Left Behind Read online

  Rayford also felt bad about his approach to Hattie. He had dealt with his own wrong in having pursued her, and he regretted having led her on. But he could no longer treat her with kid gloves, either. What scared him most was that it seemed, from what Bruce was teaching, that many people would be deceived during these days. Whoever came forward with proclamations of peace and unity had to be suspect. There would be no peace. There would be no unity. This was the beginning of the end, and all would be chaos from now on.

  The chaos would make peacemakers and smooth talkers only more attractive. And to people who didn’t want to admit that God had been behind the disappearances, any other explanation would salve their consciences. There was no more time for polite conversation, for gentle persuasion. Rayford had to direct people to the Bible, to the prophetic portions. He felt so limited in his understanding. He had always been an erudite reader, but this stuff from Revelation and Daniel and Ezekiel was new and strange to him. Frighteningly, it made sense. He had begun taking Irene’s Bible with him everywhere he went, reading it whenever possible. While the first officer read magazines during his downtime, Rayford would pull out the Bible.

  “What in the world?” he was asked more than once.

  Unashamed, he said he was finding answers and direction he had never seen before. But with his own daughter and his friend? He had been too polite.

  Rayford looked at his watch. Still a few minutes before one o’clock. He caught Chloe’s eye and signaled that he was going to make a phone call. He dialed Bruce Barnes and told him what he had been thinking.

  “You’re right, Rayford. I went through a few days of that, worried what people would think of me, not wanting to turn anybody off. It just doesn’t make sense anymore, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Bruce, I need support. I’m going to start becoming obnoxious, I’m afraid. If Chloe wants to laugh or run the other way, I’m going to force her to make a decision. She’ll have to know exactly what she’s doing. She’ll have to face what we’ve found in the Bible and deal with it. I mean, the two preachers in Israel alone are enough to give me the confidence that things are happening exactly the way the Bible said they would.”

  “Have you been watching this morning?”

  “From a distance here in the terminal. They keep rerunning the attack.”

  “Rayford, get to a TV right now.”

  “What?”

  “I’m hanging up, Ray. See what happened to the attackers and see if that doesn’t confirm everything we read about the two witnesses.”

  “Bruce—”

  “Go, Rayford. And start witnessing yourself, with total confidence.”

  Bruce hung up on him. Rayford knew him well enough, despite their brief relationship, to be more intrigued than offended. He hurried to a TV monitor where he was stunned to hear the report of the deaths of the attackers. He dug out Irene’s Bible and read the passage from Revelation Bruce had spoken from. The men in Jerusalem were the two witnesses, preaching Christ. They had been attacked, and they didn’t even have to respond. The attackers had fallen dead and no harm had been done to the witnesses.

  Now, on CNN, Rayford watched as crowds surged into the area in front of the Wailing Wall to listen to the witnesses. People knelt, weeping, some with their faces on the ground. These were people who had felt the preachers were desecrating the holy place. Now it appeared they were believing what the witnesses said. Or was it merely fear?

  Rayford knew better. He knew that the first of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists were being converted to Christ before his eyes. Without taking his gaze from the screen, he prayed silently, God, fill me with courage, with power, with whatever I need to be a witness. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want to wait any longer. I don’t want to worry about offending. Give me a persuasiveness rooted in the truth of your Word. I know it is your Spirit that draws people, but use me. I want to reach Chloe. I want to reach Hattie. Please, Lord. Help me.

  Buck Williams felt naked without his equipment bag. He would feel ready to work only when he had his cell phone, his video recorder, and his new laptop. He asked the cabbie to stop by the Global Weekly office so he could pick up the bag. Hattie waited in the cab, but she told him she was not going to be happy if she missed her appointment. Buck stood by the window of the cab. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said. “I thought you weren’t sure whether you wanted to see this guy.”

  “Well, now I do, OK? Call it revenge or rubbing it in or whatever you want, but it’s not often you get to tell a captain you’ve met someone he hasn’t.”

