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  “Sir, I—”

  Dengler held up a hand to silence him. “Not to worry.” He wasn’t so sure about that, especially if the man was truly worried about his safety . . . or his sanity.

  The chancellor turned and trudged through the snow, his shoes darkening from the moisture. As he neared the fast- flowing river, encrusted with ice to just six or eight feet from the shore, the snow grew deeper and he felt the freeze in his socks and on his shins.

  Incongruously, the sun peeking over the horizon made the scene sparkly to the point of being festive. Dengler felt hollow—had not eaten yet felt no hunger. He could tell by the looks of those in his orbit—his family, his driver, his bodyguards and aides—that they worried he might be self-destructive.

  True, life seemed worthless, hopeless, pointless. And yet a lifetime of civil service had made him who he was. He was responsible for billions of people, and—much as he wanted to retreat—he would not shirk. Somehow he would power through this black hole, despite the fact that he had let down his family. They had mustered in his mansion, grieving the eldest brother, grieving the firstborn male grandchildren, grieving a dozen other firstborns in the extended family. And they had looked to him for strength, for character, for perspective.

  Not only had he had nothing to say, but neither could he force himself to comfort anyone, no one, not even his wife of more than forty years. His very countenance, he knew, had exacerbated the situation. They had not been seeking much from him, had clearly not expected that anything he said or did could assuage such staggering bereavement. But it was clear that neither had they expected to see the leader of the world pushed back on his heels, reeling, stunned, helpless. Silent.

  Strangely, none had tried to comfort him either. Dengler had felt needy, even weepy—though he steeled himself against tears—yet something about him fended off help.

  The chancellor had not even tried to sleep, pacing all night. His wife had risen occasionally and come to him, but he would not look at her. And somehow, over the years, she had apparently learned that if he was not looking, he was not engaged, and there was no sense trying to communicate with him.

  A shave and a shower and his world leader uniform—an exquisitely tailored gray suit with a subtle pattern—had made him look the part. But as he had gazed into the full-length mirror in his closet, he could see everything but his own face. He stared into empty eyes and could not conjure an expression. It was as if he had become invisible.

  And now, as he neared the edge of the Aare, Baldwin Dengler hunched his shoulders, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and stepped gingerly onto the ice. He did not know himself what this obsession meant. He simply had to walk the river. Not far. He felt the worried gaze of his bodyguard and heard the parking-facility door as the other peeked out to be sure all was okay.

  Paul Stepola. That was who Dengler needed to speak with. The man had warned him—under the guise of expert consultation—that the underground believers had beseeched their God for this calamity. And the word from the United Seven States of America was that Stepola, himself an only child and thus a firstborn male, had been spared. He was now an international fugitive, exposed as a zealot.

  Chancellor Dengler’s initial response had been anger—a bitter, deep rage that tempted him to throw the entire force of the international government into league with the USSA to bring down this turncoat.

  And yet Stepola had been right.

  Could Dengler fault Stepola for not convincing him he truly believed God would act? The chancellor could not have envisioned a scenario that would have made him believe. Until now. That angel-of-death scenario certainly worked. What could Stepola have done to prove it, to preclude it? Dengler did not want to be a hero. He wanted Stepola to have been one, to have somehow pleaded his case so convincingly that Dengler would have had to have paused, reconsidered, backed away from his threats.

  Dengler shook his head. God had needed to act in this dramatic fashion to get his attention. It had been his own fault. He stood as the emblem of international thought. No one other than the underground resistance had believed this would actually happen.

  The cold finally reached the chancellor, and he stopped. He turned and moved off the ice, through the snow, back toward the bodyguards, who had begun moving toward him. He raised a hand to stop them. There was no need for them to venture farther.

  Dengler found his sleek cell phone in the breast pocket of his suit coat and flipped it open. The platinum, having rested near his chest, proved warm against his frozen ear. He reached his chief of staff. “I’ll be at my desk in five minutes. I want NPO agent Paul Stepola on the phone as soon as possible.”

  “It’s anywhere from six to nine hours earlier in the USSA, sir, depending on where he is.”

  Dengler stopped, feeling his management chops returning. “I’m sorry,” he said, “were you under the impression I had asked what time it was in America?”

  “Right away, sir.”

  17

  STUART “STRAIGHT” RATHE had seen the doctor around, of course, but he couldn’t have told you the man’s name, let alone his area of specialty. Come to think of it, he had seen the man in surgical greens and booties, so he was an operating-room man.

  The surgeon had sought out Straight; that was clear. Straight had been on his rounds, visiting new patients, doing his volunteer welcoming thing, trying to keep people calm, amusing them to get their minds off their troubles. That had become more difficult overnight because of the reason for the new wave of patients. Families who might have been spared a loss because they bore no firstborn males were just as likely to suffer because of what had happened in the aftermath of all those sudden deaths.

  Straight found himself hurrying from floor to floor, wing to wing, department to department, visiting the injured of all ages. The surgeon had caught him in a corridor between buildings. “Rathe, is it?” he had asked, his unusually blue eyes—probably the result of designer contact lenses—darting about to be sure they were alone.

