L.B.: Buck's new friends

Left Behind, pp. 305-308

Reading this section of the book is painful and disorienting. It has the unreal, detached sensation of a hangover after a lost weekend.

The last thing we knew, we were at the Plaza, talking to Nicolae, but now, suddenly, we're back at Buck's apartment. How did we get here? The authors fill in the blanks with a flashback of the end of the conversation at the hotel, but the pieces don't seem to fit. Something shameful happened there, but their groggy retelling of what that was blurs that part of the story. Neither Buck nor the authors seems willing to admit what really just happened.

Buck Williams had returned to his apartment after midnight, assured by Nicolae Carpathia that his worries were over.

It is "after midnight" -- several hours after midnight. At midnight, Buck was back on Marge Potter's couch, watching the end of Nightline. It was already after midnight when he got into a cab, rode to the Plaza, eluded the police, wrestled with a rival reporter, conducted a lengthy, but weirdly off-the-record, interview with the president of Romania, and then took another cab home.

The fuzzy timeline here is inconsequential, though, compared to the authors' fuzzy apprehension of why Carpathia has assured Buck that "his worries were over." Buck literally just made a deal with the devil.

Carpathia had phoned Jonathan Stonagal, put him on speakerphone, and Stonagal had done the same as he made the middle-of-the-night [i.e., 6 or 7 a.m. GMT] phone call to London that cleared Williams. Buck heard Todd-Cothran's husky-voiced agreement to call off the Yard and Interpol.

The problem with a speakerphone when someone is promising that they'll stop trying to have you killed is that you can't see whether or not they're crossing their fingers. Here are some demonstrably ruthless men. Just yesterday, they incinerated a police officer. They have entire police agencies working for them. Before this phone call, they were trying to have Buck arrested and extradited -- if they even let him live long enough to get on the plane ("We haven't quite decided yet whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape"). Yet after this phone call Buck is perfectly satisfied that everything is hunky-dory between him and the Global Conspiracy of Evil.

Let me just interject a bit of advice here: If you should ever find yourself marked for execution by an international conspiracy willing to stop at nothing until you are dead, and then, the day after they planted a bomb in your car, you talk to the conspirators on the phone and they abruptly inform you that you no longer have anything to worry about and you're perfectly safe now -- don't trust them. Change your name, dye your hair and start over again in a faraway city where no one knows who you are.

Buck assumes he's safe because the preternaturally charismatic Nicolae has told him so, and he seems to have used his Antichrist mojo on Buck's behalf. Nicolae has also reframed the situation for the conspirators -- let Buck live and they'll keep their names out of the paper, avoiding any controversy that could interfere with their plans at the U.N.

Why should they accept this rather than making sure Buck stays quiet the same way they made sure Alan Tompkins and Dirk Burton stayed quiet? Because Buck has joined the team. He has promised not to report on what he knows, effectively making himself a part of their conspiracy.

Buck's failure to understand that this is what has happened seems to arise from LaHaye and Jenkins' failure to understand that this is what has happened. The authors have worked so hard to establish Buck's heroism as a fearless, crusading journalist that they can't seem to come to grips with what he's just done, which was either cowardly or evil, or both:

"But my package is secure?" Todd-Cothran asked.

"Guaranteed," Stonagal had said.

Most alarming to Buck was that Stonagal did his own dirty work, at least in this instance. Buck had looked accusingly at Carpathia, despite his relief and gratitude.

"Mr. Williams," Carpathia said, "I was confident Jonathan could handle this, but I am just as ignorant of the details as you are."

"But this just proves Dirk was right! Stonagal is conspiring with Todd-Cothran, and you knew it! And Stonagal promised him his package was secure, whatever that means."

"I assure you I knew nothing until you told me, Buck. I had no prior knowledge."

"But now you know. Can you still in good conscience allow Stonagal to help promote you in international politics?"

