Acts of God

by James Beauseigneur

  "If a person loves God and loves his neighbor as he loves himself, then in his own time God will reveal himself more and more to that person until finally he will realize that the God he serves is in fact the God of the Bible; and the one who has paid the price for the forgiveness of his sins is God's son, Jesus.

  "As for who goes to hell, in the final analysis no one has to go to hell. In fact, the only ones who go to hell are those who refuse to go to heaven. Damnation is a sentence we impose upon ourself. If anyone truly seeks God, then God will provide that person with sufficient knowledge to be saved. The bottom line, Mr. Hawthorne, is this: God is, God loves, and God can be found." Rhoda was obviously finished but Decker remained silent, not wanting to argue the subject further.

  "I have some other patients I need to visit," Rhoda said when it became apparent that Decker was not going to respond. "If you'd like, you and Decker can continue to explore. We'll be having dinner just after sunset."

  "Sure," Decker responded. "We'll be fine."

  "Okay," she said, and then addressing the younger Decker. "Take it easy. Don't wear Mr. Hawthorne out."

  "Yes, ma'am," Decker Donafin answered politely as his mother gave him a kiss and then turned to leave.

  "So, it's just you and me," Decker said after Rhoda had gone. "Where do you want to go first?"

  "Can we go to the Lion Monument?" the younger asked.

  "You bet!" Decker responded with great enthusiasm, unaware of the climb that awaited them.

  The two Deckers walked and climbed and explored for the rest of the afternoon. Inside one of the carved-out tunnels which connected two adjacent facades, they had to feel their way along through nearly pitch black. The elder Decker felt the younger take his hand. It was now so dark it was impossible to see at all. "Are you afraid of the dark?" the elder asked as he felt the younger's hand tighten.

  "My mom says there's no reason to be afraid because Yeshua is always with me," the younger answered. "Are you afraid?"

  "A little," the elder answered.

  "Yeah, me too," Decker Donafin admitted. "A little."

  "Let's go somewhere else, then."

  Decker Donafin nodded but of course Decker Hawthorne could not see it.

  After visiting a few more sites, the elder Decker finally insisted that they stop to take a break. Half sitting, half leaning, they rested against an outcropping of stone below AdDier (the Monastery). For a few moments neither spoke — the elder because he was catching his breath, the younger because he had something on his mind — and then Decker Donafin broke the silence.

  "I think I remember my dad pretty well," he said. "But sometimes my mom or Tom or Rachael will talk about him and it will be about something I don't remember at all." At last it had come to the surface — the one thing that had never left either of their minds throughout their time together: their memories of Tom Donafin. In everything they had done that day the memories had floated and wafted through their thoughts. And yet, neither had mentioned him. Everything the younger Decker did or said had either reminded the elder of his old friend or caused him to note how the father and son differed. With equal attention the younger had observed the elder and wondered how much this man for whom he had been named was like the father he now struggled to remember.

  "I miss him a lot."

  "I miss him, too," the elder said.

  "My mom says he was a good man and that he loved God. She says we'll see him again soon when Yeshua returns."

  Decker wasn't sure how to respond. "He was a good friend," he managed after a moment.

  "Mom said you were with my dad when he died." "Yes," Decker answered. It was a gruesome memory and Decker hoped the boy would not ask him more about it. He need not have worried; Decker Donafin had no intention of asking for the details. After a moment's silence, Decker looked down to see tears in the boy's eyes. He hesitated for a moment and then leaned down to hug him. Decker Donafin put his arms around him as the tears flowed.

  That evening after supper, Decker again entertained the Donafin children with old stories of nearly forgotten adventures and misadventures he had with Tom during their days in the news business. A few of the stories Rhoda had heard before from Tom, but Decker's slightly different telling made her wonder if either men remembered the events as they had actually occurred. Decker told them how he and Tom had been captured and taken to Lebanon, though he left out details of the torture they had endured. The Donafin children knew that their father had once been a hostage but they had not realized that his captivity had lasted almost three years.

