The Power Within Him – The Power Within Us All
January 20,2021 – Israel
It was just after dawn. Robert Milner acted as navigator while Decker Hawthorne drove the rented jeep through the mountain pass on their way to meet Christopher. In the jeep Decker had brought food, bottled water, and a first aid kit. His thoughts alternated between worry about the condition in which they would find Christopher and anticipation of what Robert Milner had told him in the lobby of the Ramada Renaissance forty days earlier. The barren countryside brought back memories of Decker's own wilderness experience eighteen years earlier, when he and Tom Donafin had made their way through Lebanon toward Israel before being rescued by Jon Hansen. He recalled the powerful shift of his emotions in that moment as he lay on the ground, tangled in barbed wire, with three rifles pointed at his head, expecting to be shot; and then suddenly recognizing the U.N. emblems on the soldiers' helmets, and realizing that he and Tom were safe.
In the past, when Decker recalled that moment, he thought of it as just another case of being in the right place at the right time. Now he could not help but believe it was much more. Had it not happened, he would not have met Ton Hansen and he surely would never have become his press secretary. And had Decker not worked for Hansen, who later became Secretary-General, then Christopher would not have had the opportunities he did to work in the U.N. and later to head a major U.N. agency, and then to become a U.N. ambassador serving on the Security Council. Surely this was more than chance.
It occurred to him that this chain of events had not just started on that road in Lebanon. There was the destruction of the Wailing Wall, and then he and Tom were taken hostage; and before that, there were the events which had allowed him to go to Turin, Italy, in the first place. If he had not gone to Turin, he certainly never would have been called by Professor Harry Goodman on that cold November night back in 1988, to come and see what Goodman had discovered on the Shroud.
As he continued to think through the chain of circumstances that had brought him to this point, he tried to find the single weakest link in the chain, the seemingly least important event which, had it not occurred, would have averted any of the later events.
"Some things we must assign to fate," Robert Milner said, breaking the silence. It was as though he had been listening to Decker's thoughts.
"Uh… yeah, I guess so," Decker answered.
The days leading up to his return to Israel to find Christopher had been the most anxious of Decker's life. At times he could barely concentrate on his work as he counted the days until Christopher's return and anticipated what would follow. Milner had talked about a time so dark and bleak that the destruction of the Russian Federation and the Disaster would seem mild by comparison. Somehow the horror which might otherwise have consumed Decker at such a thought was mitigated by the hope which Milner also foresaw. Certainly, to this point, nothing cataclysmic had occurred – though the unrest in India and Pakistan might well foreshadow such events. Decker realized he would have to accept the bad along with the good. He just didn't want to dwell on it, especially if, as Milner indicated, such events were inevitable.
Ahead on the trail, a shapeless form began to take on definition. Had Decker noticed it before, he would have thought it was a bush or a tree stump or perhaps an animal, but until this moment it had blended so well into the background that it seemed an inseparable part of its surroundings. "There he is," said Milner.
Decker pressed a little harder on the gas pedal. As they got closer, he began to wonder again in what condition they would find Christopher. The last time they were together, Christopher had told Decker that he was beginning to wonder whether in the final analysis, his life had been a mistake. Now, forty days later, he was – according to Milner – the man who would lead mankind into 'the final and most glorious step in its evolution.'
In another moment they could see him clearly. His coat and clothes were dirty and tattered. He looked thin but strong. Over the forty days his hair had grown over his ears and he now had a full beard. When Decker saw his face, he was startled for a moment by the astounding resemblance to the face on the Shroud. One thing, however, was very obviously different. The face on the Shroud was peaceful and accepting in death: on Christopher's face was the look of a man driven to achieve his mission.
Milner was the first one out of the jeep. He ran to Christopher and embraced him. Patting Christopher on the back caused a small cloud of dust to rise from his clothes. Christopher then went to Decker, who reached out his hand but Christopher refused it, then instead hugged him as well. He smelled awful, but Decker held him for a long time anyway.
"Are you all right?" Decker asked. "I've been worried about you."
"Yes, yes. I'm fine." Then turning slightly to address both Decker and Milner, he continued. "It's all clear now. It was all part of the plan."
"What plan?" asked Decker.
"I've spoken with my father. He wants me to finish the task."
"You mean… God? You talked with God?!"
Christopher nodded. "Yes," he said quietly. "He wants me to complete the mission I began 2000 years ago. And I need your help; both of you."
