The Sixth Station (5 page)

“Will you look at this? Jee-sus! Excuse me, Lord!” she said, practically jumping out of her seat with joy. Dona was a die-hard New Age born-again Baptist, despite the fact that she had the body of a stripper and the hair of a supermodel.

I, just as anxious, leaned over and was shocked at the kiss image.

“I have my eyes closed like I’m being kissed by a man, I mean a lover—oh, hell, I don’t know what I mean,” I said, stunned. “What the…? I mean the guy’s a disgusting, mass-murdering terrorist! I can’t have done that,” I snapped. “Can I?”

“You can and you did. Yikes.”

Dona and I had been put on the very end of the row—I assumed in case we’d have to be whisked out quickly. We looked up as the doors opened, and we saw—and heard—the reporters straining like dogs against choke collars, waiting to get in.

“Here we come,” I said, wincing, as into my “elite” row came bow-tied, bald Alex Peyton of PBS, who was seated next to Dona. He nodded his head toward us, almost a bow actually, as though we were in a nineteenth-century courtroom drama. Normally we would have dined out on that bit of foppery for a month, but not this time. I grew a sudden new respect for journos with restraint.

The remainder of the row was then seated, and the rest of the press was led to their seats.

TV and film crews had set up their equipment earlier (all of it had been searched and gone over with bomb-sniffing dogs and every explosive-detection device known to the modern world) and were now escorted one by one to their equipment by federal agents.

Each form of media was given one “pool” photographer and one video and live-feed camera crew. It still added up to dozens of shooters in their flak jackets, pockets filled with assorted lenses and meters.

“It could take the rest of our lives to get these guys settled,” Dona whined. “I mean, I don’t have all day!”

“Yeah. You do. It’ll give you time to call your agent to start negotiating fees for
my
photos. Lucky you.”

“Lucky you too,” Dona sniffed. “I’m not stiffing you, so don’t be so bitchy.”

“I’m having a bad day.”

“No, my sweet. You are having the best day of your life. You’re the woman with the story—and your big news is going to make us big money. And win you a Pulitzer, of course.”

“
Et
tu,
Brute?!
And seriously, keep your voice down. You want the entire reporter pool to hear you?”

“Oh, sorry,” Dona snapped back. “Like they don’t know…”

“What
I
don’t know,” I whispered back, “is how everything stopped. I mean, it seemed like everyone was suddenly paralyzed as he approached me before the kiss.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, pulling back in her seat to give me a hard stare. “I never saw our so-called friends and colleagues going so wild. I mean, there was rioting!”

“What?”

I just looked at her. This would have to be a discussion for another time. Clearly, something had happened to me beyond being kissed by a killer.

It took nearly an hour to seat the press in the designated area. The UN ambassadors and foreign-service types, then the “distinguished guests,” who were seated in the front VIP assembly viewing areas, followed us in. Packed to capacity—over eighteen hundred people would be admitted that day—the room buzzed with the excitement from the chosen few who were invited to witness history.

The two lead prosecutors (and an international team of twenty) plus two lawyers for the defense (period) milled around the front of the chamber, where huge desks had been set up for both sides.

In the front, a massive golden-hued wall that rose to the ceiling framed a specially built massive marble desk on a raised platform, four steps above the throng.

We all waited anxiously to see who would become the seat’s temporary occupants—the four justices and one presiding justice from around the globe who had been chosen by the 203 member countries of the United Nations for ben Yusef’s terror tribunal, a tribunal that had not just international political ramifications for all concerned, but would have ramifications for every established religion on earth.

The wrong verdict—not guilty—could, would, rock the world order of things (Demiel had famously referred to it as “the man-made
dis
order of things”). Scholars and TV “talking heads” had speculated for months that a decision favoring the terrorist—which was as likely as a second virgin birth—could destroy humanity’s very notion of God.

