79
After enjoying quality time with his angel, Bishop Prince left her to shower in his private quarters. The girl was reluctant to see him go, but he counseled her that selfishness was sin, and patience was a virtue. With that, he promised to return to her soon.
The angel, of course, was still a virgin, still ripening on the vine of womanhood. He was waiting for the perfect time, enjoying the delicious heightening of intimacy, and when release arrived at last, it would be all the sweeter for his having waited.
Sometimes, he didn’t wait. There were instances when his urges overwhelmed him, and he immediately took advantage of an opportunity. The thorn in his flesh resisted total control, or else it would not have been a thorn; it would have been sinful perversion, and he would have been doomed to hellfire.
But God had better things in store for his prophet. My grace is sufficient . . .
In his master bathroom suite, in a marble-tiled shower enclosure with twenty-four-carat gold taps, he showered. He showered after each visit with his angels, even if he hadn’t removed any of his clothing during the encounter. It was, he admitted, compulsive behavior, as if he believed on some level that frequent purification could wash away the stain of what his flesh had done, as if mere bathing could dislodge the thorn.
He hummed an old Negro spiritual as he lathered soap across his lean physique. The song was a favorite of his maternal grandmother’s, a knobby-knuckled woman who had picked cotton in Mississippi: We shall overcome . . . we shall overcome . . . we shall overcome, someday . . . When he reflected on overcoming, however, he thought about Kingdom rule vanquishing secular society once and for all.
He was in the enviable position of having the entire day to do with as he wished. Tomorrow was Sunday, and he was scheduled to give a sermon to his congregation, but he never prepared sermons in advance, and indeed, would not know the message he was to deliver until he arrived at the podium and gazed into the hungry eyes of the devoted. When you were God’s sanctified instrument, you didn’t require notes or planning; you needed only to listen. As the King had taught: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear . . .
Later that day—after another visit with Chastity—he might even see his wife and children. He hadn’t seen them in over a week and was overdue for a visit, though his wife, the First Lady of the Kingdom, annoyed him with her petty gossip about the wives of church officials. His four children, who ranged between the ages of eight and seventeen, were barely tolerable, too, whiny and hopelessly spoiled by their mother.
Upon reconsideration, perhaps he wouldn’t see them. He didn’t want to spoil his buoyant mood.
Finished showering, he toweled dry and dressed in another suit, a custom-tailored, charcoal gray Brioni. It was a new suit. He never wore the same garments twice, and once he’d worn one, he would ship it to a star forward in the NBA, a loyal servant who tithed fifteen percent of his hefty salary to New Kingdom and believed that donning clothing worn by his bishop guaranteed his success on the basketball court.
As he was knotting his tie, someone knocked urgently at the suite’s outer door.
“Yes?” he asked. Though he was in the dressing room, his baritone resonated throughout the entire master wing.
One of his bodyguards—he was loathe to think of them in those terms, but that was what they were—rushed into the dressing room, chest heaving.
“A threat has breached the front gates, sir.”
“For the love of God, relax, my friend. A threat has breached the front gates of the campus?”
“The front gates of the estate, your holiness.”
Something clutched Bishop Prince’s heart. He would not dishonor himself by labeling it as fear.
“Then take care of it,” Bishop Prince said. “No weapon formed against you shall prosper. Godspeed.”
“Please remain confined to your suite until we’ve eliminated the threat, sir.”
Grunting, Bishop Prince dismissed the servant with a wave. The man fled the room, barking into a hand-held radio.
Although Bishop Prince received death threats frequently, the agents of evil had never infiltrated his private residence. He had a lurking suspicion of who the adversary might be.
He went to the wall of closed-circuit televisions and jabbed a button on a remote control. The screens flickered on.
The cameras showed close-up views of the back of the house, the front, the sides, and various rooms within, including the angel’s guest room. Dressed in a white leotard and tights, the girl sat on the bed, supple legs crossed Indian-style. She brushed her long, dark hair with slow strokes, a gentle smile on her face, as though she were thinking of him.
It was difficult to pull his gaze away from her. Sighing, he pressed a button on the remote to receive a different set of camera views.
More rooms were shown, but he also got a look at the property from a more distant vantage point. The camera, he recalled, was concealed in a tree near the gates.
Two men were stalking across the driveway to the house. Both had guns.
As he’d suspected, one of the men was Anthony Thorne.
His grip tightened on the remote control.
Thorne’s appearance meant Noah Cutty had failed. He looked forward to reprimanding the Director for the ineptitude of his allegedly most capable soldier.
But why had Thorne come to the estate? What was he seeking? Was this an assassination attempt, or did Thorne have another purpose?
He didn’t know. Although they had wanted to capture Thorne and interrogate him to learn what the Judas had given him, Thorne was proving such a formidable adversary that perhaps eliminating him immediately was the only viable alternative. Elimination was the course of action that his security detail would pursue, unless he directed them otherwise.
He decided that he would let his servants do their jobs.
“God and I tried to have mercy on you, Thorne,” he said to the monitor. “But you’ve forced our hand.”
He left the displays and went to prepare. God had promised that no weapon formed against the faithful would prosper. But God did not suffer fools lightly, either.