On Buck's behalf and at Buck's request, Carpathia cuts a deal with Stonagal after which, "despite his relief and gratitude," Buck lectures him for dealing with Stonagal. Seconds after Buck himself promises never to report what he knows about the conspiracy, he wags a finger in Nicolae's face, condemning him for not immediately exposing it.

Faced with such astounding duplicity and hypocrisy, with Buck's fervent condemnation of the very thing he himself is flagrantly guilty of, Nicolae has an epiphany: Buck would make a great press secretary.

Buck, alas, declines the job offer. He's a busy man, after all. He's got people to see, stories to bury, international conspiracies to cover up. Frankly, he's swamped.

Buck jokingly recommends that Nicolae instead hire Eric Miller, the reporter he'd been wrestling with in the hallway:

He told Carpathia what had happened in the lobby, on the elevator, and in the hall before Miller introduced himself. Nicolae was not amused.

So, after realizing that Carpathia is buddies with the conspirators who killed Dirk and Alan because they were Getting Too Close, Buck mentions that his rival, Miller, might be Getting Too Close too. Later, Buck will seem genuinely surprised when Miller doesn't show up for work the next day.

Through all of this, Buck seems convinced that Nicolae is innocent. Deadly, ruthless criminals are conspiring to install the Romanian as head of the United Nations, but Buck doesn't think that Nicolae's political benefit from their machinations entails any complicity on his part. He doesn't even blink when Nicolae goes on to explain how he plans to transform the impotent diplomatic bureaucracy into a world-dominating military power.

The Antichrist explains his plan:

"Israel is particularly vulnerable, as they were before Russia tried to invade them. They were lucky that time, but the rest of the world resents their prosperity. They need protection. The U.N. can give it to them. ...

You might think that the destruction of the entire Russo-Ethiopian Armada without a single Israeli casualty would have demonstrated, definitively, that Israel has all the protection it needs. But Nicolae, like the authors, has a checklist and the checklist says a peace treaty with Israel is the next thing to happen. An Antichrist has gotta do what an Antichrist has gotta do, even if it doesn't make any sense at the time.

"... In exchange for the chemical formula that makes the desert bloom, the world will be content to grant them peace. If the other nations disarm and surrender a tenth of their weapons to the U.N., only the U.N. will have to sign a peace accord with Israel."

As far as plans for world domination go, I don't find this one particularly impressive. Nicolae's plan is to ask every nation on earth to surrender their weapons voluntarily, destroying 9/10 of their arsenals and giving the rest to him. Why wouldn't they? The authors can't imagine any objections to such a scheme, and neither can Buck:

Buck sat shaking his head. "You're going to get the Nobel Peace prize, TIME's Man of the Year, and our Newsmaker of the Year."

"Those certainly are not my goals."

Buck left Carpathia believing that as deeply as he had ever believed anything. Here was a man unaffected by the money that could buy lesser men.

A man untainted by greed or the lust for fame and prestige. All he humbly wants is to create his only military superpower and to ensure that it's the only fighting force on earth.

And so, finally, 80+ pages and 20+ hours after it began, the Longest Day comes to an end. Buck, who hasn't slept or eaten since he got off the plane from Germany, is so tired he can't even manage one more phone call:

At his apartment Buck discovered yet another phone message from Hattie Durham. He had to call that girl.

Comments

[Brian J.]

So Buck is Karl Rove. Can't say I'm even a bit surprised- this is who LaJenkins want to be and who their readers want to be. (And who says LaJenkins couldn't see into the future from 1995?)

[Jos]

the chemical formula that makes the desert bloom

What? You know, I hope this is a poetic turn of phrase or something. I mean, a person can enrich the soil all he wants, but there still won't be that many plants if it doesn't rain once in a while.

I'll admit, I don't know much about desertification or whatever is required to reverse that process, but I'm thinking Rosenzweig's sand-to-soil formula isn't going to cut it on its own.

[Geds]

Is it strange that I now live in fear of writing phone calls in to stuff I'm working on? Somehow I feel like Fred's looking over my shoulder whenever I have someone pick up a phone to order pizza...

[mogley]

"You're going to get the Nobel Peace prize, TIME's Man of the Year, and our Newsmaker of the Year."

So LaHaye and Jenkins just equated the Nobel Peace Prize with the Antichrist? Wow, that puts Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu, and Mother Theresa in a whole different light.

[Tonio]

"Something shameful happened there, but their groggy retelling of what that was blurs that part of the story. Neither Buck nor the authors seems willing to admit what really just happened."

Based on my reading of the Omen books years ago, I was expecting Buck's "initiation" into Carpathia's conspiracy to involve a drug-fueled homosexual orgy.

Is Carpathia supposed to have a demonic ability to win converts? Like Svengali or Rasputin or Charles Manson?

[Andy]

So all nations are willingly going to give up their entire arsenals in exchange for a formula which makes deserts bloom? Even desert-free nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, etc? Maybe the formula doesn't only work in deserts, but still, this has to be the funniest thing I've seen in the entire book.

[Jos]

Is Carpathia supposed to have a demonic ability to win converts? Like Svengali or Rasputin or Charles Manson?

He's got mind-control powers, certainly. We don't know if he's used them on Buck, though.

[S. Tarzan]

He's got mind-control powers, certainly. We don't know if he's used them on Buck, though.

In all honesty, would he need to?

[David]

...In exchange for the chemical formula that makes the desert bloom...

I wasn't aware you could win the Nobel Prize for scientific work that is not only unpublished in a peer-reviewed journal but also, evidently, has not even been made public in any form, being kept instead as a trade secret for commercial advantage. Of course, that trade-secret-for-commercial-advantage thing rubs some of the shiny altruism off the "ending world hunger" achievement, too. Oh well.

And yes, in light of the many glaring problems Fred is so astutely pointing out, I'm aware of how minor this nitpick is...

[damnedyankee]

I'd have thought that the challenge in writing a story like this would have been to create a plausible series of events to stitch together the disparate events of the PMD Checklist of Doomy-Doom-Doom Doomliness into a cohesive, plausible narrative. A tall order, yeah, but I can't imagine it being entirely beyond the ken of a good writer.

And there's the rub: A good writer is required. Instead, what we get is these random-seeming hops from point to point, with no understanding why and even less internal coherence.

The fact that these books even made back the cost of printing, let alone became bestsellers, is cause for serious drinking, and I haven't touched the stuff since 1993.

[Erick Oppeen]

So Carpathia's got mind-control powers? Big deal! Nobody in this book seems to have a mind! This is Groo World we're talking here...the Cheese-Dip Wanderer would be in this world's equivalent of Mensa!

[damnedyankee]

Garcon! A new GIRAT, sil vous plait! The one you brought me has turned into Tim Russert!

[damnedyankee]

This is Groo World we're talking here...

I am the GIRAT of Chichester...

[cjmr]

*soda on screen* Thanks, you...you...you damnedyankee!

[cjmr]

(that was directed at the 4:14 joke, not the 4:16 one, BTW)

[damnedyankee]

(that was directed at the 4:14 joke, not the 4:16 one, BTW)

*Sigh*, me and Erick Oppeen, alone in our love of the GROOniverse... ;-)

[Vermic]

Nicolae's plan is to ask every nation on earth to surrender their weapons voluntarily, destroying 9/10 of their arsenals and giving the rest to him. Why wouldn't they?

Wasn't this more or less the plot of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? And that didn't work out so hot.

Just yesterday, they incinerated a police officer.

OMG, this really is The Longest Day. That happened YESTERDAY?

[Tonio]

"In all honesty, would he need to?"

(chuckle)

[Spalanzani]

Well, I liked the 4:16 joke...
Anyway, now that Fred seems to have reached the end of the whole "Buck sells his soul to save his hide"-section of the book, I'm wondering how much more there is to go. I've tried looking into how long the first Left Behind book is, but there seem to be at least two editions with different page counts. What kind of copy does Fred have, and how long is it?
Not that I want Left Behind Fridays to end, of course. It's just that there's 11 more of these things to go and we've got only 6 billion years before the sun explodes.

[aunursa]

IIRC In the sequel Tribulation Force, Nicolae pressures the United States, as the world's superpower, to take the first step and destroy its arsenal, expecting the other nations to follow once they see that the U.S. has complied.

[patter]

Best unintentionally funny line so far:

"But my package is secure?" Todd-Cothran asked.

[Doctor Science]

My Irony & Sarcasm Detector seems to have gone all wonky, so I'm having trouble following Fred here.

What is supposed to have happened, in a literalist-intentionalist reading of the text? Do L&J intend to convey that Buck has joined the Antichrist? Do they intend to show that Ol' Nick has used his Mojo on Buck and persuaded him to join the Bad Guys? Or what?

[aunursa]

Left Behind is around 460 torturous pages. Most of the sequels average about 400.

[aunursa]

Do L&J intend to convey that Buck has joined the Antichrist? Do they intend to show that Ol' Nick has used his Mojo on Buck and persuaded him to join the Bad Guys? Or what?

You're assuming that Jerry 21-pages-per-day Jenkins actually has a plan.

[Cyrai]

So all nations are willingly going to give up their entire arsenals in exchange for a formula which makes deserts bloom?

No, not for a formula to make deserts bloom. For that, they'll give Israel peace. Every nation in the world is going to destroy 9/10ths of their arsenal and give the rest to the UN so each nation doesn't have to go through the hassle of making a peace treaty. Since that's too much work, they'll just give their guns to the UN so the UN can make a global deal.

[Jos]

What is supposed to have happened, in a literalist-intentionalist reading of the text?

I think Buck has not actually 'joined' Carpathia, merely used him to make a deal with the people who want to kill him.

He doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that this is a Bad Thing.

[billreeves]

Anyway, now that Fred seems to have reached the end of the whole "Buck sells his soul to save his hide"-section of the book, I'm wondering how much more there is to go. I've tried looking into how long the first Left Behind book is, but there seem to be at least two editions with different page counts. What kind of copy does Fred have, and how long is it?

I don't know about the page numbers, but we are now about two-thirds of the way through the book. Don't worry, there are still dozens or even hundreds of phone calls left to chronicle.

[Tonio]

"I think Buck has not actually 'joined' Carpathia, merely used him to make a deal with the people who want to kill him. He doesn't seem to be aware of the fact that this is a Bad Thing."

That's why they call it a Faustian bargain.

[Chris Archer]

One of the underlying messages of this series is: the ends justify the means, no matter what. But especially if you're a RTC. Being a reporter for a newsweekly, Buck would not have any compunction about cutting a deal with any news source. Tim and Jerry don't have any ethical scruples themselves- they wrote this upchuck. All of it.

[Thlayli]

Faced with such astounding duplicity and hypocrisy, with Buck's fervent condemnation of the very thing he himself is flagrantly guilty of, Nicolae has an epiphany: Buck would make a great press secretary.

Wait -- that made sense!

How did L&J let that slip through?

[Tonio]

"Don't worry, there are still dozens or even hundreds of phone calls left to chronicle."

Groan...Robert Heinlein went through a period in the 1970s where his books were less about storytelling and more about philosophizing. There's a conversation in "I Will Fear No Evil" that lasts for more than 30 pages.

[chaos_engineer]

Well, we could read it as Buck pretending to make a deal with Stonagal and Todd-Cothran, in order to learn more about the evil conspiracy before he betrays it.

There's precedent for this. I think Tony Snow is doing the same thing. (At least, he'd better be doing the same thing if he doesn't want me to lose all respect for him.)

Although I don't see why Stonagal and Todd-Cothran are willing to accept this. How can they trust him? Better to kill him now, before he reads a suspense novel and learns how to send a "To be opened in the event of my untimely death" letter to a random lawyer from the phone book.

[pepperjackcandy]

Wait -- that made sense!

How did L&J let that slip through?

Um, "even a broken (analog) clock is right twice a day"?

[LL]

I truly don't know how you read this thing, even for the purposes of ridicule. I suppose it's a necessary evil, but still...

But this is priceless: "Yet after this phone call Buck is perfectly satisfied that everything is hunky-dory between him and the Global Conspiracy of Evil."

Because global conspiracies of evil are cool like dat. They keep their sinister promises. Are you sure "Buck" isn't the DIRAT? He seems to be more oblivious than Borat.

[Brian J.]

Thlayli, that made sence because LaJenkins didn't say it. Fred did.

The frightening thing is that, again, LaJenkins have portrayed the media of today perfectly- career-obsessed, obsequious, incurious, complacent, with the memory of a goldfish, and who've written the story before starting their desultory efforts to find out what happened (which, of course, they'd never tell us even if they did miraculourly find out).

No wonder newspapers and TV news are failing- there are only so many ways to say the same thing before people just tune you out.

[Cyrai]

There's a conversation in "I Will Fear No Evil" that lasts for more than 30 pages.

There's a monologue in Atlas Shrugged that's over 60 pages. That book sucked.

[Meredith]

But Nicolae, like the authors, has a checklist and the checklist says a peace treaty with Israel is the next thing to happen. An Antichrist has gotta do what an Antichrist has gotta do, even if it doesn't make any sense at the time.

Which bring up a question I've always had. Couldn't the Antichrist throw the whole apocalypse off by simply not doing what the checklist says he should be doing? After all, it doesn't look like the checklist is hard to find, and I wouldn't expect an evil being to be a good sport and stick to the plan: "Hmm, it says here I have to battle the forces of good in Europe at 3:25. I think I'll go to Disney World instead. The lines should be short, with all the children gone."

[Dan]

"Buck heard Todd-Cothran's husky-voiced agreement to call off the Yard and Interpol.
The problem with a speakerphone when someone is promising that they'll stop trying to have you killed is that you can't see whether or not they're crossing their fingers."

Maybe he didn't need to see anything. Maybe that husky voice just reached out to him, causing him to feel all tingly inside. Maybe there was a husky man behind that husky voice, and suddenly Buck was so besmitten he couldn't think straight.

Seriously - does any man ever have a husky voice, unless he's a romantic interest?

[Bugmaster]

I thought Todd-Cothran was a woman ? I've lost track...

[stinger]

"the Nobel Peace prize, TIME's Man of the Year, and our Newsmaker of the Year"

One of these things is not like the others.

[Fraser]

I actually wrote a short story a few years ago where Fate gets fed up and prevents the End Times by killing the Antichrist.

[aunursa]

Couldn't the Antichrist throw the whole apocalypse off by simply not doing what the checklist says he should be doing? After all, it doesn't look like the checklist is hard to find, and I wouldn't expect an evil being to be a good sport and stick to the plan

I love stumping Fundamentalists with questions like that...

If God loves everyone, does God love Satan?

Whatever he is, Satan isn't stupid. He's read the Bible -- he knows how the story will end. Why would he continue on a path that he KNOWS is doomed to fail?

[Ursula L]

Whatever he is, Satan isn't stupid. He's read the Bible -- he knows how the story will end. Why would he continue on a path that he KNOWS is doomed to fail?

At least in LB, I'm pretty sure Satan is stupid.

1. An author can't write a character significantly brighter than themselves.

2. Therefore, L&J's wits set the upper limit for wit in the LB universe.

3. LB's heroes need to be able to figure out Satan.

4. Therefore, LB's heroes have to be written as smarter than Satan.

5. Therefore, in LB land, Satan is incredibly stupid.

Satan has to stick to the checklist because Buck, Rayford and L&J are too stupid to figure out what is going on without it.

[aunursa]

At least in LB, I'm pretty sure Satan is stupid.

Touché.

But then again, in LB practically all of the characters are stupid.

[Brandi]

So LaHaye and Jenkins just equated the Nobel Peace Prize with the Antichrist? Wow, that puts Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu, and Mother Theresa in a whole different light.

Then again, there *is* Henry the K...

[emjaybee]

"He's got mind-control powers, certainly. We don't know if he's used them on Buck, though."

Here in Texas, we would call such an act "swatting a fly with a Buick."

Or in other words:

"This is not the Evil World Conspiracy you're looking for," says Carpathia, wiggling his fingers. Next thing Buck knows, he's back in his hotel room, making phone calls. God, Buck loves making phone calls. Sometimes he picks up the phone book and fantasizes about all the calls he's going to make. Someday...

[Rebecca Borgstrom]

Perhaps it is all a clever headfake. Perhaps the God of the Left Behind books is *expecting* the Antichrist to break with the plan---making it all the more vital that Nicolae not do so!

You see, it's very simple.

All that Nicolae Carpathia has to do is divine from what he knows of God: is God the sort of God who would rely on the Antichrist following His plan, or the sort of God who would rely on the Antichrist *not* following His plan?

Now, a clever God would rely on the Antichrist following his plan, because he would know that only a great fool would follow the plan that God has lain out in text for the fool's undoing. So if Nicolae Carpathia is not a great fool, he can clearly *not* choose to follow the plan that God has lain out for him. But in that case an omniscient God would have known that Nicolae Carpathia would not be a great fool, so clearly Nicolae cannot choose *not* to follow the plan.

Now, God comes from Australia, and as everybody knows, the representative of Australia to the United Nations is Robert Hill. Since hills are smaller than mountains, God is clearly anticipating that Nicolae Carpathia will look down on Him and follow His plan despite the risks. But the *capital* of Australia is Canberra, which could hint that Carpathia can berra well *not* follow the plan that God has lain out for Him!

Hang on, I need to go check the traffic report.

Okay, back.

Now, back in the Old Testament, God defeated Goliath, so God is clearly exceptionally strong; and being exceptionally strong, might have relied on his omnipotence to bully the Antichrist into following his plan. But God has also defeated atheists, which means he is aware of the problem of evil, and being aware of the problem of evil would be reluctant to blow his cover of free will by interfering directly with the Antichrist's actions---so clearly God does *not* expect the Antichrist to follow His plan.

The only course that I can see for Nicolae is to have somebody call up God on the phone and then, while God is distracted, quickly switch out Revelations for a Biblical prophecy of his own design. Then he can follow this faux plan, carefully monitoring the 700 Club and the Faith & Freedom Network to see whether God remains placid regarding his actions.*

Sadly, the God of the Left Behind books has spent eight thousand years carefully developing an immunity to plot holes, and all of this fervent reasoning would likely come to no effect.

* has anyone ever wondered whether these constant leaks of information about God's plan embolden the Satanists?

[Tonio]

"Whatever he is, Satan isn't stupid. He's read the Bible -- he knows how the story will end. Why would he continue on a path that he KNOWS is doomed to fail?"

I suspect PMD doctrine has an explanation similar to that offered by Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" - "We're all puppets. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."

[A-Diz]

Rebecca Borgstrom, you are my new favourite commenter.

I know this comes up all the time, but I feel the need to point out again how awesome LB's plot ought to be.

Career obsessed up-and-coming journalist is assigned to work on story about mass disapperences. After working long nights, and drinking too much coffee, and being cried at by too many parents, and interviewing too many baffled scientists, and spending too much time on Google (especially the Google thing) he starts to develop a paranoid theory that The Event might be... the rapture!

Then he's called to a luxury hotel by a shady businessman who offers him immunity from Secret Evil Forces.

AND THEN SEVENTEEN EYED MONSTERS AND GLADIATOR JESUS ON A BIG HORSE.

Now that's box office millions, I tell ya.

[Jesurgislac]

Rebecca wins the thread!

(Seriously, that was awesome.)