01 Babylon Rising (27 page)

Talon stirred himself from staring when there was a sound approaching Murphy from the opposite side. In another moment
he beard a man’s voice but still did not see a figure other than Murphy’s. For a second be thought the deeply disturbed Murphy was shouting at himself.

“Ach! You call that shooting, Murphy? I have seen blind men come closer to their targets.” Levi Abrams came crashing through the trees on the other side of Murphy.

“Levi, go away. Please.”

“I can’t. I’ve been sent by your Smokey the Bear to protect the trees. With all of your anger shooting all these arrows into the trees, you could kill more trees than a forest fire.”

“Levi, I’m warning you, I’m in no mood. Leave me alone.”

“No can do, Murphy. I’m going to go out on a limb here, while there is actually a limb left on a tree in this entire forest. I will not mince words, Murphy. What happened to Laura was horrible. I can only imagine your pain right now.”

Murphy did not stop his automation-like shooting into the trees. He had only a few arrows left.

“Actually, Murphy, I can do better than imagine what you’re going through. When my first wife and daughter were blown up in a bus bombing in Tel Aviv five years ago, I didn’t think I could go on. For me it wasn’t a bow and arrow. It was two hundred and ten rounds of ammunition on the firing range while I put away a quart of whiskey in record time. That was just the first night. It took me six months to get a grip. And you know what?”

Murphy let loose his last arrow. For the first time all afternoon it landed dead center in the trunk of a tree, the tree closest to where Levi was standing. Murphy threw down his bow and faced Levi with a wild-eyed stare. “What?”

“Those were six wasted months. I was letting those Arab
dogs win. I was letting them take in their dirty, bloody murderers’ hands the sweet, sweet memories I had of my wife and daughter and twist them into victims. You don’t want that for Laura. She was too fine for that. And so are you, my friend.”

Murphy turned away. The tears stopped. “Levi, I can’t make sense of it.”

Levi reached an arm around his friend. “I can’t either, Murphy. I am no expert, but I did seek out two people who are experts and I know they can help you get going again, as you must. I spoke to your Pastor Bob. As a Christian, you believe in a resurrection, a life after death, when you will forever be with Laura again. Look forward by faith to that event, and in the meantime, get back to work! You know that is what Laura would want you to do. I don’t pretend to understand that part of your faith, but I know you do, and it is time you put it into action.

“Second, Murphy, I spoke to that Isis McDonald. She’s ready to go over the translation of your Serpent’s tail with you. I’ve got you a plane to take you to Washington, D.C., this afternoon.”

Murphy picked up his bow. He grabbed Levi around the neck. “Levi, thank you, my friend. You would make a good Christian if you ever decide to come on over. You know I’m praying that you will. I will take you up on your plane, but first I’ve got a stop to make.”

Talon watched the two men walk off through the woods. Good, he thought. Now he could also look forward to getting back into action. On to Washington.

LAURA WOULD HAVE
been mortified but not surprised to see the unshaven, dirt-smeared, exhausted Michael Murphy walk slowly but purposefully up to the church pulpit.

Reverend Wagoner reached out a hand of welcome.

“Pastor, may I say a few words to the church?”

“Of course, Michael.”

“Friends—many of you are my friends, and I guess that’s a concept that becomes more important only when you’re grieving, but I haven’t felt much like being among people since Laura’s death.

“I guess because it’s clear to me that some sorry excuse for a person, some walking evil, struck her down.

“And I couldn’t stop it. Which is why I haven’t felt much like being around myself either.

“And worst of all, I haven’t felt much like being around God, because I’ve been angry and I’ve been blaming Him, and I’ve been just so unable to go on, so let down by Him and confused. But I realize that God has a plan for me, no matter how painful this portion of it has been.

“I guess I started to realize it when a well-meaning colleague of mine brought me the piece of Moses’ Brazen Serpent in the hospital. The piece that Laura and I found on our last great adventure together. For a moment I was almost tempted to forsake my God as this colleague suggested and place my faith instead in this false icon.

