The Atheist's Prayer 9-2010

Tom Cammarata 0 words
22077 Callayomi Road 388 pages

Middletown CA 95461 11/8/10
707-987-0155
The Atheist’s Prayer
A Novel by
Gaetano Cammarata
© 2009 Thomas Gaetano Cammarata. All rights reserved.

Cammarata/The Atheist’s Prayer 2
“Hear my prayer,
Thou God who does not exist.
How great Thou art, my God!
Thou art so great
That Thou art just idea.”
Miguel de Unamuno,
“The Atheist’s Prayer”
“… faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen ... ”
Hebrews 11:1
“One of the tragedies of life
is the murder of a beautiful theory
by a brutal gang of facts.”
G. K. Chesterton
I. Antichrist
II. Shield of God
III. King of Bravery
IV. Muse
V. Starlight, Star Bright
VI. Divine Wind
VII. Gog & Magog
VIII. People of the Book
IX. End Time
X. Revelation
XI. Apocalypse
XII. Armageddon
XIII. Paradiso
I.
ANTICHRIST
The gods had screwed up. The day was too nice to worry about dying.
“THOU ART THE ANTICHRIST, THE DEVIL INCARNATE …” the note had threatened.
A sweet, brisk wind hit Joshua Jordan’s face with a slap as he clung to a cable car on the
crest of Nob Hill, trudging along California Street. To Jordan this was one of San Francisco’s
special days, and he was grateful to be alive still to enjoy it. The morning sky glowed a brilliant
blue that almost hurt the eye — too clear, too crisp, too wonderful. The stiff breeze cleansed the
Bay Area of any trace of dust or smog, leaving the air electrified. It was late August in San
Francisco and summer’s fog, which ritually clad the city like a shroud for days on end, lay in
wait offshore, the captive of a ridge of high pressure dominating California’s northern coast.
But the wind was a warning, too. Soon the fog would roll back in through the Golden
Gate and give back to San Francisco its natural air conditioning. While the rest of the country
and the Northern Hemisphere were in summer, the fog made it like winter in San Francisco, at
least in the mind of Mark Twain.
Despite the threat, the city still gleamed about Jordan as if blessed and freshly scrubbed.
He was surrounded by the cream of Nob Hill’s religious architecture as his cable car moved
along California Street, presenting the great conflict and contradiction of gods and devils in this
most secular of cities. Grace Cathedral soared high to his left and the Masonic Auditorium sat
low to his right, monuments to differing visions of a supreme being; one Episcopal, seeing God
as the mysterious almighty, clothed in the Gothic guise of a knock-off Notre Dame de Paris,
with replicas of Ghiberti’s famed Renaissance doors from Florence thrown in for good measure;
the other was Free Mason, with a later, more modern God as the great architect of the universe,
housed behind a stark, Depression-era Art Deco façade that looked more like a tribute to Soviet
workers than to spirituality.
Everywhere he looked were religious references. In the far distance on a day like today
one could see clearly all the way to Mt. Diablo, whose cinder-cone shape suggested a volcano.
But it was not. Its two peaks lined up in this direction to appear as one, and though Diablo’s rock
was volcanic, it had been dredge up from the ocean floor by the same demonic geologic forces
which had assembled California and the western half of America over many eons. Things were
not always as they seemed, Jordan mused.
“FOR THY BLASPHEMY THE WRATH OF THE TRUE GOD AWAITS…”
How apt that the Antichrist would be able to see the Devil’s mountain so well on this kind
of day.
Behind Jordan, in the far west beyond Land’s End, in the vast Pacific where the weather
began for much of the continent, he could just see the dull haze of the fog bank biding its time in
an atmospheric purgatory, a shimmering gloss of cotton candy to the eye, and a damp rag for the
soul. But even the seagulls whirling about above Jordan seemed to luxuriate in the morning; the
Giants had a day game against the hated Dodgers that afternoon and afterwards there would be a
feast of popcorn, peanuts and Cracker Jack for the birds at the ballpark near his office.
Then suddenly the old California Street car jerked ahead, crossed Mason Street as it quit
the crest of Nob Hill and the likes of the Big Four, then dove down toward downtown. Jordan
braced himself against a pole and stood his ground on the running board, riding an ancient,
cranky chariot to an uncertain future.
“THERE IS NO PLACE YOU CAN HIDE …”
Jordan thought of that warning as the car passed by Old St. Mary’s on the corner of Grant
Avenue and California Street, the Catholic church of Chinatown. Beneath the clock face on its
great, square tower was carved a warning from Ecclesiastes: “Son, observe the time, and fly
from evil.” The pulleys in the cable slot clinked intermittently like sanctuary bells. Reflexively,
Jordan crossed himself with his free hand. “Sed libera nos a malo,” he muttered as the old red-
brick cathedral receded behind him up the hill. “Deliver us from evil indeed…” he whispered.
The car trundled down to the flats of the old Financial District and through the staggered
towers lining its street like guardians from the past. Gusts of wind blew small clouds dust and
debris along the roadway; the city was suffering through one of its periodic bouts of near-
poverty when proper street cleaning became a low priority, made worse by a preoccupied
populace less caring about the sight of litter blowing about; in earlier times it had been cigar
stubs and trolley tickets; now it was cigarette butts and gum wrappers. The city, like Jordan, was
entering middle age, its mass shifting inexorably south to beyond Market Street, into the new
neighborhoods of the high tech era carved from its low industrial past. New buildings were
sprouting everywhere; tall, relentless, remorseless weeds of steel, concrete and safety glass;
mostly condos and high-rise apartments, trophy homes in the sky for the new working elite, with
a few bland office towers mixed in. San Francisco, despite its hills, had been a low lying and
livable town for most of its first hundred years; like the great cities of Europe, until recently it
had resisted most attempts to shoot its buildings skyward. Jordan recalled the words that Frank
Lloyd Wright had once used to curse the town: “Only a city this beautiful could survive what
you people are doing to it.”
“THY DAYS ARE NUMBERED…”
He rode through the old business district of his first working years, filled with the aging
skyscrapers from the last half of the last century; tall, proud symbols reflecting the city’s early
industry and its enthusiastic adoption of any and all modern architectural styles. Survivors of
earthquakes and changing tastes, they thrust up to the sky, still defiantly displaying the
commercial energy which had produced them. Mixed here and there among the towers were
low, brick buildings only a few stories high, antiques from the earliest years, refurbished and
polished to modern expectations; yet, Jordan knew, still hiding behind their refined facades were
San Francisco’s oldest, darkest secrets, what Herb Caen, the best of the city’s biographers, once
described as “history walking at your elbow down a dark alley…” Among the joys of his life and
his occupation was occasionally ferreting out such secrets and making them known to those few
around who still cared about such things.
He jumped off in his usual routine at Kearny Street, dodged a wayward auto trying to lap
the cable car, and made it safely to the curb; Jordan laughed quietly that if the God of Abraham
was seeking vengeance on him, that was a missed opportunity. He turned briefly to salute the
grip man on the cable car and received a sweet, clanging acknowledgment from his bell in
return. Whoever had written the email hadn’t completely spoiled his morning, not yet.
“THOU CANST NOT ESCAPE US …”
He stood there on the corner, savoring the sheer deliciousness of the day and the city. It
was mid-morning and most people were already in their offices, with only a skeleton crew of
workers taking a break for lattés and mochas and frappachinos, and a few foreign sightseers
roaming the streets. The panhandlers were taking their morning coffee break as well, waiting for
noontime to work the lunch crowds. Jordan, dressed in faded jeans and an old plaid shirt under a
suede coat, his shoulder-length hair done up in a pigtail, his feet clad in comfortable brogans,
might have been mistaken for a grifter or hippy by a tourist, or for what Caen had labeled in the
1950s as Beatniks. But San Francisco’s commercial heart had not yet surrendered to the demon
tourists, not the way Union Square and Fisherman’s Wharf and too many other districts had.
Jordan decided to thwart the warning and extend his morning walk, to delay the
inevitable. God could wait. There was one place, he knew, not too far away, where he could find
momentary solace from a modern crusade waged by avenging e-angels. He turned around and
crossed over California Street to head north, not south, onto Kearny, into the city’s past.
After a few short blocks Jordan reached Commercial Street. He turned east toward
Montgomery and followed one of the few remaining alleyways reflecting forgotten names from
its past — Merchant, Leidersdorff, Gold, Osgood, Hotaling. At Montgomery he turned north the
half-block to Clay Street, and stopped to savor the view. Of all the neighborhoods and city
districts, this was his favorite, the Jackson Square area, an irregular rectangle of flat blocks and
gently rising streets that stretched north from Clay to Broadway, and east from Montgomery to
Battery, with Jackson Street its centerline. This where San Francisco had been born. Like the
crafted layers in a painted landscape, much of the city’s first history lay about him, level by
level, expressed in its architecture.
He stood on the corner of Clay & Montgomery, which had been the young town’s
waterfront in the earliest days. Mid-block to the west back up Clay he saw the nondescript
doorway that once was the entrance to Earthquake McGoon’s, Turk Murphy’s old jazz joint, the
last redoubt of Dixieland music in the Bay Area. Jordan had met Murphy as a boy when his
father took him to his first baseball games at Candlestick. Murphy’s band roamed the ballpark,
playing between innings. Jordan had never heard such music before, the syncopated chaos of the
instruments, each playing its own riff on the melody seemingly independent of the others, but
forming a joyous, harmonious whole that made him smile. His father knew the Turk and
introduced him to his son. A lifelong love and friendship were forged. When he was old enough
in college to visit the bar legally, Jordan began spending his Friday nights at McGoon’s. He
didn’t know music and couldn’t play a lick, but was thoroughly captivated by Dixieland. It was
so unlike the present music of rock culture, of what he had grown up with. He marveled at the
happiness of it all, especially the rickety-tick-tick of drumsticks on a cow bell signally the end of
the traditional solos and the mad scramble of the finale, with the massed brass of trumpet, tuba,
and trombone wailing against the reeds of clarinet and sax, together with guitar, banjo or bass in
a brawl with the splink-splank of hands on a honky-tonk piano, all underlain by drums
delivering a frantic, festive tempo. Best of all were the jam sessions after hours, to which his
friendship with the Turk granted him access, when visiting musicians would sit in. The music
became even more spontaneous, ever new, ever changing, yet always somehow joyously the
same. That was the magic of Dixieland, the original Jazz. In time it would evolve into other
forms and moods, some pensive, some sadder, some esoteric and more hip, but none quite so
happy as the original.
All that remained now were Jordan’s memories of those late nights — the smell of stale
cigarette smoke, the taste of cheap Scotch — and a few precious, badly worn record albums. He
did not know, nor cared, what filled that space these days.
Jordan pondered something as he stared at the doorway. Contemporary churches had it
wrong. The music they played should be the music of Dixie, not modern rock or ancient
cantatas. It was happier, more uplifting, more thrilling, like Gospel. What, he wondered, would a
Corelli or a Bach have made of the infectiousness drive of “The Saints Go Marching In?” The
persuasive lure of “The St. Louis Blues?” The soulful wail of “St. James Infirmary?” They
probably would have liked it, strange as it was, for they would have recognized the mathematical
base which was in their music too, the contrapuntal chase of the instruments, the measured beats
of their pace. He closed his eyes for a moment, then the memory of the email returned. Unholy
blasphemy, their church fathers would brand his music as they condemned it. Jordan shook his
head briefly as if to shake out the bad taste of the early morning, and opened his eyes again to
think of happier times from the city’s past.
Across Clay the landscape rose up with the Transamerica Pyramid, no longer the tallest
building in the city, but still strong and sharp like the tip of a railroad spike trying to hold the
city in time, a hopeless attempt to preserve its proud heritage. He walked east along Clay toward
Sansome Street where a squat block of concrete sat on the corner like a mausoleum marking
Jordan’s brief career as an ad man. He winced at the memory, then jay-walked mid-block to
enter his sanctuary, the small redwood park on the eastern side of the Pyramid. It was empty at
this hour and, with the soaring redwoods above him, it became a cathedral in greens and browns,
its tranquility muffling the sounds of the city just a few feet away. Jordan sat down on a low
concrete bench by the small modernist pond and fountain in the park’s center. Through the
northern gate beneath the redwood bows he could see the low, stocky structures of painted brick
along Washington Street, some of the first commercial buildings from the Gold Rush boom
times which managed to survive the Quake, the Fire and, above all, General Funston’s dynamite;
the city’s survivors eventually had their revenge on Funston by naming Thirteenth Avenue in the
Richmond District after him.
Jordan could just make out the beginning of Hotaling Place, a broad, one-block alley
running between Washington and Jackson Streets whose wavy lines of brick and granite paving
stones marked where the shores of the Bay once met the rolling hills and sand dunes that became
the city. It was named for an old warehouse which, among the more mundane items of ordinary
life, housed a great many barrels of whiskey on the morning of the ’06 Earthquake. It was here
that the philosophic irony of the catastrophe which changed San Francisco forever was captured
in a bit of doggerel, a few lines meant for a laugh about the old town’s past which instead
became, in Jordan’s mind, the essence of the new city’s future:
If as some say God spanked the town,
Being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down,
And save Hotaling’s whiskey?
Jordan sighed softly to the gods of time. He wanted it to stop right here, in this park, on
this bench; he did not want to think of today, or yesterday, or tomorrow. The questions of “why”
that had dogged him too long through his life, and now yet again. Why this? Why now? Why
me? He wanted to just exist, here in this small, perfect retreat, away from the silly madness
plaguing him these days because he dared criticize God’s latest, self-proclaimed apostles.
“THERE IS NO PLACE WE CANNOT FIND THEE ...”
Just then the earth hiccupped and a small, sharp jolt passed beneath his feet. Ah, Jordan
thought, it was a sign. San Francisco and the Bay Area, sitting astride too many fault lines, were
under a death sentence of their own. Someday another Great Quake — what the insurance
industry delicately preferred to call an Act of God — would level the city yet again. Jordan
knew it. Anyone with half an open mind new it. That was the price one paid for living here. God
the Father or Mother Nature; the piper must always be paid.
He sighed again, then left the park and the past behind. Jordan walked briskly down
Sansome, then across Market Street and beyond Mission to the other brick survivors of the
Quake where he worked. But when Jordan entered the building, he knew at once something was
not right, like seeing a shadow where none belonged.
The security guard at the sign-in desk had a forced air of casualness in his usual greeting
of “Hey! JJ…” The ebb and flow of staffers in the halls seemed to slow when he passed by,
though he knew that no one actually stopped or said anything other than the normal morning
banalities. Had he been cursed by some witch doctor with a great growth sprouting from his
forehead, Jordan could not be more certain that people were staring after him as he walked
through the halls. When he saw the station manager at his office door, he was sure they all knew
about his email—or something worse.
“Morning, Red,” he said as he shifted by her into his office and behind his desk. “What’s
new?” He could be as banal as the best of his trade when called upon.
Toni Rousseau pivoted on a high heel and entered the cramped room crowded with books,
files and chotchkis, all souvenirs of Jordan’s career at the station, the network, and of his travels.
The only modern touch was a large, flat iMac on the small credenza behind his desk whose
screen was currently divided among several news stations, local and national, including his
own; a clause in his contract guaranteed that he have the latest equipment and fastest internet
connection. Fortunately, technological advances kept the equipment small, for the office could
not hold much. He had refused a more spacious, more opulent office befitting his stature, on the
grounds that it would be sinful; the nature of the sin escaped most station personnel. Rousseau
was the same age as Jordan and shared much of his professional history, but right now she felt
like his mother; and like an impatient parent, she chided him: “You could have a better office
anytime you want.”
“Look at the rest of the rooms around here—cubicles everywhere or fishbowls like yours.
The constant distractions would ruin me. The noise, the chatter, the nonstop succession of staff
either being busy or trying to look busy. It would keep me from thinking — and that’s the worst
thing I can think of.”
Rousseau waved her arm about the room like a dismissive mother. “But this is hardly
more than a storage closet. How can you work like this, Joshua, crammed in here?”
“I find it comforting,” he shot back, “to have a door I can close and a window I can look
out of, even if only to see an alley.” Rousseau was the only person he tolerated to address him by
his proper name, a privilege she paid for by his calling her “Red” on occasion; to everyone else
around San Francisco, about the country and in much of the civilized world, he was simply “JJ.”
Then he put aside his smile, saying, “…and I find it rather more comforting than you and the
others right now. Talk.”
“Your commentary last night on the Last Crusade struck a nerve.” She passed a folded
sheet of paper to him. He opened slowly. It was the same note that had been slipped under his
apartment door, on the top floor of his building, past its security.
“Very King Jamesian, don’t you think?” he said. “I wonder which part they didn’t like?”
“My guess is your quote from Jonathan Swift. Or the ending where you quoted Roy L.
Fine, whoever he was. What was that line again? Something about ‘descending from apes’
wasn’t it?”
“ ‘It’s not what we’re descended from that shames us…’ ” Jordan recalled, his eyes
closed. “ ‘It’s what we’ve descended to.’ ”
“Well, that was just the highlight,” Rousseau responded, trying to keep sarcasm from her
voice and failing. “I’m sure there were other parts that caused their wrath, such as calling them
‘God’s hit men.’ “
“That they most certainly deserved. Just ask the widow of the judge who ruled on the
Texas case earlier this year. The Last Crusade made him pay with his life.”
“All the more reason for you to not antagonize them.”
Jordan snorted. “When did you get their latest missive?”
“It was in the morning mail here at the office, one to me and one to you, both with a white
powdery substance coating the paper. Scared the hell out of your assistant when she opened it.
Gave mine a fright, too. The HazMat people caused as much havoc as a bomb. That’s a copy, by
the way. The originals are with the FBI already. Fortunately, the powder wasn’t something like
Ricin or plague.”
Jordan snorted again. “Hah! Plague can’t last for long outside the host body. That’s why
in ancient times besiegers would catapult any handy plague victims over the battlements onto the
besieged. Like the Genoese attacking the Venetians, for instance. At Kaffa in the Crimea in…
um…1347. Biological terrorism goes way back, though it backfired on ‘em in that case. They
brought the plague back with the rats to Genoa and the rest of Europe. Damn near killed half of
Italy.”
Rousseau shook her head slowly. “God! You can be an insufferable know-it-all. But then,
you knew that already.”
“It’s why my fans love me.”
“And sometimes hate. Someday that intellectual arrogance of yours will get you in
trouble.”
“I get crank letters and emails all the time. Why’s this one worry you?”
“I’m being blind-copied on your email and was included in this latest scare attempt.” She
pointed to the note in his hands.
“Oh … that was considerate of them.”
“Threatening to blow you up or poisoning the station is hardly being considerate. I want
you to take a leave.”

“Oh, come on, Red!” Jordan barked, with more force than he wanted, as if someone else,
a stranger, was speaking for him. Jordan did not want to admit to anyone — much less himself
— that the emails did have the intended effect; the powder-dusted note had taken matters to a
new level, more uncertain, more dangerous. But the press had a long history of sticking its neck
out to deliver the news; it became a sense of honor to persist.
“You know I won’t run. I don’t let fools intimidate me. I won’t buckle and do exactly
want they want — me off air.” He crumpled the piece of paper and threw it at her.
Rousseau caught it cleanly, stepped the short distance to his desk and sat in the lone guest
chair, placing the paper ball in front of her. She was dressed in a business suit of charcoal grey,
the skirt cut above the knee, over a mauve blouse that was open casually at her neck; both the
suit and blouse were severely simple in style, yet feminine, elegant and chic; they highlighted
her tall body rather than disguised it. Her hair — auburn, straight, below shoulder with an
inward flip — was in a fashionably youthful style that she could still wear, despite being in her
early 50s. Her eyes were blue, deep with intellect, sharp with insight, occasionally stern like a
schoolmaster’s, often merry when the moment warranted; the kind of eyes that chilled most men
because of the brain behind them, but that Jordan had always found attractive. They had served
Rousseau well during her years on-air. Just now they held the schoolmaster’s gaze. Compared to
Jordan’s somewhat rumpled look no matter what he wore, Toni was the embodiment of
broadcast professionalism. She wore no jewelry on her hands, but there was a flattened ring of
worn skin left over from a wedding band. A gold watch circled her right wrist and a modest
necklace of thin, meshed gold links graced her neck, matched by unpretentious square gold studs
on her ears. Toni Rousseau had risen high in a profession not known for its kindness to women;
she was married only to her work now and knew it. One had to be unattached by outside cares to
put in the hours and pull the load she did; Rousseau accepted that and never permit the
emotional cost it carried to show.
“Allow me,” she said, restraining her voice as she took another folded paper from her
jacket pocket, opened it and spoke calmly. “I quote from your latest morning email:
“ROT IN HELL, BLASPHEMER! SPEW NO MORE OF THY ATHEISTIC LIES TO
UNSUSPECTING BELIEVERS! CEASE POLLUTING THE AIR WITH THY
ABOMINABLE GARBAGE FOREVERMORE! GOD SHALL OBLITERATE THE INFIDEL
AND HIS FILTH FROM THE UNIVERSE! I WOULD SPIT ON THY GRAVE, BUT NOT
EVEN THE LORD IN ALL HIS GREATNESS AND MERCY WILL FIND THY PUTRID
PARTS WHEN WE HAVE DONE WITH YOU! BE WARNED!”
Rousseau refolded the paper and put it away. “It’s signed, of course, The Last Crusade. ”
Jordan shifted uneasily in his chair. “Besides the redundancy, labored syntax and a
tendency toward overly poetical alliteration — not to mention a contradiction or two — I’ve
heard it all before.”
“Not quite. Two things, neither said directly, but there by inference. You know their
importance. A — this is the first threat of direct action by these wackos against you. B — they
used our private internal email addresses. And have you checked your cell phone lately? No?
Well you’ll find a similar text message. They got those numbers, too.”
“Yah, I did notice the email address.” The chill of that earlier dread came back to him like
a cutting wind. He recalled the memory of reading the hate mail in the morning, and the shock
of the powder, a shock which he had been trying to repress against the brilliance of the day. Like
most people of any importance, position or power, he kept as much of his identity as he could
shielded from the public eye, in spite of an open society’s — and his own profession’s — desire
to make it known to one and all.

“And now I’ve has been included,” Rousseau said pointedly.
“So? I don’t see you squirming. Why should I?”
Rousseau laughed and then sighed, as if she had been holding her breath all the while.
“I’m scared down to my toes. I’d be as white as the paper these threats are written on if it
weren’t for the makeup.”
“It becomes you,” Jordan said wistfully.
“As a pressed suit would you. But that’s not the issue any more than my complexion.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, addressing the schoolmaster in her eyes. “The issue is whether I
go on as usual.”
“You won’t.”
“I will, and you know it.”
“Josh,” Rousseau started cautiously, “I’m getting pressure from the network to either put a
leash on you, or…”
“Or what? Cut me loose?”
“Yes …”
“And what was your response, other than my recent work had given their media properties
a much-increased audience and that I have a contract which hasn’t been breached by me but
would be by them if they canned me?”
“If you recall, our beloved chairman Mr. Carson is a former lawyer. He is of the firm and
absolute belief that any contract can be voided, if that’s what he decides.”
“Except his contract, I assume.”
“Of course. By the way, I reminded him that if he fired you, I’d leave, along with a small
but critical percentage of staff, not only here, but on the radio side and the newspaper, too. And
that he’d have to do the firing himself, along with dealing with the unions.”
“In other words, you blackmailed him. Very creative.”
“Lets just say Mr. Carson had second thoughts. But I can’t hold him off much longer.
He’s getting heat from advertisers about your attacks on religion. It’s bad for business, just like
terrorism. And when he gets his ear bent at his club by fellow CEOs, or at church by his
minister, he can’t ignore it.”
“And if the terrorists happen to be religious…?”
“That’s the kind of fine point that eludes Mr. Carson.”
“But not me. I have to go on, to answer their threat. You would have too, Red.”
“There you’ve got me, Josh,” Rousseau laughed and relaxed, knowing it was hopeless to
continue; she had given it her best, but knew before she started what the outcome would be. She
sighed in resignation. “What will be your subject?”
Jordan reached over his desk and picked up the crumpled paper, smiling a sly smile.
“The Last Crusade — and Mr. Carson — wrote it for me.”
***
Jordan first began writing of the troubles of the Good Shepard and his over-zealous
flocks when religious fundamentalists — of all stripes and beliefs — once again thought it holy
and proper to threaten non-believers with death and destruction, an ancient curse once supposed
by modern secularists to have been put to rest decades, if not centuries ago. The new rhetoric
had taken on an angry tone of absolutism, that no quarter would be given in the struggle for
eternal salvation, for people’s souls and for their own ultimate supremacy.
Then, on a brilliantly clear day across America, to some the Land of the Great Satan,
nineteen Islamist madmen and martyrs, professing an ardent love for their God and a hatred for
all his sworn enemies — primarily his powerful Western, secularist enemies — highjacked four
potent symbols of that power to strike a mighty blow for their God by crashing them into yet
more symbols of that power, the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, as
if their great and magnificent God — blessed be His Name — really needed their help. With
sudden and swift strokes, some three thousand innocent human beings died horrible deaths —
their only guilt being that they were, in the minds of these madmen and their less suicidal
leaders, not Dar al-Islam, not of the House of Islam, and must therefore be of Dar al Harb, of
the House of War. They died to make someone else’s religious, political and philosophical point.
It was the kind of absurd contradiction, now new again, yet extremely ancient, which
Jordan just could neither abide nor ignore.
Like most ordinary souls, he had been raised to see religion as a private, personal, moral
matter for each individual, between a man and his god; if the man didn’t happen to believe in a
god, well, it was still a private matter, and perhaps best kept private. But another strain of
virulent evangelicalism, which held that religion was a public and political matter, was rising in
many places, hell-bent on making the world safe for God in his many guises. Here at home a
rabid brand of Christianity drew his attention. “Christicism” Jordan called it, to give name to the
excessive mysticism inherent in this current version of Christianity. To address it and explain it
to his many moderate readers often confused by its fundamentalist insanities, he cut into the guts
of the troubles, like a surgeon in search of malignancy to excise.
When a popular televangelist declared that a certain South American dictator, whose
latest socialist mischief was causing a rise in oil and gasoline prices, should be assassinated by
the CIA, Jordan announced, in an article entitled “God Only Knows,” his intent to explore and
explode this current round of religious absurdity.
Jordan declared, in a journalist’s obligatory disclosure, his own atheism, a dangerous act
even in a secular society, for it was still a society which every few decades felt compelled to
doubt whether a Catholic president could truly swear allegiance to the Constitution, the flag and
the United States for which they all stood and not the Catholic pope in Rome. Atheism, even to
many moderate religious believers, was still akin to devil worship; polls showed that half of
adult Americans believed the Antichrist existed and was loose in the world doing the devil’s
dirty work. Against this Jordan stated in simple fashion that “there was only one reason to be an
atheist, for the simple fact that there no valid, conclusive evidence for theism, other than it was a
common belief, thus making faith a matter of numbers, not proof.” He quoted Bertram Russell
to the effect that “if fifty million people say a silly thing, it is still a silly thing.”
Finally, Jordan pointed out that it was not incumbent upon him, in logic, to prove there is
no god. This was where the whole theist-atheist problem lay, and where the angry extremists on
both sides derailed their own arguments. Like a game in sports, a debate had rules which define
specifically the area and limits of opposition, to keep the play fair, the opponents honest, with a
conclusive means of determining a winner, if one was possible. This game’s rules were the rules
of logic — sharp, exact and themselves not debatable. Thus, as an atheist he could hardly be
expected, logically, to provide evidence for his atheism, that there was no god, which the very
definition of atheism held not to exist. This was an attempt to prove a negative and was
forbidden by the rules of logic. “Rather, it was up to the theists,” he wrote, “the positive ones, so
to speak, to demonstrate conclusively that their god was alive and kicking.”
But Jordan the atheist wasn’t totally off the logical hook, he pointed out, for it was still
incumbent upon him demonstrate the contradictions which theist beliefs led to, if any, or that
other, alternate explanations were possible, which would call into doubt those religious beliefs as
either unnecessary or insufficient or both. If logic was the rule by which this human game of
thought and theory was to be played by any and all who may wish to play it — had not St. Paul
said so in his first epistle to the Thessalonians: “Prove all things” — then logic must apply to
both sides. “Is not the bedrock belief of theism that God created the universe and everything in
it? Was not logic then God’s creation too, even if humanity had a palsied hand in applying it?”
Jordan thus presented his atheism not as a philosophical mooning in the face of these new
fundamentalists, but a declaration of rational and moral independence from religion itself. Had
he just presented rants against their beliefs, as the latest crop of extremist atheists were doing,
they might not react properly, claiming a higher truth in faith to his lack of it. However, insult
those beliefs with their own logical absurdities and they would declare holy war and muster
every bit of illogic to wage it, thus exposing the weakness of their beliefs. That would be much
more entertaining and would draw a vastly larger and wider audience into his discussion.
Nor did Jordan pretend to present a passionless forum for the discussion of faith versus
reason; matters had long gone past that point when people began to die. Rather, his purpose was
to show that when belief — any belief on any subject — gets to the point of using murder as the
means of concluding an argument, then something had to be radically wrong with that belief.
Jordan had a bully pulpit at his disposal and knew how to use it. He baited his trap with
the Socratic Method, by framing as questions and musings some of the more convoluted
principles of the new faithful’s old creeds, which he could then use to point out the more absurd
of those beliefs and the contradictions and conundrums to which they led. He used his monthly
magazine essay, his weekly newspaper column, and increasingly his nightly network
commentary, if events like the recent Texas case warranted it. He even renamed his blog from
“In Other Words…” to “Advocatus Diaboli” —the Devil’s Advocate, honoring the now defunct
official in the ancient Catholic process of canonization who challenged the worthiness of a
proposed saint — and invited comments. Many a Promotor Fidei obliged him and gave Jordan a
wealth of views and lunacy to work with. He then called out evangelical leaders for the half-
truths and outright falsehoods they taught as fact.
“Why did Lucifer exist at all? Why did not God the Omnipotent simply destroy the first
fallen angel when it became apparent whose side he was not on? Would that not have been a
whole lot simpler? No devil, no temptation, no sin. No need to later sacrifice his only begotten
son. For that matter, why didn’t God the Omniscient know that Satan-Lucifer-Beelzebub et alia
would rebel and cause holy hell in the first place? Why? Because it made for a more interesting
moral fable than just sticking to the ‘facts’.”
Jordan saved his best for the fundamentalists’ worst, Intelligent Design, and its utter
misunderstanding of the evolutionary process, and the complete misapprehension of its history.
I.D. was the lynchpin of modern religious revulsion against secularism and deserved special
attention for his audience to understand what really happened to bring matters to the sorry state
they were in. History had been Jordan’s major field study through his education. He urged his
audience to take seriously the injunction of Confucius — “Study the past if you would define the
future…” So, long before the public at large, Jordan had seen that this latest rise of religious
fundamentalism followed an ancient, twisted path, in which every rise in a skeptical, secular
rationalism brought forth a reverse revolt of intransigent religious faith. Its intrusion into public
life and public schools had caused a rash of court trials in the new century, primarily in southern
states, culminating in the recent Texas verdict. This was to Jordan “a distinct echo of distant
legal battles that had first come to a head some eighty years before, in a small Tennessee town
during a hot, steamy summer, like a stewpot come to the boil — the infamous “Monkey Trial.”
“As often happens in science as much as religion,” Jordan wrote, “over time the Scopes
Trial, like Sir Isaac Newton’s apple, became more myth than history, almost more fiction than
fact. Through Broadway play, Hollywood movie and TV drama, the staging of its epic battle of
reason against faith overwhelmed and transcended — an occasionally ignored — the original
facts and forces which created it.” Yes, he mused, “… the trial did feature the godless defense of
Clarence Darrow, the preeminent criminal attorney and atheist of the day, against the god-
fearing prosecutor for evangelism, Williams Jennings Bryan. And it must have promised the
kind of biblical Armageddon the faithful hoped would vanquish the perceived infringement of
the state into their cherished private beliefs.” Yet, for all its religious overtones, Jordan pointed
out that “the real trial had been started as a publicity stunt.”
A few commercial leaders of the quiet town of Dayton wanted to stir up some attention
for their community and draw in some tourist dollars. They convinced the local district attorney
to enforce their new state law prohibiting the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in
public schools. The Tennessee state senate, in committee, had originally rejected such an anti-
evolution bill; but when the Reverend Billy Sunday, then America’s most popular evangelist,
began drawing over two hundred thousand souls to Memphis to hear him preach for the law and
against evolution, the senate changed its collective mind. Sunday, a former big-league baseball
player who had no formal training in theology, but who did have a firm feel for the rural
American heartland and its people, offered an uncomplicated choice to his audiences: would you
rather believe you were created by the Lord God Almighty in His image and in His likeness, as
the Bible teaches, or believe, as Darwin insinuated, that you wriggled up from slimy protozoa as
an ancient accident of chemistry? To uncomplicated rustic minds this was an easy choice. But
there was also a more complex agenda at play for Billy Sunday and his fellow evangelical
preachers of the times — like the hugely popular Sister Aimeé Semple McPherson, a Canadian
farm girl who one Sabbath stumbled on to a Holy Roller service and found God, a husband and a
career as an evangelist all in one afternoon. They understood only too well that if the inerrancy
of Genesis was overthrown by evolution, the rest of the Bible was called into doubt. And they all
would be out of very lucrative jobs.
“The trouble was,” Jordan noted, “most scientists and science teachers of the time didn’t
think of evolution so much as theory but rather as a well confirmed fact and law of science, like
Newton’s gravity, just as their text books labeled and presented it.” But this brewing political
firestorm, stoked by the likes of Brother Sunday and Sister Aimeé, led many state legislatures to
curtail the teaching of evolution, and that was bad for the schoolbook business. So, one publisher
changed its high school biology text from the Law of Evolution to its Theory, to make it more
acceptable, less threatening, and thus unwittingly opened up a new line of attack for the faithful.
A theory in the popular mind was only a guess, an unproved belief, not a confirmed fact; this
was very different definition of theory from that used in science where a strong, consistent body
of logical proof and confirmed evidence was required to substantiate the reasoning embodied in
the theory.
Under this new, easier and popularly accepted definition, evolution was no more
substantiated than the Genesis account of Creation for the rise of life. But Genesis had divinity
behind it; Darwin only had biology and geology and some iffy logic. Other schoolbook
publishers followed that lead and toned down the firmness of evolution’s certainty; laws of
science were hard to breach. But theories, as thus newly redefined, were always open to attack.
Science may have been on the rise in the Twentieth Century, but religion had a long head start.
Most Americans did not think it unusual — if they thought about it all — to have religious ideas
like Genesis taught in public schools, to have prayers start the day or have grace spoken before
lunch meals, and to have the firm guidance of the Ten Commandments quietly underlying all
teaching. As Jordan put it, “… science was all well and good and modern in 1925, but it had its
God-given limits, particularly in a country that was still largely rural and heavily planted with
small agricultural towns like Dayton, Tennessee.”

So, Dayton’s businessmen and district attorney asked a local part-time teacher, John
Scopes, who did not actually teach biology, to challenge the new state law by teaching a class on
evolution in Dayton’s high school. Scopes willing went along and enjoyed the publicity and fine
feasts to which he was treated in the month-long run up to the trial. “Everything,” Jordan
summarized, “seemed to be going according to plan, as the civic leaders thought. There was
some interest in the local and regional newspapers; curiosity in the trial was growing. Business
prospects looked good. Then all hell broke loose.”
The newly formed American Civil Liberties Union had been looking for a test case
against the growing rash of these fundamentalist anti-evolution laws; it had been one of the
ACLU’s ads seeking a test case that had given Dayton’s elders the idea in the first place. The
ACLU offered to fund the defense for Scopes and send its lawyers to defend him. Then William
Jennings Bryan, who had been stumping the South and Tennessee, in part in favor of such laws,
then offered to assist the prosecution, all the better to advance his crusade against Darwinism
and its social evils. This might increase attention nicely, the civic leaders mused. But then
Clarence Darrow, Satan incarnate, walked on to the stage uninvited and tendered his services to
aid the young Scopes as well. Neither Bryan for the prosecution nor the ACLU for the defense
were happy about that. What had been expected to be an interesting, perhaps amusing trial now
broke out into a three-ring media circus, with the famed H. L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore
and the Bard of the Baltimore Sun, its ringleader leading the horde of newspaper reporters
descending on Dayton like hungry locusts. Wrote Jordan: “In the clash of three great egos,
Darrow, Bryan and Mencken, poor John Scopes nearly got lost.”
While Bryan, as the great Progressive champion of Christian values in American
government, was fighting his greater battle against the evils of Social Darwinism, the local
district attorney had to rely on the civil law, which was fairly well straight-forward; the Federal
Constitution, other than the First Amendment prohibition against the establishment of a state
religion, said nothing else on the matter. This was purely an issue for the several states such as
Tennessee to resolve; and as all states then were solidly Christian in a thoroughly Christian
society, it seemed normal and natural to regulate what was being taught in their schools so as to
conform to that society and its norms. This was not a plot to establish a state church, but a battle
to safeguard an already well-established religion, its views and its Bible. According to Bryan
“the hand that writes the check rules the school.” The Supreme Court’s take on the matter would
not be heard for another forty years, at a time well after economic depression and world war had
evolved society’s views on the role of religion in, among other things, its public schools.
“As for Darrow,” Jordan pointed out, “it was the ‘so as to conform to’ thinking that got
him all fired up. It wasn’t so much the beliefs being espoused as it was the intolerance of the
believers.”
Clarence Darrow had long thought that religion, especially revealed faiths like
Christianity, were capable of much more harm than good. To him history demonstrated too
many instances of entrenched religions fighting among their own sects and denominations, and
the tearing apart of their societies in the process. The endless internecine wars in Islam between
Sunni and Shia from the very founding of their religion, the Crusades and Inquisition of the
Catholic Church, and the bloodbath of the Thirty Years War which had ravaged Northern
Europe in the early Seventeenth Century over who had the true faith, Catholics or Protestants,
were especially horrid examples. To Darrow, a human being had to think, not blindly believe, to
live and prosper in peace. Crucial to that was a man’s right to think and act for himself, even
when that thinking went contrary to socially accepted religious norms. Ideas which, from the
time of Constantine to the Inquisition, were held as heresy had become mere “vanities” by
Victorian times, but were now again being promoted as heretical. As Jordan summed it up:
“Thus, Scopes was — ignoring the reason why he allowed himself to get into this conflict — a
thinking man on trial for the crime of thinking.”
With the prosecution arguing in two different directions and the defense in yet another, it
was a rich battlefield for Mencken and the rest of the press to pick at like carrion eaters. Far
from being objective, Mencken was philosophically in Darrow’s camp. To him Tennessee, its
legislature and its citizens were country hicks, the “great unwashed” and excellent examples of
what he called the “Booboisie.” Dayton was the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” Bryan their unholy
prophet, a “tin pot pope.” Anything he, Mencken, could do to weaken their hold on society was
fair game, if not exactly unbiased reporting.
The trial sparring went on for six days. It was obvious that the judge was only interested
in the literal and exact intent of the law in question; he was not inclined to wander off into other
people agendas. The judge systemically denied any evidence from the defense that did not
pertain to the law, including all the scientists, philosophers and theologians Darrow had brought
to Dayton to testify on his client’s behalf. The judge ruled that they were there to adjudicate a
specific law of Tennessee, not the general laws of science.
The outcome was obvious to the jury: the state law was valid and Scopes had broken it.
But before they could render that decision, Darrow sought the court’s permission to question one
last witness, William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the defense, as an expert on the contents of the
Holy Bible, on the trial’s seventh day.
“Now Darrow had Bryan in his sights on the witness stand and was about to make
history, if not law,” Jordan wrote. Darrow knew Bryan well enough to know he would welcome
the chance to crucify atheists on evolution’s cross, so Darrow avoided the subject completely
and stuck to the Bible. In a relentless grilling, he ultimately led Bryan to admit that he did not
hold every word of the Bible as absolutely inerrant, a denial of the most fundamental belief of
all Christian fundamentalists. Bryan was a educated man of his times; while he never completely
comprehended Darwin’s theory of natural selection and its role in evolution, he did see that the
scientific evidence meant that the measurements of the Bible were best seen as metaphorical, not
literal. He was interested in the worth of the Bible’s moral teachings, not its scientific illiteracy.
As Bryan had said during the trial, he was more concerned with “the Rock of Ages than the age
of rocks.” In this he was very much the descendant of Enlightenment thinkers and scientists of
the century before — Buffon, Cuvier, Sedgwick, Lamarck et alia — whose work had led
Darwin and others to understand that the earth and life had evolved through geologic ages which
the Bible poetically summed up as days. And also like most people of his times, Bryan
misattributed to Charles Darwin’s evolutionary writings the Social Darwinism of Herbert
Spencer, with its absolute reliance on “the survival of the fittest” — a phrase that Spencer
coined, not Darwin — and all those uglier aspects of Capitalism and British imperialism, such as
slavery, unbridled financial greed and corporate exploitation of workers even down to children,
which were morally justified under the Social Darwinist banner. But that was too a fine
distinction, lost to the uncomplicated, uncritical minds of the faithful; to them, Bryan had
admitted that he did not really believe what he professed to believe, which meant that he was
ultimately for Darwin and against God. The distinction was not lost on Darrow, and he had used
it to negate the moral force of Bryan’s arguments.
However, the jury never heard a word of it. The judge had wisely sent them away before
Bryan’s testimony. On their return, they reached the only conclusion open to them: Scopes was
guilty of breaking the law. The merits of the law were not their concern. Bryan had won the
case; but in history’s mind, he lost his crusade. Five days after the verdict was read, Bryan
would be dead.
The Monkey Trial, Jordan summarized for his readers, “marked a transition in America
and its attitude about the separation of church and state, on the one hand, and the antagonism
between science and religion on the other.” By the 1960s the advances of science had pushed the
fundamentalist brand of religion into the background. In 1968, in a landmark ruling, the
Supreme Court struck down the last of the anti-evolution laws, including the infamous
Tennessee version that had spawned the Monkey Trial four decades before. Public schools were
cleansed of religious influences like daily prayer. The glamour of space exploration and the race
to the moon captured the public’s imagination and spurred greater interest in science, including
biology and evolution. Genetics, thanks to Watson and Crick and their wondrous double helix of
DNA, was a growing concern. To most, the righteous anger of the past was antiquated and the
modern Christian religion moderated itself into an afterthought, the province of Sunday morning
sermons and select holidays like Easter and Christmas, an adjunct to essentially secular events
like weddings and funerals.
But the true believers continued to believe, and to plot. In the early 1960s a book was
published by an hydraulics engineer and by a theologian, The Genesis Flood, which recast the
story of creation told in Genesis with a scientific gloss, adding that the great flood of Noah could
account for the extinction of past species and the deposition of fossils in sedimentary rocks. The
authors both had doctoral degrees and used Doctor as part of their titles, but no legitimate
scientist gave their book any credence; yet it became a favorite among fundamentalist
churchgoers, who were not so discerning or critical. Many more books and speaking tours
followed as the two spread their updated version of creationist belief with a pseudo-scientific
polish. In 1970, they founded an institute for creation research on the grounds of a
fundamentalist college in California to foster their profitable works. Jordan pointed out that “the
college itself had been founded, not by scholastics and academics, but by a best-selling author
whose Left Behind series of novels dealing with the End Times prophecies of the Bible did for
the Revelation of St. John what Genesis Flood did for the writings of Moses.”
Their institute fostered a new round of attacks against evolution and Darwinism. Relying
on the redefined label of theory left over from the Monkey Trial, they stopped trying to prohibit
the teaching of evolution in schools, and instead, concentrated on having Creation Science
taught co-equally with it. Theirs was a legitimate theory too, they said; though divinely inspired,
it was just as worthy of study. It was not a religious doctrine, they implied, but a philosophical
point of view, just like evolution and science. That Creation Science was not amenable to any
proofs, as was science, that it suggested no means of experiment or prediction, as did science,
and that it blatantly contradicted established fact and hard evidence, unlike science, was not
important; they simply claimed the same about evolution — after all, no one was there to
witness the creation — thus “proving” that the two were equally useful explanations of life on
Earth. To minds unused to critical examination, unschooled in scientific methods, and unwilling
to insult God, this “equivalence” seemed abundantly, righteously fair. Facts did not matter when
immortal souls were at stake. As one of the authors of Genesis Flood once implied, God Himself
hung in the balance, for true Christians must “believe God’s word all the way, or not at all.”
Unfortunately for them, new approach was proved unconstitutional, and thus illegal. In
1981, the ACLU brought suit against an Arkansas statute requiring “balanced treatment” in
schools of all competing theories of the origin of life as a violation of the First Amendment’s
required separation of church and state. The trial judge agreed; Creation Science was inspired by
Genesis and as such was still religious belief, not a scientific theory. A similar statute in
Louisiana was also invalidated; the Creationists appealed this particular ruling, vowing to take
their fight all the way to the Supreme Court. After four rulings in six years against them, they
got their wish, and wished they hadn’t. In effect, the Supreme Court ruled that one could say
whatever one wanted, nonsense or otherwise, in a church as religious dogma, but not in a public
school, not as science. Creationism and Creation Science were religious belief cloaked in
scientific trappings, but they were still not science, and as such, had no business being taught in
a public high school science class.
This did not sit well with fundamentalist mothers and fathers who cherished every
revealed word of the Bible and held fast to the tales of Genesis. A new round of attempts was
made to legitimize Creationism. The Religious Right in America had grown political muscle in
the 1970s and ‘80s, out of which formed a political movement loosely called Dominionism, for
it was itself a loose alliance of politically conservative fundamentalists dedicated to using
political power to create the perfect Christian state. The movement was headed by powerful
televangelists who could rally their followers to use the ballot box and elect politicians
sympathetic to their goal, to be mindful of what their added votes could accomplish. Their
ambition was to beat the evolutionists at their own legal game.
A new theory was put forth, called Intelligent Design. Though it carried an unspoken
understanding that the Divinity was the Intelligent Designer, it was offered as the scientific
alternative to evolution. The words Creation, Creationism and Creation Science were self-
banned from its new vocabulary. Hence forth they advocated, Intelligent Design, with its attacks
against evolution as needing impossible probabilities for natural mutations leading to complex
life forms, and a irreducible complexity in those biological forms achievable only by intelligent
design, should be taught co-equally with evolution science. In effect, they returned to the
conclusions of William Paley, a Cambridge theologian from nearly two centuries before, who
first compared the marvelous intricacy of the human eye to a finely made watch; it was obvious
the watch had to have an intelligent designer, for no random process could have produced it. So,
too, an eyeball. Ipso facto, God, the intelligent designer, must and does exist. As Jordan
observed: “That their underlying misunderstanding of logic, biology, evolution and the process
of science in general produced a very flawed conclusion was of no importance. Intelligent
Design gave them a logic they could live with.”
However, the courts were no happier with this reasoning. In case after case, they ruled
the same as before; Intelligent Design was Creationism by another name, and still just as
unacceptable in a public science class. But the faithful would not relent.
In the mid 1990s, a revised version of Intelligent Design was revealed. Yes, they said,
there was micro-evolution, as the scientific evidence showed, but just not for mankind. A dog
and a wolf could come from a common ancestor, as could a cat and a lion; but not a man and
monkey. There God drew the line, they said. And their new tactic included a new battleground.
Rather than pass laws via state legislatures, the faithful barraged school boards with pleas of
academic freedom. Let their children know that there was more than one theory of the origin of
species, they pleaded in all fairness. Those school board directors who decried this end run were
voted out and sympathetic directors voted in, as happened notoriously in Kansas.
In the new century in Pennsylvania, a local school board dominated by fundamentalists
voted to include a disclaimer of fairness to be read by teachers in science classes; it stated that,
although the state academic standards required that evolution be taught in schools, Darwin’s
work was only a theory — an incomplete one, at that, still disputed by biologists — and that
Intelligent Design was an alternate explanation for the origin of life. Students were encourage to
keep an open mind; but just in case, they could read more about Intelligent Design in a book, Of
Pandas and People, available in the school library for their review. Concerned parents who did
not want their children taught medieval nonsense in place of proper science took the school
board to court. The plaintiffs showed that Intelligent Design was an old religious idea going
back to at least Thomas Aquinas, who relied on the syllogism that wherever complex design
exists, an intelligent designer must also exist. Aquinas —a theologian not a biologist — later
used this reasoning to frame his concept of God as the Primum Mobile, the Prime Mover.
Among other damning evidence, it also came out during the trial that Pandas and People
was a rehash of an earlier work with all references to Creationism simply changed to Intelligent
Design; the changes had been made shortly after the Supreme Court had outlawed the teaching
of Creationism as science in public schools. What was worse though, in the Judge’s opinion, was
that proponents of Intelligent Design were not satisfied having it taught co-equally with science,
but wanted the very definition of science relating only to natural phenomena altered to make
room for supernatural beliefs like Intelligent Design. He struck down the disclaimer as religious
interference. For his efforts he began receiving death threats and soon required a twenty-four-
hour guard. And the televangelist who had called for the assassination of the Columbian socialist
now warned the Pennsylvanian town folk that, if disaster struck their community, they could
expect no help from God.
In Jordan’s analysis these repeated attacks against evolution reflected a new
fundamentalist campaign in Christianity to return to a mythical version of “that old time
religion” which made choices easy by just believing and accepting a few simple rules with
unthinking faith. But religion — and not just Christianity — was becoming more righteous and
more demanding of respect for its authority against what it saw as a damnable moral weakness
caused by secular permissiveness. “Nowhere was this more apparent,” he wrote, “than in the
religious uproar toward the latest legal triumph of reason over faith in the Texas.”
A private, fundamentalist high school had banned the teaching of evolution entirely;
however, they had also accepted funds from the federal government as part of a faith-based
initiative to provide education and schoolbooks — which included religious classes and Bibles
— for children of parents below the poverty line. The school claimed First Amendment religious
freedom to teach privately their own beliefs; opponents argued that accepting government
money to do so violated the First Amendment clause against the establishment of a religion that
went back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who favored a “wall of separation between
Church and State.” The presiding judge agreed with those Founding Fathers and gave the school
the choice: accept the money and teach evolution — and other secular sciences along with
religious studies — or forego the money and keep their private school private and teach
whatever they wished. They could not have both. “The judgment,” wrote Jordan, “thus raised a
conflict among the faithful who said that the judge had given them a horrid and unholy choice:
God or Mammon.
This was a clear case of teaching a specific religious idea with a specific religious text,
the Bible, to the exclusion of scientific thought, or even other religious doctrine, and using
government money to do it. The courses funded did not include any historical analysis or
discussion. Even the school’s science curriculum was weak on science and heavy on Biblical
explanations. The judge had no choice.
A Jew who, the media delighted in noting, happened to have the middle name of
Solomon, had tried to render as balanced a decision as he could within the long body of
precedent he was constrained to follow. For his troubles, he was sent a scorpion, the spawn of
Satan as the media also noted, a symbol of disdain for his judgment. Unfortunately, the symbol
was still alive and stung the judge; he died an agonizing death of a rare hyper-allergenic reaction
to the scorpion’s venom. A computer-printed note reviling the judge and his judgment was
found among with the packaging and was signed “The Last Crusade,” the first public awareness
that such a group existed.
For so barbarous an action, Jordan decided they deserved no mercy.

II.
SHIELD OF GOD
Judith was angry, which was not unusual; these days she always seemed angry. The End
Days were coming and she was impatient to see them.
“I said Jordan was to die,” the she typed furiously. “Why were my orders not followed?”
“Must we really kill him?” scrolled the response from Malachi.
“He is the Antichrist. God demands it!”
“Are you sure?” came an instant reply from Micah on her screen.
“ENOUGH!” the leader typed. “Am I not Judith, namesake of the Maccabean? Did I not
slay the pagan general in his heathen camp? It is my destiny—it is our destiny—to cleanse the
Earth of God’s enemies, to purify the world for His coming. I merely carry out the Lord’s
judgment on this blasphemer.”
“Can’t we just give him another warning?” wrote Habakkuk.
“Yah! Scare the holy shit of him again! That’ll make him stop.” beseeched Micah.
“Please, Judith, no more violence!” cried Jeremiah.
Her screen scrolled with the pleadings from the others. She could read the fear in their
messages. Their collective will was flagging, their hearts lacking the strength of her belief. Only
Ruth was missing from the discussion.
“The judge was warning enough,” Judith typed.
“That was an accident and you know it! I didn’t mean to kill him.” wrote Micah. “Must
we invite the destruction of the Temple again?”
Suddenly a voice boomed on Judith’s computer. “Yah, Judith! Let’s stick to the game!”
implored Habakkuk. “ ‘O Lord, how long shall I cry and thou wilt not hear! Even cry unto thee
of violence, and thou wilt not save!’”
“ ‘If ye offer the blind for sacrifice,’ ” intoned Malachi, adding his voice to that of
Habakkuk, “’is it not evil?’ ”.
Jeremiah’s voice joined the throng: “ ‘So as a thief is shamed when caught, the house of
Israel shall be shamed.’ “
“ ‘Come, now, let us reason together, saith the Lord,’ “ offered Isaiah.
A new voice joined the others, the gentle voice of Ruth: “ ‘Be still, my daughter, until
thou know how the matter will fall, for the man will not rest, until he have finished the thing this
day.’ ”
Judith clicked an icon on her screen and spoke: “I will heed your counsel. Let us see
what the false prophet Jordan says tonight. But mark me. If he persists in attacking us, we, the
Lord’s righteous shield, will attack him. Go now, and return to the Game.”
Her screen dissolved into swirl of colors that warped the chat list into electronic oblivion
and silenced the talk. The famed Dürer woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
blossomed into being, animated and galloping to a hard rock soundtrack, announcing the next
round of play at the portal to the Game.
***
The Last Crusade had evolved out of a web space called Angels Sanctuary meant as a
social gathering place for young evangelicals. It was the kind of vastly popular cyberplace where
one could construct a unsullied personal world, part reality, part fantasy; a world where one
gained friends in a flash, with just a few clicks on a keyboard or moves of a mouse, like a
programmer fashioning a perfect bit of code. It was also a seemingly benign world that had none
of the agony or heartache attendant to forming young friendship in real life; it was all quick and
easy and simple, as life should be, just like finding something on the Web with Google or
Amazon or eBay.
What would become the Crusade’s seven members — there could be no more or no less,
they reasoned, for seven was the divinely ordained number of the Testaments — had
congregated to each other over time as they compared and commiserated about what life was
like for a young believer in a starkly unbelieving and secular culture. They found commonality
in their chatty comments to each other on their pages. They did not know who or where each
was; they preferred that sense of perfection which anonymity granted on the web: each was
known only and purely by his and her thoughts, with no warts visible, expressed in
commentaries often peppered with biblical quotations throughout. They identified themselves
only by screen names which were taken from those prophets and books of the Bible each held
most dear. They spent uncounted hours in this fashion, and in this they avidly embraced the
prevailing notion of communication without contact, of reaching out not to touch or be touched,
but to perceive and be perceived in purely spiritual, non-physical way, which the modern, on-
line world of the young found preferable. It relieved them of the obligations — the
responsibilities — of normal human interaction; they wanted the unpolluted thought and
emotion experienced in communication without all the other elements which normal, physical
contact required, especially seeing another’s face, reading its signs and signals, interpreting its
mood. The avenues for error and misunderstanding were reduced to a steady stream of words,
like the computer code that ran their machines. The more remote the communication the better.
Instant messaging was favored over email, text messaging over cell calls, and Skyping over
phoning — and all of these before face-to-face confrontation; that was what Sunday church was
for.
As a result of this self-imposed autism, they and others of their generation were often
moody and taciturn in public, awkward in speaking, lacking in social graces, sometimes even
civility, making them ordinary students at best, uninterested in anything other than their own
interests. When they weren’t taciturn and sullen, they often used many more words than
necessary, repeating themselves and constantly spraying conjunctions and interjections
throughout their speech, grains of thought thrown in the wind, its chaff obscuring meaning while
the kernels of understanding lay scattered in the dust. It was in this strange sense of impersonal
community that the seven gravitated toward each other, feeling they were guided by a force
beyond themselves. They could have been neighbors, or separated by a continent; they did not
know, or care. They only knew that they enjoyed each other’s company more than anything else,
staying in constant contact collectively, wherever they might be individually, by networked cell
phone or PDA or computer; except to sleep, and even then sometimes in dreams they took for
visions, each was never far from the thoughts of the others. They also came to know,
inferentially in time, that all were American, Caucasian and evangelically Christian.
One other commonality was a discovered fondness for video games, especially the
communal, on-line variety. They talked constantly of the faith-based games that had flourished
with the growth of the web. Playing these games, often against each other, or in tandem
combinations of the seven, gave a sense of empowerment, as if their actions on screen could
somehow direct the flow of life off-screen; as if the passion of their play fed the fervor of their
faith, allowing them to succeed on line where they often failed in life. They believed ardently
the tenets of their religious upbringing. Their parents had been mostly evangelicals praising their
Lord on the Sabbath, but ordinary, middle-class merchants or prosperous professionals who
sought Mammon during the week; they expected their children to do as they said, not necessarily
as they did. Their children never really quite understood or accepted this hypocrisy; they saw
scripture as absolute and literal truth, and had not Jesus driven the money-changers from the
Temple? That the money-changers were providing a useful and necessary service to Jerusalem’s
pilgrims seeking to buy sacrificial animals to offer at said Temple, was lost on them. But not on
their parents, who assumed that their sons and daughters in time would come to see the practical
wisdom of selective Biblical interpretation, as they had.
What the parents did not know, and could not understand even if they did, was that their
children had chosen to grow up in a parallel universe on-line, a virtual, spiritual world of their
own making, pure and uncluttered by adult contradictions. As their off-line years flowed on,
they went to school, and then to work, but not in the manner their parents had hoped and wanted.
Most found simple, low-paying jobs, often part time, often at charities, and often continued to
live at home; to them their future lie in the imaginative and ephemeral universe of the web and
the heavenly promises of Revelation, not in the uninspiring, unappealing lives of their parents.
The seven young adults congregated more and more among just themselves, password protecting
their pages, sensing their similar ages and keeping out unwanted, older intrusions. More and
more they took on the personas of their screen names, acting and living in their own secluded
space like the prophets of old. Eventually one, Judith, came to the understanding that two of
their number, Malachi and Micah, were coders, adept at the technical wonders of the web. At her
suggestion, they created their own site open only to the seven, where they could chat and dream
undisturbed. In time it also came to be known that Malachi and Micah had created their own
games — and were damn good at it.
One day Judith posed an IM question to the group.
“Who has seen the latest Apocalypse game?”
“Bogus!” came Habakkuk’s instant reply.
“Flat!” texted Malachi.
“So Silly!” wrote Isaiah.
“Empty! Sucks!” remarked Jeremiah.
“Simplistic crap!” added Micah.
Only Ruth had not joined in, even though all knew, via her icon on their screens, that she
was present.
“Ruth, what are your thoughts?” asked Judith.
“That we can do better, Mistress … ” replied Ruth.
Judith read her words, then texted to all to go to live voice. “In what way?” she asked.
“All these apocalyptic games are cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians,” Ruth replied
with a passion in her voice Judith had not heard before, almost as if someone else was speaking
through her. “They are meant for children, punk gamers. The characters are shallow, not really
doing God’s work, but mostly just killing devils and demons and beasts and the damned for the
sake of the killing and piling up points, high score wins. They make the End Times seem phony,
not the heavenly completion of Christ’s purpose. They reflect nothing of the visions given to us
by John the Divine but pale ghosts and goblins. There is no Rapture to seek.”
“My brothers…” Judith spoke slowly after a moment’s pause. “Is this not divine
inspiration? Has not the Spirit come to us? Shall we not say to Him that ‘the things of old, what
He hast designed, hath been done?’ “
Came the response: “ ‘I am Ruth, thy handmaiden…’”
“Micah and Malachi,” Judith asked, “Can we make our game unlike anything before?”
“In what way?” Malachi asked.
“Yah,” Micah added. “A game begins with the end. We must have a goal.”
“The goal is given to us in Revelation,” Judith spoke. “Through our labors, we must
place the Heavenly Father upon his throne, with Christ at his side and the Spirit above, with the
holy Prophets arrayed about him. We, the Lord’s righteous arm, will be tasked to make it be,
though the whole host of fallen angels and devils and beasts of the Apocalypse be there to halt
and hinder us.”
“We must work together in this mission,” Ruth said. “Not against each other.”
“It shall be distributive,” said Malachi.
“Make Satan unpredictable,” suggested Habakkuk. “Make him and his minions those
whom we must vanquish, for ‘the wicked surround the righteous…’ “
“It shall be stochastic,” said Micah.
“Though in times past ‘they have made His land waste…’ “spoke Jeremiah, “We shall
prevail.“
“His will shall be done,” responded Malachi .
“Ditto,” added Micah.
“ ‘Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth,’” intoned Isaiah, “ ‘The Lord has spoken…’ “
“ ‘Lift up thy arm as from the beginning,’ “ Judith commanded. “ ‘And crush their power
with thy power…’”

