"But that was just a dream!" Christopher interrupted, his good hand outstretched, appealing to Decker's reason.
"But it wasn't just a dream!" Decker shot back in anger. "In New York you told me that you used astral projection to come to Lebanon to rescue me. It was you! It wasn't just a dream!"
Unable to argue the point, Christopher's arm dropped to his side.
"You came there to rescue me!" Decker continued. "Just me! You had no intention of rescuing Tom! You were just going to leave him there to rot away and die! That's what Tom must have realized." Christopher's disposition suddenly seemed to change. His anger and defensiveness vanished and instead he just waited and listened. "I don't know how Tom knew it was more than just a dream, but I'm sure that's what he meant when he said you were going to leave him. Somehow, Tom knew that it wasn't just a mistake or an oversight. You were going to leave him.
"You don't really care about Humankind — about people — at all. If you did, you would never have forgotten about Tom."
Christopher's composure had now become so incongruous with the situation that Decker had to pause. Not only was Christopher undisturbed, he almost seemed amused.
"But he wasn't a part of your plan," Decker began again haltingly, growing more and more unsure as the look of amusement on Christopher's face became more and more pronounced. "You didn't need him to carry out your plans. You only needed me." Decker stopped, the last words falling from his lips merely from the momentum of the words that had gone before.
Christopher now smiled broadly, and it became painfully obvious that he was smiling to himself and not at Decker. Decker had expected denial or anger; certainly not this.
Finally the smile became outright laughter.
"Damn!" Christopher said finally, almost shouting. "That's pretty good, Decker! Even if it did take you twenty-three years to realize it."
Decker was stunned. Was this an admission ... or just ridicule?
"Frankly, Decker, arguing with you is taking more time than it's worth anymore," Christopher said. "To tell you the truth — something I do as seldom as possible," he added and then raised his hand in mock surrender, "it never even occurred to me to rescue Tom Donafin. As you said, I was there to get you." Christopher shrugged. "Why should I have cared what happened to Tom Donafin?
"Of course, at the time, I had no idea who Tom was. I thought he had been killed along with the rest of his family in an auto accident. You see," Christopher explained, "Tom Donafin was supposed to have died years before in a little late-night meeting that was arranged for his family with a drunk driver. It was a beautiful sight — blood and broken glass everywhere," he said, digressing. "The drunk driver wasn't even scratched. He felt so guilty about it after he sobered up that he hanged himself in his jail cell. He left a wife and two sons nearly penniless. And the best part: when he hanged himself, the guard was watching. He didn't even try to stop him. It was perfect.
"Well. . . almost perfect. I thought the whole Donafin family had died. Apparently Yahweh's minions managed to hide your friend Donafin from us all those years." Christopher shrugged off any personal responsibility for the oversight, "I had no idea who he was when I came to get you out of Lebanon.
"You know," he said, pointing his finger in the air and shaking it slowly to emphasize his syllables as a realization dawned on him, "I'll bet that's why he let you think he was dead all those years! Donafin, or Saul Cohen, or somebody, must have realized that the best way to hide him from me was to let you think he was dead. If the two of you had stayed in regular contact after I moved in with you, sooner or later I would have realized who he was and arranged another 'accident.'"
Then another thought occurred to Christopher. "The day I was shot, was Donafin standing there with you at the U.N. when you told me you wanted to introduce him to me?"
Decker nodded a nod that was more a question than an answer.
Christopher smiled. "Yahweh wasn't taking any chances," he said. "He must have had a whole legion of angels surrounding him. I didn't even see Donafin. I just assumed the friend you wanted me to meet was waiting in your office." Christopher spoke as if this was just a normal, everyday conversation. Decker was stunned and confused — not at the specifics of what Christopher was saying — but at the fact that he was saying it at all.
