Issa glanced at his teacher, who continued to gaze at the ground. Issa suspected that his teacher agreed with him. “You have dedicated your life to worship, Swami. But have you truly touched the eternal: do you live with it every day? If Brahman is the center of peace, why are you filled with anger? I have seen these untouchables stand waist-deep in the river early in the morning, when the town is still, and I have seen the expression of joy on their faces. I think they are the ones touching Brahman, Swami.”
Rather than respond, the swami turned and marched to the two guards, who straightened to attention. Issa’s pulse increased when he saw the one closest to him rest a hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Why do you feel the need to bring soldiers with you, Swami?” Issa asked quickly. He wiped the perspiration from his hands on his cloak. “Have I done anything to suggest violence? Would you have me arrested for bringing a moment of peace and good news to these people’s difficult lives?”
When the swami turned to respond, his mouth opened, but no sound came out. He looked not at Issa but past him. Puzzled, Issa turned his head. His breath caught in his throat when he saw that all fifteen of his students had come out from the water and up from the steps. The untouchables now formed a protective semicircle behind him.
Issa released his breath and turned to the priests. He fought the urge to glance to his teacher for direction and instead fixed his eyes on the swami, who now seemed unsure what to do. Issa felt the rising sun on the back of his neck; he hoped that the swami didn’t see the sweat that had started to trickle down his temples.
The swami inclined his head toward the nearest guard and whispered something Issa couldn’t hear. The guard, whose hand still rested on the hilt of his sword, ran his fingers down the side of the leather scabbard hanging by his leg. After the swami finished speaking to him, the guard looked at Issa and smiled, revealing stained and crooked teeth. Not sure how else to react, Issa returned the smile.
Opening his arms in a welcoming gesture, the swami spoke to the untouchables. “I am happy to see each of you so loyal to your teacher. Although Issa is one of our most gifted students, I am sure you understand why he can no longer instruct you, since he is not a priest himself.” The swami then directed his ingratiating tone toward Issa. “What is this talk of arresting you here? I only wanted to make sure that you understand our culture and how you are expected to behave, if you are to study with us. We would not want a misunderstanding to result in any unpleasant situation, would we?”
Seeing that he was being offered a temporary reprieve, Issa bowed his head. “No, we would not want an unpleasant situation, Swami. I understand.”
“Good, then.” The swami spun on his sandals and started down the dusty road, his white robes trailing behind him.
The guard with the hungry smile hesitated a moment, watching Issa, before he turned and followed the swami. Only with their backs to him did Issa relax and allow himself to wipe his brow. As the priests walked away, his teacher turned his head and caught Issa’s eye for the first time. His grave expression spoke more than any words. He inclined his head toward the mountains on the far side of the river. Issa understood. First checking that the other priests were not watching, Issa pressed his palms together in front of his chest and bowed deeply.
It was time to leave this village and to continue his adventure. As much as he loved his students, Issa wasn’t ready to become a martyr for them.
CHAPTER 33
NEW HOPE CHURCH BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
“I’VE BEEN ON THE PHONE for forty-five minutes with the bankers,” Brady bellowed. “What’s wrong with our loans?”
“The bankers?” Jennings repeated.
“Yes, the bankers. They called for you, but you’ve been tied up on the phone all afternoon, so they asked for me. I felt ambushed. They’re suspending the next drawdown on our loan pending an audit of our financials and our construction process. Can you tell me what the hell is going on here?”
Jennings massaged his temples with his fingertips. “Brian, you know we’ve been having budgetary issues. Ever since we fired Carla, our cash management has suffered.”
“But I’ve raised millions through donations, and now the book is taking off. The cash should be rolling in. How could we have a money problem?” Brady lowered himself into the upholstered chair opposite Jennings’s desk. He thought he detected Jennings suppressing a sigh.
“As you know, we began construction before we raised all the equity needed for the project. The bank permitted us to begin borrowing under the loan, but our continued ability to do so has been dependent on raising more money. The economy has hurt presales of the homes. Now the book is exceeding our expectations, but we won’t see the next royalty check for another four months.”
“Well, isn’t the fact that we’re going to have the money good enough?” He knocked on his forehead. “We’re raising the money; it’s just a timing issue.”
“I suspect that their concerns stem not just from the cash flow but also from our latest budget increases.”
“Oh yes, they started questioning me about that.” Brady threw his hands up in the air. “They wanted to go item by item through the latest expenditures: seventy thousand last week to the grading contractor, forty to the architect, and twenty in cash a few days ago for I don’t know what. I looked like a fool, William. Handling these details is your job, not mine!”
Jennings stiffened at the mention of the numbers. Brady noticed that his already pale complexion turned even whiter. He liked making Jennings uncomfortable, and he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t start taking a greater interest in the financials with so much at stake.
“I’ll call and explain right away,” Jennings said, regaining his composure. “The grading expense is directly in our budget. But Brian, we’ve exceeded the design fees by a factor of three. You can’t keep making changes.” He paused and added, “As for the cash, you know how some of these good-old-boy subcontractors are: they don’t even have bank accounts to deposit checks into.”
