Mission (32 page)

It gave me no pleasure to shaft my benefactor but I had to say it. ‘Joe, I'm sorry, but I can't do it. I haven't changed my mind about Donaldson but maybe it
is
time they had a new attorney. Corinne would be fine for this. She's sharp, and she'd like nothing better than the chance to pick up a dropped ball.'

Joe aimed one of his famous quizzical looks at me. ‘Leo, are you feeling okay? Or is there something you're not telling me?'

I chewed on his question and decided to come clean. ‘I think I need some time off, Joe.'

‘Leo,' he said. ‘You're family. Trouble I should know about.'

I shook my head with genuine regret. ‘I – I can't put it into words. And it's nothing you can help me with. I'm sorry.'

Joe accepted my reply with a wry grimace. ‘Well, if you change your mind.'

Poor Joe. I knew what was going through his head. David, his son, had flown to Israel to enlist without even leaving a note. I was consoled by the thought that he probably knew that, at the ripe old age of thirty-five, no one was going to stick me in the seat of a Skyhawk.

‘You'll be the first to know,' I said, trying to sound as if I meant it.

Joe tried to look as if he believed me. ‘I ran into Ken Myers on Monday night. He told me you'd turned down his divorce case.'

Myers was the man with show-girlitis. ‘I told him he was behaving like an asshole and advised him to stay married,' I said. ‘On top of which, he got a free lunch. What's he complaining about?'

‘Your attitude,' said Joe. ‘Suddenly everybody who wants to do business with you is an asshole. So tell me – what does that make you?'

‘Good question,' I replied. ‘Maybe I'm beginning to crack up. That's why I'd like to tidy my desk in the next few days then take a couple of weeks off.'

Joe's face reflected his genuine concern. ‘Take whatever time you need. But do me a favour. See a doctor.'

I grinned. ‘I'm going out with one.'

Joe threw his hands up in despair. ‘Leo, nobody was ever cured of anything by kissing a doctor's
tusch.
Go and see Sol Friedman.'

‘Okay, I will.' Friedman was Joe's long-time friend and physician and one of the top guys in New York.

‘And have him bill the office,' said Joe. ‘It can come out of the overheads. And I want you to promise to call me at home if, well, you know …'

I nodded. ‘Yes. Thanks, Joe.'

We both stood up. Joe came round from behind his desk, took my hand and held it all the way to the door. Almost as if he thought I might not make it unaided.

I opened the door with my free hand. ‘Listen, I appreciate your concern. And I want you to know that I'm not planning to try and solve whatever is wrong by running away.'

Joe gave me a sad knowing smile and patted me on the back as he saw me out.

I got back to my apartment around seven. The Man was sitting with his feet up in front of the TV set with a glass of wine in his hand
and a bottle within easy reach. He was dressed in the clothes he'd bought with Linda.

He looked at me over the back of the sofa. ‘How did it go?'

‘Not too badly,' I said. ‘I feel marginally better than when I called you this morning.'

He smiled. ‘Good…'

I dumped my case, peeled off my jacket and tie and helped myself to a glass of wine. The Man switched off the TV set with the remote control handset. I raised my glass to him as I sat down, and drank deep. ‘Where have you been – Jerusalem?'

He stretched, and sat up straight. ‘Yes.'

‘What's happening back there?'

‘The Sanhedrin is still trying to cover up what's happened. The four soldiers who were guarding the tomb have been persuaded to change their story. Instead of the earlier wild talk about angels, and blinding lights, they are now saying that they were overpowered by a group of my followers, who then made off with my body.'

‘There are a lot of people who still think that was probably what happened,' I said. ‘Tell me, why did you just appear to the twelve Apostles and to that other group, the, uh – '

‘The seventy-two Followers of The Way?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Why didn't you appear before Caiaphas, the High Priest, and the Council of the Sanhedrin? It would have made things a lot easier all round.'