  “Yes, sir, Doctor. Call me Straight. May I help you?”

  “You might,” the doctor said. He was broad and thick with black, curly hair. He carried a leather portfolio and wore a suit. “Gregory Graybill,” he whispered, slipping a business card into Straight’s pocket. The taller, older black man nearly put it out of his mind as the surgeon hurried off.

  Straight remembered it when he was disrobing at the end of the day, after midnight, in his drafty apartment. The card was standard issue, identifying the doctor as a surgeon with Chicago’s PSL (formerly Presbyterian St. Luke’s), but the personal scrawl on the back made it unique.

  In tiny, neat lettering, giving the lie to the adage that all physicians have poor handwriting, Dr. Graybill had penned:

  If you would be so kind, please call me at 2 a.m. within the next three days. This number is secure.

  * * *

  Felicia Thompson sat waiting. Did she dare believe the all- powerful God of the universe actually owed her an answer? owed her anything? Maybe owed wasn’t the right word, but she was going to sit here until He responded or delayed long enough to convince her He never would.

  Fogged into her own world, she suddenly felt her shoulders relax and realized she had hunched them against the cold until she was painfully cramped. The tension seemed to ease out of her body, and she sat warming.

  I’m here.

  No one had spoken. She had not been tempted to look in the backseat or check the radio or lower a window. I’m here had been communicated directly to her heart, to her inner being, and she would not have been more certain it was God if He had appeared in the passenger seat.

  “You’re here?” she whispered.

  Apparently He didn’t feel the need to repeat Himself.

  I love you.

  Okay, it might be God, but if it was, they were going to talk.

  “You love me? And You show me this how? By taking my son? By turning my boss and friend into a fugitive and leaving me on my own? By w
ounding my husband until he is not the same man he once was?”

  I lost a Son too.

  That stopped her. She had heard this story. Was it possible He knew how she felt? But hadn’t He choreographed that whole scenario? Couldn’t He have prevented it? Did His loss really count?

  It was as if God read her mind, and, she decided, that only made sense. Had I prevented His death, there would have been no payment for sin.

  “My sin?” Felicia said, wondering if she really wanted God to give her an inventory. She hadn’t ever felt like a sinner. She tried to be a good person, to treat people nicely. But somehow, in the presence of God, or at least in the presence of His voice in her heart, she felt microscopic, unworthy, filthy.

  Why should she feel filthy? She didn’t understand it, but she felt so far removed from God, even though He was clearly communicating with her, that she wished she could run and hide and cover herself.

  My Son died so that you might have life.

  With that, it all seemed to come together for her in a flash. If she had been perfect, if she had never sinned, the very fact that she had ignored God was sin enough. She had rejected Him and His Son and His plan. The whole world had. It was a wonder He hadn’t acted in such dramatic fashion before.

  Felicia lowered her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  It was as if the presence, the voice, left her. Was it because she was hopeless, or was there merely nothing more to be said?

  “I am a sinner,” she said, remembering Paul’s outline. “I accept You. I believe in You! I’ll confess it to somebody. I’ll tell Cletus.”

  And while she sensed no more words in her spirit, the feeling of the presence of God returned, and it was she who felt accepted.

  Felicia arrived home a few minutes after 1 a.m. and pulled into the attached garage. She noted a dim light burning in the living room and hoped it didn’t mean her husband was still up. With any luck, Cletus would be in bed, sleeping away his grief and depression. She used the remote to close the garage door before getting out of the car, trying to keep the frigid temperatures at bay.

  That didn’t help much, as the garage seemed as cold as the street, but at least she was out of the wind. She entered through the kitchen and found her way to the living room, where Cletus sat wringing his hands in his recliner. The only light came from the lamp over the piano. If he had been even trying to watch TV, she’d have been encouraged. But no.

  The room reeked of beer. “Are you awake, sweetheart?” she said, knowing he was but hoping to gauge his mood and sobriety from his response.

  He nodded, and as she turned on a light next to his chair, making him squint, she noticed the mess on the opposite wall. “Have you been drinking, dearie?”

  He shook his head. “Trying to kill God,” he said, and she shivered.

  Felicia sat on the arm of the couch not far from him. The house was warm, but not warm enough for her to shed her coat just yet. “You don’t believe in God,” she said. “You told me so yourself.”

  “Do now,” he said.

  A six-pack of beer sat next to him on the floor, four bottles gone, two remaining. He had heaved the four against the far wall, three of them breaking and splashing. The fourth remained intact but had put a serious hole in the drywall.

  “Come to bed, darling,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Done talking,” Cletus said.

  “Don’t do this to me,” she said. “We’ve both suffered. We’ve both lost. Don’t shut me out. We have to share this to survive it.”

  With that he reached for one of the two remaining bottles and flung it wildly. It slipped from his hand as he followed through and hit the ceiling, dropping to the carpet and spinning to the wall. He sighed and sobbed. “Can’t even break a bottle of beer,” he said.

  “Give me that other one,” Felicia said. “Let me have a crack at it.”

  He looked at her, cocking his head, and she believed she had finally connected with him. Was he smiling? impressed? He handed her the bottle, as if eager to see what she would do.