Brady leaned back in the chair, propping his feet up on Jennings’s desk. “No one ever said this project would be easy, but we cannot give up faith just when things get difficult. When the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years, what were God’s instructions? I’ll tell you what: stay faithful, and the Lord will deliver you to the Holy Land. That’s just what we must do now.”
Jennings seemed to relax again. “I think our deliverance may be coming sooner than we expected.” Then a broad grin spread across his face. Brady sat up straight as his number two detailed the conversation he’d just had with Jimmy Jeffries.
“It’s really going to happen,” Brady said, more to himself than to Jennings. “I’m going to be next head of the NAE. I’ll be the public face of millions of evangelicals across the nation.”
“These next few weeks are critical. We can’t afford to have anything hurt your image. Once Jeffries announces his retirement and endorses you, we should be home free until the election.”
“Well, whatever you do”—Brady pointed a finger across the desk at Jennings—“just make me look good. God help us if those heretical texts turn up anywhere. I Googled myself this morning, and the Evangelical blogs are still praising my handling of that Matthews kid at the debate.”
“I don’t think the texts will ever surface.”
Brady hauled himself out of the chair and bent over Jennings’s desk. “I need more than what you think, William. I need certainty on this. For the good of my reputation, for your job, for the faith of our community, those texts can never turn up.”
CHAPTER 34
VARANASI, INDIA
GRANT RECALLED A SCENE from a movie he’d first seen when he was twelve. His father had forbidden most movies in their home, especially anything with an R rating, but that night he’d slept over at a friend’s house. The movie, A Clockwork Orange, gave him nightmares for weeks. In one particularly vivid scene, a character being brainwashed was tied to a chair. His
eyes were taped open while he was forced to watch disturbing video images flashed onto a screen.
For the past day, Grant couldn’t turn off the images flashing on the screen behind his eyes: the moonlit plaza of the Taj Mahal; Razi’s gruesome death; Jigme’s shooting; Grant himself lying impotently on the ground.
Staring out the taxi’s filthy window, Kristin sat in silence beside him. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it silently. They’d arrived in Varanasi an hour earlier after a short Indian Airlines flight from Agra. Because Kristin had spent two weeks living and researching this ancient Hindu town on the banks of the Ganges River, they would use it as their home base for their trip to nearby Sarnath, just as Kinley had anticipated.
“It sickens me,” she said quietly, “to think how easily he could’ve died. If the shot had been a few more inches ...”
“I don’t think killing Jigme was the goal of that lunatic. Jigme was only a foot away; he let Jigme live.”
The doctor at the hospital in Agra explained that although Jigme’s wound was serious, the bullet had passed straight through his shoulder. The distraction had worked. Whoever the shooter was, he’d disappeared down the river in the confusion that followed.
When they left Jigme at the airport earlier that morning for his return to Bhutan and their trip to Varanasi, the young monk was in better spirits than either Grant or Kristin. With his arm in a sling, he joked, he would be excused from dormitory cleanup for the next few weeks. He added that his injured shoulder would also keep him out of trouble. During his recovery, he couldn’t sneak away, as he often did during a free period, to practice his secret hobby. Monks, he explained, were forbidden from participating in the national sport of Bhutan—archery.
But Grant was too distracted by the many unanswered questions to appreciate Jigme’s attempt to add levity to the situation. Now in the taxi, he caught himself having asked these questions so many times that he attempted to use one of Kinley’s techniques. He turned his attention to his breath: it was shallower than it should be. He exhaled fully, and on the following inhalation, he watched the air move from the tip of his nostril until it filled his lungs completely.
Continuing to breathe, he followed Kristin’s gaze out the window. Although Varanasi was smaller than Agra, the town teemed with the same chaos of vehicles, people, and animals vying for room on the narrow streets. When the taxi slowed to turn at the busy intersection of Aurangabad and Durgakund roads, Grant noted how daily life was lived on the town’s streets: women in kaleidoscopic saris perused tables on the sidewalk where vendors sold everything from fresh fruit to blue jeans and cell phones; elderly men chatted while getting haircuts and shaves from roadside barbers who set up shop with nothing more than a chair, scissors, razor, and bucket of water. He rolled down the dusty window and inhaled a perfume of exotic fragrances.
Kristin touched his arm. “You know, I can’t stop thinking about Razi ...” Her voice caught in her throat.
“I know.” He turned to her. He’d already gone over at least a hundred times the mental checklist of all the things he could have done differently to save Razi’s life and prevent Jigme’s shooting. “But what we need to do now is to focus on the future. We need a new road map.” He unzipped the daypack at his feet and removed a small spiral notebook. “I’ve jotted down some notes, and—”
She snatched the notebook from his hand and tossed it on the vinyl seat between them. “Must everything boil down to a list or a flowchart? Razi is dead! Jigme almost died!”
He took the notebook from the seat, replaced it in his pack, and grasped her hand. “I know. I’m just not sure how else to do this.”
She turned to face the window again, her voice softening. “Grant, I’m scared. Who was that man?”
