by Ted Dekker
Miriam tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Fine, reconcile us.”
“Okay. Christian Nazis killed the Jews. The Crusaders killed Muslims. Islamic extremists killed Christians in the World Trade Center. Right? All guilty of breaking the greatest commandment.”
“Very few Arabs are extremists who kill—”
“And Hitler was as much a true Christian as I am a toad. Point is, they all broke the Prophet of love’s cardinal rule.”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Miriam said.
“Correct.”
“And what does this have to do with the existence of God?”
“It has more to do with proving that I am not an infidel. Since you Muslims revere Jesus, and we agree he is the greatest prophet, let me offer a prayer to the God of Jesus and prove he doesn’t exist.”
“You can’t test God.”
“Maybe I can.”
Seth bounded over to a group of small boulders and scooped up an armful of medium-sized rocks. He ran to a bare patch of ground and set them in a circle. Miriam watched him curiously, afraid to ask.
He returned to the pile and grabbed up more stones. “Ever hear of Elijah and Mount Carmel?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“God descended in fire.”
He seemed enthusiastic about his idea, but Miriam was still unclear about his intentions. “You want God to descend in fire?” she said. “This won’t prove a thing.”
“No, not fire. But if I ask God to do something—anything in the immediate future—I will be able to see if even the possibilities of the immediate future change.”
“And if he doesn’t want to do it, you will say he doesn’t exist?” It was unorthodox to be sure, perhaps foolish even, but she didn’t see the harm. This was her eccentric Seth at work. At least there were no mutawa around to see his mockery.
“Don’t you get it?” he said. “Even his refusal will affect what I see. It’s like having a giant stethoscope up to the heavens. If there’s a God, and if that God responds in any way, I’ll know it! For all we know, this is the first time in history such a thing has even been possible.”
“But I won’t know that anything has changed,” she said.
“True. You’ll have to take my word for it.” He looked at the altar. “It’s been a while since I said a prayer. Maybe you should do the honors.”
“I’ll have no part in this.”
“Fair enough.”
He fidgeted with his hands for a moment, considering how to proceed. Then he lifted his face and arms to the sky. His lips moved in silent prayer.
Miriam shook her head, embarrassed for him. Her Greek god, who was at this moment standing ten meters off with his arms lifted like an idiot, was determined to prove something she didn’t care about in the first place. Her confidence was a matter of faith, not proof. Whatever he did or didn’t see wouldn’t change that.
Seth lowered his hands and turned around, eyes still closed. After a moment they flickered open and he smiled.
“Well?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He stepped toward her. “Absolutely nothing, nada, zip.
I rest my case. We’ll have to depend on good old—”
Seth froze midstride, eyes wide.
“What?”
His mouth parted. For a fleeting moment she thought he was having a heart attack or seizure.
“Seth!”
He blanched.
“What is it?”
Seth composed himself. “Nothing. Let’s roll.” He walked past her.
She hurried for her door, evidently on the passenger’s side, considering he had his hand on the driver’s door already.
“Don’t say nothing. I know you saw something. What did you see?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I saw that we have to roll.”
chapter 26
they approached the Nevada border on Highway 178 and stopped five miles from the crossing. Seth remained quiet about the altar episode. He said he was still trying to figure it out but refused to explain what it was.
But she knew. The future had changed; the fact that they were making a run for the state line was evidence enough. He had tossed a prayer into the sky and the future had changed, and Seth was not at all at ease with the fact.
Slowly Seth came to himself. He stared at the blacktop ahead, hands on the wheel. A mischievous grin grew on his face.
“Okay, the way I see it, we have three ways to do this.” He looked at her. “One way would be violent and bloody, one would be crafty and brilliant, and one would be bold and silly. Which is your pleasure?”
She thought through the choices. Violence was unacceptable to both of them. What could he mean by silly? Either way they would succeed, wouldn’t they? Although he had made some errors lately.
“Bold and silly,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Maybe not.”
“No, I think it’s a daring choice,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
“Okay.”
Seth slapped the steering wheel. “Excellent!”
He climbed out, ran to the front of the car, yanked off the Cadillac hood ornament, and hurled it into the desert. Miriam got out, amused.
“What is this?”
“This is our disguise, princess.” He ran to the trunk, popped it up, and returned with a large knife. Without warning he bent and slashed the right front tire. With a terrible hiss, the air bled out. The sound struck her as maniacal.
“I cannot imagine this is a clever idea,” she said.
He ran to the rear wheel and slashed it as well. “You chose bold and silly, remember?”
“Yes, but I didn’t choose stupid.”
Seth laughed and jumped around to the other side, where he repeated the slashing. All four tires were as flat as millet cakes.
“Let’s roll,” he said.
“You can drive on these tires?”
“For a few miles. That’s the point.”
They started down the road, and within a hundred meters the thumping began. Within another hundred the racket was so loud that Miriam was sure the wheels would fall off.
“This is ridiculous!”
“Ha! You think this is ridiculous?”
