by Tim LaHaye
As soon as she tried to say their names, Leah clouded over and could barely speak. “Peter and Paul,” she whispered. “My husband had been raised in a religious home and, though he hadn’t gone to church for years, had always wanted sons with those names. We wanted to expose the boys to church, so we started going. The people were nice, but it might as well have been a country club. Lots of social activities, but we didn’t feel any closer to God.
“At the hospital where I worked one of the chaplains tried to convert me. Though he seemed sincere, I was offended. And the woman who ran the day care center our boys went to gave me literature about Jesus. I assured her we went to church. I was incensed when my sons came home with Bible stories. I called the woman and told her they went to Sunday school and that I wished she’d stick to just watching them.”
Leah’s voice was husky with emotion. “I found my boys’ beds empty the morning after the Rapture. It was the worst day of my life. I was convinced they had been kidnapped. The police couldn’t do anything, of course, because all children were gone. I hadn’t heard of the Rapture, but it was quickly put forth on the news as one of the possibilities. I called the hospital chaplain, but he had disappeared. I called the day care center, but the director had vanished too. I raced over there, but no one knew anything. In a rack in the waiting room I found more pamphlets like the ones the director had given me. One, titled ‘Don’t Be Left Behind,’ said that someday true believers would disappear into heaven with Jesus.
“That was in my purse when I got home and discovered my husband in the garage with the door shut and his car running.” Leah paused and collected herself. “He had left me a note, saying he was sorry but that he was frightened out of his mind, couldn’t live without the boys, and knew he had no answer to my grief.”
Leah stopped, her lips trembling.
“Do you need a break, dear?” Tsion asked.
She shook her head. “I tried to kill myself. I swallowed everything in the medicine cabinet and made myself violently ill. God must not have wanted me dead, because apparently much of what I ingested countered whatever else I took. I awoke hours later with a horrible headache, stomachache, and rancid taste. I crawled to my purse to find some mints and came across that pamphlet again. Somehow it finally made sense.
“It predicted what had happened and warned the reader to be ready. The solution—well, you know this—was to seek God, to tell him I knew I was a sinner and that I needed him. I didn’t know if it was too late for me, but I prayed just in case. I don’t know how I found the energy, but as soon as I could get myself out of the house, I looked for other people like me. I found them in a little church. Only a few had been left behind, but they knew why. Now there are about sixty who meet in secret. I’m going to miss those people, but they won’t be surprised I’ve disappeared. I told them what was going on, that I had treated a GC fugitive and all.”
“We’ll get word to them that you’re safe,” Rayford said, clearly overcome.
“Am I safe?” Leah said, sitting down with a sad smile. “Do I get to stay?”
“We always vote,” Tsion said. “But I think you have found a home.”
Early in the evening in New Babylon, David sat in his office after hours, missing Annie. Being alone with her was risky, so they spent time on their secure phones and computers. He built into his unit the capability to erase both their transmissions, to serve as a backup if she forgot. He couldn’t imagine that either of them would forget to remove from their computers evidence of their relationship and especially their faith.
“Maybe we should reveal our love,” she transmitted. “By policy I would be forced to move to a department outside your supervision, but at least we could see each other without suspicion.”
He tapped back: “It’s not a bad idea, and we could use another pair of eyes in other departments. Where you are right now is strategic, though, because of what we can smuggle out of here and into believers’ hands in other countries. Keep thinking, though. I can’t stand being apart from you.”
Suddenly the TV monitors in his area—all of them—came on. That happened only when GC brass believed something was on that every employee would want to see. Most of the time it meant that Carpathia or Fortunato was addressing the world, and it didn’t make any difference whether anyone in a sector was working. If there was a TV there, it came on.
David spun in his chair and leaned back to watch the monitor in his office. A GC CNN anchorman was reporting a plane crash. “While neither the plane itself, reportedly a large private aircraft, nor the pilot or passenger have been sighted, personal belongings have washed ashore in Portugal. Listen to this Mayday call, recorded by several tracking stations in the region.”