Decker felt as though he was standing on the crest of a tidal wave. Suddenly his life had more meaning than he ever imagined possible. He believed what Milner had told him about Christopher's destiny; if he hadn't he never would have left Christopher alone in the desert. But then it had all been cerebral. Now he was hearing it from Christopher's own lips. This was a turning point, not only in the lives of these three men, but of time itself. Just as the coming of Christ had divided time between B.C. and A.D., this too, would be a line of demarcation from which all else would be measured. This undoubtedly was the birth of a New Age. Decker wished that Elizabeth were alive to share it with him.
"What can we do?" Decker managed.
"We must return to New York immediately," Christopher answered. "Millions of lives are at stake."
Before leaving New York, Decker had arranged for the loan of a private jet from David Bragford, telling him that it was for Milner. As planned, the jet and crew were waiting at Ben Gurion airport when Decker, Christopher and Milner arrived. Decker had brought clothes and a shaving kit from home for Christopher, but though he eagerly took advantage of the shower on Bragford's plane and welcomed the clean clothes, Christopher decided to forego the razor and keep the beard.
As Christopher ate his first meal in forty days, Decker briefed him on events at the U.N. Afterward Christopher began to pour over the reams of documents Decker had brought for him to review.
Three hours into the flight, one of the crew members came into the cabin, obviously very concerned about something. "What is it?" Decker asked.
"Sir," he said, "the captain has just picked up a report on the radio. Apparently all hell has broken loose in India."
"We're too late," Christopher whispered to himself as he let his head fall into his open hands.
The crewman continued, "The Pakistani Guard have detonated two nuclear bombs in New Delhi. Millions are dead."
For a long moment they sat in stunned silence, then Decker turned to Milner. "This is what you were talking about in Jerusalem, isn't it?"
"Only the beginning," he said as he reached over and hit the remote control to turn on the satellite television.
Immediately the screen showed the mushroom cloud of the first atomic bomb set off in New Delhi. The billowing cloud of debris seemed to roll back the sky like an immense scroll of ancient tattered parchment. Two days after the Pakistani Guard first made threats of hidden nuclear weapons, the television network had set up remote cameras to run twenty-four hours a day outside the threatened cities just in case the Guard carried out its threats. Even from ten miles away, the camera began to shake violently as the earth trembled from the blast's awesome shock wave. Several hundred yards in front of the camera a small two-story building vibrated with the quake and then collapsed. An instant later a bright flash on the screen marked the second explosion.
"That was the scene approximately one hour ago," the network commentator said, his voice registering his horror, "as two atomic blasts, set off by the Pakistani Guard, rocked the Indian subcontinent. It is believed that the action came in response to the successful interdiction of weapons into Pakistan from China and a new ultimatum issued by General Brooks, commander of U.N. forces in the region. According to sources close to the Pakistani Guard, leaders of the Guard were convinced that U.N. special forces were close to locating the bombs, which would have left little to prevent India from invading Pakistan.
"Within minutes of the explosions the Pakistani government strongly condemned the action by the Guard who, they repeated, are rogue forces not associated with the Pakistani government. But by then India had already retaliated, launching two nuclear-tipped missiles on Pakistan. Apparently prepared for such a response from India, China immediately launched interceptors which successfully brought down the Indian missiles before they could reach their targets.
"Prior to that launch, China had attempted to maintain a neutral position in the long-running conflict between its neighbors. That neutrality was frequently called into question, however, because of the Chinese arms merchants who served as the main source of arms for Pakistan."
As Christopher, Decker, and Milner watched, new information poured in at an incredible rate. In a matter of only a few hours, the entire war was unfolding. In response to China's action, India launched a conventional attack on the Chinese interceptor bases, while simultaneously launching five additional missiles on Pakistan. Three were intercepted; two reached their targets.
Pakistan then responded to India's attack by launching a volley of its own nuclear weapons and within minutes the Pakistani Guard set off the remaining seven bombs they had planted in Indian cities.
In a temporary lull in the action, the scene on television switched to a satellite feed from a camera mounted on the top of a remotely-controlled all-terrain rover, which showed the first horrifying scenes from the suburban areas of New Delhi. Fire was everywhere. Rubble filled the streets. The sky was filled with thick black smoke from the fires and radioactive fallout, which blocked out the setting sun as though it were covered by a loosely-woven black cloth. Scattered around the landscape were hundreds of people, dead and dying. Immediately in front of the vehicle, the mostly nude body of a young Indian woman lay sprawled in the street. All but a few scraps of her clothing had been burned away. On the less charred parts of her body, where some skin remained, the flowered pattern of the sari she had been wearing was seared into her flesh like a tattoo.
