Tarnished Image (9 page)

“If it does, though, you promise to tell me?”

“Sure.”

“OK, then.” David rewound the tape to the beginning. “This happened in India and other countries near India. It was morning there.” David pressed the play button.

“What’s that?” asked Timmy, pointing at the screen.

“It’s a giant wave.”

“Like what we saw at the beach?”

“No, Timmy, those were small waves. This wave is much bigger and much stronger.”

“How big?”

“We don’t know yet, but Dr. Scott thinks that it may be between 150 feet and 200 feet tall.”

“Wow.” He paused and wrinkled his brow. “How tall is that?”

David paused the tape. “Come over here.” David walked to the window behind his desk. “You see that building across the street? The white one?”

“Yeah, it’s smaller than our building.”

“That’s true. Our building is fifty-three floors high. That one over there is only fifteen stories. The wave on the video would be about that tall, maybe even a little taller.”

Timmy’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Wow! That’s lots bigger than the ones at the beach.”

“Much bigger,” David corrected.

“Yeah, much bigger.”

Turning back to the television, David began the tape again. Timmy was wonderstruck. David watched him as the boy watched the video. Timmy took it all in, the sudden
explosion of the wave’s power, the wreckage left behind, the torn buildings, and the lifeless bodies.

When the tape was over, Timmy turned to David and asked, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did that happen?”

“There was an earthquake under the sea. It caused the wave.”

“No, I mean, why did God let that happen?”

David was nonplussed. It was not the question he had expected. Since David had taken on the responsibility for Timmy, he had been taking the boy to church. A year and a half ago, when his wife had deserted him, David had quit praying. It was during his first trip abroad to Ethiopia with A.J., Kristen, and others to Ethiopia that David had regained his spiritual balance. Since then he had been faithful to attend and support a local downtown church whenever he could. He took Timmy and Kristen with him. Timmy was now showing new spiritual roots.

Timmy’s spiritual sensitivity proved remarkable. He had developed a real hunger for matters of faith, often quizzing David to distraction. One of David’s great joys was watching Timmy study the illustrations in a children’s picture Bible that he had purchased for him.

“What do you mean, Timmy?”

“Why did God let the wave happen?”

The question was a deep one with which theologians had struggled for centuries: Why did God allow pain and suffering?

“There’s no easy answer for that, Timmy.”

Timmy looked at the now blank television screen. Clearly the answer had not satisfied him. “Oh.”

David felt his stomach turn. This was an important question for Timmy, and David was uncertain how to answer. After four years of college, three years of seminary, and an additional two years to earn his doctorate, as well as over a decade of pastoral ministry, he felt that he should have all the answers to questions like this, but he did not. He did not have a response for Timmy, and he did not have an answer for himself. He knew the various philosophical arguments—pain is needed so that joy can be appreciated and similar platitudes—but he found those wanting.

Many times David had held dying children in his arms, children too weak to receive the nourishment that Barringston Relief had brought too late. He had helped dig mass graves and hand-feed people too frail to pick up a spoonful of rice. He carried medical supplies to outlying areas of Africa and told stories to children in Brazilian orphanages. Each effort was rewarded with more peace than anything he had ever done, but in the still, quiet nights, the same question would come to mind. He was determined not to demean the suffering or insult God with simple one-line answers to such a profound question.

Timmy was staring at David, waiting for an answer. “Timmy, I don’t know.”

“Were those bad people?”

“No, they weren’t bad.”

Timmy pushed out his lower lip, something he did when pondering some difficult concept. “Did they do something wrong?”

“No.”

“Did they make God mad?”

“Not that I know of, Timmy. The world is filled with
sadness and pain. It always has been that way, and it always will be.”

“Are there children in India?” Timmy asked.

David nodded. “There are children everywhere, Timmy.”

“Did they die too?”

A sigh escaped David’s lips, and he hung his head. “Yes, Timmy. Many children died because of the wave.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Sometimes bad things happen. We live in a world that is dangerous. Sometimes something happens like a tsunami—that’s what the wave is called—and many people are affected. It’s part of living on our planet. That doesn’t mean that God made the big wave, Timmy. The big wave is an act of nature.”

“Nature made a wave that God couldn’t stop?”

“No, that’s not what I mean—”

“Could God have stopped the wave?”

“Well, yes, I suppose He could, if He wanted to.”

“He didn’t want to?”

This wasn’t working. David was struggling to help Timmy make sense of a tragedy and was failing miserably. “I wouldn’t say it like that. You’re asking a very difficult question, Timmy. I’m not sure there is a good answer for why tragedies like this happen.”

“If we was in India—”

“
Were
in India,” David corrected.

“If we
were
in India, on the beach and everything, would we be dead?”

Closing his eyes, David thought for a moment. How should he answer that question? David decided that the truth would still be the best approach. “Yes.”

“I don’t get it.”

A sadness seeped into David, like water into a sponge. David wished for a clear and concise answer, but he knew one wasn’t available. He could try to explain some of the things he had been taught, arguments like “Death isn’t always a bad thing,” “Everyone dies sooner or later,” and “Bad things happen to good people.” But none of the things he had studied could adequately answer such a difficult question. Timmy’s mind was limited in development, but he was amazingly sharp with those things he could understand.

There were some people who would offer simplistic answers, but those answers came when people failed to question deeply and honestly. They took platitudes like pills. There were many spiritual questions that humans couldn’t answer—not in this life anyway.

“You know, Timmy,” David finally said, “at the moment, I don’t get it either.”