  The stories did not last nearly so long this night, as first young Decker and then Tom and Rachael fell off to sleep. Once again, Rhoda and Decker left the tent to talk a while longer.

  "You'll be leaving tomorrow?" Rhoda asked.

  "First thing in the morning," he answered, surprised at the confidence in his voice.

  "You're welcome to stay here with us," Rhoda said. "All that waits for you outside of Petra is death."

  Decker shook his head. "Tell Decker goodbye for me."

  "You'll probably have an opportunity to do that yourself. He's an early riser. I expect he'll want to see you before you leave."

  Decker nodded. "I'd like that," he said.

  That night Decker lay awake thinking about the events of the past few days. He no longer thought much about whether he would ever get out of Petra and back to Babylon alive. Somehow he felt certain now that he would. Now his thoughts centered on young Decker and Rhoda and the rest of the Donafin family. He thought also of the others in Petra who lay crammed together, huddled in confused, misguided fear of what was happening in the outside world. As long as he had thought of them as simply followers of the KDT, he could ignore the fact that they were people. Now he knew better: he had seen them face to face, had talked with them, and felt he was beginning to understand them. He was ashamed that it had taken being kidnapped for him to realize it. Even Scott Rosen, for all his faults, was only doing what he thought best. Decker wasn't sure how, but he was determined that somehow he would find a way to reach these people, to let them know that Christopher was not their enemy, and that what Christopher promised the world was not to be feared, but welcomed.

  On the plane to Jerusalem after his resurrection, Christopher had said that Decker's role would be to communicate Christopher's message to those unfamiliar with the concepts of the New Age, and to this point Decker had served Christopher well in that role. But that was more than three years ago and the job was nearly completed. Christopher's message of the evolution of Humankind was known throughout the world. Most people had experienced some clairvoyant, telepathic, telekinetic, or healing power; and 87 percent of the population had already received the communion and the mark. It had not occurred to him before, but as Decker considered it But now there was a new mission, a new job to do: to convert even those who were Christopher's opponents. And, ironically, it was Scott Rosen who had given Decker the means to effect that conversion. Rosen had told him of the calamities that were soon to be visited upon the earth, and both Rosen and Rhoda had stated their belief that Christopher would respond by assembling an army to march on Petra. In large part it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faced with renewed devastation, Christopher would be forced to strike at the agents of Yahweh who precipitated the devastation. If Decker could somehow alter the events predicted by the KDT so that Christopher did not march on Petra, then the KDT and their followers would have to admit they had made a mistake. And if they had made a mistake about this, then they could be wrong about other things as well. The KDT's claim to inerrancy made their hold on the people both very tight and very brittle. Like a house of cards, it was necessary only to remove one card — to cause one of their prophecies to fail — and the whole structure would collapse.

  Even if all else was true, even if all the calamities did strike the earth, it was still possible to turn this around. Instead of assembling an army to march on Petra for war, Christopher could send a peace envoy, or simp
ly do nothing at all. In this way Christopher could short-circuit the prophecy, prevent it from coming true, and show his true face as peacemaker and benevolent leader instead of the demonic beast the KDT made him out to be.

  Perhaps, also, knowing what the KDT planned would allow Christopher to initiate countermeasures to limit the effects of the plagues they predicted.

  Scott Rosen had kidnapped Decker and brought him to Petra to convince him that Christopher was evil and that Yahweh was good. As Decker nodded off to sleep, he realized that Rosen's actions were only a ploy of fate, which, as it had so many times before, was again putting Decker in the right place at the right time. There could be no doubt that the real reason he had been brought to Petra was so that he would come to know and understand these people so that he could find a way to convince them of the truth about Yahweh and Christopher.

  "Mr. Hawthorne."

  "Mr. Hawthorne."

  "Wake up, Mr. Hawthorne, it's time to go."

