The Heaven Trilogy

by Ted Dekker

  Helen cried and shook her head. Veins stood out on her neck and she struggled to breathe.

  “Jesus, lover of our souls, love this child,” Ivena whispered. She let her own emotions roll with the moment. This sweet, sweet sorrow that grew out of the pit of her stomach and flowered in her throat.

  She looked at Janjic.

  His eyes stared wide in shock.

  It occurred to Ivena that he was not necessarily seeing or feeling what she was seeing and feeling. Ivena inquired with raised brows. What is it, Janjic? What is the matter?

  Janjic swallowed and cleared his throat. He pushed his chair back and rose unsteadily, gathering himself. “Maybe I should leave you two,” he said. “I have a meeting with Karen that I should get to.” He nodded at Ivena. “I will call you later.”

  Helen did not lift her head. Ivena continued to rub her shoulders, wondering at Janjic’s odd behavior. Or perhaps she was reading more into it than was warranted. Men often felt uncomfortable around weeping women. But Janjic was not usually such a man.

  “Thank you, Janjic. We will be fine.”

  He took one more look at Helen and then walked out.

  Ivena heard the front door open, then close. She let Janjic’s oddity leave her for the moment and addressed the young woman bent over her table. “There’s nothing to fear, dear child. Hmmm?” She ran a finger along Helen’s cheek. “We will talk. I will tell you some things that will make you feel better, I promise you. Then you may tell me whatever you like.”

  Helen sniffed.

  A fleeting image of her dead rosebush with its strange new graft flew through Ivena’s mind but she dismissed it quickly. Perhaps she would show Helen her garden later.

  GLENN LUTZ paced the black tile floor, running his fingers along his stubble, feeling as though his stomach had been cinched to a knot. Waiting for any news at all. He should call up Charlie and have him put his police cruisers on the street looking for her, that’s what he should do. But he’d never asked the detective and his cronies to go that far before, not for a girl. Charlie would never understand. Nobody would understand—not this.

  But men had died for love before. Glenn thought he understood why Shakespeare had written Romeo and Juliet now. He felt the same kind of love. This feeling that nothing in the world mattered if he couldn’t take possession of the love he wanted.

  And when he did haul Helen in he would have to teach her some gratitude. Yes, she needed to understand how destructive this crazy game of hers really was. If what Beatrice said about his business interests suffering was true—and of course it was—then it was really Helen’s doing, not his. It was her doing because she had possessed him. And if she had not possessed him, then Satan himself had possessed him.

  A rap sounded. Glenn jerked his head toward the double doors. “Come.” He took a deep breath, gripped his hands behind his back, and spread his legs.

  Buck and Sparks walked in. They were already back—alone. Which could only mean one thing. Glenn swallowed an urge to scream at them, now, before they spoke—he knew what they would say already. Fresh beads of sweat budded on his forehead.

  The men stepped lightly on the tile, though walking lightly was not an ordinary thing for men weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds. They reminded him of two buffaloes dressed in ridiculous black suits, tiptoeing through a bed of tulips, and again he suppressed his rising fury. Of course they were nothing of the kind, and he knew it well. He employed only the best, and these two were that and more. Either one of these two could crush him with a few solid blows, and he was not a small man. Still, he would think of them as he liked. It was how he warded off intimidation, and it worked well.

  They came to a stop across the room and faced him, still wearing their sunglasses.

  “Get those ridiculous things off your faces. You look like two schoolchildren caught smoking in the can.”

  They obliged him, but they still didn’t offer a reason for their unsolicited appearance. For a few moments Glenn just stared at them, thinking he really should go over there and bang their heads together. He turned his head slowly to the side, keeping his eyes on them. He cleared his throat and spat on the floor. A glob of spit splattered on the tile. Still they said nothing.

  “You’re afraid to tell me that she’s gone, is that it?” Of course that was it and their silence sent heat up his neck. “You’re standing there petrified because you’ve allowed a single girl, weighing no more than one of your legs, to get away from you, is that it?” He squinted at them.

  But they still didn’t speak.

