74

            Danielle and Reuben stayed behind at the house.  Danielle promised Anthony that she would tell Reuben everything about his true paternity, though she confessed that she had no idea how to navigate such a difficult conversation.  “I wish I could tell you how to break it to him, but I can’t,” Anthony said.  “All I can say is that he deserves to know the truth, and you’re the only one who can give it to him.”  She said she would do her best.

            They took the Explorer, bringing along Anthony’s duffel bag containing their weapons, lots of extra ammo, and other equipment, including his notebook computer.  Valdez drove, while Anthony rode shotgun and Mike and Lisa occupied the backseat.  The New Kingdom Church campus was in Austell, about a forty-minute trip from Decatur, which gave them an opportunity to talk.

            “This morning, I was online searching for dirt on New Kingdom,” Anthony said to Valdez, “and I couldn’t find anything.  When I’d try to pull up a site that promised something juicy, it would mysteriously be offline.”

            “Mysteriously, huh?” Valdez smirked.  “Let me tell you, guys--most of New Kingdom’s operating budget goes into two buckets: technology and security.  I’ve seen the reports.  You wouldn’t believe how much they spend.”

            “You and Cutty were able to find us almost anywhere we went, dig up anything about us,” Anthony said.  “So yeah, I’d believe it.”

            “Genesis was behind that,” Valdez said.  “That’s what they call their records management and surveillance network.”

            “Genesis, huh?” Mike laughed.  “Like from the Bible?”

            “Laugh all you want, but it’s linked into pretty much everything,” she said.  “What is funny is that Bishop Prince personally hates the Internet.  Says it allows unrepentant sinners to ‘congregate in virtual dens of iniquity.’  His exact words.” 

            “Well, the Internet enables individual expression,” Lisa said.  “Anyone can publish a blog, or a Web site, or a Facebook profile, and rant about any topic they want.  I’d imagine that a free flow of information poses a threat to the control he wants to establish.”

            “But they’ve cracked down on the Web pretty hard, like you found, Thorne,” Valdez said.  “The tech division’s created spidering programs that crawl the Net constantly, searching for heretical content.”

            Anthony scowled.  “Heretical content?  What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?”

            Valdez shrugged.  “That’s what they call it.  Anyway, when they find something on a page that triggers an alert, they’ll move fast to delete the content, or shut it down.  They’ll send a virus or whatever, screw up the server.  If you posted something nasty on a blog today about the church, or the bishop, it would be wiped out by tomorrow morning.”

            “Like I was thinking,” Anthony said.

            “What if you were online looking for so-called heretical content on the church?” Lisa asked.  “Could they find you?”

            “If you entered in a high number of searches, yeah,” Valdez said.  “I don’t know the technology behind how they do it, but they’ve traced people like that.”

            “That’s, like, nuts, man,” Mike said.  He didn’t laugh that time.

            “As much as Bishop Price hates the Web, that hasn’t stopped him from using it to solicit donations,” Anthony said.  “I found thousands of testimonials about sowing seeds for the kingdom, and every one linked back to the church’s donation page.”

            “They bring in a fortune from online donations,” Valdez said.  “Bishop Prince may despise the Web, but he’s better than anyone else at exploiting it.”

            Anthony stroked his chin.  “How much do they bring in annually from all of their activities and businesses?  Rough figure?”

            “All of them?”  Valdez blew out a chestful of air, drummed the steering wheel with her thumbs.  “Three billion, I’d say.”

            Anthony jerked upright.  He felt as if the floor had dropped from underneath him.

            “Did you say three billion?” Lisa asked. 

            “You got it, girlfriend.”

            “Holy shit,” Mike said.  “That sounds like a Fortune 500 company.”

            Anthony was shaking his head.  “How do they do it?  I’ve read about some of their business interests, but still, there are major companies who don’t haul in that much every year.”  

            “You’ve only read about the businesses they make public,” Valdez said.  “They have a private holding company, a conglomerate I guess you’d call it, that owns huge amounts of stock in some very profitable companies in a wide range of industries: pharmaceuticals, oil, insurance, real estate, manufacturing, whole lotta stuff.”    

