“Speaking of which.” Valdez turned around in the seat and fixed Reuben with a penetrating stare. “You can’t repeat anything you’ve overheard here to your friends. This is a federal investigation. We clear, kid?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Reuben nodded vigorously.
“If you run your mouth, she’ll beat your ass like a pinata like she did your uncle,” Mike said.
Valdez flipped Mike the bird, and he laughed.
“I need to know, Thorne,” she said. “Are you going to help me out? Yes, or no?”
“I’ll help you,” Anthony said. “Under one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You’ve got to help me, too.”
73
Lisa answered the door. When she saw Valdez standing between Anthony and Mike, she screamed.
“It’s cool, sweetheart,” Anthony said. “Valdez is with the FBI. She’s been working undercover at the church.”
“Oh.” Lisa put her hand against her chest as if to calm her heart. “You’re serious?”
“We’ll get you up to speed,” Valdez said.
They filed inside. A tearful Danielle let out a squeal of joy at their entrance, pulled Reuben into her arms, kissed him, and asked him over and over again if he were okay. True to his age, Reuben acted as if he were embarrassed by his mother’s lavish attention.
Anthony drew Mike aside from the others.
“What’s up?” Mike asked.
“I need to talk to Lisa, alone,” he said. “Think you can keep Valdez occupied for a few minutes?”
“You kiddin me?” Mike’s eyes danced. “I’ve met my future wife, AT, for real.”
“All right now.” Anthony laughed. “Slow down, tiger.”
“What are you two knuckleheads jawing about?” Valdez asked, charging between them. Lisa trailed behind her, looking thoroughly perplexed.
“The old married folks need some alone time,” Mike said. He took Valdez by the arm and guided her away. “Meanwhile, senorita, let’s talk about some of your favorite action movies . . .”
Anthony asked Lisa to grab the Bible, and then he led her into his father’s study and shut the door. The air was heavy with dust, so he opened a window. Afternoon sunlight and a cool wind poured into the room.
Lisa waited beside the desk, arms crossed over her bosom. “What’s going on, Tony? I’ve got so many questions I feel as if my brain’s about to blow a few blood vessels.”
Quickly, he summarized what had happened.
“That crazy guy, Cutty, or whatever he’s called—he got away?” she asked. “That makes me very nervous.”
“We shot out a couple of tires on his truck, so he shouldn’t be able to follow us,” he said. “Honestly, I think he’ll be more concerned with telling his bosses about Valdez’s betrayal.”
“But you don’t completely trust her, either.”
“She’s a cop, so no, I don’t trust her. If we tell her what we’ve learned, she’ll call the Bureau, and they’ll bring in back-up and push us out of the picture.”
“Is that so bad? We all want the same thing. We want to bring down Bishop Prince.”
He shook his head firmly. “I’m doing this my way. I think that’s why Bob entrusted his info to me. He didn’t want to follow normal legal channels.”
“Because the church might raise roadblocks.”
“They have connections everywhere, Lisa. We’ve seen proof of that. Bob couldn’t risk going to the cops. He needed someone like me.”
“Someone with a personal stake in getting justice.” She chewed her bottom lip. “What next, then?”
“We don’t tell Valdez everything. But we get her to take us to the church.”
“The Kingdom Campus?” Her eyes got huge. “Why? That’s like going into the lion’s den.”
“Based on the scriptures we’ve read, I think that’s where we have to go. I’m certain of it, actually. Look here.”
He opened the Bible and found the two yellow-marked passages that supported his theory. He read them to her, and explained his interpretation.
“The idea’s been bouncing around in my head like a pinball ever since I read those verses this morning,” he said. “Bob hid his evidence in a place where virtually no one would ever expect to find it.”
“But what you’re proposing is incredibly risky, Tony. If you’re wrong—”
“I’m not wrong.”
She held his eyes for a long, quiet moment. “How can you be so sure?”
