Blasphemy

disgraced like that. So he killed himself, making it look like a suicide, but with a few anomalous details so they’d end up thinking it was murder. Double-reverse psychology, typical Volkonsky. He had a uniquely devious mind.”

“Why make it look like murder?”

“He hoped the investigation would eventually engulf the Isabella project, shut us down before I could pull my coup. Didn’t work, though. Events moved too fast. I accept responsibility for his death. But I didn’t kill him.”

“What a futile damn waste.”

“You’re not thinking it through, Wyman . . . .” He breathed heavily for a moment, and resumed. “This story is just beginning. You can’t stop it. Les jeux sont faites, as Sartre once said. The great irony is that they are going to make it happen.”

“They?”

“That fundamentalist mob. They’re going to supply a far more powerful end to this story than the one I had devised.”

“Your story will end in futility,” said Ford.

“Wyman, I can see you don’t understand the full dimensions of what is happening. Eddy’s unwashed masses . . .” He paused and Ford, to his dismay, could hear the faint sounds of the mob getting closer. “. . . They will kill me, martyr me. And you. In so doing, they’ll anoint my name . . . forever.”

“I’ll anoint you a madman, forever.”

“I grant you that is how most normal people would perceive me.”

The voices became more distinct.

“We have to hide,” said Ford.

“Where? There’s no place to go and I can’t move.” Hazelius shook his head and, in a low, hoarse voice, quoted the Bible. “‘They will call to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us . . .’ Just as Revelation says, we’re trapped.”

The voices were getting closer. Ford removed his pistol, but Hazelius placed a clammy, trembling hand on his arm. “Acquiesce with dignity.”

Bobbing lights flashed from the darkness. The voices swelled as a dozen filthy, heavily armed men surged around a curve in the tunnel.

“There they are! Two of them!”

The crowd emerged from the murk, black and ghoulish as coal miners, with guns drawn, white streaks of sweat like bars down their grimacing faces.

“Hazelius! The Antichrist!”

“The Antichrist!”

“We’ve got him!”

Another distant explosion shook the room. The hanging rock of the ceiling loosened and let loose a storm of pebbles, which clattered to the floor, hailstones from hell. Coal smoke drifted in tendrils through the dead air. The mountain quaked again and another cave-in down the line growled and rumbled, coughing smoke through the shafts.

The crowd parted and Pastor Eddy walked up to Hazelius. Standing over the stricken scientist, his hollow, bony face grinned in triumph. “We meet again.”

Hazelius shrugged and averted his eyes.

“Only now, Antichrist,” Eddy said, “I’m in control. God’s at my right, Jesus on my left, and the Holy Spirit has my back. And you—where’s your protector? He’s fled—Satan, the coward—fled to the rocks! ‘ Hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb!’ ”

Eddy bent over Hazelius until his face was inches from the scientist’s. And then he laughed.

“Go to hell, germ,” Hazelius said softly.

Eddy exploded with rage. “Search them for weapons!”

A group of men approached Ford. He let them come, decked the first one, kicked the second in the stomach, and slammed the third into a rock wall. The others converged with a roar of fury, and a small army of fists and feet finally drove him to the wall and then to the ground. Eddy pulled the SIG-Sauer out of Ford’s waist band.

During the melee one enthusiastic worshipper kicked Hazelius in his broken leg. With a sobbing gasp, the scientist passed out.

“Good work, Eddy,” said Ford, pinned to the ground. “Your Savior would be proud.”

Eddy glared at Ford, his face red with fury, as if he might strike the man, but then he seemed to have second thoughts. “Enough!” Eddy shouted at the crowd. “ Enough! Give us room! We’ll take care of them in our own way, the right way. Get them on their feet!”

Ford was dragged to his feet and pushed forward, and the group began to move. Two burly men hauled the comatose Hazelius along by his armpits, his nose streaming blood, one eye swollen shut, his crooked leg with the broken bone dragging.

They reached another large, cavernous stope. Lights arrived from a side tunnel, bobbing in the murk. There was a burst of excited talk.

“Frost? Is that you?” Eddy called.

A beefy man dressed in camo with a tight blond crew cut, massive neck, and closely set eyes pushed through. “Pastor Eddy? We found more of them, hiding downshaft.”

Ford watched a dozen armed men herd Kate and the others at gunpoint. “Kate . . . Kate!” He wrenched himself free and struggled toward her.

“Stop him!”

Ford felt a massive blow to his back, which sent him to his knees. A second blow knocked him on his side, and punches and kicks laid him flat. He was hauled back to his feet so roughly it almost dislocated his shoulders. A sweaty man, his face streaked with coal dust, his eyes white and rolling like a horse’s, struck him across the face. “Stay in line!”

Another distant rumble and the ground convulsed. Dust jumped up from the floor, billowing through the tunnels. Layers of smoke collected in layers along the ceilings.

“Listen to me!” Eddy cried. “We can’t stay down here! The whole mountain’s on fire! We’ve got to get out!”

“I saw a way up top back there,” said the man called Frost. “A drift-shaft was opened up in the explosion. I could see the moon at the tunnel’s end.”

“Lead the way,” said Eddy.

Armed men shoved and prodded them with guns through dark, dust-choked tunnels. Two of Eddy’s followers hauled the unconscious Hazelius by the armpits. Moving through the murk, they crossed another massive stope. The lights played through the gray dust, revealing a huge cave-in, with a mountain of rubble leading up into a long, dark hole in the ceiling. Ford gulped down the fresh, cool air streaming from above.

“This way!”

They started up the pile, staggering up the loose, sliding scree, rocks rattling down around them.

“Up from the Bottomless Pit of Abaddon!” Eddy cried triumphantly. “The Beast is yoked!”

At the head of the mob the two followers dragged Hazelius up, through the jagged hole in the ceiling rock, the rest being pushed along by men with guns. The hole led to a higher stope and, from there into another shaft, at the end of which Ford saw a momentary light—the gleam, quickly extinguished, of a single star shining in the night sky. They emerged into the night of the mesa through a long diagonal crevasse. The air stank of burning gasoline and smoke. The entire eastward horizon was ablaze. Reddish-black clouds of smoke rolled across the sky, obscuring the moon. The ground rumbled continuously, and now and then a flame leapt up a hundred or more feet like a blood-orange banner fluttering into the night sky.

“Over there!” Eddy shouted. “Into that open area!”

Crossing a dry wash, they stopped in a broad, sandy depression, dominated by a giant, dead pinon tree. Ford at least got close enough to Kate to ask: “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but Julie and Alan are dead — caught in the cave-in.”

“Silence!” Eddy shouted. He stepped into the open area. Ford was amazed at his transformation from the high-strung preacher he had first met. Calm and self-assured, his movements were now deliberate. A .44 Super Blackhawk revolver was shoved into his belt. He paced and turned before the crowd, raised a hand. “The Lord