“This is all… just incredible! If what you’re saying is true… it can’t be… but you were there; you were in the cave.…”
“I was. Honestly. I saw it all, the river of life, the vision, the clouds. The clouds had golden edges. And I came down behind you under the monastery. There was a whole long ledge that was only like eight inches wide! I nearly went hurtling off it into space. But what you didn’t see was the one-way glass window behind the waterfall and the control room up the staircase in the side of the cave. Geri, they shot my partner. Look at him—he nearly died! Have you ever had to put a straw into someone?”
But Geri was in her own world. “I was so close. I was ready to change my shoes and find Brother Timothy and give him a check for sixteen million. I mean, within minutes!”
Jaime put a hand on Geri’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about that. Truly, it’s a terrible abuse of trust. But I need to ask you for a favor. I have to get my partner to our boat, and when I do, I need you to somehow explain to the proprietors what happened to their bed.”
Geri looked at her. “You’re serious? That’s your favor? There’s no explanation needed; I just pay for new bedding. But how are you getting him to the harbor? Calling an ambulance?”
“No, I can’t risk being seen by anyone involved with this whole scheme. I’m going to call our captain and have him bring the dinghy. We’re going to have to carry my partner down, best we can.”
“Let me help you. I have a man on our yacht; he’s my own employee. I trust him completely. He never tells anything. I use him to ferry me when I don’t want Nestor to know I’m coming. And he’s very large. He could carry your friend.”
Without waiting for a response, she pulled out a beeper at her waist and clicked in a text message. It vibrated in return. “He just dropped me; he’s still in the motorboat. He can be back in five minutes,” she said. “Please. It’s the least I can do in response for your risking your life to follow me down.”
Jaime hesitated only briefly. She had been trained at one of the few places that stressed the importance of making “willful decisions to trust,” especially when it would be to the benefit of the person offering assistance.
“OK,” she said. “Thank you. Let me call my captain and tell him to be ready.”
Jaime also chose to type her text to Aeolus back on the Kairos, telling him to look out for them and be ready to set sail for Samos, where they would find both their plane and a doctor waiting.
Then Jaime went out onto the terrace, where she found Geri already on the lookout. Given the overwhelming nature of what was going on, and the ramifications it would have on Geri’s personal life, Jaime was surprised by Geri’s next question.
“So, if you are really a pastor… ,” Geri began, her eyes on the rocky islands across the way, “so if life isn’t about waiting moment by moment for a rapture… what is our purpose? What does God want us to do?”
Jaime turned and looked at Geri, tried to bring her mind back around to what she was saying. All Jaime wanted to do was get Yani back on the Kairos and go get those kids.
“Wow. You don’t ask the easy questions, do you?” she asked, still watching for the boat.
“If there’s no rapture, if we’re not going to be lifted out of here, what’s the point? What do we do?” Geri asked again.
Jaime tried to be patient. She knew Geri’s whole picture of the world, of her husband, was unraveling. But how to answer in less than an hour or two?
“Are you familiar with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount?”
“Of course.”
“That’s what I always come back to when setting my own priorities. It’s Jesus’ statement, all in one place, of what the Kingdom of God looks like. And he was very clear that God’s Kingdom starts here and now, not just when he returns to renew the earth and live among us in the New Jerusalem. Feed the poor, comfort those in grief, work for justice, take our stewardship of the planet seriously.” Jaime wanted to honor the seriousness of Geri’s question, but at the same time she was willing the boat to show up, around the corner. And, oh yeah, stop kidnapping people.…
Geri’s long black hair was free, and it danced in the afternoon breeze. She looked at her hands, as if trying to frame her next question correctly. “My husband is a good man. He has devoted his life to achieving immortality—or near immortality—for the very wealthy who can afford to use science to keep themselves fit and healthy, perhaps for hundreds of years. Somehow this doesn’t sound right to me, although I can’t exactly say why. I know we live much longer now than people used to live, and that’s a good thing.… I don’t know.”
