by Tim LaHaye
“She backed up, and the tree on the other side of Loretta’s yard started to give way. I was still yellin’ at that girl like she could hear me inside the car. I was sure that second tree would land right on her. She jerked left, and the whole road twisted up right in front of her. If she had pulled onto that pavement a split second earlier, that street flipping up would have tipped her over. She must have been scared to death, one tree lying in front of her, one threatening to fall on her, and the street sticking straight up. She whipped around that first tree and raced right up the driveway into the garage. I was cheering for her. I hoped she’d have enough sense to get to the basement. I couldn’t believe a tornado could do that much damage without me seeing it. When I heard everything crash to the floor like the whole house was coming apart—well, of course, it was—I finally got it into my thick head that this wasn’t a tornado. When the other two trees in Loretta’s yard came down, that window blew out, so I climbed down and ran to the other end of the basement.
“When my front room furniture crashed into where I’d just been, I stepped over the sump pump and pulled myself up on the concrete cutout to the window. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just hoping Chloe was where she could hear me. I screamed bloody murder out that window. She came out the side door white as a sheet, still barefooted and now empty-handed, and she went runnin’ to the back as fast as she could go. That was the last I saw of her. The rest of my house fell in, and somehow the pipes deflected everything a little and left me a tiny space to wait until somebody found me.”
“I’m glad you’re all right.”
“It was pretty exciting. I hope you find Chloe.”
“Do you remember what she was wearing?”
“Sure. That off-white dress, a shift.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cavenaugh.”
The old woman stared into the distance and shook her head slowly.
Chloe’s still alive, Buck thought.
“The first thing Dr. Rosenzweig asked about was your well-being, Captain Steele.”
“I hardly know the man, Supreme Commander Fortunato,” Rayford said, carefully enunciating.
“Commander is sufficient, Captain.”
“You can call me Ray.”
Now Fortunato was angry. “I could call you Private,” he said.
“Oh, good one, Commander.”
“You’re not going to bait me, Captain. As I told you, I’m a new man.”
“Brand-new,” Rayford said, “if you really were dead yesterday and alive today.”
“The truth is, Dr. Rosenzweig next asked after your son-in-law, daughter, and Tsion Ben-Judah.”
Rayford froze. Rosenzweig couldn’t have been that stupid. On the other hand, Buck always said Rosenzweig was enamored of Carpathia. He didn’t know Carpathia was as much an enemy of Ben-Judah as the State of Israel was. Rayford maintained eye contact with the glaring Fortunato, who seemed to know he had Rayford on the ropes. Rayford prayed silently.
“I brought him up-to-date and told him your daughter was unaccounted for,” Leon said. He let that hang in the air. Rayford did not respond. “And what did you wish us to tell him of Tsion Ben-Judah?”
“What did I wish?” Rayford said. “I have no knowledge of his whereabouts.”
“Then why did Dr. Rosenzweig ask about him in the same breath with your daughter and son-in-law?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because I’m asking you, Captain! You think we weren’t aware that Cameron Williams aided and abetted his escape from the State of Israel?”
“Do you believe everything you hear?”
“We know that to be fact,” Fortunato said.
“Then why do you need my input?”
“We want to know where Tsion Ben-Judah is. It is important to Dr. Rosenzweig that His Excellency come to Dr. Ben-Judah’s aid.”
Rayford had listened in when that request was brought to Carpathia. Nicolae had laughed it off, suggesting his people make it appear he tried to help while actually informing Ben-Judah’s enemies where they could find him.
“If I knew the whereabouts of Tsion Ben-Judah,” Rayford said, “I would not tell you. I would ask him if he wanted you to know.”
Fortunato stood. Apparently the meeting was over. He walked Rayford to the door. “Captain Steele, your disloyalty has no future. I say again, you will find me most conciliatory. I would consider it a favor if you would not intimate to Dr. Rosenzweig that His Excellency is as eager to know the whereabouts of Dr. Ben-Judah as he is.”
“Why would I do you a favor?”
Fortunato spread his hands and shook his head. “I rest my case,” he said. “Nicolae, er, the poten—His Excellency has more patience than I. You would not be my pilot.”
“That’s correct, Supreme Commander. I will, however, be piloting this week when you pick up the rest of the Global Community boys.”
“I assume you’re referring to the other world leaders.”
“And Peter Mathews.”
“Pontifex Maximus, yes. But he’s not actually GC.”
“He has a lot of power,” Rayford said.
“Yes, but more popular than diplomatic. He has no political authority.”
“Whatever you say.”
Buck walked Mrs. Cavenaugh back to her bunk, but before helping her settle, he approached the woman in charge of that area. “Does she have to be between these wackos?”
“You can put her in any open cot,” the woman said. “Just make sure her name sticker goes with her.”
Buck guided Mrs. Cavenaugh to a cot near other people her age. On his way out he approached the supervisor again. “What is anyone doing about missing persons?”
“Ask Ernie,” she said, pointing to a small, middle-aged man plotting something on a map on the wall. “He’s with GC, and he’s in charge of the transfer of patients between shelters.”
