Kingdom Come - The Final Victory (13 page)

“What?”

“If you don’t know about it, you may be the only one. Grandma wasn’t supposed to say anything, but, well . . . it’s getting around. Can you come?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. But I need to give you my impression of Miss Risto.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I hired her,” his mother said.

“Just like that?”

“Yes. Is there a problem? We all loved her.”

“So my interview with her was just a formality?”

Chloe laughed. “Your interview? You think I couldn’t see how you two connected? Your report was a foregone conclusion.”

“Then I can expect her tomorrow?”

“Oh, she’ll be here. But
you
shouldn’t expect her. She’s been assigned to recreation.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Of course I am. Admit it, Kenny; she’d be a distraction for you. Don’t worry. She’ll still be in the vicinity. You can get to know her if you wish. Now, come on. Your grandparents are waiting.”

IN
HIS
PAST
, Rayford would have said he couldn’t believe his luck. But this was more than fortune; this assignment proved he was continually blessed by God. His leadership skills had been tapped and his muscles stretched by the decades he’d spent leading a development team in Indonesia. And now it became his charge not only to rebuild and develop Egypt but to lead the spiritual effort as well.

That was not his strength, of course, certainly not his specialty. But he could not have done better selecting the team if it had been left to him alone. Admittedly, he would have wanted Chloe and Cameron on board, even Raymie and Kenny. But that would have crippled the
COT
effort.

Rayford hadn’t worked with Bruce since just after the Rapture a hundred years before, but he knew him to be an excellent preacher and student of the Bible. And who better to teach and mentor Bruce than Tsion Ben-Judah and Chaim Rosenzweig?

Bruce’s wife, who had been raptured, had a gift for organization like Irene’s. They would be of tremendous help to Mac, who would be in charge of technology, transportation, and logistics.

It was clear to Rayford that Irene had mixed emotions about the move and the new mission. She loved the kids of
COT
and especially getting to work alongside her immediate family. “But I am happiest in the service of Christ and will go wherever He sends me.”

As for Rayford, he couldn’t move fast enough. He was eager to hear of Abdullah’s assignment and would miss working with him. But the idea of seeing the ravages left on a nation from which the Lord had removed His hand and then having the resources to bring it back to productivity under His authority made Rayford feel one hundred again.

Abdullah came by to help with packing. He explained that he soon had to get back to help Yasmine with their own. “I suppose you know we’re headed back to Amman. That will seem very strange. I cannot imagine how it must have changed in a century. Somehow I think that despite the passage of time, painful memories will be dredged up.”

“I pray the Lord will use them to show you how far He has brought you.”

“Even though I will miss all the children, and of course Bahira and Zaki, I like the idea of my new role.”

“Tell me about it.”

“The Lord appeared to me in the night, apparently just before He deposited Mac and your former pastor—”

“Bruce.”

“—right, on your doorstep. He told me sin was spreading, encroaching on my own homeland, and that He knew I would want to play a part in thwarting it. Rayford, I would have dug ditches if that’s what He’d asked. When the Creator God visits you, you tend to want to do what He says. One of my questions was whether I could take my family along. It has been so strange to work with Yasmine as a sister rather than a wife. And to have my children—it is bizarre to call them that at their ages—as colleagues rather than as dependants, well, that has been a joy. Alas, the children are to stay here and work with Chloe and Cameron. But Yasmine was free to choose.”

“Really? It seems that would be a difficult decision for a wife, of sorts, and a mother. Plus, like most everyone involved with
COT
, she seems to love it here.”

“She did not make her decision lightly. As she has always done, she sought the Lord. Within days, she told me that she and He had come to an agreement. It was all I could do to stifle a laugh. It was as if they had been negotiating. I wouldn’t dare negotiate with Him, but she has been to His Father’s house and has a glorified mind as well as body, and so I expect they are on different speaking terms than He and I. Anyway, they apparently agreed that I need looking after. And He told her before He told me that my assignment would be dangerous. I suppose He worries that I have grown soft since the Tribulation.”

“Haven’t you?”