  Decker opened his eyes and looked around the room. As he twisted his body and shifted his weight to sit up, the ropes that bound his hands and feet slipped off like oversized gloves and shoes.

  "It's time to go, Mr. Hawthorne," the voice of a young boy said again.

  Decker rubbed his eyes and looked toward the voice. He was no longer in Petra; he was back in Lebanon, a hostage of the Hizballah. There in the open doorway of his room stood 14-year-old Christopher Goodman. "Christopher?" Decker asked, puzzled at this obviously unexpected turn of events.

  "Yes, Mr. Hawthorne," Christopher answered.

  "What are you doing here!?" Decker asked in confused disbelief.

  "It's time to go, Mr. Hawthorne. I've come to get you," Christopher said, making no attempt to explain.

  Christopher walked from the room and signaled for him to follow. Decker lifted the 115 pounds that remained of his body and followed Christopher toward the door. Halfway there, Decker hesitated. There was something he was trying to remember, something too important to forget, something he could not leave without.

  "Tom!" he said suddenly. "Where's Tom?" he asked of the friend he had not seen since they were brought to Lebanon.

  Christopher hesitated and then raised his arm slowly and pointed toward another door. Silently Decker opened it, looking for any sign of his captors. There was none. Inside, Tom lay on a mat identical to the one Decker had spent nearly three years sleeping on, sitting on, eating on ... living on. Tom was lying on his side with his face to the wall. Decker entered and began untying the bonds that held his friend's feet.

  "Tom, wake up. We're getting out of here," he whispered.

  Tom sat up and looked at his rescuer. For a moment they just stared at each other's faces. Decker forced his eyes away and began untying Tom's hands. He had not seen a mirror at any time during his captivity, and though he knew that his body was emaciated, he had not seen his face, where the most dramatic effects of his captivity were evident. Seeing Tom's face, he was struck with such grief and sympathy for his friend's similar condition that he had to look away to hold back tears.

  Outside the apartment, Decker and Torn walked stealthily down the hall, hoping to avoid detection. Christopher, on the other hand, walked on ahead of them, showing absolutely no sign of concern about the seriousness of the situation. They went down a long stairway, cluttered with trash and broken bits of plaster and glass. Still there was no sign of their captors. As they emerged into the open air Decker closed his eyes as the bright sunlight struck him in the face with its warmth and glow.

  "Mr. Hawthorne."

  "Mr. Hawthorne."

  Decker opened his eyes and looked around, struggling to remember where he was. Standing at the door was Decker Donafin. He was still in Petra.

  "Wake up, Mr. Hawthorne, it's time to go."

  Horror filled Decker's eyes as he suddenly understood what Tom Donafin's final words had meant.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Judas

  10:05 a.m., Sunday, June 7, 4 N.A. (2026 A.D.) — The wilderness of Jordan, north of Petra

  The dusty gray four-wheel-drive truck sped across the off-road terrain north from Petra, negotiating its way around rocks and ruts. Having long since given up on the notion of conversing with her passenger — he had not said ten words since he got in the vehicle outside the Siq of Petra an hour before — the driver thought about plans for her upcoming wedding. When she received her assignment to drive Decker to Jerusalem she had expected a hostile passenger, still enraged about his abduction. Instead he seemed almost in a trance, so preoccupied with his thoughts that he acted as though she wasn't even there. Time and again he ran his right hand up the side of his face and over his head, pulling at his thinning gray hair as it passed between his fingers.

  Alternating between nervous twitching or tapping his foot on the floorboard to a frozen tableau, Decker tried to understand, tried to think if there was something that he had missed. But there seemed no doubt what Tom had meant. Christopher was going to leave Tom in Lebanon.

  It must have been, Decker thought, his eyes squinting in reflection, that all the similarities between his current situation and what happened in Lebanon all those years ago had caused him to have the dream again. That part was simple enough. Still, that did not negate the larger meaning. How could he have missed it for so long? All these years and it had not sunk in until now. Could it have been just an accident? Decker's mind was filled with the single thought and its awful implications. It didn't make sense; it couldn't have been an accident. Decker knew that if he was right, he had discovered the single slip in an otherwise flawless plan. It had seemed so insignificant at the time, but if he was right. . .

