by Ted Dekker
“Say a thousand, for an easy number. I could say any one of a thousand words right now, and for each one, you might respond with any one of your own thousand choices. If I focused hard enough, I think I could see each word and each of your responses. That’s a million possibilities in one generation. Extend that out a few minutes and you get the idea. That’s just the possible futures of our talk.”
They skirted the first roadblock at ten o’clock, a half mile off Route 190. In fact, they could have walked within two hundred yards of the police and not been noticed, Seth informed her with a tired smile.
He led her due north, through a field and over a fence, where they would find another unlocked car, he said. If they took certain back roads, they would be safe for at least as far as he could see.
It was then, walking in the dead of night beside Seth, that Miriam finally understood the full weight of his gift. They were virtually invincible, weren’t they? As long as Seth was awake and thinking—as long as there was at least one possible avenue of escape among the thousands of possibilities—they could simply choose it and walk on, unharmed.
In this moment, she would rather be here, walking with him, than anywhere else in the world. Except in Samir’s arms, of course. A warmth rose through her chest.
She looked at Seth in his oversized shirt, hair loose, jaw firm in the moonlight, and she smiled. He smelled musty, a blend of straw and sweat—but to her it was the scent of a man, and it only reinforced her sense of security.
He looked at her, his eyes sagging. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She slipped her arm through his, as content as she could remember feeling. She could feel his skin on hers, along their arms, and that was good, because here in America you didn’t have to be a fifteen-year- old bride to be touched by a man. An image of Sita floating underwater flashed through her mind and she felt a momentary stab of pain.
You are a woman and he is a man, Miriam. What would Samir say to this display of affection, however platonic? And you know that Seth is falling for you. No, she did not know that. It was her fantasy. Miriam pulled her arm away. She was losing her mind with his.
Seth seemed too exhausted to react.
They found the car exactly as he’d predicted. An old white Cadillac with a shredded vinyl roof. It was unlocked.
“The owners are probably in the basement right now, praying someone will come along and swipe this beast,” Seth said. He looked at her. “Ready for a ride?”
“I was born ready.” It was a phrase he’d used earlier and she liked it.
He grinned wide. “Born ready, huh? I didn’t see that one coming. Let’s go.”
He was too busy considering the future of their escape to dwell on what she might say. That was a good thing. It also meant he was making mistakes. They had to rest.
They drove north to the outskirts of a town called Ridgecrest, where Seth pulled the beast, as he’d taken to calling the car, into a graveled parking lot adjacent to a large steepled building. A church. He eased the car around the back and parked behind an old shed. He simply could not go on.
“We’re past the roadblocks, and it’s dark. We should be okay. If I don’t get some rest, my body’s going to start shutting down on its own.”
“What if you don’t wake up?” she asked.
“Nothing’s happening in the next three hours. Three hours past that and the sun comes up. The sun comes up, I awake. Always been that way; always will be that way. Relax, princess. It’s time for sleep.”
He leaned against his door, and the heavy breathing of sleep took him within minutes. The window felt like a stone against her head, and Seth kept grunting in his sleep, as if fighting unseen demons. In a groggy fit of frustration she leaned toward Seth and rested her head on his arm.
She finally slept.
The heat woke her. A suffocating blanket that smelled of oil. Light streamed in through the window, hot on her thigh like a magnifying glass . . .
Miriam jerked up. It was day! The Cadillac was surrounded by a sea of cars. They’d been found!
Seth leaned against the window, mouth hanging open in a snore, dead to the world.
She hit his thigh. “Seth!” she whispered.
He didn’t budge.
She pulled her fist back and slammed it into his arm. “Seth!”
“Huh!” He jerked up, eyes wide. A trail of saliva hung from his gaping mouth. He clamped his mouth closed and swallowed. “What?”
“Look!”
He gazed around, blinking. “Cars.”
“Who . . . who are they?”
A lopsided grin split his face. “It’s Sunday.”
Sunday. Christians went to their churches on Sundays. They were in a church parking lot, swallowed up by the cars of worshippers.
Miriam exhaled and leaned back. “Do you see anything?”
She wound the window down to let some of the desert heat out. He wasn’t answering.
“Seth?” She faced him. “What is it? Do you see anything?”
“Yes. I see that in exactly twenty minutes, a cruiser’s going to roll into this parking lot.”
“Twenty minutes. We would still be sleeping if I hadn’t awakened.”
Seth had fixed his eyes on the church.
“Seth?”
“Who was the greatest prophet?”
A melody reached faintly through the walls. Children were laughing somewhere. “Muhammad,” she said.
“That’s not what your sheiks teach. Muhammad was the final prophet, but Muhammad sinned. The prophet Jesus did not sin. He was the only perfect man and as such a greater prophet than Muhammad. This is the teaching of Islam.”
It was true. But she didn’t understand his point.
“Your point?”
“Jesus was also the prophet of love.”
“Love?” What was he saying?
“Love your neighbor as yourself. Even the Rabbi Akiva called it the great principle of the Torah.”
“You’ve read the Torah too?”