Grant knew that the little information they’d been able to tell the authorities wouldn’t help catch the guy. Kristin recognized him as the one who’d watched her in front of the Taj, and Grant knew he was the same man who had struck him as a shady character at the debate. Not that the police even gave a damn, he thought. He sensed the authorities had wanted to get them out of the police station as quickly as possible; they would cover up the incident to protect tourism to the country’s most famous site. Although shots were exchanged, the events happened at night and the only death was Razi, a local Muslim student. Nothing had appeared in the press about the incident, and Grant doubted it ever would. Then he recalled the police in Atlanta who had refused to believe his theory on the missing photographs. As he turned the memory over in his mind, he couldn’t help but think that the two events had to be related. He’d seen that man in Atlanta, and now he’d followed him halfway around the world in an attempt to—what? Get his hands on the manuscripts? Stop their meeting with Kinley? Grant had called Billingsly after they’d left the police station, and his mentor had shared his concern that he was involved in something more dangerous than they’d expected. Grant, however, refused the professor’s advice to return home.
“How did he find us in Agra?” she asked, not for the first time over the past two days.
“We don’t even know he’s after the texts.”
“But what else could he possibly be after? And who is he?”
The second question troubled Grant the most. The image of the assassin’s smug expression burned into his mind. Was the shooter a lone fanatic? Grant doubted it. He was more likely part of a larger group threatened by the release of the Issa texts.
Kristin dropped her head. “Is it even worth it?”
“We can’t let this guy, whoever he is, prevent us from moving forward; that’s probably exactly what he wants.” He sounded more confident than he felt.
Kristin motioned out the window. “Hey, we’re here.”
Grant glanced at his watch. Almost five. They would travel to Sarnath first thing in the morning. He’d wanted to rush there immediately, but she explained that the temple would be closed by the time they arrived. Instead she’d insisted that they stop first at Banaras Hindu University to visit a friend, a professor of Hindu studies who had helped provide her with background research for her article on the Hindus’ religious pilgrimage to the Ganges River.
The taxi turned underneath a salmon-colored stone gate. Entering the campus reminded Grant of stepping onto the grounds of the Taj Mahal and finding peace from the bustling city of Agra. Leaving the chaotic streets of Varanasi behind them, they drove down a wide, tree-lined avenue. Conspicuously absent from the university grounds were the city’s stray cows, dogs, and pigs. Only a few students and professors on bicycles pedaled calmly down the road. Grant thought that Banaras University could have been any college in the States. To their right, classroom buildings were set back from the main road by expansive lawns, where students sat, studying textbooks under the shade of mature hardwood trees. To their left, they passed the athletic fields where other students played soccer and cricket.
“It’s not quite what I expected,” Grant said.
“Something smaller, more Third World?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“BHU is one of the largest universities in India, over twenty thousand students. See that building?” Kristin pointed to a classically designed red brick building. “That’s the law school. Over there”—she pointed to a peach-colored plaster building with brick accents on the cornices and along the main entrance—“that’s the nursing school. The university is divided by academic fields; each has its own building. Religious studies is up ahead.”
Five minutes later, they ascended a worn marble staircase to the second floor of one of the brick and plaster buildings. Proceeding down the hall past several classrooms, they arrived at a wooden door. A nameplate on the wall read “Professor Deepraj Bhatt.”
In response to Kristin’s brisk knock, a scratchy voice on the other side called out, “Hahn? Yes?”
Kristin opened the door into an office that could have belonged to Grant’s own mentor. Books and periodicals were piled on the desk and overflowing from the
bookcase behind it. A small desk lamp was the only other illumination in the room aside from the single window’s natural light. A blast of cool air from the AC unit mounted underneath the window greeted them as they entered from the humid hallway. A small Indian man with silvery streaks running through his jet black hair peered over a stack of documents from behind the desk. His eyes opened wide, and he leapt from his chair.
“Namaste, Kristin! So happy to see you again.” The professor, who was about an inch shorter than her, embraced her like a favorite relative he hadn’t seen in years.
“Professor, this is Grant Matthews.”
“Ah yes, Grant, I have heard good things about you.” He extended his hand to Grant.
“Likewise, Professor Bhatt,” Grant replied.
“Please, call me Deepraj.” The professor cleared off a pile of journals from the two mismatched wooden chairs in front of his desk. He then wheeled his own chair from behind his desk so that all three were facing each other and motioned for them to sit.
Grant took a seat, but Kristin opted to hop onto the edge of the desk, swinging her legs like a school kid. Grant couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of her legs underneath the lime green cotton skirt. He was reminded of their passionate night in his apartment that ended so abysmally. Since then, she’d been friendly, even flirty at times, but she kept her distance.
“So, Grant, I understand this isn’t your first trip to my country?”
“On my first trip, I was on the coast, in Kerala studying the spread of Christianity eastward. My research focused on the Apostle Thomas’s travels here in AD fifty-two. With my second and now third trips, I’m chasing the possibility that Christianity may have spread from East to West with Jesus’ travels. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Ah, but my friend, whichever way you travel, east or west, you will always end back where you started, if you travel long enough.”
“Professor—I mean, Deepraj,” Grant said, “you sound like a friend of mine, a monk in Bhutan who started me on this journey.”
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