Drucker fixed Rydell with blazing intent. “You think global warming is around the corner? This threat’s already here. We may have dodged the bullet with this election, but they’re still out there, they’ll be back, and they’ll fight twice as dirty. They look at it as a war. A war against secularism. A crusade to reclaim the kingdom of God from the nonbelievers and save us all from gay marriage and abortion and stem cell research. And the way things are going, they’re going to make it. At some point, these prayer warriors are going to put a televangelist in the oval office. And then we’ll have a bunch of whack jobs running Capitol Hill and another bunch of nutcases facing off against them in the Middle East, each of them thinking God wants them to show the other the error of their ways, and guess what? It’s going to get ugly. They’ll be lobbing nukes at each other before it’s over. And I’m not going to let that happen.”
Rydell wasn’t following. “And you’re going to do that by giving them a prophet to fire them up even more?”
Drucker just stared at him enigmatically. “Yes.”
“I don’t get it.” Rydell pressed on. “You’re giving them something real, a real miracle man to worship and rally around. A Second Coming to unite them all.”
“Yes,” Drucker repeated, leading him.
Rydell tried to follow his train of thought. “You’re getting all the church leaders to embrace him and hitch their wagons to his train.”
“Yes.” This time, a hint of satisfaction cracked across Drucker’s face.
Rydell’s brow furrowed. “And then you’ll get him to change his message?”
Drucker shook his head. “No,” he stated. “I’ll just pull the rug out from under him.”
Rydell stared at him questioningly—then his eyes shot wide. “You’re going to expose him as a fake?”
“Exactly.” Drucker’s hard stare burned into him. “We’ll let it run for a while. Weeks. Months. Just let it build. Let every pastor in the country accept him and endorse him as God’s messenger. Let them spread the word to their flocks,” he added, spitting out the word mockingly. “And when it’s all sunk in and settled, when it’s deeply embedded and they’re all on the hook—we’ll show him for what he really is. We’ll show them what the sign really is.”
“And you’ll show them how gullible they are.” Rydell had a faraway look on his face as he imagined the outcome in his mind’s eye.
“The preachers will have so much egg on their faces they’ll have a hard time stepping behind those pulpits and facing their people. The churchgoers will feel like they’ve been had—and maybe they’ll start questioning the rest of the crap they hear in those halls. It’ll open up a whole new discussion, a whole new questioning frame of mind. ‘If it was so easy to fool us today, with everything we know . . . how easy was it to fool people two thousand years ago? What do we really know about that?’ It’ll put everything about religion on the table. And it’ll make people think twice about who they’re willing to follow blindly.”
Rydell felt heady. He himself had been ready to try and convert the world to his cause, but this . . . this went much further. He let out a weary hiss and shook his head. “You’ll make a lot of them even more fanatical than they already are,” he warned.
“Probably,” Drucker agreed casually.
“And you could also start a civil war,” Rydell added, “if not a world war.”
Drucker scoffed. “Oh, I very much doubt that.”
“Are you kidding me?” Rydell flared. “You’re going to have a whole bunch of really angry people out there. And they’ll be looking to take it out on someone. Who’s going to shoulder the blame? You can’t exactly stand up and tell them, ‘Hey, we did it for your own good.’ The country’s already split right down the middle on this. You’ll polarize them even more. The blowback will be horrendous. There’ll be blood in the streets. And that’s before you get the blowback from the rest of the world. You’ve seen what’s starting to happen in Pakistan, in Egypt, in Israel and Indonesia. It’s not just Christians who are buying into your little scam. Muslims, Jews, Hindus . . . they’re fighting among each other over whether or not he’s the real deal. And they’re going to be seriously pissed off when they discover it’s got Uncle Sam’s fingerprints all over it. People don’t take kindly to having others mess around with their beliefs, Keenan. They get real angry about that. And it’s Americans who are going to pay for it with their blood. You’re gonna end up triggering a war you’re trying to stop.”
“Well if they’re so closed-minded, if they don’t see the danger of their ways and insist on marching down that path to destruction, then they’re beyond saving.” Drucker seethed. “We had a war over slavery. Maybe we do need a war over this.” He gave a haughty shrug. “If it’s going to happen sooner or later, might as well just get it over with. And then maybe we can build something more sane from its ashes.”
Rydell felt as if someone had reached in and yanked his lungs out with pliers. “You’re insane,” he told Drucker. “You’ve lost all sense of perspective.”
“Not at all.”
“You can’t do this, Keenan,” Rydell insisted.
“No. Not without a fall guy,” Drucker conceded.
Rydell stared at him, the words colliding with his tangled thoughts, and instantly got it. “Me. That’s what you need me for.”
Drucker nodded stoically. “I needed a fall guy. Someone with a completely different motive, one that wasn’t in any way related to the politics of this country. Because this can’t be seen as a political act, you’re absolutely right about that. The only way to do this is to paint it as the desperate act of a visionary genius with no political motive other than trying to save the planet. And who knows? It may well end up giving people more awareness of the global warming problem.”
“But you couldn’t care less either way,” Rydell said sardonically.