THREE YEARS LATER

THIRTY-FIVE

WITH THEIR KIDS now in school most of the day, Irene and Jackie had more freedom and enjoyed doing things together several times a week. Both were antiquers and junk shoppers, and one day they came upon an item that especially intrigued Irene.

They were at a suburban flea market in an otherwise abandoned warehouse, and Irene had found a stack of paintings leaning against a wall. She began idly picking through them, noting that they were simply cheap copies of famous paintings in gaudy frames and that the twenty-dollar asking price would likely be covering only the frame.

She flipped past the Mona Lisa, Dante’s Inferno, Whistler’s Portrait of the Painter’s Mother, some Picassos, two Vincent van Goghs, and even a Rembrandt. Looking slightly out of place but captivating her nonetheless were Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ, as well as his Christ at Heart’s Door.

The latter stopped Irene and she stood studying it. She was surprised when Jackie said something behind her, so lost was she in the image. Jackie commented on the kitschy look of the frame, but Irene had already decided on it. “I will replace the rococo,” she said. “But tell me about the painting.”

Later, as Irene carted her cheap treasure to the car, she was strangely excited. She had just the spot for it, though Rayford might be horrified. That was all right too. It was also her home, and if he still forbade her from going to the church of her choice, he couldn’t tell her how to decorate.

With more than an hour before she picked up Raymie, Irene stopped in a frame-it-yourself shop and traded the sprayed-gold-foil frame for half the price of a simple dark wood. She hurried home, hung it over the couch, stood admiring it for a while, then headed for the school.

Now in his late thirties and enjoying seniority at Pan-Con, Rayford was finally flying the international patterns he had coveted. The only downside was that his one diversion—which had never materialized into anything actually adulterous . . . yet—was Hattie Durham, and she was still on domestic routes. He knew her goal was to hold international trips as well so she could get back to flying with him occasionally. But she was still only in her early twenties.

The hard part of international flying, of course, was jet lag and fatigue from flying through so many time zones. Regulations called for Rayford to get eight hours’ sleep during the twenty-four hours preceding the end of his flight duty. That he found a bit of a complicator. The flying was tense, mentally straining work, but he enjoyed variety in his life. So when Rayford had downtime, he didn’t waste it in a hotel room. He was out and about, sightseeing, and visiting his various contacts—many introduced to him by Abdullah Smith. Rayford had black-market contacts all over Europe and the Middle East and a decent little side business in the States.

Besides the intriguing aspect of raising children and trying to remain civil in a marriage that had become boring, black marketeering provided the only real rush in Rayford’s life. He missed the kids when he was gone, and sometimes he even missed Irene. But he had to admit he enjoying leaving more than returning. There was more to do on the road.

Rayford was at the top of his profession, occasionally still consulting with the government, and enjoying the looks he got when he strode through airports in his dress blues, stretching his six-foot-four frame as tall as he could. On the other hand, there were days when he wondered if this would be the extent of his life. He had reached all his goals, though he would love to finally get to fly the president’s 747 at least once.

It was raining when Irene finally pulled into the driveway with Raymie, now eight. He was disappointed that he couldn’t play outside, especially given that she didn’t let him play on the computer or watch television until after dinner. But she gave him a snack and then found him roaming the house, looking for something to do.

A few minutes later he called out to her from the living room.

She found him riding the back of the couch like a horse. “What have I told you about riding that couch?” she said.

“That it’s okay because we need a new one,” Raymie said, grinning. His head was inches from the new painting. “What is this anyway?”

“What does it look like?”

“Jesus. And He’s at somebody’s house. But whose? Zacchaeus’s? I thought Jesus found him in a tree.”

One thing that could be said for Raymie’s being in Sunday school every week, even at Irene’s less-than-ideal church, was that he had heard every Bible story and knew them all. “I don’t know this story,” he said.

Irene sat on the couch and looked up at him. “It’s not from a Bible story,” she said. “It’s actually symbolic. Know what that means?”

He shook his head.

“Symbolic means it shows something that means something else.”

“So, what does the picture mean?”

“That door Jesus is knocking on, that is like the door to a person’s heart. Jesus wants to come into our hearts, into our lives.”

Raymie sat staring at the painting. “There’s no doorknob,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“How’s He gonna open the door with no handle on it?”

“What do you think, Raymie?”

“There has to be a handle on the inside. Somebody’s gonna hafta let Him in.”

“That’s right. Jesus won’t push His way into our lives. We have to decide to invite Him in. Just a minute. I want to read you something.”

Irene hurried upstairs to her bedroom and brought down her well-marked Bible. She turned to Revelation 3:20 and said, “Listen, Raymie, to what Jesus says: ‘Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in.’ Know what, Raymie? I asked Jesus into my heart.”

“Was He knocking?”

She chuckled. “I think He was.”

Irene was sorely tempted to push Raymie, to ask him if he wanted to do the same. But he was at an age where he would have jumped off a bridge if she had suggested it.

“So He’s inside you, Mom? in your heart?”

“It’s like I told you. That’s symbolic. That’s how I say it, but it just means that His Spirit lives in me. Of course I don’t have Jesus Himself inside my body.”

“How did you get Him in your heart?”

“I just prayed and told Him that was what I wanted.”