            “But they operate as a tax-exempt religious organization,” Lisa said.  “Are they paying taxes on all that money?”

            “Their holding company is a for-profit business, so they pay their taxes to Uncle Sam.  Thing is, most of what’s left over after taxes gets funneled back to the church.”  She threw Anthony a look.  “Now you know how they can afford to do what they do.”

            “It still sounds shady to me,” Anthony said. 

            “Almost like money laundering,” Lisa said.  

            “We’ve got our contacts in the IRS checking into it,” Valdez said.  “If we can nail them on tax fraud, that’d be fine with me, whatever works.”

            “Hey, it brought down Capone,” Mike said.

            Quiet, Anthony gazed out the window.  Winning justice for his dad’s murder was one thing.  But taking on a multi-billion dollar organization?  He never could have imagined this, and wondered if he would have wanted to even try if he’d known from the beginning what he was up against.   

            He suspected that was why Bob had been so vague at their meeting.

            He turned to Valdez.  “What was your Bureau assignment at New Kingdom?”

            “I infiltrated the Armor of God—that’s their defense division—to investigate domestic terrorism.”

            “You’re shittin’ me,” Mike said.  “This is from a church?”

            Valdez said, “When people think about terrorism, they think about some international sect of Muslim extremists planting bombs in the subway or flying planes into buildings.  That’s the stuff that grabs the headlines, but it’s a lot more than that.  We’ve got threats right here on American soil, from homegrown groups that don’t have squat to do with radical Islam.” 

            “Remember Oklahoma City, guys?” Lisa said.  “Plotted and executed by good ole’ American citizens.”    

            Valdez nodded.  “White supremacist organizations, anti-government militia movements, animal rights extremism, eco-terrorism—we investigate all of them under the umbrella of domestic terrorism.  Most of them are small-time operations, with objectives that would have a relatively minor impact on the nation as a whole.  Not New Kingdom’s.”

            Dread grabbed the pit of Anthony’s stomach.  “What are they doing?”

            “I don’t have the full picture yet,” she said.  “But I know the name of the project.  It’s called Revelation.”

            “That’s a book in the Bible, too,” Mike said.  “I remember it from Catholic school.  Got all kinds of weird symbolism about Armageddon.”

            “Which is what they’ve got in mind,” Valdez said.  “From what I’ve been able to dig up so far, they’re planning attacks on some very high-profile national targets—landmarks, transit systems, and people.”

            To Anthony, the wave of anxiety that rippled through all of them was almost palpable.           

            “To what end?” Lisa asked.

            “Scare tactics,” Valdez said.  “Think about what happened to us after September 11.  That sense we had as a nation of being invincible?  After that, it was gone.  We were scared as hell, so when the government revamped flight security and made it a major pain in the ass to fly anywhere, and when they passed legislation that made it easier for them to do surveillance on private citizens, we were all for it, weren’t we?  Whatever measures they told us would protect us from the bad guys, we were down with them--even if we had to give up some freedoms and conveniences that we’d used to take for granted.”

            Anthony sensed where this was heading, and he shifted uneasily in the seat.

            “You guys already know the church has cronies in the government,” Valdez said.  “But you don’t know how highly placed they really are.  I’m talking big shot senators, okay?  I’m talking about people who, if certain individuals were eliminated, would move into the Oval Office.”

            “No way,” Mike said, but the tremor in his voice made it clear that he believed every word. 

            “Now you think about a country,” Valdez continued, “under siege by mysterious terrorists destroying national symbols of pride, detonating explosives in mass transit systems and killing thousands of innocent people, and you see our most valued leaders get knocked off—and you tell me then how willing the scared-shitless American people would be to accept a new set of rigid laws designed to supposedly restore order and keep us safe.”

            “Bishop Prince’s Kingdom agenda would become a reality,” Anthony said softly. 

            Everyone fell silent.