The Testimony. James Smythe
sleep; none of us did. And I wish that I could have said I spent some time deliberating over what it was, but I didn’t do that, either. We had a constant stream of telephone calls from all sides, and I had to have conversations with people at every stage of government to get the message in our first governmental address correct. They hired me for my ability to write the words that they would want to be heard saying, but even then they had their own ideas to the point where I discovered I was nothing more than a transcriber, tidying their phrases into slightly tidier ones. Nobody in the office had any time for thinking for themselves, because it was all so frantic. Then I had a call from the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister was a terrifying woman, but strong, and you had to respect her for that. When she was chosen to lead it was under this veil of friendliness and light, because that’s the image the Knesset gave out; but in international waters she was terrifying. It’s what the country needed, apparently. She will sort out the problems in the West Bank, we were told, and she’ll stabilize international relations. Those were the promises, and whether she kept them or not, she was who the Knesset elected, and we chose who was in control of the Knesset, so we were … I don’t want to say, to blame, because that sounds negative, but we made a choice, as a people; we were responsible. She was known as a leader who didn’t take chances, and who was opinionated and strong in discussion, and who was not swayed by the thought of war. And her office called me, and told me that we needed to have a meeting. This was to be one of the first tasks of my new role; my predecessor had told me that he hadn’t had cause to meet with the Prime Minister once in his two years in this role.
I was taken by car to her offices, even though they were only ten streets away and I could have walked it – I was used to walking everywhere, that was how I stayed fit – and then scanned through security, made to take off my shoes, empty my pockets and my handbag. They made me turn my telephone on, to prove that it was real, and I saw that I had seven messages when I did, which meant Lev was getting impatient with me. I would have hell when I got home, I knew that, but some things were more important. The Prime Minster’s office was painted entirely white, with a wooden desk, pictures – both of family, and religious – on the wall behind her, but nothing else. She wore her hair not unlike mine, though she was blonde, dyed but perfectly so, so that you couldn’t tell, even from her eyebrows. So, you’re the writer? she asked. She smoked a cigarette, and indoors, no less, even though her party reinforced the smoking ban in Israel. I am, I told her, and I was going to say something else – something kind and respectful, regardless of whether I felt that respect for her – but she interrupted me. Here’s a telephone number, she said, straight to me. I want to be able to get you directly, none of this going through middlemen and assistants, okay? There’s going to need to be a connection between us, a dialogue, so the message doesn’t get diluted. Are you okay with that?
That sounds fine, I said, so I just call you directly? Any time; you need to know the message, you talk to me, and we’ll put it out there. She gave me a telephone, a mobile, government issue. Only I have that number, she said, so that I can always reach you. For now, just tell the people that we’re working on it, that we’ll have answers very soon. You know the problems: this can’t become about religion, not here, because that will make everything so much worse. Okay? Okay, I said, and then she put her head down and started writing something. After a few seconds it was clear that it wasn’t for me, so I backed out, and I waited outside the door. I kept thinking about the messages that Lev had left for me, and told myself I would call him when I had the chance – if I had the chance.
Tom Gibson, news anchor, New York City
At four in the morning we had a roundtable, representatives from all major faiths. The point was to find an order, a structure. We were under instructions from the government – stepping in in a way that I hadn’t seen them do since we left Iraq – to represent as many faiths as we could get our hands on. There was unrest in lots of the communities, people who didn’t necessarily worship the same deities as everybody else – let alone speak English – and we had to make sure that everybody was catered for. Only problem was, that was one hell of a lot of people, and we had to give them all a slot. Fine. But before they went on air, they all had to sit in a room together and wait their turn. It was all okay – even civil, I’d say – until the atheist guy, some scientist from MIT who wrote some books, had his fifteen minutes, until he started yamming on and on about how stupid everybody else was being. I can’t believe, he kept saying at the start of his sentences: I can’t believe that you people think this could be real; I can’t believe that you’re all so lonely as to believe that God exists, and wants to speak to you; I can’t believe that you’re falling for this. The priests and rabbis and guys in headdresses, they argued blind with him after a while, but then they were arguing with each other, because they had cases for why it was their God, why it wasn’t Christianity’s. Eventually the atheist started getting really annoyed, shouted at the Catholic priest. I can’t believe that you think some man in the clouds is just going to start speaking to us all, and the priest said, Explain what it was then, if it wasn’t that.
That was the crux of the argument. There was no other explanation, nothing at all; the Catholic guy sat back and smiled, just like he knew that he was right. That was when I was called out of the room, and we were told that there was something happening uptown, and that I should get ready to get back on the air.
Andrew Brubaker, White House Chief of Staff, Washington, DC
I had five minutes free, so Livvy came by and I sat down with her in the gardens and we ate a sandwich she brought along, sharing it. That was nice. I hadn’t even finished when my phone rang, and the pass that they used – The Sparrows Are Flying – meant that I had no choice but to drop it, shout goodbye to her, run inside. The code meant that we had a serious threat. By the time I made it into The Danger Room, it wasn’t just a threat: it was confirmed, going to happen, and we had to accept that.
The New York Times had printed this article in the morning that we should all, collectively, put an end to war. We don’t need to fight any more, the editorial said, because this is it; proof. Every war has been caused by religion, they wrote (which isn’t strictly true, but difficult to argue with). We can end this, because there’s no need to fight any more. It was idealistic nonsense written by idiots. Religion might have started off the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, but we never involved ourselves for religious purposes. People could throw a lot at our motives in the past – oil, money, power – but we, America, hadn’t ever gone to war in the name of God. It had been hundreds of years since the crusades, nearly thousands, but people didn’t forget, apparently. I can’t say for sure that the article was a catalyst, but it ended with a line about Our God, meaning America, meaning Christianity, and that was the biggest issue we had: where to attribute The Broadcast to. Or who, maybe. It was English-speaking, and the accent hard to pin down, but it sounded … It sounded like one of us.
That was POTUS’ first proper terrorist threat, as well. I had been at the White House for the tail years of the Obama administration, I had seen these before, but one this big hadn’t happened yet during this presidency. The threat had come in as being for a targeted attack on New York, and we had word that a device had been left on the corner of 59th and 5th. We didn’t get that info until seconds before it went off; there wasn’t any time for POTUS to even ask what he should do. It was designed to hit foot-fall traffic, tourists, people on their way home. It wasn’t a huge strike; early reports had casualties in the sub-triple-figures category, but that was only because there were far fewer people on the streets than usual. On an average day it would have hit thousands, potentially. More. POTUS was devastated that we didn’t get to it in time. I reassured him; we were given a warning that there was a bomb, not an opportunity to do anything about it, and the two were vastly different.
Mark Kirkman, unemployed, Boston