Rydell’s brow furrowed. “And then you’ll get him to change his message?”
Drucker shook his head. “No,” he stated. “I’ll just pull the rug out from under him.”
Rydell stared at him questioningly—then his eyes shot wide. “You’re going to expose him as a fake?”
“Exactly.” Drucker’s hard stare burned into him. “We’ll let it run for a while. Weeks. Months. Just let it build. Let every pastor in the country accept him and endorse him as God’s messenger. Let them spread the word to their flocks,” he added, spitting out the word mockingly. “And when it’s all sunk in and settled, when it’s deeply embedded and they’re all on the hook—we’ll show him for what he really is. We’ll show them what the sign really is.”
“And you’ll show them how gullible they are.” Rydell had a faraway look on his face as he imagined the outcome in his mind’s eye.
“The preachers will have so much egg on their faces they’ll have a hard time stepping behind those pulpits and facing their people. The churchgoers will feel like they’ve been had—and maybe they’ll start questioning the rest of the crap they hear in those halls. It’ll open up a whole new discussion, a whole new questioning frame of mind. ‘If it was so easy to fool us today, with everything we know . . . how easy was it to fool people two thousand years ago? What do we really know about that?’ It’ll put everything about religion on the table. And it’ll make people think twice about who they’re willing to follow blindly.”
Rydell felt heady. He himself had been ready to try and convert the world to his cause, but this . . . this went much further. He let out a weary hiss and shook his head. “You’ll make a lot of them even more fanatical than they already are,” he warned.
“Probably,” Drucker agreed casually.
“And you could also start a civil war,” Rydell added, “if not a world war.”
Drucker scoffed. “Oh, I very much doubt that.”
“Are you kidding me?” Rydell flared. “You’re going to have a whole bunch of really angry people out there. And they’ll be looking to take it out on someone. Who’s going to shoulder the blame? You can’t exactly stand up and tell them, ‘Hey, we did it for your own good.’ The country’s already split right down the middle on this. You’ll polarize them even more. The blowback will be horrendous. There’ll be blood in the streets. And that’s before you get the blowback from the rest of the world. You’ve seen what’s starting to happen in Pakistan, in Egypt, in Israel and Indonesia. It’s not just Christians who are buying into your little scam. Muslims, Jews, Hindus . . . they’re fighting among each other over whether or not he’s the real deal. And they’re going to be seriously pissed off when they discover it’s got Uncle Sam’s fingerprints all over it. People don’t take kindly to having others mess around with their beliefs, Keenan. They get real angry about that. And it’s Americans who are going to pay for it with their blood. You’re gonna end up triggering a war you’re trying to stop.”
“Well if they’re so closed-minded, if they don’t see the danger of their ways and insist on marching down that path to destruction, then they’re beyond saving.” Drucker seethed. “We had a war over slavery. Maybe we do need a war over this.” He gave a haughty shrug. “If it’s going to happen sooner or later, might as well just get it over with. And then maybe we can build something more sane from its ashes.”
Rydell felt as if someone had reached in and yanked his lungs out with pliers. “You’re insane,” he told Drucker. “You’ve lost all sense of perspective.”
“Not at all.”
“You can’t do this, Keenan,” Rydell insisted.
“No. Not without a fall guy,” Drucker conceded.
Rydell stared at him, the words colliding with his tangled thoughts, and instantly got it. “Me. That’s what you need me for.”
Drucker nodded stoically. “I needed a fall guy. Someone with a completely different motive, one that wasn’t in any way related to the politics of this country. Because this can’t be seen as a political act, you’re absolutely right about that. The only way to do this is to paint it as the desperate act of a visionary genius with no political motive other than trying to save the planet. And who knows? It may well end up giving people more awareness of the global warming problem.”
“But you couldn’t care less either way,” Rydell said sardonically.
“Not true, Larry. I care. But I’m not even sure what, if anything, we can realistically do about it. And bringing reason back into politics—that’s going to help the polar bears more than pushing Hummer into bankruptcy, don’t you think?”
“This isn’t about saving the polar bears or the rain forests, Keenan,” Rydell said angrily. “It’s about social justice. For everyone on the planet.”
“Social justice is about freeing people from the clutches of witch doctors and superstition,” Drucker fired back.
Rydell rubbed his brow, letting Drucker’s words sink in. The room was suddenly feeling much hotter and tighter. “How was it all meant to end for me? ‘Suicide’ ? ”
Drucker nodded. “Once the hoax is exposed. A tragic end to a heroic attempt.” He sighed and leaned forward. “I’m sorry, Larry. But I hope you can see the sense in what I’m trying to do here. The urgency. And that, at some level, you agree that it had to be done.”
Rydell sat back and shrugged. “I hope you won’t be disappointed if I tell you I won’t play along.”
Drucker gave him a negative, dismissing wave of his hand. “Please, Larry. Give me some credit.”
Larry looked at him, waiting for more—and suddenly froze at Drucker’s composure.
“You’re going to have a stroke,” Drucker told him, casually. “A bad one. In fact it’s going to happen sooner than you think. Maybe right here in this restaurant. In front of all these people. You’ll end up in a coma. One we can manage. And during that time, we’ll,” he paused, choosing his words, “massage your personality. You know, like we did with the priest. We’ll put the right answers in your mind. Make you more amenable to our plans. And when the time comes, we’ll help you take your own life, after leaving behind a detailed, contrite, and moving explanation of why you did what you did.” Drucker studied his face, as if intrigued by Rydell’s reaction to his words. “It’s the stuff of legends, Larry. No one will ever forget your name, if that’s any consolation.”
Rydell felt a surge of sheer terror—and just then, he noticed something behind Drucker. A man in a dark suit, one of his drones. He swung his head around toward the entrance of the cafe. Two more men appeared there. His mind tripped over his only option—to make a loud, visible run for it and hope the commotion screwed up their plans—and he was about to push himself out of his chair when he spotted something else. To his side. Out, on the street. A white van that had been parked there all along. Its side door, sliding open. Two silhouettes, standing inside, on either side of something big and round and mounted on a stand, something that looked like a projector lamp. His hands slipped off the chair’s arms as he tried to push himself to his feet, but he never made it past a couple of inches off the seat cushion. The blast of noise was horrific. It assaulted his senses like a hammer blow that came from inside his skull, overwhelming every nerve ending in his head with an unbearably loud and shrill noise that wouldn’t stop. His eyes burst into tears and he yelled out, the force of the caustic sound blasting him out of his chair in front of a stunned roomful of hotel guests. His hands shot up to protect his ears, but it was too late as his legs crumpled under him and he fell to the ground, wretching and coughing and sputtering with convulsions.
Drucker’s men rushed to his side. They helped him up and instantly bundled him out of the room, avoiding any brusque moves, and displaying the well-trained, expert moves of caring, efficient bodyguards. One of them even called out for a doctor. Within seconds, they’d hustled him out of the cafe and into a waiting elevator.
Its doors slid shut with a silent hiss, and it glided down to the hotel’s underground parking lot.
Chapter 72
Matt’s pulse thundered ahead as he saw Rydell get blasted out of his seat by an unseen force. There was no noise, no physical disturbance. It was as if he’d been punched backward by a huge invisible fist. Then he was there, bent down on the ground, writhing in agony, the contents of his belly spewing out onto the cafe’s richly textured carpet.
He’d been ready to make his move. Waiting in a corner booth, behind the grand piano by the bar, away from the main seating area, biding his time at a staging point he’d chosen carefully. His fingers were wrapped around the
