The Apocalypse Codex

Schiller.

Schiller was not an isolated phenomenon, Persephone noted. He had connections. Connections with John Rhodes III, a scion of Washingtonian blue-bloods and a pillar of The Fellowship—Abraham Vereide’s C Street prayer breakfast and power broker mission to the Gentile Kings. Rhodes had a visiting fellowship at the Institute for American Values, and sat on the board on the National Organization for Marriage. One of NOM’s board members, Chuck Parker—CEO of a Christian textbook publisher—also sat on GPM’s board. GPM was a sponsor of NOM, and Schiller had run pledge drives on his TV show, urging his flock to “stand tall and defend marriage.” Parker was a shareholder in Stone Industries, an arms manufacturer, and—

Persephone blinked. Uneventful. Boring. Sleepy. That was the problem with trying to cram while leaning back in a recliner with a tumbler of Wild Turkey at forty thousand feet: it was too easy to doze off. Johnny found this stuff interesting (his upbringing had, if nothing else, exposed him to some of the wilder reaches of fundamentalist Christianity) but she was making heavy weather of it, finding their feuds and arguments as arcane and recondite as Trotskyite ontogeny or cultist schismatics. Pay attention now. This stuff was—would be—important. Golden Promise Ministries, the Fellowship, National Organization for Marriage, True Path Publishing, Stone Industries Small Arms, Pillar of Fire International, the Purity Path Pledge League—they were all merging into a whirling tattered spiderweb of Christian Dominionist pressure groups and fund-raising organizations. Deeper connections to shadowy ultra-conservative billionaire sponsors were hinted at but coyly elided—nobody wanted to speak truth to the power to launch a million libel lawsuits.

Johnny honked, a sluggish bass. Persephone reached out and poked his shoulder.

“Yes? Duchess.”

“You were snoring.”

“Was I? Oh bugger.” He stabbed at the power button on his seat, then waited until it tilted up to Persephone’s level. “Something come up?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She closed the folder. Quietly, she added: “I make a sky marshal two rows ahead, over to the left, aisle seat. Dead-heading pilot to his right. Four businessmen, a retired couple, one woman and child. Am I missing anyone?”

By way of reply, Johnny stood up clumsily and stepped across her legs, then walked aft towards the toilets. A couple of minutes later he returned. “I match your count. We’re green.”

Over the years, Persephone and Johnny had frequently needed to discuss confidential matters in public, so they’d long since worked out a protocol to improvised security. A first-class airliner cabin was pretty good—lots of background white noise, little opportunity for adversaries to plant bugging devices (especially after they’d arranged last-minute seat changes with the cabin crew), an easy environment to monitor for eavesdroppers. By color-coding it green Johnny was agreeing that it was—conditionally—safe to talk.

Persephone relaxed infinitesimally. “Do we know any forensic accountants on this side of the pond?”

“Accountants?” Johnny frowned. “We’re going to Denver. If you wanted to pick up an accountant, couldn’t we have stopped on Wall Street?”

“I didn’t know we’d need one until…” She gestured irritably at the folder. “It’s a real mess. As bad as mafia money laundering, all barter and back-scratching.”

“You’re assuming this is about cash, Duchess.”

“It usually is.” She looked pensive. “Except when it’s about power.”

“What about religion?”

“Religion is power, to these people. And power is religion, of course. If you’re a humble believer set on doing your deity’s will, then what are you doing spending the take on Lamborghinis and single malt? The real believers are running soup kitchens and emptying bedpans, trying to do good while the televangelists preaching the prosperity gospel are doing it to keep up the payments on the McMansion and the Roller.”

She spoke with quiet vehemence, fingers whitening on the spine of the folder. “Power and money. It’s about all of those things, otherwise why is Schiller trying to gain access to the highest levels of government? He’s a fraud and a dabbler, and Mr. Lockhart shall have his evidence.”

Johnny thought for a while. Then he shook his head slowly. “You’re wrong this time, Duchess. Snark or Boojum. What if he is a true believer, have you thought about that?”

“A true believer in what? The prosperity gospel? New Republican Jesus who rewards his faithful flock for their faith with the ability to make money fast? That’s self-serving cant, and you know it. Wish-fulfillment as religion.” A twitch of the cheek: Persephone unamused. “Don’t get me started on the gap between the Vatican and their flock.”

“I know the church I grew up in.” McTavish is silent for a few seconds. “I could smell it on him. He’s one of the unconditionally elect, Duchess, and it’s quite probable that he holds to the old rites.”

“If it’s a shell, what’s going on under cover of the church?”

“Well.” Johnny shuffles uncomfortably. “You know about the five points of Calvinism, yes? Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. Up in the western isles they take it all too damn seriously. That, and the, uh, cousins under the sea. They hold that they’re unconditionally elect; and that the bloodline of the elect are going to usher in the new age and summon Jesus back to earth—but only when he’s good and ready, you understand. Pay no attention to the gill slits and fins, they’re signs of grace. It’s come to a pretty pass when the bastard spawn of the Deep Ones turn into Presbyterian fundamentalists, hasn’t it? But anyway, that’s what we could be looking at, worst case.”

“So you think they’re a cover for a cell of cultists who are planning on raising something?”

“If you pray to Jesus on the cosmic party line and something at the other end picks up the receiver, because you happen to have an affinity for the uncanny and your prayers attract attention, what are you going to assume?” Johnny shuffles again. “But they’re not cultists in the regular sense, Duchess. Quite possibly they’re just your regular prosperity gospel preaching televangelists. There’s a certain point beyond which any sufficiently extreme Calvinist sect becomes semiotically indistinguishable from the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh. But even though their eschatology is insane, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’re trying to summon up the elder gods.”

“In which case we’re back to money again.” She smiles triumphantly.

“Some of these Pentecostalists, Duchess, they’re not all con men. From 3 John: ‘I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.’ Suppose rather than passing the plate in church, they get a radio show and pass the plate and half a million listeners donate. Isn’t that going to convince a preacher that it’s all true? Wealth comes to the faithful, that’s the message they’re going to take. An’ I never yet met a con man who wasn’t the better at the job for believing his own spiel.”

“That’s not…untrue. But money corrupts. Almost invariably, powers that arise around money are corrupted by it. He might have started out as a true believer, but money has a way of taking over. A church is a business, after all, and those employees or executives who are good at raising money are promoted by their fellows.”

Johnny shrugged, helpless in the face of her conviction. “I still reckon you shouldn’t discount belief, Duchess. They may be after the money as well, but they’re motivated primarily by faith. I know Schiller’s kind: I was born and raised to be one of the elect.”

“But you broke out,” she observed. “And that was a couple of decades ago, and you don’t know Schiller personally. He’s an American cousin, not one of your relatives.”

“All true.”

“So. We’ve got a situation to investigate. Is Schiller fronting a cult or merely making money? That’s worth knowing, but what we really want to find out is why he’s putting so much effort into getting in deep in the UK. Recruiting hands and doing breakfast with VIPs.”

“So you’ve got a plan?”

“Not much of one.” Persephone’s lips wrinkled. “The provisional plan is that there is no plan. First we scope the site and designate accessible dead-letter drops. Then I go in, I do the course, and I come out. You’ll be sitting on the outside monitoring the message drops—I won’t make contact directly unless I want to abort. Gerry’s little helper will make contact with you while I’m inside; if I learn anything, pass it on to him. I think it’d be useful to customize a penetration toolkit for the job, and have two escape routes planned in case things go really off the rails. But I’m not expecting any trouble. It’s a residential retreat and bible study course aimed at recruiting new blood, not a Gulag or an army base.”