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  He swiveled in his captain’s chair and said, “Young man, you almost met your maker.”

  Omar nodded, and then whispered hoarsely, “Thank you, sir.”

  “Just abiding by the law of the sea,” Harley said. “If someone is in trouble, you must help them.”

  “But only if you do not endanger yourself,” said Omar. The boy knew his rules of the nautical road. After a few seconds, he added, “You put yourself in danger. I appreciate it.”

  “So, what were you doing out there?” Harley asked.

  “Taking pictures,” the young man said.

  “Of what?”

  “The shoreline.”

  “That’s a United States Army Fort,” Harley said, gravely. “I suspect you are up to no good.”

  Omar looked almost as scared as he did when he was trapped on the boat. “No, sir. Photography is my hobby.”

  “You take good pictures, I know,” said Harley. “I have seen your work in Occoquan. But you were not preparing for an art show today.”

  Omar looked around, desperately wanting to get off of Harley’s boat. When he saw there was no escape, he asked, “Who are you?”

  “Harley Camden.”

  “Do you live in Occoquan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a second. I know your name. You visited my father, didn’t you? That was good of you.”

  The police boat appeared again with its siren and lights on, but this time it was heading east on Gunston Cove. It circled the burning boat, looking for people in the water. Harley pointed to the police boat and said to Omar, “I could turn you and your camera over to them.”

  The young man held his camera even tighter to his chest, and stared down at his feet, not wanting to look Harley in the eyes. “Go ahead. It’s a free country. I can take pictures of whatever I want.”

  “All right,” said Harley, “let’s go over to them and I’ll tell them my suspicions.”

  Omar realized that Harley had called his bluff, and he squirmed in his seat. At that point, a fire boat appeared around the eastern end of Fort Belvoir and motored up to the burning boat. A large water cannon was directed at the fire, and within seconds it was out.

  Harley pushed his throttle forward to move toward the boats filled with police and firefighters. As he did, Omar said, “Wait. Let’s talk. I don’t think you need to tell them about the pictures.”

  “Why not?” asked Harley.

  “Because I’m not going to do anything with them. If you want, I’ll give them to you.”

  Harley thought for a moment “All right,” he said, “I’ll consider it. Let me hold on to the camera, and I won’t turn you over to the police.”

  Omar handed him the camera and showed him where the memory chip was inserted. They pulled up alongside the police boat, and Omar explained to the officers that he had caused the fire by failing to run the blower before starting the engine. Harley vouched for him by saying that it was a rookie mistake and could have happened to anyone. Since the hull of the boat had remained intact, miraculously, the officers said that the fire boat would tow it to the Town of Occoquan. They explained that Omar would have to take responsibility for the boat being salvaged or transported to a dump, and the young man agreed that he would do that. They took down his personal information and said that they would be in touch with him as they filed their report on the incident.

  The trip back to Occoquan looked like a funeral procession. The fire boat pulled a charred hull, and behind it was a bowrider containing two solemn men, the older one with a camera slung over his shoulder. As they entered the Occoquan River, Omar turned around and looked at Harley with anger in his eyes.

  “What’s the matter with you?” snapped Harley.

  “You’ve got nothing,” muttered Omar. “I should tell the cops you tried to molest me.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Harley. He sounded confident, but he wasn’t. Omar’s threat was not only unexpected but deeply unnerving. “Your best bet is to say nothing at all,” Harley scolded.

  The two said nothing for the rest of the trip, both acutely aware of the damage that each could do to the other. The air remained hot and still, and Harley wondered where the wind of the Spirit had gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  Harley dreamed he was in his twenties, on his summer semester in Israel, digging in the Galilee. A warm breeze caused a grove of pine trees to sway gently, and a pair of birds flew in gentle circles above him in a cloudless sky. He had spent the day working in the same square as Leah Silverman, enjoying playful banter while sifting dirt in the search for ancient coins and sherds of pottery. Leah’s legs were brown from weeks in the sun, slender and long beneath her cutoff jeans. She wore a yellow T-shirt from a Go-Go’s concert with the sleeves rolled up, a red bandana on her head, and aviator sunglasses. Harley enjoyed looking at her across the sifter, and he loved to make her laugh.

  When the workday was over, he returned to his A-frame dorm for a quick nap before their afternoon classes. Dozing off, he was visited by a wingless but clearly supernatural messenger who told him that Leah was pregnant. Harley was shocked, since the two of them had not slept together and he was not aware that she was seeing anyone else. Pregnant? How could that be? Then the angel said, “Harley, do not be afraid to take Leah as your wife.”

  What? That was more unexpected than an unplanned pregnancy.

  “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus.”

  When Harley awoke from sleep in the A-frame, he wondered whether the angel was speaking the truth or not. How would I know? He had never received a message from God in a dream. What would Leah say if I approached her and asked if she were pregnant? Would she marry me? Would she even consider raising a child with me?

