6 Years Later

Will's POV

It was frigid in Chicago. I pulled my heavy parka out of the closet. I hated lugging it through the airport, but I needed it just to get from the house to the car and from the car to the terminal. For months it had been all I could do to look at myself in the mirror while dressing for work. Often I packed my Global Community One captain's uniform,with its gaudy gold braids and buttons on a background of navy. In truth it would have been a snappy looking and only a slightly formal and pompous uniform, had it not been such a stark reminder that I was working for Jacques Gandolfini (Hades).

The strain of living in Chicago while flying out of New York showed on my face. "I'm worried about you Will," my sister Nikki had said more than once. She had even offered to move with me to New York especially after Lionel had relocated there a few months before. I knew Lionel and Nikki missed each other terribly, but I had my own reasons for wanting to stay in Chicago for as long as possible. Not the least of which was Lauren Haney

"I'll be married before you will if Lio doesn't get on the ball. Has he even held your hand yet?." I asked Nikki

Nikki blushed"Wouldn't you like to know? This is just all new to him, Will. He's never been in love before." she replied

"And you have?"

"I thought I had been, until Lionel. We've talked about the future and everything, he just hasn't popped the question."

I put on my cap and looked in the mirror, parka slung over my shoulder. I made a face, sighed, and shook my head. "We close on this house two weeks from tomorrow. And then you either come with me to New Babylon or your on your own. Lionel could make life easier by being a little decisive."

"I'm not going to push him, Will. Being apart has been a good test and I hate the idea of leaving Chiron alone at Camp Half Blood."

"He's hardly alone. The camp is bigger than ever and the underground shelter won't be a secret for long. It must be be bigger than the camp itself."

Chiron had done his share of traveling, too. He had instituted a program of camps all over the U.S. in anticipation of the day when those believing that Zeus was the king of the gods would be put to death. It wouldn't be long. Chiron had gone all over the world, finding recruits starting in Greece going to Delphi.

Already there was pressure from the Global Community North American government outpost in Washington D.C. to convert all camps into official branches of what was now called Enigma Babylon One World Faith. The new one world religion was headed by the new Pope Peter. Formally Peter Mathews of the United States. He had ushered in what was called "a new tolerance and unity" among the major religions. The biggest enemy of Enigma Babylon, which had taken over the Vatican as its headquarters, were the millions of people who believed that Zeus was King of the Gods.

To say arbitrarily, Pontifex Maximus Peter wrote in an official Enigma Babylon declaration, that the Jewish and Protestant Bible, containing only the Old and New Testaments, is the final authority for faith and practice, represents the height of tolerance and disunity. It flies in the face of all we have accomplished, and adherents to that false doctrine are hereby considered heretics.

Pontifex Maximus Peter had lumped the Orthodox Jews and new Christian believers together. He had as much problem with the newly rebuilt temple and its return to the system of sacrifices as he did with the millions and millions of converts to Christ. And ironically, the supreme pontiff had strange bedfellows in opposing the new temple. Eli and Moishe, the now world-famous witnesses whom no one dared oppose, often spoke out against the temple. But their logic was an anathema to Enigma Babylon.

"Israel has rebuilt the temple to hasten the return of their Messiah," Eli and Moishe had said, "not realizing that she built it apart from the true Messiah, who has already come! Israel has constructed a temple of rejection! Do not wonder why so few of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists are from Israel! Israel remains largely unbelieving and will soon suffer for it!"

The witnesses had been ablaze with anger the day the temple was dedicated and presented to the world. Hundreds of thousands began streaming to Jerusalem to see it; nearly as many as had begun pilgrimages to New Babylon to see the magnificent new Global Community headquarters Jacques Gandolfini had designed.

