Pieces of Light

by Julie Cave

  "Who do you suspect of trying to tarnish your reputation?" This question came from the back of the room.

  "I'm confident I will find that out," said Winters, again staring at the camera.

  "Why do you think someone would deceive you in this manner?"

  "Perhaps I made some decisions that weren't liked," said Winters. "Perhaps I said something that ruffled some feathers. However, I'm sure that this, too, will come to light eventually."

  Actually, this question disturbed Winters most of all. He had no idea why Cartwright had betrayed him and he didn't like that one bit. He had thought the Englishman had been a colleague, not an enemy. Why did Cartwright want him out of the way? What could he hope to achieve with Winters out of the Senate? He knew better than anyone that Winters was able to be bought. That was priceless in the world of politics. Winters did not like the feeling of helplessness one little bit.

  "Are you saying there is a conspiracy to cause your career to be ruined?" the pinch-faced woman asked.

  "At this point, we simply don't know," said Winters. "I'm confident we'll find out."

  Abruptly, he decided he'd had enough. He thanked the press with more graciousness than he felt and left the room. As he did so, his cell phone buzzed.

  "What?" he barked.

  "Senator, I just watched your press conference," said a familiar voice.

  "Dinah Harris," said Winters with a scowl. "I should've known you'd call to gloat."

  "Actually, that's not why I called," said Dinah mildly. "I called to thank you for helping me solve a case."

  Winters stood at a window and watched dark thunderclouds bank up on the horizon. "What are you talking about?"

  "I realize you've been occupied with other things," said Dinah, "but recently, there's been a bomber targeting churches in the D.C. area. We just solved the case, and if it wasn't for that lawsuit you posted me, I may not have put all the pieces together as quickly."

  Winters glared at his own reflection. "Why would the bomber be interested in that lawsuit?"

  "He helped to draft it," explained Dinah. "What he read in the lawsuit fanned an already angry and violent nature. He picked his targets directly from the pages of the lawsuit."

  Winters shook his head. Was there no end to the craziness of this day? "I had no idea about that," he said.

  "What are you going to do now that you've resigned?" Dinah asked.

  I want to go on a murderous rampage, thought Winters. "Watch the press conference again," he snapped. "I already answered that question."

  "Well, you know, I still pray for you," said Dinah. "Maybe one day God will soften your heart and open your eyes."

  Winters rolled his eyes. "Are you done? I certainly am." He hung up and slipped the cell phone into his pocket. Dinah's call did nothing to improve his mood.

  Winters left the building and made his way to his expensive town house in Alexandria Old Town, where only those who could afford the pricey real estate lived.

  Alone, he poured himself a bourbon and sat in the den. It was time to make a plan.

  * * * *

  While Winters sat brooding in his home, a luxury private jet streaked across the sky above the cobalt Atlantic Ocean. Cartwright and his protégé Connor were flying back to London, having accomplished their goals in the capital city of the United States.

  Cartwright leaned his tall frame back in the reclining leather seat. In front of him, an early gourmet dinner had been served with a glass of expensive French wine. "Well, old chap," he said to Connor, "I'd like to propose a toast to a job well done."

  He held up his glass. Connor clinked it with his own. "To a job well done," he echoed. "It seemed so easy, in retrospect."

  "That's an important lesson," said Cartwright. "When dealing with corrupt individuals, it often is easy, providing their paranoia doesn't get the best of them. You must always appeal to their strongest desire — greed, pride, lust for power."

  Connor ate some gnocchi stuffed with cheese. "I'm a little concerned that Winters won't go away."

  Cartwright agreed. "I suppose we could have come up with a more permanent solution," he said. "But it's very risky trying to eliminate a United State senator. The risk for reward ratio was too high. In fact, this whole operation cost us nothing. We made an initial upfront payment of half a million dollars, knowing full well that the FEC would require the senator to return the funds once he'd been caught. I'm pretty happy that we not only took Winters down, but we also got our money back."

