The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (18 page)

Rayford sat back. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m so new at this.”

“We all are.”

“Yeah, but you were raised in it, Bruce. You know this stuff.”

“I only missed the most important point.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what appeals to me about it. I’m hungry for knowledge of the Bible. And I need a friend.”

“So do I,” Bruce said. “That’s the risk. We could wind up grating on each other.”

“I’m willing to take the risk if you are,” Rayford said. “As long as I’m not expected to take any leadership role.”

“Deal,” Barnes said, thrusting out his hand. Rayford shook it. Neither smiled. Rayford had the feeling this was the beginning of a relationship born of tragedy and need. He just hoped it worked out. When Rayford finally arrived home, Chloe was eager to hear all about it. She was amazed at what her father told her and said she was embarrassed to say she had not watched the DVD yet. “But I will now, Dad, before we go to Atlanta. You’re really into this, aren’t you? It sounds like something I want to check out, even if I don’t do anything about it.”

Rayford had been home about twenty minutes and had changed into his pajamas and robe to relax for the rest of the evening when Chloe called out to him. “Dad, almost forgot. A Hattie Durham called for you several times. She sounded pretty agitated. Said she works with you.”

“Yeah,” Rayford said. “She wanted to be assigned to my next flight and I ducked her. She probably found out and wants to know why.”

“Why
did
you duck her?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime.”

Rayford was reaching for the phone when it rang. It was Bruce. “I forgot to confirm,” he said. “If you’ve agreed to be part of the core team, the first responsibility is tonight’s meeting with the disenchanted and the skeptics.”

“You
are
going to be a tough taskmaster, aren’t you?”

“I’ll understand if you weren’t planning on it.”

“Bruce,” Rayford said, “except for heaven, there’s no place I’d rather be. I wouldn’t miss it. I might even be able to get Chloe to come to this one.”

“What one?” Chloe asked when he hung up.

“In a minute,” he said. “Let me call Hattie and calm the waters.”

Rayford was surprised that Hattie said nothing about their flight assignments. “I just got some disconcerting news,” she said. “You remember that writer from
Global Weekly
who was on our flight, the one who had his computer hooked up to the in-flight sat phone?”

“Vaguely.”

“His name was Cameron Williams, and I talked to him by phone a couple of times since the flight. I tried calling him from the airport in New York last night but couldn’t get through.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I just heard on the news that he was killed in England in a car bombing.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not. Isn’t that too bizarre? Rayford, sometimes I don’t know how much of this I can take. I hardly knew this guy, but I was so shocked I just broke down when I heard. I’m sorry to bother you with it, but I thought you might remember him.”

“No, that’s all right, Hattie. And I know how overwhelming this is for you because it has been for me, too. I’ve got a lot to talk to you about, actually.”

“You do?”

“Could we get together sometime soon?”

“I’ve put in to work one of your flights,” she said. “Maybe if that works out.”

“Maybe,” he said. “And if it doesn’t, maybe you could come over for dinner with Chloe and me.”

“I’d like that, Rayford. I really would.”

Buck Williams sat near an exit at JFK Airport reading his own obituary. “Magazine Writer Assumed Dead,” the headline read.

Williams, a five-year employee of
Global Weekly
, had won a Pulitzer as a reporter for the
Boston Globe
before joining the magazine as a staff reporter at 25. He quickly rose to the position of senior writer and has since written more than three dozen cover stories, four times assigned the
Weekly
’s Newsmaker of the Year story.

The journalist won the prestigious Ernest Hemingway Prize for war correspondence when he chronicled the destruction of the Russian air force over Israel 14 months ago. According to Steve Plank, executive editor of
Global Weekly
, the administration of the magazine is refusing to confirm the report of Williams’s death “until we see hard evidence.”

Williams’s father and a married brother reside in Tucson, where Williams lost his sister-in-law, niece, and nephew in last week’s disappearances.

Scotland Yard reports that the London bombing appeared to be the work of Northern Ireland terrorists and might have been a case of retribution. Captain Howard Sullivan called his 29-year-old subordinate, victim Alan Tompkins, “one of the finest men and brightest investigators it has been my privilege to work with.”

