The Righteous Men (2006) (46 page)

‘For the Lord loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones.
They will be protected forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut
off.’

Mohammed was writhing, struggling to break free. And still the voice was
speaking, its breath hot.

‘The wicked lie in wait for the righteous, seeking their very
lives; but the Lord will not leave them in their power or let them be condemned
when brought to trial. The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord; he
is their stronghold in time of trouble.’

Finally he felt the needle break the skin of his arm and, as the sky
darkened, he heard the words of a prayer, until the voice grew distant and all
was silent.

N
ow it was Will’s turn
to take charge. He all but pushed Tom out of his chair, and instantly returned
to twenty-first century journalism’s base camp: Google.

‘Church of the Reborn Jesus’ brought up a page of entries, but
they were thin. To Will’s surprise, the group did not have a website of
its own.

He clicked the first entry, a link to a paper delivered at a University of
Nebraska conference.

Though never large in number, the Church of the Reborn
Jesus achieved great influence at its height a quarter century ago, especially among
young Christian intellectuals. Central to its teaching was a radical brand of
replacement theology, the belief that Christians had replaced the Jews as God’s
chosen people …

Maddeningly, the article said nothing more, rambling off into a wider
discussion of campus Christianity in the 1970s. But Will was on a roll. He
could tell TC was keeping up, yet both knew, intuitively, there was no time to
waste on discussion. He went straight to Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia and
typed in ‘replacement theology’.

It took a few seconds, during which Will’s right foot pulsated —
partly in anxiety, partly in excitement. A half-buried memory was nagging away
at him.
The Church of the Reborn Jesus: he had seen that name before,
somewhere at the office
…

Then a page appeared, headlined Supersessionism. It was defined as ‘the
traditional Christian belief that Christianity is the fulfilment of Biblical
Judaism, and therefore that Jews who deny that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah fall
short of their calling as God’s chosen people.’

Will skimmed to the next paragraph. ‘It argues that Israel has been
superseded … in the sense that the Church has been entrusted with the
fulfilment of the promises of which Jewish Israel is the trustee.’

The entry noted that while several liberal Protestant groups had renounced
supersessionism, ruling that Jews and ‘perhaps’ other
non-Christians could find God through their own faith, ‘other
conservative and fundamentalist Christian groups hold supersessionism to be
valid … the debate continues.’

And I bet I know where it continues
, thought Will. He went back to
Google, now narrowing his search to ‘Church of the Reborn Jesus and
replacement theology’. Three references, the first an article from
The
Christian Review
.

‘… Replacement theology became increasingly unfashionable in
this period, discredited by the politically correct crowd, said its defenders.
A few years earlier, it had enjoyed a vigorous revival chiefly through a
cerebral grouping known as the Church of the Reborn Jesus. According to this
group, Christians had, by their recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, not only
inherited the Jews’ status as the elect, but inherited Judaism itself.
The Jews had, the Reborn Jesus movement argued, ignored God’s direct
wishes and therefore forfeited all that they had learned from Him. They had
disinherited themselves from their role as the chosen people but — and this
is what set the Church of the Reborn Jesus apart — the Jews had also
abandoned their own traditions, customs and even folklore. From now on, those
were to be regarded as the possessions of committed Christians.’

‘Stop.’ It was TC, white-faced. ‘That’s the key
point, right there.
Their own traditions, customs, even folklore
. This
group believes that Judaism contains the truth, not for Jews but for Christians.
Even the folklore
. Don’t you see? They’ve taken it all. The
mysticism, the kabbalah, everything.’

‘The story of the righteous men,’ said Will.

‘Yes. They don’t think this is some weird Hassidic tradition.

They think this belongs to them. They believe it’s true.’

He clicked on the next Google result. It was a link to an evangelical
discussion group. Somebody calling themselves NewDawn had written a long
posting, apparently in reply to a question about the origins of the Church of
the Reborn Jesus.

In its day it had quite an impact — kind of the
smart end of the whole Jesus freak, sandal-wearing movement. It was centred on
this very charismatic preacher who was then a chaplain to Yale, Rev Jim Johnson.

Will looked up at TC. ‘I know that name,’ he said. ‘He founded
some evangelical movement in the seventies. Died a few years ago.’ But TC
was reading on.

‘Apparently Rev Johnson influenced a whole generation of elite Christians.
They called him the Pied Piper on campus, because he enjoyed such a dedicated
following.’

I can vouch for that,
said the posting below.
I was at Yale in that
period and Johnson was a phenomenon. He was only interested in the A-list,
top-flight students — editors of Law Review, class president, those guys.
We called them the Apostles, hanging around Johnson like he was the Messiah or
something. For anyone interested, I’ve scanned in a picture from the
Yale
Daily News
which shows Johnson and his followers. Click here.

Will clicked and waited for the picture to load. It was grainy, in drab,
1970s colour and it took a while to fill the frame. Slowly it came into view.
At the centre, wearing a broad grin, like the captain of a college football
team, was a man in his late thirties, wearing an open-necked shirt and large
glasses with the curved, rectangular frames that were then regarded as
super-modern. He wore no dog-collar, no dark suit. He was, Will concluded, what
the Victorians would have called a muscular Christian.

Surrounding him were young, serious-looking men, exuding that born-to-rule
confidence that radiated out of Yale or Harvard yearbooks. The hair was long or
bulky, the shirt collars and jacket lapels wide. The faces seemed to shine with
possibility. These men were not only going to rule the world. It was quite
clear they believed they would do it with Jesus’s blessing.

‘I think you need to hurry,’ said Tom, now taking up Will’s
previous position by the curtain. There’s a car outside. Two guys are
getting out and coming into the building.’

