While my professional life was checkered, my personal life was blighted. I didn’t drink every day, or even every week. But when I did drink, I drank too much. When I drank too much, I had a destructive tendency to become sexually aggressive. That led to a depressing pattern of poor choices in men—the sort of choices that one would expect from a half-sauced woman on the prowl. I spent far too many nights sleeping in strange apartments, with one hand on a loser’s bare chest and the other hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle. To characterize me as a young woman tumbling toward the cliff’s edge would be accurate, except that a fair segment of the population would not even consider me that young anymore.
I realize many people would be appalled that I can describe so flippantly a life drifting toward disaster. Many others, however, will understand perfectly. They are the ones who understand what it is like to work later than everyone else in the office because they have nothing to return home to but an empty apartment; the ones who dread weekends because they can only wander the malls alone so many times before the store clerks begin to pity them; the ones who lie in bed at night and cry because they don’t understand why they can’t be charming enough, or pretty enough—or good enough—to not be alone anymore. Those people will understand. Humor helps. Flippancy helps.
Crying changes nothing.
In any event, fate did not appear to be dragging Planet Pasbury and Planet Mason on a collision course. In fact, we were orbiting in different solar systems, which is why he was the last person I expected to be on the other end of the line one Saturday morning in March when my cell phone beeped and woke me. I was sprawled on the couch of my office, a rambling loft in a rejuvenated warehouse near downtown Dallas. Wherever I had been the night before—and that recollection did not immediately come to me as I shook off sleep—I had found it more convenient to crash at the office than to make my way farther north to my apartment.
The phone beeped again. I rolled onto my back, freeing my left hand from between my hip and my leather Euro sofa. I must have slept on the hand for quite a while, because it felt like a giant sponge dangling from my wrist. I couldn’t flex the fingers quickly enough to make them useful, so I dragged myself into a sitting position and slapped my bare feet onto the hardwood floor. The room smelled of bourbon—stale, open-all-night bourbon, but still good stuff. I scratched one foot with the other and kicked over the bottle on the floor next to the couch. Fortunately, it was nearly empty. Only a few drops slid out onto the floor before I righted the bottle and reached for the phone. “Hello.”
“Taylor Pasbury?”
The floor was cold; my toes curled reflexively in an effort to generate warmth. I tucked one foot beneath me and tried to pull the hem of my black cocktail pants over the toes of my other foot with my sponge hand. “Speaking,” I grunted. One of the advantages of being in the security business is that clients actually prefer a certain level of gruffness, particularly from a woman.
“I’m glad I caught you in your office. This is Simon Mason. Fred Skilling, at Skilling Oil, gave me your name.”
“That was thoughtful of him.” I tried to run my hand through my hair. The night on the couch had turned my usual gentle waves into a twisted mess that clumped in auburn hives about my neck and shoulders. I worked at the knots with my fingers.
“I’d like to talk to you about taking charge of my security. Is this a good time?”
I’m sure that most people go through their entire lives without receiving a phone call from someone famous. Because of my time in the Service, though, I had received many of them. I’m not bragging; it’s just a fact. That is why it is odd that the name Simon Mason, which by then was already more recognized around the world than the Secretary of State’s, did not register with me at all.
“Mr. Mason, I appreciate your call, and I hope that I can help you, but my office hours are Monday through Friday, eight-thirty to five-thirty. If you’ll call back then, my assistant will set up a time for you to come in. She keeps my calendar. I couldn’t even tell you right now where I’m going to be next week.”
“I’m sorry to bother you on Saturday, Ms. Pasbury, but I’ve got a big Weekend of Glory celebration in Chicago tonight and tomorrow. I’m in Chicago right now. I was hoping you could come to at least one of the events and take a look at our set-up. We’ve had some threats. The FBI has convinced me we should take them seriously.”
I sat up straight. “You mean, you’re that Simon Mason?”
He chuckled. “Well, I’m not certain who that Simon Mason is. I’m the one who’s a preacher. Have you heard of me?”
It had to be a prank. I tried to recall what male I had been with the night before. After a few muddled moments, I realized I had come back to the office alone, so I ran the male half (okay, quarter) of my telephone contact list through my mind to identify the most likely practical jokers. No one stood out. But my head hurt. I didn’t feel like wasting any more time. “Mr. Mason, would you mind if I gave you a call right back? I’ve got something going on here . . . uh, I left some water running. If I could just get that taken care of. Uh, is there a number?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“It’s not just water, uh . . .” I spotted my space heater sitting on the floor next to the couch. “There’s a space heater too . . . with the water, I mean. Dangerous combination. Is there a number?”
He cleared his throat. “Sure, I can give you the number here at the Palmer House. I really don’t want to talk about this on my cell phone. Have you got a pencil?”
“I have one right here. Let her rip.” I had neither a pencil nor any intention of playing along with this stupid game. I held the phone away from my mouth and yawned as he repeated the number slowly. “I’ll call you in just a few minutes, Mr. Mason. Thank you.”
“I’ll only be here for another half hour. Can you call by then?”
