The Genesis Plague (2010) Read Online Free Page B

that Ms Peters was jotting copious notes with a mother-of-pearl pen as her shrewd gaze swept the bookshelves on one wall that brimmed with treatises on world peace and Evangelicalism, biographies of military generals including Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Patton. When she spotted Guns, Germs, and Steel among the collection, her meticulously groomed eyebrows tilted up. Then her attention shifted to the opposite wall where Stokes’s diplomas, certificates, citations and war medals hung in neat frames together with a display of photos. When he saw her squinting, he snapped his fingers to get her attention, then motioned for her to get up and have a closer look.
    Smiling, she stood up and went to take a look at the impressive photo montage. It took only a moment before the pen began moving rhythmically across the notepad.
    ‘You tell the architect that’s how it’s going to be. Remind him that we’re the client.’ There was plenty of biographical material on that wall to please any reporter, Stokes thought: Randall Stokes front and centre with international dignitaries; Randall Stokes rubbing elbows with Hollywood power brokers; Randall Stokes shaking hands with secretaries of state, presidents and generals spanning three presidential administrations. He noticed that Ms Peters paused longest on the shot of Stokes striking a pose alongside the Pope.
    She continued along the wall to the portrait of a teenaged marine cadet in dress blues. Then came the photos of a twenty-something, more fit Randall Stokes with his war buddies, grinning and armed to the teeth amid the ravaged backdrop of half a dozen battle zones - Kuwait, Bosnia and Baghdad among them. She admired his glinting marine officer’s Mameluke sword mounted on a hook, then finished with the impassioned stills capturing Stokes in his most familiar role: preaching to the masses - his ever-swelling evangelical flock. In two other frames, those photos had morphed into Time magazine covers.
    ‘Don’t be afraid to use a little backbone, all right?’ Pause. ‘God bless you too.’ As he cradled the phone, he let out an exasperated sigh and folded his hands over his chest. ‘My apologies,’ he said to the reporter. ‘Been wearing too many hats lately.’ He rolled his eyes.
    ‘Not a problem,’ she said, and made her way back to the chair. ‘Still okay to use this?’ She pointed to the slim digital micro-recorder she’d set on the end of his desk.
    ‘Sure.’
    She hit the device’s record button.
    ‘Where were we?’ Stokes asked.
    ‘The megachurch,’ she reminded him, pointing with her pen out the wide plate-glass window at the nearly complete gleaming glass, steel and stone construction superimposed over the distant backdrop of the Mojave Desert Valley’s sprawling casino metropolis. ‘How most confuse it for a sports arena,’ she reminded.
    Stokes chuckled. ‘There will be no monster truck rallies or hockey games here, I assure you.’
    ‘Many call you a modern-day Joseph Smith - the proselytizing, the temple in the desert …’ she said, almost accusatorily with a tip of her left eyebrow.
    Stokes made a dismissive gesture and grinned. ‘Ms Peters, I didn’t transcribe the Word of God from golden tablets scrawled in hieroglyphics.’ Not exactly the truth, he thought. ‘We’ll let the Mormons make those proclamations.’
    The interview continued with innocent questions about the church’s tremendous growth and Stokes’s ambitious mission to transform faith not only in America, but in countries around the world - to ‘baptize the world in the name of the saviour, Jesus Christ - the only path to redemption and salvation’. She then asked probing questions about his ‘retirement’ from the military, which went largely unanswered. Next, the reporter tactfully solicited his perspective on the motivational lecture series he’d parlayed into a global ministry, and why his fresh message of revelation proved so timely for