Chapter 11
The diary Bishop Russo accidentally left behind in my lab has proven to be extremely informative. I’ve gained more insight into the twisted and deviant plans of Russo than I ever wanted to learn. He was meticulous in expressing his feelings in words and drafting out his step-by-step plan. On the day that Bishop Russo barged into my laboratory it was different. Something in the clone was beginning to trouble him.
“Matthew, I’m sorry to disturb you. I didn’t call before I flew up here because I wanted no one to know where I was going. We’ve got to talk. I need some answers right away.” Russo seemed desperate. Over the years I had grown to mistrust this beady-eyed man. This was a new side of him: a weaker, uncontrolled side that actually appealed to me.
“Bishop Russo, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this before. What’s got a burr under your saddle?” I questioned.
“It’s that damned clone of yours,” the Bishop responded.
“My clone now. I feel like a father when the son does something wrong. All of a sudden the mother cries out, ‘That son of yours.’ So, what did my son do now?”
“I’m sure you’ve been watching the news. You know about his peacemaking trips around the world. These things have changed him. At one time, I felt as if he was working with the Prophet Thompson and me. Now, it’s like we are working for him. There has been a radical change in his personality. Could it be some kind of genetic problem?” he asked.
“Maybe, I don’t know. I could run some tests on him to see if there is a problem. Personally, I think that he’s starting to believe his own press,” I said as I folded up my books. I placed them on the shelf next to my desk as I tried to place the blame a little closer to home for Russo.
“If he is, then that cloned messiah is going to foul up the plans we’ve set,” he grimaced plowing deep hard lines across his face.
“Are they your plans? Or are they his plans? Have you stopped to question whether or not they are God’s plans? I think it’s time that you and the mighty prophet start to examine your motivations in this project,” I snapped out self-righteously.
“Like your motivation was so high and lofty. The moment I mentioned a million dollars you were on board. So, don’t give me that holier than thou crap. You’re just like Thompson and me,” he lashed back at me. His words stung because they were true. I had examined my motivation and what I did was more for me than anyone else involved. I felt convicted and deserved his comment.
“I’m sorry, John. You’re right. He scares me. His leadership of this ten nation European Union has established him as a world power broker; and the possibility of joining those ten nations to the mother church frightens me even more,” I confided.
“Don’t be too worried about that. His Eminence, the Pope, is racing to pull away from the linking of the Union and the church. I’ve tried to convince him that world peace could be achieved by placing such a moral rudder at the headship of new European Union. He isn’t buying it,” Russo explained. He sat back in the big, leather chair opposite my desk and rubbed his face hard with his two hands. He was trying to bring the blood to his brain so he could think clearly.
“Look, John, why don’t you fly back to Rome, grab our clone and bring him in for a hundred thousand mile check-up. If there is something I can do then we’ll do it. Like I said, though, I think he’s simply believing all that’s been told him,” I said in as calming of a voice as possible while inside I started to unravel.
Russo snapped to his feet. His nervousness hadn’t left him. He reached down and snatched up his battered, leather brief case. His quick movement tipped it and the contents went sprawling across my lab floor. I bent down to help him and he glanced up at me. His eyes had a sadness in them that allowed me to see his heart. He spoke, “I guess I wanted a Jesus with flesh on him and now I’m trying to control him. I’m wrong in that, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know, John. I really don’t know,” I answered as I shook my head.
The Bishop was probably on his flight back to Rome by the time I sat at my desk again. As I swung my feet under it, my shoe kicked something. The item slid out of the other side of the desk. I got up and went around to see what it was. It was a thick leather-bound book. At first I thought it was Russo’s Bible. I put it on my desk thinking that I’d post it down to him in Rome the next day. If it hadn’t been for Beth’s phone call, I would have done just that without even opening the book.
“Matthew,” her voice came through the phone. I loved to hear her voice. “I heard something on TV today that troubled me. It was a Biblical reference. So, I guess I’ve got a Bible question for you.”
“What luck, Bishop Russo was just in and he accidentally dropped his Bible. I’ve got it right here on my desk so spit it out,” I responded playfully.
“What was that son of a…”
“Now, Beth,” I shot out to stop her. Beth had never liked the Bishop and I’m sure with good reason. “He had some concerns about Jesus and he needed to ask me some questions. Anyway, he’s gone. So, ask me the question?”
“The guy on TV said that in the last days before Christ returns, there would the formation of ten nations into a union under a religious leader. Where is that in the Bible?” she questioned.
“I’m not sure, probably in that last book, Revelations,” I answered. “Let me see.”
I picked up the heavy, thick, black leather volume and turned to the back section. It was blank. I flipped forward until I found pages covered not in Bible verses but in the handwritten scrawl of John Russo. It was his diary and the entries went back to before we met. It wasn’t a daily record but from its appearance, it was an important record of the major events in the clone’s life.