Sitting on the street beside the woman's body, a startled young girl, three or four years old, looked up at the rover and began screaming. The bombs had not been so merciful to her as to her mother; she might languish two or three days before life fully released its grip on her. For a moment the camera dwelled on her, her skin covered with numerous open blisters.
Christopher turned away from the screen. "I could have prevented this," he said. It took a moment for the statement to sink through the horror and register with Decker.
"Christopher, there's nothing you could have done," Decker answered. "It's useless to blame yourself."
"But there is something I could have done. I told you before we left New York that I felt Moore was going to do something which would lead to catastrophe, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. But it wasn't true. There was one thing I could have done. And now, because I hesitated, millions have been killed and millions more will die. Even after the war is over there will be untold deaths from fallout and radiation poisoning. And unless the U.N. acts to provide immediate relief, millions more will die of starvation and disease."
"But it's crazy to blame yourself for this. If this is the result of something Moore did, then the responsibility rests with him alone."
"Oh, the responsibility does indeed rest with Moore. It was he who put General Brooks back in control, and it was he who directed Brooks to issue the two ultimatums. With the first, Moore was hoping to bring the war to a quick close in India's favor. In return, he expected to gain Nikhil Gandhi's support for his bid to become Secretary-General. With the second ultimatum, Moore believed he could force the hand of the Pakistani Guard. General Brooks assured him that the Guard didn't really have nuclear devices planted in India, but Moore knew the risk he was taking. If there were no bombs, then the ultimatum would call the Pakistani Guard's bluff. On the other hand, if the threat was real, he knew that a war would destabilize India to the point that Gandhi would likely return to rebuild India and Rajiv Advani would replace him as Primary on the Security Council. Either way, he calculated that he would benefit."
"Are you sure about all this?" Decker asked, unable to believe that Moore would sacrifice so many people to become Secretary-General.
"I am," Christopher answered.
"Christopher is correct," Milner said with certainty.
"Moore is also responsible for the murder of Ambassador Lee," Christopher added. "And he is planning the assassination of Yuri Kruszkegin. There is nothing he will not do to achieve his goals. I must stop him now, before he can do any more."
"Why didn't Moore just kill Gandhi, instead of risking the lives of so many?" Decker asked, still struggling to believe the magnitude of Moore's malevolence.
"The death of Ambassador Lee was believed to be an accident," Milner answered. "If Kruszkegin died, most would assume it was coincidence. But no one would believe that the death of three Primary members was just a fluke, especially if soon after that Moore became Secretary-General precisely because of the replacement of those three members. Besides, killing Gandhi would still leave him the problems in India and Pakistan to deal with as Secretary-General – better to try to end the war quickly in India's favor and ingratiate himself to Gandhi, rather than bring suspicion on himself with three untimely deaths."
"What are you going to do?" Decker asked Christopher.
"In the third chapter of Ecclesiastes," Christopher answered, "King Solomon wrote, 'There is a time for everything: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to reap; a time to heal and a time to kill.'"
Decker looked back and forth from Christopher to Milner and then back to the television screen. As the camera panned the devastation, in the distance, where the smoke and radioactive cloud had not yet entirely shrouded the earth, the moon rose above the horizon, glowing blood red through the desecrated sky.
It was another two hours before their plane landed in New York. From there they went directly to the United Nations, where the Security Council was meeting in closed session. As night had fallen in the east, the war continued to spread. Nuclear warheads dropped like overripe fruit, appearing as falling stars in the night sky. The destruction spread six hundred miles into China and to the south nearly as far as Hyderabad, India. West and north of Pakistan, the people of Afghanistan, southeastern Iran, and southern Tajikstan gathered their families and all they could carry on their backs, and beat a hurried path away from the war. In just days the local weather patterns would fill their fields, rivers, and streams with toxic fallout.
Pakistan was little more than an open grave. India's arsenal was completely spent. What was left of its army survived in small clusters that were cut off from all command and control. Most would die soon from radiation. China was the only participant still in control of its military and it had no interest in going any further with the war. In the few hours it had taken them to fly from Israel and arrive at the U.N., the war had begun and ended. The final estimate of the number killed would exceed four hundred and twenty million. There were no winners.