“And the Talmud.” He looked at her and winked. “Time to jet.”
chapter 24
samir exited the Los Angeles International Airport terminal Sunday morning, carrying only a single, medium-sized bag. He’d been in the United States once before, on a five-day visit to New York for Sheik Al-Asamm. It was two years after he began working as a driver for Miriam, while she was still twelve and he only twenty. The sheer volume of new sights and ideas had sent him virtually running back to Saudi Arabia, begging the sheik never to be sent again.
Since that time, he’d been to Paris and Madrid on a number of occasions, but they hadn’t affected him like New York, whether because he was older or because those two cities were more reserved he did not know. He’d also been to Cairo. Many Saudi men went to the more liberal capital of Egypt for their pleasures, though that was not Samir’s reason for going. Samir never understood the blatant disregard for Islam’s moral code, which was almost always associated with such trips. He despised it. He always confined his pleasure to what was permissible according to the Koran, and always restricted his pleasure to the company of one person whom he loved more than any other man, woman, or child in the universe.
Miriam.
I have come for you, my love.
He hailed a taxi and was soon riding down Century Boulevard, headed for the car-rental agency. His plan was simple. He would allow Miriam to find him, and then he would take her away from this nightmare. He needed nothing but his own love and the will of Allah. And a little help from the others, of course. But they were already helping, far more than they could possibly realize.
In the last hour alone they had told him where to find her.
Whatever information the Americans turned up on the ground, they passed on to Hilal, who in turn told General Mustafa, who informed not only the king, but Khalid and the sheik. Hilal knew a third party was after Miriam, but he didn’t know it was Omar. In fact, because Samir knew about Omar, he knew more than the American
Clive Masters. Omar knew everything that Hilal knew, but he was not aware of Samir’s involvement.
Only Samir and the sheik knew the full picture. And it was appropriate, Samir thought, because he was here for love.
The taxi driver swerved and cursed at a passing bus. By his accent the man was from Pakistan. Likely a Muslim.
“You have lived long in America?” Samir asked.
“Three years. I’ll be lucky to survive another three with these crazy drivers.”
“That’s a comforting thought for your passenger.”
The man laughed. “You get used to it. This is your first time to the States?”
“Second. I’ve been to New York.”
The man nodded.
“You are a Muslim?” Samir asked.
“Yes. There are many Muslims here.”
“And you are a good Muslim?”
The man glanced in the rearview mirror. “A good Muslim, yes. I try my best. It’s not easy to be a good Muslim in America.”
“Then you should go home to Pakistan.”
The man nodded, but the wind was out of his sails. “Perhaps.”
They drove on in silence.
Samir looked to the east. Somewhere out there in this vast landscape of lost souls, Miriam was running for her life. Afraid, abandoned, and desperate. He took a deep breath and begged God for her safety. One more day. Give me one more day.
They had missed Seth and Miriam by five minutes, and Clive knew it might just as well have been a week. Ten units had searched the streets of Ridgecrest for the next hour and turned up exactly what he expected them to: nothing.
Clive drove out of the church parking lot. With any luck, none of this would matter soon. He was putting the final touches on a plan to upstage Seth. The only way to deal with Seth was to put him in the dark; Clive knew that like he knew the walnut in his pocket was round. And if he was right, he was closing in on a way to do just that.
The first step was to track Seth’s movements and establish, with as much confidence as possible, his destination. For that he needed more manpower. If he could determine the destination, Clive thought he had a pretty good chance of getting there without being seen in Seth’s futures.
Peter Smaley had called an hour earlier and initiated a conference call with Secretary Paul Gray and NSA Director Susan Wheatly. Clive had talked to Susan before. The straight shooter took a personal interest in his unique position with the agency. It was his first time, however, to speak with the secretary of state, who was upset about having to tolerate Saudi diplomats running amuck in “this crazy manhunt down there.” The secretary understood the sensitive nature of the country’s relationship with Saudi Arabia better than anybody, but it didn’t mean he had to like it.
Clive patiently retraced the events of the last three days and then gave his estimation of the situation.
“You’re saying that Seth rather than Miriam presents the bigger problem to us,” Susan had observed. “Not because he’s assisting the princess, but because of this . . . this ability of his.”
“Yes. And I’m suggesting we make bringing him in the top priority.”
“You have over a hundred members of various law enforcement agencies directly involved now. And the rest of the country on full alert for this guy,” the secretary said. “Sounds like top priority to me.”
“I want more. He may try to take her from the country. I want all ports closed to private flights unless they’ve been thoroughly searched. I want to bring in Homeland Security and I want to set up interstate roadblocks. I’m suggesting we view Seth as a terrorist on the loose with an atomic weapon. And then I want you to give me authority over all resources. Nobody moves or talks without my saying so. That’s top priority.”
The phone went silent for a few seconds.
“You really think a college student from Berkeley is that dangerous?” Susan said.
“I think he’s the most dangerous man on the planet at this moment.”
Now, an hour later, Clive waited for their response. His patience was a formality. He already knew what the answer would be.
