James BeauSeigneur - In His Image James

"Forty days."

"Forty days!!" Decker blurted out, loud enough for anyone in the lobby to hear him.

"There is no other way," Milner answered, exaggerating his whisper to quiet Decker.

"But if he doesn't freeze or die of thirst first, he'll starve!"

"He will do neither, though the preparation will certainly be brutal and unmerciful. Still, he is there by his own choice. No one could force this upon him. He has chosen it for himself. If he wishes, he may withdraw from the preparation at any time."

"Then I'll stay here and wait for him," Decker said.

"You too must choose of your own will," Milner said. "But you can do nothing here. If you return to New York you may be able to provide essential information to Christopher upon his return which will help him in the decisions he must make."

Obviously there was no real choice; Decker had to return to New York. But just as obvious was Decker's concern about leaving Christopher. He was sure that Milner would never let any harm come to him; next to Decker no one was closer to Christopher, and in some respects Milner was probably closer. Still, this could be a matter of life and death. Milner could see the worry in Decker's eyes and so once more placed his hand on Decker's shoulder. Suddenly, a peace such as he had never known swept over Decker and his anxiety just seemed to vanish.

"Will you stay here?" Decker asked.

"Yes. I cannot go to him but I will stay as close to him as I can." Decker nodded his approval.

"I'll leave on the next available flight, but I'll be back in thirty-eight days, before Christopher returns."

"Good," Milner said. "And now I must leave." Decker shook Milner's hand firmly and Milner turned to leave, but stopped before he had gone two steps. "Oh, Decker," he said as he turned halfway back around, "be particularly careful of Ambassador Moore."

"Is he a part of this somehow?"

"Not exactly," said Milner. He's just a very ambitious man who will stop at nothing to become Secretary-General. The forces who oppose us seek out such men as surrogates to accomplish their goals for them."

Stopping at Nothing

December 14,2020 – New York

"Back so soon?" Jackie Hansen asked as Decker arrived at the Italian Mission in New York. "I expected you two to be gone for at least a week." Decker showed himself into Christopher's office and signaled without speaking for Jackie to follow. "What's up?" she asked after she closed the door. "Where's Christopher?"

"He's still in Israel," Decker answered. "He's going to be there for about a month and a half." Decker was hoping to make this explanation as simple as possible, but it wasn't going to be easy.

"A month and a half! "Jackie exploded. "He can't do that! He's got things to do, meetings to attend, speaking engagements." Decker held up his hands to stop Jackie so he could continue his explanation, but she had never yielded to that ploy in the past, and she wouldn't now. "I'll just give him a call and point out a few things to him! "What's the number at his hotel?"

"He's not at a hotel… "

"Fine. What's the number where he's staying?"

"Jackie, it's just not possible to reach him."

"Well, I'll just call him on his pocket phone."

"Jackie, stop! He doesn't have it with him. Please, just wait a minute." Jackie crossed her arms and stopped talking. For a moment at least, she was listening. Decker quickly seized the opportunity. "We found Robert Milner."

Jackie dropped back against the edge of Christopher's desk. "Is he all right? Is he alive?" she asked. After being missing for sixteen months, nothing could be taken for granted.

"He's fine. He looks just fine." The news of Milner had the disarming effect on Jackie that Decker was hoping for. Now perhaps he could try to explain without Jackie interrupting. "Christopher is with him," he said. It was a little less than the truth, but a lot easier to explain.

"Well, they must be staying somewhere," Jackie said, getting back to her previous track.

"Yes, of course. But there's no phone and there's no way to reach them."

This understandably made no sense to Jackie. "You mean they're camping out or something?" she asked, offering the only suggestion she could think of.

"Well, yes. In a manner of speaking, I guess you could put it that way."

"But it's the middle of winter. They'll freeze!"

Decker had run out of simple explanations. "Look, they'll be fine. You know how I feel about Christopher; he's like my own son, the only family I've had since the Disaster. I wouldn't leave him there unless I was sure he'd be all right." As he finished he realized his words had been as much to reassure himself that he'd made the right decision as they were to convince Jackie.

"But why didn't he at least call?"

"I know it sounds crazy," Decker said, "but there just wasn't an opportunity to call." Jackie's expression told him that the part about it sounding crazy had been a correct assessment. "Look, I don't really understand it either. Milner said it all had to do with some New Age stuff."

"Oh," Jackie said, not as though she now understood, but rather as though suddenly she no longer needed to. "Well, uh… then I guess I'd better get to work canceling Christopher's appointments."

Decker was dumbfounded by Jackie's sudden change of attitude but was glad that he didn't need to explain Christopher's absence any further. Now he could concentrate on his own anxiety about leaving Christopher in Israel in the first place – not a very comforting accomplishment, he realized.

"Jackie, there's one other thing," Decker added, "something I need your help with. When Milner and Christopher are finished with whatever it is that they're doing in Israel I'm supposed to meet them there and brief Christopher on everything that's happened at the U.N. while he's been gone: not just things that concern Italy or Europe, but everything. I'll have someone in my office compile and index every press release that goes out of the U.N. Printing Office. I'll take care of any reports, studies, speeches, white-papers, etc. Christopher is especially interested in any information on Ambassador Moore's activities. I know you've got friends in nearly every office… "

"Not in Moore's office," Jackie interrupted.

"What about through the Lucius Trust?" Decker suggested.

"Moore doesn't let anyone from his office associate with the Trust."

"You're kidding! Barring free association of employees is against international human rights and labor laws."

"Well, he doesn't exactly prohibit it. It's more a matter of 'very careful hiring.' Secretary Milner looked into it a few years back and apparently didn't think we could prove anything."

'Too bad," Decker said.

"Maybe somebody I know knows someone in Moore's office," Jackie suggested. "I'll try to find out."

"Great," Decker said. "But you need to be very careful in how you go about it. It could be very damaging if any of this gets back to Moore."

"Of course," Jackie answered.

December 15,2020

Two days later Jackie Hansen came up with a contact, a friend from the Lucius Trust who had a friend who was a low-level staffer in Moore's office. This meant that any information the staffer provided would be limited to what was said around the office, and then further limited by what he remembered and how well he remembered it, and then by what he was willing to tell Jackie's friend. Finally, it would be passed to Jackie, who would commit it all to paper for

Decker. By the time the information reached Decker it would be in at least its fourth telling. Still, it might help fill in some holes along the way and, as Decker well knew from his days in the press, any bit of information could be important.

The first piece of information to emerge was simply a vague indication that Moore was leaning on General Brooks to end the war as swiftly as possible, hardly a major news item. But it did help explain Brooks' action a week later when he issued an ultimatum to Chinese arms merchants to immediately cease the sale of weapons to the combatants. The move did not set well with Ambassador Fahd, the Middle East Security Council Primary. The arms from China were not going in the generic sense to the 'combatants,' as Brooks described them, but rather to only one of the combatants: Pakistan, a country in Fahd's region. Stopping the sale of Chinese weapons would only benefit India. And Pakistan was not the only Middle East country with an interest; the Chinese arms were being purchased with oil money.