Abdullah laughed. “From flying you Trib Force crazies all over the planet for seven years to working at a children’s day camp? They seem equally demanding to me.”

“Dangerous, eh?” Rayford said. “Surely the Lord doesn’t expect a man your age to pose as a member of
TOL
.”

“Captain Steele,” Abdullah said solemnly, laughter dancing in his eyes, “I recall the days when a comment like that to a person of ethnicity was punishable as a hate crime.”

Within a few days, Mac had flown everyone and their belongings about 270 miles west to the city of Al Jizah, south of Cairo, where the Lord had directed Rayford to a tract of land on which he was to build living quarters for the team.

“You should have asked David to hit up Noah for the ark blueprints,” Chaim said as he watched the younger men do most of the work. In truth, much of it fell to Rayford and Mac as the other three met during the day and evening studying and planning their ministry attack.

As soon as they had landed in Al Jizah, it became clear the area was wounded. Since the Feast of Tabernacles in Israel several days before, no rain had fallen in the entire nation of Egypt. Worse, it was obvious that God had shut off even the underground springs—deadly to a desert climate. Rivers had stopped flowing, and rapidly evaporating water lay stagnant everywhere. Citizens filled containers as fast as they could, trying to collect the last of the good water.

Kenny Williams had begun looking for Ekaterina Risto after work every afternoon. They often sat together in the staff debriefing sessions. Today she was beaming, and when it came time for workers and volunteers to tell of anything interesting that had happened that day, Ekaterina was the first on her feet.

“Kat Risto,” she said. “I know a lot of you, but for you others, obviously, I’m new here. I’ve been working in rec, and at first I was afraid I wouldn’t get a chance to do as much ministry as you guys who teach or lead worship. But today I told the story of Jonah, and a little girl—she said she was ten—asked me to pray with her for salvation.”

The staff erupted in applause, but Kat wasn’t finished. “It was the sweetest thing. When she prayed, she told Jesus that, like Jonah, she had been running from Him. She said, ‘I kept trying to give myself to You, but I would borrow myself back. Now I want to be Yours for good.’ ”

Later, as Kenny walked her home, Ekaterina said, “I had no idea how thrilling and rewarding this was going to be. In Greece we worked with the kids where we worshiped. We knew they were the only ones who still had to make decisions. But we pretty much left that responsibility in the laps of their parents, forgetting, I guess, how kids look up to their teachers. Often they’ll listen more to us than to Mom or Dad. In all the years I worked with kids, I never prayed with one to become a believer. That was a huge failure, and I didn’t even know it. Someday I need to take this
COT
idea back home.”

“I think it would work anywhere,” Kenny said. “I’m surprised there aren’t more ministries like it around the world.”

A neighbor man about Rayford’s age wandered over to the Al Jizah construction site one afternoon. “You the ones the Lord sent?” he said.

“That would be us, sir.”

“Can you do anything about getting Him to turn the water back on?”

“That’s why we’re here, but as you can imagine, the leadership of this nation is going to have to get in line.”

“I hope you’re not expecting a warm welcome in Cairo. Those young men who talked the other leaders out of going to the feast are dead, slain by lightning in the very presence of their colleagues.”

Rayford stretched. “The Lord’s justice is swift, friend. He clearly made an example of those two, as His Word warned. When their ends came, there could have been no question why. And I believe we’ll be seen as the messengers we are. We’re praying the whole ordeal will give us a hearing among the young people here, show them there’s no trifling with God.”

“Well, know that every other believer is praying the same thing. Why must we suffer for the actions of a few?”

The Millennium Force met in a semiprivate back room at the Valley Bistro just south of the Valley of Jehoshaphat. “So, we’re still looking for a natural to try to infiltrate the Other Light?” Bahira said.

Raymie nodded, but—no surprise—Zaki jumped in. “Qasim’s already done it, and he has a report for us.”

“Zaki, we’ve been over this,” Raymie said. “He’s probably already given us away.”