Mayday! Mayday! Quantum zero-seven-zero-eight losing altitude! Mayday!
“Radar trackers lost sight of the craft soon thereafter, and rescuers searched the area. Luggage and personal effects of two people, a man and a woman, were discovered. Authorities assume it will be just a matter of time before the wreckage and bodies are discovered. Names of the victims are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.”
David squinted at the screen, wondering why GC brass thought this newsworthy until the victims were known. Then the internal caption scrawl appeared on the screen:
ATTENTION GC PALACE PERSONNEL. PROBABLE VICTIMS IN THIS CRASH, ACCORDING TO RESCUE AUTHORITIES, ARE AS FOLLOWS: PILOT SAMUEL HANSON OF BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA, UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, AND HATTIE DURHAM, ORIGINALLY OF DES PLAINES, ILLINOIS, U.S.N.A. MS. DURHAM ONCE SERVED HIS EXCELLENCY THE POTENTATE AS PERSONAL ASSISTANT. CONDOLENCES TO THOSE WHO KNEW HER.
David phoned Mac. “I saw,” Mac said. “What an obvious fake!”
“Yeah!” David said. “The pilot must be cashing in a huge insurance policy, and Hattie has to be somewhere in Europe.”
“Maybe they’re shopping for more Stupid pills,” Mac said. “Are we supposed to believe Carpathia and Fortunato fell for this?”
“Surely not,” David said. “Unless they engineered it. Maybe they found Hattie and had her killed, and now they’re covering. They’d better come up with wreckage or bodies.”
David heard the ping that told him he had a new message. “I’ll get back to you, Mac.”
Rayford and Chloe sat in T’s office at the base of the Palwaukee tower with T and two men from his house church. Chloe outlined how she planned to link the major players on the co-op network and start testing the system before actual buying and selling got under way. “We have to keep it secret from the beginning,” she said. “Otherwise we’ll be grouped with all other commodities brokers and put under the GC’s aegis.”
The others nodded. Rayford’s phone beeped. It was Buck. Rayford laughed aloud as Buck recounted the strange news report. “Turn on the TV, T,” he said. GC commentators mournfully discussed the tragedy, though names had not been revealed outside New Babylon and so far nothing but papers and belongings had been found. Rayford shook his head. “Someday Fortunato, or whoever tried to take advantage of this, is going to embarrass himself beyond repair.”
Chloe tugged at his sleeve and whispered. “At least we can be pretty sure Hattie’s all right for now.”
“The question,” he said as the meeting broke up, “is where she is. She’s not smart enough to get any thinking person to believe she went down in that plane. Could she still surprise Carpathia?”
When the churchmen were gone, Rayford, Chloe, and T jogged upstairs to quiz the tower man about the 11:30 flight the night before. He was fat and balding, reading a science fiction book.
“Sounded southern to me on the radio, though I never saw him,” the man said. “Bo signed off on the landing and takeoff.”
“He was here?” T said.
“No, he called me about eight to preapprove it.”
“I didn’t see the plane’s numbers on the computer.”
“I wrote ’em down. I can still enter ’em.” He rummaged under a pile of papers. “Oh-seven-oh-eight,�
�� he said. “And I guess you know it was a Quantum.”
“Can we find out who that’s registered to?” Rayford said.
“Sure can,” the man said. He banged away at his computer keyboard and drummed his knee as the information was retrieved. “Hm,” he said, reading. “Samuel Hanson out of Baton Rouge. He’s got to be related to Bo, doesn’t he? Isn’t Bo from Louisiana?”
CHAPTER 7
Reuniting with Abdullah Smith warmed Mac. In his earliest days as first officer to Captain Rayford Steele, Mac had met the former fighter pilot from Jordan. Abdullah had lost his job when Carpathia confiscated international weaponry, but he quickly became one of Rayford’s leading black market suppliers.
