The Sign

by Raymond Khoury

  He stepped closer until he was about ten feet away from them and stopped. He guided his gaze above their heads, at the massive sign lighting up the sky a couple of hundred yards farther away, by the monumental arch.

  It hadn’t been that hard for him to find them. Not for someone who knew what to look for. A vantage point, within a certain range, somewhere where they could work and watch and not be seen. There hadn’t been that many options. The third spot on his sweep turned out to be the right one.

  “I’m feeling all warm and cuddly inside,” he chortled, gesturing for them to raise their hands. “Love and peace and goodwill to all men. Is that what you’re selling them?”

  “It’s working,” Rydell told him, glancing across at Danny as he set down his cell phone without killing the line. He raised his hands slightly. “They’re listening.”

  “And you think that’s going to make a difference?” His voice rose with his anger. “You think our enemies are going to buy into that horse shit too? Wake the fuck up, Larry. They may be listening, but it’s not going to change anything.”

  “It could. Look, I don’t know what you and Keenan have in mind, but I don’t want them to stop believing in God,” Rydell said, raising his voice and volleying the anger back at Maddox. “I’d just like them to use their own minds a bit more. Just listen to Father Jerome. Listen to what he’s saying.”

  “It’s an admirable thought,” Maddox said mockingly. “We are the world, we are the children, right? It’s great. Everything he’s saying out there, it’s just great—but you know what it’s going to do?” He set his pack down on the ground, reached into it, and pulled out a sniper rifle. “It’s going to get him killed.”

  GRACIE STIFFENED the second the words echoed through the headset of her cell phone.

  Maddox was alive—and there. And by the sounds of it, he’d taken them by surprise.

  An icy panic stabbed the back of her neck. She turned to Dalton in alarm and said, “I need to call Matt. We’ve got trouble.”

  Chapter 84

  The crowd was thoroughly rattled and exploded with awe at the appearance of the familiar sign before Father Jerome raised his hands to calm them and his voice burst out, cutting through the confusion.

  “Many of us have preached the same message, the only message that counts,” he bellowed as they quieted to listen to his words. “A message of humility. And charity. And kindness and compassion. That’s all that matters. And yet it hasn’t worked. All these religions we’ve built have been around for hundreds, for thousands of years. And yet the world is angrier and more divided than ever. And we need to do something about that.”

  “MATT.” Gracie’s voice burst through his earpiece. “It’s Maddox. He’s got Danny and Rydell.”

  Matt’s feet froze for a beat—he missed one step, maybe two—then he was suddenly weaving through the crowd, hurtling toward the Miller Outdoor Theatre, a tangle of horrific images tumbling through his mind.

  MADDOX SWUNG THE RIFLE at Rydell and Danny. “As soon as he’s done talking, he’s going to get his head blown off. We’ll make it look like some towelhead nutjob took him out, we’ve got a bunch of them on watch. ’Cause that’s how all good prophets end up, isn’t it? They have to die for their cause.”

  Rydell started to say something, but Maddox cut him off sharply.

  He mocked him loudly. “Come on. You can’t do these things half-assed. You’ve got to go all the way. You’ve got to close the deal. If you really want people to believe his words, if you really want his words to be seared into the minds of all those millions of people out there, he needs to die. He has to. To become a martyr. ’Cause martyrs . . . they’re so much harder to ignore, aren’t they?”

  Danny studied him for a beat, then said, “And after he’s dead . . .”

  Maddox nodded casually. “Yep. With you both out of the picture, it’ll clean things up, nice and tidy. They won’t find you. They will find the Iranian whacko who shot Jerome, though. A card-carrying fanatic with a great CV, someone we’ve been watching for quite a while. He’ll have his head blown off, of course. Self-inflicted. One for the team.”

  “You weren’t planning to expose Father Jerome?” Rydell asked.

  Maddox shook his head. “Nope.”

  “But Keenan . . .” Rydell got it. “He didn’t know.”

  Maddox flashed him an icy smile. “Of course not.”

  “So the Iranians, the Muslim world,” Danny said. “They’ll get the blame?”

  “Of course,” Maddox smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The prophet who wanted to set us free, shot by an agent of intolerance.”

  “You’ll start a war,” Danny blurted. “The people who’ve bought into Father Jerome—they’re going to be mad as hell.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Maddox replied coolly.

  Rydell took a step forward. “Think about what you’re doing here, Brad—”

  “I’ve thought about it, Larry,” Maddox hissed, anger flaring across his face. “I’ve done nothing but think about it while I’ve watched us pussyfoot around and let these savages slaughter us. ‘Rules of engagement, ’ ” he spat out indignantly. “Geneva Conventions. Senate hearings the minute you try and bitch-slap the truth out of some kamikaze who doesn’t think his life’s worth anything anyway. We’re just too weak. We don’t have the balls to get things done. We’re playing by the rules against an enemy who knows wars don’t have rules. They’re laughing at us out there; we’re getting our asses handed to us and you know why? Because they get it. They know how to get things done. They know that if someone slaps you, you don’t turn the other cheek. You rip their fucking arm off. And the only way we’re going to win this thing is to get people really angry, so angry that they’ll be baying for blood.”