Eli and Moishe had angered everyone, including the visiting Gandolfini, the day of the celebration of the reopening of the temple. For the first time they had preached other than at the Wailing Wall or at a huge stadium. That day they waited until the temple was full and thousands more filled the Temple Mount shoulder to shoulder. Moishe and Eli made their way to the temple side of the Golden Gate, much to the consternation of the crowd. They were jeered and hissed and booed, but no one dared approach, let alone try to harm them.

Jacques Gandolfini had been among the cadre of dignitaries that day. He railed against the interlopers, but Eli and Moishe silenced even him. Without the aid of microphones, the two witnesses spoke loudly enough for all to hear, crying out in the courtyard, "Jacques! You yourself will one day defile and desecrate this temple!"

"Nonsense!" Gandolfini had responded. "Is there not a military leader in Israel with the fortitude to silence these two?"

The Israeli prime minister, who now reported to the Global Community ambassador of the United States of Asia, was caught on microphone and news tape. "Sir, we have become a weaponless society, thanks to you."

"These two are weaponless as well!" Gandolfini had thundered. "Subdue them!"

But Eli and Moishe continued to shout, "God does not dwell in temples made with hands! The body of believers is the temple of the Holy Spirit!" Gandolfini, who had been merely trying to support his friends in Israel by honoring them for their new temple, asked the crowd, "Do you wish to listen to me or to them?"

The crowd had shouted, "You, Potentate! You!"

"There is no potentate but God himself!" Eli responded.

And Moishe added, "Your blood sacrifices shall turn to water, and your water drawing to blood!"

Lionel's POV

I had been there that day as the new publisher of the renamed Global Community Weekly. I resisted Gandolfini's urging me to editorialize about what Jacques called the intrusion of the two witnesses, and he persuaded the Global Community potentate that the coverage could not ignore the facts. The blood let from a sacrificed heifer had indeed turned to water. And the water drawn in another ceremony turned to blood in the pail. The Israelis blamed the two witnesses for debasing their celebration.

I hated the money I was making. Not even an outrageous salary could make my life easier. I had been forced to move back to New York. Much of the old guard at Global Weekly had been fired, including Stanton Bailey and Marge Potter, and even Jim Borland. Steve Plank was now publisher of the Global Community East Coast Daily Times, a newspaper borne out of the merger of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Though Steve wouldn't admit it, I believed the luster had faded from Steve's relationship to the potentate too.

The only positive factor about my new position was that I now had the means to isolate myself somewhat against the terrible crime wave that had broken all records in North America. Gandolfini had used it to sway public opinion and get the populace behind the idea that the North American ambassador to the Global Community should supplant the sitting president. Gerald Fitzhugh and his vice president were now headquartered in the old Executive Office Building in Washington, in charge of enforcing Potentate Gandolfini's global disarmament plan in America.

My one act of resistance to Gandolfini was to ignore the rumors about Fitzhugh plotting with the militia to oppose the Global Community regime by force. I was all for it and had secretly studied the feasibility of producing an anti-Global Community Web site on the Internet. As soon as I could figure out a way to do it without its being traced back to my penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, I would do it.

At least I had convinced Potentate Gandolfini that my moving to New Babylon would be a mistake. New York was still the world publishing capital, after all. I was already heartbroken that Nikki's brother was being required to relocate to New Babylon. The new city was palatial, but unless a person lived indoors twenty four hours a day, the weather in Iraq was unbearable. And despite Gandolfini's unparalleled popularity and his emphasis on the new one-world government and one world religion, there were still enough vestiges of the old ways in the Middle East that a western woman would feel totally out of place there.

I had been thrilled at how Will and Lauren Haney had taken to each other. That took pressure off me and Nikki, wondering about the future, worrying about leaving her brother alone if they were ever to marry. But how could Will expect an American woman to live in New Babylon? And how long could they live there before the potentate began to step up his attacks on King Zeus believers? According to Chiron, the days of persecution were not far off.

