I disconnect the wireless connection on my computer and go to the class list just like I did when I wanted to know Martha’s address. I find Hope’s address and reconnect everything. It’s the address where I secretly met Martha. It’s the house that had the clock with a hidden cross on the face.
The private car with a corps driver is waiting outside my office building. If I try to walk home they’ll activate my com and track me and insist I get into the car. I can’t leave my com in my office and make a break for it because I’m pretty sure my office has a hidden camera or at least that they watch me from an adjacent building.
I go to the car and ask the driver to take me home. As we’re leaving campus I say to him “I’m going to be out of town for a while, let’s drive around a bit instead of going straight home today.” As we drive I start telling him about the history of the town and point out different aspects of the architecture. If he’s listening he shows no signs of it. That’s okay, I know very little about architecture and I’m making most of it up anyway.
As we approach the street where Hope lives I say “Turn left at the next street, there are some very interesting houses down there.”
He drives past.
“You missed the turn,” I say but as we pass I look down the street and see several large black buses near the house.
“Current op chart says the street is APO.”
“What does that mean in English?”
“It means pick a different street.”
We drive along several more streets and I continue to blather on about fictional history and architecture. I direct him past Martha’s address but there are no lights on so I have him take me home. I try many times, but Martha’s com is inactive.
I sit at my desk, staring into space and try to think through what I know and don’t know. Although I’m sure these women are Christians, it’s still not clear why they were sent to sit in my class. Were they sent to kill me? Or were they just an advance team send to see if I could be converted?
What am I missing?
Martha could have killed me dozens of times and the thought of her being my assassin still makes me shutter. If she’s been sent to kill me she won’t need to use poison or a weapon, she can kill me at any time by breaking my heart. I’m in love with her.
But is it really her? Or have I fallen in love with a character portrayed by a skilled actress?
At midnight I try one last time to reach her but her com still isn’t active. For the first time in my life I leave my com in my ear while I sleep.
***
The next morning I’m packing for my trip to D.C. when the doorbell rings. My com tells me it’s Martha. When I open the door she’s standing there with a bright smile on her face as if none of the events of yesterday ever happened.
“Good morning. I thought I’d come to see you off.”
She puts her fingers to her lips and motions to indicate my house is bugged.
How did she know?
“That’s very thoughtful. Is it just you? I’d hoped perhaps some others from class would stop by too.”
“Sorry, it’s just me. I’d hoped to get a friend to come along but she seems to be out of town.
“Is she on a vacation?”
“Yes. She just needed a little escape I guess.”
So Hope was being sought for questioning and she somehow managed to escape. If Martha’s cover was blown she wouldn’t be standing here. So now it’s just a matter of finding the true purpose of this visit. Is she here to kill me? Or have I convinced her and her leaders that I’m sincere? If I don’t die in the next few minutes I’ll ask to join them and spend the rest of my life in hiding and studying the Bible.
“And how about you? Do you need a little escape too?” I ask.
“Pretty soon I think.”
If she were here to kill me she could have done it by now so I invite her to the kitchen. The one last piece of the puzzle I need to know is if those kisses meant as much to her as they did to me.
“Today I go to D.C. and become a traveler. There are some things I need to say and some things I need to ask before I leave.”
“Me too,” Martha replies, “but go ahead and finish packing. I’d like to think through what I want to say.”
She takes off her shoe and removes the insole and brings out a piece of paper.
“I don’t know how to start,” she writes in her pretty script.
“How about your deep dark secret?” I reply on the next line.
“Not dark, just deep,” she writes and smiles at me.
“Why did they send you?”
She looks startled for a moment and then smiles again when she realizes that I’ve suspected all along.
“To watch.”
“And?” I reply.
“To get close to you.”
“Were those kisses real? Or just part of the act?” I write.
A tear rolls down each of my cheeks.
“I was just supposed to watch, but we got closer than anyone expected, especially me.”
“Were you sent here to kill me?”
A broad smile covers her face.
“It’s not what you think. I’m here to prepare you,” she writes.
“Prepare me for what?”
“To choose.”
She sits there drumming her fingers as she thinks of what to write next. I stare at them, the four fingers beating up and down in one color while her thumb sits motionless in another. It’s like they’re drumming in slow motion and I can hear the echo of each finger as it hits the table.
The four drops of paint on her shoes, the missing number four on her mailbox and the four drumming fingers. I was so eager to meet a Christian that I missed huge pieces in the puzzle and misread the ones I did have.
“You’re not a Christian, you’re from Four!” I burst out loud before I can stop myself.
She’s taken aback for a moment by the broken silence.
“We won’t stay in the shadows,” she says in a whisper and turns to run. She knew the house is bugged so she also knows there will be a corps guy coming through each door in seconds. To my shock she turns back, leans down and kisses me on the lips.
“Goodbye kisses don’t count.”