  In the dream, Harley wrestled with these questions as he lay in bed and looked out of the dorm at the rays of afternoon sunlight coming through the pine trees of Galilee. Justice was important to him, as was personal responsibility, so he thought Leah should be held accountable for her unplanned pregnancy. He felt anger toward her for flirting with him on the dig site and then spending the night with someone else. But he also had compassion for her and didn’t want to do anything to embarrass her or cause her public humiliation. Wrestling inside him were the virtues of justice and love, fighting for dominance inside Harley just as they had battled inside Joseph. He went back and forth and finally concluded that he should go ahead and marry her.

  Harley awoke from his dream in Occoquan, feeling even more confused. He had experienced a dream within a dream. As the fog lifted, he realized that the promise of intimacy with Leah was a fantasy. He was hungry for closeness and camaraderie, attraction and affection, but the reality of his life was that he had ended their Fourth of July boat ride with a slow boil of anger and frustration. The dreams seemed to be challenging him to make a commitment to Leah, an offer of unconditional support as she brought a new life into the world. But what was that life, if it was not a baby? Leah is surely not pregnant, he thought, not at age fifty-five. Only in the dream was she a fertile young woman. But the dream inside the dream was so vivid. What was God saying to me? Or, if it was not a message from God, what is my subconscious saying to me?

  Looking around his bedroom, he quickly took stock of his reality. In the dream within a dream, he felt love and connection. But in the real world, he faced overwhelming fear and judgment and rejection. He was suddenly terrified by the thought of what might happen to him as a result of taking Omar’s camera. Members of an ISIS cell might attack him and kill him in the carport beneath his house. The police could arrest him for possessing evidence of a terrorist plot. Maybe Omar would follow through on his threat to accuse him of sexual abuse. His congregation would fire him and his friends would desert him.

  He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and tried to control his breathing. Settle down. Don’t panic. You are allowing yourself to be dragged to a very dark place. The fact is that you are holding on to the camera of a young man whose life you just saved. Noth
ing more, nothing less. There is no evidence of anything. Your suspicions are just your suspicions. Remember, when you get stressed, the best thing to do is focus on your daily routine. What was it that the angel said? “Harley, do not be afraid.”

  Rolling out of bed, he headed downstairs to make coffee. As the coffeemaker gurgled, he glanced at the clock on the microwave. He had an hour before he needed to be in Woodbridge for a clergy breakfast. Routine would help him. He picked up The Washington Post on his front porch and read about another terrorist attack by a lone-wolf soldier of the Islamic State, this one a vehicular attack in a crowded Spanish beach town. Five people dead, seventeen injured. It was certainly good that the regular army of the Islamic State had been so badly degraded, but defeats on the battlefield did not reduce the frequency of these random attacks. If anything, they seemed to be increasing, as ISIS shifted its attention.

  Harley thought more about his rescue of Omar. He was still fearful, but his panic was subsiding. Reflecting on the moment he pulled close to the Bayati boat, he wondered what had driven him to do what he did. Did I really want to save Omar, or did I secretly hope that the fireball would kill us both? While such a death would have been agonizing, he wouldn’t be facing the tension he was experiencing now, the struggle between love and justice that Joseph had experienced in Nazareth. Looking from his kitchen to the dining room, he saw Omar’s camera on the table, containing what he assumed were surveillance pictures of Fort Belvoir. Harley had looked at the digital photos on the camera screen the previous night, and he saw just a few buildings and roadways in very high resolution. He realized that the pictures alone were not proof of a terrorist plot, but they must have been taken with malicious intent. There was simply no other reason to be shooting such photos. And then his mind shifted to the dream of fertile Leah, which was a much happier focal point, a balm for his fearful heart. What kind of new life am I supposed to be supporting in all this? What risk am I being challenged to take?

  Harley sipped his coffee while getting dressed, thinking about how the struggle between judgment and compassion had appeared first in Joseph’s dream, and then continued throughout the ministry of Jesus. In fact, it was one of the dominant themes of the New Testament, hidden in plain sight. Why didn’t I see it before? Checking the weather report on his smartphone, he saw that the day was going to be another hot one, so he skipped the tie and put on a lightweight sport jacket. Then he headed out the door for his clergy breakfast, grabbing Omar’s camera as he passed the dining room table and throwing it into his trunk for safekeeping—and just in case he was called on by authorities.

  Walking into the Bob Evans in Woodbridge, it didn’t take him long to find the clergy breakfast. Ten men were sitting around a long table, and about half were wearing clergy collars. Harley was surprised that there were no women but then figured that such gatherings were rather old-fashioned and might not appeal to younger female pastors. He saw an empty seat, asked if anyone was sitting there, and then introduced himself to the men on either side, one in a collar and one in a golf shirt.

  “Hi, I’m Harley Camden, the new pastor of Riverside Methodist in Occoquan.”

  “Welcome. I’m Jim Black, the pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Woodbridge.”

  “And I’m Tony White, pastor of New Life Community Church in Lake Ridge.”

  “Black and White,” said Harley, trying to remember their names. “Sounds like a joke.”

  “We’ve heard them all,” said Father Black. “Please, have a seat.”

  “How long have you been here, Harley?” asked Pastor White.