“Beth, I’ll have to call you back on that. Something just came up. Something very important.” I hung up the phone and rushed down the hall to the copier room. My heart was thumping. What if Russo discovered it missing and was heading back to get it? I needed his notes so I could know his thoughts. I had to copy this and get it back to him before he became suspicious. I flipped through page after page copying for the next two hours. My eyes, feet and back were sore but I needed to get these notes to a safe place where I could read them.
As I was lost in thought over my current project, I heard fast paced steps clicking down the hall. My office was the only room on that narrow hallway of the building. The steps had the cadence of a man in a great hurry. I grabbed my notes and the diary, flipped off the light and slid behind the door to the copier room. There was only one way out and only one way in. My heart beat loudly in my mouth that I was sure it alone was enough to betray my hiding place. The footsteps hurried by the door and further on. I heard my office door handle jiggle. Whoever it was, they wanted to see me.
The clicking steps reversed and headed back down the hall towards me. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to be invisible. The steps clicked to a sudden stop outside the door. The light from the hall cut a white, four foot long rectangle on the copier room floor. The person in the hallway stepped towards the half open door. His shadow started into the rectangle. It moved more like the rising bands of heat racing up from the ground on a hot August day. The shadow stopped. It moved no further. I listened for the sound of my visitor’s breathing. Nothing. It was dead quiet.
The hand of the shadowy figure raised from its side until the tip of the shadow touched the copier. Suddenly the whirring sound of the machine fan stopped and the lights on the control board went dead. The shadow receded and then slowed as it retreated. I waited for the shadow to wrap around the door and grasp me. Then suddenly the clicking heel headed off down the hall.
I waited a few minutes before I moved back to the machine and tried the on switch. Nothing happened. I clicked it on and off several times but nothing happened. How could a shadow shut off a machine and render it inoperative? The whole affair was starting to frighten me and there were two more pages to copy. I needed those copies.
I walked into my office and saw my flat bed scanner. I booted up my computer system and decided to finish off the copying that way. It took me a few moments and then I wrapped the diary to send back. I had to cover my tracks and make Russo believe that I never saw the inside of the diary.
I scribbled a note to him, “Dear John, your Bible fell out of your briefcase when you were here. I didn’t think a Bishop should be without the main tool of his trade. I’m sending it off to you within minutes of you’re departure. Who knows, with the slowness of air travel and the lateness of flights, it may beat you back to Rome.” I hoped the humor would disarm any suspicions that I had done exactly what I had done: copied the entire book.
Those notes proved invaluable to me as I fit the whole story together. It was his last entry that shocked me as it rolled off my laser printer. The ink on the diary page must have just dried as he landed in Zurich to see me. The Bishop, the Prophet and the Messiah had gathered that morning to discuss the problems with the new European Union. The cementing factor was the Catholic Church but the Pope wasn’t in favor of linking politics and the Vatican together.
Thompson and Russo felt blocked by this one obstacle in the road to their goal. They couldn’t move ahead and the man sitting in St. Peter’s Basilica wouldn’t budge on his view. They knew that only one man stood in their way of establishing the potential and essential power that it would take to solidify the new union on the ashes of the financially broken European Union.
Russo’s concern over the clone was more than he let me know. It was true that Jesus was certainly becoming the leader amongst them. This was disturbing to both Thompson and the Bishop. Thompson wanted the Union to come together quickly. He would be airing his show in every one of the countries. The revenue potential was extremely high.
Through my source within the Vatican, I knew that the Holy Father kept the clone at a distance. The Pope recognized that any one-on-one meeting would be misconstrued by the Messiah’s followers as a validation of the clone’s ministry. He still wasn’t sure. Something was missing in the clone’s brown, piercing eyes. The Pope was a most formidable blockade to the plans and desires of the three: the Bishop, the Prophet and the Messiah.
As I was putting away my copy of the diary in a safe place, I noticed one page had been written on hurriedly. The ink lines at times made little sense. I felt like I was reading a thought that Russo needed to remember, a phrasing that was important. Bishop Russo scribbled in large letters, “He said he would take care of it. What did he mean? Would he…” The rest was unintelligible.
This must have been the last words he scrawled on the airplane before disembarking. Hurriedly written after the tension filled morning meeting with the other two. If I conjectured and put together what I could read between Russo’s words, the clone had exerted himself above them. He had taken on a role above theirs. A role that would one day leave them as his servants. That meeting ended with Jesus saying he would take care of it. He would take care of what? The remaining hours of that day answered the question. It was too shocking to believe and I suppose when you read it, you won’t believe it.