Deir Al-Suryan Monastery, Wadi Natrun, Egypt
As Gracie had predicted, they’d barely managed to beat the news crews to the monastery, and were now safely ensconced behind its walls. A growing number of cars and vans were gathering outside the gates. With the rest of the monks alarmed by the sudden activity—the monastery was home to almost two hundred of them—the abbot set out to calm them while dispatching Brother Ameen to talk to the journalists. The younger monk told those crowding the gates that Father Jerome had no comment as yet, and asked them to respect his privacy. The reporters protested loudly, but to no avail.
The siege had begun.
Gracie’s satphone was back up and running. There was no point in staying under the radar any longer. On the contrary. She, Dalton, and Finch were supremely well placed to trump their peers on this story, which was now monopolizing the screens at all the major news channels, commanding continuous coverage and constant live updates. Their exclusive was alive and well, and less than half an hour after getting back, they were sending their first “live” footage from the roof of the keep that abutted the monastery’s entrance gate.
Standing on top of the large, sand-colored cube, Gracie weighed her words carefully as she faced the lens of Dalton’s camera.
“He hasn’t yet made a statement, Jack. As you can imagine, he’s overwhelmed by what’s happened in the last couple of days. All I can confirm to you at the moment is that Father Jerome is indeed here with us at the monastery.”
“But you’ve talked to him, haven’t you?” Roxberry asked, through her earpiece.
“Yes, I have,” she affirmed.
“And what did he tell you?”
Roxberry’s frustration was coming through loud and clear, and Gracie’s cagey replies weren’t helping. She’d avoided mentioning to him that they’d shown Father Jerome the footage of the sightings, and hadn’t shared what he’d told them in the cave. She and Finch had sifted with great care through what she would or wouldn’t say, deciding that it wasn’t their place—not yet, anyway—to announce things that the priest had said in confidence and that could be taken wildly out of context and distorted at will, which was inevitable. Hard as it was to keep a huge scoop like that to themselves, they’d agreed that it was more appropriate to give Father Jerome the chance to tell his story himself, if and when he chose to do it. They’d approach him for a live interview as soon as he’d had a chance to rest and let it all sink in.
“He asked us to respect his need for a bit of peace right now, which we fully understand.”
She could almost feel Roxberry’s rising blood pressure throbbing through her earpiece.
She and Finch had also debated whether or not to use the material they’d shot inside the cave. Gracie felt they’d been granted a privileged viewing, and she had misgivings about airing the footage, feeling as if she’d be betraying the priest’s trust. But, as Finch had pointed out, they couldn’t not use it either. It was too good for that, it was part of the story, and besides, the British documentary crew had been allowed to film it for broadcast purposes. It was already airing around the world. He couldn’t see the harm in simply confirming it, and Gracie had agreed.
She signed off, expecting an instantaneous and irate callback from the news desk, and stepped over to the edge of the flat roof. The roof had nothing but a low, three-inch lip around it, and Gracie felt a bit uneasy looking at the sharp drop-off. As she gazed beyond it at the flat, barren landscape outside the monastery’s walls, she also had a different kind of bad feeling. The trickle of headlights bouncing across the desert was growing ominously as more and more cars converged on the monastery. She knew the region well enough to know how quickly things got out of hand, how suddenly religious passions got inflamed and escalated into bloodshed. She tore her gaze away from the eerie light show and joined Finch and Dalton, who were huddled around the open laptop, watching the Al Jazeera reporter’s live broadcast from outside the gates.
“Weird, isn’t it?” she observed, overcome by a sudden tiredness and setting herself down cross-legged beside them. “Sitting here, inside the gates, watching ourselves from the outside in.”
“It’s like a bizarro-world version of a hostage situation,” Dalton intoned.
Gracie noticed a shift in the shadows coming out of the roof hatch to her left, and saw Brother Ameen’s head pop out. He gave them a subdued nod and climbed up the rickety ladder to join them.
“How’s Father Jerome?” Gracie asked.
He shrugged wearily. “Confused. Scared. Praying for guidance.”
Gracie nodded in empathy, frustrated that she couldn’t give him any answers herself. She knew that the pressure he was under was only starting. Watching the streaming news reports on the laptop only confirmed it. The reports coming in from Cairo and Alexandria were troubling. The revelation that Father Jerome had effectively foreseen what was still unexplained was causing a huge stir across the country. The polarization of opinions was already clear, even though the story had barely broken. The clips chosen for broadcast showed the local Christians to be confused, but generally excited, by the news. For them, Father Jerome had long been a beacon of positive transformation, and on the whole, they seemed to be embracing his involvement as something inspirational and wanted to know more. The Muslims who were interviewed, on the other hand, were either dismissive or angry. And, Gracie thought cynically, probably chosen for how inflammatory—hence attention-grabbing—their reactions were. Clerics were denouncing Father Jerome and calling on their followers not to be swayed by what they were already describing as trickery.
She glanced over at the young monk. His face was tight with tension.
“What is it?” she asked him.
He kept his eyes on the screen for a moment, then turned to her.
“I don’t understand what this thing is that you all saw. I don’t understand Father Jerome’s visions either, or how they’re both related. But there are some things I do know. Egypt’s not a rich country. Half the people around here have little or no education and live on less than two dollars a day. Even doctors in public hospitals don’t get paid more than that. But we’re also a very religious country,” he continued, his eyes drifting off to the chaotic light show below. “People take comfort in their religion because they don’t see hope in anything else around them. They don’t have faith in their politicians. They’re tired of traffic and pollution and rising prices and falling wages and corruption. They have no one else to trust but God. It’s the same everywhere else in this part of the world. Religious identity matters more to people out here than their common citizenship. And here, in this country—we’re on a knife edge as far as sectarian differences are concerned. It’s taboo to talk about it, but it’s a real problem. There have been a lot of incidents. Our brothers at the Abu Fana Monastery were attacked twice in the last year. The second time, they were beaten and whipped and made to spit on the cross.” He paused then turned, his eyes bouncing between the three of them before settling on Gracie. “There’s a lot of tension and a lot of misunderstanding between the people of this country. And there are millions of them within an hour’s drive of here.”
Gracie understood. It wasn’t a good mix.
“Bringing Father Jerome down from the cave was a good move,” he added. “But it might not be enough.”
She’d been thinking the same thing. An alarming vision coalesced inside her: that of two seriously antagonistic groups outside the gates, Coptic Christians on a pilgrimage of sorts to hear what Father Jerome had to say, and Muslims out to repel whatever outrage the kuffar—the blasphemers—were perpetrating.