Mighty and Strong (The Righteous)

by Michael Wallace

  The two agents exchanged a glance. “Tell me how you knew that,” Agent Krantz said.

  “You as good as told me yourself.” He turned the picture so they could see it. “Look at her eyes. She's older than she looks at first glance. And there's something knowing in that expression. You sent her in there, didn't you? This is an FBI agent.”

  “Didn't I tell you?” Agent Fayer snapped. “We can't trust this one.”

  “Would you rather have my husband be stupid?” Fernie asked. “Is that who you want to send after your missing agent?”

  “Let's see if I understand this,” Jacob said. “You took an FBI agent and trained her as a Mormon fundamentalist and then sent her to infiltrate the Church of the Last Days. Only she disappeared.”

  “Something like that, yes,” Katz said.

  “What's her background, mainstream Mormon, like Agent Fayer?”

  Fayer shook her head. “Secular. Not LDS at all. But she spent time soaking up the lingo.”

  “Soaking up the lingo,” Jacob repeated. “No wonder she's in trouble. These people are drunk on religiosity. Every other word out of their mouth has something to do with scripture, revelation, faith, and the like. They're expecting the world to end any day now and they live like it. You can't fake that level of knowledge. I'll bet she was sniffed out five minutes after they met her.”

  “You don't know this agent,” Krantz said.

  Jacob looked to Fayer, thinking the Mormon should at least know what he was talking about. She hesitated, then nodded. “She's good. Very good.”

  “Except she's gone, so she apparently wasn't good enough,” Jacob said.

  So what happened to her? Say they discovered her. Surely they wouldn't kill an FBI agent, would they?

  The baby fussed in the bedroom. “You want me to get that?” Jacob asked.

  Fernie stood up. “Let me. I need to look in on the other kids anyway.”

  After his wife left, Jacob said, “What are you afraid of? Why don't you go up to the compound, knock on the door, and show them this picture?”

  “It's an end-of-the-world cult,” Fayer said. “That place is stuffed full of guns and who knows what else.”

  “Probably all show.”

  “That's what I think,” Krantz said. “Some people think it could be another Ruby Ridge brewing, or Waco,” he added with a half nod at his partner. “Worst case scenario, Jonestown. Mass suicide. Women, children. Everyone dead.”

  “Suicide isn't their style,” Jacob said. “That other stuff? I'm not so sure. It might be for show, it might not. But if they do fight, they won't be planning to go down in a hail of gunfire. Martyrs and all that. They think they can win.”

  “Win what?” Fayer asked. “What are they trying to do?”

  “I'm not sure, but I have ideas.”

  “Such as?” she asked.

  “First, can you tell me what your agent was looking for?”

  “We're not at liberty to say,” Krantz said. “But you don't need to worry about that. You need to find our girl, make sure she's safe. Get us a message or convince her to get out if it looks dangerous.”

  “This isn't fraud,” Jacob said, “like at Blister Creek, or you wouldn't have sent a young, pretty agent under cover. Polygamist bait. Too dangerous.”

  “That's fair to say,” Krantz said. “The stakes are high.”

  Just how high? During the fraud and murder case that brought his own church to its knees, the FBI had sent two agents to Blister Creek. Hispanic men, who'd posed as casual labor. Nobody paid them any attention, thinking them illegal immigrants with limited English. It had been a clever ruse, and not particularly dangerous. At any time, Jacob figured, they could have flashed their badges.

  But to send a young woman into the Church of the Last Days, alone, was a risky gambit. Say she was discovered. Either the church wasn't a physical threat, in which case they'd boot her out and become doubly suspicious of outsiders. Or they were, and she was in danger. Or already dead.

  And now they wanted him to go inside, too? After their first agent's cover was likely blown?

  “The Church of the Last Days isn't like the FLDS,” Jacob said, “just one big, inbred family. They're new, they've grown by gathering independents and people from other sects. Someone there will know me.”

