a problem with using force to bring things back to normal. A lot of force.”
A swell of unease rolled through her. She turned to Finch. “Can you get hold of someone at the embassy? Maybe they can rustle something up.”
“I can try, but—I think Brother Ameen is right. Might be better to get out of here before it gets out of hand. And that goes for Father Jerome too.”
Dalton indicated the crowd below with a nudge of his head. “It’s not going to be easy.”
Gracie’s expression darkened further. “We have a car and a driver. And it’s still calm out there. We should leave at first light. While it’s doable.” She faced Finch again. “We can take Father Jerome to the embassy. We need to let them know we’re coming. We’ll figure the rest out from there.”
“What if he doesn’t want to leave?” Finch asked.
Gracie turned to Brother Ameen. He gave her an uncertain shrug. “I’ll talk to him, but I don’t know what he’ll say.”
“I’ll go with you. We’ve got to convince him,” she insisted as she got off the floor. Brother Ameen nodded and crossed over to the open hatch. Gracie turned to Finch. “First light, okay?” She gave him a determined look before gripping the sides of the hatch and disappearing into the heart of the keep.
Chapter 38
Houston, Texas
The Reverend Nelson Darby’s cell phone rang just as the tall, elegant man was stepping out of his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car. He was in great spirits, having just witnessed a dress rehearsal of the five-hundred-person choir’s Christmas show. The caller ID on his screen prompted him to wave his assistant on, and he stayed back to take the call on the wide stairs that led to the handsome manor that housed the administrative core of his sprawling “Christian values” empire, an empire whose flagship was the resplendent 17,000-seat glass-and-steel megachurch Darby had built, one of a growing number of full-service Christian cocoons the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the thirteenth-century cathedral towns of Europe.
“Reverend,” the caller said. “How are things?”
“Roy,” Darby answered heartily, as always pleased to hear Roy Buscema’s measured voice. A fit man in his early forties, Darby had an angular face, deep-set eyes, and thin lips. With his backswept, perfectly coiffed jet-black mane and Brioni suits, he looked more like a pre-credit crunch investment banker on the make than a preacher. Which wasn’t inappropriate, given that both involved managing multimillion-dollar enterprises in a highly competitive marketplace. “Good to hear from you. How are things with you?”
Buscema, a gregarious journalist for the Washington Post, had met the pastor a little over a year earlier, when he’d been commissioned to write a feature profiling him for the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. The finely observed and highly complimentary article that he’d written had laid the groundwork for the friendship that followed, a friendship that grew into an unofficial consigliere-godfather relationship with all the hours they spent discussing and strategizing the pastor’s endorsements in the marathon presidential primary of the last year. Buscema’s take on the events had been impressively astute and always correct, and he’d let the pastor in on more than one scoop that had borne itself out. The pastor was converted. He saw in Buscema a savvy analyst who had the pulse of the people and knew where to go to get his prognoses corroborated, and as such—and given that Darby was one of the Christian Right’s political bigwigs—he was an invaluable man to have at hand.
Especially now, with all this going on.
“Crazier than ever,” Buscema replied. “But hey, I can’t complain really. It’s what we’re here for. Say, you been watching that thing over the ice caps?”
“Who isn’t?”
“What do you think?”
“To be honest with you, I’m a bit befuddled by the whole thing, Roy,” the pastor confided with his usual disarming candor. “What in God’s name is going on out there?”
Buscema’s tone took on a slightly more serious edge. “I think we ought to talk about it. I’m gonna be in town tomorrow,” he told the pastor. “If you have some time, why don’t we get together?”
“Sounds good,” Darby replied. “Come out to the house. I’m curious to hear your take on it.”
I bet you are, Buscema thought as they agreed on a time. He said good-bye and hung up. He then scrolled down his contacts list and made a second, almost identical, call.
A third, similar call followed soon after that.
As did six other carefully coordinated calls, made by two other men of a