by Glenn Kleier
“Tommy, have you been sneaking onto that damn Internet again instead of doing your homework?” Tom Senior wanted to know.
The boy scowled at his sister and said nothing.
Michelle Martin switched off the TV and sided with her daughter. “Shelley's right, Tommy. You can't fault the woman for where she comes from. Nobody can help how they came into this world.”
Tommy snorted. “Get real, Mom! That research center wasn't like, you know, the Garden of Eden or something. The woman didn't come from God. She's a prefab, lab job.”
Mrs. Martin frowned, not wanting to accept the logic. “I don't know, there's just something special about her. The way she looks. The way she speaks and moves and holds herself. Her power. She's so—so spellbinding. It's like she's… from another world or something!”
“I don't care if she's from Mars,” Shelley declared. “Jeza's got a heck of a lot more to offer than any other preacher I ever heard!”
“Yeah,” the son snipped. “I'd put her right up there with David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite!”
Mrs. Martin looked back and forth between her arguing offspring, confused.
The father impatiently grabbed up the remote control and switched the TV back on.
47
Ben-Gurion apartment complex, Jerusalem, Israel 2:12 A.M., Monday, January 31, 2000
He stretched out his long tanned legs and looked down the narrow track at the sand pit beyond. A crowd lined the runway. The judges stood at the end with their tape measures, awaiting him. He dug his spikes into the asphalt for a secure grip and mentally anticipated his approach.
Feldman knew this was a dream, but he couldn't get out of it. He was back in college, in the middle of an athletic competition, about to vent his youthful angst in the all-out sprint and explosive release of the long jump event.
The crowd was getting impatient. Behind him, Feldman heard Hunter's voice urging him on. “Hurry, Feldman, hurry!”
Feldman felt uncharacteristically nervous as he started his approach. But his legs, which carried him to college on a four-year track scholarship, were as quick and strong as ever. They launched him into a spectacular leap. Above him, low clouds roiled dark and menacing. Below him, the sand pit had turned into a deep, wide abyss of flames and tormented souls, and he flailed wildly in panic.
Feldman awakened in a sweat. Curled next to him on the inside of the couch, lost down among the pillows, Anke breathed slowly and evenly. Her long, soft hair lay tousled in her face, only her mouth showing, full lips parted slightly. Feldman smiled and lightly kissed those lips.
Carefully extracting himself, he got up to use the bathroom. But as he crept past his phone it began to ring loudly, startling him. He snatched up the receiver in an instant, hopeful of saving the others’ sleep. On the opposite end came a man's voice, serious, deliberate, insistent.
“Jon Feldman?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Please listen to me very carefully. You have only about thirty minutes to clear out of your apartment. A detachment of militia from the Defense Force is on its way to arrest you and your associates.”
“What?”
“Listen to me, you've got to clear out right away and you've got to leave Israel now. Don't use the airports or the trains. Take Highway 1 to Route 30 east to Jordan. That's your quickest way out. Amman is only about a hundred kilometers. With a little luck you should make it in a couple of hours.”
“Who is this? How did you get my number?”
By now the others were stirring and Hunter was up, groping for the light switch.
“I'm a friend and I'm trying to help you. Please listen to me, you haven't much time.”
“What about Nigel Sullivan, and Arnold Bollinger and the rest of my WNN crew? What's happened to them?”
“They're going to be rounded up, too. Don't call them from your apartment. Wait until you're on the road and use your car phone. I can't do any more than I already have. Trust me and go. Good luck!”
“Wait a minute! Who are you, and how do you know all this?”
Feldman heard nothing more but dial tone.
“Come on, guys,” he called to the others, “we're gettin’ the hell out of here, now!”
Gathering only their essentials, the couples bolted from the apartment into Feldman's Rover and tore off through the night. Hunter, sitting next to Feldman in the front, began punching in numbers on the car phone to pass along the alarm.