Thus two modern magi of an ancient god brought forth Revelation 2.0.
Malachi and Micah were good at their word, better even than they hoped. As if by the
divine inspiration Judith had invoked, Revelation 2.0 was the alpha and the omega, the first and
the last word in an electronic Apocalypse. After six months of work, they fashioned a game, and
a world scenario, compelling to both player and prophet alike, joyous and vexing, almost what
one could expect the road to the real End Times to be. By using a random number generator
keyed to the chapters and verses of the digitized text of the King James Bible, and to strategic
words and phrases therein, seven demons and seven devils, enemies of God and Man,
continuously popped up to shout blasphemous quotations at the seven prophet-players, tempting
them away from the heavenly Father. They, God’s defenders, must instantly deliver an
appropriate counter quotation by spoken word or by number — or chosen by keyboard or cursor
from a side table of the chapters and verses of the King James Bible illustrated as a medieval
text.
But the correct manner or choosing was never the same way twice for each prophet in
each play; Malachi and Micah had devised an algorithm which would generate a successful
pattern based on the combinatorial possibilities of one of the three ways to respond being the
first and appropriate means when all three are possible at any given time; in effect, it took all the
possible ways three letters A, B and C could be arranged as ABC, ACB, BCA, BAC, CAB or
CBA; each letter was first only twice of six possibilities. By sheer luck alone they had odds of
one in three to employ the best means: word or number or list. These were sporting odds
unthinkable in Las Vegas, but useful in a cerebral game like Revelation 2.0. If successful, Satan
and his beastly minions were foiled in that round and the first of the twenty-four prescribed
elders was seated. When all were in place, round by round, then the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
could be enthroned. And after they sat in heavenly splendor, came the Rapture of the faithful
drawn up to that splendor, and then the battle of Armageddon could begin.
The game was set to be counter-productive; if an answering quotation was deemed
insufficient by a weighted table of values assigned to each passage of the text, not only was the
intended elder not seated, but the last was unseated, causing the game to regress, or collapse into
Hell if no elder was seated by the time limit of each round, which was inexorably counted off by
a demon gargoyle hovering in the upper left, the sinister corner of the screen. The standard for
quotational sufficiency shifted increasingly, requiring greater and quicker thought — and
accuracy — by the players; a premium was placed on knowing the Bible by heart, forward and
backward, inside and out. All told, Revelation 2.0 had the appropriate rewards and punishments
of a classic game, yet it circumvented the limitations set upon most such challenges by game
theory; for there was not a single goal in each play, but many; not one standard of attack, but an
ever-shifting pattern. It seemed much like trying to understand the word and will of God in real
life.
The creation of the Revelation 2.0 established two important themes among the players:
that the group was progressing beyond the normal concerns of young adult Christians into what
would become the übermenschen tone of the Last Crusade’s angry principles; and that, quietly,
Judith had assumed the uncontested lead as übergruppenfeuhrer.
***
The prophecies were clear to Judith. Israel had been back in the hands of the Jews for
over half a century; would they not soon rebuild the Temple? Europe was forming an all-
encompassing secular Union under a Treaty of Rome signed not long after the birth of the new
Israeli state; was this not a reforging of the ancient Roman Empire, the scourge of the early
Christian church? War, famine, plague and disaster seem to be always on the news; were these
not evidence of the start of the Tribulations, as predicted by the Lord in Matthew 24:4? All that
was missing was the advent of the Antichrist, the False Prophet, the Beast of Revelation; would
he not soon arise to promise the world peace but bring it world war, as foretold in the Book of
Daniel? Of all this Judith was certain, especially the Antichrist, for she knew who he was.
An abandoned child raised by a widowed grandmother, she fervently believed what the
Bible plainly told, for in truth she was named Judith. That was her grandmother’s doing. She had
raised her granddaughter to love God and to fear her. The woman had lost her own daughter to
Satan; she would not lose Judith.
While other little girls grew up reading fairy tales and romantic stories of young love,
Judith read Bible stories and apocalyptic fiction. The child was steeped in Dispensationalist-
Millennialist teachings from the earliest age, though never labeled or defined as such; to her
grandmother, and through her to Judith, these teachings had lost their provenance while
becoming something of holy writ themselves. Since the Bible was held to be the true, the exact
and the inerrant Word of God, it stood to reason that its final twenty-two chapters, the Book of
Revelation, were a sacred summation which foretold exactly and truly what to expect on Christ’s
return. But Judith’s education included little of the up-and-down, back-and-forth history of the
Book and its intent, only the conclusions others reached to suit their own ends. To Judith
Revelation proclaimed the God-given visions of John the Divine, last of the Apostles, writing in
exile on the Isle of Patmos at the end of the First Century. John told the faithful of the new
religion of Christianity what to expect at their Lord’s return, expected in his lifetime, “what must
soon take place.”
She never learned that some scholars thought that Revelation was really less John’s
vision of Christ’s return than John’s prayer for the destruction of the Roman Empire, whose
latest emperor, Domitian, had sent him into his exile. But John’s generation did pass away
“without all those things having taken place” as predicted by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, and the
Second Coming did not happen. It was then rescheduled by new prophesies, foremost among
them in the Fourth Century by Gregory the Great, pontiff of the newly ascendant Roman church;
he too was wrong, and Judgment Day was postponed yet again, only to flare up in a host of new
prophecies on the change of each millennium in 1000 A.D. and in 2000 A.D. Even Martin
Luther felt compelled to predict the return of Christ, a privilege that goes with founding one’s
own church. Not counting other Biblical versions, the End Times had been predicted and
expected at least 143 times since John’s original.
It was another John, the Englishman John Nelson Darby early in the 19th Century, who
revived John the Divine’s ravings, updated them, and invented the concept of the Rapture, when
all born-again Christians would be swept up to heaven before the Tribulations began, and thus
be spared as well as saved. Needless to say, Darby’s version of the Second Coming never came,
but that did not stop others from hoping, and still others from hopping on the prediction
bandwagon.
In the United States soon after, an ardent Baptist farmer named William Miller made
some arcane calculations and determined the Second Coming was due in March of 1843. Jesus
didn’t show. Undaunted and undeterred, Miller recalculated and named March of 1844 the new
target date. Again, Christ was a no-show. Many of Miller’s followers, “Millerites” they were
called, lost their fervor and drifted away, calling the experience “The Great Disappointment.”
The urgency to believe the prophecies weakened over the next hundred years, but did not die.
When the State of Israel was declared in 1948, fundamentalism found new hope, for this was the
one prediction never really expected to come to pass, not after two millennia. But it did, and
fundamentalists were sure it was a sign that, at long last, the Son of God was due back soon.
Popular fiction in books and movies modernized the prophecies of Revelation and put a
contemporary human face on them, enormously influencing a new generation of evangelicals,
and enormously enriching their authors; for as far as was known, there was no commandment
against profiting from the sale of religious ideas, as had, for example, the Catholic Church for
two thousand years. For a while in the 1960s, the Bible and the little red book of “Quotations
from Chairman Mao” ran neck and neck as the most published and profitable works in the
world.
None of this would have been of much interest to Judith, had she known it. From early
age she interest was only in the future, not the past. She had grown to young adulthood
expecting the unfolding of what the Bible foretold. Her grandmother had said to believe, not
question, to have faith, not doubt. She was not allowed to have a normal life of girlfriends and
boyfriends, even if highly Christian, for fear of contamination of other interpretations of the
ordained belief and the taint of heretical disbelief. Each summer of her adolescence Judith was
sent to stern Bible camp, where she drilled in Scripture and was taught to recognize and avoid
the temptations of the secular culture which was based squarely on the seven deadly sins. The
only joy they were to know was singing the Lord’s praises. Judith was not allowed to date until
senior year in high school, and that with great circumspection; the boys her grandmother found
were vapid, docile believers, with most aspects of virility squeezed from them like juice from
fruit, leaving behind a crushed and clammy character. There was no touch of Biblical heroism or
adventure in any of her few friends. Consequently, Judith knew little if anything of love and sex,
not even by the typical route of gossip and giggles which teenagers became self-educated and
educating. The advent of puberty and menstruation were evidence, her grandmother told her, of
the damned nature of females, Eve’s Curse, and the need for greater isolation and prayer and
faith, particularly in her grandmother’s word and instruction. Judith often wondered what other
great evil her mother had done, besides abandoning Judith to her own mother.
But curiosity can be a very human trait, even in the faithful, if also a failing one. Once
she went off to college, her grandmother could not completely control what she learned, what
she read, to whom she spoke, even though her grandmother moved to Virginia to be nearby the
fundamentalist college she had chosen. The school was founded by a popular televangelist and
had taken to the evangelical forefront in spreading fundamentalist teachings, especially by
political means; to the founder’s mind all humanity should — and would — have a Christian
salvation, society and government, whether it wanted these or not. However, despite her
grandmother’s best intentions, the rapidly evolving Internet made available to Judith a world of
thought vastly different from the books of the shelves at school, all of which — even science —
had the Bible as background and frame of reference. The growing web of possibilities and
potential the Internet offered was tempting and could not be controlled; and Judith, in the
solitude of her dorm room, if not rebellious, was curious.
The secular world she had so long been sheltered from was beguiling, seductive. A part
of her mind said that this was to be expected, for that was how the Evil One worked. But the
whole realm of religious art which had developed out of the Renaissance was a revelation of its
own. So many of the Bible’s heroes and heroines were portrayed with incredibly loving beauty
and artistry; Judith began to understand her faith’s prohibition against graven images, for some
depictions of Biblical events had decided undertones of a very corporeal humanity. The
brooding scenes of Caravaggio were so very dark in spirit as well as color; his painting of Judith
Beheading Holofernes was a horrific depiction of murder and revenge, not of an act of
patriotism, one that frightens even the murderess. Bernini’s sculpture of the Ecstasy of Saint
Theresa, who in her autobiography described a dream in which an angel thrust a golden spear
into her heart “… to pierce my very entrails with the love of God …” so that it made her moan,
led some modern commentators — given the Saint’s body language and the excessive expression
of her face — to describe it all as really the climax of a badly disguised orgasm. Judith could
appreciate the phenomenon, for her young body had often given her signals as it grew of a
pleasure that, if it had not been preached as carnal and sinful, might be what the experience of
God must be. She had been a scrawny child, all bones and gristle, but without the restless energy
that marked her own mother’s childhood; when her hormones kicked in at puberty, she shot up
and out into a voluptuousness that she outwardly cursed and inwardly enjoyed. Not long after
first seeing the picture of the sculpture of Saint Theresa, she had found that gently rubbing her
thighs together in the early hours of the morning, when sleep and dreams had not completely left
her, generated a rapturous feeling in her loins. It was her secret pleasure, and she delicately
explored it further and further as dreams permitted, sometimes letting a hand wander over and
down her belly, until she awakened one morning to find herself moaning like the saint. She
stopped instantly, her eyes wide open, and began to comprehend the power of temptation the
world outside her faith held, the power of Asmodeus, the demon of lust.
Yet, if much of that world was full of a sensual life, she found that it was also empty of,
or even antagonistic to religion. Judith could not condemn it all — or avoid it entirely. Certainly
the secular view of life shown in movies and on television was decadent and lurid, Sodom and
Gomorrah writ modern and large. So she tried to fit in better with those about her, for the school
and its community were like a fortress against the debauchery outside, walled in and protected
by deep beliefs and high morals. Its students were expected to take up adult life in the manner
their parents had, to be productive and fruitful and mostly faithful; but the one expectation most
did not share was of the return of the Son of God any time soon. A few, very few, sought to be
missionaries, as Judith’s grandmother desired her to be, a new generation of evangelists to bring
the word of God to an increasingly godless world. She just found so little in common with any
of them. But always in the background was her grandmother’s stern visage.
Upon graduation, her grandmother found a missionary service with a group destined for
Africa that Judith could join, teaching English and the Gospels to people more and more turning
to Catholicism from the old tribal gods, and thus were doubly damned. Far from the verdant
protective society of Virginia, Judith arrived in a Kenya that was incredible in its natural beauty,
yet culturally desolate, with a people being divided asunder by a few rich who were getting
richer, and of many more of poor who were only getting poorer. Often described as a model for
modern democracy in the Third World, Kenya was a tribal polyglot that spoke over fifty
languages beside the main Swahili and a bearable English left over from colonial times. But it
held little familiar to Judith. The land which paleontologists and anthropologists called the
birthplace of humanity was anything but a modern paradise. Over half the population was under
age 15, with a life expectancy of barely three times that. Malaria and AIDS were rampant killers,
like plagues sent by God in olden times. The upper crust and middle class of society were small
and diverging from the mass of the population, living in enclaves slowly being surrounded by
sprawling slums.
Her mission was in the barren northern regions were farming was barely at a subsistence
level and the poverty grinding. Women in particular bore the brunt, with little hope of education
or economic gain. Tribal traditions were still strong and choked innovations and the innovative
few among the young. Witchcraft was still a force, both of awe and terror. While the concept of
a heavenly reward was appealing, it was too remote to alleviate their suffering here on earth. The
flashy showmanship of the Catholic liturgy was a more visible evidence of the Christian god’s
power than the ethereal, cerebral, pictureless paradise Judith offered. The culture was too alien,
its rural people too stuck in a downward spiral of destitution and alienation from the modern
urban culture, such that she felt a hopelessness she never thought possible. She prayed to God to
deliver her. And God did, by taking her grandmother.
A contested presidential election, whose outcome was rigged in favor of the ruling party,
had ended in civil strife that was on the verge of becoming a tribal civil war, pitting the majority
Kikuyus against a vast coalition of the lesser tribes. The riots in Kenya’s major cities threaten to
spill out into the countryside. The mission was distant enough from the immediate troubles, but
no one, including the local authorities, really knew what to expect. Africa’s modern history,
after escaping its legacy of being Europe’s colonial pawn, was one of genocidal tribal slaughter.
Soon would begin the flood of refugees to the countryside, seeking safety and overloading the
capacity of an all but barren landscape. When fifty Kikuyus, mostly women and children, were
burned alive while seeking sanctuary at a small church in a western village, Judith sent an email
to her grandmother asking to arrange somehow to relieve her obligation. News of the conflict
had quickly circled the globe with the instantaneous speed of modern communications.
On an afternoon when a high sun baked the landscape a golden brown and Judith lay in
her room, frozen in the African heat by the lethargy of a black depression, a courier arrived at
her mission. The group’s elder called for Judith and took her to the mission’s humble chapel.
The burning light of the sun was softened here, filtered through the harmonizing colors of a
modern stained-glass window that showed no human form but a simple cross, yet ablaze in the
streaming light. He sat Judith down on a front pew and handed her an email from her
grandmother addressed to the organization’s hierarchy, to its leader personally. It spoke of an
illness which had incapacitated her. Would he please see to it that her granddaughter was
returned to care for her? In return, she would see to it that a special donation would be made to
the mission. At no time was Judith referred to in other than the third person.
Judith was grateful to her grandmother, but was somewhat surprised by the tale of
illness; it was an uncharacteristic elaboration. She flew home to Virginia to discover that her
grandmother had died while she was enroute. The supposed lie had actually been the truth. Her
grandmother had left Judith both a long testament to guide her — and a sizable inheritance. God,
indeed, worked in mysterious ways.
Judith buried her grandmother in the family plot in Charleston, per her written
instructions, then settled the obligation to the missionary group with the promised donation that
silenced any complaint. Judith felt a pang of guilt for leaving the others behind, but she had
prayed for deliverance, and God had delivered, in rather strange fashion. For the first time in her
life, Judith was alone, with no one to direct her, to guide her, neither friend nor family to love
her. At age twenty-two, she was set for the rest of her life, but had no great desire to live it.
What Judith longed for was the bliss of the Rapture, to be drawn up to the heavens. That
had been her dream and expectation since childhood. She found nothing but spiritual
degradation and moral desolation all about her. She wanted release, to not think, to not be, but to
just believe, as she had been raised to seek. Nothing in life was of much value to her, for it was
the afterlife that held the great promise. This was the mystery that bedeviled her spirit; nothing
on earth was worth wanting if Christ was coming again. Yet, why were we still here, if the
destiny of the faithful was to reunite with God in heaven? She had no wish to explore life, to
taste its pleasures as now she could afford; for were they naught, as she had learned, but the
temptations of the devil? Yet, it was the gift of life itself that was tempting, sensuous, inviting.
This was a taunting paradox that plagued her soul. She could not end her life, for in doing so she
would be denied the reward she so sought. She began to believe that the real original sin had not
been Adam’s desire for God’s wisdom by eating the fruit, but that Adam had taken away Eve’s
eternal life, which God alone had granted.
Judith wrestled with this confusing mystery. Slowly an answer emerged, and a plan. If
this brief life was prelude to the eternal life thereafter, a life she could not willfully end; and if
the world about her was like the fleshpots of scripture meant to tempt her from her rapturous
reward; then she must depart from the world without leaving it. She would become a hermit, a
monk in her own monastery, and await Christ’s coming.
Judith sold her grandmother’s ancestral home, a grand Richmond house which had been
in the family for over two hundred years, and liquidated all the properties, stocks and bonds
which had been left to her in the will, the accumulated fortune of a old family whose line ended
with Judith. Her grandmother’s financial advisor had recommended establishing a trust that
would provide her granddaughter with decided comfort, but whose vast principal could be
protected. The old lady had declined the option stating, in an uncharacteristic act of seeming
charity to her granddaughter, that Judith deserved everything she got. Judith’s own mother was
not mentioned in the will, which made Judith think that she must be dead — or damned.
To procure the safety of isolation, she looked for a home along the shores of the Atlantic
near Virginia Beach, where the waters of Chesapeake Bay mingled with the ocean, something
apart, something alone. She found an old estate that encompassed nearly two hundred acres. Its
nearest neighbor would be a half mile away in either direction along the coast. The original
home, a gilded Victorian with a steep mansard roof and gingerbread trim dating from the 1880s,
had suffered severe damage in the great hurricane in 1938, a storm many at the time thought was
sent by God, which ravaged the Atlantic Seaboard has far north as Rhode Island with a ferocity
that was biblical in its proportions. The property was of old title, exempt from most modern
coastal regulations. It was one of those rare oddities of real estate: an immensely valuable
location, desired by many, but available to none. The Great Depression had left the family
fortune in ruins as bad as the storm had left the house. The estate languished for decades; the
impoverished heirs who had inherited it with each generation could not agree on selling or
keeping it; some wanted to rebuild, others to cash in on their inheritance. Through the stalemate
its value kept increasing, as did the number of heirs who had a stake in the property. Through
successive real estate booms, developers coveted the land for the many lucrative estate homes
they could build cheek by jowl along its shores. The math was simple: the too many owners
wanted too much; the too few buyers offered too little. Through the years the original home and
grounds had been left to crumble in the elements, past the point of saving. In a bold stroke that
settled the conflict among the heirs and thwarted the developers, Judith made an offer close to
the estimated market value of the land as if it had been developed. The real estate agent thought
her mad and tried to reason with Judith, even though her commission would suffer greatly. But
Judith was adamant, for money had little value to one who had no long term use for it.
The townsfolk nearby thought her a bit young to be so eccentric, but her money was
good, and there seemed to be a lot of it. Judith rented a small house in town while she prepared
plans for her new home. Each day she strolled along her seashore, enjoying its perfect solitude;
the only company she sought was that of Christ in her thoughts and his world to come. One
morning in early spring when the air held more of winter’s chill than the promise of summer’s
warmth, cool offshore breezes pushed the waves close to her feet as she walked. The damp sand
was firm under foot, strengthened by the receding tide. Large patches of gray clouds played hide
and seek with the sun, casting her alternately in light and shadow. She came upon a small bluff
she had passed many times, near the mid-point in her property. The remains of the old house
were inland a few hundred yards on a higher rise that gave it a view which extended miles out to
sea. Here by the shore’s edge, the mainland rose up again briefly, a low wave of earth frozen at
its crest, then dipped back to the sea, leaving a broad stretch of sand before reaching the ocean.
As she passed by it, the clouds broke once more and a band of light streamed down on the apex
of the bluff. The bright sun buffeted her eyes and she looked away towards the land and saw the
light funneled by the parting clouds. Here, Judith, thought, here. This is where God wants me to
build, as if foretold by Deuteronomy: “So shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee.”
She found a local architect and commissioned a modest cottage and had it built into the
bluff so that the world behind was hidden and only the sea and sky were visible in front. Her
new home was simple, unadorned, like her life; it would suffice to house her body while she
waited for Jesus to claim her soul. Behind it to the west, her land receded nearly a third of a mile
to a small pine forest that blocked the sight and sounds of the road and any sign of humanity; the
old house and its grounds were left to their fate. Paths worn into the bluff through the years gave
easy access to the beach. To the east in front of her home the empty ocean stretched as far as her
eye could see, as did her beach to the north and to the south; rarely did any work of mankind
impose itself on her solitude. Distance was the wall that protected her home. Her only contact
with the outside world was a high-speed Internet connection that provided phone and radio and
television as well. She made arrangements with local merchants and delivery services to have
what she needed deposited in a small gate house at her property’s entrance, with payment via her
online accounts. What little she wanted from the outside world would be available with almost
no human contact. Though she would withdraw from everyday life, she could turn to the Internet
for a companionship her faith could not entirely replace; the remote kind, the kind untouched by
emotion and sensual temptation.
Judith went to her college website for links she might trust to explore in spiritual safety.
She monitored chat rooms, reading the ongoing discussions, but did not join in at first. The
threads were less about the joys of religion than the threats against it. Many of the religious radio
stations that streamed online were the same. Much of it seemed political, too concerned with this
world; the content of these sites discussed and supported the formation of a Christian nation, one
which saw Christian values as the only values that would be permitted, the ten commandments
the only moral guide to be allowed. She remembered instructors at school who had railed against
the godless teachings of evolution that contradicted, even denied, Holy Scripture in high school
biology books. Some teachers had supported those school boards which attempted to infuse their
school rooms with the holy word of God, not the writings of that devil Darwin. While Judith
could sympathize with the cause, it was not in a direct line with her true interest; all this political
bother was unnecessary, for the will of God was plainly written in the text of Revelation.
Finally, she found a chat room within Angels Sanctuary, with a small cadre of adherents
who shared her fascination with the Second Coming, and her expectation of its imminent arrival.
Judith monitored the discussions until she felt familiar and comfortable with the
participants’ thinking. They read like an honor roll of prophets: Micah and Malachi, Habakkuk
and Jeremiah. She studied past postings and saw that most who wandered into the room left
again quickly. Based on their departing flames, she guessed these faint-hearted souls had little
faith in God’s final judgment. Females especially, who seemed more interested in trolling for
boyfriends and impressing girlfriends on the site, expressed their displeasure at the overbearing
masculinity of the central members. Judith continued to watch the group from a distance as she
developed a sense of the depth of their belief. They certainly knew their Bible, especially the
Old Testament. They sprinkled their comments with quotations, mostly from the King James,
reveling in its antique Jacobean English and playing word games with its archaic terms; but
always behind their postings was their sense of the nearness of the End Times.
A fifth, Isaiah, joined the core of four, and stayed. Like his namesake, he offered a
mixture of prophecy and accommodation: surely those who truly believed the word of God and
his Prophets will be saved; those who do not, deserve their fate and no further consideration.
Beneath his signature was a quotation from Isaiah II: “The Lord Almighty has a day in store …
the arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled.” Soon after the other
four added similar lines from their respective namesakes’ scripture.
Judith maintained her distant surveillance until one day another woman started posting
comments. Her screen name was Ruth and she seemed, like Isaiah, to be not as quite as young
the others and had a more moderating influence on them. She wrote not of tribulations and
armageddon, but of rapture, reminding the group that true believers, those born again, would be
swept up to heaven at the start the End of Days. That was the great purpose of their faith, and its
reward. Her signature quotation summed up her expectations and that of the group: “Whither
thou goest I will go ... and thy God my God.”
The wisdom of Ruth impressed Judith, appealed to her, expressing a compassion that
Judith did not often feel. More, Ruth held a hope of companionship that Judith found she craved
in her isolation. Each morning brought expectation of the Rapture; each evening, yet another
disappointment made all the worse by her self-imposed seclusion. She waited until Ruth posted a
comment on a popular televangelist who was raising funds to build yet another ostentatious
crystal cathedral in Southern California, in time-honored fashion since the days of Sister Aimee
Semple McPherson who begat the fashion eight decades before with the Angelus Temple in Los
Angeles. Judith offered a response that perhaps this was less a monument to God than to the
man’s own vanity. The reply was instant.
“WHO ARE YOU TO MOCK HIM!?” flamed Jeremiah.
“YAH! JUDITH AIN’T EVEN IN THE BIBLE!” scrolled Micah.
“GET OUTTA HERE, BLASPHEMER!” wrote Habakkuk.
“ ‘YE OFFER POLLUTED BREAD UPON MINE ALTAR,’ ” typed Malachi.
“ ‘WHEN YE ENTERED,’ ” cried Jeremiah, “ ‘YE DEFILED MY LAND, AND
MADE MINE HERITAGE AN ABOMINATION.’ ”
Only Ruth seemed undisturbed. “Her words are not unwise, my friends,” she wrote. “Let
her have her say.”
Judith explained that her thoughts were about the way in which the megachurches and
their leaders spread the gospels seemed more about making money than saving souls. Their
grandiose buildings, like over-wrought Gothic or Rococo cathedrals of earlier ages, were signs
of gluttony. The highly orchestrated and choreo-graphed sermons with psychedelic light shows
that sparked like celestial fireworks on huge display screens, along with fake fog drifting down
from the stage like wandering spirits, with over-amplified rock music and huge choirs echoing
“Hosanna!” and “Hallelujah!” — all meant to electrify the crowds and garner greater collections
and contributions — were symbols and symptoms of greed. And in their shadow lives away
from the stage and pulpit, too many of these sanctimonious leaders shamefully succumbed to
lust, embarrassing God with their marital infidelities. They seemed destined to commit all seven
deadly sins while they preached the seven holy virtues.
“All this speaks of too great a pride,” Judith concluded. “They are concerned too much
with today and not the End Times, of this mortal world and not the immortal world to come.”
“There is wisdom in her words, my friends,” Ruth replied. “She sees the hidden vice
where others see only false virtue.”
“Let us welcome her to the fold,” wrote Isaiah. “ ‘The eyes of the arrogant man will be
humbled and the pride of men brought low; the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.’ ”
Thus did the seventh and final prophet wander in from her wilderness.
As Judith integrated into the group, she was appreciated for the depth of her knowledge
of the Book of Revelation. But one question about her remained; it was left to Ruth to ask it.
“Mistress, why do you use the name Judith? She is not of our Bible, neither Christian or
Hebrew. Only the Roman and Eastern Catholics include her.”

This question had vexed Judith as well, as she had grown older and studied the Bible
more deeply, like a worrisome guilt that would not leave her conscience, for it was a
contradiction that nagged her understanding. It made no sense. Why had her family, Protestants
all, given her a name not of the Protestant Bible? Judith was a hero in the best biblical sense, a
widow who had beguiled and then slain the enemy of the Jews. Her namesake suspected it was
the work of her long lost mother who had left her behind. But that made no sense either; her
grandmother could have, should have, rechristened her. But Judith had never the courage to ask.
The puzzle remained with her, dogging her soul, a question that had no hope of an answer. In
time, in self-defense, she fashioned her own.
“Like she for whom I am named,” Judith wrote back, “I was an outcast, abandoned by
the one who bore me.“
Ruth’s reply, from Proverbs, appeared simultaneously on the screens of the other six: “
‘Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning gain guidance…’ “
As the relationships among the seven grew online over many months and the
strengths and knowledge and the interests of each became known, they withdrew further
from the orthodoxy of Christian belief, contemplating and exploring more and more the
arcane imagery of the Book of Revelation and its predictions of the End of Days and of
the Last Judgment. They were in no doubt that it was coming, and soon. What vexed
them was when exactly, for they faced the hard challenge of maintaining the intense and
constant state of grace which the final judgment required while all about them most
aspects of everyday living neither held nor wanted that kind of emotional endurance. “Be
thou faithful unto death,” John of Patmos had written, “And I will give you the crown of
life.” Though he spoke of tribulation, John never mentioned the price to be paid.
Judith took the lead and suggested they divine evidence from the text which would prove
their times as the beginning of the End Times. St. John had also written that the Devil would be
imprisoned for a thousand years in the bottomless pit, then set free. Exactly when he had been
imprisoned and why he had been released were not clear. Since all time was measured by the life
of Christ, Judith reasoned, it must have been after the crucifixion, possibly as punishment for
engineering that horrible act, thus resolving the first question. Isaiah resolved the second part
with the straightforward insight that the Evil One had been set free in order to fulfill the
prophecy, of course.
Another revelatory conundrum was that the saints and martyrs would reign with Christ
for a thousand years. Again, the text was not completely unambiguous; were these millennia
consecutive or concurrent? Ruth offered that since it had been two thousand years from when
Revelation was written and yet the Apocalypse had not come. So, the millennia must be
consecutive and the End Times must be due. All other prophecies concerning the Second
Coming had proved false simply because they had failed this two-thousand-year test.
Now that the ancient lands of Israel were back in the hands of the Jews, it was expected
that the Third and final temple would be built in Jerusalem, once the blasphemous Dome of the
Rock was removed; indeed, they noted that many Christians were working toward this ultimate
and necessary end, with aid of the Israeli Tourist Ministry; each year thousands of evangelicals
toured the Holy Land, contributing substantially to its local economies. As for the state of the
world, the daily news reported endless war, famine, disaster and pestilence; just what one would
expect the Tribulations to bring about. So where was the Antichrist? And who was he? The
Bible was full of enticing clues, but none conclusive.
The Antichrist was foretold to arise as an ultimate peacemaker, one to lead mankind
through the “troubles and tribulations.” But halfway trough his seven-year reign, he would
recant and lead an army of millions in the final battle of Armaged-don, Lucifer’s last attempt to
over throw the throne of God. Again, the clues were few and subtle. Was he a man, or a class of
men, such as the atheists, heretics, blasphemers and false prophets who denied the Christ? Daniel
in the Old Testament thought he must be a Jew, as did a modern televangelist who also claimed
that he was alive today and just biding his time. Saints John, Matthew and Paul in the New
Testament mentioned a “man of sin” and the “son of perdition;” very descriptive, but not very
selective, for now as then the world was full of sinners. While the word of God may be inerrant,
Judith cautioned, it was also, on occasion, not very clear. The Antichrist could be anyone.
“If that’s the case,” wrote Isaiah one day in response to Judith’s work, “I vote for Joshua
Jordan. That bastard knows everything.”
Judith had not been familiar with Jordan. She rarely watched popular television nor read
anything that wasn’t related to the Bible. But it stood to reason that the Antichrist would be
known in the ordinary world as someone famous, admired, appealing. She Googled Jordan’s
name and was shocked. So many references, so many commentaries. She then looked up his
listing in Wikipedia that described in detail a man of the present, a man of many
accomplishments and talents and honors, as prophecy implied, but also that he seemed to be a
man with little or no past. This was even more curious, for it fit exactly the words of Revelation
that the Beast would ascend whole from the bottomless pit.
Judith began to read Jordan’s writings archived online and watch his commentaries on
the nightly news. He covered a vast range of subjects, only occasionally religion and its history.
His work was often sprinkled with phrases from several languages, including unusually Hebrew
and Arabic, and when he did comment on religious subjects, it was with impressive knowledge.
If he himself had no history, his grasp of the subject was inspiring.
Jordan reminded her of an instructor at college, a young man who had taught there but
briefly. He wasn’t quite as conservative as the older faculty, and the younger students found him
refreshing. Judith also thought him handsome. During a discussion of the ten commandments
and their relation to daily life, he pointed out that few other religions, primarily only Judaism
and Islam, banned religious art, but all rather gloried in it; most other Christian denominations
did not even consider the ban a commandment at all, but a warning against false idols. Many of
his students thought this horrendous. He decided to give his class a quick survey of art history in
religion and set up a laptop to project images from the Internet on a LCD wall screen behind his
desk. That had been his downfall. He had tried to make his students aware that throughout
history much of mankind, in its attempts to depict the Lord and his Saints, had seen beauty, not
idolatry; that there were many ways to perceive God. He purposefully avoided paganism and
stuck to Christianity, but a few in attendance that day saw only blasphemy. The teacher was
censured for straying from the accepted orthodoxy which the school cherished, and he chose to
leave rather than submit. It had been that class which had piqued her curiosity, enticing her to
explore religious art that resulted in her corporeal explorations. The thought of that time caused
Judith to tremble, then to curse, for the trembling was not spiritual, but sensual. Only a devil, the
demon of lust, could awaken such memories.
Jordan’s weekly newspaper column “Point of Departure” was published online as well,
as another blog, also inviting comments. In a preface he wrote: “I am neither the first word nor
the last on any subject I might cover. Little if any of what I say is original to me. You will find it
written all through the pages of history. Check any good encyclopedia. My goal is not to end
debate, but to encourage it. A blog should be a dialog not a diatribe, a many-sided, continuing
conversation. It’s one rule is — or should be — reason. Rationality is the measure by which
ideas should be judged. Forget that rule and there will never be any basis for agreement, only
constant, eternal dissension. Know your facts and how they connect and what they lead us to,
then this will be a useful dialog. Forget the facts and express only opinion or blind belief, you’ll
find that no one is listening any more.”
Judith began looking forward to Jordan’s posts, waiting for a sign that would prove that
Jordan was indeed the Antichrist. When Jordan wrote a column which speculated on what the
founders of the world’s great religions would do if they returned today, he caused something of
a frenzy in the wider media. Jordan noted that if Jesus came back now, he would certainly not be
seen in Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome. Instead, he would probably be found in the city’s slums
and whore houses, run-down missions for the poor, orphanages, drug rehab centers, wherever
there was suffering or sin.
The posted comments expressed an almost universal outrage by the faithful. How dare
Jordan put the their Savior among sinners. Only the atheists reveled in his ironic indictment of
hypocrisy.
Jordan replied that “… obviously the righteous posters don’t really read or understand
their Bible. For example, the Gospels depicted Christ the Redeemer walking among those who
needed redemption the most: the crippled, the diseased, the lost, the dead — not just the wealthy,
the Pharisees and Sadducees, not princes or kings or conquerors. When he gave sermons, it was
by the seaside or on a mount, not in some huge edifice that cost a million times more than any of
his followers would ever earn. His one visit to the Temple was to drive out the money changers.
When he needed to meditate, he chose the desert not a monastery, where the devil could easily
tempt him.
“He ministered to the low people not the high priests. If anything, Jesus would condemn
what belief in him had become. The great churches and the great wealth of those churches would
be an abomination upon his name and his ministry. The crystal palaces of modern evangelism
would cause him much sorrow, he who fed the poor and cured the lame. He did not cause vast
choirs of angels to sing his praises, but went about his business as anonymously as he could.
When confronted by the priesthood about how an adulteress should be judged, he did not preach
a syrupy sermon but challenged any among them to cast the first stone only if they were without
sin, but none could. When they tried to trap him into heresy or treason by choosing between God
and Caesar, he answered simply to give each his due.
“Jesus asked only” Jordan concluded, “that those who followed him love their god and
their neighbor. He taught by example, and what example do modern churches provide that were
even remotely like his?”
This confused Judith mightily. Jordan was right. Jesus would indeed weep at what was
being done in his name. How could this be the work of the Antichrist? It caused Judith to do
something she had wished to no longer do: react with the outside world. She wrote a response to
Jordan’s comments.
“Do you believe the end is near?” she asked and signed her name “Judith Maccabeus.”
The other posters instantly mocked her, too, saying that she offered no insight or opinion
and should have condemned Jordan, or applauded him. The atheists used her question as
evidence of the silliness that religion inspired. One offered to sell Judith a robe and placard and
sandals that she might walk the streets and carry her message to the masses. After that, the blog
was closed to further comments on that subject.
Judith was stunned and hurt by the posters’ ridicule and calumny. She had asked what
was to her a simple, but crucial question; she had expected a simple answer, not vile threats. She
wished she had never reached out in so public a way. But was this one more indication that
Jordan might be the Antichrist? Had not his followers mocked one who was righteous? Had not
they made fun of the most serious event since the first coming of Christ? Why did they mock her
as the mob mocked Jesus on the sorrowful trail to Golgotha? She must have answers, and she
must have them directly from Jordan. Then she saw on her computer screen that Malachi and
Micah had come online and she instant-messaged them, asking how to find Jordan’s email
address.
“A public address is no problem,” Malachi returned. “Private addresses are harder, but
not impossible.”
“Does he have a personal one at the TV station?”
“If he does, we’ll find it,” Micah messaged back.
Malachi responded an hour later with Jordan’s information. “Found his private stuff, too.
And he has a Skype account.”
“Blessed art thou…” Judith replied.
She thought carefully of what to do next. How Jordan responded to her would prove
whether he was the Antichrist or not. The Evil One would be clever and manipulative, not wise
and forgiving. But to save her soul she could not think of anything but what she had already
written. She sent an email to his station address asking her original question. A reply came back,
an automated response from his assistant declaring that due to the volume of email that Jordan
received in the course of a day, it was impossible to give personal, individual replies. Her
thoughts would be saved and if sufficient other writers had similar comments, he would try to
address them at some point in the future. This irritated Judith, and confused her more. She had
expected the Antichrist to decisive, not evasive.
She added Jordan to her Skype contacts and waited for him to come online. She was not
confident enough to speak directly with Jordan, so she decided to use instant messaging when
his icon turned green.
“Do you believe the end is near?” she typed.
There was no response. She had come to expect immediate reaction like from those of
her online group and the blog. It meant Jordan was weighing whether to allow her calls. This
was crucial, she felt, but was not sure just how. If he dismissed her, did that mean he feared her?
If he allowed her contact, was he unafraid? After sitting at her computer for nearly an hour,
checking that Jordan was still online, she finally gave up went for a walk along her beach. It was
autumn and the ocean breezes were gathering force for winter; a storm was brewing and the
clouds grew dark, threatening much rain. As the winds rose bits of sea mist stung at her face,
forcing her to squint and shield her eyes. Judith turned back and made her way home against the
sudden shower. Was this a sign too? On her return, she found a text message on screen.
“I suppose it depends on which ‘end’ you mean,” read Jordan’s reply.
Judith typed furiously: “The End Times of Revelation, of course. The second coming of
Jesus.”
“Technically, it would be the third. Don’t forget the Resurrection.”
“I … I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Most don’t.”
“Why do not others mention this?”
“It is a small point, but telling. Speaking of which, do you mind telling me who you are,
‘Judith Maccabeus’?”
Judith thought furiously, her heart pounding. “I am … “ she typed, “…an admirer…”
What does one say to the Devil?
“That’s quite a name, and quite a question. Now that you found me, what can I do for
you?”
“I was awed … by your commentary,” she wrote cautiously, trying to calm herself.
“You know a lot about religion.”
“More than most, less than some,” Jordan replied. “History and I are old friends. But I
sense hesitation. What troubles you, Judith?”
“The End Times! Why have they not come?” She couldn’t help herself; he had asked and
she felt Jordan sensed the importance of her quest.
“That’s a very old question.”
“But I must know the answer. I fear the Antichrist!”
Jordan clicked the icon on his screen to establish a voice link. “Do you mind if we talk?”
His voice suddenly filled the room as if he was now here in her sanctuary, but in a mild,
unthreatening way. “All this typing is hell on my wrists.”
Judith quickly clicked her icon in return. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid of the devil.”
“Why, for someone so young?”
“How did you know I’m young?”
“Your voice, your language. As mine marks me as older, yours marks you as younger.”
“Oh…”
“How old are you, Judith?”
“Um, twenty-three.”
“And why do you need to know the date of the Apocalypse and the identity of the
Antichrist?”
“Because I want to be worthy when Jesus returns. This world does not make that easy.”
“Hah! You sound just like a dualist.”
“What’s that?”
“Dualism was a very ancient religion, from Persia originally, that held there were two co-
equal gods, one of good, one of evil. The god of evil was believed to have created the world and
everything in it. The god of good was responsible for the spiritual world. It was humanity’s
earliest attempt to explain why a god, being all-powerful, would allow evil. Dualism was seen as
the result of the conflict between these two powerful gods in their contest for men’s souls.
Dualists believed that life and the world were a miserable phase to be endured until they died
and were with the good god again.”
“But there is only one God!”
“Are you sure?”
“The Bible tells me so.”
“Which part, in particular?”
“The very first commandment. ‘I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me.”
“You left out part. ‘I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage …’ ”
“That’s not important …”
“But it is! That little bit defines the Hebrews’ debt to their god. The commandments were
the price Jehovah demanded for his services.”
“You make God sound mercenary.”
“Well, to the ancient Hebrews he was. For God’s benediction and protection he expected
to be paid with exclusive worship. That’s the defining principle of monotheism, although it
could also be argued that God issued the First Commandment because he was envious of the
many other gods the Hebrews used to worship and did not wish to be taken as inferior to any of
them. Deuteronomy chapter six, verses fourteen and fFifteen: ‘Ye shall not go after other gods,
of the gods of the people which are ‘round about you … for the Lord thy God is a jealous God
…’ If there were no other gods, why would he be jealous?”
“That’s blasphemous!”
“Yes, I agree. And thousands of Dualists were burned at the stake for such beliefs during
the Albigensian Crusade.”
“What’s that?”
“It was a little crusade the Church waged against itself in the Languedoc, a southern
region of France near its border with Spain, during the early Thirteenth Century. This was in
between wars against the Saracen infidels in the Holy Land. Some of those who fought in the
Crusades learned of this ancient belief, found it appealing and brought back versions of it with
them to Europe. These particular French Dualists were called Cathars, after the Greek word for
‘purified,’ which was the state they tried to achieve, purified of the trappings of worldly life to
spite the devil before death returned them to their chosen god. They had no use for priests and
popes in their beliefs, which why the Holy Mother Church waged a war of eradication against
them. But in the Crusaders’ earnest attempts to please God in heaven and his pope on earth, they
also killed thousands of Christians, too, for Cathars and Catholics all looked and dressed and
spoke the same. One crusader asked how to tell the difference and was ordered — by an
archbishop no less — ‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’ Isn’t that even more
blasphemous?”
“I knew noting of this…”
“That’s the point, Judith. You may know the Bible, but there’s more to know and
understand about religion than just one book. I’ve got to go. But if you have more questions, I’ll
try to answer them another time. Just send me an email to this address.” A text message
appeared on her screen. “Meanwhile, try reading an encyclopedia.”

Judith, as a child of the Internet, decided to search online rather than go search through a
library. She read of the Albigensian Crusade and saw that Jordan had not lied to her. Then she
sought references of the Antichrist and found a bewildering array of theories and beliefs. Many
churches in many times claimed to know the Antichrist’s identity. Martin Luther said it was the
Catholic Pope in Rome; other founders of other Protestant religions held similar beliefs, for
obvious reasons. However, she found that in the Russian Church the orthodox old guard
regarded Peter the Great, secularist and lover of all things Western, as their Antichrist, for he
made the clergy shave their beards, pay taxes and learn to speak French. Muslims called him the
false messiah, Maseeh Dajjal, and the one-eyed liar, Awar Dajjal, for Mohammed had cautioned
that “when the False Messiah rises up, remember God is not one-eyed.” The Jews appeared to
not believe in an afterlife, much less an Antichrist.
In modern times, she knew, contemporary Apocalyptic fiction settled on certain
attributes that made for a good antagonist. He would be attractive, one who beguiled people with
his charm. He would be articulate, able to sway people with his well-chosen words. He would be
multilingual, able to convince many people in their own tongues. He would, above all, be
brilliant, a man whose knowledge and understanding would comfort people and bring them
willingly to his side in the clash of good and evil to come. This did indeed sound like Joshua
Jordan. But why would the Antichrist be open and inviting to her, be willing to educate her? In
this doubt she was frozen and could not ask more questions. Those she had asked were difficult
enough.
Then before she could email a question to Jordan, his website posted an itinerary for an
upcoming book signing tour for the latest compilation of his columns and essays entitled
“Whistling in the Wind” on the foibles and follies of modern life, succinctly encapsulated in
blocks of five hundred and a thousand words, the journalist’s standard measuring cups. Judith
scanned the list of cities and bookstores and found that he would be visiting Washington, only
two hundred miles away. She decided to break her seclusion to see what Jordan was like in real
life.
She rose early on the appointed day and drove west to Richmond, joining Interstate 90 to
head north towards the nation’s capitol. The bookstore was near Georgetown University. She
had programmed her car’s GPS navigator for the most direct route. She had not been to
Washington in years, and then only once as a child to see the Reverend Billy Graham preach; her
grandmother had preferred the simpler, less tempting life of Richmond. The computed route
took her off the interstate and the Beltway and westward up along the Potomac River, away
from the Mall and the political center of the country, past the rolling graves and monuments of
Arlington Cemetery, then across the Arlington Bridge to Ohio Drive and the River Freeway. She
concentrated so hard on navigating the twists and turns of the connections, all the while praying
for divine guidance, that she was only dimly aware of the elegant columns and solemn grace of
the Lincoln Memorial as it loomed large before her. Finally, she steered north and exited the
highway to the city streets of Northwest Washington.
Judith drove to the public parking lot she had found on her online map, just a few blocks
from the bookstore. The sky was gray above the city and the chill air held hints of an early snow.
Leafless trees lining the street bent against frequent gusts of bitter wind. The avenues had the
familiar mix of a college town, a unvarying parade of small shops, cafés, restaurants, bookstores
and pubs always within easy walk of the campus. The architecture had a familiar feel too, like
Charleston and Richmond, of brick and white board trim, with stately columns bordering
impressive doors. It was nearing noon and the streets began to fill with students and shoppers.
Young mothers wrapped in expensive running clothes and parkas pushed high-tech baby
carriages along as they window shopped. Students dressed mostly in jeans and wrapped in multi-
colored anoraks and parkas flowed easily in and out of the store fronts. The restaurants began to
fill up as well and Judith realized suddenly that she was hungry. The reading and book signing
were scheduled for three o’clock. She had hours to fill. She walked to the bookstore directly and
bought a copy of Jordan’s new book, then found a coffee shop nearby where she could have a
simple meal and read undisturbed. She found a quiet table in a corner away from the windows
and ordered a sandwich with plain water and tea to drink. She began reading “Whistling in the
Wind.”
Nearly three hours later Judith looked up and saw the crowds in the restaurant were gone.
She looked at her watch and rose quickly. The reading would begin soon.
The bookstore was almost full and she was barely able to get in the door. The crowd has
eclectic; young and old, student and teacher, worker and housewife; they shared one thing in
common: their faces were alert and intelligent. There seemed to be more women than men, but
all were well-behaved considering the tight quarters and rising body heat. She could not see
Jordan very well. He was standing at the back of the main room near a table which seemed to be
on a small platform so that he was above the crowd. He was talking amiably and with seeming
familiarity with an older woman who, by her bearing and the way she occasionally directed
others about her, Judith judged to be the store owner. The woman looked at her watch, nodded at
Jordan, and beckoned the crowd to silence. She gave a brief introduction and invited Jordan to
begin, his book in hand.
He stood silently a moment, closed his book and then said to his audience, “Rather than
read from my favorites, I’d like to read from yours. Hold up your hands and we’ll pick
randomly.”
Jordan asked the owner to do the honors, so he could not be accused of playing favorites.
A sea of hands shot up eagerly. Jordan feigned surprise and the crowd laughed easily. The owner
chose the first request, from a professional looking woman dressed in a suit and Jordan thumbed
through the book to the requested essay on judging between evidence and belief: “I may argue
from fact and you from faith, but the point is we both use the same process, up to a point. We
reason, we use the rules of logic. How else can we ever form our arguments? We don’t just
believe. But somewhere along the way, we can convince ourselves of the absolute seeming truth
of our belief, because we want to believe. We accept, often unconsciously, any illogic of it in
spite of the evidence, because we prefer it. Faith breaks the deadlock of contradiction by
ignoring it. Thus, faith is not really blind, but more likely myopic.”
A murmur of delight passed over the crowd like a wave and a few people clapped. When
Jordan looked at the requestor and said, his eyebrows rising, “Good choice. It demonstrates how
faith can highjack a debate. I take by the smile on your face that we agree, and that you are a
lawyer.” The crowd laughed as the woman eagerly nodded her head. The owner selected another
and Jordan read the audience’s selections for a half hour. Then he asked for questions from the
floor. They ranged over many topics and Jordan answered easily, avoiding the tone of a
professor. Toward the end of his scheduled time, he asked for one last question. The bookstore
owner selected a young man with a dark face, a student with long hair fashioned in dreadlocks,
dressed in jeans, sneakers and a cotton hoody. He introduced himself as a philosophy major. His
voice held the singsong quality of a Jamaican.
“Since you started your crusade against fundamentalists, a lot of them have started
calling you the Antichrist. As an avowed atheist, how do you view this judgment?”
“Well, I can’t be both,” Jordan laughed. “The first precludes the second. The Antichrist
is out to destroy God. Therefore, he believes in him, which means he can’t be an atheist. On the
flip side, an atheist doesn’t believe there is a god. Ergo, there is nothing for him to destroy.
Think about it. It is from such shoddy logic that fundamentalist crusades — and religions — are
fashioned.”
The crowd erupted into applause and Judith was suddenly afraid, as if she was her
namesake in the encampment of Holofernes, surrounded by his Assyrian heathens.
The crowd began lining up for the book signing. Judith joined the queue, clutching
Jordan’s book to her breast. She studied him as he chatted briefly with each person, then signed
his name with an old fashioned ink pen of black and gold. She pondered what she must do, what
she must say, when her turn came. She was lost in thought, shuffling along as the line
progressed. Suddenly a voice interrupted her thoughts.
“What is your name?” Jordan asked politely.
Judith looked up and saw that she was facing him as he held out his hand for her book to
sign.
“Ju, Ju —“ she stumbled, confused. “Judy! Make it Judy!”
Jordan looked at the frail, tall girl before him. She was dressed plainly in simple slacks
and a sweater, a parka tied around her waist. But her eyes held his attention. They were fierce
and intense, as if beams of light would suddenly shoot out of them. A flood of silent emotions
seemed to wash over her face as she stood there, holding her copy of his book in outstretched
hands.
“Are you okay?” he asked gently.
“I’m, I’m — it’s alright,” Judith fumbled. “I’ve never done this before.”
Jordan cocked his head, his own eyes furrowed while he tried to comprehend a memory.
The voice was familiar. Then his eyes brightened as he made the connection. He spoke as he
wrote.
“To Judy, the other Maccabean …” Jordan smiled as he handed her the book.
Judith’s eyes widened, half in pride, half in horror, and she then knew what she must do.
The thought filled her with fear and she trembled within as she stumbled out to the street. Then
just as suddenly, a terrible resolve filled Judith and her fate became clear, like a divine vision,
simple but all-powerful, calming her with a certainty of purpose. Like the one whose name
Judith bore, she must destroy this pagan leader, this Antichrist.
Judith returned home and pondered what must done. She sought counsel and sent an IM
to the group: “Jeremiah was right. Jordan is the Antichrist.”
“Are you sure?” responded Habakkuk.
“Yes. He is both wise and wicked. He is everything the prophecies foretold.”
“What did he do?” asked Micah.
“He read my mind. He knew who I was, though he had never seen me before.”
“Spooky!” wrote Malachi.
“He is the Satan who will lead the armies of the damned against God.”
“What must we do,” asked Isaiah.
“We must destroy him!”
“Heavy,” wrote Jeremiah.
“Is there any other proof?” asked Ruth.
“What more do you need? If you had been there, you’d have seen it. Trust me, he’s
bewitching.”
“But my sister,” Ruth replied, “for so drastic a measure, we must be sure. There must be
something we can all see and agree on.”
“Proof? You want proof?”
“Yes, mistress,” responded Ruth. “Something of which there can be no doubt.”
“You shall have it!” typed Judith. “Return to the Game. I shall contact you when I am
ready.” Then she disconnected.
Judith had remembered Gematria, a reference she’d found in her research on the
Antichrist to the ancient Greek method of divining meanings from the numerical values of the
letters in holy or prophetic writings. When she first read of it, Judith suddenly recalled a passage
from Revelation: “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the
number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”
As applied to Revelation, the Number of the Beast—John of Patmos’ name for
Matthew’s Antichrist — was hypothesized as really referring to the Roman Emperor Nero who,
to the Christians of the First Century A.D., was the devil made real. Changing Nero’s Latin
name to Greek letters and then converting that to Hebrew, John had added up their numerical
value, since in Hebrew numbers were represented by letters, as was done with Roman numerals.
The letter-numbers summed up to six hundred and sixty six, 666. Thus, Nero was the Antichrist
and his death would be the sign that the return of true Christ was near, at least to John of
Patmos. But Nero committed suicide and the Second Coming didn’t come, so John’s Gematria
was either a false method, or a correct method incorrectly employed.
Surely, Judith thought, if I can show that by his very name Jordan is the Antichrist, the
others will believe me. She took out a pad of paper and a pencil and wrote out the alphabet.
Beneath each letter beginning with “A” she wrote out the numbers from one to twenty-six. Then
she wrote out Jordan’s name, under which went the corresponding numbers from her list. Joshua
added up to 57, Jordan to 73. They totaled only 130, not nearly enough. There must be
something else, she thought, another element to his name. What was he? A commentator! Judith
quickly added up the numerical equivalents to 116, added that to 130 and got 246. Not nearly
enough. She worked at the problem over several days, ignoring everything else, especially her
companions. She must find the proof. But no word that she thought of which might supply the
missing amount made sense. They were too long or held too many unusual letter combinations.
It must be simple, Judith reminded herself at last. Then she thought of something. She
wrote the word “writer” and added up its letters to 93, which added to 57 and 73 equaled 223.
Judith stared at the number and realized it was almost a third of the required amount, just one
digit too much! She multiplied it by three and got 669. So close! What am I missing? she
wondered. She looked at his name and title: “Joshua Jordan Writer.” She stared at them. What
did they have in common? Three words … of six letters each! Three sixes! 666! And three was
also the corrective amount. She had multiplied the total of his name to get 669. Now she
deducted three from that total and behold, again 666, the number of the Beast!
Judith sat frozen and stared at the pad before her. Two different methods had produced
the same result. God had given her the proof she needed. Jordan was indeed the Antichrist.
Judith went to her computer and put herself online. One by one the other six joined in.
She typed out her gematrical scheme and her conclusion. A voice came from her machine that
seemed to fill the room and those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi, Micah and Habakkuk: “What is
bidding, my mistress?”
Once again Judith felt inspired, as is the Holy Spirit had touched her soul, her heart, her
mind. It all became clear now. Another great flash of emotion washed over her body and left her
trembling, like Santa Theresa in the thralls of her ecstasy. Judith’s discoveries, her fascination
with Revelation, her whole life and its purpose — this was all God’s doing, this was all God’s
will. He had ordained for her a great role in the Lord’s grand scheme: to rid the world of its
Jordans and do whatever they could to bring about the End of Days. She and her chosen
companions, they were to be His shield and sword. The divine will would be done, one way or
another, and she its instrument. Her reward would be the Rapture as she assumed her station next
to God through the Tribulations and Armageddon and the Last Judgment.
“Jordan has waged a crusade against our beliefs,” she spoke to the rest. “We shall wage
our own against him. Only… only we shall be the last crusade. For when we are done, there will
be no need for any other.”
“We’re not really going to kill anybody, are we?” Malachi’s voice whined over Judith’s
computer.
“If God wills it,” Judith said. “We are not here to make prophecies, but to carry them out.
Remember Matthew. ‘This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.’ “
“But must the innocent suffer for the iniquities of others?” asked Ruth.
Judith, thinking of the archbishop in the Albigensian Crusade, responded, “God will
know his own.”
“I think we should maybe just send him a warning,” suggested Isaiah.
“Yah!” added Habakkuk, “A warning!”
“How?” demanded Judith.
“Have you been following the trial in Texas?” asked Isaiah. “The one about spending
government money on Bibles in that private school?”
Judith did not know of it and Isaiah explained the controversy of the Judge’s decision.
He portrayed it as the continuing onslaught of science against creationism and their biblical
beliefs. Were not such perversions of scripture’s logic a hallmark of the impending End of
Days?
“What if we sent a warning to that judge and everyone else that their days are
numbered?” Isaiah asked?
“I know!” broke in Micah. “Let’s send him a scorpion. We can use the Devil’s own to
warn him.”
“We must be cautious,” warned Ruth.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll gas the damn thing.” Micah said. “Hee! Hee! They come pretty big
where I live. Should give him quite a scare!”
“I was thinking of how to send it,” Ruth admonished. “What we’re talking about is
illegal.”
“It is God’s will,” warned Judith. ”He will guide and protect us.”
“Still, it is best to be careful,” replied Ruth.
“We can work it ‘round-robin.” said Isaiah. “I can organize it in such a way, if you all
send me what I need, that they’ll never be able to trace it any of us.”
“How?” asked Ruth.
“Each of will contribute a piece or an action. Malachi? Can you get some clean credit
card numbers, at least seven? From seven different locations?”
“Sure.”
“They have to be fresh.”
“No problem. I can get each one as you need it.”
“Ruth, buy four postal mailing boxes, one of each size. Assemble them but don’t tape
them except for the largest. Put the smallest in the next size and then that in the next and so on.
Send those to Micah. Be sure to wear gloves so that you leave no prints. Same goes with all of
you.”
“But I don’t know where Micah lives. None of knows where any of us are!” pleaded
Ruth.
“That’s the beauty of this,” chuckled Isaiah. “Nothing will tied to any of us directly. I
want each of you to go to some neighboring town, at least an hour’s drive away. Find a local
post office or mail drop and purchase a mailbox. Pay for just a few months. Use cash. No checks
or credit cards or even money orders. Nothing that can be traced. Malachi, find out the judge’s
synagogue. He’s got security about him these days, so we can’t send our present to his home or
courthouse. But they may not be as cautious about where the Jew worships.”
“It’s as good as done.”
“We must use plain, ordinary things, paper and labels and such. Nothing special, nothing
custom. Whenever you buy something, use a different store, and never that store again. And
don’t buy anything online. We will send each piece to each other as I direct, using double
packaging. If we do this right, the judge will get a scorpion in a box with a label written by
different hands, sent using stolen credit card numbers from who knows where. They will have
clues. I can’t avoid that. But they will be clueless.”
“How do you know these things?” Judith asked.
Isaiah’s voice was sheepish in its reply. “Besides the Bible, I‘ve read a lot of spy novels.
And I like crime shows on TV.”
Laughter filled Judith’s room and she waited for it to subside.
“What shall be my part in this?” she asked finally.
“You have the honor,” said Isaiah, “of writing God’s judgment that goes with it.”
***
The news of the judge’s death infuriated Jordan. He sat in his office frozen by a seething
emotion of anger and a desire for revenge. This was no longer an intellectual disagreement, a
polite difference of opinion. He wanted revenge on someone. He wanted to strike out. Hard. But
he had no one at hand to strike, just a phantom, a hidden menace that pathetically, laughably
called itself the Last Crusade.

“Maybe you can’t slap ‘em upside the head,” Jeni Sakata said. “But you always said the
best weapon against stupidity was ridicule. Hit back with that.” Sakata had been Jordan’s
assistant and producer for five years. She had never seen him this angry.
“The bastards deserve more.”
“Maybe, but who’re you going to shoot? They may not be nearby, but you damn well
know they’ll be watching tonight, to see your reaction.”
“Yah, you’re right, Jeni.” Jordan waved at her weakly. “Leave me alone for a while,
okay? I need to figure out this evening’s commentary.”
Sakata left Jordan’s office and sought out Toni Rousseau.
“What can I do to help him,” she asked. “I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Nothing.” Rousseau said. “You can’t do anything. No one can. Not even me. When
Joshua get his anger up, it’s like the walls of Jericho all over again.”
The red light of the camera winked on. Jordan took a quiet breath, raised his head
towards the lens, then began.
“A man died in Texas yesterday. A wise man, a just man. He was killed by unknown
assailants, simply because he had tried to be just. That was his job. Alan Solomon Feynmann
was a judge of the Federal court in Austin. He delivered a decision recently that pleased
reasonable people everywhere, and angered many more who were not so reasonable. Whatever
his personal religious beliefs were, he put them aside, in pursuit of that just decision. His killers
could not. Judge Feynmann said that a private school could not use public money to advance its
own version of God’s word which it preferred to the gospel of evolutionary science. This was
not about their right to believe want they wanted, despite all the evidence against those beliefs. It
was about using Federal money to promote them. There were many who disagreed with this
decision, and they will likely challenge it in a higher court. But a few true believers rendered
their own verdict regarding the judge. As God’s hit men, they killed him. Sent him a scorpion as
their own symbol of justice. Thus a gentle man who used his mind was wantonly murdered by
those who were out of theirs. They call themselves the Last Crusade. I don’t know whether to
laugh at such megalomania, or to cry. They say they speak for God, who in the days old spoke
for himself quite well. They say they wish to sanctify the world for Christ’s second coming, yet
they deny and defy his greatest commandment, the one about loving thy neighbor, not to
mention that other, older one about murder. They say they are being true to the words of the
Bible. Well, I was taught to believe that promulgating any proposition that constantly leads to
contradiction would, in a rational field of knowledge like, say, biology, be considered absurd
and invalid. In religion, especially as espoused by these Last Crusaders, it’s considered
praiseworthy. Jonathan Swift once wrote that a man ‘cannot be reasoned out of that which he
was not reasoned into.’ The Last Crusade proves him right yet again. But as regards their view
of evolution and the lengths they would go to abolish it, perhaps Roy L. Fine said it best: ‘It’s
not what we descended from that shames us, but what we’ve descended to.’ “
A continent away, Judith became angry again.

III.
KING OF BRAVERY
Special Agent Wong was not a happy man, even though he couldn’t help himself and
laughed at Jordan.
The studio was dark despite the festoons of spotlights and cables strung from the high
ceiling like jungle vines, all lost in the dimness of the vast room. The set was empty of regular
production staff; it was still a few hours before the daily ritual of taping Jordan’s commentary.
One small spotlight, its barn doors only halfway open to narrow the beam and scrimmed with a
gel filter, gave the soft, diffused light of a summer moon, illuminating the set and desk where
Jordan had been writing his piece. Wong had interrupted him for questioning. Toni Rousseau
stood nearby, out of the cone of light. In the deeper shadows hiding the camera equipment,
Jordan’s assistant sat on a stool and waited quietly.
“Please, Mr. Jordan—“
“It’s just JJ.”

“Yes, right, of course…” he sighed in surrender, chuckling in spite of himself. Agent
Wong worked to recapture his professionalism and do what must done. But in the ten minutes he
had been trying to interview Jordan he had been told a very funny joke, a few snippets of San
Francisco history, and a hilarious, impromptu homily on the terrorist mind. As a fan, Wong had
to admire Jordan; as an agent of the FBI, he had to remember what had brought him here. He
mentally shook himself as he stood opposite the desk from which Jordan delivered his nightly
network commentary.
“But I really need you to think seriously about any time or place or person that didn’t
quite seem right in the last week or so.”
“In San Francisco? Are you kidding? To the rest of the country nothing or no one is
‘right’ here at any time. They all think it’s what Herb Caen used to call ‘Berserkeley’ — on both
sides of the Bay.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know that’s not what you mean,” Jordan answered with frustration. “But for the life of
me, I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary. Nothing sticks out. Let me give you an
example. Did you know that at one time, maybe a dozen years ago, there was a man, young,
very well dressed in a three-piece suit and carrying an expensive lawyer’s brief case, who used
to stand on the corner across from the B of A Building in the morning and shouted passages
from the Book of Daniel? Shouted, mind you, not recited. Did that for months. He didn’t harm
or harangue anyone and the cops left him alone. The mayor then was liberal and free speech was
back in fashion. Every now and then the guy would change corners. And after a while, he
became part of the background to the point that I didn’t notice he was missing for almost a week
after he’d gone. In this town, the abnormal is often normal. Emperor Norton. The Summer of
Love. The Zodiac Killer. We’re used to it. I just wonder, now and then, what became of that
young man.”
“Actually,” Wong sighed, “He’s still up at the state home in Napa. The FBI does keep
track of these people, just in case. Nobody wants another McVey.”
“Oh … my apologies. I’m impressed,” Jordan admitted with a new found appreciation
for the agent’s little portion of officialdom; like most writers, he cherished the odd, juicy factoid
when one tumbled his way from unexpected sources.
Agent Wong was in his early thirties, Jordan guessed, stocky like a linebacker, with his
black hair in the cropped, brushed forward cut of a geek; his lip sported a thin, wispy mustache,
its sparseness a genetic legacy. He wore the standard-issue grey suit and vest of the FBI with
black shoes that could use some polish; but from his vest pocket, Jordan noticed, hung a Phi
Beta Kappa key, its three inscribed stars reflecting Jordan’s deepest held values: friendship,
morality, learning. He wondered if Wong held them as well.
Wong studied Jordan in return with dark, practiced eyes, noting the obvious and trying to
look beyond into his subject’s psyche. Jordan was celebrated in the media as an award-winning
social historian, a populist philosopher and cultural gadfly, “a new Abelard for the New Age”
one fellow critic called him, who had, like the original, reversed the medieval principle of faith
with the dictum that “one must understand in order to believe, not the other way ‘round.” When
he could, Wong listened to Jordan’s nightly commentary on the network news, his weekday
morning show on public radio, his afternoon talk show on television’s station sister radio
operation, always read his weekly column dedicated to San Francisco and syndicated in a host of
newspapers around the country, and looked forward to his monthly set-piece in a major national
magazine, or his occasional articles in many others. When he could not listen directly or find
time to read the originals, he downloaded the podcasts and PDFs for later attention; his laptop
and iPhone bulged with those yet to be addressed. Jordan had published three books in the last
decade; Wong’s favorite was a local’s historical guide to San Francisco, S.F. on the Rocks,
which did for the city in its new century what Herb Caen had done for it in the last.
Wong was as familiar with the wide range of his thinking and the whimsy of his words as
any fan might be. That was why he had lobbied for this assignment, and that he was a cyber
crimes specialist in an era when terrorism more and more used the virtual, ethereal, online world
of technology to advance its causes.
To his mind Jordan, while provocative was never argumentative, always well-grounded
in his arguments and observations, a subtle and superb debater. Like Winston Churchill and
Caen — two writers for whom Jordan professed great admiration — he delighted in a
contrarian’s view and a deep pleasure in skewering the pompous with a witty rapier in one hand
and a bludgeoning broadsword of fact in the other. Yet, he neither ranted nor raved, just subtly
jabbed and probed, systematically and thoroughly dissecting and demolishing his opponents’
logic by ultimately establishing the unassailable validity of his points and the absurdity of theirs.
His positions seemed neither fully radical nor far reactionary, depending on which edge of social
politics one stood; yet he was never considered a moderate. The man simply made sense no
matter which side of an argument he chose; and often, to the consternation of his opponents, he
switched sides in mid-argument, displaying a devastating rhetorical skill that Wong admired, and
secretly envied. The common complaint of most other cultural critics was that Jordan always
talked over the heads of his audience; no one is really interested in “ideas” they said, or in his
endless abstractions. Jordan replied that “this was the kind of dull thinking one gets from a head
full of only the concrete.”
In response to criticism of his lack of refined, stylistic and academic language, Jordan
said that he used words “simply, easily, in the manner for which they were meant. He stood with
Machiavelli in avoiding the “unnecessary artifice with which so many writers gild their work.”
Most great ideas and grand principles are not difficult to understand, if expressed in words of
one or two or at most three syllables. I don’t try to ‘intentionally obfuscate meaning with an
armada of verbosity and verbiage.’ That’s why I chose journalism over philosophy.” One critic
had labeled Jordan “a hack of all trades” who tries “to do too much and does too little well.”
Jordan reveled in the description and had the line added to his business card. “It’s true,” he had
said at the time. “I am a hack, a dilettante, in the oldest, truest sense. I’m just surprised the old
bastard recognized that.”
Jordan was dressed in his customary old suede sport coat which looked to be at least as
old as the last time suede had been in style, sometime in the 70s. The network producers and
directors hated his wardrobe as undignified. But audience testing had shown that his casual
fashion gave him a “professorial” appearance that equated to trustworthiness in the viewers’
minds; because of this he was often taken as being much older that he was. Jordan did nothing to
dissuade this view.
He wore a pale blue, buttoned-down shirt, with a maroon knit tie, atop blue jeans and
dark brogans to complete a look that would be acceptable on any campus on either coast, at least
among the older faculty. He was neither slim nor heavy, neither muscled by exercise nor soft by
sloth. His dusty-blond hair was shoulder length like a hippy’s, but tied neatly in a pony tail like a
colonial patriot. His face had the carved planes of a Germanic ancestry, but his eyebrows had a
heavy, swarthy look, Levantine, that seemed out of character. They added to the mystery. In
sum, Jordan was a constantly shifting mirage if one tried to pin him down exactly, yet
comfortable to his public, like an old Cheshire cat people were happy to have around, the
warmth of whose smile seemed to remain behind after he’d gone. Off-air and out of the public
eye, he pretended to be a grumpy old man; his wardrobe worked for that, too. But his humor
betrayed him. Wong had to wonder how such a jovial pundit could be a real threat to anyone.
Yet Jordan was, and it was Wong’s job to find out the who and the why.
Rousseau gave him the opportunity to avoid the direct approach at Jordan again as she
stepped forward into the light.
“What have you learned from the email and note?” she asked, falling back into her
training as a journalist.
“Not much,” Wong shrugged. “Modern technology unfortunately makes anonymity easy.
The paper of the notes is common inkjet paper written with common inkjet inks. We know the
manufacturer of both, but then these are just single samples among billions in daily use. They
came from an office supply store in Columbus, Ohio. The printer used was sold to the New York
City library system and placed in a Brooklyn branch a year ago. The notes were express mailed
from a public mailbox in Manhattan, paid for by a stolen credit card number from a victim of
identity theft in Texas. The white powder was ordinary talcum. These people meant to scare, not
to kill … this time. Their only real mistake was using the Postal Service. That made it a federal
crime.”
“How did they get our internal email addresses and personal cell phone numbers?”
Rousseau asked.
“That was relatively easy. They hacked your station’s systems. Despite your firewalls
and all the levels of security, it’s really not that secure against a determined attacker. Most
systems aren’t. Because of the necessary connectivity needed for all your departments and the
need for correspondents to access from outside, your systems are hard to really protect. They
hacked in using a public computer in a library, this time in Utah.”
“Somehow,” Jordan offered whimsically, “this doesn’t comfort me.”
Rousseau cut him short; she could sense a know-it-all lesson coming. “That can be fixed.
Were you able to trace where they sent the email from?”
“Yes,” responded Wong. “But as I said, the technology is against us. They used another
public computer in a library in Orange County to set up a temporary, anonymous, free email
account at a web portal. Anyone can do it at anytime. It’s like using a disposable cell phone paid
for by cash. There’s no real record and they never use it again. Finger prints were wiped clean.
The only prints we found were from those who used it after and they all came up clean. So, the
trail dead ends. No one remembers anyone out of the ordinary. We just can’t cover every free
computer or monitor every free email provider in the country, not to mention every unsecured
Wi-Fi hot spot.”
Rousseau paced briefly, then turned abruptly back to Agent Wong. “What have your
people discerned about the writer from the texts?”
“Besides the bad poetry,” Jordan offered.
“Well, in fact,” Wong countered, “that was helpful, psychologically. Our profiler’s guess
is that he is a teacher, most likely a Bible school instructor, with frustrated ambitions, probably
to be a writer of some sort, perhaps a preacher.”
“He?” asked Rousseau. “Why not a she?”
“Most people far enough off the deep end to threaten murder are male. The historical
odds favor it.”
“So Squeaky Fromm or Charlie Manson’s harem were anomalies?”
“Yes. Unlikely, considering the probabilities, but occasionally it happens,” Wong
volunteered. “However, bear in mind the type of severe gender hierarchy which extreme
religious groups rigidly maintain. Women, even in Western religious cultures, are second class
members. It’s not likely that men of such beliefs, like a Charles Manson, would take orders from
a woman.”
“And the next time?” wondered Jordan.
“Same people, most likely. But they’ll use a different library in a different town, or
maybe piggybacking on somebody’s home network from a laptop, with a different email
provider, a new email account. They’ll bounce the message around the Net from ISP to ISP to
confuse us. The note said ‘we’ but I get the impression it’s not a large number. Just a hunch,
really. Probably only a few true believers, but spread out around the country — New York,
Texas, Ohio, Utah, California so far that we know. I don’t think they have a lot of mules they
can trust yet. But these people are adept technologically, and smart enough not to reuse previous
steps. Our guess is that they are younger, in their twenties or thirties, maybe with an older
mentor or guru to guide and inspire them. Still, somewhere along the line, they’ll slip up and
we’ll find them.”
“Before or after they kill Joshua?” offered Rousseau.
Wong shrugged.
“Which means,” Jordan countered, “you’ve exhausted all the information and know
basically nothing. No offense, Agent Wong. I’m just being realistic. Now I must end our chat. I
have a commentary to finish.”
Rousseau made to leave, but stopped when Wong did not move.
“You intend to ignore the warning?” he asked. “You’ll go on tonight?”
“It’s not generally known, but I tape my segment well in advance of air time, given the
three-hour difference with the East Coast. I never deliver it live. Per my contract, I have absolute
editorial freedom. So it’s inserted from here into the network feed at the end of their main news,
then the whole taped broadcast is satellited to the other time zones to air at 6:00 p.m. locally. If
they want to bomb me during my commentary, they’ll have to find me at the bar across the alley
about an hour from now. Besides, you and Toni will have this place buttoned up as tight as Fort
Knox.”
Wong nodded, then asked: “Just one more thing then. Two actually. This is awkward,
Mr. Jor—JJ…”
“What is it?”
“I’d like access to your personal email and instant messaging archives. I want to review
them for possible leads. Maybe someone from the Last Crusade contacted you once without
revealing his identity.”
“Sure. My assistant Jeni will arrange it. What’s the other thing?”
“Could … could I have your autograph?”
Jordan laughed gaily. Even Rousseau had to stifle a chuckle.
“Sure! On one condition.”
“What condition?” Wong asked.
Jordan picked up an antique fountain pen from the desk and took a small, personalized
notepad from his jacket vest pocket. “Lose the mustache,” he said mimicking Bogart as Sam
Spade. “Miles Archer you’re not. Now, what’s your first name again?”
From the shadows beyond the cameras Wong heard a giggle.
“It’s Lee,” he answered with a blush, his right hand tracing the line of his upper lip.
“Lee Wong? That‘s unusual.”
“It’s short for Leland Stanford Wong the fourth, after my great, great grandfather.”
“A railroad man, eh? Well, you know what Herb Caen once said about your clan?”
“Uh, no …”
“That there were ‘more Wongs than Whites in the S.F. phone book.’ It was a Sunday
column June or July of ’64, when the Republicans were gathering for their convention here at
the Cow Palace.”

Rousseau let her eyes roll up to beyond the tangle of darkened lights and cables above
them.
“He also noted,” Jordan shrugged, “that bars outnumber churches in this town three to
one.”
Wong stood silent, thinking hard for something to say, knowing that whatever he might
say, he shouldn’t attempt wit. “Do you always use an ink pen?” he said finally. “It’s so, so…”
“Archaic is the word you want,” Jordan chortled as he scribbled briefly and tore off the
page. “As a gumshoe, you should appreciate how much history will be lost because our era
writes electronically. I wouldn’t give a fig or a farthing for how much will survive until the next
century. I’m immodest enough to believe that what I write now will be worth reading in the
future as well. So, I do most of it by pen first. It’s tactile and gives me a feel for the words.
Besides, I’m a shitty typist. Here…”
Jordan and Rousseau both noted that Special Agent Wong accepted the note with a
certain amount of reverence, holding it with two fingers from each hand. He folded it gingerly
but with exaggeration, first in half, then quarters, then eighths. He held up the folded bundle
with two fingers of one hand. He wrapped his left hand over his right as if washing them and
then presented both palms up. The note had disappeared. Wong thanked Jordan as he offered his
hand.
Jordan smiled at Wong’s prestidigitation and shook his hand warmly.
“That’s it. Keep it safe. It’ll be worth something when I’m dead.”
***
“Your grandmother says you’re crazy. You dishonor your ancestor.”

Lee Wong stared at his father across the dinner table. He hadn’t been sure what to expect
from his announcement, but that wasn’t it.
“Oh, come on, Dad,” Wong answered in exasperation. “My ancestor was a coolie on the
railroad, not the Emperor.”
“You now dishonor me.”
“How? You’re a highly respected civil engineer. You’ve built bridges all over the world.
But your great grandfather was a blacksmith before he was forced to be a coolie.”
Lee’s mother and grandmother silently began removing the dinner dishes; only his
younger, teenaged sister remained seated and watched him with amusement. The meal had been
a cross-cultural combination of past and present, Chinese and American, typical of what Lee had
grown up with — dim sum and pork chops, bird’s nest soup and a spinach salad, washed down
with either a Chinese beer or a Sonoma Valley sauvignon blanc; a mixed feast like the décor of
his apartment. A huge, stained glass bowl of a light fixture, inverted and featuring matched blue
porcelain dragons that curled about it, hung from the ceiling above a Danish Modern table from
the Fifties. Both were relics bequeathed from his extended family for his apartment while in
college and now graced his loft condo. As a child he had stared at those dragons with endless
fascination during Sunday feasts at his grandmother’s parlor. The table had been a legacy of his
mother’s uncle who loved to proclaim it the symbol of his assimilation of American culture. To
Lee Wong, they were the welcomed bits and pieces of hand-me-downs that allowed him to
cheaply furnish his apartment off campus with some sense of familiarity.
Wong had graduated high in his class at Cal. Despite offers from top-ranked private and
public institutions inside and outside of California, he chose to stay and get his doctorate in
computer science at Berkeley. But rather than be an academic, Wong had chosen the path of
commerce while he finished his degree and joined a dotcom startup in Emeryville, a hot bed of
the New Economy which mashed together electronics, computer science and the burgeoning
Internet. His father had chastised his willingness to work for stock options and little salary; he
likened it to a crap game. But the younger Wong countered that the longer the odds, the better
the payout. This was part of the attraction of the New Economy, being on the frenetic edge of
technology, most of which was based on mathematics and programming. Seen in terms of
software, the world, humanity and all of daily living could be summed up as an endless series of
interlinked and interlocked databases, holding information from and about the details of life, the
understanding of which depended on their proper manipulation, like DNA in the human cell that
formed and controlled what all the cells in aggregate would become. This sense of abstraction
was not a conventional view of life his parents could comprehend, much less approve. In his
own way, Lee Wong felt like his ancestor, a lone wanderer struggling through the swamps of
tradition.
Wong had been a math adept in high school, an ardent programmer and constant gamer;
he had also been both a cub scout and boy scout, to the pride of his parents and the endless
derision of his teenage friends. Fortunately for the family honor, Wong eventually studied
seriously in college. Advanced degrees were everything to his elders, the recognition that he
would continue the family tradition of excellence, and honor the legacy of Lee’s great, great
grandfather. He would be true to the family name, to that of his revered ancestor, Wong Jung,
the “king of bravery” in Cantonese. His ancestor had survived drought, famine and genocidal
clan war, all of which, each in its turn, had attacked his village of Taishan, a favored target for
tragedy along the often embattled Pearl River Delta. The province of Guangdong, which later
British overlords of China would call Canton, lay along the western shores of the South China
Sea. Not one of these misfortunes alone which plagued Guangdong and Taishan would have
been enough to send Wong Jung so far from home, but all three had exhausted his weary soul.
He had heard tales as a child of the wondrous Gam Sun, the Golden Mountain across the great
ocean, San Francisco and California, from earlier émigrés who had returned to Taishan, with
modest wealth, to purchase a proper bride. Stories such as those of the Gold Mountain, like the
Spanish legends of El Dorado and of Cibola and the Seven Cities of Gold, fueled the
imaginations of the poor as well as the rich; the dream of sudden wealth just waiting for the
finding resonated through most human societies, no less so among the peasants of Guangdong
who contributed inordinate numbers of Chinese immigrants to the American West.
Stan Wong had often forgiven his son his many childhood transgressions; the juvenile
fascination with shoplifting, joyriding with six or seven boys crammed into a car, the time lost
immersed in video games, grades in high school that were average in subjects other than math
and computers. Lee was a modern boy beset by many modern distractions. But going to Cal was
not a transgression he could easily forgive. Lee had not followed the path of the constructive arts
but instead lost himself in the inner world of computing and programming.
Rather than learn to build a bridge or a factory or a skyscraper which stood as a
monuments to the designer’s ingenuity and family honor, he wrote computer code that forever
lay hidden from sight. At least, his father sighed, his son hadn’t preferred hacking. Lee’s
fascination and output ran to games and utilities and, ultimately, to databases, the new
foundation of the new economy. Any computer program was at heart a database holding
commands and storing data, combining and recombining these elements to create effects on
screen — and by extension everywhere in the real world — which most people thought magical.
That was the essence of Clarke’s Third Law, a prescient insight by the science fiction author a
half-century before in the earliest years of computing that “any sufficiently advance technology
was indistinguishable from magic.” The day Lee Wong read those words, his life’s course was
set.
Unfortunately for his family, that path wandered around Berkeley and the East Bay, not
Palo Alto and the Peninsula, where his ancestor Wong Jung had worked for Leland Stanford,
first as coolie labor, then ultimately as a mechanic. His sons, including Matthew’s great
grandfather, had been among the first Chinese to attend the college founded by Stanford in
memory of his own lost son. On the day he became a citizen, Wong Jung adopted the name of
his patron as his own, as a form of honor common to his new country and not his old.
In modern times, Northern California’s two great universities, one public, the other
private, reflected the constant battle between the forces that shaped, and occasionally shook, the
Bay Area — fierce young idealism versus stodgy old money. Cal in Berkeley in the 1960s
became a cauldron of radical thought, of free speech, of reaction against a war that was
increasingly unpopular. The middle-class student son of Italian immigrants stood atop a car and
energized a movement which the old guard of authority thought too revolution-ary. Meanwhile,
Stanford in Palo Alto hewed more closely to the views of one of its first graduates, Herbert
Hoover, the thirty-first President of the United States who sat quietly by his free market
ideals on non-interference while the country around him crumbled into the Great Depression.
Yet, all that was lost on Lee Wong.
Berkeley was alive to him, relaxed, and some thirty miles away from Stanford. Lee saw
that attending school at The Farm would have been just extended high school. He would be
expected to live at home as his parents and grandparents, his aunts and uncles and cousins all
had. That would not do. There were times when he felt that eyes of everyone in the house, and
of all his ancestors, were looking over his shoulder. More than that was the feeling of constraint
those eyes held, as if his future was already determined, that what was expected of him was on a
board somewhere, neatly organized by year and category and accomplishment, that he was
expected to live his life by the strictures of that list. A mind that could see the intricacies of
human action in endless lines of computer code or mathematical formulas did not order itself to
the strict conformity of a list. Such a mind saw the capacity for variation in the objects it
contemplated, for looping, nesting and jumping of thought, of feedback and alteration to the
results, so that the goal of its product was not just routine action in the outcome, but adventure,
and discovery. To Lee this was a very different, interactive outcome than what engineering and
architecture produced. A building or a bridge were static; programming was dynamic. He needed
to have the free and unrestrictive playing field that Berkeley provided.
His undergraduate years exposed Lee Wong to many startups in the East Bay. He found
part-time jobs coding that paid very well, much better than bussing tables in a restaurant or filing
books in the Beaux Arts elegance of Doe Library. When Wong finished his doctorate, he did not
seek a post in academia, but accepted an offer from a dot.com that specialized in online games,
designing interactive competitions that could involve thousands of players at once. His salary to
start was greater than what his father had made in the first ten years of his career.
Life was good for Leland Stanford Wong IV, its path set in a direction of his own choice.
Then one day, on the other side of the country, the insane acts of nineteen religious fanatics
changed the course of that life even as it ended those of thousands of others.
The sky was clear and crisp above the bay, as it was across the whole nation; later
satellite images would show a continent without a cloud, just the scant contrails from the few
jets allowed to fly in the emergency. Wong had finished his morning bike ride through the hills
of the East Bay and ended up at his favorite old coffee shop near his loft apartment in an old
converted warehouse. It was the kind of place where the plates and cups were made of thick,
heavy porcelain, not compressed paper, and the waitresses, who seemed to have been there
forever, always called him “Honey.” It had survived the waves of gentrification that had
transformed the old industrial section of Berkeley that lay between the freeway and the Bay. The
restaurant’s patrons sat comfortably in tufted vinyl booths or on tufted stools at the counter and
ate hardy breakfasts of eggs with bacon or huge pancakes with sausages. They read newspapers
not computer screens.
Wong took his usual seat at the counter end by the cash register and the waitress, a
placid, middle-aged woman dressed in a crisp uniform of pale blue with a short white apron, her
hair held back behind her head in a net, poured a cup of high-test coffee. She didn’t bother
placing a menu before him, for Wong always ordered by a set pattern of meals determined by
the day of the week. Today it was Tuesday and Joe’s Special, a traditional Bay Area dish that
combined scrambled eggs, ground beef, grilled onions, sautéed spinach and Parmesan cheese
into a concoction that tasted much better than it sounded. He was still in spandex riding pants
and shirt, but wore against the early morning cold a heavy, dark-blue sweatshirt emblazoned
with the “Cal” logo in yellow script. The days of September in the Bay Area were still warm and
summery, but the mornings held the coolness of autumn, especially at this hour; it was just past
six a.m.
A radio, kept by the cook near his grill to fill the monotony of preparing the same items
repeatedly, day in, day out, was tuned to the top Bay Area news station. Suddenly it took on a
more strident tone. The announcer’s voice lost its normal patter of artificially inflected interest
and spoke with an urgency that comes from reading words that did not make sense. Wong called
to the cook to turn up the volume.
“… NOT UNDERSTOOD HOW AN AIRPLANE COULD BE SO OFF-COURSE WITH SUCH CLEAR VISIBILITY. IT
HAS BEEN CONFIRMED THAT THE COMMERCIAL JET LINER STRUCK THE NORTH TOWER OF THE WORLD TRADE
CENTER FROM THE NORTH, WELL AWAY FROM THE NORMAL AIR LANES RESERVED FOR ORBITING AIRCRAFT. STRICT
FAA RULES PROHIBIT ANY AIRCRAFT, COMMERCIAL OR PRIVATE, FROM OVER-FLYING MANHATTAN WITHOUT PRIOR
AUTHORIZATION AND FORMAL CLEARANCE. FLAMES ARE POURING FROM THE UPPER FLOORS OF THE NORTH
TOWER. THE NUMBER OF CASUALTIES IS NOT KNOWN AT THIS TIME …”
Wong waved off the waitress, threw some money on the counter and ran out to his bike.
In reaction to a primal sense of fear and anger stemming from the unknown, he sought the safety
of home. He reached his loft and ran up the stairs with his bike hooked over his shoulder. He
quickly turned on his TV and switched to the top cable news station. Like millions of others
around the country and across the world that day, he would stay glued to that position for much
of the time, as the events played out in New York, and then in Washington. The images held the
unreal. Great buildings were not meant to crumble to dust like mud huts, the swarms of people
running wild-eyed from an angry tsunami of plaster dust and papers and smoke, the bodies
falling.
By the end of the day a resolve settled into his mind that replaced the flush of angry
emotion that had grown through the hours of watching. He wanted to do something to fight
back, to avenge those who had died, who were still dying. He knew finally what he could do,
what he must do.
His family was due the next day for dinner. Through most of his adult life Wong’s father
had hardly set foot in Berkeley except for the alternate years when Cal hosted the Big Game in
football. But when his only son had chosen to go school there, he relented. Maybe God would
knock some sense into him some day. He had come to expect the unexpected from his son. But
Stan Wong was not ready for his announcement.
“Your grandmother is correct. You are crazy to join the FBI.”
“They’re going to need people like me. Four planes, eighteen, nineteen hijackers. This
took incredible planning. They had to do much of it online. They’re going to need people skilled
in databases, people like me.”
“Son, the FBI has been no friend of the Chinese. Hell, they tried to recruit me to spy on
Cal students on Big Game days back in the ‘60s! I’m sure there’s a note in my file somewhere.
You think they’ll miss that little fact when they vet you?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Just how many Asians do you think work there?”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re not going to find all the skills they’ll need without us.”
His father laughed. “So you think!”
Lee Wong spoke quietly. “Dad, the world’s changed because of yesterday. We can’t
begin to imagine how much. But terrorism has changed too. To do what it did, it’s got to be
online. It’s got to be electronic. The buildings they destroyed were your world. The job to find
who destroyed them is in mine. ”

IV.
MUSE
“Tell me, Red,” Jordan pondered, “Why didn’t we last as lovers.”
Toni Rousseau shrugged, sipping her wine. “Couldn’t take the competition.”
“From whom? You could beat out anyone without breaking a sweat.”
“Not the ghost from your past. Don’t deny it! She was always there, even in bed.”
“I never mentioned anyone…” Jordan whispered, his eyes looking down into his drink.
“Oh Joshua, my dear Joshua,” she said, reaching over to sweep a few strands of hair off
his forehead. “You may understand many things, but I don’t think women are high on the list.”
“It was a long time ago …” His voice trailed off.
“And yet it seems like yesterday …”
“Yes!” he whispered.
“That’s why I ended it. I couldn’t compete against what wasn’t there, but still very real
just the same. No woman can, at least not the smart ones. Only the silly ones try.”
“That would go a long way in explaining my love life, after you…” Jordan idly stirred
the golden liquid of his drink with a finger; he always drank scotch neat, with a water back.
“Some day you’ll have to exorcise that ghost, put her to rest.”
“I thought I had.”
“Not until you can look into a women’s eyes and not see hers. Until then, all of us are
down the list.”
“You were my first … time …”
“So I gathered. You made up with intensity what was lacking in technique.”
“I was young …”
“Ancient history, Josh. Let it remain so.”
“But you were always very high up on that list…”
“But not the highest,” Rousseau shrugged again. “As sweet as you were — as sweet as
you still are — I can’t accept second place. And I don’t think you could love a women who
would.”
“Pity,” he said into his drink as he took a big swallow, the liquid stinging his throat like a
penitential submission. “I can’t help but feel I missed a lot.”
Rousseau chuckled and her eyebrows arched a bit. “Tell that to my ex-husband.”
There was a silence between them for a moment, an awkward, abnormal silence, that
Jordan felt compelled to break.
“So, what did you think of the commentary?”
“Took you two takes,” Rousseau reproached.
“The first bad was the cameraman’s. Lord! He was nervous.”
“We all were,” Rousseau laughed. “Even though the bomb squad did a complete sweep
of the studio and the building, none of us was completely confident. Who is, in these
circumstances?”
Toni Rousseau sat opposite Jordan in his favorite booth and rolled a glass of wine lightly
between her palms. It was their first time together in a bar in a long time. It was only four in the
afternoon and she was not as used to drinking in daylight as she once had been. Jordan was.
The Galley was an ancient pub, paneled in dark, stained oak and oiled redwood, bordered
by cut glass and etched mirrors, and accented by highly-polished brass rails and fittings. It had
been the hangout for generations of reporters and pressmen working in the old brick buildings
across the alley, reporting and recording a century and a half of San Francisco’s history. In
modern times, television studios — a newer element of the media empire which had started life
as a broadsheet hawked for pennies to gold miners on the city’s streets — had replaced the
block-long presses which, in their turn, had been banished to an industrial ghetto down the
Peninsula. The newspaper’s editorial staff still occupied a portion of one old building and
grudgingly shared the Galley with their broadcast brethren. Jordan was one of the few they
tolerated, with reluctant civility, for he knew how to write as well as speak. One of them had
noted that Jordan “never placed a noun against a verb but to good, explosive effect.” What they
could not abide was the Internet philistines who gave the corporation an online presence for their
newspaper, for Rousseau’s television operation and for its sister radio station. The Webbites
seemed to have little respect for tradition, journalistic or otherwise, and none for anyone older
than they.
Jordan looked about the bar and noticed for the first time how many young faces,
unfamiliar faces, were there these days, and how many of the old faces were not. Like the city,
the media business was paradoxically getting younger as it entered middle age, yet was dying as
Google and YouTube, Blackberries and iPhones became the preferred source of the news for
their generation. Just for a moment he felt old and tired, then remember the time and his
purpose.
“Hey Bart!” Jordan called to the bartender. “Turn up the set. I want to admire myself.”
Several patrons grumbled and hunched over their drinks as the volume came up on a flat
video screen hung above the end of the bar, the only concession to modern technology allowed
in the place. The satellite tuner was set to the East Coast affiliate of his network, displaying the
news three hours ahead of San Francisco. On it Jordan’s image changed to a dramatic close-up
as the sound came up.
“… and so I issue a challenge to my would-be assassins. Come talk to me. I invite you to
a discussion of what ails you and your God. Come tell me why you hate me — live, in person,
on TV. I’ll listen. Meet me in debate at some place public, say the Masonic Auditorium, a fitting
venue for such a discussion. I’ll arrange it. Concerned about the authorities? Just choose an
emissary, a spokesman you trust, who — I trust — won’t be armed. In fact, I’ll make it easy for
you and hard for the cops. In my next column I will publish a list of neutral, independent and
capable intellectuals whom I think could ably represent your side. Pick your Jeremiah from that
tribe to verbally battle this Joshua and let the public decide which of us speaks true. You have
nothing to lose and everything to gain. You know where to find me.”
The scene on the TV lingered on Jordan’s taped image a second too long. The cameras
were slow to cut to a stunned network news anchor; the director had missed a beat. But the
universal maxim of no dead air forced the anchor to speak. She looked down at her useless script
and then at the irrelevant text of the teleprompter. For the first time in a long time she had an
semi-original observation to make, however brief: “… that was today’s national news,” she said
slowly, “… and the beginning of tomorrow’s. Good night ... and good luck …”
In the hushed bar, two older reporters — the daily “Talk of the Town” columnist and the
paper’s TV critic — bolted for the newsroom, casting a glance of admiration at Jordan as they
passed his booth; the rest sat there, astonished. The smart ones among them knew not to bother
Jordan just then. The thought of stray lightning bolts had crossed their minds.
“Nice recovery,” said Rousseau, nodding at the screen as it faded to the end credits; the
traditional news theme music seemed oddly out of synch as the bartender lowered the sound, a
look of bemusement on his face. “I take it you didn’t clear that last bit with anyone after all,”
Rousseau wondered idly.
“No,” Jordan said into his drink. “Do you think the network brass would have gone along
if they’d known what I was planning? They’d still be debating it.”
“Personally, if I were in New York, I would have shot you. Instead, I’ll let —“
Rousseau’s cell phone buzzed on the table. She checked the display, took a swallow of
wine, and answered.
“Good evening, Mr. Carson. Yes, Mr. Carson, I knew. No, Mr. Carson, I didn’t try. Yes,
I agree, Mr. Carson, we’re stuck. No, Mr. Carson, I don’t think it’s worth trying. The same to
you, Mr. Carson. Good night.”
Rousseau put her phone on silent and closed it. She took another sip of wine.
“Mr. Carson wants to kill you, too — after the debate, assuming there is one. Even he
couldn’t resist the ratings potential.”
“Look at all the free buzz he gets for the next few days. I was counting on that,” Jordan
mused, and waved to the bartender for another round. “Let’s hope the Last Crusade can’t resist
either.”
Suddenly, Jordan’s cell phone began ringing in his coat pocket, playing a distant,
haunting horn passage from Stravinsky’s “Right of Spring.” He took the phone out and looked at
its screen and then relaxed. He punched a button.

