Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II (6 page)

“Well, who would have figured that woman would track her down during classes?”

He glared at me as though it were my fault.

“I thought she’d left campus!” I said, defending myself.

“That much is true,” the professor said.

A film clip of the professor yelling, “That’s enough! This press conference is over!” was played. Whitson and the professor viewed it without comment, though I noticed the professor’s hand gripping the arm of his wheelchair.

Whitson slumped into a chair. “She has single-handedly undone everything we attempted to accomplish today.”

“It was going to come out eventually,” the professor replied philosophically. “We’ll survive this. It may be rough sailing for a while, but we’ll survive.”

Jana coiled the cord of her microphone while Ostermann and the cameraman packed the equipment. She glanced up and saw Sue Ling, arms folded, looking down at her from the campus walkway.

Even at this distance Jana could feel Sue Ling’s anger. The two women exchanged a long, uncomfortable glance before Jana turned her attention to the microphone cord. When she looked up again, Sue Ling was gone.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Ostermann said, having witnessed the silent exchange.

“I would have to care for it to bother me.” Jana coiled the cord.

“All I’m saying is that sometimes you have to choose between getting the story and having friends. You can’t let your friends get in the way of the story. You were a professional today.”

Carrying the cord, Jana plopped it down on the equipment waiting to be carried to the van. She took another glance at where she’d last seen Sue.

“And sometimes your friends make the choice for you.”

The three of us in President Whitson’s office stared at a blank television screen, each of us absorbed in his own thoughts.

The door to the outer office opened. Whitson’s secretary didn’t ask why the three men were watching a television screen with no picture. She dutifully approached Whitson and handed him a sheet of paper.

“This fax just came in. It’s from Dr. Zahin.”

As Whitson read the fax, his secretary excused herself.

“And the hits just keep on coming,” he said, reaching for the television remote. He checked his watch, then hit the button that brought the television screen back to life.

A dirty hand filled the screen as it dropped one coin at a time into a pile. “…twenty-three…twenty-four…twenty-five…”

The same video clip they had shown me in private was being aired by a national network. By way of explanation, Whitson held up the fax.

“Dr. Zahin apologizes for breaking our agreement. He says unforeseen developments forced his hand and insists that if I were in his position I would take a similar course of action.”

Following the counting of Judas’s coins, a news analyst described for the television audience the significance of the find. A graphic of one of the coins was added to a list of graphics identifying the other artifacts identified in the third manuscript—the gifts of the Magi, Pilate’s reports, Peter’s taxes, the shop in Nazareth. The whole world knew about them now.

The professor stared at the graphics. “We need to move quickly. Grant, how soon can you leave for Jerusalem?”

Whitson and the professor both looked at me, awaiting my answer.

“Wait a minute.” I took a step back. “No one said anything about Jerusalem.”

“Things are happening too quickly,” he replied. “I need someone in Jerusalem to be my eyes and ears.”

“I agree,” I said, “but why does it have to be me?”

“It isn’t you,” the professor said. “I’ll send Sue as my representative. I want you to go with her, just in case she comes across some of our old friends.”

An icy shudder shook my spine. By “old friends,” he meant rebel angels and their demon horde. I had barely survived my last encounter with them and wasn’t ready for a repeat showdown.

“No,” I said. “When you said you needed my help, you didn’t say anything about international travel or hand-to-hand combat with unfriendly angels. I’ll pass.”

The professor swung his wheelchair so he was facing me directly. “What do you mean, you’ll pass? That’s not an option.”

“Of course it’s an option. Free will makes it an option. If there’s one thing I learned from recent experience it’s that we all have choices. And I choose to pass on this one.”

“Your fear is unfounded,” Whitson said, adding his voice to the professor’s. “We don’t know that angels have anything to do with this.”

“It’s not that,” I lied. “I got a call from my publisher. They’re offering me a new book deal, and they’re throwing a lot of money in my direction. I can’t pass this up. It’s my chance to reestablish my reputation in the industry. Sorry, but playing Indiana Jones doesn’t pay the bills.”

The professor folded his hands in his lap. He stared at me long and hard. “Looks to me like you’re digging a hole.”

We both knew what he meant. I’d once accused him of hiding from danger.

“One man’s hole is another man’s vocation,” I said.

Yeah, it sounded that stupid when I said it, too. But they knew what I meant. I left them to fight their own battles.

In the parking lot I called my publisher.

“Consider the contract signed,” I told him. “I’ll overnight it to my agent.”

With that phone call my bank account had just gotten a lot fatter. So why didn’t I feel like celebrating?

“Good work, kiddo. The networks are running with your exclusive,” Matt Gabra said, coming up behind Jana. “They’ll air it tonight on the evening news.”

Jana was watching a tape of the broadcast that had aired while she and Ostermann were returning to the station. She watched with fascination as the thirty pieces of silver were counted. The producer waited for the clip to finish before continuing.

