by Tim LaHaye
Ernie proved formal and distracted. “Missing persons?” he repeated, not looking at Buck but still working on his map. “First off, most of them are going to wind up dead. There are so many, we don’t know where to start.”
Buck pulled a photo of Chloe from his wallet. “Start here,” he said.
He finally had Ernie’s attention. He studied the picture, turning it toward the battery-powered lights. “Wow,” he said. “Your daughter?”
“She’s twenty-two. To be her dad I’d have to be at least forty.”
“So?”
“I’m thirty-two,” he said, astounded at his vanity at a time like this. “This is my wife, and I was told she escaped from our house before the quake leveled it.”
“Show me,” Ernie said, turning toward his map. Buck pointed to Loretta’s block. “Hmm. Not good. This was a worldwide quake, but GC has pinpointed several epicenters. That part of Mt. Prospect was close to the epicenter for northern Illinois.”
“So it’s worse here?”
“It’s not much better anywhere else, but this is pretty much the worst of it in this state.” Ernie pointed to a mile stretch from behind Loretta’s block in direct line with where they were. “Major devastation. She would not have been able to get through there.”
“Where might she have gone?”
“Can’t help you there. Tell you what I can do, though. I can blow her picture up and fax it to the other shelters. That’s about it.”
“I’d be grateful.”
Ernie did the clerical work himself. Buck was impressed at how sharp the enlarged copy was. “We only got this machine working about an hour ago,” Ernie said. “Obviously, it’s cellular. You hear about the potentate’s communications company?”
“No,” Buck said, sighing. “But it wouldn’t surprise me to know he’s cornered the market.”
“That’s fair,” Ernie said. “It’s called Cellular-Solar, and the whole world will be linked again before you know it. GC headquarters calls it Cell-Sol for short.”
Ernie wrote on the enlargement, “Missing Person: Chloe Irene Steele Williams. Age 22. 5'7", 125. Blonde hair. Green eyes. No distinguishing marks or characteristics.” He added his name and phone number.Adobe Garamond Pro
“Tell me where I can reach you, Mr. Williams. You know not to get your hopes up.”
“Too late, Ernie,” Buck said, jotting his number. He thanked him again and turned to leave, then returned. “You say they call the potentate’s communications network Cell-Sol?”
“Yeah. Short for—”
“Cellular-Solar, yeah.” Buck left, shaking his head.
As he climbed into the Range Rover, he felt helpless. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Chloe was out there somewhere. He decided to drive back to Loretta’s another way. No sense being out without looking for her. Always.
It was late, and Rayford was tired. Carpathia’s office door was shut, but light streamed beneath the door. He assumed Mac was still there. Curious as he was, Rayford wasn’t confident Mac would honestly debrief him. For all he knew, Mac was spilling his guts about everything Rayford had said that day.
His top priority before sleep was to try to get through to Buck. At the communications command post he was told he had to have permission from a superior to use a secure outside line. Rayford was surprised. “Look up my level of clearance,” he said.
“Sorry, sir. Those are my orders.”
“How long will you be here?” Rayford asked.
“Another twenty minutes, sir.”
Rayford was tempted to interrupt Carpathia’s meeting with Mac. He knew Nicolae would give him permission to use the phone, and by barging in, he would show he was not afraid of His Excellency the Potentate meeting with his own subordinate. But he thought better of it when he saw Fortunato had turned the light off in his office and was locking his door.
Rayford walked briskly to him. Without a trace of sarcasm, he said, “Commander Fortunato, sir, a request.”
“Certainly, Captain Steele.”
“I need permission from a superior to use an outside line.”
“And you’re calling—?”
“My son-in-law in the States.”
Fortunato backed up against the wall, spread his feet, and crossed his arms. “This is interesting, Captain Steele. Let me ask you, would the Leonardo Fortunato of last week have acceded to this request?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Would my permitting it, despite how cavalierly you treated me this evening, prove to you I have changed?”
