Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  “So why do the story? That’s what I want you to tell me. Why even attempt something so futile and potentially self-destructive?”

  John could see Slater thought he was prevailing in this bout of ideas and wills, and yet . . . there was that little four-footer again, saying the same words but in stark terror, as if begging for his life.

  John slowly rose from his chair. The power—the conviction—of his words was too much for him to remain sitting. “Mr. Governor, the image you have built has drawn the eyes of the people, and many of them believe the image and praise it. But the image will topple, and then, Mr. Governor, will a man remain in its place?”

  Slater shouted at him, his face reddening in anger.

  “Just answer my question, Barrett! Give me one good reason why you’re trying to destroy yourself!”

  John could see it even as he said it. “All your life you’ve devoted yourself to the building of an image, and now . . . full of fear, you’re tumbling around inside it, getting smaller and smaller . . . You’re lost in there, but you’re afraid to come out, afraid of the Truth. That’s why you’re afraid of this story.”

  Devin rushed forward again. “Mr. Governor, you don’t have to put up with this nut!”

  John could see the little four-foot man scream back at his special assistant, “Leave me alone! I can handle this!” The little man looked at John, his eyes burning with anger—and fear. “I can handle you—anytime, anywhere! You’re nothing, you hear me? Nothing!” He was like a child screaming in defiance at his parents.

  John spoke it even as he came to know it. “You will win the election, Mr. Governor.”

  That at least stopped the escalation of the governor’s anger. He backed off a little, then even forced a smile.

  “So you admit that.”

  “But win . . . and serve . . . as what? What will you be? What will the people elect?” John sat back down, pondering out loud. “The Adam Bryant School has survived their involvement in the death of Hillary Slater, but . . . as what? Are they better people now? Have they become more human, more virtuous for having deceived others? The doctor who falsified the death certificate has survived, and his practice remains, but . . . as what? What has he gained that is worth surviving for? Not more integrity. Not more dignity. Not more honor.

  “And what about the women? Now they have the right to choose, and yet . . . how will they find the sacredness of their own lives if life itself is no longer sacred?” John looked directly at the governor. “But even as all these have survived as less than what they were before . . . we—you, the Brewers, all of us—have survived, but none of us are richer. Just consider what we’ve lost—our character, our integrity, our honor, our sacredness, and now . . . our children.”

  The governor took a deep breath, straightened his spine, and responded, “But I will win the election, Mr. Barrett, no matter what you try to do! You can put that on your little videotape and report it!”

  “You’ll win the election,” John repeated, “but by a smaller margin than you’re projecting now.” Then he added firmly, “And you’ll be unable to complete your term of office.”

  The governor looked laughingly at Mr. Devin, who broke into a mocking smile of his own.

  Slater asked with a sneer, “What’s this—a doomsday message from the junior prophet?”

  John continued quietly but firmly, his eyes locked on the governor. “The image will collapse, and the man inside will wither from shame.”

  Before the governor could dismiss the words, John jumped in with some more. “And here’s how you’ll know that the Lord has given you this message: Before you go home tonight, you’ll spill coffee on yourself.”

  The governor rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair incredulously. Mr. Devin broke out in rude, mocking laughter. Slater’s voice was cracking up with laughter as he asked, “That’s it? No bolts of lightning? No earthquakes?”

  John received more. Even he was amazed. “There’s more. When you go home tonight, you’ll receive a new pair of running shoes. Uh . . . navy-blue running shoes.”

  Now Mr. Devin approached the governor’s desk, amused and not wanting to miss a thing. “Mr. Governor, we should have sold tickets. This is great.”

  “There’s more,” said John, and now even Mel the cameraman was coming closer, all ears. “On Wednesday you’ll discover that your chief of staff has been lying to you.”

  Mr. Devin didn’t think that was funny at all. “Are you talking about me, Barrett? I’d be careful if I were you.”

