Buck stood on a seat and scanned the racks. Nothing. He lay on the floor and looked beneath the seats. Nothing but his own bag, the pile of clothes, the foodstuffs, and the water, oil, and gasoline. If Buck hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Tsion Ben-Judah had been raptured after all.
Now what? No traffic had passed while Buck was engaged with the officer. Did he dare shout into the darkness? When had Tsion left the bus? Rather than make a scene for anyone who might happen along, Buck merely climbed aboard, restarted the engine, and drove down the shoulder of the road. After about two hundred yards, he tried to pop a U-turn and found that he had to accomplish it with a three-point turn instead. He drove down the other shoulder, clouds of dust rising behind him, illuminated by the red taillights. C’mon, Tsion! Tell me you didn’t start off walking all the way toward Egypt!
Buck thought of honking the horn. Instead he drove another couple of hundred yards north and turned around yet again. This time his lights picked up the small, furtive wave of his friend from a grove of trees in the distance. He slowly rolled the bus to the area and opened the door. Tsion Ben-Judah leaped aboard and lay on the floor next to Buck. He was panting.
“If you have ever wondered what the saying meant about the Lord working in mysterious ways,” Tsion said, “there was your answer.”
“What in the world happened?” Buck said. “I thought we’d had it for good.”
“So did I!” Tsion said. “I was dozing and barely understood that you were going to do something with the engine. When you raised the hood, I realized I needed to relieve myself. You were pouring the water when I got off. I was only about fifteen feet off the road when the squad car rolled by. I did not know what you would do, but I knew I could not be on that bus. I just started walking this way, praying you would somehow talk your way out of it.”
“Did you hear our conversation, then?”
“No. What all was said?”
“You won’t believe it, Tsion.” And Buck told him the whole story as they rolled on toward the border.
As the old bus putted along in the darkness, Tsion apparently grew brave. He sat in the front seat, directly behind Buck. He was not hiding, not leaned over. He bent forward and spoke earnestly into Buck’s ear. “Cameron,” he said, his voice quavery and weak, “I am going nearly mad wondering who will take care of the disposition of my family.”
Buck hesitated. “I don’t quite know how to ask you this, sir, but what generally happens in cases like this? When pseudo-official factions do something like this, I mean.”
“That is what bothers me. You never see what happens to the bodies. Do they bury them? Do they burn them? I do not know. But the mere imagining of it is deeply troubling to me.”
“Tsion, far be it from me to advise you spiritually. You are a man of the Word and of deep faith.”
Tsion interrupted him. “Do not be foolish, my young friend. Just because you are not a scholar does not mean you are any less mature in the faith. You were a believer before I was.”
“Still, sir, I am at the end of my insight in knowing how to deal with such personal tragedy. I could not have remotely handled what you’re going through in any way near how you’re handling it.”
“Do not forget, Cameron, that I am mostly running on emotion. No doubt my system is in shock. My worst days are yet to come.”
“Frankly, Tsion, I have feared the same thing for you. At least you have been able to cry. Tears can be a great release. I fear for those who go through such trauma and find it impossible to shed tears.”
Tsion sat back and said nothing. Buck prayed silently for him. Finally, Tsion leaned forward again. “I come from a heritage of tears,” he said. “Centuries of tears.”
“I wish I could do something tangible for you, Tsion,” Buck said.
“Tangible? What is more tangible than this? You have been of such encouragement to me I cannot tell you. Who else would do this for a man he hardly knows?”
“It seems I’ve known you forever.”
“And God has given you resources that even my closest friends do not have.” Tsion seemed deep in thought. Finally he said, “Cameron, there is something you can do that would be of some comfort to me.”
“Anything.”
“Tell me about your little group of believers there in America. What did you call them? The core group, I mean?”
“The Tribulation Force.”
“Yes! I love hearing such stories. Wherever I have gone in the world to preach and to help be an instrument in converting the 144,000 Jews who are becoming the witnesses foretold in the Scriptures, I have heard wonderful tales of secret meetings and the like. Tell me all about your Tribulation Force.”
Buck began at the beginning. He started on the plane when he was merely a passenger and Hattie Durham was a flight attendant, Rayford Steele the pilot. As he talked, he kept glancing in the rearview mirror to see if Tsion was really listening or merely tolerating a long story. Buck had always been amazed that his own mind could be on two tracks at once. He could be telling a story and thinking of another at the same time. All the while he told Tsion of hearing Rayford spill his own story of a spiritual quest, of meeting Chloe and traveling back from New York to Chicago with her on the very day she prayed with her father to receive Christ, of meeting and being counseled by Bruce Barnes and mentored and tutored by him whenever possible, Buck was trying to hold at bay his fear of facing the border crossing. At the same time he was wondering whether he should complete his story. Tsion did not know yet of the death of Bruce Barnes, a man he had never met but with whom he had corresponded and with whom he hoped to minister one day.
Buck brought the story up to just a few days before, when the Tribulation Force had reunited in Chicago, just before war erupted. Buck sensed Tsion growing more nervous as they neared the border. He seemed to move more, to interrupt more, to talk more quickly, and to ask more questions.
