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"Oh, Chaim, Chaim! You are learning so much. That old brain is still good, still facile, still receptive. You are getting this-I know you are! If not you, who shall go? You seem uniquely qualified, but much as I dream it, I ca
"Do you understand what that means? You could lead your people, his people, to a place that will be almost impossible to go into or out from. If you were to be there until the Glorious Appearing of the Christ, what would you eat? What would you wear? The Bible says God himself will provide as he did in the days of old! He will send food, delicious, nourishing, fulfilling food! Ma
"No, Tsion," Chaim said wearily, a tease in his voice, "whatever you do, do not neglect to tell me about my clothes."
"I won't! And you will be grateful, not to mention amazed. If I amaze you, will you admit it?"
"I will admit it."
"Promise me."
"My word is my bond, my excitable young friend. Amaze me and I will say so."
"Your clothes will not wear out!" Tsion stopped with A flourish, his hands in the air.
"They won't?"
"Are you amazed?"
"Maybe. Tell me more."
"Now you want to hear it?"
"I always want to hear it, Tsion. I am just unworthy. Scared to death, unqualified, unprepared, and unworthy."
"If God calls you, you shall be none of those! You would be Moses! The Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would go before you, and the glory of the Lord would be your rear guard."
"I would need a rear guard? Who would be chasing me?"
"Not Pharaoh's army, I assure you. But if it were, God would make a way for you to escape. Carpathia's hordes would be pursuing you. And for all his talk of peace and disarmament, who has access to the residue of the world's weapons, surrendered willingly to the lying purveyor of peace? But if you needed the Red Sea parted yet again, God would do it! For what have we learned, my little Hebrew schoolchild?"
"Hmm?"
"Hmm? Don't hmm? me, Chaim! Tell the rabbi what you learned about the great stories, the miracles from the Torah."
"That they are not just stories, not just examples, myths for our encouragement."
"Excellent. But rather, what are they? What are they, my star pupil?"
"Truth."
"Truth! Yes!"
"They actually happened."
"Yes, Chaim! They happened because God is all-powerful. He says they happened-they happened. And if he says he will do it again, what?"
"He will."
"He will! Oh, the privilege, Chaim! Deal with your fears. Deal with your doubts. Give them to God. Offer yourself in all your weakness, because in our weakness we are made strong. Moses was weak. Moses was nobody. Moses had a speech impediment! Chaim! Moses, the hero of our faith, had less to offer than you do!"
"He was not a murderer."
"Yes he was! You forget! Did he not kill a man? Chaim, think! Your mind, your conscience, your heart tells you God ca
"He found you, Chaim! He pulled you from the miry clay! Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up!"
"Back to my clothes," Chaim said. "I could wear clothes from now until Jesus comes again, and they wouldn't wear out?"
Tsion sat back and waved dismissively. "Chaim, if he can save you and me, of all people, forgive us our sins, bring us back from spiritual death, this clothes thing is one of his lesser miracles. Forget the extra buttons, the patches, the thread. Go there with something you like, because you'll still be wearing it when this is all over."
David had pushed the limits of his ability to virtually set up the entire GC compound for his own remote computer monitoring. He breathed a prayer of thanks to God for allowing him to focus and work in spite of his grief. Mac and Abdullah were set to visit him in an hour to finalize the escape plan that included David and Ha
While waiting word from Ming Toy, David checked his archives for meetings he had recorded but never listened to. In his Carpathia file was the one with Suhail Akbar, Walter Moon, Leon Fortunato, and Jim Hickman the day he himself had chatted with Hickman. David felt a chill as he prepared to eavesdrop, and he did a quick walk-through of his area to make sure everyone was gone for the day. He could close a program and shut down with a single keystroke, but still he didn't want to be surprised by the wrong person.
Something Ha
"Such as? "he had said.
"Monitoring you, maybe."
He had brushed it off. He had developed antihacking programs, antibugging devices. He had electronic ears everywhere and believed he could hear if someone breathed a word of something like that. It was impossible, wasn't it? Surely the brass wouldn't be so free to speak if they thought he was listening in. And if they were onto him, it seemed they would have shut him down long before this.
David believed the security chips he'd inserted in his phones and E-mail programs were impenetrable, and he had tried to explain it to Ha
"I don't pretend to have a clue, David. Maybe you are the top computer genius alive, but ought you not be very careful?"
"Oh, I am."
"You are?"
"You bet."
"But you tell me of phone calls and E-mails between you and your compatriots in the States."
"Not traceable. Not hackable." "But you trace others. You hack others." "I'm good."
"You're living on the edge." "There's no other way to live."
Ha
David had begun the Carpathia meeting recording before he went to see Hickman, so he discovered several minutes of Carpathia alone in his office. The last time he had listened in that way he had heard Nicolae praying to Lucifer. Now, Nicolae was Lucifer. Did Satan pray to himself?