  “You talking about Nicolae Carpathia or me?”

  “Very funny. Anyway, he has met you.”

  “This is the captain from that flight where you and I met?”

  “Yes—now hurry!”

  “I might want to meet him.”

  “Go!”

  Buck called Marge from the lobby. “Could you meet me at the elevator with my equipment bag? I’ve got a cab waiting here.”

  “I would,” she said, “but both Steve and the old man are asking for you.”

  What now? he wondered. Buck checked his watch, wishing the elevator was faster. Such was life in the skyscrapers.

  He grabbed his bag from Marge, breezed into Steve’s office, and said, “What’s up? I’m on the run.”

  “Boss wants to see us.”

  “What’s it about?” Buck said as they headed down the hall.

  “Eric Miller, I think. Maybe more. You know Bailey wasn’t thrilled at my short notice. He only agreed to it thinking that you’d jump at the promotion, because you know where everything is and what’s planned for the next couple of weeks.”

  In Bailey’s office the boss got right to the point. “I’m gonna ask you two some pointed questions, and I want some quick and straight answers. A whole bunch of stuff is coming down right now, and we’re gonna be on top of every bit of it. First off, Plank, rumors are flying that Mwangati Ngumo is calling a press conference for late this afternoon, and everybody thinks he’s stepping down as secretary-general.”

  “Really?” Plank said.

  “Don’t play dumb with me,” Bailey growled. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure what’s happening here. If he’s stepping down, your guy knows about it. You forget I was in charge of the African bureau when Botswana became an associate member of the European Common Market. Jonathan Stonagal had his fingers all over that, and everybody knows he’s one of this Carpathia guy’s angels. What’s the connection?”

  Buck saw Steve pale. Bailey knew more than either of them expected. For the first time in years, Steve sounded nervous, almost panicky. “I’ll tell you what I know,” he said, but Buck guessed there was more he didn’t say. “My first assignment tomorrow morning is to deny Carpathia’s interest in the job. He’s going to say he has too many revolutionary ideas and that he would insist on almost unanimous approval on the parts of the current members. They would have to agree to his ideas for reorganization, a change of emphasis, and a few other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not at liberty to—”

  Bailey rose, his face red. “Let me tell you something, Plank. I like you. You’ve been a superstar for me. I sold you to the rest of the brass when nobody else recognized you had what it takes. You sold me on this punk here, and he’s made us all look good. But I paid you six figures long before you deserved it because I knew someday it would pay off. And it did. Now, I’m telling you that nothing you say here is gonna go past these walls, so I don’t want you holdin’ out on me.

  “You brats think that because I’m two or three years from the pasture, I don’t still have contacts, don’t have my ear to the ground. Well, let me tell you, my phone’s been ringing off the hook since you left here this morning, and I’ve got a gut feeling something big is coming down. Now what is it?”

  “Who’s been calling you, sir?” Plank said.

  “Well, first off, I get a call from a guy who knows the vice president o
f Romania. Word over there is the guy has been asked to be prepared to run the day-to-day stuff indefinitely. He’s not going to become the new president because they just got one, but that tells me Carpathia expects to be here a while.

  “Then, people I know in Africa tell me Ngumo has some inside track on the Israeli formula but that he’s quietly not happy about the deal requiring him to step down from the U.N. He’s going to do it, but there’s going to be trouble if everything doesn’t go as promised.

  “Then, of all things, I get a call from the publisher at Seaboard Monthly wanting to talk to me about how you, Cameron, and his guy that drowned last night were working the same angle on Carpathia, and whether I think you’re going to mysteriously get dead, too. I told him that as far as I knew, you were working on a general cover story about the guy and that we were going to be positive. He said his guy had intended to take a slightly different approach—you know, zig when everybody else is zagging. Miller was doing a story on the meaning behind the disappearances, which I know you were planning for an issue or two from now. How that ties in with Carpathia, and why it might paint him in a dark light, I don’t know. Do you?”

