Free The Regime: Evil Advances by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page A

said at last.
    “I figured as much.”
    “You are the ultimate kingmaker, Leon. And I want to be king.”
    “I know.”
    “You know?”
    “Surely you are not surprised to know that I did my homework before accepting your invitation. Your rise in business has been meteoric. Your intelligence has already been celebrated. Your physical prowess is legendary. While you have not announced it publicly, it is getting around that you are restless, eager to expand your horizons, grow your business, widen your influence. Politics cannot be far off.”
    “Let me ask you something, Leon. How far would you go to help a man achieve his dreams?”
    Leon pushed his plate away a couple of inches and leaned back, crossing his arms. “Ah,” he said. “The true test.”
    “I am just curious.”
    “Oh, it is more than that and you know it. It is the crux of the matter. I told you I did my homework.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning I have an idea how far you will go to achieve your goals.”
    “Really? How far?”
    “Let me stall by telling you what got me booted from the Catholic university.”
    Carpathia loved such stories.

    “I told you I loved the pageantry. I never forgot the funeral of one pope and the election of another and all that went with it. What is more beautiful than the red, red, red of the cardinals’ vestments? Even as a student, I always had businesses on the side and, thus, more money than my classmates. Once I had it in my head that I wanted a cardinal’s vestments, nothing could dissuade me. I rushed to the shop at the Vatican, only to have to lie to be able to purchase what I wanted. I was informed that I had to have special permission to buy such garments, so I immediately spun a yarn about it being a gift for my bishop. I said we were the same size, and I was overjoyed when the questions stopped and the measuring began.
    “When the vestments were ready and I tried them on before the three-way mirror, I could have gone straight to heaven. I had to harness my emotions to continue the ruse and insist that my bishop would be as thrilled as I was. I wanted to wear them back to my dormitory, but that would have given me away. I couldn’t wait to get back and don them again.
    “I wore them everywhere, like a costume. Classmates oohed and aahed. Upperclassmen scowled and derided. I outwitted a professor by telling him I was wearing a rented costume for a masquerade party. He didn’t find it amusing but neither did he imagine it broke any rules. Which was not true of my wearing the getup to classes the next day. Class, singular, would be more like it. By the time I entered my second class, the authorities were waiting for me. I was brought before an administration

    council, where I was scolded, reprimanded, and instructed to return the ‘costume’ posthaste.
    “I tried to tell the council that my true motivation for wearing the elaborate habit was genuine admiration and respect for them. They weren’t buying. They said my devotion belonged to Christ. And you know, Nicolae, it hit me in that moment. While this had all really just been a lark—a compulsion to have and to wear the beautiful garments—I had no real devotion to Christ. I knew He was the object of the worship of the church, was purported to be the Savior of the world, the Son of God. But I simply didn’t believe it.”
    “And so?”
    “When I was seen, hours later, still traipsing about campus in my vestments, I was summarily expelled.”
    “And excommunicated?”
    “No. That was threatened. I accomplished that on my own.”
    “On your own?”
    “I simply stopped being Catholic. No Mass. No prayer. No rosary. No nothing. I had read widely in Theosophy, and while I determined to remain religious for the rest of my life, its tenets most resonate with me.”
    “And those are, in a nutshell?”
    Fortunato turned and stretched his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “The beauty of Theosophy, which is not yet two hundred years old, is that