  “Speak!” Glenn yelled. “Say something!”

  “Yes,” Buck said.

  “Yes? Yes?”

  A thought rudely interrupted his intended barrage—She’s gone, Glenn.

  He held his tongue, breathing in shallow pulls. They’d let her go and for that they would have to pay. But what did that mean? That means that Helen’s gone. Gone! A streak of panic ripped up his spine. A deep terror that brought a quiver to his hands.

  It was followed immediately by another fear that these two pigs had seen his dread.

  “Where?” he snapped.

  “In the park, sir. A man took her in his car.”

  Now the heat mushroomed in his skull. He dropped his hands to his sides. A man? He could not steady the tremor in his voice. “What do you mean, a man? What man?”

  “We don’t know, sir.”

  “He drove a white Cadillac,” Sparks interjected.

  “You’re telling me that she left in another man’s car?”

  “Yes.”

  Glenn fought a wave of nausea. The room drifted out of focus for a brief moment. “And you followed them? Tell me you followed them.”

  Sparks glanced at Buck. It was all Glenn needed to know. “But you did get a license plate number?” His voice sounded desperate, but for the moment he no longer cared.

  “Well, sir, we tried, but it all happened very quickly.”

  “You tried?” Glenn whined mockingly, frowning deep. “You tried!” he screamed. He was slipping over a black cliff in his mind—he realized that even as he lashed out. “I didn’t pay you to try. I paid you to bring her back! Instead she’s escaped you three times in two days. And you’ve got the gall to walk into my office and tell me you didn’t even have the sense to take down a license number?”

  They stared at him, frozen.

  He had killed a few men and it was always in this state of mind that he’d pulled the trigger. This kind of blinding fury that made the world swim in a black fog. Glenn closed his eyes and stood there shaking, speechless, unable to think except to know that this was all a mistake. It was an impossible nightmare. He hadn’t just happened upon Helen—he’d been led to her. The hand of fate had rewarded him with this one gift, this one morsel of bliss. He had rescued her from the pit of hell and he wasn’t about to lose her. Never!

  There are people here, Glenn. These two buffaloes are watching you go berserk. Get a hold of yourself !

  He breathed once very deep and opened his eyes. Sweat stung his eyeballs. He stepped toward them. Perhaps a little taste of insanity would be good for them. It would put the fear of God in them, at the very least. He walked briskly for the desk, retrieved a black semiautomatic pistol from the top drawer and strode for the men. Their eyes widened.

  He lifted the gun and shot them quickly, each in the arm, blam, blam, before even he had a chance to think it through. The detonations thundered in the room. Actually, he shot Sparks in the arm; his shot went high on Buck and clipped his shoulder. Sparks moaned and muttered a long string of curses but Buck merely placed a hand over the torn hole in his shirt. His eyes watered, but he refused to show pain. For a brief moment Glenn thought they might come after him and he reacted quickly.

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  Sparks stilled, gritting his teeth.

  Glenn wagged the gun at them. “If she’s not in this office within three days you’re both dead. Now get off my floor!”
r />   They stared at him with red faces.

  He clenched his eyes and took a deliberate breath. “Go!”

  They turned and strode from the room.

  Glenn walked to his desk and sat heavily. If this didn’t turn out right he might very well use the gun on himself, he thought. Of course there were other ways to track her down. He would employ every resource at his means to find her. A white Cadillac. How many white Cadillacs could there be registered in this city? Twenty? Fifty? The fool who’d picked her up had just made the biggest mistake of his life. Oh, yeah, you’d better start packin’ heat, baby, because Lutz is gunnin’ for you.

  He dropped his head to the desk and moaned.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE IMAGE of Helen, leaning over the table crying, had softened as Steve drove Jan across the city, but it still left its imprint and he couldn’t wrap his mind around the terrifying sorrow that had accompanied that image.

  “So, Steve,” he asked with a thin smile. “What do you make of our daring rescue?”

  The chauffeur chuckled. “She’s a feisty one, sir; that’s for sure.”

  “You think she’s sincere?”