Christopher either interpreted Decker's expression as a request for additional explanation or just wanted to further Decker's agony by continuing. "You see, Tom Donafin was the last of his line, the last blood relative of Jesus — or Yeshua, or whatever the hell you want to call him. Anyway, according to an ancient law, a blood relative of one who is murdered has the right to seek out the killer and avenge the murder. I knew that I would be killed; that was never in question. It's in the prophecy. In fact, it fit perfectly into my plan. How else could I have staged such a dramatic resurrection with the whole world watching? But I had someone else in mind to actually pull the trigger."
Christopher laughed a contemptible laugh, "Poor Girard Poupardin. The pathetic fool was there to shoot me to avenge Albert Moore — a man who didn't give a damn about him. It didn't really matter who killed me." Christopher shook his head with the regret of a chess player who realizes he made the wrong move. "I just wanted it to be a murder. Instead it was a damned execution! It's a minor point in the larger scheme of things, but I spent a lot of time setting that up!" It was clear that Christopher did not like Yahweh beating him at his own game.
Christopher regained his composure. "No matter," he said, putting the defeat behind him. "It was rather sweet irony, though, that Poupardin was so determined to kill me that when Tom Donafin robbed him of the pleasure, he turned the gun on Donafin instead."
"Oh, and in all modesty," he added with a grin, "I think timing my death to coincide with the beginning of the madness, and then ending the madness when I killed John and Cohen, was a master stroke. Who would have suspected that the spirit beings who appeared at my call at the Temple in Jerusalem were the same ones who had wreaked bloody carnage with the madness only moments before?"
Christopher smiled and waited for Decker to respond, and the longer he waited, the bigger his smile became.
"Then it's all true?" Decker finally managed to ask, not only in disbelief that he had been right, but even more so that Christopher was admitting it. "All the things that the KDT say about you are true. You really are the Antichrist, the son of Satan!"
"In the flesh," Christopher replied, bowing grandly and mocking Decker. "But don't act so surprised. I've never made a secret of it. I even told you as much on the plane to Israel after my resurrection, and on several occasions since then. I've been saying it all along, but it didn't seem to matter to anyone. Of course, I've always couched it in stories of how evil Yahweh is." Christopher shook his head in wonder. "It's always amazed me how eager humans are to believe that line. All I have to do is draw their attention to some pretty bauble or trinket that's just beyond their reach, tell them how unfair it is that they don't have it, and that if God was really good and loving, he wouldn't keep them from having it. Money, power, sex: it all works pretty much the same. Of course the most seductive temptation for humans has always been telling them they can be their own god, or at least be equal to God. It worked with Eve in the Garden of Eden — 'you will be as God,' I told her. It's worked throughout the centuries. And now the very same lie has worked with the New Age for all of Humankind"
"So your entire life," Decker had to force the words from his lips, "your entire life has been an act?"
"Please, Decker, let's not trivialize my accomplishments with terms like 'act,'" Christopher said. "I prefer to call it a magnificently orchestrated, brilliantly executed lie."
"And the prophecies about you in the Bible are all true?"
"Of course," Christopher said without emotion.
"But then you must know that if you go to Petra you will lose."
"Ah, true," Christopher agreed. "But even if I do not, it will make no difference. The time of my end h
as been set. It does not matter where I am. For my purposes, going to Petra is simply the most favorable of the available options. It is to Petra that Jesus will come. I will not cower in fear in some dark corner when that day arrives. I will go there to Petra to meet him! I will stand defiant at his return and I will bring with me those I have stolen from him! I will no more fear him in the end than I have served him in the past! I will never yield! I have set myself against him and I will defy him until the end. And thereafter, I will curse him boldly from the flames of hell!"
"But why? If you know you will end up in hell, why go through with it?"