“Anke”—Feldman looked into her eyes in his rearview mirror—”you don't have to leave with us, you know. You're still in the clear. They don't have anything to connect you with me yet.”
She leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder. “I'm too involved to quit now. I want to be with you to help, if I can. If you'll let me.”
Hunter interrupted. “I got hold of Sullivan, guys. He says for everyone to stay calm and head for the Ambassador Hotel in Amman. He'll meet us there to decide what we'll do next. Probably send us all down to Cairo for a while until this thing blows over.”
He tried to reach Cissy next, but her line was continually busy.
“Something's wrong,” Hunter decided. “Turn around, Jon, we gotta go back for her!”
Feldman hit the brakes and made a sharp U-turn. Ten minutes later, the car was rolling slowly and quietly past Cissy's flat with its lights off.
They were too late. There, parked around the side, was an Israeli military jeep. Feldman slipped the Rover into an alley and pulled over to deliberate.
“Shit,” Hunter exhaled briskly. “They've got her!”
“There was no one in the jeep,” Erin observed. “They must still be up in her apartment.”
“Come on, Feldman,” Hunter urged, “let's take a look.” And he got out of the Rover, fishing a loose tire iron from under the boot in the back.
Feldman was right behind him, pausing only long enough to hand Anke the keys and suggest she move up into the driver's seat. “If we run into trouble, you guys get the hell over to Amman and contact Sullivan. He'll know what to do.”
Outside the apartment building everything was quiet. There were no lights on upstairs.
“This is weird, Jon,” Hunter decided. “It could be a trap.”
“Yeah, if her line's busy, why are her lights out?” Despite the potential threat, there was no talk of turning back. They made their way softly up the stairs that led to a small landing and Cissy's front door.
“I can't see shit,” Hunter whispered, cupping his hands over his eyes, face pressed against the glass of the sidelight. “I'm gonna knock.”
“What?”
“Yeah, hell, let's do it! Here!” Hunter handed Feldman his tire iron and Feldman flattened himself against the stucco beside the doorway.
Hunter rapped lightly at first and waited. There was no answer. A bit harder. Still no answer. Finally, he smashed his fist hard against the wood and he heard a cry of complaint from inside. The porch light flickered on, the door opened and a squinty-eyed Cissy peered out over the chain-lock.
“Cissy!” Hunter whispered.
“Hunter, is that you?” Cissy called out. “What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night? Are you drunk?”
“Cissy,” Hunter whispered again. “Quiet! Listen to me, we're in big trouble. The military's after us. They've got warrants for all of us, we gotta split now! Right away!”
From inside the apartment, they heard the muffled, accented voice of a man. “Hey Cissy, what is it? Everything okay?”
Hunter looked baffled and Feldman stepped forward, lowering his weapon.
“Feldman?” Cissy was still squinting from the light. “Are you in on this, too?”
“Cissy, listen to me,” Feldman whispered insistently. “Hunter's right. We think the IDF is after us for the broadcast. We got to head out of here quick. Just grab a few things and let's go, please!”
Hunter was still mentally scratching his head as a large, shirtless, bristly-chinned young man unlatched the door and s
lipped an arm around Cissy. “What's going on?” he asked again. “What do these clowns want?”
“None of your business, pal,” Hunter shot back. “She works with us and this is confidential. Take a hike.”
The man wasn't backing off. “You take a hike, asshole.” He reared himself up and pulled open the door, giving Hunter a threatening shove to the chest.
“Answer me one question, dude.” Hunter held his ground as Feldman fingered the tire iron. “Are you IDF?”
The man puffed himself up even more and announced proudly, “Sergeant first class, asshole!”
Like a rocket, Hunter fired a short, devastating right to the chin and the soldier toppled backward, landing in an unconscious heap.
Cissy was incredulous and kept looking back and forth between the two combatants, sputtering. Hunter grabbed her by the shoulders, looked her dead in the eyes and hissed forcefully, “I'm not gonna say this again. Tamin's after our asses and we're gettin’ out of here. Stuff some clothes in a bag and let's go!”