  “Probably,” Krantz said. “In fact, we're counting on it. We'll give you a back story, practically push you into their arms. I'm thinking they'll take you.”

  “Back story as in polygamist doctor loses his job at the hospital?”

  “We can smooth that over. At least privately.”

  “And if I don't agree, you'll screw me over with the hospital board.”

  “I wouldn't say that,” Fayer said. “But we might not feel particularly motivated to put in a good word on your behalf.”

  “There are other jobs out there, you know,” Jacob said.

  “Are there?” she asked. “Soon enough for what you need? We've done our research, Dr. Christianson. Things have got to be tight on what you're making, all the student loans. A wife who doesn't work outside the home, three kids.”

  “We're frugal. We survive.”

  “Now you do. What if you lose your job?”

  “If that's meant to scare me, it won't. You can hurt my wife and kids if you get me canned. But I'm guessing they'd rather have me around broke and out of work than have the same thing happen to me that happened to this so-called Sister Miriam.”

  “We're not trying to threaten you,” Krantz said. “We want to appeal to your better nature. There's a damn good FBI agent in trouble down there. You know this community. You've done work for the FBI before. We know you want to help. And since you're helping us, we'll help you in return, make sure you keep your job. And if you get our agent out, pass along whatever information you discover while you're at it, we're authorized to give you a one-time payment for your trouble.”

  “Payment, so, like an FBI informant?”

  Krantz shrugged. “Informant sounds too. . .gangster, you know. Mob business. Think of this as consulting work.”

  Cleverly worded. If they'd just offered to pay him to go in there, he would have refused. Appeal to his better nature, then dangle the pay as a bonus, that might work.

  But if there was a carrot, there had to be a stick to back it up.

  “It's up to you, of course,” Krantz said. “We have a contingency plan.”

  His suspicions deepened. “What kind of contingency plan?”

  “If you won't help us, we've got someone else in mind. Someone who has been helpful to the FBI in the past. A girl. More polygamist bait, as you put it.”

  He felt his face flush. “Leave my sister out of this.”

  “Eliza's a big girl,” the man said. “She can decide for herself. She might be especially eager to help if she knows it will help you out of a jam.”

  I'd do anything for you, Eliza had said.

  Would she? Would she really do this? He thought she might.

  “Let me tell you about Special Agent Haley Kite,” Fayer said.

  “This is your Sister Miriam?”

  “That's right.” Fayer said. “She's a chameleon, can blend into any social situation. You know the type of person who visits a friend in South Carolina for a weekend and comes back with a drawl? That's Haley.”

  Jacob noted how Fayer used the woman's first name. Fayer and the missing woman had a friendship of some kind.

  “How long since you've heard from her?”

  “Almost a month,” Krantz said. “We had three different ways to make contact, assuming she couldn't simply get to a phone. She missed every check-in. We've got to assume she's in isolation.”

  “Why would you assume that?” Jacob asked. “What if it's worse than that? What if they caught her in her lies?”

  “No chance,” Fayer said. “Like I said, she could adapt to any situation. She's the best I've ever seen at languages, accents, mannerisms. Give her a year and Haley could pass for Osama bin Laden
's little sister.”

  “Then why isn't she in the Middle East, searching for bigger fish?”

  “Don't make assumptions about the size of fish we're trying to land.”

  “Assumptions are all I can manage, unless you tell me more.”

  “Which we can't do,” Fayer said.

  “Okay, well let me ask you something as one believer to another.” He looked at Agent Krantz. “You'll have to bear with us. We're going to talk about magic unicorns.”

  “About what?” Krantz asked.

  “The spiritual realm. It's going to sound like magic to you. But Agent Fayer and I have some common ground.”

  “I doubt it,” Fayer said. “We don't believe the same thing at all.”

  “Sure we do,” Jacob said. “You're a Mormon, and so am I. Just different flavors of the same faith. We've got ninety-nine percent overlap, and your church used to teach the last one percent, but doesn't anymore.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fayer said. “I've heard your taped interviews with Agent Cardoza after the Blister Creek arrests. You're a skeptic. You don't believe any of it.”