He turned away from her and swept his gaze across the photos on the desk, the sports memorabilia and the journalism award plaques on the shelves. The relics of his father’s life. Looking at the items, as it usually did, caused his breath to catch in his chest.
But his father’s legacy wasn’t defined by dust-filmed objects sitting on shelves and desks in a forgotten room.
“One thing my dad taught me that I’ll always remember is that I should trust my instincts,” he said. “To believe in myself and do what I think is right, no matter who doubts me or says I can’t do it. That’s why I’m so sure.”
She gave him a measured look, and then nodded.
“So let’s do it,” she said.
He deposited the Bible in his pocket, and they left the study. They found Mike and Valdez sitting in the living room. Mike was running off at the mouth about movies, gesturing wildly. Valdez, half-listening, yawned.
“Hey, there they are,” Mike said, and rose off the sofa.
Valdez shot to her feet, too. “Where the hell were you? I have a job to do here, Thorne, and not a lotta time to do it.”
“It’s just a job for you. But it’s my life, my family.” He pointed to a portrait of his father that hung on the wall. “See him? That’s my dad? He’s dead, and guess who’s responsible?”
“I’m sorry,” she said in a softer tone. “Dios mio, you’ve lost so much.”
“So you’ll excuse me then if your job isn’t my top priority.”
“Okay, guys.” Lisa stepped between them. “How about we continue this conversation in the car?”
“Where do you want to go?” Valdez asked.
“I think you can guess the answer to that question, too,” Anthony said.
Valdez’s dark eyes glimmered. She withdrew a cell phone from her jacket.
“In that case, we’re gonna need a search warrant,” she said.
74
Danielle and Reuben stayed behind at the house. Danielle promised Anthony that she would tell Reuben everything about his true paternity, though she confessed that she had no idea how to navigate such a difficult conversation. “I wish I could tell you how to break it to him, but I can’t,” Anthony said. “All I can say is that he deserves to know the truth, and you’re the only one who can give it to him.” She said she would do her best.
They took the Explorer, bringing along Anthony’s duffel bag containing their weapons, lots of extra ammo, and other equipment, including his notebook computer. Valdez drove, while Anthony rode shotgun and Mike and Lisa occupied the backseat. The New Kingdom Church campus was in Austell, about a forty-minute trip from Decatur, which gave them an opportunity to talk.
“This morning, I was online searching for dirt on New Kingdom,” Anthony said to Valdez, “and I couldn’t find anything. When I’d try to pull up a site that promised something juicy, it would mysteriously be offline.”
“Mysteriously, huh?” Valdez smirked. “Let me tell you, guys--most of New Kingdom’s operating budget goes into two buckets: technology and security. I’ve seen the reports. You wouldn’t believe how much they spend.”
“You and Cutty were able to find us almost anywhere we went, dig up anything about us,” Anthony said. “So yeah, I’d believe it.”
“Genesis was behind that,” Valdez said. “That’s what they call their records management and surveillance network.”
“Genesis, huh?” Mike laughed. “Like from the Bible?”
“Laugh all you want, but it’s linked into
pretty much everything,” she said. “What is funny is that Bishop Prince personally hates the Internet. Says it allows unrepentant sinners to ‘congregate in virtual dens of iniquity.’ His exact words.”
“Well, the Internet enables individual expression,” Lisa said. “Anyone can publish a blog, or a Web site, or a Facebook profile, and rant about any topic they want. I’d imagine that a free flow of information poses a threat to the control he wants to establish.”
“But they’ve cracked down on the Web pretty hard, like you found, Thorne,” Valdez said. “The tech division’s created spidering programs that crawl the Net constantly, searching for heretical content.”
Anthony scowled. “Heretical content? What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”
Valdez shrugged. “That’s what they call it. Anyway, when they find something on a page that triggers an alert, they’ll move fast to delete the content, or shut it down. They’ll send a virus or whatever, screw up the server. If you posted something nasty on a blog today about the church, or the bishop, it would be wiped out by tomorrow morning.”
