61

            A snow-white, chauffeur-driven Mercedes Maybach transported Bishop Prince and the Director across the Kingdom Campus.  They were escorted front and rear by black SUVs bearing Armor of God agents, forming a three-vehicle motorcade.

            The Maybach was an exemplary machine, ultra luxurious.  It featured double-quilted, diamond-stitched leather seats.  Hand crafted wood trim fringed with twenty-four carat gold.  Utterly unique, custom details such as the Kingdom’s emblem embroidered in the headrests—and bullet-proof windows and reinforced steel panels that could have repelled a machine-gun ambush.

            He owned another similarly equipped Maybach, that one as black as night.  He also counted among his personal fleet a Rolls-Royce Phantom, an Aston Martin, a Ferrari, two Bentleys, and more Mercedes and BMWs than he cared to enumerate. 

            He had long reveled in the accouterments of wealth.  Wealth was a sign of God’s favor.  God had smiled on King Solomon, the legendary monarch of Biblical times, blessing him with great wealth, wisdom, and a reign of peace. 

            He often envisioned himself as a King Solomon for a new age.  But the Kingdom he was building was still new, still expanding.

            Still warding off threats.

            He reclined in the seat, customized to accommodate his elongated frame, and gazed out the one-way window.  It was a sunny morning, and Kingdom servants were out in multitudes, walking, jogging, playing sports, and conducting daily business. 

            Many of them waved at the passing convoy.  Ordinarily, he would have lowered the glass and returned the greetings of his loyal flock, but he kept the window sealed, quietly ruminating on how blissfully ignorant they were of the tenuous position in which their Kingdom found itself. 

            He turned to the Director.  The military man was seated next to him, brow furrowed in thought. 

            “Noah Cutty was indeed zealous, as you promised he was,” Bishop Prince said.  “I pray that he’s competent as well.”

            “Cutty should have no major issues collecting Thorne, sir.  I expect we’ll have Thorne in our custody before nightfall.”   

            The Director’s original plan had been to simply eliminate Thorne, but that morning, the chief technology servant had contacted them with the disturbing news that the Judas’ treachery ran deeper than they had thought.  According to recent investigative traces of their database, the Judas had plundered their most confidential data sources and copied volumes of highly combustible data onto a storage device of some kind—including explicit details about their most classified project, Revelation.   

Revelation.  The intricately layered, holy vision that had come to Bishop Prince in a dream several years ago, the execution of which he and the Director had been toiling and scheming ever since.  If the plans leaked into the wrong hands, there was no telling the havoc Satan could wreak on the Kingdom.

            Common sense suggested that the Judas had given the storage device to Thorne.  Eliminating Thorne would prove of no consequence if he had passed his information to others.  A thorough interrogation was in order—and though Bishop Prince had never participated in such affairs in the past, the threat they faced was so acute that he might question Thorne himself.

            “You understand my concerns, yes?” Bishop Prince said.  “The Judas could expose our work.”         

            “He wouldn’t have transferred the data to Thorne at their meeting,” the Director said.  “That would’ve been too risky, for both of them.  He’ll be leading Thorne to it.  That’s how he operates—that’s how he was trained.”  

            “By you,” Bishop Prince said. 

            The Director accepted the rebuke with a shrug.  He was the only man on earth who could have gotten away with a response like that in the bishop’s presence, and he knew it. 

            “We should assign more men to this mission,” Bishop Prince said.  “We have a force of hundreds.  Why are we entrusting a task of this magnitude to one agent and his female partner when we could dispatch an entire team to capture Thorne right now?”

            The Director’s eyes hardened.  “As you should be aware, sir, we’ve always used two-agent teams for domestic missions.  It gives us a measure of anonymity.  A squad of say, five of our vehicles boxing in Thorne somewhere and attempting to apprehend him could be a public relations disaster.  Thorne isn’t an average civilian—the man’s a Marine, not long out of service, heavily armed, and you hit him with lots of firepower, he’s going to hit back.”  The Director smacked his fist against the palm of his hand, causing Bishop Prince to flinch slightly.   “You want some snot-nosed brat with a camera phone recording video of a major shootout between him and our agents, and posting it online for the whole world to see?  Or perhaps you’d like to see those vultures in the TV news crews coptering over the scene and talking up every eyewitness within five miles?  Best of all, how about we mistakenly kill a few innocent civilians in the process, create some nice collateral damage? Too many variables can go haywire with deploying a large unit—and that’s why I don’t allow it.”

            “We have monitoring capabilities online, and contacts in the media.  We could shut down any story before it spread, clean up any fallout.”

            “I will handle this my way.”  The Director’s mouth was a sharp line.  “You preach your sermons—I keep your ass safe.  That affirmative with you?  Sir?”

            Bishop Prince paused.  “I don’t appreciate your tone, Director.  Remember your place.”

            The Director’s fists had been clenched, his jaw tight.  He blew out a hiss of air.           

            “I’m sorry, your grace,” the Director said.  “This is a tough spot for all of us.  I ask only that you trust me as you have in the past, and relax.  We’ve dealt with breaches like this before.  We must remember, God is on our side, and no weapon used against us will hurt us.”

            He smiled at the Director’s paraphrased scripture.  The Director was not known for his Biblical erudition.  Bishop Prince wondered if the man ever cracked open the book at all.  

            “God can speak through the most unlikely mouths, I see,” Bishop Prince said.

            The Director shrugged, offered a rare smile.       

            The motorcade arrived at the tall wrought-iron gates of his mansion.  The agents at the guard booth waved them through, and the vehicles entered the long, wide, curving driveway.

            “Do you wish for me to remain on the premises, sir?” the Director asked. 

            “That won’t be necessary.  Contact me with any updates you receive.”

            Bishop Prince glanced at his Piaget watch.  The Swiss timepiece featured an eighteen-carat white gold case and bracelet set with baguette and trapeze-cut diamonds, a dial with trapeze and brilliant-cut diamonds, and a winding crown set with round brilliants.  Priced at over a quarter of a million dollars, the watch had been a present from a European financier who wanted Bishop Prince to guarantee that his soul would be conveyed to heaven after his death—a destination the bishop had assured him was his upon receiving the gift.  He who gives greatly to the man of God shall receive greatly from God, too.

            It was eleven o’clock.

            He just remembered: he had a date with an angel.