  “I don't disbelieve it, either. I'm undecided. But yes, I'm a skeptic. And so are you.”

  “No, I'm not.”

  “Does this mean you believe everything your church teaches?”

  She glanced at Krantz with what looked like embarrassment. Jacob allowed himself a smile. It wasn't the first time he'd seen someone lose their nerve when talking about faith in front of the uninitiated. One of the great surprises of entering the gentile world as an adult was how good people were at compartmentalizing. Get them to talk privately about their faith and they accepted all sorts of unprovable claims, but in the real world it was another matter.

  Jacob once had a biology professor at the University of Utah who had taught about mitochondrial DNA, evolutionary biology, and other subjects that presumed that life had emerged from the primordial soup half a billion years ago. The man was also an LDS bishop. One day, curious, Jacob had approached the professor after lab. It was early in his studies and he'd still found the concept of evolution shocking.

  “How can you believe all that?” Jacob had asked the professor. “God created the earth in six days. And all the animals were fully formed.”

  “It helps if you think of them not as six actual, twenty-four hour days,” the professor answered, “but six creative periods of time. We call them days, but that's really a metaphor.”

  He fully expected Fayer to backtrack in a similar way in front of her non-Mormon partner. But he'd underestimated her. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe the gospel one hundred percent. And I believe in living prophets.”

  “I could go places with that,” Jacob said. “But not now. I'll just assert again that you're a skeptic, too.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” Agent Krantz asked.

  Fayer lifted her hand. “No, let's hear what he has to say. I just told you I believe, so how does that make me a skeptic?”

  “Do you believe that when you take the communion wafer it changes into the flesh of Jesus Christ as it enters your body?”

  “Mormons don't believe that,” she scoffed.

  “No, but the Catholics do.”

  “And I'm not a Catholic, so what's your point? When we take the sacrament we're doing it in the remembrance of the body and blood of Christ, not actually consuming human flesh and blood.”

  “So you're skeptical,” Jacob said.

  “Of the Catholics, sure.”

  “And everyone else, too. Except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You couldn't hide the sneer from your face when you thought about a communion wafer turning into human flesh. That's just stupid, you thought.” He shrugged. “I don't believe it either. The only difference between you and me is that I'm skeptical of one more religion than you are.”

  “What's your point?” she asked.

  “You said there's no way Sister Miriam was discovered. She's too good a liar.”

  “It's not lying, it's undercover work.”

  “Right, for you and me. But it's lying if you believe Brother Timothy is the prophet of the one true church. And Satan is the Father of Lies. This would be Satan's work, a secret combination to overthrow the Lord's true representative.”

  “But you don't believe that any more than I do,” Fayer said.

  “I don't disbelieve it. I have my doubts, but I've never met Brother Timothy. How can I be sure? He could be almost anything but all I have right now is hearsay.”

  “I assume you have a point to make,” she said.

  “My point is, what if he really is a prophet? He could see through her lie, no matter how good she is.”

  “You're talking about the power of discernment.”

  “Exactly.”

  The power of discernment was one of the spiritual gifts that the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had defined in the Doctrine & Covenants, which was the companion book of scripture to the Book of Mormon. A book of revelations for the modern church.

  “I'm not asking you to believe it,” Jacob continued. “I'm asking you to remain open to the possibility that someone in the compound used spiritual means to discover your friend's true identity.”

  She didn't say anything. At last she shook her head. “No, I can't believe it.”

  “I was raised Catholic,” Krantz said. He waved his hand. “Yeah, I know about the communion wafer and wine and all that. My mother had this St. Anthony medal on a chain. When she would lose something she'd rub the medal in her fingers and say, 'St. Anthony, look around. Something's lost that can't be found.' Silliest thing in the world, but nine times out of ten she'd find what she was looking for. I don't know, maybe sometimes these things work.”