The Man shook his head. ‘It wouldn't have done any good. The Sanhedrin, as part of the ruling establishment, had reached an accommodation with the Romans. If they had embraced my message and incorporated it into the official doctrine, they'd have killed it stone dead. Nothing kills faith quicker than an educated mind. Scholarship prevents a man from acquiring true knowledge. Reason and logic are human faculties that were developed to make sense of the external world – '

‘That is controlled by ‘Brax,' I interjected.

‘Right,' he nodded. ‘And ‘Braxian logic cannot explain how I can be here, and also in first-century Jerusalem. It cannot cope with the questions raised by the concept of simultaneity. ‘Braxian reason tells you that there are no such things as angels; miracles; or timeless, dimensionless worlds beyond this one. ‘Braxian rationality requires physical, scientific proof of existence as the basis for all belief. But Man's intellect, his intuition, his instinctive emotions enable him to
make that leap that takes him beyond Time and Space. To experience God, or the Presence – or whatever name you choose to give
That Which Is.
To know the “otherness” which is Man's true self and to which he belongs and will one day return. The untutored mind of a man that the scholars dismiss as ignorant can make that leap. So can the unspoiled mind of a child.'

‘Is that why you said, “
Suffer the little children to come unto Me”?
' I asked.

‘Yes.' He smiled. ‘I can see you've been doing your homework. It's important to bear in mind that my mission was to free the Ain-folk. But that could only be achieved by first raising the level of awareness in each and every one of you. Your minds had to be unlocked before the Ain-folk could be roused from their drugged torpor. My words were to be the key. The message had to be spread by a revolutionary, subversive movement because it needed the fervour, the impetus and self-sacrifice that only a dedicated minority could provide. Whose evangelical zeal would carry the message beyond the borders of Israel and set the whole world on fire.'

‘And that was what you meant when you said that the Jews no longer had an exclusive,' I said.

‘That's right…' He leaned forward and refilled his glass. ‘Under the Sadducees, Palestine had become a theocracy. The priests were like the ayatollahs of Iran. The Temple controlled the money supply and the economy. It was like Fort Knox and the New York Stock Exchange rolled into one. And the people who ran it, through the Sanhedrin, ran the country. They were conservatives in every sense of the word. And they had allowed the flame of awareness that lay at the core of Judaism to be smothered with the dead weight of ritual and rigid observance of the
Torah.
True belief had become lost in the growing obsession with the minutiae of interpretation. The outward, measurable display of piety took preference over inner enlightenment. And amongst those Jews who were opposed to the collaboration between the rich, ruling classes and the occupying power, the age-old struggle against ‘Brax had become politicised; the longawaited Messiah was no longer seen as the Heaven-sent instrument which would secure their spiritual liberation. The hopes of the revolutionaries were focussed on the emergence of a priest-king who would combine the spiritual authority of Aaron and the generalship of David, who would lead the nation to victory against the oppressive
earthly
power of Rome.'

I smiled at him. ‘I can understand why they were a little disappointed in you.'

He smiled back. ‘They were doubly disappointed. I was anathema to the religious establishment and the business community because I challenged their authority and attacked their materialist philosophy, and I was regarded as worse than useless by the anti-establishment factions. Disparate groups like the Maccabees, the Sicarii, and the Zealots. And the Pharisees, who held the middle ground. The war they sought against the Romans was of no concern to me
or
the Empire. Ours was a struggle that was old before the world began. The only people on whom I made any real impact were the ‘
amme ha-'aretz
– the “people of the land”. The unwashed peasants. The poor, impoverished sons of Canaan who had to work from dawn till dusk and were looked down upon because they neglected their ritual prayers and observances.'

‘And didn't pay their tithes to the Temple,' I added.

He brushed my observation aside. ‘The Temple had more money that it knew what to do with.'

I lit a cigarette and sat back. ‘So … what news of the Empire?'

The Man frowned. ‘How do you mean?'

‘Well – ' I hesitated to ask a question to which the answer might be bad news but I was now committed, ‘ – have you, uh, had any confirmation that they know what's happening? Have they mailed you a new set of mission orders? Or are you finally going to come clean with me and tell me what's going on?'

