Covenant (29 page)

            “We’re clear,” she said.  “They’re not following us.”

            Underneath the jacket, he closed his eyes and released a sigh that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul. 

            Finally, they were free. 

            He hoped.

52

            Once they had driven north of the Atlanta city limits and entered suburbia, Anthony rose in the seat and asked Lisa to pull off the highway.  

            In the parking lot of an apartment complex in Marietta, they found an old Buick sitting on a flat, but the car had a valid license plate.  He used his Swiss Army Knife to remove the plate, and put it on the Volkswagen, trusting that it would be a day or so before the owner of the Buick noticed the missing tag.     

            It was reasonable to assume that since the lunatics had learned they were at the condo in Midtown, they would discover Lisa’s sister lived there, and might soon begin searching for her vehicle.  With no GPS, satellite radio, or other high-tech snares on the car to aid their hunt, they would turn to auto tags. 

            To stay ahead of these people, he and Lisa would have to continue to out-think them.

            “We’re all set,” he said, easing into the front passenger seat.  “Now, we need to find a hotel where we can lie low for a while, and think.”

            “And sleep,” she said, eyes red with fatigue. 

            There were numerous hotels off I-75 in Cobb County.  They decided on a budget-priced chain hotel that advertised free Internet access, and that offered quick passage to the highway.  He used a moist toilette to clean the grime and crusted blood off his wrist, and then went inside, alone, to book a room.

            At the front desk, he paid cash for a room for one night, adding a couple hundred dollars as a deposit for incidentals.  He claimed that he didn’t have his driver’s license, gave his name as Mark Justice, the pseudonym of a local thriller writer that no one would be likely to connect to him, and supplied a fake Atlanta address and phone number.  

            He requested a second-floor room on the western side of the hotel, which would provide him a view of any vehicle that entered the parking lot, and access to a side exit.         

            In the gift shop, he purchased a pack of Band-Aids, disin-fectant ointment, pain reliever pills, and bottles of water. 

            Finally, he and Lisa entered their room with all of their bags in tow.  They stripped out of their soggy, soiled clothes, and showered together. 

            There was nothing sexual or romantic about their shower.  It was an opportunity for them to decompress, together.  He washed her back; she washed his; and for several minutes afterward, they held each other, letting the warm water cascade over them.

            As they clung to each other, neither of them spoke.  Words would have failed to convey the closeness he felt toward her.  The sense of partnership.  They were in this together, to the end.  Her commitment to him—twelve hours ago, it would have been so easy for her to demand that he drop her off at her parents’ while he went at this alone—inspired a quiet sense of awe.  He had a few buddies who were married, some longer than he had been, and they spoke disgustfully of how their wives failed to support them, how they had drifted apart and lived in separate words linked together solely by children, or a house, or plain old habit.  Commitment was not embodied in the mere exchange of vows; it was best exemplified in action, and Lisa had gone far above and beyond anything he ever could have expected, or asked.    

            “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” she said suddenly, head against his chest, as in sync with his thoughts as ever.  “This is where I’m supposed to be.  Doing this with you.”

            He kissed her wet forehead.  “Thank you.  I hope it’s not all for nothing.”

            “It’s not.  There’s always a purpose, a plan.  Even if we don’t immediately understand what it might be.  Over time . . . it all becomes clear.”

            “You really believe that?”

            “If I didn’t, what would be the point of anything?  Life would be meaningless.”

            He closed his eyes and let the water bead against his face, her words ricocheting around his mind. 

            After they toweled off and dressed in underclothes, she cleaned and bandaged his wrist wound, and he swallowed two pain reliever capsules.  Then, she pulled the curtains over the windows and adjusted the air conditioner, while he hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and set the bedside alarm clock for ten o’clock in the morning.

            “We’ll get about three hours of shut-eye,” he said.  “After that, it’s back to work.”

            “Wow, three whole hours.”  She stretched out across the king-size bed.  “I’m joking, but with the way I feel right now, the idea’s as tempting as a full night’s sleep.”

            With the curtains drawn, shadows gathered in the room.  Although none of the pockets of darkness were deep enough to hide an intruder, he imagined faces floating in them, shining fanatical eyes watching, plotting.

You’re safe,
he told himself. 
Relax.

            Nevertheless, he buried a handgun underneath his pillow.  He put another piece on the nightstand, beside the clock, and Lisa had placed her .357 on the table on her side of the bed.

            He closed his eyes and, after a short while, drifted asleep. 

            He dreamed, again, about his father.  They were on the lake, fishing rods dipped into the silver water.  Blood glistened on his dad’s shirt, of which he again seemed unaware.   

Something jerked the end of Anthony’s line, and he pulled it out to discover that it was a not a fish, but a rifle, and he reeled it in and dropped it onto the floor of the boat, and his dad picked it up and thrust it into his hands, saying,
“Now you take this gun and you go get them suckers, son, go get justice for me, dammit, ‘cause it’s time for war . . .”

53

           
At dawn,
Bishop Emmanuel Prince typically would offer his morning prayers on the eastward-facing balcony of his hilltop mansion as the sun’s rising face kissed the Kingdom Campus.  It was a ritual he’d performed daily for decades except under the most extreme circumstances, and served to ensure that he began each day in alignment with the Holy Spirit.

            Although he was on the balcony that morning to greet the sun, fully dressed in his normal clothing—two-piece suit, silk tie, Italian loafers—he did not kneel.  He did not bow his head.  And he did not pray.

            What he did was survey the Kingdom Campus—as if he were seeing it for the last time.

            The vast, highly ordered complex of buildings and green space was arrayed before him in its entire splendor, like a finely crafted model train set lying at a child’s feet on Christmas morning. 