  Fayer snorted.

  “I rest my case,” Jacob said to Fayer. “You're a skeptic. But why not? Haven't you ever prayed to find lost keys?”

  “That's a little different than believing there's some guy—St. Anthony, whoever that is—whose job it is to help people find lost stuff, but only if they repeat a silly rhyme first.”

  “That's what I mean about magic unicorns,” Jacob said. “It always seems like mumbo jumbo to an outsider. Look, if you don't like to think about the power of discernment, how about this? Maybe your friend is a one-in-a-million liar. And maybe for every liar as good as Agent Kite, there's someone with a one-in-a-million ability to detect lies.”

  “If you'd only seen her at work,” Fayer said.

  “Yeah, I'd probably find her convincing,” he admitted, “but that only means I'm not one of the one in a million who can tell she's lying. Maybe Brother Timothy, or someone else in the Church of the Last Days, is that person.”

  “I guess that's possible.”

  Was there any difference between that and the so-called power of discernment? If you had a remarkable, one in a million ability, did it matter if you gave that a scientific versus a spiritual name? Yet it was interesting that Fayer dismissed one out of hand and accepted that the other might be possible.

  Agent Krantz rose to his feet. “I don't know anything about spiritual powers, but I can tell you're hooked. You want to butt heads with these people, see what they've got.”

  “Maybe a little bit,” Jacob admitted. “And I'm curious about your chameleon. Is she as good as you claim? And can I get her out of trouble?”

  “We hope so,” Krantz said.

  Truth was, he was hooked. If it weren't for his wife and children, he'd be ready to sign up now.

  “No promises. I've got to talk to Fernie, first. And I'll need some help with the hospital.”

  “Of course.”

  “And protection for my family. You say these guys are dangerous, and I believe it. If they are, I can't expect to stir the hornet nest and not take chances with getting stung. Any deal involves a couple of your agents watching my house at all times.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “The apartment upstairs is for rent, if that helps.” Ja
cob hesitated. “There's one last thing. You want my help, it's non-negotiable.”

  “What's that?” Krantz asked.

  “Don't mention my sister again. You try to bring Eliza into this and you'll make an enemy.”

  Chapter Eight:

  Emma waited for her chance to ask Brother Timothy to give her Jacob.

  It took more patience than she could bear. The prophet had blessings to give, sermons to deliver, bread to break with his own hands. Did he have a moment for himself? Or rather, for her?

  She approached for the first time during the communal supper in the courtyard. Brother Timothy ate his soup slowly, his eyes focused on something in the distance.

  Brother Clarence sat on the prophet's right side, and he set down a thick slice of bread when he saw her approach, wagged his finger and shook his head.

  “But Brother Clarence. . .”

  “No, Sister Emma. Not now.”

  Emma bowed her head in assent and withdrew.

  But on the second morning after her trip to the hospital, she found him hoeing in the gardens, back bent beneath the heat of the noontime sun. One of his wives—heavily pregnant—gathered the wilting weeds turned up by his hoe, while another wife watered a row of lettuce. Emma didn't see Brother Clarence, who would have surely waved her away again.

  “Brother Timothy?”

  He straightened his back, leaned against the hoe. Sweat trickled through the streaks of dirt on his face, dripped from his beard. He wiped his forehead with a sleeve. “Yes, Emma?”

  The sun was too hot, too bright. She shielded her eyes. “Brother Timothy, please, I need your help.”

  Brother Timothy studied her with a gaze so penetrating it almost hurt. “Are you in trouble?

  She thought about why she'd gone to the hospital and started to look away in shame, but managed to check herself. “Brother Timothy, I'm ready to get married.”

  He blinked. “Sister Emma, the Lord makes that decision, not you.” His wives stopped what they were doing, stared.

  “I felt the Spirit. When I was in bed last night, it came upon me and I felt it burning inside me. It told me I needed to get married and who to marry.”