by Randy Singer
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
“You’ll have to wait.” He spoke without an accent—a flat, monotone voice. He was obviously trying to convey a total lack of emotion.
“How long?”
“A few more hours.”
“How long have we been going already?”
“I can’t say.”
“I don’t think I can wait a few more hours.”
This time her captor didn’t respond. He just stared at her through his stocking cap, freaking her out.
“Where are we going?”
Silence.
“What do you want from me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“If it’s the algorithm, I don’t have it.”
Again, he didn’t respond, and she took that as a good sign. He wasn’t arguing. He didn’t seem to be getting angry. She would push a little more. She wanted to see outside the truck. She needed to know where they were taking her. Was it day or evening? How many others were involved?
Even as she planned, doubts and anxieties attacked her, eating at her self-confidence like termites. She had no weapons. They had firepower and training, outnumbering her at least two to one. Not to mention the thick canvas straps holding her down.
“I have to pee,” she said, swallowing her pride. It wasn’t true, but if they stopped the truck and let her out, she could at least pick up some useful information.
“Hold it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
His refusal to answer gave Jamie a strange sense of empowerment. She was having the last word, not him. He was probably low man on the totem pole, and his intimidation factor had gone down a notch or two. Even the creepy effect that came from the way the nylon stocking mashed in his face was a little less terrifying.
“I’m not kidding about this,” she said. “I’ve really got to go.”
This time he moved. He walked deliberately toward her and stood over her for a moment, swaying with the motion of the truck. The way he looked at her, leered at her, even with the stocking shielding his eyes, made her skin crawl. She shuddered and turned her head to the side.
He reached down and grabbed her chin with a gloved hand, turning her head toward him. He squeezed with strong fingers. Hovering over her, he let his eyes rove up and down her body. Then he locked back onto her eyes, destroying her sense of empowerment, the tiny victories she had just awarded herself.
“Shut up,” he said, “or I’ve got ways to shut you up.”
He stayed frozen there for a long second, his nylon mask nearly touching her face. He smelled of sweat and stale food.
After a few seconds, he let her go and walked slowly back to his spot near the side of the truck. He grabbed a handle and kept his eyes glued on her. He was volatile. Insecure. Maybe predatory. Now she knew he meant business.
She tried to calm her racing heart and summon another dose of courage. It would be easier to just cower in silence, but she couldn’t allow herself to do that. This time, she would be more careful.
“Look,” she said, “I’m not trying to make you angry. I’m just telling you—I’ve really got to go.”
“Shut up.”
The fear mixed with anger and frustration. She felt vulnerable and violated, but also just plain mad. What kind of coward treated another human being this way? If she had half a chance—her Kimber, a knife, a fistfight, anything! She would claw his eyes out if she could get her fingers loose and within reach.
That’s when it hit her. It was probably a delusional thought, birthed by terror and desperation. But at the moment it seemed like she had no other choice. She asked to go. He refused. She told him she really needed to go. He refused.
What if she just did it? What if she peed right here in the back of the truck, right now? The thought disgusted her, but wouldn’t it disgust him more? The temperature had to be nearly ninety degrees. How bad would it smell in an hour? What kind of stench would there be in two hours? If he had any real thoughts of violating her, wouldn’t this be a guaranteed way to keep him at bay? Even Mr. Nylon Head would be grossed out by this.
Maybe next time he would believe her.
She thought about swimming pools and waterfalls and ocean waves. Tall glasses of water on the rocks and Lake Lanier. She thought about car trips as a child, being ready to burst at the seams, her father telling her to hold it until the next exit. She thought about the advice her brother gave when Jamie, as a young girl, was swimming in their subdivision’s pool and had to go: “Why take time to go to the bathroom when we’re swimming in all this water?” She thought about the hard rain that had fallen on Tuesday.
She banished every thought of her present situation, her fear and anger and the battle of wills she so desperately needed to win. She replaced those visions with thoughts of water and water and more water—anything to make her go.
Three minutes later, it worked.
The caller wanted to remain anonymous. Huang Xu could deal with that. On the first call, Xu verified that the caller had insider information. Following that call, Xu authorized the wired funds, precisely as the caller had instructed. The receiving account was owned by a shell corporation in the Caymans that was a wholly owned subsidiary of another shell company that was a partnership composed of six other shells.
But Xu’s men had already traced the supposedly impenetrable corporate maze back to its ultimate owner. If the caller didn’t deliver, he would pay in blood.
“He’s reserved a room tomorrow night at the Staybridge Suites on North Point Parkway in Alpharetta,” the caller said. “He’s using the alias of Brian Mackey.”
“The money’s in the bank,” Xu replied.
“Now,” the caller said, “let’s talk about releasing Jamie Brock.”
66
At a few minutes after midnight, lying awake in the king-size bed, David glanced at the clock’s digital readout. Stacie had fallen asleep, but David couldn’t keep the images from flashing through his mind. Even now, as he stared at the ceiling, listening to his wife’s rhythmic breathing, he could see it all so clearly.
