“A few days later I had the Mount Carmel staff cover for me while I drove down to Austin. I called Liebowitz from a hotel and he agreed to come see me on his lunch hour. The deal was, I’d show him what I had, and if he agreed about the implications, he’d take my evidence to Baker and set up a meeting between me and H.

“I told him everything. I was worried how he’d react to the stuff about the mirage, but I’d brought some artifacts with me, and they made enough of an impression that at least he didn’t dismiss me as a nut. And he was very interested in my documents about Curveball and the other operations the Quail Hunter had subverted. ‘You were right to come forward with this,’ he said finally. He told me his boss had suspected for some time that the Quail Hunter was up to no good, but until now there’d been no way to pin anything on him.

“I wanted to go back with him to see Baker, but he said that wouldn’t work, he needed me to stay in the hotel room and wait for his call. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll only be a few hours,’ he promised. ‘Then I’ll send somebody to take you to H.’ I was so relieved, I almost cried. ‘Thank you, Mr. Liebowitz,’ I said. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘call me Libby. All my friends do.’

“So I waited, but he never called. I started getting nervous again. To calm myself I got out a Bible, but it slipped out of my hand and when it hit the floor it opened to Matthew 26—the chapter where Judas Iscariot conspires with the high priests. My blood ran cold when I saw that. I picked up the Bible and closed it and flipped it open at random. Luke 22: Judas and the high priests.

“I didn’t need a third warning. I walked out of the hotel and got in my car and laid rubber for Mount Carmel. I’d already worked out an exodus plan with the staff in case the worst happened, and now I called them on my cell and told them to be ready to go as soon as I got back.

“I stopped for gas outside Troy. Another car pulled in while I was using the restroom, and when I came out I recognized the driver as one of the Quail Hunter’s centurions. Then before I could react three other men blindsided me. They grabbed me, tasered me, and threw me in the trunk.

“If they’d taken me to Crawford I’m not sure how I would have escaped. But after we left the gas station I could tell from the sound the tires made that we weren’t following the main highway. I figured we were probably headed out into the county and the centurions’ orders were to dispose of me in some farmer’s field.”

“What did you do?” Mustafa asked.

“The only thing I could do,” David Koresh said. “I took a nap. I didn’t have any Elefaridol on me but I thought this once God would let me work the trick without it. I closed my eyes, started reciting, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ and by the time I got to ‘pray my soul to take,’ I was back in the burning building. Not trapped this time. Searching. Looking for a room where guns were kept . . . I found it just in time. Picked up a rifle, gripped it tight. Then the car stopped, the centurions opened the trunk, and I woke up and became death.

“One of the centurions managed to draw his own gun before I killed him.” Koresh placed a hand on his abdomen. “He got me here, same place Jesus was wounded. I was bleeding pretty bad, but I stayed conscious long enough to get back to the highway. I called the Center again and told them what mile marker I was at. Then I passed out.

“I woke up a day later in a caravan headed north. We’d already crossed the border into Oklahoma Territory and the staff told me everything was fine—we’d made a clean getaway. I knew that wasn’t true, though. While I was out, God had sent me another dream, a detailed prophecy. During the first stage of our exodus God had confounded our pursuers, made them think we’d gone south, but they’d realized their error now and the Quail Hunter was determined not to let us get away. His centurions were screaming up the road behind us with orders to kill us all . . . But God had arranged some reinforcements for us in Oklahoma City. I knew just where to go. And that was how we met Timothy.”

“What was he?” Mustafa asked.

“A freedom fighter,” Koresh said. “Oklahoma Territory, you know, it’s like New Mexico and Coahuila—Texas claims it as a dependency, but the residents beg to differ. Timothy was a demolitions expert for the rebels. He agreed to help us deal with the centurions on our tail. Afterwards, he and some of his friends decided to join us.

“From Oklahoma we made our way east through Gilead, following a path God laid out for me in my dreams. Eventually we crossed the frontier into America, and we’ve been living underground here ever since. The Quail Hunter is still looking for us, but God keeps us one step ahead of the centurions, and we’ve sabotaged a lot of the Quail Hunter’s links to the insurgency. To the extent that they weren’t sabotaged already.” He arched an eyebrow. “Turns out the Quail Hunter isn’t the only foreign power using Americans as pawns.”

“And V. Howell Industries?” Mustafa said. “What is that about?”

“It started as a way of supporting ourselves,” Koresh said. “When we left Texas we didn’t have much cash, but we did smuggle out a bunch of mirage artifacts, along with a lifetime supply of Elefaridol. Then as we made our way across the Heartland, we discovered that to people with Gulf Syndrome, those artifacts were like pieces of the True Cross. We used them to barter for goods and services and to recruit new allies. Once we got here, we established a trade network with some local entrepreneurs God told us we could trust, and eventually expanded the business onto the Internet. The money’s not great—not after all the middlemen and cutouts take their share—but as you see, we live pretty cheaply. And in the end it’s less about commerce than evangelism: As the artifacts spread further around the globe, awareness of the mirage spreads with them.”

“So your business plan is to infect the whole world with Gulf Syndrome?” Mustafa said.

Koresh acknowledged the criticism in Mustafa’s tone with a crooked smile, but he said: “It’s what God wants.”

“To drive other men mad, as your Quail Hunter was driven mad? As the crusaders have been driven mad?” Mustafa shook his head. “I thought you wanted to redeem God’s people. How does plunging the world further into chaos accomplish that?”

“That was the hardest part to understand,” David Koresh said. “When I found out what kind of people were collecting the artifacts, when I thought about what that knowledge might inspire them to do, I asked the same question. I prayed about it: How can this be the road back from exile, Lord? As usual, what made the answer so difficult to see was that it was just too simple. But it had been there all along, from my very first vision.” He got up and went over to his desk and opened the big Bible again. Post-it notes fluttered from the margins as he turned to the back of the Book. He found the verse he was looking for and read aloud: “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” Koresh looked at Mustafa. “Death,” he repeated. “I am become Death. You see? You get it?”

“No,” said Mustafa.

“Koresh. The name of my anointing. It means Cyrus, but it also has another meaning, a secret meaning. It means death.”

“In what language?”

“The language of the Seven Seals.” Koresh pressed his hand against the page of scripture. “This is what the mirage is. A period of chaos and tribulation, when the world turns upside down and then keeps on tumbling. I was wrong: It’s not a judgment, it’s the Judgment, and my job isn’t to find a road back from exile, it’s to prepare the way forward, to the Last Day. To break the seals, and blow the trumpets, and pour out the bowls.