The God Machine (8 page)

Koster slipped on his new shirt and his blazer and made his way to the foyer where Nick and Theresa were waiting. Their son Sean was to meet them at the Club. Robinson was dressed in an impeccable charcoal gray cashmere over a rumpled white shirt; Theresa in a colorful off-the-shoulder affair, a retro muumuu from the fifties.

They made their way to the Club House. Most of the guests were clustered out on the deck, drinking champagne, nursing cocktails, munching on tiny hors d'oeuvres of king crab and fresh shrimp, hamachi and sevruga on toast points. It didn't take long for Koster to find himself alone in one corner, eyeing the crowd.

A model was arguing with her friend about representation. The commissions were killing her. Her agent was a bloodsucking ghoul. A Web entrepreneur discussed art with a radio commentator. The new governor of New York chatted idly with the producer of a reality TV show called simply
Revenge
. And Nick and Theresa flitted like hummingbirds from person to person, trailing laughter behind them.

By the time they sat down to dinner, Koster was starving. He had already calculated, with some level of certainty, the cash value of what each of the guests was displaying in jewelry around him: around $12.3 million, give or take a few hundred thousand. He had counted each strand, each chain and each stone—semiprecious and precious—using a standard variable for mean carat size and a simple mathematical algorithm. Then he'd estimated the number of hairs on the heads of the guests with brown hair, but they kept appearing and disappearing from view, and he found it hard to keep count—even with the dance of his fingers on the lip of his wineglass.

The night air had grown chilly by the time the party migrated inside to the main dining room. Koster was seated at a table next to a young movie starlet named Roberta Hachette, a blonde with an impenetrable accent and mysterious cleavage. At first things seemed to go well. They chatted quite amiably through the poached salmon with hollandaise. Until she found out what he did for a living and grew suddenly bored. By the time the game hen arrived, the man past the floral arrangement proved far more enticing to her. He dabbled in media development, some sort of investor. So Koster took up with the P.O.W. dowager to his left, but she complained bitterly about the riffraff one saw in Manhattan these days.

“Unkempt,” she kept saying. “The part of your hair can determine your future, you know?”

Koster nodded and answered, “Five million.”

“Excuse me?” She looked over her glasses.

“The approximate number of hairs one can see on the heads in this room as we sit here. Not counting the wait-staff.”

They waited in silence for dessert to arrive. After a while, as other guests began to mill about, to stretch their legs or visit friends at neighboring tables, Koster made his excuses and headed for the sliding doors. A few guests were already smoking outside on the deck. He could hear their muffled voices. They turned to look at him, then stared out to sea once again, chatting, engaged, as waves broke their backs on the strand.
The part of your hair
, he considered.

Koster slipped down the back stairs toward the beach. The sounds of music and laughter slowly faded, replaced by the pulsing of waves and the dull trudge of his loafers as he tore up the sand. He walked and he walked, then he started to run, until the light from the
Club House was just a dull aching glow, until the wind carved up his blazer and shirt, and the tide nipped at his feet. He stopped at the lip of the jetty. The pier jutted out from the beach into darkness and the bottomless sea. Koster reached into his jacket and plucked out a cigarette case. The joint was perfectly rolled. He stuck it between his lips. The tip glowed rhapsodically within his cupped hands as he set it ablaze with his lighter. He sucked in the smoke, held his breath and exhaled.

Who died in that basement in France?
Koster laughed. He took another hit off the joint and felt something tear deep inside him.
Who died?
He wondered sometimes. Perhaps Nick was right.

Rain pelted his face. Koster looked up just as the night sky burst into light. Lightning shattered the heavens.
Who died in that basement?
He had been sleepwalking his way through his life for more than a decade. Ever since France. Since Mariane's death. Only the death of his son had scratched him as deeply.

Koster came to the end of the pier and looked out to sea. The storm was upon him. Great sheets of water fell from the heavens. Lightning bolts fissured the sky. He would be crazy, he thought, to get involved in one of Nick Robinson's schemes once again. And yet he found the notion strangely appealing. He owed Nick a great deal. But it wasn't his loyalty, or the idea of unearthing the Gospel of Judas, a text of great age and religious significance. Nor was it because it had once been the property of Benjamin Franklin, though that helped. No, Koster thought, as he stared at the water glimmering and churning at his feet. Instead of running away, he was desperate to rush back into chaos. Was he just bored? Or did he still blame himself for Mariane's murder? Koster looked up at the sky, letting the rain wash like tears
down his face. Mariane! He tossed what was left of the joint in the waves.

To wake up. To live, for a moment, like life mattered again. To feel like he actually cared.

Koster put his hands in his pockets. Then he turned and made his way back down the pier toward the beach.

F
ROM THIS ANGLE, MICHAEL ROSE WAS IN THE PERFECT POSITION
to watch his penis as it plunged into the black whore kneeling on the bed right in front of him. A big man in his thirties, with thinning blond hair, thick red lips and transparent blue eyes, Michael thrust into the girl once again, and again, mindful not to tip the mirror balanced precariously on her back.