  "Perhaps now that he's no longer a senator, it could be done?" Connor asked.

  Cartwright laughed. "You are a bloodthirsty creature, aren't you? Perhaps we could think about creating an unfortunate accident. In the meantime, we'll leave him alone. We have other things to do."

  They sat in companionable silence for several moments.

  "So now that Winters is gone, how does that help us?" Connor asked, trying to get his mind around intricacies of the older man's plan.

  "We know that Winters was liberal in his political views," explained Cartwright. "In many cases, that does us a favor. However, he shared a similar view with many of his Congress and Senate buddies with regard to illegal immigration."

  "He's considered soft on illegal immigration," said Connor, nodding.

  "Right. In fact, he and his liberal colleagues had suggested that tough illegal immigration laws were likely to do nothing to stop the influx of illegals pouring across the Mexican border. They suggested assisting illegals already in the country with health care and access to welfare, for example. Winters in particular supported a civil rights movement which advocated for the rights of illegal immigrants." He stopped talking to take a bite and wash it down with a sip of wine.

  "Now, Winters hails from California, a state which has a major illegal immigration problem. Were he successful in relaxing illegal immigration laws, his state in particular would be affected."

  "Now why is that a problem?" Connor asked, puzzled. "We'd have more aliens entering the country than ever before."

  "Ah yes, but those aliens would now have rights," said Cartwright. "We want the illegals to have no rights, so that they have no choice but to remain under our control. There is an extraordinary amount of money to be made through illegal immigration. The rules of supply and demand work in that arena as well as any other — when you relax laws so that supply is made easier and cheaper, prices fall as the demand is met. You really want laws to be tightened so that supply is restricted, demand soars, and prices rise as a result. If you happen to be in control of supply, you make a preposterous amount of money."

  "So we needed to get rid of Winters because he wanted to relax immigration laws," said Connor thoughtfully, "in favor of someone who is going to take a hard-line approach?"

  "Right. When the border is sealed up, fewer immigrants can cross on their own steam. But we can help them, for a fee, of course." Cartwright looked immensely satisfied with himself.

  Connor gazed out of the window for a moment. "What you're talking about, of course, is not illegal immigration but human trafficking," he said.

  Cartwright shrugged. "Call it what you want. As long as there are people desperate enough to cross the border illegally, I see it as an opportunity to make money. A lot of money."

  "I guess you have a plan for state and local government?" Connor asked. "After all, a federal senator whom we can use for our own purposes is one thing, but he has no control over state and local law."

  "Just another piece of the puzzle," said Cartwright, his face inscrutable. "This is not a plan that can be executed overnight. We've achieved the first goal; the next is to work on the governor of California. You work with what you've got — bribery, blackmail, extortion — whatever their breaking point happens to be."

  "And if they don't have a breaking point?"

  "We get rid of them," replied Cartwright immediately. "Election campaigns are ridiculously easy to manipulate. If we have to do that, we can."

  Connor finished
his meal. "I see. You know, I always knew it was going to be interesting working with you."

  Cartwright smiled. "You're learning from the best, son."

  The private jet continued to hurtle through the sky while its inhabitants plotted and schemed. In the United States, the person who had once been known as Cartwright had ceased to exist and there was no record of him ever being in the country. His name was not and had never been Cartwright.

  Similarly, the existence of a person named Connor Eastleigh had been erased as if he'd never been born. If anyone tried to trace the whereabouts of that young intern who'd worked in Senator Winter's office for a month or so, they'd find that the trail went cold very quickly.

  Cartwright chuckled to himself as he settled back for a quick nap. Senator Winters had had no idea who he was really dealing with. Had he known that Cartwright was a prince in one of the world's largest and most powerful cartels, which dealt in everything from drug trafficking to human trafficking, he would have had a heart attack.

  That was the simple beauty of it.

