LIEUTENANT GENERAL ARCHIE Gladstone was on hand in Albuquerque to greet the secretary of defense on his arrival. “Mr. Secretary, how was the ceremony in Babylon?” he asked. “It was pure hell, Archie,” Al Augustus blurted out as they hurried across the tarmac to the waiting staff car. “There was a big statue of Beaulieu in a monstrous temple. Tauriq Haddad introduced a world credit system that would only be available to people who agree to worship Beaulieu as god!”

“You must be joking,” said Gladstone, as they jumped into the back of the staff car. “Beaulieu is an American president. What does he think he’s doing? He used to be a congressman, and now he wants people to believe he’s god? Do you mean we can’t have any money unless we call him a god? He must be crazy!”

“Worse than crazy, Archie. When Haddad tried to get James Wong to be first to sign up, James had the courage to refuse. He said Jesus Christ is God, not Mark Beaulieu. Then, in front of our eyes, the head of that giant statue suddenly changed into something more like the head of a cobra, with scales and a hideous expression, and it began shouting, ‘Kill! Kill!’ Then, James was dropped through some kind of trap door into a torture chamber under the auditorium, and they killed him. There’s no telling what they must have done to him down there. He was yelling and screaming, and we could hear the whole thing. But then all of a sudden the noise stopped. Archie, it was horrible!”

“Sir,” Archie said, “you’ve had a long, hard trip. Are you sure you saw a talking statue turn into a snake’s head? Could it have been some kind of mass hypnosis?”

“General,” Al said sternly, as the car sped out onto the highway, “my eyes are great and, trust me—I know what I saw. We’re dealing with the devil incarnate here. There may have been some doubt about who this guy was when we first started dealing with him, but there’s no doubt anymore. Are all our troops deployed?”

“Yes, sir, they sure are. From Pueblo to Albuquerque, on both sides of the Sangre de Cristo.”

“How about the Pershings?”

“All deployed in relatively safe locations.”

“Now, for the big question, Archie,” Al Augustus said. “Are the troops loyal?”

“I would say so, sir,” Archie Gladstone replied. “At least seventy-five percent of them are unaffected.”