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their prison, their sweltering, sheet-metal tomb.

Chapter 3
    Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.
    —Paul, Epistle to the Romans

    Major Ezra Hodge of the Defense Intelligence Agency fielded the heat for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in La Libertad because everybody was short-handed and fielding heat was part of his job. No one at the embassy or on the damage control team knew what happened, and Ezra the Invisible wasn’t telling. Hodge, himself, had planted the bomb in Colonel Toledo’s car. He had done it under orders, but these orders arose from a Higher Authority than the Defense Intelligence Agency. The New Prophet of the Apocalypse, the Angel of Eden himself, laid out the scenario and Ezra the Invisible pulled it off.
    The children were all that mattered. Eden would be worthless without Adam and Eve, and it was wise of the Angel to gather them in while Revelation ran its course.
    Dajaj Mishwe’s part of the operation had been mightily screwed, but Hodge activated a contingency plan that might yet see him alive on the far side of the Apocalypse. His was a sweet dream of a plan that included an elegant sailboat and the perfect companion.
    This companion was not yet a Gardener, but Hodge had faith that Rena Scholz would see the light when the flaming sword fell. She had been a nun, but abandoned Catholicism when she joined the Army. He’d done his research—she didn’t drink, didn’t date and read voraciously in theology. Hodge imagined that in her gratitude for saving her life, Major Scholz would love him, that they would let the Apocalypse run its course and then sail back with Adam and Eve to populate a fresh, new Eden based on the Angel’s plan.
    Hodge fanned his face with a fistful of papers. His tiny office was a sweat-trap across the street from the U.S. Embassy. The pea-green cubicles around him were jammed with tacticians, logisticians and propagandists of every stripe. The noise level was high, but not high enough to drown out the single word that followed the tone on his Sidekick.
    “Revelation,” his Sidekick said, and it repeated “Revelation” in its pseudobiologic voice until Major Hodge reluctantly replied, “Revelation. Acknowledge.”
    The GenoVax delivery to Mexico City is secure, he thought. The last EdenSprings shipments went out today, as did the great sword that hangs over the Sanhedrin tonight. We will take off the heads of many serpents, the nearest one first.
    The Angel’s Artificial Viral Agents floated in the ritual ice water of the Gardeners, in the bottled waters of nearly every market, vending machine, cafeteria and airline. Similar AVAs slept in the communion wafers of the idolators. God would sort them out.
    Hodge’s job was to stir up the serpent, first, and get it to focus on the flute in front of it rather than the sword poised above. With the Master dead, confusion among the Children of Eden was already a strong ally. The Master’s myocardial implant already had triggered its coded signal, verifying his heart’s failure to Central Command. It was, perhaps, fortunate that it had to fail here in Costa Brava. Now that ViraVax was off-line, it fell to Hodge to verify the signal. Hodge took his time with this, thereby adding to the confusion.
    He had no word from the Angel at ViraVax. Their backup communications ran four redundancies deep, and all were silent. Hodge could only imagine the madness of the final scene at ViraVax, with hundreds of bodies melting from their bones, and it was possible that someone or something had, indeed, killed Dajaj Mishwe. Flaming Sword was designed to unfold on its own even if he, Hodge, died, but Hodge preferred to live.
    Major Ezra Hodge and Dajaj Mishwe had worked together before, in certain private experiments on the nature of death that the two of them ran while they were in EdenWood together. Hodge was fully prepared to carry on the mandate of Revelation and the Apocalypse without the Angel Mishwe.
    Hodge would