Chasing the Wind

by Norma Beishir

  “Absurd. I’m just a man, nothing more,” he insisted.

  “So were the apostles,” I told him, “but Jesus imparted to them the power to heal, to perform miracles.”

  “I’m not even a believer.”

  “Neither was Saul of Tarses before Jesus called him to service and he became the Apostle Paul,” I said. “Paul persecuted Christians. He killed many of them prior to his conversion.”

  “This is insane,” Connor insisted.

  “Humor me,” I urged. “You were born in Scotland. The British Isles. The island of the angels.”

  He turned to the window, arms folded across his chest. Finally, he nodded. “So were millions of other men,” he said.

  “The papyrus says the prophet will come from the island of the angels,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You can’t seriously believe that story.”

  “I do,” I insisted. “I believe you’ve been having visions all these years, Connor. I believe your mother also had visions. A prophet would have visions.”

  “So would a bloody drunk,” he pointed out.

  “Dante and his people have gone to a lot of trouble to control you.” I started making notes on the computer.

  Connor was silent for a moment. “That’s not because I’m some kind of mystic.”

  “Prophet,” I corrected.

  “No difference,” he said with an offhanded shrug. “They want my DNA. They think they can create a master race.”

  “They killed your mother, Connor. They have us running for our lives,” I said. “Whatever their motives, we need to know what they know and how far they’re willing to go now to get you and our baby.”

  “Obviously, murder isn’t out of the question,” he said sullenly. “But that doesn’t make me a prophet. Darlin’, I’m no more a prophet than you are.”

  “Moses had pretty much the same response,” I told him. “And the same doubts.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “The text said the prophet would be apart from God,” I went on.

  He turned to face me again. “That I’ll give you,” he said. “No one could be more apart from God than I am.”

  “The prophet must be made whole again in the eyes of God,” I read from the computer’s monitor. “Whole again…according to the ancient mystics, the soul comes to earth in two parts, and they spend their time here searching for their other half so they can become whole again.”

  He didn’t say anything, waiting for an explanation.

  “The prophet had to be made whole again in the eyes of God. Under the eyes of God. God’s holy city. Jerusalem.”

  He frowned. “We were married in Jerusalem.”

  I nodded.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Unbelievable,” he said. “How am I supposed to accept this?”

  “Faith helps.”

  “The one thing I don’t have, love.”

  I watched him with concern. Finally, I asked, “Remember the bird?”

  “Bird?”

  “In Egypt, the bird I found. You healed it.”

  “It just looked that way.”

  “Connor, have you ever healed anyone else?”

  He couldn’t hide his surprise. “Healed anyone?”

  “Just what I said. Have you ever healed anyone?”

  “No. Yes.” He pulled up a chair and sat backward on it, leaning on its back to face her, his arms resting on the frame. “I healed you.”

  “Me?”

  “The bruise on your shoulder,” he recalled. “That night, it was quite large and dark. Purple. It should have taken a week or more to disappear. The next morning, when you got out of bed, I noticed that it was gone. There was not a trace of it.”

  I nodded. “You kissed it.”

  He still looked skeptical. “If I can raise the dead, why did I almost die myself when the bloody snake bit me?” he wanted to know.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I told him. “No spiritual gift is ever ours to control. The power is God’s, working through us.”

  “So the Almighty will allow me to raise the dead, but he considered allowing the serpent to kill me.” Connor scratched his head in puzzlement. “I can’t be of too much value to him.”

  “Or he was using what happened to you for another purpose,” I suggested.

  More than ten years since it was returned to China from British rule, Hong Kong is an energetic mix of contrasts: a major financial center surrounded by an unspoiled wilderness; completely Westernized, yet traditionally Chinese to its core. Its population of almost seven million occupies approximately ten percent of its geography, which made it an ideal place in which to disappear.

  “How did you celebrate Christmas as a child?” I asked Connor. We were having lunch in a restaurant near our hotel and would be doing the same for dinner. There would be no Christmas tree, no celebration like the ones I’d had as a child.

  “Before Edward or after?” Connor asked, his contempt for his stepfather clear in his voice. He’d been drinking heavily since we arrived, trying to drown his frustrations.

  “Mum made it special, " he recalled. "After she died, Edward had the staff make a huge banquet for forty people or more. There would be a mountain of gifts under an elaborately decorated tree. It was beautiful. And pointless.”

  I rubbed his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “It must have been tough for you after she was gone.”

  “I didn’t want to have Christmas. When I left Edward’s semblance of a home and went to America, I didn’t observe Christmas at all. Why celebrate a day for something I didn’t believe in?”

  I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him. I wondered what Christmas was going to be like for our child. Would we always be on the run?

  “I would imagine it was an important day for your family,” Connor said then.

  “Yeah, it was—is,” I said, smiling at the memories that sprang to mind. “We always had pets, and never just one. Dad said we lived on Noah’s Ark. Every Christmas, Mom would put up a large Nativity in the front yard. We had two identical cats, father and son. Fat Cat and Fat Cat Junior. Junior liked to sleep in the manger. Mom had a light installed in it so it could be seen at night, so it was warm in there. Junior liked that warm spot on the cold winter nights, so he’d displace Baby Jesus a couple of times a day.”