“‘Watch out that no one deceives you,’” he said, as he picked up a tightly furled bill from the glass. A Franklin. A hundred. “‘For many will come in my name… You will hear of wars and rumors of wars… Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.’” He stuffed the furled bill in his nose. Then, careful not to let his penis slip out of the girl, he snorted a line. “‘There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.’” He shivered and thrust, and came with a groan. “‘The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light…’ Say ‘Amen!’” He slapped the girl's ass.

“Amen,” she obeyed, her face pressed to the sheets.

“‘… the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ Say ‘Amen!’”

“Amen!”

Michael pulled himself out of the girl. He fell back on the bed. He snorted the rest of the crank still lodged in his nostril. He watched as the girl reached around for the mirror, as she placed it before her and snorted a line.

“Why then,” Michael asked, “should we study the End-Times?”

The girl was barely eighteen, probably younger, he thought. She called herself Blue, perhaps for the makeup she favored. Her skin shimmered with sweat and, for the first time, he noticed her nose stud. Her hair was done up in tight cornrows. “To know Jesus,” she said. “To get ready. And…”

“And what?” he replied.

“When He comes, He'll bring a reward.”

“That's right, Blue. I'm so proud of you.” He reached over to the nightstand next to his bed and picked up his crocodile wallet. “The apostles knew a great secret, a divine secret. When King Jesus returns, the reward He will bring will relate to the lifestyle you've lived. So, here,” he continued, “you'd better take this.” He handed her another hundred-dollar bill. Then he swung himself round, off the bed. He tilted his head to the side, stretching his neck, until it resounded with an audible
crack
. He walked to the window.

From this imposing vantage point in the Hollywood hills, beyond his swimming pool and tennis courts, beyond the cabaña and greenhouse, he could see the entire expanse of the smog-shrouded sprawl of Los Angeles. The highway looked packed. If he didn't leave soon, he'd be late for his sermon. And that, he considered with a sigh, would not sit well with Dad. Then he smiled. Oh, well. No time for a shower.

*  *  *

The Prayer Palace had once been the Mother of Angels Hospital, located on just under ten acres, two miles or so west of Los Angeles and two miles from Hollywood. The 360,000-square-foot facility featured more than one thousand rooms in nine buildings on the WCC campus, and the impressive fourteen-story main building, where the Prayer Palace was housed, was seen by an average of two and a half million motorists every week.

Michael's father, the great Thaddeus Rose, had purchased the property three years earlier. The elder Rose had been the Senior Pastor of the fastest-growing church in the history of the United States, based in Arizona—the Worldwide Church of Christ of Phoenix. With an average weekly attendance of more than fifteen thousand, the Phoenix megachurch had hosted outdoor events with more than twenty-five thousand worshipers, and from Palm to Easter Sunday the congregation swelled to more than one hundred fifty thousand. Rose had been responsible for launching the Heart of the Family radio show, plus the Heart of the Family Research Council, a Washington-based lobbying group—arguably the most powerful Christian Right organization in the country. As a reward for his remarkable success, Thaddeus Rose had been invited by the WCC chapter of Southern California to start the Prayer Palace in L.A. And in only three years, it already boasted more than twelve thousand parishioners. It put that Crystal megachurch monstrosity in Orange County to shame.

But all this success, Michael thought, as he pulled his pearl gray Infiniti into the parking lot, all of the glory heaped upon his father, the praise and adulation, all the money and fame had only transpired due to
him—
from the sweat of the son's brow. To this day, Thaddeus could
barely surf the Internet. It was Michael who had expanded the radio show. It was Michael who had produced the first WCC TV broadcast, now available to more than ninety percent of American households, and in more than twenty-six nations overseas—albeit hosted by Thaddeus. It was Michael who had pushed for the Web site. He'd nurtured their successful e-mail campaigns, their keyword buys, the systems that supported their more than four hundred outreach ministries. It was Michael who had interfaced with the RNC through the Heart of the Family Policy Councils, and who had worked so tirelessly and relentlessly for the GOP during the last presidential campaign. And yet, try as he might, no matter what he did, Michael would always remain Thaddeus Junior. The son.

Michael pressed the button on his car key and the Infiniti beeped.

The follower.

He lifted the key to his face and sniffed at his hand. He could still smell Blue on his fingers.

B
Y THE TIME
M
ICHAEL ROSE FINALLY MADE IT ONSTAGE, HE
was late. He'd been forced to endure a phalanx of supplicants and petitioners from the parking lot to the dressing rooms, with time-sensitive questions about Webinars and search engine optimization, telethons, tax exemptions and gross rating points. His pretty wife, Judy, and Thaddeus were already up front by the podium. The attendance was excellent. More than ten thousand teens, tweens and twenty-somethings swelled the arena. When they saw him, a few girls pressed forward, crowding the stage. One was wearing a pink and white dress with blue ribbons. Barely eighteen, Michael guessed. Then the spotlight came on.

“Why do we study the End-Times?” Michael said. The auditorium grew dark. A giant screen behind the dais burst into light as the first of the three cameras caught the figure descending the stage. “What are the four pillars which support this assembly?”

The crowd murmured and voices cried out, “Salvation through Christ!”

“Amen. And what else?” Michael asked.