Storming Heaven (15 page)

“The Germans, for some reason, have become very paranoid about the church and blatantly persecute its members. It’s very disturbing—the parallels between their treatment of the jews during the war and the Kneissians now.”

“Would you know anyone, maybe at the German embassy, that I could call? I’d be interested in what they have to say.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Obviously, the Germans’ treatment of the church has been a public relations nightmare for them in the States. I doubt you’d find many of their officials interested in talking.”

“You’re probably right.” Beamon glanced at his
watch and wrestled himself out of the sofa. “I’ve got to run, Marjorie. I really appreciate your time.” He breathed in deeply. “It smells like your dinner’s about ready.”

She rose from her seat and took his hand. “I was going to ask you to stay for dinner. My husband makes a wonderful veal parmesan.”

“I’d love to, but I can’t. You won’t be surprised to hear that I’m already late for my next meeting.”

“No, I guess I wouldn’t be. Be careful driving now.”

Beamon started out of the den but paused at the door, suddenly realizing that in their entire conversation, she had never used the word “they” when speaking about the church. He turned back to face her. “One other thing, Marjorie. Are you a member of the Church of the Evolution?”

She hesitated, crouching down and stroking her two dogs simultaneously. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

I
T WAS NIGHTTIME. THE TALL WINDOWS
surrounding the room looked dead. Black streaks against the stark white of the walls.

Just inside the door, Sara stopped and knelt down beside her. “There’s something I have to tell you, Jennifer. Are you listening?”

Jennifer nodded silently, her eyes moving to the machines grouped around the small bed and then to the old man lying motionless there.

“Do you know who he is?” Sara asked.

“No.”

“His name is Albert Kneiss. You recognize the name, don’t you?”

She did, but hearing it just added to the confusion that had continued to weaken her. She tried to concentrate, to process what she knew about Kneiss and his church. She’d lived in Flagstaff for most of her life; many of her friends—some of her best friends—were Kneissians.

“Yes,” she said finally.

“Good. That’s good, Jennifer.” Sara took her hand and gently caressed it. Jennifer’s mind told her that this woman was a liar—that she wanted to hurt her—but she couldn’t pull away. She was so lonely and Sara was all she had. In the little room that had become her universe, Jennifer was beginning to
have trouble distinguishing minutes from hours and hours from days. Sara’s visits were becoming one of the only things that reminded her that time moved on and that there was a world outside.

“I know it’s hard for you, staying in that room all alone,” Sara said, seeming to read her mind. “But it’s very dangerous for you right now and it’s the best way for me to protect you. You understand that, don’t you? You understand that I just want to keep you safe?”

“Yes,” Jennifer mumbled, still trying to overcome the effects of her captivity and think clearly. What did this woman want? And why was she about to speak again with a man many people she knew thought was God?

Sara stood and steered Jennifer to the bedside of the old man. His breathing was even more labored than she remembered, each gasp punctuated by the quiet click of a machine next to him, making it obvious it was no longer a completely biological act.

Jennifer stood immobile as Sara inserted a syringe into the clear tube running into his arm. She watched the operation for a moment and then let her eyes wander from machine to machine, finally letting them fall on the papers taped to the back of the heart monitor. They were calendar pages.

Jennifer felt a weak rush of adrenaline as she shuffled silently to her right. Sara was completely absorbed in what she was doing, all her concentration locked on the old man’s face. The two pages of the calendar became readable as she took one more small step. They were for February and March.

She leaned forward at the waist, afraid to move
any closer, and scanned the writing in the small squares, searching for anything that would tell her where she was and why. But it was only medication and cleaning schedules.

Jennifer took a step closer to the heart monitor as it stuttered and began to increase in tempo. The small clock built into the display read Thursday, February 27, 7:32
P.M.

Jennifer moved back to her original position, feeling a brief sense of elation at her small triumph, followed closely by a deadening sensation of despair. She had been there a week and a half.

The random fluttering of the old man’s eyes became more purposeful and Jennifer turned her full attention to him, watching the gray mask come to life as his eyes opened and cleared.

He took a few shallow but conscious breaths and once again reached out to offer his hand.

“Jennifer. You don’t know the peace the sight of you brings me.”

This time she moved toward him without prompting and slid her hand into his. Despite everything—the memories of her parents’ death, her loneliness and confusion—Jennifer felt a sense of calm spread through her as she looked into the ancient face.

The old man’s head rose almost imperceptibly from the pillow as he looked around the room. “Where are the others?”

Sara knelt next to the bed and put a hand gently on his shoulder. “There was a storm, Albert. No one can travel.”

The deep lines in the old man’s face rearranged themselves into an expression of deep thought for a
moment. “Perhaps it would be best to wait, then. They all must hear. They all must understand.”

Sara’s hand moved from the old man’s shoulder to his nearly bare scalp. “I don’t think we can wait any longer. You’re becoming so weak. If what you have to say is important, you should say it now.”

“Sara. My Sara,” he said, smiling weakly and then looking back at Jennifer, who was standing transfixed, waiting for him to speak. She was finally going to find out what had happened to her. She could feel it.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve done more to deliver my message than I ever could have hoped. I’ll ask you to help me one more time.”

She kissed his cheek and moved away from them. As she passed by, though, she brushed against Jennifer in a way that suggested that she would be watching her closely.

“You know who I am, don’t you, Jennifer?”

She nodded slowly. “You’re Albert Kneiss. People think you were sent here by God.”

