Authors: John Edward
“You don’t want to miss the show today. Call your relatives and friends, call anyone that you care about, and tell them that they must watch this show today.
“Why?
“Because today I am going to lay out for you, as clearly as I can, the danger—no, ‘danger’ is not a strong enough word—the perils facing us. And folks, when I say facing us, I mean every man, woman, and child who is of good heart.
“I now know, though I am not at liberty to reveal my sources, that the President has hosted meetings with people of religion and science to deal with this crisis that faces us.
“Religion and science together?” Dave smiled at the camera. “Isn’t that a little like matter and antimatter?
“A preacher and scientist went into a bar. The bar disappeared in a puff of smoke.”
“Okay, that was a weak joke, I’ll admit. It might even have been a sick joke.
“But you do get my point, I hope. Normally the Big Bad Wolf is the budget or lobbyists or right-wing or left-wing conspiracies. I’ve been a whistle-blower on many topics, but none has scared me half as much as this black cloud. If something is out there, some deep, dark, sinister shadow, a force of evil that is threatening us, it is threatening scientist and preacher alike, is it not? And is it not in the nature of man to form alliances for survival?
“This, I can tell you from a scientific viewpoint. A few weeks ago, a scientist at NASA, while studying pictures of space, noticed an anomaly. The redshift of Abel 2744 moved from
z
equals 0.308, to
z
equals 0.512.”
Dave chuckled. “
Z
equals zero what? Dave, what on Earth are you talking about?
“Well, that’s just it. I’m talking about nothing of this Earth. I’m talking about a cluster of stars, officially Abel 2744 but referred to as Pandora’s Cluster. And from that cluster a mysterious cloud of dark matter is coming toward Earth. If you don’t understand dark matter, then you can just refer to it as I have been. That’s why I think of it as a dark or sinister shadow, without real substance but very real nonetheless.
“Interesting, don’t you think, that this evil would be coming from Pandora’s box? Or, in this case, Pandora’s Cluster. And it is evil, my friends. It is more than just a scientific observation; it is a manifestation of evil.
“On another but related note, in recent days all eyes have been focused on the heavens, and I have reported to you from this desk on the strange goings-on that even our top scientists have had trouble following.
“It seems that billionaire Roger C. Bracken’s attempt to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon blew up shortly after launch this morning in rural Oregon.
“Was this attempt by man to answer some of our most troubling questions thwarted by forces we do not—and perhaps cannot—understand?
“Pandora’s Cluster, anyone? You make the call.”
The broadcaster held his hand up, palm out. “From New York, this is Dave Hampton. Good night, America and the world.”
Off camera, the news broadcaster slumped in his chair. For the entire program he had kept it together as he reported on the dire events he saw unfolding on the planet and beyond. Now he felt the weight of the danger the world was facing and the choices—good, bad, and indifferent—that mankind had made in the past. And the choices that would have to be made in the very near future.
CHAPTER
21
Melbourne, Australia
After Mary Beth was killed, Dawson quit his job. He could no longer face going to work in the same place where he had shared that final thirty minutes with Mary Beth. For a while he did consultations with writers, and he took jobs writing for hire, doing several Westerns under a house name.
Then he wrote
The Cain Collage
. In this book he introduced the character of Matt Matthews, an Indiana Jones type. On the day the planes hit the World Trade Center towers, Dawson saw the curtain pulled back to reveal evil, the dark forces of the world, and “good versus evil” was the theme of his book.
The Cain Collage
became a runaway bestseller, and he followed it with
The Mizraim Montage,
using the same character and the same good-versus-evil theme.
Dawson looked at the book again. His name was above the title, and above that, in shining blue foil, was a legend:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
. He had to admit, that had a good sound to it.
And now he was on a promotional tour, not the 5
A.M
. local TV show in places like Mobile, St. Louis, and Dallas, but ten thousand miles from home.
