“Not ready to decide yet.”
“Ray, I need you in here. Can you come or not?”
“Not today, Earl. I’m in the middle of something here, and I’ll have to see you tomorrow.”
“What’s so important?”
“It’s personal.”
“What, you’ve got another deal cooking?”
“I’m cooking, but not another deal. I happen to be preparing dinner for my daughter.”
Rayford heard nothing for a moment. Finally: “Rayford, I’m all for family priorities. Heaven knows we’ve got enough pilots with bad marriages and messed-up kids. But your daughter—”
“Chloe.”
“Right, she’s college age, right? She’d understand, wouldn’t she? Couldn’t she put off dinner with Dad for a couple hours, knowing he might get the best flying job in the world?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Earl. I’ve got that Baltimore run late morning, back late afternoon. I can see you before that.”
“Nine o’clock?”
“Fine.”
“Rayford, let me just warn you: If the other guys on the short list ever wanted this job, they’re going to be drooling over it now. You can bet they’re calling in all their chips, lining up their endorsements, trying to find out who knows who, all that.”
“Good. Maybe one of them will get it and I won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Earl Halliday sounded agitated. “Now, Rayford—,” he began, but Rayford cut him off.
“Earl, after tomorrow morning let’s agree not to waste any more of each other’s time. You know my answer, and the only reason I haven’t made it final yet is because you asked me not to for the sake of our friendship. I’m thinking about it, I’m praying about it, and I’m talking about it with people who care for me. I’m not going to be badgered or shamed into it. If I turn down a job that everyone else wants, and later I regret it, that’ll be my problem.”
Buck was pulling into the parking lot at New Hope Village Church just as Chloe was pulling out. They drew up even with each other and rolled down their windows. “Hey, little girl,” Buck said, “you know anything about this church?”
Chloe smiled. “Just that it’s crowded every Sunday.”
“Good. I’ll try it. So, are you taking the job?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I’ve already got a job.”
“Looks like I have one, too,” she said. “I learned more today than I learned in college last year.”
“How’d it go with Bruce? I mean, did you tell him you knew he sent the flowers?”
Chloe looked over her shoulder, as if afraid Bruce might hear. “I’ll have to tell you all about it,” she said. “When we have time.”
“After the meeting tonight?”
She shook her head. “I was up too late last night. Some guy, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Couldn’t get rid of him. Happens to me all the time.”
“Later, Chloe.”
Buck couldn’t blame Bruce for whatever level of interest he had in Chloe. It just felt strange, competing with your new friend and pastor for a woman.
“Is that what it smells like?” Chloe exulted as she came in from the garage. “Shrimp scampi?” She entered the kitchen and gave her dad a kiss. “My favorite! Who’s coming over?”
“The guest of honor just arrived,” he said. “Would you rather eat in the dining room? We could move in there easily.”
“No, this will be perfect. What’s the occasion?”
“Your new job. Tell me all about it.”
“Dad! What possessed you?”
“I just got in touch with my feminine side,” he said.
“Oh, please!” she groaned. “Anything but that!”
During dinner she told him of Bruce’s assignments and all the research and study she had done already.
“So, you’re going to do this?”
“Learn and study and get paid for it? I think that’s an easy call, Dad.”
“And what about Bruce?”
She nodded. “What about Bruce?”
CHAPTER 11
By the time Rayford and Chloe were doing the dishes, Rayford had heard all about her awkward encounter with Bruce. “So he never owned up to sending the flowers?” Rayford said.
“It was so strange, Dad,” she said. “I kept trying to get the subject back onto loneliness and how much we all meant to each other, all four of us, and he seemed not to pick up on it. He would agree we all had needs, and then he would shift back to the subject of study or some other thing he wanted me to look up. I finally said I was just curious about romantic relationships during this period of history, and he said he might talk about it tonight. He said others had raised the same subject with him recently and that he had some questions too, so he had been studying it.”
“Maybe he’ll come clean tonight.”
“It isn’t a matter of coming clean, Dad. I don’t expect him to tell me in front of you and Buck that he sent me the flowers. But maybe we’ll be able to read between the lines and find out why he did it.”
Buck was still in Bruce’s office when Rayford and Chloe arrived. Bruce began the nightly meeting of the Tribulation Force by getting everyone’s permission to put on the table everything that was happening in each life. Everyone nodded.
After outlining the offers that Buck and Rayford had received, Bruce said he felt the need to confess his own sense of inadequacy for the role of pastor of a church of new believers. “I still deal with shame every day. I know I have been forgiven and restored, but living a lie for more than thirty years wears on a person, and even though God says our sins are separated as far as the east is from the west, it’s hard for me to forget.” He also admitted his loneliness and fatigue. “Especially,” he said, “as I think about this pull toward traveling and trying to unite the little pockets of what the Bible calls ‘tribulation saints.’”
Buck wanted to come right out and ask why he hadn’t simply signed a card on Chloe’s flowers, but he knew it wasn’t his place. Bruce moved on to both Rayford’s and Buck’s new job opportunities. “This may shock all of you, because I have not expressed an opinion yet, but Buck and Rayford, I think both of you should seriously consider accepting these jobs.”