He slid into the car, fired it up. Hilal hadn’t shown himself since their talk last night. He was probably headed for Nevada already. Clive now thought of him as an enemy of sorts. He had the will and the means to take both Seth and Miriam out. Clive wanted them alive. At the very least, he wanted Seth alive. No man could do what Seth was capable of doing. Killing him would be a mistake of the worst kind.
His phone rang.
“Yes.”
“You have it, Clive,” Smaley said. Amazing how his attitude had changed since Clive interrupted his meeting the previous day.
“Okay. I call the shots?”
“You run the show in-country. The border is being handled.”
“Good enough.”
Smaley breathed into the phone. “I have to say, I’m pretty skeptical about this . . . theory of yours.”
“Okay.”
“So. If you had to call it now, where would you say he’s headed?”
“Las Vegas,” Clive said.
“Las Vegas,” Omar said, dropping the phone on the seat. “Drive.”
“How do they know?” Assir asked.
“They don’t. But neither do we. The agency man believes they’re headed for Las Vegas, and Hilal believes him. So we go to Las Vegas.
We stay with our plan. Sooner or later the student will make a mistake.”
After two days of cat-and-mouse games, it felt good to have a destination. He’d watched the meeting between Hilal and Clive Masters through binoculars at nearly a thousand yards and received the pertinent points of their conversation an hour later, when Hilal reported his suspicions to Saudi Arabia.
Now Seth and Miriam’s entourage was headed for Las Vegas, and he would beat them there as well.
Omar laid his head back on the leather seat and closed his eyes. If the hunters were right about Seth’s gift, then there was only one way to trap the student, and the agency man would be the one to do it.
But no matter how the scene played itself out, Omar would witness the end. He would be the vulture. And Miriam would be his prey.
His wife would be his prey.
chapter 25
seth called them the “eyes from the sky.” Helicopters. They were unquestionably the most annoying and most threatening factors in the route through Death Valley. Given the Cadillac’s white paint, finding cover in the endless brown landscape was like trying to hide a mosque in the middle of the Rub‘ al-Khali desert. If not for Seth’s three-hour sight into the future, they would have been apprehended long ago. He’d pulled the car into hiding no fewer than six times since their departure from the church yesterday morning.
The other annoying element was the heat. Particularly after the Cadillac’s ancient air-conditioning unit quit functioning.
They decided Sunday afternoon that traveling at night might be a better idea. The darkness would provide cooler temperatures and hamper the helicopter’s search. They freshened themselves up at a gas station manned by an old codger, purchased enough junk to fill the backseat, and went looking for a place to wait out the afternoon.
Seth’s “old codger” was really just an older man who didn’t care what was happening beyond his driveway, and the “junk,” as he called it, consisted of necessities like toiletries, food, water, and clothes. The food was arguably unhealthy, and the clothes didn’t fit Miriam as she would have liked. But after washing and changing into a fresh shirt in the station’s restroom, Miriam felt nearly giddy.
They found an outcropping of bleached rock off the road, parked the car under it, and did their best to sleep in the stifling heat. Seth certainly needed the sleep. Despite his insistence that all was “peachy,” she knew differently.
“You may say you’re crisp as a fruit, but you can’t hide your tired eyes,” she’d said. “You’re taking the Advil as if it were candy, and your eyes are puffy.”
“Don’t be silly
.” He looked in the mirror and then sat back without comment.
“It’s wearing you down.”
He looked past her with glazed eyes. “I’m sure that’s what Clive is thinking. He’s trying to push us to exhaustion and then close in. But as long as I don’t sleep longer than three hours, we’re okay.”
He picked up a battery-operated alarm clock they’d purchased with their other supplies. What if it didn’t work? Or worse, didn’t wake him? She decided not to worry aloud. He needed sleep, not her concerns.
The issue turned out to be moot. Seth couldn’t sleep. They resumed their journey after dark, and Seth seemed his energized self again. They talked about fashion in terms Miriam didn’t know were part of the fashion world’s lexicon. His was a unique view of the world, to be sure. And then they talked about surfing.
She’d been to the beach in Jidda, of course. But always draped from head to foot in the black abaaya and veil. The notion of diving into the ocean wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt had never struck her as such an intoxicating idea until now, hearing Seth talk. For that matter, what would it be like to swim in the waves naked? What a lovely idea!
Constant detours forced on them by the pursuit made their progress slow. They must have avoided a dozen police cars in one four-hour stretch. By eleven o’clock that night, Seth could barely keep his eyes open. He gave up in defeat and rolled the car into a ravine well off the road. Clive and his group would not likely discover them before daybreak. They both fell asleep within the hour.
The alarm chirped three hours later. Miriam pulled herself out of sleep’s haze long enough to turn it off. She was fast asleep within seconds.
Miriam was the first to awaken Monday morning. She pushed herself up in the rear seat. Seth was gone. She peered over the front seat. Nothing.
“Seth?”
The car moved under her and she realized that she was sitting on him. Alarmed, she clambered for the door, planting her elbows in his back and on his head in the process. That woke him. He rose groggy and grumbling, but none the wiser.
“We’re safe?” she asked.
He looked around, waking. “Safe. What happened to the alarm clock?”