Now she began to worry in earnest. He had never failed them, but this madness was a new thing. Perhaps he had actually lost his gift as the result of the prayer.
A loud bang sounded from the engine and Miriam flinched. Steam began to seep from the hood. Now what? The engine was going to blow up!
“Seth! Shouldn’t you stop?”
“No!” He was delighted. “This is it!”
“What on earth are we doing?”
“Mess up your hair and put some of that white sunblock on your face. Could you do that for me?”
“Not until you tell me what we are doing!”
“We’re putting on a disguise. Just enough so that he won’t recognize you for a few seconds. That’s all we need. I thought white sun-block would be better than grease.”
“Who is he?”
The smile left his face. “I’m sorry, but we’re starting to run out of time. We’re committed, and honestly, if I tell you too much, this won’t work. I swear I’ll make anything you find less than hilarious up to you later, but now you have to make yourself look nonArabic.”
Smoke was streaming out of the hood. A tremendous thump sounded under them.
“We lost a tire,” he said, grinning again.
She stared at him for one last moment, and then scrambled for the back where a small bag held their toiletries. “I don’t like this,” she said, pulling out the tube of white cream. She smeared the paste over her face. “I don’t like this at all.”
“You look like a ghost.”
She grabbed the visor and looked at her image in the mirror. A streaked white face stared back. The car stopped in a cloud of smoke.
“Perfect,” Seth said. “The crossing is just around that corner. Just drive nice an
d easy and stop before you get to the police cruiser.”
She spun to him. “Drive? I can’t drive!”
“I told you it would come in handy, didn’t I?”
Captain John Rogers had just put out his last Lucky Strike and was thinking he’d much rather be back in Shoshone, having a cold brew at Bill’s Bar, when he saw the cloud of smoke rolling his way from around the bend.
His first thought was that someone had ignited a smoke bomb, but he discarded the thought when he saw the grille. It was an overheated car, limping as if running on the last cylinder. Banana peckers, that thing was barely crawling. Didn’t the fool driver realize he was frying the engine?
He couldn’t make out the car because it was crawling under a mask of steam, but by the square grille he pegged it as an old sedan. These here were tourists from New York or Vermont, come to take a picnic in Death Valley without knowing the first thing about the harsh realities of the place. John had seen it a hundred times.
He grunted and leaned back on his hood. “Banana peckers,” he said. He didn’t know how the fool could see past the windshield. It was wobbling too. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken . . .
Good night, the thing had burned its wheels off! Was that even possible? The situation had just gone from New Yorker stupid to hardly imaginable imbecile. In his eleven years patrolling these parts, he couldn’t remember seeing anything quite like this.
He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Double banana peckers,” he said. “Wait’ll the boys get a load of this.”
The car sounded like a limo pulling strings of empty cans after a wedding. It clanked to a steaming halt ten yards off.
John rested his right hand on his gun. Never could be too careful. A man stupid enough to drive this deathtrap was stupid enough to do anything.
The engine died. Hissing smoke boiled skyward. All four tires were gone. Now how in the world was that possible?
The door flew open and someone stumbled out, coughing and gagging on the smoke.
“Hold it there!” John yelled. “Just hold it right there!”
The person straightened, frantic. It was a woman and her face was white. Either sunblock or makeup. Her hair flew every which way, and she reminded him of Gene Simmons wearing that Kiss makeup.
She gripped her hair and turned in a slow circle, moaning.
A faint breeze cleared the smoke for a moment. The car was empty.
He edged forward and peered through the haze.
“You must help me,” the woman moaned.
“You alone, miss?”
She began to jump up and down, screaming at the top of her lungs. “The arks are after me! The arks are after me! Help me, the arks are after me!”
Startled, he followed her terrified look back down the road. “Okay, just go easy, miss. I don’t know what you’re on, but everything is fine now. There are no arks after you.”
“The arks! You don’t understand, I have the ring and the arks are after me!”
He eased toward her. The woman was either high and hallucinating, or a plain lunatic. Not terrible actually; she would be his ticket off this post. He held out a reassuring hand.
“Please, miss. I’ve been here all day and I can assure you, there are no arks in these parts. Now if you’ll just calm down.”
It dawned on him what she was trying to say. He stopped four feet from her and waved a hand through the smoke. “Do you mean the Orcs are after you? Like the Orcs from The Lord of the Rings?”
She stopped jumping, surprised but no longer frantic, as if a light had just gone on in her head.
A door slammed behind him and he spun back. The cruiser!
“Hey!”
A hand slapped at his waist, and he twisted back to see the woman hurl his revolver over the guardrail. He grabbed at her, but she was past him, running for the cruiser. He took a step in the direction she’d thrown the gun and immediately realized he would never retrieve it before they took off. He chased her.
“Stop!” He knew then that these were the two they had been looking for. “Stop!”
The engine fired and the woman piled in. With a squeal of tires his cruiser shot backward, peeled through a U-turn, and then roared off, leaving him straddling the yellow lines on the road.
