Lubbers regarded the man for a moment. Damned if this guy doesn’t know just what buttons to push, he thought. “What’s in this for you?” he asked.
Lucifer shrugged. “In a narrow sense, nothing. It would be far easier for me to sit back and see how things play out. But I have a soft spot for underdogs. I’d really like to see what humanity is capable of without the interference of our race. It’s time for humanity to seize its destiny, to free itself from the shackles of belief in gods and angels. Do you agree?”
“Absolutely,” said Lubbers.
“Then would you say it for me?”
“Fine,” said Lubbers. What difference did it make? “The United States is a Christian nation.”
“Wonderful,” said Lucifer, barely able to control his glee. He felt like doing a little jig—like he did that time Pontius Pilate asked him for a towel.
“Now,” said Lubbers, “tell me how to kick some angel ass.”
“I have a plan to do just that,” replied Lucifer. “However, I’m afraid that the resources of the FBI are not going to be sufficient for the task. We’re going to need some serious firepower.”
“Like what? Artillery? Tanks? I can pull some strings, get whatever it takes to do the job.”
Lucifer shook his head. “Artillery, tanks, fighter jets...these are all worthless. Worse than worthless; they would use them against you. No, what we need is something far more dangerous and far more subtle. As far as I know, President Babcock is the only one with the power to deliver the weapon you would need to defeat my people.”
Lubbers smiled. “Well, let’s go talk to him then.”
“What?” Lucifer asked, seemingly impressed. “You can get a meeting with the president of the United States, just like that?”
“They put me in charge of the Anaheim Event, and since this moon thing is obviously related to what happened in Anaheim, it sort of fell in my lap too. Since Black Monday I’ve had a direct line to the president himself. Hell, I’ve actually been dodging his calls, because I haven’t had much to report. But I’d say this is worth a meeting, wouldn’t you, Mr. Rezon?”
Lucifer smiled. “Whatever you say, chief.”
EIGHTEEN
Having flown three hours from Pamplona to the remote Pacific island of Santa Maria, Mercury alighted on a rocky beach and stood for a moment, straightening his hair and admiring the view. The orange sun was just sinking behind the palm trees, making for a very pleasant vista. The Azores were about as far off the beaten path for angels as you could get. As long as he kept his head down and avoided performing unnecessary miracles, there was virtually no chance of any of Heaven’s agents ever finding him—and since Mercury was currently wanted for insubordination and interference with the orderly procession of the Apocalypse, that was a good thing. He needed to lay low for a while, and there were worse places to spend a few centuries than the Azores.
Mercury strolled up the beach and had soon located a friendly-looking old bar with a weathered sign that read LA TRAVIATA. He smiled. A cold beer sounded pretty good.
The place was nearly deserted. A small, balding man stood behind the bar watching an old color television that hung from the ceiling across the room. On the screen was a football game: the Miami Dolphins versus the Denver Broncos.
“Football fan,” said Mercury, approaching the bar.
“Sim,” said the man with a scow. “Meu Broncos estão perdendo.”
“Lions fan myself,” said Mercury.
“Sinto muito,” replied the man. “You must have a lot of...como se diz...character. You do not look old enough to remember when the Lions were good.”
“Almost nobody is,” replied Mercury. “Uma cerveja por favor.”
“Sure,” said the man, filling a mug with amber liquid from a tap. “I’m Jorge.”
“Mercury. Nice to meet you, Jorge.”
“Ai!” exclaimed Jorge suddenly, slapping himself on his forehead. “Mercúrio. Cabelo prateado. I forget. This is for you.” He held out a wrinkled piece of paper that had been folded in half.
Mercury eyed the paper suspiciously. “I think you’re confused, Jorge. No one knows I’m here. I mean, no one. In Heaven or on Earth.”
Jorge shrugged and set the paper on the bar. “Little chubby man, look like bebê, says I give it to man with cabelo prateado. Silver hair.”