That threw the meeting into an uproar. It was the first time the four of them had spoken so forcefully on such personal subjects. Buck maintained that he would never be able to live with himself if he sold out his journalistic principles and allowed himself to manipulate the news and be manipulated by Nicolae Carpathia. He was impressed that Rayford did not seem to have his head turned by such a choice job offer, but he found himself agreeing with Bruce that Rayford should consider it.
“Sir,” Buck said, “the very fact that you’re not angling for it is a good sign. If you wanted it, knowing what you know now, we would all be worried about you. But think of the opportunity to be near the corridors of power.”
“What’s the advantage?” Rayford said.
“Maybe little to you personally,” Buck said, “except for the income. But don’t you think it would be of great benefit to us to have that kind of access to the president?”
Rayford told Buck he thought they all had a mistaken notion that the pilot of the president’s plane would have more real knowledge than anyone who read the daily papers.
“That might be true now,” Buck said. “But if Carpathia really buys up the major media outlets, someone next to the president would be one of the few who knows what’s really going on.”
“All the more reason for you to work for Carpathia,” Rayford said.
“Maybe I should take your job and you should take mine,” Buck said, and finally they were able to laugh.
“You see what’s happening here,” Bruce said. “We all see each other’s situations more clearly and with more level heads than we see our own.”
Rayford chuckled. “So you’re saying we’re both in denial.”
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Bruce smiled. “Maybe I am. It’s possible God has sent these things your way just to test your motives and your loyalties, but they seem too huge to ignore.”
Buck wondered if Rayford was wavering as much as he was now. Buck had been dead sure he would never consider such an offer from Carpathia. Now he didn’t know what he thought.
Chloe broke the logjam. “I think you should both take the jobs.”
Buck found it strange that Chloe would wait until a meeting of the four of them to make such an announcement, and it was clear her father felt the same.
“You said I should at least keep an open mind, Chlo’,” Rayford said. “But you seriously think I should take this?”
Chloe nodded. “This isn’t about the president. It’s about Carpathia. If he is who we think he is, and we all know that he is, he’ll quickly become more powerful than the president of the United States. One or both of you should get as close to him as possible.”
“I was close to him once,” Buck said. “And that’s more than enough.”
“If all you care about is your own sanity and safety,” Chloe pressed. “I’m not discounting the horror you went through, Buck. But without someone on the inside, Carpathia is going to deceive everyone.”
“But as soon as I tell what’s really happening,” Buck said, “he’ll eliminate me.”
“Maybe. But maybe God will protect you too. Maybe all you’ll be able to do is tell us what’s happening so we can tell the believers.”
“I’d have to sell out every journalistic principle I have.”
“And those are more sacred than your responsibilities to your brothers and sisters in Christ?”
Buck didn’t know how to respond. This was one of the things he liked so much about Chloe. But independence and integrity had been so ingrained in him since the beginning of his journalism career that he could hardly get a mental handle on pretending to be something he was not. The idea of posing as a publisher while actually on Carpathia’s payroll was too much to imagine.
Bruce jumped in and focused on Rayford. Buck was glad to have the spotlight off himself, but he could understand how Rayford must have felt. “I think yours is actually the easier decision, Rayford,” Bruce said. “You put some major conditions on it, like being allowed to live here if it’s that important to you, and see how serious they are.”
Rayford was shaken. He looked at Buck. “If we were voting, would you make it three-to-one?”
“I could ask you the same,” Buck said. “Apparently we’re the only ones who don’t think we should take these jobs.”
“Maybe you should,” Rayford said, only half kidding.
Buck laughed. “I’m open to considering that I’ve been blind, or at least shortsighted.”
Rayford didn’t know what he was open to considering, and he said so. Bruce suggested they pray on their knees—something each had done privately, but not as a group. Bruce brought his chair to the other side of the desk, and the four of them turned and knelt. Hearing the others pray always moved Rayford deeply. He wished God would just tell him audibly what to do, but when he prayed, he simply asked that God would make it plain to all of them.
As Rayford knelt there, he realized he needed to surrender his will to God—again. Apparently this would be a daily thing, giving up the logical, the personal, the tightfisted, closely held stuff.
Rayford felt so small, so inadequate before God, that he could not seem to get low enough. He crouched, he squatted, he tucked his chin to his chest, and yet he still felt proud, exposed. Bruce had been praying aloud, but he suddenly stopped, and Rayford heard him weeping quietly. A lump formed in his own throat. He missed his family, but he was deeply grateful for Chloe, for his salvation, for these friends.
Rayford knelt there in front of his chair, his hands covering his face, praying silently. Whatever God wanted was what he wanted, even if it made no sense from a human standpoint. The overwhelming sense of unworthiness seemed to crush him, and he slipped to the floor and lay prostrate on the carpet. A fleeting thought of how ridiculous he must look assailed him, but he quickly pushed it aside. No one was watching, no one cared. And anyone who thought the sophisticated airplane pilot had taken leave of his senses would have been right.