“I realized this morning that the Serpent is a sign to me not to give up my faith but to renew it. I believe this was what Pastor Bob here was getting ready to talk about the other night when the bomb went off. I was helped to focus on it by, of all people, my Israeli friend, Levi Abrams, which I guess shows us that guidance and inspiration come from all sorts of places if we open ourselves.

“Here, in the face of the greatest pain and most unknowable mystery of my life, the loss of my soul mate, just like Moses with the Serpent, my faith is being tested, but I will not turn away. Just like Moses with the Serpent, I have a responsibility to fulfill, my duties, my service, in the face of all the evil and the fear and the turmoil of the world around me.

“So today, I wish to announce to you, my Christian friends, that I am going to trust our Lord for the future and believe that He still has a plan for my life, even while I am grieving. And with His strength and hope, I can put my life’s worst
tragedy behind me and get back to work. So, thank you for your prayers and for letting me get this off my chest. Now I’m off to find the other two pieces of the Brazen Serpent. I am confident that is what both God and Laura would want me to do.”

IT WAS
A day of wrenching opposite emotions. As kept her vigil with Paul in his unconscious state, he began to stir, and then without any warning opened his eyes. He was very weak, but he was able to speak, and seemed to be showing few effects of his temporary unconsciousness. He even managed to smile at her. The doctors and nurses rushed in and wanted to begin testing Paul, so was asked to step out.

FBI Agent Baines was waiting for her in the hallway of the hospital. His news was horrible, one of her worst nightmares made true, but it brought with it a sense of relief for Shari. Tests had finally revealed the identity of the remaining victim from the church basement. The body had been completely destroyed, so DNA testing had been a challenge. However, they were now convinced that it was her brother, Chuck. And the
FBI believed that Chuck had actually been the one to detonate the bomb that had been some form of a pack worn on his back.

Shari had not seen Chuck since the Wednesday morning of the bombing, and, of course, she had worried where he had gone off to, even allowing for the possibility that he could be involved in the bombing in some way, though he was both the most unreligious and unpolitical person she knew. Strangely, she had been rooting for his just having run off on some spree with his new friend.

Now the seeming truth was settled and she felt the hot tears running down her cheeks. What could he possibly want with bombing the church? It had to be his strange friend putting him up to it. Shari braced herself for Agent Baines’s likely barrage of questions. To her surprise, he was very kind.

“Miss Nelson, I am sorry for your loss. There are a lot of questions you could help us with about how and why your brother would have bombed the church. But if you need time to deal with this, I understand.”

Shari looked at the medical team attending Paul, her happy story, and realized she would probably not get to see him for hours. She turned to Agent Baines. “No, let’s deal with Chuck now and start putting this tragedy to rest.”

It became clear pretty quickly that Chuck was likely more victim than evil mastermind of the church bombing. Based on his criminal record, the FBI could see he had neither the experience nor the brains to have worked with the explosives, and stressed his complete lack of interest in being part of any
religious group, even if there had been a bomb factory of religious zealots in that basement—which the FBI was not inclined to believe once they sifted through the rubble and conducted their interviews.

Agent Baines drove back to the hospital after an hour. “Bizarre as it sounds, I almost wish you all were a bunch of religious fanatics, as the press is making out. This just looks like some nasty attempt to implicate evangelical Christians, as with the U.N. message. To what end, beyond troublemaking, we don’t know. But we will figure it out and catch them.”

“I hope you do, Agent Baines. We’ll all be relieved to be out of this disturbing spotlight someone is shining on our faith, seemingly to hurt innocent people and embarrass us.”

When got back to Paul’s room at the hospital, she was glad to see that the doctors had left, but he was not alone. A very distinguished-looking man in a handsomely tailored suit was leaning in very close to where Paul lay, talking very seriously.

“Hi, Paul.”

Paul smiled as she entered the room. “Oh, Shari, great, you’re back. This is Shane Barrington,
the
Shane Barrington. He came here to visit me, can you imagine?”