Patience, give me patience … and something coherent to say, Jaime prayed. She ducked back inside to check on Yani, who appeared to remain stable, at least.
Then she returned, and both women stood together on the terrace of the hotel on Patmos, their eyes scanning the sea before them. It was clear Geri was still awaiting an answer.
“Look at the Aegean; it holds such power and mystery. And the sky and the clouds, and everything we saw re-created so exquisitely in the virtual reality room. But in a way, this is also only virtual reality. There is another, much grander reality awaiting us when we see God ‘face-to-face.’ Can you even imagine it?
“Trying to cling to these bodies—well, it’s sort of like being in prison, getting a pardon from the governor, but refusing to leave the jail. Why would you refuse freedom? Why refuse to become the full person you were created to be? To me, it makes no sense.”
Geri added, “It’s not about wanting to live forever in these bodies, at least not for me. And I think part of what bothers me about the people who are trying to do that is the whole division between rich and poor, who gets to live forever and who’s dying even from malnutrition and genocide right now because those of us who have the money and power to change things are looking after ourselves instead. How am I going to explain that, when I see God ‘face-to-face’?” Just saying the words seemed to lift a weight off Geri’s shoulders.
“These are important things to consider,” said Jaime.
Geri said, “Will you pray for me? I mean, to make the right decisions? I guess I suddenly have sixteen million dollars to spend.”
Even as she spoke, a small motorboat appeared from behind the rocks to the right, the very rocks that Jaime and Yani had tried so hard to swim past to get to the hotel.
The man at the helm was muscular and tall, and Jaime thought they had a good chance between them of getting Yani down to the boat, even while he was intubated.
Jaime smiled. “You got it. And you pray for me, too,” she said to Geri. “And for the kids.”
February 26, 2006 6:30 p.m.
Friedrichshafen Airport
Freidrichshafen, Germany
* * *
Patsy Covington was a great believer in visualization. On every job she used it successfully. During kidnappings, she visualized the victim unconscious in the car long before he or she was actually there. But the victims always did end up occupying the space Patsy had already claimed for them.
With removals, she pictured the victims already parted from their bodies and the bodies disposed of. As far as she was concerned, the eight people she was offing tonight were already dead. She felt as relaxed as if they were gone and dumped, unable to identify her or cause trouble for anyone, ever again.
In some ways, then, her Cessna Grand Caravan was like a time machine, she thought, as she and the pilot hurtled down the runway in those few rattling moments before takeoff. It was as if the plane was a time machine to the past, where the future in which she was already living would be created.
She enjoyed that idea so much that she pictured herself piercing the space-time continuum as the Cessna left the ground, heading for Barkarby Airport, northwest of Stockholm.
February 26, 2006, 6:30 p.m.
Samos Airport
Samos, Greece
* * *
Jaime knew they were in a race against time to save the
lives of the kidnapped Eden children. In a way, it was a miracle of its own that Yani was alive and walking across the tarmac next to her. It was hard to believe that three hours ago he had almost died, and now here he was walking on his own to the plane. The doctor whom Anna had arranged to have meet them at Samos had explained that while a pneumothorax was indeed very dangerous, when it was fixed quickly and correctly, a patient could be up and around quite soon. But now that Yani was alive, Jaime gave herself a moment to mourn the time it had taken the doctor to repair his pneumothorax. She hoped the extra time spent would not keep them from successfully completing their mission. She hoped to God Daniel Derry was still alive.
Jaime let Yani precede her up the steps of the Gulfstream 150. At least he wouldn’t be flying this time and insisting she pay attention. In fact, the doctor only let Yani go with the assurance he’d spend the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Stockholm resting. “Then don’t go scaling any walls, at least for a day or two,” the doctor who’d been awaiting them on Samos had warned. Jaime wasn’t sure where they were going, but she would put money on the fact that there were walls that needed scaling.