“No, and he’s prepared to debrief us. Trust me; there’s stuff you’re going to want to hear.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“He’s probably outside by now, waiting for me to bring him in.”

“You told him where we were meeting?”

“Well, yeah. It was no secret, was it?”

“Zaki, if we’re going to do this, be this force, we don’t want a lot of people knowing about it. I’m not afraid of the young people of the Other Light, because they can’t hurt us. But they can sure hurt a lot of other people, so we have to stay under the radar.”

“Fine, but can I bring him in?”

Raymie looked to Bahira, who rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“I guess there’s no harm in hearing what he has to say,” Raymie said.

That was clearly all Zaki needed to hear. He rushed out and returned seconds later with Qasim, who pulled out a notebook and appeared to be waiting for his cue.

“Before you start,” Raymie said, “I need to be clear. You realize you’re not part of this group and you don’t work under our auspices.”

“Granted. But it’s in your best interest to know what the competition is up to, wouldn’t you say? And they’re up to a lot. Those so-called nightclubs of theirs, at least the one in Paris, are so underground hardly anybody even knows about them.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Kenny said. “No matter what they’re doing in there, they’re breaking every law on the books, and if they flaunted it, they’d be in deep trouble.”

“Rumors say they have these dances and orgies and do a bunch of drugs, but unless they were just putting on a show for me, none of that was going on. They just meet there and talk and scheme and plan.”

“How’d you get in?” Kenny said.

Qasim looked self-conscious. “I said I was a friend of a friend of Ignace and Lothair Jospin. The younger one, the redhead, met me at a prearranged spot. He was pretty circumspect, I have to say, wanting to know who I knew and how I knew you.”

“
You
meaning
me
, right?” Kenny said.

“Of course.”

“Brilliant. How hard do you think it’ll be for them to find out I’m a believer, working in a ministry?”

“I covered all that.”

“Do I want to hear this?”

“Sure. I was good. I told him you were a subversive, infiltrating the enemy. Little did he know that that’s really what I was doing.”

Raymie feared Qasim would come off to
TOL
the way he appeared here—totally amateurish. He sighed. “So, what did you learn?”

“Well, for one thing, these people are serious.”

“Come on,” Bahira said. “That goes without saying. They’re in the minuscule minority, what they’re doing violates the law of almighty God, and they know it! Some of their people have died, and while they revere Satan—”

“They like to say Lucifer; they say Satan is a pejorative label the believers gave to a poor guy who got a raw deal.”

“Regardless, while they revere him, he’s powerless and can’t even be planting these ideas in their heads. These people are totally making this stuff up as they go along, and it’s entirely in the flesh. They’ve been seduced by the world and by their own pride. They can’t even blame it on the devil!”

“That doesn’t make them any less passionate, Bahira,” Qasim said. “They trust me, though. I know that.”

“How do you know?”

“They gave me a copy of their ‘If It’s True’ manifesto.”

“Really?” Kenny said. “They haven’t even sent me one.”

“That’s because they don’t trust you yet. But I won ’em over. They’ll be sending you one.”

“You see why we needed another guy?” Zaki said. “I told you Qasim could pull this off.”

Bahira scowled. “Don’t be so sure. For one thing, he’s not working for us. And for all we know, all he’s done is expose us.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Qasim said. “But thanks for the gratitude. Now, you want to see this manifesto or not?”

WITHOUT
SO
MUCH
as a call or an official invitation, Rayford Steele’s small band entered the Egyptian parliament building that had been rebuilt in Cairo during the first year of the millennial kingdom. Whatever had been going on, the entire place fell mute, and all heads turned to watch the men approach the dais.

The man presiding immediately said, “We’ve been expecting you,” and several members of the government stood to applaud. Others glared at them until the ovation petered out.

Tsion strode to the microphone with the others forming a half circle behind him. “Excuse me,” he said as the presiding official moved away and took his seat.

“Micah!” someone shouted, and it seemed to Rayford that many who began clapping again recognized Chaim, the famed leader of the Jewish remnant at Petra during the Great Tribulation, standing behind Tsion. But again, the applause was short-lived.