Sykes had to go to the bathroom. He used an empty mayonnaise jar and sealed it back up. He sipped water to stay hydrated. All vehicles bound for the medical center formed a line on Reservoir Road that inched toward the sandbagged guard booth. The line moved so slowly that Sykes could see inside the cars.
Why wasn’t Rush here?
Then Orrin saw him.
Sykes pressed the glasses close. A Toyota 4Runner had just taken up position as eighth car in line. The back window was down. Rush was unmistakable, arguing with the four other people in the car, and Sykes matched the face of Eddie Nakamura to Harlan’s provided photo on the front seat. There was Chris Vekey. And the admiral. And some kid.
Sykes felt relieved. They were here.
But suddenly the 4Runner halted, the argument grew animated, the back door opened, and Rush got out. Then everyone else got out, too. The argument was continuing. Sykes’s consternation grew.
The four other passengers stayed on the sidewalk. Rush climbed back into the 4Runner, into the driver’s seat.
Nakamura tried to open the passenger-side front door, but Rush locked him out. Nakamura knocked on the window clearly asking to get in.
“Shit!” Sykes said.
The other passengers began walking toward the driveway entrance, digging in their bags or coat pockets for ID.
The 4Runner broke from the line, made a U-turn, and headed back along Reservoir Road, toward central Georgetown. Rush was the only one inside now.
Sykes put the Honda in gear and pulled out from his space and rounded the corner, skidding slightly on slush. He could see the red brake lights on the 4Runner half a block ahead, where Rush turned onto Tunlaw Road.
Sykes reached for the encrypted cell phone as he followed Rush back up toward Wisconsin Avenue, in lightly falling snow, making sure to keep a block behind. He could not get closer without risking being spotted, since there were only two vehicles on the road.
It was easy to hang back and keep Rush in sight. Three minutes later, it became clear where Rush was going.
Rush figures things out, Harlan had told Sykes.
Uh-oh, Sykes thought, reaching to call Harlan Maas.
TWELVE
“What do you want to know about leprosy?” the Very Reverend Nadine Huxley asked.
She was dean of the National Cathedral, America’s intersection point between God and government. Here lay saints and soldiers, tributes to both heaven and earth. I’d entered the gray Gothic building beneath the gaze of rooftop gargoyles including the movie villain Darth Vader. He stared out beside traditional demons and monsters, set there after children across the nation voted to add a modern icon to the collection. Inside, stained glass windows depicted religious figures but also the Apollo 11 moon mission. Altar pieces in Saint Mary’s Chapel showed the mother of Jesus near a statue of Abraham Lincoln, whose visage, in pennies, lined the floor. The Humanitarian Bay honored Saint Francis of Assisi and also George Washington Carver, who’d studied peanuts. Last time I’d been here, I’d attended the funeral of astronaut Neil Armstrong. Diana Krall had sung, “Fly Me to the Moon.” Not exactly religious fare.
Now I stood with Nadine Huxley in the Miracle Chapel, beneath the window mosaic depicting lepers. Nadine was a small, trim blonde in black, with a clerical collar snug against her white throat. We both wore surgical masks. Behind us, all three rows of seats were crowded with worshippers, some of whom were clearly sick and should have been at the hospital. A man walked in behind me and knelt. His lips moved. I felt his eyes shift to me. He was praying.
I told the dean, “So far we’ve been concentrating on medical aspects. I’m curious about leprosy in religion.”
I knew Dean Huxley from her previous posting in Boston, where she’d returned from a leprosy mission in India, and addressed staffers at the Wilderness Medicine Program on treatment in poorer countries. I’d found her a brilliant and sensitive person, who managed to mesh a deep appreciation of the Bible with one of science. She had no problem mixing the biblical and the political, the biblical and the scientific. That’s what I wanted to hear now.
“Leprosy?” she said. “In the Old Testament, it is basically a punishment. “The word itself is a translation from the Hebrew tzoraat, or ‘smiting.’ Moses asks Pharoah to let his people go, allow Jewish slaves to exit from Egypt, and he touches his chest as a threat, as if he’s leprous. Leprosy was punishment for lashon hara, slander. When Miriam mocks Moses, she is punished by God with leprosy. Tzoraat is often in the Old Testament. Read Leviticus. It’s all over the place.”
“As a punishment,” I repeated.
“For ridiculing God’s messenger, or message, yes.”
“And in the New Testament? The same?”
There were many more worshippers here than usual. Some watched Nadine. Others were engrossed in prayer. Smarter ones wore surgical masks and gloves against infection. Others ignored precautions, which was stupid, considering that this place drew the sick. I saw couples holding hands, parents who had brought children. What I saw was undoubtedly repeating itself in towns and cities all over the country. Churches, mosques, and synagogues would be hosting a steady stream of terrified supplicants, seeking divine help.
Above us, in windows, lepers knelt before Christ, frozen in colored glass. The art commemorated events considered divine and, like Bible Fever as Admiral Galli called it, allegedly violated the laws of nature. Twenty-two panels showed impossible events, made true by the Lord. Jesus walking on the sea. The healing of the blind, the man with dropsy, the demonic, lepers.
“In the New Testament, leprosy is cured by prophets. It’s an affliction, not a punishment,” she said. “In Latin, ‘Et cum ingrederetur quoddom castellum, occurrerunt ei decem viri leprosy, qui steterunt a longe.’ ‘And as Christ entered a town, ten leprous men met him, standing at a distance…’”
I noticed that some of the people who had been praying were now listening to us. Some stared outright.
“Can we continue this somewhere else?” I asked.
“Are you here officially, Joe?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then we stay here,” she said, “for them.”
I sighed. “You said that in the Old Testament, leprosy was punishment for mocking God or his prophets. Have you ever heard of the Sixth Prophet? A person? A book? A mention? Anything at all?”
“‘The Sixth Prophet’? Why do you ask?”
“I’m not sure. I’m just asking.”
“Well, there are so many ways to answer that, so many prophets. Oral ones. Written ones. Minor ones. A prophet is an oracle of God. A prophet’s primary duty is to convey the holy word. In the American Orthodox Church, Micah would be the sixth. He prophesied the birth of the Savior. In the Mormon Church, Joseph F. Smith was, I believe, its sixth prophet. Islam has twenty-five prophets. Abraham is sixth. Where are you going with this?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Is there a connection? The outbreak and prophets?”
I tried to remember the exact words that the two men in Somalia had been singing. I couldn’t. I said, “I never knew there were so many prophets.”
She laughed. “Well, in three thousand years of history, you get a big list. Saint Anthony was a patron for Saint Anthony’s fire, thought to be leprosy. Saint Bernard of Siena cured lepers. Saint Damian died afflicted. And those are so-called real prophets. There are plenty of false ones, coming out of the woodwork all the time. Cult prophets. Visit any asylum, you’ll find a dozen prophets.”
“So Old Testament, punishment. New Testament, not.”
“Nothing’s that easy. Jacobus de Voragine was archbishop of Genoa, thirteenth century. His writings charged that Emperor Constantine was punished by God with leprosy for persecuting Christians. So while the official version was cures, even churchmen pointed fingers.”