  “You’ll be dragging millions of innocent people into a war just to punish a few extremists—”

  “It’s not just a few extremists, Larry. It’s all of them. It’s the whole fucking region. You weren’t out there. You haven’t lived among them. You haven’t seen the hatred in their eyes. Your ‘we are all one’ bullshit won’t work. We can’t live together. It’s just not going to happen. There’s a fundamental difference between us and them on every level. They know it. We know it. We’re just too gutless to face up to it. And they’re coming after us. They’re not going to give up. Make no mistake, they’re our enemies, plain and simple. They want to destroy us. They want to conquer us, and it’s not a land grab. It’s a holy war. And to win a holy war, you need a crusade. We have to go after them with everything we’ve got, no holds barred. Once and for all. We need to wipe them off the face of the earth. And the death of your fake prophet will make it happen. It’ll be one hell of a call to arms, one that’ll be heard around the world.” He leveled the gun at them. “So you just keep that sign up there and settle back until he’s done. Then we’ll finish this.”

  FATHER JEROME FIXED his eyes fervently on the massed onlookers and jabbed a stern finger in their direction.

  “We all pray to the same God,” he told them. “That’s all that matters. Everything else—all these institutions we’ve built in His name, all the rituals and public expressions of faith—we created those. We did. Humans, people like you and me. And maybe we were wrong in creating them and giving them the power they have over us. Because God doesn’t care about what you eat or what you drink. He doesn’t care about how often you pray to him or what words you use or where you go to do that. He doesn’t care who you vote for. He only cares about how you behave toward one another. That’s all that matters. He gave you all great minds, minds that have allowed you to achieve great advances. You sent a man to the moon from this very city. That’s how clever you are. You can create life in test tubes. You can wipe out the planet with the weapons you keep creating. You hold life and death in your hands, and you are all gods. And like it or not, you control your lives with everything you do, with very action you take. What you do. What you buy. Who you vote for. And you have infinite powe
rs stored inside you. You have minds that allow you to achieve the impossible. Minds that allow you to reason. To talk to one another and debate things openly. And those same minds should be enough to tell you how you should treat one another. Every single one of you knows that. You can see that for yourselves. You know that hurting and killing one another is wrong. You know that sitting idly while others die of starvation is wrong. You know that dumping lethal chemicals in rivers is wrong. Every day, each and every one of you is faced with a choice, and it’s how you choose to behave that matters. It’s that simple.”

  “ALMOST DONE.” Maddox seethed as he watched Father Jerome from their vantage point.

  Rydell watched him inch toward the Navigator and prop the rifle on the SUV’s side mirror. He turned to Danny.

  “Run the debunking software.”

  “What?” Danny asked.

  “Run the damn software,” Rydell yelled. “Better to expose him than get him killed and start a war.”

  “Don’t,” Maddox growled, spinning the rifle at them—

  “Wait,” Danny blurted, raising his hands. “Just calm the hell down, all right? I’m not doing anything.”

  “Danny, listen to me,” Rydell urged him. “He can’t kill us both. He needs the sign to stay up. Run the goddamn software.”

  “Don’t even try it, Danny boy,” Maddox warned. “It doesn’t matter to me if the sign dies out right now. It’s done all I needed it to do.”

  Rydell turned to Maddox in exasperation. “Listen to me,” he pleaded. “This is good. This can change things. It can make things better for everyone. It’ll achieve what you’re trying to do without—”

  “Enough,” Maddox yelled, his voice ripping up the air like a mortar shell. “You know what, Larry? You’re no longer needed here.” He raised the gun, three inches maybe, and squeezed the trigger—

  —just as Matt tackled him from the side. The bullet flew wide, missing Rydell and ricocheting against the side of the theater as Maddox and Matt fell against the hard ground. Maddox spun around and lashed out with a fierce kick that caught Matt across the chest and winded him.

  Matt recoiled in pain as Danny and Rydell rushed Maddox. The soldier scrambled to push himself off the ground, but he forgot his right arm was mangled as if a dingo had been at it and instinctively used it to right himself, causing a torrent of agony to flood through him. He fell back again and glared at Matt as his left hand dived under his jacket. Matt saw the grip of an automatic sticking out from behind Maddox’s belt, saw the rifle he’d dropped lying a few feet away, and dived for it.

  Maddox’s hand had less distance to travel and came up first—but he didn’t count on Danny, who was already there and threw his weight against him and shoved him to one side, hard. Maddox flew sideways and landed on his right arm again, and his scream sliced through the empty lot before Matt shut him up permanently with three high-powered rounds to the chest.

  “YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE to tell you what to believe or who to worship,” Father Jerome was telling the crowd. “You don’t need to follow any set of rituals. You don’t need to worry about an angry God not allowing you into heaven. You don’t need to march into these great temples of intolerance and be told what is God’s inerrant and infallible word, because the simple truth is that nobody really knows that. I don’t. All I know is that you’re not slaves and you’re not part of any grand master plan. If there is a God, and I believe there is one, then you are all God’s children. Each and every one of you. You create your own destiny. And you need to accept that responsibility and put aside your egocentricity and stop looking for excuses in tired old myths. You make your own fate every single day. You need to look after each other. You need to look after the land that feeds you and gives you the air you breathe. You need to assume your duty toward all of God’s creation. And you need to accept the credit for the good and take the blame for the bad.”