O
SBORN
S
COTT
PRESSED
HIS
FINGERS
TO
HIS
TEMPLES
AND
rubbed. He closed his eyes and took in slow, deep breaths. Weariness ached within him; fear percolated in his mind; his stomach felt like a vat of heated acid. Opening his eyes again he looked at the data sheet in front of him. It contained information from NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center. Earlier that day, their P-3 Orion aircraft had flown through Claudia, which had been fully upgraded to hurricane status with good reason. NOAA verified information of the earlier fly-through by the Fifty-third Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. The barometric pressure at the storm’s center was abysmally low at 875 millibars, and wind speeds had already surpassed one hundred forty miles per hour. Tomorrow it would be worse.

Part of Osborn felt excited. This was a once-in-a-lifetime—no, a once-in-a-century storm. Scientists waited all their lives for the opportunity to study such an event. The excitement waned. This was more than a storm, it was death packaged in wind and rain. Most would see a monstrous cyclone, but Osborn recognized it for what it truly was: a six-mile-high, fast-moving, ravenous, unrelenting demon—a demon that would not be satisfied without a sacrificial oblation of life and property.

And there was nothing Osborn Scott, Barringston Relief, or anyone else could do about it except watch impotently.

The news media were already carrying the story. Every broadcast and cable network told of the impending meteorological invasion. Maps appeared on television screens, and impeccably dressed weathermen and women pointed to the circling white clouds. Each quoted the National Hurricane Center and made prognostications. That was a good thing, Osborn knew. The sooner people knew, the sooner they could protect themselves. Except no one yet knew where Hurricane Claudia would hit.

Tomorrow they would have a better idea, and they hoped that would be soon enough.

Osborn pulled open the right-hand desk drawer, removed a five-by-seven color photo in a battered metal frame, and studied it. Slowly he passed his finger over the young faces of the group in the photo. All so young. He paused as his fingers reached one face, that of a youthful woman with a brilliant smile and straight, shiny blond hair.

The image blurred as Osborn’s eyes filled with tears. In his mind, the hair was no longer the beautiful locks portrayed in the photo; instead the hair was wet, tangled, and matted with blood.

Slamming his eyes shut, Osborn fought the images that played in his mind like a movie on a screen. He took a deep breath and willed himself to think of something else, anything else. He would not, could not, endure the memory again. It brought too much pain, too much mental agony.

Blond hair. Wind. Blood. Water. Blood.

Quickly he put the photo away and slammed the drawer, but it did no good. Osborn Scott was doomed to
live the event over one more time—one more agonizing, soul-shredding time. And he was powerless to stop it.

Words ricocheted in David’s mind as he gazed out the window of his office. Fragments of sentences and pieces of paragraphs bounced about with no loss of energy, never settling. Osborn’s answer to David’s question would not go away. How do you help everyone? “You don’t,” he had replied. “You have to make choices. Some you will save; others you will be forced to lose.”

David shook his head. Those were unsettling words he did not want to hear. He knew that no matter how large Barringston Relief became, there would be people out of reach of its help. The pending hurricane was bearing down on Cuba and other areas like a medieval dragon swooping down from the sky on a English village, and the monster wave churning hundreds of miles of coastland into a mass of twisted debris only made matters worse.

Many would send help. Countries would mobilize food and medical aid, but no matter how fast things happened, people would die or be left homeless.

Pictures as clear as any taken by a camera flashed in his mind. David could see the carnage, sense the pain. He was thankful to be a part of an organization dedicated to helping others, but he knew that it wouldn’t be enough. Still, they would do their best. Lives would be saved, and families sheltered and fed. He wished he could do more, and he prayed that nothing else would go wrong.

“Nice office,” a male voice said behind him.

David turned and saw two men in suits standing in the doorway to his office. One was an African American who
stood about David’s height but was more stoutly built. He wore a dark blue suit with an equally blue paisley tie. His face was pleasant and adorned with a slight smile that elevated a thick mustache.

Standing next to him was a man in a light gray suit. His face reflected no emotion at all.

“Thank you,” David said with uncertainty.

“Did you have this designed for you?”

David glanced around the room. It was a good-sized office, simply adorned and furnished with a glass-topped desk, matching conference table, and walnut credenza. Several leather chairs were opposite the desk.

“No,” David replied. “I inherited it when I became head of Barringston Relief. May I ask who you are?”

“The head of Barringston Relief?” the man said with a tone that showed he was dutifully impressed. “Then you are, indeed, Dr. David O’Neal?”

“I am,” David answered. “What can I do for you?”

The man reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a small leather wallet, opened it, and showed his identification to David. The man in the gray suit mirrored the act.

“I’m Agent Bennett Hall of the FBI, and this is Detective Wilson of the San Diego Police Department. The first thing you can do for us is to step away from the window and stand in front of the desk.”

“I don’t understand.” David was perplexed.

“I’ll be happy to explain things in a moment, sir, but first do as I say, and step away from the window and stand in front of the desk.”

“But,” David began, “I don’t—”

“I understand that,” Hall said firmly. “Just do as I ask.”

David complied and stepped to the center of the room.

“Please turn around and place your hands on the top of your head.”

“What?” David responded loudly. “You’re not serious.”

“I am serious, sir. Turn around and put your hands on your head and interlace your fingers.”

Again David complied. His heart raced and he felt his face flush. “There must be some mistake.” David felt a hand seize his own. A second later, David felt something cold, smooth, and metallic touch his right wrist. He heard a small click and a muted ratcheting sound. He was being handcuffed.