“Like I was thinking,” Anthony said.
“What if you were online looking for so-called heretical content on the church?” Lisa asked. “Could they find you?”
“If you entered in a high number of searches, yeah,” Valdez said. “I don’t know the technology behind how they do it, but they’ve traced people like that.”
“That’s, like, nuts, man,” Mike said. He didn’t laugh that time.
“As much as Bishop Price hates the Web, that hasn’t stopped him from using it to solicit donations,” Anthony said. “I found thousands of testimonials about sowing seeds for the kingdom, and every one linked back to the church’s donation page.”
“They bring in a fortune from online donations,” Valdez said. “Bishop Prince may despise the Web, but he’s better than anyone else at exploiting it.”
Anthony stroked his chin. “How much do they bring in annually from all of their activities and businesses? Rough figure?”
“All of them?” Valdez blew out a chestful of air, drummed the steering wheel with her thumbs. “Three billion, I’d say.”
Anthony jerked upright. He felt as if the floor had dropped from underneath him.
“Did you say three billion?” Lisa asked.
“You got it, girlfriend.”
“Holy shit,” Mike said. “That sounds like a Fortune 500 company.”
Anthony was shaking his head. “How do they do it? I’ve read about some of their business interests, but still, there are major companies who don’t haul in that much every year.”
“You’ve only read about the businesses they make public,” Valdez said. “They have a private holding company, a conglomerate I guess you’d call it, that owns huge amounts of stock in some very profitable companies in a wide range of industries: pharmaceuticals, oil, insurance, real estate, manufacturing, whole lotta stuff.”
“But they operate as a tax-exempt religious organization,” Lisa said. “Are they paying taxes on all that money?”
“Their holding company is a for-profit business, so they pay their taxes to Uncle Sam. Thing is, most of what’s left over after taxes gets funneled back to the church.” She threw Anthony a look. “Now you know how they can afford to do what they do.”
“It still sounds shady to me,” Anthony said.
“Almost like money laundering,” Lisa said.
“We’ve got our contacts in the IRS checking into it,” Valdez said. “If we can nail them on tax fraud, that’d be fine with me, whatever works.”
“Hey, it brought down Capone,” Mike said.
Quiet, Anthony gazed out the window. Winning justice for his dad’s murder was one thing. But taking on a multi-billion dollar organization? He never could have imagined this, and wondered if he would have wanted to even try if he’d known from the beginning what he was up against.
He suspected that was why Bob had been so vague at their meeting.
He turned to Valdez. “What was your Bureau assignment at New Kingdom?”
“I infiltrated the Armor of God—that’s their defense division—to investigate domestic terrorism.”
“You’re shittin’ me,” Mike said. “This is from a church?”
Valdez said, “When people think about terrorism, they think about some international sect of Muslim extremists planting bombs in the subway or flying planes into buildings. That’s the stuff that grabs the headlines, but it’s a lot more than that. We’ve got threats right here on American soil, from homegrown groups that don’t have squat to do with radical Islam.”
“Remember Oklahoma City, guys?” Lisa said. “Plotted and executed by good ole’ American citizens.”
Valdez nodded. “White supremacist organizations, anti-government militia movements, animal rights extremism, eco-terrorism—we investigate all of them under the umbrella of domestic terrorism. Most of them are small-time operations, with objectives that would have a relatively minor impact on the nation as a whole. Not New Kingdom’s.”
Dread grabbed the pit of Anthony’s stomach. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t have the full picture yet,” she said. “But I know the name of the project. It’s called Revelation.”
“That’s a book in the Bible, too,” Mike said. “I remember it from Catholic school. Got all kinds of weird symbolism about Armageddon.”
“Which is what they’ve got in mind,” Valdez said. “From what I’ve been able to dig up so far, they’re planning attacks on some very high-profile national targets—landmarks, transit systems, and people.”