Mercury’s heart skipped a beat. Little chubby man who looked like a baby? There weren’t a lot of people who fit that description. How could Perp possibly know he’d be here?
He grabbed the note and opened it. It read:
Christine needs your help.
Turn yourself in.
- M.
“Son of a bitch,” Mercury grumbled, shaking his head. A note from the archangel Michelle? He pulled the card from his pocket and compared the handwriting. They certainly were similar. It was hard to tell if the same hand had written them both, but certainly he could trust Perp not to give him misleading information. And in any case, whoever left this note obviously knew he was here. If it was a trap, he’d already be in custody.
And if it was a trap, why play on his sympathy for Christine? How many people even knew about his relationship with Christine? A relationship that amounted to, what, saving the world together a couple of times. It’s not like they were particularly close. As far as he knew, Christine thought of him as an arrogant jerk. After all, he was an arrogant jerk, and Christine was certainly as good a judge of character as most of the humans he had encountered. What would make anyone think he’d stick his neck out because of some vague threat to Christine? And why would Christine need his help anyway? Last he knew, she was safely back in Los Angeles. None of this made any sense.
At least this message was less ambiguous than the last one he had gotten from Michelle, some four thousand years earlier. The rain comes from above. He still hadn’t figured out what that was supposed to mean. This note at least had a clear message. Christine needs your help. Turn yourself in.
“Bad news?” asked Jorge.
Mercury shrugged. “I’m not sure. It says a friend of mine needs help. But if I go help her, I could get in a lot of trouble. And frankly I’m not sure how I can help her anyway.”
“Ah,” Jorge replied, smiling. “A woman friend. Sounds like you are in trouble either way, amigo.”
“Yeah, it’s not like that,” said Mercury hurriedly. “I mean, she’s...That is, I’m...Well, let’s just say we’re from two different worlds.”
“A fruta proibida é a mais apetecida,” said Jorge, nodding.
“Sorry,” replied Mercury. “My Portuguese mostly revolves around beer.”
“An old saying,” said Jorge. “The forbidden fruit is most desired.”
Mercury sighed. “Boy, you said it, brother.” He downed the rest of his beer, placed a generous tip on the bar, and walked outside. The western sky was on fire with the dying light.
Christine needs help. Turn yourself in.
Did he really need any more information than that? What difference would it make? The message came from someone he trusted. It didn’t matter if he didn’t understand how giving himself up would help her. If Christine needed his help, that was all there was to it. So much for hiding out until the heat had died down.
Mercury leaped into the air, heading toward the Megiddo portal to throw himself on the mercy of Heaven.
NINETEEN
Travis Babcock was not a bad man. He was friendly, good-natured, and generally fair in his dealings with other people. He would have made an above-average manager of a local hardware store. Unfortunately, the overlap of the skill sets required for managing a hardware store and managing an unruly bureaucracy tasked with the health, safety, and education of three hundred million people is smaller than one might expect.
His brother, Joshua Babcock, would have made a great president, somewhere in the upper Roosevelt range. Joshua was brilliant and hardworking, and possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of history and economics. Unfortunately for the coun
try, Joshua was born with a rare condition that prevented his body from producing saliva and was, therefore, unofficially disqualified for public office. He worked unhappily in Chico, California, as a marginally competent and perpetually cotton-mouthed hardware store manager.
Travis executed his office with dignity and an arsenal of facial expressions that concealed the fact that he rarely felt like he had any idea what he was doing. He reassured himself that this was how all presidents felt; the trick, he figured, was to act confident and stick to his principles, which were composed of a not entirely coherent mishmash of notions picked up from Sunday school lessons and Schoolhouse Rock.7 As long as he stuck to his principles, he figured, history couldn’t judge him too harshly.
