Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

“But it’s right there. I know it’s there.”

“They’re old friends. Trust me.”

“But it’s-”

“Trust me. They will change everything.” The face suddenly Petra’s. “How much are you willing to find, Ian? How much?”

It wasn’t difficult to explain the dream, or why she had appeared. At one point, his eyes had opened to the blackened cabin, certain that she was there with him. Hardly the first time. Anxiety, evidently, owed nothing to linear time.

By 6:30, he was showered and shaved, on deck with those who had taken the cheapest way across-a single seat. Most were still asleep, signs of late-night drinking, and who knows what else, in evidence. Even with the odd amalgam of smells, a crisp breeze managed to cut its way through, salted wisps on his tongue. Finding an area by the rail, he peered out.

He had never seen the Adriatic in sunlight, its coloring far more vivid than he had expected, almost with a dimension to it. Even the sun seemed sharper here, a constant pulse streaking the curls of water in a saffron blue.

It was exactly as Petra had described it, those moments when she would threaten to steal him away to Dubrovnik, find a boat, and just drift. The two of them. “Now, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” He would smile, tell her about the Cape. And she would laugh.

“Either one,” she would say. “Either one.”

The first hint of shore appeared in the distance. He stared out for a moment longer, then checked his watch. Another forty minutes before docking.

It had been eight hours since Brindisi, time enough for the name of a priest to appear on a computer manifest, no sixth sense needed to place him on the Laurana into Igoumenitsa. Still less trouble to catch a flight to Athens-or perhaps a private airfield somewhere nearer the port-so as to meet the ferry. Pearse realized he needed to be a little less conspicuous. He looked around and saw a group of three young men beginning to shake off the effects of the previous night, yawning and speaking Italian as they joked with one another. He noticed their clothing, similar enough to his own-nondescript pants, faded shirts. He pulled himself from the rail and started toward them.

By 7:30, he would make sure they were all fast friends.

Nigel Harris’s last-minute announcement of a press conference had caught the media completely by surprise. Most hadn’t expected rumblings from that quarter for at least another six months-Tony Blair’s promised timetable for elections. CNN had been the first to jump, offering the 7:00 A.M. slot, completely at a loss, though, as to what the colonel- former colonel, they had to remind themselves-was proposing to unveil. His rather public departure from the council, and his subsequent tours through Europe and the States, had made him a hot topic. Several op-ed pieces over the last few months in the New York Times, Corriere della Sera , and the Frankfurter Allgemeine hadn’t hurt his notoriety, either. If he wanted the early-morning slot-Nigel over coffee and toast-they were more than happy to oblige. It suited him. After all, “the new dawn” seemed to be a mainstay of his rhetoric.

He’d thought about the BBC. Bit more respectable. Bit more homegrown. But the Beeb didn’t have the international cachet CNN could offer. They’d replay the conference again and again throughout the day, beaming him out to every one of their stations. And, if nothing else, international was the word of the day.

The pundits had been on the air since nine o’clock the previous night, speculating. Nightline had devoted an entire segment to the upcoming announcement. And given the time difference, they were promising to stay on the air-2:00 A.M. Washington time-to give their own spin on things when he finally got through talking. One guest had mentioned the possibility of a post in Blair’s government. Given the PM’s recurring run-ins with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he needed all the help he could get. Someone else had suggested that a new U.S. cabinet post might be more to his liking. The term spiritual adviser had been tossed around with a certain degree of playful cynicism. Still one more had speculated on a reconciliation with the TC, a way to solidify the “new Christian voice for the millennium” through a revamped Testament Council. Whatever it was, most of the major networks throughout Europe and the States were putting time aside. Harris was news. And news meant ratings. His own PR people had told him he’d be busy for the next few days. Wasn’t that the point?

With a go from the producer in the London studio, Harris stepped to the microphone at 7:04. He pulled two note cards from his jacket pocket and began to speak.

“Good morning. My name is Nigel Harris, and let me first extend my thanks to CNN for organizing all of this at such short notice, and to you for allowing me to join you during your no doubt busy mornings. I promise to be brief.

“As many of you know, I stepped down as executive director of the Testament Council over a year ago. I was convinced, at the time, that an organization of its kind could achieve only limited gains within a secularized society, and that faith and politics, difficult as it was for me to admit, would never find a common ground in creating our future. I saw the selfsame efforts, both here in Europe and in the United States, coming to naught, and felt, perhaps, that our time had passed. I realize now that I was wrong.” He paused. “It has never been clearer to me than today that those goals can be achieved only by the mutual cooperation of both. Faith must infuse politics. Politics must guarantee the rights of its faithful.”

Again he paused, aware that, somewhere in the council’s London headquarters, the phones were ringing off the hook. “No, we had no idea he was coming back, either,” they’d be saying. He would have loved to have been there to see the surprise on their faces during the next few minutes. “I have also come to realize that such cooperation cannot be limited in its scope. At the council, we set our boundaries too narrowly. Our agenda alienated, rather than embraced. When the desire to strengthen the family, restore commonsense values, and foster religious liberty becomes the tool of political one-upmanship, then the issues of greatest concern to a faithful constituency can only become lost in the fray. I know that was not the council’s intention to begin with, but, sadly, that is where the TC stands today.

“Several months ago, I therefore decided that there was a need for a new kind of leadership, an international organization that could meet the expansive needs of a new millennium, the new dawn. With the hope of stemming the cultural crisis that continues to batter away at the very heart of our social fabric, I brought together a group of political, civic, and religious leaders-names that will be made public at the end of this broadcast-who share my concerns. In the hope of inspiring inclusion, we have dubbed ourselves the Faith Alliance. At this very moment, the alliance is putting the final touches to a proposal, which we will present to various government leaders around the world, on how best to build a morally girded bridge to the next millennium. We are fully aware that this is only the beginning of the dialogue, but it will mean nothing without your support. I am, therefore, here this morning to tell you that a copy of that proposal, along with the alliance’s mission statement, will appear in newspapers around the world one week from today. With it, our telephone numbers, fax numbers, and E-mail addresses, so that we can be certain that your voices-the voices of decency, civility, and cohesion-will be heard.

“We are taking this step because we feel that, in a world connected by the flick of a computer key, we can hardly sit back and allow the values dearest to us, and to our children, to remain at risk. Ours has been called a godless society, a great wasteland, a society so self-indulgent that we’ve become easy prey for those who would take advantage of our materialistic pride and our spiritual negligence. A new kind of terrorism abounds, which takes the godless as its victims. It becomes imperative, therefore, that wherever we can inspire faith, we must act with vigilance. Wherever we can find common ground, we must cultivate it so as to protect ourselves. Religious and, indeed, moral commitment can no longer be seen as quaint relics in an enlightened world of reason, where technology has become our surrogate divinity. Our children’s future is too important to allow us to become so distracted.