I, Saul (5 page)

Augie settled back behind his desk wondering what in the world he had done. The timing couldn't have been worse. Where was he going to come up with the money?
Lord,
he said silently,
give me the faith You gave Rajiv to believe this was of You. I'll trust You to provide.

Augie had never seen such a fast change in the weather, especially in Arlington. Huge, roiling black clouds blew in so quickly from the west that temperatures plummeted into the 90s and flashes of light appeared on the horizon. By the time he reached US 30 heading east, the sky was black and lightning struck within a few hundred feet of the highway. The ferocious thunder was so loud it hurt Augie's ears and wind rocked the car. When the heavens opened and the rain came in sheets, Augie's wipers couldn't keep up, and visibility plunged to zero. Like everyone else, he was forced to pull over and wait it out.

With no idea how long he would be delayed, Augie was tempted to call Sofia right then, but the storm would probably keep him from getting through. He and Sofia loved to discuss their future, marriage, kids, even where they might live. Her parents had only recently realized that their friendship had blossomed into something serious.

“Daddy's cautious,” she had told him, admitting that her father insisted it was way too soon for either of them to be “getting ideas.” Augie deduced that Malfees Trikoupis was not yet ready for anyone to ask for his daughter's hand. Amusing, because Augie and Sofia had known each other for years as long-distance friends before moving to
the next level during a tour that ended in the red-rock city of Petra.

When he was thirty, Augie had met Mr. and Mrs. Trikoupis even before he met Sofia, when the tour group gathered in the lobby of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem at the beginning of a Holy Land tour. The understated but elegantly dressed couple exuded wealth and sophistication, and Mrs. Trikoupis mentioned that their daughter was with them but that she had begged off from socializing that first night, knowing she would be the youngest member of the tour group that had congregated from around the world.

Mr. Trikoupis, dark and stocky with a shock of wavy white hair, seemed immediately taken with Augie when Roger Michaels introduced him as the host of the trip. “Young Dr. Knox knows the Book,” Roger had boomed, lips hidden by his prodigious beard.

Mr. Trikoupis had excused himself and led Augie to a corner. “Perhaps this week you can infuse my daughter with a bit of an interest in antiquities, my field,” he said, carefully enunciating in what was clearly a second language for him. “Sofia is a senior at the University of Athens majoring in modern art, but I would love for her to work in my business one day.”

“Your business?”

“I am an importer-exporter dealing in antiquities. I have many shops in Greece, the largest near our home in Thessaloniki.”

“Oh!” Augie had said. “You're
that
Trikoupis! I've been in a Tri-K shop or two of yours. So nice to meet you.”

Augie had caught his first glimpse of the radiant Sofia at breakfast the next morning, and her energy alone made him feel old. Her jet hair and huge blue eyes captivated him, and he was struck by her firm handshake and eagerness to get on with the day. He had been miserable on his first such tour.

Her father had immediately monopolized Augie's time, and it was only near the end of that week that he'd had a chance to chat with Sofia—she had been impressed by his facility with both ancient and modern Greek—and trade e-mail addresses.

For the next few years they communicated sporadically between continents, getting to know each other via the Internet and seeking each other's advice about family and even relationships. She would send photos and resumes of her suitors and Augie would do the same with his miscellaneous dates.

Sofia had upset her father by remaining in Athens after graduating and becoming active in her church and career. “Augie,” she had transmitted one night, “who wants to work for their father? Oh, sorry, you work for yours, don't you?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he had written back. And somewhere along the line Augie became comfortable enough with the Greek beauty that he opened up about the most difficult relationship in his life. Sofia was far enough away that he felt free to express things he had never told anyone.

“I teach in his department, yes, but we don't talk. I'd love to think he was proud of me for following in his footsteps, but we are so unlike each other. May it ever be so.”

“I must know what you're talking about, Augie. I really do care, you know. I won't pester you, but please know you can confide in me. But only if you trust me, and only if you wish.”

