“Then…then he appealed…to Caesar…”
“Stop!” Will cried out.
The knives were already at their throats. Sheikh Mudahmid leaned forward slightly.
“I appeal to Sheikh Yassiheim—to the highest mufti—the greatest spiritual advisor to this group.”
“You have no right to any appeal,” Mudahmid said, laughing contemptuously.
“No—but my client does. An Arab—and a former Muslim—he has come to know that Jesus, whom you call a prophet, is also Jesus the Savior, the only one who shed the purest blood for our vilest sins. Shouldn’t Hassan Gilead Amahn’s case be heard before Sheikh Yassiheim, the highest mufti? So that he may explain the truth of his heart, and that his hands are innocent of the blood of your people?”
“I am the highest mufti!” Mudahmid yelled.
But one of the imams whispered something to him. Mudahmid replied loudly, angrily.
The imam then rose and said something in Arabic, waving his arms.
Mudahmid also got up, raising his voice in reply and shaking his finger.
The men with the knives were waiting nervously, their blades poised near the throats of Will and Gilead.
But the delay had worked.
As Sheikh Mudahmid turned to the men to order the execution, he moved away from the window. And did not see the approaching assault.
The window glass smashed, shards flying, as Caleb Marlowe and Nathan Goldwaithe rappelled into the room, firing at the gunmen as they somersaulted in.
Two of the gunmen fell immediately. The third one shot back, clipping Nathan in the arm and knocking him to the floor, from where he still managed to return fire, killing the terrorist.
Caleb was yelling for Will and Gilead to lie down as he fired at the two executioners, who were scrambling for their guns.
As he downed both of them, for just a fleeting instant, Gilead had a shock of recognition…and that is when he knew he had seen him before…that Marlowe had been the bearded man who had shoved him out to safety at the Islamic Center riot. “Thank you, thank you,” Gilead was trying to say yet could not quite get out in all the confusion and shooting.
But Caleb’s back was turned to the sheikh, who had stayed back when the two imams had scrambled out of the room. His face contorted with fury, he pulled a revolver out of his robe and fired directly at Caleb Marlowe, hitting him in the back. Then he turned the weapon toward Gilead and fired, sending a bullet into his head.
Gilead blinked, and with a look of confused calm, collapsed to the floor.
Mudahmid then began to fire at Will. As his target tried to scramble away, the sheikh, who was walking toward him while firing, pointed the barrel directly at his chest.
The gun fired, and the bullet struck Will in the upper left quadrant of his chest, a perfect shot to the heart, sending him to the floor with the impact.
Nathan, struggling up from where he lay fired the rest of his clip into the sheikh, who crumpled to the ground as one final terrorist appeared in the doorway.
He tossed a grenade into the middle of the room and ran out.
The grenade landed only a few feet away from Will, who was lying on his side, his eyes still processing the last images…of Gilead laying stone-still…and Caleb, bleeding profusely, rising on his hands and knees turning to Will…just for a millisecond…but long enough to lock eyes with him and send him a last look that went beyond language. And then Caleb Marlowe fell on the grenade as it exploded.
When the smoke cleared a little, Nathan Goldwaithe screamed into his walkie-talkie, “American citizens hit and down—request immediate assistance!”
A group of Israeli-operated Blackhawks, containing IDF forces, already in the air just outside of the Gaza Strip, bolted forward in formation toward Rafiah.
In the darkness, they entered the town, dodging ground fire and sniper fire from rooftops. As the Blackhawks came into sight over the streets, now filled with hordes of people pointing, yelling, and shooting guns, the signal was given to Tex Rhoady, who had been hovering over the building. Now he could speed off and leave the rest to the big choppers.
As Tex whirled out of the area ducking ground-to-air missiles and random gunshots, the Israeli Defense Forces landed in the street and on the roof of the apartment building.
They had come to rescue the living, collect the fallen, and gather the dead.
77
THERE WAS A MILD, WARM BREEZE blowing that day in Jerusalem, and the sky was clear. A group had gathered at a small cemetery on a hill overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Old City of Jerusalem that lay just beyond it. The Temple Mount plateau still rose up in the midst of it all, as it had for thousands of years.
In the past centuries, the sunlight would sparkle off the golden Dome of the Rock, which had dominated the Mount. But since the devastation of the bombings and the international tensions following them, those days were gone.
