the ever-faithful Cardinal Litti. Lying in their embrace, her eyes slowly closed and a bright red patch grew large upon her chest.
Hunter stood and left the room. Feldman hung his head and sobbed.
108
The University of Wisconsin, Madison 8:38 A.M., Friday, April 21, 2000
As if the black smoke billowing from mammoth Camp Randall Stadium had spawned them, low-lying dark clouds overhung the city of Madison, Wisconsin. An anxious, fearful Michelle and Tom Martin approached the university haltingly in their car, held up by snarled, bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“Damn!” Tom ventilated at their slow progress. “We'll never get there through this mess!”
“Maybe with all the traffic, Tommy never even made it!” Michelle voiced, optimistically.
“If he and his friends left at three this morning, he made it all right. It's the riot over there that's causing this traffic jam. Anyway, we know Shelley was at the damn rally! I told that girl not to go!”
Michelle moaned with worry.
The Martins had been up since 5:30 A.M., awakened by a disturbing phone call from the parents of their son's best friend. Against Tom Senior's orders, young Tom had sneaked away in the middle of the night with some of his schoolmates. They, and tens of thousands like them, had journeyed to Madison to attend a 7:00 A.M. assembly held at the University of Wisconsin's massive Camp Randall football stadium.
Sponsored by, and intended for, the pro-Jeza Messianic Guardians of God, the event had been organized to showcase Jeza's Good Friday speech. Her address was to be telecast live, at 7:30 A.M., Central Standard Time, on the stadium's giant viewing screen.
Unfortunately, as the Martins had heard in alarming radio reports during their long, frantic drive from Racine, virtually as many Jeza detractors as supporters had shown up. Because the assembly was a free event, no tickets were required and there was no mechanism to screen attendees. The anti-Jeza crowd entered the stadium as freely as the Jeza advocates, each gravitating toward opposite sides of the huge, 76,129 seat arena, filling it to capacity and spilling over into the parking lots outside.
The small detail of campus police assigned to this event had not been impervious to the clues of an impending disaster. Early on, in the predawn light as the crowds steadily grew, they had nervously appealed to the city police force, which soon also recognized the gravity of the situation. Having concluded that any attempts to cancel the event would ignite a riot, they called in more substantial reinforcements. The National Guard was rushed to the scene in helicopters, quickly setting up a phalanx in the center of the playing field, back to back, facing the opposing sides. Riot control gear at the ready, the edgy Guardsmen had awaited Jeza's speech with rising apprehension.
An indication of what was to come occurred the instant the prophetess first appeared on the stadium's viewing screen. While the pro-Jeza side erupted in an exultant cheer, the opposing faction immediately began booing and hissing and shouting Antichrist epithets across the gridiron. As the Messiah began her address, the protesters had cried out all the louder, attempting to drown her out.
Enraged at having their assembly defiled and Jeza's message obscured, the Messianic Guardians of God were already primed for battle. But then, in that final, climactic moment when the prophetess was ruthlessly gunned down, it became all too much for them. They had erupted in an uncontrollable frenzy and began charging down out of the stands, provoking a mirror response from their opponents.
The luckless National Guardsmen, like pharaoh's soldiers caught in the middle of the parted Red Sea, had gaped in horror as the two giant waves descended upon them. Without exception, they broke ranks and bolted, every man for himself, toward the exits.
The attacking armies collided midfield, assaulting each other with abandon, unwittingly injuring many of their own fellow supporters in the confused melee. The tragedy had resulted in thousands of casualties.
Similar scenarios were occurring all across the globe, as the latest news reports from the Martins’ car radio revealed. Reaction to Jeza's passing was creating an unremitting nightmare of violence between the two antagonistic millenarian factions.
Tom Martin could stand it no longer. He switched off the radio in frustration. As another screaming ambulance made its way past him down the center of the road leading to the coliseum, he spontaneously swung his car out behind it, following it through the entrance gates, defying all police commands to stop.
Pulling in behind the parking ambulance, the Martins watched in horror as National Guardsmen, police and firefighters scrambled back and forth with the injured and/or arrested.
“Oh my God!” Michelle Martin broke down, spying two paramedics carrying a young woman on a stretcher to the back of the ambulance.
“It isn't Shelley,” her husband assured her. “I saw blond hair.”
“God help us, we'll never find them in this awful mess!” Mrs. Martin cried.
Yet, miraculously, in the midst of all the chaos, their daughter found them. Holding a blood-soaked scarf to the back of her head, Shelley Martin burst into tears of relief at the sight of her parents’ car.
“Daddy! Mom!” she screeched, and her father rushed out of his vehicle to snatch his daughter away from the turmoil.
“Oh, thank God you're here!” she wailed, as he bundled her into the front seat between himself and his wife. “It's so
“Shelley!” her father gasped at the sight of the blood. “Are you hurt bad?”
She shook her head, still weeping.
“Sweetie,” Michelle Martin implored, stroking her head, “have you seen Tommy? We think he's here somewhere. He drove up with some of his friends this morning and-”
Shelley's face contorted. “Yes!” she waded. “He had a club in his hand! It was like he was in a trance or something. He was with a bunch of his friends, his shirt was open and he had one of those awful Guardian of God badges tattooed on his chest. His friend attacked me with a club and was about to hit me again when Tommy jumped on him. They were swallowed up in the riot and I haven't seen Tommy since.”
Her mother groaned and sank back in her seat, tears streaming down her cheeks. She stared out the window, up into the turbulent clouds of black smoke still issuing from inside the coliseum.
Somehow she knew she'd never see her son alive again.
109
Mount of the Ascension, Jerusalem, Israel 2:12 A.M., Saturday, April 22, 2000
Feldman sat alone on the villa balcony, staring out into the still city. The rains had continued steadily until precisely midnight, then stopped promptly, as if turned off by a switch. Now the clouds had dissipated and the stars emerged timidly, one by one, on a moonless, immaculate night.
For the moment, there were no throngs in the streets. No shouting. No violence. Ironically, it was peaceful and quiet in the Holy Land. The millenarians were all stilled, huddled in their tents and shelters, unable to get at each other due to the considerable flooding and oppressive mud.
And Feldman had never felt so despondent.
Thankfully, his associates displayed considerable respect for his feelings, granting him the distance he needed. Only now had his emotions quelled enough that he could reflect back on the TV coverage of the cowardly assassination.
Jeza had indeed been evacuated promptly in the Israeli military helicopter and flown directly to Hadassah Hospital a short distance away in north Jerusalem. She was pronounced dead on arrival. The body was being held under tight security by a full division of the Israeli Defense Force. The Israeli prime minister, Eziah Ben-Miriam, had