Christopher laughed. "Call it hatred of God. Call it independence. Surely you can understand that. I simply refuse to serve. The poet John Milton understood it. He put it quite succinctly back in 1667 in Paradise Lost: 'Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n,' he wrote, paraphrasing the Lord Lucifer. And, to take others with me, of course! It's really quite simple. Man was made to rule and reign with God. To love and be loved. When I take those that God had intended for himself, I anger him, I enrage him; and most important, I hurt him! Do you have any idea," Christopher said in great earnestness, truly wanting Decker to understand, "what it's like to tweak the nose of God?" Christopher threw up his hand in exhilaration at the thought. "The rush of sheer, raw power that swells through you when you watch his face and know that you," Christopher looked back at Decker and struck the air with his clenched fist to emphasize each point, "by your will! by your power! have intentionally made God, the one who created the Universe . . . weep!"
Decker was lost. . . defeated. Scott Rosen and the KDT had been right about Christopher; about everything. And whether Christopher called his life an act or a lie, Decker realized that his own life had been a sham. On that backdrop nothing really mattered anymore. Still, there was one thing Decker wanted to know. "Christopher," he said. The feel of Christopher's name on his lips, the sound of it in his ears, shook Decker with the memory of all the years he had spoken it before and been deceived. "Just one more question." Where before Christopher had no time for Decker, his expression now indicated an eagerness to answer; he was truly enjoying this.
"Why me?" Decker asked. "Why did you pick me?"
Christopher looked at Decker, momentarily surprised by the unexpected query. Then suddenly his cheeks expanded as he pressed his lips together, trying to control his response. Giving up and yielding to the impulse, Christopher exploded into riotous, prolonged laughter.
"Can you really be so stupid?!" he roared with derision. "Can you really believe that you were so important to my plans that there has to be a reason that I picked you? I could just as well have chosen any of at least a thousand other people." Christopher paused to wipe a tear of laughter from his eye before he continued.
"Okay," he said, trying to sound serious but enjoying this far too much to conceal it, "I'll tell you why I chose you." Christopher stopped to savor the moment. It was a joke whose punch line had waited twenty-three years for just the right moment to be told.
"You," Christopher said, and then paused, struggling to deadpan the delivery of his response, but enjoying the sound of each syllable as it rolled off his tongue, knowing the effect it would have on Decker, "you just happened . . ." Christopher laughed despite himself, "to be in the right place ... at the right time!!"
Christopher now roared with laughter so uncontrollable that he had to take hold of the back of a chair to steady himself.
Decker's mind and body went limp. Had he the presence of mind to notice it, he would have found it quite inexplicable that his heart continued to beat under the weight of his chest as he suddenly came to understand that the sum total value of his life had amounted to nothing more than a joke for Christopher's entertainment.
Up until this moment he at least had his anger. Now even the anger was gone. It was not satisfied, it was just finished. Now there was nothing. Nothing had meaning. For more than two decades Decker had built his life around Christopher. Now, not only was that gone, snatched out from under him, it had all been a farce. Not only had he been betrayed, he had been a fool! He was a joke!
Decker's arms felt heavy and his shoulders slumped, giving the impression that he had simply curled up to die but that someone had propped him up with a stick. He stood there for a long moment, unable to move while Christopher looked on in delight.
Christopher went over to the bar and poured himself another drink. "You've been quite a project, actually," he said. "I've brought you along; given you opportunities to advance your career. I'm sure you remember the boy in Jerusalem who ran from behind the Wailing Wall — the boy you brought home to Jenin after the riot. I arranged all of that. Getting you taken hostage to Lebanon served two purposes. First, it got you out of the way for a few years until I was ready for you. You were starting to ask too many questions. I couldn't risk having you publish a story that might expose my origin, and I couldn't be sure that dear Uncle Harry would be able to keep you quiet. I needed you locked away for a few years. A minute ago you said that I had come to Lebanon only to rescue you" Christopher said with a grin. "In truth, I wasn't there to rescue you at all. It was more like getting you out of cold storage." Christopher shrugged, "Tom Donafin was of no consequence to my plan. He could have stayed there and rotted for all I cared.
"The second purpose for having you taken hostage was that it provided a way to get you and Jon Hansen together. Of course, there were other ways I could have arranged for you to meet him. You could have met him while working on a news story. But this way, with him rescuing you just as you were about to collapse from hunger in Lebanon, you had a couple of days together and, because of the circumstances, there were strong emotional ties built.