“Yes, Mom,” he said quietly. He had forgotten that his parents always watched his
commentary’s first delivery, viewing the East Coast network news on satellite TV. That had
been his Christmas gift some years back. They could watch favorite shows without having to
stay up late for West Coast viewings. Jordan listened silently for several minutes, occasionally
wincing.
“Yes, Mom. Love to Dad…” he finally said and cut the connection. Jordan took another
long sip from his drink, draining it. He smiled weakly at Rousseau.
“My mother says hello. She was also wondering what the hell was I thinking.”
***
All television stations, as a responsibility under their FCC license, are required to provide
local, cultural and educational programming, along with their profitable commercial shows, to
justify their use of the public airwaves. Most local stations kept these obligations to a minimum,
and invested as little as possible in their creation, and even less in running them; they were
usually the filler for early morning programming on weekends, before the lucrative sports
coverage or news interview programs began.
Jordan’s station was one of the few exceptions. It was still owned by one man, not a
company, when he joined it years ago. Such privately held stations were fast disappearing into
media divisions of corporate conglomerates. But John Oldham’s family had built its own media
empire in San Francisco from its earliest days. They were an ante-bellum dynasty from the Old
South that had fallen on hard times. California and its gold were to be their salvation. Instead
they proved a bitter disappointment. John Marchant Oldham wandered back down to San
Francisco from the Sierra foothills an almost beaten man. But the one quality he still had from
his Southern heritage — one that was in short supply in Gold Rush California, other than what
was to be found in the ornate haciendas of the its Mexican dons — was culture. Many gazettes
and journals had sprung up in San Francisco, but most were short lived. Oldham knew what a
proper newspaper must have a sense of its time and place beyond the immediate moment, and
decided that was what he could provide to those fellow failures at gold mining. He published a
weekly broadsheet that featured those failures as well as the successes the Gold Rush had
produced that became popular with Sourdough readers, and then with the businessmen who
made their living on the Sourdoughs. In effect, he learned how to mine those who were mining
the miners. The weekly rag became a daily, and then inspired many competitors. But it outlasted
the competition, slowly becoming the primary source of local information about local events.
The advertising revenues of the first newspaper, then in time of radio and finally television, had
made his family as wealthy as if they had found the fabled mother lode. Oldham, the last, barren
scion of the family line, still carried its sense of noblesse oblige for his good fortune and
returned it by providing above average cultural programming. The station specialized in
documentaries, of a half-hour’s or an hour’s length, particularly about major points of local
history When Jordan and Rousseau had joined the station from its ad agency, he wrote and
narrated them and she was his producer.
At first Jordan worked on already planned projects, and as these were completed and the
reactions to his work were noted, he was allowed to suggest subjects for future documentaries.
While he had a journalist’s sense of history to compliment his adman’s sense of sell, the one
thing he did not want to become was a day-to-day reporter for the station. He preferred larger
subjects and bigger ideas than the minutiae of daily life, of district school board meetings, city
hall politics and Western Addition muggings. Documentaries gave him the depth with which to
explore subjects, and by often choosing stories that had a San Francisco or California
connection, they proved popular with the viewing audience, and were highly rated by the
Nielson service, for documentaries. Oldham knew he was on to something when his on-air news
staffers started petitioning for a chance to narrate some of them.
Toni Rousseau adapted her advertising production skills to the longer form of the subject
matter. A TV commercial took a few days, at most, to a few weeks to plan and execute and
polish; a documentary could take months of work. In the ancient decades before Google and
Wikipedia, there was constant research in libraries and collections throughout the Bay Area,
following references given to her by Jordan, scouring sources for archival photos or footage that
would give the subject a human face, arranging for interviews with authorities on the subject,
tracking down and arranging interviews with people who had lived through the times, or whose
ancestors had. Each facet of the research suggested more avenues to explore until Jordan was
satisfied and could fashion the mass of data and opinions and memories into a working script.
Then the two would spend several days shooting film or in editorial, bringing the story to life.
Jordan sought out the older reporters on the station’s staff for their sense of San
Francisco and its history. Many of these in turn sent him to some of their sources, the even older,
mostly retired reporters of the newspaper which had been the original factor of the family
business. By following their leads and suggestions, he and Rousseau were often able to uncover
aspects of the city’s history that even many historians were ignorant of. During one extended
research project after a year at the station, a project which had produced an overabundance of
facts, details, rumors and memories, Rousseau pondered the problem out loud to Jordan.
“You know what, Joshua?” she said with an ironic smile on her lips, the kind of smile
that Jordan had learned long ago to trust, “Every one of these pieces ends up with a box load of
files, stuff we’ve found but didn’t use. Nice little stories that weren’t enough for a full feature.”
“Yah, I’ve got a desk full of chotchkis to prove it.”

“What if we did a series of short subjects? Just three or four minutes. We’ve already got
most of what we need for a couple of dozen. And they could bookend it with commercials, local
spots. Might make an interesting series.”
“It might, indeed …”
Over the next few hours, they batted the idea back and forth and worked it into a
proposal. Jordan made a phone call, then they took it to Mr. Oldham who, unlike most CEOs,
had a bad habit of listening to suggestions from his subordinates; more often than not, under his
appreciative administration, they had proved useful and profitable.
Mr. Oldham read and reread the single sheet of paper, turning it around constantly, as if
looking for more. He was a stocky man, short but strongly built for a man in his late sixties. His
hair was a bush of grey that was in keeping with the sartorial excesses of the 1970s, curly and
unruly. His attire was also contemporarily excessive, a gray suit with large lapels and a narrow
waist, fronted by striped shirt and a large gaudy tie with a huge Windsor knot. Oldham looked as
if he had spent his youth doing manual labor, rather than as an heir to the family business. Part
of his training by his father was that at one time or another, he worked every job on the
newspaper, from the executive to the janitorial, so that when his time came to run the works,
Oldham would likely know exactly what to expect and what to do.
“That’s it?” he said finally.
Jordan and Rousseau looked at each other, then back at their employer, holding their
breath.
“Umm … yes,” Jordan said. “Actually, it was Toni’s idea …”
“I thought so …“ he said slowly, drawing the words out in slow torture. “Well … I
certainly wish my sales staff knew how to write a proposal so succinctly. It’s good, you two.”
Jordan and Rousseau started breathing again.

“But,” Oldham said, “I know how we can make it better.”
“Oh …?” Jordan and Rousseau said, almost as one.
“First, we’ll make these sixty seconds long. That’s enough, with a sixty or a couple of
thirties front and back, as you suggested, a total of three minutes max. Longer and these shorts
might break the pacing of the news. And second, Toni, almost half of these story ideas involve
women. I think you should do the narrations and on-camera bits on them.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” Mr. Oldham said firmly. “You’ve worked in front of cameras before, as I
understand your history. Shouldn’t be that much of a problem. And the cameras certainly like
you. I think our female viewers would appreciate a women’s perspective.”
“No, oh no …” she protested.
“Yes! Oh yes!” Oldham chuckled. “It’s done. When can you two have the first dozen
episodes ready? We need to figure where and when to work them in. How about we start on the
weekend news? To see how they test?”
“I told you …” Jordan laughed. “… when I said to bring both of us here that you
wouldn’t regret it.”
“Nor, I see, will you.”
“San Francisco, Then & Again” proved very popular, as Mr. Oldham knew it would, and
so did Toni Rousseau on air, as Jordan knew she would. Local advertisers competed to have
their commercials as part of the mini-stories, often paying a premium for the position. Weekend
news ratings rose noticeably, for a time period that had historically been known as “Death
Valley.” From before the Gold Rush to modern times, the two mined a wealth of local and
regional history, with as colorful a cast of characters as any time or town ever produced.
Among the many there stood out Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who as a young girl of good
family rode fire engines — and reputedly firemen later on — around the streets of the growing
San Francisco; in old age the cigar-smoking, sharp-gambling heiress led the campaign to honor
the city’s volunteer fire brigades with a monument on Telegraph Hill — and was thus honored
herself in its name — Coit Tower, a fluted Art Deco depiction of a fire hose nozzle that had
definite phallic overtones, despite the denial of its architect to the contrary. Then there was Philo
Taylor Farnsworth working in a lab at the foot of the same Telegraph Hill, who invented the first
all-elec-tronic television system in the 1920s, and ended up having to defend his patents against
the better financed and connected — though less scrupulous — David Sarnoff of the young
Radio Corporation of America in New York, who championed a rival system based on details
purloined from Farnsworth’s discoveries. But perhaps most colorful of all was Joshua Abraham
Norton, an itinerant Londoner who in the 1850s — after an unsuccessful stint as a businessman
in the city, unlike the Big Four who preceded him — seemingly lost his marbles along with his
money and proclaimed himself Emperor Norton the First, known to those who humored and
helped support him as “His Imperial Majesty, Emperor of these United States and Protector of
Mexico.” Emperor Norton wandered the city in an old military uniform complete with gaudy
epaulets and saber, and issued many fabulous decrees and proclamations before he dropped dead
one day in 1880 in front of Old St. Mary’s Church in Chinatown, including one to build a bridge
and tunnel across the Bay; nearly six decades later it became the reality of the San Francisco-
Oakland Bay Bridge.
These stories and events, portrayed in the lives of an ever-fascinating parade of historical
actors and actresses, became popular attractions for the station. They also became one of the
more popular items recorded on personal home VCRs when they made their appearance in the
early 1980s. One-minute audio versions were developed for the sister news-talk radio station that
aired during weekday prime time drives in the morning and afternoon, followed by a newspaper
adaptation that began running on the Op-Ed pages. The radio series and half-column stories were
syndicated and played well to a national audience; San Francisco’s rich history and quirky
characters were fascinating to listeners and readers whose villages, towns and cities were
deemed dull by comparison. After awhile Jordan collected his favorite short subjects in to a
book of essays under the same title that sold well nationally. Ironically, they helped fuel the
city’s conversion from a working town to a tourist attraction.
Then, when one of the weekend male anchors was promoted to fill a weekday slot
vacated by another male anchor who had been elevated to the network news staff in New York,
Oldham chose Toni Rousseau to become a weekend co-anchor. She was relieved of her
production duties and shared a production assistant/producer with Jordan, continuing to write
and narrate “Then & Again” segments along with her new anchor duties.
Rousseau’s on-air presence improved the weekend rating even more. Oldham nodded
sagely at Jordan and promoted Rousseau to a junior position on the weekday, early-evening
news team. Her fresh looks and unaffected style, combined with Jordan’s coaching and her
experiences with the “Then & Again” documentary moments, presented her as more than just a
reader of the news, but someone who could ferret it out as well. Mr. Oldham smiled, for her
presence was an antidote to the “happy hour” news format that was infecting his industry
nationally, which sadly had begun at another San Francisco station that tried to compete with
his; she delivered the news as interesting and attractive, without succumbing to silliness. The
male bastion of the main news desk crumbled a year later when Rousseau joined the prime time
evening and late night news teams.
The late hours and demands of Rousseau’s new schedule had an adverse and worrisome
effect; it put a strain on her relationship with Jordan which went back to their time together in
advertising. Privately, they had kept separate lives as well as separate apartments; but their
changing station schedules made it impossible to live together and work together, not without
ultimately destroying both their professional and personal bonds. That made it harder to find
mutual time for each other; she would arrive at the station as he was getting ready to end his day.
As a major anchor, she had opportunities now to research, write and present major stories, not
just relay the nightly news of the day’s events. Rousseau reluctantly asked to end her partnership
in “Then & Again.” Their personal relationship, while much fun, had never grown beyond a
certain point. Jordan had an emotional history she could not fathom, nor ultimately abide. But
she owed him much, and could not bear losing his friendship either, which presented the kind of
emotional diplomacy that historically had little chance of succeeding.
Rousseau arrived early one day to the station and went to Jordan’s office. He had been
given a small broom-closet of a room that had a window with no view that he prized. She leaned
against the door jam, dressed in a tailored tan suit with broad shoulders over a sage green blouse.
Jordan had his back to her as he stared at a blank sheet of paper in his typewriter, an old Royal
upright that looked ancient; he had been staring at it for some time.
“Greetings, Red,” he said without looking back.
“How did you know it was me?” Rousseau asked with surprise.
“No one else around here reminds me of lilacs in spring.”
“Damn!”
“What’s wrong?” Jordan asked turning to the door.
“You’re going to make this harder than I thought.”
Jordan swiveled his chair around to face Rousseau. He had the far look of infinite
sadness she had seen a very few times before. It was the only outward expression of a locked
emotional gate in a wall no one, not even she, could breach.
“Then don’t do it.” His eyes took on a look of uncharacteristic pleading, but his voice
remained level.
“It’s not working anymore, Joshua. Besides, I’ve met someone.”
Jordan closed his eyes, sparing Rousseau the hurt they held, but showing it anyway with
clenching anguish. “If that’s your story …” he said slowly, his voice straining to keep even, “…
then stick with it. Who is he?”
“An attorney …”
“Oh great!” he laughed harshly, unable to restrain the surge of emotions behind it. “From
an ad man to an ambulance chaser. What’s next? A fucking used car salesman?
“I’m sorry, Joshua …” Rousseau stood leaning against the door frame, her knees weak.
She knew that she should walk away, but Jordan’s face suddenly had the look of a lost puppy.
Then it froze and became blank.
“Don’t be,” he said abruptly. “I’ll make you an offer, Red. You don’t say another word
about it and we’ll remain friends. Not one damn word.” He turned his back to the door and
became randomly typing meaningless letters.
“Deal?” he asked blankly to the wall.
Rousseau smiled weakly. “Deal,” she said softly to his back and walked away, her eyes
growing moist. She had expected tears. There were always tears with these scenes, she knew.
But she had hoped that they would not be hers.
Jordan and Rousseau settled into their own, separate and comfortable routines as their
popularity grew. But as the years piled up and the decade of the 80s passed, time began running
out on their comfort and their routines.

The first sign of trouble flared with a political appointment that came from network
headquarters in New York. Oldham’s long-time station manager had retired, leaving an opening
for the network, itself recently bought out in one of the merger manias that inflicted the 1980s; it
had been melded with disparate other media properties in broadcast, newsprint, magazines,
movie studios and amusement parks to form an “entertainment” arm within the corporate
Kraken. Oldham gathered key staff members for a lunch at Jack’s on Sacramento Street off
Montgomery, a narrow, dark cavern of brick and wood beams, first opened in 1864, the oldest
restaurant in the city, and owned by a series of Frenchmen who tried their best for over a century
to bring authentic French cuisine to San Francisco’s sourdough tastes.
“The network is threatening to pull its affiliation,” Oldham told the group seated at a
long table in one of the upstairs dining rooms. Jack’s private rooms had been a favorite haunt of
the city’s powerbrokers for over a hundred years. The dark wood trim and antique wall paper
seemed to reek of cigar smoke more in the mind than in the nose. Jordan noticed for the first
time that Oldham’s hair had grown mostly white, like frost on a julep glass.
“Our ratings are slipping against our ‘happy news’ brethren owned and operated by the
competing networks. New York is accusing us of being the city’s third PBS station.” That
brought a laugh from around the table.
“Seriously,” Oldham protested, “our new corporate masters need higher ad rates to pay
for the stock premium they laid out to buy the network’s properties. And I needn’t remind you
that lower ratings mean lower ad rates.”
The station’s news ratings, which set the standard for advertising revenue for all areas of
its programming, were still the highest in the city and Bay Area, but the margin of difference
was dwindling as the competition jollied up their news shows with younger anchors, with even
younger reporters doing stories meant for still younger audiences, the kind that had more
discretionary income and demonstrated less discretion in spending it.
“News operations are expected to pull their own weight and be profitable,” Oldham said.
“That grumbling you hear,” Jordan called out, “is Ed Murrow growling from his grave.”
The room laughed again, but its tone held a worried edge.
“Well, we don’t want to join him,” Oldham laughed himself. “We can’t afford to lose
our affiliation. We’d be just another local channel showing worn-out reruns. They want to buy
us because they can control an ‘O-&-O’ better. But I’m not going to sell.”
“So we have a standoff,” said an old production staffer, a woman with graying looks, a
broad face and short hair, who wore a man’s suit better than most of the men in the room; she
had trained a generation of producers at the station, including Rousseau, and several more now
working at other stations up and down the West Coast and across the country.
“More of a stalemate, Alice. Like a crumbling marriage. And I’m trying to keep us out of
divorce court.”
“What’s it going to cost us?” Jordan asked.
“They get to appoint the new general manager. Won’t settle for less.”
“Do we know who it is?” asked the assistant general manager politely, a man who all had
expected to step into to his departed boss’s position; he had been with the station for twenty
years and had worked his way up from gopher to reporter to management, all without the benefit
of an MBA. Oldham had always preferred personal talent to paper credentials.
“Yes, I do, Bill. Sorry, but he’s a corporate man, Jennings from the their Boston O & O.”
“Not a she?” asked Alice, not expecting an answer.
“One revolution at a time,” Oldham laughed sadly.
The changes came quietly but quickly on the new manager’s arrival. Small changes, at
first: a redesigned news set, with brighter colors and shining metallic accents and more TV
screens like those one saw on cable news shows; a gradual shift in the subject and emphasis of
many stories, away from national and international — these were seen as more proper to the
network coverage — to local interest subjects; and then an encouragement towards more banter
among the news anchors between stories, with more personal comments replacing the stalwart
professional approach to news coverage that frowned on “personality” in the news other than
that of its subject matter. Then, six months later came the larger changes.
The older news anchors were targeted for replacement; they were offered the option of
returning to reporting positions — or they could leave for anchor slots in other, smaller markets.
Younger, more telegenic talent was brought in from Los Angeles, Chicago and New York to
show San Francisco how a modern media operation and business were run, and run more
profitably. Finally, Rousseau was demoted off the primetime news teams back to weekends and
reporting. The general manager, a product of the Harvard School of Business, said they needed
to skew towards the younger demographic, and as she was now in her 40s, well, it was just an
obvious move.
That was essentially the same reasoning Rousseau’s husband gave her when he
announced, a few days later, that he wanted a divorce after five years of marriage. While at first
a seemingly perfect match of highly photogenic partners that delighted society news editors — a
popular TV anchor wedded to a high-profile attorney — it had proved no more workable in time
and scheduling than had her relationship with Jordan. Her husband’s solution, proving all too
common these days, was simple: end the union as if it were no more than a corporate divestiture,
with an equitable distribution of assets. There were no great family resources to divide up, no
children to worry about; just a home in the hills of Tiburon across the bay in Marin, a ski
condominium at Tahoe and two expensive cars. She got the house and Volvo and he the condo
and the Porsche. He’d already discovered a younger someone at the office with a more
traditional work schedule, and being younger, was more appreciative of his experience and
opportunities for his help in her career.
Jordan found Rousseau in the Galley at ten one morning soon after, her hands wrapped
around a Manhattan on the rocks. The bartender Bart said nothing, but held up three fingers.
“Are we trying for a personal best, Red?” he asked as his slid into the booth opposite
Rousseau.
“Already passed that...” she answered, her words slurring slightly. Her eyes were red,
like the liquid of her drink, her mascara smudged at the corners from wiping at tears.
“Normally, someone in your condition I’d take to McGoon’s for some Dixieland, but
they closed a long time ago.”
“Then you should have good reason to join me.”
“Actually, I have good news, an oddity for our profession. I’ve just been chatting with
old Fezziwigg.” It was Jordan private nickname for Oldham.
“Is he going to fire me, too?”
“No, but Fezzi’s going to fire your soon-to-be ex’s law firm.”
“That is good news,” Rousseau said, lifting her glass in a mock toast.
“It gets even better. He fired Jennings as well.”
“No! They won’t let him get away with that!”
“He still owns the station, but not for long. Oldham wants to see us in his office at
eleven. “
“Oh damn! I’m a wreck …”
“Yah, but you’re still the prettiest wreck in the room.” Jordan offered her his
handkerchief.
Rousseau and Jordan were joined by ten others, key staffers, in Oldham’s office. None of
Jennings’ new hires were among them.
“I’m retiring …” he said bluntly. “… and I’ll be selling the whole operation, TV, radio,
newspaper. The corporation’s getting everything they want. Since we’re grandfathered in with
the FCC, they won’t have to deal with Washington much with this acquisition. The rules are
changing and media ownership across lines is getting easier. So, what’s that mean to you all?
”I can’t undo everything Jennings did, but I convinced Carson that if things continued in
that direction, he would end up acquiring a property damaged beyond repair. He’s a practical
man, and young enough that he’s willing to wait a while to get his way. That gave me the edge I
needed.”
Oldham nodded to his secretary. She handed out envelopes to each staffer.
“You and this operation have been like family, the personal family I never had. But I
won’t be able to protect you when I’m gone. So, I’ve done the next best thing. Inside those
envelopes are two items. Each of you now has a lifetime contract with the station. Please sign all
copies and give them to Ms. Crosetti. And Ms. Crosetti, this is for you.”
Oldham took out an envelope from his suit coat vest pocket and handed it to his
secretary. Crosetti had been with him almost from the first years when he ascended to running
the family business; she had been recommended by Oldham’s father’s secretary when he stepped
down. Crosetti was a diminutive woman in size only, guarding access to her boss like a pit bull,
organizing his day and keeping him to his priorities; Oldham had a bad habit of easily losing
track of time when he spontaneously began chatting with employees. She was the kind of unsung
female employee who kept American business working properly in spite of the efforts of their
bosses to the contrary. Her still-dark hair, now streaked with gray, was bundled in a neat bun at
the back of her head. Her business suit — she was never known to wear a dress at the office —
was trim and proper, with only a variety of bright scarves to add color. No matter what hour of
the day or day of the week, if Oldham was in the office, so was she. Young new hires through
the years called Crosetti the Spinster. She did not care. Crosetti had outlasted most of them.
Everyone in the office, in the company, knew that she quietly, secretly loved Oldham; everyone,
it seemed, but Oldham.
“These contracts are iron-clad, as recognition of your services through the years. They
cannot be voided for any reason other than criminal cause. So all of you please return the
staplers and pencils you made off with through the years.” A wave of laughter flowed through
the room, the kind Oldham always enjoyed evoking.
“The other item is a thousand shares of company preferred stock. You’ve earned it as a
bonus. As I said, you won’t be able to prevent the changes that are coming. But at least you will
benefit by them. My guess is that Carson will clean house once the acquisition is approved.
Those of you who don’t want to stick around — and I don’t blame you; neither do I — Mr.
Carson will be only to happy to buyout your shares, probably at a premium. Those of you who
stay, your shares should improve nicely. That’s it. Now back to work.”
The staffers looked shell shocked, thumbing their envelopes as they filed out of
Oldham’s office.
“Josh? And Ms. Rousseau? Please stay a moment. You too, Ms. Crosetti.” Oldham
pointed at chairs in front of his desk, which Jordan and Rousseau took. Crosetti took her usual
side chair and produced a steno pad and pen.
“Toni, I’m not going to undo what Jennings did to you. Actually, I think he did you a
favor, if unintentionally. On-air longevity is a rare thing in this business, particularly for women.
Time always takes it toll, as it will even for you. However, I have something else in mind.”
Rousseau looked at Jordan who shrugged his shoulders, then looked back at Oldham.
“With your background in production you’ve got a lot of valuable experience. I’m giving
you a managerial position, working with the unions, in concert with the lawyers. NABET, SAG
and AFTRA will be happier dealing with one of their own. You’ll easily earn their respect. Do
well and Mr. Carson will reward you. He’ll be an idiot of he doesn’t. Any man is an idiot who
doesn’t appreciate you.” He looked at Jordan as he spoke.
Rousseau remained silent for a moment, then said simply, “Thank you …”
“Pity I won’t be around to watch the fun,” Oldham laughed.
“You’re not leaving that soon are you?” Jordan asked.
“Soon as the deal is done I’ll be off on my honeymoon.”
Crosetti’s pen skipped a line on her pad. Neither Jordan or Rousseau said a word.
“Ms. Crosetti, please call the travel agency. Book two tickets on the Royal Swan line for
their around-the-world cruise, first class, a penthouse suit, starting from San Francisco. It should
be making port here not long after the acquisition is complete and I can step down.”
Crosetti wrote slowly, her eyes riveted on the pad. “The names?” she said quietly, her
voice holding as much dignity as she could summon.
“Oldham and Crosetti.”
His secretary scribbled fiercely on her pad, refusing to look up.
“Come now, my dear,” Oldham said softly. “What kind of life would it have been? This
business is not kind to family men, not at my level. And you have been infinitely more valuable
here than as a homemaker. I don’t suppose I can make up for that. But when this done, we’ll
have all the time that’s left to us for my amends.”
Ms. Crosetti looked up from her pad, a gentle smile framing her silent thanks.
“Well,” said Oldham, “… that about does it. A good morning’s work.”
“What about me?” Jordan demanded. “What am I supposed to do?”
Oldham laughed a happy laugh, the kind that comes from satisfaction, from a sense of
accomplishment.
“Just keep doing what you’re doing, Joshua,” Oldham chuckled. “Sooner or later
someone’s bound to notice.”

V.
STARLIGHT, STAR BRIGHT
The news of the Jordan’s broadcast challenge to the Last Crusade ripped westward that
night like a California wildfire fueled by Santa Anna winds. As it aired in each new time zone,
its flames burst forth with greater ferocity. When the news hit the Internet, the blaze went
worldwide. The buzz lasted for days, as Jordan surmised. Commentators everywhere, expert or
amateur, pronounced him incredibly brave — or unbelievably stupid. Radio talk shows,
newspaper columnists and editors, television journalists and political pundits worked the story
until it seemed as if there was nothing left to analyze except an analysis of the analyses. Jordan
had to refuse interviews after a while, or else he could get no work done. In an incessant need to
fill airtime, column inches and web pages, the modern media repeated themselves over and over.
Bloggers flogged it every which way. Yet the only question that really mattered was the one that
went unanswered. Would the wackos be dumb enough to agree.
As expected, one by one over the next days, every name on Jordan’s list responded with
adamant public refusals to be associated with the Last Crusade, much less be its champion.
Every name but one. Then, on the morning of the seventh day, Jordan received a phone call in
his office.
“Mr. Jordan? This is Hannah Mosley.”
Jordan looked at the phone in disbelief. “Doctor Hannah Mosley?”
“Yes…”
“It’s an honor, Dr. Mosley…”
“I am willing to represent the Last Crusade in your debate.”
“That’s not really necessary. I didn’t expect anyone on the list would.”
“So I gathered, from what I’ve been reading.”
“If I may ask, why are you interested?”
“I had not heard of the Last Crusade until recently, but I am familiar with your writings.”
“You honor me again, Doctor.”
“While not wishing to be discourteous, that was not my intention, since you offered my
services as spokesperson without my permission. Then I thought, perhaps this might be an
opportunity to present a more positive view of the Christian religion against your generally
negative opinions. In that, I need not be a supporter of the Last Crusade.”
“I appreciate your candor, Doctor, but I repeat: you do not have to do this. I had expected
to trivialize the Last Crusade with a cheap publicity stunt, nothing more. I hadn’t counted on
anyone accepting my invitation. I apologize if I have offended you.”
“Nonetheless, the challenge had been made. We have both much written and talked about
religion and religious belief, from opposite poles. This would be as much an opportunity for me
to set the record straight as it would be you to belittle it, if that is what you intend. So, I’m
willing to meet you in a civilized debate, if you feel you could keep it at that.”
“I will act as if my life depended on it.”
“No, not your life, Mr. Jordan, just your immortal soul.”
Jordan put the phone in its cradle and stared at it for a while, until his training as a
journalist kicked in. He wrote an entry announcing Mosley’s acceptance and posted it on his
blog. Then he called Toni Rousseau. It was in the middle of that call when the station’s
computer systems were attacked.
The radio operation was knocked off air, its servers overwhelmed by outside activity
from a denial of service attack that wormed its way into the operational machines. The television
side found its control room systems frozen by a virus. On every monitor was the same image of
the Dürer woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping along to a blasting hard
rock beat; a banner at the top held the emblem of the Last Crusade, a cross against crossed
swords, as a flaming flag waved by a ghoulish medieval devil cackling incessantly. The
newspaper operation was reduced to pen and paper as another virus invaded its servers,
disrupting the electronic distribution of news and advertising on which modern papers depended,
which funneled the combined electronic data of art, photos and text to the actual printing on a
press. All individual newsroom computers linked at the time to the company intranet also were
taken over to display the same Dürer image and banner. Only one laptop was immune; on
Jordan’s screen was a message:
“AS DOCTOR HANNAH MOSLEY HAS ANNOUNCED THAT SHE WILL ACT AS OUR REPRESENTATIVE, WE
ACCEPT. ARRANGE THE TIME AND PLACE. MAY GOD FORGIVE YOU. WE DON’T … THE LAST CRUSADE.”
Jordan laughed loudly. His assistant came to his door to check on him while everyone
else contended with the electronic havoc.
“Are you okay?” Sakata asked with a worried look.

“I’m fine,” Jordan laughed again. “Just surprised. Seems as though I’m to debate the
intellectual Madonna of the religious right. This could be fun. And on home turf, too,” was all
he said.
***
The telephone rang with the shrill electronic imitation of a traditional phone. Its
harshness grated on Clark Mosley’s nerves; he much preferred the sonorous, natural ring of
brass that God and Ma Bell had meant telephone bells to have. But his wife was progressive and
had replaced the traditional with the modern, despite his misgivings and the torture to his ears.
He snatched the graceful arc of the phone’s too-light hand set from its cradle and before he
could finish his greeting a voice on the other end demanded to speak to his wife.
“Oh, Christ! Hannah!” he shouted over his shoulder, not bothering to smother the phone,
letting the caller hear his anger as well as his wife. “It’s another goddamn reporter! When the
hell is this all going to stop?”
“It will go away, Hannah Mosley said with a placating tone as she reached for the phone.
“Yah, yah, yah,” Clark mocked her as he tossed the instrument to his wife as she
approached.
“It’s not every day,” she said brightly, cupping the phone mouth piece in her other hand,
“that a girl wins the Nobel Prize.”
Clark shook is head in disgust and walked back to his chair and picked up the newspaper.
The first call had come at two in the morning from the Swedish Academy of Science, a refined
voice speaking English with a distinct but distinguished Scandinavian accent, announcing to
Doctor Hannah Lowell Mosley that she was a co-recipient of the 1975 award for physics.
Apparently, thought Clark, the Swedish Academy of Science was not familiar with the concept
of an eight-hour time difference with California. Nor was New York, for the phone began
ringing again at six a.m. as the Eastern media picked up the story from Reuters. It kept on
ringing whenever the line freed up until nine that morning. Then the locals started calling,
colleagues and reporters, the first offering congratulations and the latter seeking interviews. The
longer it went on the more insistent the journalists became, realizing they were slipping behind
in the news race. Indeed, it was not every day that a girl won the Nobel Prize; Mosley was the
first since Dorothy Hodgkin of Great Britain, Nobel class of ’64, one of the very few women in
Nobel history.
Hannah Mosley was a professor of cosmology at Stanford at a time that saw both interest
and revelations in the cosmos explode, both professional and popular alike. The discovery by
Penzias and Wilson in the ‘60s of a background of microwave radiation pervading the universe
— poetically described by the press as the fading echo of the great celestial blast that gave birth
to creation — provided the first conclusive evidence that the universe had not been born gently
by divine dictate. Their work also foretold the doom of all other competing, non-religious
hypotheses of the origin of creation, especially the steady state theory of Hoyle, Gold and Bondi.
Ironically, its was Fred Hoyle who had given the name to the opposing cosmological model
offered by George Gamow in the 1940s which predicted the background radiation of the
primordial explosion, when he derisively called it the “Big Bang”. The press liked the imagery
and the name stuck, to Hoyle’s everlasting chagrin.
Mosley’s early doctoral work in mathematics had become, years later, the basis for a
team collaboration to solve the older mystery which the Big Bang merely postponed. Was the
universe open and endless, fated always to expand until time and energy thinned out,
approaching the heat death of absolute zero like a hyperbolic curve drawn to its asymptote? Or
was it closed, destined to someday reverse its expansion and collapse again in a Big Crunch?
The previous mathematics of Einstein and Hubble didn’t say conclusively; it all depended on
how much matter there was in the universe. Clearly, by observation, there wasn’t enough. The
pursuit over the next few decades, often more like a scavenger hunt than a scientific search, was
on in the academic world to find the missing mass.
As an undergraduate student Mosley was told, by a sympathetic instructor, of the work of
Vera Cooper Rubin, who in 1950 in her Master’s thesis showed that there was more to the
universe than the conventional academic view, for stars in distant galaxies were rotating faster
about their galactic cores than they should, work that would ultimately contribute evidence to the
concept of “dark matter.” Being a woman in a man’s field, though, her work was dismissed and
ignored at the time. But a young and curious Mosley found it fascinating, and that interest led
her to seek a practical application of her mathematical skills to the understanding of the structure
and composition of the universe.
Mosley’s contribution was to expand and refine her earlier work on the subtle
mathematics of quantum gravity by incorporating the geometric, multi-dimensional description
of the universe found in General Relativity; Minkowski, Kaluza and Klein each had seen and
cracked opened this door a bit when they allowed that Einstein’s description of a cosmos with
four dimensions of combined space-time could be seen as a four-dimensional sphere embedded
in a five dimensional space; Mosley had walked bravely through that door into a murky chamber
of shadowy theory where most conventional theorists feared to tread. But if the missing mass
could be found, and her work suggested it was wrapped up asymptotically in extra, hidden
dimensions — which Hilbert Space provided infinitely — and in magnetic monopoles, the
massive, hypothetical sub-atomic particle first posited by the British physicist Dirac in the
earliest years of quantum theory, then one could conjecture a closed, cyclical universe, self-
contained, self-sustaining, self-regenerating.
Mosley enjoyed the complex mathematics that chilled most astrophysicists, the arcane
twists of differential equations which populated the tensor calculus of Relativity and quantum
mechanics. The team’s confirmation of gravitational lensing, of how the gravity of distant
galaxies bent light from other, farther objects behind it — in accordance with a prediction by
Einstein — greatly increased the size of the universe and gave hope of discovering more of the
hidden matter. In the next decade, Mosley’s multi-dimensional work would be partially absorbed
into the new String Theory, but monopoles would fall out of favor, and along with them her
hope of a closed, recycling universe. There was still not be enough mass uncovered, despite the
hypothesizing — some said fantasizing — of “dark energy” to go along with dark matter.
For its time, Mosley’s work was the kind of deep, abstract understanding of fundamental
existence lost on most people not accustomed to science, much less astrophysics or even
metaphysics, expressed only in the abstract symbols of mathematics. When the shared Noble
was announced and its spotlight focused on her, academia and the popular press held their
combined breath, awaiting her next revelations, for she was a rarity, a woman of genius at the
very peak of a field still not noted for welcoming women. Mosley’s fame and stature would have
been historically assured had she never done anything else again. Unfortunately for her science,
Mosley never did.
The slide from the pinnacle began when her husband refused to accompany her to
Stockholm for the Nobel ceremony. “Say hello to King Gustav for me,” was all Clark would
say, declining any explanation. “You know why,” he told Hannah.
For several years now, her husband had begun to chaff while living in the public glare of
her career as it rose like a golden sun and his own dreams faded into the twilight of his life. He
had followed her from M.I.T. to Caltech to Stanford. Clark Mosley was a writer who had
published little; now she was a geek who had won the top prize. He had found her a human
calculator and made her into a human being, and this was his reward. Something inside him
resented this betrayal of his fate and said “no more.” While Hannah dealt with the demands of
her new celebrity at home and in Sweden, he went on a fishing trip to Mazatlan. The annual
outing to Mexico they always took together in January was meant to escape winter, and she
accepted it as her concession to his lack of interest in her work and career. In the twenty years of
their marriage, Clark Mosley often used his love of the outdoors to escape and console himself
from his own failure and her success. To Hannah, nature was the great expanse of the universe,
not cleaning fish by a campfire. But she endured it because her husband loved it.
Clark Mosley had checked into the La Playa Hotel, a low-rise, colonial-styled collection
of buildings of stained wood and white stucco that had grown year by year, section by section
through their visits since the late-1950s. He much preferred the Playa over the newer high-rises
sprouting like concrete mushrooms along Mazatlan’s long, languorous beaches. They had his
favored room ready in the oldest section where the amenities were not quite so modern, but
which had a patio with direct access to the beach. He could sit there at dusk and toast Apollo’s
setting sun like an old friend until the goddess Nyx spread her veils of night and the stars began
to twinkle; then Morpheus would send him dreams he could live with. Witness reports from
hotel staff, people who had known the convivial Notre Americano through many winter seasons,
noted that he rarely left his room, but that a good deal of beer and whiskey were delivered there.
At dawn on the day of the Nobel presentations, reports later said, Clark had set out under
a cloudless sky and a calm sea, a good augur for a good day of ocean fishing. He went out alone
on his rented cabin cruiser, supposedly in search of Dorado, Bonito or Yellowtail, tasty species
that gave a good fight. The boat failed to return by sundown. A late afternoon winter squall gave
the only hint of what might have happened. The next day’s search found the boat drifting far out
to sea and south of Mazatlan, empty. No other sign of Clark Mosley could be found until three
days later when what remained of his body washed up along the shores of the village of
Novillero down the south coast.
Hannah Mosley, still in Stockholm, was devastated by the news when it finally reached
her; it had taken the Mexican authorities some time to track down the Nobel winner. American,
Swedish and Mexican officials expedited the paperwork and she flew immediately from Europe
to Mexico City, then on to Mazatlan.
Standing in the hotel room with the everyday effects of her husband, she felt lost in a
universe she thought she knew well, fighting a confused and uncertain fear that was alien to her,
that sought to overwhelm her. Every piece she touched brought back memories which once had
been happy, at least in her mind, but now cut her heart with an emotional scourge. When the
Mexican police brought her the few items found with his body, she saw her husband’s watch. It
was a large, chunky chronometer, a modern amalgam of analog and digital technologies favored
by sportsmen and astronauts. She stared at it in numbed disbelief. It couldn’t be, she said, the
officials not understanding her. They had confirmed his identity; the watch had been still
attached to a wrist that had not been chewed from the arm. Mosley stood numbly in the small
room after they left. She began to sway back and forth, then collapsed to her knees against the
bed, lost in sobs. The watch had a chronically weak clasp. Clark never wore his watch fishing,
for fear of losing it. If he had died wearing his prized watch, it could mean only one thing —
Clark had taken his own life.
Somehow Hannah Mosley stumbled her way through the arrangements to ship his
remains home, to return to Palo Alto, to a life that now had a yawning emptiness, like the maw
of a immense, threatening beast. The media began to plague her for comments, interviews,
reactions, for her previous story of abstract science now had taken a very humaninterest twist.
Mosley refused to speak to any of them. The university and friends stepped in to shield her. An
overwhelming sense of guilt wracked her mind and tore at her emotions. If only, she thought
repeatedly; if only she had listened to him, tried to make him appreciate her success, not envy it.
If only she had not been caught up so much in the glamour of that success that she failed to see
its damning effect on Clark. But the more her success rose, the further he drifted away. She
blamed herself. Clark had been so vital and generous to her in their first years together. Why
couldn’t he just accept and share in her good fortune — their good fortune?
At the funeral, friends — sincere, well-meaning friends — had tried to console her with
the thought that this all had been God’s will and plan and that Clark was happier in heaven at
God’s side. In her grief, Hannah Mosley could not admit to herself — much less to these friends
— her husband’s suicide. God had nothing to do with it, other than to damn his soul for taking
his own life. But their talk of faith seemed to make a strange sense of his senseless death and
took root.
Mosley found that she could no longer do the work that had brought her joy and fame,
and then had taken her husband. She applied for a sabbatical, to get away from the constant
spotlight that brought an intense glare to every aspect of her life and profession, and succeeded
in only highlighting her failure with Clark. Each new demand for her ‘wisdom’ only confirmed
in her mind that she knew nothing really; that she had not seen what had angered her husband,
what he could no longer face; that to Clark his life had no meaning sitting as it was on the
coattails of her success, but that he could find neither the strength nor courage to leave the
comfort of those coattails.

The sabbatical stretched from one year to a second, then a third. Slowly and with
difficulty, a mind steeped in logic and the rationalism of mathematics, discarded science in
search of other answers to the questions which haunted her. The Nobel prize money and a family
trust assured her financial independence. She was forty-eight years old, well past the prime
productive years of a mathema-tician; there were no more realms to conquer when the will to
live begins to fade. That was Clark’s sad legacy. In time, Mosley stepped away from academia
and public notice. The concept of an absolving faith began to attract her, for the damning sense
of guilt was still there, quietly gnawing at her soul, along with the persistent pain of loneliness.
She talked to her religious friends, in an effort to understand the vague concepts from childhood
that she had left behind when she’d grown up in the world of science. Her work had help define
a universe that was its own beginning and end; there had been no need for a creator. But now,
the concept had another purpose, if she understood her friends correctly; one of absolution, of
forgiveness. These were thoughts that did not involve the metrics of her old work. They could
not be measured, but merely need only be accepted without proof, in spite of reason’s
objections. She began to understand the attraction of the concept of God’s will, for inside its
great expanse a soothing fantasy was allowed to form; for whatever reason God had intended,
what had happened was now his doing, his fault, his responsibility. There was great solace in
that, and escape.
Mosley devoted herself to Biblical study and the evangelical beliefs of her friends, for
hers was a mind used to finding its own way and understanding; she could not accept blindly
even that which offered her release. If so many millions believed as they did, there must be a
reason. With the passionate fervor of the new believer, she sought to comprehend the cause of
Christ. When asked about her conversion by a science journalist who had once tracked her down
after years in the shadows, she answered simply: “If God can sacrifice his only begotten son on
the cross, the least I can do is try to understand his reasoning.”
The academic and everyday worlds went on to newer interests and forgot about Hannah
Mosley.
Then, at the beginning of the last decade of the old century, during the resurgent debate
across the country over the role of religious belief in science education, her evangelical friends
asked her to help defend their beliefs against the atheistic, evolutionary war which the secularists
were waging again their faith in God’s Intelligent Design, the new name for the old Creationism.
Still the proper scientist, Mosley took up the study of biology to understand what had given rise
to the conflict of Darwin versus the Divinity. The more she learned, the more she found it
difficult to ignore science in favor of faith. The two stalked each other like predator and prey.
Yet, two hundred years before, men of science had faced this same conundrum and were no less
faithful for it.
She decided to go to Paris to study where the great anatomist Cuvier, a devote Christian
and creationist, had built up the Museé Nationale de l’Histoire Naturale in the early 1800s, and
inadvertently, before Darwin ever set forth on the Beagle, forged the first understanding of the
process of evolution, a concept which Cuvier himself condemned his whole life. This was a
great contradiction — and a appealing puzzle to a mind that had never shirked an intellectual
challenge. She wanted to understand how the great minds of early science dealt with the
evidence and knowledge their work uncovered, that challenged their faith at its core and soul.
She was asked by her church friends, “What good are the thoughts of scientists dead for
centuries?”
Mosley smiled and answered, “What good are the words of a prophet dead for two
millennia? One goes to the source to understand. When ideas are written is not important. What
is written is.”
Somewhere in a far corner of her heart a desire taunted her, like a stubborn melody that
would not leave the mind, to return to where she had met her husband.
Mosley rented a pied-à-terre from a Palo Alto couple in Place d’Estrapade, snuggled
between two petite streets in the 5th Arrondisment of Paris. The apartment overlooked a small
triangular space lined with tall, leafy plane trees shading a delightful park of stone benches,
flower beds and a modernist fountain in the center. She had the top floor of her building to
herself and could see out her bedroom window the dome of the Pantheon a block away up Rue
d’Ulm. The apartment was perfect; everything she needed was nearby. The 5th was the heart of
the old French scientific establishment, its streets reflecting the glory of France’s contribution to
knowledge: LaPlace, Curie, LaGrange, Descartes, Buffon, Cuvier. She was in the middle of
another triangle comprised of the Sorbonne, the Luxembourg Gardens and le Jardin des Plantes,
the grand botanical treasure of the Natural History Museum, begun as a medicinal herb garden
for Louis XIII. It was an easy walk down Rue Estrapade through Blainville to La Cépède and the
main gate of the gardens. Along the way Mosley crossed Rue Mouffetard, one of the grand old
market streets of Paris. In the tiny Place de la Contrescarpe, memories flooded back as she
strolled its narrow, cobbled streets. Her old café was still there, but with a new name.
As a Nobel laureate, Mosley was accorded privileges at the museum not available to non-
science mortals and ordinary tourists. She was given a small office on the grounds and access to
the Museum’s ancient records and papers. Its officials were honored by her presence, if puzzled
as to why a mathematical physicist was interested in ancient biology. They nodded politely as
Mosley explained her plan of research. Her French tended to be more academic than
conversational, for she had first learned the language to read the works of LaPlace in the original
for her senior thesis on his celestial mechanics. She found her language even stiffer now, tinged
with the dust of disuse.
During lunchtime, while staff disappeared to local cafés for hours, she walked the garden
grounds with her lunch bag and notebook. The two bronze lions were still perched over the
fountain and half-circular pool notched in a small hill, still guarding the main gates, one with a
human foot sticking out of its mouth. The enormous Cedar of Lebanon spread its huge canopy of
branches over a trunk a meter and a half thick. Swarms of tiny black flies formed clouds over the
paths as she walked; it seemed as if nothing had changed in twenty-five years. One day, after a
week or so of research, she wandered through the maze that circled a small hill graced on its
crest by a gazebo of wrought ironwork and glass. Generations of children had worn tunnels
through the shrubbery in their efforts to thwart the maze. She climbed the path to the gazebo to
eat lunch and review her morning’s notes. As she settled in, a little girl’s angelic face popped out
of the shrubs, bid Mosley “Bon jour!” then disappeared again in host of giggles. Mosley closed
her notes and then her eyes and thought of the children she and Clark never had.
The day was ruined for effective thought. Mosley left the gardens to return to her
apartment. When she reached Place de la Contrescarpe, she stopped at her old café, now called
Delmas, brimming with young and old alike enjoying a fine spring day that held no threat of rain
for a change. She found an open spot toward the back of the sidewalk tables and ordered a
coffee and Cointreau. She studied the crowd; how different it was from the pubs and restaurants
of Boston and Cambridge where she had first studied, and later Pasadena and Palo Alto, where
those studies had culminated in her award. But there was something similar, too. A college town
was a college town, even when surrounded by a great city.
Mosley’s eyes came to rest on a young woman who seemed in her mid-thirties sitting
alone at the table next to hers. A Parisian, she guessed, from the way the woman was dressed in
a casually elegant style; her long silk scarf was looped around her neck and lay gently on her
shoulders like a regal mantle gracing her upper torso. She wore a dark leotard under a large,
cable-knitted sweater, like a dancer just come from rehearsal. The woman had short hair and a
button nose on a round face highlighted by very bright eyes. Her lips held a pout that could
easily become a kiss or turn down into a sigh. Her make up was faultlessly applied, sparingly so
that it highlighted her eyes, not dominate them. She wore no jewelry other than a heavy watch.
Mosley stared at her, fascinated, and another wave of memories washed over her. In her mind
she became that other girl in another time at this café, then called Le Shoppe, not so pretty or so
stylish, just arrived from Boston for the summer of 1955 to discover what life was like away
from academia.
***
Hannah Lowell, newly a Master of Mathematics from Radcliff via Harvard, had
journeyed to post-war Paris of the mid-1950s to find something of life that did not involved
textbooks and blackboards; there would be too much of those in her future.
Her summer would be devoted to one long attempt to inventory Paris’ huge treasure of
churches and museums, galleries and concerts, anything and everything she could sample, for it
was all so different from Boston and her life there. The buildings were ancient, covered by
centuries of grime and soot, but on a bright summer day after a brief rain, they glistened like
gemstones to her. Hannah wandered the ancient streets of a Paris just recovering its joi de vivre
nearly lost to the occupation of the German Wehrmacht and Gestapo, the collaboration of the
Vichy French, and the deprivations which followed them after the war.
She had found the little café in la Place de la Contrescarpe after a particularly long walk
in her first week from where she was staying in the 16th, with friends of her parents in the
diplomatic corps. Central Paris had struck her as a compact town not unlike Boston where her
world had consisted of Beacon Hill, old Cambridge and the environs about Harvard Square — in
the fall it would include the lands along the Charles River that comprised M.I.T. — but there the
comparison ended. That day her walk, which had started at eight o’clock in the morning at the
Palais de Chaillot and the Trocadero, had taken her across the Seine and up the Eiffel Tower,
then through the long expanse of the Parc du Champs de Mars and its avenues of trees, up to des
Invalides and Napoleon’s Tomb, down a warren of streets leading to the magnificent church of
Saint-Sulpice, then to the Luxembourg Gardens and exhaustion, where she rested her weary feet
on a bench by the great octagonal central basin. An armada of toy sailboats plied its waters to the
delight of sailors young and old. It was well past two in the afternoon and Hannah realized that
she was famished. She had been told that the local cuisine was better and cheaper in the Latin
Quarter in the 5th and that she would find a street lined with restaurants if she went to la Rue du
Pot de Fer where it intersected Rue Mouffetard. Her Michelin guide book told her that was only
a few blocks away to the east; she would then be in good shape to finish the day with the
Pantheon and the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
Hannah reached the Street of the Iron Pot, a slim cobbled lane that barely had room for
the small tables lining both sides; wads of young people wandered up and down, talking in a
rapid French she could not easily follow, stopping on occasion only to read a menu posted by
each café or restaurant. Occasionally, a small motor scooter would put-put its way through the
crowds with a trail of acrid smoke. She selected a small place at the corner where Pot du Fer met
Mouffetard, taking a seat inside by the main window where she could watch the crowds walking
along both; they seemed mostly students, from the Sorbonne and the universities of Paris and
Rene Descartes nearby, probably finishing exams before the summer break. She ordered classic
onion soup, beef bourguignon and a small carafe of red wine and proceeded to devour it all.
Hannah had to force herself not to wolf down the food; she had never been this hungry before.
The meal was exquisite, unlike any French cuisine she had ever tasted in Boston. The old waiter
who served her suppressed a smirk when she asked for the bill; she had been there less than an
hour.
Hannah wandered up Mouffetard, past its boulangeries, patisseries, fromageries,
charcuteries, to the small plaza at its end. Their many aromas and colorful arrays assaulted her
senses in a delightful way, despite having just eaten. The buzz of the shoppers, the calls of the
shopkeepers along the narrow street, made even more narrow by the overhang of canvas
awnings, was like a an elixir. She suddenly felt giddy from the wine and the long day of walking
and knew she could go no further; there was a Metro stop a block away to take her home. But
the day was still fresh, the young summer sun still high. She decided to relax at the café Le
Shoppe that dominated la petite place. The tables beneath the old, faded red awnings were filled
with mostly young men and women about her age enjoying the day; further inside at the bar she
could see the older men, the tradesmen and shopkeepers still savoring their long lunch and cheap
wine. She order a coffee and thought how marvelous this felt, to be in such a beautiful place on
such a glorious day.
Her life since childhood and the discovery of her mathematical talents had been devoted
to study and school. She was distant cousin of Percival Lowell, of the famed Lowell clan of
Boston and Harvard. An adept in the family interest of mathematics, Percival also had a
hobbyist’s curiosity about astronomy. He built a private observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona in the
mid-1890s, named it for himself and his family, then spent the last years of his life searching for
the canals on Mars which the Italian astronomer Schiaparelli had claimed to have seen some two
decades before. The unfortunate word in Italian that Schiaparelli had used was canali; he had
meant lines or perhaps grooves, but the distinction was lost of a romantic press which saw them
as evidence of intelligent Martian life. Percival had become obsessed with proving the existence
of these Martians and their waterways. He had deluded himself into seeing true canals and oases
and wrote three books on his theory of a living Mars and its citizens. No one else ever saw what
he saw, but the popular fascination which his books engendered about Mars lived on,
culminating in H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Hannah had grown up with the tale of her
ancestor’s quest. Rather than Mars, though, she was fascinated at a young age by the story of
Planet X, the hypothesized planet whose gravity was responsible for the supposed discrepancies
in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. Percival, until his death in 1916, was sure it was there,
awaiting his discovery and he organized a systematic search for it. But it wasn’t until 1930 that
Clyde Tombaugh, another amateur astronomer working at the Lowell Observatory, finally found
the dim, distant planet by a thorough and painstaking analysis of thousands of stellar photo
plates. He named it Pluto, first in keeping with the ancient tradition of naming the planets for
Greek gods, and second because its two initial letters were PL, for Percival Lowell.
This was the stuff of legend, thought Hannah Lowell, aged ten; it had the element of fate
about it, for the Planet X was discovered in the year of her birth. It seemed even more so to her
third grade teacher when Hannah showed the woman the rudimentary algebra and trigonometry
she had worked out to express the wildly eccentric orbit of the planet named for her ancestor.
Hannah’s mother, rather than discourage such intellectual endeavors in a female, recognized that
her daughter was a prodigy, as adept at mathematics. Hannah was given special tutoring to
develop her talents, for the mathematics professors at Harvard which her mother consulted all
said that most such blessed children do their best work in the first twenty or thirty years of their
lives. Time was not to be wasted on the nonessential. The abstract world of functions and
variables, of derivatives and integrals, of origins and axes and dimensional analysis became a
converging series that led Hannah inexorably to ever greater and greater abstraction through the
years of adolescence and early maturity, a matrix of existence of almost pure thought far
removed from the quiet little café in Paris where she sat on a June day in 1955.
Everything about the day was tactile, alive and sensuous in a way she had never really
appreciated. She studied the young women at nearby tables, envious of their glamorous style and
clothing, relaxed in their manner, shameless in the way in which they flirted with their young
men. She thought she must look dowdy by comparison in her khakis, blouse of starched white
cotton and penny loafers. Hannah was twenty-four years old and had never been in love, never
even had a boy friend. She wondered what it would be like to be fawned over so eagerly.
“Excuse me, Miss. Are you all right?” a voice interrupted her reverie, a voice in English.
Hannah blinked and focused her eyes on the source of the voice that was still speaking. A
man sat at the table next to hers, smoking a cigarette and nursing a brandy. He must have slipped
in after she sat down, she thought vaguely, for she did not recall seeing him before. He looked to
be in his thirties, dressed in casual slacks and shirt with a sweater draped on his shoulders as if
he had just finished a tennis match. He was quite handsome, she thought, with his crew cut hair
and athletic bearing.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “Did you say something?”
“I said I’ve never seen someone smile so intensely.”
“Until now, I didn’t have a reason.”
“Oh?”
“I mean … not you, I’m sorry… I mean them …” Hannah waived at the tables in front of
them. She suddenly felt the heat from the blood of the blush in her cheeks.
“I’m envious. I’m also Clark Mosley. And you are…?”

“Hannah, Hannah Lowell, of Boston,” she said offering her hand.
“Enchanté, mademoiselle,” he replied, giving her hand a perfunctory peck. “The Beacon
Hill Lowells, I’m guessing.”
“Are you from Boston?” she asked eagerly.
“Ah, Boston,” he swooned, “ ‘… home of the bean and the cod. Where the Cabots speak
only to the Lowells. And the Lowells speak only to God.’ No, I am lowly. I went to Cornell. But
I played intercollegiate hockey and got to see a lot of Beantown. What brings you to Paris, as if
there had to be a reason?”
“I took the summer off before starting work on my doctorate in the fall.”
“A doctorate? My goodness. That serious? In what, may I ask?”
“Math. My specialty will be Hilbert Spaces, infinite-dimensional, orthogonal vector
spaces, with application to resolving quantum mechanics and general relativity theory. It’s about
what the late Professor Einstein called his Unified Field Theory. Exciting things are happening
in astronomy, in cosmology, these days. New ideas of the universe and how it started,” Hannah
exclaimed with mounting enthusiasm.
Clark Mosley laughed and threw up his arms as if to ward off a menacing beast. “If you
say so. Funny, I didn’t take you for a brainiac.”
“What did you take me for?” she asked slowly.
“Dunno. Like I said, you were smiling so intensely I thought something must be wrong.”
“Quite the contrary,” Hannah laughed. “Everything is just fine. I’ve never been so happy
and at ease in all my life.”
“Paris has a way of doing that,” Clark said, downing his brandy.
“What brought you to Paris?”
“The war.” He signaled the waiter and ordered another brandy for himself and a
Cointreau for her. He spoke French casually, confidently, with no hint of an accent.
“That was ten years ago.”
“There are times when it seems like a hundred.”
“Were you … did you see combat?”
“No, fortunately. The closest I came to dying was of boredom.”
“In a war?”
“For every dogface out there on the front lines there were ten of us schleppers behind the
scenes. Supply mostly. But I was a little better off. Intelligence. Corporal Clark Mosley, clerk-
typist, serial number 16876191, at your service. I got drafted towards the end of the hostilities.
I’d banged up my knee in a game — playing BC, as a matter of fact — so I was disqualified
from combat duty. But the Army taught me to type properly, bless its bureaucratic soul, and sent
me to Paris in a G-2 unit in Bradley’s command, for which I will always be grateful, especially
now.”
“What do you do?”
“Write. I string for the New York Herald. Plus, sell whatever I can to whoever’s buying.
And I pick up a few coins playing poker once a week with the staffers at Time. They get paid in
dollars that go a lot farther than francs. I liked Paris after the war and decided to stick around for
a while. Uncle Sugar actually paid me to take courses here on the G.I Bill. That allowed me to
learn the lingo. I’d been a copyboy on the local rag during summers in Ithaca, so I thought, why
not make some spending money while I write the great American novel. Hell, it worked for
Hemmingway.”
“For whom?”
“Ernest Hemmingway, the famous novelist? Papa Hemmingway? The Sun Also Rises? A
Farewell to Arms? The Old Man and the Sea?” Won the Nobel Prize last year? The man who
supposedly once described Paris as a moveable feast? He used to have an apartment around the
corner from here.”
“I’m sorry, I never read fiction. No time.”
“My dear, you are sitting in perhaps the most inspirational city in the world, a town that
motivated generations of writers domestic and foreign, and you can sit there straight-faced and
tell me you don’t read fiction?”
“The last story I’ve read was a Nancy Drew mystery. I was nine.”
“Well then, we have all summer to catch you up.”
Clark became Hannah’s personal tour guide, both for Paris and the world of arts and
letters it centered. He never seemed to have work to do, and always had time for her. He took
her to salons and readings, in French and in English. He introduced her to several ex-pat Brits
and Yanks, like himself new Bohemians in search of their muses; novelists, poets, painters,
sculptors, and not a mathematician or scientist among them; they would congregate at
Shakespeare & Co., the English language bookstore favored by Hemingway and the rest of his
Lost Generation when it ventured forth from its haunts in Montparnasse in the 1920s. She and
Clark enjoyed concerts in ancient cathedrals, the voices and instruments echoing off the vaulted
ceilings like heavenly choirs. They attended a performance of Madam Butterfly at the Opera
House, hovering like angels in the highest balconies, surrounded by Beaux-Arts magnificence in
keeping with the soulful arias rising from the stage. They took the Metro to Montmartre and
climbed the long stairs up the hill to Sacré Cœur, the highest point in Paris. The great soaring
Basilica in travertine stone gleamed a brilliant white in the summer sun, despite a half century of
grime and pollution that stained most of the city below; the view from the dome was
incomparable, with the whole of Paris prostrate before them beneath a forest of trees, with only
landmarks such as cathedrals like Notre Dame, monuments like des Invalides and above all the
Eiffel Tower rising to pierce the sky. They took the train out to Versailles to inspect its palaces
and the wondrous Hall of Mirrors, then walked the long, seemingly endless gardens; the great
fountains shot streams of water in the air in a lavish display of hydraulics, just as they had for
the amusement of Marie Antoinette nearly two centuries before. Back in Paris, they strolled the
cool, shady paths of the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes for relief from summer’s heat.
Clark had female friends who schooled Hannah in the modern arts of being feminine.
Her long wavy hair, often knotted up in a braid for simplicity, was shorn down to a sexy
shortness that she could quickly run her fingers through in the morning and look appealing. Her
khakis were banished to the armoire and replaced by flowing skirts and Capri pants that accented
her petite frame; only one item, her blue jeans, were allowed to stay, as they were in great
demand among the chic, young ladies of Paris and scarcely to be found. One women — Hannah
was sure she had been one of Clark’s former lovers; maybe they all had — taught her how to use
makeup to transform her wide Boston Brahmin features with an alluring look requiring a
minimum of make up. The unadorned bud that had been the girl became the bright blossom of
the woman.
Clark took her to small, hidden treasures of dining which most guide books, even
Michelin in its haughtiness, didn’t know about; a tiny, four-table Greek restaurant down a
basement on the Île-St-Louis; a Moroccan café in the 15th on the Avenue de La Motte-Picquet; a
boulangerie in the Marais that had the best true bagels in Paris; a patisserie near Les Halles
whose pastries were both divine and sinful in the same bite.
Clark delighted in pointing out to Hannah the incongruities that circumscribed France in
general and Parisians in particular: the French could display the highest sense of couture and
culture, then deny these with vulgarities like la Place Pigalle and the Folies Bergère with its
demimondaines; they were tolerant under the cry of liberté, égalité et fraternité to the benefit
and amazement of a generation of black American expatriates, yet were blithely bigoted toward
their own colonial African immigrants; they thought themselves the center of the universe, and
thus everyone’s target; the conviction was absolute and universal among the intelligentsia that
although one could assimilate and learn to speak French like a native, no non-native could ever
be French. They were not alone in these contradictions among Europeans. Germany had only
recently expressed the sense of its own superiority, to the world’s horror. Victorious British
upper lips were still stiff even as their empire dissolved around them and they still suffered
through rationing. And Italians always had the two-thousand-year glory that was Rome to fall
back on, even though there had been, so far, more post-war governments in Italy than there had
been post-war years. But the French were alone in their absolute certainty. For it was universally
agreed among the Parisian literati that Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss was really speaking of France
when he famously expressed “this the best of all possible worlds.”
When Clark was able to borrow a car, their explorations expanded to include the war-
battered coasts of Normandy and the elegant châteaux of the Loire Valley. It was during one of
these outings when, one languorous July evening, at a charming inn harbored by a little seaside
village that looked like it had been lifted from a painting by Pissarro along the Bretagne coast,
that Hannah renounced what Clark dubbed her status as the sole adult virgin in France and
became another notch on his list of lovers.
In August, when most of official Paris deserted the steaming city of stone for the cool
breezes of the coasts, it seemed as if Clark and Hannah had the old town to themselves. They
spent much of it in Clark’s rented garret rooms atop an old family apartment building on la Rue
Tournefort, not far from Le Shoppe were they had first met. Clark guided her in how to love and
be loved with a gentleness that was unexpected, a sensuality that she craved, and vitality she
never dreamed she could experience. She had come to Paris to see something of the world and
discovered much about herself instead.
One drowsy afternoon they lay in bed, Hannah tucked in the arc of Clark’s arm, her head
on his chest, its hairs tickling her nose. She stared at her leg wrapped across his long torso, at his
muscles gleaming with sweat from their lovemaking. A sheet was draped partially across her
hips, more in vestigial modesty than warmth.
“It’s time I made travel arrangements,” she said softly.
“Where?” he yawned. “The south? Nice? Cannes? Monaco?”
“No, Boston…”
“What?” he laughed. “We’ve not finished France yet. The whole of Italy and Spain
demand our attentions. Boston can wait.”
“No, it can’t. I start at M.I.T. next month.”
“You’re not serious? I offer La Belle France and you want Beantown?
“I have my career, silly. This summer’s been wonderful,” she said looking up at his eyes.
“But I can’t be a vagabond forever.”
“Why not? Stay in Paris, with me. Go to school here, if you must.”
“Don’t tempt me…”
“Hell, Hannah! We’ve got something fine going. Why end it?”
“Because as much as I’ve loved this summer, this is not my life, not what I want to do
with it.”
“What are you going to do, spend it with your eyes stuck to a telescope and your fist
stroking only a slide rule? Where’s the fun in that?”
“Life isn’t just about fun” she said rising up from the bed, the sheet dropping to leave her
naked. “This isn’t real.”

