there, kid?” Kurt asked. “You seem to be kind of zoning out.” Jack smiled, embarrassed. “Oh . . . Yeah. I guess I’m just a little tired. Didn’t sleep too well last night.”
“That’ll do it,” Kurt said, “There’s no substitute for a good night’s rest. I remember when . . .”
Jack did not hear the rest of the man’s words, because at that very moment, he saw her. She passed right by him, on his right-hand side, walking quickly, and turned down the corridor that lead to the locker rooms. She was there. And suddenly all the heaviness lifted and all of the hope returned. She was there, not in Cancun or the Caribbean, or anywhere else. She was there, at Manus Manufacturing, on 66 Old Hook Road in Silverton, Illinois. And he would, at some point, have the chance to talk to her. The thought at once terrified and exhilarated him. Did she know him the way he knew her? Had she dreamt about him? What if she knew nothing about him, about their mission? What if she didn’t want to know anything about it? What if he told her and she just looked at him as if he were crazy? And what if she had a boyfriend or a husband?
Too many what-ifs. He was driving himself crazy. Maybe if he found out something. Anything. He waited for her to return from the locker room, which she did moments later. She walked over to her station, exchanging a few pleasantries with the woman next to her, and commenced work. Her job was to take the finished, fully boxed filters and place them next to her on a pallet. She worked with a kind of calm, rhythmic ease.
“So,” Jack asked, “What’s the story with that one? The first one on the first belt up there.” He pointed. Kurt smiled at him. “Oh, you mean Diane?” he said. “Yeah,” Jack said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “She got a boyfriend? Husband?” As he waited for Kurt’s reply, he could actually feel his heart suddenly accelerate to what must have been about a hundred and thirty beats a minute. So much hinged on his answer to that question. Too much. He didn’t like to feel so helpless. “Definitely no husband,” Kurt said, then stopped and thought for a moment before continuing: “And . . . I don’t think she’s got a boyfriend either. Nope, I think the path is clear.” He gave Jack a smile. For the second time that morning, Jack felt a wave of relief. But he also felt a bit wobbly. The excitement, along with the heat, was getting to him. He turned to Kurt and said “I’m gonna take a five.”
“Make it a ten, no hurry,” Kurt replied, giving him a thumbs up sign.
Jack went to the break room. It was an average sized room, with three long rectangular tables in a row. Off to one side of the tables were two vending machines—one for soda, one for snacks—and off to the other a table with a coffee machine on it. On the wall opposite the tables was a sink, some counter space, and a refrigerator. Behind the tables were lockers. The room was empty except for an older woman seated in the corner of the room poking at a salad in a small Tupperware dish. Along with the salad she had a fruit drink, a small bag of pretzels, and another Tupperware dish full of what looked to be some kind of condiment or dressing. Mercifully, the room was about twenty degrees cooler than the factory floor.
Jack rummaged through some cupboards, looking for cups. He found one, went over to the sink, and poured himself some water. Then he took a seat at the middle table, on the end, back facing the door. He took a sip of the water and glanced briefly at the woman. She had long scraggly black hair, a large, crooked nose, and she looked either very bored, very tired, or both. Around her shoulders was a thin, finely woven black shawl. She looked at him and said, “Is this your first day?”
“Second,” Jack replied. He took another sip of water. He was feeling better already. The woman nodded, as if his answer had somehow explained something important. “Yeah, it takes some getting used to,” she said. “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Especially the heat.”
“Oh, that’s the worse,” the woman said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna feint.”
“I believe it,” Jack said. “How long have you been working here?”
The woman looked up at the ceiling, her face a mask of intense thought, as she tried to recollect the correct answer to his question. “Well, I started in 89 . . . So, I guess about . . . twenty-eight years.”
“Wow, that’s a long time,” Jack said.
“Too long,” the woman said, then went back to her salad.
Jack didn’t know how to respond to that, and the two said nothing more. A few moments later someone else came in the room and said, “Hey Donna!”, then went to her locker and opened it. Jack’s heart leapt in his chest as he watched the girl rifling through her locker. It was her. It was Eve. And when she was done rifling through her locker, she came right over to his table, a bag of potato chips in her hand, and sat down right opposite him.
8
Kanye sat at the desk in the corner of his motel room, an open bible before him. He leafed through it, studying the verses that seemed to give to him a divine confirmation of the horrible thing he already knew had happened to his once beloved church. Everywhere he turned, there was confirmation. Peter warned about it: For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: 1 Peter 4:17
Paul warned about it “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” Thessalonians 2:3-4
And Matthew warned about it: When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: Matthew 24:15-16
He closed the bible, stood up, and trudged over to the bed. He flopped down, resting his head against the headboard, his mind filled with an awful realization. It was all true. The son of perdition was sitting in the temple of God. The abomination of desolation was standing in the holy place. The church that he once loved had been overrun. And its vicar, Christ, had been replaced by Satan. And that is who he, and the entire Christian church, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant, was serving. So much so that they would try to kill a man whose mission was to save humanity from themselves. And they would kill him because a free humanity threatened their own existence.
Kanye took his cell phone off the night stand and looked up his contacts. Near the top of the list was Cardinal Byron Banks. Banks, nearing eighty, was one of Kanye’s oldest and dearest friends, and a trusted advisor. Banks knew about Kanye’s mission; he was one of the men on the committee that had appointed him to the awful task. And yet, in the twenty-two years since the birth of Adam Landers, he had never discussed this mission with him. Perhaps he simply not wanted to believe that the Cardinal, a man of unceasing kindness, who had given his life in service to the poor, could really be in on this nefarious plot, could really have given himself over to serve Satan.
But of course, it wasn’t really that simple. It was not a line that had been crossed boldly, or with careful deliberation. No, it happened gradually, in stages, like a company being bought out by another, bit by bit, piece by piece, until one day the annexing corporation owned a majority of shares and had the deciding vote on matters of corporate policy. This is how the takeover had happened, and good men, like the Cardinal, did not so much make it happen as they failed to actively oppose it. But happen it did. The majority of shares had been acquired by the enemy. And it was something Kanye could not ignore. He called Cardinal Banks, who answered on the third ring. After a brief round of small talk, Kanye, his heart beating fast, got to the reason for his call.
“Cardinal,” he said, “I am in a motel in Silverton,
