[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
barely presentable enough for a place like Global Bistro, where Hattie and
Nicolae were often seen.
Of course, Rayford would not be able to let on that he had known about
Hattie's demotion before she did. He would have to let her play the story out
with all her characteristic emotion and angst. He didn't mind. He owed her
that much. He still felt guilty about where she was, both geographically and
in her life. It didn't seem that long ago that she had been the object of his
lust. Rayford had never acted on it,
of course, but it was Hattie whom he was thinking of the night of the Rapture.
How could he have been so deaf, so blind, so out of touch with reality? A
successful professional man, married more than twenty years with a college-age
daughter and a twelve-year-old son, daydreaming about his senior flight
attendant and justifying it because his wife had been on a religious kick! He
shook his head. Irene, the lovely little woman he had for so long taken for
granted, the one with the name of an aunt many years her senior, had known
real truth with a capital T long before any of them.
Rayford had always been a churchgoer and would have called himself a
Christian.
But to him church was a place to see and be seen, to network, to look
respectable.
When preachers got too judgmental or too literal, it made him nervous. And
when
Irene had found a new, smaller congregation that seemed much more aggressive
in their faith, he had begun finding reasons not to go with her. When she
started talking about the salvation of souls, the blood of Christ, and the
return of Christ, he became convinced she was off her nut. How long before she
had him traipsing along behind her, passing out literature door-to-door?
That was how he had justified the dalliance, only in his mind, with Hattie
Durham.
Hattie was fifteen years his junior, and she was a knockout. Though they had
enjoyed dinner together a few times and drinks several times, and despite the
silent language of the body and the eyes, Rayford had never so much as touched
her. It had not been beyond Hattie to grab his arm as she brushed past him or
even to put her hands on his shoulders when speaking to him in the cockpit,
but Rayford had somehow kept from letting things go further. That night over
the Atlantic, with a fully loaded 747 on autopilot, he had finally worked up
the courage to suggest something concrete to her. Ashamed as he was now to
admit it even to himself, he had been ready to take the next, bold, decisive
step toward a physical relationship.
But he had never gotten the words out of his mouth. When he left the cockpit
to find her, she had nearly bowled him over with the news that about a quarter
of his passengers had disappeared, leaving everything material behind. The
cabin, which was normally a black, humming, sleep chamber at four o'clock in
the morning, quickly became a beehive of panic as people realized what was
happening. That was the night Rayford told Hattie he didn't know what was
happening any more than she did. The truth was that he knew all too well.
Irene had been right. Christ had returned to rapture his church, and Rayford,
Hattie, and three-fourths of their passengers had been left behind.
Rayford had not known Buck Williams at that time, didn't know Buck was a first
class passenger on that very flight. He couldn't know that Buck and Hattie had
chatted, that Buck had used his computer and the Internet to try to reach her
people to see if they were OK. Only later would he discover that Buck had
introduced
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Hattie to the new, sparkling international celebrity leader, Nicolae
Carpathia.
Rayford had met Buck in New York. Rayford was there to apologize to Hattie for
his inappropriate actions toward her in the past and to try to convince her of
the
truth about the vanishings. Buck was there to introduce her to Carpathia, to
interview Carpathia, and to interview Rayford-Hattie's captain. Buck was
merely trying to put a story together about various views of the
disappearances.
Rayford had been earnest and focused in his attempts to persuade Buck that he
had found the real truth too.
That was the night Buck met Chloe. So much had happened in so short a time.
Less than two years later, Hattie was the personal assistant and lover of
Nicolae
Carpathia, the Antichrist. Rayford, Buck, and Chloe were believers in Christ.
And all three of them agonized over the plight of Hattie Durham.
Maybe tonight, Rayford thought, he could finally have some positive influence
on
Hattie.
Buck had always been able to awaken himself whenever he wanted. The gift had
failed him very infrequently. He had told himself he wanted to be up and
moving by
6:00 P.M. He awoke on time, less refreshed than he had hoped, but eager to get
going. He told his cabbie, The Wailing Wall, please.
Moments later, Buck disembarked. There, not far from the Wailing Wall, behind
a wrought-iron fence, stood the men Buck had come to know as the two witnesses
prophesied in Scripture.
They called themselves Moishe and Eli, and truly they seemed to have come from
another time and another place. They wore ragged, burlap-like robes. They were
barefoot with leathery, dark skin. Both had long, dark gray hair and unkempt
beards. They were sinewy with bony joints and long muscled arms and legs.
Anyone who dared get close to them smelled smoke. Those who dared attack them
had been killed. It was as simple as that. Several had rushed them with
automatic weapons, only to seem to hit an invisible wall and drop dead on the
spot. Others had been incinerated where they stood, by fire that had come from
the witnesses'
mouths.
They preached nearly constantly in the language and cadence of the Bible, and
what they said was blasphemous to the ears of devout Jews. They preached
Christ and him crucified, proclaiming him the Messiah, the Son of God.
The only time they had been seen apart from the Wailing Wall was at Teddy
Kollek
Stadium, when they appeared on the platform with Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah, a
recent convert to Christ. News coverage broadcast around the world showed
these two strange men, speaking in unison, not using microphones and yet being
heard distinctly in the back rows. Come nigh and listen, they had shouted,
to the chosen servant of the most high God! He is among the first of the
144,000 who shall go forth from this and many nations to proclaim the gospel
of Christ throughout the world! Those who come against him, just as those who
have come against us before the due time, shall surely die!
The witnesses had not stayed on the platform or even in the stadium for that
first big evangelistic rally at Kollek Stadium. They slipped away and were
back at the
Wailing Wall by the time the meeting was over. That coming together in a huge
stadium was reproduced dozens of times in almost every country of the world
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over the next year and a half, resulting in tens of thousands of converts. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]