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to punish those who didn’t buy it?
    I needed more from you at twelve, Dad. I deserved better. Thanks, Mom, for sparing me this till now.
    And the idea that the Bible’s prophecies were being fulfilled, that God’s Son was coming soon—well, urgency was part of the comeon in virtually every fraud. “A onetime offer,” “Get in on the ground floor,” “Fire sale—prices will never go lower,” “Something for nothing”—how could his father fall for that? Paul knew of the book of Revelation from his studies but had never read it, though he’d heard it was powerful and richly symbolic. The florid what-if pitch was another typical huckster tactic—fire-and-brimstone razzle-dazzle to throw in a scare and close the deal. Didn’t all religions threaten colorful punishments to keep the faithful in line? Was his father really that naive? After a lifetime of admiration, Paul was flooded with contempt for the pathetic dupe his father had turned out to be.
    What kind of man fell prey to such lunacy—calling it “the most important and fulfilling decision of my own life”—and even tried to inflict it on a child? Maybe his mother, with all her rationality and abhorrence of religion, couldn’t justify ever showing it to him—or was too ashamed to. He could only imagine what Ranold would say. He couldn’t have had this planted, could he? Some coincidence, this and finding out about Andy Pass the same week.
    The envelope looked rather pristine, considering it had been in a box for thirty-odd years. The sealing wax seemed darkened and brittle, but it would take an expert to tell for sure whether it was new or old. The same was true of the ink, which looked like the kind that had to be drawn out of a bottle into an old-fashioned pen. He could compare the handwriting by eye but computer analysis would be necessary to test it definitively against other letters from his father that his mother had saved.
    We were in Washington long enough for someone to plant a letter, of course—but did I tell anyone I’d be clearing out my mother’s basement this weekend?
    Paul examined the box of mementos, which looked no less dusty than the others. It had been in the middle of a stack of boxes, so its lid was clean and offered no clue. But maybe the timing wasn’t the issue. Surely Andy had been under investigation for months. During that time, people in his life would have come under scrutiny—including Paul, if Ranold, who knew he once viewed Andy as a father, was in charge.
    Ranold would know better than to suspect Paul was a Christian, but the letter could be some kind of loyalty test—to see if Paul knew the truth about Andy and looked the other way. If Paul suddenly discovered that his own father had been a Christian, it would be natural for him to turn to the one religious person he knew and trusted. So anytime during the three months Paul’s mother’s house had been standing empty, the letter could have been planted to flush him out.
    Spinning the plot, Paul had to acknowledge it seemed like a stretch. Maybe he was grasping at straws to escape the reality that his father had been a crackpot, not the shining example of a man he had idolized for thirty years. But “a stretch” didn’t mean impossible or even far-fetched. Paul knew well that fabricating and planting a letter was child’s play for the NPO; and if the operation was one of Ranold’s first special projects, his father-in-law would have pulled out all the stops.
    The letter itself was probably the only key to the truth. Paul tore off part of the envelope flap, then folded the letter back into it and replaced the envelope in the box, beneath the stack of congratulatory cards.
    He had hit the trifecta, Paul thought bitterly. Andy and his father and now even Ranold were tainted by the Christian threat . Tomorrow he would sound out his boss about the extent of the Christian problem—whether the activity was nationwide or localized in Washington—and try to