Rayford stretched his long frame flat on the floor, the backs of his hands on the gritty carpet, his face buried in his palms. Occasionally one of the others would pray aloud briefly, and Rayford realized that all of them were now facedown on the floor.
Rayford lost track of the time, knowing only vaguely that minutes passed with no one saying anything. He had never felt so vividly the presence of God. So this was the feeling of dwelling on holy ground, what Moses must have felt when God told him to remove his shoes. Rayford wished he could sink lower into the carpet, could cut a hole in the floor and hide from the purity and infinite power of God.
He was not sure how long he lay there, praying, listening. After a while he heard Bruce get up and take his seat, humming a hymn. Soon they all sang quietly and returned to their chairs. All were teary-eyed. Finally Bruce spoke.
“We have experienced something unusual,” he said. “I think we need to seal this with a recommitment to God and to each other. If there is anything between any of us that needs to be confessed or forgiven, let’s not leave here without doing that. Chloe, last night you left us with some implications that were strong but unclear.”
Rayford glanced at Chloe. “I apologize,” she said. “It was a misunderstanding. Cleared up now.”
“We don’t need a session on sexual purity during the Tribulation?”
She smiled. “No, I think we’re all pretty clear on that subject. There is something I would like clarified though, and I’m sorry to ask you this in front of the others—”
“That’s all right,” Bruce said. “Anything.”
“Well, I received some flowers anonymously, and I want to know if they came from anyone in this room.”
Bruce glanced away. “Buck?”
“Not me.” Buck grimaced. “I’ve already suffered for being suspected.”
When Bruce looked at him, Rayford just smiled and shook his head.
“That leaves me then,” Bruce said.
“You?” Chloe said.
“Well, doesn’t it? Didn’t you just limit your suspects to those in this room?”
Chloe nodded.
“I guess you’ll have to widen your search.” Bruce said, blushing. “It wasn’t me, but I’m flattered to be suspected. I only wish I’d thought of it.”
Rayford’s and Chloe’s surprise must have showed, because Bruce immediately launched into an explanation. “Oh, I didn’t mean what you think I mean,” Bruce said. “It’s just that . . . well, I think flowers are a wonderful gesture, and I hope they encouraged you, whoever they were from.”
Bruce seemed relieved to change the subject and return to his teaching. He let Chloe tell some of what she had researched that day. At ten o’clock, when they were getting ready to leave, Buck turned to Rayford. “As wonderful as that prayer time was, I didn’t get any direct leading about what to do.”
“Me either.”
“You must be the only two.” Bruce glanced at Chloe, and she nodded. “It’s pretty clear to us what you should do. And it’s clear to each of you what the other should do. But no one can make these decisions for you.”
Buck walked Chloe out of the church.
“That was amazing,” she said.
He nodded. “I don’t know where I’d be without you people.”
“Us people?” She smiled. “You couldn’t have left the last word off that sentence, could you?”
“How could I say that to someone who has a secret admirer?”
She winked at him. “Maybe you’d better.”
“Seriously, who do you think it is?”
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“That many possibilities?”
“That few. In fact, none.”
Rayford was b
eginning to wonder whether Hattie Durham had had anything to do with Chloe’s flowers, but he wasn’t going to suggest that to his daughter. What kind of crazy idea would have gone through Hattie’s mind to spur such an act? Another example of her idea of a practical joke?
Wednesday morning in Earl Halliday’s office at O’Hare, Rayford was surprised to find the president of Pan-Con himself, Leonard Gustafson. He had met Gustafson twice before. Rayford should have known something was up when he got off the elevator on the lower level. The place looked different. Desks were neater, neckties were tied, people looked busier, clutter and mess had been swept out of sight. People raised their eyebrows knowingly at Rayford as he strode toward Earl’s office.
Gustafson, former military, was shorter than Rayford and thinner than Earl, but his mere presence was too big for Earl’s little office. Another chair had been dragged in, but as Rayford entered, Gustafson leaped to his feet, his trench coat still draped over one arm, and pumped Rayford’s hand.
“Steele, man, how are you?” he said, pointing to a chair as if this were his office. “I had to come through Chicago today on another matter, and when I found out you were coming to see Earl, well, I just wanted to be here and congratulate you and release you and wish you the best.”
“Release me?”
“Well, not fire you, of course, but to set your mind at ease. You can rest assured there’ll be no hard feelings here. You’ve had a remarkable, no, a stellar career with Pan-Con, and we’ll miss you, but we’re proud of you.”
“Is the news release already written?” Rayford said.
Gustafson laughed a little too loudly. “That can be done right away, and of course we’ll want to make the announcement. This will be a feather in your cap, just like it is in ours. You’re our guy, and now you’ll be his guy. You can’t beat that, huh?”
“The other candidates have dropped out?”
“No, but suffice it to say we have inside information that the job is yours if you want it.”
“How does that work? Somebody owed some favors?”