As the caskets of the dead were lowered down into the two graves, Fiona stood by, weeping. Tiny Heftland was at her side, and next to him, Tex Rhoady. She was holding hands with young Andrew. Nigel Newhouse was there too, trying to make sense of it all. Behind him, Jack Hornby—a man who was rarely at a loss for words—stood wordlessly.
General Cal Tucker and his aides, as well as several special-operations veterans who had served together, snapped to a sharp salute as the American flag-draped coffin of Caleb Marlowe was lowered into the ground.
And then the second coffin, containing the body of Gilead Amahn, was lowered. It was draped with a white flag that, at its center, displayed a cross, and in its background, a green outline of the mountains of the Gilead region. Bill and Esther Collingwood, who were struggling now for composure, thought their adopted son would have appreciated that.
But someone else was there at the graveside service.
In the very front, just inches away from the edge of Marlow’s grave, stood Will Chambers. He was fingering the metal “shield of faith” that his son had given him. His son’s badge now had a bullet-tip indentation in it—created by a forty-five-caliber round fired from the revolver of Sheikh Mudahmid. The heavy brass badge had stopped it from striking Will’s heart.
Will had a bandage, covered by a black patch over his left eye. He had been hit by some shrapnel from the grenade explosion that Caleb had blocked with his body. The doctors told him he had lost the eye. But somewhere in all of what had happened, Will figured, he had actually gained some additional sight.
A Bible verse—the one about there being “no greater love” than that someone should lay down his life for another—that was what was going through Will’s mind as he stood by the grave of Caleb Marlowe.
And Will also was thinking about the life of Gilead Amahn as well. About his passion to tell the greatest story that could ever be told…whether it was told in peace or, as seemed to typify Gilead’s short life, preached in the maelstrom of a violent world spinning toward its final destination.
With the kaleidoscope of events that had occurred during the last few days, and the urgency, hope, relief, and sorrow that had followed, few in that assembly had been following the news.
But if they had been, they would have learned of a strange transfer of power that had just taken place away in the Caribbean, in the tiny island nation of the Republic of Maretas. The body of Warren Mullburn had been found, stretched out in convulsed posture, in the stateroom of his great yacht Epiphany. Having finished a huge lobster, squid, and artichoke salad brimming with plenty of greens, he was suddenly taken ill. Almost immediately incapacitated, in less than an hour he was dead. The island coroner ruled it was death by accidental poisoning…ingestion of the deadly cicuta maculata plant that somehow had found its way into his salad.
It was rumored that President Mandu La Rouge might have been behind the death. Or perhaps even Mullburn’s illegitimate son, Theos, who had inherited his father’s global fortune and who was showing himself to be, in his own way, even more ruthless than his father. After all, there w
ere suspicious circumstances. Mullburn could not have asked for help even if he wanted to. The door lock to his stateroom had been glued shut with a high-strength industrial epoxy. The phone lines had been disconnected. And his cell phone was missing.
But only the billionaire’s personal chef, whose cuisine had been constantly and viciously criticized by the oil tycoon and who had shared Orville Putrie’s interest in botany and greenhouses, probably knew the whole truth. And he had been permitted to leave the island for parts unknown.
Scott Magnit was given a life sentence in prison. As was Orville Putrie.
Judge Lee Kwong-ju returned to South Korea. And Alain Verdexler, on reaching his home in Belgium, was flooded with media requests from around the world, asking that he explain his vote to “abstain” in the last judgment of Hassan Gilead Amahn. But he declined to break his silence.
As for Saad Mustafa, as a result of mounting international pressure, he launched an investigation into Palestinian public prosecutor Samir Zayed, in order to determine whether he had conspired in the kidnapping of Gilead Amahn and Will Chambers.
So, on that hill in Jerusalem, Will Chambers stepped back from the graves, placing himself close to Fiona and Andy.
Reaching out, he pulled Andy to him and squeezed him tight. On the other side, he wrapped his hand around Fiona’s, and then wrapped his little finger around her little finger, and squeezed. She squeezed back—in that secret communication of joined intimacy, the kind that is spoken silently in a wedded pair’s own private language.
When they returned to the United States, Will would meet with his law-office associates, display his black leather eye patch, and announce his “informal retirement.” And then he and Fiona would figure out exactly how they could best celebrate the sweet blessings of the rest of their life together.