  Buck shook his head. “I see them as two totally different pieces. I asked Carpathia what he made of what happened, and everybody has heard that answer. I didn’t know that’s what Miller was working on, and I sure wouldn’t have thought he would somehow link Carpathia with the disappearances.”

  Bailey sat back down. “To tell you the truth, when I first took the call from the guy at Seaboard, I thought he was calling for a reference on you, Cameron. I was thinking, if I lose both these turkeys the same week, I’m taking early retirement. Can we get that stuff out of the way, before I make Plank tell me what else he knows?”

  “What stuff?” Buck said.

  “You looking to leave?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You taking the promotion?”

  “I am.”

  “Good! Now, Steve. What else is Carpathia gonna push for before he accepts the U.N. job?” Plank hesitated and looked as if he were considering whether he should tell what he knew. “I’m telling you, you owe me,” Bailey said. “Now I don’t intend to use this. I just want to know. Cameron and I have to decide which story we’re going to push first. I want to get him onto the one that interests me most, the one about what was behind the disappearances. Sometimes I think we get too snooty as a newsmagazine and we forget that everyday people out there are scared to death, wanting to make some sense of all this. Now, Steve, you can trust me. I already told you I won’t tell anyone or compromise you. Just run it down for me. What does Carpathia want, and is he going to take this job?”

  Steve pursed his lips and began reluctantly. “He wants a new Security Council setup, which will include some of his own ideas for ambassadors.”

  “Like Todd-Cothran from England?” Buck said.

  “Probably temporarily. He’s not entirely pleased with that relationship, as you may know.”

  Buck suddenly realized that Steve knew everything.

  “And?” Bailey pressed.

  “He wants Ngumo personally to insist on him as his replacement, a large majority vote of the representatives, and two other things that, frankly, I don’t think he’ll get. Militarily, he wants a commitment to disarmament from member nations, the destruction of ninety percent of their weapons, and the donation of the other ten percent to the U.N.”

  “For peacekeeping purposes,” Bailey said. “Naive, but logical sounding. You’re right, he probably won’t get that. What else?”

  “Probably the most controversial and least likely. The logistics alone are incredible, the cost, the . . . everything.”

  “What?”

  “He wants to move the U.N.”

  “Move it?”

  Steve nodded.

  “Where?”

  “It sounds stupid.”

  “Everything sounds stupid these days,” Bailey said.

  “He wants to move it to Babylon.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “He is.”

  “I hear they’ve been renovating that city for years. Millions of dollars invested in making it, what, New Babylon?”

  “Billions.”

  “Think anyone will agree to that?”

  “Depends how bad they want him.” Steve chuckled. “He’s on The Tonight Show tonight.”

  “He’ll be more popular than ever!”

  “He’s meeting right now with the heads of all these international groups that are in town for unity meetings.”

  “What does he want with them?”

  “We’re still confidential here, right?” Steve asked.

  “Of course.”

  “He’s asking for resolutions supporting some of the things he wants to do. The seven-year peace treaty with Israel, in exchange for his ability to broker the desert-fertilizer formula. The move to New Babylon. The establishment of one religion for the world, probably headquartered in Italy.”

  “He’s not going to get far with the Jews on that one.”

  “They’re an exception. He’s going to help them rebuild their temple during the years of the peace treaty. He believes they deserve special treatment.”

  “And they do,” Bailey said. “The man is brilliant. Not only have I never seen someone with such revolutionary ideas, but I’ve also never seen anyone who moves so quickly.”

  “Aren’t either of you the least bit shaky about this guy?” Buck said. “It looks to me like people who get too close wind up eliminated.”

  “Shaky?” Bailey said. “Well, I think he’s a little naive, and I’ll be very surprised if he gets everything he’s asking for. But then he’s a politician. He won’t couch these as ultimatums, and he can still accept the position even if he doesn’t get them. It sounds like he may have run roughshod over Ngumo, but I think he had Botswana’s best interest in mind. Carpathia will be a better U.N. chief. And he’s right. If what happened in Israel happens in Botswana, Ngumo needs to stay close to home and manage the prosperity. Shaky? No. I’m as impressed with the guy as you two are. He’s what we need right now. Nothing wrong with unity and togetherness at a time of crisis.”