He could hear the same repetitive questions coming at him, but this time with an Aussie accent:
“What was the motivation behind the series?”
“How many books do you see yourself writing for the character in this series?”
“Are you excited for it to be a movie?”
The funny part about doing these interviews was that the interviewer had hardly ever read the book. The producers of the show would glance at the press release notes, then formulate questions for the host to ask, squeezing them into a two-minute segment.
Sometimes that canned procedure would have ludicrous results.
“I got the idea from an exhibit I saw in the American Museum of Natural History in New York,”
Dawson would say.
“So, where did you get the idea for this story?”
the interviewer would ask, not having listened to what Dawson had just said.
Non-writers probably thought that such things as book signings and publicity tours were the glamorous side of the business. Authors knew that such events were arduous and disagreeable, but it was the nature of the business and absolutely necessary to do these interviews to allow people to know the book is out. Having sold over 1 million copies of each of the previous books internationally gave Dawson Rask the luxury of not having to worry about supporting himself. This also allowed him to dedicate his time to the ancient texts, symbolism, and mystical mysteries that his readers so appreciated.
Dawson considered himself a student of the ancient wisdom. He loved to interview the philosophic minds of today’s generation, at least those that he felt would be the ones most remembered. From astrologers to atheists, metaphysicians to quantum physicists, there was not a concept or discipline that he didn’t like to imagine.
He particularly loved the research that inspired him to create the character of Matt Matthews, who blogged his findings on his websites and created a buzz in the Internet world. Matt was a reflection of Dawson—not who he was, but who he would like to be.
And like his character, Dawson was what others would call “a cool dude.” He was personal friends with “Oprah people,” from athletes, to show-business personalities, to the ultra-wealthy, to sitting and former Presidents. His tweets had 8 million followers and counting, and he could start a frenzy with a single released thought.
Dawson was once fined by the City of New York for asking his fans to drop off cans of soup for a local shelter at a City Hall town meeting that was attempting to shut the shelter down. There were fifteen hundred cans dropped off within the hour—forty-five hundred in less than two hours.
The event put a strain on the New York City Police Department, blocking pedestrian and car traffic for over three hours. He had hoped, by his suggestion, to generate local awareness of the situation, but it became national, appearing on every broadcast and cable network news show that day. Dawson knew his popularity, and respected it. His goal was to use his popularity, and his gift for writing, to educate as well as to entertain.
In contrast, Dawson’s brother, Boyd, had overcome the less-than-stellar reputation he had realized in high school. President of a refuse collection company, he had become very successful in part because of his willingness, indeed his eagerness, to do business with the mafia.
“My brother dumps his garbage on the public, and I haul it off,” Boyd liked to say, criticizing his brother’s elitist way of making a living.
Dawson knew that Boyd was very jealous of him. Dawson had risen above his brother’s shadow and sibling competition to sibling victory. And he believed, sincerely, that it had become almost a Cain and Abel rivalry, a theme of good versus evil.
Some literary critics had actually pointed that out as a continuing theme in his novels. A
New York Times
reviewer wrote:
Though elements of the picaresque color the major players of this author’s books, there seems to be in each of them a theme of sibling rivalry, sometimes satirical and overplayed, sometimes as subtle as the base note of a quality perfume. And, as the notes in a perfume produce the final, blended scent, so too, do the “notes” of Rask’s novels combine in such a way as to produce a satisfying read.
The reviews, as well as the sales of all three of his books had been outstanding, and his agent wanted him to release the rights to his first two books to make them Hollywood blockbusters.
Dawson said he would agree, as long as he maintained creative control over the storyline. He simply didn’t need the money to sell out his vision.
He told his agent: “If I had a son and a daughter, named Mike and Emily, I wouldn’t allow a complete stranger to pay me a million dollars for each so he could call them Mark and Carrie!”
* * *
It was too early to use any of the hotel’s valet services, so Dawson ironed his own pants and shirt, got dressed, then looked at the clock. The glowing red digital clock said that it was 6:30
A.M
. He picked up the phone.