Ernie proved formal and distracted. “Missing persons?” he repeated, not looking at Buck but still working on his map. “First off, most of them are going to wind up dead. There are so many, we don’t know where to start.”
Buck pulled a photo of Chloe from his wallet. “Start here,” he said.
He finally had Ernie’s attention. He studied the picture, turning it toward the battery-powered lights. “Wow,” he said. “Your daughter?”
“She’s twenty-two. To be her dad I’d have to be at least forty.”
“So?”
“I’m thirty-two,” he said, astounded at his vanity at a time like this. “This is my wife, and I was told she escaped from our house before the quake leveled it.”
“Show me,” Ernie said, turning toward his map. Buck pointed to Loretta’s block. “Hmm. Not good. This was a worldwide quake, but GC has pinpointed several epicenters. That part of Mt. Prospect was close to the epicenter for northern Illinois.”
“So it’s worse here?”
“It’s not much better anywhere else, but this is pretty much the worst of it in this state.” Ernie pointed to a mile stretch from behind Loretta’s block in direct line with where they were. “Major devastation. She would not have been able to get through there.”
“Where might she have gone?”
“Can’t help you there. Tell you what I can do, though. I can blow her picture up and fax it to the other shelters. That’s about it.”
“I’d be grateful.”
Ernie did the clerical work himself. Buck was impressed at how sharp the enlarged copy was. “We only got this machine working about an hour ago,” Ernie said. “Obviously, it’s cellular. You hear about the potentate’s communications company?”
“No,” Buck said, sighing. “But it wouldn’t surprise me to know he’s cornered the market.”
“That’s fair,” Ernie said. “It’s called Cellular-Solar, and the whole world will be linked again before you know it. GC headquarters calls it Cell-Sol for short.”
Ernie wrote on the enlargement, “Missing Person: Chloe Irene Steele Williams. Age 22. 5
'7", 125. Blonde hair. Green eyes. No distinguishing marks or characteristics.” He added his name and phone number.Adobe Garamond Pro
“Tell me where I can reach you, Mr. Williams. You know not to get your hopes up.”
“Too late, Ernie,” Buck said, jotting his number. He thanked him again and turned to leave, then returned. “You say they call the potentate’s communications network Cell-Sol?”
“Yeah. Short for—”
“Cellular-Solar, yeah.” Buck left, shaking his head.
As he climbed into the Range Rover, he felt helpless. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Chloe was out there somewhere. He decided to drive back to Loretta’s another way. No sense being out without looking for her. Always.
It was late, and Rayford was tired. Carpathia’s office door was shut, but light streamed beneath the door. He assumed Mac was still there. Curious as he was, Rayford wasn’t confident Mac would honestly debrief him. For all he knew, Mac was spilling his guts about everything Rayford had said that day.
His top priority before sleep was to try to get through to Buck. At the communications command post he was told he had to have permission from a superior to use a secure outside line. Rayford was surprised. “Look up my level of clearance,” he said.
“Sorry, sir. Those are my orders.”
“How long will you be here?” Rayford asked.
“Another twenty minutes, sir.”
Rayford was tempted to interrupt Carpathia’s meeting with Mac. He knew Nicolae would give him permission to use the phone, and by barging in, he would show he was not afraid of His Excellency the Potentate meeting with his own subordinate. But he thought better of it when he saw Fortunato had turned the light off in his office and was locking his door.
Rayford walked briskly to him. Without a trace of sarcasm, he said, “Commander Fortunato, sir, a request.”
“Certainly, Captain Steele.”
“I need permission from a superior to use an outside line.”
“And you’re calling—?”
“My son-in-law in the States.”
Fortunato backed up against the wall, spread his feet, and crossed his arms. “This is interesting, Captain Steele. Let me ask you, would the Leonardo Fortunato of last week have acceded to this request?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Would my permitting it, despite how cavalierly you treated me this evening, prove to you I have changed?”
“Well, it would show me something.”
“Feel free to use the phone, Captain. Take all the time you need, and best wishes on finding everything OK at home.”
“Thank you,” Rayford said.
Buck prayed for Chloe as he drove, imagining Chloe had found her way to safety and simply needed to hear from him. He called to give Tsion an update but didn’t stay on the phone long. Tsion seemed down, distracted. Something was on his mind, but Buck didn’t want to pursue it while trying to keep the phone open.
Buck flipped open his laptop and looked up Ken Ritz’s number. A minute later Ritz’s voice mail said, “I’m either flyin’, eatin’, sleepin’, or on the other line. Leave a message.”
“Ken, Buck Williams. The two of us you flew out of Israel might need a return trip soon. Call me.”
Rayford couldn’t believe Buck’s phone was busy. He slammed the phone down and waited a few minutes before redialing. Busy again! Rayford smacked his hand on the table.
The young communications supervisor said, “We’ve got a gadget that will keep dialing that number and leave a message.”
“I can tell him to call me here, and you’ll wake me?”
“Unfortunately, no, sir. But you could ask that he call you at 0700 hours, when we open.”
