“Shut the hell up,” hissed Graham.
“Nice talk, in church.”
A bunch of people in the church flipped Bibles open to the Book of Genesis.
“It’s right in the beginning,” Neal whispered helpfully to Graham.
“Now, the Jews have always claimed to be the chosen people, but the Bible tells us differently, doesn’t it?” Carter asked in a voice that attempted a professorial tone of neutral inquiry. “You’ll notice in Genesis that Cain was jealous of his brother Abel, whom God favored. Now that is pretty interesting. Why would God favor Abel? The answer is simple. Because Cain was not the son of Adam, but the son of Satan! Cain was the offspring of Eve’s mating with the serpent. And so of course God favored Abel.”
Neal elbowed Graham. “So does Mia Farrow get to play Eve in the movie?”
“Now, we all know that Cain slew Abel,” Carter preached, “the first example of a Jew killing a Gentile, and this is the important part: God cursed Cain. I refer to Genesis 4:11, ‘And now art thou cursed from the earth,’ and in 4:12, ‘a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.’ “
“Sounds like you,” Graham muttered to Neal. “What did you do to piss off God?”
“I know you.”
“And now Adam had himself another son!” Carter proclaimed. “The son’s name was Seth, and Seth-follow along now through all the begats in chapter five-was the ancestor of Noah, who, as you know, was the chosen of God. The Jews, you see, are the sons of Cain. Far from being the chosen people, they were the cursed people. Cursed by God himself!”
“Nothing like personal service,” Neal whispered.
Joe Graham just shook his head.
“Now,” Carter said, “you have to work your way through a bunch of ‘begats’ until Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac married Rebecca, and they prayed to God to have children and God answered-this is Genesis 25:23-‘And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the elder shall serve the latter.’ Amen!”
“Amen!” responded the congregation.
“And now here we go again, friends, because Rebecca had twins. The first one to emerge was Esau, and listen here to the description: Esau ‘came out red, all over like an hairy garment.’ Now what does that tell you? Esau was the spiritual descendent of Cain, son of the devil, cursed by God! And it is Esau, friends, who will be the father of one of these two nations, the weaker nation.
“Now, the younger twin was Jacob, and we will come to read that Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, and that Isaac blessed Jacob, and that Esau was jealous. It’s the same old story all over again, and sure enough, Esau plotted to kill Jacob. And Esau is described as ‘cunning’-and we sure know that, don’t we-but Jacob got away.
“And that night he laid his head down on a pillow made of stones, and he had a dream, and he dreamed that he ascended a ladder to heaven, and spoke with the Lord, and that the Lord said, ‘I am with you, and I will never leave you.’ Amen. And that spot where Jacob had this dream? It was called Bethel, and keep that in mind.
“Now, Jacob wandered as a fugitive for years, but he knew that God was with him, and Jacob became a cowboy, friends, the first cowboy, and his herds multiplied and became strong, and Jacob eventually returned to the place of his birth a rich and powerful man, and Esau came out, all alligator tears and everything, and hugged him and kissed him-now, we all know what the kiss of a Jew means, don’t we-and Jacob took his wives, and children, and cattle and moved on, he went back to Bethel and saw God again… and I’m going to read this part word for word, because it’s at the heart of everything we’re about here… Genesis 35:10, ‘And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob; thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.’
“Jacob was the real Israel, friends. Not that phony baloney Israel that Washington gives our tax dollars to.
“But to continue, ‘And God said unto him, I am God almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.”
Carter closed the Bible and paused dramatically.
“You see, folks, Jacob, descendent of Seth, was the father of the chosen people, chosen by God to form ‘a nation and a company of nations.’ Now, what is that nation? The present-day, so-called Israel? Don’t you believe it. That’s what they’d all like us to believe, that’s the hogwash we’ve been asked to swallow, but it just isn’t true. Can’t be! Why not? Because, among other things, where is the company of nations to go along with it? All I see is that impostor Jew state and a bunch of strung-together Arab sheikdoms. The sons of Esau, the sons of Ham, not the sons of Jacob, the sons of Seth! That’s not what God had in mind, no sir, not at all.”
Neal leaned over to Graham and asked, “Do you think he’s going to tell us what God had in mind?”
“I think so.”
He did. The Reverend C. Wesley Carter, founder and pastor of the True Christian Identity Church, laid out the grand design for them. How the true descendants of Seth and Jacob migrated out of the Near East, how they took their wives, kids, and cattle and journeyed north and west, eventually coming to settle in Germany, England, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. They were the lost tribe of Israel, who finally found the promised land-America.
“But the Jew, the jealous Jew, the sons of scheming Satan, the sons of murderous Cain, the sons of cunning Esau, they crept into Eden again. We have a Jew banking system and a Jew press, a Jew government and a Jew-dicial system! We have sold our birthright to Esau! And we will have to buy it back with tears and sacrifice and blood!
“But that’s another sermon. Let us conclude with a prayer.”
“Amen,” Neal said.
Back out in the limo Neal said, “So Harley got religion.”
“If you want to call it that. I just wanted you to see what we’re dealing with here,” Graham said.
“Less than a full deck, that’s for sure.”
“Funny kid.”
The driver actually turned around in his seat and looked at Graham. The driver was pissed off at having had to sit for an hour and change in the crotch of the city.
“You ready to go back to the hotel now?” he asked.
“Why not?”
Neal sat back in the upholstered seat and looked out through the tinted window.
“Okay,” he said. “Are you going to tell me the whole story now?”
“Not yet.”
“When?”
“When we get back to the hotel.”
So Neal looked out the smoky window and watched the palm trees through the haze of sunshine and smog and wondered what was waiting for him back at the hotel.
Ed Levine looked like a brown bear at the zoo as he climbed out of the swimming pool and shook off the water. He grabbed a towel off his chaise longue, wiped himself off, and stepped to the edge of the pool area to greet Neal Carey.
“I never thought I’d hear myself saying this,” Ed said as he stuck out his hand, “but it’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you,” Neal said, realizing with some surprise that he actually meant it. Ed Levine had been his boss, his rival, his nemesis for about a dozen years.
They stood awkwardly staring at each other for a few moments-Ed in bikini swimming trunks, water dripping into a pool at his feet, Neal trying to keep his new shoes from getting wet.
“So how have you been?” Neal asked.
“Divorced.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not,” Levine said. “So how was China? Did you have a good time?”
“Terrific.”
Joe Graham asked, “Is this touching moment over? Can we get to work?”
“Is he on?” Levine asked Graham.
“He’s on,” Neal answered.
“Let’s grab a table. I’ve had lunch sent out.”