“And Pastor Bruce had been on the church staff for many years without having truly been a believer?”
“Yes. That was a sad, difficult story even for him to tell.”
“I cannot wait to meet him,” Tsion said. “I will grieve for my family, and I will miss my mother country as if she truly were my parent. But to get to pray with your Tribulation Force and open the Scriptures with them, this will be balm for my pain, salve for my wound.”
Buck took a deep breath. He wanted to stop talking, to concentrate on the road, on the border ahead. Yet he could never be less than fully honest with Tsion. “You will meet Bruce Barnes at the Glorious Appearing,” he said.
Buck peeked in the mirror. Clearly Tsion had heard and understood. He lowered his head. “When did it happen?” he asked.
Buck told him.
“And how did he die?”
Buck told him what he knew. “We’re probably never going to know whether it was the virus he picked up overseas or the impact of the blast on the hospital. Rayford said there seemed to be no marks on his body.”
“Perhaps the Lord spared him from the bombing by taking him first.”
Buck considered that God was providing Rabbi Ben-Judah to be the new scriptural and spiritual mentor for the Tribulation Force, but he didn’t dare suggest that. No way an international fugitive could become the new pastor of New Hope Village Church, especially if Nicolae Carpathia had his sights trained on him. Anyway, Tsion might consider Buck’s idea a crazy one. Was there not some easier way God could have put Tsion in a position to help the Tribulation Force without costing him his wife and children?
In spite of his nervousness, in spite of his fear, in spite of the distraction of driving in unknown, dangerous territory with a less-than-desirable conveyance, suddenly Buck saw it all laid out before him. He wouldn’t call it a vision. It was simply a realization of the possibilities. Suddenly he knew the first use for the secret shelter beneath the church. He envisioned Tsion there, supplied with everything he needed, including one of those great computers Donny Moore was dolling up.
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Buck grew excited just thinking about it. He would provide for the rabbi every software package he needed. He would have the Bible in every version, every language, with all the notes and commentaries and dictionaries and encyclopedias he needed. Tsion would never again have to worry about losing his books. They would all be in one place, on one massive hard drive.
And what might Donny come up with that would allow Tsion to broadcast surreptitiously on the Internet? Was it possible his ministry could be more dramatic and wider than ever? Could he do his teaching and preaching and Bible studies on the Net to the millions of computers and televisions all over the world? Surely there must be some technology that would allow him to do this without being detected. If cell phone manufacturers could provide chips allowing a caller to jump between three dozen different frequencies in seconds to avoid static and interception, surely there was a way to scramble a message over the Net and keep the sender from being identified.
In the distance Buck saw GC squad cars and trucks near two one-story buildings that straddled the road. The buildings would be the exit from Israel. Up the road would be the entrance into the Sinai. Buck downshifted and checked his gauges. The heat was starting to rise only slightly, and he was convinced if he drove slowly and was able to shut off the vehicle for a while at the border crossing, that would take care of it. He was doing fine on fuel, and the oil gauge looked OK.
He was irritated. His mind was engaged with the possibilities of a ministry for Tsion Ben-Judah that would outstrip anything he had ever been able to accomplish before, but it also reminded him that he too could, in essence, broadcast over the Internet the truth about what was going on in the world. For how long could he pretend to be a cooperative, if not loyal employee, of Nicolae Carpathia? His journalism was no longer objective. It was propaganda. It was what George Orwell would have called “Newspeak” in his famous novel 1984.
Buck didn’t want to face a border crossing. He wanted to sit with a yellow pad and noodle his ideas. He wanted to excite the rabbi over the possibilities. But he could not. Apparently his rattletrap and its vulnerable personal cargo would have the full attention of the border guards. Whatever vehicles had preceded them were long gone, and none appeared in the rearview mirror.
Tsion lay on the floor beneath the seats. Buck pulled up to two uniformed and helmeted guards at a lowered crossbar. The one on the driver’s side of the bus signaled that he should slide open the window and then spoke to him in Hebrew.
“English,” Buck said.
“Passport, visa, identification papers, vehicle registration, any goods to declare, and anything on board you want us to know about before we search should be passed through the window or told to us before we raise the gate.”
Buck stood and retrieved from the front seat all the papers related to the vehicle. He added his phony passport, visa, and identification. He slipped back behind the wheel and passed everything out to the guard. “I am also carrying foodstuffs, gasoline, oil, and water.”
“Anything else?”
“Anything else?” Buck repeated.
“Anything else we need to see, sir! You will be interrogated inside, and your vehicle will be searched over there.” The guard pointed just beyond the building on the right side of the road.
“Yes, I have some clothing and some blankets.”
“Is that all?”
“Those are the only other things I am carrying.”
“Very good, sir. When the bar is raised, please pull your vehicle to the right and meet me in the building on the left.”