One late night (the following morning her time) she suddenly confessed that she was considering going home to work for her father. She had been working in a fine-arts store and teaching evening classes, but, she said, despite many friends and a good church family, she felt lonely. “I don't date guys who don't share my faith,” she wrote. “But even the Christian guys seem to have only sex on their minds. I miss my family.”

“Funny,” he wrote, “I miss the father I never had.” “You don't see him every day?”

“Of course. But he doesn't see me.”

The rain finally began to abate, so Augie carefully followed the other motorists back out onto the highway. When he reached Dallas Theological an hour later, Biff Dyer's ramshackle van was pulling out. Augie honked and Biff stopped next to him. “I told you I wasn't gonna deliver, Augie, and my day is over.”

“I'll owe you, Biff, but you've got to give me a few minutes.”

Biff parked and slammed his door, striding back toward his office looking none too happy. Augie caught up and explained that he had been delayed by the storm. “This phone thing is critical, Biff. You know I'd never take advantage of you.”

“You never have before. But it's my wife's birthday and I—.”

“I won't take a minute longer than necessary.”

Augie loved Biff's space. Behind a plain, efficient office sat a windowless chamber lined with shelves jammed with every electronic gadget imaginable. Biff outfitted the DTS faculty—and much of Arlington's—whenever they went overseas. Biff himself had gone only twice himself, but he'd met Roger Michaels. “Everybody's favorite,” he said. “So what's up with him?”

Augie shook his head. “Petrified about something, and I've never seen him other than totally in control.”

“Roger scared? Can't picture it. Don't think I've ever met anyone as worldly-wise and confident.”

“I know, Biff. But now he needs me for some reason, and I can't let him down.”

Biff quickly traded out the data chip from Augie's phone, inserted
the old one into a drive to be scanned, got online to arrange for a new number, and loaded the new chip with several hundred minutes for international transmissions. “As secure a cell as you'll find, so guard that number. Remember, this doesn't protect anyone's phone you're connecting with. It blocks your identity, but anything that shows up on their phone is fair game.”

“Got it.”

“This thing sucks power like a vacuum, man. Carry a charger everywhere you go. I know you've got a converter for every country on the globe.”

“I don't know how to thank you.”

“I'll bill you. Listen, I gotta run, but let me show you one more thing.”

Biff led Augie into the deepest corner of his electronic shack where the decades-old fluorescent lights barely reached. He pulled a tiny flashlight from his nerd belt and held it in his teeth, talking around it as he moved junk to reveal a new and very compact machine. “You won't bewieve what thith can do, Augie,” he said, mouth full of flashlight. He lifted the boxy apparatus so he could reach a tiny compartment in the back. “Spring loaded.” He pushed in and out sprang a chip no bigger than his finger tip. “Sound activated and can record a hundred hours.”

“No way! Record what?”

“Your phone, if you want.”

Biff explained that top-of-the-line phones can serve as bugging devices, even when turned off. “They can transmit to other phones, or to a recorder like this one.”

“How can that be?”

“It would take me too long to explain. But if you want a record of a conversation, you just hold down this button on the side and hit your pound key, and
voila
.”

“Even with my phone off.”

“Miraculous, eh?”

“From how far away?”

“Where'd you say you were going? Rome?”

“Get out.”

“Want me to program it for your phone, just in case?”

“Of course!”

Biff deftly slipped the chip out from Augie's phone, inserted it into the recorder, hit a button, and replaced it. “Done. And you wouldn't believe the capacity.”

“You're the best.”

“Just be sure to tell me the whole story someday.” “Promise. And give your wife my best wishes.”

“Carol.”

“Carol, right. I haven't met her, have I?”

Biff shot him a look. “The Cities of Paul tour? With Roger?”

“Sure, that's right. Sorry, Biff. My mind's already in Italy.”