Travis was at present concealing his confusion and self-doubt with his generic Look of Genuine Concern, which he was directing at Deputy Assistant Director Dirk Lubbers and a man named Lawrence Rezon, who claimed to have inside knowledge about the Anaheim Event and Black Monday. Travis wasn’t sure what to make of Rezon. He had insisted on meeting alone with Lubbers and Travis, claiming that he wasn’t sure who else in the government he could trust. Rezon claimed to be a member of an alien race from another dimension, the same race that he claimed had perpetrated the destruction of Anaheim Stadium and the moon. This idea was a bit difficult for Travis to swallow, but Lubbers seemed to think his story checked out, and Lubbers was the most hardheaded, practical man Travis knew. It was certainly worth listening to what this man had to say. Plus it allowed him to postpone a meeting with Lia Sokhov, the secretary of agriculture, who wouldn’t shut up about some strain of mutant corn that was causing problems in Africa. Like Travis didn’t have bigger problems to worry about.
“Our civilization has grown complacent,” Rezon was saying. “Overconfident. Our success has led to hubris. And that will be our downfall.”
“And you don’t feel any guilt about betraying your fellow...what are we calling them?” said Travis, frowning. He squinted at a two-page document lying on the desk in front of him. Rezon and Lubbers sat across from him in the Oval Office.
Lubbers had provided the president with a report that was basically a very abbreviated and sanitized version of Eddie’s account. No references to “Heaven” or “angels” in the official report.
“Beings of Indeterminate Origin,” said Lubbers. “BIOs.” It was the term Jacob Slater had used in his debriefing, and Lubbers had adopted it for his report.
“Does that work for you, Mr. Rezon?” asked Travis.
Rezon shrugged. “BIOs is fine,” he said. “In answer to your question, I don’t believe guilt is a useful sentiment. What has happened has happened. I do not regret turning against my superiors. I believe they have acted in an arrogant and condescending way toward your race, and these latest atrocities have confirmed my desire to see humanity free of their influence.”
“Why did they destroy the moon?” asked Travis. “And Anaheim Stadium? Are they trying to send us some kind of message? Because I gotta tell ya, they’ve got our attention but I don’t know what the hell they are trying to say.”
Rezon shook his head. “My best guess is that they felt threatened by Harry Giddings and his Covenant Holders organization. You have to understand that my people—the BIOs—have cast themselves in the role of angels. Before that, they were considered gods. They feel marginalized by the genuine faith of people like Harry.”
Travis nodded. Harry Giddings had been a good friend and a fervent supporter of Travis’s campaign. He liked the idea of Harry as a saint who had been martyred by heretics who felt threatened by the Truth. What right did these alien creatures, these BIOs, have to call themselves angels? That bordered on blasphemy.
“As for the moon,” Rezon went on, “your guess is as good as mine. I would assume that it was some sort of display of power, to show you that you’re out of your league. But honestly I’m only guessing. The BIOs are, as a rule, strange and capricious beings, with little understanding or tolerance of human morality or conventions. You could go mad trying to puzzle out their motivations. Fortunately, I have spent a great deal of time on Earth and have come to understand and appreciate humanity. My love for your race has made me a pariah among my own people.”
Travis Babcock nodded in appreciation of Rezon’s sacrifice on humanity’s behalf.
“What do you mean that their overconfidence will result in their downfall?” asked Lubbers, anxious to get back to the nuts and bolts of how they were going to turn the tables on these interloping assholes. Having grown restless with the abstract discussion, he had gotten up and was standing across the room, examining a series of black-and-white photographs hanging on the Oval Office wall. Directly in front of him was a photo of Nixon shaking hands with Elvis Presley. Strange bedfellows, thought Lubbers.
“Ah,” replied Rezon. “You are familiar with the Biblical story of Goliath?”
“Of course,” replied the president. “Goliath was a giant, the champion of the Philistines. David killed him with a stone from his sling.”
“Exactly,” said Rezon. He recited: “ ‘A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels. On his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.’ Do you know how much a shekel is?” asked Rezon.
The two men were silent.