He glanced down at his waist. No radio. He could get the gun, of course, but . . . John turned around and looked at the steaming car they’d abandoned. The tireless wheels were mangled. It was going nowhere. The trunk was open. The man had come from the trunk and snuck around, using the smoke for cover while the lady went on about the arks. Orcs.
Banana peckers! This was not good. Not good at all.
chapter 27
they deposited the police cruiser in a small town called Pahrump and took a bus into Las Vegas. Miriam made it abundantly clear to Seth that his notion of “bold and silly” was far better characterized as “crazy and ridiculous,” and then only in generous terms. Even so, she had done her share of laughing as they sped away from the stranded cop at the state line.
The fact that she had raved on about an ark when she should have said Orc was the worst of it. He insisted he’d said Orc, not ark. And after all, he claimed, she’d seen the movie; she should know. But she finally decided to forgive him. The whole incident seemed to have endeared her to him, even more so than before.
Still, despite his outward pleasure with her performance, he maintained the same introspective nature he’d adopted after his experiment with the prayer. His ability to see forward in time hadn’t stretched beyond three hours, but now he seemed to see more futures within that time. His sight was broadening if not lengthening, if she wasn’t mistaken, and his headaches had increased, judging by the number of Advil he kept taking.
Las Vegas was a city of true wonder, its lights and colors surpassing her wildest imaginations. Seth referred to the huge casinos as hotels, but in her mind they were nothing less than enclosed cities.
They took adjoining rooms in Caesars Palace, both deluxe rooms in the Forum Towers. Miriam wasn’t unaccustomed to luxury, of course, but nothing she’d experienced compared to the magical aura that surrounded them in this magnificent palace.
The rooms were trimmed with gold and mirrors and ancient symbols of Greeks—pillars and horses and, yes, Greek gods like her own.
“It’s a waste of resources,” Seth said as she swept through the room, delighted. She stopped at the window high above the city and looked out at a dizzying ocean of colors, red and blue and orange and green, moving and flashing with glitter and glamour.
She let the sights go and faced him. “A waste on whom? I’m not worth this?”
He looked at her, blushing, and she knew his mind was scrambling. “No. That’s not what I meant. For you, this is hardly acceptable.”
For a moment they searched each other’s eyes. His were soft and lost, and looking into them, sadness overtook her. In another time, in another place, I could love you, Seth. But not here. Never.
Seth cleared his throat and turned to the window. “Hilal is here,” he said. “But he’s not what I expected.”
“And what did you expect?” Miriam asked, disappointed that he had guessed their destination before they’d had a chance to enjoy it.
“I expected Clive to have the police out in force, searching the hotels and streets. But the Las Vegas police aren’t even aware of us. I can see numerous incidents in which we could walk by the authorities without being noticed, much less shipped off to prison. Hilal must be here on his own.”
“Are we safe or are we not?”
He paused. “Safe.”
“Then let’s go shopping,” she said.
“Sure.”
They wandered through the shops in the forum, engulfed by a sea of people who meandered about in a daze. The prices seemed high by Seth’s estimation, but price was one thing Miriam had learned to ignore. Being a princess did have one or two advantages.
In addition to the costumes they bought for the coming day, Miriam c
ould not resist purchasing suitable clothing. A simple yet elegant emerald dress for her and a pair of black slacks with a beige shirt for Seth. And new shoes for both.
They dined at the Terrazza restaurant on lobster and crayfish, a favorite of Seth’s. She insisted and he agreed. It wouldn’t have mattered what they ate; Seth was clearly more interested in her than in the food. She decided then, for the first time, not to discourage him. Women were created to be beautiful for a reason. Their faces were not meant to be hidden away by black veils for their husbands alone. And she was in Las Vegas, for heaven’s sake! Seth liked her, maybe even loved her. She liked him very much as well. She would make nothing more or less of the matter.
Miriam sat across from Seth and laughed with him, unencumbered by the shackles of her upbringing for the first time. They drank wine and they drank freedom, and Miriam could not have imagined either tasting so delicious.
They retired early and she, at least, slept like a baby, properly pampered and refreshed for the adventure before them. It was ten o’clock in the morning before Seth knocked on the door that separated her suite from his.
“Come.”
Seth opened the door, grinning. “The gentleman has arrived.”
She stood back and looked at him, stunned by the transformation. His hair was neatly slicked back above his ears. His face was clean shaven and smooth except for a mustache he’d attached to his upper lip. Dressed in the black slacks and beige shirt, he looked every bit the dashing man.
“My, you do clean up, don’t you?”
“And you, my princess,” he returned, eyeing her, “you are absolutely stunning.”
“Yes?” She cocked both hands and touched her wig. “You like it?”
“But of course. I think I would find you beautiful in a gunnysack, but you are quite ravishing in this dress.”
“Thank you.”
The straight brown wig hung just below the ears, masking her own long black hair. The disguises were Seth’s idea, and despite the apparent lack of danger, he had insisted they carry through. They would be at the gambling tables for some time, perfectly framed by a dozen cameras. No need to advertise.
