Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II (8 page)

There was a tap at my door.

“Grant? Are you ready?”

I bolted across the room and startled Sue Ling with the suddenness of the door opening. Grabbing her by the arm I pulled her across the room.

“You have to see this!”

“Ouch! Grant, you’re hurting me—”

“Sorry, it’s just that—” I pulled her onto the balcony. “—look!”

With the sweep of my hand I showed her the angels.

“I know,” Sue replied, unimpressed. “I have the same view from my balcony. That’s why I brought an umbrella. Oh, look, what good timing. Choni’s in the parking lot waiting for us.”

“Sue? Can’t you see them?”

Of course she couldn’t see them. But at times like this there is no reason, only excitement and desire. I so wanted her to see what I could see. Maybe if I wished hard enough. Maybe if I clapped my hands.

“Well, we’re off!” she said cheerily.

I blocked her with my arm.

“Sue, I see angels.”

Her genial expression faded.

Sue Ling didn’t need to be convinced of the existence of angels. As the professor’s assistant she’d seen Abdiel often enough, possibly even conversed with him. She also knew enough to know that seeing angels wasn’t always a good thing.

“Angels,” she repeated. “How many and where?”

She scanned the rooftops in anticipation of viewing the location, if not the angels.

“Thousands,” I said. “Thousands upon thousands. And not down there. In the clouds.”

With fervent gaze she scanned the clouds. With reverent voice she said,
“And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.
Matthew 24, verse 30.”

“We have to get down there,” I said.

It took a moment for my words to penetrate. When they did, she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of the room.

“Ouch! Sue, you’re hurting me—”

She let go of my arm in the elevator. I rubbed it.

Her eyes were fixed on the floor indicator, urging the elevator downward. As soon as the doors started to open, she was pressing to get through and ran into a woman and two men who were getting in.

“Jana!” she exclaimed.

The collision knocked Jana back a step into her bow-tied coworker and cameraman, whom I recognized from the press conference, though he wasn’t carrying a camera at the moment.

When Jana recovered, she looked at Sue, then at me. “What are you doing here?”

Sue stepped around her and waved for me to do the same. “Grant, we’re late,” she said, hurrying on.

“Hi, Jana.” I stepped to one side to let her into the elevator. “You’re a long way from home.”

“Grant!” Sue called to me.

“Sorry, Jana, I have to go.”

I was halfway across the lobby when—“Grant!” It was Jana.

I turned back.

“Grant?” Sue held the lobby door open.

Once again I found myself forced to choose between my former girlfriend and the woman I was attracted to but couldn’t have.

But from the expression on Jana’s face, she wasn’t expecting me to make a choice. She was sizing me up.

She turned to the cameraman. “Get your camera. Move!” To the bow tie, “Get the car.” Then she fixed her sights on me. “Grant, what exactly are you doing here?”

A vise grip clamped onto my arm. It was Sue. She pulled me across the lobby. At the door, I said to Jana, “Sorry—”

Jana followed us into the parking lot where Choni stood beside his car and waved at us.

“Take us to Mt. Olivet,” Sue ordered.

The sharpness of the command wiped the smile off Choni’s face. As Sue bundled into the backseat and I climbed in front, Choni slipped behind the driver’s wheel.

Putting the car in gear, he said, “It would be better to sightsee another day. My father is expecting—”

“Mt. Olivet,” Sue repeated without explaining herself.

She looked out the back window. Jana was standing in the middle of the parking lot watching us.

Had it been me giving the orders, Choni would have argued with me. But women have a certain tone men and children have learned not to argue with. Sue used that tone. She used it well. I doubted it was the first time she’d used it.

“It is important you get to Olivet?” Choni asked.

Sue and I exchanged glances. “Has anything changed?” she asked me.

I looked eastward at the clouds. “Unchanged,” I replied.

“End-of-the-world important,” Sue said to Choni.

“And that woman?” he asked, motioning to Jana.

A small car screeched to a halt beside her. The cameraman, carrying his camera, emerged from the hotel at a dead run.

“She’s of no consequence,” Sue said, “but if you lose her, it wouldn’t break my heart.”

Choni smiled. “A chase scene. I’ve always wanted to do an American chase scene.”

Exiting the hotel parking lot he sped down the access road and onto the main thoroughfare. Then he turned hard left into a housing district.

“A shortcut,” he explained. “I used to date a girl who lived here. I thought it was serious, like she was the one, you know? She broke it off because her dog didn’t like me. It’s not like I wanted to marry her poodle.”

Jana’s car followed us in.

The housing district was a maze, every few hundred feet a turn. The cloud of angels swung from my side of the car to the front, to the driver’s side, to the back, to my side again, and finally to the front as we exited onto the main road.

I stuck my head out the window to get a better view. Sue rolled down her window and did the same.

“I’ve never seen anyone so fascinated with a thunderstorm,” Choni said. “I must visit San Diego and see this city that has no weather.”

We exited the maze. Sue watched the exit for Jana for as long as she could see it. Jana’s car never came out. Sue faced forward with a satisfied grin.

The road we were on skirted the southern edge of the Temple Mount running parallel to ancient walls. At the southeast corner the road turned north.

“We’re entering the Kidron Valley,” Choni said. “Mt. Olivet is on the right.”

At the base of the slope was a huge graveyard that stretched farther than we could see.

The car slowed.

“Why are we stopping?” Sue asked.

Choni motioned to the road ahead. A tour bus had stopped and was blocking the road. The panel to its engine was raised.