Cissy screwed up her face at Feldman, who nodded emphatically, and then she quietly gave in.
Two minutes later, Hunter took her bag in one hand, her arm in another and hurried her through the door. On her way out, she looked back mournfully over her shoulder at her fallen soldier, sighed and hustled off with her two escorts into the night.
48
Ambassador Hotel, Amman, Jordan Monday morning, January 31, 2000
All but one of the WNN crew managed to escape Tamin's grasp. Arnie Bollinger had risked returning to his office to retrieve some important papers, but the IDF had been lying in wait and promptly arrested him.
Feldman, Anke and the remaining WNN staff, meanwhile, had made it safely to Amman, Jordan. En route, Feldman had thought to make a precautionary phone call to Anne Leveque. His warning, however, came too late. To his great anger and dismay, Feldman learned that the widow had already received another visit from Goene. The general had come armed with a search warrant this time, tearing apart her home until he found and confiscated her late husband's incriminating diary.
As tired as he was when he reached Amman, Feldman was unable to sleep. He felt a devastating guilt over the disastrous consequences of his Origins report. But there was to be no relief from the bad news, which continued dribbling in via Israel Radio news briefs.
It was apparent that Tamin was coming under increasing political pressure back in Jerusalem. In a rare live radio broadcast, the defense minister vehemently denied WNN's accusations regarding the nature of the Negev Institute experiments. He also defended his repressive police actions against WNN as necessary to safeguard nameless “state security secrets.”
And then, in his most outlandish and brazen act yet, the defense minister announced an all-out manhunt by the IDF to take the elusive Messiah into “protective custody.”
Feldman was beside himself. As the reporter was well aware, with the Leveque diary now in the IDF's possession, the only remaining evidence left to indict Tamin and Goene was embodied, quite literally, in the person of the little prophetess herself.
Despite WNN's Origins report, the large majority of Jeza's followers remained fiercely loyal to her. Many denounced the report altogether, but most simply discounted its importance, believing that the Millennium Eve phenomenon at David's Well purified any possible spiritual contamination from the laboratory experiments; that the lightning strike atop the temple ruins was the pivotal moment when God anointed Jeza and imbued her with her soul and her mission. To Jeza's faithful supporters, then, this current threat to their Messiah was an intolerable outrage that demanded immediate and forceful action.
But then at last, there came some good news. Perhaps as a token appeasement to the Knesset, the IDF finally released Bollinger later in the day without pressing charges. The exhausted, bedraggled newsman arrived shortly thereafter at the Amman airport to a hero's welcome. The large crowd that greeted him was led by a tired, but cheering, WNN news staff.
The message Bollinger bore from the IDF, however, was not good. WNN was barred from Israel indefinitely. All its properties had been seized under direct orders of Shaul Tamin. Sullivan had no choice but to immediately relocate all operations and personnel to WNN's regional headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, pending further developments in the Holy Land.
49
Mormon Convention Center, Salt Lake City, Utah 8:42 A.M., Saturday, February 5, 2000
It was the second morning of the first convocation when, at last, the meeting got down to its most controversial topic of interest: “An Evaluation of the Authenticity of a New Messianic Presence.” From an elevated lectern at the front of the huge auditorium, a tall, gaunt, bespectacled Mormon elder called to order the assembly of over five hundred religious leaders.
Delivering today's keenly anticipated focal presentation would be a scholarly young Mormon theologian who was introduced as Brother Elijah Petway, a foremost authority on Old and New Testament correlations. Brother Petway was a small, lean, light-complected man with thinning blond hair, compressed face and pale blue eyes that blinked mechanically behind wire-rimmed glasses.
Eagerly taking the podium, Brother Petway beamed at his attentive audience. “My fellow Judeo-Christians, Muslim and Buddhist brothers and sisters,” he began, in a prim and precise voice as thin as his physique. “I thank you all for the opportunity to bring before you the results of my exhaustive studies.”
