The God Machine (13 page)

In frustration, Franklin had recently concocted the idea of a lottery to furnish a hundred companies with cannons and equipment, though the idea of a private association of shopkeepers assuming from government the right to create and manage a military force would undoubtedly prove far too radical. The Proprietors would never permit it. Through their greed and resentment of the Assembly, they would dither, and put off and debate—until their chances to mount a defense were long gone, and Philadelphia had been burned to the ground.

Franklin began to gather up the objects strewn across his study floor. He stacked the loose papers in a pile on his desk. He picked up the shards of a shattered carafe, and righted his inkwell and quills. Who could save the colonists, he wondered as he replaced his possessions, who but the middling people, the tradesmen and shopkeepers and farmers? At present, they were like separate filaments of flax before the thread is formed—without strength, unconnected. But union would strengthen them. And this, he surmised, was why his house and his study lay in ruins. This powerful notion that lingered within him. If the rich and the powerful Proprietors couldn't be counted on to support them when threatened
by the French or the Indians, the colonists needed to take on the challenge without them. Without the Penns. Without relying on their British governors. With out the support of the Crown.

Cooperation amongst the colonies didn't come easily, but it would have to come sometime, eventually. After all, if the six nations of the Iroquois could invent such a union, so could a dozen or so English colonies, especially when the need was so urgent. Such a union would require a national congress composed of representatives from each state, based on their population and wealth. A President General could be named by the King. Issues such as national defense and westward expansion would be handled by a General Government, while each colony would follow its own local legislature and its own constitution. This was the logical next step … but the colonial Assemblies would resist it for usurping too much of their power, and London would subvert it from fear of encouraging too much colonial unity. In the end, Franklin feared, the Crown preferred her colonies divided and squabbling, fulfilling their role as the source of raw materials, so that goods and products could be manufactured in Britain, only to be exported back to the colonies.

Penn held the leash. He had tried to destroy or subvert Franklin on several occasions, but always through agents, through third parties, obliquely. If he were true to form, he'd select the same tactic again. Jedediah Andrews was behind that tall stranger with the dark eyes and black eyebrows. Of that, Franklin was certain. The man in the clergyman's frock.

He picked up his portrait of Franky. The canvas was unharmed, though the frame had been chipped in the fall. He hung it back up on the wall. Then he took a step backward and looked at his son, at that smile, at those small doleful eyes.
But what does all this have to do with
the Gospel of Judas?
Franklin wondered.
Unless Penn's using the gospel as bait
. He shook his head. Who would risk breaking in, would risk ransacking his house, for such an old Gnostic text?

He continued to clean up his study. When he had put away all his papers, when he had remounted the art on the wall and reassembled his shattered inventions as best as he could, it had grown late. The June sun had long set. Franklin lit a lamp. He made his way through the door, began to turn toward his bedroom when he noticed the mirror again. This is where he had first glimpsed the face of the stranger. Franklin stopped. He lifted the lamp. Something was wrong. The mirror appeared to be scratched. He ran a hand down the glass. No, it wasn't scratched. It was covered with white chalk or dried soap. And it was etched in the shape of a cross. A Maltese cross.

With a shudder, Franklin wiped the shape from the glass with his sleeve. So the rumors he had heard from the rabbi were true. Andrews and Penn had made a pact with the Papists. From now on, he'd have to invent a new code, draft his journals so that no one could read them. This symbol, this cross was the sign of the Knights, the Hospitallers of Malta. They were after Christ's Logoi. Long ago, in a far distant land, they had misplaced His words and the Judas schematic. Now, after almost two thousand years, they were coming back to reclaim them.

I
AN
W
ILSON HAD BEEN WATCHING
T
HE SIMPSONS
WITH HIS
son, Trevor, and daughter, Kathleen, in their small house in Narberth, when the power went out. It was one of those episodes with Itchy and Scratchy and Wilson had just been thinking how he should probably turn it off due to the violence, or change the channel at least, when the TV went off by itself. It was like he was telekinetic.

“Shit,” said Kathleen. She was a lanky thirteen-year-old, with brown hair pulled back in a scrunchy with pink polka dots.

“Bubonic shit,” countered Trevor. “I love that episode.” At ten, Trevor had his father's round face, and a buzz cut which he'd greased up into a kind of a faux Mohawk. He wore a blue dinosaur T-shirt.

“Watch your language,” said Wilson. He got up from his lounger and made his way, like a blind man, toward the kitchen. There was a flashlight in the cabinet by the stove, he was sure of it. He could visualize it. He was about to swing open the door when another light flashed in his eyes. At first he thought it was Trevor. “Cut
it out,” he said tartly, blocking the light with his hand. “For crying out loud, it's right in my eye.” That's when he saw it was somebody bigger, someone dressed in a ski mask and jacket. Someone carrying a gun.

“What the devil…” he stammered. Then somebody hit him.

When Wilson awoke, he was tied to one of his dining chairs. Kathleen and Trevor were tied up beside him, to his right and his left. A half dozen men wearing ski masks and jeans, and holding automatic weapons—M16s—stood around them. All wore night vision goggles. The lights were still out. Wilson could barely make out the figures in the glow of the night light. “What do you want from us?” Wilson said.