  Felicia had played a little ball in her day. She unsnapped her coat and spread her arms, giving herself room. She held the bottle over her head like a pitcher would, then stepped while pulling it low behind her. With everything that was in her she put her whole body behind the heave. That bottle soared high to the wall, smashing to pieces and showering fizzy beer all over the room.

  But her heel had caught when her foot should have been sliding on the carpet, and her momentum carried her down in a heap. That made her laugh in spite of herself, in spite of her pain, in spite of her anger and remorse and grief.

  And apparently Cletus couldn’t help but laugh too. “That was a bit high!” he said, chortling. “But I got to call it a strike.” He swore loud and long, and his laughing turned to wailing.

  Felicia pulled her tall frame from the floor and found her way to his lap, shedding her coat as she did. She collapsed into his arms, and the recliner leaned so far back she feared they would topple. But it held, and they held each other, and they sobbed the sobs of the forlorn, the devastated, the nearly destroyed.

  They held each other tight and took turns caressing each other and sharing their grief. When Felicia sensed Cletus was spent and had calmed some, she said, “I need to tell you what I did tonight, hon.”

  * * *

  It was all Straight could do to stay awake, and he knew he should not have stretched out on the bed. He dozed for seconds at a time, starting and jerking to read the clock, certain he had slept past the appointed hour. But he had not.

  Finally, at 2 a.m., he dialed the number on Dr. Graybill’s card.

  The surgeon picked up immediately. “Mr. Rathe?”

  “Straight, yes.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for calling. I must see you privately.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “Not by phone, sir. Can you meet me tomorrow?”

  “When?”

  “I see patients in my office until noon; then I’m not due to the hospital until two. I could meet you at 12:30.”

  “That works for me. Where?”

  * * *

  “You received Christ?” Cletus said, with so much emphasis on the verb that Felicia knew she had an inordinate amount of explaining to do.

  He sat up and Felicia stood, gathering her coat. “I’ll clean up the mess in the morning,” she said.

  “My mess, my job,” he said. “Now tell me.”

  She told him everything, dug out the file and showed him that too. Cletus had the same questions she had had: How did what God had done make Felicia feel like a sinner? Wasn’t God the sinner?

  “We were warned,” she said. “We were all warned. You can’t legislate God out of life and then wonder where He is when everything goes wrong. There was a solution to this, a way out of it. But in our pride and ignorance, we didn’t listen, didn’t believe it. Los Angeles should have been a clue, but no, we knew better.”

  Cletus sat shaking his head. “I’ll grant you that God proved Himself, but I still don’t know how you got from that to where you surrendered to His side. You did this why? Because He left you no choice? He bullied you into this?”

  “I still have a choice, Clete. I can shake my fist in His face, throw bottles against the wall, try to kill Him. But if it’s true, if all of this is real, if He does have power over life and death and to give and take, the rest of it has to be real too.”

  “The rest of it?”

  “That He’s been trying to get our attention for decades. He offers forgiveness and life, but we—all of us—pushed Him away, made Him illegal, denied He even existed. It’s a wonder He didn’t wipe all of us out.”

  “You’re on His side now. You’re a traitor to your country, to the NPO. You’re a turncoat, a double agent, a fugitive as soon as you’re found out.”

  “I am,” she said. “Are you with me, Cletus?”

  18

  “GOD SPOKE TO YO
U?” Cletus said. “Like audibly? You heard Him?”

  Felicia was back on the arm of the couch, leaning toward her husband. He had to think she was talking insanities, so she was trying everything in her power to be earnest, credible. If ever there was a time when crazy talk had to be taken seriously, this was it.

  “I didn’t hear Him hear Him. I heard Him through my heart, my soul, my mind.”

  “You heard yourself, what you wanted to hear.”

  “Hardly. Listen, Clete. I waited and waited, and every time I was about to explode, to curse Him anew, I sensed Him—or something, or someone—urging me to wait. I was to sit, to listen. I had asked a question, and not only did I deserve and expect an answer, it seemed I was about to get one.”

  “So He talked to you, to your inner being.” Cletus was clearly not buying this. “What did He say?”

  Felicia’s voice caught. That surprised her, but it shouldn’t have. The message had made her cry when first it came. She didn’t know why she thought she could just relate it to her husband without it overwhelming her again. “He reminded me,” she said, forcing a whisper though her constricted throat, “that I was not the first or only parent to lose a son. He had lost one too.”

  Cletus stared, blinking. “Yeah, but . . .”

  Felicia waited. Yeah, but what? What could Cletus say? That it wasn’t fair because God was God and had the power to bring His own Son back to life? That it wasn’t fair because Danny would not be returning to them?

  “Did that make you feel better?” Cletus said.

  She shook her head. “Nothing makes me feel better, sweetheart. Sometimes I feel I’ll never get over this, that I won’t survive it.”

  “I’m not sure I want to.”

  “Of course you do, Clete. I need you to. You’re my rock. I can’t do this without you.”

  He buried his face in his hands. “Some rock,” he said. “Crazy old man sitting in the dark flinging beer bottles at the wall.”

  “We do what we gotta do,” she said.