The time spent on the kiss costs her. The corps guy kicks in the back door when she’s still two meters from it. Capturing her will not be a priority and he’ll have already received orders to kill her if necessary to insure my safety. They’re called “kill teams” for a reason.
The image of Martha I’ve built in my head as a quiet and gentle young woman is shattered in an instant. Her hands and feet are a blur as she hits him with some sort of a flying kick that causes his gun to crash to the floor and then takes him across the face with a spinning back fist. He’s so stunned that his own swinging fist is easily caught and used to flip him to the floor. A second later the front door bursts open but she’s already gone. The second agent doesn’t try to pursue. He makes sure I’m safe then calls for help.
While he’s busy I slip the paper and pencil into my pocket and put my head onto the table. There are pieces of a shattered puzzle flying through my head and for the first time in my life I can’t begin to fit them together.
Four? She’s a pagan? What about the clock face? What about her essay?
There’s only one puzzle piece left for me to hold. Love. I’m in love with her no matter what her beliefs are and I’m not ready to let her go until I know more.
In two minutes the house is surrounded and in five they’ve cordoned off a ten block radius and put surveillance drones over the neighborhood but she’s disappeared without a trace.
***
An hour later I’m in the bureau’s private tube car with Janet on my way to D.C. It was an hour in which it felt like the life was being sucked out of me. I couldn’t focus enough to pack my bag so Janet did it for me then literally led me by the hand down my front steps and into the waiting car.
I need to find her.
I need to know.
“Whoever she is, her cover is even deeper than mine,” Janet says. “We ran multiple checks on her and everyone else in the class and never found a thing. The other girl, Hope Dubois has fallen off the map along with a third named Cindi Stone. Do you know anything about them?”
“They were all students in my class,” I hear myself say in a voice that sounds like I’m hypnotized. “They all lived in town and attended the class live instead of watching remotely. Martha sat next to Cindi in class yesterday but before that they’d never even spoken to each other as far as I know.”
“I listened to the audio from your house. You were just sitting there quietly and then you suddenly blurted out she was from Four. What tipped you off? For that matter, what made you suspect she wasn’t who she claimed to be and why didn’t you tell anyone?”
I sit in silence so she continues.
“I see what happened. You really were in love weren’t you? I told you love is an outdated notion.”
As she says it, Janet gets a faraway look.
“An outdated notion perhaps, but still a pleasant one,” I reply softly.
“You’re the right person for this job, Cephas. You almost had me believing in love…”
The word “again” was on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to say I almost had her believing in love again. For a moment she isn’t an undercover agent, she isn’t even a woman. All I can see is a wounded soul. I watch my hand reach out and touch her cheek in time to catch a tear as it rolls down her face. I want to help her. I want to help heal her soul.
“But I’m glad it turned out this way, it should give you more focus for the mission,” Janet says as she snaps out of her memories and moves back from my hand.
“Really? And why is that?”
“Because you’re seeing firsthand the division and conflict religion causes. The fish heads and the Fours must already be fighting. Maybe this time we can finish the job.”
Her words sound like the pieces of a puzzle that’s been set before me and I find the fog lifting from my mind.
This time? What does she mean by ‘this time’?
“So are you going to tell me how you figured out that Martha McLeod is from Four?” she asks.
There’s a mirror on the wall behind Janet so instead of answering, I voluntarily stare into my own eyes.
What now little sparkle? My plan to disappear into the Christian world and seek answers has been shattered. My dream of exploring love with Martha is gone. I have no choice but to go back to being what I hate. The legend of the Cult Hunter will continue, but now it’s my turn to write the script.
I was wrong about Martha’s beliefs. I was wrong about who to trust. But if there’s one thing I was right about it’s that the only measure of privacy I have left is the privacy of my own thoughts. Everything else the corps seems to be able to watch or listen in on as they please. If I’m to ever find out who Martha really is and how she feels about me then our next meeting must be on my terms, not on the corps’ terms.
These jumbled thoughts combine to make me seethe with anger. I’m mad at myself. I’m mad at the corps. I’m even mad at the God that I’m not supposed to believe exists. I turn it onto Janet.
“I’m not telling you anything about Martha McLeod or Four.”
I find myself speaking through a clenched and angry jaw, the opposite of the carefully controlled cult hunter.
“In the past I was just an analyst who left the hunting to others. Not this time. The corps created the image of The Cult Hunter and now you have one for real. Nobody hunts Martha McLeod but me.”
***
The big announcement ceremony is happening at the National Institute of Science building. The three travelers will be raised one at a time onto the giant stage from below while a massive live audience looks on. I still have no clue who the Christian will be. I can hear the President speaking over my com. He drones on and on about the importance of the project to the entire world and how past intolerances of the religious must be put behind mankind. I’m contemplating a nap when he gets to announcing who the three travelers will be.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached the point of revealing to the world the identities of the three time travelers but the truth is that they need no introductions. To insure non-believers everywhere are represented, our first traveler is internationally renowned religious abolitionist Dr. Thomas.”
