Glenn Kleier - The Last Day

“Yeah,” Hunter intruded, grinning, “the standard stuff. You know: age, weight, measurements.”

Cissy shot the brash cameraman a scowl.

‘I'll give you a partial answer.” Anke laughed, taking no apparent offense. “Twenty-seven.”

“And are you married, engaged or otherwise attached?” Hunter persisted.

“Give her a break, Hunter!” Feldman protested.

“None of the above,” Anke responded with a good-natured laugh.

Cissy rescued her. “Where are you from originally, Anke? Do I detect a French accent?”

“I'm from Paris,” she said. “My mother's French, my father American.”

“So what brought you to Israel?” Hunter would not be elbowed aside.

“I came here in ‘97 to take an assistant professorship at Tel Aviv University. I'm working on my graduate degree.”

Hunter stole a quick, sideways glance at Feldman. “Let's see now, Anke,” he summarized, “we've established that you've got looks, personality, brains-probably money, too, eh? So, what I can't figure out,” and he gestured with his coffee spoon toward Feldman, “is what you see in this underfed, underpaid, diehard news geek!”

Bollinger and the other crew members burst out laughing.

Nodding slightly, pursing her lips to restrain a smile, Anke regarded the uncomfortable man next to her. “Well,” she teased, “I should think he has promise as a reporter, if only he'd show a little more social conscience.” She paused at the look of objection on his face. “But then again,” and her eyes locked into his, “there was the wonderful report he did about that meteorite destroying the Negev Institute. Now, that was worthy journalism. Who knows, Mr. Feldman”-she smiled at him admiringly- “you may have even prevented a war.”

The timing and sincerity of the compliment caught Feldman quite off-guard. He felt his cheeks grow warm.

“Okay,” Cissy stepped in once again, “I think our guest has endured about enough of our keen interviewing skills for one afternoon.” She turned to Anke, apologetically. “You'll have to excuse Hunter's retarded social graces. You see, he spent his formative years in solitary confinement at a home for unwed fathers and he simply doesn't know any better.”

Anke laughed. “I see now why Mr. Hunter operates behind the camera instead of in front of it.”

This unleashed an appreciative chorus of scorn directed at Hunter, who accepted his comeuppance with a broad-faced grin.

As they finished their meal, Bollinger had one final question of Anke. He wanted to know if she was unduly concerned about the prospect of the world ending in the next three hours and thirty-five minutes. She replied that she was not.

Outside on the mountain, however, it was an entirely different story. Escalating noise drew Feldman and his associates onto the balcony where they observed increasingly strange activities underway.

The rising tensions and close quarters had apparently pushed several incompatible cults into open opposition. In some instances, what began as civil disagreements in theology had degraded into shouting matches and even fist-fights, pitting zealot against zealot in a battle of the self-righteous.

“There, I think God likes that guy's style.” Feldman facetiously pointed to an open circle of fighting where one defender of the faith ran up and smashed a folded lawn chair over the head of another.

“Yeah, skull-cracking for Christ,” Hunter snorted, and Anke looked disapprovingly at both reporters.

“Oh, over here!” Hunter shouted. “Where are the field glasses?”

To their right, a small group of men and women had shed their clothes and were prancing before a bonfire to a poorly played pan flute.

“Yes,” Hunter intoned in a bad W.C. Fields imitation, “naked unto the Lord!”

The Israeli police were kept busy trying to quietly extract the troublemakers without aggravating conditions, and more than one millenarian would experience the rapture of jail tonight.

As the sweet smell of marijuana came wafting up to the balcony, Bollinger clapped his hands and announced, “Okay gang, let's get some of this on tape, shall we?” The crew, who'd been standing around entranced by all this, snapped to and hustled off to gather their gear while Hunter, way ahead of them, was putting a telephoto lens on his camera to zoom in on the nudists.

Feldman scanned the turbulent assembly, feeling better about the evening's potential newsworthiness. “Well, Anke, this should be a New Year's party unlike any we've ever seen!” She looked down on the crowd with a wry smile and shook her head disbelievingly.

Mount of the Ascension, Jerusalem, Israel 10:00 P.M., Friday, December 31, 1999

Promptly at ten P.M. Jerusalem time, live from New York City, WNN International began their worldwide news segment Millennium III. As Hunter readied himself and his camera crew for the impending signal to go live, Anke and Feldman moved over to one of several TV monitors positioned just inside the balcony.

The WNN International news team in New York opened with a brief overview of the current millenarian saga, effectively conveying with selected news clips the worldwide scope of the phenomena. Next, they went to a historical background report.

At ten-thirty P.M. Jerusalem time, the newscast turned to the rise of the neomillenarian movements in the U.S. and abroad, from the early 1990s to the present. Feldman noted with special interest a report on one of the longer-standing millenarian creeds, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society.

Also calling themselves the Jehovah's Witnesses, and known for their fervent, door-to-door preaching, these particular millenarians would appear to have had a great deal at stake tonight. The most crucial dogma of their faith revolved around the prediction of an imminent Second Coming. This prophecy was based on complex biblical calculations derived in the 1870s by founder Charles Taze Russell. In concert with a special passage in the Gospel of Matthew, it had been foreseen and declared that the generation of Jehovah's Witnesses alive in 1914 would “not pass away” before Judgment Day occurred.

With the youngest of that generation now in their upper eighties, the millennium had become an all-or-nothing event to justify their faith and very existence. Indeed, their current spiritual leader and head of the governing board, Joshua Milbourne, who had been born in 1914, was in failing health with a serious heart condition. One way or another, for over six million adherents of the religion, the end was nigh.

The WNN report included a live bedside interview with the ailing Joshua Milbourne, who was watching the telecast in his private hospital room. In the course of his interview, Milbourne mentioned that he had several delegate Witnesses present at the Mount of the Ascension. They were there, on his behalf, to ensure that Milbourne was one of the “biblically designated 144,000,” the chosen few who would reign in heaven as “kings and priests” over the new nation of God on Earth.

Bollinger immediately dispatched two of his staff to search for Milbourne's delegates.

The interview with Joshua Milbourne was especially noteworthy because the elderly Witness was one of the few established church leaders to officially proclaim that Judgment Day would commence at twelve o'clock tonight in Jerusalem. WNN would keep a reporter at his bedside and intended to cut back to Mr. Milbourne later for a follow-up, “eating-of-the-crow” segment.

Time elapsed quickly, and Bollinger soon cued Feldman to take his position on the balcony to ready himself for the live signal switch. A red light began flashing and there was a call for quiet.

Feldman made for a striking presence on camera, out in the night air of the Holy City, overlooking the dark sky and the fires and candles of the unsettled assembly. His lean, boyish face was slightly flushed with emotion, his appearance casually masculine in an open Oxford shirt and dark cardigan sweater. He kept his commentary short for this first segment, introducing the strange scene below him as the camera swung by to take in the bedlam and nervous tension of the teeming masses.