The detective wasn’t pleased. But he knew for the time being he had to humor this federal intrusion.
“Maybe a drug deal gone bad,” he suggested. When Gallagher tossed him a skeptical look, the detective added, “This part of town has developed some illegal drug traffic.”
The FBI agent had to ask the obvious, “So, is our guy here, Mr. French, a known drug dealer or user? Or maybe a frequenter at coke or heroin parties?”
The detective looked over at his partner who shook his head no.
“Any hint of drugs found here in this office?”
“Just some Tylenol in his desk.”
Gallagher had to restrain himself at that one. But he kept it professional.
“Any prior criminal record?”
Both detectives shook their heads.
“Any prior arrests? Outstanding warrants against Mr. French? Any judicial warrants of any kind out against him?”
The two detectives kept shaking their heads.
“Does your PD have anything bad to say about Mr. Roger French?” Gallagher said, now venturing into sarcasm. “Parking tickets…books not returned to the public library…”
The senior detective cleared his throat and finally said, “The deceased appears to be clean.”
Gallagher finally had to let it out, and when he did in his tone there was a certain amount of tell me again why am I wasting my time with you guys?
“Yet you fellows are still sticking to the drug-dealing scenario?”
“Meaning what?” the detective retorted.
Gallagher was getting impatient. “Look at this crime scene. The victim was tied to a chair, and by my guess had been connected to that wall socket over there by electric leads…” Gallagher pointed at the tiny burn marks on each earlobe.
“So,” a detective said, “he was…”
“Right, tortured,” Gallagher cut in to save time. “Perfectly standard interrogation technique, of course, if you live in, say, Iran. But, gentlemen, this is Philadelphia…” Then as he surveyed the body he added, “I think he put up a fight. Maybe reluctant to talk, otherwise no need to turn up the juice on this poor guy…”
“Talk about what?”
“That’s what I need to find out. What kind of information did our victim have access to, other than insurance rates and commercial premium amounts? Anything that might be of unique value to some bad guys?”
“We’re not sure.”
“How about any unusual contacts he had. Anything there?”
That’s when the two detectives looked at each other. After a moment, one of them spoke up.
“Mr. French is the son-in-law to Mr. Rocky Bridger, a retired general.”
“Where was the general detailed?”
“The Pentagon.”
Gallagher had already done the math. One of the first things the detectives told him when he had arrived was that Roger French had left a message on the voicemail of his wife saying he was going to be late to their daughter’s basketball game because he had some “last minute business” to attend to. Gallagher figured the killer could have set up a meeting with French. He had computed the drive time from the crime scene in the swamp in the New York State countryside to that part of Philly. Gallagher was starting to get the feeling in his gut, and in his brain, and literally right in front of his eyes, everywhere, that this crime spree he was witnessing was a trail of carefully premeditated mayhem left by Atta Zimler.
“The Pentagon?” Gallagher yelled out loud, to emphasize the obvious.
Two detectives nodded in tandem.
“Fellas,” the agent said, handing his card over to the senior detective, “I would appreciate any updates you can give me on your progress on this case.”
When Agent Gallagher was in his car, he called Miles Zadernack, his supervisor. He was glad Miles picked up the call immediately.
“Miles, Gallagher here. That case I’ve been working on turned up something big. I think it needs a focused, special investigation.”
“What do you have?”
“My favorite subject…Atta Zimler. Miles, I think he’s entered the United States.”
There was a dead silence on the other end for at least ten seconds.
“If that’s true,” Zadernack then said in a deadpan monotone, “that would certainly be remarkable.”
Remarkable? That comment struck Gallagher like something you might expect from a birdwatcher who had just spotted a species he hadn’t seen in a while.
“If it’s true,” Zadernack added again for emphasis.
“I think it is. I’ve been piecing together the trail. It has all the elements of the modus operandi of our terrorist assassin.”
“Yes, but why would he enter the United States in the first place? Seems highly risky for him.”
Gallagher was trying to keep a respectful tone, but it was getting really hard.
“Miles, hey, you’ve got to be kidding. Please, trust me on this one.”
“John,” Miles Zadernack said. “I think we need to meet to discuss this. Face-to-face. Here in the office.”
“I’m in Philly now, following some leads. That’s going to be kinda tough. Time is of the essence—”
“I’m not asking you to come back to New York.”
Gallagher burst out with, “Miles, you’re kidding me—”
But Miles shot back with, “John, I don’t know why you keep saying that. You know I’m not a person who kids around. I want you back here ASAP. Then we’ll talk.”
John Gallagher clicked off his Allfone cell. His chest was burning again. Zadernack had already derailed his investigation of Ivan the Terrible, the talk radio host.
Now this. His first thought was, admittedly, one of base self-preservation. Am I getting canned? Demoted to a desk job? Reassigned to Montana? Something’s coming down. Whatever it is, this is not going to be good for John Gallagher.