"Moving in with you after you were released meant I had to get rid of Harry and Martha Goodman, but that was easy enough. I just had to make sure they were on one of the planes that was going to crash. That's why Harry Goodman came to see you the night before he died. He thought he was there to tell you about his latest research, but I had put that thought in his head so that he would be delayed and have to take a later plane.
"Actually, the toughest part was getting you to accept the job with Hansen. I almost gave up on you there, but you finally came through, thanks to the behind-the-scenes work of Robert MHner and Alice Bernley. After that, it was pretty easy. I just had to play the perfect kid and, from time to time, make up some ridiculous story about dreams I had." Christopher's only purpose in telling Decker these things was to make him hate him more. It was working.
"But you helped along the way," Christopher said as though he was sharing credit, though in fact his point was to ridicule Decker. "When you suggested the idea about requiring that everyone who took the communion also take the mark I nearly lost it trying not to laugh. Not only did you swallow my lies hook, line and sinker, you even cut your own bait!"
"Then what you told me about Elizabeth and Hope and Louisa being reincarnated . . .?" Decker asked like a fighter dropping his fists and leaving himself open to be hit.
Christopher just laughed and shook his head.
"And the story about the Theatans?"
"It's amazing what people will believe," Christopher answered smugly. "I didn't make it all up, though. I adapted the name from the teachings of one of the New Age groups. Of course, they got it from me originally."
"And the confessions of the fundamentalists on television?"
"Contrived, for the most part. Of course, there is a lunatic fringe among the fundamentalists who actually do say such things."
Decker fell silent, closing his eyes for a moment to try to endure it all. "So what now?" he asked finally, helplessly, barely managing a whisper.
"Now I prepare a brilliant speech, an inspiring plea, whipping the people of the world to a fever pitch against Yahweh. I'll issue a bold challenge, appealing to their sense of pride, their incredible propensity to overestimate their own worth, and despite both, their inconceivable willingness to sell themselves and
their birthright for a little temporary gratification. I'm certain I can depend upon their willingness to believe flattery, no matter how preposterous and insincere. Then I'll gather all of the peoples of the world, Humankind," he added with a snicker, "at Meggido and I'll lead them into 'glorious battle' at Petra."
"I meant," Decker stammered, "what about me? What do you plan to do with me?"
"I know what you meant!" Christopher answered scornfully. "That's up to you. You can either take the mark or be executed. It's up to you."
"You're not going to kill me?"
"There's no profit in that," he said. "Except for a few special exceptions like John and Cohen or Albert Moore, I never kill anyone myself. It's much more enjoyable when someone else does it. It just heaps one more coal of guilt on their heads for later on.
"So, there you have it," Christopher said. "If you'd like, you can take the mark tomorrow and live until you die — which should be about three months. Oh, but of course, we wouldn't want you to get kidnapped again or lose your way to the clinic, so I'll have U.N. Security assign some 'bodyguards' to stay with you just to make sure you get there safely tomorrow. Or if you prefer, I'm sure the executioners can squeeze you in and you can have your head cut off before the night is out.
"Take a few minutes to think it over," Christopher said, as he turned to go back toward his desk. Then stopping and turning back he added in an engaging tone that seemed totally out of place, "Actually, Decker, the next few months should be quite interesting for you." Christopher walked back to where Decker was standing. "You've always enjoyed new experiences," he said. "Think of it. You have the opportunity to know the feeling that I've experienced since before your world began: to know that with every passing second, you're moving a little closer to eternity in hell. First you'll feel the horror and dread, and then the denial, and the anxiety, and the nightmares. Pretty soon," he said, now sounding philosophical, "you'll come to realize that there is really only one possible response." Christopher paused as if to give Decker a chance to realize for himself what the one possible response was. "Hate!" he said finally, standing face to face with Decker.
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