  “I think she’s hurting. Hurting people tend to be sincere. It was good of you, sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir, Steve. You’re my elder; maybe I should call you sir.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jan smiled and let the statement stand. It was a small game they played and he doubted it would ever change. The chauffeur pulled up to the ministry and parked.

  Jan stepped from the Cadillac and walked toward the towering office complex, trying to shake the annoying little buzz that droned on in his skull. The city was hot and muggy. An old black Ford with whitewall tires moaned by. The sound of beating wings drew his attention to the roofline where two gray pigeons flapped noisily for better footing. It occurred to him halfway up the steps that he’d neglected to close the door. He turned and jogged for the car, grinning apologetically to Steve, who’d already opened the driver’s door to come around and shut it.

  “Sorry, Steve. I’ll get it.”

  “No problem, Mr. Jovic.”

  “Jan, Steve. It’s Jan.” He shut the door and headed back. At times he was embarrassed to have a driver. True, in the beginning he could not drive in a country where everyone drove at double speeds, but that had been five years ago. Somehow the driver thing had just stuck. It came with the position, he supposed.

  A large illuminated sign featuring a white dove hung over the brick entrance. On Wings of Doves, it read in golden letters. The name of his ministry. And what was his ministry? To quicken within the world’s heart the deep love of God—the same love shown by a little child named Nadia, the same love of Father Micheal. The same love Ivena suggested Jan didn’t really possess at all. Ivena, now, she had lost her daughter and the love poured out of her in rivers. He wasn’t sure exactly how he was to show the love of the priest anymore.

  Father, show me your love again, he prayed. Do not allow this world to swallow the fire of your love. Never. Teach me to love.

  An image of the woman, Helen, riding beside him in the car flashed through his mind. “Do preachers always drive such expensive cars?” she had asked.

  He pushed into the office building and made his way to the elevators. Betty, the correspondence coordinator, was on the elevator, on her way to the mailroom to “set John straight,” she said.

  “And what are we setting John straight about today?” Jan asked.

  Betty grinned softly, bunching her round cheeks into balls. She was nearing sixty and John was half her age; it was a ritual, a mothering thing for Betty, Jan often thought. She had adopted the mailroom manager as her son. She, the short, heavyset, gray-haired wise one, and John, the tall bodybuilder with jet-black hair— mother and son.

  “He’s gotten the crazy notion up his sleeve that we really can’t answer three hundred letters a day, and so he’s telling his people to send no more than two hundred letters down to our department on any given day.” She waved at the air. “Nonsense!” Betty leaned forward as if to tell Jan a secret. “I think he likes flexing his muscles, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, John does enough of that, doesn’t he? But be easy with him, Betty. He’s young, you know.”

  She sighed as the bell for the sixth floor rang. “I suppose you’re right. But these young ones need some guidance.”

  “Yes, Betty. Guide him well.”

  She clucked a short laugh. “And congratulations again, Jan.”

  “Thank you, Betty.”

  She stepped off and Jan rode on, grinning wide. The thought that all those letters in dispute were requests rather than checks ran through his mind. The ministry was slowly being sucked dry by them. My, my . . . where had all the money gone?

  They rented the five lower floors to tenants and ran the ministry from the top three, an arrangement that gave them office space at virtually no cost. It had been another one of Roald’s brilliant touches. Of course, they didn’t really need all three floors, but the space allowed Jan and Karen to occupy the whole top floor as well as providing Roald a spacious if temporary office for his frequent visits. The mailroom occupied the sixth floor and the administrative offices occupied the seventh.

  Jan walked in and smiled at the office secretary, Nicki, who was filling her cup with fresh coffee. “Afternoon, Nicki. They say too much of that stuff will kill you, you know.”

  She turned to him, flashing a broad smile. “Sure, and so’ll hamburgers and soda and everything else that makes this country great.”

  “Touché. Any messages?”

  “On your desk. Roald and Karen are waiting in the conference room.” She shot him a wink and he knew it was because of Karen. Their engagement would be a hit around the office for at least another week. The thought of seeing Karen again suddenly set free a few butterflies in his stomach. He smiled sheepishly and walked into his office.