“The hell it isn’t. You look pretty real to me. Life ain’t worth living if it ain’t fun. I hope
to God I never get to a point when it isn’t anymore.”
“Clark, ma chere,” she said as she began gathering her clothes. “Il n'y a aucun futur ici,
pas en tant que ta maîtresse.”
“So that’s what this is about. My mistress? When did this attack of prudery come on?
“Not prudery, Clark, but prudence. How long have you been here, in Paris? Ten years?
What have you done in all that time, besides have some fun? When I’m gone you’ll find another
young thing to replace me. Or maybe go back to one of your earlier lovers.”
“Hannah, that’s not fair. I do care for you.”
“But not enough, I presume, to marry me … ”
“Oh ho! How’d you suddenly get so clever?”
“I had a good teacher, this summer. Pygmalion should be happy at his Galatea.”
“I pray Aphrodite puts Galatea’s butt back in the sack,” he said, patting the empty space
next to him.
“Sorry, Clark, but that’s not in the stars, at least not mine. Let’s leave it with the happy
memories intact, the fun memories. I can never thank you enough for them.” Hannah finished
dressing, then gathered her things into a small valise. She stood by the door and smiled at him.
“Ma cher Clark … may you never grow up. But if you should, come find me in Boston.”
Hannah slipped out the door and closed it quickly so that he could not see her tears.
A week later Hannah departed Le Havre for New York aboard the Île de France. She
used the seven days of the Atlantic crossing and the sea air to clear her mind. The family friends
with whom she had stayed were discrete about her absences; this was Paris, after all, and their
reports back to her mother were more about how she had matured and grown during her visit
than her adventures, about which they could only guess. Mostly, she was grateful that she hadn’t
gotten pregnant. As September unfolded, Hannah took up her doctoral candidacy. It was good to
get back to the theoretical and the mathematical; she craved the dispassionate thought they
required. She lost herself to the infinite dimensions of Hilbert Spaces, quantum mechanics and
relativity theory, and tried not to think too much of Paris.
In late November of the following year, the first snows of a long, cold winter began to
fall, blanketing Cambridge and the campuses it sheltered in a cloak of white. One Saturday
morning Hannah relaxed, thinking of Christmas, in her small apartment atop a carriage house on
Agassiz Street. The home it sat behind belonged to one of the Lowell clan and was just north of
Radcliff and Harvard. It had been perfect in her undergraduate years, and now was a short
subway ride to M.I.T. Hannah was expected home at Beacon Hill, just across the Charles River,
for the holidays. That had been her family tradition all through college; it was also why she had
gone to Paris, to find new sights, perhaps new traditions. A low coal fire burned in the tiny
fireplace of her main room, adding a bit warmth and cheer against the chill of the thick flakes
falling through bare trees outside her windows. The old radiators in the corners cranked hissy
protests now and then, like ancient dragons, but kept the place comfortable. Bookshelves
between windows took up most of the wall opposite the fireplace. A sturdy, expandable dining
table by the kitchen end of the room served as writing desk and was littered with Christmas
shopping, colorful bows and wrapping papers. Bookshelves perpendicular to the long axis of the
room on its opposite end formed a sleeping alcove near the bathroom with its tiny tub and wash
stand. Hannah, dressed in flannel-lined khakis and a pale-gray cashmere sweater with a
turtleneck, sat before the fire on a low couch. She was scanning a small, antique volume of
poetry she had bought as a Christmas gift for her mother. In the back of her mind, as she read,
the thought tickled Hannah that she never would have even noticed such a book before Paris.
Then the phone rang and she rose to answered it.

“Will you accept a person to person call from a Clark Mosley?” the operator asked.
“Yes!” she cried. The circuit clicked and then was silent. “Clark? Clark? Are you
there!?”
“Hello, Galatea…” a distant voice said cheerfully.
“Clark! Where are you? Paris?”
“No, New York, freezing my butt off.”
“What are you doing in New York?”
“That’s where the freighter docked.”
“What freighter?”
“The one I took from France, silly. Some of them take on a few passengers. It’s all I
could afford.”
“Why … why did you leave Paris?”
“You invited me, remember? I did what you suggested. I grew up. I decided that if I was
going to write the great American novel, it might prove helpful to be in America.”
“Oh you sweet, mad child! When can you get to Boston?”
“I’ll take the train tomorrow. I’m staying with an old friend tonight … um, a war buddy.
Should be there around noon.”
Hannah took the subway from Harvard Square in Cambridge to meet Mosley at old
South Station in Boston, across the Charles. The decrepit steam locomotive of his train wheezed
into its berth as if that was the last thing it would ever do; perhaps it was, for a century of
passenger rail service was inexorably giving way to the modernity of air travel and interstate
highways. Clark spotted her first, leaping down from the railcar over the steps, then dropping his
duffle to swoop Hannah up in a great bear hug, swinging her about as if she was a little girl. She
laughed and giggled as she had in Paris. Then she kissed him passionately.
“How long?” she asked, as he set her down on the platform.
“Why do women always want to know when a romance is going to end before it even
gets started?”
“How long?”
“How long do you plan to live?”
“What are you talking about?”
“As part of my maturation process, I also decided that marriage might have its merits.”
“You’re not joking, are you?”
“My dear, I gave up Paris for you. If that doesn’t say ‘Je t’aime” I sure as hell don’t
know what will.”
As they started to walk to the Red Line station back to Cambridge, Mosley suggested
they should splurge and take a taxi back to her apartment. “Do you mind paying?” Clark asked
as they arrived. “All I have left are some francs.” The driver looked at him dubiously as Hannah
paid the fare.
Later, they lay in her bed, exhausted. Clark toyed with the strands of her hair, still short
and functional like a pixie’s, twirling a few in his fingers as her head lay on his chest. Hannah’s
hands caressed slow circles around his navel; he still had the feel of a tennis player.
“So,” he asked lazily, “when do I get to meet the folks?”
Hannah presented Clark to her parents over Christmas, but not as her fiancé. That
required too much invention, for she had not mentioned him specifically in her accounts of her
summer in Paris. Instead, she had distributed his many facets among several “acquaintances” to
provide a suitable story. Clark played along with her fairytale, careful not to embellish it too
much. He applied just the right amount of dazzle to his life, his years at Cornell, leaving out that
it had been on an athletic scholarship. His war years in Intelligence hinted at some sort of
espionage, but Clark respectfully declined to elaborate, professing modesty. He spoke to her
mother in flawless, cultured French, to which she happily replied in kind. Mr. Lowell politely
and obliquely inquired about his profession and his intentions. Clark answered that he planned to
turn his Paris years into a novel, but also that he had connections in New York journalism for the
interim while he developed the book. The Christmas holidays passed without incident, though
Clark found the enforced celibacy of separate rooms a bit much.
“Give me time to figure this out,” Hannah pleaded. “We can ‘announce’ our engagement
in the spring and be married in summer, after I graduate.”
“Whatever you say, Galatea.”
The wedding, though not quite Boston’s social event for the year, was properly executed
by Mrs. Lowell, and kept to the bare minimum of family at Hannah’s request. It was a double
celebration, of their wedding and her doctorate. Clark persuaded a fellow stringer at the Herald
he’d known in Paris to be his best man; his parents sat at the ceremony in quiet dignity, aware of
the cultural difference between their families, but both proud and happy that Clark seemed to be
settling down finally. His best man brought along his new wife, one of Clark’s former lovers
from Paris.
For their honeymoon, Hannah convinced Clark of San Diego and a stay at the Del
Coronado, long a family haunt when winter became too severe; it was preferred over Florida,
despite its distance. She had received interest from the California Institute of Technology in her
doctoral work; the dissertation had caused something of a stir among cosmological circles, and
Caltech, ever on the forefront of scientific and mathematical research, was offering the new Dr.
Mosley a post-doc fellowship and a part in the Institute’s growing involvement with the new
NASA’s space projects. The center of the country’s technological interests were moving
westward from its war roots in New England and New York to the innovative academic-
industrial partnerships of California. Clark thought the sport fishing in the Pacific was worth
investigating.
They moved to Pasadena in the fall of 1958 and Hannah immersed herself in her work,
once again drawn deeply into an abstract theoretical world which Clark found cold and empty,
like the space it described. He sought writing projects in Hollywood, but found the work
unappealing. It did present certain fringe benefits in the shape of young starlets in the making,
always available, always willing. Hannah laughed uncertainly and told Clark that he could look,
but not touch. She had no proof that he ever did, but much of the intimacy was draining from
their marriage.
The Paris novel remained on the shelf, a project he’d get around to when he was ready.
He submitted short stories to magazines, based on his adventures in post-war Paris as a way to
develop the book, but literary tastes were changing and the public was now enamored with the
glitterati of Monaco and its Hollywood princess; the rejection slips mounted until his stories,
with a little editing and reworking — and a pen name — found a home in men’s magazines, the
kind sold in cheap newsstands or hidden in the back racks of drugstores, away from the
windows.
Hannah was happy in their new home just off campus, bought for them by her parents as
a belated wedding gift. There was a magnificent ice rink on California Boulevard in downtown
Pasadena where she and Clark could skate even in summer. She fantasized skating parties with
their children someday, but she remained barren. After two years of trying, she talked her
unwilling husband to undergo medical testing with her. The results were conclusive: it wasn’t
her eggs, but his sperm count. Artificial fertilization techniques were new and primitive and
expensive, but Hannah tried them anyway, without success. Clark laughed and apologized for
shooting blanks. “Call it God’s will,” he clucked without conviction.
The post-doctoral work stretched to three years, then became a tenured position which,
had she been in Germany at Göttingen or the Max Planck Institute, would have accorded her the
title Frau Doktor Professor. Clark took to asking “What’s up, Doc,” and went on more camping
and fishing trips. Mercifully for Hannah, he did not like hunting and its horrible trophies. Her
one concession was the annual winter sojourn to Mazatlan after the holidays back in Boston. It
gave her time to catch up on her reading while Clark fished. She had to admit that she much
enjoyed the incredibly fresh treats he brought back and then had the Playa’s chef prepare for
them in the dining room. After a few winters, Clark fell in with other snowbirds, seasonal
refugees from the cold northern states, and he seemed to Hannah to be happy; but she noticed
that cocktail hour began earlier each year and ran longer.
In 1966, Hannah was offered a post at Stanford. Clark shrugged, sold the house and followed to
Palo Alto. Women of her talents and growing stature in the sciences were still a rarity, and the
University, while conservative in many ways with elements like the Hoover Institution, saw
Hannah Mosley as a way to appease the rising shrillness of women’s lib. Hannah settled in to
teaching and her researches. Cosmology was getting more play in the popular press. When
Apollo 11 landed in Mare Tranquillitatis and avenged the insult of Sputnik, American science
and scientists basked in its glory; a handsome female cosmologist who spoke in plain English
proved popular with the press. Through her connection with Caltech, she participated in one
fashion or another in NASA’s challenging adventure of exploring the solar system. Then
Hannah was invited, based on her doctoral work and current research, to participate in a
collaborative project with colleagues from Caltech and M.I.T. She was off to L.A. or Boston
frequently for team conferences and theoretical discussions, or responsible for hosting them
when it was Stanford’s turn. After a few years, the project was completed, the results checked
and rechecked according to her statistical analysis, then published in the Journal of Astrophysics.
Clark shrugged some more and sent off his stories for a nickel a word. Earlier, in 1961,
the year Hemmingway killed himself with a shotgun, the Paris book was buried under junk on
the closet shelf and not spoken of again. More years passed, but not much changed. Their paths
were set, and diverging. Then one morning at 2 a.m., the phone rang and a man with a Swedish
accent asked to speak with his wife.
***
“Êtes-vous malade, Madame?” a voice asked beyond Mosley’s vision.
“Non, non … Je suis bien,” she answered the voice slowly after a few seconds, shaking
her head to clear her thoughts.
“I’m glad. You had me worried there,” said the young girl.
She looked familiar, Mosley thought, but could not place her. Mosley held her head in
her hands briefly.
“You’re sure you’re okay? I was talking to you for almost a minute before you
responded.”
Mosley blinked her eyes clear and realized that it was the girl she had first seen when she
sat down. “No, no, I really am okay. Just a little woozy. I was lost in thought.”
“I’ll say!” she laughed “I must have stared at you for several minutes before I spoke. I
thought you were catatonic. You hardly blinked.”
“It was a deep thought,” Mosley laughed weakly. “I was remembering this place when I
first saw it nearly forty years ago. I met my husband here, my late husband.”
“Oh, I hope they were good memories.”
“They were, mostly.”
“Forgive me for being nosy, but you look very familiar. I know I’ve seen your face
somewhere. That’s what made me look at you before.”
“My name is Hannah, Hannah Lowell Mosley.”
“Omigod! The Nobel winner! I read about you when I first came to Paris years ago. You
were all over the news here. A female winner! I’m so terribly sorry. That was callous of me to
ask about your memories.”
“Not at all, child,” Mosley assured her. “They’re just ancient history now.”
Mosley returned from Paris like one reborn. Slowly, her research coalesced into a
working hypothesis which she polished with the kind of rigorous thought she used to enjoy. The
great men of the past whose efforts, against their every instinct to the contrary, had formed the
first theories of evolution — Cuvier, Sedgwick, Lyell and a generation of others culminating in
Darwin and Wallace — demonstrated that the earth, its geology and its biology, were very
ancient and much changed through the eons; that mankind had fooled itself into thinking the
Creator had made His creation immutable. The evidence was just too overwhelming that He
hadn’t. The fossil record in demonstrably ancient strata could not be ignored. The mystery of
creation was simply more mysterious than anyone had reckoned, possibly more than could be
reckoned. Natural forces had shaped — and were continuing to shape — life and land all about
them, not in a metaphorical moment, but through millions of years. In time, a legion of
astronomers concurrent with the biologists pushed the date of the creation back even further to
billions of years. All these men had been devout if not always practicing Christians. Culturally
and structurally, God was as much a part of them as language, and just as useful. Their need for
a Creator was not diminished, but relegated back to some indefinite time. God had started the
celestial ball rolling, they believed, and ever since His gravity kept it so. Einstein’s relativity
may have replaced Newton’s force-at-a-distance with curved space-time, but it was still God’s
space and God’s time. The deism of the Enlightenment became their unacknowledged creed.
Their inspiration and exemplar was one Thomas Burnet, an Seventeenth Century British
naturalist who was also an ordained minister; in this unique happenstance he could see that
science and religious thought were independent and unrelated, what Stephen Jay Gould would
call, three hundred years later, separate magesteria, different bodies of teachings. The
procedures of first did not apply to the second. The Reverend Burnet saw early on that problems
would arise in trying to pit one against the other. “Tis a dangerous thing,” he warned, “to engage
the authority of scripture about the natural world in opposition to reason, lest time, which brings
all things to light, should discover that to be evidently false which we made scripture assert.” In
Burnet’s vision, God was no less divine as a passive creator removed from daily existence than
the active deity of the Bible. Mother Nature was God’s face to the world. His winking and
blinking, His frowns and smiles were natural law writ across the land and sea, the skies and the
universe; exact, measurable, discoverable. It was not by co-incident that Pantheism and
Transcendentalism were popular modes of thought all throughout their era.
In time, most of Science saw the wisdom of the compromise; unfortunately, many
elements of Religion did not. As the self-proclaimed spokesmen for the Creator on His Creation,
Religion also claimed a priestly monopoly on God’s truth, and had a very vested interested in
maintaining it. In reaction to the rationalism of the new science which certain churchmen in
Victorian times saw as a deadly challenge to their faith, that faith became more basic, more
fundamental, less open to interpretation, requiring stricter acceptance and absolute obedience to
the word of God, for which they held the copyright. Many of these early evangelicals saw
Scripture as God’s “dispensations,” an ordained set of beliefs for all mankind, chief among them
the Second Coming, with its attendant Rapture, Armageddon, Judgment Day and finally, the
End of Time, which they expected soon to occur. To them, Darwin was the devil incarnate and
evolution blasphemous heresy. To accept the teachings of Darwin and Huxley and their
diabolical spawn was to deny the teachings of Christ and the Prophets. There was no will but
God’s will, as interpreted by them, His true chosen few.
Mosley found this reasoning quaint, but specious. If humanity had reason and science, it
was because God intended that we have them and that these gifts were to be used. Which begged
the question: who was humanity to ask of, or question, God’s intentions?
Her thinking led her to see the Creator as the Prima Causa, but not necessarily Thomas
Aquinas’s Primum Mobile — God as first cause, but no longer the daily mover of the universe.
Ultimately, questions of “why” were irrelevant. It was enough to understand that He had a
purpose, even if we did not know what it was; His creation, His rules.
Mosley saw this as the basis for a “rational faith” which could provide a path of peace
between science and religion, offering each the benefits of the other. It gave credence to a belief
which could not be proved, while providing a rational for science which could be. Both sides
had to give up something if there was to be a bargain. Ironically, it was the same thing —
certainty. Science could push back its researches and its explanations of the natural order further
and further in time, even to the Big Bang, but there would always be the issue of prima causa
that she doubted would ever go away. Religion could sing the praises of the Creation and fashion
moral rules to live within its bounds, but it could not claim special insight and access to the
supernatural powers of the Creator’s omniscience and omnipotence.
Mosley returned to Palo Alto with a new feeling of a new purpose for herself, for now it
seemed less important that she discover the new, as before, than to make better sense of the old.
Deep inside she felt an overwhelming need to accept that there was a benign principle and
purpose to it all; if not, then the guilt for Clark’s death must either be senseless, or a dull ache
that would never cease its grip on her soul.
She wrote up her researches and conclusions as an essay and published it in the church
journal of the friends who had sought her help. It concluded:
“… Let us stop fighting Darwin and accept him as a fellow traveler in the lands of
Creation. He uncovered God’s means, evolution by natural selection, but not His purpose.
Darwin is necessary to understand what happened after Creation. He knew not — and tells us
not — of why God fashioned man and his world. That was not Darwin’s concern. Nor should it
be ours. The issues of Intelligent Design and Irreducible Complexity and all the rest are moot
and meaningless. If one does not want to believe as the Darwinists believe, then don’t. It is your
god-given right, as to believe in evolution is theirs. However, I do not recommend trying to best
them at their own game. You will lose.
“For, do we not ride in cars, trains and planes? Do we not talk on telephones anywhere
and everywhere? Listen to radios in our cars, watch television beamed to our homes from
satellites? Do we not use computers to typeset and print our bibles? Yet, not one of these
marvels and devices, and thousands more, were ever mentioned in any holy texts of any religion
at any time. God gave us the means to provide for ourselves; do not ask for more.
“It is enough to know and accept that the Creator started it all and we shall know why
only when we join Him. That will be our salvation and reward. Both sides must relent and give
up something precious — a godless universe for the one, the poetic nonsense of Genesis for the
other — to achieve a faith based on reason, on what God made us, we reasoning beings. For, if
we cannot trust the god who formed us — through the miracle of His evolution — who can we
trust?”
Her essay caused a scandal among the congregation.
The academics said this was all self-evident, old and established and worn, and wasn’t it
better just to let this particular sleeping dog keep on sleeping? And there were elements within
the body faithful who did not like the idea of absolving Darwin, not after a century and more of
cursing him. Nor did they like losing the franchise on God’s thinking. Mosley tried to explain
that hers was hardly the final word on the subject, but she felt that it was as tightly honed as she
and Ockham’s Razor could make it. It offered intellectual and emotional peace instead of
endless rancor and warfare.
The tempest might have rested there, in its Palo Alto teapot, but a Stanford parishioner
posted Mosley’s text to an Internet discussion group on the newly emerging World Wide Web,
where it found a larger audience. From there, email spread it further, like a virus in a very rich
medium. Then the mainstream media discovered the essay and jumped on it. The press loved
contradictions and here was a scientist talking like a saint, a Nobel scientist, at that; her
credentials were impeccable. She delivered arguments which were logical deductions, not
religious rant, just as her mathematical proofs had been. Only now the subject was God, not
theoretical and abstract, but accessible to anyone.
She was seen as a new champion of religious thought who gave a rationalistic voice to
arguments in favor of a rational faith, a new apostle for the true believers on both sides. It was as
if something in the back of Hannah Mosley’s mind would not, could not, let go of its training,
and she reentered the public awareness as an advocate and spokeswomen for religious
considerations, primarily Christian, though her conclusions were useful to any religion.
Mosley’s new celebrity turned her into an must-have speaker — on both sides; for she
could speak of matters of faith and the limits of its universal mysteries, then speak of scientific
discovery and its need to recognize the limits beyond which was the province of faith. She was
sought after by Sunday morning news programs, as a participant in discussion panels on radio,
and by hosts of late-night entertainment shows that sought to improve their ratings. Now in her
sixties, she appeared matronly, a soothing, sympathetic voice of reason and understanding. One
night she was introduced as “God’s Great Grandma” by a comedian host and was thereafter in
even greater demand. To balance her new pop culture celebrity, Mosley received accolades of a
more serious sort. She was awarded that year’s Templeton Prize, founded by a Twentieth
Century American expatriate knighted by the Queen of England; a fabulously wealthy
stockbroker who — despite his success, or because of it — was captivated by the great questions
of existence, of faith and of science; the Prize was given to one whose work affords “progress in
religion” and whose thinking provides for “discoveries and breakthroughs to expand human
perceptions of divinity and to help in the acceleration of divine creativity.” The prize was
annually awarded at Buckingham Palace by the husband of the Queen, herself the head of the
Church of England, and was monetarily worth more than the current Nobel awards. While in
Great Britain, Mosley was invited to give the next year’s Gifford Lectures in Scotland, founded
by a Nineteenth Century Scots jurist who bequeathed his fortune to the establishment of a series
of annual papers, to be given at his native country’s then four major universities, to explore what
he called “Natural Theology,” by which he meant not a great oxymoron, but theological belief
supported by science, not miracles. The Gifford Lectures had grown to become a most
prestigious honor in academia and included among its honorees such writers and thinkers as Paul
Tillich, Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arnold Toynbee and Carl Sagan.
But back on American terra firma both extreme ends of the belief spectrum denied and
decried Mosley’s efforts and condemned her infidelity. Atheists claimed that she produced no
proof of a divinity. Fundamentalists claimed that she castrated the Creator. But being the
extremes, they were few, and seen by the masses in the center as being unreasonable and, well,
extreme. The mainstream adored and accepted her, God’s Great Grandma. Only one voice
neither applauded Mosley, nor accepted her conversion.
Joshua Jordan published a commentary, appropriately in his newspaper’s Sunday edition,
entitled “An Obituary for a Lost Soul.” It read like a dirge and compared Mosley to St. Paul,
post epiphany. Jordan was dubious and not swayed by her transfiguration. He did not attack her
conclusions, but doubted her motives. Why would a mind so committed to reality choose to
champion the unreal. It was certainly possible, he noted, for a Nobel laureate to go off the deep
end; William Shockley’s advocacy of eugenics had demonstrated that all too well. And Leo
Szilard, the true father of the atom bomb whose visionary mind first saw the power of its chain
reaction, gave up physics for biology at the end of his career. But something more was at play
here. Jordan speculated that the death of her husband was instrumental; again, there was
precedent, for had not Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of that epitome of logic, Sherlock
Holmes, taken up spiritualism late in life in the hope of contacting his dead wife? It was all
rather mysterious, and unconvincing. The commentary ended: “Old Saul maybe dead, but this
new Pauline is no Saint.”
Mosley’s supporters urged that she file a libel suit again Jordan. She told them to forget
it. She also told them to do as Jesus had taught, and intellectually turn the other cheek. She was
admired for her humility, while Jordan was reviled for his cruelty. But deep inside, Mosley was
disturbed and did not want the matter examined too closely; Jordan had stumbled nearer the truth
than she dared admit to anyone, much less herself.

VI.
DIVINE WIND
Sakata’s tone took on a gravity she usually avoided as she asked Agent Wong a question.
“How safe is JJ, really?”
They were sitting at Jordan’s favorite table at Tadich Grill, a short distance from the
cable car terminus at the foot of California Street. Tadich was Old San Francisco. Like Jack’s
and the Galley, it was a relic from the last century that Jordan favored for its patina of history. It
was a tall, narrow room that seemed to go on forever. The tables and booths were old, dark
wood, the table cloths and napkins a stiff, starched white. The cutlery was heavy, the crystal
light. One of its current waiters had first served Jordan nearly thirty years before, and had been a
busboy for ten years before that. Most of the menu had not changed much either, still chops and
steaks, swordfish and abalone and crab when in season, served with fresh lemon and pools of
drawn butter, a weight-watcher’s secret fantasy. Like John’s Grill on Ellis or the long-gone
Hoffman Grill on Market, Tadich had been a haunt of both Dashiel Hammet and Herb Caen,
each in his time. A sampling of the city’s elite from all professions could be found there daily;
politics, sports, business, the arts. They came not to be noticed, but to enjoy a hearty meal in
good company in a setting proper to both. No reservations were taken for lunch, so the line
began forming at 11:30 every morning, and by noon the place was always packed. For certain
regulars, their tables or booths were held automatically unless released. So religious were the
steady clientele that a table seldom went unclaimed.
Jordan had asked Sakata to meet with Wong to call off his security dogs; they had
severely cramped his freedom of movement. He could no longer take his daily cable car to the
office, but was met each morning by a chauffeured town car with an accompanying FBI agent.
At the station he was handed off to a company security man who, to Jordan, had all the joi de
vivre of a golem. Jordan had tried to talk Wong out of the restrictions, but to no avail. He then
sent Sakata to bargain for better terms.
Jeni Sakata was a product of the School of Broadcast Journalism at U.C.L.A., talented at
keeping her boss on schedule and handling his overflow research. She wore her jet dark hair,
with matching streaks of silver along each temple, in a long, straight, layered lengths, accented
with the traditional cross-cut bangs of Japanese styling, which in turn accented her eyes like
stark ebony framing around a delicate Oriental print. Large bangle loops hung from her ears
beneath the dark hair that threw glints of light at random. She was dressed in black jeans over
black cowboy boots and a black scoop-neck sweater, offset by a bright pink scarf that wrap-ped
around her neck and down her shoulders; from beneath the scarf a small tattoo of a pink rose on
her left breast would occasionally peak through, to Wong’s distraction. Sakata was in her late
twenties but looked like she had just left high school. That tended to cause some to
underestimate her, to their later regret. Lee Wong did not want to be one of them.
He drew in a breath and held it as a cable car clanked past the front window nearby, on
its way back towards Nob Hill. The intense look she gave him warranted honesty; he knew that
if he tried any other tact he could forget any future social possibilities.
“Unfortunately,” he said finally, letting the breath out slowly, “in a society that’s as open
as ours, no one is really safe, not if someone sets their mind to it. In the previous century five
presidents were shot at. Two escaped harm, one was wounded and two were killed. These were
supposedly the best protected people on the planet. Yet, assassins got close enough to each to
shoot.”
“I appreciate the frankness, Lee, even if it doesn’t reassure me.”
“It’s not that bad … Jeni. We control the circumstances. The auditorium will be swept
repeatedly. We’ll have dogs sniffing everything and everyone. Anyone not FBI or security will
be searched. Everyone on the security detail will vetted thoroughly and an enough of the rest
will be known to others that any stranger will stand out to someone. The likelihood of getting
something past us will be remote.”
“But not impossible.”
“As close to impossible as I can make it. You wouldn’t want to shop on the difference.
Besides, this is a debate, not a duel. And Mosley is in her seventies. She’s not a radical, never
even protested anything, as far as we can determine. She’s certainly not a religious fanatic. Quite
the opposite, from what I’ve read of her works published over the last ten years or so.“
“Why did she accept when all the others JJ suggested ran like scared kids?” Sakata asked,
sipping from her wine glass. She looked at her watch on her left wrist, a delicate band of gold
with the face flush with the surface so that it looked like a sleek, modernist bracelet. Jordan
would be along soon.
“I have no idea,” Wong laughed. “This whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense. I give
your boss credit for bravery, but not a lot for common sense. These are not times to take threats
lightly. But he acts like it’s all a private joke.”
“Everything is, to him.” Sakata mused. “He doesn’t see life like an ordinary person. I’ve
tried to research his background, but it’s like there’s a shadow over it that makes things hard to
see. Everything I Googled was from the last twenty years or so.”
“I know what you mean. His early records are sealed, did you know that? What you see
is not what you get.”
“Like magic?”
Wong’s eyes widened a touch and a small swelling formed in his throat tangling his
tongue into an awkward silence. He remembered the snicker from the shadows of the studio.
“Where did you pick it up?” Jeni asked.
Wong waited a moment, his fingers absently playing across his lip, searching for the
moustache that was no longer there. Sakata smiled at his unconscious act.
“At Cal,” he said after a bit. “I got tired of gadgets like Rubik’s Cube. Computer geeks
are endlessly playing games or solving brainteasers like crosswords and Sudoku, magic squares
or crafts like origami, things that take logic and analysis. The mind’s always restless. One day in
my freshman year I saw a guy in the student union, a grad, doing magic tricks to impress some
first year girls, things like plucking off an earring and putting it in their pockets, or other places
more interesting. I asked him about it and he gave me a website to check, Magic.org. They sell
everything from beginner’s tricks to professional stuff. I found I had a knack for it and really
enjoyed the reactions from people.”
“Ever visit the Magic Castle in L.A.?”
“No. Used to be you needed an invitation from a member and that only pros can join.”
“Not any more,” Sakata countered. “When this is over, I’ll call a friend of mine and get
you in. Just don’t sit on any bar stools.”

“I’ve heard about them,” he laughed. “And Irma the piano player. You know what’s
funny? Magic helps me in my work.”
“How?”
“Misdirection. That’s what sleight-of-hand is all about. Getting the audience to look at
one hand while you deal with the other. That guy I mentioned? At Cal? I sat across from him as
close as I am to you now and watched him perform card tricks. I never once saw how he did it.
Wouldn’t tell me either. The magician’s code. Never explain a trick. You gotta learn it to find
out. When I started at the agency on cyber crimes, it helped to think like a magician. What’s
being done on the surface is meant to distract from what was really being done underneath.
Amazing how ingenious the bad guys can be, just like magicians.”
Wong reached over to put his hands on Sakata’s as they framed her wine glass. She was
surprised by his motion. His left hand then moved swiftly upward toward her right ear, nicked
her dangling earring, and in a sweeping flourish returned, presenting Sakata with a silver dollar.
Her eyes grew wide.
“But this isn’t computer fraud,” Sakata protested finally. “It’s not like they’ve stolen his
identity.”
“No, not yet,” Wong admitted. “But they could, if they really wanted to harm JJ, not just
kill him. Hell, they’re adept enough they could do more damage that way. That’s what’s screwy
about this group. They’re not acting like true terrorists. Oh, by the way, is this yours?”
Wong handed over Sakata’s watch.
“You son of a bitch —“ she laughed, flustered. She looked at her watch in his hand and
then at Wong. Sakata let her face relax before she spoke. “Just how does a true terrorist act?”
“They destroy anyone or anything that disagrees with them, then brag about it in any and
every way they can.”

“They threatened JJ and Toni.”
“But just threatened, not attacked. Emails and childish notes with talcum powder, for
God’s sake. It’s like they’re playing. They could have planted a sniffer or Trojan horse to screw
up the station’s systems again, but didn’t, at least as far as we can tell. They’re damned good
with computers, I’ll give ‘em that. They zombied a helluva lot of machines into a botnet to
launch their attack on the station, then cover their tracks. But I can’t figure what they’re after.”
“The Texas judge. They killed him.”
“That was most likely an accident,” Wong mused. “They sent a scorpion through the
mail, probably as a symbolic threat. To most people the species isn’t lethal. There’s no way they
could have known the judge was allergic to that particular venom. I doubt the judge even knew.
Besides, they never claimed credit for it. Never made anything of it.”
“Wasn’t it a warning?”
“Terrorists usually have political arms or fronts that do all the talking. These guys have
published no manifesto, or claimed a utopia they aim to build. I quite can’t put my finger on it.
They haven’t bragged about their work so far, the way terrorist groups usually do, for the sense
of legitimacy public notice gives. It’s as if they have no agenda. And this thing with Mosley, I
just don’t know. She was chosen by JJ whom they threatened. There’s no other connection that I
can find.”
“That’s the fun of it, Lee,” Jordan laughed as he approached the table.
“I’m glad you find it funny,” Wong answered as he rose to greet Jordan, who then sat
down next to Sakata. “The rest of us don’t.”
“Relax, kids,” Jordan chuckled. “It’s all going according to plan, except for your bully
boys crowding my life just now.” He looked Sakata. “Any luck?”
Sakata shrugged. “Sorry…”

Jordan looked from Sakata to Wong and wondered.
“What plan?” asked Wong.
“The best way to defuse an idea or ideology is to get people to laugh at it, as my assistant
here keeps reminding me. This debate will be my comedy hour.”
“I doubt that Mosley will see it that way,” Sakata said.
“Oh God! I hope not,” Jordan laughed. “I’m dead if she plays it for laughs too. The
technique doesn’t work if both sides know it’s a lark. But if she’s true to character, she’ll be
serious, scholarly, a saintly grandmother with a PhD, a Nobel and a mind like whirling razor
blades.”
A waiter appeared unbeckoned with Jordan’s drink. He took a sip and nodded his assent.
“I’ve been scanning your correspondence files,” Wong said. “Interesting reading.”
“Like Oscar Wilde, ‘I’ve nothing to declare but my genius.’ ”
“Which rubs quite a few people the wrong way.”
“Part of the job description. Keeps things interesting. Find anything useful?”
“No, most of it is standard bloviating.”
“On whose part?”
Wong ignored the remark, enjoying a secret pleasure at besting Jordan if only in a tiny
way; he began to understand why some resented Jordan while most admired him. “I limited the
search to religious topics. A couple of the more strident possibilities stood out, but most proved
harmless. We investigated them and found nothing illegal or threatening. Just the normal
Internet venting.”
“You said ‘most’ twice now…”
“Well, there was one, but it doesn’t make sense. Do you recall a Judith?”
Jordan thought a moment. “You mean the Maccabean mouse?”

“Yes, Judith Maccabeus. A strange handle. You two had a consistent conversation going
for over a month last year, then it stopped abruptly.”
“Well, she was typical of many young evangelicals. The only world they know is the
Bible. She was worried about Armageddon and the Antichrist and not being worthy. Did
missionary work in Africa somewhere. Terribly discouraged by that. I suggested other ways to
look at religious history than just one book. Seemed harmless enough. Why does she stand out?”
“Not for what she said, but for what I couldn’t find.”
“Like what?”
“Where she went. She dropped off the map, so to speak.”
“How’s that again?”
“Well, I traced her back to a religious social website. She was part of chat room devoted
to heavy-duty End of Days stuff. I gathered they expected it soon.”
“Nothing unusual about that. A lot of evangelicals, especially the more fundamentalist
types, expect the Second Coming to be in their lifetimes. That’s they live for. Only, they get
disappointed when it doesn’t happen. Most never learn the lesson that should teach. So the myth
lives on. What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. She and the whole group, six others, suddenly stopped frequenting the
chat room. Others took it over, but there wasn’t the same fervor.”
“Where did they go?”
“Don’t know that either. I couldn’t find a trace of them anywhere else on the Net. That’s
unusual. And that’s what’s curious about Judith and the rest of her chat friends. It takes a good
deal of computer know-how to hide on the Internet, the kind demonstrated by the Last Crusade.”
“Well,” Jordan laughed, “Judith’s no hacker. She seemed a scared little mouse, tall,
skinny, the Plain-Jane-type that’s always dreaming but never doing.”

“How did you know she’s skinny or tall?” Sakata asked. “Did you actually see her?”
“Once, at a book signing in D.C.” Jordan thought for a minute. “I autographed her copy
of my book. Funny, now that I think of it, her eyes had the look of a deer caught in headlights
when she read what I wrote.”
“What was that?” Wong asked.
“She was all nervous and embarrassed, like she had stage fright, you know, trying to talk
to someone famous. She stuttered a little. Called herself Judy, not Judith. Then I recognized her
voice. We’d talked via Skype now and then. I didn’t want to embarrass her more, so I wrote a
little note ‘… to Judy the other Maccabean.’ That’s when her eyes got wide. I gathered she was
overwhelmed that I recognized who she was.”
“Then what?”
“Then I had another book to sign. It was a long line. My pen actually ran out of ink.”
“She never contacted you again?”
“No, not in any way. Funny, that is strange. Most people who get special treatment from
a celebrity either abuse the connection in a show of pride, or cherish it and only make contact
when something important warrants it. But they always test the link, just to make sure it’s there
still. That said, I could never think, in my wildest imagination — which can get pretty wild — of
Judith as a terrorist. A nun maybe ...”
“Have you followed up on her?” Sakata asked Wong.
“I’m trying. We’ve subpoenaed the website for her records, but they’re stonewalling us.
Invoking the First and Fourth Amendments.”
“Let me guess,” Jordan interrupted. “Religious freedom, freedom of speech, and
unreasonable searches. Right?”
“They’re also claming freedom of assembly,” Wong shrugged. “Our lawyers are
debating their lawyers in Federal court. I think we’ll prevail, but it’s going to take time.
Christian terrorism doesn’t impress Homeland Security as much as Muslim terrorism. But with
this Judith at the bookstore, there must be thousands of Judiths or Judys in D.C, tens of
thousands in the Virginia-Maryland area. It will take some time to narrow things down to find
her again. And that’s assuming her real name is Judith and that it’s not just a Internet handle.”
“Well, you now know the full extent of my dealings with Judith the Maccabean. I’ve got
bigger fish to fry, one Dr. Mosley.”
Sakata looked at Jordan with curious eyes. A question had been puzzling her from the
beginning. “Did you meet Mosley too? You talk as if you know her.”
“Never had the pleasure,” Jordan replied with exaggeration. “But I wrote her obituary
once, when she fell off that horse.”
“What!? I didn’t find—” Sakata began, but was cut short by Jordan.
“Her Saint Paul act. Child, didn’t you ever read the Bible?”
“No. I had too much else to read in school.”
“ ‘One cannot vanquish one’s opponents if one doesn’t understand why they are
opponents,’ if I may quote myself.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“This was years before you came on board. Back in my first years as a cocky columnist.
Come to think of it, you were probably in kindergarten. And you, Lee, were maybe in third or
fourth grade.”
“I checked the archives,” Sakata protested. “There was nothing there about Mosley that
you wrote.”
“I found nothing either,” offered Wong.
“Hah! You both checked only the online archives, didn’t you?”
“Umm, yes …”
“O! Ye children of technology. If you’d done a proper search of the newspaper morgue,
you might have found it. The electronic archive only goes back to the mid-‘90s.”
Sakata’s cheeks turned crimson. Wong secret pleasure dissolved. Jordan looked from one
to the other and mentally shrugged his shoulders.
“When Mosley abandoned science and took up her new career as an apologist for the
faithful, I wrote a column comparing her to Saint Paul. ‘An Obituary for a Lost Soul’ and
subtitled ‘Acts of the Newest Apostle.’ Her conversion seemed just as biblical, ‘… as if the
great, explosive light of revelation had knocked her off her high horse and showed her the true
path.’ ”
Jordan closed his eyes to see the words in his mind. “I finished ‘… but when that
emotional flash fades away, the path she walks will be one in darkness. We all of us struggle to
find our way in this world, and our reason is the lamp we shine upon our questions, our
problems, our uncertainties … and our tragedies. There are no guarantees that we will always
find useful truth. But extinguish reason’s lamp and we are left with only faith and fantasy, myth
and magic, by which to stumble about in the murky shadows of ignorance. To accidentally lose
one’s way can be forgiven. To consciously misplace it cannot. Old Saul may be dead, but this
new Pauline is no saint.’ ”
***
Jeni Sakata would not give her thesis advisor the pleasure of seeing her cry.
“You have no right,” she said, her face intense and intent on not showing any weakness.
No trace of any emotion creased her brows, not even the deep, cold anger that she barely kept in
check.
“And you have no right to attack my career,” Peter Menendez said smoothly, despite not
seeing the reaction he anticipated. He expected tears, that had always worked in the past; reduce
your audience to whimpering and they were yours.
“This isn’t about you,” Sakata said evenly, fighting to keep her voice level. Her future
lay in Menendez’s hands and he was about to strangle it.
“You slandered my profession. What am I supposed to do, thank you?”
Peter Menendez sat behind his desk as if it and he were the focus of studio cameras. He
was the polished product of his highly polished industry and never let anyone forget it. He was
dressed in a tan, double-breasted suit of Italian styling; he let people think it was a designer
piece, although the label was of a house brand for a moderately-priced national department store
chain that was used to compete with Armani and Cerruti. His natural genetic coloring gave him
the healthy look of tanned skin and youthful vigor that Anglos envied, but without the beach life
or sports or tanning salons they required to get it. His hair was still dark with only slight
highlights of grey at the temples; he had stopped touching it up when he neared sixty so as to
appear more avuncular, as Walter Cronkite had been, as if everyone’s favorite uncle really read
the nightly news. He was proud that his face did not yet need a lift. In L.A and in broadcasting,
that was a point of honor.
Menendez had begun his career in the Sixties at a small Hispanic station in San Diego, a
third generation descendant of Imperial Valley braceros, a rooky reporter fresh out of college
with a BA and a lot of ambition, the first of his family to attend, much less finish, university. His
handsomeness was a natural for the camera. He made his mark with a story about the efforts of
his family and many other Chicanos to recover money deducted from the Mexican laborers’
wages for supposed savings accounts under the original Braceros Program begun during World
War II; a plan intended to bring a few hundred experienced agricultural workers into California
while the gringo boys were away at war ended up a flood of fifty-thousand laborers, skilled and
unskilled, by war’s end. That many people meant a great deal of money was involved; as always,
a temptation to some. Menendez’s family never saw any of the promised money, but their story
made their grandson its beneficiary.
The Hispanic market in Southern California continued to grow and become more
prosperous, and therefore, a more desirable television market; his fortunes increased as well. In
the Seventies, Menendez was picked up by a mainstream Los Angeles station, but soon
graduated beyond covering only Hispanic news, showing a talent for the slippery field of
California politics. Three years in the state capital of Sacramento reporting, along with its usual
follies, the exploits of one of the state’s most illustrious and powerful Assembly Speakers — an
old-time San Francisco attorney of impeccable sartorial taste and seemingly infinite connections
— taught Menendez the art of proper presentation; it was then that he began wearing only
double-breasted suits and overcoats over monogrammed shirts graced by French cuffs fastened
by gold links, like Edward R. Murrow from a generation before who wore only tailored outfits
from London’s Saville Row.
When L.A.’s ever-shifting demographics signaled it was time, Menendez was brought
back as weekend anchor for an independent station that was a West Coast outpost in a newly
forming cable network. There his career might have played out as a local celebrity to both the
Anglo and Hispanic communities, perhaps rising to weekday anchor on the prime-time slot until
retirement. But three revolutions had been brewing simultaneously in the broadcast industry
which would affect the nightly news, changes heaven-sent for Menendez.
First, in the Seventies, technology gave birth to cable television, a source of
programming that did not depend on over-the-air broadcasting. Coaxial cable could reach many
more homes than rabbit-ear or rooftop antennas with better, more stable pictures in Southern
California’s mountainous landscape. When cable TV exploded on the scene, so too did the
number of channels that could be delivered to American homes. The new medium vastly
increased the potential for advertising revenue, even though each individual channel reached a
fraction of what the traditional national networks and their affiliates delivered from New York
or L.A. Local advertising became exceptionally affordable to local advertisers, producing an
almost endless parade of car dealers and furniture stores on TV morning, noon and night.
Second, the growth of cable outlets required something to fill all that time; there were
only so many reruns of network shows available, and film libraries were limited to old black and
white movies and shorts from the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. Hollywood found additional life
for its creative and production crews as they began churning out “concepts” and “story lines” to
fill the programming void. But the great number of new cable outlets diluted the talent pool,
watering down the high-brow network offerings to low-brow spin-offs and blatant knock-offs.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in reporting the news. For legitimacy, every cable station
at first had to have a news staff, and advertising now had to pay for that expensive staff and the
journalistic infrastructure it required. Network news programs featured the last of the Morrow
Boys and their imitators who had been molded and nurtured by Ed Murrow in the earliest days
of the nightly news; soon they would be retired or dead and their replacements needed.
Suddenly, oppor-tunities might be available to those who only dreamed of national status, like
Peter Menendez, but never expected to achieve it.
Then came the last revolution. In the Eighties, the FCC of a friendly administration in
Washington looked favorably upon consolidation in the broadcast industry. Restrictions on the
number television stations a company could own, along with radio stations and newspapers in a
given market, were relaxed. They became “media outlets” with potential advertising streams that
caught the attention of corporations with quarterly earning reports always in need of bolstering.
Bit by bit, market by market, station by station, new national networks were formed based only
on cable like CNN, and with them came the twenty-four news cycle, every hour of which had up
to eighteen minutes of advertising to sell. What was a trend of the Eighties became the gold rush
of the Nineties as an even friendlier Congress eased the rules more, and the separate media
morphed into corporate empires ruled by distant, often unrelated corporate masters.
Los Angeles, like the tri-state New York area, had an enormous population which spent a
growing percentage of its life in front of what was truly becoming the boob tube. It slowly
wrested creative control of programming away from the East Coast. For like New York, it was
filled with media consultants with impressive MBAs who saw the obvious, but who knew how
to repackage it with high-priced gloss and a verbose smoothness: to attract a bigger audience, the
news had to be bigger, to become more entertaining. Thus was born “happy” news, filled with
flashing smiles of gorgeous teeth; coiffed, over-sprayed hair that permitted no stray strands; and
newscasters who could deliver the news with a chuckle, a knowing wink, and casual banter —
especially female newscasters who could flash a bit of the glam upon which Hollywood had
once built an empire, and thus be appealing to both sexes. Broadcast journalism became more
news readers than news reporters, and a highly-rated news hour could bring a station and its
corporate parent a bonanza of advertising income; for the news show ratings from Nielson and
Arbitron became the standard by which all other network or station programming ad rates were
set.
Menendez’s star rose brightly in this changing firmament; he was handsome, talented,
experienced. Though he never cracked the traditional networks, he attained through cable a
degree of national prominence he never expected to reach. He joined one of the growing twenty-
four hours news networks as the main west-coast anchor and was able to ride every disaster,
natural or man-made, to fame. California’s constant earthquakes, annual fires and seasonal
floods were his reportorial bread and butter, augmented by the all too frequent multi-car wrecks
or airplane crashes that plagued Southern California. His early training as a reporter allowed him
to weave the bits and pieces of incomplete coverage into a coherent whole that flowed smoothly
into portions that could be easily separated by commercials. Directors loved him; corporate
executives even more. He reached the summit of his profession on the day the University of
California at Los Angeles offered him a guest lectureship and mentorship in its School of
Broadcast Journalism. But after he met Jeni Sakata, the bubble that had been his career began to
deflate.
A child of Southern California culture, Sakata had grown up in L.A. and thought the
influence of Hollywood’s celebrity mentality quite normal; didn’t every little girl of moderate
beauty, some talent and an at least one ambitious parent want to be a star in the movies or on
TV? But as she got older and suffered through high school, Sakata, through a flash of insight too
often ignored in favor of the culture’s glitz, had managed to set her head more straightly on her
shoulders than her beach-loving, mall-prowling, club-hopping girl friends. One day while
shopping, she glimpsed, like a religious vision, that life wasn’t just the moment at hand, but also
many more days ahead, in an uncharted future that was hers and hers alone to navigate.
She had seen three girls who had been two years ahead of her in high school, who ran
together and were known then as the BeeBees — the Bitchin’ Babes — who now spent their
days as beauticians at Beverly Center, the only mall in America — in the world — to have its
own tourist bureau and zip code. One an Anglo, one an Asian, one a Latino, they had been taken
as the epitome of cool in their high school culture; envied and worshiped and feared by lesser
girls. Now they spent their lives doing make-overs, teaching beauty tips to overly made up
teenagers, and schilling extravagant cosmetic products to aging women in their 30s. The
BeeBees still looked lovely in their perfectly paired lipstick and eye shadow and nail polish,
their hair coiffed in the latest styles; still fabulous on the outside, but, Sakata could see now,
empty on the inside. They grazed the tabloids of pop-culture for the most up-to-date gossip, used
their cell phones to spread any up-to-the-minute tidbits of social blather, but never read anything
else. Their language was frozen in senior year, a patter littered with too many conjunctions, a
word whose meaning they no longer knew. Whenever a literate customers asked a question or
made a casual statement using words of more than three syllables, the BeeBees’ faces went as
blank as their minds. All that they learned in high school was how to become — and remain —
popular. Mathe-matics was still a wasteland to them; it was enough to know how to use the cash
register to make change for the infrequent cash purchase, by reading the digital answer from the
register’s screen. In school anything and everything was considered a fashion accessory,
including boyfriends; there was always a line of willing male students eager to be with the
BeeBees. Now the highlight of their lives was the happenstance of servicing a movie star or
some other L.A. celebrity the mall constantly attracted. They had nothing to look forward to but
more of the same, until time diminished their one asset, their looks, and they were shunted to the
back counters devoted to servicing old women in their 40s and 50s also trying to reverse, or at
least retard, time’s cruelty.
Sakata saw herself in the mirror the BeeBees held up to her life and through its reflection
examined more closely the culture about her, the world she had shared with them; it was indeed
a pretty picture, but shallow; filled with petty content and little meaning; constant action with
little or no purpose other than to pass the time and look hip while doing it. A girl who had
transferred to Los Angeles from Chicago — and was derided by the BeeBees as a country hick
— once told her that back home Los Angeles was scoffed at as a place where one pulled back
the fake glitter to reveal the real tinsel underneath. Sakata saw in her epiphany of the BeeBees
that if her life was to have purpose, if her days were to be charted and not random repetitions of
the same, she had to do the charting, and do it now.
She worked harder and got her grades back above average where they had been in grade
school. In the process, she found she enjoyed creative pursuits, particularly film and video. On
graduation, she got into U.C.L.A on the recommendation of a part-time boss, the owner and
chief director of a commercial film company headquartered in the San Fernando Valley; he
taught a course in advertising film techniques at U.C.L.A. one semester a year. She attended
classes in the morning and shot up the San Diego freeway to the Valley and then across on the
Ventura to Burbank in time to work after lunch hour, which in Los Angeles in the film industry
could often be three hours long; she had a great deal of time to talk with the production people
while waiting to be assigned work.
Sakata found herself in the midst of an industry that was rapidly modernizing and falling
under the spell of technology; while film was still the preferred medium to shoot, the computer
had replaced the moviola and film stand for editing, and through computer generated graphics,
was fast becoming the principle creative cinema tool in itself. This was an education not yet to
be gotten in any school. As a production assistant, she took copious notes for the company’s
directors and producers. She contacted and scheduled the subcontracted film crews, from gaffers
to stagehands to costumers to makeup artists, film editors, sound editors, sound effects
specialists, jingle composers, music arrangers, photography directors, casting directors, lighting
directors, prop masters, set designers, recording studios, film studios, electricians, plumbers,
carpenters, caterers, talent agents, and the most full fun of all, animal wranglers; a whole circus
train full of craftspeople dedicated to movie magic. Five half-days a week, she was in the middle
of that magic and helped bring it to life. Every commercial was a mini-movie, scaled in
production to its thirty, fifteen or ten seconds of air time, but requiring many hours over many
days of pre-production, then actual production, and finally post-production. The rare sixty-
second commercial, all but dead in advertising but occasionally rediscovered for its effect by
younger admen, was like a full-length feature. Her part-time status did not often allow her to
attend an actual shoot, which usually started in early morning; but the fact that certain tendencies
of the production process often involved long evenings after normal business hours, she often
got to witness just how TV’s endless flow of commercials got put together.
And yet, something was missing for Sakata. Heaven knew it was fun to be a part of it,
even a bit glamorous, if only as a glorified gopher. The work was certainly productive and, for
commercials, creative. But it wasn’t important. No matter how much time and love and money
got put into it, a TV spot was still just a TV spot, and would only ever be.
Sakata concentrated on her liberal arts requirements at school until she could find what
she wanted to spend her life doing. Documentary films intrigued her for a while. She thought of
producing a history of the concentration camps — politely called internment camps by the
government — her grandparents had been forced to live in at the beginning of the Second World
War; but her grandparents had since long gone to join their ancient ancestors and the subject
seemed remote to her. Sakata’s parents had been born a decade after the war’s end, so the
shameful saga had not been a constant factor in growing up the way it was for some of her
friends. An only child and Sansei, third generation Japanese in America, Sakata had never
thought of herself so much as a hyphenated Japanese-American, but simply an Angelino who
was most certainly not a Valley Girl, like too many of the mall rats in high school. Besides, she
soon realized that documentaries lacked the sense of immediacy that commercials had; a rapidly
approaching deadline — she had noticed both in herself and in film people as a genus — was a
great spur to creativity. Industrial films could be imaginative in execution, but were deadly dull
in content. That left the movie business — or television. Both required large commitments of
time for each project, but they could be creative and thus give her a sense of pride and
productivity.
Then, at 4:31 a.m. one chilly January morning in her sophomore year, the Northridge
Earthquake shook her world and tossed it on end, along with much of Southern California.
The quake was centered in the San Fernando Valley to the north, but literally knocked
her out of her bed in her small lodgings not far from campus in Westwood. Damage was
extensive throughout the near L.A. basin. Sections of several freeways collapsed and the
backlash shut the remaining highways to only essential emergency traffic. All classes at all
schools of any level were suspended as greater Los Angeles — an assembly of sub-towns
requiring endless commuting by hide-bound commuters used to just about any indignity —
ground to a halt. Fires raged in the Valley. Gas mains burst as water mains went dry, a deadly
combination first observed in San Francisco in 1906. It was impossible for Sakata to reach work
even if the offices had been able to open the next day; certainly no one would be thinking of TV
commercials for a while anyway. There was nothing to do but watch the tube and see how the
newsrooms, local and national, handled the story, for there was nothing else on television, nor
would be for the next few days. Crisis mode was in effect in the vast wasteland, ironically
demonstrating to Sakata why it never should have become that.
An amazing balancing act she never really appreciated before played out on the TV
screen. The news sources all worked valiantly to provide needed information to the millions of
locals cut off from much of their daily lives, yet conveyed the drama and tragedy of the quake to
the many millions more outside of California and the West Coast who had never experienced
such an event. The first few hours were the crucial hours. Sakata found herself mesmerized. The
news was gathered by reporters in fits and starts, then delivered by the anchors piecemeal as it
filtered in. But it was the process of getting the data — the facts and tidbits and pictures that
gave shape and depth to the story — of analyzing it all and turning it into human interest news
— which fascinated her. Sakata began to imagine the cart-wheels being turned by the production
people, what miracles of imagination were solving problems not often faced in a lifetime. An
second epiphany struck her right between the eyes. She was watching her future , not on screen,
but behind it.
Peter Menendez had stood out in those first hectic days of the earthquake. His face never
seemed to be gone from the camera for long. Over three days and nights he reported the news as
Los Angeles came to grips with its disaster, and the disaster became the normal background for
living. During the midnight hours he caught what sleep he could so that whenever he was on air,
he portrayed confidence and authority. He was but one of a legion of journalists and their
production support, both in broadcast and print, who had struggled against incredible odds and
mangled infrastructure to deliver the news. But he became one of the most memorable. Many
honors came his way afterwards, tributes to his long career and this its crowning achievement;
the two he savored most were a Peabody Award and the sinecure at U.C.L.A.
Sakata felt honored when Menendez was assigned as advisor for her senior thesis project.
He suggested possible subjects and opened doors throughout Los Angeles for her. Sakata got to
see the business on the inside, as she had in advertising production. She worked part-time at
Menendez’s station, watching and confirming what she had imagined in the aftermath of the
quake. As her senior year began, most of her course work was finished. All that remained was
the thesis.
She knew it would be about broadcast news, but which aspect eluded her. It could not be
about production alone, for that was a constantly evolving technology which, while fascinating,
was nevertheless just technology. Sakata wanted something more, something worthy, something
human.
She decided to research the business of network news to look for inspiration. U.C.L.A
had a rich archive of television history to explore for understanding the trade. Looking at ancient
kinescopes, literally black and white television screens captured on film by camera attached to
TVs, she was struck by the artlessness of the early medium, compared to modern production
design and techniques. Primitive was hardly the word; the industry was being invented before
her eyes and she couldn’t believe what she saw. As a child of technology, she had assumed that
the news had always been delivered in living color. These old, blurry black and white prints,
even in digital form on DVDs, were almost embarrassing. She began reading histories of the
early industry and thus began to understand its hard learning curve. She contacted the Paley
Museum of Television History in New York for material and, through school accreditation,
gained access to the national archives of the Smithsonian in Washington. Network news had
been born of radio, where words and sounds and music helped the audience create their own
mental pictures of daily and world events; at first it could not compete against Hollywood and its
newsreel companies who squeezed pictures of life and death and pop culture on to the nation’s
movie screens between the featured films, cartoons and the preview trailers. Then, in the early
Fifties, a man came to the medium who understood that, while words were still the instrument of
drama in the news, with key pictures he could juice that instrument with the impact of
lightening. On See It Now Edward R. Murrow left his radio microphone for a seat in front of a
TV camera and gave broadcast journalism a new vision, even though in his heart he felt sound
alone was sufficient, for no one had ever matched Murrow and his voice in tone, phrasing and
effect.
Sakata marveled at the simple but powerful techniques Murrow and his production staff
invented for television, but in reality had just borrowed quietly from the movies. The camera
was placed slightly above the plain of his eyes, so that the viewer seemed to be looking down on
Murrow as he delivered his stories, making it more accessible and personal. The lighting was
subdued, for so often in early television it was a wash of light that flattened the subject being
shown in its glare; with Murrow it became a model of tones and shadows that highlighted his
long, drawn face. Murrow’s attitude was one of relaxed intensity, his legs often crossed as he
leaned toward the camera, casually flicking his cigarette ash into a tray, making the audience a
partner in his information, not just a recipient. The camera would creep dangerously close to his
face at times for impact, but Murrow’s stern yet comforting visage always conveyed confidence.
He rarely raised or inflected his voice, but the emphasis he gave to key words made him seem
like a prosecutor delivering a damning indictment, or a character of Shakespeare in full flower
of speech. But most of all, Sakata saw that Murrow did not invent or influence the news by his
delivery of it, but paid homage to his audience’s intelligence with honest, if ever dramatic,
statement of the facts for them to judge.
Murrow had altered the concept of network news and documentaries for two generations
to come, yet his own time on air barely lasted seven years. Further, his vision, while priceless,
was not without cost; Murrow was forced to endure hosting Person to Person, an embarrassing,
gawky display of celebrity adulation, 1950s-style, that the network and sponsors found
enormously popular. But for all that he dazzled his viewers, Murrow scared the bejeezus out of
those commercial sponsors — as well as his own corporate management — with his
controversial subjects on See It Now, such as the infamous Senator McCarthy whose name
became synonymous with anti-communist witch hunts. In the end, after his main sponsor
deserted him, his weekly show was cut back. Murrow was ultimately forced out, and in leaving
his prominent position atop the industry, he delivered a prescient eulogy on broadcast news, on
the creeping scrim of “entertainment value” which tainted it, and the bald commercialism which
infected its delivery, that stood true to his word long after he had died of lung cancer from the
cigarettes he used to hawk on air.
On a hunch, Sakata cued up images of Murrow on a split screen on her computer with a
cross section of newscasters who followed over the next four decades. Progressively, after those
molded by Murrow’s techniques such as Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, they paled by
comparison. If his technique was artful, his successors’ were artificial, and the more entertaining
and commercial the news became, the more artificial their technique. After months of watching
the various anchors, local and national, she felt like a cultural anthropologist studying the slow
decay of a society’s priesthood wallowing in a parody of its religion teachings. Then it hit her,
both the title of her thesis and the theme of the project: “Art and Artifice in Broadcast
Journalism: From Murrow to Morons.” The script all but wrote itself.
As a theme, Sakata used segments from Murrow’s address to the Radio and Television
News Directors Association, his eulogy on the broadcast business he saw in grave danger of
dying from irrelevance, to set the stage. She began with a quotation from the opening, with
Murrow intoning:
“Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about
fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the
kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in
black and white … evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the
realities of the world in which we live.”
Each point he made became an item in her bill of indictment. Then she used one of
Murrow’s own techniques to best effect in delivering the proof of her thesis; as Murrow had
with Senator McCarthy, she let the newscasters’ own damning images speak for themselves. The
effect was just as devastating.
Decade by decade the corrosion of intellectual integrity in the news business continued in
favor of hype; it became more important to look honest than to be honest, for the stories to
appear intelligent than actually to be intelligent. The effect really became first noticeable in 1960
— not long before Murrow died and his warning became prophecy — as the television industry
and its news departments learned to cover politics; like sporting events, political campaigns and
conventions were live and unpredictable, despite the best efforts of party hacks and campaign
managers. Journalists loaded with the cumbersome equipment of clunky headsets and huge
microphones, wearing radio transmission equipment like backpacks wandered the convention
floors looking for stories, while news anchormen sat on high and tried to make sense of the
orchestrated chaos below them. The unexpected could happen, and when it often did, ratings
soared. The sight of a reporter being hustled away by security guards was always irresistible.
The first televised debate between presidential candidates demonstrated the absolute
importance of image. A heavy five-o’clock shadow could be a damning detail, while a boyish
mop of hair and a youthful smile from a mouth full of gleaming white teeth could be
charismatically appealing. Later in the decade the power of television advertising came into full
play and made image paramount over substance; the placid scene of a little girl counting daisy
petals against the voiceover countdown to the detonation of an atom bomb test turned the 1964
presidential campaign into a referendum on whether extremism in defense of liberty was a vice
or not — and whether the suggestion of one vice-presidential candidate — the former head of
the Strategic Air Command who wanted to bomb the Viet Cong back to the stone age with
nuclear bombs the way he had firebombed the citizens of Tokyo in World War II — was really
best for the country.
Broadcast news producers divined the import of these developments and the direction
they were taking. The viewing public, in poll after poll, professed increasing boredom and
wanted entertainment on their TVs; game shows and quiz shows were extremely popular and
held their attention and boosted network ratings. Over time, the length of stories shrank until
they became barely more than the span of a headline, subhead and lead paragraph in an old
news-paper article. In this the broadcast media were not alone, and often took their direction
from the profitable success of their print cousins. Glossy publications under the banner of news
magazines littered newsstands and supermarket checkout counters across the nation with
celebrity gossip and tattletale tell-alls that sold in the millions of copies, each issue packed with
progressively more pages of profitable advertising than of editorial content. It was only a matter
of time that a changing public taste accepted similar stories on television programs professing to
be news but often offering more in the way of entertaining tidbits than telling details. Little by
little this technique crept onto the nightly news: the untimely death of a young movie starlet, the
latest drug rehab of a famous rock singer, the gambling scandal of a prominent superstar athlete,
the marital misadventures of a promising politician. In time it would reach the ultimate
contradiction: covering the famous simply because they were famous.
Except for the brief period of the lunar landings, the decline was steady. By the time she
reached modern day examples, Sakata found it almost too painful to watch. The stories were
much shorter, the features softer, the celebrity content higher, the entertainment value dominant.
What had been a proud profession was now a grab bag of pretty faces mouthing snippets of
“news” and sound bites both local and national and hardly ever international, mostly with no
depth or analysis, as if the audience was too bored or too busy to pay attention for very long.
Their tactics would in time invade the burgeoning Internet and spawn “info-snacking” where
web-savvy viewers could absorb their news through RSS feeds in entertaining bite-sized morsels
from network websites and from an endless parade of hip bloggers offering more commentary
than information, further eroding the prestige of network news in particular, and journalism in
general, while blurring still further the difference between dull fact and profitable fiction. It was
all there, in black and white and living NTSC color.
Sakata ended her thesis project with a black screen and quotation from Murrow’s News
Directors Association speech with simple, clean text in white, with no music or sound behind it,
just the voice of Murrow recreated by the talented mimicry of an actor whom she had often
booked for TV commercials:
“Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.”
Sakata planned for her initial test film to run only fifteen minutes, like a short story that
would later become a novel. The final project would be maybe forty-five minutes to an hour
long. She used a fellow student in the film school with acting experience and a good, baritone
voice as narrator, and used the mimic to supply Morrow’s voice where needed for contrast, and
used Murrow himself on film where available to suit the subject. Another student proficient at
editorial techniques procured access time to an Avid digital video editing system at the school’s
media center. She called in favors from film stock houses and music libraries to augment the
archival footage. She decided that there would not be an overuse of special effects and exotic
transitions in the editing that marred too many of the projects she had reviewed from the
school’s archives, that made the films look like over-wrought rock videos. Sakata believed as
Murrow and his producers had believed: use the elegance of simplicity to let the subject speak
for and prove itself. It took the first four months of her senior year to complete the test film to
her satisfaction. All she had left to do before starting final production was get her advisor’s
signoff on the thesis and its final script.

Peter Menendez could not bear to look at Sakata, he was so angry. He had read her
outline and synopsis in disbelief, then looked at her test film, and took it as a personal affront.
Everything he held dear in his career she pilloried. Everything about his industry she mocked.
“You aren’t even mentioned,” Sakata pleaded. She had not included Menendez in her
lineup because she did not consider him in any way close to the worst of modern offenders; there
were so many others to select from in New York and Washington. In fact, she had found his
work on the earthquake in the first days admirable, as were so many others, like a refreshing
return to sensibility.
“That’s irrelevant,” Menendez seethed. “To call the industry artificial is to call us all
fakes. There’s no way in hell I’ll approve this.”
“I thought the purpose of the news was to inform and enlighten.”
“This is a hatchet job.”
“How?” Sakata asked in desperate confusion.
“Ed Murrow has no more relevance to today’s business than does Mighty Mouse for
crime fighting.”
“Precisely my point, only in reverse,” she said leaning forward in her chair. She thought
of Murrow’s “Harvest of Shame” exposing the degrading inequities of the bracero program in
California’s agri-business and wondered how Menendez could make such a statement.
“What had been a serious form of presentation is now like a cartoon by comparison,” she
said in level tomes.
Menendez stared at Sakata with puzzled disgust. That was just the kind of turnaround
phrasing technique he once used to employ. “Who are you to say my life’s work is a waste?” he
hissed at Sakata.
“I never said that, never even thought it.” Something was in play here that she could not
understand. Why was he taking it personally?
“Well, you sure showed it!” Menendez was almost screaming, his tone so intense that it
scared her.
“But you weren’t — I didn’t —“ Sakata fumbled for words, trying to comprehend what
he wasn’t saying. None of this made sense. She had not been blind to the possibility that some
would find her subject hit a little too close to home; she had purposely excluded anyone current
from the L.A. broadcast community. Then a flash of a thought hit her like the pulse of an
explosion. Its force blew away the fog of confusion and she understood clearly the single core of
meaning left behind. Calmly, she sat back in her chair and thought how to frame her next words.
“It’s because you’re not in it …” She spoke slowly, evenly, trying not to give the words
an emphasis she did not intend. “It’s because you’re not Murrow … or portrayed like him …”
“Get the hell outta here!” he screamed. Menendez swung his chair around ninety degrees
to look away from her, holding his head and face in one hand.
“I’m sorry …” Sakata started after a brief pause. She began to feel an emotion that
should have been sympathy, but felt more like pity, and he did not deserve that. Then, in the
fading glow of the initial insight she saw that this was the crux of her thesis. Here in small was
its premise she herself had unwittingly demonstrated but not employed: if reality doesn’t
conform to what the public desires, sugar-coat it, disguise it, spin it, and selectively present it.
Whatever you do, don’t bruise their egos, for they might not watch the commercials.
“… but I’m not changing it,” Sakata finished with an urgent sense of pride.
“Then you aren’t graduating, Ms. Sakata,” Menendez said, not looking at her. “At least
not from this school. Take your little puff piece to San Luis Obispo, up to Hearst Castle. They
like this sort of yellow journalism around there.”
“I could protest to the dean.”

“Go ahead,” Menendez laughed as he turned back. “It won’t do any good against forty
years in the trade and a Peabody.”
Jeni Sakata opened her mouth but did not speak. Instead, in resignation, she reached
across the desk and gathered up her work from in front of Menendez, not looking at him, and
walked out. She had a future to think about. There was no part of it here any longer.
Sakata told no one. It was pointless to upset her parents. Friends wondered at her
sullenness, but she kept quiet and to herself as much as possible. To complain would mean to
explain, and right now Sakata felt she owed no one an explanation. Time briefly worked in her
favor and she had a few weeks reprieve as classes paused for Christmas break.
Winter was unseasonably damp and cold in Los Angeles, for the Pineapple Express, one
of the nastier effects of an El Niño, was forming in mid-Pacific, aiming a steady stream of
storms to pummel California with rains that bordered on torrential. Warm fronts rising from
Hawaii in the southwest were meeting up with cold fronts swirling down from the Gulf of
Alaska in the northwest. Their clash would roll over the whole western coast of the continent,
drenching it with cold rain in the lowlands and snow in the mountains. They could last a few
days or as much as a few weeks. By then the rains would become floods and the snows
avalanches. Such was the fun of winter weather in California under an El Niño, almost biblical
in its proportions.
Sakata sat for days in her tiny bungalow in Westwood Village below campus as the
storms followed one on another. The place was small, but in a quiet neighborhood, a guest house
behind a manse that for a time early in the school’s history had housed a long line of deans. The
main house had long ago been subdivided and as used as preferred student housing. She had
been lucky to score the bungalow; she loved its privacy. It was cramped by the accumulated
books and tapes and files of her research, but still cozy and comfortable, like the old sweats she
wore constantly. A small fireplace, converted to gas in the 1970s as a gesture to reducing L.A.’s
perpetual smog, flickered with what little cheer it could muster in front of her sofa bed, closed
now and holding a pile of over-sized pillows to curl up against. A childhood quilt that was a
patchwork of bright colors sheltered her legs and feet, and a cup of hot chocolate warmed her
insides as Sakata thought about her future. Both were welcome antidotes to her sense of
imploding depression. Did she even have a future?
Menendez could block her in any direction she could think of. She could not get around
him at school. He was right; his status was unassailable. And she was sure she’d run into his
interference if she tried to land a broadcast job in Los Angeles; his influence was too pervasive.
It would be wondered about and remarked upon that she did not list him as a reference.
Anywhere in the industry he could be problem; without a degree there was no hope of entry as
the lowest production assistant, and there would be no degree unless she changed her thesis
project. Given his reaction, she would have to start over with a new subject more acceptable.
That she would not do.
Sakata began scanning employment web sites and job boards from her laptop. She could
get work in advertising, if necessary, she thought; Menendez could not reach her there. She had
enough production experience to work in an agency or film house. That would pay the bills,
even if it left her creative needs unmet. But she couldn’t find anything suitable in L.A. or San
Diego. Christmas was not the time to be looking for work; too many companies chose the
holidays to let people go, not take them on. In desperation, she looked at San Francisco, Portland
and Seattle. If there was nothing up north either, she would start working her way east.
Then, just before Christmas she came across a posting on Craigslist in San Francisco for
a PA/Producer — with Joshua Jordan! She stared at it in disbelief. It was the perfect job for her.
And there was no chance in hell she could get it.
Sakata had watched Jordan on the nightly news as part of her research and wanted to
curse him, for he was the living antithesis of what she had been trying to demonstrate. He was
Ed Murrow incarnate, in three-minute installments. His commentaries were precise, concise and
devastating, his words were simple, elegant, unhampered by flashy delivery, yet cutting to the
heart of an issue or argument with the nimble hands of a skillful surgeon. Jordan’s voice and
look were completely different from Murrow’s, but just as effective in their own way. Where
Murrow’s visage always seemed to look grave, Jordan’s face conveyed the convivial confidence
of his convictions. The art was there, but not the artifice. That had posed a problem for her, for
she certainly could not exclude Jordan from her project, but she could also not use too much of
him. She chose one clip to demonstrate that the legacy of Murrow was not completely dead, a
piece on universal heath care, that would serve as the pivot around which to wrap up the work.
Sakata imagined that she was likely to be one among many applying for the job. Her
competition would be slick, polished, expert — and that would be just the students like herself.
Those with actual experience in production would present professionally prepared sample reels
loaded with actual work they had coordinated, backed up by resumes featuring positions at
major stations, along with glowing recommendations. She had just her thesis project and a few
part-time jobs, poor fodder on which to feed hope.
Oh hell, she thought, why not? Might as well to go for broke. She laughed weakly to
herself. The thought seemed appropriate; that phrase had been the motto, discovered in her
research, of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated fighting unit in the Second
World War — over 18,000 individual commendations — comprised almost solely of young
Japanese-American men drawn from Hawaii and the internment camps in California, who by
their heavy and inordinate casualties demonstrated a point of honor and patriotism they should
never have had to make. There was nothing else she could do but send her brief resume and
references to Jordan, along with the project outline and an a DVD of the test film of her senior
thesis. She left in the brief clip of Jordan; either he’d love it — or hate her for a callow attempt
to bribe his ego.
Sakata’s hand had paused over the slot of the mailbox. She could feel that it was sweaty,
even in the rain. She had never quite felt the emotional impact of hope in a simple action like
this before, one that meant so much. She tried to hold onto that hope, to use it as a crutch. But all
that she felt in her chest was the dull despair her mind said was more realistic. She shrugged and
dropped the package into the box and tried not to think about it. She would give it a week before
giving up hope of a reply entirely.
On New Year’s Eve, Sakata sat in her sweats under a favorite Cardigan sweater, recycled
from her father’s closet, in front of the tiny fire, not quite sure whether to laugh or to cry.
Outside in the dark the wind and rain beat at her windows. A sad jazz song was being sung on
the radio by a female jazz great, a story of love gone wrong. The lyrics had no meaning for her,
but the long, sorrowful wail of the saxophone tore at her soul. She had refused all offers to
attend parties. She did not have a steady boyfriend, but rather a shifting collection of casual
friends that dated off and on and occasionally cohabitated among itself. The idea of forced
revelry culminating at midnight mauling held no joy. The campus was deserted for the holidays.
She had told her parents that she was going up to Tahoe to ski and celebrate the New Year; if
they called, it would be on her cell phone and wouldn’t realize the deception. She did not want
to be alone, but she couldn’t stand to be with anyone either. A new year was coming, one that
she did not want to face.
A knock on the front door startled her. The knock soon became a pounding.
“Who the hell —?” she wondered. It had to be one of her friends who’d started partying
too early.
Sakata went to the door and opened it the width of the safety chain. Wind and rain blew
inside and swept across her face, making it difficult to see. “Who is it?” she asked.
A hand thrust itself through the opening and in front of her eyes holding a few sheets of
paper.
“Is this your work?” asked a familiar voice, a male voice.
Sakata took the soggy documents from the hand. They were the synopsis of her thesis.
“This is mine,” the voice said, as the hand withdrew and quickly returned with a folded
up newspaper. Sakata turned it over and saw that it was folded to highlight a column of
commentary.
“Omigod!” Sakata whispered.
“Do you think you could open the door before you start praying?” asked Joshua Jordan.
Sakata yanked the chain from its socket and swung the door open. Jordan stood there in a
pounding rain wearing a soaked trench coat and a soggy Fedora, holding a bottle of champagne.
There was a grin on his face like she had never seen before. He held out the bottle to Sakata.
“This belongs to you,” he said as he swiftly walked inside.
Sakata took the bottle and closed the door before she became more sopping wet than
Jordan.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” Jordan said as he took off his coat and held them up to Sakata. “If
the rest of your script is as good as the synopsis, outline and video, the job is yours.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Sakata stammered as she took the coat and hat and
draped them over the chair near the door. He wore a heavy knit sweater of good wool dyed a
dark green over a white button down shirt and khakis. Around his neck was a deep maroon scarf
tied in Parisian fashion.