There was the supernaturally calm face of Professor Moses Kumari, as he turned and looked at David just before climbing into the triad’s helicopter. The bravest man David had ever met. On nights like this, David was still haunted by the professor’s voice on his cell phone away message, the message David had heard several times after speeding away from the gravel pit. David’s failure to detonate the Semtex explosives, and the torture that Kumari had had to bear as a result, still sent spindles of guilt down David’s spine.
A year later, he was standing with Stacie in Mangalore, India, on the site where Professor Kumari’s church had been burned to the ground and rebuilt. It felt like they had stepped back in time to the New Testament. The church members described miracles of healings, hundreds of conversions, and leaders being jailed on trumped-up charges. They lived simply and sacrificed so that Dalit children could have two new school uniforms and an English education.
Their new pastor, a man named Udit Guptara, had been a former member of the BJP, the radical Hindu political party, and had helped terrorize local churches before he became a convert. He told stories of how he would beat pastors, burn their houses, and file anticonversion charges against them. But when his wife became deathly ill, a local pastor came to his home and asked if he could pray for her. Guptara said he allowed the man in the house on one condition: “If she dies, you die with her.”
When she recovered, Guptara converted to Christianity and became a pastor for the same religion he had once despised. It all seemed to strain credibility to David, but the other church members had nodded along as Guptara told his story, eyewitnesses to the miraculous.
During one of the last days of their visit, David and Stacie had pulled Guptara aside to tell him the real reason they came. The pastor knew they were friends of Professor Kumari, and they had initially told him they wanted to help the Dalit children that the professor cared so de
eply about. But after watching Guptara for a week, and being unable to track down any of Professor Kumari’s family members, they decided to confide in the pastor. After swearing Guptara to confidentiality, they told him everything.
“I’m afraid,” David said, “that the persecution of the church and Pastor Prasad may have been the work of the Manchurian Triad, not radical Hindu groups.” David paused to let that sink in. He had not only caused Kumari to suffer, but he may have caused a dozen or more church leaders to suffer and die as well. “But we need to know whether there is anybody else Kumari might have trusted with this algorithm key besides Pastor Prasad. It could be worth millions of dollars for schools just like yours.”
Guptara rocked back and forth for a moment, deep in thought. “Kumari was a brave man, a godly man,” the pastor said. “But I’m sorry. I do not know of a surviving church member who was entrusted with such a secret.”
He must have read the look of disappointment on David’s and Stacie’s faces because he quickly shifted gears. “But perhaps God brought you here for a different purpose than you realize.” He paused, looking from David to Stacie. “Professor Kumari demonstrated in the most radical way what our Lord did for each of us. Kumari traded his life for yours, Stacie, when you were in captivity. He took your place with the triads so that you might be freed, and you and David might be reunited. He suffered for you, just as Christ suffered and died for us.
“Perhaps you came here to find a key to a code worth millions of dollars. But perhaps God wanted you to find something more precious . . . more costly.”
“Perhaps,” David said in a tone that made it clear he was more interested in finding the code than being preached at.
But Stacie didn’t say a word.
Later that night, as a courtesy, David and Stacie went to a church service where they sat surrounded by wide-eyed Dalit children whom Stacie had befriended that week, all crowding in too close for David’s liking. Every time he would glance at one of them, they would look at him with a huge smile, an appreciation that this important man from America would esteem them worthy to be touched and would look them in the eye. And then the kids would snuggle a little closer, putting a hand on David’s arm or leg.
David couldn’t wait to get back to America.
But when the service was drawing to a close, and Pastor Guptara, after an interminably long message, started calling people forward for repentance, Stacie reached over and took David’s hand. She nodded toward the front. “Come with me,” she whispered.
Are you crazy? David wanted to ask. They were both emotional. Tired. The whole trip had been disorienting. But David hadn’t totally lost his sense of pride and independence. Besides, God wouldn’t be interested in someone like him. “I’m okay,” David had said, his voice low. “You go.”
And she did. Like a pied piper, with about a half-dozen kids following behind her.
After the service, Pastor Guptara baptized new converts outside in a hole in the ground that looked to David like a freshly dug grave lined with plastic. The children crowded around when Stacie stepped into the baptism waters fully clothed.
It was all surreal to David, as he and other church members stood behind the children who ringed the edge. The water was a muddy brown and David couldn’t help but wonder when they had last changed it. The pastor stood next to Stacie, one hand on her back, the other holding her hands in front of her, and asked if she had put her faith in Christ. She nodded and he dunked her under.
When she came up, the children cheered and Stacie smiled and David somehow knew that this was more than just an emotional moment. She shook her hair out of her face, and the members pulled her from the tank and started giving her hugs.