“It’s about point four ounces,” Rezon explained. “That means his coat of armor alone weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds. The head of his spear weighed fifteen pounds. That’s heavier than most bowling balls. The point is, this was a big man. David was probably around fifteen when he challenged Goliath. He had no armor and no weapons other than a slingshot. So how did he beat Goliath?”
“God was on his side,” said President Babcock.
“Yes!” exclaimed Rezon. “Also? Goliath wasn’t prepared to defend against a kid with a slingshot. He was so used to fighting the biggest, scariest, most well-armed men around that he forgot that a well-aimed shot with a stone the size of a marble could crack his skull open. And that’s how we’re going to beat Heav...that is, those big, heavy BIOs.”
“So...what?” asked Lubbers, turning away from the photos to regard Lucifer. “We send a SEAL team armed with slingshots through this portal in Glendale?”
“Ye of little faith,” said Lucifer, smiling at the president. The president smiled back. Lubbers frowned. He had been worried that Babcock might not be receptive to Rezon’s case, but now he seemed to be in danger of being too receptive. If Babcock got any more receptive, Rezon would be taking up residence in the Lincoln Bedroom.
“I’m a practical man, Rezon,” said Lubbers. “Don’t talk to me in metaphors.”
“May I ask you a personal question, Director Lubbers?” asked Lucifer.
Lubbers frowned. “If it’s relevant to the discussion at hand,” he replied cautiously.
Lucifer gazed hard at him. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart?”
Lubbers swallowed hard. “I have not,” he said.
“Hmm,” replied Lucifer, stroking his chin.
Goddammit, thought Lubbers. I’m going to get locked out of the decision-making process just because I’m not a Jesus freak. What a crock of shit. I work my ass off for thirty years, claw my way up to deputy assistant director of the FBI, and now I’m going to get shut out because I won’t spout some fairy tale religious bullshit.
In point of fact, Deputy Assistant Director Dirk Lubbers was in no danger of being cast aside by Lucifer, who had learned centuries earlier that one of the most effective ways to keep someone from questioning their loyalties to a group was to imply that they didn’t belong in the group in the first place. Human beings didn’t like feeling out of control, particularly control freaks like Lubbers. Lubbers woul
d fight tooth and nail to get into any club that was trying to keep him out, even if that club was run by the devil himself. Had Lucifer let up on him, Lubbers might have realized how insane Lucifer’s proposition was, but instead he was entirely focused on not being the odd man out. Not only that but—truth be told—Lucifer hadn’t had this much fun since the Crusades. Toying with a hardheaded atheist like Lubbers was sheer bliss. Getting atheists to renounce their principles and accept Christianity was almost as much fun as provoking good Christian souls to apostasy.
“Is that going to be a problem?” asked the president. His question was directed at Lucifer, but he was sitting back in his chair, observing Lubbers coolly.
“Oh, not for me,” clarified Lucifer. “I try to be tolerant of others’ religious beliefs—or lack thereof. But I believe that I am on a holy mission, directed by God himself. If I may be so bold, I believe that each of us here has an important role to play. President Babcock is obviously the ultimate authority, the one God has chosen to oversee the operation. I am to act as his humble counselor. That leaves you, Director Lubbers, to be the hands and feet. To make a theological analogy, you are Son to our Father and Holy Spirit. This is a lot to ask of a skeptic.”
“I’ll be fine,” Lubbers said through gritted teeth. They weren’t getting rid of him that easily. After all, he was the one who had brought Rezon to the president. This whole thing was his idea.
“Dirk,” said Travis earnestly, leaning over his desk, “would you like to commit your life to Jesus Christ right now?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, thought Lubbers. No! No, I don’t want to fucking commit my life to Jesus Christ. All I want to do is fucking kill the motherfuckers who blew up the moon! What in fucking fuck does this namby-pamby Jesus bullshit have to do with anything?
“Yes,” Lubbers said, as evenly as he could. “Yes, I would.”
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