“Good morning, Mr. Rask,” the man at the front desk said.
Dawson smiled. He almost expected the man to say, “Throw a shrimp on the barbie.”
“Yes, is my driver here yet?”
“He is indeed, sir, sitting in the lobby as we speak.”
“Good, tell him I’ll be right down.”
Dawson had not yet met his driver, as arrangements had been made by his publisher and publicist. But when he stepped from the elevator, there was little doubt that the tall man wearing a blue blazer, tan slacks, and what Dawson would describe as a Greek fisherman’s hat was his driver. His suspicion was corroborated when the tall man stepped toward him.
“Would you be Mr. Rask, by chance?”
“Not by chance,” Dawson replied. “I worked hard to get here.”
The driver laughed politely. “Your car is out front, sir.”
The black stretch Mercedes was parked under the porte cochere on the other side of the drive in the area reserved for VIPs. The driver held the door open for him, which always made Dawson feel a little self-conscious. The steering wheel was on the right, and even though he knew they drove on the left side of the road here in Australia, it was still a little jarring.
On the way to his first interview, on a national radio show, he experienced an anxious feeling. Why? he wondered. He was certainly well seasoned by now—he had done hundreds of these things over the last three years.
A few seconds later, he felt clammy and nauseous—not carsick nauseous, just nauseous—and he actually thought for a moment that he might need to vomit. As he rolled the window down to get a breath of fresh air, he saw a large statue of a lion. But it wasn’t an ordinary statue, because this one seemed to be moving.
That’s not possible,
he thought.
“We are here, Mr. Rask,” the driver said. “I will be waiting for you in the car park, reading your novel. If you need anything, call me on my mobile. Here’s my card … Jack Ransom.”
Dawson happened to look down on the passenger’s side of the front seat and saw a newspaper. He didn’t notice the headlines, nor did he read any specific article, but for some strange reason, disconnected words from different parts of the page seemed to leap out at him.
Joy … Cancer … Belfast … Mere … Christianity … November.
The words seemed to float above the paper, and he felt a wave of dizziness come over him. He closed his eyes, and bracing himself with one hand against the top of the car, he reached up with his other to press his hand against his forehead.
“Perry Landers,”
the driver said.
“What?” Dawson asked.
“I asked if you are all right,” the driver said.
Dawson blinked a few times and stared at the driver. He could have sworn that he heard the driver say “Perry Landers.”
“Mr. Rask?” the driver asked, his words a bit more anxious this time.
“Oh, uh, yes,” Dawson said. “I’m fine. I’m just trying to get used to the difference in time between here and home.”
The driver smiled. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I visited my first cousin in the U.S. a couple of years ago. He lives in Nashville. You’re sure you are all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”
Despite his reassuring answer, Dawson knew that he wasn’t all right. Something was wrong and he knew it. It was as if had received bad news without actually receiving it. The air felt heavy, and there was a knot in the pit of his stomach.
“Perry Landers,”
the driver said again.
“What?” This time Dawson barked the word.
“I said have a good interview, sir.”
“Dawson?” his Australia-based publicist called out to him. “You’re on in five minutes. Please come inside now.”
CHAPTER
22
Vatican City
The papal apartments wrap around the Courtyard of Sixtus V on two sides of the top floor of the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. Since the seventeenth century, the papal apartments have been the official residence of the Holy Father. The apartments include the pope’s bedroom, an office for the papal secretary, the pope’s own private study, the dining room and kitchen, and a smallish but comfortable living room with the latest TV equipment.
There is housing for the nuns who run the papal household, as well as a roof garden that Pope Benedict XVI used to enjoy especially. Nearly everyone in the world is familiar with the image of him blessing visitors and tourists in the piazza from his study near his bedroom. The pope lived and worked within these confines as his predecessors had for hundreds of years before him.