“Oh, certainly.” By this time I was studying a spot where the nail polish on my big toe was peeling. I had paid way too much for that pedicure to have the stuff coming off after two days. “I’ll talk to you real soon, Mr. Mason. Good-bye.” I clicked off the phone and was just setting it on the end table when it occurred to me to check his number in the incoming calls directory. I hit the menu button and clicked through to the folder. The number was in the 312 area code. Chicago.
I jumped up and brushed my hands over the wrinkles in my silk blouse, as if I thought Simon Mason was going to walk through the door of my office at any minute.
Realizing that panic was not a strategy, I took a deep breath and forced myself to think. I needed confirmation. I dialed information and asked for the number of the Palmer House in Chicago. It matched. Great, he really was Simon Mason. And now that he had had a few minutes to reflect on my running-water-and-space-heater story, he had without question concluded that I was a moron.
I had to find a way to make the story plausible. A space heater and running water—I had it! I dialed the Palmer House and asked for Simon’s room.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Mason? It’s Taylor Pasbury.”
“Well, that didn’t take long. I hope everything is okay.”
It occurred to me that I was about to lie to the world’s most famous preacher. It was a victimless lie, though, which helped. “I may as well come clean with you, Mr. Mason.” I gave him an embarrassed laugh. “I was getting ready to take a bath when you called. That’s why the water and the space heater were a problem.” I silently applauded my clever escape.
“You have a bathtub in your office?”
This was a great example of how I sometimes completely overlook the obvious. Now that Simon Mason had voiced the question that would have been obvious to ninety-nine out of any randomly selected group of a hundred people, I—Old Number One Hundred—was stuck. I could cling to the implausible story that, yes, I did have a bathtub in my office. (After all, doesn’t everyone?) But if we ended up working together, he was going to see my office eventually. I decided to throw myself on
the mercy of a man of God, not so much from contrition as from a sense that the road of lies I would have to travel to get clear of this would be long and winding and far too exhausting.
“Okay, I’m going to give a confession. I’m not just a liar, I’m a serial liar. There is no water. There is no space heater. And there is no bathtub in my office. When you called, I didn’t believe it was really you. I was sure it was someone playing a joke on me. So I gave you that excuse about running water and the rest. After I got off the phone, I figured out that it really was you. I think you can deduce where it all went from there.” I held my breath.
He began to laugh—a clear-throated, energetic laugh—and I wondered if he might be younger than I imagined. “You know, I thought I was the only one who ever got caught in a dumb white lie.”
I scratched my head. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that you lie?”
“I try not to make a habit of it. But, yes, I’ve told a lie or two. I’m not proud of it, but it’s the truth.” He paused. “It really is the truth. I wouldn’t lie about lying.” He laughed again.
Now, I was beginning to wonder about him.
“Listen, if perfection is one of your requirements for taking on a new client, we should cut this off right now.”
“No, that’s not a requirement. If it were, I would have a short client list, wouldn’t I?”
“Yes, I think you would.”
I walked over to my desk and picked up a pen and note pad. “So, Mr. Mason—I mean, Reverend Mason— what kind of threats have you received?”
“First of all, call me Simon. Okay if I call you Taylor?”
“Sure.”
“Actually, I haven’t personally received any threats. The FBI tells me that I’ve been the subject of terrorist chatter.”
“You mean National Security Agency chatter?”
“I don’t know. What is the National Security Agency?”
“It’s an agency that monitors communications around the world for the U.S. government. Very secretive. These days they focus a lot of their attention on terrorist organizations.”
“Well, apparently it didn’t take a lot of sleuthing to uncover this threat. They tell me it’s been posted on Web sites run by Islamic terror groups.”
I scratched out notes as he spoke. “So you’re being threatened by Muslim terrorists?”
“That’s what I understand.”
“What exactly is the nature of the threats?”
“It’s not completely clear, but the educated guess is that they want to kill me.”
“Of course. That’s why they call them terrorists. But why do they want to kill you?”
“I don’t know. The FBI supposes that it’s simply that I’m a prominent Christian. You know, culture war. And haven’t you heard? I’m as famous as the Pope.”
“Yes, I read that. Congratulations.”
“What a joke.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s not true. And it’s not helpful to what I’m trying to do, that’s for sure.”
“What are you trying to do?” There was a pause. I leaned forward and quickly added, “I need to understand more about your business’s—sorry, I’m not used to working for preachers—I mean your ministry’s goals.”
“My job, as I see it, is to lead people to the truth. The truth is Jesus, because he can save people’s souls. It’s that simple, which is lucky because I’m not any great intellect. I’m a pretty simple guy.”
I had to give him credit. He had a disarmingly genuine delivery of the I’m-just-a-simple-preacher thing. I was a long way from buying it, though.
“Anyway, I’m a much easier target than the Pope, there’s no doubt about that. For most of my security I rely on the auditoriums where we hold our celebrations.”
I shook my head. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You don’t have a security team? You’re an obvious target for any number of radical groups, not to mention hundreds of kooks.”
