The Genesis Plague (2010)

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 Christians who saw the US invasion of Iraq as fulfilment of End Times’ prophecy heralding Christ’s return.
    As Stokes anticipated, things soon turned serious when Ms Peters turned her queries to the contributions that funded both his global mission and this extraordinary construction project. Venturing into the minefield, the reporter had smartly turned up her charm. It began with some innocent nibbling on the tip of her pen - a mildly seductive act that Stokes had to admit was a potent distraction.
    ‘As you know, your past and current political affiliations have many speculating as to how the church raises its funds. There’s rumours that a major network is producing a scathing primetime expose which suggests that large transfers have been deposited into your accounts. Transfers that can’t be traced -‘
    Stokes held up a hand. ‘Ms Peters, let 60 Minutes speculate all it wants. Success always draws detractors. But I suggest you stick to the facts.’
    ‘Which are?’
    Feisty, he thought. He sighed, tapped his thumbs together. ‘Our major contributors and benefactors choose to remain anonymous,’ Stokes simply replied, ‘just how Christ himself would have wanted it.’
    ‘I see,’ she relented. Some more notes. She paused the micro-recorder. ‘Off the record … do you miss all that?’ She pointed with the pen at the military photos. ‘The action, the glory?’
    Spoken like a true civilian. ‘Memories of war aren’t like fond recollections of one’s first love.’
    ‘True. An ex-girlfriend might take your favourite sweatshirt and CDs … but not your leg.’
    It was common knowledge that Stokes’s military career derailed in 2003 when a bomb in the road outside Mosul had claimed his right leg just below the knee.