Abdullah had been disgraced four years before the Rapture when his wife had become a Christian. He divorced her and fought for custody of their two small children, a boy and a girl. When he could not get relief from months of travel at a time for the Jordanian air force, he was denied custody and took up full-time residence at the military base.
A man of few words, Abdullah had once revealed to Mac and Rayford that he was heartsick to the point of suicide. “I still loved my wife,” he said with his thick accent. “She and the children were my world. But imagine your wife taking up a religion from some mysterious, faraway country. We wrote long letters to each other, but neither could be dissuaded. To my shame, I was not devout in my own religion and fell into loose morals. My wife said she prayed for me every day that I would find Jesus Christ before it was too late. I cursed her in my letters. One sentence pleaded with her to renounce the myths and return to the man who loved her. The next accused her of treachery and called her despicable names. Her next letter told me she still loved me and reminded me that it was I who had initiated the divorce. Again, in my anger, I lashed out at her.
“I still have the letters in which she warned me that I might die before finding the one true God, or that Jesus could return for those who loved him, and I would be left behind. I was enraged. Just to get back at her I often refused to visit my children, but now I realize I hurt only them and myself. I feel so guilty that they might not know how much I loved them.”
Mac recalled Rayford’s telling Abdullah, “You will be able to tell them one day.” Abdullah had merely nodded, his dark eyes moist and distant.
Abdullah became a believer because he saved his wife’s letters. She had meticulously explained the plan of salvation, writing out Bible verses and telling him how she had prayed to receive Christ. “Many times I crumpled up the letters and threw them across the room,” Abdullah said. “But something kept me from tearing them or burning them or throwing them away.”
When Abdullah heard that his wife and children had disappeared, he had lain prostrate on the floor in his quarters in Amman, his wife’s letters spread before him. “It had happened as she said it would,” he said. “I cried out to God. I had no choice but to believe.”
Because of his Middle Eastern look and his fondness for a turban and a blowsy, off-white top over camouflage trousers and aviator boots, the diminutive Jordanian was the last person anyone suspected of being a Christian. Until the conversion of the 144,000 Jewish witnesses from all over the world and their millions of converts of every nationality, most assumed they could identify a Christian. Now, of course, only true believers knew each other on sight, due to the mark visible only to them.
Abdullah, thin and dark with large, expressive features, was as quiet as Mac remembered him. He was also extremely formal in front of others, not giving away that he and Mac were both spiritual brothers and old friends. He didn’t pretend they had not met, for Mac had concocted a former military connection. But they did not embrace until they were alone in Mac’s office.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Mac said, calling Annie from her office. She knocked and entered, breaking into a smile.
“You must be the infamous Abdullah Smith,” she said. “You have a custom mark reserved for Jordanians.”
Abdullah gave Mac a puzzled look, then stared at Annie’s forehead. “I cannot see mine,” he said. “Is it not like yours?”
“I’m teasing you,” she said. “Yours merely works better with your coloring.”
“I see,” he said, as if he really did.
“Go easy on the American humor,” Mac said.
“Canadian humor,” Annie said. She spread her arms to hug Abdullah, which seemed to embarrass him. He thrust out his hand, and she shook it. “Welcome to the family,” she said.
Again Abdullah looked questioningly at Mac.
“Actually, she’s the newest member of the family,” Mac said. “She’s just welcoming you to this chapter of the Tribulation Force.”
Abdullah left some of his stuff in his small office behind Mac’s, then two laborers from Operations helped take the rest to his new quarters. As he and Abdullah followed the men, Mac said, “Once you get unpacked you can get your feet wet by plotting our course to Botswana Friday. We’ll leave here at 0800, and they’re an hour earlier, so—”
“Johannesburg, I assume,” Abdullah said.