What he didn’t expect, though, was something far worse.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The first seventeen holes flew by. Joshua and his partners were having a good time. The course at Hanover Golf Club was every bit as difficult as Joshua had remembered. When they got to the last hole, Joshua’s ball was about ten feet off the green. Campbell’s ball was a few feet back on the fairway.
Joshua was laying two strokes on that last hole, which was a par four, and he was ahead of Paul Campbell by three strokes. But the pastor was also laying two on that last hole. Joshua knew that his opponent had played a respectable game, even making him sweat a little at the beginning of the back nine. But Joshua’s powerful command of the game was finally edging him away from his competitor.
Joshua carefully eyed his ball, then studied the distance to the green and to the cup. Campbell was watching him.
“I’m starting to recognize that look on your face. You’re aiming for a birdie on this last hole, I’m sure of it!” Campbell shouted out to him. “You’re going to try to drop that ball right into the cup.”
As Joshua pulled out his nine-iron, he smiled and shot back, “It’s crossed my mind…”
“Rub it in! Go ahead, rub it in!”
He took a few practice swings, then set himself at the ball. Joshua looked up and over the wide green for one last second, looking beyond it to the huge sand trap that lay on the other side. Enough but not too much. Controlled swing. Get up under the ball. Arch it high so it drops a few feet directly in front of the hole. Forget about the backspin this time. Don’t focus on the sand hazard. Go for broke.
Joshua swung a seemingly flawless stroke, catching the ball on the full flat of his nine-iron and scooping it high into the air and sending it toward the green in a graceful curve.
It looked perfectly aligned to head right toward the cup, which was in the middle of the wide, irregular-shaped green.
But without backspin the ball hit the green hard and bounced once and then skipped over the hole and then caught the down-slope on the other side of the green and started rolling away from the pin, now
picking up speed.
In an instant, the golf ball rolled off the green, dropping off the little lip of the sand trap where it met the green and rolled down several feet almost to the beginning of the steep sand hazard on the other side.
Joshua kept his cool, as he always did. But he was already adding it up in his head. If Campbell did well in his final stroke or two and Joshua didn’t, things could get very interesting.
Campbell took out his nine-iron. He looked relaxed in front of the ball. He swung.
His ball went up into the air and then landed down on the green with a vicious spin, slowing down, but still heading right toward the cup, and then picked up the slight down-slope and kept rolling. Joshua was watching, and now he was concerned.
The ball was rolling up to the cup. But just before it got there it angled off and caught the edge of the round hole.
The ball rimmed the cup and rolled around the circumference once and then dropped into the cup with a clunk.
Joshua was astonished. Oh man, that was too much…
“Great shot!” Joshua called out. “Now how do we account for that? Divine miracle or minister’s luck?”
Campbell was surprised himself at the shot and was laughing. “Don’t ask me. I couldn’t begin to tell you how I just did that…”
Joshua had just lost his three-stroke lead. With his next stroke it would be down to just two. And he might be lucky to win by just two. The sand trap was a bear of a hazard. There was ten feet of sand to cross. Uphill. Then to a green that seemed to be fast. And he still had to conquer the moderate up-slope to the pin.
Joshua took out his sand wedge and sauntered down into the sand.
From the top, looking down at him, Campbell was smiling, watching a super competitor in the clutches of a pressure play.
But inside Joshua’s head, he had closed out the emotions that tell you how much winning is important—winning at everything—and he was now running on automatic.
It was his own mental formula developed in those situations where he had been up in the thin air, going several hundred miles per hour in a military jet when things suddenly went bad, and he had to make them good—or perish.
Direction, altitude, power, precision, control.
Now…
With the swing, the full plate of the wedge scooped the golf ball up and sent it arching over the wicked sands, upward, toward the green.
There was enough power behind it to take it completely out of the sand hazard and over the green where it dropped and started traveling fast toward the pin.
Joshua couldn’t see the hole from down where he was, so he was “flying by instruments,” as he called it, just using the flag on the pin that Pastor Campbell was holding up there on the green as his guide.
Then Pastor Campbell gave a little jump and he swung his fist in the air and laughed.
“Unbelievable!” he cried out. “Great shot!”
Joshua made his way out of the sand, strode up to the green and over to the cup.
There was a quiet feeling of satisfaction as he reached down and felt the ball at the bottom of the cup and then plucked it up.
Bob and Carl, who were playing back, had arrived just in time to see Joshua’s magnificent shot.
When the four of them were back at the clubhouse there was a general celebration over Joshua’s mastery of the course. At the same time, Pastor Campbell said that it had been the best eighteen holes that he had ever played at Hanover.
The two other men had to run off to meetings, so Paul Campbell and Joshua sat down in the club for a quick sandwich.
“You really forced me to up my game,” the pastor said. “But at the same time, hey, I’ve got to admit…some of my shots were flukes. I don’t think I earned my score today, shooting just two strokes behind you. You, on the other hand, really earned your score. You play the game with a tremendous amount of skill. And discipline.”