When Augie got back on the road toward Arlington Memorial Hospital the sky had turned that pale green that follows a ferocious storm. He realized that within an hour of connecting with his mother he needed to call Sofia before it got too late. As it was, it would be well after midnight in Greece. Difficult as it had been to tell her of his troubled relationship with his father, he had found it freeing. Revealing a part of his history he had shared with few others created a special bond with Sofia.

One of his earliest memories, he had written her online, was of his mother telling him that he was not born to them the way most babies were, but rather they chose him: “Daddy and I accepted you as a gift from God. Your father so longed for a son.”

Yet only his mother seemed to have time for him. His father proved a mysterious presence in the house, quiet, sullen, unengaged. Once, Augie wrote Sofia, he had asked his parents if he could have a brother or a sister. “My mother looked pained, and my father said, ‘Your mother is a little fragile, son. And one child was all we wanted.'

“But later,” Augie wrote, “my father told me that when he realized how difficult raising me was on my mother, he would have been fine having had no children.”

“Oh, Augie. How old were you?”

“Nine or ten. It was weird, though, because my mother frequently reminded me that my dad had so wanted a son that I was a true gift. He was an academic through and through. All I wanted to do was play sports. I badgered him all the time to play catch with me or come to my games. Once my mother insisted that he play catch with me, but he never took off his suit coat or tie. And he threw like someone who had never held a ball before. I remember hoping no one was watching. Then I accidentally tossed the ball over his head, and he scowled before he went to get it. When he bent to pick it up, his pants ripped and he stormed inside, saying, ‘This is why I didn't want to do that!'

“I became a pretty good athlete, all-conference in baseball and basketball in high school. My dad never saw me play. My mother came when she could, but when she would talk at dinner about how proud she was of me and that Dad should have seen me, he'd mutter about hoping I would ‘outgrow these obsessions. There's more to life than fun and games, you know.' The only recreation he allowed himself was crossword puzzles and other word games. Otherwise his nose was always buried in some scholarly book. I learned not to put posters of my ballplayers on my bedroom walls. He'd just tear them down and say, ‘We're not to idolize men.'”

“I'm sorry,” Sofia wrote, and Augie sensed her sympathy was genuine.

“If it hadn't been for my mother's faith, I'd have never become a believer. We were all in church, every service every week. I had good Sunday school teachers and friends, and I liked the pastor. Dad was an elder. He preached sometimes, and though I always found him dead boring, everybody else revered him because he was a professor. Head of a seminary department. They say you base your view of God on your father. Imagine my view.”

“How did you turn out so opposite, Augie? Or is it lucky we live so far from each other?”

“Good question. But no, people like me. They don't like him. And he doesn't seem to care.”

“Your mother was strong enough to keep you from turning out like him?”

“She's a saint. Not perfect, because I wish she'd have stood up to him more often, but that's easy for me to say. He's a powerful force of nature. I don't know what she could have done to change him. But I was also taught that Christians should be known by the joy in their salvation. She had plenty, under the circumstances.”

“And he had none?”

“I saw his teeth only in pictures when he was expected to smile.”

“Sad.”

“How did you keep from rebelling?”

“I didn't. I had no joy either. To me the Christian life was one big chore—rules, limits, dos and don'ts. By the time I was a junior in high school I was this great athlete and a straight-A student, but none of that seemed to please my dad. I thought at least my report card would impress him, but he just gave it a glance and asked if I was sure I was taking all the subjects I needed to get into college. I told him I was
working closely with my academic adviser. He said, ‘If your academic adviser had a clue, wouldn't he be more than an academic adviser?'

“Something in me snapped. I suddenly knew how to get his attention. Not only did I quit studying and turning in homework, I even skipped school now and then. When some buddies and I got busted for shoplifting, Dad wanted to ground me for life, not allow me to play sports, the whole bit. What pierced me though were my mother's tears. I hadn't thought that through. I wanted only to hurt him; to have hurt her crushed me. I told her I would accept any punishment if she would forgive me, and I would never do anything like that again.”