After a somewhat tiresome explanation of the methodology and thoroughness of his research, Petway launched into the gist of his findings—a litany of both obvious and obscure parallels drawn between scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and the recent occurrences in the Holy Land. The bulk of his correlations consisted of such things as a comparison of the alleged meteorite with the biblical Star of Bethlehem; similarities between the Japanese astronomers and the Wise Men of the Orient; the significance of the December 25 date on which the institute was destroyed, and so forth.
He finished with a controversial pronouncement.
“Obvious to everyone now, in light of the World News Network's revelations,” he maintained, “is the unique and biblically relevant nature of Jeza's nativity. As you'll recall, Jeza was created through a process of conception known as polar body fertilization. This process precluded the introduction of sperm into the reproductive organs of Jeza's maternal donor. Indeed, the procedure circumvented altogether the need for male gametes.
“We have, therefore, a pure, virgin conception and virgin birth, in the truest sense!”
There was a stir of rumblings from large sections of the audience, but Petway's enthusiasm was unabated. He took a large, self-satisfied breath. “I feel there is an inevitable conclusion this assembly must draw from the overwhelming body of direct and indirect evidence just presented. I submit to you that it is irrelevant whether Jeza be God-made through an immaculate conception, or man-made through artificial fertilization. God works in strange ways. If it be His decision to use man's folly to achieve His own objectives, who are we to question?
“I also submit to you that it is irrelevant whether the New Messiah be male or female. The apparent anomaly of Jeza's sex should not diminish her message. We must search for the higher meaning in why God has chosen a female to represent Him this time.
“And finally, I submit to you that, even if you agree with but a portion of the amazing correlations I've just identified, we must all of us now make the evaluation that this special presence among us, this saintly, godly creature known as Jeza, can be none other than the only begotten Daughter of God: Jeza Christ!”
This resulted in diverse reactions from the assembly, ranging from caustic outrage to merely appreciative applause, to tumultuous, standing ovations and enthusiastic Alleluias. Strong support emanated not only from the millenarian sections, but also from the Jewish contingent, which was made up of several excited rabbis, including the respected head of the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Lubavitcher movement, Rabbi Mordachai Hirschberg, who held a hand over
his fluttering heart.
Petway vacated the podium convinced of the persuasiveness of his arguments.
Certainly, for one quiet, inconspicuous gentleman sitting alone at a more distant table, Brother Petway had scored far more hits than misses. Carefully capturing every word on tape recorder, making precise entries in his notepad and feeling completely vindicated was the revitalized Cardinal Alphonse Litti.
50
WNN regional headquarters, Cairo, Egypt 10:03 A.M. Sunday, February 6, 2000
Other than Arnie Bollinger's safe deliverance from the hands of Shaul Tamin, there were few positive developments to help alleviate Feldman's growing frustrations with his exile. Over the last several days, removed from all the action in Israel, he and his associates had little to do but hang around Cairo headquarters, hoping for WNN to get their visas restored.
Trying to keep abreast of current events this morning, Feldman and Anke sat in an empty WNN editing bay scanning a dozen TV monitors on the wall in front of them. Each set was tuned to a different channel, the volumes muted on all but the one that happened to last catch their interest.
Abruptly, Anke gestured toward a particular screen. Feldman obligingly jumped to a program where an earnest-looking man was reporting on the growing world prominence of two opposing millenarian sects.
“The startling arrival of the female mystic Jeza has had a polarizing effect on the hundreds of millenarian creeds around the world,” the announcer explained. “In light of recent events, most millenarian sects have split into two distinct camps of pro-Jeza and anti-Jeza factions.
“Among millenarians within the anti-Jeza bloc, a majority have been gathering under the banner of a rather vocal organization known as the Guardians of God. In the pro-Jeza coalition, supporters have been steadily migrating toward an evangelical sect calling themselves the Messianic Guardians of God. Although these two factions represent opposite extremes of the millenarian movement, surprisingly both sects were once one and the same.”