“How do you do, Miss Nelson. Paul here has been saying what a good friend you have been to him. What a tragedy for a young man to have to struggle with the year he has had, and that was before this.”

There was something about Barrington that made stand back and be wary. “Yes, Mr. Barrington. But, forgive me,
why would a rich, powerful man like yourself care about what’s going on in Paul’s life?”

Weak as he was, Shari’s question made Paul pale even more. “Shari, there’s no reason to be rude to Mr. Barrington.”

“Oh, I don’t take that as rudeness, Paul. I have recently suffered some terrible violence in my family that took my only son from me. When I heard about this bombing and what happened to Professor Murphy and to you, I felt I wanted to come and offer my support. This is exactly what I talked about in my press conference. I want to help victims and fight criminals of every kind.”

Paul smiled. “Well, it sure is good of you to come, sir.”

Barrington patted Paul’s shoulder. “I’m not here just to be sociable, Paul. My staff looked into your story and it made me think of my son, of the chances he’ll never have now, and, I’m sorry to say, of the missed opportunities I had to be there for him when he was growing up and having some problems.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “So, I have taken the liberty of drawing up a special Barrington Communications scholarship for you to Preston. Now you have no financial worries as long as you stay in school.”

Paul’s eyes welled up with grateful tears. Shari became even more suspicious of this Mr. Barrington and his sudden interest in Paul. This was turning into quite a day.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR STOOD
on the highest part of the palace ramparts as a spring breeze from the river gently stirred his robe and filled his nostrils with the smells of new life. How strange are the workings of the mind, he mused. Just a few months earlier he had been tormented by the dream of the great statue, reduced to an impotent wreck by his inability to remember a single detail of it. Then the Hebrew slave, Daniel, had restored it to him, and since that day he had dreamed of the statue every night, intense, almost unbearably vivid reveries that left him not drained and confused as before, but eager and invigorated when he awoke
.

Ever since Daniel had explained the dream’s meaning, that there would be no greater empire in the history of the world than Babylon, no greater ruler than he, Nebuchadnezzar, king of kings, he had felt a new energy surging in his veins, a heady, intoxicating feeling of almost superhuman power. Surely none could resist him now; surely every
tribe, every nation, from the far mountains where the sun rises to the unknown shores where it sinks back into the underworld, must acknowledge his mastery, must bow down before his imperial might and feel his foot upon their necks
.

Looking out over the plain, he could already see many of his subject peoples toiling in the spring heat. Hundreds, thousands of men, pulling ropes, lifting great beams, swarming like ants on the arid ground. Even at this distance he could faintly hear the crack of the whips, feel the sting of leather biting into naked flesh as his foremen drove them on beyond the point of exhaustion
.

Was it just his imagination, or did he smell the sweat of their labors on the breeze? His wife, Amytis, had filled her gardens with every kind of blossom and shrub to remind her of the lush sanctuaries of her native Persia, and he often walked there, filling his lungs with their rich scents. But even the most exotic of her blooms did not smell as sweet as this, the sweat of men who would die for no other reason than to glorify his name
.

As the sun rose higher and the air began to tremble with the coming heat, his eyes lifted from the teeming crowds of workers to the massive object in the center of the plain. It lay like a prostrate giant bound with a massive spider’s web of ropes. But the ropes were not to keep it in place. They were there to raise it. And as he heard the shouts of his foremen and the cruel lashing of whips grow in intensity, he knew that the statue was about to take its appointed place at last. That his dream was finally becoming a reality
.

For a time the huge figure didn’t move, and for one terrible moment he wondered if his engineers had miscalculated, that it was simply impossible to raise such a massive weight from the ground no matter how many slaves you had at your command. For surely such an ambitious feat had never been tried, never even been imagined before
.

But then the groaning of thousands of feet of twisted hemp mingled with the agonized cries of muscles straining beyond endurance gave way to a deeper, wrenching sound as the statue seemed to raise itself out of the dust and started to float upward. The king opened his mouth in awe, unable to shake the conviction that the statue was somehow alive, pushing itself toward him
.