“No, north of there. We’re seeing Mwangati Ngumo in Gaborone on the old border of Botswana and South Af—”
“Oh, pardon me, Captain, but you must not have been there recently. Only helicopters can get in and out of Gaborone. The airport was destroyed in the great earthquake.”
“But surely the old military base—”
“The same,” Abdullah said.
“Carpathia’s reconstruction program has not reached Botswana?”
“No, but with the . . . the, pardon me, regional potentate of the United States of Africa residing in Johannesburg in a palace not much smaller than this one, the new airport there is spectacular.”
Mac thanked the helpers and unlocked Abdullah’s apartment. The Jordanian’s eyes widened as he surveyed the rooms. “All of this for me?” he said.
“You’ll grow to hate it,” Mac said.
With the door shut, Abdullah looked at the bare walls and whispered, “Can we talk here?”
“David assures me we can.”
“I look forward to meeting him. Oh, Captain, I nearly referred to the African potentate as the king! I must be so careful.”
“Well, we know he’s one of the kings, but those two wouldn’t have had a clue. I thought Potentate Rehoboth—what’s his first name—?”
“Bindura.”
“Right—was going to move his capital more central, like back up to his homeland. Chad, was it?”
“Sudan. That was what he had said, but apparently he found Johannesburg preferable. He lives in such opulence, you could not believe it.”
“All the kings do.”
“What do you make of that, Captain?” Abdullah was whispering. “Has Carpathia bought their cooperation?”
Mac shrugged and shook his head. “Wasn’t there some sort of controversy between Rehoboth and Ngumo?”
“Oh, yes! When Ngumo was secretary-general of the U.N., Rehoboth put tremendous pressure on him to get favors for Africa, particularly Sudan. And when Ngumo was replaced by Carpathia, Rehoboth publicly praised the change.”
“And now he’s his neighbor.”
“And Rehoboth is his king,” Abdullah said.
Late Thursday night in Illinois, Rayford finally found himself alone in the kitchen with Leah Rose. She sat at the table with a cup of coffee. He poured himself one.
“Settling in?” he said.
She cocked her head. “I never know what you’re implying.”
He pointed to a chair. “May I?”
“Sure.”
He sat. “What would I be implying?”
“That I shouldn’t get too comfortable.”
“We voted you in! It was unanimous. Even the chair voted, and I didn’t have to.”
“Had it been a tie otherwise, how would the chair have voted?”
Rayford sat back, his cup in both hands. “We got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “I’m sure it was my fa
ult.”
“You ignored my question,” she said.
“Stop it. Voting in a new sister would never result in a tie. Hattie was here for months, and she’s not even a believer.”
“So is this our truce chat, or are you just being polite?”
“You want a truce?” he said.
“Do you?”
“I asked you first,” he said.
She smiled. “Truth is, I want more than a truce. We can’t live in the same house just being cordial. We’ve got to be friends.”
Rayford wasn’t so sure, but he said, “I’m game.”
“So all that stuff you said . . .”
He raised his chin. “. . . that exposed me for the crank I am?”
She nodded. “Consider this an all-inclusive pardon.”
He hadn’t asked forgiveness.
“And for me?” she pressed.
“What?”
“I need a pardon too.”
“No you don’t,” he said, sounding more magnanimous than he felt. “Anything you said was because of what I—”
Leah put a hand on his arm. “I didn’t even recognize myself,” she said. “I can’t put that all on you. Now, come on. If we’re going to start over, we have to be even. Clean slates.”
“Granted,” he said.
“I’ve got money,” she said.
“You always switch subjects so fast?”
“Cash. We’d have to go get it. It’s in a safe in my garage. I am not going to be a freeloader. I want things to do, and I want to pay my way.”
“How about we give you room and board in exchange for medical care and expertise?”
“I’m more about care than expertise. I’m no replacement for Floyd.”
“We’re grateful to have you.”
“But you need money, too. When can we get it?”
Rayford pointed to her cup. She shook her head. “How much are we talking about?” he said.
