He climbed to the third floor, praying as he went for one more sign, one more assurance. Show me, Lord, he beseeched. Forgive my doubts.
Brent Lucas was hunched over his keyboard, his back to the door. His head jerked slightly at the sound of Biddle’s knock. “Yes?” he said, not looking around.
Biddle cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt such intense concentration.”
Lucas turned, and his expression changed from annoyance to surprise. He jumped to his feet and came around the desk to shake hands. “Mr. Biddle!” he exclaimed.
“I wanted to personally welcome you on board,” Biddle said, thinking as he had the other times they’d met how physically imposing Lucas was and how brimming with energy. Lucas’s shirt outlined his muscular chest and torso, giving him an aura of unstoppability. His aggressiveness was right there on the surface; he wasn’t the kind to let anything stand in his way.
Biddle realized that his odd sense of familiarity with Lucas came from the inch-thick binder assembled by his team of private investigators. It detailed Lucas’s grades and athletic endeavors, how Lucas’s father and brother died, about the suicidal house fire when his mother died and almost killed her two sons. He knew everything, down to Lucas’s last girlfriend and the kind of car he drove. Under different circumstances, Lucas might have been a wonderful addition to the firm.
Brent released Biddle’s hand and went back to his desk, thinking his boss seemed more than a little keyed up.
“Any questions so far?” Biddle asked as he took a seat across from Brent.
Brent thought for a second. “Only one,” he said, reaching for his jacket where it hung on the back of his chair and pressing start button on the recorder that sat in the side pocket. “In the research meeting… the unemployment report. I have to admit I’ve been curious.”
“About what?”
“All of it.”
Biddle leaned forward. “We invest according to the Word of God.”
“What about earnings per share and cash flow?”
“We use balance sheets and income statements like everyone else, but when I receive signs, we act on them.” Biddle smiled. “There’s a higher truth than analysis, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Pardon my cynicism, but you’re saying that God revealed a government employment report?”
“If God puts it in one Christian’s heart to help another Christian, what would you call that? Is information given in that way something to be refused? Don’t God’s commands transcend man’s statutes? Non-believers don’t understand that, but you should.”
Brent remembered that he was a guy who’d supposedly sent twenty-five thousand dollars to the New Jerusalem Fellowship. He nodded. “Absolutely… but do you disclose that to our clients?”
Biddle’s eyes narrowed. “Some of them,” he said quietly.
“The reborn ones?” Brent persisted.
Biddle nodded. “Why would I share that information with unbelievers?”
An hour later, Biddle looked across his desk at Wofford. “I have no doubt. He’s the one.”
Wofford sat in an overstuffed chair chewing a thumbnail. “Smythe found out what happened at Lucas’s old firm. He asked me why we hired him.”
Biddle looked up sharply. “Tell Smythe to mind his own business.”
“I did, but I’m not sure his curiosity is satisfied.” Wofford looked down. A flicker of worry passed across his face. “He suspects something.”
Biddle felt a spasm of anger at Wofford’s caution. “Forget Smythe. Think of the opportunity. If we do our job, we fulfill the prophecy.”
Wofford looked up, and his expression hardened. “What if you’re wrong? We’re risking everything!”
“Everything? What is everything? Are you risking your soul?”
“No, but—”
“We don’t have Jesus here! We can’t touch him! We can’t watch Him move through crowds, see Him heal the sick, feed the hungry! If we lack courage, how’s that going to happen?”
Biddle tried to control his annoyance. After all, how could he explain his visions to someone who never saw them? How could he explain that God’s will moved inside him like an unborn child. It was part of him, indistinct, yet full of unspeakable promise. The Second Coming was a miracle, something to be trusted, an event that would unfold like a flower from the small bud of faith and possibility. And a nuclear attack on the President of the United States would be the spark. The massive reprisals would be enough to begin the conflagration.
“Armageddon,” Wofford whispered, as if reading Biddle’s mind. He rubbed an invisible spot on his trouser leg. “God guide us,” he said.
“His will is being done!” Biddle snapped. He held up a finger and quoted from Hebrews, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The burden of his own certainty became so much heavier when those around him were weak. Yet even as he cursed Wofford’s fear, a different thought intruded—Anneliës, her name a sultry whisper in his mind. He felt his cheeks redden. His weakness, he thought, as he turned reflexively toward the window.
Anneliës was inextricably part of the plan. He hated that, just as he sometimes hated her. Nothing about her was the way he’d planned. She was different from any other creature he’d encountered—unbelievably tempting and seductive, a devil in his heart and an angel in human form. He had chosen her because her extraordinary allurements would enable them to complete the preparations with Lucas, but they had snared him as well. His gaze wandered to the corner of his credenza, to the picture of Faith, his wife. God help me, he prayed.
NINE
NEW YORK, JUNE 20
THEY SAT AT A CORNER table illuminated by wavering candlelight. Brent could hear the background murmur of other voices, but his attention was rooted on the woman across the table. His heart caught in his throat as he gazed at her, with her flashing eyes and high cheekbones, her simple black dress held up by thin spaghetti straps.
Maggie could have been a model, a fact made obvious by the way other men turned to stare, but she set little stock in her beauty, just as she did the accumulation of wealth, or worldly power. Like Brent’s father and brother, she valued the qualities that made her community thrive—the welfare of her fellow citizens, fairness, equality, and justice.
Tonight, in spite of the romantic setting, her lovely features were creased in anger. “You’re twenty-nine years old,” she was telling Brent. “And you still have no idea what you want.”
Brent sighed. This whole topic was something he wanted to avoid.
“You want a good marriage and a life that stands for something, but you also want to be rich and powerful,” Maggie went on.
“I want you.”
“Okay… when?”
He shrugged. “You know… when I get some things settled.”
She shook her head, and her anger seemed to dissipate, only to be replaced by sadness. A tear broke free and ran down her cheek. “You never make the hard choices. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can wait.”
Brent reached across the table for her hand, but he never touched it. From somewhere nearby he heard a crashing sound as if a waiter had dropped a tray of silverware.
He opened his eyes. His bedroom was dark. From down in the street he heard the noise again, only he recognized it this time—a garbage truck compressing a load of trash. He was alone, as he had been since that last night with Maggie. His heart beat a lonely tattoo against the walls of his chest.