Joshua smiled as he chewed on his BLT on whole wheat.
Then something occurred to him. He had to say it out loud. “That’s it.”
“What?” Campbell replied.
“The answer to your little riddle. You said that life was dissimilar to the game of golf.”
“Right. So, what’s your answer?”
“I think your point was that it may take discipline and skill to achieve things in life. Obviously. But that somehow those things aren’t enough.”
Paul Campbell stopped eating. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back.
“I think you’re right.”
But now Joshua wanted the pastor to close the loop. He asked, “So, skill and discipline are not enough…but not enough for what?”
“For God.”
There was silence between the two men. Joshua expected the man sitting across the café table to keep talking. But he didn’t. Finally Joshua had to plow ahead.
“Okay. What about God?”
“As skilled and disciplined and accomplished as you—or anyone, for that matter—might be…regardless of that, it’s not enough to please God.”
“Sounds like He’s hard to please,” Joshua shot back with a chuckle.
The pastor replied simply, “Exactly. God is hard to please. Impossible in fact.”
This surprised Joshua. “Wow, that’s a downer coming from a clergyman. I thought you guys specialized in giving out words of hope.”
“Let’s put it this way: God won’t be pleased with purely human effort as a way to achieve relationship with Him. That’ll never work.”
“Why not?”
“The Bible says every one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory that we were originally designed for. We all have an inherent sin flaw, and we act on that. That blocks our ability to connect with God.”
“So what’s your solution…to not sin? Act self-righteous? Be pious? Go to church?”
“Nope.”
Now Joshua was getting impatient. If there was a problem, then he liked to figure out the solution. Campbell was proposing a tragic problem for the human race, and no solution.
“Then what?” Joshua asked. His voice was loud enough to draw the attention of a group of women eating lunch at a nearby table who turned and looked.
Campbell replied, “Accept the one solution that God’s given us. That’s the only remedy that will work. The only thing that will enable us to have any kind of relationship with Him. To receive forgiveness for sin. Take us out of the enemy camp and put us into friendship with the Creator of the Universe. That’s it. Nothing else will do.”
Joshua was looking for loopholes. “So no multiple options available?
Look, if I’m way up in the stratosphere flying at Mach one and I encounter problems with my aircraft, I’m not going to limit myself to one single solution. I’ll try multiple strategies to get control of that airplane.”
“Let’s use a communications model. You’re up in that aircraft. You want to contact the control tower. The radio has to be set on the right frequency. If the tower has only one frequency available, it doesn’t make much sense to say you don’t like that frequency and you’d rather have multiple options…”
“So, what’s the single frequency for God?”
“The Bible makes it crystal clear. The ultimate reason that Jesus came to earth was simple, but pretty mind-blowing. He came to be cruelly tortured and then to die in a Roman crucifixion just outside the city walls in ancient Jerusalem. That’s the only way He could be a sacrifice. The perfect Son of God, offered as a perfect payment for the price of my sin—and yours.”
Joshua was calculating the odds. Something didn’t add up. “There are what…thirteen billion people who’ve lived on this planet, something like that? So how could one man, I don’t care who he is…how could one man’s blood possibly cover the sins of every single person? Couldn’t be done.”
Paul Campbell nodded. “You’re right. Can’t be done.”
Joshua chuckled and sized up the man across the table. “Now you agree with me? What??
?s the hitch?”
“Because an ordinary man could never die for his own sins, let alone billions of others. But then, that’s the point of those Bible prophecies I was talking about at church. God has given us the guidance from His Word, like landing lights on an airport runway. Pointing the way directly to Jesus as the one and only Savior. God made into man. Fully human, yet fully Divine. Incomprehensible? Yes. But when Jesus was crucified, it was literally the blood of God being shed, which is the only thing that can cleanse the sins of thirteen billion people. Obviously, Josh, God thinks human beings are worth saving. It’s that simple. And that profound. The only thing left is how we respond to that.”
“So here’s my response,” Joshua said. “Some things are worth saving. Right? We can agree on that. In my case I want to save my country. I caught what you were saying last night. In fact, you and I have something else in common, beyond a close golf game I mean.”
“What’s that?”
“We both realize that this may be the last and best chance we have to stop America from being sucked into a global commune. A place where liberty gets destroyed by redefinition. Our borders start to evaporate. Where we have to ask permission of the international community before we take action to defend ourselves. Where the vision of men like Patrick Henry and George Washington gets erased from the memories of our grandchildren. According to what you said last night, if that happens, it could be the beginning of the end. One long, ugly global nightmare. Well, I’m not just going to sit back and watch it happen.”
“Nations are made up of people. That includes you. So, you may want to consider looking to your own salvation first, Josh. You may be surprised what God has in store for you once you sign onto His team.”
“You want me to do the same kind of spiritual conversion thing that Abby did? Which is fine for her. But what you’re offering me, it’s certainly not the right time.”
“What do you mean?”