Sullivan added that Williams and Tompkins had become friends after the writer had interviewed the investigator for an article on terrorism in England several years ago. The two had just emerged from the Armitage Arms Pub in London when a bomb exploded in Tompkins’s Scotland Yard vehicle.

Tompkins’s remains have been identified, though only items of personal identification of Williams were recovered from the scene.

Rayford Steele had a plan. He had decided to be honest with Chloe about his attraction to Hattie Durham and how guilty he felt about it. He knew it would disappoint Chloe, even if it didn’t shock her. He intended to talk about his new desire to share his faith with Hattie, hoping he could make some progress with Chloe without her feeling threatened. Chloe had gone with him to the church meeting for skeptics the night before, as she promised. But she had left a little over halfway through. She also fulfilled her promise to watch the DVD the former pastor had recorded. They had discussed neither the meeting nor the DVD.

They wouldn’t have much time together once they arrived at O’Hare, so Rayford broached the subject in the car as they gaped at the wreckage and debris lining the roadways. Between their house and the airport, they saw more than a dozen homes that had been gutted by fire. Rayford’s theory was that families had disappeared, leaving something on the stove.

“And you think this was God’s doing?” Chloe said, not disrespectfully.

“I do.”

“I thought he was supposed to be a God of love and order,” she said.

“I believe he is. This was his plan.”

“There were plenty of tragedies and senseless deaths before this.”

“I don’t understand all that either,” Rayford said. “But like Bruce said last night, we live in a fallen world. God left control of it pretty much to Satan.”

“Oh, brother,” she said. “Do you wonder why I walked out?”

“I figured it was because the questions and answers were hitting a little too close to home.”

“Maybe they were, but all this stuff about Satan and the Fall and sin and all that . . .” She stopped and shook her head.

“I don’t claim to understand it any better than you do, honey,” Rayford said. “But I know I’m a sinner and that this world is full of them.”

“And you consider me one.”

“If you’re part of everybody, then, yes, I do. Don’t you?”

“Not on purpose.”

“You’re never selfish, greedy, jealous, petty, spiteful?”

“I try not to be, at least not at anyone else’s expense.”

“But you think you’re exempt from what the Bible says about everybody being a sinner, about there not being one righteous person anywhere, ‘No not one’?”

“I don’t know, Daddy. I just have no idea.”

“You know what I’m worried about, of course.”

“Yeah, I know. You think the time is short, that in this new dangerous world I’m going to wait too long to decide what I’m going to do, and then it’ll be too late.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Chloe. I just hope you know I’m thinking only of you, nothing else.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Daddy.”

“What did you think of the DVD? Did it make sense to you?”

“It made a lot of sense if you buy into all that. I mean, you have to start with that as a foundation. Then it all works neatly. But if you’re not sure about God and the Bible and sin and heaven and hell, then you’re still wondering what happened and why.”

“And that’s where you are?”

“I don’t know where I am, Dad.”

Rayford fought the urge to plead with her. If they had enough time over lunch in Atlanta, he would try the approach of telling her about Hattie. The plane was supposed to sit only about forty-five minutes before the return to O’Hare. Rayford wondered if it was fair to pray for a delay.

“Nice cap,” Steve Plank said as he hurried into JFK and slapped Buck on the shoulder. “And what’s this? Two day’s growth?”

“I was never too much for disguises,” Buck said.

“You’re not famous enough to need to hide,” Steve said. “You staying away from your apartment for a while?”

“Yeah, and probably yours. You sure you weren’t followed?”

“You’re being a little paranoid, aren’t you, Buck?”

“I have a right,” Buck said as they climbed into a cab. “Central Park,” he informed the driver. Then he told Steve the entire story.

“What makes you think Carpathia is going to help?” Plank asked later as they walked through the park. “If the Yard and the exchange are behind this, and you think Carpathia is linked to Todd-Cothran and Stonagal, you might be asking Carpathia to turn against his own angels.”

They strolled under a bridge to elude the hot spring sun. “I have a hunch about this guy,” Buck said, his voice echoing off the cobblestone walls. “It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that he met with Stonagal and Todd-Cothran in London the other day. But I have to believe he’s a pawn.”

