shipped. What remains here in the building can be used to attack anyone who enters the building. There are areas that can be sealed off where police and authorities can be gassed.
“You realize of course,” he said, “that from most of these condemned areas, we will be the only broadcast that the United States receives. We will have the advantage in describing this gentle plague. We have written our poetry, which is worthy to be remembered, like the story of the battles of Darius carved in rock.”
He pointed to the various monitors whose cameras remained fixed on corridors or empty rooms or elevators. “All killing traps. We are a fortress here.
“On the third day,” he said, “as the United States weeps in confusion for the rest of the world, while secretly sighing in relief to be rid of it, I will rise from the Dead, and I will tell what I have seen of these deaths everywhere, and that this plague was inevitable and the will of God. All the members of my Temple are prepared to take positions of leadership.”
“Do they know it’s a hoax!” I demanded. “Your own idiot followers? Do they know it’s Nathan, an identical twin, who will be killed?”
He smiled patiently at me, his back to the map, his arms folded.
“You tricked him into the hospital to acquire the DNA you need to verify your own death,” I said. “How many know about the fraud? How many are there involved in exchanging the DNA records at the key moments in order to verify your resurrection?”
“Enough key people know. Of course the great mass of my followers don’t know. They know who I am, and when I appear they will know it’s Gregory. I take the responsibility for this on my own shoulders. I take the guilt of the murder of the world, and the burden of a new myth of my journey to hell and back. I am the new Messiah. I am the anointed one. And my secret things are mine, as Yahweh’s secrets were His.”
He took the time to calm himself. His eyes were wet with emotion. “You’re beautiful, Azriel. I need you. You’ve been sent to be at my side. You’ve been sent.”
“Get on with this plan. Who knows what?” I demanded.
“Only a few in this location know that the death and the resurrection are a trick. Isn’t that how it probably happened the first time?”
“The first time,” I whispered. “And what was the first time? Was it Calvary? Is that what you think?”
“Even the people distributing the gas throughout India do not really know what it will do. Only those in charge know. There are levels of knowledge. Mine is a world of zealots willing to die for me, don’t you see, die for me and for a new world. Now listen to what I say. Listen!
“Imagine the relief when people realize what has taken place. I mean it. Think of the relief in the minds of all intelligent Americans and Europeans, all Westerners, or whatever you want to call us.”
He sat down again and leaned towards me. “Azriel, people will be overjoyed when the Great Death has passed. They will be overjoyed! Only the West with all its resources will remain, that’s all. All the poverty, the disease, the tribal war, gone. Gone from the earth. A new beginning.
“We, the Temple of the Mind, will take control. We outnumber those in Washington who might at first resist us. We will have no problem in other places. We know what has happened. We have the knowledge. We will go on the airwaves describing that the will of God has been done, and that the earth is now at peace, and free of millions who covered it like termites and parasites.”
“And you think the President of this country is going to take your hand for this?”
“Well, we’ll probably have to kill him. But at least we’ll give him a chance. At the moment he is an extremely brilliant man and rather beautiful. But our Temple people in Washington are ready. There are three thousand of them within blocks of the White House, and the nearby Pentagon. I presume you know these are our important buildings. We can gas everyone in those buildings. If necessary the entire population of Washington can be gassed. I’ve agonized over this. I believe that we should not do this to our own people.”
“How merciful.”
“Just wise. We want the government to realize it has been spared by the prophet Gregory at the will of the Lord to help rebuild a new and bountiful world order. At least, we want to give the President and our congressmen time to visualize these empty continents where the lilies of the field can bloom again in all their glory.”
He implored me with his eyes. He was truly moved. When he trembled it wasn’t fear, but a great anticipation.
“Don’t you see, my friend?” he asked. “This is what everybody wants. When a man turns on television at night and sees the war in the Balkans, it fills him with despair. Well, there won’t be any more war. Bosnians and Serbs alike will be dead.
“Imagine never having to worry again about the naked millions, the hunger, the floods, the disasters in India. All gone. All of those beautiful cities and temples lying virgin and ready to be reawakened. No one wants to hear any more about petty genocide in Iraq, or street riots in Tel Aviv, or massacres in Cambodia. We’re all sick of watching the Third World struggle, while we remain impotent, castrated by our superiority and refined values.
“Everyone wants this!
“It is what Alexander would do! It is what Constantine would do! No one has the means, the guts, the wisdom, or the courage to do it but me! I alone will do this. I alone will do it! I will strike as the Pharaoh struck when he rode down on those who invaded the Valley of the Nile.”
I said nothing. A clock was ticking in my brain, a clock. Six or before. What time was it now?
“You’ve got to consider it,” he continued. “You’ve got to carefully consider it. Imagine the jungles of Indochina and those beautiful ruins, with all the warlike people gone! Imagine the majesty of a city like Berlin. Imagine its resources. In fact Germany will be filled with resources. And those the Germans hurt in the World War will be so happy that Germany is gone!
“All these people have brought this on themselves! I was born to do this, you’re proof of it.”
“How can you be so sure of that?” I asked. “Doesn’t my presence make you pause even an instant!”
“No. Not when I picture the world after the Last Days. The Paradise. Imagine the quiet sweet earth, growing with grass again, and only those of the West preserved to reinvent, and to save, to rebuild nations without ever letting the chaos of the past redevelop. America will colonize these peaceful and beautiful worlds. Under my leadership. If the government helps, that will be good. We need the help. If not, we take over the government.”
“And the people in this country, you think they will let you do this?”
“Trust me, they will be very happy once it has sunk in, once they know all that is gone, once they know we are living in a world filled again with natural resources, and abundant land, and beautiful monuments, and fertile and magnificent places to be colonized. Even our Afro-Americans will be delighted that they don’t have to worry any more about Africa. American members of all our minority populations will be saved. No people or race exists that does not have a colony in America. This country is the Ark! Cooperate! They’ll worship us. They’ll worship the risen Messiah, and then his Hasid roots can be known, and it will all be written down; it will become the great turning point in history.”
I let him go on: he was truly in his own grip now, nothing could have shut him up, this was his aria.
“Azriel, if you only knew how much we have tried to help these poor nations. If you only knew the conditions in Baghdad and Israel. If you only knew the impossible state of things.
“The first half of this century, we saw fascist madmen like Hitler and Mussolini, and Franco and Stalin. We saw their crude methods fail and pitch Europe into agony.
“Now there are no more such men in the West. There isn’t a single leader in the West capable of the clarity of Franco.
“One must go to ragged poor places like Baghdad to find little dictators, like Saddam Hussein, or to the Balkans to find those who would fight to the death. Even Russia itself has no great Stalin, no Lenin, no Peter the Great.”
“And you saw these men as great?” I asked. “You see them as great?”
“No, they were evil. They did harm, and by the way, they annihilated millions. Don’t think for a minute Stalin didn’t kill as many people as Hitler. They killed and they killed and they killed. But it was crude, sadistic, ugly, primitive. I don’t count them as great.
“Now the West is led by people who are caught in the trap of their own conscience and benevolence. They know they should bomb Iraq and Iran off the map, but nobody has the guts to do it! Everybody knows Africa is a breeding place for plagues that can kill the world. No one has the guts to annihilate the population.”