“We’re ready for takeoff, sir,” said Costas, the pilot who’d met them in Rhodes and brought their plane to Samos. Since Yani was injured, Costas would fly them to Stockholm. Aeolus, who had captained their yacht, was co-pilot. “As soon as you’re settled, give the signal.”
Aoelus helped Yani into the cabin. Yes, OK, it ticked Jaime off that everyone connected with their mission, everyone connected with Eden, treated Yani like he was a celebrity or visiting hero. Not that they disrespected her, but they all called him “sir,” not out of protocol but from the obvious respect they had for him. How can you blame someone for displaying respect? The doctor didn’t call Yani “sir,” but certainly seemed more jocular than he needed to be when warning him about scaling things.
“You ready?” Aeolus asked Jaime, who had boarded behind them and fastened her belt across the wide brown leather seat.
“Yes, thanks,” she said. At least they’d remembered to bring her along.
Aeolus turned and reentered the cockpit. The checklist already complete, the plane turned and headed for the runway.
Jaime turned on her handheld and again flipped to the names of those missing. She was reading the information on Inaba, the young woman kidnapped from the African hospice where she’d been working, when the wheels left the runway and the plane headed up.
“Jaime.”
She reluctantly turned around. Yani was lying on a berth that pulled down into a bed from the cabin wall. His head and shoulders were propped up on a backrest, and two seat belts crossed his body under the blankets, one above and one below his bandaged wounds.
They hadn’t had any time alone since Geri had shown up at the hotel room, which was just as well. Given the opportunity, Jaime would have had trouble not smacking him silly.
He was waiting for her to meet his eyes. Yani, the wounded hero—and her along for the ride.
“Come sit by me.”
Oh, wow, lucky her. She didn’t move.
“Are you angry?”
“Am I angry? If you’d trusted me, you wouldn’t have nearly died and we could have taken off two hours ago.”
“Close the cockpit door.”
The door to the cockpit had been open for takeoff. The plane was now beginning to level off, and Jaime felt safe enough to unbuckle and comply with his request.
Then she went back and sat, not by him, but in one of the large leather chairs that faced backward from the cockpit, where she could at least see him as they talked.
“So tell me, what were you doing, falling onto the dumbwaiter just as I was getting the hell out?”
“Villella got a call saying they’d caught you. I followed him to the monastery. I couldn’t exactly ride down with him in the makeshift elevator car, but I could use the rope to rappel down. I was almost there, ready to make my final descent into the cave, when the car started coming back up. Once it reached the roof of the cave, I would have no way out, no way to get down to you. I had to jump for it, onto the car, and then on down into the cave. Unfortunately, that caught the attention of Mr. Villella and his friends.”
“I had the information. I was on the way out. I had it handled.”
“Jaime, you’ve learned my secret,” Yani said seriously. “Something even Aeolus and Costas might not know. In fact, if you weren’t my partner, I’d have to kill you.”
Jaime looked at him, aghast. The truth was, she knew he could kill her, and easily. He’d had her in a death grip soon after they’d first met. You don’t tend to forget that kind of thing. “Yeah?” she said, trying to sound casual. “Whatever this secret is, does Clement know?”
Yani smiled. “Oh yeah. Clement’s well aware.”
“What secret do I know, then?”
He sighed. “You might find this hard to believe, but… I’m not perfect. Obviously. In fact, I’m human in a way that endangered both our lives. I screwed up, big-time. Thank God you were there to pull me out.” At least he looked sincere. “You deserve to be mad at me. In fact, you should be, at least for ten minutes or so. That’s really all the time we can spare. But the fact is, my imperfection bought you a chance to earn your stripes. Which you did, by the way, with flying colors.”
“So you no longer want me off the assignment?”
“Jaime, I never thought you couldn’t do it. What I told you in the hotel room back on Patmos was true. It was myself I didn’t trust, never you. I didn’t trust myself to act in a coolheaded way, were you ever in danger. And I think I proved to both of us that those fears were well-founded.”