“Always. Get used to it, potty mouth,” Jordan said as he undid the scarf and tossed it on
his coat.
“This isn’t real. Jobs don’t get offered this way.”
“Yes, that’s true. They don’t. But isn’t it a lot more fun this way?”
“Oh, for God’s sake …” she stumbled.
“That’s the second time you’ve invoked a deity. For your own sake, don’t make it a
habit.”
“You can’t be serious …”
“Ms. Sakata, I’ve just flown down from San Francisco in one of the worst storms it’s
ever been my misfortune to experience, and driven through a half-flooded freeway from LAX to
get here. That makes me serious.”
“Tell me I’m dreaming … or delirious,” Sakata said as she hugged the damp sweater
around her, bottle still in hand.
“You better hope that I’m not.”
“Come get close to the fire,” she said quickly.
“At last, a sensible suggestion.”
Jordan walked into the room and noted the files, discs and tapes mixed among the books
on tables and the floor. “I think we’ll get along,” he said. “You have the same filing system I
use.”
Sakata pointed Jordan to one end of the couch amid the pillows. She took the other end,
clutching the champagne bottle like an old teddy bear, and stared at him. This may be unreal, she
thought, but the fire seemed warmer and friendly now, and the music on the radio seemed
happier.
“Should I address you as Jennifer or Jeni?” Jordan asked as he patted the over-stuffed
pillows about him.
Sakata just nodded.
“Okay, I choose Jeni. Hope you approve,” Jordan shrugged.
Sakata nodded again.
“Jeni, in the last dozen years I’ve had almost as many assistants and producers. They
were good people, talented kids mostly. They worked hard and kept me happy. But they either
burned out quickly or got a bad case of the ambitions.”
Sakata nodded once more.
“But none of them had the talent and promise your work shows.”
Sakata didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe.
“Hmm, you’d make a good salesman,” Jordan laughed. “You know when not to talk and
force a customer into talking himself into buying.”
Sakata shrugged slightly. She knew this wasn’t a dream, but it didn’t seem any more real,
just the same. And right now she just didn’t trust her tongue to speak for her.
“Okay, I admit this all a little unorthodox,” Jordan said apologetically. “But for all my
trumpeting of reason in my writing, I trust my intuition too. Your film showed me you know
how to think, how to analyze, how to dig, despite your young years. That’s what I want in a PA
and my producer. In return, I offer you a springboard for your career. Stick with me for a couple
of years, and you can go anywhere and do anything you want, and I will sing your praises to the
Almighty Himself, if you wish. Is that acceptable?”
Sakata nodded vigorously, her eyes wide in a happy mixture of disbelief and anticipation.
“Good, that’s settled,” Jordan laughed again. “Now, why don’t you put that bottle on ice
while we work out the details. I don’t feel like waiting for midnight.”
Jordan had left her later that evening after one glass of champagne and went off in
search of his hotel. She finished the bottle and felt as light and bubbly as the sparkling wine. The
next morning she awoke to clear skies and no trace of a hangover. Jordan had left behind an
open plane ticket and a hotel reservation. Sakata flew to San Francisco the following week, as
instructed, and went through the formalities required by human resources. She found a loft
apartment not too far from the office for reasonable rent and made arrangements to ship her
meager belongings north. Jordan gave her a month to get settled in and had the company pay for
her expenses. Sakata took only two weeks. She was still in a state of disbelief when she reported
for work.
After her hiring, Rousseau had asked Jordan why he had not considered any of the more
experienced applicants recommended by network executives.
“There is enough inbreeding in the business as it is, Red,” he answered. “I will not add to
the genetic destitution of our trade. Besides, watch this,” he had replied, handing Rousseau the
disc of Sakata’s test film. “I don’t often wish I’d written something. But this—this from
someone so young. Well, it had to be rewarded.” He gave her Sakata’s full script for the
intended film.
“You know she never graduated,” Rousseau said.≠
“Scholastic envy and foolish revenge by her advisor, a past-his-time L.A. anchor whose
nose she tweaked with her thesis. I know Pete Menendez. And I don’t care if she never finished
kindergarten. She can think. What’s more, she can organize and communicate what she thinks.”
“She’s awfully young.”
“So were you. That didn’t stand in your way.”
“How long do you give her?”

“Long enough. Rather, how long are you going to wait? If you have half the brains I
credit you with, you’ll keep on eye on her. Somebody has to replace me someday when I put
down my pen. Start grooming her now or you’ll lose her. She’s brilliant and incredibly telegenic
and what’s even better, not full of herself. She thinks in ways others don’t, sees things others
miss. All she needs is experience to round her out. That she’ll get hanging around me. And if
you ever mention any of this to her, I’ll deny every word. Then I’ll quit.”
After five years, Sakata never gave Jordan cause for regret, nor ever thought to leave,
though she knew someday she must, if she was to ever have a career of her own. Like the cold
rain of a California winter, the contemplation of leaving left her chilled.

VII.
GOG AND MAGOG
Sakata was lost in memories while she waited down in the parking garage. Suddenly, she
became aware that the crowd had fallen silent. It was 5:45 p.m. and Hannah Mosley, alone, had
arrived at the Masonic Auditorium. Sakata moved quickly to greet her. She had contacted
Mosley per Jordan’s instructions to provide pertinent information about the debate and had
arranged for a town car to deliver her to the parking entrance, as much away from the glare of
the news media as was possible, accepting, of course, the network’s own. She had researched
Mosley and found a dizzying array of references; her Google search alone had produced nearly a
million entries. This was a complex woman who had accomplished enough to fill three lifetimes.
Sakata had to suspend her sense of awe and treat her professionally as any dignitary required.
Camera lights flicked on and their operators jockeyed for position as Agent Wong
approached Sakata, who had moved Mosley through the narrow space behind the stage
backdrop. Mosley followed effortlessly, unaffected by the stares of the crowd and the growing
murmur of voices.
“I’m sure you understand, Doctor Mosley,” Wong said politely after introducing himself,
“but we must search you.” He could not shake the feeling he was about to frisk someone’s
grand-mother, a grandmother who had personally met the Queen of England and the King of
Sweden.
“I’d be insulted if you didn’t,” she said quietly, just as politely, as one resigned to an
inevitability.
“If you like, we can do this in private,” Wong offered as he nodded to a female agent.
Mosley wore a skirt and jacket of heavy gray wool over a white turtleneck sweater against the
bitter fog which, in the last few days, had returned to descend upon the city like a clammy veil.
“That won’t be necessary,” Mosley assured Wong.
The female agent approached Mosley and waved a detection wand up and down her
body. She handed the wand to Wong when she had finished.
“I must do a pat search now,” she stated impersonally. “Do you understand or object?”
The harsh glare of the camera lights bore down on them. If Mosley felt any indignity, she did
not show it. In the back of her mind the thought of her late husband fleeted by; it was the kind of
scene he used to write.
“Do what you must, child. I have nothing to hide,” Mosley responded coolly as the agent
expertly frisked her legs and torso in a gentle but thorough manner. Wong circled several people
around Mosley to block the view the cameras.
“She’s clean.”
A policeman approached with a beagle on a leash. He led the dog to Mosley. The dog
sniffed her once, then a second time, but gave no indication of any scent of extraordinary or
dangerous. The policeman drew the dog away.

“Do you have any electronic equipment with you, Doctor?” Wong asked. Mosley handed
over her purse.
“Just my phone and an old calculator,” she responded. “Why don’t you hold them for
safekeeping?” A faint smile flowed across her lips, then was gone. Rousseau and Jordan pushed
through the crowd to the knot clustered around her, his assistant standing next to Wong. Sakata
stared at Wong holding the purse, then at Mosley, but said nothing, a question mark shadowing
her face.
“Welcome, Dr. Mosley,” Jordan said, offering his hand. She took it with a curt gesture of
formality and a brief nod of her head. Mosley was a trim, solid woman in her mid-seventies; her
hair, cropped to short curls, was a soft grey slowly turning to a softer white. She stood eye to eye
with Jordan. She wore little makeup, but held a stately aura before the crowd, like a statue in a
temple, symbolizing much but silent, saying nothing to reveal her thoughts. Jordan could not
help but feel he was in the presence of — not a martyr-in-the-making — but of an adversary of
great strength. There was a eminent mind inside that statue — he could palpably sense it — a
mind he intended to test.
“The rules are simple,” Jordan continued. “It will be just the two of us on stage. No
moderator, and only necessary production staff in the background behind the cameras and
backstage. I will act as announcer at the start. I’m sorry, but the live audience is largely FBI,
police, network security and all the media that would fit. The powers that be insisted. You will
have the privilege of the first comment or question, if you wish. We each will respond to the
other, not necessarily as a debate, but rather as if this was more like a discussion in a faculty
lounge, with the exception that it will be broadcast around the world. There is no time limit to
responses. Take as long or a little as you wish. I ask only that rules of civilized discourse be
observed. The network has agreed — reluctantly — to keep us on air until one of us feels there
is no more to be said — or admits defeat. That will our decision solely. There will be no
commercial breaks, only network IDs, when necessary by law. If that is acceptable, please
follow me on stage.”
Mosley nodded curtly again and followed Jordan. Technicians quickly attached wireless
microphones to both, tapped them, asked both for sound checks, then indicated their approvals.
As they came out into the auditorium’s view, sporadic applause broke out, but quickly died. The
audience, though not there for its usual purpose, could nonetheless comprehend that an event of
importance was about to take place. They were not immune to the publicity which led to this
evening. The house lights dimmed as the two sat down on comfortable, well padded lounge
chairs of equal sides and back, sitting center stage in a pool of light, a small, round table with
glasses and a water pitcher between them. The audience and all else about them receded into the
shadows; the world for them now existed solely on stage. There was a brief, taped introductory
piece, in keeping with broadcast tradition, explaining the obvious to a television audience rapt
with anticipation. On a hand cue from the stage director, Jordan spoke to camera.
“Good evening to viewers and listeners across the country and around the world, whether
on TV, radio or the Internet. Despite the lamentable publicity, the discussion you are about to
witness is not to be a replay of Darrow versus Bryan, or even of Moses at the burning bush. I
expect it to be better.
“Recently, I was the target of a death threat by a group known only as the ‘Last
Crusade’. In an attempt to understand their reasoning, or lack thereof, I offered them this
opportunity to explain just why I was worthy to be on — and apparently at the top of — their hit
list. They accepted Dr. Hannah Mosley as their voice for this event, who agreed. I must say, in
all fairness, that neither I nor the FBI know of any connection between Dr. Mosley and the Last
Crusade. She was selected by them from my list of representatives, not theirs, as being one who
could speak cogently on the fundamentals of their faith. In her published works and talks, she
has from time to time discussed the religious and philosophical basis for their beliefs, while
never at any time subscribing to their policy of terror. Is that correct, Dr. Mosley?”
She nodded her silent assent.
“Thank you, Doctor Mosley. You may now go first.”
“To add a certain additional amount of urgency to the proceedings, do you know what
this is?” Mosley held up her left wrist on which she wore a bulky digital-analog watch, the kind
favored by engineers and astronauts.
“Looks like an expensive timepiece,” Jordan answered, uncertain of its relevancy.
“It once belonged to my husband. I have it still because he never wore it fishing.”
“I … I can appreciate its sentimental value for you.”
“Then appreciate this. The watch has been modified as a trigger. Interwoven into the
fabric of my clothes is a quantity of an experimental explosive known colloquially in college
chem labs as PDQ. When detonated, anything within a radius of several meters will be
obliterated pretty damn quick, hence the acronymic name. Beyond that the carnage will still be
severe, but not necessarily lethal. My wedding band is the electronic switch that will set it off
instantly if anyone attempts to stop or harm me. My hands have only to come together to a
certain range. Those who do not wish to be injured should back away. Now say your prayers,
Mr. Jordan, before I kill us both.”
Many of the stage crew cringed and inched backwards while shadows backstage began to
move towards the two chairs, but the cameras remained fixed on Mosley and Jordan. Rousseau
looked uncertainly at Wong as he whispered into a wireless microphone. Sakata fought to
suppress a scream. An uncertain murmur began rising from the audience.
“Stop!” Jordan shouted to the crowd and to the people backstage. He leapt to his feet.
“Nobody is to come closer or do anything. This is my doing, my responsibility. Keep us on air,
no matter what. Lock the cameras on us and move away. Wong, do not interfere!”
Wong spoke urgently into his microphone, ordering the marksmen to stand down until
they received his explicit command; he did not relish the idea of killing a Nobel Prize laureate,
whatever the reason. Something did not seem right to him, did not compute; but until he could
unravel that vague half-thought in the back of his mind, he would be cautious. The camera
operators stood their ground, in spite of whispered orders in their headsets from the director off-
stage to follow Jordan’s command. Jordan bowed his head slightly in respect to their decision
and turned quickly to Mosley.
“Doctor…” he pleaded, “…if you wish to kill me and yourself, do it now — or... “
“Or what?”
“Accept my original challenge,” Jordan said slowly as he thought furiously. “Convince
me… of why… of why I’m wrong in whatever way I have offended you. Or take the chance I
can convince you I haven’t.” His heart beat a hard and crazy staccato against his chest as he
fought to control the emotional madness swamping his conscious mind with a distant memory of
a time far past.
“Why should I?” She raised both hands and started to move them inward.
“Because I’m willing to gamble ...” Jordan answered, “… that somewhere deep inside,
beneath all the hate, and I suspect, the sorrow, there’s an ember of reason, of humanity, you
haven’t been able to extinguish.”
“You’re a fool!” Mosley spat back. “There is no reason to humanity — to anything —
anymore!”
“Then convince me!” Jordan pleaded, regaining control of the primal terror that ate at the
base of his being.

“Why? What have I to gain? I want you dead. It should be obvious that I no longer care
what happens to me. I will be glad to die as long as I take you with me.”
“But you’ll never get a better audience for your cause. Much of the civilized world is
watching. Think of the glory of your victory should I admit defeat. How many millions could
you reach? Besides, you know you’re not likely to get out of here alive, one way or the another,
if you don’t. Your only hope now is to convince me. Otherwise, my meager death is all you will
have accomplished. And somehow, I must believe there’s more at stake here than my life.”
Mosley glared at Jordan, studied him like a specimen, but lowered her arms to her sides
and kept them apart. “I will go along … for a while.”
Jordan eased back in to his chair, outwardly calm and in control; inside, his mind raced
to find the thoughts, the terminology, with which to start.
“You were once held as the pinnacle of reason,” he said slowly, gaining confidence in
the feel of the words as they passed his lips. “Now, you are the high priestess of faith —”
“That is your characterization, Mr. Jordan, not mine,” Mosley barked back. “It’s
indicative of the snide attitude you secularists always adopt toward anyone who dares to
champion faith. I suggest you drop that attitude if you want this debate to continue ... ” Mosley
smiled contemptuously, raising her arms again, “ ... or shall I drop it for you?”
Jordan slumped his head against his chest. “My apologies. A very old, very bad habit.”
Raising up, he continued. “Still, Doctor, you were a cosmologist, brilliant, a second Newton
some said. You dealt with the nature of the cosmos as easily as a baker deals with dough. And
like Newton, you wandered off into mysticism at the pinnacle of your success. What did you
find in faith that you didn’t have in rationality?”
“And what makes you think rationality and faith are mutually exclusive, Mr. Jordan?
Many great scientific minds have also had faith in things they could not measure. Newton, as
well as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Planck, Bohr, Einstein. They, like I, all
professed belief in either a supreme being, or some force greater than ourselves that shapes and
guides the universe. Would you call these men irrational, too?”
“Belief is not proof any more than a feeling is, and you know that. Otherwise, who
would have accepted your mathematics? But to the extent that those great minds — and yours —
willingly ignored their reason, their ability to think clearly, logically, consistently — the very
thing that made them what they were and enabled them to see what they saw — yes, they were
irrational, as far as those unproved, mystical beliefs went. That’s the danger of faith. It permits
what reason forbids.”
“Oh please, Mr. Jordan,” Mosley laughed, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “You
acknowledge my scientific credentials with one breath and insult my intelligence with the next.
Your argument is so typical of secular arrogance. You speak as if mystics were merely apes
grunting in a cave and throwing stones at their own shadows. Mysticism explores the possibility
that there are truths unattainable by reason alone — that spiritual truth can be empirically and
phenomenologically experienced. Newton, after all, didn’t take off his scientific hat and submit
to a lobotomy before he spent the better part of his life performing alchemical experiments. Had
he and others like him not explored that territory today condescendingly called ‘dark arts’, Boyle
would not have had a great body of chemical knowledge to which he could apply his
skepticism.”
Jordan bowed his head away from Mosley’s gaze and began slowly. “I have always
respected your credentials, Doctor, just as I have always admired your intelligence.” Suddenly
he raised his head, his eyes fixing Mosley’s. “What I can’t abide is the willingness of you
faithful to self-lobotomize your minds for the sake of ancient runes, mystical incantations and
so-called supernatural mysteries. A truth that cannot be proved? Reality which cannot be
objectively demonstrated? These are nothing but contradictory terms. If permitted, they would
invalidate all knowledge. Yes, reason alone is not sufficient. That’s why we developed the
necessity of objective, evidentiary proof to validate the products of reason where possible. And,
yes, alchemy gave birth to chemistry and physics, just as religion should have given way to
philosophy and natural science as our means to understand existence and our place in it.”
Jordan thought suddenly of an old friend. “It’s like magic …” he said slowly. “Magic
works because people can’t comprehend how a human could do it. To children especially it
seems truly supernatural, a miracle. But the miracle dies when the trick is exposed. That’s why
magicians never tell. And why the faithful hold on to their precious faith.”
“Now you insult me with cheap theatrics,” Mosley spat at him.” I warn you, do not insult
my intelligence again.”
“But I fear you insult your own intelligence, Doctor, by arguing in circles. You say
mysticism is acceptable because it requires faith which itself is acceptable because it leads to
mystical insight? There’s a roundabout shadow worthy of stoning! Mysticism is merely
explaining the unexplained by means of the unexplainable. Why is reason so necessary to sell
faith, but unnecessary to prove it? Call this a black and white universe, Doctor, but rationality
and faith are mutually exclusive. But negate reason, negate our rationality, and what’s left? Our
spiritual insights? Our spiritual wishes? Our spiritual whims? Indeed, faith prefers not to have
reason’s brutal facts around to murder its beautiful theories.”
Jordan paused for a second, holding up his hand, as another thought came to him. “Just
which spiritual truths,” he asked, “which insights of faith led the Last Crusade to issue a fatwa
for my execution? They say I am profane, a blasphemer, heretical. You say I am arrogant, snide,
a secularist. Is that reason enough to kill me?”
“Mr. Jordan,” Mosley sighed, “I utterly reject your premise that rationality and faith are
mutually exclusive. Faith and reason are just two facets of our human experience. Negation of
reason is ignorance; negation of faith is hubris. Yes, we certainly use our faculties of reason to
attempt to explain why we have faith in something of which we cannot be certain, ‘the evidence
of things unseen…’ We have faith that we will wake up to see the sun tomorrow, but we don’t
know for certain that we will. When it comes to God, we have faith because we feel fragile and
insignificant the more we discover about our extraordinary cosmos, its intricate design, its
inexhaustible grandeur. We look, and we measure, and we calculate, but with all our
sophisticated tools, we cannot come close to understanding how it all came about. So faith is not
unreasonable, not irrational. It is a humble admission that Man is not the measure of all things.
An admission that although we cannot understand why senseless things happen in our lives, we
accept that there is a reason for them beyond our ken.”
For a moment, Mosley herself seemed small and fragile. But then she remembered her
purpose and her eyes narrowed. “As for the Last Crusade, the reason they want you dead is not
the reason I want you dead.”
***
Judith stared at her computer screen, her face skewed into a question. “What are you up
to?” she asked the screen image that was focused on a close up of Mosley. She tapped her
keyboard to go vocal to the rest of the Crusaders watching on theirs.
“Do any of you know about this? Has anyone contacted her?”
Almost as one they denied any involvement, their voices tumbling over each other out of
her speakers.
“Quiet!” Judith shouted. “Ruth, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk. Start checking her out.
Check everything. Find a connection between her and Jordan. Malachi and Micah, can you get
me more than what we’re seeing here? There must be security cams. Can you tap them?”
“Sure,” responded Malachi. “But what for? If she’s going to knock off Jordan, isn’t that
what you wanted?”
“Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?” Judith hissed at her screen. “If Mosley kills him
for some reason of her own, no matter how lofty, it trivializes ours. She contravening God’s
will, damn her, and I won’t have it!”
***
Jordan laughed, and quickly suppressed it. “Forgive me, Doctor. I know what I did to
offend the Last Crusade. Just what did I do to upset you so?”
Mosley seemed confused to Jordan, with a look in her eyes he never though possible to
such a mind; not the look of a momentary uncertainty, but of something fundamentally wrong.
“I … I despise your cynicism. It is so … cheap,” she answered weakly, a weariness
seeming to overtake her as she sank in her chair, her arms limp.
Jordan decided to press his advantage. “You may reject my premise all you want, Doctor,
but it remains that the two concepts, faith and reason, are, by definition, mutually exclusive. If
we know so little of the cosmos, as you say, it only points to how much more there is to learn,
not that it cannot be learned.
Jordan paused and his eyes narrowed as he sought the words of an idea forming in his
thoughts. “A discussion,” he said finally, “or even an argument like ours, presupposes that that
there may be evidence or proof on either side for what is being professed which, ultimately, can
be understood and agreed upon. That is trust. Faith denies this. It only accepts what it believes
and only believes what it has already accepted. It becomes a closed circle that excludes all else.
It doesn’t want what it won’t believe. And perhaps here is the root of the problem. Think for a
minute, Doctor. Substitute ‘trust’ for ‘faith’ and you might, just might, make sense. Trust gives
us something to work with besides belief. It is the basis on which we can gain and verify
knowledge. Faith has only belief, unprovable, untestable belief. Trust is perhaps the most
important value we can have after our reason, not faith. It is a concept that requires the reliance
on and confidence in the integrity of the person or event being trusted. Between humans, it is a
mutual act of understanding and acceptance based on the value of our being able to be
objective.”
“What is faith but trust in something higher?” Mosley offered, uncertain of her
opponent’s approach.
“No! Doctor,” Jordan shot back forcefully. “Faith is much lower, like greed. Both are an
irrational desire to have the impossible — one the unproved, the other the unearned. Faith is
often taken as being synonymous with trust, but it’s not really. It is entirely different. This may
seem like a harmless bit of semantics, but it isn’t. Faith isn’t really based on belief, but on doubt,
on the uncertainty we feel as we look at a confusing world through ignorant or uneducated eyes.
What we don’t know or refused to learn baffles us, frightens us. So, for the great questions about
the fabric of the natural world, we fashion answers from supernatural cloth. Faith is not a
positive like trust, but a negative, like stupidity, a self-imposed ignorance. I think this gross
misunderstanding of the two — and the often conscious interchanging of them — is a pivot
point on which much of what ails us has spun, now and for too many centuries past.”
Mosley thought for an moment, uncertain. “I’ll grant you that faith is not synonymous
with trust … but I doubt it is the evil conspiracy you’re trying to make it seem.”
Jordan laughed his answer. ”The supposition that faith and trust are synonymous was a
clever bit of psychology, I think, by the priests of ancient times, of which their kings approved,
for it confused the difference between the two and gave faith a moral blessing it never could
have earned on its own. Like a confessional it grants the sinner absolution, not to go and sin no
more, but to go and sin again and again with impunity, knowing that another profession of faith
will always absolve and redeem and protect you.”
Mosley shook her head in denial, then spoke forcefully, “Yes, faith may start with doubt. But
both faith and trust require belief, an acceptance of something as true. Ninety-five percent of the
people on this planet say they believe in God. Are we all insane? Just because the five percent
like you have not had the experience of God, are the rest of us to say, ‘Oh, well, they must be
right because we haven’t been able to prove it to them in terms they accept?’ We, the ninety-five
percent, say that atheists like you will never accept any proof because you have already decided
what you will believe and what you will not believe. We say God is all around you but you are
blind to Him because you cannot accept that there is intelligence in His design.”
Jordan sighed. “When I was a young boy, I used to sit in a tree and stare out to sea for
hours, wondering what lay beyond the horizon, as you might have done — must have done as a
child. I was fascinated and imagined many things, but a supreme being wasn’t one of them.
“Doctor, I have tried hard to keep God out of this discussion, but you keep dragging Him
in. This is not about the existence of a deity, or science versus religion, or the Divine versus
Darwin. It is simply and only about faith versus reason and which can be trusted to lead us to
truth, to the recognition of reality, to what exists objectively, independent of our subjective
desires. It doesn’t matter what the subject of the belief is. Belief alone is half the process, not the
conclusion, but the beginning, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Proof is what fulfils belief,
completes it and turns it into knowledge. And when that knowledge stands the test of time,
proves its worth, it becomes wisdom. Belief alone, without proof, becomes myth, fable, the
unexplained which becomes the unexplainable. Then it becomes blind faith, devoid of trust. We
secularists believe what we do not just because we want to, but because we must. That is where
the evidence leads us. That is what the logic tells us. Our beliefs are hard fought by our trust in
reason, not uncritically accepted by blind faith. The negation of faith is not hubris, Doctor, but
compliance, an obedience to the rules that reality and the universe set for us. Surely you as a
cosmologist should see that. Why is reason so important, so necessary in selling faith, but not in
proving it? Why is it that faith requires such a lower, cheaper standard for belief than does
science?”
Mosley shook her head. “Without faith, all we see in the universe is chaos. All we see in
the complexity of the human organism is chance. There is a reason for everything we see, Mr.
Jordan, for everything that happens ... there must be a reason ... ” Mosley dropped her head to
her chest.
“Is that your mind telling you this, Doctor? Or your heart?” Jordan asked softly.
Mosley raised her head defiantly. “It is both. It is reasonable to think that for every effect there
has been a cause. But when those causes affect one personally ... sometimes very deeply ... it is
also reasonable to expect that they will elicit feeling. That is the other side of being human, Mr.
Jordan. We are equipped to both think and feel.”
“And when your head and your heart don’t agree, which do you follow?”
“I cannot give you a hypothetical answer to such a broad question.”
“Cannot or will not, Doctor?” Jordan shot back. “I find it fascinating that you can’t give
a hypothetical answer to a question about your own hypothesis.”
Mosley thought for an instant. “If there needed to be a choice, it would be circumstantial.
In any case, I would do my utmost to reach a consensus between reason and intuition, if you
like. Men seem to prefer the term ‘gut hunch,’ which somehow makes it sound far less of an
emotional faculty, but it is essentially the same for both genders.”
Jordan shrugged. “What you claimed before, about ‘there is a reason for everything,
there must be.’ As a theist your basic belief is that the universe must have a reason, a purpose,
and a cause. And the supreme being — no matter how he is defined and named in all the myriad
ways humanity has found so far — the supreme being is that reason, is that purpose, is that
prima causa from which all effects follow. Am I accurate here?”
Mosley looked at Jordan with narrowed eyes, a warrior uncertain of the direction of an
adversary’s next attack.
“Yes, I would say you are accurate … as long as you don’t interpret the concept in a
limited anthropomorphic sense. What we contend is that prior to the physical universe, as we
perceive it, there was an intention, and from that intention issued a cause.”
“I see,” mused Jordan. “The road from heaven is paved with good intentions as well. But,
unless some extraterrestrials wish to join us here tonight, I will speak for them and all sentient
life forms in the universe. Or … is faith limited only to earthly sentience?”
“Are you making a joke, Mr. Jordan? Or are we now debating UFOs?”
“No, Doctor Mosley, I am making a point. Several, actually. First, fundamentalists past
and present, especially firebrands like the Last Crusade, seem to be very geo-centric. If the
universe is God’s handiwork, the sacred texts make little mention of most of it. Second, the
overwhelming mass of life on this planet, and presumably the entire universe, seems to get by
without a concept of a creator. Faith is irrelevant to its existence. Third, there’s the messy meta-
physical problem of a Creator who exists outside of the existence which He supposedly created.”
“I agree that the Creator does not exists outside of existence—“
“Wonderful! We almost agree on something,” exalted Jordan.

Mosley ignored his manner. “My point is that I believe there is more to existence than the
physical universe we can measure and catalog. As for sacred texts, they were written, and should
be understood, in a human context. Even if the authors of these texts were divinely inspired, they
necessarily would have been translating that inspiration into human language to be read and
understood by human beings. God was speaking to us, not aliens.”
“So, even though the Bible or the Quran may be divinely inspired, they’re still
interpreted by humans, and any such interpretation is subject to mistakes, accidental error — or
even outright misrepresentation. Certainly, let us hope God speaks more plainly when He speaks
to the aliens. But really, Doctor Mosley, what’s more important here? The messenger or the
message?”
“I’m … I’m not sure what you mean?” Mosley viewed Jordan through narrowing eyes.
“I mean, Doctor, does it matter where sacred texts come from? Isn’t what they offer of
greater significance than who offers it?”
“I … I never though of it that way…”
“Most people don’t, I suspect. The message and the messenger are taken as one and the
same. But that’s not necessarily so.”
“How can they not be?” Mosley slumped back into her chair, her hands hanging limply
astride the chair’s arms.
***
Judith screamed at her screen. “KILL THE BLASPHEMER!” She punched the keyboard
and shouted. “Micah! Malachi! Find a way to interfere. We’ve got to stop her! She’s letting him
win!”
***
Jordan leaned forward, the hunter about to flank his prey. “As you confirmed just a
minute ago, sacred human texts are not so much sacred as they are very human. The Old
Testament has been shown by extensive scholarship — the kind the likes of the Last Crusade
can’t abide — to be a moral fable in the guise of history told and retold over many centuries by a
long line of Hebrew Aesops before it was written down. As with all creation myths, Genesis
tried to answer questions unanswerable by the knowledge of its time. So the authors of Genesis
— there were at least two, by the way — created fairy tales with morals, because that was the
message they knew they could and wanted to deliver.”
Mosley shook her head slowly, deliberately, in denial. “But these are the words of God.”
“Really, Doctor?” Jordan laughed. “Just what do we know of our gods? It’s all hearsay,
exegesis ad infinitum, fable to moral to myth and back again. The only proof of validity offered
is that billions believe it, or want to.”
Mosley’s eyes widen, a fusion of anger and distaste. “Would you take God out of
godliness? Would you deny His power to inspire?”
“Yes!” scoffed Jordan. “The messenger doesn’t validate the message, but the reverse.
Many of those supposedly holy words can have importance, regardless of how they were
inspired. Are they any less valuable if written by a nameless scribe?
“No…” Mosley answered weakly, her mind wrestling with thoughts long buried, long
ignored. “But to make the source human and not divine mocks the Divinity and negates Him as
our guide and comfort.”
“Just which god are we talking about?” Jordan replied in earnest. “The tales of the Torah
and the commentaries of the Talmud? The ‘noble truths’ of the Buddha? The insights of the
Quran? The Te of Confucius? Or the pleasant poetry of the King James gospels? They all speak
to us not so much as literal history or divine truth, but as the anonymous moral hopes of their
times, ethical guidelines from unknown teachers who thought their words would have lasting
value. Must one believe in Christ the Redeemer to appreciate Jesus the Rabbi?”
“But how can we trust them if they are not from the Divinity?” Mosley spat back.
“Ah, that word again,” Jordan mocked her in return. “How can we trust that they are?
Every age has redefined its gods to suit its purposes. Think of it all! The ineffable divinity of
primitive man goes from many gods to the accessible one. Then in reverse, this angry Yahweh
of the Hebrews became the loving Trinity of the Christians. The son of man of the Tanakh
becomes the Son of God of the Gospels. Mary is transformed from a pregnant young girl to a
virgin of immaculate conception. Judas stops being a compatriot of Christ and becomes a
conspirator to his death. The Magdalene is no longer a wise disciple but depicted and despised as
a whore. Mohammed starts as a shrewd desert merchant with heretical ideas and ends up the
Prophet of his own religion. Gautama achieves enlightenment as the Buddha, but in the end —
the man who had no use for gods at all — all but becomes one.”
Mosley slumped into the recesses of her chair, suddenly exhausted. Still, something
within would not let her quit just yet, not while she was able to think and not just feel. “Are God
and His prophets now to be propagandists? Is that the kind of humanist trust we are to follow,
not divine guidance?”
Jordan slowly shook his head with a weak smile which he fought to keep from becoming
a smirk. The end was within sight. Mosley looked a worn out combatant struggling to rise for
one last blow, her mental armor shattered and all but gone, her will failing. It pained him to see
her so, but his life hung on the outcome of the next few minutes as much as Mosley’s.
“That is an ancient misunderstanding, Doctor,” he began slowly, “a deliberate confusion,

a false choice. Take off the blinders of faith for an instance. Why have our clerics always taught
us to reach to the heavens in search of eternal truth, when it is right here on earth that properly
concerns us? Why do we seek the resolve of the divinity and ignore the needs of humanity. Is it
not possible, Doctor, to have a non-religious morality? A secular ethics, based on our nature and
needs as human beings, not on divine will? After all, is there nothing to learn from
Shakespeare’s Polonius?”
Jordan closed his eyes and read has he had first read long ago: “ ‘… this above all: to
thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to
any man.’ ”
He opened his eyes and stared sharply at Mosley’s. Her lips tried to find a smile, but
failed. She responded in a whisper.
“ ‘… give every man thy ear, but few thy voice…’ ”
“Touché,” Jordan nodded in respect. He was certain that last had cost her mightily. He
gathered his own emotional will and asked, “But still, Doctor, do you really believe, as the Last
Crusade believes, in the literal truth of the revealed word? Do you really trust in Genesis the way
they do, in the litanies of holy men and women of the Bible? Can you really accept as gospel
Bishop Ussher’s calculated age of the Earth of just six thousand years?”
Mosley closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, back and forth, awkwardly rocking in
her chair. “No, no, of course not…” she whispered. “To do so would deny my life's work… and
what I know to be true.”
“And yet ultimately, is that not exactly what faith has asked of you?”
Mosley abruptly stopped her rocking and rose to her feet, raising her hands above her
head. She had reached a crossroad and was lost for which way to turn. It seemed as if devils
were tearing at her mind, her soul. Then, through the mental fatigue, she remembered her
intention for the night. “This serve no further purpose!” She exclaimed slowly, looking down in
Jordan in pity. “Now you die.”
Jordan rose hastily to stand before her. The audience began to stir. He heard hushed
voices backstage hurriedly speaking, then the unmistakable sound of rifle safeties high above
clicking to off.
“No! Wait!” he shouted to the hall and turned back to Mosley. “Doctor, one last request,”
he asked in desperation.
“What … is it?” Mosley asked with great weariness. The fight was drained from her
body, from her spirit, from her very being. Hope itself had died within her. All that was left was
the last, necessary strength for her final act.
“Before we die, let us try an experiment,” Jordan asked uncertainly.
“What kind of experiment?” Mosley answered weakly, bewildered. “What possibly could
you hope to prove?
“That you are not the complete fool you seem to be acting like. Let us change sides.”
“Change sides?” Mosley asked in disbelief, her head rising and cocked in curiosity.
“Yes. You take the side of reason and I of faith.”
“Is this a game? Some sort of parlor trick?
“I assure you I am deadly serious. You hold my life in your hands. I pray at least give me
the chance to save it.”
Mosley lowered her arms and dropped back into her chair, shaking her head. From
somewhere deep inside her, she asked, “What do you know of faith, Mr. Jordan? What does an
atheist know of God?”
Jordan slowly lowered himself into his seat, his arms resting along the chair sides, weary
but determined.
“Let me tell you a story, Doctor Mosley. A story no one knows …”

VIII.
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
The child Jordan spoke of was born Yeshua ben Yarden bin Hakim Abdullah al-Karim,
in Haifa five years after the declaration of the State of Israel. He was the son of an Israeli mother
and a Palestinian father, a marriage mostly frowned upon by Jew and Arab alike in what from
ancient times was called the Holy Land. But it was allowed in Haifa — or more often, just
overlooked — during the turbulent years following the partition of Palestine and the declaration
of the new Jewish homeland. The city flowing upward from the shores of the Mediterranean
along the slopes of Mt. Carmel, cooled by placid sea breezes rising off its crescent bay, seemed
the one place in that cursed land where reason ruled more than faith. In the words of one astute
observer, among themselves the Haifans had simply made a separate peace.
Haifa and neighboring Acre to the North across the bay had been conquered continually
through history by whatever invading force passed their way; Crusader and Saracen, caliph and
king all found the tranquil setting to their liking and settled there. In contemporary times during
the first Arab-Israeli war, the Hagannah, the homegrown defense force of the Jews, won control
of the city, and in the years that followed some 3,000 Arabs of Haifa, those who had not joined
their 40,000 brothers and sisters neighbors in the Palestinian diaspora, found that they could live
side by side with the Jews in any neighborhood of the city, not constricted to a ghetto as in
Jerusalem and other Israeli towns. Eventually their numbers grew to around one in eight of the
population, whereas before they had been eight in ten. Haifan Arabs sat on the city council as
equals, owned businesses, shops and restaurants like the Haifan Jews, and when the conflict that
raged throughout Israel through those early years tried to invade Haifa, Jew and Arab joined
hands to address the protestors and protect their peace. They co-existed in comfort and
acceptable harmony for no better reason than that they were all just too busy to hate. Haifa was
an industrial town, Israel’s main port and chief refinery, trying hard to become a modern,
technological society, wanting to forget the embattled world of its ancient past. Its people were
more educated and prosperous, and thus more tolerant. Their children walked the corridors of
the Israel Institute of Technology and filled the classrooms of Haifa University without worry or
fear of one another; they were there to learn how to make a living, not end a life.
Rabbi and imam alike, accepting the wisdom of Isaiah’s injunction to “reason together,”
were held in esteem by most residents — and each by the other — for in Haifa many taught their
flocks only the happy teachings and useful rules, not the hatreds and hostilities, from the Torah
and Talmud, from the Quran and Hadith, often borrowing lessons from the other’s writings, for
together they accepted that they were, in the felicitous phrase of The Prophet, People of the
Book. Same god, different name.
In this quiet corner of an angry land, Yeshua attended both Hebrew school and Muslim
madrassa; neither parent was very religious, for both were professionals with active lives, and
though they wanted their children to understand the values of a secular life, they also wanted
them grounded in the virtues of their joint heritage. Whether blessed by genetics or nurtured by
his upbringing, Yeshua had a talent for languages. Like his older sister, by age ten he was fluent
in Hebrew and Arabic along with English, with a smattering of German tinged by Yiddish for
flavor; he could recite long passages from both the Torah and Quran. Unlike other children his
age, though, he was also familiar with many entries in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteenth
Edition, particularly those of a historical nature. Yeshua was a bright, eager student, often
quizzing his teachers for deeper meanings in what he was being taught, sometimes deeper than
they could or cared to fathom.
One day he asked a rabbi at school a question. He spoke in Hebrew. “If God is
everywhere, why can’t I see him.”
The rabbi responded, “God is within us, guiding us.” His answer did not sit well with
Jeshua.
“The only voice I hear inside is my own,” he said after a few moments of introspection.
“Are you thinking? Or praying?” the rabbi enquired. Knowing his family well, the rabbi
switched to Arabic. “’For did not the Prophet say ‘who speaks better than he who calls to Allah
while he himself does good.’ ” Jeshua said nothing more.
Later that evening he told his mother of his encounter with the rabbi.
Sarah Yarden, born Sarah Steinmann, was a hospital nurse. Her father, Jacob, a doctor,
witnessed, with a vague sense of foreboding, what was developing in Germany in the late 1920s
and early ‘30s; like his grandson to come, he had a sense of history. When the Nazi Brown
Shirts began parading through the streets of his beloved Munich, Jacob began to worry in
earnest, then to plan. He talked to family and close friends about his concerns; he had read Mein
Kamph and did not think it the ravings of a lunatic, but the brutal intentions of an angry man.
“But there has been nothing like a pogrom in Germany for a hundred years,” a friend
answered.
“Your name is Jacob not Ya’akov. Have we not assimilated?” his rabbi countered.
“Are we not good Germans?” his wife Rebecca replied.
But when Jacob saw, with the Nazi menace rising, that Herr Professor Einstein also
thought to leave the country by accepting a guest professorship in America, he told his wife it
was time to depart. Rebecca refused to go. She would not leave her mother who not leave her
husband who would not leave his ancestral home. In the dim past such troubles, though ugly and
horrible, were brief. After all, this was not Poland or Russia where pogroms arose for seemingly
no reason and Jews were slaughtered indiscriminately until the blood lust subsided. This was
Germany, the most cultured of nations on the most cultured of continents. Germans understood
the contributions of its Jews to their country; they were not like this nasty little Austrian corporal
with his silly mustache. They would listen to reason. Besides, these times too, they shrugged,
would pass.
Then Herr Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, a post he never won in any
election, and shortly thereafter, declared himself Der Fuehrer, The Leader of all German people,
Jews included, whether they wanted one or not.
The first laws prohibiting Jews from holding professional posts in German universities
were quickly passed. Books of Jewish authors and intellectuals were burned on campuses
throughout the country, often with the volumes pitched into the flames by Christian professors.
Jacob recalled the warning of Heinrich Heine, a German-Jewish poet who a century before had
decried in a play the burning of the Quran by the Holy Church in the Spanish Inquisition and
warned “where they burn books, so too in the end, they will burn human beings.” Heine’s works
were among the first to be torched.
Jacob could no longer wait. Medical professionals would soon follow on the prohibition
lists. But his wife remained adamant and would not countenance leaving her comfortable life
and family for something so unknown. Jacob knew where he must go, for had not the holy days
of Passover and Yom Kippur always ended with the traditional prayer: “Next year in
Jerusalem”? So, before the world began to turn its back and shut its doors, Jacob Steinmann
spirited away with young Sarah, barely four years old. His intent kept secret from his wife, he
had managed to arrange a train trip to Switzerland, ostensibly to attend a medical conference in
Zurich. It grieved him to leave his Rebecca and so many others behind, but he knew with an
absolute certainty from a long, clear history what was to befall those who refused to see and to
act. From Switzerland they made it to Paris and from there to Marseilles. His money was
limited, for the Nazis had put restrictions of what a Jew could take abroad. Finally, aboard a
tramp steamer plying the Mediterranean from east to west and back, they reached Palestine at
Haifa and connected with the Zionists there. The movement had long proclaimed the need for a
Jewish nation in Palestine; indeed, Jacob, on a vacation trip as a boy, remembered seeing posters
for a film in Prague promoting “The Promised Land” with young healthy Jews building a new
life in their ancient homeland.
Then, as Jacob and Sarah finally reached Jerusalem, the first pogroms began in Germany
with the shattering crash of glass during Kristalnacht, and the ineffable God of Abraham seemed
to turn his face away from the Jews of Europe. Soon, Jacob’s wife and her family would be
among the first to be lost to the gathering Holocaust, in which the Nazis instigated a final,
political solution to what had been the two-thousand-year-old religious problem Christians had
with Jews. Rebecca lived on in Jacob’s memory, but he never spoke her name again. In time,
Sarah could no longer remember her mother’s face; it became a distant, hazy ghost in her
dreams.
Eventually they returned to Haifa. Jacob found it far preferable to Jerusalem and its
oppressive air of religion; three great faiths clamed it as holy, but for their own, somewhat
exclusive reasons. Haifa’s industry even in those days offered opportunity to the educated, and
being a medical man, Jacob brought European training to a land that sorely needed it. He worked
at a local hospital and kept a small practice that served his district. He soon noted that it included
more and more Arabs as word spread of his curative touch.
Young Sarah finished school and then trained as a nurse after academy, to work with her
father. She knew that she did not have what it took to be a doctor; but she also knew she wanted
her life to have meaning. To Sarah that was to share with others those healing skills her father
had taught her. And what she added to that was a gentle talent to comfort the sick and the injured
beyond the medicine. It was at her father’s small infirmary that she met her future husband.
Though the world collapsed into war about them, Jacob and Sarah Steinmann had found peace.
Afterwards, when the full extent of the Holocaust’s horror became known, they changed the
family name to Yarden, to forget Germany, to forget Europe, to reflect the main source of life in
their new home, Eretz Israel.
Sarah Yarden looked at her son, a boy not yet ten, and smiled. “It is for you to decide
whose voice you hear,” she said finally. “No one else can tell you.“
Yeshua sought out his father in the little room that served as his study and told him his
story. An assistant professor of electronics at the Institute of Technology, Hakim used the early
evening hours to catch up on his journals. There never seemed to be enough time for all that
needed reading, but he gladly gave some to his son.
“Father, whom should I believe? My Rabbi? Or my Mother?”
His father laughed. “Your mother is clever.”
Hakim’s family and ancestors had lived in the lands about Haifa as far back as anyone in
the family could remember, certainly before the Ottoman Turks came to conquer Palestine.
Through the centuries, they had been everything necessary to survive in a realm too often ruled
by outsiders — shepherds, farmers, tent makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, practical pursuits that
were always in demand. When the new nation of Israel was declared, they shrugged in weary
resignation and went back to their work. But in Haifa, at least, their children had always found
more opportunity than elsewhere and young Hakim attended school, studied hard, and became
the first member of his family to earn an academic degree. As an electrical engineer, he found
work in the early electronics industry of Haifa; he chose to share his good fortune as a part-time
instructor, thus ensuring new generations to come of engineers, both Jewish and Arab. He hoped
the same some day for his son.
Yeshua was confused. “How was Mother clever? She did not give me an answer. Don’t
you always tell me that there has to be an answer to every question?”
“Yes,” Hakim said with a sigh and a smile, “if the question is valid. Your mother was
gently pointing out that yours wasn’t, only without saying so directly, and not insulting our
rabbi.”
“It seems simple enough, Father,” Yeshua replied with some impatience.
“No, not quite simple enough. Remember Ockham’s razor, Yeshua.”
“It’s either me or God in my head.”
“And which case requires fewer assumptions?”
Yeshua answered immediately. “That the voice is mine.”
“And is that not what your mother implied, in somewhat different words?
“Yes…” the boy answered slowly.
“Do you believe it?”
“Yes!” he stated fiercely.
“Then always,” his father cautioned, “trust your own judgment. And base that judgment
on the fewest assumptions that you can, until such time as evidence demonstrates that more are
needed. That’s what old William of Ockham was saying.”
The young boy, not quite ten, never forgot the lesson.
Yeshua was as happy and adjusted as a child could be, given the times; he like to play as
well as learn, got good grades, and didn’t mind too much the bruises and scrapes normal to an
active, energetic boy who was allowed to grow up in peace. Haifan Jew and Haifan Arab fought
on the playground as children always fought, but played together the next day as if nothing
much had happened. A soccer ball was not a religious icon.
On a bright, sunny day in 1965, during the spring of his twelfth year, the outside world
rudely intruded on Yeshua’s private realm. It was at the wedding feast of his sister, Nasra, who
like her mother was marrying a Palestinian. The second such instance in the same family was
twice too many for some people, the kind who, from afar, resented Haifa’s equanimity, who felt
that Allah had not meant Arab and Jew to commingle, much less cohabitate. No matter that her
name was Palestinian, that she looked as much an Arab as her father; she was born of a Jewish
mother. So, apparently, it had been ordained by their angered god for his avengers to set these
matters to rights and prevent the marriage. These were members of a renegade group of the early
Fatah movement who resented the growing power of Israel. One man in particular swore his
own oath of vengeance; he had coveted Nasra bas Yarden bar Hakim for himself.
There were warnings and threats against the couple not to proceed. No one took them
seriously, for had not the people of Haifa lived in peace for a decade and a half since Partition?
As the husband-to-be was the nephew of a second cousin of the bride’s father, all sides of both
families, to the third generation, some eighty celebrants in all, were present for the wedding
feast. Not being fanatically religious had made for an extended family that knew how to live and
laugh and enjoy the best of each tradition. Isaiah’s injunction “to reason together” had held.
The festivities didn’t mean much to a child of Yeshua’s age. Yet, there was a sense of joy
about the throng that day that was catching. After a secular ceremony which offended no one
present, came the mixed feast, the best of both worlds. Then, above the aroma of strong coffee
and smoke from hookahs hung the music. The small band was playing a crazed mazurka,
reminiscent of the kind of music favored by the Jews of Poland for centuries and found
infectious by the modern Arabs of Haifa. A clarinet wailed a happy tune, aided and abetted by a
drum, flute, fiddle and accordion. Everyone was either dancing and laughing and having a
joyous time, or sitting back to enjoy the merriment, as only a wedding in a family like that could
create.
Yeshua had dropped a favorite toy and crawled under the table to retrieve it. The blast
flattened the table and almost crushed him, but the table had saved his life.
For some time he lie dazed, the blood of his family soaking the floor and him like a
sickening flood. Mercifully, Yeshua passed out. He came to in a hospital days later, an orphan,
for his whole, extended family, unto the third generation, had been wiped out by the orders of a
madman professing his insane faith in an all-vengeful, yet still all-loving God.
Later, no one knew what to do with Yeshua. He had no family left, either Israeli or
Palestinian. He was placed in an orphanage where, eventually, a couple from San Francisco
found him. Haifa had been a sister city to San Francisco and their local Rotary Club sponsored
that orphanage, and a few others throughout Israel, which they and other Rotarians visited every
few years, bearing bundles of donated clothes and toys no longer loved as at Christmastime.
There were a lot of orphans then, but few like Yeshua. The boy who had loved to learn and play
and laugh rarely spoke now, and when he did, it was in halting, heavily accented English.
The San Francisco couple learned his history and decided to apply for adoption; they had
no children of their own. To their surprise, both the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority
objected. The couple never quite understood why. It wasn’t as if either side needed another
orphan. But the life of this sad little boy had become political to forces outside Haifa. A
stalemate ensued. Eventually, the authorities thought to ask Yeshua, the boy who had become a
refugee in his own homeland, what he wanted. He looked at the bureaucrats with eyes that
seemed lost in their dark sockets. He answered them, first in Hebrew then in Arabic, that he just
wanted to go away, anywhere, it didn’t matter. Yeshua didn’t really care, as long as it wasn’t
Haifa. Both sides, embarrassed, relented. Their last act was to grant Yeshua’s request to change
his name to Jordan, the English equivalent of Yarden. Like the river, his life flowed through
troubled times.
Yeshua, now Joshua, was brought to San Francisco by his new parents. His adoptive
father was Irish, his new mother Italian, and both lapsed Catholics. But Joshua was taught first
by nuns and then by priests straight through to the University of San Francisco, the last bastion
of the Jesuits on the Pacific. As the years passed, Israel and Haifa often faded into the far
recesses of his memory, but not the faces of Sarah and Hakim and Nasra.
In his new home, Joshua Jordan found new problems. Though he came from two cultures
which traced their histories back to ancient tribes, he never really knew what a tribe was until he
attended grade school. It was bad enough being the new kid in class, but infinitely worse to be
one who spoke English with a vague, Semitic accent. The new playground — unlike the grass
fields in Haifa where he had played games and kicked balls with the other kids, both Jew and
Arab — was a concrete testing ground for his courage and tenacity. To a tribe of children, to be
different was to be suspect; and to be suspect was to be intolerable. When in a group, most
children sense difference and fear it; it is the non-them, thus likely to be against them, a vestige
of the days hundreds of thousands of years ago when humanity wasn’t quite human yet, and
lived out its short lifespan on the African savannah with constant caution and what emotional
wits it had. In such a proto-culture, only the familiar was acceptable and fear was a great
motivator. Joshua took many lumps. The nuns and lay teachers didn’t seem to care much; this
was how kids had always solved their problems, especially those not from the better homes and
neighborhoods of the city.
Joshua soon realized that he could not fight his way out. He came home from school one
afternoon with a bloody nose, a fat lip and a blackening eye. His mother was aghast. She took
him straight back to school at St. Cecilia’s and sought out its principal. Sister Mary Basil, of the
Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, was a formidable force of nature, her blocky old
face a set of chiseled planes framed by her black headdress and white wimple, with browless
eyes that pierced through the object of their sight. Her back was as stiff as her manner. Reverend
Mother Basil had came to the grammar school of St. Cecelia — the parish “beyond the Peaks”
where the city’s Irish and Italian families found room to build proper homes on the rolling sands
dunes of San Francisco’s old Outside Lands, its western half bordering the Pacific — in the
decade after the school had been founded in 1930. While she did not condone the use of violence
outright, she was nevertheless known to three generations of students for her swift ruler across
bare knuckles. To her mind, if God wanted children to get along with Joshua, the boy had better
learn quickly how to figure out God’s will. His mother was now even more aghast; the Italian
nuns of North Beach where she had grown up had imparted to her a very different sense of the
Divine will and retribution. She took Joshua and left, but not before giving the old nun a good
tongue lashing in Italian. Joshua had not said a word, in any language, but another lesson had
been learned.
That evening when his father came home from work and was told the story of the day’s
events by his wife, he sat down with his son at the dinner table.
“Dis wasn’t a good day, eh, Josh?” He was a plumber and spoke in the peculiar mix of
Irish and other sounds used by generations of San Franciscans from south of Market Street,
where the Irish first settled, once described by a fourth-generation local, a journalist, as
“Sampensican,” a dialect of English that seemed to be borrowed from Dublin by way of the
Bronx.
Joshua shook his head slowly, but said nothing.
“I could show you how ta fight dem kids.”
Joshua shook his head again, this time vigorously.
“Den we’ll just have to teach ya ta talk your way around dem.”
“How?” Joshua asked.
“Well, let’s see. You’re probably the smartest kid I ever come across. You speak at least
three languages I know of, and know da Bible far better den any priest I ever knew. Dere must
be sumpin’ dere we can use.”
After a moment’s pause, Jordan whispered something in Hebrew.
“Huh?”
“Daniel 5:14” Jordan said in English. “ ‘The spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light
and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee.’ ”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Joshua then spoke in Arabic, to his father’s delighted confusion.
“ ‘…when he had attained his maturity, We gave him wisdom and knowledge,’ ” he
repeated in English. “ ‘Thus do We reward those who do good …’ It’s from the Koran.”
“Do you know what dese mean?”
“I think so. There are many references to wisdom in both Books.”

“Son, I think you’ll do jes fine. But work on yer accent sum.”
The next day at school, when the class bully and his tribal henchmen approached, Joshua
was ready. His eye was swollen and his nose and lip still sore. Raising his right hand to cover his
eyes, he intoned the Kaddish, the most ancient and sacred Hebrew prayer, written mostly in
Aramaic during the time of the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews. What began in Jewish lore as a
paean to glorify God’s name had in time become the great prayer of mourning to help the
departed find everlasting peace; yet the prayer contained no mention of death or resurrection.
Joshua had recited it for eleven months after his family’s destruction, as prescribed by tradition,
as he would each year on that terrible anniversary for the rest of his life. Also by tradition, their
funeral had been simple, devoid of emotional displays or ostentation, and their remains were laid
to rest before sundown and the beginning of Sabbath. The bomb had been planted in the glass
ballroom chandelier, a globular mosaic of mirrored pieces, which had rotated above the dance
floor; so mangled were the bodies that Jew and Arab shared a common grave, mourned over by
a citizenry shocked beyond belief by the savagery of the attack. Though Jordan had recited the
ancient Salat al-Ghaib, the funerary prayer of Islam for when none of the other prescribed
preparations — the ablutions of the bodies, the wrapping of the funeral shrouds, the procession
to the grave site — could be observed. To Joshua it seemed the Kaddish and Ghaib were the
only ways the two religions, with all their prescriptions and proscriptions, allowed him to honor
his dead. It was not enough, but it would have to do.
He intoned almost tonelessly the low notes taught to him by his old rabbi who, along
with Joshua’s imam, had died at the wedding feast. As the sound poured forth in an emotional
torrent, Jordan tried to keep the dull, non-flamboyant pace that tradition required. Yet, there was
no one to utter the responses. Then he tried to imagine his family standing before God joining in
the prayer; he could see their faces clearly, their slight smiles that tore his heart; but the face of
God, either as Yahweh or Allah, was just a blur.
“Yitgaddal v'yitqaddash sh'meh rabba … exalted and sanctified is God's great name…”
he translated concurrently as he sang, his eyes still covered.
The bully stopped and stared at Joshua, uncertain of what to do. Hit him? Or run away
from a madman? But God’s name had been invoked and he had been taught by his mother —
and Sister Mary Basil — to fear and respect such incantations.
Joshua slowly, methodically recited the full text of the Kaddish, ending with the final
invocation to God in Hebrew: “Titqabbel tz'lot'hon uva`ut'hon d'khol bet yisra`el qodam avuhon
di bishmayya, v''imru amen…” Joshua finished. “Let them be accepted, the prayers and
supplications of the entire House of Israel before their Father in Heaven, and say, Amen.” Then,
as a postscript, uncovering his eyes, Jordan added in Arabic: “Inna Lillahi wa inna Lillayhi
raajioon … We come from Allah and to Allah we return…”
The bully stepped back. He had heard English words in there that were familiar, even
though he did not understand them. Obviously, Joshua did. And as in tribes of old in every land,
he assumed that those who spoke in strange tongues were blessed — and protected — by God.
That was the best his twelve-year-old mind could tell him.
From that day on until he finished his formal education and for years thereafter, no one
ever bested Joshua Jordan, never out-thought him, ever out-fought him, again. But it was a sad
feeling to be young and smarter not only of others your age but most people you met. One
learned to trust none but one’s own counsel, and that marked him apart. In time the realization
came that this sadness was not just a feeling of sorrow, but of loneliness as well.
Jordan was next sent to St. Ignatius College Preparatory High School, through much of
the city’s history the feeder institution to University of San Francisco, which in its earliest times
had also borne the name of the Jesuit Order’s founder. In those days SI, as it was always known,
was boys-only, still largely white-only as well, when Jordan first attended. But the rapidly
changing diversity in the Bay Area in the 1970s brought in more non-Caucasian students.
Because of its high ranking nationally among college prep schools, more and more immigrants
to the Bay Area, especially Catholic immigrants form Asia and Latin America, sent their sons,
then their daughters, to SI. Ninety-six percent of its students went on to college. Whatever those
students made of their lives, they did it with a good education.
At first, Jordan struggled with religious studies at St. Ignatius. The bias was, of course,
towards Christianity, especially Catholicism. After all, the school’s motto was Ad majorem Dei
gloriam, “to the greater glory of God.” Being both Jew and Arab, Hebrew and Muslim, he was a
late-comer to the school’s faith. Such silly conundrums as why women had to cover their heads
in church but men must bare theirs mystified him; his family had worn neither yarmulke or hijab
and he didn’t believe God so petty as to care. The Trinity also proved vexing. After the Hebrews
spent centuries of narrowing the divinity down to the sacred One, with which Islam agreed,
Christianity cloned it back into Three; why did the kristlekh meshuggenim, those crazy
Christians, feel the need to confuse an already confusing subject further? But it was the concept
of the Eucharist, in particular, which bothered him; the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood in
the rite of Transubstantiation, even if symbolically as he tried to frame it, was repugnant, not the
least because his first two religions had strict dietary laws. Then, in class one day, during a
typically disputatious session with an instructor, it became known that he had been neither
baptized nor confirmed. That was scandalous. Jordan’s fellow students hooted and howled and
mocked him. The priest teaching the course seemed more interested in casting out a heathen than
making a convert. However, current rules prevented him from beating sense into Jordan as in the
old days. So, instead of a leather belt across his bottom, Jordan was sent to the principal’s office.
He had remained silent. This was an old, weary saga being restaged yet again.
The principal, a short, bald, round-faced man with a stout belly beneath his monk’s
robes, was old and nearing retirement. A wisp of gray hair ringed his large head around his big
ears, and bushy gray brows shadowed his bright eyes. He spoke with a variation of Brooklynese
that verged on the Sampensican accent Jordan’s father spoke, only milder, having been cultured
by higher education. There was always a jollity in his smile that put one at ease. Jordan had
never spoken directly to him before, but he was familiar enough with that part of the priest’s
personality on display at school assemblies held in the gym every Wednesday. The old priest
studied the first-year student who had not said a word, ignoring his questions, his eyes often
downcast. The look of emptiness in Jordan’s eyes when he did look up bothered him. Rather
than get angry at the boy’s silence, he grew concerned. He checked the records and called his
mother. Jordan heard only one side of the conversation, but enough to know it was about his
past. The priest put down the phone and looked at Jordan for what seemed to the boy an eternity.
Finally, in accented Hebrew, the priest spoke the words of an old Jewish proverb, “’The
deeper the sorrow, the less voice it has.’”
Jordan’s eyes grew wide and filled with tears and suddenly he was sobbing. The young
man dissolved into a child again, alone and afraid in Haifa. With great difficulty he choked out
the Hebrew words of another proverb, ” ’No one knows the sorrow of another.’ ”
The priest rose and walked around his desk to Jordan, who looked up with an endless
sadness in his eyes, deep and haunted. The priest beckoned Jordan to him. The boy rose,
uncertain of his fate. The priest encircled Jordan with his arms and drew him to his chest in an
absolving hug. The tears flowed once more, this time in relief at the touch of comforting,
understanding arms. After a bit, the child stopped sobbing and became the young man again.
The priest released his arms and smiled at Jordan, tousling his sandy hair.
Father Meyer, as Jordan always thought of him though his true name was Mayer, had
been a biblical scholar in his early priesthood, a promising scholar, studying at the Pontifical
Gregorian University in Rome, of whom the Jesuit hierarchy took note. However, his studies
produced a thesis which, had it been written in the time of Giordano Bruno, might have marked
him a heretic deserving of the stake; it concentrated a bit too much on Christ’s humanity at the
expense of his divinity. But the Society of Jesus was more tolerant now in the Twentieth Century
than in the Sixteenth when they had first come forth in the Church as the “Soldiers of Christ”
and later in the Counter Reformation against Protestantism as the “Infantry of the Pope.” But the
universal question of priority between secular reason versus religious faith had, for Jesuits at
least, been resolved and answered for all time by their founder, Ignatius Loyola himself: “I will
believe that the white that I see is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it.” There would
always be room for some thinking, but not too much, not too far, not too often.
The thesis was filed away, the young priest’s studies concluded, and the priest himself
reassigned. Fortunately, Father Meyer had also shown an aptitude for organization and
administration, and the Jesuits were ever practical as well as devoted. An educated man should
be used in education and a manager must manage. Ergo, a high school principal was fashioned
from the wayward scholar, with a lifetime sentence of humility imposed as his penance. Thus
chastened, he was sent to San Francisco and St. Ignatius, a continent away from where he had
been born and raised in Brooklyn. He there became known by two generations of students as
Father Mike, to all except Joshua Jordan.
Through all his years at SI, Father Meyer was obedient to the letter of his punishment,
but found ways to avoid the full spirit of its intention. When he came across a boy with talent,
with a mind that didn’t follow but led, he took that student under his private guidance. It was not
without reason that among SI’s notable graduates were several politicians, a football Hall-of-
Famer, a Medal of Honor recipient, assorted doctors and lawyers, at least one billionaire
businessman, and two professional comedians. What they all had in common was Father Meyer
shaping their education, liberalizing it from the heavy burden of religious conformity, and letting
the students’ minds breathe. Though there was some suspicion in Rome over the tactics and who
was behind them, the results could not be ignored, for they polished brightly the Jesuit school’s
reputation as a maker of men. To the Society’s rulers Father Meyer remained a devout Catholic
and obedient priest; but to himself he had found a productive means of gaining revenge.
Jordan was exempted from the daily religion class and tutored by Father Meyer
personally. His other instructors were rechosen with great care and intent. It was obvious that
Jordan was one helluva bright kid and knew more about Judaism and Islam than all the teachers
at the school put together, Father Meyer not excepted. Jordan’s studies were intense, and highly
competitive with the few other select students given the same privileged attention, a de facto
honors class. Many points of view were available on many subjects, and all discussed and
debated rigorously. Father Meyer’s tutorial cabal were more concerned in demonstrating how to
reach a valid conclusion than in any one particular, favored conclusion. In short, the chosen few
of independent mind were taught how to think for themselves, properly, validly, tenaciously.
Father Meyer did not concern himself with what his prized students might do in life, whether
they had a particular, specific goal in mind, or were still window shopping for their life’s
purpose. Doctor, lawyer, Indian fakir; it did not matter. They would not get there if they didn’t
know how to think.
Jordan’s time with Father Meyer became a free-ranging discussion of religion in general,
with particular attention to comparisons of the major faiths founded on the Book. The
ecumenical aura of the Second Vatican Council was then still washing over Holy Mother
Church, storming the intellectual battlements with the assaults of inquiry and curiosity long
resisted since the Counter Reformation. The spirit of John XXIII, ironically the second Pope of
that name, infused and inspired many clerics inside the Church — and commentators outside it
— to wonder why the old lady of Rome was so rigidly set in her ways. It seemed every time the
voice of rationality cried out in the Church, the fierce arms of repression and status quo choked
it off. Father Meyer knew his time was long past to join the latest radicals on the ramparts; but
perhaps not for the likes of Jordan. If the essence of religion was to be rescued, as a means to a
moral and honorable life, Joshua and his cohorts would have to be trained properly. He saw that
as his fate, if not his destiny. Perhaps, Father Meyer thought to himself in the quiet hours of late-
night contemplation when he could not bring himself to pray, this was a practical joke the Holy
Trinity enjoyed at his expense.
Through Jordan’s four years the old priest took pleasure in his talks with his prized
student, though he was surprised that Jordan could take their discussions of ethics and easily
demonstrate a humanist morality constructed without reference to a divinity; just delete the first
four commandments, as well as ignoring the other 605 of the lesser known commandments
found in the Pentateuch, and the remaining six made just as much sense and were just as useful.
It was like hearing the faint echo of an personal canticle from Father Meyer’s past that he had
long been forbidden to sing.
Jordan displayed a talent for writing that impressed his tutors, especially since English
had been his fourth language, not is first. He attacked the obvious and turned its words back on
itself, like a judo wrestler using his opponent’s own mass in his defeat. The Golden Rule of
politics, he noted as the theme of an essay on social studies, seem to be “do unto others before
they did it unto you.” An essay on ethics produced a reverse of the ancient, clichéd escape clause
from the Sermon on the Mount: “Judge, and prepared to be judged.” He turned Alexander
Pope’s famous aphorism into the warning that ”where bliss was ignorant, the wise face folly.”
He transformed a book report on Hamlet in part into an essay on integrity, pointing out that
honesty, like charity, begins at home.
It was in rhetoric, though, that Jordan found his voice. Father Meyer, who could speak
with a perfect mastery of the Queen’s English or a Brooklyn brogue when he chose, insisted that
Jordan develop a proper accent, which in those days was considered to be Midwestern, with just
a tinge of New England to give it high gloss. He had Jordan read the works of Thomas Jefferson
and Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, and in modern times the speeches of
Winston Churchill, the columns of Herb Caen and the recordings of Ed Murrow. Every Sunday,
Father Meyer fired up an old tube short wave radio and tuned in the weekly broadcast of Alistair
Cooke’s “Letter from America.” Jordan learned the cadences of the English language, spoken
and written — from the simplicity of a storyteller like George Burns to the aristocratic tempo of
the Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan. More than speech, though, Jordan learned
debate, the art of concise, effective, devastating argument. But beyond even that, he finally
learned what he came to love most about Father Meyer, his infectious sense of humor, and its
value in unarming an opponent. It was true. Laugh and the world laughed with you. He knew
only too well the obverse; much too much he had cried alone.
Towards the end of his senior year, Jordan began pointing out to Father Meyer that many
words of the Christian bibles, in particular the King James version, were at variance with the
Hebrew originals which in turn had survived as Greek translations, thanks to the Jews of
Alexandria, living there in the times of the Ptolemaic pharaohs; liberties had been taken from
one language to another to yet another. Further, the definition of one word in four from the
original texts was not known or in dispute, he noted, according to modern scholarship. So,
Jordan reasoned, any sense of certainty in meaning derived from the texts had to be tempered by
skepticism, if not outright doubt. Father Meyer wondered just how Jordan had acquired his
information; there was nothing on it at that level in the school texts. It was much later that he
learned that the young man whose hair he used to tousle had conned his way into Gleeson
Library at USF nearby and availed himself of its treasures, then audited select classes there on
religious studies.
Thus, as if ordained — with Father Meyer’s blessing and by his connections — Joshua
Jordan was officially accepted by that august institution upon graduation, having added Latin
from SI and Italian from his mother to his arsenal of languages.
The University of San Francisco sits on the southern slope of Lone Mountain, just to the
north of Golden Gate Park and its Panhandle, pinched by the boundaries of three old
neighborhoods: Haight-Ashbury, the Western Addition and the Richmond District.
Geographically it was at the center of the city between the ocean and the Bay; philosophically, to
Joshua Jordan, it seemed barely removed from the Middle Ages. But for many years USF was
where the Irish and Italians sent their good Catholic boys for a higher education, whether they
wanted one or not. He could have gone to a public school, like San Francisco State in the Sunset
District near where he lived in the city, or the University of California across the Bay in
Berkeley, for very little. But his parents had wanted him to attend USF, the Catholic college,
even though his parents were neither very religious and nor had ever graduated from any school
of higher education, much less USF. But they knew that in their adopted son they had the
makings of something special; his was a talent that must be encouraged, according to Father
Mike, even if they did not fully understand it. Unlike most other children, he wanted to learn.
His parents were frugal; the plumbing business had done well. They did their charity
work through the Rotary Club and spent little on themselves. So, when Jordan finished high
school, they had saved enough for his first year expenses. Father Meyer supplied the rest with
scholarships. Each year more were found, for a student who spoke at least five languages — two
of them recently dead or dying — and was practiced in three major faiths at age seventeen, was
deemed worthy of a modest investment. The dean of Admissions, and old friend and past student
of Father Meyer, wasn’t quite sure what he’d get in Jordan, but he was willing to pay to find out.
Education was always something of a crap shoot, he had said to Jordan as he welcomed him to
the University. Little did the dean know that this also described Jordan’s slowly growing view of
faith itself.
Jordan continued his religious studies, his comparative studies, more in search of an
understanding of his life than any desire of how to lead it. Always the question “why” was in the
background. Why had his life, his family been taken from him? What purpose did it serve? The
deeper he dug, the less sense it made.
The rest of Kipling’s faithful serving men, as Father Meyer had taught him, he could
comprehend and answer. The “what and where and when and how and who” of things were facts
that could be dug out, if occasionally with much effort. But “why” was often elusive, too subject
to interpretation based on something other than fact. The school’s curriculum, founded on the
liberal arts and the Jesuit theory that a well-rounded education led to a well-rounded populace,
seemed somehow more reflective of previous, gentler times, not the modern era of discovery,
invention and rebellion the 1960s promised. The early stirrings across the Bay in Berkeley and
on other campuses around the country were challenging the sedateness of an educational system
designed to produce ever more cogs for the gears and wheels of industry, obedient
organizational men who did not question their superiors. At first, the war cry of the student
rebels was “Relevance!” It soon became a cry against war itself, as Viet Nam exploded into the
public conscience on the nightly news. To Jordan, all this was distant. He was living like an
American, but he wasn’t quite one yet. He was under age for the draft and he would have student
deferment when old enough. In his mind, he was already familiar with the horror of war,
declared or otherwise. The body count of his family never left his head. He had his own answers
to find.
Religious reasoning, he discovered, always left him with the notion that something was
missing. Religion’s ready answer was to fill that void with faith. Accept. Believe. Trust to God’s
plan. Trust to God’s will. But then that company line turned around and claimed that mankind
was to blame for its ills, that man had used his free will to choose badly, that it was is own
damned fault he was damnable and required God’s salvation. Jordan sensed that somehow this a
was a perversion of the concept of trust. But in religious use, faith and trust were synonymous,
interchangeable. Trust faith, the “evidence of things not seen,” trust in God, not in oneself. But if
God in his infinite wisdom could not control the human race, what chance did we have to do the
job any better? At best, the reasoning was paradoxical; at worst, it was blatant contradiction. His
latest religion, Christianity, just labeled it all a “supernatural mystery” and said to seek no
further. The circle turned back on itself, with slim solace for a young man whose family had
been violently ripped from him.
As Jordan had pointed out to Father Meyer, the ancient texts were not trustworthy for all
the hanky panky the priests and scribes had played with them through the centuries. Supposedly
though, God’s plan was simple. Ignoring the long eras of paganistic practices, it really started
with the Jews; Yahweh made a compact with his stiffed-neck people to forsake all other
divinities. This was a tough choice. Thousands of years of belief had to be discarded, and many
of the lesser household gods had been useful, such as Ashtoreth whose powers and favors were
necessary to keep the Hebrews and their lands fertile. But Moses and a host of following
prophets, with an occasional nudge from heaven, led the way to the promised land of milk and
honey and six hundred and fifteen commandments, depending who did the counting. God’s plan
in those days was very detailed.
Then, in need of a messiah to rescue the Jews from the influences and corruptions of the
Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and themselves, God sent them his Son and
fellow Holy Spirit. To most Jews, this contravened the earlier Covenant with their unitary god
and all the time spent building and rebuilding temples to house the arc which held God’s
contract which was supposed to be his first and last word on the subject. But a few relented and
did what humanity always did in such situations; they started a new religion, this one based on
the hope and redemption which Jesus offered in his short ministry. This new creed took time to
develop. Not for the people who believed and lived it; they saw it as being fairly straight
forward — accept Christ as one’s savior and live by two, simplified commandments selectively
chosen from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. First,“Love the Lord with all your heart, and with all
your mind and with all your strength.” Second, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What was
excluded from these dicta was any need for a priesthood. That would not do. Whole armies of
rabbis and priests and holy men would be out of a job.
For the next three centuries after the tragic trail that led from Gethsemane to Golgotha to
the Ascension, the new church’s selfproclaimed spokesmen and fathers of the divine faith —
women need not apply — bickered and battled among themselves while splitting theological
hairs, such as what John the Evangelist had really intended when he co-opted Plato’s concept of
logos, the highest, most ideal form of reason, and equated it with Jesus in the famous
introduction of his gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God …” Debate raged among early Church Fathers about the nature of this new
Christ. Was he of God or from to God? Equal or Subordinate? The Latin-speaking West argued
with the Greek-speaking East over what the divine words of the Old Testament, originally
written in Hebrew and Aramaic and then translated to Greek and finally Latin — and thus
subject to very human translation — had all really meant.
If that wasn’t enough, the issue of the new Gospels needed to be dealt with, for it seemed
in those early centuries that every town and village and sect had its own take on the story of
Jesus which was jealously guarded and worshiped. Each edited the others versions of these
supposedly sacred texts so as to root out heresy and establish orthodoxy, which ultimately was
defined as whoever held the upper hand at the moment. Finally in the Fourth Century, the
Emperor Constantine — who in his time had patronized Hercules, Apollo and Sol Invictus and
didn’t much care who reigned in heaven as long as he, Constantine, reigned on earth — desired
order and stability for his newly reunited empire. All this Christian bickering threatened that
stability, and Constantine definitely held the upper hand. He called a council of bishops at
Nicaea in Asia Minor in 325 A.D. and told the Church Fathers to work it all out. When after
much debate they couldn’t, he did. Henceforth, Constantine declared in his position as head of
religion for his empire, Jesus was divine and the Son of God, the embodiment of Rome’s leading
pagan god Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. Anything written or spoken to the contrary was
deemed heresy. Thus, many of the early Gospels besides those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John were excised from the Bible, such as those of Peter, Thomas, Philip and Mary Magdalene,
along with a few Old Testament books deemed unnecessary or unworthy — anything that
detracted from or denied the godhood of the Son of God. In time-honored fashion, Constantine
enforced the new Nicene Creed by buying off the bishops with exemptions from civic duties and
the paying of taxes. He declared this new Christianity the state religion, but not the sole religion,
and did not force the issue, for most of the civilized world was still pagan and happy with its
pantheon of gods for all occasions; indeed, the Roman pagans called the new Christians
“atheists” for believing in only one god. On his death bed Constantine, ever cautious and
pragmatic, accepted baptism and left the mess for his sons and heirs. For another three centuries
the bickering went on, with cries of heresy thrown back and forth. Then, out of the deserts of
Arabia, a new prophet rode forth with yet another interpretation of the God of Abraham, of his
word and his intentions.
Unlike Moses, Jordan noted, who spoke directly with his God via the burning bush,
Muhammad received the latest pronouncements through several meetings with the Archangel
Gabriel; it seemed as though the Divinity was through with direct talks to his children and was
back to using ambassadors. The primary pillar of the new belief was to be the “testimony” or
Shahadah, which claimed “la ilaha illa-llah, wa muhammadan raslu-llah … there is no god but
Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” Very convenient for Muhammad. The other four
pillars were Salat, ritual prayer; Zakat, obligatory almsgiving; Sawm, fasting on Ramadan; and
Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime. The Book, of which the Jews and
Christians were also its People, received a new and final Arabic testament, the Quran.
Discussions of what Muhammad had said was said to him became enshrined in the
supplementary Hadith. Islam, as the new belief came to be called, was to be a total, willing
surrender of one’s self to God, and a Muslim was one who submitted to his will.
The new faith burst out of its confines on the Arabian Peninsula, sword in hand, and over
the next century, spread through all points of the compass, which the Arabs had borrowed from
the Chinese in their travels and conquests. They also discovered and spread the Hindu
numbering system and its symbols which the world remembers now as Arabic, as well as many
ancient Hellenic and Roman texts preserved in Greek Orthodox monasteries throughout the
Fertile, now Islamic Crescent. Eventually, Islam rolled up against Christendom, first in the Holy
Land which it also claimed as holy, and then in Europe, via Spain and eventually in the Balkans
once it conquered Constantinople nearly a thousand years after Muhammad first started talking
to Gabriel. Islam the religion soon took on the customary trappings of necessary government,
but with definite religious overtones, and formed a theocracy of hereditary caliphates and
subordinate sultanates to administer its conquests. Islam then looked about its new empire, saw
that it was good, and concentrated the next several hundred years on maintaining the status quo.
As was traditional in a new religion, Jordan learned, Islam was constantly debated and
interpreted by its adherents. People could not help themselves. Too many ideas embodied in the
Quran and Hadith were open to wonder and question. Such debates and interpretations, when not
agreed upon, were labeled heresy by whichever side again held the upper hand. Islam split into
two sets of beliefs which mutually excluded each other, even though they were based on the
same Book — the Sunni and the Shia. Since thoughtful interpretation and rational debate,
Ijtihad, had been the cause of these internecine troubles, in the Thirteenth Century it was banned
by the ruling Caliph and the door closed on further discussion. Individual minds were not to be
trusted to find correct meanings. The collective wisdom, as interpreted by the elders and leaders,
the mullahs and the clerics, was substituted. Islamic Law, Sharia, ossified into only those norms
already accepted, and Islam, as a religion, settled into a comfortable sense of religious and
cultural superiority even as Islam, its culture and social order, entered a long period of slow
decline under its latest rulers, the Ottoman Turks.
Jordan came to accept that his three religions, all meant to provide answers, gave him
none. How could they? They were unable to solve their own problems, and constantly bickered
and battled among themselves and each other. Judaism had three branches, not counting sects
and cults; Islam had the main two, each in open war with the other; Christianity took the prize,
though, with 33,380 different denominations. And all this did not include the other two-thirds of
humanity and its thousands of pagan religions. A science fiction writer of the day had summed it
all up in the title to a famous short story regarding the Buddhist version of the end of the world,
“The Nine Billion Names of God.”