Buck slowly drove under the angled crossbar, keeping the bus in first gear, the noisiest. Tsion reached past Buck’s chair and grabbed his ankle. Buck took it as encouragement, as thanks, and, if necessary, farewell. “Tsion,” he whispered, “your only hope is to stay as far in the back as possible. Can you scoot all the way to the back?”
“I will try.”
“Tsion, Michael’s wife said something to me when I left. I didn’t understand it. It was in Hebrew. The last two words were something like Y’shua Hama-something.”
“Y’shua Hamashiach means ‘Jesus the Messiah,’” Tsion said, his voice quavery. “She was wishing you the blessing of God on your trip, in the name of Y’shua Hamashiach.”
“The same to you, my brother,” Buck said.
“Cameron, my friend, I will see you soon. If not in this life, then in the everlasting kingdom.”
The guards were approaching, obviously wondering what was keeping Buck. He shut off the engine and opened the door, just as a young guard approached. Buck grabbed a water can and shouldered his way past the guard. “Been having a little trouble with the radiator,” he said. “You know anything about radiators?”
Distracted, the guard raised his eyebrows and followed Buck to the front of the bus. He raised the hood and they added water. The older guard, the one who had talked to him at the gate, said “Come on, let’s go, let’s go!”
“Be right with you,” Buck said, aware of every nerve in his body. He made a huge noise, slamming the hood. The younger guard moved toward the door, but Buck passed him, excused himself, put one foot on the steps, and tossed the water can into the bus. He thought about “helping” the guard search the bus. He could stand with him and point out the blankets and cans of gas, oil, and water. But he had already come dangerously close, he feared, to making them suspicious. He came back off the bus and into the face of the young guard. “Thanks so much for your help. I don’t know much about engines, really. Business is my game. America, you know.”
The young guard looked him in the eyes and nodded. Buck prayed he would merely follow him into the building on the other side of the border crossing. The older guard was waiting, staring at him, now waving for him to come over. Buck had no choice now. He left Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah, the most recognizable and notorious fugitive in Israel, in the hands of border guards.
Buck hurried into the processing building. He was as distracted as he’d ever been, but he couldn’t let it show. He wanted to turn and see if Tsion was dragged off the bus. No way he could escape on foot as he had on the road not long before. There was nowhere to go here, nowhere to hide. Barbed wire fences lined each side. Once you got in the gate, you had to go one way or the other. There was no going around.
The original guard had Buck’s papers spread out before him. “You entered Israel through what entry point?”
“Tel Aviv,” Buck said. “It should all be there—”
“Oh, it is. Just checking. Your papers seem to be in order, Mr. Katz,” he added, stamping Buck’s passport and visa. “And you are representing . . . ?”
“International Harvesters,” Buck said, making it plural because he meant it.
“And you’re leaving the area when?”
“Tonight. If my pilot meets up with me at Al Arish.”
“And how will you dispose of the vehicle?”
“I was hoping to sell it cheap to someone at the airport.”
“Depending upon how cheap, that should be no problem.”
Buck seemed frozen into place. The guard looked over his shoulder and out across the road. What was he looking at? Buck could only imagine Tsion detained, handcuffed, and led across the road. What a fool he had been to not try to find some secret compartment for Tsion. This was madness. Had he driven a man to his death? Buck couldn’t stand the thought of losing yet another member of his new family in Christ.
The guard was on the computer. “This shows you were detained near Beersheba earlier this morning?”
“Detained is overstating it a bit. I was adding water to the radiator and was questioned briefly by a GC peacekeeping officer.”
“Did he tell you the previous owner of your vehicle has been arrested in connection with the escape of Tsion Ben-Judah?”
“He did.”
“You might be interested in this, then.” The guard turned and pointed a remote control device at a television up in the corner. The Global Community Network Ne
ws was reporting that a Michael Shorosh had been arrested in connection with the harboring of a fugitive from justice. “Global Community spokesmen say that Ben-Judah, formerly a respected scholar and clergyman, apparently became a radical fanatic fundamentalist, and point to this sermon he delivered just a week ago as evidence that he overreacted to a New Testament passage and was later seen by several neighbors slaughtering his own family.”
Buck watched in horror as the news ran a DVD of Tsion speaking at a huge rally in a filled stadium in Larnaca, on the island of Cyprus. “You’ll note,” the newsman said, as the picture was stopped, “the man on the platform behind Dr. Ben-Judah has been identified as Michael Shorosh. In a raid on his Jericho home shortly after midnight tonight, peacekeeping forces found personal photos of Ben-Judah’s family and identification papers from both Ben-Judah and an American journalist, Cameron Williams. Williams’s connection to the case has not been determined.”
Buck prayed they would not show his face on television. He was startled to see the guard look over his shoulder to the door. Buck whirled to see the young guard come in, staring at him. The young man let the door close behind him and leaned back against it, his arms folded over his chest. He watched the news report with them. The DVD showed Ben-Judah reading from Matthew. Buck had heard Tsion preach this message before. The verses, of course, had been taken out of context. “Whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”
The news reporter said solemnly, “This just a few days before the rabbi murdered his own wife and children in broad daylight.”