The world leaders who were to occupy the second row came next. For the opening day, the vice president of the United States, Lester Wallace, the Speaker of Israel’s Knesset, and top governmental ministers of countries such as Russia, Great Britain, Iran, North and South Korea, and China were seated. In all, 314 leaders from 203 countries were present to witness this historic event.

To the shock of even the jaded press, the clerics were seated next.

“And you didn’t think this was about religion,” I whispered to Dona. The religious leaders were actually being seated after the heads of state—the place in line, so to speak, reserved for the most important.

“Well, of course they’d be here; it was their houses of worship that were blown up, their followers killed.” There’s no doubt but that we were all taken aback not just by the magnitude, but more specifically by the choices of the clerics who’d been invited—and who had actually shown up.

Since, for security reasons, the guest list, so to speak, had been kept so secret, a court officer began passing out the press materials at this point, identifying the clerics present.

First came the secretary to the pope, who was followed by John Cardinal Benning of the Archdiocese of New York, then the high rebbes from both the NYC and Jerusalem Hasidic communities, followed by four of Iraq’s five Shia Grand Ayatollahs, as well as two Sunni leaders. Next came the “lesser” Catholic, Anglican, and British archbishops, as well as the president of the American National Association of Evangelicals, the prophet and president of the Mormon church, Lane B. Gardener, as well representatives for the Bahá’í, Jainist, Shinto, Cao Dai, and Zoroastrian faiths. Representatives of the Quakers and the Unitarians, both large faiths in the United States, declined to take part in what they called a predetermined lynching.

Next to last came the secretary to the Dalai Lama, and finally, like the star of the show, the Reverend Bill Teddy Smythe, celebrity preacher, founder and former head of the chain of American megachurches, the Light of God Tabernacle, wheeled in, thick silver hair shining atop his massive head like a halo.

The whole show, so far, essentially verified the Internet rumor about a secret conclave earlier in the month, in which every cleric present this day had supposedly participated.

Indeed, as I later found out, it
had
actually taken place. It was unprecedented but it had been
necessary,
apparently, if they were to keep their followers from joining forces against them. Paranoid? Sure. But in light of what later happened, perhaps not.

The goal of the powerful, or so it went in the blogosphere, was the destruction of the man the “mainstream media” called “raggedy false prophet-cum-terrorist,” but who actually was the true Son of God; this, they claimed, had been “proven” by the fact that he had amassed millions of followers in a very short period of time. So had Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and Fidel Castro, to name just a few, but the bloggers forgot to mention any of them.

The governments and the world’s great religious leaders, even those with thousands of years of bad blood between them, had allied this one time in order to capture Demiel and bring him to justice. He must, they in turn proclaimed united, be made to pay for his unprecedented acts of terrorism and be exposed for the fraud they knew him to be. There were not just the preposterous claims of cures and “miracles” he’d supposedly performed, but, most important, the heinous and very dangerous claim his followers perpetrated about just who he was supposed to
be.

And so here we all were together, along with presidents, prime ministers, and dictators—all to see a thirty-three-year-old skinny, badly dressed man of dubious origins attempt to defend himself against all the power in the world.

How had it come to this? That was the question on everyone’s mind.

And it was the question that was still burning on my lips as the court officer appeared in front of the door through which the magistrates would enter.

4

New York, United Nations General Assembly, War Crimes Tribunal of Suspected Terrorist Leader Demiel ben Yusef

“All rise,” the officer announced, and in a scene worthy of a TV courtroom drama, introduced the until-then secret ad hoc panel of international judges—their anonymity deemed a necessary safety precaution.

Even though the function of the World Court (officially the International Court of Justice) is to resolve disputes between sovereign states, this case of international terrorism involved so many of the member countries that it was declared a matter for the World Court, albeit with a specially appointed panel of judges. Although the United States withdrew from the court in 1984, we still keep a standing, permanent judge on the panel. I know, it makes no sense.

The first judge entered. He was the chairman of the Supreme Court of Sweden, dressed in a black robe with a red stole that went around the neck, falling onto the chest.

