Page 4 of A Gathering Storm

Collins’ dark gaze bored into Victor’s. He suppressed a shiver at the feeling of being in the presence of true evil.

He needs your help. . .

Victor jerked back. The whispered words in his mind were almost as if someone had spoken them into his ear. Collins needed his help? The man was filled with hatred for him. The world. He’d tried to kill Victor once, and given the opportunity, he’d do it again. Collins stood against everything Victor had fought to protect most of his life, and yet the piercing feeling in his heart warned that God was speaking to him. And Collins wasn’t too far gone yet. There was still something redeemable inside him that God wanted to use for His kingdom.

He recalled how the apostle Paul had once persecuted the church before he had a God encounter on the road to Damascus.

Compassion—something Victor never expected to feel for this man reared its head.

“Lizzy has agreed to speak with you along with her husband. Your sister Betty has not. To allow this to happen, I need to know about the rest of the nuclear weapons. You told Cole they were hidden right under our noses. Tell me where they are, and I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

Collins’ eyes widened. He stumbled over his words. “You’d help me? After everything I’ve—”

“I will,” Victor confirmed. “Because I believe you are just as much of a victim in some way as the rest of us.” He watched a little of the hard exterior Collins had become famous for slip. “You do know things about Kirkpatrick’s plans that will help us take him down and stop whatever he has in mind for the nukes.”

Collins focused on a spot at the end of the bed while he swallowed repeatedly. “The weapons were in Anana Harbor. Most of them were moved there from Texas. The rest went to Afghanistan.” His tone was almost humble—something Victor didn’t associate with Collins. “Ahmad thought he was transporting the full weaponry to Afghanistan, but Walton knew you’d connect Ahmad with the missing weapons eventually. He had a separate plane transport the weapons to Alaska to a bunker he’d prepared ahead of time. I can give you the coordinates, but I’m certain he’s moved them by now.”

“What’s the location?” Before he could move forward with helping Collins, he had to make sure the former CIA agent wasn’t leading him on.

Collins rattled the coordinates off while Ben typed them into his phone. “I’ll see if James can procure satellite images of the site and check the radiation content of the space. It should tell us if the weapons are still there.”

“They won’t be there,” Collins insisted. “Walton knows I not only have the location of the bunker, but the code to enter it. He’ll have moved them by now.”

“We’ll need the code.” Victor waited for Collins to give it. The man hesitated for a breath before reciting it.

Ben typed it into the phone and headed for the door. “I’ll send this to James.”

With everything taking place at a rapid pace, Victor prayed Kirkpatrick hadn’t had time to remove the nukes. Because if they were gone, there’d be no way of tracking them.

“I appreciate your cooperation so far, Martin, but we’ll need more. What does Kirkpatrick have planned for the weapons? For the peace talks? Something’s in the works. You must know. He trusted you.”

Collins was without words for the longest time.

“Martin, whether or not you believe it, what Kirkpatrick is planning will affect you and your family. I don’t know what he told you to convince you to go along with him in the first place, but he was using you to put the world in a state of chaos so that he could make himself indispensable for a reason. What is that reason?”

Victor watched the man who appeared defeated, and he wavered between believing Collins would keep his secrets to himself and wondering if there was anything useful if he shared them.

“What peace talks?” A frown formed between Collins’ brows as he glanced around the room. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The declaration seemed to confirm Collins would be of little use beyond possibly locating the nuclear weapons, yet the brokenness Victor witnessed in this man who had caused so much carnage made him appear almost human.

As believers, Christ called them to love their enemies. Could Victor find love in his heart for this man?

“You don’t know anything about what’s been happening in Berlin.” The confusion on Collins’ face confirmed the truth. Victor explained about the unexpected press conference that had taken place in Berlin. For the time being, he withheld information about the failed attack on Israel.

“Kirkpatrick reached out to the world leaders well ahead of the conference to be able to pull off such an enormous feat. Did he mention the peace talks to you? What is he planning?” Victor watched Collins and knew the truth. He’d been kept in the dark about the future events because Kirkpatrick hadn’t planned on him being part of them. “You had no idea this was coming,” Victor surmised.

Collins’ expression froze. He stared wide-eyed at Victor. “I thought he was my friend. He took me under his wing when I was just a young agent at the CIA. Walton told me about all the good we could do in the world together. It was with his urging that I faked my death and brought my team in with me. It was supposed to be the next phase in our grand plan. But it was all a lie.”

Now that they had Collins talking, Victor wanted to hear the whole story. Wanted to know how he’d become the most wanted man in the world.

“You said you met Kirkpatrick when you were new to the Agency?” Victor glanced over at Cole, the former director of the CIA. Cole had experienced firsthand the dangers of Legion when he’d been lured to his family’s cabin and shot by Collins.

Collins’ shoulders slumped and he looked away. “I’ve done some bad things in my life, and I only have myself to blame for them. Walton might have filled my head with grandeur, but I had the choice to do the right thing and didn’t.”

The contriteness on Collins’ face was almost believable. . . if Victor didn’t have a dossier filled with the terrible crimes this man was accused of committing.

Collins proceeded to tell the story of how a young CIA agent had been flattered by the faith Kirkpatrick had shown him. The ideology Kirkpatrick had spewed was a familiar one that came straight from the prince of darkness. It would allow for Collins to make a difference in the world, a dedication that came with a cost. Many would hate him, but in the end the change he’d help bring into being would be honored along with his sacrifices. It was a story as old as time. And one Victor didn’t understand. How could someone as intelligent as Collins let themselves be blinded by lies?

???

---