“Well, it would show me something.”
“Feel free to use the phone, Captain. Take all the time you need, and best wishes on finding everything OK at home.”
“Thank you,” Rayford said.
Buck prayed for Chloe as he drove, imagining Chloe had found her way to safety and simply needed to hear from him. He called to give Tsion an update but didn’t stay on the phone long. Tsion seemed down, distracted. Something was on his mind, but Buck didn’t want to pursue it while trying to keep the phone open.
Buck flipped open his laptop and looked up Ken Ritz’s number. A minute later Ritz’s voice mail said, “I’m either flyin’, eatin’, sleepin’, or on the other line. Leave a message.”
“Ken, Buck Williams. The two of us you flew out of Israel might need a return trip soon. Call me.”
Rayford couldn’t believe Buck’s phone was busy. He slammed the phone down and waited a few minutes before redialing. Busy again! Rayford smacked his hand on the table.
The young communications supervisor said, “We’ve got a gadget that will keep dialing that number and leave a message.”
“I can tell him to call me here, and you’ll wake me?”
“Unfortunately, no, sir. But you could ask that he call you at 0700 hours, when we open.”
Buck wondered about Ritz’s voice mail. How would anyone know if he had been killed in the earthquake? He lived alone, and that system would just take calls until it filled.
Buck was about half an hour from Donny and Sandy Moore’s house when his phone rang. “God, let it be Ernie,” he pleaded.
“This is Buck.”
“Buck, this is a recorded message from Rayford. I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you. Please call me at the following number at seven o’clock in the morning my time. That’s going to be 10:00 p.m., if you’re in the Central Standard Time zone. Praying Chloe’s all right. You and our friend, too, of course. I want to hear everything. I’m still looking for Amanda. I feel in my soul she’s still alive. Call me.”
Buck looked at his watch. Why couldn’t he call Rayford right then? Buck was tempted to call Ernie, but he didn’t want to bug him. He wended his way back to Tsion. As soon as he came into the house, Buck knew something was wrong. Tsion would not look him in the eye.
Buck said, “I didn’t find any rods to poke in the backyard. Did you find the shelter?”
“Yes,” Tsion said flatly. “It is a duplicate of where I lived at the church. You want to see it?”
“What’s wrong, Tsion?”
“We need to talk. Did you want to see the shelter?”
“That can wait. I just want to know how you get to it.”
“You will not believe how close we were last night when we were doing our unpleasant business. The door that appears to lead to a storage area actually opens into a larger door. Through that door is the shelter. Let us pray we never have to use it.”
“Here’s thanking God it’s there if we do need it,” Buck said. “Now, what’s up? We’ve been through too much for you to keep anything from me.”
“I am not keeping it from you for my sake,” Tsion said. “I would not want to hear if I were you.”
Buck slumped in a chair. “Tsion! Tell me you didn’t get word about Chloe!”
“No, no. I am sorry, Cameron. It is not that. I am still praying for the best there. It is just that for all the treasures in Donny’s briefcase, the journals also led me wher
e I wish I had not gone.”
Tsion sat too, and he looked as bad as he had when his family had been massacred. Buck laid a hand on the rabbi’s forearm. “Tsion, what is it?”
Tsion stood and looked out the window over the sink, then turned to face Buck. With his hands deep in his pockets, he moved to the doors that separated the kitchen from the breakfast nook. Buck hoped he wouldn’t open them. He didn’t need to be reminded of cutting Sandy Moore’s body from under the tree. Tsion opened the door and walked to the edge of the cutout.
Buck was struck by the weirdness of where he was and what he was looking at. How had it come to this? He had been Ivy League educated, New York headquartered, at the top of his profession. Now here he sat in a tiny duplex in a Chicago suburb, having moved into the home of a dead couple he barely knew. In less than two years he had seen millions disappear from all over the globe, become a believer in Christ, met and worked for the Antichrist, fallen in love and married, befriended a great biblical scholar, and survived an earthquake.