The men didn't answer. They simply stood there and waited. Then a warm glow appeared at the base of the stairs. Wilson heard someone approaching, the
clip-clop
of hard leather soles. The glow broadened; a figure materialized. At first Wilson could scarcely believe it. A young nun, wearing a traditional habit and veil. She was carrying a candle, and the bronze glow of the flame emblazoned her face, the full lips and small button nose. She looked as if she might be strolling to vespers, down a long convent corridor in Veracruz or Cancún; she looked Mexican. She stared at her feet, humbly looking away. She was muttering a prayer, he could see that. Her lips moved. She looked up and he noticed her eyes, black as space, like an infinite tunnel, seemingly welling with tears. They were vacant, he realized. Dead.

“Your wife, Mr. Wilson?” she inquired. “She hasn't come home yet?”

“Any minute now,” he found himself answering. “She went shopping for dinner.” He had meant to lie. He had meant to say something quite different.

The nun smiled. She had an infectious agreeable grin, with large perfect white teeth that glimmered against her brown skin. Wilson shuddered.

“Then we'll just have to wait,” she replied.

“Wait for what? Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want from us? Money? I don't have any money.” His voice trailed off. Clearly they weren't looking for money he thought. They had come for something quite different.

The nun took a step closer. Instinctively Wilson reared back. She smiled and looked down at Kathleen. “How old are you, child?” she inquired.

Kathleen stared up in terror. Wilson wrestled against his restraints but they just wouldn't budge. The knots were too tight.

“Thirteen.”

“Like Saint Agnes,” the nun said. “Did you know that back in the early 300s, the prefect Sempronius asked Agnes to marry his son, but—being Christian—she staunchly refused. So he condemned her to death. According to Roman law, the execution of virgins was forbidden. Undaunted, Sempronius ordered the girl to be raped, though they say that her hymen was miraculously preserved. Then they led her outside to be burned at the stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn. So the officer in charge of the troops simply chopped off her head.” The nun reached out, placed her hand upon Kathleen's left shoulder. “With his sword.” She caressed the slender young neck. “Sometimes,” she murmured, “one has to make terrible sacrifices for the good of the Church.” For a moment she stood there, staring off into space. Then she added, “Her bones are conserved in the church of Sant' Agnese fuori le mura, in Rome, and her skull at the Piazza Navona. It's an interesting tour.”

Wilson couldn't stand it any longer. “What the hell do you want from us? Who are you people?”

The nun moved closer to Wilson. “A few days ago, a construction worker named Tom Moody brought you a journal unearthed at your worksite on Market Street—Franklin Court.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

The nun nodded curtly at one of the men in the ski masks. He came forward and stood behind Kathleen. Without warning, he jammed a black rubber gag in her mouth. Then he took out a roll of electrical tape.

“Now, wait a minute,” Wilson said. “Leave my kids out of this. They don't know anything.”

The man wrapped the tape around Kathleen's head, over her eyes and her nose and her lips, trapping the gag in her mouth. Only then did he begin to untie her. He pulled the girl up by the hair.

“Please,” Wilson said. “I'm begging you. Let her go. She knows nothing.”

Kathleen flailed at first but the man in the ski mask cuffed her once on the cheek and she fell still. He picked her up by her scrunchy with the pink polka dots. He dragged her just out of sight. Wilson struggled to see, but—lashed as he was to the seat—he was unable to turn. “I said she doesn't know anything,” he pleaded. “Let her go, or I won't help you find what you're looking for.”

The nun took Wilson by the chin. “But you will, Mr. Wilson,” she told him. “I have faith in you. Where's the journal?”

“What journal?”

The nun nodded again and despite the gag and the masking tape, Kathleen uttered a scream. “Stop it. Please, stop it,” begged Wilson.

“Franklin's journal,” the nun said.

Wilson heard the sound of something tearing. Kathleen shrieked. The noise was muffled and grim. Kathleen cried out again. “I don't have it,” Wilson said.

“You're lying.”

“I sent it away. To New York.”

“To whom?”

“To Robinson. Nick Robinson.”

The nun held up her hand. “And the copy you made?”

“What copy? I didn't make any copy. I don't have a copy.”

“Anyone ambitious enough to send the journal to Robinson would never let go of his prize. You made a copy. One denial would have been more believable.”

The nun grew suddenly silent. She cupped the palm of her hand round her ear, clearly outlined just under her veil. “We have company,” she told the masked men.

They ducked out of sight. The nun faded back toward the kitchen, blowing out the candle as she did so. The room fell into darkness again. Seconds later, a key scraped in the lock. Tumblers clicked. The front door swung open. A hand reached inside for the light switch, turned it on, turned it off, but the room remained dark. A figure stepped into the hallway. It was Wilson's wife. She was carrying two bulging brown grocery bags in her arms.

“Run, Nancy,” cried Wilson. “Get out of here. Now!” A flash of white light. In his head. It exploded. And then pain. And then nothing at all.

T
HIS TIME, WHEN
W
ILSON AWOKE, HIS HEAD HURT, AND HE
could feel blood running down the nape of his neck. It felt shockingly cold. Nancy was standing a few feet away next to Trevor. The nun stood behind her. She was strangling Nancy with her rosary beads. She was choking her. And Nancy was trying to reach up, trying to tear at the nun's little fingers, at her veil, at her habit. But she couldn't quite reach. Wilson strained at his bindings. He pulled at his chair. The nun kept on squeezing and squeezing until the woman he had known for seventeen years, who had borne his two children, who had slept in his bed every night of their marriage, was as limp and as unrecognizable as a stranger at the back of a car wreck sliding by on the highway at night.