“Once again, you impressed them,” her producer said of the networks. “I wish I could say I passed on the chance to gloat that you signed with us. But I’m not that big a man.”

Jana swung around. “I’m going to Jerusalem and Cairo.”

“Whoa! Hold on there!” Gabra cried. “You did good today, but the public attention span for religious stories is a couple of sound bites long.”

Jana wasn’t listening. She strode toward her desk with Gabra hot on her heels.

“You said I could choose my stories,” Jana reminded him as she transferred pens and writing pads from her desk to her purse. “You increased my budget. I’m going.”

“Now wait just a nanosecond. Hear me out. I know what I told you, but I’m still the producer here, and as the producer I’m telling you that this story doesn’t have legs. This whole thing will have blown over before you get halfway to Jerusalem. I’m telling you, it’s a wasted trip.”

“You know what I think?” Jana replied. “I think that this story not only has legs, it has wings.”

Hoisting her purse over her shoulder, she called across the room. “Ostermann! Pack your bags. We’re going to Jerusalem.”

With Christina in D.C. lobbying for Senator Vogler and Jana angry with me, I had no one with whom to celebrate the signing of my new book deal. So I ordered a pizza with the works and pondered the fact that my only friends were a professor, former girlfriends, and a prospective girlfriend. I needed to get a life.

Three hours later I regretted that decision. Indigestion and the late-night news are a painful combination, even though Jana looked terrific on the screen. Very professional. Even the news anchors were impressed. What they didn’t know was that she’d seriously wounded a friend to get the story.

For an hour I tossed in bed. Unable to sleep, I got up and read a World War II novel about an American nurse and a German soldier caught between lines in the Ardennes forest. An hour later I returned to bed, and another hour after that I managed to fall into a fitful sleep.

I dreamed I was in a forest being chased by German soldiers. Having no weapons as they closed in on me, I figured my only recourse was to fly to safety. I spread my arms like wings and lifted my chin heavenward. I never got off the ground. Bushes snagged my clothing. Roots clawed at my feet. I was held earthbound. Hands clutched at me. I turned to fight them off and saw—

—a dark figure standing at the foot of my bed.

I screamed like a little kid.

“Fear not,” said the dark figure. “I am an angel.”

Finding my voice, I replied, “Forgive me if I don’t find comfort in those words.”

The being provided his own light to reveal himself. His radiance filled the room.

“Abdiel! Why didn’t you tell me it was you? Better yet, why didn’t you knock, or choose a more suitable hour, like one in the daytime?”

“Angels do not heed time zones.”

“Well, for humans they come in pretty handy.”

He stared down at me. “You’re not going to Jerusalem. Why?”

I reached for the bedside lamp.

“Nothing personal,” I told him as I clicked it on, “but I tend to get distracted by intruders that glow in the dark.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“The professor sent you, didn’t he?”

Squaring his broad shoulders, Abdiel said, “I do not take orders from men. Why are you not going to Jerusalem?”

I looked at the clock on the nightstand. I’d been asleep a little less than an hour.

“It’s three-seventeen in the morning,” I told him. “I don’t justify my decisions to anybody, angels included, at three-seventeen in the morning.”

“Would you prefer we have this conversation later?”

“I’d prefer not to have this conversation at all!”

To make my point, I switched off the lamp, though with Abdiel glowing it made no difference. I flopped down onto my pillow. Abdiel remained at the foot of the bed.

“How do you expect me to sleep with you standing there?”

“Too bright?”

He dimmed himself.

“Better?” he asked.

“No, it’s not better. I can’t sleep if you’re here.”

“Do not humans pray for angels to watch over them while they sleep?”

Exasperated, I switched on the lamp again.

“All right. I’m not going to Jerusalem because I have a new book contract with a tight deadline. Now you know.”

“This book. It must be written?”

“This book is my chance to redeem my reputation as a researcher and author. Plus, it pays well.”

“Your reputation among men is important to you?”

“Of course it’s important to me! This is my life we’re talking about.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is your reputation as a writer that has suffered. You are confusing your life with your profession.”

“My profession is my life,” I said. “Maybe you don’t see it that way, you being an angel. But that’s the way I see it and the last time I checked, it’s my call to make.”

He stared at me for several moments. His lack of response unnerved me.

“It is my call, isn’t it? I still have free will, don’t I?”

“You would have me instruct you about that which you already know so well? Free will cannot be taken from you by anyone save the Father.”

“Naturally. That’s the way it should be,” I said, relieved the rules hadn’t changed. “And so I choose not to go to Jerusalem.”

“If that is your…”

“It is. And now I’m choosing to go back to sleep.”

Before he could say anything more, I switched off the light, huddled beneath the covers, and closed my eyes. I resisted peeking for as long as I could. When I did, Abdiel was still there.

“And I choose to stay until this conversation is finished,” he said.