"Don't you see, my friend?" he asked. "This is what everybody wants. When a man turns on television at night and sees the war in the Balkans, it fills him with despair. Well, there won't be any more war. Bosnians and Serbs alike will be dead.
"Imagine never having to worry again about the naked millions, the hunger, the floods, the disasters in India. All gone. All of those beautiful cities and temples lying virgin and ready to be reawakened. No one wants to hear any more about petty genocide in Iraq, or street riots in Tel Aviv, or massacres in Cambodia. We're all sick of watching the Third World struggle, while we remain impotent, castrated by our superiority and refined values.
"Everyone wants this!
"It is what Alexander would do! It is what Constantine would do! No one has the means, the guts, the wisdom, or the courage to do it but me! I alone will do this. I alone will do it! I will strike as the Pharaoh struck when he rode down on those who invaded the Valley of the Nile."
I said nothing. A clock was ticking in my brain, a clock. Six or before. What time was it now?
"You've got to consider it," he continued. "You've got to carefully consider it. Imagine the jungles of Indochina and those beautiful ruins, with all the warlike people gone! Imagine the majesty of a city like Berlin. Imagine its resources. In fact Germany will be filled with resources. And those the Germans hurt in the World War will be so happy that Germany is gone!
"All these people have brought this on themselves! I was born to do this, you're proof of it."
"How can you be so sure of that?" I asked. "Doesn't my presence make you pause even an instant!"
"No. Not when I picture the world after the Last Days. The Paradise. Imagine the quiet sweet earth, growing with grass again, and only those of the West preserved to reinvent, and to save, to rebuild nations without ever letting the chaos of the past redevelop. America will colonize these peaceful and beautiful worlds. Under my leadership. If the government helps, that will be good. We need the help. If not, we take over the government."
"And the people in this country, you think they will let you do this?"
"Trust me, they will be very happy once it has sunk in, once they know all that is gone, once they know we are living in a world filled again with natural resources, and abundant land, and beautiful monuments, and fertile and magnificent places to be colonized. Even our Afro-Americans will be delighted that they don't have to worry any more about Africa. American members of all our minority populations will be saved. No people or race exists that does not have a colony in America. This country is the Ark! Cooperate! They'll worship us. They'll worship the risen Messiah, and then his Hasid roots can be known, and it will all be written down; it will become the great turning point in history."
I let him go on: he was truly in his own grip now, nothing could have shut him up, this was his aria.
"Azriel, if you only knew how much we have tried to help these poor nations. If you only knew the conditions in Baghdad and Israel. If you only knew the impossible state of things.
"The first half of this century, we saw fascist madmen like Hitler and Mussolini, and Franco and Stalin. We saw their crude methods fail and pitch Europe into agony.
"Now there are no more such men in the West. There isn't a single leader in the West capable of the clarity of Franco.
"One must go to ragged poor places like Baghdad to find little dictators, like Saddam Hussein, or to the Balkans to find those who would fight to the death. Even Russia itself has no great Stalin, no Lenin, no Peter the Great."
"And you saw these men as great?" I asked. "You see them as great?"
"No, they were evil. They did harm, and by the way, they annihilated millions. Don't think for a minute Stalin didn't kill as many people as Hitler. They killed and they killed and they killed. But it was crude, sadistic, ugly, primitive. I don't count them as great.
"Now the West is led by people who are caught in the trap of their own conscience and benevolence. They know they should bomb Iraq and Iran off the map, but nobody has the guts to do it! Everybody knows Africa is a breeding place for plagues that can kill the world. No one has the guts to annihilate the population." "And here, what of the poor and the ragged here?" "We are the Ark, I told you. In the New World, our small population of unredeemables will be given a new chance. Or executed. It won't be a problem. It's nothing. It's a gnat in the face, our problems here.
"That's the beauty of it. America, New York itself, contains people of all races. They can begin the new world order with us. If some do rebel, out of sentiment for their lost lands, we kill them. But we have gone against no race, no tribe, and will in this safe haven protect the remnants of all peoples.
"And remember our campaign through television is extensive. It's all worked out. As the horrible deaths are reported, we will control the news from those areas completely. The President and his Army will be helpless. There will be no overseas connections or allies. Only
the Temple of the Mind of God."
"And during these Last Days," I said, "people here will be in a panic that they too are going to be exterminated. All America will be in panic and fear of this plague."
"Exactly, then they will discover that they are blessed. And I have come back from the Dead and have brought with me a vision of a New World. They will learn that God's will decreed these things, that God chose the Temple as His instrument, but I have been among the Dead! Believe me, when this thing is over, the Temple of the Mind of God will be the only worldwide institution left in existence, and resistance to us will be simple to block. We have it all planned, we have our leaders, we have our stations, we have everything in order.
"Nathan has to die in my place at six o'clock, and if I die before that, if anything happens to me, if I give a signal, the world extermination process will begin automatically. And I have a thousand ways of giving that signal."
"Like, name one, for instance?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"What if I simply kill you now and save Nathan and reveal the
plot."
"You can't. Don't you realize there are soldiers at all the doors?
And the Bones, remember, I've told them, if you begin to fight us, they are to cremate the Bones. That will end your existence."
"What if it doesn't?"
"What can you do? You can't stop all these people worldwide, you can't even betray this building into the hands of the enemy. We have it under control perfectly. Don't you see? You can only be in one place at one time, spirit or not, and your abilities are limited. When Rachel committed suicide right behind your back you didn't even know it."