  * * * *

  The following morning, a gloriously mild Sunday that hinted that cooler weather was on its way, Dinah took Aaron to church. It was with great thankfulness in her heart that she sang the final song: Lead me to the Cross/Where your love poured out/Bring me to my knees/ Lord I lay me down.

  It was clear Aaron hadn't been to church in a long time, but he listened intently. He didn't seem to mind when he was surrounded by Dinah's friends after the service, all of whom were very interested in Dinah's new companion.

  Finally, they managed to leave church and made their way to Dinah's favorite deli for brunch. Dinah drank in the sensation of simply being with a man for whom she cared so deeply.

  "Well, I hope you didn't find that too confronting," she joked, once coffees had been served.

  "Not at all," said Aaron. "You know, I'm not anti-Christian or anti-God. I just ... don't really know much about it all. My parents were not into church, and I can count on one hand the times I've ever set foot in one."

  "I'm a little similar," admitted Dinah. "I grew up in much the same circumstances. I didn't encounter God until I'd made such a mess of my life that I actually wanted to end it." It was hard to be so honest. Speaking about her past with such brutal candor was a little frightening.

  Aaron nodded. "So what made you decide to become a Christian?"

  Dinah thought for a few moments. "I suppose because it was the only thing that made sense. My world was chaos; God offered order. I was hurting; God offered peace. It was more than that. It was as if I'd stumbled across what I knew to be the truth after all these years. As soon as I heard it, I knew in my heart of hearts that it was the truth."

  "So what is Christianity then?" Aaron asked. The waiter arrived to take their order. Dinah didn't reply until they'd both ordered.

  "It's an understanding that I was born with a sin nature," she explained. "That I'm an imperfect person. I can try to live up to God's expectations through being good, but I'll always fail. God created a perfect world, where we could have a perfect relationship with Him. But the human race rejected God and asked for independence. God calls us into a relationship with Him, but even if we wanted to, our sin makes that impossible. God is a completely just and holy God, and He can't excuse or tolerate sin. Really, He could have completely wiped us from the face of the earth — we'd completely rejected Him, after all. Instead, because of His great love, He chose to offer us a way of entering into a relationship with Him. He created a scenario where He could punish all of mankind's sin once and for all, using the sacrifice of a person who'd never sinned and was perfect. That sacrifice was His own Son, Jesus, who came to live on earth as a man. He suffered not only a physical death, but a spiritual one that we all deserve, as God heaped upon Him the wrath for the sin we'd committed. Only Jesus defeated death because He wasn't just a man — He is God, too — and was resurrected from the dead on the third day."

  Their food arrived and Dinah took a moment to sample her eggs Benedict. "All we have to do is recognize what Jesus did for us, and accept His offer of forgiveness and salvation. In doing so, God no longer sees our sinful hearts but hearts made clean and fresh. He also offers life with Him after death, for eternity."

  She paused again to gather her thoughts.

  "You see, Christianity is not about always doing the right thing or saying the right thing or performing the right rituals. It's about the state of your heart: recognizing your own sinfulness, your own need for God, understanding what Jesus' death on the Cross actually means, and receiving salvation. It's about leaving your old life behind and living a new one dedicated to Jesus. It's about your personal relationship with God."

  Dinah took a sip of coffee. "It's also about having hope for the future, and that your own existence has a purpose. We are not random accidents of nature — we are created in the beloved image of God. Bad things happen — because it's no longer a perfect world. When you have faith in God, you can endure the bad things, knowing that life on this earth is simply a prelude to the next life."

  She smiled. "I'm not afraid to say that I do have a personal relationship with God. I talk to God through prayer, and God talks to me through the Bible. That's why I take what the Bible says seriously."

  Dinah sat back, realizing that she'd been talking nonstop and hadn't allowed Aaron to get a word in. "Sorry," she said. "Please, ask questions or make comments. I didn't mean to hog the conversation."

  Aaron just laughed. "I liked listening to you," he said. "I can see that you deeply believe what you're saying and that you're passionate about it."