But Will was hardly listening. Instead he was pushed back into his seat with
surprise: he had recognized one of the faces in the photograph. He was only
able to because he had seen another, different picture of this same man in his
youth recently. The paper had run it when he was appointed. There, at Jim
Johnson’s side, was none other than Townsend McDougal — the future
editor of The
New York Times
.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Will said.

‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

Will was confused. How would TC recognize McDougal?

‘I didn’t want to say, because I wasn’t sure. But it
really couldn’t be anyone else.’

Will looked up at her, crinkling his eyebrows to register his puzzlement. ‘Who
are you talking about?’

‘Will! They’re coming up. You’ve got to go!’

‘Look,’ said TC, taking her finger to the far left of the back row
of the picture — an area Will had barely examined. TC stopped at a lean,
handsome young man with a full head of thick hair. He was unsmiling.

‘Maybe I’m wrong, Will. But I think that’s your father.’

T
om had fairly wrenched Will
from the chair and out the window, sending him plunging down the fire escape.
He nudged TC the same way and was about to follow himself when he looked back.
The computer screen was still alight with information. It would be too
terrible, thought Tom, if his machine, always such a loyal ally, were to end up
giving them all away.

He rushed TC out, then moved over to the desk and started frantically
closing down programmes. It was while he was shutting down the internet browser
that the door flung open.

He heard it before he saw it, a splintering crash, as two men shouldered
their way into the apartment. Tom looked up and saw one of them: tall,
thick-armed and with the clearest, sharpest blue eyes. In an instant, Tom
decided to do the one thing his every instinct rebelled against. He reached for
the powers cord and pulled it out of the wall, shutting down his computer and
everything connected to it.

But the move was too sudden for his uninvited guests. They interpreted a man
stretching downwards the way they had been trained to, as someone reaching for
a weapon. As he pulled on the white flex, the bullet pierced his chest. He crumpled
to the ground. The screens went dark.

Will charged down the back ladder, taking two then three rungs at a time.
His head was throbbing. Who was chasing him? What had happened to TC and Tom?
Where should he go?

But even as he thundered downwards, storey after storey, his mind was racing
with what he had just seen. The face was unmistakable; TC had seen it straight
away. What Freudian impulse had led his eye away from it? The eyes, the jaw,
the firm nose: his father.

And yet, the one thing he knew for certain about William Monroe Sr was that
he was an avowed rationalist, a coolly secular man whose scepticism about
religion might well have thwarted his highest ambition, to serve as a justice
of the United States Supreme Court. Could he really have once been a
bible-thumper, and such a serious one?

Three more storeys to go, and now he could feel the iron handrail vibrating.
He looked up, to see the soles of shoes descending just as fast as his. One
more level to go: Will all but jumped it.

Now he started sprinting down Smith Street, dodging people as they came out
of the Salonike diner. He looked over his shoulder: a commotion behind him,
caused by a man dashing through a crowd. ‘Hey, watch it asshole!’

Will body-swerved round the corner, clasping hold of a pretzel wagon to
steady himself. In front of him was Fourth Avenue, with six lanes of traffic,
all moving fast. At the first gap, he plunged in.

He was standing on the dotted white line separating two streams of heavy
traffic. Drivers started blasting their horns; they clearly thought Will was
some kind of psycho. He looked back. There, just a lane of cars away, was the
stalker, the man he had nearly caught in the act of murder less than twenty four
hours ago. As if protected by the traffic, Will stared at him. What came back
was a laser-beam eye that seemed to bore right through him.

He wheeled around and spotted another gap in traffic just a beat and he
would miss it. Will leapt across, turning around to see that his pursuer had
made the same move.

They were still just the width of a single car apart. He could see a bulge
around the man’s hip, what Will assumed to be a holster.

He looked ahead: the light was still green. But for how much longer? Soon it
would be red: the traffic would slow down and he would be able to cross to the
other side, but so would the man with the gun. He would be within pointblank range.
But there was no gap. The cars were moving too fast.

Will had only one option. Instead of crossing the road, he sprinted to his
left, as if trying to catch up with the traffic.

He ran faster, never taking his eye off the lights. He would act the second
he saw a glimmer of red. Come on, come on. He looked around. The man was still
just one lane away, but hardly moved from his previous position. Now was the moment.

As green turned to red, the traffic slowed, the cars bunching up behind each
other: Will had only to dart between them, keeping himself low. Three, four,
five lanes and he was nearly there.

Once across, he had to burst through a family waiting at the crossing; he
knocked the balloon out of a child’s hand.

Will looked back to see it soar — and to realize Laser Eyes was now
just a sprint away from him.

At last, Atlantic Avenue subway station. Will hurtled down the stairs,
cursing the wide woman blocking his way. Down and down, vaulting over the
turnstile, hoping his ears would not fail him. Years of travelling on the
Underground in London had given him a sixth sense for the mix of wind, light
and humming sounds that indicated a train was coming. Will was sure he could
hear it on the opposite platform. He would have to get up the stairs and across
the bridge in just a few seconds. He could hear the thudding of footsteps; the
stalker was just behind him.

Only moments separated them, but as Will crossed the bridge he could see the
train that had just pulled in. An instant later, he was sliding down the
stairs, shoving people out of the way. There was the beep-beep-beep and hiss of
air that announced the train was about to move off. Just one more second …

Will dived from the bottom stair and across the platform in what felt like a
single leap. The door had almost closed behind him when it stopped — held
back by four fingers of a hand. Through the glass, Will could see his face: the
eyes almost translucent, fixed in a stare that turned Will’s guts to ice.
The door was inching back.

‘What you doing? You just gonna have to wait for the next train like
everyone else!’ It was a woman passenger, no younger than seventy, using
her walking stick to whack the knuckles protruding through the door. As the
train began to move off, she rapped harder — until one by one, they
disappeared.