Jordan came to his own conclusion, quod est demonstrandum. It was impossible to trust
faith.
He then explored secular philosophy at USF in hopes of gaining ground on “why.”
Unfortunately, philosophy proved nearly as intractable and impenetrable as religion, with a
dense obscurity of meaning of its own that bewildered him. It was not quite the same as
medieval scholars debating the number of angels that could tap dance happily on a pinhead; it
was more a sense of official uncertainty in the validity of anything, starting with the relative
nature of existence itself. Doubt, while useful in any intellectual investigation, was taken as a
philosophical end in itself, rather than as a means to an end, not quite enshrining humble
ignorance as a primary virtue, but close. He began to notice growing numbers of students around
him in class or at the student union or at campus parties priding themselves as being “open-
minded” and “tolerant” of all points of view when they basically couldn’t decide one way or
another, or could not simply answer a straight question put to them by Jordan. He had been
tutored in logic by Father Meyer at SI and knew the difference between a syllogism and a
sorites. So, when a professor once joked that “philosophy was where one majored in finding
meaning when there was none,” Jordan did not laugh; it seemed the truest statement the
philosophy department had produced so far.
As always, he turned to history to find answers not available in the classroom. He started
with an old friend, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteen Edition. Thanks to his adoptive
parents, it had accompanied him from Haifa. Little else had, save pictures of Sarah, Hakim and
Nasra.
Jordan mined its subjects on philosophy with the fervor of a sourdough armed with little
more than pick and shovel, following the veins of references and footnotes wherever they may
lead, struggling against the hard crust of centuries of interpretation and reinterpretation. His
early training in Talmudic studies helped him unravel the confusions and perplexities, for no one
could squabble and debate endlessly about God and his meaning as did the Jews; the history of
their commentaries had been preserved in the Talmud as snaking spirals on its pages
illuminating each nugget of Scripture. Yet, as he dug through the mounds of secular thought,
ancient and modern, whenever he unearthed a reference to someone or something that seemed to
make simple sense, it was quickly dismissed by orthodox establishment commentary, declaring
it to be naïve, shallow, lacking complexity, as if an easy answer could never be a valid answer,
much less a true one.
The influence of science on philosophy in the Twentieth Century was not what Jordan
reasoned it should have been. He had been taught to see science as the great simplifier. He
expected the laser light of critical examination to amplify, to organize — in short, to simplify —
human meanings and relationship. The opposite effect occurred. It all got denser, like the fog
that often smothered the campus. Saint Ignatius, like any good prep school in the 1960s, had
given him the basics of science: physics, chemistry and biology, all pretty much static in their
defining principles since Newton, Boyle and Mendel. The fruits of quantum theory and
Einstein’s relativity were just beginning to find their way into popular culture and store shelves,
and DNA was the darling of biochemistry. Electronics was leaving radio tubes behind in favor
of transistors. Integrated circuits were on the drawing boards of Silicon Valley, its name only
recently coined, but the concept of a “personal” computer was at least a decade away. Humanity
had just taken its first steps on the moon. However, what little the public knew of science from
their high school days most often did not stick with them. Popular magazines explained new
discoveries and developments in popcorn terms — light and easy to ingest and then quickly
forgotten. But there seemed to Jordan to be underlying currents in philosophy where science had
been borrowed to ill effect. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, meant to clarify the statistical
nature of the infinitesimal world of the atom and the quantum, had been co-opted to mean that
all knowledge was uncertain. Worse, Einstein’s concepts of relativity — which replaced the
classical notions of time, space, mass and energy — had been taken as license to pronounce all
things relative. There were no absolutes. There was no certainty. Was there even a provable
reality? Wasn’t reality just a matter of individual opinion? Or worse, personal whim, as Dr.
Leary, through his LSD, was suggesting?
As a result, to Jordan both metaphysics and epistemology, the basic studies of being and
knowing, proved to be a contentious tangle; they had left the province of the real and the rational
for the unreal and the irrational. In metaphysics, the old camp declared, “We exist!” The newer
camps shot back, “Prove it!” In between lay a no-man’s land where the rest shrugged, “Don't
know...” or more often, “Who cares …?” Ockham's Razor got a hard workout in Jordan's mind.
Metaphysics appeared to follow a path from the ancient aim of self-evident simplicity to a post-
modern fudge of obfuscating complexity; from the elegant logic of Aristotle — where an entity
could either be or not be, but not both at the same time; in other words, it is what it is and not
something else — to the fudge of Wittgenstein’s Logical Positivism, where a thing wasn’t
anything until the Positivists said so, like an umpire calling balls and strikes.
In the theory of knowledge, the problem was “universals.” Were there concepts that were
true for all people, everywhere, at all times? “No!” spake the Pragmatists. There were no
absolutes, only “conditionals” determined by the moment and the event, in the process declaring
— paradoxically — a very specific absolute. “Get used to it,” they said, “and live accordingly.”
The Neo-Platonists counter-offered with a very well considered “perhaps.” There may be
“ideals” but their true and perfect forms are beyond human perception and imperfect
understanding, thus introducing the kind of mysticism into epistemology and philosophy that
had previously been used only in the realm of religion.

In sum, to Jordan modern philosophy was no better than ancient religion, providing
neither means of knowing nor methods of proving. In the end it proclaimed no certainty, no
surety, no help. And to Jordan, it was no wonder why philosophy was popularly dismissed as a
joke, an amusing diversion devoid of merit. As a famous comedian of the day was later to
remark: “… the study of modern philosophy suggested that philosophy was nonsense.”
What his college experience did confirm was a trait and pattern in Jordan that would be
there for the rest of his life in any action or endeavor. As his father Hakim had cautioned, he
needed to understand something by his own research, by his own analysis; to get at its roots and
not blindly accept “authority” or “common belief” without putting them to the test. Too often
there was a hidden agenda behind those authoritative declarations of belief and faith, sometimes
in science as much as in religion. Yet, Jordan preferred the precision of scientific enquiry to the
mysticism of religious conviction. But even though he had gotten a good grounding in science at
SI, it was clear to him that he would never be a scientist. Higher math vanquished any thoughts
in that direction. He’d battled calculus to a workable draw for tests in high school, and was still
on speaking terms with algebra, but that was it. Most areas of knowledge he felt capable of
handling eventually, but not science, not deeply. He would have to make do with employing its
means and methods to the rest of life’s subjects.
Yet, for all his training, there was another subject for which Saint Ignatius and Father
Meyer could not prepare Jordan — the opposite sex. Oddly enough, he discovered that in a
science class.
Jordan’s science requirement at USF for his liberal arts curriculum was simple and basic,
designed for non-science majors. Jordan was well enough prepared for its two-year general
survey of the natural world by SI that he could skip a class or two or three without problem. He
found that if he could take a quick look at a classmate’s notes, he’d know what to expect on
assignments and quizzes. The professor was pretty much sticking to the book, for he had written
it. One day in his sophomore year when no other urgency of his own studies required his
attention, he attended the class. He slipped through the upper back door of Harney Center’s
lower lecture hall and sat next to a frosh, a cute girl he’d seen before, who was earnestly
scribbling in her notebook nearly every word the instructor pronounced.
Jordan tried his best to adjust his posture in his chair so that he was seeing more of her
than the professor who, at the moment, was comically spinning about the podium with a meter
stick on his head. He was demonstrating the tilt of the earth on its axis and how the seasons came
about. Most students laughed at the display, but she was still scribbling, trying to draw the
whirling dervish on stage in stick figures.
“You know,” Jordan whispered to her, “you’ll find all that in the textbook.“
“I’ve tried,” she answered tartly, still looking back and forth from the lecturer to her
notebook. “I just can’t make sense of it.”
Jordan studied her more. She was petite, lithe, athletic. A runner or a gymnast, he
suspected. She had a pleasant smile when she relaxed enough to recognize that the antics onstage
were actually funny. Her face was round with a pert nose. It was her eyes, when not worried,
that were the dominant feature. They were dark blue and bore the popular look of lashes heavy
with mascara, yet with a bright sparkle that made her face quite lovely. Her dusty blond hair was
short in a pixie cut, another indication of athleticism; it would be easy to maintain for all the
sweat and showering an athlete must endure. She wore a heavy sweater — it was September and
late summer in San Francisco — over jeans and sockless loafers. Jordan found himself observing
things about her, features he had never paid much attention to in anyone before. He noticed her
lips unexpectedly, closely, as if they were under a microscope. They were a bit pouty and bore a
pale, almost pink gloss, barely more than their natural color. Her teeth were fairly even and
white, which meant she didn’t smoke like so many other students. She wore little jewelry, just
simple pearl clips on her ears and a man’s watch on her wrist. An athlete, definitely. Jordan
suddenly had an intense desire to see her standing. He crossed his legs and squirmed in his seat,
trying to seem natural.
“I can help you with that,” he whispered hesitantly.
“Shush!” she replied, still scribbling.
The professor was ending his demonstration and the class was settling back down. Jordan
leaned over to her. “You’ll never get it the way you’re doing it. You’ve got to be more
selective.”
“How would you know?” she shot back, struggling to keep her voice low. “You’re never
here half the time.”
Jordan’s heart hiccupped a beat. It had never done that before.
“I mean …” she added quickly, suddenly embarrassed, enough so that she not able to say
what she meant.
“Truce,” Jordan offered, sensing her discomfort. “The name’s Joshua.”
“Mudayzin Ubijul Dumtum,” she answered, jamming her pencil in her mouth to thrust her
hand forward to shake. Her face turned a bright crimson and her eyes widened in horror as she
groaned.
“Pleased to meet you, Mudayzin,” Jordan whispered in a laugh, taking her hand. It was
warm and soft and lingered an instant longer than necessary. “I have a suggestion that will help
both of us. Trust me?”
Her face relaxed a bit into simple confusion. But something about his manner put her at
ease. He didn’t look like a typical frat boy looking for an easy piece. He had a nice smile, and
unlike the frat boys, he wore his hair long in a ponytail. She nodded her head, the pencil still in
her mouth.
They quietly exited by the upper door and left Harney Center. The fog bank was piling up
past Lone Mountain, a damp wall of diffusion swallowing the campus and western San
Francisco, pushing its way east. Jordan looked up, then at her. “Still trust me?”
“Yes,” she said after a pause. There was more curiosity in her voice than concern.
“Then follow me,” he said as he turned right, crossed Golden Gate Avenue, cut through
the short block of Chabot Street and started marching up hill to the campus of Lone Mountain
College.
“By the way,” she shouted to Jordan, “my name is Madison — Maddie, for short.”
The grounds of Lone Mountain College, formerly San Francisco College for Women,
would soon to be absorbed in the growing USF. The forested knoll with its roads and stairs
leading up to the great central bell tower on the hill’s peak reminded Jordan of Mount Carmel in
Haifa and the area of the Baha’i Shrine. He liked to ascend the tower to the platform beneath the
peaked, red-tile roof for its panoramic view of the Bay. On a day like today it stood above the
fog like a beacon. To the north, poking above the forested hills of the Presidio, were the red
pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge, pointing the way to the Marin headlands and the rural north
counties. The fog was flowing beneath the arch of the roadway on its way to the Delta and then
the Central Valley. To the west, beyond the low, rolling hills covered with houses and the long
green rectangle of Golden Gate Park, was the immense expanse of the Pacific. On a clear day the
Farallon Islands were visible just on the horizon, a good test of eyesight; on really clear days it
seemed that one could see all the way to Asia. To the south, beyond Mt. Sutro and the early
construction of its huge new TV tower, was the growing sprawl of the Peninsula; the small
mission towns of the Spanish — San This and Santa That, and the commercial communities
which followed them — were slowly coalescing into a megalopolis, like wine stains on a
crumpled table cloth.
But it was always to the east that Jordan set his view.
The city below him, stretching to the Bay and the East Bay rim beyond, had a similar
feel to Haifa. The family home had been on the mid-slope of Mount Carmel, amid its verdant
cover. The mountain was held holy at one time or another by several civilizations and their
religions, the most recent being the Baha’i, the latest incarnation of a human as the divinity. On
that mountain called by the ancient Hebrews Kharem-El, the Garden of God, Elijah invited and
debated with the prophets of Ba’al the efficacy of their god versus his, after which said prophets
were stoned to death for their blasphemies. The army of General Sir Edmund Allenby flowed
through the Carmel Ridge Pass nearby to fight the Battle of Megiddo in the Great War that
secured the capture of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and so began the tortured British
Mandate over the Holy Land. The final battle of Armageddon was to take place here, if it ever
got to that.
A young Jordan had read of these exploits and many more in the mountain’s history from
the Britannica in his father’s little study, but that was not why he climbed its slopes. He had
loved to wander the terraced gardens of the Baha’i Shrine, built in the year of his birth. They
flowed over the hillside beneath the golden-domed shrine like a water fall of greenery and
marble, pouring downward step by step on its way to the sea. The shrine was an amalgam of
styles, looking part temple, part mosque, part basilica, a kind of symbol of the myriad ways
humanity saw its gods and tried to honor them, not realizing that in the process that the
architects were really displaying and honoring the magnificent vision and creativity of the
human mind.
There was a grove of olive trees off the main grounds with one old favorite which Jordan
climbed when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. The view from that tree was always
restful. The Bay of Haifa spread to the north of him like the crescent of a scimitar, with Acre,
the old Crusader fortress town, forming its northern tip. The hills tapered away from the
mountain and around the bay, and through the centuries those hills became dotted, then covered,
with buildings of all sorts; homes, schools, factories, the endless assortment of life’s requirement
for shelter, with a view.
But the best of the panorama before Jordan was always the Mediterranean itself, vast and
blue and inviting. If he learned from his readings a good deal of the mixed history of the land
surrounding Haifa, the sea itself was always a mystery. He dreamed in wide-eyed wonder, as
only a child can, of how the spectacle must have looked when those early ships of the
Phoenicians, the biremes and triremes of the Greeks and Romans, the galleys from
Constantinople — first Byzantine then Turkish — the fat boats of the Crusaders, the swift dhows
of Saladin’s fleet — countless vessels with countless sailors with countless stories — first
appeared over the horizon to the young boys of Haifa who, like him, had sat in theses groves,
staring out to sea. There were names carved into the bark of this ancient tree going back
centuries, and many trees had come and gone through many generations of children looking out
over the water’s azure hue.
Jordan led the way up the tower. Campus security and caretakers long knew of him and
his penchant for high places. Somewhere along the way he had learned to pick locks. These
days, he had his own key. He wasn’t alone in his admiration of the view.
The site above the fog stunned Maddie.
“O my god!” she blurted out.
The fog below them hugged the contours of the city as it flowed eastward, like a soft
comforter of down constantly shifting and undulating as it conformed to the reclining body
beneath it. Only a few buildings were tall enough or on hills high enough to poke through,
becoming islands in an ocean of pearl white mist that spread around her. Above the sky was
clear and bright beneath a mid-morning sun. The East Bay and its hills basked in that sunlight,
for now.
“I’ve never seen it this way before… it’s beautiful,” she whispered. “They’re, they’re
like castles on snowy mountains.”
“Yah,” Jordan answered her, pleased at her appreciation and understanding. “This place
is special, for many reasons.”
A red-headed parrot wandering away from its colony in the Presidio, the old army base
to the north of Lone Mountain, dropped down to the tower and alighted beneath one of the
terracotta urns that stood on the four corners of the walkway. It froze, trying to look like a
gargoyle in plaster and painted clay; high above a hawk carved slow circles in the sky, searching
for its vanished prey. The parrots of the Presidio and Telegraph Hill made good eating when
they strayed too far from their roosts. The emerald birds with their distinctive caps of iridescent
red were escaped or abandoned — no one knew for sure — and relatively new to San Francisco;
the city’s hawks and recently returned falcons were glad for their arrival. Jordan looked up along
the tile roof of the tower as it receded to a peak, seeing that it would make a perfect perch; it was
not yet surmounted by the great concrete cross that would be placed on its apex when the
Society of Jesus absorbed the Lone Mountain campus in a few years and, like Crusaders a
thousand years before in Haifa and Jerusalem, the Jesuits would plant their mark upon it.
A tumble of questions flooded Maddie’s mind, all eager to jump out her mouth. A knot
of anxiety seemed to worry her chest suddenly, when she thought of where she was, with a
stranger. But then she looked back at Jordan and the knot dissolved. There was nothing else in
his eyes but the same kind of curious wonder as in hers. She was not certain what might happen,
but she was not afraid. A point had been reached, a bond of some sort forged, the first steps of
trust had been taken, but hardly a dozen words had passed between them.
“I propose a partnership, Maddie,” Jordan offered. “A swap.”
“Just what did you have in mind…” she asked, pushing back an unwanted suspicion from
her thoughts.
“An intellectual swap.“
“What for what?”
“Your notes for my explanation of them.”
“Oh…OH!” she blurted.
“You take too many notes, so you miss too much of the meaning. You don’t have to
copy everything down. I’ll teach you how tell what’s important from what’s not.”
“And what do you really want in return?”
“Just the notes will do.” Jordan wasn’t ignorant of sex, just unpracticed, which led to
being uncertain. His father had given the usually awkward discussion of sex a decidedly
plumber’s perspective, with mentions of male and female threads, pipes, sockets and couplings.
Away from home, teenage boys could talk a lot about sex, but few knew much in detail, except
for what could be discerned from dog-eared copies of Playboy and Penthouse. But until this
morning Jordan had not realized that his constant sense of loneliness held another component,
one which his growing body and young emotions were now stirring within. He sensed that the
next few minutes and the next few words would be critical. Yet, for the first time in his short
life, words failed him. Only one expression of all his languages wandered into his consciousness:
Don’t be a schlemeil.
“How would it work?” she asked.

“After classes. Whenever’s a good time for you. We could meet at Gleeson.”
“I have track practice three times a week, and meets on Fridays and weekends. Could we
do it Wednesday evenings?”
“I suppose,” Jordan pondered. “If we make it a joint study hall kinda thing.” Not having
to attend the science lectures except for tests would free up time during the day for his own
interests. His required courses were not that demanding.
“The mid-term is in a few weeks. Will there be time?”
“I think so, if we get started soon.”
“How about tonight, at my house?”
“Okay,” Jordan answered. The schlemeil faded from his mind and he wondered in
passing which of the two of them would have the most chutzpa.
Madison Abigail Dennett, “Too Mad” to her fiends back East, pedaled her bike furiously,
racing to get home and get ready. She tore through Golden Gate Park almost oblivious to the
traffic. Her route, which she rode religiously every day for the exercise, took her down the
Avenues of the Inner Sunset district around the minor hills and major slopes of Mt. Sutro,
through the West Portal area to St. Francis Wood.
Her father, an executive for International Business Machines, had been transferred
recently to the West Coast from mid-state New York, to manage IBM’s growing resources in
California. The state alone was different enough, but to his wife its cities were intolerable. The
Western ideas of urbia and exurbia were not the Eastern approach; everything was so dry here,
even along the coast. She had refused to live where the companies facilities were, down the
Peninsula among the slowly vanishing orchards of Santa Clara County and the South Bay’s
nether regions; they were not unlike the rural lands around Armonk in New York where the IBM
headquarters ruled. But the train service was abominable. Everything was just too spread out.
And there were no proper shops and stores, like Saks or Bloomingdales, even in the city. Then
she discovered St. Francis Wood. It was as if God had dropped a suburb right in the middle of
the town. Comfortable, stately homes —with lawns! — nestled within an urban forest of
Monterey pines, cypress and well-kept sycamores. Some were Colonial, some Tudor, some
French Mansard; many —too many — were modern versions of the Spanish Mission style with
clay-tiled roofs, alien to East Coast eyes. But the streets were a pleasing blend of curving lanes
and rectangular grids. It even had a roundabout with a fountain. Beyond to the east was the city
itself, a Manhattan in miniature, without the energy or attitude.
Mr. Dennett managed to establish the corporate administration downtown in what San
Franciscans laughably called skyscrapers. Mrs. Dennett found a house to rent on the main, broad
avenue that curved through the heart of the Wood called Santa Clara. It was a boxy, rectangular-
shaped, pseudo-Colonial with arched windows, clad in tan stucco, not proper clapboard as in
New England, or brick, as in her hometown of Richmond. It would do for their time in exile.
She estimated that it would be at least two years before she could return to friends and family
and her social network back home; but that was the price a modern woman paid as the wife of a
rising executive.
The neighborhood and the surrounding area were pleasant, Mrs. Dennett had to admit,
but what was lacking was a Baptist church, though San Francisco was home to a wide array of
them. There were Black Baptists, Chinese Baptists — both Mandarin and Cantonese — as well
as Japanese, Burmese, Portuguese, Brazilian, Macedonian, even American Indian. She had no
idea that the ministry of John the Baptist reached so far and so wide. But there was not a real
Baptist church, which meant Southern Baptist. To her way of thinking, the cover of a book was
more important than its contents. A Southerner by birth and heritage, she had survived both the
winters of the North and the chill of its New England daughters; her family stretched back nearly
two centuries to the Madisons of Virginia, even earlier according to some, disputed genealogies,
to Jamestown. Though a late-comer to the Revolution, her distant relative James had found
useful employment both in the new Congress and as the young country’s Fourth President. But
in California, as foretold in Exodus, she was a stranger in a strange land, in exile until a new
deliverance took her back home. How she would raise her daughter without the proper setting
and church support she did not know. Granted, this was not quite Sodom and Gomorrah the
Haight-Ashbury District made it seem, but it wasn’t Armonk or Richmond either. Mrs. Dennett
finally settled on the Hamilton Square Baptist Church on the city’s Cathedral Hill; the district
was home to several churches of differing denominations. Dominating them all, to her mind,
was the god-awful Modernist monstrosity of the new St. Mary’s. Hamilton Square wasn’t a
proper Georgian structure, either, but an amalgam of Art Deco and Spanish-Mission with a
soaring steeple. But the ministry dated to 1881 and thus had at least a suitable pedigree. It was
perhaps a bit too fundamentalist for her taste, but that could be useful in reining in her daughter.
Maddie, to her mother’s consternation, fell in love with San Francisco, precisely because
it wasn’t Armonk; it was so different. The attitude and outlook were benign. Society didn’t seem
so rigid; conformity wasn’t the prime virtue it was back east. People here smiled a lot, even
laughed! They were so relaxed by comparison. The weather had something to do with it, she
suspected. One could be outdoors all year round without sweltering or freezing. To an athlete,
that was heavenly.
Where she would go for her education was another problem for her mother. The best
local institutions of higher education were unacceptable. The University of California across the
Bay in Berkeley was a hot bed of revolution against the established order, its student barely
more than hippies. Mills College, a women’s school of some reputation, was unfortunately in
Oakland; that would not do. Stanford to the south had better credentials as a private school with
better choices for potential husbands, but she wanted Maddie closer to home; eventually they
would return east and Maddie would finish her education at one of the Seven Sisters; a suitable
match would be found at Harvard or Yale, or even Princeton, if necessary. Then she found USF.
Though Catholic, it was almost perfect; the school was open to other faiths, even Jews.
In the compact landscape of the city, it was practically next door. It seemed conservative
in attitude and administration; there was none of the socio-political nonsense and protesting
student bodies found at the city’s other schools like San Francisco State. It even had a growing
athletic program for women, the better to work off Maddie’s relentless energy.
Maddie made the wide sweep on her bike off Santa Clara up her driveway and let the
bike fall by the garage; she ran into the house, breathless. She found her mother in the kitchen,
supervising the evening’s dinner preparations.
“Mom, I’ve met someone!” she managed to get out between breaths.
“Oh …?” her mother replied slowly, directing the maid. “Does he come from a good
family?”
“Yes. His father’s a plumber and his mother runs the business.”
“I see…”
“No, you don’t,” Maddie said smartly, her breathing returning to normal. “Josh is smart
at things I’m not and he’s offered to help me, to tutor me in science, in return for my class
notes.” Maddie poked around the counter until she found a carrot to nibble. The cook, a middle-
aged black women from the Fillmore District, winked at Maddie. Her son was a fellow student
at USF on a basketball scholarship, playing for the Dons.
“Joshua? That’s … a pleasant name. I’m sure he’s a nice boy.”

“He’s a very nice boy, Mother, and he’ll be here at eight — after dinner, so don’t worry.
I thought we could use Dad’s study.”
“If you feel this is necessary, I’m sure your father could find someone…”
“Mom, don’t start,” Maddie cut her off. “Josh is a good kid, smart as a whip. I’m not
planning on jumping in the sack with him and get pregnant and ruin my reputation.” The cook
stifled a chuckle.
“Madison, please! Your language. That’s not how a young lady should speak.”
“Maybe not ten, twenty years ago, when you were in school. It’s 1972! Thing’s have
changed. Don’t worry, Mother. I’m not about to burn my bra …” Maddie called back as she
turned to leave the kitchen. “… yet.”
Jordan and Maddie met Wednesday evenings, after the week’s major lecture, in her
father’s study, a corner room with four large, arched and multi-paned windows on the two
outside walls. The natural light of the northern and western exposures, often filtered by the fog,
was gentle on the eyes; there was a large oak desk set diagonally across the corner that took
advantage of it. In the evening after sunset, the lights of the neighborhood glistened like
starlight. Two over-stuffed Chesterfield chairs in red leather sat in front of the desk on a floral
oriental rug; between them was a small, low coffee table where they could spread out textbooks
and notes. The arrangement was mutually beneficial. Jordan had never experienced this level of
comfort and luxury; Maddie took it for granted and enjoyed sharing it.
Jordan was able to coach Maddie into taking better notes, to isolate key concepts, and not
get lost in detail. He explained the appropriate principles of physics in an easy manner she could
understand, with many analogies to sports that put things in a better perspective. Maddie wasn’t
ignorant, he thought, just not scientifically inclined; she was the more active, practical, athletic
type. She had two passions, one expected, the other a surprise. Maddie could run like the wind
and spoke French fairly fluently; she had been doing both since early childhood.
To Jordan’s great comfort, Maddie was without guile; she was what he saw. She would
flirt with him in a casual way, to tease him, just to see his reactions; it was obvious Jordan knew
little about girls. To Maddie, that was a refreshing change. The student rebellions on many
campuses across the country may have changed many attitudes, but jocks were always jocks, and
always on the lookout for a chance to score. She felt comfortable with Jordan, for he was
without guile as well, the bits she could tease out of him. He was too serious by half, she
thought; there was something about him she could not fathom. Jordan rarely talked about
himself, and never about his past, what little there was. That was very different, too. Most boys,
especially the frat brats and trust-fund kids in high school, never stopped talking about
themselves. The sorority girls were even worse; she had refused all offers to join any, to her
mother’s regret. Jordan liked to discuss bigger things, deeper things, that Maddie could not
always follow. But they seemed important to him. Life had different interests for her, but in her
own way, she admired the kind of mind she knew she would never have.
Midway through one evening, after an hour of discussion, her mother appeared on
schedule, this time with some lemon meringue pie and coffee. Jordan thanked her and tried to
make polite chitchat, at which he had never excelled. He was certain she took him for an idiot.
When she finally left, he delicately tried to balance the dish of pie on one knee and the coffee on
the other. Just then, danger in the form of Maddie’s cat, Sheba, loomed, deciding to investigate
the food, sniffing at Maddie’s plate on the coffee table. Jordan watched it with foreboding as it
circled his chair. Suddenly, without warning, Sheba leapt from the side into his lap with
disastrous effect. Cake, coffee and cat went flying in every direction.
Maddie couldn’t stop laughing. Jordan sat there, his face reddening. She leaned over and
swiped a bit of meringue from his nose, licked it, and he broke out in laughter as well, with tears
streaming from his eyes. Sheba, sulking beneath the desk, was not at all amused.
“Je pense comme vous comme ça,” Maddie giggled merrily, then said, seeing his
confusion, “I think I like you like that.”
“Mia ragazza ha una idiota per suo ragazzo,” Jordan choked out as his belly ached with
laughter. Another bond had formed between them, a more personal one, the kind that survives
embarrassment. As he wiped tears and meringue from his face, Jordan told himself that he would
have to start learning French.
Slowly, in the warmth of mutual respect, the two grew closer. Maddie stopped her
teasing and the flirting took on a new tone. One evening in late fall, as dusk fell sooner and the
room went to darkness earlier, Jordan found the chairs rearranged. They were side by side and
well behind the coffee table and away from the desk. A single floor lamp now stood between
and slightly behind the chairs, casting them in a softer pool of light. On the desk and on other
tables in the room thick candles burned gently, warming the room with their flickering glow. He
was sitting next to her now as he had that day in the lecture hall. He became aware of new scent;
it was perfume, like orchids in moonlight. Maddie acted normally, but he noticed that her eyes
bore a bit more mascara than usual, her lashes a touch longer, her lips a deeper pink. There was
no longer a cute teenager sitting next to him, he thought, but a lovely young woman.
Somehow, Jordan found the courage to ask her on a real date. Maddie smiled. Her
mother frowned.
They went to a movie, a current hit, Fiddler on the Roof. Maddie was fascinated; she
knew nothing of Jews and Judaism, but the story was very human, at once happy and tragic, the
music unbearably beautiful, joyous and sad. One by one, Tevya’s daughters found love, even as
their world crumbled about them. She pondered Jordan afterwards, his face a study of far-off
sorrow she could not completely understand. As they walked from the theater along West Portal
Avenue toward a local pizzeria, she asked him what was the matter. A street car cranked by, its
bell clanging a warning at the cross street. “Home movies,” was his only comment, mystifying
her.
They went to a spring hop on campus; she had to teach him about modern dancing. The
fast numbers were not easy; one was supposed to gyrate separately to the rock beat a few feet
apart, never in unison or coordinated in any fashion, yet somehow together. Jordan found it
awkward at first; he was used to the choreographed rhythms of jitterbugging to Dixieland and
swing bands, as his parents had taught him. The slow songs were less of a challenge; his mother
knew that some day some girl would crack his shield of emotional distance and she wanted him
ready for at least the simple things he would confront. Jordan put his arm around Maddie and
drew her closer than he’d ever experienced, feeling her through the fabric of his old sport coat.
She wore a light silk mini-dress of psychedelic orange with large, purple and white polka dots; it
ended high above her knees. The thin straps highlighted her athletic shoulders above as her high
heels accented the long, toned sweep of her legs below. In between was hardly a mystery either.
She wore a necklace of shimmering pearls with matching earrings, but Maddie had refused to
wear the little white gloves her mother thought proper after the argument about her length of her
dress — or the lack of it. Jordan felt her warmth and his arm tingled. Maddie smiled at him and
rested her head on his shoulder; her eyes closed as they swayed gently to the music. Jordan
inhaled the scent of jasmine in her hair, like Haifa in springtime. He trembled briefly at the
thought. Maddie looked up at Jordan, wondering, and gently kissed him on the lips.
The young boy, who for so long had carried in his heart only a distant sadness and
distrust, now, as a young man, began to feel something more than just friendship and affection
for another. Holding Maddie in his arms, gently, tenderly, warmly, Jordan felt the first, sweet
pains of love and longing. His mind tried to grasp the hunger his emotions were brewing, the
heady mixture of both having and wanting. His sense of time collapsed; it was now just this
moment on the dance floor. The past dissolved from memory into an all-encompassing now,
with just a faint hint of a future, all to the rhythm of an old love ballad. He recognized it was
from a record album of a popular crooner who had been, oddly enough, a favorite of both his
mothers, one in San Francisco, the other in Haifa, half a world and a lifetime ago. The lyrics
now came to mind with a meaning he never fully comprehended before. “... the walls of the
room fade away in the blue ... deep in a dream of you ...”
Jordan’s tutoring had worked. Maddie’s comprehension and her grades in the science
courses improved. She wanted to show her appreciation. Towards the end of the second semester
while going over notes from a biology lecture than seemed more chemistry than biology, she
invited him to dinner the next week. Jordan looked at her quizzically.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, silly.”
“Your mother …”
“… elle sera ma mère. Don’t worry, she won’t crucify you.”
“There are worse tortures.”
Jordan arrived for dinner wearing a new sport coat, his hair tightly pig-tailed to make it
look shorter, and holding a bouquet of flowers from his mother’s garden. He presented them to
Mrs. Dennett, who smiled politely in thanks, then handed them to the maid. Grace Dennett had a
delicate stature to her small, thin frame, her hair like a crown on her head; had the American
Revolution been lost, she would have been treated as an aristocrat back in Virginia. John
Dennett, a broad man with a direct face, shook Jordan’s hand with a firm grip, like an engineer
testing the texture and strength of a new material. Sitting in the living room, Jordan felt like a
specimen under a microscope until Maddie sat next to him and leaned gently, imperceptibly
against his side for comfort and support. The discussion was light and easy, about how badly the
Giants were doing in baseball, and the decent prospects for the Forty-Niners and their Gold Rush
defense in football for the coming season. These were no match, of course, for the Yankees and
the football Giants of New York. Mr. Dennett lamented the state of hockey in general and in the
Bay Area in particular. The league never should have expanded. The pitiful Golden Seals of
Oakland were evidence of that. Jordan nodded sagely and did not try to comment much; he was
out of his depth in professional sports. Maddie made the appropriate responses and her father
seemed pleased.
To Jordan the formal dining room was a marvel of correctness and good taste. The outer
wall featured three arched window doors, like portals to the outside; the stone patio beyond held
heavy wrought-iron furniture painted white and the gardens were green and carefully tended.
Paintings hung on either side of the arched way in from the living room; they were by members
of the Hudson River School, Jordan recognized from his art history classes. They looked to be
originals, he thought, their soft light diffusing their bucolic rural scenes to hide the brush strokes
and present serene settings as created by a rational and benign god. The table was set in a
fashion Jordan had never experienced, like a tableau from a Edwardian saga. The tablecloth and
napkins were of rich, heavy linen. The plates of fine porcelain had gold rims an inch wide. The
silverware was really silver, with the weight and heft of a royal setting, highly polished;
mercifully, there were only two forks. The glassware was light and thin and elegant, like thin
sheets of water frozen in an unnatural clarity and molded into delicate bowls on narrow stems.
For Mrs. Dennett it was a presentation with a purpose, one which carried the message: This is
who were are. Jordan read another message there: Who are you?
From a sideboard the cook and a maid served the meal. It began with steamed artichoke
and mayonnaise sauce, a dish Jordan had never experienced; he couldn’t figure how to attack it
with knife and fork until Maddie quickly demonstrated the proper finger technique. Then came
the main course, filet mignon with sauce Béarnaise and asparagus accompanied by a rich,
golden Hollandaise. The wine, which he and Maddie were permitted to enjoy, was also French,
Châteauneuf du Pape, shipped out by Mrs. Dennett’s wine merchant in New York; she thought
the vineyards of Sonoma and Napa Valleys a land of parvenus.
It was during dessert that the conversation turned dangerous.
“So, Josh,” Mr. Dennett asked, “What’s your major?”
“History, sir,” Jordan replied, “With an emphasis on comparative religious studies.”
“You’re Catholic, I understand,” interjected Mrs. Dennett. “Devout?”
Ah, thought Jordan, here was the trap, disguised as an off-hand, one-word aside. She was
good, he had to admit. If he answered yes, he was damned in her Baptist eyes as a practicing
Catholic; if he answered no, he was condemned in toto as a non-practicing Christian. He had
neither the heart, nor the courage, to tell her he was also a lapsed Jew and an apostate Muslim.
Instead, he answered as he had often on the playground.
“In sh ‘Allah,” he said quietly in Arabic. “… as God wills” he repeated, nodding his
head.
Maddie’s mother stared at Jordan, stymied, in more ways than one.
Through sophomore and junior years, her science requirement achieved, Maddie did not
need tutoring; she wasn’t sure what to major in, so she took art and literature courses to round
her athletic corners into a something smoother, more refined culturally, at her mother’s
suggestion, and continued her French studies at her father’s. But she and Jordan continued to get
together at school and to date. It was all they could do to keep their hands off each other.
Maddie was free-spirited, adventurous, but knew the bounds beyond which her mother
would become a problem. She had no doubt that she was falling in love with Jordan, and he with
her. She also had no doubt her mother disapproved. Mrs. Dennett was always unfailingly polite
to Jordan, but Maddie was well familiar with her mother’s sang-froid, born of her sense of
having sang blue, with which she treated any potential mate not of her choosing.
More and more, Jordan avoided Maddie’s home. They met in coffee shops and cafés in
the Hashbury, that slowly decaying hippie graveyard of 1967’s “Summer of Love” centered on
Haight and Ashbury streets; what had blossomed there as a psychedelic wonder of sight and
sound and free love had become a nightmare of squalor, hard drugs and abandoned teenage
runaways even before that summer’s end. Jordan’s father, who had been called to fix the trashed
plumbing in too many crash pads, had brought him to the Haight twice, at its start and its finish,
as an object lesson on what happens when life was lived too freely, too loosely, and without
regard for consequences.
On Friday nights, Jordan and Maddie often enjoyed the pleasures of Playland-at-the-
Beach, San Francisco’s answer to Coney Island; Maddie thought its roller coaster a tame
imposter to the original Cyclone she first rode in wild glee with her father when she was eight
years old. Laughing Sal, the great mop-headed, gap-toothed papier-maché farm girl whose high-
pitched giggles delighted two generations of San Francisco kids, was enjoying her last laughs as
she guarded the Fun House; Sal and the park were destined to close at the end of summer to
make way for dreary condos whose only view of the ocean was when the perpetual fog bank
along the coast occasionally melted away.
On summer weekends they enjoyed concerts at Stern Grove, a small, perfect forest of
towering eucalyptus and pine just west of St. Francis Wood in the Sunset District where Jordan’s
family lived. Since the Great Depression free concerts were held there every Sunday through
July and August. It was a natural amphitheater within sheltering meadows some sixty feet below
the level of the surrounding streets of Sloat Boulevard and 19th Avenue. As a boy Jordan’s first
encounters with classical music and opera occurred here which expanded his appreciation
beyond the meager collection of old record albums played endlessly by Sarah and Hakim. It was
his pleasure to introduce Maddie to the joys of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, a tiny but rabid
collection of young and old musicians dedicated to saving Dixieland music for the day when the
wider culture would appreciate it joyous charms again.
In the fall, they drove over the Golden Gate to Marin, to beyond Novato to where the
Renaissance Pleasure Faire held forth in the groves of the Black Point Forest. Many attendees
had begun to dress in costume like the Faire’s participants, creating a kind of Sherwood Forest
of Robin Hoods and Maids Marian, knaves and knights valiant, some in full armor, and
merchants of all sorts plying goods and savory treats from medieval to modern times from stalls
among the ancient oaks. Maddie bought a pretty tunic with long, wide sleeves trimmed in lace
and a wide leather belt with a big buckle that she could wear to join the fun. Jordan discovered
an oversized earthen drinking mug that held a huge portion of coffee or tea or cocoa. Maddie
laughed with delight when Jordan verbally dueled the Versifier, a scurrilous young poet who
hung from the great limbs of huge oak and shouted rhymed taunts at fairgoers with an
exuberance flavored by large amounts of spittle. Jordan and he traded quotations with mock
courtesy, bowing low with exaggerated waves of their arms. A crowd began to form around the
tree, applauding the two and shouting encouragements. The Versifier finally clapped merrily and
lauded Jordan’s talent, inviting him to take a seat in his tree and earn his keep as well. Jordan
demurred, citing Cyrano de Bergerac: “When I have writ a line that all but sings itself, I have
paid myself a hundred times.” The crowd roared its delighted approval and declared Jordan the
winner. The Versifier lay down on his limb as if slain.
On colder, wintry days, they rented ice skates at the old rink on Forty-eighth Avenue
between Kirkham and Lawton Street. It was a tiny, ramshackle building of dark wood and dim
light, not the spacious, over-lit rink of Iceland in Berkeley, and certainly not the glamorous
splendor of Rockefeller Center’s famous ice. But Maddie had a wonderful time teaching Jordan
how to skate. His ankles, no matter how tightly she laced his skates, wobbled like they were
made of rubber; Jordan flailed about and fell often, to Maddie’s endless giggles. But eventually
he found his legs and the two could skate passably as a couple.
Jordan and Maddie often walked the flat stretches of Ocean Beach at the western end of
Golden Gate Park, which early city fathers and John McLaren had fashioned out of the sand
dunes of the city’s “outside lands” to the west, bringing forth a paradise of green and blue; they
bequeathed to the future a verdant space that rivaled Central Park in New York, instead of just
the racetrack which had been favored by the Big Four. They picnicked on the perimeter grass by
Stowe Lake surrounded by Cyprus and Monterey pines. They rented rowboats to navigate a lazy
path along the doughnut-shaped waterway where ducks and grebes and seagulls swam and fished
and mated. In the center was an artificial island comprised almost entirely of Mt. Strawberry,
accessible by a great stone bridge formed from rough-hewed rocks that arched like a frozen gray
rainbow over the water. They hiked to the top of the island and found what generations of San
Franciscan teenagers had discovered since the park’s creation, solitude and serenity, with a
stunning view.
After a while, they found more secluded spaces among the dells and hollows the park
afforded, as their intimacy grew and the desire for privacy increased. Jordan was caught in a
psycho-emotional vise. His hormones were pleading for release, while his imagination saw
Maddie as a Greek goddess in need of a pedestal. He felt that to love one was to lose the other.
Maddie was hardly less conflicted.
There were plenty of means available now to young women to have sex safely; her few
female friends and classmates laughed, nervously, about it. But that wasn’t the issue. She had
been raised with the idea that sex and love were meant for marriage, no matter how much both
taunted her before it. Good Christian girls, of any denomination, but especially Baptist, did not
do such things, her mother warned, despite the mass of evidence — and Gloria Steinem — to the
contrary. Mrs. Dennett had summed all it up with a mnemonic device worthy of Ogden Nash: “a
decent docent doesn’t.” Ultimately to Maddie’s mother, Jordan was just another young hot blood
on the make.
Maddie knew that she was still too young for marriage, regardless of her own or her
mother’s intentions. Jordan was too young, as well; he had another several years of schooling
ahead, Maddie was sure, for he was being encouraged by the faculty to skip his masters degree
and seek a doctorate directly after graduation. She could see herself waiting until he was finished
and found a post-doc posting somewhere, maybe even here in the Bay Area. But her mother
would remain a stalwart obstacle. And the frequent picnics in the Park became occasions of
temptation that grew harder each time to ignore. There were limits, she knew, but she wasn’t
always certain what they were, or where she wanted them to be.
On a bright Saturday afternoon in late May at the end of her junior year, Maddie and
Jordan lay together on a big blanket, surrounded by shrubbery, looking up at a patch of sky that
was blue beyond belief, like deep ice lifted high for the sun to reflect upon. A wind was rising
from the ocean, penetrating even into their shelter. Jordan rolled the blanket over them in
protection. After a bit he could feel their combined body heat toasting them beneath the fabric
and he hungered for the touch of her. Maddie was on her back, tucked in the crook of his left
arm, her sight lost in the depths of the sky. Slowly, Jordan brought his right hand around and
rested it on her breast. Maddie heaved a sigh, but did not resist. Jordan rolled his head slightly
and kissed her. Their lips gave way to probing tongues, gently seeking the intimate pleasure of
another being. Jordan’s hand, still on top of her sweater, began a slow circling of her breasts.
Maddie sighed again, savoring the touch of him even through the thick cotton fabric. Her whole
body began to tingle in a delicious way. The kiss went on and grew in passion. Jordan slipped
his hand down to work its way beneath the sweater. Maddie squirmed slightly but did not stop
him. She was feeling intoxicated by the taste of desire, giddy, wanting to sense more. Jordan
slowly raised his hand across her taut belly and found she was not wearing a bra. Maddie
shivered slightly at his touch. His fingers trembled as he lightly caressed one soft mound then
the other, her nipples hardening to his tender strokes. Maddie drew in a deep breath and broke
the kiss. She could feel Jordan’s groin against her leg, his growing hardness. A limit was fast
approaching in the fog of her mind, a dim red light weakly flashing its warning.
Jordan’s eyes pleaded with Maddie, but she gently closed hers and shook her head. This
had always been part of the bond between them, to be able to speak to each other without words.
Jordan began to remove his hand, but stopped. Maddie opened her eyes and looked into the
longing she saw in his. She shook her head slowly again. Jordan, relented, then pinched her
breast as he quickly withdrew his hand.
“Tu merde!” she hissed and laughed at Jordan, then rolled over on top, pinning his arms
to the blanket, straddling his body with her knees. “You wanna play games?”
Maddie lowered her hips to his and began a slow grind against them. She bent her head
down and kissed Jordan passionately, her tongue darting in and about. He started to squirm
beneath her, raising his hips to meet her motion. His tongue began to probe back, seeking hers as
it wickedly teased his lips. A wave of emotion washed over Jordan as his tongue found hers.
Then Maddie nipped its tip with her teeth, carefully, but to good effect. Jordan yelped. Maddie
laughed gaily and collapsed against his chest. Jordan began to laugh as well, in spite of his
tongue. He drew his arms around Maddie and crushed her to his body, holding her so tightly that
it seemed though neither could breathe, laughing until the desire was spent, his passion drained,
and all that one could feel was the closeness of the other.
As the summer break at the end of her junior year commenced, a Deus ex machina
descended upon Jordan and Maddie in the form of IBM. Her father was being transferred back to
New York. They would be moved by the time school began again in the fall.
Maddie’s mother was overjoyed; her prayers had been answered. She began preparations
for the move and spent many expensive hours on the phone back East talking to friends, making
arrangements. Over the Fourth of July holiday, she informed her daughter of her plans.
“But I’m not going back East , Mother,” Maddie said simply.
“Of course you are, dear. I’ve arranged everything.”
“That’s why I’m not going. I want to stay here. I love Josh. When he’s finished school,
when he’s got his PhD, we’ll get married.
“That’s out of the question. He’s a nice boy, but—“
“Mother, stop it. Josh knows more about religion than any ten holy men you can name.
So don’t let’s say another word about that.”
“Maddie, he knows about it, studies it. But does he live it?
“In his own way, no less than you.”
“Be that as it may…” her mother quickly retreated to find another tact. “It would be
years before he can afford to marry, if ever.”
“So, I’ll find work. I’ll get a teaching credential and teach high school French and sports.
Josh is used to working part-time. We’ll get by.”

“Oh for gracious sakes, Maddie, be serious. I don’t want you living in some hovel.”
Maddie laughed. “I doubt we could afford the kind of hovel you’d envision.”
“No daughter of mine —“ Mrs. Dennett stopped, her face a study in horror. “Have you
two …” She could not bring herself to say the words.
Maddie laughed again and shook her head. “No, we’ve not slept together, if that’s what
you’re thinking.”
Her mother visibly deflated in her relief. “No… I … of course not …”
“You raised me to be a good girl, Mom. I’ve given you no reason to be ashamed of me.
And Josh has never been anything less than a perfect gentleman, despite what you think.”
A thought occurred to Mrs. Dennett. “Has he even proposed to you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how do you know he loves you?”
“Trust me, I know.”
“So nothing formal has been decided?”
“Nothing formal. But if I was to raise the issue this evening, we’d be married by
tomorrow night in Reno. That’s how sure I am of Josh.”
“We’ll speak to your father about this.”
On his arrival. Mr. Dennett was apprised by Mrs. Dennett of the state of affairs in his
small but endlessly challenging family. He immediately went to a certain cabinet in the kitchen
and mixed a martini. Mrs. Dennett declined; Maddie accepted a glass of white wine.
“Your mother says you’ve been accepted at Vassar,” he said after a long sip. “You could
come home weekends.”
“I want my home to be here, with Josh,” Maddie pleaded gently.
“But is this best for the family?”

“Dad, according to the State of California, I’m old enough to drink. I think I’m old
enough to plan my own future.”
“Of that, I have no doubt. But is what you want the wisest thing to do?”
“It’s what I feel, what I know in my heart.”
“Believe me, Maddie,” her father said gently, taking another sip of his drink, “when it
comes to the world, what your head tells you is more important than your heart. I’m sure the
State of California would agree.”
“Father,” Maddie began slowly, “I don’t want to hurt you and Mom, to disappoint
you…”
Mrs. Dennett interrupted her. “Do you believe in the ten commandments?”
“Yes, certainly…”
“Including the fourth?”
“Sure — oh…”
“Until you no longer do, I ask you to obey it, and my wishes.”
Maddie bit her lip and closed her eyes. Slowly she nodded, fighting to keep her tears
inside. Mr. Dennett moved to comfort her. He cradled her in his arms as if she was the young
child again he so enjoyed watching grow up, so alive, so full of adventure, so confident. He had
marveled at her capacity to learn, no so much scholastics but the stuff of life about her; when she
was six, he heard Maddie imitating him as he occasionally spoke French to friends and family on
the phone to keep up his proficiency. After a while, he realized that she was actually speaking
the language; simple sentences with a limited vocabulary, but making sense. When Maddie
began learning to read, he gave her a book of French fairytales so that she learned to read French
as well as English; and Maddie was thrilled to visit Paris with her parents one summer vacation
in grade school. She had always attacked problems with an envious energy. When she first tried
to ride a bike, she fell constantly, skinning her knees, bruising her palms; Maddie refused
training wheels and kept at it until her father feared she would have scars instead of skin on her
hands, but she mastered it in the end. When Maddie competed in sports, she did not feel it
necessary to be the absolute best, the star player; its was the game, the play, that mattered, that
she enjoyed the most. The competition was within herself, not the other players. But something
lately had changed. Was it that she was an adult now, with all the attendant disappointments and
heartbreaks that he could not spare her from, as much as he wished he could?
It disturbed Mr. Dennett that his wife had begun using religion as a leash to rein Maddie
in. She had been no more religious than he until they came to California; born an Anglican, he
quietly accommodated his wife by attending Baptist services, alien as they were; he had always
been more social than religious anyway. Maddie was an adult; she needn’t be treated like a silly
school girl who had forgotten her bible lessons. Then a thought occurred to him, a way out of
this dilemma.
“I have a suggestion,” he said to Maddie.
“I will not let her stay here,” Mrs. Dennett warned.
“No, that’s not it. Maddie, do you enjoy your French studies?”
“Mais oui, Papa,” she answered, looking up in curiosity at her father. “Je les apprécie
beaucoup.”
He smiled at his daughter and held her at arm’s length.
“Ah, bien, ma chère,” he continued. “What would you think of a year or two of study in
Paris?
Mrs. Dennett opened her mouth to protest, then thought better. This could have
possibilities.
“Live in Paris?” Maddie asked.

“Yes, next year, after you finish school at Vassar.”
“You’re not trying to bribe me…”
“Mais non, ma fille doutante sage… I’m trying to find a compromise, something we can
all live with. I know the perfect school. I did a year there myself, ages ago. And I’m sure we can
find a family for you to live with in Paris. I know several execs back at Armonk who’ve been
posted there. It would allow you to lock in the language, living it daily. And there are worse
places to live for a couple of years.”
“And afterwards, when I’m done?”
“Ma petite coquette, I think you would be ready to live wherever and however you
wanted.”
“I’ll do it, if you wish, Father, if you promise me that it will be my life and no one else’s
to decide when I’m through.”
“Je tu promets, ou le Diable devrait prendre mon âme,” he laughed. “If you and Josh are
meant to be, you’ll wait and find a way…” Mr. Dennett decided not to add that he was certain
that Mrs. Dennett would try to make sure that did not happen. There was only so much he could
do.
“She can go anywhere but the Sorbonne…” Mrs. Dennett said to no one in particular,
thinking to herself. “The radicals have made it as bad a Berkeley ...” She was adding up the
benefits in her mind. A finish of Parisian gloss would polish her daughter’s rough edges. The
language would be a plus back in New York society. And she would be nine thousand miles
away from San Francisco and Joshua Jordan.
“No, No, No! Not again …” Jordan moaned.
It was early evening after the dinner hour and the sky was turning softly to twilight. The
buildings along Haight Street had a pinkish glow cast by the setting sun, mellowing the glaring
colors of the few remaining psychedelic storefronts. Maddie had chosen a favorite coffee house,
the Grindstone, to tell him. The sweetly acrid smell of marijuana mingled with the rich aroma
roast espresso beans. A few of the Hasbury’s remaining hippies, nearing the dreaded age of
thirty and the prospect of having to find work, sat slouched at a corner table. She thought first to
meet at the bell tower on Lone Mountain, but somehow felt that would have been a betrayal.
“What do you mean, not again?” Maddie was puzzled. She had told him the whole story
of her mother’s plans and her father’s solution. She had tried to think of every objection, every
argument Jordan might have, but this confused her. “It’s just for a few years, maybe three. Then
I’ll come back. We’ll be together again.”
“No…” Jordan moaned. He held his head in his hands, afraid to look at Maddie. He had
been dreading this moment since the day he met her mother. It had been obvious and inevitable,
as if the woman had wielded the moving finger of fire and written it on his soul. Even if they
had just been friends, she would have found a way to keep them apart.
“Josh, please understand. As long as I accept their care and support, I can’t defy my
parents. I can’t hurt them that way.”
“But you can hurt me, right?”
“I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. But, have you ever defied your mother?”
“Neither, never…” he whispered.
“What? I don’t understand. You’re not making sense.”
“Nothing…” As happy as he had been in her arms, he now felt as sad and lost to Maddie.
What could he do? What more could he say? He had no chance against her mother, not when her
father was in agreement. The woman made him think of someone from his childhood, a similar
force of nature wearing a wimple, implacable against all reason. “Fiat voluntas mea …”
“Josh, please! I don’t understand at all. Look at me. I’ll come back. We’ll get married It
won’t be that long.”
No, Jordan thought savagely, she doesn’t really comprehend. Her mother will never let
her win. Three years or thirty, it didn’t matter. Her own life is too tied up in Maddie’s. She
could never face the sisterhood of her society friends with a black sheep daughter, especially if
she ever found out about his true heritage. She would use religion or anything else as a cudgel
against Maddie. Nor did it matter whose lives were slammed in the process, whose happiness
was sacrificed, so long as a façade of propriety was preserved, that Maddie seemed the obedient
child. But Maddie would obey, because she believed she should, because the religious rules her
mother had invoked would not let her do otherwise, not without secretly feeling guilty every
minute she was with him. What good would their time together be if deep inside she resented it?
His heart stung him with the question that seemed never far away — why? Why was it that just
about everything good in his life that he’d ever found, everything he dared to care about, was
taken from him? As always, he heard no answer.
“Josh, please!”
Jordan saw that there was only one way he could act now, one way to keep Maddie —
and himself — from hanging on to a hope, a dream, a future her mother would never permit.
“Go to hell!” he shouted. Others in the café looked around at them.
“Wwwhat?” Maddie stumbled, astonished.
“Go to Paris and go to hell…” he seethed, trying to calm himself.
“You don’t mean that. You can’t mean that!” Maddie’s voice became a trembling, unbelieving
whisper.
Suddenly, an anger welled up in Jordan that frightened him, a blinding rage that forced
his vision down to a single point, one that he wanted to strike out against, to crush as if it was
everything and anything that had ever hurt him, lash out with all his might, with all his will, to
pummel the point until he was exhausted and drained of any emotion and it was gone. That point
was Maddie.
“Josh…” she whispered through her tears.
Jordan stood up and blindly walked away, quickly, unsteady, not looking back. He did
not want the last sight of her to be Maddie crying.
Jordan found himself standing on a street corner, staring at a bus. The door was open and
the bus driver was getting pissed. The man had a beefy face and pudgy hands and the impatient,
surly manner of a one who did not like waiting.
“You want on, kid, or not?”
Jordan saw that he was standing at a corner stop. His feet had brought him here without
his conscious mind’s participation. It was dark out. He had no idea how long he had walked, but
he knew suddenly where he had to go. He stepped on to the bus and flashed his Fast Pass. He
walked to the back and slumped into a seat as far away from any passengers as he could manage.
He transferred to another bus at Van Ness Avenue and again at Clay Street. He rode the 55
Sacramento over Nob Hill and down across Chinatown, down to the financial district. He got off
at Kearny. It was well after working hours and the area was mostly deserted; there were few
restaurants or bars in the financial areas to attract people away from the comforts of their homes
and their TVs once work was done. The loneliness of the evening suited him.
Jordan knew that somehow he had to forget Maddie, forget what he had said to her, and
that he couldn’t. She would never leave his mind, not completely. But until he lost her, Jordan
had not realized how much a part of him Maddie had become, how much had had looked
forward to seeing her bright face, to hearing her happy voice, her gentle teases. Every time
before what he loved had been taken from him; this time it was he who walked away and that
made her loss all the worse with the sense of his own guilt. He knew from sad experience that
there would be too many times in the days and months ahead when he would think of her and
feel only a stabbing ache in his chest, the sorry sense of longing in his arms that would no longer
hold her. His goal was to reach a time when the ache was just dull, then wasn’t there, and he
could think of her without feeling at all. He doubted that would ever happen; it never had with
Sarah, Hakim and Nasra.
He stood by the non-script door on Clay Street behind which he had spent many happy
Saturday evenings, first by himself and then with Maddie. Now he was alone again. He opened
the door and walked down the stairs to Earthquake McGoon’s.
The Turk waved to him with his trombone from the band stand as the quintet worked its
way through “Tiger Rag.” Jordan took his place at the dark end of the bar and the bartender
poured his usual, scotch from the well on the rocks with a lemon twist and a water back; the
drinks at McGoon’s were as generous as the music. He sipped the burning liquid and breathed in
the mad harmony of the players as they raced through the song, chasing each other with bits of
the melody, answering back with more. The infectious beat, the crazy ramble of the instruments
assaulted his ears in the close quarters of the room. He tried to absorb the music into his body to
feel it like a sense of touch, into his mind, his soul. Like the scotch, it penetrated a bit, but not
enough. The gleeful joy wasn’t there tonight. An old quotation stumbled into his mind from a
philosopher who must have loved such music, for in an essay on the effect of the arts on
happiness she had written that “there was no such thing as a sad tap dancer.” Until tonight,
Jordan had agreed with her.
The band finished the rag and took up another tune, “Come Back to Sorrento,” a slow,
dirge-like love song that spoke of longing. “Retornado a Sorrento” his mother had called it, a
classic Italian love song of lament. The music built upwards with urgency, Turk’s trombone
wailing an emotional refrain of sadness and sorrow, echoed first by the clarinet, then by the
trumpet. They reached a peak as one, a crescendo that cried to the heavens, then passed and
slowly returned to earth and was done. Jordan looked at his drink and drained it. He stood up,
saluted the band, then left. It was a long way home across the spine of San Francisco’s hills, and
he intended to walk every foot of it.
When he reached home out in the Sunset, it was near dawn. The sky was turning a
golden gray behind the hills of the city to the east. His parents were still asleep. He went to his
room and found a note on his nightstand next to his books. He opened it and saw his mother’s
handwriting. Father Meyer had called and wanted to see him that morning at nine.
Jordan arrived at the rectory at Saint Ignatius feeling deathly tired and guilty; it had been
almost a year since he’d seen the old priest. School and Maddie had filled his days. He did not
recognize the young Brother who answered the door, who told him in a hushed tone that Father
Meyer was expecting him in the library. The man seemed hardly older than he, and much too
somber as he led the way. The Brother knocked once and listened. After a minute, he knocked
again, then opened the door for Jordan, nodding that he should go in. Jordan entered and the
Brother closed the door silently behind him.
Father Meyer was sitting in an old wingback chair, its back mostly to Jordan, a blanket
on his lap, in front of a small fire, despite the fact that it was July. Jordan had spent many hours,
memorable, happy hours, here in discussion and debate with Father Meyer. The room could have
served as a museum replica of a Medieval chamber. Dark paneled wood graced the walls
between bookshelves which rose to the ceiling. The ceiling itself held stout timbers stained a
deep brown and cracked with age. Between them white plaster seemed to fade away from sight
in the dim light, reflecting the ebb and flow of the small fire’s glow. The fireplace sat beneath an
intricately carved stone mantelpiece, above which hung a portrait of Saint Ignatius, the Order’s
founder, born Iñigo López de Loyola, receiving its charter and benediction from Pope Paul III.
Jordan walked around to the second chair in front of the fire. He looked at the old priest
and shuddered. His face was gaunt, worn, too thin to be real. Meyer’s shoulders were narrow
and the paunch that always reminded him of a Santa Claus by Thomas Nast was almost gone.
Jordan could not believe how much had changed in just a year.
The priest was knapping, his hands placed one on top of the other on a black leather
satchel, his head nodding. His breath was labored in sleep, but a small smile was on his lips, a
faint echo of the jolly man he remembered. Jordan sat down and waited, not wanting to disturb
the old man’s rest. After a few minutes, a fire ember popped and startled Father Meyer awake.
He raised his hands to his face to rub his eyes and saw Jordan sitting next to him, his face a mask
of sorrow.
“I thought I taught you how to smile better than that,” Father Meyer wheezed and
laughed weakly, barely above a whisper.
“It was a long day and longer night. I’m sorry I haven’t been here more often.”
“Yes,” the priest said slowly, his breath labored. “I see that you are. What’s wrong?”
“That’s my question.”
“Oh, nothing a miracle couldn’t cure, but miracles are out of fashion these days.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough. Inoperable. The lungs are shot.” He coughed and caught his breath.
No, thought Jordan, no ... I can take anything but not this too, not now.
“I’ve heard reports on you, Joshua. Excellent grades, in spite of your abysmal attendance
record.”
“I had good teachers here. You should know. I’m the product you crafted.”
“No, don’t blame me. I just put you in the right frame of reference, so to speak. The rest
is your doing. You should be proud. I am.”
Jordan bowed his head, but did not speak.
“I want you to have something, Joshua. In all the world, through all the boys I’ve seen
pass through here, I think you are the only one who could truly appreciate this.” Father Meyer
offered the satchel to Jordan.
Jordan handled it as if it were a holy icon, curiosity riding across his face like waves of
firelight.
“Go ahead. Open it. I haven’t got forever, you know.”
Jordan unbuckled the strap that bound the leather and opened the satchel flap. He gently
extracted a thick sheaf of papers. They were an old carbon copy. He read the title page and
looked up at Father Meyer, stunned. It was his proscribed thesis. “How did you get this?”
“By never giving it up.”
“You defied the Order?”
“Of course. Some things are too precious, too valuable, to forbid, even for God’s
soldiers.” A semblance of the old jollity washed across Father Meyer’s face, but the brief
chuckle caused him much pain.
“Go now,” he said. “Things will get unpleasant shortly.”
Jordan returned the papers to the satchel. “What can I do?”
“Study it. Prove me right. Prove me wrong. Whatever you think fit. And, if you deem it
proper, some day publish the damn thing.” Father Meyer coughed again and paid another price
in pain.
“Anything else?” Jordan asked, his eyes closed.
“Yes. Stop being so damn serious. We all have to die some day. My time is nearing. I’d
rather go seeing you smiling, no matter how hard that may be to arrange.”
“I’ll try…”
“Come, Joshua. Think of it in a properly intellectual light. I’ll get to see if there’s an
answer to all this. That’s the one great difference between us. I’ve never had true faith, just a
nagging uncertainty. You, on the other hand, are absolutely certain there is no afterlife. So I’m
betting Pascal’s Wager. If there is a God, I get to join him. If there’s no God, I’ve lost nothing.
You see, I get the benefit of doubt. I just pray — rather, I hope — for your sake that some day
your convictions bring you some peace of mind.”
“These are the times when I’d give anything to just believe, to have prayer work, to think
miracles can happen.”
“Joshua, my son,” the old priest’s voice took on a tenderness that Jordan could only
imagine Hakim’s might have had at that age. “They say the worst moment for an atheist is when
he feels grateful and has no one to thank. That’s not quite right. It’s when he’s sad and has no
one to blame. Now come, give an old man a hug.”
Jordan rose and placed the satchel on his chair. He stood before Father Meyer, doing his
best to keep his tears inside. He crossed over to the old priest, bent down and wrapped his arms
about him, as Meyer had once done to a young Jordan, no so long ago. He held the frail body in
his arms, his eyes closed. Father Meyer used all his strength to return the hug; it felt more like a
caress. Jordan released him and retrieved the satchel. The old priest beckoned him to draw near
again.
“Kneel down,” he wheezed.
Jordan obeyed. He leaned forward on one knee. Father Meyer lifted his hand as if to give
a blessing. Instead, he tousled Jordan’s hair and laughed.
“Go, now. Lech I’cha! Mazel tov! Go forth! And always remember the great wisdom of
old, old …What’s’isname.”
“ ‘Turn that frown upside down …’ ” Jordan laughed weakly and smiled through his
tears as he walked away.
Two months later, at in the rococo splendor of Saint Ignatius Church, Jordan attended the
solemn high funeral Mass said for the repose of the soul of one he had known as Father Meyer,
born Michael Mayer, of the Society of Jesus. The church was filled, once the word went out and
the obituary published, by the old priest’s sons, as they all thought of themselves. A choir of
current students and graduates sang a requiem meant for a pope, but sung now with even greater
solemnity and melancholy. Their polyphonic chorale echoed down from the coffered ceiling of
the cathedral like angels welcoming one of their own back to the fold. The great organ ranged
mightily through Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, a work that had been one of Father Meyer’s
favorites, and through him, Jordan’s and that of many more. The organist portrayed the lament
and longing of the first movement as the universal sorrow of all mankind yearning for what it
had lost in the Garden of Eden, then exploded into the joyous redemption and salvation of the
fugue, as if heaven were one great musical feast. Then all was silent, like the grave. Finally, a
solo bell in the church tower began to toll a slow dirge of a familiar sadness in Jordan’s heart as
he and seven others carried the casket from the church.
Unknown to Jordan, later that day a silver Boeing 707 departed San Francisco for New
York. On board in first class was a cheerless young women, with a round face and eyes that had
lost their brightness, heading into exile, wondering in her heart — why?
School became mechanical for Jordan, something that had to be finished, but the love of
it was gone. He quietly completed his degree, suffered through the graduation ceremony for his
parent’s sake, then began work on the doctorate. The hours and days, the months and years went
by; he didn’t much notice or remember them. Learning was easy once, when his mind was like a
sponge that soaked up anything it touched. Now he used his skills just to get by. His grades were
sufficient, but no longer distinguished. The campus was a hard place to be, with too many
memories. He stopped climbing the bell tower on Lone mountain. It made him think of Maddie,
not Haifa.
He was troubled by his thesis. What should be its subject? He didn’t much give a damn
what it was. Religion was nothing more than dead history now, history he would be happy to
forget, among other things. One day he took out Father Meyer’s dissertation and read it again.
He marveled at its reasoning and tried to imagine the old priest as a young man writing it. He
could see the trace of conflict in his writing and his thinking as faith transmuted into a growing
doubt. Even allowing for the lack of consistency of detail among the gospels, it was apparent
that Father Meyer favored the man not the god. That had been his downfall.
Jordan pondered the work for a while. With a little modern scholarship to update of
sources, plus a rework of the conclusion, it would make a passable piece, one that would have
been acceptable to its original inquisitors. He closed his eyes and pictured Father Meyer as he
had first known him, a jolly St. Nick of a man in a monk’s robes.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “Some day I’ll put it to rights. But right now I need your
help.”
Jordan restructured the thesis, polished it, had it retyped, and put it aside. He knew its
subject well enough to get through the orals exam and be done with it all. It was an easy matter
to deconstruct Father Meyer’s work into early drafts which he could then feed bits and pieces to
his thesis advisor in a way that its provenance would never be deduced. He would reconstruct
the work, with his revisions, into a final draft. Unless his advisor went to Rome to rummage
through the Society’s archives, Jordan’s ruse would not be discovered, at least in that century.
His doctorate didn’t mean much any more; he doubted that he’d ever use it. But completing his
studies and procuring the degree would be the path of least resistance. It would honor his parents
and SI. He would be free then to do what he wanted, if he ever discovered what that was.
The one thing he still enjoyed was writing. He took courses in journalism, often finding
himself the oldest student in his classes, by several years. From time to time he’d notice some
young co-ed, eager and bright and full of life. Then he would stop attending the class, after first
finding a young male student who was struggling and who accepted Jordan’s offer of tutoring in
exchange for his notes.
Eventually, after having finished all his course work, he faced the inevitable. Jordan
submitted the reworked thesis and underwent the oral examination. Father Meyer and his cabal
had taught him well and would have been proud; Jordan answered the questions put to him with
grace and avoided the temptation to show up his examiners. The one thing he would not permit
was the immediate attempt to publish the thesis, as was expected, if he was to take up an
academic post at USF or elsewhere; it was widely thought among the academic staff that his
thesis was a brilliant refutation of the God is Dead movement, proclaimed by Time Magazine a
decade before, in which the deity was shown to be alive and well residing in his crowning
achievement, Homo fidelis. Jordan also declined, politely, an invitation to join the campus
chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, saying only “… non sum dignus ut intro sub tectum teum
…” Indeed, Jordan thought, I am not worthy.
On the day he received his PhD, Jordan’s parents sat in the audience beaming as they had
when he had graduated with his bachelor’s degree two years before. He tried to imagine how
Sarah and Hakim would have reacted. He found it hard to see their faces clearly; that had never
happened before. Yet, one face he could see still, a cheerful face with a button nose that he
wished would go away.