“Appropriate,” I whispered to Dona, noting the duds. “Inquisitionists! They should be dressed like monks!”

Dona shot me a surprised glance, whispering, “Hello? I thought you were ready to see the bastard fry—no?”

“Yes, of course. I’m just saying…” I muttered, embarrassed.

“Man, one kiss and you’re acting like a fat girl without a date for the prom.”

The rest followed: chairwoman of the Corte constituzionale della Repubblica Italiana, the chief justice of the Saikō Saibansho of Japan, and the newest appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, fifty-four-year-old scholar and right-wing-leaning Harvard Law School grad Alberto Sant’Angelo.

“You knew they’d choose that charmer,” I whispered sarcastically.

Finally, amid much flourish, the chair of the tribunal entered—this would be the person presiding, the one who would have the final say if there was a tie vote—the one everyone had been speculating about for months.

“Oh, my God! I can’t believe it,” Dona exclaimed under her breath as the officer announced, “The Honorable Judge Fatoumata Bagayoko, president of the United Nations’ Special International Criminal Court, presiding.”

The chief judge entered sporting what looked like a crown of braids atop her head. She carried herself with the haughtiness of a star—which she was within the international judicial system. This was going to be the tribunal that would make her name live forever. It was the most important public tribunal since the Nuremberg Trials.

“I told you it would be her,” I whispered back.

Bagayoko was the most public jurist in the world, a woman who was such a media hound she would probably have gone on
Dancing with the Stars
if she thought it would help her gain more exposure. Still, her reputation was so stellar she instilled fear in everyone around her.

When she was seated, the officer called out, “The Tribunal of Demiel ben Yusef for Crimes against Humanity is now in session.”

To the consternation of the sitting judges, without warning or provocation the Reverend Bill Teddy unsteadily rose from his wheelchair and began an invocation.

Bagayoko’s angered face said it all. But who in her right mind was going to stop an eighty-nine-year-old legend who had managed in his supposedly frail state to organize all the world’s religious leaders and have them here sitting side by side like fraternity brothers?

“May God bless this assembly,” Bill Teddy began in a clear, strong voice.

“Frail, my ass. The God fraud strikes again,” I mumbled.

“May You, dear Lord, help us to find the truth,” he continued, “and bring justice to those who have been martyred—be they Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Hindu—for their beliefs! God bless the United Nations and God bless America, the land upon which this proud institution stands!” The shocked assemblage broke out into spontaneous applause.

“Order! I will have order in this courtroom,” Bagayoko declared as all the lenses in the world trained back on her.

“Was he supposed to stand up and do the God thing?” I asked Dona. “How inappropriate was that?”

“Or maybe how appropriate,” she answered.

Next, four United Nations security officers led in a handcuffed and shackled Demiel ben Yusef. They unlocked the handcuffs, but the leg shackles remained in place as he was seated between his attorneys at the front of the room facing the judges. His back was to the press area but sideways to the dignitaries.

Bagayoko, clearly annoyed that the reverend had tried to steal her moment, plowed on as though he didn’t exist.

She stood to address the courtroom, resplendent in her black robes, and began in her strong, slightly accented English:

“The privilege of presiding over this trial is a responsibility so grave that it weighs heavily upon all the justices seated here today.

“The crimes for which the defendant has been accused are global in nature, crimes against the peace of the world, if you will.

“But be assured that we are not here to find a quick and easy way to apply a salve on the terror that’s been perpetrated against the world these past few years. Yet we will not allow even the most august of legal minds to automatically lay at the feet of one man responsibility for the terrorist bombings that have taken place around the globe—unless these crimes are proven to have been perpetrated and planned by the defendant, Mr. Demiel ben Yusef, beyond a reasonable doubt. We cannot and must not rush to judgment seeking vengeance, not truth, satisfaction in place of proof. We must keep these things in mind despite the fact that our hearts are heavy with the pain of loss of human life and limb that has become the by-product of terrorism in the name of God.