  “What about Eric Miller?”

  “I think people are making too much of that. We don’t know that his death wasn’t just what it appeared and was only coincidental with his run-in with you and Carpathia. Anyway, Carpathia didn’t know what Miller was after, did he?”

  “Not that I know of,” Buck said, but he noticed that Steve said nothing.

  Marge buzzed in on the intercom. “Cameron has an urgent message from a Hattie Durham. Says she can’t wait any longer.”

  “Oh, no,” Buck said. “Marge, apologize all over the place for me. Tell her it was unavoidable and that I’ll either call her or catch up with her later.”

  Bailey looked disgusted. “Is this what I can expect from you on work time, Cameron?”

  “Actually, I introduced her to Carpathia this morning, and I want her to introduce me to an airline captain in town today for part of that story on what people think happened last week.”

  “I’ll make no bones about it, Cameron,” Bailey said. “Let’s do the big Carpathia story next issue, then follow up with the theories behind the vanishings after that. If you ask me, that could be the most talked about story we’ve ever done. I thought we beat Time and everybody else on our coverage of the event itself. I liked your stuff, by the way. I don’t know that we’ll have anything terribly fresh or different about Carpathia, but we have to give it all we’ve got. Frankly, I love the idea of you running the point on this coverage of all the theories. You must have one of your own.”

  “I wish I did,” Buck said. “I’m as in the dark as anybody. What I’m finding, though, is that the people who have a theory believe in it totally.”

  “Well, I’ve got mine,” Bailey said. “And it’s almost eerie how close it matches Carpathia’s, or Rosenzweig’s, or whoever. I’ve got relatives w
ho believe the space alien stuff. I’ve got an uncle who thinks it was Jesus, but he also thinks Jesus forgot him. Ha! I think it was natural, some kind of a phenomenon where all our high-tech stuff interacted with the forces of nature and we really did a number on ourselves. Now come on, Cameron. Where are you on this?”

  “I’m in the perfect position for my assignment,” he said. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  “What are people saying?”

  “The usual. A doctor at O’Hare told me he was sure it was the Rapture. Other people have said the same. You know our Chicago bureau chief—”

  “Lucinda Washington? It’s going to be your job to find a replacement for her, you know. You’ll have to go there, get the lay of the land, get acquainted. But you were saying?”

  “Her son believes she and the rest of the family were taken to heaven.”

  “So, how’d he get left behind?”

  “I’m not sure what the deal is on that,” Buck said. “Some Christians are better than others or something. That’s one thing I’m going to find out before I finish this piece. This flight attendant who just called, I’m not sure what she thinks, but she said the captain she’s meeting today thinks he has an idea.”

  “An airline captain,” Bailey repeated. “That would be interesting. Unless his idea is the same as the other scientific types. Well, carry on. Steve, we’re gonna announce this today. Good luck, and don’t worry about anything you’ve said here finding its way into the magazine, unless we get it through other sources. We’re agreed on that, aren’t we, Williams?”

  “Yes, sir,” Buck said.

  Steve didn’t look so sure.

  Buck ran to the elevator and called information for the number of the Pan-Con Club. He asked them to page Hattie, but when they couldn’t locate her, he assumed she hadn’t arrived yet or had gone out with her pilot friend. He left a message to have her call him on his cell phone, then headed that way in a cab just in case.

  His mind was whirring. He agreed with Stanton Bailey that the big story was what had been behind the disappearances, but he was also becoming suspicious of Nicolae Carpathia. Maybe he shouldn’t be. Maybe he should focus on Jonathan Stonagal. Carpathia should be smart enough to see that his elevation could help Stonagal in ways that would be unfair to his competitors. But Carpathia had pledged that he would “deal with” both Stonagal and Todd-Cothran, knowing full well they were behind illegal deeds.