Another weak smile. “That’s right. God did send me here. To teach and make people better understand Him. And themselves.”

She concentrated on the face of the old man in front of her, breathing in the strong scent of dust and antiseptic cleaner that seemed to emanate from him. “You don’t look like an angel,” she heard herself say.

He breathed out audibly. The laugh of a man too weak to laugh. “No, I don’t suppose I do.”

Kneiss moved his free hand to a worn leather
book lying next to him. “Take this. It’s yours now.”

Jennifer sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned across the old man, gently sliding the book from under his hand. She’d seen it many times before. On TV, in local bookstores, in the hands of her friends and neighbors. The gold letters on the front had been almost completely worn away by time but were still legible.

Jennifer opened it and turned a few of the cracked and yellowed pages. Each was cluttered with notes scrawled through the margins in an elegant hand that must have been his.

“You probably didn’t know that I had a daughter, did you, Jennifer?”

She looked up from the book.

“Her name was Carol.”

“Carol,” Jennifer repeated quietly, as she carefully closed his Bible.

“And she, in turn, had a daughter,” the old man continued. “That daughter is you.”

Jennifer stood and backed slowly away from the bed, pulling her hand from his and letting the book fall to the floor.

Kneiss reached out to her again, but she just moved farther away. She had always been told that her real parents were dead and that she had no blood relatives. But she could see now that it had just been another lie. Her whole life was just one
stacked on another. And now it was all coming down around her.

“When my daughter and her husband died—you were very young then—I wanted to bring you here. To raise you myself, in the church. To prepare you.” He looked past her at Sara. “Sara convinced me that it would be a mistake. That trying to bring you up surrounded by people who knew who you were and what you would become would be impossible. Seeing you now, I know she was right. She so often is.”

Jennifer glanced back at Sara as the old man continued. “Eric and Patricia Davis were two of my most devoted followers. And they were childless. We decided that it would be best for you to develop naturally on your own. Without my influence or the influence of the church.”

“Why?” Jennifer stammered. “Why did you do this to me?”

“I know this is hard, Jennifer, but my time here is almost over. You understand that, don’t you? That I have only a short time left here?”

She nodded dumbly. He was supposed to die on Good Friday, just like Jesus. Everyone knew that.

“Well, when I’m gone, the church will be yours to lead.”

“Y
OU’RE EITHER GOING TO HAVE TO START
getting here on time or give me a key,” Chet Michaels said. “I’m numb from the waist down.”

Beamon adjusted the gym bag thrown over his shoulder into a marginally more comfortable position as the young agent peeled himself from the steps.

Today had been his first session with the personal trainer he had hired, and his first attempt at real exercise since his unheralded but pivotal bench-warming position on his high school football team.

This regime of self-improvement was starring to get to him. Nicotine withdrawal, booze with no burn, and now a set of quivering leg muscles that probably wouldn’t propel him the rest of the way to his front door. He wondered if all healthy people felt like crap and were just good liars.

“You been working out?” Michaels said. “Feels great, doesn’t it? Get out of the office and sweat off your stress?”

Beamon threw his gym bag at the young agent. “Shut up and carry that up the stairs for me.”

Michaels grinned and bounded up the icy stairs two at a time as Beamon tested the first step with his foot and grabbed the handrail.

“You all right, Mark?” Michaels said, his head appearing over the railing above him

God, how he hated that kid.

Beamon could feel Michaels’s eyes on him as he waddled across the living room to the fridge.

“I forgot it was your first day with that personal trainer. How’d it go? I love—”

Beamon looked up from the two beers he was hovering over and gave Michaels a glare that prompted him to change the subject.

“Man, I could have used a hot cup of coffee tonight. Your neighbor decided not to take pity on me, I guess.”

Beamon dropped into the sofa and pushed one of the bottles toward Michaels, who was pulling a folder out of the small backpack that had been slung over his shoulder.

“She’s visiting her mother.”

Michaels’ eyebrows rose slightly. “Really? When’s she coming back?”

“Don’t know,” Beamon lied. In truth, he knew she’d be back the day after tomorrow. And if he’d regained full use of his legs by then, he intended to take his newly buffed physique over to her door and ask her out on a proper date. “Let’s go, Chet. I just want to have a couple of beers and go to bed.”

“If you’re tired, I could just—”

“Nah, you’re here and I’m going to D.C. Sunday. Won’t be back till Monday afternoon.”

“What’re you doing there?”

“Budget meeting,” Beamon lied.

The truth was that he was scheduled for another in a string of pointless hearings relating to a case he’d wrapped up almost six months ago. When a group of
well-organized vigilantes had decided to end America’s drug problem by poisoning the narcotics supply, one of their early victims had, unfortunately, been the son of a powerful senator. The hearings, ostensibly begun to ensure that America’s hospitals would never again be flooded with thousands of dying addicts, had now degenerated into a forum for Senator James Mirth to allocate the blame for his son’s death. Blame that, by all reports, rested firmly on his shoulders.

Michaels looked a little uncomfortable as he held out a thin stack of paper.

Beamon eased himself forward and took it. The pages consisted of a few copied articles on the Church of the Evolution from various newspapers and magazines.

“I’m underwhelmed,” Beamon said. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“There is no rest right now. I
am
working on getting some more, though.”

Beamon scanned a copy of a
Wall Street Journal
story describing the phenomenal investment performance and financial strength of the church, then flipped through the remaining articles. Most related to the persecution of the church by the German government.