In quick strides Christopher reached the door of the Security Council Chamber and burst through, followed closely by Decker and Milner. For a moment the members stared at the intruders. Everyone knew Decker but they had not seen Milner in a year and a half, and the change in Christopher was more than the hair and the beard; his whole demeanor had changed. When he recognized Christopher, Gerard Poupardin, who sat some distance from Moore, looked over at another staffer and laughed, "Who the hell does he think he is: Jesus Christ?"
Christopher seized the opportunity provided by the startled silence. "Mr. President," Christopher said, addressing the Canadian ambassador who sat in the position designated for the President of the Security Council. "Though I have no desire to disrupt the urgent business of this body in its goal of providing relief to the peoples of India, Pakistan, China, and the surrounding countries, there is one among us who is not fit even to cast his vote among an assembly of thieves, much less this august body!"
"You're out of order!" Moore shouted as he jumped to his feet. "Mr. President, the Alternate from Europe is out of order." The Canadian ambassador reached for his gavel but froze at the sheer power of Christopher's glance.
"Gentlemen of the Security Council," Christopher continued.
"You're out of order!" Moore shouted again. Christopher looked at Moore and suddenly and inexplicably Moore fell back into his chair, silent.
Christopher continued. "Gentlemen of the Security Council, seldom in history can the cause of a war be traced to one man. On this occasion, it can be. One man sitting among you bears nearly the total burden of guilt for this senseless war. That man is the ambassador from France, Albert Moore."
Moore struggled to his feet. "That's a lie!" he shouted.
Christopher stated the charges against Moore.
"Lies! All lies!" Moore shouted. "Mr. President, this outrage has gone on long enough. Ambassador Goodman has obviously gone completely mad." Moore could feel his strength returning. "I insist that he be restrained and removed from this chamber and that… " Moore once again fell silent as Christopher turned and pointed, his arm fully extended toward him.
"Confess," Christopher said in a quiet but powerful voice.
Moore stared at Christopher in disbelief and began to laugh out loud.
"Confess!" Christopher said again, this time a little louder.
Abruptly, Moore's laughter ceased. The panic in his eyes could not begin to reveal the magnitude of his torment. Without warning he felt as though his blood were turning to acid as it coursed through his veins. His whole body felt as if he were on fire from the inside.
"Confess!" Christopher said a third time, now shouting his demand.
Moore looked in Christopher's eyes and what he saw there left no doubt as to the source of his sudden anguish. He stumbled in pain and caught himself on the table in front of him. Blood began to trickle from his mouth and down his chin as he bit through the tender flesh of his lower lip; his jaw clenched uncontrollably like a vice under the unbearable agony. Gerard Poupardin ran toward Moore as those near him helped him to his seat.
The pain grew steadily worse. There was no way out. "Yes! Yes!" he cried suddenly in excruciating anguish, as he pulled free of the grip of those helping him. "It's all true! Everything he has said is true! The war; Ambassador Lee's death; the plan to kill Kruszkegin; all of it!" Everyone in the room stared wide-eyed in disbelief. No one understood what was happening, least of all Gerard Poupardin. But everyone heard him – Moore had clearly confessed.
Moore hoped only that his confession would bring relief from his torment, and in that he was not disappointed. No sooner had he finished his confession than he fell to the floor, dead.
Someone ran for a doctor and for about fifteen minutes the chamber was filled with confusion, until finally Moore's lifeless body was taken from the room.
"Gentlemen," came a somber voice from near the spot where Moore had fallen. It was Christopher. "A quarter of the world's population is dead or threatened by death in China, India, and the eastern portions of the Middle East. There is so much that must be done, and it must be done quickly. As indelicate as it may seem: with the death of Ambassador Moore, until France can send a new ambassador and the nations of Europe can elect a new Primary, as Alternate from Europe, I am now that region's acting Primary representative. Gentlemen, let us get to the business at hand."
The coroner's report would find that Albert Moore died of a massive heart attack, brought on, it seemed, by the tremendous burden of guilt for what he had done. For Decker, no explanation was necessary: Christopher had begun to exercise the unexplored powers within him. He could only hope and pray that these powers would be equal to the challenges the world would soon face as Christopher led mankind into the final stage of its evolution and into the dawn of the New Age of humankind.