            For forty years, his father, and then, he, had labored to bring their divinely-inspired vision of a kingdom on earth to fruition.  From his father’s birthing the church in an elementary school basement in southwest Atlanta, to the glorious, twenty-four hundred acre wonder they enjoyed today, it was the blessed fruit of forty years of faithful service to God.

            They had accomplished much, but there was so much work left to do.  The King would not return to earth until his servants had established dominion in every nation.  Their ministry had touched and influenced millions—but the world contained
billions
of souls that needed to be saved . . . or condemned if they turned away from God’s gentle, loving hand. 

            Sometimes, he was stunned by the audacity of the vision God had given him.  Humbled by the ambitious, holy mission with which he had been charged.  Although he was a preacher’s son, he had never expected that God would call on him to lead his people into glory.  When he’d received the Call, he’d been a junior in high school and a star player on the varsity basketball team, with dreams of going to college on an athletic scholarship. 

            He’d also been—and he shared this point openly in his sermons—a fornicator, and a frequent abuser of alcohol and marijuana.  

            One night after a playoff game in which he’d scored twenty-seven points and his team had emerged victorious, he’d gone with some teammates to a party.  There were horny high school girls there, weed, and kegs of beer.  He eagerly indulged his taste for all three vices, and had been so intoxicated that by the time he and his buddies piled into a van to go home, he neither realized, nor cared, that the designated driver was drunk, too.  

            On a winding, dark country road, the driver swerved to avoid hitting a massive buck, and not only swiped the animal, but slammed into an oak tree at seventy miles per hour.  The van crumpled like a soda can in a trash compactor, and the passengers, none of whom were wearing seat belts, perished instantly in the wreck.

            Except for Bishop Prince.

            Limbs horribly twisted, ribs broken, blood gushing from a deep gash in his forehead, he’d been certain that he was going to die, and cried out for God to save him from Hell, which was the fate he surely deserved for the sinful life he’d led.  He promised God that he would serve him, in any capacity demanded, if only his life were spared. 

            Crying and pleading, he suddenly realized that a man stood on the shoulder of the road, at the edge of the wreckage.  He was as tall as a tree.  His face was luminous.  His flowing robe glowed white as the stars.

An angel of the Lord.
  He fell into a stunned silence.

            The ethereal visitor approached the van and stuck his gigantic hand through the ruptured windshield.  He touched Bishop Prince’s forehead, a sensation like static electricity dancing on the bishop’s flesh, and he heard a booming voice in his mind as resonant as thunder.

God has heard your cry, and he forgives you.  Serve him for the rest of your days and order your life as a testament to his enduring goodness and mercy. 

            There was a blinding blaze of light . . . and when it faded, he was standing in the high school locker room, minutes after the night’s playoff game had ended, still dressed in his sweaty basketball jersey and sneakers. 

            He was awestruck.  And knew in his soul that God had found him worthy of a second chance.

            When the teammate who’d driven the doomed van dropped by his locker a minute later and ask if he wanted to come to a party, he told him firmly that he was going home to study the Bible with his father.  His response drew a strange look from his friend, but he didn’t care.  He quit the basketball team the next day and announced to his family that he planned to attend a theological college.  

            The path of his destiny had been revealed, and there was no turning back.  God had important work for him to do.  He’d been chosen.

            Now, decades later, one minion of the devil threatened to destroy it all.

            During his ministry, Bishop Prince had conquered hundreds of Anthony Thornes, godless men with grudges to bear over some wrongly perceived sin of his or the church.  Few of them were credible threats.  All of them were summarily eliminated.

Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm,
the Lord had declared in the book of Psalm.  God granted special protections to those engaged in the important work of Kingdom building.

            Thorne, however, was proving to be a special case.  Their intelligence indicated that he’d received assistance from a high-ranking, former church official, but they had been unable to determine the precise nature of the information that the Judas had passed to Thorne.  They had in their arsenal some of the most powerful technological equipment known to man, unprecedented access to databases, surveillance covering
every square foot
of the Kingdom Campus and much of the outside world—yet they did not know what the Judas had given Thorne.

            But considering the Judas’ extensive knowledge of the Kingdom’s global operations, and his wicked motives, it was certain to be utterly devastating.

            Footsteps approached from behind: boot soles against marble in a familiar marching cadence.  The Director of the Armor of God appeared at his side on the balcony.

            Although the Director was much shorter than Bishop Prince—the bishop stood six feet seven, while the Director was barely six feet—the Director was one of the few people in the world who did not behave as though he felt miniaturized by the bishop’s presence.  Bishop Prince respected that about him.  A man should fear only God, not other men.

            He couldn’t say as much about other so-called men, including the President of the United States. 

            The Director’s face was all hard angles, his thin lips a slash, his dark eyes like darts.  He was clean shaven, his steel gray hair trimmed in a precise crew cut.  He was dressed that morning in a white shirt and dark wool slacks with creases so bladelike they could have sliced paper, and his black leather boots had a mirror shine. 

            For a long moment, neither of the men talked.  They watched the rays of the rising sun bleed across the land before them. 

            Bishop Prince wondered if the Director also pondered the precarious position of their organization.  Over the years, he had given nearly as much to the church as had Bishop Prince and his father, single-handedly building the Armor of God from a fledging outfit that employed a handful of fellow, God-fearing ex-Army Rangers into a formidable, highly trained, well-equipped, instantly deployable armed force that numbered in the hundreds.  He had saved the Kingdom from catastrophic scandals many times, often taking it upon himself to fire the sniper rifle that silenced the Satan-inspired voices of dissent.  

            The Director cleared his throat.  “I’ve ordered Cutty to return to the Kingdom Campus.  He and I will convene at oh-nine hundred hours.”