Tsion slid the door shut and trudged back. He sat wearily, elbows on the table, his troubled face in his hands. Finally, he spoke. “It should come as no surprise, Cameron, that Donny Moore was a genius. I was intrigued by his journals. I have not had time to get through all of them, but after discovering his shelter, I went in to see it. Impressive. I spent a couple of hours putting the finishing touches on one of Bruce Barnes’s studies that was quite ingenious. I added some linguistics that I humbly believe added some insight, and then I tried to connect to the Internet. You will be happy to know I was successful.”
“You kept your own e-mail address invisible, I hope.”
“You have taught me well. I posted the teaching on a central bulletin board. My hope and prayer is that many of the 144,000 witnesses will see it and benefit from it and respond to it. I’ll check tomorrow. Much bad teaching is going out on the Net, Cameron. I am jealous that believers not be swayed.”
Buck nodded.
“But I digress,” Tsion said. “Finished with my work, I went back to Donny’s journals and started from the beginning. I am only about a quarter of the way through. I want to finish, but I am heartsick.”
“Why?”
“First let me say that Donny was a true believer. He wrote eloquently of his remorse over missing his first chance to receive Christ. He told of the loss of their baby and how his wife eventually also found God. It is a very sad, poignant account of how they found some joy in anticipation of being reunited with their child. Praise the Lord that has now been realized.” Tsion’s voice began to quaver. “But, Cameron, I came upon some information I wish I had not discovered. Maybe I should have known it was to be avoided. Donny taught Bruce to encrypt personal messages to make anything he wished inaccessible without his own password. As you recall, no one knew that password. Not Loretta; not even Donny.”
“That’s right,” Buck said. “I asked him.”
“Donny must have been protecting Bruce’s privacy when he told you that.”
“Donny knew Bruce’s password? We could have used that. There was a whole gigabyte or so of information we were never able to access off Bruce’s computer.”
“It was not that Donny knew the password,” Tsion said, “but he developed his own code-breaking software. He loaded it onto all the computers he sold you. As you know, during my time in the shelter, I downloaded to my computer—which has astounding storage capacity—everything that had been on Bruce’s. We also had those thousands and thousands of pages of printouts, helpful for when my eyes grew tired of peering at the screen. However, it simply seemed to make sense to also make an electronic backup for that material.”
“You weren’t the only one who did that,” Buck said. “I think that stuff is on Chloe’s computer and maybe Amanda’s.”
“We did not, however, leave anything out. Even encrypted files were copied because we didn’t want to slow the process by being selective. But we never had access to those.”
Buck stared at the ceiling. “Until now, right? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Sadly, yes,” Tsion said.
Buck stood. “If you’re about to tell me something that will affect my esteem for Bruce and his memory, be careful. He is the man who led me to Christ and who helped me grow and—”
“Put your mind at ease, Cameron. My esteem for Pastor Barnes was only elevated by what I found. I found the encryption-solving files on my own computer. I applied these to Bruce’s files, and within a few minutes, everything encrypted glowed from my screen.
“The files were not locked. I confess I took a peek and noticed many that were merely personal. Mostly memories of his wife and family. He wrote of his remorse over losing them, not being with them, that sort of thing. I felt guilty and did not read everything there. It must have been my old nature that attracted me to other private files.
“Cameron, I confess this excited me to no end. I believed I had found more riches from his personal study, but what I found I thought better to not risk printing. It is on my computer in my bedroom. Painful as it will be, you must see it.”
Nothing would have kept Buck from it. But he mounted the stairs with the same reluctance he had felt digging through the rubble at Loretta’s. Tsion followed Buck into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the high, squeaky bed. A plastic folding chair sat in front of the dresser, on which Tsion’s laptop rested. The screen saver bore the message “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”
Buck sat and brushed the touchpad with his finger. The date of the file indicated it had been in Bruce’s computer since two weeks after he had officiated the double wedding of Buck and Chloe and Rayford and Amanda.