  Connor tried to smile. “That’s what I’d like for our children,” he said. “A real family, a real home, not some mausoleum masquerading as a home.”

  “We can have that,” I said. “You can make it happen, Connor. Open the door and accept your calling. Accept the truth.”

  “This whole prophecy business—I can’t process it, darlin’,” he admitted. Connor looked uncomfortable discussing it in a public place, in spite of the fact that we practically had the restaurant to ourselves. There was only one other customer, and he was picking up take-out at the counter, having a lively conversation with a restaurant employee.

  “I believe you’re the prophet,” I said. “I believe you’ve been given an enormous responsibility.”

  “But why?” he wanted to know. “Why me? It makes no sense.”

  “Only God knows why, Connor,” I said softly, covering his hand with mine.

  “If God is so all-powerful, why does he even need me? Why does he need anyone to be his prophet? Why doesn’t he just do whatever he wants to do himself?”

  I didn’t have a logical answer for him. “It doesn’t work that way,” was all I could tell him.

  “Convenient.”

  “Faith is believing what we can’t see, what we can’t prove,” I tried to explain.

  “The papyrus said the prophet would emerge from the Angel Isle to lead mankind, to give hope to a world that has none,” he said. “How could I give hope when I have none myself?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. “That’s it,” I said finally as the realization came.

  “What?”

  “That’s why th
ey killed your mother,” I reasoned. “You’ve already demonstrated certain spiritual gifts, but only by accepting God, by seeking salvation, can you achieve your full potential. Satan will stop at nothing to prevent that from happening.”

  He managed a short laugh. “You’re saying the devil’s out to get us?”

  “He’s out to get everyone,” I said seriously. “Your mother’s death, the threats against us—it’s all for one purpose. It’s to make certain you never turn to God, never realize your destiny.”

  He sat there in silence for a while, trying to process what I was telling him. “Still doesn’t make sense,” he said quietly. “Why didn’t they just kill me when I was a wee lad if they knew all of this about me?”

  “Maybe there’s some reason they can’t,” I suggested. “If they can’t destroy you, then they’ll destroy everyone and everything you love in order to keep you separated from God.”

  “I’m an atheist. How could I be any more separated?"

  He was drinking again. He'd started drinking heavily when we arrived in Hong Kong, sometimes to the point of passing out.

  I watched Connor with growing concern. I stopped even trying to convince him of his calling. I knew he didn’t want to hear it. He was struggling with it. After a lifetime of being studied and tested and exploited, presumably for his incredible intelligence, now he was being faced with a reality that went against the beliefs of his lifetime. It was a mental overload, and I wondered how much more he could take.

  Would it be any easier for him if he were a believer? I wondered. It hasn’t been any easier for me.

  He doesn’t want the role that’s been thrust upon him. How do I help him to deal with it, to accept his destiny? How do I help him learn to trust, to have faith?

  Tell me what to say to him, God. Tell me how to make him see.

  I took the glass from his hand. “I really wish you wouldn’t,” I told him.

  He took it back. “It’s New Year’s Eve, after all.”

  “That’s just an excuse.”

  “It dulls the pain.”

  “Connor, please.”

  Reluctantly, he put it down. “I can’t deal with this. It’s…it’s…I can’t even find the words,” he told me. “It’s insane. If I’m the prophet, why do they want our baby?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, shaking my head. “I don’t know. If we had the rest of the text, maybe we could figure it out, but this is all we have to work with.”

  He sank onto the corner of the bed. “I can’t believe any of this.”

  I sat next to him. “Whatever we believe or don’t believe, what’s put us in danger is what they believe.” I touched his cheek. “I can’t do this alone, Connor. I need you functioning at one hundred percent.” Suddenly, I let out a small gasp.

  He looked at me, startled. “Is something wrong?”

  I shook my head. “No, no. Something is right for once.” I took his hand and placed it on my abdomen.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Be patient.”

  I could tell when he felt it by the expression on his face—a tiny, almost imperceptible stirring inside my body. “He’s moving,” he said, amazed.

  “He? Could be she,” I said.

  “Not this time,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d love a wee girl, of course, but this baby is a boy.”

  I noticed the man following us as we walked to the restaurant. He was hard to miss. He was the biggest, ugliest creature I’d seen since I watched pro wrestling with Tim when we were in college.

  “I’m bloody sick of eating in restaurants already,” Connor was saying. “I miss being able to have a quiet dinner at home. I wouldn’t even mind doing the dishes.”

  “Connor, I think we’re being followed,” I said in a low voice.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “The big guy?”

  I nodded. “I saw him yesterday, too,” I said. “He’s hard to miss. There’s at least three hundred pounds of refined ugly there. He might as well be wearing a neon sign.”

  Connor steered me into the restaurant. “Let’s see if he waits for us,” he said.