  John looked Devin squarely in the eye and told him, “You never destroyed that tape cassette of Shannon DuPliese’s 911 call. Instead you kept it in your desk, hoping to use it to further your own power. But Ed Lake stole it from your desk drawer, hoping to use it himself, and after you fired him, he gave it to my father . . .” John looked at the governor. “. . . and that’s how this whole news story began.”

  Devin cursed loudly, denying the charge, then grabbed John by the arm. “That’s it, buddy, you’re out of here!”

  “Hold it, Martin!” ordered the governor.

  Devin stopped and put on a sudden grin. “Mr. Governor, this guy’s a loony! He isn’t making a bit of sense! I’d just as soon be rid of him.”

  Hiram Slater’s countenance was filled with rage and loathing. He glared at the prophet and said, “What else?”

  Devin’s big hand was locked around John’s arm, ready to snatch him out of his chair, but John spoke anyway. “On Wednesday you’ll also learn that your other daughter, Hayley, is pregnant.” John saw the little four-footer leap onto the desk, jumping and screaming like a wild dwarf, his eyes wild with fear, “Out! Out! Get away from me!”

  Hiram Slater was on his feet, yelling, “Of all the indecency! of all the arrogance!”

  Devin’s grip tightened on John’s arm. Devin was just waiting for a word from the governor.

  “First your father,” the governor said seethingly, his face red with fury, his body trembling, “and now you!” He looked at Devin. “Get this kook out of here!”

  John was lifted out of the chair. Devin’s huge hand was crushing his arm as the chief of staff dragged him toward the door.

  Devin pushed the door open and practically carried John around Miss Rhodes’s desk, finally releasing him just inside the huge, carved oak doors.

  John straightened his clothing and looked back, wondering what had become of Mel.

  The door to the governor’s office burst open once again, and out came Mel like a man escaping a burning building. “And you can be sure Loren Harris will hear about this!” came the governor’s final words over Mel’s shoulder. Mel dragged all the equipment through the door as quickly as he could, hoping Mr. Devin would see he didn’t need any assistance. John dashed over to help him, and Mel could only puff, “Boy, you sure got us in deep soup this time!”

  Devin swung the big door open and held it there. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  John let his eyes meet Devin’s just one more time before they went into the hall and began to work their way back out of the King’s lofty chambers.

  CHAPTER 32

  IN FRONT OF a bank of monitors with still pictures pasted over their screens, Ali Downs was ready for the camera, looking stunning as usual. Walt Bruechner, the late-night news anchor with the big teeth and thinning hair, looked pretty good, all made up and suited up and ready to sell the news. Marvin the photographer was back again, chubby, bearded, and fretting, all his strobes, umbrella reflectors, and floodlights in place, and just like before, he was peering through the viewfinder of his big camera on a tripod and trying to elicit the right response from his subjects.

  “All right, all right, gimme news, gimme action, gimme that old intensity,” he chattered.

  Ali and Walt had some dummy scripts and looked at them. “Ali,” Marvin said, waving his hand at them, “you’re checking a story with Walt, checking for accuracy, okay?”

  Ali held her script so Walt could see it. “John—I
mean, Walt—what do you think of this? I don’t trust the source. And look at that spelling!” Flash.

  “Hmmm,” said Walt, “just how do you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?” Then he cracked up. He loved his jokes. Flash.

  “Hey, come on, come on, let’s get serious!” said Marvin.

  Walt read from the script, “The annual Ostrich Egg Toss was held in Veteran’s Park yesterday, and as always there was no winner . . .”

  “Yeah, that’s good, that’s good.” Marvin kept peering down through the viewfinder. All they could see was the top of his head. “Now look at me. Make me trust you.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you,” said Ali in mock seriousness. Flash.

  They smiled. Flash.

  They looked at the script again. Flash.

  They posed with a TV camera. Flash.

  Walt in shirtsleeves. Flash.