Buck spoke into the computer’s microphone. “Open document.”
The screen read:
Personal prayer journal. 6:35 a.m.: My question this morning, Father, is what would you have me do with this information? I don’t know it to be true, but I cannot ignore it. I feel heavily my responsibility as shepherd and mentor to the Tribulation Force. If an interloper has compromised us, I must confront the issue.
Is it possible? Could it be true? I don’t claim special powers of discernment; however, I loved this woman and trusted her and believed in her from the day I met her. I thought her perfect for Rayford, and she seemed so spiritually attuned.
Buck stood, his seat hitting the back of the chair and knocking it to the floor. He bent over the laptop, palms on the dresser. Not Amanda! he thought. Please! What damage might she have done?
Bruce’s journal continued: “They are planning a visit soon. Buck and Chloe will come from New York and Rayford and Amanda from Washington. I will be returning from an international trip. I will have to get Rayford alone and show him what has come to me. In the meantime, I feel impotent, given their proximity to NC. Lord, I need wisdom.”
Buck’s heart raced and he panted. “So where’s the file in question?” he said. “What did he receive and from whom?”
“It’s attached to the previous day’s journal entry,” Tsion said.
“Whatever it is, I’m not going to believe it.”
“I feel the same, Cameron. I feel it deep in my heart. And yet, here we are, despairing.”
Buck said, “Previous entry. Open document.”
That day’s entry: “God, I feel like David when you refused to respond to him. He pleaded with you not to turn away from him. That is my plea today. I feel so desolate. What am I to make of this?”
“Open attached,” Buck said.
The message had been sent from Europe. It was to Bruce, but his last name had been misspelled Barns. The sender was “an interested friend.”
“Scroll down,” Buck said, sick to his stomach. As the computer responded, the phone rang in his pocket.
CHAPTER 9
He flipped his phone open. “This is Buck.”
“I’m trying to reach Cameron Williams of Global Weekly Magazine.”
“Speaking.”
“Lieutenant Ernes
t Kivisto here. Met you earlier today.”
“Yes, Ernie! What have you got?”
“First off, headquarters is looking for you.”
“Headquarters?”
“The big man. Or at least somebody close to him. I thought I’d widen the search for your wife, so I faxed that sheet to surrounding states. You never know. If she was hurt or got evacuated, she could be anywhere. Anyway, somebody recognized the name. Then a guy named Kuntz said he’d seen you earlier too. Somehow your whereabouts gets into the database and we get word headquarters is looking for you.”
“Thanks. I’ll check in.”
“I know you don’t report to me, and I have no jurisdiction, but since I’m the last one who saw you, I’m gonna have to answer for it if you don’t check in.”
“I said I would check in.”
“I’m not naggin’ ya or anything. I’m just saying—”
Buck was tired of military types covering their own tails. But this was a man he wanted to get back to him as soon as possible if Chloe turned up. “Ernie, I appreciate all you’re doing for me, and you may rest assured that I will not only check in with headquarters, but I will also mention that I got the word from you. You want to spell that last name for me?”
Kivisto did. “Now for the good news, sir. One of the Cell-Sol guys got the fax in his truck. He wasn’t happy about me broadcasting it everywhere. He said I shouldn’t be tying up the whole GC network for a missing person’s bulletin. Anyway, he said they saw a young woman who might fit that description being lifted into one of those Ambu-Vans late yesterday.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure exactly where, but for sure it was between that block you pointed out to me and where I am now.”
“That’s a pretty big area, Ernie. Can we narrow that at all?”
“Sorry, I wish I could.”
“Can I talk to this guy?”
“I doubt it. He said something about having been awake since the earthquake. I think he’s bedding down in one of the shelters.”