Buck wondered about Ritz’s voice mail. How would anyone know if he had been killed in the earthquake? He lived alone, and that system would just take calls until it filled.
Buck was about half an hour from Donny and Sandy Moore’s house when his phone rang. “God, let it be Ernie,” he pleaded.
“This is Buck.”
“Buck, this is a recorded message from Rayford. I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you. Please call me at the following number at seven o’clock in the morning my time. That’s going to be 10:00 p.m., if you’re in the Central Standard Time zone. Praying Chloe’s all right. You and our friend, too, of course. I want to hear everything. I’m still looking for Amanda. I feel in my soul she’s still alive. Call me.”
Buck looked at his watch. Why couldn’t he call Rayford right then? Buck was tempted to call Ernie, but he didn’t want to bug him. He wended his way back to Tsion. As soon as he came into the house, Buck knew something was wrong. Tsion would not look him in the eye.
Buck said, “I didn’t find any rods to poke in the backyard. Did you find the shelter?”
“Yes,” Tsion said flatly. “It is a duplicate of where I lived at the church. You want to see it?”
“What’s wrong, Tsion?”
“We need to talk. Did you want to see the shelter?”
“That can wait. I just want to know how you get to it.”
“You will not believe how close we were last night when we were doing our unpleasant business. The door that appears to lead to a storage area actually opens into a larger door. Through that door is the shelter. Let us pray we never have to use it.”
“Here’s thanking God it’s there if we do need it,” Buck said. “Now, what’s up? We’ve been through too much for you to keep anything from me.”
“I am not keeping it from you for my sake,” Tsion said. “I would not want to hear if I were you.”
Buck slumped in a chair. “Tsion! Tell me you didn’t get word about Chloe!”
“No, no. I am sorry, Cameron. It is not that. I am still praying for the best there. It is just that for all the treasures in Donny’s briefcase, the journals also led me where I wish I had not gone.”
Tsion sat too, and he looked as bad as he had when his family had been massacred. Buck laid a hand on the rabbi’s forearm. “Tsion, what is it?”
Tsion stood and looked out the window over the sink, then turned to face Buck. With his hands deep in his pockets, he moved to the doors that separated the kitchen from the breakfast nook. Buck hoped he wouldn’t open them. He didn’t need to be reminded of cutting Sandy Moore’s body from under the tree. Tsion opened the door and walked to the edge of the cutout.
Buck was struck by the weirdness of where he was and what he was looking at. How had it come to this? He had been Ivy League educated, New York headquartered, at the top of his profession. Now here he sat in a tiny duplex in a Chicago suburb, having moved into the home of a dead couple he barely knew. In less than two years he had seen millions disappear from all over the globe, become a believer in Christ, met and worked for the Antichrist, fallen in love and married, befriended a great biblical scholar, and survived an earthquake.
Tsion slid the door shut and trudged back. He sat wearily, elbows on the table, his troubled face in his hands. Finally, he spoke. “It should come as no surprise, Cameron, that Donny Moore was a genius. I was intrigued by his journals. I have not had time to get through all of them, but after discovering his shelter, I went in to see it. Impressive. I spent a couple of hours putting the finishing touches on one of Bruce Barnes’s studies that was quite ingenious. I added some linguistics that I humbly believe added some insight, and then I tried to connect to the Internet. You will be happy to know I was successful.”
“You kept your own e-mail address invisible, I hope.”
“You have taught me well. I posted the teaching on a central bulletin board. My hope and prayer is that many of the 144,000 witnesses will see it and benefit from it and respond to it. I’ll check tomorrow. Much bad teaching is going out on the Net, Cameron. I am jealous that believers not be swayed.”
Buck nodded.
“But I digress,” Tsion said. “Finished with my work, I went back to Donny’s journals and started from the beginning. I am only
about a quarter of the way through. I want to finish, but I am heartsick.”
“Why?”
“First let me say that Donny was a true believer. He wrote eloquently of his remorse over missing his first chance to receive Christ. He told of the loss of their baby and how his wife eventually also found God. It is a very sad, poignant account of how they found some joy in anticipation of being reunited with their child. Praise the Lord that has now been realized.” Tsion’s voice began to quaver. “But, Cameron, I came upon some information I wish I had not discovered. Maybe I should have known it was to be avoided. Donny taught Bruce to encrypt personal messages to make anything he wished inaccessible without his own password. As you recall, no one knew that password. Not Loretta; not even Donny.”
“That’s right,” Buck said. “I asked him.”
“Donny must have been protecting Bruce’s privacy when he told you that.”
“Donny knew Bruce’s password? We could have used that. There was a whole gigabyte or so of information we were never able to access off Bruce’s computer.”
“It was not that Donny knew the password,” Tsion said, “but he developed his own code-breaking software. He loaded it onto all the computers he sold you. As you know, during my time in the shelter, I downloaded to my computer—which has astounding storage capacity—everything that had been on Bruce’s. We also had those thousands and thousands of pages of printouts, helpful for when my eyes grew tired of peering at the screen. However, it simply seemed to make sense to also make an electronic backup for that material.”