The sound was juiced on the final shout so that it came out as if Proverb were hollering from the mountaintop. Cynthia had to admit that the presentation was slick. All over the floor of the auditorium, the more exuberant sections were leaping in the air and yelling the line right back to the spangled figure on the stage.
"Praise the Lord!"
"Praise the Lord, I feel so good!"
"Praise the Lord!"
The deacons in the VIP lounge were watching in stony silence. There was no conversation above the music and the crowd noise that was being relayed through the monitor speakers. The choir was getting louder. Proverb raised a hand, and the faithful fell silent,
"I'll say it again." His delivery became stylized and mythmic. "Joy-a is when you feel-a so good-a that you want to jump in the a-ir and holler out-a: Praise the Lord, I feel so good-a!"
That time the punchline had been shouted from an even higher mountain. The crowd repeated the jumping and shouting. The choir had grown to a couple of thousand strong and was smoothly sliding into a do-wop back beat.
"Doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop."
"Joyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."
"Joyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."
"The message of Jesus is joy-a to the world-a. "
The audience roared their agreement, but even as they were roaring, the rollercoaster ride started to climb again. The choir was fading. The blue light was closing on Proverb. Again the crowd fell silent. Cynthia wondered how it must feel to have such power and control; what it felt like to have command of all those special effects. It was a miracle that Proverb was able to stay sane, if indeed he did. It was also quite clear why the deacons loathed him. He was now talking one on one, down home to the crowd.
"Now, I guess it's no secret that when I was a young boy, I was kinda wild. And I gotta tell you, way back then, one of the things that put me off coming to know Jesus sooner than I did was that I had this crazy idea that Christian folks didn't have no fun. I thought that being one with the Lord was a matter of giving up this and forgoing that and walking around with a long face and a sorrowful disposition. We know better than that now – don't we?"
The crowd howled, and Proverb beamed. A huge image of his face had come up on the back projection screen.
"We know that Jesus came to Earth to bring us joy. We know that Jesus came to Earth to make us know a true happiness. When I began to walk with Jesus, the first thing that I learned was that Jesus wants us all to have a good time."
Proverb paused to let that sink in. The eyes of the huge image seemed to be glowing slightly. For half a second Cynthia felt that they were looking deep inside her. She shook her head with a quick jerky motion. It was far too easy to be sucked in by this stuff.
"Now you may be saying, 'Hey, I may feel good right now, but there are times when I get downright miserable.' You may be saying, 'Hey, times are hard, Reverend Proverb. There are days when I ain't sure that I'm going to make it.' "
The stage began to darken. Gray storm clouds were driven across the screen behind the huge image of Proverb.
"Hard times, my friends. Hard times, friends and neighbors. Make no mistake about that. The whole of this country is being sorely tried and tested. The one thing you shouldn't believe, though, is that these hard times come from Jesus. It's the good times that come from Jesus. The hard times come from one place and one place only. They come straight from Hell. That's right! Straight from Hell! These hard times are the works of Satan – and don't let anyone tell you different!"
Proverb was in full cry.
"We all know them. We all know so-called good Christians who go around preaching doom and gloom, telling you that hard times are sent by Jesus because you've been weak, or because you've been bad. Well, my friends, I've got something right here and now to tell those so-called Christians. If they're not damned liars then they've been very badly informed."
There was the loudest roar yet from the crowd. They seemed to know who the damned liars were. Cynthia sneaked a covert glance at the deacons. They were in a tight knot around Senior Deacon Booth over on one side of the panoramatic window. They were watching Proverb like a flock of hawks. Booth was already red in the face and huffing and puffing. He barked at an aide.
"I want comprehensive tapes of this seditious nonsense on my desk first thing in the morning. You hear me?"
The aide nodded vigorously. Cynthia scowled. That had to be one bitch of a job, nursemaiding a piece of slime like Booth.
When he had sufficiently terrorized the aide, Booth turned to the other senior officers with a look of grim triumph. "I think, gentlemen, mere's one thing of which we can be certain. After this display – " He nodded contemptuously in the direction of the stage, " – we have ample, legitimate grounds to require the Reverend Proverb to provide answers to the Fifteen Questions."
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. The Fifteen Questions, as laid out in the Second Amendment to the Mandatory Articles of Faith, were invariably the prelude to an indictment for capital heresy. She looked down at the roaring crowd and wondered: Did Booth and the others really think they could do that to Proverb without his millions of followers going violently bananas?
She saw that Longstreet was coming toward her. He had a wry look on his face.
He moved close to her and whispered. "I fear that my superiors are planning to make even bigger fools of themselves than they already are. They seriously believe that they can arrest Proverb, and his followers will just roll over. Do you want some more champagne? You seem to have been a good girl so far."
He signaled to a waiter. Longstreet apparently had not been a good boy. His breath smelled of brandy, and his eyes were unnaturally bright.
Cynthia accepted the glass. "You seem to have broken your drinking rule."
"Who wouldn't, at an affair like this? I feel the cold wind from the camps when I'm in the same room as Booth."
Cynthia quickly swallowed her champagne. If Longstreet was afraid, what hope did she have?
"What do you think would happen if they did try Proverb for heresy?" she asked.
"Civil war, if this crowd's anything to go by."
"Oh, come on."
"First-degree ghetto burning, at a very minimum."
"You shouldn't joke about all this. Not in public."
"I don't really – " He was suddenly staring across the room at a group of late arrivals. "What the hell is this? The Night of the Long Knives?"
Matthew Dreisler was in the center of the group.
"Dreisler the headhunted."
"The head of the DIA?"
"The very same, and he never socializes unless there's a purpose to it. He's no butterfly."
Cynthia could feel the ripple of fear go through the room.
Longstreet seemed transfixed. "God, he's always immaculate."
A black leather coat was thrown casually over the perfect shoulders of Dreisler's silk, double-breasted evening jacket. A black velour trilby was tilted over one eye, and, of course, there were the inevitable old-fashioned sunglasses. He was flanked by two large men who were clearly his bodyguards, and slightly behind him were two less strapping young men who had to be aides or assistants. The party was completed by a tall spindly figure wrapped in an all-enveloping cowled overcoat. It was hard to guess exactly what his function was, but he had the look of a personal spiritual advisor – and a strange one at that.
Advancing through the VIP lounge, they seemed to be very much aware of the effect they were having on the rest of the guests. They did not swagger like stormtroopers – Dreisler was too sophisticated for that. The air of menace – and the relish that he clearly took in that menace – was subtle, almost understated. It was also quite unmistakable. It became plain that they were going for Booth.