She was staring at the pattern of swirls on the gray-blue carpet.
“Now the question is, can you forgive me, and move past the anger? We’re no better off if you become the one with issues. We’ve got to work professionally, both of us clearheaded and issue-free. I’m apologizing, and releasing the issues on my side. Can you do the same?”
Oh, drat. She needed her righteous anger to keep her balanced.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “But first let me really enjoy these ten minutes.”
“Fair enough,” he said. He opened his arms and again beckoned her over. This time she went and sat next to him on the pulled-down berth. He took her hand. “Jaime,” he whispered, “thank you.”
She felt the anger draining from her muscles, the tension flowing out her fingertips. Darn him anyway.
“Rest here a minute,” he said. “You deserve it.”
“Is there room?” she asked. “There can’t be. You’re injured.” In response, he slid toward the wall, leaving enough room for Jaime to lie down on her side, her back toward him. He draped one arm casually over her shoulder.
“Is there anything else you want to say?” he asked. “Whatever it is, get it off your chest. I can take it.”
“Speaking of chests, don’t you ever make me intubate you again, do you understand me?”
“I’ll do my best to avoid it. But I’ve got to say, kudos to you. You saved my life.”
“Yeah, well, this once.” She exhaled deeply, letting the rest of the tension drain away.
“So you took all my clothes off?” His voice had a much lighter tone.
“Yep. Saw you totally naked. Took a core reading, in fact, in case you don’t remember that part. But don’t worry; it’s not how I get my jollies,” she said, echoing his line to her in a similar situation. Then, perversely, “Oh, wait, I lie. Actually, it is.”
“That’s fair,” he said, the smile still in his voice. “’Cause when I said it, I lied, too.”
How did he win, every time? But this time Jaime was smiling herself, as she shared the warmth of Yani’s berth, and she let herself surrender to an hour’s sleep.
February 26, 2006, 9:32 p.m.
Lillistra Estate, Tranholmen Island
Stockholm, Sweden
* * *
“WZ5JNT, DE, AA7ZU.” Eri
c smoothly flipped his thumb and forefinger against the paddles of the electronic key, tapping out his father’s amateur radio call sign, followed by his own. He had been listening to the radio all evening, but the frequencies had been dead, no activity, until about 15 minutes before. Then suddenly they had opened up. When he began to hear call signs from the midwestern United States, he decided to try to reach his father.
Over and over Eric tapped out the Morse code message, hoping his father would hear his radio call. Then he would pause a few seconds to see if there was an answer. This was not their normal meeting night, but he really needed to talk to his dad.
Earlier that afternoon, Eric had returned to the estate and managed to slip back into his room just before the nurse came to check on him. After receiving a clean bill of health for looking so rested, he had begun to dig through hall closets in search of coats.
Now he sat, with a trash bag full of coats hidden under his bed, waiting to slip out for his 1:00 a.m. rendezvous. This was starting to seem real, not like a game at all. Eric was nervous and very worried. He needed to talk to someone. Someone he could trust.
It wasn’t that Eric did not trust his mother, but she was so very protective, she would flip if she knew what he was up to. And she might not even believe him. He couldn’t afford to have anything stop him right now; this was too important.
He had considered talking to the nurse—he seemed to be a pretty good guy—but Eric just didn’t know him well enough to trust him.
But Eric’s father had always been supportive. He didn’t talk down to Eric but listened to his ideas, and supported even his most challenging projects. This project was a little bigger than anything he had undertaken before, and he needed help.
“CQ OK. CQ OK.” Having no luck reaching his father, Eric decided to see if he could reach anyone in Oklahoma who might give him a call.
He tapped out the “CQ” again, and this time there was an answer. It wasn’t from his father, but Eric recognized the call sign of a friend in the Stillwater, Oklahoma, Amateur Radio Club.
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