  Jan glanced over the large oak desk, empty except for the small stack of messages Nicki had referred to, and headed back out. The ministry’s administration was handled almost entirely by the staff now. And with Karen at the helm of public relations, he was relegated to showing up and dazzling the crowds, giving his lectures, but not much more. That and worrying about how to sustain this monster he’d created.

  He opened the door to the conference room. “Hello, my friends. Mind if I join in?”

  Karen stood from the conference table and walked toward him, brown eyes sparkling above a soft smile. Her hair rested delicately on a bright blue dress. Goodness, she was beautiful.

  “Hello, Jan.”

  “Hello, Karen. Welcome back.” She reached him and he kissed her cheek. The thought of an openly romantic relationship in the office still felt awkward. Although it hardly should; she was going to be his wife. “I missed you.”

  “And I missed you,” she said quietly. She glanced over his choice of clothing and smiled, a tad disingenuous, he thought. “So I take it you’ve been playing today.”

  “I guess you could call it that. I was at the park.”

  She mouthed a silent, Ahhh, as if that put the puzzle together for her.

  Roald Barnes grinned a pleasant smile with all the maturity and grace expected of a graying elder statesman. He wore a black tie cinched tight around a starched collar. “Hello, Jan,” he said.

  Jan looked at Karen. “How was the meeting this morning? Still on speaking terms with our publisher?”

  “The meetings, plural, were . . . how should I put it? Interesting.” She was slipping into her professional skin now. She could do it at a moment’s notice—one second the beautiful woman, the next a sharp negotiator leveling a rare authority. At times it was intimidating.

  “Bracken and Holmes refused the seventh printing.”

  “They did, huh? My, my. And what does this mean?” He crossed his legs and sat back.

  She took a breath and exhaled deliberately. “It means we have to face some facts. Sal
es have faded to a trickle.”

  He looked at Roald. The older man’s grin had all but vanished. “She’s right, Jan. Things have slowed considerably.”

  “You think I don’t know this? What are you saying?”

  “We are saying that The Dance of the Dead is nearly dead.”

  “Dead?”

  The word seemed to throw a switch somewhere in Jan’s mind. He buried an urge to snap at the man and immediately wondered at the anger he felt. The man’s choice of words could have been better, but he was only speaking the same truth that had lurked in these halls for weeks now.

  “What happened to May she live forever? Things of this nature don’t just die, Roald. They have a life of their own.”

  “Not in this country, they don’t. If people aren’t buying—”

  “It’s not simply a matter of people buying. I’ve said so a thousand times. I say it at every interview.”

  Jan was suddenly feeling very hot in this small room without really knowing why. Roald knew well Jan’s basic resentment with characterizing the success of the book in mere numbers. After all, the book was about God. Between every page there was the voice of God, screaming out to the reader; insisting that he was real and interested and desperate to be known. How could such a message be reduced to numbers?

  “I think what Roald’s trying to say,” Karen interjected with a firm glance over to Roald, “is that on the business end of things our income’s drying up. Another printing would have helped.”

  “You know very well, Jan, that what’s hot one year may be cold the next,” Roald said. “We’ve enjoyed five enlightening years. But enlightenment doesn’t pay the mortgage. And the last time I checked, your mortgage was rather significant.”

  “I’m aware of the costs, my friend. Perhaps you forget that this story was bought with blood. With blood and five years in a prison that might leave you dead within a week. You may say what you like, but be careful how you say it!” Heat washed over his collar. Easy, Jan. You have no right to be so defensive.

  Roald became very still. “I stand corrected. But you also should remember that this world’s filled with people who don’t share your sentiments toward God. People who committed the very atrocities you’ve written about. And don’t forget, it was I who made this book possible in the first place. I’m not your enemy here. In fact, I’ve bent over backward to help you succeed. It was I who convinced you to publish your book in the United States. It was I who first persuaded the publisher to put some marketing muscle behind the book. It was even I who brought Karen on board.”