Now, the graveside service was almost finished.
Pastor Wyman, who had stayed in Jerusalem to fulfill his longtime dream of touring the Holy Land, had been asked to lead the service. So he gave a short message. It was based on the one-hundred-fourth psalm, verses ten through twelve—the picture of God giving water to the beasts of the desert and sending springs of water through the dry valleys.
On that hill overlooking Jerusalem, he quietly explained how God provides the “springs” of living waters for our souls when we are spiritually parched and feel ourselves surrounded by the lonely desolation of the desert all around. How Jesus Christ is the source of that living water. And how only He can make us sing, even though our hearts are broken and our heads are bowed low. And then he read the final verse again:
By them the birds of the heavens have their home;
They sing among the branches.
Bill and Esther had requested that Fiona sing at the graveside. After composing herself, she took a step forward, glancing out at the ancient city spread out before her, and then began to sing.
There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.
Sometimes I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.
If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
and say He died for all.
When she was done singing, there was quiet. Though the quiet would not last. Weeks later, massive violence would erupt in Jerusalem, caused by several Palestinian groups in retaliation for the Israeli troops’ daring to enter the Gaza Strip during the rescue operation. The Israeli Defense Force would strike back, driving out the Palestinian police and the UN troops that had encircled the Temple Mount.
After two millennia of waiting, the nation of Israel would finally be in exclusive possession of the Mount. The long-awaited rebuilding of the ancient Jewish Temple would then begin.
And more wars, and the rumors of them, would also begin—and then the march toward the last judgment of history…and of God.
But in that brief moment of reflection, as Will and Fiona and Andy, and the small group of mourners, cast one last look over Jerusalem, it was peaceful.
And there was no sound, except for the sound of the breeze whispering through the leaves of an ancient, spreading olive tree nearby, and the warbling song of the birds who were safely nested in its branches.
About the Author
CRAIG PARSHALL is a highly successful lawyer from the Washington, DC, area who specializes in cases involving civil liberties and religious freedom. He is also the frequent spokesperson for conservative values in mainstream and Christian media. The Last Judgment is the final installment in the Chambers of Justice series, following four other novels—the powerful Resurrection File, the harrowing Custody of the State, the gripping The Accused, and the suspenseful Missing Witness.
THE CHAMBERS OF JUSTICE SERIES
by Craig Parshall
The Resurrection File
When Reverend Angus MacCameron asks attorney Will Chambers to defend him against accusations that could discredit the Gospels, Will’s unbelieving heart says “run.” But conspiracy and intrigue—and the presence of MacCameron’s lovely and successful daughter, Fiona—draw him deep into the case…toward a destination he could never have imagined.
Custody of the State
Attorney Will Chambers reluctantly agrees to defend a young mother from Georgia and her farmer husband, suspected of committing the unthinkable against their own child. Encountering small-town secrets, big-time corruption, and a government system that’s destroying the little family, Chambers himself is thrown into the custody of the state.
The Accused
Enjoying a Cancún honeymoon with his wife, Fiona, attorney Will Chambers is ambushed by two unexpected events: a terrorist kidnapping of a U.S. official…and the news that a link has been found to the previously unidentified murderer of Will’s first wife. The kidnapping pulls him into the case of Marine colonel Caleb Marlowe. When treachery drags both Will and his client toward vengeance, they must ask—Is forgiveness real?
Missing Witness
A relaxing North Carolina vacation for attorney Will Chambers? Not likely. When Will investigates a local inheritance case, the long arm of the law reaches out of the distant past to cast a shadow over his client’s life…and the life of his own family. As the attorney’s legal battle uncovers corruption, piracy, the deadly grip of greed, and the haunting sins of a man’s past, the true question must be faced—Can a person ever really run away from God?
The Last Judgment
A mysterious religious cult plans to spark an “Armageddon” in the Middle East. Suddenly, a huge explosion blasts the top of the Jerusalem Temple Mount into rubble, with hundreds of Muslim casualities. And attorney Will Chambers’ client, Gilead Amahn, a convert to Christianity from Islam, becomes the prime suspect. In his harrowing pursuit of the truth, Will must face the greatest threat yet to his marriage, his family, and his faith, while cataclysmic events plunge the world closer to the Last Judgment.
The Last Judgment Page 39