“Is there anybody else?” Pastor Guptara asked when he had finished baptizing the last convert. To David, it felt like every head swiveled and looked directly at him.
“Think that about wraps it up,” he said.
67
It had been easy to resist Guptara’s invitation three years ago. But now, the night before the greatest danger he had ever faced, David’s sense of self-sufficiency was slipping away.
If he had been inclined to foxhole conversions, David certainly would have made the jump a long time ago. He had seen his share of foxholes. But the nagging sensation tugging at him now was something more than that. He believed that God had answered his desperate prayer and bailed him out four years ago, saving his wife from her kidnappers in the process. But David had never come through on his end of the bargain.
And now, a single thought dogged him: Can a man con God?
David knew the answer. He also knew that within the next forty-eight hours, he would undoubtedly be saying a few more desperate prayers. Jamie was already in the triad’s grasp. Soon, he and Stacie would be putting their lives on the line. How could he expect God to help if David didn’t at least try to make things right?
He pulled down the covers and slid out of his side of the bed. Stacie grunted and rolled partway over but didn’t wake up. He walked over to the hotel desk and turned on the lamp, watching his wife for a reaction. She pulled the sheets tighter around her neck and kept sleeping.
David padded softly to the closet and removed the small metal box from the bottom of his gym bag. He opened the lock, pulled out a thick, worn Bible, and carried it back to the desk.
He had kept this Bible with him every day of his life for the past three years, poring over the underlined portions and margin notes. It was a New Living Translation, with Hindi and English translations side by side. David opened it to the New Testament and tried to remember the verses that Guptara had been preaching on the last night of David’s visit.
Like almost everything else in his life right now, this Bible had its own mysterious background. It had been brought to him and Stacie in the middle of the night at their run-down hotel room in Mangalore by an eighty-eight-year-old widow from Kumari’s church. She had waited until the night before they returned to the States, the night Stacie was baptized, to deliver her gift.
“It was Pastor Prasad’s Bible,” the woman explained. “He came to me a few nights before the persecution started. He somehow knew there might be trouble coming. He said if anything happened to him, I should keep this Bible hidden because it contained the key to a very important project that Professor Kumari had been working on. He told me to give the Bible to any Americans who came looking for it, but only if they were true friends of Professor Kumari and seemed to be honest.”
The older woman had gently handed the Bible to Stacie. “After tonight, I knew that you were ready,” the woman said.
Nearly every day for the next three years, David and Stacie had studied the Bible and Pastor Prasad’s margin notes, trying to decipher the key to the algorithm. They had pursued one idea after another, and even consulted secretly with a few encryption experts, explaining vaguely that the Bible contained a hidden decipher key. Nobody could figure out what it was.
But tonight, none of those concerns mattered. David read the familiar margin notes not to discern a hidden key, but to understand what the pastor had been thinking. He turned to the book of Romans because he still remembered bits and pieces of what Guptara had said during that last night in India. David remembered thinking that it sounded too good to be true, like one of his con jobs. Confess and believe, Guptara had said. But who really believed that a simple prayer could wipe out years of sin? Apparently Stacie had. And David had watched her closely since that night. Something radical had happened to her, something she had never been able to shake.
It was hard to argue with a transformed life.
He was deep in thought when he felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of the chair.
“Sorry,” Stacie said.
He put a hand on top of hers. “It’s all right.”
“You aren’t going to solve that tonight, David. Come back to bed. We both need our sleep.”
He hesitated before responding. A part of him—the independent strea
k—wanted to work through this on his own. “That night you were baptized in India—what part of the Bible was the pastor preaching from?”
If Stacie was shocked to hear the question, she didn’t let it show. She reached over his shoulder and flipped to Romans 10:9-10. She read the verses out loud. “‘If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.’”
Stacie pulled a chair around and they talked about what those verses meant. David asked a lot of questions, and Stacie did her best to answer. After several minutes of discussion, and a long pause in the questions, she said softly, “It’s time to surrender.”
“You really think God can accept me?” David asked. “I’m a con man. I can’t even count how many lies I’ve told, how many people I’ve ripped off, not to mention the gunshot wounds and torture.”
“That’s why they call it grace.”
He thought about this for a long time. He’d been around church some as a boy and had heard about the thief on the cross. Pastor Guptara in India had compared himself to the apostle Paul, one day beating up Christians, the next day becoming one of them. And now Stacie told David about Matthew, a tax collector and fellow con artist, whom Jesus called as one of his disciples.
Maybe Stacie had a point. It seemed that Jesus wasn’t very fussy about how you came.
Without another word, David began praying. He surprised himself with how rapidly and naturally the words came. He felt Stacie take a hand off his in order to brush away some tears. He asked for forgiveness and mercy, confessing his sins in broad categories so it wouldn’t take all night. He asked for strength and wisdom and courage for the task ahead. And because he didn’t want to take any chances, at the end of his prayer he opened his eyes and prayed the words on the page in front of him.