  Another hour passed before the truck finally came to a real road, bounced onto the blistering hot blacktop, and turned west. Decker's mind flashed back to the road in Lebanon where he and Tom Donafin had been rescued by the convoy carrying Ambassador Jon Hansen. Had that really happened just by chance? he wondered.

  About three miles down the highway, the driver pulled to the side of the road and stopped behind a Japanese-built station wagon. "The key is in the glove box," she said as she handed him a canteen full of water. "Just keep heading west for about thirty kilometers and you'll come to Jericho."

  "Thanks," Decker said reflexively as he took the canteen and the leather satchel that held Elizabeth's Bible, and got out of the truck. The temperature was well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit with the sun beating down through perfectly clear skies, but Decker was oblivious to such details. Going to the car, he mindlessly opened the door, got in, and closed the door behind him. The driver who had brought him from Petra sat in the air-conditioned comfort of her own vehicle waiting for him to start the car, but despite the heat Decker just sat there, absorbed in thought. Finally, when she was about to go and check on him, Decker remembered something about the key being in the glove box and reached over to find it.

  Without looking back at the driver, Decker started the car and drove off. Only the intense heat of the steering wheel in his bare hands broke Decker's concentration and he used his shirttail to hold the wheel as he tried to determine how to turn on the car's air conditioning. It was fortunate that the car was pointed toward Jericho, for he had no recollection of the woman's directions and no thought of where he was going.

  Decker got past the U.N. border guards in Israel without incident, though they were a bit unnerved to have a high official of the U.N. arriving unexpectedly. Their response gave no indication that he had been reported missing. Apparently, Rosen was right: Decker traveled so frequently that after being gone for only four days, no one was seriously concerned about where he was. This was a point of some relief as Decker had no desire to explain where he had been or what had happened to him until he first had some time to think.

  He found a small restaurant off the beaten path where he thought it unlikely that anyone would recognize him. As he ate, he agonized over what to do next. Certainly he should call someone to let them know where he was and that
he was all right — all right, he thought in pained irony, now there was a relative term. He decided the best course of action would be to call Debbie Sanchez, his second in command, tell her that he had taken some time off and would be gone for another week or so. She could tell anyone else who needed to know. That should work, he thought; Debbie would probably be irritated that he hadn't told her of his plans ahead of time, but she was too new in her job to question him or demand an explanation. When she got over being mad, she'd probably welcome the opportunity to be in charge for awhile.

  Decker crossed his fingers and hoped the video on the telephone might be broken — it was going to be hard enough to sound like nothing was wrong without trying to look the part as well. He could turn the video off, but that would just raise questions; and he couldn't lie and say the equipment was broken because the monitor at the other end would indicate that it had been turned off.

  Putting on the best face he could manage, he dialed the phone. Debbie Sanchez had worked for him for less than a year and although she was a very intelligent woman, he hoped she might not be able to see through his performance.

  "Ms. Sanchez' office," a woman said. Decker looked at the face on the screen. It was Kwalindia Oshala, Debbie Sanchez' administrative assistant.

  "Mr. Hawthorne!" she said. The inflection in her voice and the look on her face made it clear she was surprised to see him. This was not a good sign: obviously there was some concern about his unplanned absence, even if they hadn't begun an all-out search.

  "Yes," Decker answered, as if everything was fine and he had not noticed her surprise. "Let me talk to Ms. Sanchez."

  "Sir," she responded, "she's out. She's covering for you at a meeting of the World Press Club." Decker had forgotten about being scheduled to speak, and for an instant he felt guilty about missing the appointment.

  "What about Martin?" he asked, referring to Debbie Sanchez' aide.

  "He's covering for Ms. Sanchez at a meeting in Beijing," she answered.