“Look, I’m not some big shot in the way that you probably think. Fifteen years ago I was just a local sports-radio host. On weekends I traveled around preaching to groups that were sometimes smaller than twenty people. This fame thing came on quickly and snowballed to the point where it’s ridiculous. If it weren’t for the people it allows me to reach, I’d say no thanks.”
I sat back down on the sofa and shifted the phone to my other ear. “That’s good background. Let me get some more basics. Do you have a few minutes to answer some questions?”
“I have about fifteen minutes right now. I can make more time later.”
“Okay. First, your family. Wife? Kids? Do they travel with you?”
“My wife died seventeen years ago. Ovarian cancer.”
I wrote wife dead on the note pad. “I’m sorry. That must have been awful for you.”
“It was. But God uses everything for his purposes, even tragedies.”
“So you think God planned for your wife to die?” I might have phrased that better if I had given it some thought. I heard him take a deep breath before he spoke.
“No, God didn’t give Marie cancer. Genetics did. God did have mercy on us, though. We had five years together before she died. And for three of those we had Kacey, also.”
“Is that your son?”
“Daughter. She’s twenty now. She goes to Southern Methodist University in Dallas.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-four.”
“Does she travel with you?”
“Kacey?”
“Yes.”
“Generally only in the summers, but she is here with me in Chicago. Travel doesn’t work very well for her with school and all.”
I wrote daughter 20, no travel. “Does she live at home?”
“She lives on campus during the school year and at home in the summer.”
“There are no other children?”
“Just Kacey and me. That’s our family.”
“You say you’re in Chicago for a meeting?” I set down my pad and pen and walked over to the small refrigerator behind my desk. I took out a bottle of water.
“Yes, at the Mid America Center. I’d like you to come up and take a look, if possible. I know this is short notice. Do you think you can make it?”
Was he kidding? This was the juiciest security assignment in America. “I think I can juggle some things and make it work. How about if I call you back in ten minutes or so after I check my schedule?” It’s never good to seem too readily available.
“That’s fine. Please don’t be longer than that, though. I have to leave for the auditorium. We’ve got a rehearsal.”
After I hung up, I danced around the couch and whooped. Simon Mason, the best-known Christian on the planet, was about to make me the best-known security consultant on the planet. How they would envy me back at the Secret Service. It was only 10:45 in the morning, but this day was starting out right. That called for a celebration. I set my bottle of water on the end table and picked up last night’s bottle of bourbon. There was just enough left for a healthy slug.
CHAPTER
SIX
THE TAXI’S HEADLIGHTS SPARKLED off fat, wet snowflakes that drifted down in lazy zigzags as the driver edged past a line of tour buses near the entrance to the Mid America Center in Chicago. Each bus had a sign of some sort in the window—This Bus Headed for the Promised Land or Jesus Rocks at DuPage County Bible Church. With a tweaking of the signs’ language, I could as easily have been arriving at a Bulls game.
The air was just cold enough to allow the snow to gather in tiny drifts against the curbs. Winding lines of pedestrians flowed like narrow tributaries from the parking lots toward the arena, converging into broad streams at the crosswalks. Their momentum swept them along in clusters, families and friends huddled against the chill. As they moved, snowflakes swooped onto their jackets and hoods, sat up for an instant as if looking around, and then disappeared into wet splotches.
Blue jeans
and sweaters appeared to be the favored dress for the evening. I brushed lint from my gray wool skirt, which had seemed a solid, businesslike choice when I was packing. Now it seemed I was going to look like an English nanny at a rock festival.
I twisted my fingers in my bangs, a habit I developed as a child when I triggered a crisis by losing my chewing gum in my hair. My mother, in the midst of one of her bad spells, pulled out her scissors and gave me something that I recall as essentially a crew cut. Whether it was actually as short as that, I couldn’t swear, but she definitely intended it to punish. It served its purpose well. She sent me to school, where I sat alone and bawled while three-quarters of the kids in the second grade pointed at me and laughed. It really wasn’t so bad, though; it’s only stuck with me for about twenty years.
I’m often reminded that one thing hasn’t changed since then: My sense of style is pathetic.
As if my fashion choice for the evening had not been bad enough, I left Dallas in such a rush that I forgot to check the forecast. Though I brought a raincoat, I packed nothing that would prepare me for a winter storm. I had no idea whether this was the beginning of a March blizzard or just seasonal flurries.
I leaned forward and tapped the driver. “Are we supposed to get much snow?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s just lake-effect stuff. It shouldn’t amount to much. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and nearly fifty degrees.” Several cars in front of us moved away from the curb, and we finally arrived at the drop-off point. I paid the driver and stepped onto a thin layer of slush that coated the edge of the walk.
At Simon’s request, the FBI had briefed me by telephone on the threats, which were vague as to possible means but quite specific as to the target. Whoever these people were, they wanted Simon. I had no idea what to expect from his security operation or what exactly I was supposed to do that evening. I would have to play it by ear.
Forsaken Page 4