Tourists buzzed around the bus doing what tourists do. They wandered mindlessly in search of suitable backgrounds to take pictures of their spouses and friends. Several of them were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the middle of the road, smiling and saying, “Cheese,” with the ancient city at their backs.

Sue climbed out of the car.

Choni and I exchanged puzzled looks. “I can get around them,” he said of the tourists.

“Sue?” I climbed out of the car.

She was standing on the shoulder of the road, taking in the surrounding area.

“The Golden Gate.” She pointed to a double-tiered archway that was embedded in the wall. “Also called the Gate of Mercy and the Beautiful Gate.”

Maybe at one time it had been a gate, but the archway had been filled in. Now it was just part of the wall with graves scattered in front of it.

“Jesus and his disciples walked through that gate to go to the Temple,” Sue said. “It was through that gate that Jesus rode a donkey while the crowd waved palm branches.”

I nodded. I could see it. The gate was situated in line with the Temple Mount.

“On this side,” she said, indicating our side of the road, “is the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus was arrested.” Her gaze moved up the hill. “And Mt. Olivet, where he ascended into heaven in a cloud of angels. I can see it.”

“I can, too,” I said. “It’s just as the Bible describes it.”

“No,” she said. “I mean, I can see them. The angels. I can see them.”

If she was pulling my leg, she was doing a masterful job of it. The expression on her face was one of awe and wonder.

“You saw this at the hotel?” Choni asked.

His face was just like Sue’s. He could see them, too. He stood inside the open door of his car, his arms resting on the top, his mouth open, his eyes wide and fixed on the clouds.

“Well, will you look at that?” one of the tourists said with a southern drawl. “Jubal, lookie up there at them special effects. Looks like angels in the clouds, don’t it? How do they do that?”

Jubal glanced upward and squinted his eyes. “Thas nothin’.” He spat. “I seen better special effects at Disney World.”

A line of cars had queued up behind us. About a dozen or so cars back was Jana. Like everyone else, she was gazing up at the sky in wonder. As she gazed, she directed her cameraman to record the event. She needn’t have bothered. His camera was pointed at the clouds.

“We need to get up there,” Sue said.

Choni assessed the situation. In both directions now the road was jammed with people. Everyone was getting out of their cars and staring at the angel-filled clouds over Mt. Olivet.

“Only one way I know of to get to the top of the mountain,” he said.

Vaulting over the edge of the road he slipped and ran down the bank. Sue and I were right behind him.

As I made the leap I glanced in Jana’s direction. She was recording a report. Her cameraman was lying on his back in order to get the angels in the background. Our movement caught Jana’s attention. She said something to the cameraman, and seconds later they were running down the slope after us with Jana in the lead, the cameraman on her heels, and the bow-tied reporter trailing. He was carrying a small monitor.

We crossed the Kidron and began climbing, weaving through olive trees that were part of the Garden of Gethsemane. Choni led us to a path that crested onto a road.

“Come, come!” he urged us, with a huge kid’s smile.

He reached for Sue Ling’s hand and pulled her up, though she didn’t appear to need help. I, on the other hand, was wheezing like an old man.

“Don’t tell me,” I said to Sue Ling. “You’re a jogger.”

“Five miles every morning.”

“I plan to start Monday.”

We crossed in front of the Church of All Nations with its colorful mosaic façade. It was easier going here. Level ground.

Cars had caught up with us. A steady stream snaked up the side of the mountain. Behind us Jana and her crew were climbing onto the road.

The church’s retaining wall came to an end and we began to ascend. We came to a fork in the road.

Choni went left. The steeper road.

A crazy thought born no doubt of oxygen deprivation popped into my head. It would be just my luck to drop dead of a heart attack minutes before the greatest spiritual event in the history of the world since the Resurrection.

I was falling behind. Sue slowed for me to catch up.

“Do you need help?” she asked.

“Thanks. No. I’ll make it.”

Apparently I wasn’t convincing.

“We can walk. Or hitch a ride.”

The idea of slowing to a walk was tempting. The possibility of catching a ride was not likely. While the cars were bumper to bumper, they were moving at a quick clip and the roads were narrow. Stopping would back up everything. Besides, most of the cars were packed with passengers. Some even had young men riding on the hoods and tops and trunks.

“Lets. Just. Keep. Going,” I said.

While she could have run ahead, Sue stayed with me.

With my lungs bursting with pain, my knees threatening to collapse, and white spots floating in my vision, we crested the round summit. From here everything flattened out.

There were people everywhere, heads tilted heavenward, mouths gaping at the angelic assembly overhead. For their part, the angels were oblivious to our presence. They moved into place and stood with solemn reverence, eyes forward, not looking down.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Tears moistened the wrinkles of Choni’s eyes.

Actually, I had, but I didn’t tell him that. The last time I saw an assembly of angels of this magnitude I was standing atop a skyscraper in San Diego in the center of it all. I liked this time better. No one was paying attention to me.

Hunched over, my hands were on knees as I tried to catch my breath.

Choni came up to me. “You knew before they appeared. How did you know? Are you a prophet?”

“I have a better question,” I said. “Where from here?”

“Yes, yes—” Sue exclaimed, looking around. “Choni, there are three locations that claim to be the place where Jesus ascended.”

Choni nodded. “Traditions, at best. All we have from Scripture is that Jesus ascended in the vicinity of Bethany.”

“Where’s that?”

“Here. Somewhere.”

“So you’re saying—”

“We’re close enough. From here it’s anybody’s guess.”