  “Arrived in June. The bishop moved me down from Sterling.”

  “I feel your pain,” said Father Black. “You and I get moved around by our bishops, while White here can stay where he is as long as he keeps his customers satisfied.”

  “Church members,” corrected White.

  “Whatever,” said Black. “You keep your flock happy, and you can stay for years and years.”

  “True enough,” White agreed. “But if I make them unhappy, I can find myself on the street without a job. You guys have security as long as you stay loyal to the bishop.”

  “But sometimes that loyalty gets sorely tested,” added Harley. “So, what’s the news in Woodbridge?”

  “We were just talking about one of our younger colleagues,” said Black. “Nice guy, a regular at these breakfasts, a Lutheran. He seemed to be doing well at his church, but then he started disappearing for hours at a time. His church administrator would ask where he was going, and he would give evasive answers. She got concerned enough that she notified the bishop.”

  “The bishop sent a member of his staff to find out what was going on,” White added. “The pastor was not in his office that day, but a church member had been to lunch at a local restaurant and reported that the pastor was there, sitting at a table in the corner. The bishop’s assistant found the pastor and asked him what he was doing. The guy said that he was performing intelligence work, meeting with informants and assisting authorities with matters of national security.”

  The blood drained out of Harley’s face. He could only croak out the words, “That’s odd.”

  “Very much so,” continued Black. “Long story short, he was having some kind of psychotic break. Total delusions. The bishop pulled him out of his church and put him on administrative leave. I sure hope he is getting the help he needs.”

  “Amen to that,” White said. “He was a heck of a preacher. Very passionate and engaging. He preached so well at a community Thanksgiving service that he made me jealous.”

  “Well, it’s often the passionate ones who go off the rails,” said Harley. A wave of paranoia swept over him; he hoped that no one had observed him on the water with Omar.

  “Yeah, we’ve lost some good ones from the Catholic Church,” Black noted. “Although, when you calculate how much trouble they cause, the cost of cleaning up their messes always exceeds the benefit of whatever gifts they have.”

  “Better to be boring,” said White.

  “Fortunately, that’s your gift,” cracked Black, smiling.

  A pastor at the end of the table asked the newcomers to introduce themselves and then said that they would order breakfast, share some announcements, and then have a prayer when their food arrived. Harley scanned the menu but could hardly focus on it since the story of the Lutheran pastor had spooked him so badly.

  Fortunately, the time of announcements gave him a few minutes of welcome distraction. Father Black said that a pro-life demonstration was being planned for a local women’s clinic, which struck Harley as a black-and-white response to the problem of unwanted pregnancies. But then Black added that he had found an immigration attorney who was charging his parishioners very reasonable rates as she helped them to navigate the citizenship process. A number of pastors around the table nodded and asked if they could get her number. Pastor White announced that a talk on sexual purity would be offered at his church and invited the group to publicize it among their youth leaders. Harley conjured a mental picture of the poster for the event, with the word sexual in black letters and purity in white letters. Then White encouraged his colleagues to join him in an effort to curb payday lending, which was drawing his low-income church members into a downward spiral of debt.

  After the food was delivered and the pastor at the head of the table said grace, Harley continued his conversation with the clergy on either side of him.

  “I know that your Lutheran colleague was dealing with some mental issues,” he began, “but I am sure there are some serious national security issues all around us. What would you do if a member of your congregation told you about a terrorist plot?”

  “I’d go right to one of my deacons who works for the CIA,” said Pastor White, as he took a bite of toast.

  “It depends,” responded Father Black.

  “Depends on what?” asked Harley.

  “Depends on where I heard it. If it was in the confessional, I would h
ave to keep it confidential.”

  “Really?” said White. “Even if the plot posed a real danger?”

  “Yes. The seal of the confessional prohibits me from disclosing anything I hear. What is said is between the parishioner and God.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” asked Harley.

  “Of course. I can encourage the parishioner to report what he has heard. Or to turn himself in, if he is part of the plot.”

  “That sounds righteous, in theory,” White observed, after swallowing another bite. “But what if lives are lost because the plot is not revealed?”

  “I cannot break the seal,” said Black, “even under the threat of my own death. Some things are more important than life and death.”

  White shook his head in disagreement.

  “What I hear you saying is that you cannot reveal what a person says, but you can try to persuade them to do the right thing,” Harley said.

  “Exactly,” said Black. “Confession is all about getting right with God, and doing the right thing is always part of reconciliation.”

  “I have always found that people are more willing to speak honestly when they know that I will keep things secret,” Harley said.

  “That’s the key to confession,” said Black.

  Pastor White wiped his mouth with a napkin and said that he would have to run. Harley looked at the time on his cell phone and realized he needed to leave, too.

  Back at Riverside Methodist, Harley pulled into the parking lot and checked his trunk to make sure that Omar’s camera was safe and secure. Then he entered his office by the side door and punched the button on his answering machine. There was only one message, and it made his heart skip a beat.

  “Harley, it’s Leah. I won’t leave a detailed message on your office machine, but I’d like to get together. Are you free for dinner tonight? Give me a call.”