  Ali close-up, jotting notes. Flash. Flash.

  “Wet your lips and smile.” Flash. “Lean forward, Walt. Ali, move in.” Flash. “Okay, turn this way a little. Closer together.” Flash. Flash. Flash.

  Then the video shoot. Mounted cameras, handheld cameras, high angles, floor angles, close-ups, traveling shots. News in the making. Faces full of business, like the world’s going to end if we don’t get this story out, working, editing, rushing about, handheld shots racing through the newsroom, quick conversations, zoom-in shots of Walt, then a blurry pan, then Ali brought into focus and zoomed in some more. Intensity, intensity. Walt with sleeves rolled up, banging away at the computer, not just taking but tearing news copy from the printer, nodding in agreement with no one in particular. Ali busy at work, then consulting with a reporter (over-the-shoulder shot), then a wry, you’re-not-fooling-me smile at someone off-camera.

  From his office door Ben Oliver caught glimpses of the process, the same old process, but made no comment. Toward the end, while Walt and Ali strode through the newsroom toward nothing in particular while a camera dollied alongside them to catch their determined expressions and purposeful gait, he finally allowed himself one bitter expletive and went inside his office, closing the door behind him.

  SOMETHING WAS UP. The whole news staff knew it. News—whether it was from reliable sources or not—rippled across the newsroom from cubicle to cubicle, through the computer system and over the phones.

  “Leslie Albright’s been canned,” came one report.

  “John is definitely history,” came another.

  “Be careful,” came a warning. “Loren Harris is on the warpath, and you might be next.”

  “Walt Bruechner? Give me a break!”

  Tina Lewis didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but she did let little drops of poison slip through to the right people from time to time. From these bits and pieces the story began to develop.

  “They tried to push through an anti-abortion story.”

  “They still are, and Loren Harris is taking the coward’s way out.”

  “So what’s Ben Oliver doing about it?”

  “The governor’s putting on the heat. We could get burned on this one.”

  “Somebody had an abortion? Who?” “Who cares?”

  Then Tina had a meeting with Rush Torrance, the Five O’clock producer, and some of the overheard conversation regarded a story John Barrett would be doing alone that evening, something about the governor’s daughter and how she died, and how the governor did nothing about it when he should have, and how another girl died in the same clinic due to the governor’s negligence or indifference.

  Now the polarizing started.

  “I gotta hear more about this.” “You don’t need to. It’s nobody’s business, and especially not ours.”

  “You call this news? It’s gossip, it’s sensationalism.”

  “Eh, pure politics, that’s what it is.”

  “Man, digging up something this cheap, Barrett and Albright deserve to be canned!” “But what if it’s true?” “So what if it is? That doesn’t make it news.”

  “The public doesn’t need to know any of this stuff.”

  “It’s a political smear tactic, can’t you see that? I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot cattle prod!” “It happened, didn’t it?” “We don’t know that.” “Do we even want to know?”

  “Don’t you have work to do?”

  “The governor’s kid died from an abortion? Oh man. Quick, where do I hide?”

  “Are you sure Barrett’s doing the story? I don’t want my name on it!”

  VIDEO: REPLAYED EXCERPTS from the governor’s address to the Women’s Citizen League’s fund-raising luncheon.

  As stirring music rises in the background, Hiram Slater once again delivers those stirring words: “. . . a woman’s inalienable, inviolable right to choose. I have not compromised on that ideal . . .” Lap dissolve to another angle: “. . . As an army marches to victory, every soldier in the ranks knows he or she may not come back from the battle, that he—or she—may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice in order that those who come after can walk on ground that was gained through that sacrifice . . .”

  Dissolve to a shot of Slater sitting with Hillary, his arm around her. The camera slowly zooms in on their smiling faces.

  “As a family, we have stood for the sanctity of privacy for all our children . . . I believe Hillary did what was right for her, at that time, at that place in her life, and I will stand by her proudly, even in her death. I want you to do the same.”