“And how do you know He came in? Can you feel Him?”

“In a way I can. I know He’s with me all the time.”

“Humph. Mom, you want to be the bad guy and I’ll be the sheriff? You run out into the kitchen and I’ll try to shoot you from my horse.”

Irene wanted to say no. She wanted to ask Raymie how he could have such a short attention span. How could he not see how important this was? that this was everything compared to the nothing of his imaginary games? She’d rather say no and tell him she was busy, then leave him alone so he could think about what they had discussed. But would he? For all she knew he would use the Sallman painting as a target.

“Okay,” she said, “but you get only two shots.”

Irene leaped off the couch and was nearly around the corner before she heard the surprised boy make a shooting sound. “Missed me!” she called out, and the sound came again. Irene made a big show of being hit, bumping the wall, sliding to the floor. “I’m gut shot!” she said. “Not gonna make it.”

Raymie laughed and climbed down, running to her. “Gotcha,” he said. “Good thing you got Jesus in your heart.”

While keeping his distance from the dirty work, Nicolae Carpathia succeeded in killing what little was left of the late Emil Tismaneanu’s business by letting Leon Fortunato and Jonathan Stonagal do their magic behind the scenes. Stonagal made sure Tismaneanu Tech defaulted on its payments to Corona Technologies in Louisiana, and suddenly Carpathian Trading had the inside track on both of Corona’s cutting-edge products.

Sales multiplied exponentially, and it wasn’t long before Nicolae had paid off Stonagal and was far and away the wealthiest, most successful businessman in Europe. Forbes magazine already listed him among the top 10 percent of the richest people in the world, and Stonagal himself teased that Nicolae might one day topple him from his perch as number one. Carpathia had laughed heartily at this, as he held less than 5 percent of what Stonagal owned, but inside he was not amused.

Surpassing Stonagal’s wealth was just one of his many goals. In fact, with the memory of his visitation from the spirit world still fresh in his mind, he would always consider virtually owning the world an entitlement. And he wanted more than to own it. He wanted to rule it.

Chloe arrived home from her after-school activities early and went straight to her room as usual.

Irene knocked lightly on her bedroom door.

“Busy!” Chloe called out.

“Doing what?” Irene said. “You just got here. Can’t a mother at least get a greeting?”

“Hi, Mom! Bye, Mom!”

“Chloe, please. Can’t I see my own daughter a little at the end of the day?”

“I’m on the phone.”

“I want to talk to you when you’re off. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Fine!”

Cameron Williams had been a staff writer at Global Weekly just less than a year, and he had a new nickname: Buck. Because he was constantly bucking tradition and protocol. The youngest writer on the staff, Cameron thought nothing of trying to scoop even his own colleagues.

“You think this is a newspaper,” one of them said at a staff meeting, “where we’re all out to beat each other? It doesn’t work that way in New York, sonny boy. We work together.”

“Calling me sonny boy doesn’t sound like us working together, all due respect. And the fact is, you’d better hustle, because if you don’t I will beat you. Make no mistake; I’m more interested in scooping the other newsmagazines, but if you get left in the dust too, whose fault is that?”

“Okay, people,” Senior Executive Editor Steve Plank said, raising a hand. “Down to business. We’ve selected President Fitzhugh as our Newsmaker of the Year, and I want Williams to do the cover piece.”

“You’ve got to be kidding! He’s all of, what, twenty-five years old, and you’re giving him—”

“Twenty-six,” Cameron said.

“So I was off by a year. He’s still too young to—”

“Seems your facts are often just slightly off,” Cameron said.

“Now, Buck,” Plank said, making the others laugh. And the nickname stuck. “All right, everybody, no more bickering. We do have to work together on this. I don’t expect Buck, er, Cameron to do all the reporting too, so let’s supplement his one-on-one interview with everything you can dig up, and—”

“One-on-one? We’ve never interviewed a sitting president one-on-one.”

“Well, I misspoke,” Plank said. “Of course I’ll be there, as will Bailey.”

“Stanton Bailey will be there?” Cameron said.

“Well, duh,” someone else said. “He’s only the publisher.”

“I know who he is,” Cameron said. “But, I mean, wow!”

“You and Bailey will be there and Buck Rogers here gets to do the interview?”

“That’s enough,” Plank said, reddening. “I’m still in charge here, so you can quit challenging my decisions if you like your jobs.”

A few snickered.

“You think I’m kidding, just push me some more.”

Silence.

“That’s better. Buck here has earned this assignment, and you don’t have to agree with it. But the fact is some of you others didn’t earn it. If you had, you’d be there. You can make all you want of the youngest guy in the room getting the cover piece, but if you’d like to have an assignment like that, you’d better get off your tails and start hustling.”

Later, in Plank’s office, he said, “Buck, it’s a good thing I like you. You’re driving these people nuts.”

“Seems like it. But I don’t get it. I thought working hard was what journalism was all about. This is the only job I ever wanted, and I want to do more than just keep it. I want to excel at it.”

“You’re already doing that, Buck.”

“You gonna be calling me that from now on?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I like it. But anyway, lay off the others. The best revenge is success. You want to get their goats? Keep beating them, but don’t say a word about it. Don’t lord it over them. You’ll frustrate them no end.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

“Maybe it’ll make ’em work harder.”