To Anthony, the wave of anxiety that rippled through all of them was almost palpable.
“To what end?” Lisa asked.
“Scare tactics,” Valdez said. “Think about what happened to us after September 11. That sense we had as a nation of being invincible? After that, it was gone. We were scared as hell, so when the government revamped flight security and made it a major pain in the ass to fly anywhere, and when they passed legislation that made it easier for them to do surveillance on private citizens, we were all for it, weren’t we? Whatever measures they told us would protect us from the bad guys, we were down with them--even if we had to give up some freedoms and conveniences that we’d used to take for granted.”
Anthony sensed where this was heading, and he shifted uneasily in the seat.
“You guys already know the church has cronies in the government,” Valdez said. “But you don’t know how highly placed they really are. I’m talking big shot senators, okay? I’m talking about people who, if certain individuals were eliminated, would move into the Oval Office.”
“No way,” Mike said, but the tremor in his voice made it clear that he believed every word.
“Now you think about a country,” Valdez continued, “under siege by mysterious terrorists destroying national symbols of pride, detonating explosives in mass transit systems and killing thousands of innocent people, and you see our most valued leaders get knocked off—and you tell me then how willing the scared-shitless American people would be to accept a new set of rigid laws designed to supposedly restore order and keep us safe.”
“Bishop Prince’s Kingdom agenda would become a reality,” Anthony said softly.
Everyone fell silent.
75
For several minutes, the only sounds in the SUV were the purring engine, and the hum of the tires spinning against the highway.
Valdez was on I-20 by then, traveling westbound. Downtown Atlanta passed by on the right, skyscrapers poking at a thickening dome of gray clouds.
Anthony wondered if the church planned to destroy any of those tall buildings. When he spotted a MARTA train speeding along tracks, he wondered if the rail system were a target, too.
Think about how people would freak out if that happened. It would be pandemonium.
It was almost too frightening to imagine, like a plot twist pulled out of a doomsday novel. Unfortunately, con
sidering the staggering resources the church commanded, it was entirely plausible.
“Tell us about the Armor of God,” Anthony said.
“It’s a paramilitary force, approximately seven hundred men strong,” Valdez said. “They serve as Bishop Prince’s personal bodyguards, provide security on the Kingdom campus, and handle other missions, as ordered by the Director. Most of them are ex-law enforcement or military.”
“Is that how that Bob guy got you in, ‘cause you served in the Army?” Mike asked.
“That helped. They want experienced people, and they’re smart enough to know that they have to go outside the church to get ‘em.”
“Do you have to be a believer in the church’s doctrines to work for them?” Lisa asked.
“When you’re selected, they put you through a nine-week training program on a wilderness retreat they own in Montana,” Valdez said. “It was a lot like boot camp, physically demanding, except with an extreme focus on New Kingdom dogma. You’re memorizing Bible passages, chanting church slogans, and listening to Bishop Prince’s sermons constantly. Totally brain-numbing, but that’s the point.”
“Like some radical Islamic terror cell training camp,” Anthony said.
“Good analogy. Super fanatical, group-think environment. If you don’t believe in New Kingdom’s teachings when you go in, by the time camp’s over, you sure do—or you learn pretty damn well how to fake it, like I did.”
“How’d you keep from being brainwashed?” Lisa asked.
“Soon as I got out of camp, I slipped away and met with a Bureau shrink. She put me through some deprogramming sessions, cleaned all of that crap out of my head. But I can fake it when I need to.”
“Cutty sure wasn’t faking the funk,” Anthony said.
“Cutty?” Disgust curled Valdez’s lips, as if the man’s name tasted foul in her mouth. “The word on him was that he was always a freakin’ psycho—he set a fire in his house when he was something like sixteen, torched his entire family.”
Lisa shuddered. “Are you for real?”
Covenant Page 29