I missed Chiron more than I thought possible. I tried to see him every time I got back to Chicago to see Nikki. Anytime Chiron came through New York or they happened to run into each other in a foreign city, Chiron tried to make the time for a private study session. Chiron was fast becoming one of the leading prophecy scholars among new believers. The year or year and a half of peace, he said, was fast coming to a close. Once the next three horsemen of the Apocalypse appeared, seventeen more judgments would come in rapid succession, leading to the glorious appearing of Zeus seven years from the signing of the covenant between Israel and Hades.

Chiron had become famous, even popular. But many believers were growing tired of his dire warnings.

Will's POV

I was going to be out of town until the day before me and Nikki and the new buyers were to close on the house. I smiled at the idea of buyers securing a thirty year mortgage. Someone was going to lose on that deal.

With me gone, Nikki would be left with much of the work, selling stuff off, putting furniture into storage, and arranging with a moving company to ship her things to a local apartment and his all the way to Iraq.

For the past couple of months, Lauren had been driving me to O'Hare for these long trips, but she had recently taken a new position and couldn't get away. So today, Nikki would take me by Lauren's new office, where she was chief buyer for a retail clothier. When they had said their good-byes, Nikki would drive me to the airport and bring the car back home.

"So how's it going with you two?" Nikki asked in the car.

"We're close."

"I know you're close. That's obvious to everybody. Close to what, is the question."

"Close," I said.

As we drove, my mind drifted to Lauren. Neither me nor Nikki had known what to make of her at first. A tall, handsome woman a couple of years my senior, she had streaked hair and impeccable taste in clothes. A week after I had returned from my first assignment flying Global Community One to the Middle East, Chiron had introduced her to the us after a Sunday morning meeting. I was tired and none too happy about his reluctant decision to leave Pan-Con for the employ of Jacques Gandolfini, and he was not really in the mood to be sociable.

Miss Haney, however, seemed oblivious to me and Nikki as people. To her we had been just names associated with a former acquaintance, Irene Steele, who had left an indelible impression on her. Lauren had insisted on taking us to dinner that Sunday noon and was adamant about paying. I had not felt much like talking, but that seemed not to be an issue for Lauren. She had a lot to say.

"I've wanted to meet you, Captain Lewinsky, because—"

"Will, please."

"Well, I'll call you Mr. Lewinsky for now, then, if captain is too formal. Will is a little too familiar for me, though that is what Irene called you. Anyway, she was the sweetest little woman, so soft-spoken, so totally in love and devoted to you. She was the sole reason I came as close as I did to becoming a believer before the Rapture, and—second only to the vanishings themselves—she was the reason I finally did come to Zeus. Then I couldn't remember her name, and none of the other ladies from that study group were still around. That made me feel lonely, as you can imagine. And I lost my family, too, I'm sure Chiron told you. So it's been hard. Chiron has certainly been a godsend though. Have you learned as much from him as I have? Well, of course you have. You've been with him for weeks."

Eventually Lauren slowed down and shared her own story of the loss of her family. "We had been in a dead church all our lives. Then my husband got invited to some outing at a friend's church, came home, and insisted that we at least check out the Sunday services there. I don't mind telling you, I was not comfortable. They made a big deal all the time about being saved. Well, before I could get my little mind around the idea, I was the only one in my family who wasn't saved. To tell you the truth, the whole thing sounded a little white trashy to me. I didn't know I had a lot of pride. Lost people never know that, do they? Well, I pretended I was right there with my family, but they knew. They kept encouraging me to go to this women's Bible study, so finally I went. I was just sure it was going to be more of the same—frumpy middle-aged women talking about being sinners saved by grace."

Somehow, Lauren Haney managed to finish her meal while talking, but when she got to this part of her story she clouded up and had to excuse herself for a few minutes. Nikki rolled her eyes. "Brother!" she said. "What planet would you guess she's from?"

I had chuckled. "I do want to hear her impressions of Irene," I said. "And she certainly sounds 'saved' now, doesn't she?"

"Yeah, but she's a long way from frumpy white trash."