Jordan sat one Friday night six months later in McGoon’s. The band was between sets
and he had been nursing his drink for an hour, staring into the golden amber, wondering what
the hell he should do.
“Still the somber one, eh, Jordan? Didn’t you learn anything from Father Mike?” Jordan
looked up, trying to recognize the face behind the voice in the dim light.
“Tommy Campbell, SI, Class of ’73,” the face said, offering his hand.
“The frosh jock who ran circles around me in intramural sports?” he said as his shook the
offered hand.
“You were such an easy target.”
“I don’t doubt,” Jordan offered, remembering now. Campbell was dressed in a mod style
of designer jeans with a short leather jacket over a electric blue shirt that sported long collar
points and was open wide at the throat. He wore a tight chain of heavy gold links around his
neck. His hair was long in a shag cut, professionally done. A dark mustache drooped from his
upper lip as if he was Dr. Fu Manchu or Ming the Merciless. To Jordan he looked like a guitarist
in a rock band, at least compared to himself; Jordan wore his usual khakis and black turtleneck
sweater under a favorite old suede sport coat. He waved to the bartender for another drink and
pointed to Campbell.
“I saw you at Father Mike’s funeral” Campbell said. “You were one of his special kids,
weren’t you.”
“Yeah, guilty…”
“You shouldn’t be. God! How I envied you guys.”
“Envied?” Jordan asked. “Why? We worked twice as hard as the rest of you.”
“That’s just it. You worked twice as hard and got out four times as much. Let me guess,
college was easy for you, right?”

“What are you, a lawyer? Sounds like a lawyer’s leap of logic.”
“Worse, an ad man.”
“Oh… sorry,” Jordan mumbled as he sipped his drink.
“Forget it. I’m used to it. What are you doing these days?”
“Not much. Listening to the music. You like Dixieland?”
“Not really. Sounds kinda ancient to me. I’m performing next door in the Magic Cellar.”
In an adjoining basement to McGoon’s was a night club devoted to magic acts,
professional and amateur. It also housed the collected illusions and memorabilia of Carter the
Great, the famed conjurer and San Francisco native who had rivaled Houdini as the Master of
Magic in the early years of the previous century, until the latter’s death in 1926. The owner of
the building had been a fan of magic as well as jazz.
“Let me guess, magic helps you in your work.”
“No, it helped me get girls at Cal.”
“A worthy endeavor, I’m sure. And still you ended up in advertising.”
“Well, it’s not easy making a living as a magician. Lots of amateurs and not a lot of call
for pros these days. But I found I had the knack for creating ads. You know, the patter a
magician uses?”
“The spiel.”
“You make it sound foreign.”
“It is. Sorry. Old habit, thanks to Father Mey — Father Mike.” A thought came to
Jordan. “How does one get into advertising?”
“Usually by the back door,” Cameron laughed.
“Eh?”
“Most people I work with started out being something else, like me. Teachers, reporters,
artists, photographers, lawyers — lots of lawyers, now that I think of it. Don’t know why. We
didn’t like what we were doing and somehow found the ad biz. It’s not that hard to get in.
There’s no schooling for it. If you’ve got the knack, they help you develop it. Sort of on-the-job
training. That’s how I stumbled on to the game. I majored in business administration, but found
it deadly boring when I started working. I answered a want ad for a production gopher at an ad
agency, got the job, and thought I could do what the people in the creative department were
doing, be creative. I had the knack, the magic, I guess. I’m now at my second shop.”
Jordan pondered his next question before asking it. “Do you think a history major could
make it?”
“Assuming you can write something shorter than a treatise and have a decent
imagination, sure. I think of copywriting as a cramming the brains of a playwright, a logician
and a salesman all into one skull. Not a pretty sight, but it works. You have to be good at each.
You only get a few words on a page or sixty seconds on TV to convince your audience.”
“Who do I talk to?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Very.”
“I don’t know ... one of Father Mike’s kids a huckster…”
“Believe me,” Jordan smiled weakly, “there are other things he’ll get me for.”
“Well, let me talk to my boss, my creative director. He’s always interested in new talent.
We work just down the street, at Clay and Sansome.”
A week later Jordan joined the firm of Reardon & Roark Advertising as a junior
copywriter-trainee.
Jordan found the work agreeable and the pay even more so. It was the clients who were,
mostly, disagreeable, along with the account people who fawned over them. He soon learned
there were two schools of thought about advertising: blatancy and subtlety, otherwise known as
hard sell and soft sell. Most clients preferred the former, most creative admen the latter; the
result was constant tension. Usually, the clients, who controlled the money, won. Usually, but
not always. A creative revolution had been going on in advertising for the last decade or so,
Tommy Cameron told him, in which subtlety had been on the rise; companies like Volkswagen
and Qantas and Absolut, all foreign born but with American ad agencies, showed that audiences
could be convinced with intelligent entertainment, not idiotic bombast. It was as if the ad men
finally asked themselves, after two centuries of advertising, how would I like to be talked to?
Early on Jordan ran up against the agency’s worst client, because he was new and
because all the other copywriters had burned out their brains trying to satisfy the client’s
demands. The account was responsible for a large percentage of the agency’s billings, though for
none of its creative awards. All that Tommy would tell him was the C.D.’s theory: if Jordan
survived this client, he’d survive anything. The first time he presented a script for a radio
commercial, the man began pounding the conference table in one second intervals. Jordan
stopped reading and the client stopped pounding.
“Something wrong?” Jordan asked.
“I didn’t hear my product’s name in the first five seconds.” The client was a short man,
probably in his early fifties, Jordan thought, beginning to turn corpulent. He had a ruddy face
with squinty eyes and chained smoked while constantly sipping sodas.
“I’m surprised you heard anything.” Jordan said. The account executive cringed.
“Young man, I assure you, if I don’t hear my product mentioned in the first five seconds,
I won’t listen to the other fifty-five.”

Jordan thought of Father Meyer, and then kept quiet. He listened to the client prattle on.
When he was done, Jordan asked him a question.
“Does it matter to you that what you want insults the audience’s intelligence?” The A.E.
cringed again.
“The audience doesn’t have an intelligence, kid. People are a herd. They eat, sleep, shit
as a herd. Your job is to get that herd headed in my direction.”
“If I understand, then, what you want is bullshit. Correct?”
“Now you got it! People remember crude. They don’t quote poetry. That’s why TV’s so
popular.”
“Okay, give me a second.”
Jordan picked up a pencil and scribbled on his script. He then began reading the revised
copy to the client, who raised his fist, but stopped. Jordan had gotten the product’s name in the
first three seconds, then mentioned it five more times, including the last words of the spot. Yet,
the logic of the product’s value and worth to the consumer was still there and made sense for all
the directness with which it was being sold. What was missing was the artfulness.
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” the client said happily.
“No, actually,” Jordan sighed, “it wasn’t.” For someone who had wrestled with Talmudic
interpretations, this was easy. Another lesson was filed away in Jordan’s book of life and living:
the art of compromise. The client was happy and Jordan would remain well fed.
The portly man across the conference table looked at the confused account executive,
pointing at Jordan. “From now on he does all my work. You finally found somebody who
understands.”
As a reward, Jordan got to work on better accounts as well, those which preferred subtly
and imagination in their work. For an engineering company that had constructed factories during
three wars for the production of army transport, he wrote a headline that said: “We built the
factories that built the Jeep” over a drawing of the famed army vehicle driven by GI’s bouncing
along a rutted road. When he discovered that the same firm had designed and erected the rolling
mills for structural materials for the Bay Bridge erected between San Francisco and Oakland in
the 1930s, he recommended another ad that said: “We built the mills that rolled the steel that
made the Bay Bridge.” The client loved the work. No one had ever really captured the sense of
history and accomplishment the client was so proud of.
As further reward, he was given a choice assignment on the agency’s newest account by
Jordan’s creative director. A tall, grizzled man from New England via New York’s Madison
Avenue, his name was Theodore Fredericks, known Ned to his friends, Captain Ahab to his
creative teams. Under his guidance Reardon & Roarke had become a western outpost of the
creative revolt against traditional advertising. San Francisco had been a backwater in the
business; no serious ad man would work there, not when the action was in the Big Apple. To
Fredericks that was just as well; he wanted the people who weren’t ruined by traditional business
thinking, but could see advertising as the art of convincing the audience, by their own values, the
worth of his clients products, not duping them into buying anything and everything. This took a
different kind of creative imagination; the kind that had more in common with a museum docent
than a carney barker. It had the practical effect that, while all other advertisers were shouting, his
clients had better success with a whisper. But this also meant that, to Fredericks, no ad was ever
done that couldn’t done better. He was demanding and curt with his creative crew; by his own
admission he had been in the business too long. But those who persevered flourished under
Fredericks, receiving the industry’s accolades and rewards and Ahab’s infrequent smiles of
appreciation; they became like star athletes coveted by other agencies who wanted to bolster
their own creative teams with this new approach. Those who couldn’t hack it under Fredericks
simply left, or were invited to leave.
Jordan’s new client was a local TV station that was also a national network affiliate.
Their first project was to be a campaign that introduced the station’s latest sports director and
sportscaster, a newly retired star quarterback from the Forty-Niners. He was to start the
following week; the new advertising had to be ready to run on the weekend before, with first
newspaper ads scheduled for the coming Friday, five days hence, followed by TV and radio the
next day, setting up his introduction on the Monday evening newscast. Jordan listened to the
client, the station’s owner, tell the story that his own promotional people hadn’t known how to
handle the project; they were more suited to cranking out late-night commercials for car dealers.
The man went on at length about the quarterback’s history, his Bay Area heritage. He had
attended high school in Oakland, college at Stanford, and then went pro with the Niners. Jordan
listened intently, then scribbled a note to his art director, saying: “How about this?”
The headline for an ad read: “Local boy makes good.” The artist smiled broadly; he
could see the possibilities easily, the sign of a good idea. Fredericks agreed.
Over the next few days, Jordan and the art director fashioned that thought into print,
radio and TV ads. The task was daunting. They had four days to do work that usually took four
weeks. Jordan spent the next five days rushing back and forth between his typewriter, recording
studios and the TV station. He had never been so engrossed and so enraptured in a project and in
its process at the same time. Each element, from scripts to production, required him to invent
anew. There was no time for living, just doing. Time became relative only to the task at hand; it
was hard to keep track of day and night, locked as he was either in a windowless office or
darkened studio. He walked out of a recording session to catch a cab back to agency at one point
and was surprised to see daylight; he had entered the studio down on Mission Street at ten in the
morning and exited at eight o’clock to a lovely summer’s twilight with the sun soft and fat and
golden sitting in the west. On Friday evening, Jordan stumbled back to the office after finishing
the last radio commercial that would start running in the morning. He was tired and a little
punchy from a week of long days and late nights. Someone handed him a scotch from the
agency kitchen, which doubled as a bar after hours. He wandered back to his office and found a
handwritten note stuck against the platen of his old Royal upright typewriter. He recognized the
scrawl of his creative director. It said simply: “Josh, Hell of a nice job. Ned.”
Working on the television client gave Jordan the opportunity to get more involved with
the production of its TV and radio commercials. The client’s facilities were suited for producing
news broadcasts, not advertising commercials. The production capacity of San Francisco in
those days was primitive. As had been the case for most of the century, any serious film work
had to be done in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, for all the crafts and craftspeople who made the
movies were also available to make ads.
The trips to L.A. were fun; life there was so different from the Bay Area, especially on
expense account. But Hollywood itself was a disappointment. Jordan marveled at the skill and
dedication of the people he worked with. No matter how busy they were, no matter how many
projects a production house may have going, they always made him feel like he was their only
client. Yet Hollywood the town seemed a dowdy old lady living on past dreams. The movie and
television industries were no longer headquartered there, but mostly out in Burbank and the San
Fernando Valley. Its buildings were old and ill kept. Garish neon signs flashed everywhere. The
area centered on the famed corner of Hollywood and Vine had turned in to a tawdry sideshow of
panhandlers and pimps; hustlers looking to hustle tourists looking for the Old Hollywood of the
movies and newsreels. Sleazy stores hawked cheap trinkets and trash. Porn shops and burger
joints looked equally greasy.
The one treasure Jordan did uncover was Pickwick Books, on Hollywood Boulevard near
Highland Avenue. It was Ali Baba’s cave, festooned not with gold and gemstones, but with
uncounted volumes, hard cover and soft, from floor to tall ceiling and seeming to stretch on
forever into its recesses. Like Foyles of London or Brentano’s in San Francisco, what it lacked
in elegance, it more than made up for in depth. From its opening in the late 1930s, it had been a
haven for writers and readers alike; authors such as Faulkner and Fitzgerald browsed and bought
there; Hollywood’s cinematic royalty wandered its niches. It was among the best arguments of
heritage the young town could boast. Every production trip to L.A. for Jordan required at least
an hour at Pickwick’s.
The other production treat for Jordan was getting to work with one of the agency’s better
producers, a young woman, Toni Rousseau. With dark red hair, tall grace and aquiline features,
she had been a teen model. But she saw early on the limited future models had. The constant
fight against the natural process of growing up, to keep the girlish body that womanhood takes
away, made drugged or drunken nut cases of too many coworkers. Rousseau enjoyed a burger
and a Coke now and then, and after she came of age, fine wines with elegant meals. But when,
on the same New York shoot, her agent offered her “diet” pills, a photographer assistant
suggested a different kind of coke, and the married client proposed to “support” her career, she
began planning for life after modeling, the sooner the better.
Toni was curious about the production people who surrounded her on photo shoots and
commercials; they seemed to be enjoying themselves a hell of a lot more than she was. When
she graduated high school, Rousseau connived a job at an ad agency that had used her for TV
spots; she started as a secretary in the broadcast production department, grateful that she had
found the time to take typing in school. After two years, having mastered the endless paperwork
that accompanied all production, she became an assistant producer. A year later she was made a
full producer and given a hefty raise. Another three years found her at Reardon & Roark
working with Jordan.
She enjoyed Joshua, as she called him; his bullshit was so much more intelligent.
One day between production meetings in L.A. she took Jordan for his first lunch at
Musso Frank Grille, Tinseltown’s oldest restaurant, on Hollywood Boulevard between Highland
and Vine. Its leather booths had sheltered decades of fabled patrons while they enjoyed corn beef
and cabbage, Welsh rarebit, chicken pot pie and grilled steaks two inches thick. Faulkner, after a
trip to Pickwick Books up the street, used to mix his own mint juleps at the bar; other writers,
like Raymond Chandler who wrote “The Big Sleep” at Musso Frank’s, became disillusioned
with the Hollywood system, with what it did to their work, and slowly drank themselves to death
there.
“So, Joshua …” Rousseau said merrily to Jordan as they sipped drinks and waited for
lunch to arrive; she had ordered a martini up for each. They sat in a stuffed, red leather booth in
a wood-paneled room, dimly lit and dripping of film noir. Their waiter, who looked as though he
had been there half a century, wore a red jacket the same color as their booth.
“What line are you going to try today?” The question had become a game between them.
Rousseau had once recounted some of the seduction routines men had used to meet her or later
try to bed her. Jordan took it as a challenge to succeed where they had failed. He enjoyed her
company immensely, for she seemed unaffected by her looks, and knew how to glam down and
relax.
“Oh, let’s see, Red … turn your head to profile,” Jordan mused.
Rousseau, dressed in blue jeans and a white fleece top that hung casually on her breasts
like new fallen snow, turned and lifted her head slightly. Her tall, slim nose presented the
silhouette of an Italian Nefertiti. Her dark auburn hair was rolled up loosely like a Gibson girl’s
and held in place with an enameled Japanese chopstick. Jordan noticed that her jeans were
ordinary, not a designer label; it was Rousseau’s easy style that made them appear expensive.
“My dear, your proboscis is a classic, as if sculpted by Thutmose or Phidias.”
“My what? By who?”
“That long, thin thing in the middle of your face,” Jordan said, sipping his drink.
“You’re not going to get very far that way. Phidias indeed.”
“I could have said Praxiteles, fair Athena, but that would have been showing off.”
“Just what the hell are you doing in advertising, Joshua? You’re too damned educated.”
“Waiting for something better to come along. Until then, it’s fun. It’s easy. And I get to
follow you around like a lost puppy.”
“Hmm, you know the old saying …” she leaned over and whispered moistly in his ear,
“A man chases a women until she catches him.”
“Woof…” Jordan burbled into his martini.
Later that year, on New Year’s Eve, Rousseau allowed Jordan to win the challenge. The
memory of Maddie began to fade, but not completely. In the far, dim reaches of Jordan’s mind,
she joined Sarah and Hakim and Nasra.
In March of the new year, Jordan received a phone call from his client, John Oldham, the
owner of the TV station, asking Jordan to join him for lunch, alone. He walked the blocks down
Sansome to California and then east, past where the old Alaska Commercial Building of brick
and stone with its carved walrus gargoyles, was being dismantled in favor of a modernist
concrete bank owned by a Japanese keiretsu, to Tadich’s. The client was in his back booth, away
from the windows.

“Josh, remember those ads you did last year on the documentaries?” Oldham was grey-
haired and distinguished, with attentive eyes that missed little about him He was the last, barren
descendant of a old media family which traced its financial roots back to selling two-penny
broadsheets in the Gold Rush streets of San Francisco. His great grandfather — having first
helped Texas secure its independence from Mexico, then helped that new nation engineer its
absorption into the expanding United States under President Polk, decide that the gold fields of
California, yet another element of the Mexican Empire ripe for the picking, would afford an
even better opportunity to secure his fortune.
“Of course. I’m damned proud of them, Mr. Oldham.”
The station had wanted to promote a series of documentaries about California history that
had been produced in-house, a rarity for a local, commercial station. Jordan and his art director
had taken the story of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two and
fashioned an ad showing a black and white archive photo of a camp boundary sign forbidding
internees of Japanese ancestry beyond that point, with the headline: “A little bit history you
never learned in school.” Jordan hadn’t, and it had shocked him to learn of the American
concentration camps. Another ad displayed an archival photo of a Klu Klux Klan meeting,
complete with white hoods and burning torches, holding up a tiny baby for God’s blessing;
Jordan’s headline was: “A little bit of history most people would rather not face.” The ads had
built a large audience for the documentaries’ telecasts, and later won awards for Jordan and the
art director in a New York advertising competition.
“How would you like to write the documentaries, not just the ads?” the station owner
asked.
“Love to. Who do I have to kill?”
“I’m serious. I’ve followed your writing. You’ve a fine sense of history, son. I think
you’re ready for the next step. Besides, ‘if you wou’d not be forgotten as soon as you are dead
and rotten, either write things worth the reading, or do things worth the writing.’ ”
“Ben Franklin, right?”
“Very good, Josh.”
“I had a teacher once who I swear knew him personally.”
“What of my offer?”
Jordan thought for a moment, looking at the man. “On one condition,” he said finally.
“More money?” the owner laughed.
“No, pay me what you think I’m worth. I trust you, fool that I am. What I have in mind
is worth a lot more than money, for both of us, some day.”
“Name it.”
“I want to bring Toni Rousseau along as a producer, my producer.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Yes. You won’t regret it”
“But will you?” the station owner laughed again as he thrust out his hand to shake on the
deal.
On April Fool’s Day, Jordan and Rousseau moved south of Market to the old brick
offices of the television operation and to new careers.
Through the following three decades, Jordan’s and Rousseau’s careers orbited each other
like a pair of binary stars, each influencing the other in subtle and lasting ways. The great
questions of why in his life were no nearer to being answered, but seemed less important for all
their resistance to solution. Work was a salve that masked their buried pain and significance.
In time the events of the world outside the cozy life in San Francisco began to draw
Jordan’s attention. His parents still visited Israel and Palestine every other year in support of
their orphanages. When the latest Arab Intifada exploded against the Jews, Jordan pleaded with
them not to go, but they would not hear of it. He found the irony rich, that two lapsed Catholics
— and thousands more like them — privately did more good and offered more charity to the
victimized children caught in the crossfire than did most of the world’s official Christian
religions. He joined them on one trip to Haifa and wished he hadn’t. Jordan found himself a
stranger in a familiar land; while much had changed, much more had not. Haifa was still
beautiful, still more tolerant than other towns and villages and kibbutzim in Israel, but the
pervasive aura of religious intolerance in the Holy Land — and the political intolerance it
inspired — hung like a rotted, musty shroud affecting all who lived beneath it. The experience
was chilling, not the least for the distant memories of Sarah, Hakim and Nasra which it brought
back; Jordan realized that his own personal conclusions about religion were just that: personal
and not popular. The people of the Book here, as everywhere, hung on to their beliefs against
any and all intellectual assaults. He resolved on his return to San Francisco to explore this
conundrum in his work and his writing. It was a contradiction, perhaps the greatest, certainly the
most pervasive, which his life’s training and experience cried out for him to solve.
Toni Rousseau’s career, first as on-camera talent, then off-camera in management,
fulfilled Jordan prediction to Oldham. As negotiator with the unions through the triennial rounds
of bargaining on each new contract, she became adroit at balancing the demands of labor against
the unwillingness of management to pay more than necessary. She kept labor peace at the station
without bankrupting its budget. The ranks of management above her, at the station, at the
network, and at corporate headquarters back in New York, interfered minimally; Rousseau
found she had the patronage and protection at the highest level.
Jack Carson, the network president at the time of her station’s absorption into the
corporate fold, had risen through his own ranks to the chairmanship of the conglomerate, in part
by his shrewd acquisitions of local stations such as in San Francisco. His view of capitalism was
less one of profitability by creativity and production of new products or services than one of
sheer accumulation; buy up enough businesses in whatever fields were currently profitable, he
believed, and some were bound to succeed. It was the new theory being taught in business
schools and their MBAs were pervading the economy like lice. The old theories or production
were held in contempt and their practitioners were being replaced by the new aristocracy of
finance — the money lenders and their tax lawyers. For it was reasoned that, if under the new
theory profit took precedence over production, then making money was now to be an end in
itself, not the means to the end of providing what life required to keep on living. In this
endeavor, in San Francisco, Toni Rousseau’s management talents proved useful, therefore
valuable. She rose steadily in the station’s ranks until the day came when she sat in the general
manager’s office. That she sat there earning only two-thirds of what her predecessors had earned
rankled; but she bore in mind what Mr. Oldham had always cautioned: one revolution at a time.
Battling on too many fronts was a guarantee for defeat.
Rousseau used her position to prevent the worst of the media evolution from turning the
station’s product into pure entertainment, particularly in the news department; she channeled that
into games shows and talk shows featuring local talent, many of which ended up syndicated
throughout the network’s affiliate stations. Of the staffers who were there at the end of Oldham’s
retirement, most were still there. The oldest had retired, but not before training their
replacements, thus insuring a continuity of excellence. By encouraging advancement through
the ranks rather than promote from outside the station staff, Rousseau enjoyed a sense of loyalty
from her employees that was fast fading from the wider business world.
As Jordan’s focus changed more and more away from San Francisco’s appeal to national
and international subjects, Rousseau elevated him to a daily commentator’s role on the station’s
nightly prime time news; he had one minute after the main stories and before the weather to
make any point he wanted about any subject that had popular, and even unpopular interest, about
any event or subject of that day’s news. Taking on the buzzing tone of a cultural gadfly drew
attention and a greater numbers of viewers. When his subjects or comments were controversial,
viewership and responses spiked, mostly in the affirmative, though the numbers of letters and
phone calls were never huge. These were still useful as indicators of the audience’s mood;
Oldham had always cautioned that for every viewer who took the time to respond, there were
four hundred more who agreed, but never took the time to voice it.
The station’s audience share grew steadily, and as a consequence, so did its ad rates and
advertising revenue. Its ratings were the highest of all stations in the market. These were duly
noted in New York, and Jordan’s commentaries were selectively used on a national basis on the
network’s news broadcasts. His popularity grew nationally, leading to more avenues and venues
from which to comment. “San Francisco Then & Again” morphed into “America Then &
Again” that portrayed to the country its history and often forgotten cast of little characters as
Jordan’s original segments had done for the city.
At first, the issues of religion, of faith, and of their roles in life were infrequent subjects
of Jordan’s attention. Then he became of aware of two trends that demonstrated that religion and
faith were intruding on daily life in a political manner not seen in centuries. During his school
years in the ‘70s, religious conservatism in America spawned the Moral Majority, which proved
in the long run to be neither, but had fostered an agenda of negativism: they were against
abortion, homosexuality, the equal rights for women, censorship of their views and,
incongruously, the strategic arms limitation talks initiated by their favored conservative
president. What they did approve of was a romantic, traditional vision of family life that did not
exist except on reruns of 1950s television family sitcoms. The organization did not last long, but
its effect did. Religious conservatives became more political and began using politics and the
legal system to advocate and impose their religious views, particularly in the classroom against
the theory of evolution and its evil progenitor Charles Darwin.
Another conservation strain of religion was brewing offshore, overseas where it drew
little attention in America. Islam was on the rise again, a minor but increasingly militant strain
whose roots traced back to a conservative sect in 18th Century Arabia. Its founder, Muhammad
ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, believed in an strict adherence to the Quran and the Hadith as a personal
guide to life, to only the words of the Prophet Mohammed, as interpreted by al-Wahhab alone.
To his followers after his death, this meant rejecting a thousand years of scholarship and
commentary on their faith. They held to a rigid, traditional view of life from early Islam that did
not exist except in their dreams. Their modern descendants, who now ruled the Arabian
Peninsula and three-quarters of the world’s proven oil reserves, were against abortion,
homosexuality, the equal rights for women, censorship of their views — in short, any or all
beliefs that conflicted with theirs. They were marked by a strident effort to enforce their beliefs
and rules with archaic and brutal punishments.
This all might have quietly remained the concern of the Muslims had not its modern
proponents also believed in Jihad as a proper means of spreading their one true faith. Western
ideas of humanism and rationality were antithetical heresies which must be eradicated. Slowly
but steadily the conservative brand of Islam took root among many in the Muslim world, much
as Christianity had first in the ancient Roman Empire, then again in Reformation Europe. But
since much of Islam was ruled by hereditary princes or secular dictators, its inflammatory
politics generated a reaction of oppression. In many countries through the arc of the Fertile
Crescent, the jihadis were driven underground and increasingly took to terrorism as means of
promulgating their beliefs.
Then, on the day the twin towers fell in New York, the two forces of religious
conservatism collided in a philosophical tremor that shook the world. Jordan saw unity in these
two seemingly contradictory forces.
From the blast that took his family to the billowing clouds of dust engulfing lower
Manhattan to the legal attempts to control thought in the schools of the American heartland,
Jordan saw a common thread which most others did not: a desire for reactive, restorative action
driven by fear. Religion was not merely the contemplative, spiritual practices of the Sabbath.
Underneath, on both sides, was a dedicated, delusional army of true believers who saw an enemy
that finally must be destroyed at all costs, by any means; an implacable enemy to which would
be given no quarter: the freely thinking human mind.
Jordan knew then that he must bring about out his own armageddon. As history sadly
showed, the thought police, who saw themselves as God’s favored children, were on the march
again, this time they hoped to final victory. They must be stopped. All that stood in its way was
a fragile legal system and a few scarred veteran observers and commentators like himself. It
might be a futile battle, he thought, against an enemy who had billions of unthinking,
unquestioning allies. But it was the least he could do for the memory of Sarah, Hakim and
Nasra.
IX.
THE END TIME
Jordan leaned forward and raised his arms in the silence of the auditorium as if to
encompass both himself and Mosley.
“This is where that twisting trail in life has led me, Doctor, here, with you. You can
believe it was God’s will, my will, or blind chance. I don’t care, really. But, Doctor, understand
this. If any one is familiar with the God of Abraham, it is I. And if anyone can speak to faith,
well, you decide. My fate rests with you. Grant this atheist his prayer. Or send me to join my
family.”
Jordan slumped back into his chair and slowly clasped his hands together, the index
fingers pointing upward from his fists, resting against his lips.
Hannah Mosley let her arms fall to the outside of her chair. “It seems…” she whispered
weakly, “… it seems we have more in common than I ever thought. Yet the loss we each
suffered has led us to different poles. Will it really matter, Mr. Jordan? Will this accomplish
anything other than delaying the inevitable?”
“Hopelessness is not an solution, Doctor,” Jordan said softly. “Try, and maybe together
we can determine just what is inevitable and what is not in human existence.”
Mosley looked at Jordan with eyes that has lost their hate. “As you wish … Doctor,” she
answered gravely, with a respect that had not been in her voice before. But there was no
conviction in her tone when she said, “Say what you will.”
Jordan studied her briefly, trying to understand something. There was an aspect of her
body that he could not quite define, yet he knew it did not quite fit the situation. But he could
not let the moment and the momentum slip away.
“I want to go back to what we almost agreed upon, the issue of ‘the Creator who does not
exist outside of existence.’ That is the core of the matter. Strip away all the philosophical
niceties and intellectual complexities and we are left with the issue of causality. Can the universe
be causeless? Is not the supreme being, as you so ably wrote, the Prima Causa, the first cause,
and the Primum Mobile of Aquinas? Is this not the one place where faith is really necessary?
For, as you said, does not every effect demand a cause?”
Mosley looked askance at Jordan. She measured his words before answering, looking for
his intellectual trap, knowing there must be one. But at the same time, now on the opposite side
of the argument, a line of reasoning awakened in her mind, premise by premise, principle by
principle, as strong and as sure as the tenants of her faith had been, yet far older. And as these
older thoughts rose up to form her reply, so too rose an anger, and anger at herself for an
awareness and understanding which also had been long buried by a calculated trust in faith.
“You are, in effect, asking what causes the cause, if there is or was anything before
existence, Doctor Jordan,” she said at last, her manner weary, impatient. “Yet, to ask the
question is to answer it, as I should have seen years ago.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow. And if I don’t, I’m sure the audience doesn’t.”
“That is the curse of your own arrogance,” Mosley shot back, warming to the challenge,
the anger fueling her tempo. “You had the answer before, but passed over it in favor of
impressing me with your erudition. Think simply. Think basically. Think fundamentally. It does
no good to ask a question that cannot be answered or tested. That only demonstrates that the
question itself is either invalid or unwarranted. What is better is to show that the concept which
the question both reflects and requires is neither sufficient nor necessary.”
“Not necessary?”
“Not required, if you like. Any axiomatic system such as mathematics, or science or
philosophy is ultimately based on the assumption of certain self-evident, irreducible truths,
primary axioms, concepts of a principle or a process so simple, so basic, so fundamental they
cannot be reduced further, and so obvious as to be certain without definition. Notions such as
points and equality in geometry, for example. Addition and subtraction in arithmetic, but not
multiplication and division, for they are but adding and subtracting in a different guise. Axioms
are obvious and self-referential. And they are independent, not requiring anything else. Indeed,
they can be neither proved nor denied, for doing either requires their own use, ending in a
circular loop of logic.”
“What has this to do with causality?”
“It is not the philosophical axiom people think it is. Existence is. It is necessary and
sufficient unto itself, requiring nothing more. In cosmology, the universe is the sum total of all
that exists. But in proclaiming that something caused existence — created the universe — one
is also admitting that the supposed entity must have existence as well. But claiming that it
somehow created existence from outside of existence is, by definition, a contradiction in terms.
Anything supposed to be outside of existence is non-existent. You are asking for a nothing to
cause a something. That cannot be, not without denying and defying all reason and logic. Even
the very term ‘supernatural,’ created to make sense of the senseless, reflects the contradiction.
To be above the natural world is to be outside it, outside of existence. Always within the concept
of the Creator as the first cause lies the hidden assumption of existence, the ultimate sine qua
non. It is so obvious that we miss it, even though it is the fundamental attribute of everything.”
“And if I choose not to believe that?
“Believe what you want. Denial is not proof. The logic is incontrovertible. Wishing and
wanting won’t make it otherwise. Your belief may offer your comfort and solace, but it explains
nothing.”
“And if I accept your axiom of existence…?”
“Then you are led inevitably to two conclusions. You are led to the understanding that
there cannot be a level of spirituality or anything else outside of existence. That is a logical and
physical absurdity. And it is only a blind faith which could believe a concept like that.”
Jordan looked at Mosley with admiration, in spite of himself. “What’s the other
conclusion?”
“That everything which is posited about a supreme being can just as easily be posited
about existence — the eternal, the timeless, the unending — the necessity and font of all else. So
why not just say that existence is axiomatic and thus its own cause, just as God was once so
taken by primitive humans, but without all the emotional baggage, and without the psychological
crutch humanity has leaned on for thousands of years? To posit a god responsible for all is to say
nothing is our fault but only God’s will. But with the axiom of existence a supreme being
becomes unnecessary, unrequired, the source of an endless, absurd regression of logic if you try
to prove its existence, and the wellspring of endless debate over its purpose. Being simply is.
Accept existence as the primary, the irreducible axiom, the concept without which there is
nothing.”
Mosley pondered a second, remembering an old thought, one that had once conflicted
her, until she had buried it beneath her studies. “If you like, perceive it another way. We know
that universe at the quantum level is random, ruled by statistics and probability, not deterministic
the way Newton thought and Einstein hoped. In every quantum event, God — Einstein’s “Old
One” — would have to play dice to make it work, with outcomes still uncertain, only probable.
Which gives the lie to an omniscient, omnipotent divinity. Eliminate that proposition and you
still have existence and a universe that works by natural rules and relationships we can know and
discover and calculate.”
“Could not the divinity have started it all and then stepped back to have natural law guide
his creation?”
“Do not prattle on that God is beyond time and space. That is the province of non-
existence. One might as well call the Big Bang the first cause,” Mosley retorted with a smirk.
“But then, that just pushes back the issue, for one is forced to ask what caused the Big Bang.
Deism doesn’t solve the problem of priority, but merely postpones it. God is what you get when
you don’t ask enough questions.”
“Your arguments seem … seem so mathematical, so existential, the concept of an
uncaused existence. Isn’t it just another assumption, like God?”
“Your assumption is that God exists?”
“Yes …”
“Then your assumption is still dependent upon the concept of existence. It is neither
absolute nor independent.”
“Aren’t we just playing word games here?”
“Like ‘trust’ and ‘faith’? No, this is not — wait, Doctor,” Mosley whispered in sarcasm.
“How perceptive! This is a game, for games have precisely defined rules, specifying exactly
what is legal, what must be done, otherwise the play would be chaotic. Yes, an axiom is an
assumption, but fundamentally so. By definition, by the rules of logic, everything proceeds from
it. The axiom proceeds from nothing but itself. That’s the whole point of an axiom, and in a
sense what validates it. An axiom can’t proved. It is so obvious, so basic, so self-evident that it
includes and requires itself in its own proof. Yet it is demonstrably true. The only way to
invalidate it is to somehow demonstrate that it is not needed. But this ultimate existential
argument of existence permits no exemptions or escape, not even for a supreme being. It is the
latter which requires the former, not the reverse.”
“Ockham’s Razor,” Jordan said softly, his eyes blinking back tears at the memory of
Hakim in his little study.
“Exactly!” Mosley looked sharply at Jordan. She could see that his focus was far off, to
another time, to another place. Jordan suddenly shook his head to recapture the debate.
“But what of God’s will? Or my free will?” he asked sternly.
“You can’t have both,” Mosley responded just a severely. “You were correct earlier,
Doctor. It is an either-or, black-and-white universe. Only without a willful supreme being can
humanity exercise its own will.”
“Why can’t they co-exist?”
“As you above all others should appreciate, Doctor, words do have exact meanings. By
definition, God’s will and our will cancel each other. In a universe ruled by an all-powerful, all-
knowing god, is not everything known and ordained, by definition? That leaves no room, no
possibility for any other free will. In such a universe with such a god, there can be no sin, for
nothing happens which is not part of its plan. To say otherwise is to have a god who is neither
all-powerful nor all-knowing. Nor is there need for prayer. It is useless, pointless, if all is known
and fated. A god who can be swayed from its purpose by mere supplication is a very capricious
god, one who toys with us. Only with blind, axiomatic existence can we have free will, the will
and the power to discover and understand the facts of that existence. And only in such an
existence can there be good and evil.“
“Cannot God choose to let me exercise my own will?”
“You have free will only to the degree that you have choice. When all is predestined,
there is no choice. Good and evil — morality — only apply when one can choose what one
values. If there is no choice, what are those values defined by? Right and wrong, in terms of
action, have no meaning if there is no choice. How could Adam and Eve have sinned before they
ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which taught them right from wrong? It is not God which
defines the good and its opposite, evil. It is existence and the nature of the world which gives us
the means to understand, to define the good, to see the evil, and to choose between them.”
“Is it not my choice to exercise my free will?
“Do you really? Are you not still at the mercy of the creator’s choice to suspend or not to
inflict its will? As the Greeks portrayed, their gods set the rules in such a game, Doctor Jordan.
Mortals merely played it — were constrained to play it.”
“Yet,” Jordan persisted, “through the millennia humanity has wanted a creator, needed
one.”
“Only in our own minds. Nowhere else in nature is one necessary, as you once pointed
out.”
“It seems so simple an act to say that a supreme being exists.”
“It is also simple to say that an unmovable object can meet an irresistible force. But
again, by definition, they are mutually exclusive. One cannot be if the other is. An object which
cannot be moved resists any force. A force which cannot be resisted moves any object. Either
way, an impossibility, a contradiction in terms. Yet we take the pretty metaphor as truth, as
something of great insight, because we want it to be, not because it is. Meaningless language,
empty of content.”
“But, Doctor, that’s just it. Why does all this leave me empty? Why do I feel that there
must yet be a cause?”
“Perhaps it is your shoddy thinking. Or, to be generous, a misunderstanding of the nature
of your emotions in dealing with the issue of causality.”
“My emotions?”
“Alright, our emotions!” Mosley thundered as she leaned forward, then stopped. “Do we
really need to go there?”
“Only you can say, Doctor…”
Mosley let out as terrible sigh, as if her will to go on was deflating. Jordan winced
involuntarily, then fought to return to a dispassionate stance. Mosley glared at him in return.
“Think simply. Think basically. Think fundamentally,” she said finally, behind closed
eyes. She began to raise her hands to her face, caught herself, and lowered them to the chair.
Mosley opened her eyes and riveted Jordan with them.
“Through most of human history emotions have been taken as antithetical to reason, and
often superior. They are seen as irrational and unreasoning. But think! Would it not be a poorly,
unintelligently designed being whose mind and emotions were set against each other? In fact,
emotions are perhaps the most rational, the most ruthlessly logical element of the human entity.
They are based solely and squarely on our values. They reflect what we prize most and fear
most. In between these two poles are just varying levels of love and hate as we learn to judge the
world about us.”
“Are you, the epitome of reason, now saying we can ignore our minds in favor of our
feelings?”
“No, I’m saying we must use our minds to understand our feelings. Before we knew how
to reason, we felt, whether as a child or as a species. Emotions are simply a different aspect of
the same mechanism for survival. Emotions were an early form of knowledge, of judgment,
automatic, non-cognitive, one which we share with our fellow animals, one which gave us a
quick means of judging what was good or bad for us. The amygdala and hippocampus, the seats
of emotion, are ancient parts of our brain, far preceding the cerebral cortex, which we share with
other vertebrates. Call what they give us a form of intuition, ‘gut hunch’ as I said before. But
with the evolution of our mental capacities and capabilities, we developed another means, a
conscious, more specific method of analyzing and judging the world about us. Yet, our emotions
remain, a primitive ingredient of our survival equipment. In some respects they have evolved as
the moral fuel of life, for ultimately they offer an immediate estimation of what we have judged
— consciously or subconsciously — to be our values, what is right or wrong for us, good or bad
for us, what is worth having and what is worth avoiding, a reason to keep on living — or not. It
is not a coincidence that the words ‘moral’ and ‘morale’ share a common root. The judgment of
the first shapes the reaction of the second. Emotions are crucial to life. And if we did not need
them, we would not have them.”
“One could say the same of religion and God.”
“Only if one could prove that God and religion are genetic. Just where in our
chromosomes does one find holiness? What stretch of RNA encodes for the protein of a creator?
A concept of a spiritual gene is another blatant contradiction in terms. Spirituality resides within
the human mind, its birthplace. It is not subject to evolution any more than faith is.”
“What has evolution to do with faith?”
Mosley narrowed her eyes as she studied Jordan. “I may have left cosmology behind
when I took up biology and then faith, Doctor, but that does not mean I stopped thinking — and
learning. I wished to know, to understand where things got so badly off track for us as a species.
So I went back to relearn what our cultures have forgotten. Have you ever really wondered why
theists, especially fundamentalists like the Last Crusade, fear Darwin, hate him, and wish to
wipe his theories of the origin of species, of evolution, out of existence?”
“He wounded their pride?”
“Worse, he made a creator unnecessary! But Darwin never said a word about god or
religion in his work, even though, like most scientists of his day — those proud products of the
Enlightenment! — when he stepped aboard the Beagle, he was a creationist. But on his return to
England after five long, arduous years of discovery and study, he came home an evolutionist. It
was only the public clamor against his work when he finally published it that forced him to
include a reference to a divinity at the very end of his second edition of Origin. But all he
wanted was to just present his theoretical ideas and his observations to support them, knowing
full well that he didn’t have the complete answer, but we, the future, eventually would. That’s
how science works. But the conclusion of atheism — both logical and inescapable in Darwin’s
reasoning, as he well knew — is entirely in the minds of the religious, the worst possible place
for it to occur. For they know they can’t refute it, only deny it. Evolution challenges faith at its
very core with hard, physical evidence which cannot be ignored without peril. It exposes the
fatal flaw of faith. The faithful know that and hate that.”
“What flaw?” Jordan asked. “Does not faith provide answers reason can’t, ‘the evidence
of things unseen?’ “
Mosley’s eyes drew narrow and a smirk crossed her lips once more. She drew a breath
in, then let it out slowly.
“The human mind, when working properly, unhindered by outside forces or inner
confusions, works by the strict, unbending rules of logic. But logic is only a tool which
administers the principles and ideas and values we learn and absorb as we grow. And as you
know only too well, a tool can be used incorrectly, even maliciously. When young, we see and
wonder at the world and all its many, often confusing elements. Yet in our minds our nascent
reason sifts through it all. We learn to form percepts, concepts, questions, hypotheses,
conclusions. We slowly learn to understand the world about us, to the extent we are encouraged,
or at least not discouraged. And each new thing we learn must be integrated with what we have
already learned and accepted. Does this sound familiar? This is the simple mechanism of a
child’s common sense. But as we grow and mature and what we learn of the wider world is more
complex and doesn’t fit neatly, properly, logically into what we believe, then we either reject it,
or we alter what we thought we knew to make it all work together. That is the process of
science, a process too few master. Most just stumble along with what is left of that childhood
common sense, blind to reason’s power, deaf to its appeal, dumb to its necessity. Yet even then
reason does not totally abandon us, as we it, for our emotional reason is still there, trying to
guide us.”
“Emotional reason? Is that not a contradiction in terms?”
“Paradoxical, perhaps, but not a contradiction. Think of the process! When our reason
works correctly and successfully, we feel a sense of achievement, often profoundly so. My god,
We feel good! And when the facts don’t work, we feel a sense of discord, of unease, a sense of
failure, to the degree they don’t fit. And when we deny what we know and try to believe
something else, we feel guilt. It is in this most critical aspect of our education as humans that we
must learn the nature of our minds and the nature of our emotions.”
“Is this not what religion and God can give us?”
“Sadly, from what I’ve seen through my years, they do the opposite. If any other species
trained its young the way humanity does, it would be marked for extinction in short order.
Somehow, our brains have saved us, so far. That too is a paradox. The one thing we need to
learn we leave out. In all the years we spend in formal education, the most crucial item is never
addressed explicitly. We are never told that we are there to learn how to think. We fill the heads
of our offspring with everything else, but not logic, not the rules of thought. Our system just
assumes we will magically attain reason, that it is automatic, innate, instinctual, not learned. And
with all the mumbo-jumbo of every kind we feed our children, it is no great wonder why there is
confusion and contradiction in our beliefs. That is what faith tries to conceal, to avoid, by
blindly defending beliefs claimed as answers to these contradictions. We label them
‘supernatural mysteries’ beyond reason’s reach. Yet there is no greater treason we can commit
than to deny our reason, to abandon it for the sake of avoiding these confusions. But
contradictions are also the great avenging beasts of our emotions. A contradiction creates a
conflict of emotion within us that will not subside until it is dispelled, until it is logically solved
and rationally dismissed.
“A crisis of faith is really a crisis of conviction. As we grow and learn, doubt arises. Is
there really a god? Is there really a purpose? Why are we here? Why do things just happen? Our
great contradiction is that we choose to throw out informed knowledge in favor of ignorant
belief. This is what haunts theists about evolution … about science … about cosmology… “
“What haunts you, Doctor?” Jordan asked gently, sensing something wrong.
Mosley shook her head slowly and winced. “I must finish before ... ”
Jordan could see the emotional price she was paying to continue. Her face was twisted by
a tormenting anguish. Her eyes were focused inward. Something deep had ripped loose in her
psyche, something that would not grant her peace.

“Evolution’s … process and predictions …” Mosley said weakly, waving him away. “…
and especially its description of the past … don’t require a supreme being. The worst terror of
the faithful … is that they can’t disprove any of it at all. They can only deny … and knowing
that, their denial …”
Something visibly jolted Mosley inside. Jordan could sense it. Yet she persisted, her eyes
closed tightly.
“Their denial becomes a righteous shield … to let them believe … what their reason
won’t—”
Yet another connection flinched in Mosley’s mind, causing her to wince. But she carried
on.
“We willfully disconnect the links of logic and reason in our minds, but at a terrible
emotional price. Worse, our denial … then implacably, mercilessly, ruthlessly … tries to co-op
the full force of our emotions in its defense … with an anger that becomes the bulwark of belief.
‘If God can sacrifice his only begotten …’” Her voice tailed off into an inaudible murmur.
“Doctor, don’t,” Jordan whispered. “It isn’t necessary…”
“Oh, yes, it is…” Mosley hissed weakly. “You knew it would lead to this, damn you!”
“Yes…” he whispered as an awful sadness washed over his face. There was no pleasure
in watching a great mind crumble.
“Then let us finish it, Doctor Jordan,” Mosley said defiantly, her voiced rising. “Faith
hides what we knew but would not — could not — accept, and we pay the emotional price that
transaction requires. Without a god there is no meaning, no purpose. The world is just chaos,
unthinking, unfeeling. And the accidental … is a grave hurt … for which no good can be found.
How does one make sense of the senseless after all?” She rose and raised her hands to her face,
standing in the intense glare of the spotlight. The auditorium went deadly still.
A shout broke the silence. A single word — “No!” — came as a frightened gasp from
backstage. Mosley turned to look. Jordan jumped to his feet, grabbing her wrists, forcing them
apart, and in doing so, spoiled the target of Wong’s snipers.
Jeni Sakata held her hand to her mouth, then turned to Wong. “Give me her purse,” she
shouted, her eyes widening. Wong looked at her in confusion. Sakata looked around quickly and
yanked the purse from the hands of the young female agent who held it. She ripped it the open
and dumped it on the floor, searching frantically through the contents.
“What are you doing?” Wong shouted.
“Magic!” Sakata screamed, scattering the private bits and pieces of Mosley’s life around
the floor. She found a small, unlabelled envelope, tore it open and took out a piece of folded
paper. Sakata quickly opened and read the note. She thrust it at Wong, who read and passed it to
Rousseau as he stepped forward.
“You’re wrong, Doctor Mosley,” Wong shouted as he walked swiftly on stage. Jordan
struggled to hold Mosley’s arms apart. She writhed and twisted, much more strongly than Jordan
thought possible for someone her age. She would not quit.
“Do it, damn you!” Mosley cursed at Wong.
Wong waved to the marksmen in the rigging to stand down.
“Go back!” Mosley screamed as the others approached. “There’s no need for you to die.”
“I don’t intend to die,” Wong replied as he drew near.
“And neither do I,” said Sakata as she quickly joined him.
“Nor I,” said Rousseau , as she strode to Jordan’s chair.
“No, no! Don’t do this!” Mosley cried.
“Get back!” Jordan yelled at them. “Don’t be stupid! She’ll kill you all!”
“You won’t kill anyone, Doctor Mosley, will you?” Wong stated firmly. “Because you
can’t.”
Mosley collapsed to the floor, her frail body heaving with the sobs of a sorrow only
Jordan — and only he partially — could guess.
“The debate is over,” Wong said. “Stop the cameras. Clear the building.”
In the network’s headquarters in New York, and in a cottage by the sea in Virginia, all
hell broke loose.

X.
REVELATION
The windows of Jordan’s apartment looked out over the cold damp of the night, the fog
partially obscuring the lights of the city several stories below. The tall apartment buildings on
the crest of Nob Hill shredded the mist into thin streams that slowly drifted down the hillside
into oblivion. Jordan owned the top floor of the Clay-Jones Building, a blocky, tall protrusion of
Art Deco concrete that had risen into the city’s post-Quake skyline; its frame soared upward in
1929 just as the stock market was crashing to earth. Sitting tall and proud on the corner of Clay
and Jones Streets, the building’s great virtue for Jordan was its magnificent views.
As his celebrity had grown and his income with it, Jordan had taken advantage of the
condo/co-op conversion crazes that swept over San Francisco like its fog every decade or so.
He’d bought his penthouse unit and eventually the other three corner apartments on his floor as
they became available. He joined them into a continuous series of rooms and hallways that
circled the building’s core and looked out over the Bay Area through 360 degrees.
Grace Cathedral and the Masonic Building were to the east and south of them, with the
beacons of the Bay Bridge along its looping cables strung like Christmas lights in the far
distance. The great towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the north and west, glowed a cheery
warm red over the chilly streams of fog that submerged its roadbed. But here on the city’s
eastern crest the fog bowed to the Clay-Jones’s height, swirled about it, then tumbled low over
the hillside below them. The scattered lights of cleaning crews in the city’s office towers were
visible downtown. Only the lights of 999 Green Street’s glass apartment tower high on Russian
Hill and the shafts of light accenting the chiseled nozzle of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill stood
above the mist.
Mosley sat slumped alone on a couch in Jordan’s long living room which stretched along
half of the room’s north wall, her back to the windows and the views. She had not said a word
since leaving the auditorium. Jordan sat opposite her in one of two wingback chairs which
framed a low coffee table between him and Mosley. Rousseau sat to his left in the other chair.
Wong stood by the table on their left; Sakata entered the room from a small kitchenette with a
tray carrying coffee and cups. The aroma of espresso drifted into the room with her.
“How did you guess, Agent Wong,” Mosley asked finally, flatly, more of curiosity than
of interest.
“I didn’t, Jeni did. All your talk of reason and logic didn’t make sense to her.”
“Really?” asked Mosley listlessly.
“No, not really. Of course, all evening the comments of you both made a great deal to
think about. Too much, perhaps. So much so that it blinded me to the obvious. But your giving
me your purse, Doctor, didn’t gibe to Jeni.”
Sakata stepped forward and placed the tray on the coffee table.
“No woman ever willingly gives her purse away to a stranger. Too much of our lives are
in it. Unless she doesn’t think she’ll ever need it again. That’s what I could not resolve at first.”
“She was right, of course,” Wong continued. “And when Jeni showed me your note, I
understood.” He unfolded the paper and read: “ ‘May God forgive me, if he can. I cannot.’
Classic suicide text.“
Wong folded the note and offered it to Mosley. “You were not there tonight to kill
Jordan, but to have me kill you.”
“Yes,” Mosley whispered, ignoring the note as if it was contaminated.
“Call it assisted suicide,” Wong said to the others. “Or Death by Cop, as they say in the
trade. It made no sense that she could get explosives by our experts and precautions, but because
she was there to speak for the Last Crusade, we just assumed somehow she had, simply because
she said so. We had to. She assumed we would do anything, including killing her, to prevent a
bombing. She was counting on that.”
“This whole thing was a stunt? A charade?” asked Jordan, confused.
“Yes,” said Mosley with a drained voice, ignoring Sakata’s offer of a cup. “I agreed to
speak for the Last Crusade not for their reasons, but for mine. I wanted to die … or rather, I no
longer wanted to live. I think I had already come to many of the conclusions that you led me to
this evening, subconsciously. After all these years, despite my profession of faith, I could not
really believe my husband was taken from me for some divine purpose, however benign the
divinity. The corollary was that there was no purpose, and I could not accept the senseless. Yet, I
found I did not have the courage to kill myself.”
“That was your emotions, Doctor,” offered Rousseau. “They worked on your behalf,
even though you couldn’t — or wouldn’t — understand them fully.”
“Something else was a play here, though,” Wong interjected. “As you said, some
assumptions we make seem so basic as to be self-evident. But not all are. They just seem so.
Think of Euclid’s Fifth Postulate.”
Jordan, Rousseau and Sakata all looked at Wong, wondering what he could be getting at.
Only Mosley seemed to understand and nodded. “You studied mathematics, I take it.”
Wong nodded respectfully in reply. “A minor in math history, after computer science. I
enjoyed the subject immensely.”
“Do you wish to explain, then?” Mosley asked.
“If you don’t mind,” he said with some pride, then turned to the others. “For over two
thousand years Euclid’s Elements of geometry were taken as gospel truth in every culture that
studied and taught it. Using the basics of Aristotle’s logic, he defined concretely the axiomatic
system of proof Doctor Mosley described on stage tonight, what became the foundation and
essence of Western thought and science. However, such basic geometric concepts as “point” and
“line” and “surface” could not be proved without using them in their own proof. So Euclid
accepted them as self-evident truths — axioms — common notions useful as definitions, and
built his geometry from there. But he kept such assumptions to what he considered the bare
minimum necessary. He included one, though, among his defining postulates, what we
commonly call today the Parallel Postulate, that was troublesome even to Euclid. It states, in
essence, that two straight, equidistant lines, extended to infinity, never meet. That seemed self-
evident, obvious, and for the next twenty centuries, no one contradicted him. After all, he was
Euclid, and everything else he proclaimed had made supreme sense. We still learn his geometry
in high school as the epitome of reasoning and certainty. Some even made a religion of Euclid’s
work, such as the Pythagoreans.”
“Then came the doubters,” Mosley offered.
“Yes, the doubters, the faithless. Among them, a young Russian , a German, and an even
younger Hungarian.”
“How did I ever miss this?” Jordan wondered.
“Because you’re a cobbler, and a cobbler always sticks to his last, to what he knows,”
Sakata chuckled. Jordan looked at her uncertainly.
Wong laughed and continued. “Lobachevsky, von Riemann and Bolyai, all students
during the first half of the Nineteenth Century, realized that the Parallel Postulate wasn’t true in
all cases. Each saw that Euclid assumed and described a flat universe in which his plane and
solid geometries existed. That was the given of Euclid’s time, even though Greek geometers had
known that they lived on a round earth for hundreds of years. They saw further that one could
postulate other curved universes, not just planets. Think of a sphere, or the bell horn of a
trumpet. On a sphere there are no parallel lines, for all straight lines meet twice, at the poles, the
diametrically opposite sides of the sphere. And on a horn, no straight lines, defined as the
shortest distance between two points, meet at all, but approach each other endlessly,
asymptotically.
“Well, the hue and cry that arose at their heretical theories was like a witch hunt among
mathematicians and scientists of their day. Euclid had stood for over two millennia and these
unbelievers dared to doubt and contradict him. Faith in Euclid had blinded uncounted
generations of good mathematicians to the truth.”
“Yet, ultimately,” said Mosley, “their work led to Einstein’s … to mine.”
“And to your own blind assumption, Doctor, which was that, even though you could see
no purpose to your husband’s death, there must be one, there had to be one, for the very concept
of a god seems to imply that there must be.”
“The loss of your husband…” began Jordan as he understood finally, “… like the willful
act that took my family, was unfortunate, but not ordained. Unbidden, unexpected, and for too
long unexplained.”
“But my faith seemed … at first … to heal me,” Mosley whispered.
“As it often does for many people,” Rousseau consoled. “Because that faith smothers the
truth beneath its emotional mantle, hiding it from inspection, for the truth is too painful to bear.
But you aren’t just anyone, Doctor. A mind like yours cannot negate itself forever. I don’t know
when, but at some point your mind, your training, began to reassert itself, certainly here tonight.
Only you traded one false assumption for another. There may not exist a divine purpose, but
there is always the purpose we give ourselves. We define who we are. We validate ourselves. We
establish our own worth. It’s not easy, and many fail. And much about our cultures gives us no
help. As children, are we not often taught to not ask the great questions, but to just accept, just
believe, and not seek proof?”
“But my husband killed himself! I knew it was a lie, the public story! I of all people have
always known that…” Her voice trembled into a whisper.
“Perhaps, Doctor Mosley…” Sakata offered gently, “… perhaps your sorrow, your anger
at his action, blinded you. Our tears can make it unbearably hard to see clearly.”
Mosley’s head collapsed into her hands as sobs wracked her body. Sakata and Rousseau
moved to her side. After a few minutes, she raised her head again. Rousseau offered a
handkerchief and she cleared her eyes, brushing away the tears of many years.
“So then…” Mosley wondered in a whisper, “… am I to join you all as an atheist?”
“That is for you to decide, Doctor,” Jordan said softly. “You better than anyone here
knows the price to be paid in denying evidence. But that’s the wrong ‘ism’. Rejoin us as a
humanist,” Jordan offered. “With the emphasis on humanity and not divinity.”
“The logic for atheism may be overwhelming,” Wong added, “but it battles thousands of
years of blind, emotional belief and billions of uncertain believers. This uncertainty in
understanding the nature of existence, its effect on causality, confuses people and gives them
doubt. Your proposition is so simply stated, “existence exists,” but so dense and difficult to
absorb for minds that are not used to the strict rules of reason as you know them. Part of the
problem, though, are the those rules of reasoning. As a mathematician, Doctor, deductive logic
is everything to you, where general, fundamental principles are established and taken down to
specific cases. This train of reasoning, from major to minor premises to a conclusion, is exact
and absolute. As children, we all absorb this process subconsciously — imperfectly and not
completely, as you noted. We expect all questions to have answers, assume all effects to have
causes.
“But much of life involves inductive logic, reasoning from the specific to the general.
But induction is not absolute. Its conclusions are conditional, leaving open the possibility of a
counter case to the supposed generality. Instead of certainty we get probability, the likelihood
that our conclusions are correct with the more instances we see without contradiction. That’s the
world I live in, a fact here a clue there, trying to figure out what they mean, what connects them.
But that kind of reasoning is never complete, just probable. Induction always carries with it the
sense of doubt which Toni spoke of. This is what faith breeds on. People want the absolute
emotional reassurance that blind belief fools them with. It’s not something easily changed after
one night’s conversation. But it will come, one person at a time, all seeing and understanding the
logic in their own time. Only then doubt is dispelled. In fact, I’m willing to bet you could
probably find an agnostic — or two — standing right here.”
“Believe it or not, Doctor,” Jordan laughed, “I have nothing against believing. What
harm is there in Santa Claus, in the principle of mutual respect, good will and sharing he
symbolizes? If people find comfort in some beliefs, as some of us find beauty in religion’s
rituals, they are free to believe what they want. Much of humanity’s greatest artistic
achievements were inspired by religious faith. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rafael each gave us a
different vision of their beliefs, or lack of them. The religious music of Bach takes us to the
heavens with his masterful skill. Humanity’s great religious art is really a tribute not to God, but
to our human talent at giving sight and sound to the unintelligible. Yet, our secular works are no
less magnificent for not being divinely inspired. Hell, if I was a churchgoer, you’d probably find
me in a Black Baptist gospel meeting every Sunday. Lord! They at least know how to put joy in
their belief!“
Wong turned to Mosley. “Actually, Doctor, you may have defined a new concept on
stage tonight, one not so loaded with hate and fear. If you showed that it was not possible to
prove the existence of a creator, you also showed that the concept was unnecessary. A sort of
nonotheism, if you will. What LaPlace remarked to Napoleon.”
Jordan, Rousseau and Sakata looked at him again quizzically. Mosley smiled and Wong
laughed.
“When the French emperor,” Mosley said, “after reading the mathematician’s great work
on celestial mechanics, opined that he saw no reference to the creator in it, LaPlace replied
simply: ‘Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.’ ”
“Speaking of hypotheses, Doctor …” Wong asked. “There’s a question I’ve been
wanting to ask concerning the debate. How do you square axiomatic existence with the Big
Bang?”
“Lee,” said Jordan. “You continue to amaze me. You found time in the middle of all the
madness tonight to ponder cosmology?”
“Some might say, Doctor Jordan,” Mosley interjected, “that cosmology is the new
religion. However, the answer to your question — Doctor Wong, is it? — is a Big Crunch. It
remains consistent if the universe is cyclical.”
“I thought there isn’t enough matter in the universe for it to collapse.”

Mosley laughed, with the kind of free and easy joy she had not felt in too a long time, the
kind that comes from the enjoyment of one’s greatest value and interest. “True, but in my
lifetime I have seen the estimates go from ten percent to now ninety percent of sufficient mass,
under the theories of dark matter and dark energy. I have fai—“ She caught herself and laughed
again. “— I trust the remainder will be found. I hope I live to see it. A universe that expands and
contracts does so endlessly, a self-contained system. Time and space come to an end, only to be
reborn instantly in the next cycle. Nothing is lost, all is reused, in accordance with the
conservation of mass-energy. The key and clue are blackholes.”
Wong’s gaze drew inward as he pondered the thought. Then he remember his purpose
and his job and left her hint for another time.
“There’s still the issue of the Last Crusade,” he said to the group. “And of Doctor
Mosley’s actions on stage.”
“Well, I’m not pressing charges against her!” Jordan protested.
“It’s not that simple. These are federal crimes. The charge doesn’t require a complainant.
But still…”
He turned to Mosley. “Doctor, I think I can convince the attorney general’s office not to
prosecute you. Extreme emotional distress is evident here. The need for counseling is as well.
And based on what the world saw last night, I doubt there’s a grand jury alive which would
indict you anyway. But if you co-operate with us to find those behind the Last Crusade, I’m sure
no charges would be filed.”
“But I know nothing of them,” protested Mosley. “I never talked to them, never met any
of them.”
“But someone you know may have. How were you contacted to act as their
representative?”
“I received an email from an old friend who said she knew Dr. Jordan and thought the
debate would be of interest to me.”
“Then that person may know someone in the Last Crusade. What is her name?”
“I can’t…”
“I won’t force you, Doctor. It won’t take much to find out. You owe her nothing, though.
If she belongs to the Last Crusade, or supports them, she’s just as culpable as those who made
the threats. At least one of them is a murder, the rest accomplices.”
Jordan interrupted. “I’m curious, Doctor. You say she knows me, but I can’t think of
anyone I know who would also know you. Our paths have never crossed before tonight, except
in print.”
“But you mentioned her earlier this evening, though at the time it did not really register
with me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought it odd you knew her funny nickname, but
the fog of my depression veiled it. You called her ‘Two Mad.’ ”
Jordan sat frozen.
“Madison Abigail Dennett …?” Wong said slowly, looking from Mosley to Jordan.
“How do you know her, Dr. Mosley?” Rousseau and Sakata both looked at Jordan as well,
wondering; a slim shaft of light was illuminating a long dark corner of Jordan’s life, a life that
until this night had been unknown, only guessed.
“We met in Paris, years ago, when I went back to study biology in the early ‘90s. She
was kind and sympathetic at a time when I desperately needed kindness and sympathy. I could
use her now.”
“That makes two of us,” Jordan whispered.
“Three …” Wong added, his voice not happy at the thought. “I knew there had to be a
connection somewhere, but I did not guess this…”

“What happens next, Lee?” Jordan asked pointedly, not wanting to know, but knowing
that he could not escape the reality that must be faced.
Wong thought a moment. “We go to Paris. Both of us have questions that need answers, I
think ...”
“What about the death threats?” Rousseau asked.
“With all the publicity and tonight’s craziness, I don’t expect the Last Crusade will try
anything soon. Probably no more email for a while. They would know we have a tap in place at
the ISP for your accounts and can quickly trace any new emails. They’ll have to think of
something else. Kinda like me, right now. After JJ’s admissions during the debate, Paris may be
a stone cold trail.”
“You can’t really believe …” Jordan said slowly.
“I don’t know what to believe. I do know what I don’t want to believe, any more than
you. But the only definite link I have now is in Paris, assuming she’s still there. You don’t
expect me to ignore it, do you?”
“She will be there,” Mosley said, “Of that I am certain.”
The silence that followed, as Jordan looked to Wong, was broken by Sakata.
“Lee, may I ask Doctor Mosley a question?”
Wong looked at Mosley, who nodded her assent.
“Doctor,” Sakata asked slowly, “When you at first were ready to let yourself be killed,
why did you agree to JJ’s challenge to keep the debate going?”
Mosley looked at the young woman and smiled.
“I wanted to teach him a lesson.”
Jordan bluffed a laugh, but Sakata persisted. “A lesson in what? Humility?”
“In arrogance, child,” Mosley said softly. “And before you say anything, Doctor Jordan,
think it through. Simply, basically, fundamentally. You accused me tonight and in my ‘obituary’
— yes, I had read it! — of the arrogance of faith. That because we faithful believe as strongly as
we do, we feel superior. And is not that exactly what your wisdom has done to you? Do you not,
on occasion, exhibit an arrogance of knowledge?”
“Joshua Jordan?” Rousseau mused, grateful for the release of tension that had been
building.
“Yes, the all-wise Joshua Jordan,” Mosley continued, a smile creeping into her voice for
the first time in a long time. “You were like some troublesome student from my teaching days,
always trying to impress me with labored insights. I knew you would not be harmed tonight, not
if my planned worked. But when you challenged me instead of groveling, well, I just couldn’t
resist the chance to knock you off your high horse, intellectually speaking. I did not expect it to
change my purpose.”
“Harrumph…” muttered Jordan.
“You were right about one thing, though, Doctor.”
“Only one?”
“Faith does not necessarily make the faithful any smarter. Faith freezes intellectual
discovery, kills it. While it may not have seemed so, I haven’t had quite so much enjoyment in
such a scholarly discussion as I did on that stage in a long, long time.”
“You’ve come a long way in a short time, Doctor,” said Rousseau.
“No, I’ve come only a short way in too long a time, the time I’ve wasted hating,
denying.”
“Think of the journey ahead,” Jordan offered, “And the delight of learning it holds. If I
promise to leave my arrogance at the door, can we do it again sometime, any subject?”
“Perhaps,” Mosley smiled, looking at Wong who smiled in return.

“Only if I can be there,” added Wong. He turned to Sakata. “I have a question for you,
Jeni.”
“Me? I don’t know anyone!”
“Backstage, when you screamed and grabbed the purse. You shouted ‘Magic!’ Why
magic? ”
“I wanted to say ‘misdirection’ but couldn’t get the word out. Magic was the only thing I
could think of.”
The first spikes of sunrise began to appear from beyond the East Bay hills. Sparks of
light began to reflect wildly off the windows of the tall buildings surrounding the group as they
exited to the street. The hours ahead would be a busy for all.
The grayness of dawn was fading away into a brilliant morning; yesterday’s fog had
begun to dissipate with the sunrise. In the early hours the city held the last silence of the night;
what little traffic there was only magnified the absence of the restless daytime noise of the city.
A thin crescent moon on the wane hung low in the still dark skies beyond Nob Hill to the
Southeast. The cable in the slot along California Street two blocks away rumbled its portent of a
new day; the first cable cars would be along soon.
“I‘m putting you under your own recognizance for now, Doctor Mosley,” Wong said.
“Until we sort things out. For the time being, my advice is go hide somewhere. Here’s my card.
Call me in a few days, when I return.” Mosley, astonished, accepted the card and nodded her
understanding.
“You’re welcome to stay at my place,” Rousseau offered. “The media will be all over
your home. We can better control the circus if they don’t know where you are just yet.”
“Thank you,” Mosley said quietly. “I don’t deserve your kindness, after last night.”
“Let’s just say,” Rousseau smiled as she winked at Jordan, “It’s the human thing to do.”
“That settles that then,” Wong said. “A good morning to you all.” He turned up the collar
of his coat and headed south towards Grace Cathedral. Jordan had told him that there was coffee
kiosk in its bookstore entrance that would just be opening.
“Lee, wait up!” Sakata called after him. Wong turned and waited. Sakata turned quickly
to Mosley. “One last question, Doctor, if I may…” she asked as she wrapped her short jacket
about her shoulders against the morning chill.
“Certainly, child,” Mosley answered.
“When this episode is over, with your permission, I would like to do your life story,”
Sakata asked as she started after Wong.
Jordan looked at Rousseau and smiled, but said nothing.
“So, Josh,” Rousseau asked finally, “where are you off to this fine morning?”
“Paris. I have some unfinished business there.”