He gazed at me silently over the top of his glass.

‘I mean, it was great the way you bailed me out this morning,' I continued. ‘But please, don't tell me it was another accident. That really would be stretching coincidence too far.'

‘Yes, I guess it would …' He set his glass down. ‘It's really very simple.'

‘Oh, really?' I said.

He smiled. ‘No, I mean that. Do you remember when we met at the beginning of last week after that elevator business and we talked about ‘Brax? I told you his forces were waiting in the wings when the rescue fleet arrived in the skies above first-century Jerusalem.'

‘I'm not likely to forget,' I said.

‘Well,' he continued, ‘they weren't there to try and stop me going home. Nothing would have pleased them more. They were standing by in case we had some other move planned.'

‘Which, knowing you,' I said darkly, ‘was more than possible.'

He bit back a smile. ‘Do you remember our very first talk up at Sleepy Hollow, when I mentioned the power grid that once linked the Empire and the galaxy primes?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘It was smashed by ‘Brax after his break-out from the Netherworld and for the past hundred million years or so, you've had Celestial line-men out trying to repair it.'

He nodded. ‘That's right. It hasn't been easy. After ‘Brax swept back into power his forces were despatched to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. As the nature of the physical universe changed under their malevolent influence, we began to encounter what radio hams call “signal impedance”. You may be able to visualise the problem better if you imagine the Power of The Presence being beamed out like a wireless signal and getting fouled up in an increasingly impenetrable cloud of static.' He paused and sipped his wine thoughtfully. ‘Cloud is perhaps the wrong word. I don't want you to think of it as a towering mass of cunim hovering just beyond the Milky Way. It's a dark grey veil. A virulent miasma enveloping everything. Filling this room. Clouding your inner eye. Clogging your brain. And what we're trying to do is punch a hole through it to let the good news in.'

‘You're winning,' I said. ‘I got the message.'

‘Good. So, to cut a long story short, the final phase of the Bethlehem mission included setting up a power transmission from the Empire to re-charge Earth. In the way you boost the batteries of a car. But because of this problem of “signal impedance” the rescue fleet was strung out in a line to act as relay stations for the beam. Thus keeping it “clean” and at maximum strength.' He hesitated. ‘I was to be the final stage in the relay. The power was to be earthed through me.'

Aha,
I thought.
The Jewish Connection.
But I kept my irreverence to myself. ‘Let me get this straight – was this operation to recharge the planet?'

‘Yes.'

I frowned. ‘What does the Earth need the power for?'

‘To stay alive,' he replied. ‘To help revive the Ain-folk. It's the life-force that permeates the natural world. Humans, animals, birds, fishes, insects, flowers, grass, rocks, trees, the earth, sea and sky all possess it in varying degrees. Earth is more than just a spinning ball of sea-girt rock, gift-wrapped in clouds. It's the mother of all life upon it. A conscious, living thing that holds within itself a memory of its
past. It remembers everything that ever happened, records every emotion. And like you, it feels joy, sadness, pain, anger. It gets sick and purges itself. It was young, and will grow old.'

‘I never thought of the Earth as being alive,' I said.

He smiled. ‘Have you never felt an inexplicable affinity with a rock you've picked up at random on a beach? Ever experienced a sense of place – the emotional charge stored in old houses, of battles lost and won recorded by the stones under your feet? Or discovered some spot where you feel an overwhelming rapport with the earth and sky? A sense of unity?'

‘Yes, I think I know what you're getting at,' I said. ‘What Carlos Castaneda calls “power places”. Is this what was meant by those words in the Book – “
I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, O Lord, from whence cometh my help
”?'

He nodded. ‘There is a power-gradient that runs along the slopes of hills and mountains. And it was the earlier knowledge of these forces that degenerated into the idea of mountain-gods. There are other places too where the lines of force converge. When the whole system was working properly, these sites acted as cosmic terminals and plug-in points.' He smiled. ‘Celestial gas-stations.'

‘You mean like Glastonbury, in England?'

‘That was one of them.'