  Back to Governor Hiram Slater, his words and the music reaching a crescendo. “Your governor cares about women and their sacred right, and it is his desire to protect it, strengthen it, and establish it without fear or misgivings, so help me God!”

  Applause, applause, applause.

  Freeze frame. The picture of Slater fades to a soft-hued portrait on parchment as the solemn words appear: “Governor Hiram Slater. His Pain . . . Your Gain.”

  Small title across bottom of screen: “Paid for by the Committee to Reelect Governor Slater, Wilma Benthoff, Chairperson.”

  JOHN AND MEL arrived back at the station a little before 10 o’clock and immediately felt a certain uneasiness in the newsroom, as if they’d just returned from covering a nuclear disaster and might be contaminated.

  “How’d it go?” George Hayami asked from behind the assignment desk when they reported in.

  Mel just cussed a blue streak and then reported, “You should’ve seen it. The gov about scratched John’s eyes out.”

  George flashed a questioning glance at John.

  John just shrugged as he made himself a cup of coffee. “I would say he was unavailable for comment.”

  “So did you get anything on-camera?”

  Mel shook his head. “We didn’t even get that far before he threw us out of there.”

  By now Erica Johnson was standing there, having a professional as well as personal interest. As managing editor she was responsible for story assignments and content and needed a report on how it went and what would be available for the evening newscasts. As a person, well, she—and almost the whole newsroom—was just plain curious.

  “So what’ve we got for tonight?” she asked.

  Mel took that as a cue to detach himself. “I’m getting another assignment. Excuse me.”

  John answered, “Well, it’ll be what we discussed with Ben, a two-minute package. I’ll voice the whole thing and work in sound bites.”

  “But no reacts from the governor, I take it?”

  What else could John say? “I guess I’ll just have to say he was unavailable for comment.”

  “So now you don’t have reacts from the governor and you don’t have anything from the Women’s Medical Center either.”

  “Hey, I called them this morning, and their reaction was pretty much the same as the governor’s. They couldn’t throw me out, but they did hang up.”

  “The governor threw you out?”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wel
l . . . before we could do the interview he wanted to talk to me about my motivations for doing the story, and so we talked about my motivations, and then we grappled over which would prevail—my obsession with Truth or his obsession with image and power, and . . . well, the upshot of it was that he had no interest in participating in the kind of moralizing, muckraking story I was pursuing. It was his office, so he asserted his sovereignty and threw me out.”

  “Hoo boy . . .”

  “I suppose Loren Harris has heard about it?”

  Erica shook her head. “Loren Harris isn’t here today. He’s gone far away, and he can’t be contacted.”

  Well, that was interesting.

  Erica continued, “Which means the last avenue of appeal is closed until this is over.” She sighed in resignation. “So go ahead. Put it together. I’ve got you slotted for the Five O’clock and the Seven O’clock.” She walked away with nothing more to say, and John went to his desk to begin.

  The main body of the story would be prerecorded ahead of time, with narrative and video; on the live newscast he would introduce the story with a short lead-in, then the cassette would roll, and then he would come back to do a short closing tag. According to Ben, everything—the lead-in, the prerecorded package, and the tag—had to fit within two minutes.

  He clicked on the computer console and stared at the blank screen. Two minutes. Two minutes. How could he say it all in two minutes?

  He tapped out a short list of the main points:

  —Hillary Slater dead from abortion.—already stated by gov.

  —Women’s Medical Center responsible.—they refused to comment.

  —gov covers it up.—do we say for political reasons?

  —gov buys silence from Shannon DuPliese (?)

  —second girl dies in same clinic. Annie Brewer.

  —no comment as yet from Governor Slater.

  He felt a doubt. The question arose in his mind: So what?

  Maybe the governor was right. Who really cares? Maybe Tina was right. We’ve already covered this—why drag it all out again?