XI.
APOCALYPSE
In the soft Parisian sunlight of late summer a pale blue sky framed the top of Sacré
Cœur. The tip of its white dome gleamed above the buildings lining the way, hovering like a
huge, stone balloon as the two walked. The scene was a shimmer of color like a cityscape by
Renoir or Pissarro. Both artists had been denizens of Montmartre, along with many other
Impressionist painters, and the legacy of their impressions of Paris lines the walls of galleries
and museums around the world. The surroundings seem to glow in the sunlight and city haze
with the essence of its subject, like delicate daubs of paint on a canvas, forcing the mind to fill
in the detail which the eye could not easily see. Lee Wong was grateful now for the liberal arts
classes he had been required to take in college, meant to balance his science and mathematics
load, to produce something more humane than the human computing machine which industry
sought.
Jordan and Wong climbed slowly along Rue Lepic towards Montmartre’s summit, not far
from the Basilica, guided by the address Mosley had provided. They had followed the street’s
meandering path up from Boulevard de Clichy, the main thoroughfare of the Eighteenth
Arrondisment, and its southwestern boundary. The buildings flanking the narrow street grew
younger as they approached where Lepic merged gracefully into Place Jean-Baptiste Clèment.
The streets became shorter and their names longer, part of the mystique and paradox that
Montmartre shared with the rest of old Paris. Jordan had noted in his fashion that the district in
its time had been home to both the sacred and the profane. Beneath the great Basilica paid for by
subscription of the French people, lay the battleground where the worker’s militia, which
became Les Communards of the Paris Commune of 1871, briefly took over the city’s
government in revolt against the disaster of the Franco-Prussian war, a supposed stain upon the
honor of all France. The true stain was the blood of 58,000 French soldiers who died in a
senseless war of national vanity, and it was to their honor that Sacre Cœur was later rededicated.
The profanity lived further down the slopes of Montmartre, along the red light district of Place
Pigalle. There the nightclub with the Red Windmill on its roof, le Moulin Rouge, had
symbolized the tawdry energy of the Fin de Siécle Paris immortalized in the posters and
paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, though even he had to clean it up a bit. The scandal of
the Can-Can — that frenetic ballet of chorus girls with its wild, twirling leaps, flashing skirts
and stockings, ending in impossible leg splits — was not the abandon with which the girls
danced; it was that they sometimes danced sans dessous, without panties.
Neither Jordan or Wong spoke much after they started walking from the Metro station at
Place Blanche. Wong knew what must be done and would be done, in time; he respected his
companion’s privacy and did not probe. They had said little on the long flight from San
Francisco, departing late afternoon and arriving near noon, most of the trip spent in a much
needed sleep. They had checked in at the hotel, a modest boutique establishment Jordan
frequented on his stays. It was tucked away on a quiet street between Boulevard Saint-Germain
and the Seine in the Seventh. The hotel was but a short stroll to the Museé D’Orsay, and then
across the Passerelle Solférino, a narrow, graceful, modern arch of steel providing a footbridge
across the river to the treasures of the Right Bank, to the Tuileries and the Louvre and much
more. They had walked through incredible civic scenery along the way to the Metro station at
Place de la Concorde. When they spoke, it was about Paris. It was Wong’s first visit to the City
of Light and he was in awe of its sights, for they lived up to everything ever said about them. He
began to understand what friends had often conveyed after returning from France; it took a
Paris, they said, to appreciate the beauty of San Francisco, a city that had been the backdrop of
his life, which he and they took for granted, and whose charm and magic were often forgotten;
Wong never saw his home as tourists did.
In theory he too was just another tourist in Paris; he claimed no official standing as an
agent of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had not requested the assistance of
the French authorities. Though recognized immediately by the Air France cabin crew at the
airport in San Francisco — thanks to the debate — he and Jordan were treated with deference as
simply two American travelers enroute to Paris in first class, Wong’s upgrade courtesy of
Jordan; as a civilian on holiday, he could accept it as a gift from a friend.
Though work had required Jordan to visit the city many times, he had never lingered
long there. He did not know what had become of Maddie after that night in the Hashbury coffee
house. The days afterward became months, then years, then decades. Yet, whenever he came to
Paris, or to New York, he found himself staring at certain young women, with athletic bodies
and short hair, with round faces, American faces, holding bright eyes. Rousseau’s ghost.
Through all the years he had not thought of Maddie so intensely as he had forced himself to
during the debate. Her face had been frozen in time and was joined now with those of Sarah,
Hakim and Nasra. Toni had been right; Maddie’s memory and spirit had never been far away in
his mind, shaping his life in ways that his thoughts did not know, but which his deep, enduring
emotions did.
“Still there,” Wong said quietly, with a silent chuckle.
“What? Who?” Jordan asked, confused.
“Our shadow. A couple of plain clothes men from the French national police.”
“They’re tailing us?” Jordan resisted the urge to turn and look.
“Not tailing, more like guardian angels. A professional courtesy, since I did not seek
official help. No doubt the debate had an impact here, too, though heaven knows it was on at
three in the morning. They would assume I would come. They’d have checked with the airlines,
known our flight, then followed us to the hotel this morning. I spotted these just as we left the
Metro.”
“Rather clumsy.”
“Not really. They wanted me to know I had help, even if I didn’t ask for it. Otherwise, I
sure I wouldn’t have nailed them so soon.”
“The ‘Old Boy Network’?”
“After a fashion.“
“Hmph. Wasn’t it Hammet who said ’a gumshoe’s a gumshoe, wherever he walks …?’ “
“If he didn’t …” Wong smiled, “… he should have.”
They walked on in silence. Jordan was dressed in khakis and a pale blue shirt under a
favorite old black sport coat of a lightweight cotton. Wong wore a black tee under a tan, open
shirt-jacket on top of comfortable gray cargo pants which provided pocket space for his iPhone,
passport, keys and all the Euro coins that seemed to be breeding there, for there were definitely
more of them now than when they arrived. With only a few hours for a nap he felt tired still
from the flight, but a mild surge of adrenaline and rich French coffee was keeping him awake
against jet lag; Wong could only guess what was driving his companion on.
Jordan stopped where the road started curving up and left again and looked at Place Jean-
Baptiste Clèment ahead on his right. He saw why Maddie had chosen this spot, this building.
Across the way a short street intersected Rue Lepic, creating the triangular Place and a window
through the line of buildings that opened upon the plain of Paris below. A high apartment here
would have a wedge of sight to the River Seine as it twisted around the Hôtel des Invalides to
the Eiffel Tower, at the same time overlooking L’Opera and La Madeleine and much beyond. In
the distance he saw through the haze the towering office building of Montparnasse. The
memories came to him of the view of Haifa from Mt. Carmel, and of San Francisco from the
bell tower on Lone Mountain.
The building was old and only a three stories tall, made of brick and wood, not like the
grand apartment houses of stone and plaster which Baron Haussman had used, nearly a century
and a half before, to frame his broad avenues and long boulevards as he remade Paris into a
modern city. Only a very few of the ancient grain windmills remained on Montmartre; the
district was being gentrified into homes for the young professionals of Paris, and into pieds-à-
terre for foreign tourists, not unlike what was happening to San Francisco. The building had
been a family home originally. Sometime in its history it had been converted and remodeled; the
first two floors held two apartments, each of which flanked a central staircase. The top story
seemed to be one, larger apartment; it’s facade held small balconies and tall windows that drew
in the view. Jordan read the names on the panel by the main door. Unit number five, the top
floor, bore the simple inscription: “M. A. Dennett.” Nine characters, like hieroglyphs carved on
a stele which, in their simplicity, spoke volumes. Jordan pushed the buzzer. A woman’s soft,
clear voice answered almost immediately, thinned by the electronics of the intercom, but still so
familiar, a voice he had not heard in thirty years. The door lock buzzed open.
“Please come up,” Maddie said. “I’ve been expecting you…”
Jordan and Wong climbed the spiraling staircase to the top floor. The door to the
apartment was open and Maddie stood at the threshold. Her hair was still short and her frame
still held the air of athleticism. She wore sensible Capri pants in a pale tan with a burgundy top
under a open white blouse that were suitable for the late summer heat. Her pearls, restrung many
times but still soft and shimmering, burnished by the natural oils of her skin, hung gracefully
from Maddie’s neck. Wong stopped and held back as Jordan approached her. When he saw
Maddie close up, Jordan felt suddenly as if he was in a reverse of the story of Eden, as if
returning home and Eve awaited. He stopped in front of her and stared; wetness formed at the
corner of his eyes. Maddie, a new Maddie, with a face that was still bright but now held thirty
years of experience and wonder which had etched the soft lines by her eyes, looked back at him
and smiled. His heart clenched again, as it had that first day in the lecture hall. Jordan raised his
right arm up and held his palm gently against her cheek, stroking it softly with his thumb.
Maddie’s left hand rose to clasp his tenderly, warmly, pressing it against her face. A wave of
diffuse, urgent emotion flooded through his body, weakening his knees. Maddie turned her head
to kiss his palm, then carefully used his thumb to brush at her tears.
“It was worth the wait, Josh …” she whispered quietly.
Jordan and Wong sat in her small living room. A low sofa against the interior wall was
matched by two chairs that sat on the opposite side of a polished coffee table. Maddie had
brought out a tray of demitasse cups with a small pitcher, sugar bowl and server and was pouring
their coffee; Jordan recognized the pattern of pale cream porcelain and heavy gold trim from the
dinner table back in St. Francis Wood an eternity ago. He noticed the oriental rug beneath the
table and chairs; it was the one from her father’s study, the stain from the pie still faintly visible.
The room behind him looked out its tall window-doors on to Paris in the distance; it seemed the
major focus of the room’s decoration, as a view properly should. One end of the tall chamber on
the left, beyond the dining area that led to the small kitchen, held a large bookshelf filled to the
top, with some books crammed sideways on top of others to fit. In the wall to the right held a
small fireplace flanked by built-in shelves that displayed more books and small pieces of
sculpture he remembered from the study. These in turn were flanked by the paintings that had
been in the dining room in San Francisco. The room had the feel of a museum, and probably the
purpose, Jordan guessed. Maddie finished pouring their coffee and sat attentively on the edge of
the sofa.
“I have some answers now,” she said to Jordan. “But I’m sure your companion has his
own questions.” She turned to Special Agent Wong.
“Please,” Wong pleaded gently. “I can wait a little longer. I doubt JJ can.”
“JJ? Is that what you prefer these days?” Maddie asked with a faint smile.
“No! God no! Not from you …” Jordan moaned.
“Then it will remain ‘Josh’… as I knew it would from your wonderful confession in the
debate. Where shall I begin?”
“Perhaps,” Wong offered, “from where it ended for you two. I don’t wish to pry, but
your two lives have been entwined somehow in something bigger. Well, maybe not bigger, but
dangerous. I have to find out what it means. Part of your story is known now to maybe a billion
people. Both JJ — Jordan! — and I will find our answers there.”
Maddie sighed and settled back in the sofa with her coffee cup held in her hands on her
lap.
“Like so many sad stories, it began in Paris …”
***
She told of finishing school at Vassar and trading Poughkeepsie for Paris as her father
had promised. It had not been easy at first. She barely made it through her senior year, for
studying was hard and she had little interest in learning anything other than her French studies.
The nagging question of why haunted her emotionally, but Maddie summoned up the will that
had served her in sports and persevered. Her father had found a good host family in Paris, an
older couple who had retired from IBM to live in France. They provided a living place and a
link back home while she studied at the Catholic University of Paris where her father had gone.
The “Catho” as it was known to generations of its students, specialized in teaching French as a
foreign language on all levels, using the history of France, its civilization and culture to infuse
its students with French ideals in the arts and literature, the theater and modern communications,
while ingraining the language into their minds. There were many Americans among its enrollees,
as well as other Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, Middle-Easterners, Indians, Australians
— a scholastic League of Nations comprised of people of all ages, many of whom had chosen
France as their new home and French as their new language. While they would never be taken as
français vrai by Les Français, anywhere else in the world, when they spoke, no one would doubt
that they were.
Maddie found the emersion beneficial, healing, for it took her conscious mind away from
San Francisco and gave her another challenge to master, one that would help rebuild her
wounded psyche. A part of her had died that night when Josh walked away, the unbounded sense
of hope that is the essence of being young, the certain feeling that the world is somehow
comprehensible, the absolute belief that anything is possible. Doubt had not been a part of her
vocabulary, just as hope had been its theme; hope had been the one thing she felt she could give
to Josh, to mask and perhaps diminish that brooding mystery which was always there in the
background, a shadow that would permit no light.
Mr. and Mrs. Dennett were pleased with their daughter’s progress, each for their own
reasons. The success of Maddie’s first year led to a second. It also led to an affair.
Jean-Paul was a French employee of IBM France, whom she met through her host
family, at a dinner party one night. He was a rising cog in the corporate hierarchy, one of several
young candidates in their late twenties and early thirties being groomed for eventual leadership
in the company’s international operations. He was a highly trained electrical engineer who had
done post-grad work in the U.S. at M.I.T. In the staid world of IBM, he was being turned into an
operations man, though he was something of an anomaly; he championed the new field of mini-
computers that were more than just dumb terminals to the company’s bread-and-butter main
frames. To Maddie he was a fascinating blend of both cultures; his manners were French, his
outlook American. Jean-Paul opened up an appealing view of life for her, a practical
appreciation of the sensual, based on an understanding of Paris more enticing than what she
learned in class. The mystery of Josh and the nagging questions of why did not go away entirely,
but enough so that life held a sense of promise again.
For over a century an endless parade of books, plays, movies and musicals proclaimed
and portrayed contemporary Paris as a romantic playground built just for young lovers, or so it
seemed to Maddie as she saw it through her new guide; the French smirked, for they had long
ago given the world and the English language their name for the phenomenon: cliché. But the
little things, the ordinary things, did take on une nouvelle signification in such a setting; a stroll
along the river bank with the graceful arching buttresses of Notre Dame as backdrop; savoring a
new liqueur with strong coffee in a sidewalk café; sitting on a park bench among freshly leafing
trees beneath the shadow of the Eiffel Tower; looking into the eyes of someone and feeling the
intimate presence of a fascinating mind and all that it held. But these sensations were not quite
new nor without a sense of memory and sorrow; they carried a vague shadow of a hazy guilt as
well, for they had first been felt not so long ago, far away, in a city by a bay.
Slowly, through several dates, Maddie began to enjoy Jean-Paul’s subtle coaxing, the
hints at greater intimacy; her father used to call her sa petite coquette and she reveled in playing
the role as a child, not quite knowing what it really, fully meant, but sensing something
important, something adult. But the consoling, comforting arms of a father were vastly different
from the caresses of a lover. She felt a growing hunger to feel what a young body and mind
craved, what she had barely tasted before, but also what society and its religions denied. Until
now. This wasn’t Armonk. Or Richmond. A different, more relaxed set of Parisian rules allowed
behavior forbidden at home. Here the hunger could be fed without recrimination. A chosen
pleasure, not compulsory virtue, was its own reward. The French had provided yet more words
to describe this sensation and their ultimate take on the matter: joie de vivre and blasé.
Hunger won out over abstinence and Maddie decided to respond to Jean-Paul’s
intimations. A warm spring evening began innocently with wine and fellow students at a café
nearby by the Catho and the Sorbonne; two musicians, a boy and a girl, were joyously jamming
on acoustic guitars for coins in the center of the small square that was mostly triangular; its
incongruity fit the mood and its shape manipulated and amplified the sounds of their instruments
as they rang out. The two executed happily the unique jazz chords of Django Reinhardt, France’s
first great jazzman, inspired by the gypsy master’s mangled hand with only three fingers to work
the fret board. Django had changed the guitar from a simple rhythm keeper into an instrument
with its own special voice that, like the violin of his early collaborator in the Hot Club of Paris,
Stephane Grappelli, had given jazz a new sound of expression. Their music echoed off the
ancient buildings of the Latin Quarter, enriching that sound with reverberated tones in the low
notes and mellowing the peaks of the highs. They played an old American show tune that had
become a jazz classic; it sang a litany of favorite things to drive away the blues when one was
feeling sad. The boy took the verse and was chased by the girl who surged ahead to launch the
chorus. Then the two joined in contrapuntal harmony, he taking the lead on one phrase, she the
next, alternating back and forth. Each performed ever-changing riffs, variations, improvisations
of the simple melody, yet never losing the familiar notes among their new interpretations, until
they reunited in the finale. The beat and the rhythms were intoxicating to Maddie, like the wine.
Jean-Paul joined her from work. He was dressed still in a conservative gray suit and
white shirt, the IBM uniform, but well-cut in the European fashion and tailored to fit
comfortably over his tall, lanky frame; his one hint of corporate rebellion was a rich scarlet
necktie sporting a field of small, golden fleurs-des-lis. His hair was styled short and straight back
in contrast to the long, shaggy mops, moustaches and beards of the male students sitting around
him, hippie descendents of Daniel Cohn-Bendit and his student rebels of the previous decade,
the Soixante Huitards of 1968’s social unrest, who delighted in digging up the ancient
cobblestones of Paris and throwing them at the police, in the fashion of many generations of
Parisian revolutionaries. Jean-Paul’s face was tall as well, his eyes narrowly set above a long
nose, inspiring descriptions in business publications comparing him with a young Charles de
Gaulle, a characterization smirked at — in envy — along the company’s junior executive row in
New York. Maddie had seen his American counterparts before, back in Armonk, at barbecues
ands cocktail soirees during the summer between Vassar and the Catho. They were uniformly
Eastern stock, like prize bulls meant for breeding the next generation of corporate engineers,
managers and salesmen, if not at IBM, then in some proper — that is, Eastern — concern. If the
country had developed a tilt to the west such that the beatniks and hippies and other crazies all
seemed to roll into California, the Eastern Seaboard establishment was still well anchored in
New York and New England.
But Jean-Paul, for all his American airs, was to Maddie in Paris l’essence d’être
Parisien. His charm was alluring, his attentions amusing. He ordered a split of champagne, in
contrast to the ordinary, inexpensive vin de table the students had been drinking; he made sure
the year was a favorable one, following the French belief that vintages from the start of a war
were always better than those from its end, which lately had been mostly bad. The evening
progressed beyond the café to dinner at a small bistro further into the heart of the Latin Quarter
along the Rue du Pot de Fer. The street was alive with students roaming back and forth along the
winding way, calling to each other, laughing, enjoying the first warmth of spring that lingered in
the night air. The waiter led them to a table away from the windows, away from the crowds,
where the music coming from a radio nearby by the register was soft and could be heard. A
votive candle in a pleated glass holder like a shot glass cast refracted waves of light across their
faces as it flickered. Jean-Paul ordered for them both, and Maddie relaxed into the comfort of
having inconsequential decisions made for her. She was tired of facing questions that had no
answers and just wanted to enjoy the moment. And if the evening progressed as if by a well-
worked script, she did not notice, or care. The wine and the meal were exquisite, with each
course appearing on cue, over the next two hours.
Jean-Paul was witty, in both French and English, and she laughed in a manner that had
seemed forgotten to her. She found her French flowing more easily, more naturally than ever
before, and that she retreated to English for some essential thought or esoteric expression less
often. Later, they walked northward, up the Rue Mouffetard to a little café called Le Shoppe
frequented by the working class and had Calvados with their coffee. Maddie coughed at the
strong taste of the burly apple brandy. She was dressed in a heavy sweater over jeans, as she
often had at school in San Francisco against the summer fog, only now the wool was Irish and
the pegged jeans sported a designer label. Jean-Paul leaned over to nuzzle her neck behind her
ear. In the far back corners of her mind the old warning light glowed a dim red and she laughed
at the memory. Maddie blew out the candle on their small table to darken the area about them
and kissed Jean-Paul passionately. The brandy warmed her belly and the attentions of his tongue
against hers sent the sensation lower.
Maddie drew in a deep breath and whispered, “Not here.”
Jean-Paul signaled the waiter and settled the bill. They walked arm in arm the few blocks
down Rue Mouffetard to a taxi stand in the Place Monge. Jean-Paul gave directions in a rapid
French she could not follow. The cabbie headed north along Rue Monge to Boulevard Saint-
Michel, then across the Île de la Cité and the River Seine. There were shorter routes to Jean-
Paul’s apartment, but none so spectacular. Nearly a thousand years of history passed by in the
sooty façades of Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle alone; Maddie chuckled to herself and thought
briefly of the ornately rococo facade of Saint Ignatius, built in Spanish Colonial style, that was
the cathedral church at USF back in San Francisco; how laughably modern it was by
comparison. On the Right Bank the taxi wove its way along the quays that flanked the river,
following its curve out to the Sixteenth Arrondisment where Maddie’s host family also lived.
She giggled like a little girl as she leaned against Jean-Paul and sought comfort in the crook of
his arm. With his free hand he occasionally, gently stroked her hair.
The taxi arrived at a handsome, triangular corner apartment building on the Avenue
Victor Hugo. It was modern by Parisian standards, dating from the first decades of the Twentieth
Century with an early Art Deco style that rebelled against the florid excesses of Art Nouveau
and la Belle Époque. A concierge was on duty even at this late hour and greeted Jean-Paul
warmly. They rode the small, cramped elevator wrapped in each other’s arms; a long passionate
kiss timed the floors as they passed. The elevator jerked to an abrupt halt that startled Maddie
and broke the kiss. There were two apartments on his floor; Jean-Paul’s had the prized corner
view looking out over the circular Place Victor Hugo, lined with trees newly leafing in the warm
spring air. Ten streets radiated out from the place like lines of light from an evening star. The
main sightline extended through the gap sliced by the broad expanse of Victor Hugo to the Arc
de Triomphe, gleaming under its floodlights like an frozen curve of gold in the night. In the far
distance, almost lost in the dark of the hour, the floodlit dome of Sacre Cœur sat atop
Montmartre, guarding the manners and morals of the Right Bank which the district had once
mocked.
The plan of Jean-Paul’s apartment had the clean simplicity of an electrical circuit,
everything with a place and a purpose. Dimly lit, the central room was unusually large,
accommodated by the sacrifice of precious space in the remaining rooms. At the northern end,
taking advantage of the corner view, a conversation pit was framed by Modernist furniture; a
pair of gracefully sweeping Barcelona chairs and another pair of tubular Brno chairs, all by Mies
van der Rohe, flanked a large, low stainless steel coffee table with a polished black marble top.
The wall between the windows held framed posters from art exhibits of Matisse and Miró at the
newly opened Centre Georges Pompidou, itself a highly debated example of Modernist
architecture once described by a critic as un cauchemar d’un plombier, a plumber’s nightmare.
Maddie walked about the room, casually touching objects, as if she could sense the mind
that had valued them. She was drawn to the acute angle of the corner, to tall window doors that
led to small balconies and the view of the distant arch. The effects of the Calvados had left her
both light-headed and light-hearted. She opened one set of doors and stepped out on to a narrow
balcony hardly more than a ledge, stabilizing herself by leaning on the railing. She breathed in
the cool night air of spring. Jean-Paul had watched her, amused, as she inventoried the elements
of his private life. He came up to Maddie at the corner windows and casually wrapped his arms
about her from behind. Maddie sighed at the embrace and raised her arms to encircle his. Jean-
Paul lowered his head to kiss her hair gently and Maddie bent her head to rest it on his shoulder.
Time was ticking away on the last of her childhood.
Jean-Paul kissed her hair again and Maddie turned about, still enclosed by his arms, to
face him. She looked into his eyes. She thought briefly of sunny glades in Golden Gate Park and
the promises they had held. Then she sighed again and kissed Jean-Paul deeply. He returned her
urgency, then stopped, holding back and looking into Maddie’s eyes. He saw an odd mixture
there, longing, and yet regret. Then he understood. He was the first, but not the one she had
intended it to be.
Jean-Paul kept his amusement at the thought to himself. Each wanted the other for very
different reasons, their emotions, their longings and intentions shaped by these. The least he
could do, he thought, was not ruin hers while he enjoyed his. Jean-Paul bent down, picked up
Maddie in his arms and kissed her again, turning slowly into the apartment, in the direction of
his bedroom. Maddie looked back over his shoulder, watching the dome of Sacre Cœur fade into
the night.
Maddie’s host family began to wonder about her, and to worry. For the last month she
had spent infrequent evenings at home, or had returned at late hours. That, in Paris, was not unu-
sual. It was with whom she spent them which caused the worry. When she was home, Maddie
seemed happy as she made her apologies; what was gone was the school girl; what replaced it
was the mistress. The wife, Evelyn, had been meaning to speak with her, but never found quite
the right moment. Her husband, George, was of a different mind. His own daughter had had a
similar affair during her time here in Paris, but was now safely married off and living back home
in New York. As long as Maddie didn’t get pregnant, no harm was done, some fun was had, and
life was enjoyed in this Parisian playland before being confined to the straightjacket of IBM’s
and Armonk’s social circles. He cautioned his wife against interfering.
Evelyn was alone at home one evening, pondering what to do, what to say; her husband
was in New York on business. Maddie had not yet returned from dinner with Jean-Paul and
friends. She knew Maddie had an exam the next day; but her studies had not suffered for all the
time she spent with Jean-Paul; rather, they had benefited, for the goal had been to learn French
and France as one born to both, and the emotional whirlwind of an affair, conducted mostly en
Français, was an urgent, powerful teacher. It was nearly midnight when the telephone rang.
Evelyn answered quickly, wondering who could be calling at such a late hour, then
suddenly fearful that something had happened to Maddie. She was relieved, and then annoyed,
to hear that it was Mrs. Dennett.
“Good evening, Grace,” she responded.
“Bon nuit, Evelyn,” Mrs. Dennett replied. “May I speak with Madison, please?
“I’m afraid she’s … she’s not here …”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause before Mrs. Dennett asked, “When is she
expected?”
“Shortly, I hope.”
“You hope?”
“Grace, Maddie’s grown up. She has her own life and her own schedule now.”
“It’s past midnight there, isn’t it?”
“Yes …”
“And it’s a school night, correct?”
“She isn’t in high school any more, Grace. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Do you?”
“That was uncalled for.”
“I … I apologize. I’m a little distraught. Please have Maddie call me as soon as she gets
in. It has to do with her father.”
“He’s not …?”
“No, not that. John’s not dead. But he is ill. Maddie should come home.”
“I’ll have her call you when —“
Just then she could hear a key in the lock of the apartment door open and knew it was
Maddie. She called out for her. Maddie was still savoring the evening, a knowing smile on her
lips; she could still smell the scent of Jean-Paul.
“It’s your mother,” Evelyn said, cupping the phone’s mouthpiece to her shoulder. She
was about to say more, but thought better and offered the handset to Maddie.
“At this hour?” Maddie wondered quietly aloud, her brow forming a crease of worry,
having grown up in an a time when long distance phone calls late at night rarely held good news.
She accepted the telephone from Evelyn.
“Mother, what’s wrong …?”
“You father’s had a stroke.” Grace’s voice was thin and distance. Maddie wasn’t sure if
it was because of the phone line or the worry she could hear in her mother’s voice.
“How … how bad?” Maddie asked, biting her lip.
“Bad enough,” Evelyn responded in a weary tone. “It’s left him partially paralyzed in his
left arm. He can still speak, thank God! But his speech is slurred. Dr. Bremen said the next thirty
days are critical. I need you to come home.”
“Of course, Mother. I’ll make arrangements tomorrow. I can be there the day after.”
“Very good. I’ll have a car meet you at the airport.”

“Mother … how can this have happened? Dad’s only sixty-one.”
“Men his age are dropping like flies,” Grace answered with a weariness that was
uncharacteristic. “Overwork, worry, stress. God’s will, for all I know…” There was also an
anger in Grace’s voice unlike any Maddie had ever heard before; she was not quite sure if it was
directed at her, her father, or God. “Just … just pray for him, please…”
Maddie closed here eyes against the tears welling up. “I’ll call you tomorrow with my
flight information, Mother. Please try to get some sleep. There’s nothing more you can do until
I’m home.”
“That’s the hell of it!” Grace whispered in a strained voice, in nearly a scream that she
managed to strangle. “I feel so damn helpless!”
Maddie hung up the phone, suddenly weak at the knees. Her brain was flooded with so
many different, conflicting thoughts. Evelyn quickly took her to the living room couch, then
poured a brandy for them both. Maddie told her the details of her father and the necessary next
steps as she sorted them out in her mind.
“I’ll take care of the flight in the morning,” Evelyn said. “You pack and call the school.
There’s a late afternoon departure from Orly that will get you to JFK around six p.m.”
“Thank God Jean-Paul will be there,” Maddie said with some relief.
“What …?”
“He’s going to New York next week for his part in the annual planning sessions. I was
thinking of joining him there and surprising the folks.” There was a wistful half-laugh in
Maddie’s voice as she recalled the idea and when it had occurred to her in Jean-Paul’s bed.
“Does Jean-Paul know about it?”
“No, no! Of course not!” Maddie laughed fully, grateful for the emotional relief. “I was
going to surprise them all.”

“I’ll say,” Evelyn said quietly, half to herself. She looked at Maddie, whose face was a
mixture of sadness, worry, and hope. She dreaded the next moment. “Maddie, dear. There’s
something you should know.”
“What …?” Maddie could see the pain straining Evelyn’s face.
“Jean-Paul is engaged.”
Maddie looked at Evelyn with uncomprehending eyes.
“You’re joking…” she laughed feebly.
“I wish to God I were.”
“I … who … he … who is she?” Maddie whispered, her eyes closed. In that moment of
asking she realized that she did not really want to know, or any of the facts that would flow from
the name. She just wanted to time to stop. No, to back up, to retreat to some distant childhood
memory when her life was so simple and there were only happy challenges and the joy they
brought when she conquered them.
“She’s the daughter of the French U.N. ambassador. She lives with her parents in New
York. They’re to be married next spring, here, in Paris.”
When she was old enough to appreciate its meaning, the rich irony of Armonk had
tickled Maddie’s sense of humor; it wasn’t an official town, just a “census-designated” area,
home to IBM. But it had been the punch card tabulating machines of Herman Holerith, first
developed to automate and expedite the 1890 Census, which eventually gave birth to the modern
monolith of Big Blue. Each June when school let out so that she could enjoy the last blushes of
spring before summer’s heat, the landscape was a child’s paradise and playground. The rich
green of lawns rose to meet the darker green of the canopy of trees and then to the blue of a
brilliant sky studded with clouds that occasionally brought delicious sun showers. She always
thought the name Big Blue had meant that huge sky overhead.
As her father rose in IBM’s corporate ranks, the family moved westward a few miles
from Armonk to White Plains when he was transferred to IBM’s facilities there. It was more
convenient to catch the commuter trains down to Manhattan and the New York airports when
necessary, and his career made that increaseingly so. It wasn’t the first time the family had
moved in the service of the company, nor would it be the last. Locals in Connecticut and New
York joked that for many of their neighbors IBM stood for “I’m Being Moved.” When Maddie
reached middle school, she began to understand her father’s talents; he was a “fix-it” man, a
manager IBM could call on to reorganize and right an under-performing operation or facility.
The explosive growth of corporate computing in the 1950s and ‘60s, which had made IBM a
household word and a blue chip investment, often resulted in management problems. Logistics,
manufacturing, research and development had exploded all over Big Blue’s world map, often
overwhelming a manager who was more suited to managing a computer program than the human
programmers under his charge. Mr. Dennett was the man the Watsons, first Senior then Junior,
trusted to set things right. He had joined the International Business Machine Corporation just
after the war, having served as young naval lieutenant assigned to Bletchley Park, not far from
London, home to the joint Anglo-American effort to crack German codes. Nazi U-boats were
ravaging supply convoys in the North Atlantic, threatening England’s lifeline from America;
millions of tons of war materials and thousands of brave merchant marines were sent to icy,
watery graves between New Foundland and Liverpool and Murmansk. Dennett’s assignment was
to keep those early electro-mechanical computational devices working while the brain boys like
mathematicians Alan Turing and Max Newman sought to break Germany’s Enigma code. The
British-designed Colossus Mark 1 and Mark 2 greatly speeded up the process of analyzing and
comparing German intercepts, looking for any link that might gain insight to the code’s
structure. But like all such early computers, they were intricate and delicate and prone to failure;
ENIAC, the first commercial digital computer, developed in America during the war to calculate
ballistic trajectories for naval guns, was the size of a tennis court and sported 18,000 state-of-
the-art vacuum tubes in its digital processor, with a failure rate of one every half-hour. Lt.
Dennett had a feel for these temperamental machines which Thomas Watson Senior, head of
IBM, appreciated. When the war ended, he personally recruited ex-Lieutenant Dennett; his
judgment proved correct, for Dennett possessed a similar feel for the human components of the
corporate body and became its most reliable troubleshooter. But now George Dennett, what was
left of the tall, wiry young man, lay in a hospital bed, weak, crippled, unable to help even
himself.
Maddie sat alone by her father’s bedside. The hospital room was starkly pale in the off-
shades of color judged soothing and reassuring by architects who followed market research and
not their own experiences. Somehow, the sick and the injured were supposed to respond to the
somber tones, and that the colors were meant to be reassuring to the healthy who came to visit.
The only real colors were several vases of flowers overflowing available surfaces, granting the
room a sense of vitality its design denied. The adjustable bed dominated the small space, leaving
room only for a night stand and two chairs. A television hung suspended in a corner, a soap
opera silently playing itself out as nobody watched. The bed was adjusted so that her father was
partially upright, to allow him comfort as his body struggled to breathe. Dennett slept fitfully,
his mind trapped in a malfunctioning container, causing dreams of helpless confusion and
misadventure. His head would jerk slightly from side to side occasionally as he wrestled with his
nightmares. Maddie reached over to hold his good right hand. The left side of his body looked
frozen, the arm limp at his side, unmoving. Dennett’s face was a half-mask of tension and calm,
the left side failing to react to his dreams, resulting in a crooked grin that held no humor.
Maddie sat facing her father, gently stroking the top of his hand with her thumb and
murmured in low, reassuring tones, as if comforting a child. She never dreamt she would ever
see her father this way. In the last two days the focus of her world had telescoped down to this
room, to the pale body whose hand she desperately caressed in hopes of somehow bringing him
back to the fullness of what she had always expected to see. The issue of Jean-Paul, and the
issues he existence would raise with her mother, were pushed back to far recesses of her
consciousness as she wrestled with the fate of her father.
Helplessness had never been an accepted state of mind for him, nor by his example, for
Maddie. She wanted desperately to do something, anything, that would bring release, that would
bring her father back. At one point, the vague thought of prayer entered her mind and she
laughed to herself in a sad fashion. Despite her mother’s proddings, Maddie had never believed
in it, never saw the point. If, as her mother and so many others contended, all was God’s will,
what good was prayer? Could God be swayed by her tears? Those of the Magdalene and his own
son’s mother had not been enough to save Christ. Jesus himself had pleaded to his father in the
Garden of Gethsemane to no avail. All the saints in heaven could not help her, for the cross
proved not a symbol of salvation, but of damnation, as the Romans intended. If all was ordained,
the cross held not hope, but hopelessness, whether one prayed to it or was nailed to it. Prayer
was useless because it was pointless. But that thought did nothing for Maddie’s sense of sorrow
and of helplessness.
Just then she heard firm, familiar footsteps behind her and knew that her mother had
entered the room.
Grace Dennett stood behind her daughter’s chair in silence. She put her hand on
Maddie’s shoulder, and Maddie reach up across her body with her free hand to clasp it gently.
“We need to talk,” her mother said quietly.

Maddie took a deep breath and let it out silently, then rose from her chair. “Not here.”
They walked to a visitor’s lounge, not saying a word. Maddie stood by a window. The
setting sun left the sky ablaze with gold as its fading light robbed the landscape of color.
“Who, exactly, is Jean-Paul Dumont?” Grace asked.
“Someone one I know in Paris, an IBMer I met through Evelyn and John. Why?”
“He called this afternoon.”
“Oh? What did he want?”
“He inquired after your father, and you. He seemed to know a good deal about us for
someone we’d never met.”
Maddie continued to stare out the window, at the fading sky, not wishing to face her
mother’s eyes. She thought of several answers she could give, each more elaborate. Then she
thought of her father, of how he would want her to reply. “As I said, he’s someone I know, in
Paris.”
“Just how well do you ‘know’ him?” Grace persisted.
Maddie whirled about in rising anger to face her mother squarely. “He’s my lover. There,
are you satisfied?” she said evenly, her voice holding its tone against opposing feelings of pride
that wanted to shout her words, and feelings of humiliation that wanted them whispered.
Grace’s eye’s flared, her face flush. Maddie could see it filling with righteous anger.
“Don’t say a word, Mother. Not now. Not for my sake, or yours, but for Poppa’s. I will
deal with it.”
“You’d better. He’ll be here next week.”
The long walk up the ramp from the train platforms depressed Maddie. The walls and
floors looked grimy and ill-kept, like the city above. Graffiti covered much of the old stone, as it
did the sides of her train. Though Grand Central Terminal had recently been spared the
developer’s wrecking ball, it seemed destined to die a slow death of neglect. She walked into the
great space of the main concourse, dowdy and decaying like the lower levels, an ancient Beaux
Arts empress with a grim, painted face whose days of glory were all behind her. No daylight
shown through the high windows in the graceful lunette arches that lined the long axis of the
concourse; no one had ever bothered to remove the blackout paint still there from the war thirty
years before, thus preserving the gloom. The barrel-vault ceiling rose high overhead like a
cathedral; the curved surface once displayed a grand depiction of celestial skies, only in reverse
of what one saw from Earth. Legend held that it was God’s view of the universe, only now it
was hidden behind a coating of six decades worth of cigar and cigarette smoke. It did not matter;
huge billboards hawking modern wares drew the visitor’s eyes, when not focused on the flashing
electromechanical train board, producing a false sense of glamour. Time was catching up with
Grand Central and New York City; it seemed as if both had changed much in the few years she
had been away in Paris. Her thoughts made Maddie wish she could instantly be back there and
not here. Paris may be tinged by centuries of soot and smoke and rain, she thought, but that stain
was the result of a thousand years of life. New York’s decay was hardly more than a few
decades of conscious negligence.
It was midday and the crowds were light. Maddie walked to the round information booth
that squat beneath the dull gilt and tinged opal of its huge four-faced clock. She had chosen this
spot because it was neutral territory and easily found. Jean-Paul had suggested that they meet at
the newly opened restaurant atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center, whose
magnificent views of the city to the north encompassed the Empire State and Chrysler buildings
in midtown, and the earth‘s curvature on the far horizon out to sea. Maddie had declined; she
wanted no distractions. She was a few minutes late. Jean-Paul was waiting for her, dressed in a
grey business suit, casually smoking a cigarette, and idly watching the few travelers wandering
about.
He glanced her way as Maddie approached. She was wearing very casual clothes, jeans
and her favorite Irish wool sweater, in odd contrast to the proper, more formal attire most people
chose to wear when traveling. He leaned down to kiss her. Maddie averted her face to the side.
Jean-Paul shrugged, then settled for a buss of her check in the European manner.
“My sympathies for your father,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Thank you, but no. Mother thanks you, though, for the flowers. That was very
thoughtful of you.”
“De rien …” he replied politely, wondering. Maddie was being distant, the look of a
question shadowing her face, and something more. It was obvious, from her use of more makeup
than was normal, that she had been crying. That was to be expected, he thought, considering her
father’s condition. Her stance was stiff, though, almost tense. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“When did you plan to tell me? Before or after?” Maddie said, holding an even tone
against the anger welling up inside her.
“Before or after what?” he asked, a quizzical look forming on his tall face.
“Your wedding.”
“Oh…” Jean-Paul thought briefly before shrugging his head and shoulders again slightly.
He smiled at her. “Before, naturally. Je ne suis pas un merde.”
“I don’t know what you are,” Maddie said finally, her eyes locked on his. Jean-Paul met
her glare and would not flinch.
“Am I not a man with whom you found some joy? A ‘good time’ as you Americans like
to call it. Was that wrong?”

“And your girlfriend over here?”
“She would understand. It is not so unusual in France.”
“Do you love her?”
“After a fashion, yes, but it will be a marriage of convenience.”
“Convenience?”
“Hers is a family of high position and diminished means. Mine is the opposite. We both
gain in the transaction.”
“You make it sound like a business deal.”
“Of course it is. Consider it a merger of complementary assets.”
“That’s cold…” Maddie whispered.
“That is the way of the world. Study your own history. Half the fortunes along Fifth
Avenue were rearranged that way, marrying off rich daughters to impoverished European
aristocrats. It is no different now. It’s still quite common in Paris or London, though I must
admit the English were better at it. You have read Jane Austen, I am sure.”
Maddie stared at him, wondering, wanting to be more angry and wondering why she
wasn’t. Then thoughts whispered in her mind that she had been a willing partner, had not asked
questions, had not wondered of the future. But still, she felt betrayed, if only by her own willful
blindness. If he was in the wrong, the wrong was not solely his. She was left to ask weakly,
“And afterward?”
“Ah, afterward…” Jean-Paul smiled. “I see no reason to change matters.”
His reply shook Maddie like a slap to the face. “Won’t your wife object?” A strange
anger began to rise in her chest.
“Why should she?” Jean-Paul shrugged. “Marie comprend. She understands. I am sure
she will keep her own lover.”

“She told you this?” Maddie was incredulous.
“Of course not. These things are understood, but never spoken of, so long as it does not
threaten the marriage. Really, ma petite coquette, have you learned nothing of France?”
“Don’t call me that!“ Maddie screamed suddenly.
“What?” Jean-Paul asked in alarm. “I meant no harm. C’est juste une expression
d’affection…”
“You have no right … no right ….” Maddie turned abruptly and ran away, leaving Jean-
Paul to stand in wonder, beneath the clock with four faces.
Maddie gently lowered her father in to his favorite reading chair in his study. They had
brought him home after nearly a month at the hospital. Mr. Dennett’s body had fought back
enough that he could rise and stand with assistance. His left side was still paralyzed partially, his
left arm still useless, his face still holding its crooked smile; but his doctors were of a mind that
he would be no worse off at home, and the change of scenery to familiar settings might aid his
recovery, if there was to be one.
The room was an old friend to Maddie, a space her father had recreated after a fashion in
each home they’d had in his travels for the company. His desk and the chairs in front were
arranged in a corner in his preferred manner. The oriental rug proudly displayed its colors and
complimented the varied hues of the books on shelves about the room. The view across from his
desk out the single long, wide window was more expansive than those in San Francisco; its
tableau to the west of green lawn and fields receding to a distant woods were comforting and
pleasant, like neighbors or old friends one was always glad to see.
That thought made Maddie realize that her own life had hung suspended now for two
months in the closed routine of caring for her father. Her friends in Paris were an ocean
removed; some had written when word spread among her circle at school. They had been polite
and earnest in their sympathy, but that was all that they could do, for they were even more
helpless there than she was here. Maddie’s few friends and companions from high school and
college, who all thought, as she had, that they would stay in touch forever, had long wandered
off along their own lives’ trails, following paths that rarely intersected hers. There was one
person she wanted to see now, desperately. But he was a continent away, and Maddie had no
certainty that he would want to speak to her even if she sought him out. Her father’s tenuous
grasp on life had reduced her world to the here and now, with the past hazy and the future
uncertain, when she found the few minutes to think of them. Her own vague sense of hope
somehow kept this shrunken time and space of her life going on, but its direction was unknown.
Mr. Dennett smiled his half-smile at Maddie as she tucked a warm, ancient carriage
blanket about his legs. He lifted his good right arm to her cheek and caressed it weakly. Then he
suddenly curled his hand and hooked her nose gently between his forefinger and index, like a
magician stealing it. She giggled lightly like a little girl, then quickly wiped a tear from the
corner of her eye.
“Whuss ‘rong?” Mr. Dennett asked, his speech slurred by the slack, lifeless muscles of
his left cheek.
“I’m okay, Papa. Just tired.”
“You sh’ud go home…”
“I am home.”
“Noo, Parisss…”
“I can’t. Not till you’re better.”
“Naw, go home … I … be fine”
“You need … I’ll catch up with Paris later. It’s not going anywhere.”
Mrs. Dennett entered the library with the recent mail. She placed most of the pieces on
her husband’s lap, each envelope opened and the contents turned sideways so that he could take
it out with his one good hand to read. Most were get well cards, from friends and co-workers.
There was a personal note, however, from Thomas Watson Jr., recently retired as President of
IBM, wishing Mr. Dennett a speedy recovery. Mr. Dennett placed his mail upon the small table
at his side, but kept the note on his lap. He read it again and smiled his bent smile, then a
weariness borne of his weakness overwhelmed him and he gently nodded off.
“I have one for you, Maddie,” Mrs. Dennett said quietly, yet casually. “From Dr.
Bremen’s office. Are you not well?”
Maddie accepted the envelope. She saw the unasked question on her mother’s face,
mixed with a look of disdain, but refused to accept that along with the letter.
“It depends, Mother.”
“On what?”
“On whether the doctor confirms I’m pregnant.”
Mrs. Dennett gasped. “How do you know?”
“I missed my second period last week.”
“Oh, good Lord! No!”
Maddie opened the envelope and read its contents. “Apparently, the Lord believes
otherwise,” Maddie responded with a shrug. She saw the look of reproof in her mother’s eyes
turn to horror. Of anything Maddie might have said or done, this was the worst, and the most
unforgivable. Yet somehow, Maddie could not care. Something had changed in her, something
besides the embryo she now bore. Maddie knew she should have been as shocked as her mother
at the news, but she wasn’t. She certainly did not feel as though she was suffering God’s
punishment, as she was sure her mother was thinking; she felt that she had done nothing to
warrant God’s attention at all. It was all of piece with what she had felt about her father’s illness,
not holy proclamations of divine will, but reflections of very human conditions. Maddie put the
doctor’s letter back in its envelope. She thought a moment before answering her mother’s
unasked question.
“I once said I had done nothing to dishonor you, mother.” Maddie spoke with an even
voice, one without much interest in the words being spoken. “I’m sorry to say that’s no longer
true. Don’t worry. I will take care of it.”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Dennett asked quickly.
“I mean I will get an abortion. They are legal now in New York. I still have a month
left.”
“My God, no! You can’t!” Grace hissed.
“Why, mother?”
“Because it is against God’s law.”
“Forget it, mother. That one won’t work anymore.”
“But it is my grandchild!”
“Are you staking a claim?”
“What are you saying?”
“That I would find it difficult to …” Maddie turned away, to look out the window to the
view of receding lawn, wanting to lose herself in its depths, not wanting to face the next
moment. But it was there, not to be ignored, finally not to be runaway from.
“To what?” Mrs. Dennett demanded.
“To see a child of mine …” Maddie said, her fixed faraway out the window, “… raised
the way you tried to raise me these last years.”
“Well, I never …”
“Don’t deny it,” Maddie whispered, turning back to face her mother. “You’ve used your
religion as a weapon to keep me in line.”
“I merely tried to guide you …”
“Into a nun’s cell, in some appropriately suitable Fifth Avenue nunnery, chaste, silent,
proper, and not an embarrassment to your friends.”
“How dare you speak to me that way.”
“How dare you think my life was yours to do with as you pleased. Josh tried to warn me
about that. But I felt a sense of honor and obligation to you and father. I was wrong, at least
about you.”
“That is not the issue now.”
“That is precisely the issue. You want this baby to make up for where you feel you’ve
failed with me.”
“Need I remind you that you are the one who is pregnant and unmarried?” Grace stated
sternly, her voice rising.
“Who … whooze pregnant?” Mr. Dennett mumbled, waking from his sleep.
“Your daughter.” Mrs. Dennett said coldly.
Maddie went to her father’s chair and knelt by his side.
“Iz true?” he whispered, looking from his wife to Maddie.
“Oh, it’s true alright!” Mrs. Dennett said fiercely.
“When you were my age, mother …” Maddie said slowly, soothing her father’s brow,
“… that was a social death sentence. It no longer is. I have other choices now.”
“I won’t let you do it!”
“Doo what?” Mr. Dennett asked weakly.
“You daughter wants to kill the child.”

“Mother, please! Don’t…”
“What duz she mean…? Mr. Dennett asked Maddie, confused. He raised his right hand to
gently stroke her hair.
Mrs. Dennett would not relent. “Madison is going to abort her child, our grandchild.”
“Mother, I beg you,” Maddie whispered. “Don’t do this. Not now.”
Grace Dennett looked at her daughter with widening eyes. “Why should I spare you?
Have you ever thought of me? Of what I’ve had to put up with?”
Maddie lowered her head and looked at her father. “I wasn’t thinking of myself, or you. I
was thinking of Papa.”
“For God’s sake, George. Tell her she’s wrong!”
“Mother,” Maddie screamed. “Leave him alone!”
Mr. Dennett looked at his daughter with infinitely tired eyes. He tried to speak, but no
words would come. He slowly shook his head from side to side, looking at Maddie. Then
suddenly he looked at his wife and his head jerked backwards, as if shot. Mr. Dennett raised his
good arm to bring his right hand to his temple. His eyes widened, not in pain, but in wonderment
and surprise. He looked at Maddie again, pleading to her with his eyes. Then his head slumped
against his chest.
The funeral was almost more than Maddie could bear. Her mother had taken charge, to
provide her husband with a tribute she thought worthy. Maddie could understand, for her father
had touched many other lives along with hers. But the forced solemnity and propriety chilled
Maddie, for it was so unlike how her father had been in life. The gathering at the home
afterwards was as solemn as the church service. Mrs. Dennett’s circle gathered about her, the
unofficial battalion of IBM wives and widows, offering the proper forms of comfort and solace,
more from some unwritten societal requirement than deep friendship; the Cluck Club, as Maddie
used to call them when she was little. They tried to include her in their consolations, but she
could not bear it, and quietly absented herself from the gathering.
In the days that followed, Mrs. Dennett spoke to her no more than was necessary. She did
not say it directly, but Maddie was sure her mother held her responsible for Mr. Dennett’s death.
With what little emotion she could feel, Maddie wanted to laugh at that irony, but could not. She
felt nothing but a persistent pain borne of emptiness. Maddie was alone for the first time in her
life, with no one to turn to for comfort. The void in her emotions caused by the loss of her father
was deep, and dark. Each time she thought of him, the pain in her chest became unbearable. Yet
it was the only emotion she thought she could ever feel now, this awful sense of sorrow and loss.
She tried to think of good times, of when she was a child who giggled at his teasing. But then
the ache of the loss bore down like a dead, cold weight that all but froze her into helplessness.
Maddie had thought, when she’d left San Francisco in confusion and uncertainty, that she
understood sadness. But this was a sorrow of another kind. To walk away from someone was to
at least still keep alive the slim feeling of hope. Death was final, ending all hope, stealing the
love and joy of the joyous loved one with it to the grave.
The days passed, but she had no real sense of their passing. Time lost its familiar
patterns. With no purpose to direct it, time no longer mattered. Maddie would rise to begin a
day, but then morning slipped through afternoon to evening as she sat in her room, staring out
the windows at views that no longer held pleasure. The feeling was alien to Maddie, to be
without purpose. The house seemed strange and empty as well, with her father’s spirit, his
essence gone. It was her mother’s now, and Mrs. Dennett no longer cared for it either.
After the reading of Mr. Dennett’s will, which left nearly everything to his wife, Mrs.
Dennett announced that she was going to sell the house and move back to Richmond. Maddie
did not protest. She neither cared nor wanted to care. Mr. Dennett had left Maddie sufficient
funds, under the direction of his wife, to allow his daughter to finish her education, at home or in
Paris, to whatever level she might choose. Maddie would have given it all back for another few
moments with her father.
“What’s to become of the child?” Mrs. Dennett asked one evening at dinner, sitting at
the table out of habit. She had the cook maintain the ritual forms of family life as if that would
mean they were a family still. She kept the pretense of having a family alive, though her
husband was dead, her daughter seemingly lost to her, and the fate of her grandchild uncertain.
They sat at the long table in the dining room, Mrs. Dennett at her traditional seat on one end,
Maddie at the middle. Mr. Dennett’s place at the far end was not set, as if no diner had never sat
there nor ever would again.
“I must know what your attentions are, Madison,” Mrs. Dennett repeated. Her tone was
perfunctory, as if speaking to the help.
“I don’t know any more,” Maddie said indirectly, as if in answer to a different question
from a different questioner. “I suppose I’ll return to Paris.”
“Why not remain here … until the baby is born?”
“And then …?”
“Then you may go where you wish.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Just have me disappear so that I won’t upset your cozy
little world any more.”
“Madison, I am still your mother …”
“Are you?” Anger rose within Maddie, of a kind she had never felt before. She fought to
control it, with only partial success. “My mother wouldn’t have killed my father.”
“How dare you!”
“I begged you not to push it. But, no, you had to have your way, even at the cost of Papa’s life!
Do you think I’d ever leave a child with someone like that?”
“Why not? You were willing to kill it, one of God’s children.”
“Aren’t we all supposed to be? Why does God get to pick and choose? Why did he take
Papa and leave you?”
“I don’t deserve this …”
“Somebody does!”
“Madison, please! You’re upset, I understand. But be reasonable. Your father has left us
well off. You can go back to Paris, if that’s what you want. I’ll pay for everything. Just leave me
the child. I’ll take her back to Richmond …”
“Her?”
“It’s just a figure of speech. I don’t really know…”
“You have this all planned out, don’t you. Like some little play. Me, Papa — No! It’s
like a Bible story! That’s it! You’re God determining who lives, who dies, who gets to stay in
Paradise, who gets cast out. We’re all just characters in your little dramas, aren’t we. ‘Thy will
be done.’ ”
“Don’t you blaspheme!” Grace shouted. “You’re not worthy of mentioning His name,
you who would murder His child!”
Maddie sat frozen. She looked away from her mother, down at her dinner plate, seeing
nothing, seeing everything. Her anger became a sudden calm, the kind that comes from knowing
what was to follow. She folded her napkin and placed it neatly on the table. She rose from her
chair, uncertain of what lay ahead, but certain of one thing. She could no longer stay here.
“Where are you going?” Grace pleaded.

“As Papa wanted, back home, to Paris.”
“If you leave now with my grandchild …”
“You’ll what? Curse me? I can live with that.”
“But you can’t live without money. Leave and you’ll not see one penny. I mean it!”
Maddie looked at her mother and saw, not a stranger, but someone, something, unknown,
unknowable. She tried to remember what it had been like as a child, but then realized that, one
way or another, it had always been like this. Maddie turned to leave the room.
“Well? What’s it to be?” Grace demanded.
“What else?” Maddie shrugged. “God’s will ...”
A summer rain swept over the plane of Paris. The clouds, dark and ominous, rumbled
with the threat of lightning. Westerly winds splattered the windows with heavy rain drops,
obscuring the views. It had been a month since Maddie had returned to Paris, to John and
Evelyn’s apartment. Maddie offered to move out, but they wouldn’t hear of it. She was welcome
to stay until matters were resolved. They had called to let Grace Dennett know that her daughter
had arrived, but the maid who answered had said she was not available. Grace did not return the
call.
Maddie sat by the window in her room. The view through the raindrops spread out over
the Jardin du Ranelagh, a triangular park near the eastern reaches of the Bois de Boulogne. The
view encompassed the Musée Marmottan across the park, a splendid old hunting lodge that
looked more like a child’s delicate playhouse; built by a Revolutionary hero in the early 1800s,
it had survived the ups and downs of French history through that turbulent century, from
Napoleon’s rise to France’s fall, eventually to become something of a shrine to Claude Monet
and his fellow Impressionists. Maddie was staring not at the view but at the rain drops on the
window as they joined, forming rivulets that slowly worked their way down the glass; their
random pattern seemed like the path of her life, pushed and pulled despite her wishes or efforts
in directions she could not predict. Then the phone rang out in the living room. Muffled through
the door, she could hear Evelyn answer. A moment later there was a knock on her door.
“It’s a Mr. Atkins for you. He says he’s an attorney in New York.”
Maddie went with Evelyn back to the living room and picked up the receiver. “This is
Madison Dennett …”
“Miss Dennett, my name is Raymond Atkins. I knew your father and had the pleasure of
working with him. My sympathies …”
“Thank you. Mr. Thompkins. You’re very kind. What work did you do with my father at
IBM? I understand you’re a lawyer?”
“That is the reason I’m calling. What your father and I did was not for the company.
Rather it was extracurricular.”
“I’m not sure I understand…”
“Your father asked me to create and manage a life insurance trust for him.”
“An insurance trust? Who was the beneficiary?”
“You, Miss Dennett.”
“Oh … Why wasn’t this mentioned in my father’s estate?”
“Because it is not part of his estate. It’s more of a combination of a self-insurance policy
on his life with a trust fund as the benefit, with you as the insurance beneficiary. That’s the
ingenuity of the thing. Being a trust, your father could purchase the underlying assets, whose
proceeds became the payout as in an insurance policy. So there is no tax liability, either as
income tax or estate tax. Your father was really quite creative in this.”
“When was this created?”

“Shortly after your tenth birthday.”
“My father never mentioned anything to me.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He wanted it kept secret.”
“From whom?”
“From you … and Mrs. Dennett.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Why would father hide a trust fund or insurance policy
from his own daughter, and his wife?”
“He called it a donum ex machina, his gift to you from the machine. He wanted it there
for you for the day he would not be, such as now.”
“But why didn’t my mother know of this?”
“I wondered about that too. But your father said he wanted the eventual assets
completely independent of any control other than yours. Part of the legal requirement for such
an insurance trust is that he could not actively manage the assets once they were acquired and
placed in the trust. There needed to be an independent trustee. Wisely, he sought a trustee he
could trust. For whatever his reasons, I gather that was not Mrs. Dennett. He consulted me on his
idea, and ultimately asked me to administer the insurance trust confidentially. I honored his
wishes, though in fact, I had a hard time doing that. Your mother was not very helpful when I
could not explain fully the reason I was contacting you. She said you were in Paris and hung up.
That’s why I knew to call George and Evelyn. Your father had kept me apprised of your where-
abouts once you became an adult.”
“This is all rather strange. What’s in this trust.”
“Mostly IBM and other blue chip stocks, though your father had a knack for picking new
technology companies. They’ve been doing rather nicely, especially Microsoft. Each year your
father added to the fund, finding new stocks when they were inexpensive, but had good growth
potential by his judgment. Through his suggestions, I managed it to keep that growth steady no
matter what the economy was doing. In fact, we’ve both done rather well. My compensation as
trustee was your father’s insight on which stocks to buy for my own retirement fund. ”
“Just what is this fund worth?”
“Well, as I said, your father wanted it to grow, so he set it up for dividend reinvestment.
The maximum amount he could contribute to the trust was limited by the annual gift tax
exemption of $12,000. But even with the market being somewhat depressed this decade, with
stock splits through the years it’s still done quite well.”
“How well?”
“It’s worth just over a half a million dollars.”
“Did you say ‘million’?”
“Yes.”
“This is some kind of joke, isn’t it.”
“I assure you, Miss Dennett, it is not. I would not be spending a small fortune on long
distance to Paris for a joke. The policy is legitimate, if unorthodox. According to its terms, you
were to receive the benefits when your father died, like any life insurance policy. That is why I
have contacted you. How would you like to receive the proceeds?”
XII.
ARMAGEDDON
“I bought this building with Papa’s gift,” Maddie said, as she poured more coffee into
their cups. “The rents of the lower units pay for its upkeep and provide income. And I have
interest from the trust fund. Mr. Atkins managed it very well, until he died some years ago. His
son takes care it for me now. My father’s stock picks paid for his education.”
“What have you been doing all these years?” Jordan asked quietly, as Maddie reached for
his cup.
“Teaching. English to French kids who want to learn the language beyond what they get
in school. And French to the children of Americans living here who need tutoring. It’s a modest
income, but qualifies me for medical benefits. It’s probably what I would have done …” Maddie
smiled gently “… had I stayed in San Francisco.”
Jordan accepted his coffee cup. He began to answer, but could not speak.
Wong took advantage of the silence. “Now I have a question. Why did you suggest to Dr.
Mosley that she participate in the debate?”
“We had stayed in touch after she had returned to the States. I thought that maybe I could
use it as a way to reconnect with Joshua. I had told her that I knew you, but not how and when. I
never dreamed —”
Maddie was cut off by the buzz of the apartment intercom.
She rose and went to the door. “Qui? Vous-etes qui?” she asked into the unit. After a few
seconds, she asked again, in English. “Who is it?”
“My name is Judith …” a thin voice said through the intercom.
Jordan looked at Wong who looked back in disbelief.
Judith sat meekly on the couch next to Maddie. Jordan and Wong sat on the edge of their
chairs.
“Judith, are you with the Last Crusade? ?” Wong asked.
“Yes, I am …” she said timidly.
“How did you find us? How did you know to follow us here?”
“We bugged your cell phone. Malachi found a way to hack the software so that whenever
the phone was turned on, it acted like a microphone and picked up whatever sounds were near.
He said he could direct that through the Wi-Fi function to my computer. He said he could route
the signal using the Internet. So wherever your phone was, if you were near a hot spot, I could
hear what was going on.”
Wong took out his iPhone, his face a growing crimson. “How long has it been bugged?”
“Since during the debate,” Judith answered plainly. “Micah hacked every phone
company’s records until he found your account file. When we saw that yours was an iPhone and
could access the Internet directly, Malachi got the idea. He said when you jail-braked it, I think
he called it, you didn’t change some password, so that he could get whatever the phone picked
up and send it through Wi-Fi, not by your phone’s data connection. That way it would not show
up on your bill. The Wi-Fi function was free, he said, and he could route the signal to any IP
addresses we wanted, then erase the trail.”
Judith took out her own iPhone and increased the volume. “We were able to listen in
after the debate at Mr. Jordan’s apartment. His router was not password protected either. That’s
how I knew to come to Paris. It did not take Malachi and Micah much to find this address.” Her
words came back from Wong’s phone almost simultaneously.
Wong punched his phone off. “Why have you followed us?” he asked.
“I need answers too,” she said meekly. “Answers that only Mr. Jordan and Miss Dennett
can give me.”
“Answers to what, Judith?” Jordan asked.
“Whose child am I?” she whispered, tears beginning to flow from her eyes. “I must
know…”
Judith sat with her hands clasped together in her lap. Maddie moved to comfort her. She
seemed a little girl, lost and afraid among strangers. She embraced Judith like a consoling moth-
er. Judith started to rise and Maddie rose with her. Judith’s hands moved briefly between them
as if to lift her arms to hug Maddie. Then Judith suddenly and swiftly pivoted around to grasp
Maddie around her waist from behind with her left arm. In her right hand she held a paring
knife. She drew the blade quickly to Maddie’s throat.
Wong reached for a gun that was not there, but in San Francisco.
“Where, how..” Wong fumbled the words.
“A store, here in Paris.”
“Be careful,” Jordan pleaded.

“Oh, I will be!” Judith said proudly. “I will very carefully kill her, this Jezebel, this
daughter of Baal, then you!” Her eyes grew wide as if finally understanding a great vision.
The new blade gleamed like a fine mirror. The edge was sharp, like soldier’s saber.
Judith held the blade flat on to Maddie’s neck, against the carotid artery, as she had seen done in
Africa when cattle and sheep were ritually slaughtered. A quick twist and tug of her hand and
Maddie would be dead.
“Why must she die? She’s done nothing to hurt you,” Jordan asked slowly, fearfully. He
could see the knife blade push against Maddie’s neck, the edge rotating slightly, pressing her
skin almost to its breaking point.
“Because I am her child and you are the devil. You two created me. Now I must kill you
both to save my soul, to be worthy of my savior, of my destiny to destroy the Antichrist.”
Judith’s voice rose and took on a edge, sharp, like the knife’s, and her hand, though strong with
the conviction of certainty, trembled a bit with the tension of holding the blade fast and the
excitement of fulfilling her purpose in life.
Maddie started to speak, but Judith cut her short.
“Shut up, bitch!”
Wong looked quickly to Jordan’s eyes as if he wanted to convey something. Then, he
held up his hands to Judith palms forward as if showing they held nothing, pleading as he
opened them wide, then slowly rotating his wrists.
“But Montmartre hasn’t … magically become Mt. Carmel,” he said slowly, briefly
glancing at Jordan, nodding imperceptibly at Judith.
Jordan’s eyes grew wide in comprehension. “It’s not Megiddo,” he said to Judith. “This
not where the battle of Armageddon is supposed to take place. It means ‘Hill of Megiddo’ in
Hebrew. If it happens here, then the all prophecies were wrong. John was wrong. God was
wrong.”
“They must be right!” Judith screamed in confusion. “I want them to be! I am owed
that!”
“Think, Judith! Think!” Jordan pleaded. “If you kill me, who will lead the armies of the
damned? There would be no Armageddon.”
“That is why you must die!” Judith shouted, her eyes wide in righteousness. “The words
of God must be fulfilled! The Antichrist must die!”
“But Scripture would be invalidated. The holy word of God. It would not come to pass as
the Holy Spirit directed John to write. Who are you to cancel the Bible, to rewrite God’s word?”
Judith’s eyes seemed to turn inward. “…but He chose me to be His instrument …”
“Did God speak to you as he did to Moses and Abraham? Did you ever hear a voice in
your head that was not your own?”
“… you’re trying … trying to confuse me …”
“No, Judith,” Jordan pleaded. “You have only been confusing yourself. You can trust
your own mind or you can trust the words of the Bible, a book written by men, not God. But you
can’t trust both. Remember the bookstore. If I am an atheist, I cannot be the Antichrist. How can
I destroy what I don’t believe in?”
“… I do not … I can’t understand … it doesn’t …”
Slowly Wong moved to his right and used his left hand low to indicate to Jordan that he
move to his left, placing Judith well between them so that she faced one or the other, but could
not do both.
“You heard us at the debate, Judith,” Wong asked softly. “… and after, didn’t you?”
“Yes …?”
“If Doctor Mosley could not accept the contradictions with a mind like hers, is that not a
sign?”
“A sign?” Judith asked weakly. “Of what?”
“That is for you to determine,” Jordan offered.
“You are asking me to deny what I’ve believed all my life!” Judith shouted.
“Believed …” Maddie said quietly, trying to be calm, not to struggle. “… but not
understood … like that I am your mother.”
“You must be! Jordan’s story! You abandoned me just as you abandoned him!” Judith
tighten her grip around Maddie’s waist, the knife turned edge on.
“You are not our child,” Maddie said tightly, fighting her own fear as the blade pressed
her throat. “We never mated.”
“So you think!” Judith hissed. “He came to you as an incubus. He took the form of your
French lover to reunite with you, to sire me.”
“No …” Maddie spoke softly. “You cannot be our daughter.”
“Yes! It has to be! I am the baby you abandoned to your mother. Admit it!” Judith
screamed. “I am the one she raised in Richmond not to be you! The old bitch died and left me
rich that that I might find you someday. That baby was me! It all makes sense. It’s God’s plan,
don’t you see? It must be true!”
“But I never gave birth,” Maddie said firmly, her own memories flooding back. “When I
returned to Paris, I miscarried. My father’s death, my mother’s anger ... Whoever your father
was, it wasn’t Joshua.”
“No! No! No! He has to be! You’re lying!” Judith shouted fiercely, clenching the razor
more tightly to Maddie’s throat, pressing the edge into her skin. A tiny trickle of blood began to
creep down her neck.
“What she says is true, Judith,” Wong pleaded. “Her mother is still alive, still in
Richmond, in a care home, old and senile, but still alive. I checked it out after the debate, before
we came here. Whoever you are, you are not their child.”
“THEN WHOSE AM I?” Judith screamed.
“We don’t know,” said Wong said softly. “But we can help you find her. This is a real
mystery you need to understand, not some Bible story to accept blindly.”
“Please …” Judith whispered. “Please help me —”
Suddenly, behind Judith, came a pounding on the apartment door, like swords against
shields. She froze briefly, her head turning backward reflexively.
Maddie grabbed at Judith’s arm holding the knife. She caught it in both hands, holding
the knife away. Judith began to struggle to free her arm, releasing her grip on Maddie’s waist;
she fought with a strength that Maddie thought impossible for her slight frame. Then the athlete
in Maddie took over, her training as a child remembered in her muscles. She released her left
hand from Judith’s arm, but kept the right hand tightly on her wrist,. Twisting hard and ducking
under Judith’s arm, rotating like a ballerina. She wheeled back upright, her hand still clamped to
Judith’s wrist. Swiftly, she brought her left hand back to press sharply again the young girl’s
elbow, locking it straight, useless. Suddenly, a pain exploded in Judith’s shoulder from the
twisting in its socket and she screamed. Her hand fell open and the knife dropped away to the
floor.
Wong moved rapidly to kick the knife away. Suddenly, her weapon gone, Judith ceased
to struggle, her will to fight spent. She collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
Then the apartment door burst open and two French guardian angels rushed in to a
strange vision.
XIII.
PARADISO
The sky glowed a brilliant blue that almost hurt the eye — too clear, too crisp, too
wonderful. The view was as Maddie remembered, only better. They stood on the observation
deck of the new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Jordan had made her keep her eyes
closed when the exited the elevator. He gently led her to the northeast corner where two tall
glass walls, from ceiling to floor, met in an invisible corner made only of light. Only then could
she look out. When she did, Maddie gasped.
The observation deck was a hundred feet above the park. The building was an eccentric
mash of a low museum box and a high office tower clad in copper mesh that should have
clashed with its Nineteenth Century setting, but somehow it didn’t. The first de Young was born
of a great quake, and so was the second. Its view seemed higher to Maddie than those from the
bell tower on Lone Mountain which now centered the near scene to the east. Yet here the view
was everywhere about them, lofty, above it all. The glass walls flowed smoothly, endlessly
around the whole floor. The city’s hills and valleys and planes spread out around them, like a
kingdom. It was Jordan’s wedding gift to her.
Their ceremony had been simple but magical, held in the garden of Rousseau’s home in
Marin, high on a hill looking south to a sweeping vista over San Francisco Bay, Angel Island,
the city and the South Bay beyond. It was October, when an enchanting Indian summer had
descended upon the Bay Area, with days languid and nights brisk. The fog had dissipated,
banished to the far ocean. The winds which often proceeded it, coaxing the fog over the city and
around the bay, were calmed so that the sun’s light fell gently on the skin like a caress.
The wedding party had been small. Hannah Mosley stood in for Maddie’s father and
gave away the bride. Jenny Sakata was her maid of honor, Lee Wong stood as Jordan’s best
man. The ceremony was performed by a female judge who was an old debating friend of Jordan,
a former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court whose skill at logic often gave him a run
for his mental money.
The wedding feast was set on a long, curving row of tables on the back lawn, with the
bay as backdrop and a vast open sky above. The guests sat on the side opposite the view, in a
setting proper to Olympian gods. But the gods were not hearing the pipes of Pan; quietly but
insistently Dixieland music played in the background, providing an untraditional but joyous
theme. The number of guests was small, intimate, and during the wedding toasts all were invited
to visit them in Paris, as Joshua and the new Mrs. Jordan had decided to divide their time
between the City of Light and the City by the Bay.
Only one couple could not attend the affair, Jordan’s parents. They had long been
committed to their orphanage tour and were in Israel. Jordan had tried to talk them out of it, not
because of the wedding, but because of the chaos and bloodshed of the latest Intifada of the
Palestinians against the Jews and their inevitable reaction. But it was just such madness, they
replied to his pleadings, which created too many orphans who needed their help. Jordan relented
to their logic. Before leaving they welcomed Maddie to the family at last, and wished them both
happiness and long life together, as they had enjoyed. Neither his parents nor Jordan knew that
they were never to see the other again.
Jordan stood at the glass wall and looked east to the bay, past Lone Mountain and its bell
tower, past USF and the rococo towers of St. Ignatius Church, past the modern towers of down-
town where he had worked, past the bridge and the bay which had made him think of Haifa, and
now brought Sara, Hakim and Nasra back to his thoughts. Jordan could swear that in his mind
they were smiling.
He led Maddie along the glass walls to the southwest corner. The vast sweep of the
Pacific spread before them, beyond the Sunset District and St. Cecilia’s, where he had grown up
in fits and starts, past St. Francis Wood, where he had found his first love, then lost it. A setting
sun glowed a reddish yellow through the dusty haze of a far horizon hidden in the fog bank that
waited its time to return.
Jordan felt the gentle, comforting presence of Maddie against his side as they gazed out
to the far view, to the sun’s last rays as it was taken by the sea. He thought of the time when they
had been young together, when they watched sunsets from the Cliff House, joining other young,
romantic couples sipping Irish Coffee and applauding the spectacle of San Francisco sunset.
But this was different, Jordan now knew. He sensed Maddie’s warmth and her gentle,
involuntary sigh that escaped as a long, low breath. Maddie nestled closer and he put his arms
about her shoulders. Her hair smelled of jasmine and he was again at a college dance discovering
the unbound joy of wanting, needing, having another. The questions of why, the questions of
meanings and purpose, were gone, answered, not with words, nor even thought, but with feeling,
the primitive, primal font of understanding. Being was its own reward, its own justification, its
own purpose, and this emotion was its proof. The here and now mattered, too, for that was what
life was. But whatever the new day brought tomorrow, Jordan felt, nothing was ordained,
nothing fated. Yet, one certain, self-evident sense of trust was there in his mind and in his heart.
Life was indeed axiomatic, its own beginning and end, its own evolutionary goal. It
required no permission, no acknowledgment, no mystical explanation that explained nothing.
The warmth encircled now in his arms needed neither reason nor explanation. It sought no
validation. His mind could rest finally, the gods and demons of others vanquished.
The very real warmth of Maddie was in his grasp again, and that was all that mattered.
FINITO

The Atheist&#39;s Prayer 9-2010

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The Atheist&#39;s Prayer 9-2010

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22077 Callayomi Road 388 pages

The Atheist’s Prayer

© 2009 Thomas Gaetano Cammarata. All rights reserved.

Thou God who does not exist.

How great Thou art, my God!

Thou art so great

That Thou art just idea.”

“The Atheist’s Prayer”

“… faith is the substance of things hoped for,

the evidence of things not seen ... ”

“One of the tragedies of life

is the murder of a beautiful theory

by a brutal gang of facts.”

II. Shield of God

III. King of Bravery

V. Starlight, Star Bright

VI. Divine Wind

VII. Gog & Magog

VIII. People of the Book

IX. End Time

least in the mind of Mark Twain.

workers than to spirituality.

not always as they seemed, Jordan mused.

“FOR THY BLASPHEMY THE WRATH OF THE TRUE GOD AWAITS…”

cranky chariot to an uncertain future.

“THERE IS NO PLACE YOU CAN HIDE …”

you people are doing to it.”

“THY DAYS ARE NUMBERED…”

around who still cared about such things.

“THOU CANST NOT ESCAPE US …”

level, expressed in its architecture.

happy as the original.

Jordan pondered something as he stared at the doorway. Contemporary churches had it

think of happier times from the city’s past.

Richmond District after him.

became, in Jordan’s mind, the essence of the new city’s future:

If as some say God spanked the town,

Being over frisky,

Why did He burn the churches down,

And save Hotaling’s whiskey?

“THERE IS NO PLACE WE CANNOT FIND THEE ...”

the Father or Mother Nature; the piper must always be paid.

not right, like seeing a shadow where none belonged.

about his email—or something worse.

anytime you want.”

thing I can think of.”

others right now. Talk.”

closed. “ ‘It’s what we’ve descended to.’ ”

‘God’s hit men.’ “

“All the more reason for you to not antagonize them.”

Jordan snorted. “When did you get their latest missive?”

you knew that already.”

“It’s why my fans love me.”

pointed to the note in his hands.

“Oh … that was considerate of them.”

you to take a leave.”

out to deliver the news; it became a sense of honor to persist.

emotional cost it carried to show.

“ROT IN HELL, BLASPHEMER! SPEW NO MORE OF THY ATHEISTIC LIES TO

UNSUSPECTING BELIEVERS! CEASE POLLUTING THE AIR WITH THY

ABOMINABLE GARBAGE FOREVERMORE! GOD SHALL OBLITERATE THE INFIDEL

PARTS WHEN WE HAVE DONE WITH YOU! BE WARNED!”

heard it all before.”

The Atheist's Prayer 9-2010

The Atheist's Prayer 9-2010