  He spent several moments collecting his thoughts. "I admit, I was distraught when my sister Carmen died. I couldn't see the reason in it. I couldn't understand the casual cruelty of life. Listening to you, I can start to understand more about the meaning of life, as clichéd as that sounds."

  "Right," said Dinah.

  There was a silence as Aaron processed his thoughts. "Dinah, I won't lie to you," he said. "I don't know if I want to become a Christian. I don't know enough about it. I just know that I'd like to learn more ... and I'd like to be your friend."

  Dinah couldn't help but smile. "Aaron, I'd be happy to be your friend, but you must understand that I cannot offer you anything more than friendship at this point."

  Aaron rolled his eyes playfully. "Yes, you've made that very clear."

  "I can introduce you to my pastor," suggested Dinah. "He can help you to learn more and understand what it is to be a Christian."

  Aaron nodded. "It's a deal," he agreed.

  They spent several hours together, talking and laughing, simply enjoying each other's presence. Whether Aaron would prove to be the man God had set apart for her — Dinah didn't know. She did know that God cared about even the tiniest detail of her life. Whatever His will was for her, she would follow with praise in her soul.

  Her world had once been tinged with loneliness, despair, and grief. Now it was fragranced with hope, joy, and the promise of the future.

  * * * *

  Sussex 1 State Prison

  Waverly, Virginia

  Prisoner Number: 10734

  Death Row

  I have been set free.

  Not literally. I'll live the rest of my drastically shortened life in this metal box, until they put a needle in my arm.

  However, I have come to see that I can be free even when caged in the most extreme circumstances. I have come to understand that true freedom is not found in a physical sense or a mental sense, but in a spiritual sense. I can see now that I was just as much a prisoner when I set those bombs as I am now in prison. I was a prisoner to hatred, anger, despair, and evil. I allowed my heart to be chained and shackled with my selfish desires.

  I can see now that I am no better than my father.

  Wow. It's taken me a long time to realize this, and it's a blow to my very soul. The man whom I vowed I would never be, somehow caught up with me and morphed into me. I ope
ned myself up to evil. I can admit my wrong now; I know fully that my actions, which led to the death and suffering of many people, violated man's law and God's law.

  I look out at the patch of blue sky when I'm allowed out of my cell. I stare at the pieces of light that fall my way. I imagine my soul flying free through the bars, soaring like an eagle. I imagine my world hasn't shrunk to a steel cube the size of a postage stamp.

  I have hope; my family has hope. Isabelle has moved in with our mother, after Scott refused to let her back into the house and sent her divorce papers. They are trying to heal many wounds, many inflicted by me. They come to see me when they can, and perhaps one day all that's gone between us will fade into forgiveness.

  I think about how I stand at the foot of the Cross, mesmerized by the wonder of what was accomplished there. The power of the Cross washed away my guilt, eliminated my shame, and restored my life. There is nothing I can do — or have done — that can defeat the victory won there on that day. I am a human being so low that my society sees fit to lock me in a cage and one day execute me. Yet for me, the lowest of the low, He died!

  It is precisely as if Jesus walked into this prison, told the guard that He had committed the bombings and murdered those people, and that I was to be set free from all punishment. In my place, He lies down on the cold, steel table and takes the needle. He dies the death reserved for me.

  How could the God of everything, the One who created everything with His word and His breath, the powerful King who holds the world in His hand: how can it be that He should die for me?

  That is why I do not fear today or tomorrow. I do not fear the black inkiness of the night. I feel no terror when others scream and thrash violently in their sleep. I have no despair at the thought of endless days stretching before me with nothing to do but read and sleep. I feel only peace when I think of that final day, the day they come for me to end my life. There is nothing in this world that can defeat the glory for which I now live.

  I see only streets of gold, a place where there are no tears, no pain, no sorrow, and no death. I see an eternity of glory where I can feast my eyes on the One who saved me. I see indescribable joy, unspeakable delight, and stunning wonder when I peer into my future.