Steve pointed to a bench and they sat. “Well, I met Carpathia this morning at his press conference,” Steve said, “and all I can say is that I hope you’re right.”

“Rosenzweig was impressed with him, and that’s one insightful old scientist.”

“Carpathia’s impressive,” Steve conceded. “He’s handsome as a young heartthrob, and this morning he spoke in nine languages, so fluently you’d have thought each was his native tongue. The media is eating him up.”

“You say that as if you’re not the media,” Buck said.

Steve shrugged. “I’m proving my own point. I’ve learned to be a skeptic, to let
People
and the tabloids chase the personalities. But here’s a guy with substance, with a brain, with something to say. I liked him. I mean, I saw him only in a press conference setting, but he seems to have a plan. You’ll like him, and you’re a bigger skeptic than I am. Plus he wants to see you.”

“Tell me about that.”

“I told you. He’s got a little entourage of nobodies, with one exception.”

“Rosenzweig.”

“Right.”

“What’s Chaim’s connection?”

“Nobody’s sure yet, but Carpathia seems to attract experts and consultants who keep him up to speed on technology, politics, finances, and all that. And you know, Buck, he’s not that much older than you are. I think they said this morning he’s thirty-three.”

“Nine languages?”

Plank nodded.

“Do you remember which ones?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Just thinking.”

Steve pulled a reporter’s notebook from his side pocket. “You want ’em in alphabetical order?”

“Sure.”

“Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.”

“One more time,” Buck said, thinking.

Steve repeated them. “What’s on your mind?”

“This guy’s the consummate politician.”

“He is not. Trust me, this was no trick. He knew these languages well and used them effectively.”

“But don’t you see which languages they are, Steve? Think about it.”

“Spare me the effort.”

“The six languages of the United Nations, plus the three languages of his own country.”

“No kidding?”

Buck nodded. “So am I gonna get to meet him soon?”

The flight to Atlanta was full and busy, and Rayford had to change altitudes continually to avoid choppy air. He got to see Chloe for only a few seconds while his first officer was in the cockpit and the plane was on autopilot. Rayford made a hurried walk-through but had no time to chat.

He got his wish in Atlanta. Another 747 had to be flown back to Chicago in the middle of the afternoon, and the only other pilot available had to be back earlier. Chicago coordinated with Atlanta, switched the two assignments, and found a seat for Chloe, too. That gave Rayford and Chloe more than two hours for lunch, enough time to get away from the airport.

Their cab driver, a young woman with a beautiful lilt to her voice, asked if they wanted to see “a truly unbelievable sight.”

“If it’s not out of the way.”

“It’s just a couple of blocks from where y’all are going,” she said.

She maneuvered around several detours and construction horses, then through two streets manned by traffic cops. “Over yonder,” she said, pointing, and she pulled into a sandy parking lot rimmed by three-foot concrete-block walls. “Can you see that parking garage ’cross the way?”

“What in the world?” Chloe said.

“Strange, isn’t it?” the cabbie said.

“What happened?” Rayford asked.

“This has been going on since the vanishings,” she said.

They peered at a six-story garage with cars seemingly jammed into each other at all angles in a gridlock so tight and convoluted that cranes worked to lift them out through the open sides of the structure.

“They were all in there after a late ball game that night,” she said. “The police say it was bad anyway, long lines of cars trying to get out, people taking turns merging and lots of ’em not taking turns at all. So some people who got tired of waiting just tried to edge in and make other people let ’em in, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“And then, poof, they say more than a third of the cars ain’t got drivers, just like that. If they had room, they kept going till they hit other cars or the wall. If they didn’t have room, they just pushed up against the car in front of ’em. The ones that were left couldn’t go one way or the other. It was such a mess that people just left their cars and climbed over other cars and went looking for help. They started at dawn moving the cars on the ground levels with tow trucks, then they got them cranes in there by noon, and they been at it ever since.”

Rayford and Chloe sat and watched, shaking their heads. Cranes normally used for hoisting beams up to new buildings were wrapping cables around cars, tugging, yanking, dragging them past each other and through openings in the concrete to clear the garage. It appeared it would take several more days.