Eckhart stood beside his boss, the one who’d orchestrated the bombing at the plant in Cincinnati earlier this week as a way to test the blast capacity of the tri-nitrocellulose. Together, they surveyed the blueprints of Terabyne Designs’ headquarters northeast of Seattle nestled high in the Cascade Mountains.
All in all, there were eight buildings on the campus, but the ones that mattered most were the power plant, the conference center, and the underground access chamber to the site’s mainframes.
“The structural integrity?” Eckhart asked her.
“With those crates themselves lined with RDX and the tri-nitrocellulose packing material, it’ll be sufficient to take down the building.”
“And bomb-sniffing dogs?”
“According to Terabyne’s SOPs, they’ll clear the building before the crates are brought in.”
If all went as planned, tomorrow’s attack would make the one in Cincinnati remarkably forgettable.
It wasn’t just about carnage, although there would certainly be more casualties than there had been earlier in the week. No, it was about making a statement and putting things right again. The time for action had come, and if it wasn’t taken now, a year from now, or even a week from now, might be too late.
A few things needed to happen first: arrange for the armored car, prepare the packing material, and get the press credentials in place.
* * *
We were almost done with our meal when I asked Nick, “How do you do what you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean tracking killers, terrorists. Always seeing the worst side of people, of what they’re capable of. It must be hard.”
“It can be, yes,” he admitted. “I suppose in your case you get to see mostly the best of people. As a pastor, that is.”
“Most folks are good at putting on a show on Sunday mornings, but when they’re alone in my office you’d be amazed at what they admit—well, then again, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised at all.”
He didn’t comment on that, but said instead, “I have to believe that what I do matters. That it makes a difference. That’s what keeps me going.”
“The pursuit of justice?”
“Yes, which is a bit of a mystery in itself.”
“How’s that?”
He set his chopsticks down. “Most people believe in justice, wouldn’t you say? Or at least that it’s a goal worth pursuing?”
“Sure. I’d say so.”
“But why?”
“Why?”
“Why would we believe in justice when there’s no evidence from the natural world that it exists, that it ever has, or that it ever will? In fact, there’s overwhelming evidence against it.”
“Evidence against justice?”
“Nature isn’t just in any way—it never has been. There’s nothing fair about the life-and-death clash for survival, in who lives and who dies—or how. And in what I deal with in my job, some people’s crimes go unpunished while innocent people are sometimes imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. We always fall short—but we have the same goal. Every culture in the world does.”
“Justice.”
“Yes. Even though, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s a goal that’s not only illusive but also illogical.”
His words reminded me of Solomon’s observations in the book of Ecclesiastes where he concludes that everything in the end is meaningless, like chasing after the wind. There’s corruption in our courts, the just and the wicked both die, as do the wise men and the fools. None of it makes sense. Ultimately, without God and his final justice in the equation, there is nothing truly fair about life.
Nick was right. Why would we as a species cling so desperately to a concept for which there is no evidence?
I thought of my conversation with Trevor earlier about the justice and love of God. If we truly are made in God’s image—whatever exactly that phrase might imply—it would make sense that we desire justice and cling to the concept of it even though there’s no evidence for it in the natural world. Otherwise, where would this desire for justice, where would the idea of it, even come from?
Nick turned to Jordan, who was finishing up with the screen. “Have you been listening to this, Jordan?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“So what do you think? Does justice exist?”
“Not in this world, only in the afterlife—if that exists.”
“So in the CoRA?” Nick said.
Jordan reflected on that. “The fact that people strive for justice, lacking any evidence of its existence in nature, suggests that something beyond this life exists, since that’s the only way there could be any sort of real justice in the universe.”
“What conclusion does that lead to, then?”
“If you believe justice exists, you have to believe in the afterlife. And if you believe in the afterlife, you have to believe in God. This isn’t to say that God or the afterlife must exist, just that, in order to be consistent in your thinking, you would need to believe that they do if you believe that justice does.”
I’d never thought of things in those terms before, but it made sense to me. Beliefs about God, justice, and the afterlife were all intertwined—but that still didn’t make me feel like life was fair in any way, or that it was just for God to have taken my daughter from me the way that he did.
* * *
He tests the screen and finds it working. But cannot concentrate on the task at hand.
Because he is thinking about justice. He is thinking about the afterlife.
And about his mother, seeing her there at the production facility. And his subsequent visit to the park with Kestrel and their conversation about her. Is she in the CoRA or is she gone forever?
Those thoughts pool down into the discovery of the note on the bottle.
He saw what it said.
He knows the location and he knows the time. The message instructed her to come alone.
He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even know who Kestrel is planning to meet.
But he does know, or at least he senses, that it would not be good for her to go there alone.
* * *
After Nick and I finished eating, he and Jordan arranged my new furniture for me, and then Nick reached out to shake my hand.
His grip was firm and resolute.
Admittedly, I wished he would have leaned in for a hug, or at least something a bit more personable than a handshake. But I wasn’t going to complain. When he stood close I caught a whiff of that cologne again.
The ocean.
Sailing toward—
“Please let me know if you need anything,” he said as he let go of my hand. “Call me anytime.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Then, after we’d said goodbye and Jordan and I were alone again, Jordan asked me, “Do you want to mate with him?”
“What?!”
“Isn’t that where romantic relationships eventually lead?”
I flushed. “There’s nothing romantic about our relationship. And besides, mating isn’t necessarily the end goal of a romance. If that’s what we were having. Which it’s not.”
“What is the end goal, then?”
“Jordan, I . . . Well . . .” I found myself quite embarrassed talking to him about this. “Intimacy. Oneness. Sex can be part of that, but it doesn’t need to be.”
“Oneness,” Jordan said. “As the Bible teaches? The two shall become one?”
“Yes.”
He said nothing more and I wondered what he was thinking, but whatever it was, I was glad to set the topic of mating with Agent Vernon aside.
I could probably wait a few minutes before leaving to meet the person who’d left me the note, but I decided to take off now to make sure I was there in time and to, hopefully, have a look around first before the rendezvous.
I waited for Nick’s car to disappear down the street and got ready to leave.
I thought of taking my slate with me in case whoever had sent me the message earlier needed to reach me, but then decided that since the Purists were not fans of technology—to say the least—and I didn’t want anyone to be able to track where I was, I left it on the kitchen counter.
After I asked Jordan to test ViRA’s settings for the new screen on the wall, I turned to leave.
“I saw the note at the park,” he said.
I paused, then faced him. “This is something I have to do.”
“You shouldn’t go alone.”
“I’ll be fine. Now, stay here, Jordan. Don’t follow me. I’ll see you when I get back.”