  We ordered dinner, but I found it difficult to eat. Every time I looked out the window, I saw him, waiting, watching. “I feel like a dying hyena with a vulture lying in wait,” I told Connor.

  “We can’t let him get us alone,” he said.

  “We can’t stay here all night.”

  He took a bite. “We stay in public places. Edward’s obsessive about privacy. He won’t allow his hired goon to make his move in public. The cartel doesn’t want the attention.”

  He was still watching the restaurant when we finally left. He started to follow us. I had an idea. “Let’s get on that bus,” I suggested.

  Connor nodded.

  Safety in numbers, I thought as we moved to the back of the crowded red-and-yellow double-decker bus. He wouldn’t attack us in front of twenty witnesses—would he?

  He did. Towering above everyone else, he pushed his way through the passengers standing in the aisles and positioned himself beside me. In the next moment, I felt something sharp against my back. A knife. He leaned past me and spoke to Connor in a low voice: “Don’t try anything stupid.”

  I scanned the faces of the other passengers, trying to figure out which of them, if any, might be able and willing to help us. Did any of them speak English? Would they choose not to get involved? There were two large men whose clothing suggested they might be construction workers standing in the aisle maybe five feet from us. Three others looked fairly athletic—they might be able to take him if they all worked together. If they chose to get involved.

  I didn’t know where the tears came from, only that they surged forth in spite of my best efforts to suppress them. When the words came, I couldn’t believe they were coming from me. “Why do you keep doing this?” I wailed, unable to control myself. “Why can’t you leave us alone? It’s been three years. Two restraining orders. Why can’t you just accept that it’s over? I don’t love you anymore. Do you really think taking me off this bus at knifepoint is going to make me stay with you?” I was sobbing, unable to stop. “Please, just leave us alone.”

  The two large men turned. “Hey,” one of them said to the other, “he’s got a knife.”

  “Leave her alone!” the other shouted.

  In seconds, they were making a move, the three other men following closely behind. The other passengers shifted to allow them to pass, in the process shoving Connor and me away from the monster and toward the rear exit. As soon as the bus came to a stop and the opportunity presented itself, Connor pulled me off the bus. The other passengers followed, with the two largest men forcing the monster into the street, restraining him as a young woman called for police assistance from her cell phone.

  Connor tugged my arm. “We have to get out of here.”

  I looked back once as we crossed the street. The men were restraining him. The police had arrived. For a moment, I thought I saw the monster look directly at me. I silently prayed the police would keep him locked up.

  Connor led me into a nearby restaurant, moving toward the rear. We ran through the kitchen, startling the chef. He turned, cleaver in hand, and yelled something in angry Chinese.

  “Just passing through,” Connor assured him. “No need for that, mate!”

  We stumbled through the rear exit into an alley cluttered with battered garbage cans. A young man was taking out his frustration on an old motorcycle. “I have an idea,” Connor said.

  I stared at him. “You can’t be serious. It’s a piece of crap. Probably doesn’t even run.”

  “We can’t go back to the hotel. Can’t take that chance,” Connor said. “We have to get away, as far as we can, before my stepfather posts his goon’s bail.”

  He approached the young man and spoke to him in fluent Mandarin Chinese. The transaction was brief, and even though I didn’t speak the language, I knew my husband had just bought that clunker. The young man walked away with a sa
tisfied smile, and Connor helped me onto the bike.

  “Are you sure this wreck will run?” I asked as Connor made a fourth attempt to start it.

  Finally, the engine started to roar. “It’ll get us where we’re going,” he promised.

  “And where is that?”

  “I’ll let you know when we get there.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”

  48

  Connor

  We had been on the road for hours, stopping only when it was absolutely necessary. I worried that keeping my pregnant wife on the bike for such a prolonged period might pose a risk, but staying in Hong Kong was even riskier.

  I saw the approaching storm on the horizon and knew we’d have to take refuge somewhere soon, but where? I was still searching when it started to rain. I pressed on for an hour in the rain until it became a downpour that made it impossible for us to go any further.

  I pulled the motorcycle into an alley behind a row of small shops, one of them a laundry.

  "What have you got in mind?" Lynne asked.

  "A place to spend the night."

  She looked alarmed. "Here?"

  "There's no room at the inn," I said.

  I jerked my wet jacket up over my head and went up to the laundry’s rear door. I checked carefully to make sure there was no active alarm system, then started looking for something with which to pry open the door. When I found nothing, I chose a large chunk of concrete lying next to an overflowing dumpster and smashed the glass panel in the window. I reached through the broken glass, tearing my sleeve and cutting my forearm in the process, and opened the door.

  I gestured to Lynne, who stepped past me and went inside. I entered behind her and closed the door.

  “I wish you’d picked the restaurant,” she said. “I’m starving.”

  “That wasn’t possible,” I said. I checked out all of the windows and front entrance. “This place was the one least likely to have any kind of security.”

  She took off her jacket. Underneath, her wet clothes clung to her. “How could you be so sure?” she wondered aloud.