  He looked across the stunned crowd and smiled. “Enjoy your lives. Look after your loved ones. Help those less fortunate. Make the world a better place for all. And allow me one last humble request. Please don’t allow my words to you here today to be used and abused in the same way.” He cast his gaze across the onlookers again, shut his eyes, and raised his hands. The sign held there for a moment longer—then it dropped down, slowly, until it engulfed the entire platform around Father Jerome in its dazzling light, obscuring him and his protective ring of cops and park patrolmen from view. The massed audience flinched backward, gasping in horror—then the sign split up and divided itself into smaller balls of light that shot outward, over the crowd, spreading themselves evenly all over them. A horizontal field of hundreds of smaller signs, each no more than three feet across, now hovered over the sea of onlookers, almost within reach of their outstretched hands.

  It took a couple of seconds for the first gasp and the first shout to draw the crowd’s attention back to the platform at the top of the steps.

  The cops and the park patrolmen were looking around in puzzlement. The whole crowd looked on, also bewildered.

  Father Jerome was gone.

  Chapter 85

  Across town, at his mansion in River Oaks, Reverend Nelson Darby glared at his massive TV. His land line was ringing.

  Again.

  As was his cell phone.

  The preachers he’d invited onto the stage with him were clearly watching the live telecast too. And they weren’t thrilled either.

  He sucked in a deep, angry breath.

  Grabbed the big phone unit from the limed oak coffee table in his study.

  Ripped its power cord out of the wall.

  And hurled it straight through his TV screen.

  THEY ALL WATCHED the endless replays of the coverage in the executive lounge of the FBO at Hobby Airport with relief. They’d pulled it off, and so far, there was no sign of any vicious reaction, not from anywhere around the world. They all knew they’d opened a huge Pandora’s box, opened up a debate that would surely rage on for months and years ahead. But it was an opportunity none of them could resist.

  Rydell had booked the FBO for their exclusive use. The plane bringing Rebecca from L.A. was due any minute. It would then take them all to their various destinations: D.C. for Gracie and Dalton; Boston for Rydell, Matt, and Danny. Father Jerome would be Rydell’s guest until they figured out how to reintroduce him into public life—if at all.

  In the well-stocked lounge, Gracie studied Father Jerome as he watched himself on the TV screen.

  “No regrets?” she asked him.

  He looked at her with warm, smiling eyes. “None whatsoever. We need this. We need a new level of consciousness to deal with the challenges we’re now facing. And who knows? Maybe it’ll work.”

  “You have more faith in human nature than I do, Father,” Rydell commented.

  “Do I? You created this.” He pointed a bony finger at Rydell. “You created something wonderful. And you did it with the best intentions. It was a shame to let it all go to waste, when it could be used to do so much good. And you had to think it would work, or you wouldn’t have tried it in the first place. Which tells me you also had some level of faith in mankind heeding its call and doing the right thing, no?”

  Rydell smiled, and nodded. “Maybe, Father. And maybe they’ll surprise me and listen and take in one tenth of what you said.” He paused, then told him, “I owe you my life, Father. Anything you want, just name it.”

  “I can think of a few places that could use hospitals and orphanages,” Father Jerome said casually.

  “Just write me up a list,” Rydell told him. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

  Gracie gave Father Jerome a soft pat on the shoulder. She looked over at Dalton, who was listening intently as Danny told him all about the technology behind the sign. She wondered if Dalton would bail on her and join Danny and Rydell in geekland, then spotted Matt over by the coffee machine, walked over and joined him.

  “So I guess your Hollywood blockbuster’s not gonna happen, huh?”


  Matt crinkled his face in mock pain. “Nah. Just as well, really. I wouldn’t know how to deal with all those groupies.” He paused, then added, “Your Woodward and Bernstein moment’s also gone up in smoke.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” she groaned.

  Something in her eyes told him it wasn’t that much of a lighthearted retort. “You okay?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. It just feels weird. Pulling off a big scam like this. It feels a bit, I don’t know, condescending. Like we know better.” She chortled. “I feel like Jack Nicholson on that stand, remember? Barking out, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ ”

  “You’re way hotter,” he ventured.

  It was just the disarming comment she needed. “I sure as hell hope so,” she shot back, then beamed a melting smile at him. “But thanks for noticing. Now would you please do me a favor and find something else for us to talk about?”

  He studied her smile, basked in it for a moment, then said, “You like classic cars?”

  Author’s Note

  Here’s where we are:

  “I turn back to your prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we are the generation that is going to see that come about. I don’t know if you have noted any of those prophecies lately, but, believe me, they describe the times we are going through.”

  —Ronald Reagan, speaking in 1983

  “If people aren’t involved in helping godly men in getting elected, then we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that certainly isn’t what God intended . . . We need to take back this country . . . And if we don’t get involved as Christians, then how could we possibly take it back? If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin.” And: