Free The Regime: Evil Advances by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins

successful pilot someday?”
    “That isn’t the point. She’s a brilliant student. She can write her own ticket. She’ll be fine that way. You’re a grown man. You have the right to make these decisions on your own, even if I disagree. Even if I hate the consequences. But she’s twelve, Rafe. Challenging the existence of God, saying I can’t know the Bible is true, fighting going to church and Sunday school every week. She criticizes her Sunday school teacher, slouches and folds her arms and closes her eyes during sermons.”
    “She hears them.”
    “Oh, I know well she hears them, because she picks them apart.”
    “So do you, Irene.”
    “I give up.” She turned away from him.
    “No, don’t do that. At least we’re talking. Do you really want me to feel like you’ve given up on me?”

    She turned back. “No, I don’t. But I want you to encourage Chloe to give me a chance. Give the Bible the benefit of the doubt. Make an attitude adjustment about Sundays.”
    Rayford sat up and swung his feet off the side of the bed. “Can’t do it,” he said.
    “Oh, Rafe!”
    “I can’t, Irene. I have to be true to myself and do what I believe is best. You’re not going to browbeat your own child into a life decision this important. You can’t force her to share your beliefs. She has to come to them on her own. I want her faith to be based on her own study and conclusions.”
    “Like yours.”
    “Yes, like mine! What’s wrong with mine?”
    “You don’t have any, Rayford. You attend church the way you go to the club. If you were serious about your relationship with God, you would study the Bible, go to a church that teaches and preaches it. And you’d be sure you raised your children the same way. No, I don’t want to give Chloe an inherited faith. I just want to see her more open, more teachable, more malleable. She’s too young to be so rebellious, so anti-everything.”
    “She’s not a rebel, Irene. She’s a good kid, a great student, never in trouble. I asked you to imagine the kind of husband you could have. Imagine the kind of daughter you could have.”
    “So I’m supposed to be thrilled with my husband and my daughter—despite their nonexistent relationships with God—because of what they’re not? Well, Rayford,

    let me tell you, I’m just so thrilled that I thank God every day you’re not like Hitler. And isn’t it wonderful that you’re not a mass murderer? That could really put a crimp in a marriage.”
    “Now it’s my turn to give up,” he said.
    With that, Irene was out of bed and pulling on her robe. She turned on the lights and sat before the television.
    “You know,” he said, “that thing you said about my going to church the way I go to the club?”
    “Um-hm,” she said, not looking at him.
    “That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to switch churches.”
    She turned to look at him, bewilderment on her face.
    “You realize our church is where we met our doctor, our dentist, our insurance guy, and even the man who put my name in for membership at the club?”
    Irene turned back to the TV.

TEN

    Nicolae Carpathia and Leon Fortunato walked and talked until dawn, stopping to take in the beauty of the Romanian sunrise over the Carpathian Mountains. Peter and a bodyguard discreetly stayed about a hundred feet behind them.
    The men traded life stories, hopes, dreams, plans. While Nicolae had not yet said it in so many words, it had to be clear to Fortunato that he was being vetted for a role in Carpathia’s future.
    The more they talked, the more specific Nicolae became and the more questions he asked. Fortunato soon sounded like a man selling himself, but he was subtle. It was, Nicolae decided, as if it was clear to both men what each wanted, but neither would put it on the table.
    Finally they retired back to the anteroom, where Leon slipped on the smoking jacket and Peter had plates of fruit and toast delivered.

    “I do not like to play cat and mouse,” Nicolae