Loud applause erupts above me as Dr. Thomas is raised onto the stage.
“Our second traveler,” the President continues as a small elevator begins to raise me to the stage, “is the world’s leading expert on religious history. He speaks the ancient languages necessary to accomplish the mission but even more importantly he’s a man of unquestioned integrity, Dr. Cephas Paulson.”
The applause are thunderous. I do my best to smile and wave.
“Our third traveler is here to insure believers hear from one of their own that Christ is a fraud. Until now I thought all Christians led sad, solitary lives watching for their sky daddy to ride his sun chariot across the sky or some other such nonsense. It turns out at least one Christian has been leading a very public life right under our noses.”
Instead of more applause I hear the crowd gasp followed by murmurs. I don’t hear the rest of his speech because I look to my left and there being raised up onto the stage wearing a massive gold cross is Jocie.
Chapter Seventeen
The three travelers stand for an obligatory picture with the President and then they hustle us off the stage before I can grab a microphone and say something truthful. We’re moved to a small room where we can get acquainted and meet our press handler, Janet.
“Was this your idea?” I ask Janet while pointing at Jocie.
“No Cephas, it was mine,” Jocie says. “You crashed my world so I thought I should return the favor. Besides, it’s the role of a lifetime.”
“Wait. So you’re not a believer?” Thomas asks, trying to catch up.
“Oh, I believe. I believe my name will live forever. We’ll come back and I’ll be crushed that Christ wasn’t real but I’ll come out of it and the public will see me as being stronger and braver than ever before. I’ll star as myself in the movie but of course we’ll find men who are better looking to play you two.”
“She’ll never pull it off,” I say turning back to Janet. “We have a one week tour full of interviews and party appearances. Any believers who pay attention will know she’s a fraud.”
“I think I’ll have this melted down,” Jocie says, looking at the gold cross.
“She isn’t here to convince the believers Cephas. That’s your job. Jocie is here to entertain the people who sit stoned in front of their screens all day not knowing which is real, their life or the video. They’ll live the story through Jocie like it’s their own.”
“Then what’s my job?” Thomas asks.
“To validate the beliefs of the abolitionists,” Janet replies.
“And to complete the love triangle,” Jocie says then walks to Thomas and engages him in a very provocative kiss.
“So it’s a triangle because you have him while you secretly pine for me?” I ask.
“I was thinking something more like you regret letting me slip through your fingers and I crush you and Christianity out of existence at the same time.”
***
The corps puts us into the finest hotel in D.C. where it turns out the top three floors are permanently leased to the corps for use as a safe house. Thankfully each of the travelers has an entire floor to themselves if you don’t count sharing it with a dozen security personnel each. There are even patrol drones silently circling around in the air outside.
I turn on a screen and the news feed is split screen between the announcement earlier today and a live shot of Jocie and Thomas walking hand in hand in a park somewhere nearby. Every once and a while they do something lewd for the cameras. Thomas seems to be enjoying Jocie’s attention, I’m guessing he won’t
need his suite in the hotel tonight.
Thomas doesn’t have many obvious physical enhancements but when he leans his head forward to stick his tongue in Jocie’s mouth you can see he has some sort of data port low on his neck. I can tell that it’s expensive gear but there’s no way to tell what it does.
I tell my com to interface with corps computers. Janet reinstated my old clearance so I have access to all of the world’s knowledge, except of course for banned religious writings. I ask the computer to pull up all information on the group Four. There isn’t much and it wouldn’t matter anyway because the only thing in my head is an image of Martha’s face. I feel like I’m being haunted, like a spirit has been sent to torture me with her image until I go insane.
Snap out of it Cephas. You’ll get the answers you seek in time but right now you have a job to do.
There’s no doubt that everything I look at is being monitored so I start pulling up ancient texts on Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew. I try to look at so much information that anyone watching me will be overwhelmed and not be able to see which information I cared about and which I ignored. Next I pull up ancient maps of Jerusalem and the surrounding country and ask the computer to extrapolate the predicted location of Christ over a three-year period.
While the computer works on the map I start thinking more about Janet’s comment about finishing the job “this time”.
I ask the computer to give me a list of the top one-hundred public figures who led the equalization movement in the 2020’s and the push to change the First Amendment in the 2050’s and then to cross-reference them for any names that appear on both lists. There are two names that stand out, Robert Marco and Tyco Leonard. I’m a religious historian and I’ve never heard of either of them. I discover why. The materials I’m looking at are marked as not being part of the public access databases. Once again my instincts tell me that these are interesting pieces of a larger puzzle so I keep going.
I pull up their biographies and find both were very wealthy and both had inherited a great deal of their wealth. I ask the computer to expand the search to include all known relatives of these two men including non-blood relatives related by marriage. The combined list now brings up a total of twenty people who were involved in both periods of history. It seems the abolition of religion was a family affair that included a fair bit of inter marriage between the two families.