immediately handed the control back to the astonished Feldman, pivoted quickly, and with a slight, bemused smile on her face, retired to her room.
Hunter could only stare at the screen, mouth agape.
Jeza spent the remaining few hours before their arrival in her room, alone, meditating.
68
Salt Lake City, Utah 8:00 A.M., Saturday, March 4, 2000
Cardinal Litti was up early this morning in anticipation of yet another full day at the second convocation. He sat on the sofa in his hotel room, sipping tea and praying.
But in the middle of his thoughts, the cardinal was interrupted by a knock. Assuming it to be maid service, he quickly unlatched the lock and opened the door wide. But it was not the chambermaid.
“Hello, Alphonse,” a familiar but unwelcome voice intruded. “May we come in?”
“Di Concerci! Santorini!” Litti gasped. “What are you doing here?”
The two cardinals entered the room, despite lacking an invitation.
“You're looking well, Cardinal Litti,” Silvio Santorini greeted his errant colleague.
“ ‘Cardinal?’” Litti questioned. “Do I still hold that title?”
“Of course,” di Concerci reassured him.
Litti asked the impossible. “Can it be that you're here because Nicholas has reevaluated my report?”
“No, Cardinal,” di Concerci said. “We're here to observe the convocation, and also to talk with you about returning to the Curia. Perhaps we were too abrupt with you. Perhaps you should have been allowed to discuss your- interesting theories. If you'd be willing to come back with us at the end of the convocation, we assure you, you will have an opportunity to present your thinking. Come, let us go to breakfast together and we'll discuss all this further.”
Litti was not won over so easily and emitted a short, contemptuous laugh. “Please spare me the patronization. The Congregation's encyclical on the New Messiah is written and disseminated. It's too late for my words to matter.”
“It's never too late, Alphonse,” Santorini promised. “Please, reconsider.”
“Do you think I make my choices casually, Silvio?” Litti's face reddened with emotion. ‘That I so simply give up fifty years of devoted service to my Church. Abandon my security, the only life I have ever known, to pursue-” Litti fought back the tears that welled in his pained, sad eyes.
Knowing he was wasting his efforts, Litti calmed himself and changed the subject. “You're here for the duration of the assembly? You'll stay to hear the Messiah speak?”
“We are here for the duration, Alphonse,” di Concerci pledged. “I'll be representing the Vatican on the dignitary panel.”
“What!” Litti shouted, in disbelief. “You try to prevent
“Antonio did not steal your place, Alphonse,” Santorini attempted to reassure the wayward cardinal. “The convocation made a formal request of the Vatican for an official representation on the panel. Nicholas was considering you when you forsook your position on the Congregation. You were in absentia. We didn't even know for sure that you were here until after we arrived last night.”
“I don't believe you!” Litti challenged. “Nicholas denied my request to come here. Why would he reconsider?”
“Irrespective, Alphonse”-di Concerci sidestepped this-“we're here to observe and evaluate this alleged Messiah, which is precisely what you wished of us all along.”
Litti turned to face his old adversary once more. “Cardinal di Concerci, I caution you that you cannot possibly understand her message unless you adjust your perspective. You must listen with a virgin ear, feel with a pure heart, think with an unadulterated mind.
“Regretfully, in knowing you, Prefect, I must say that I have little hope for you in that regard. But if, after hearing the New Messiah, either of you find yourselves persuaded to my position by even a small degree, seek me out again and I will speak with you further. Beyond that, we have nothing more to say.”
With that, the two Vatican emissaries departed. Litti attempted to return to his prayer but was too upset.
In the elevator down to the lobby, Silvio Santorini rolled his eyes and shook his head at his colleague. “He's exactly as you described him. Not at all himself. It's very sad. And potentially very embarrassing for us should he express his views to any of the media who hover constantly around us here. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was not wise to allow Alphonse to retain his cardinalship. Should he speak out in public, he may be presumed to be representing an opinion of the Curia. Or at best intimating a division in our ranks. It's dangerous.”
“I agree, my friend,” the prefect replied, “but the pontiff wouldn't hear of it At least, not yet Nicholas and Alphonse were once very close. Nicholas still holds out hope that our fractious cardinal will come to his senses. Personally, I've
Santorini nodded “Did you bring your virgin ears?”
“None that I would allow the words of this false prophetess to penetrate, I can assure you,” di Concerci quipped. And both men indulged in a brief laugh as they left the elevator and exited the hotel into the brisk morning air.
69
Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. 2:15 P.M., Saturday, March 4, 2000
It was a bright and beautiful winter afternoon. Right on schedule, WNN's charter flight touched down on the outskirts of the U.S. capital. The sight that greeted the deplaning party was spectacular-hundreds of thousands of screaming, near-hysterical people with flowers and signs and flashing cameras, amassed as far as the eye could see around the protected perimeters of the huge airport.
It would have been impossible to motorcade through this congestion and, as planned, the Moore administration had one of its presidential helicopters waiting close by to whisk the four of them immediately off to the White House. All the immense crowd got for its long patience was a few glimpses of the petite Messiah as she intermittently appeared among the moving wall of Secret Service agents.
But there was no mistaking her. Her radiance set her dramatically apart from everyone else around her. Disappointing to Feldman, Jeza had returned to the security of her old linen robe and tired, worn sandals. Her hair, however, looking considerably less unruly than Feldman was accustomed to seeing it, gleamed and bounced in the morning sun as she and her party moved rapidly across the tarmac, into the idling chopper, up and off to the South Lawn.
The welcome at the White House was even more ebullient. The crowds were larger still Stretching all along Pennsylvania Avenue and its surrounding blocks were throngs of well-wishers, followers, the hopeful afflicted, the curious-as well as a few isolated groups of protesters who held absolutely no sway over this generally adoring crowd.
Throughout the cheering multitudes, colorful signs and placards abounded, praising Jeza as Lord, citing scripture, predicting the end of the world. And one banner that was particularly popular on all three major network evening newscasts: “Moore needs a miracle!”
Stepping out of the helicopter, Feldman took Jeza by the arm, assisted her down to the pad and along a