When Lauren returned, she apologized and said she was "determined to get this said." I smiled encouragingly at her while Nikki made faces at me behind her back, trying to get me to laugh.

"I'm not going to bother you anymore," she said. "I'm an executive and not the type to insert myself into people's lives. I just wanted to get together with you one time to tell you what your sister, meant in my life. You know, I had only one brief conversation with her. It came after that one meeting, and I was glad I got the chance to tell her how she had impressed me. "If you're interested, I'll tell you about it. But if I've already rattled on too long, tell me that, too, and I'll let you go with just the knowledge that Mrs. Lewinsky was a wonderful lady."

I actually considered saying that we had had a tiring week and needed to get home, but he would never be that rude. Even Nikki would likely chastise me for a move like that, so I said, "Oh, by all means, we'd love to hear it. The truth is," he added, "I love to talk about Irene."

"Well, I don't know why I forgot her name for so long, because I was so struck by it at first. I remember thinking that Irene sounded more like a name of someone many years older than your sister. She was about thirty, right?" I nodded. "Anyway, I took the morning off, and I arrived at this home where the ladies were meeting that week. They all looked so normal and were wonderful to me. I noticed your sister right off. She was just radiant—friendly and smiling and talking with everyone. She welcomed me and asked about me. And then during the study, prayer, and discussion, I was just impressed by her. What more can I say?"

A lot, I hoped. But I didn't want to interview the woman. What had so impressed her? I was glad when Nikki jumped in."I'm glad to hear that, Mrs. Lewinsky, because I was never more impressed with my sister than after I had left home. I had always thought her a little too religious, too strict, too rigid. Only when we were apart did I realize how much I loved her because of how much she cared for me."

"Well," Lauren said, "it was her own story that moved me, but more than that, it was her carriage, her countenance. I don't know if you knew this, but she had not been a Christian long either. Her story was the same as mine. She said her family had been going to church sort of perfunctorily for years. But when she found New Hope Village Church, she found Christ.

"There was a peace, a gentleness, a kindness, a serenity about her that I had never seen in anyone else. She had confidence, but she was humble. She was outgoing, yet not pushy or self-promoting. I loved her immediately. She grew emotional when she talked about her family, and she said that her brother and her sister were at the top of her prayer list. She loved you both so deeply. She said her greatest fear was that she would reach you too late and that you would not go to Paradise with her and her son. I don't remember his name."

"Rayford, Junior," Nikki said. "She would have called him Raymie."

"After the meeting I sought her out and told her that my family was the were all worried that they would go to Paradise without me. She told me how to receive Zeus. I told her I wasn't ready, and she warned me not to put it off and said she would pray for me. That night my family disappeared from their beds. Almost everyone was gone from our new church, including all the study ladies. Eventually I tracked down Chiron and asked if he knew Irene Lewinsky."

Me and Nikki had returned home chagrined and a little ashamed of themselves.

"That was nice," I said. "I'm glad we took the time for that."

"I just wish I hadn't been such a creep," Nikki said. "For hardly having known her, that woman had a lot of insight into our sister"

For nearly a year after that, I saw Lauren Haney only on Sundays and at an occasional midweek meeting of the larger core study group. She was always cordial and friendly, but what impressed me most was her servant's attitude. She continually prayed for people, and she was busy in the church all the time. She studied, she grew, she learned, she talked to people about their standing with Zeus.

As I watched her from afar, she became more and more attractive to me. One Sunday I told Nikki,

"You know, we never reciprocated on Lauren Haney's dinner invitation."

"You want to have her over?" Chloe asked.

"I want to ask her out."

"Pardon me?"

"You heard me."

"Will! You mean like on a date?"

"A double date. With you and Lionel."

Nikki had laughed, then apologized. "It's not funny. I'm just surprised."

"Don't make a big deal of it," I said. "I just might ask her."

"Don't you make a big deal of it," Nikki said.