Norm had been boating since he was eleven, learning to sail at St. Andrews Prep. But it was powerboats that he loved. And this was his third. Beside him sat Father Timothy Callahan, newly appointed priest of St. Pius Church. Tim was half Norm’s age and thirty pounds lighter. He had a full head of chestnut brown hair, whereas Norm Babcock was as bald as a cue ball. Today Father Tim was dressed in a green golf shirt and shorts. His usual attire was all black with a white collar. Or clerical robes, which some weeks ago Norm had donned to hold “confession” with one Roman Pace.
“The man is a bloody snake,” said Babcock, looking at the monitor.
“Yes,” Father Tim replied, his voice weak, barely audible.
While Gladstone pounded on his podium in perfect Evangelical self-righteousness, Norm turned up the volume so his sermon could be heard over the groan of the engines.
Norm veered toward Peddocks Island as they headed out to open sea. He knew all about Gladstone—a rube from the backwoods of Tennessee who followed in his father’s footsteps to become a backwoods preacher. In time, the established clergy—other Protestants and Catholics alike—called him a fraud: just another Bible-thumping “evanghoul” getting fat and powerful off the dollars of destitute trailer parkers desperate for hope. His following at first was small because he was competing with dozens of other teleministries around the country and had no distinction—no hook.
But then his sermons shaded into the occult—near-death experiences. Hundreds of books on the subject had been written over the decades—and all basically the same blather. Someone is pronounced dead from a heart attack, an accident, gunshot, whatever. The victim floats out of his or her body to go moving down a tunnel toward a celestial light, where he or she meets spirits of dead relatives and “beings of light.” To bolster “authenticity,” Gladstone claimed to have suffered a near fatal asthma attack; then, while paramedics attended him, he reported moving down a tunnel to a garden where the Lord Jesus Christ himself welcomed him to paradise. He woke up in a hospital, alert to the glorious possibilities, and wrote a book, self-published, of course, and peddled it to his congregation as evidence of God’s truth—for only $9.99. The same old charlatan but with spiritually toxic snake oil.
“There it is,” Norm said, stabbing his finger at the screen. “Devil’s blasphemy, point-blank. The son of a bitch.”
Father Tim nodded, but his face wore a hangdog expression. “I still don’t like it, Norm. We’re complicitous to murder.”
“Tim, what he’s doing is an abomination. You heard with your own ears.”
“Yes, but hiring a hit man makes us murderers in the eyes of the law and God.”
“Let me remind you that the Jesus Christ he met with open arms was
“Now the bastard enlists the Holy Word in service of Lucifer,” Norm growled. “Sacred light. Let’s not forget that Lucifer’s very name is a lie—Bearer of Light.”
“But I’m still not comfortable with this whole thing.”
“Look, these people have taken it into the laboratory. He and his scientist pals are trying to do what nobody’s dared before—or had the means to. And once he has his so-called proof, he’s going on TV to show the world. And then what? Bloody Armageddon, that’s what.”
“But murder.”
Norm paused the video. “Review your book of Matthew, my friend—every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Need further consolation? Then consider Ecclesiastes: ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,’ including ‘a time to kill.’ This man is evil, and what he promises is an abomination against God and the Holy Spirit.”
“Are you going to send this Pace after him, too?”
“That would attract too much attention. Just those doing his bidding. And then all his legions will see that the emperor has no clothes.”
Tim was only two years out of the seminary and still green under his collar. But Norm was not reticent about telling him, made easier by the fact that he was Tim’s uncle, with considerable clout with conservatives in the local Catholic community. At Boston College he had considered the seminary to become a Jesuit priest but went on for an M.B.A. Wise real estate investments made him a fortune, allowing him to generously support conservative Catholic organizations, schools, and businesses needing legal protection against liberal social movements and the ACLU. He was also a director of the ultraconservative Fraternity of Jesus, which was dedicated to preserving pre-Vatican Catholic orthodoxy and to promoting the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life. This small but powerful brotherhood was not recognized by the Vatican. That was no problem for Norm and his colleagues because they didn’t recognize the current pope or the last several.
Father Tim nodded in agreement. And Babcock unmuted the television.
“First the snake oil, then the pitch.” While Gladstone explained how payments could be made through all the major credit cards and so on, Norm muted the video. “We’re fighting to save the Church herself from this lying son of a bitch. He’s mimicking the real Word of God only to lead the flock away from the true Jesus, the true Holy Spirit, and the true authority of the Church. He’s evil and he must be stopped. Period. And we’ve got the right man for the job—a master at stealth, a latter-day Saint Michael. And this dragon will be cast out—this silver-tongued serpent with his bloody 800 number.”
“He’s turning the Holy Word inside out,” Norm continued. “Jesus teaches that death be feared; they preach that death be embraced. Jesus says the Lord hates sins; they claim that sin’s not a problem—that anyone can go to heaven. Jesus says fear hell; and they preach there is no hell, only divine light at the end of the tunnel. Jesus says only those who embrace God’s Word will see heaven; and they preach that all are welcome—Christian, Muslim, Jew, or atheist. This is nothing less than the grand deception of Satan.”
While Gladstone continued soliciting donations, Father Tim said, “But if you want to stop the snake, go for the head, no?”
“No, you just get the mouth. It’s those behind the scenes, those fuzzy-headed scientists and their fancy machines and computer programs—Satan’s doormen. That’s where the danger lies. Stop them and their machinations, and this little man will have no shadow to cast.”
“Thy will be done.”
Then Norm pressed a few buttons on the laptop and a still photograph with a name under it appeared.
“Who’s that?”
“The next doorman.”
