward, hardly breathing at all, like I was some junkie shooting up into my own thigh muscle, powerless to resist the presence from doing exactly what it would.

  I am here, the presence seemed to say, I am coming for you, as it was of old, and you can do nothing to stop me. I am here to do his work. As it was of old, in the beginning and in the Bible.

  It was several minutes before the cold departed and I dared to breathe again.

  “Get a grip,” I told myself. I flushed the toilet and came out of the cubicle, glancing one way and then the other. “He’s messing with your head. You’re imagining this. D’you hear? It’s all in your head.”

  I washed my hands, splashed some water on my face, and went back to the checkout, where the clerk gave me a look. He was a skinny kid with a gloomy expression, as if he might have been planning to hang himself with one of the drive belts that were dangling like so many nooses on the wall behind his head.

  I handed over a twenty. He opened the cash register, took out my change, and laid it on a little ashtray that was the shape of Texas and decorated with the state’s six national flags. I collected my change, turned to walk out, and then turned back.

  “Wait,” I said. “When I was in your men’s room, did you see anyone go in there behind me?”