\u201cSo who\u2019s that?\u201d Steve called out as Buck hesitated near the bathroom door, waiting to hear all the messages before getting into the shower.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a girl,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNice?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBetter than nice. Gorgeous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBetter call her back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t worry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This scene establishes the tandem story lines of Steve and Hattie. Notice the similar tones of guarded, tentative vulnerability. Hattie begins her message enthusiastically, then backtracks a bit, perhaps fearing she\u2019s been too forward. Likewise Steve, perhaps sensing the accusatory jealousy of his initial question (\u201cSo who\u2019s that?<\/i>), quickly backtracks as well (\u201cBetter call her back\u201d).<\/p>\n
Remember this scene as their parallel futures unfold. After their advances meet with a chilly reception from Buck, they both turn to Nicolae, with disastrous results.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral other messages were unimportant,\u201d we\u2019re told, so we never get to hear what it was people had to say to Buck when they thought he was dead.<\/p>\n
At the end of the tape are two messages, left \u201cthat very afternoon\u201d after Buck\u2019s public reappearance at the UN press conference. That event was apparently broadcast live, around the world. And apparently, law enforcement officials across Europe were staying up late to watch it, because Buck gets phone calls from Scotland Yard and Interpol.<\/p>\n
From \u201cCaptain Howard Sullivan of Scotland Yard\u201d (does Scotland Yard even have<\/i> the rank of \u201ccaptain\u201d?):<\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 As you know, two gentlemen with whom you were associated have met with untimely demises here in London. I would like to ask you a few questions. You may be hearing from other agencies, as you were seen with one of the victims just before his unfortunate end. Please call me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You may remember Sullivan as the late Alan Tompkins\u2019 brazenly corrupt boss. He\u2019s the one who told international conspirator Todd-Cothran that if T-C were to kill a police officer in cold blood he would \u201ccome over there and dispose of the body myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m struggling to piece together the timeline here. The \u201cafternoon\u201d press conference happened after Carpathia\u2019s very long \u201cafternoon\u201d speech. At the earliest, then, Buck\u2019s publicly coming out as not-dead would have happened around 4:30. I guess T-C was watching the press conference live, at 9:30 London time, because Carpathia is a part of his and Stonagal\u2019s international conspiracy to conspire internationally about conspiratorial things. And I guess that upon learning that Buck was still alive he called Sullivan and had him make this phone call. And then he called Interpol, where I guess the conspiracy also has its loyal agents, because otherwise why would Interpol be concerned about the suspicious deaths of two Londoners in London?<\/p>\n
The next message had come less than half an hour later and was from Georges Lafitte, an operative with Interpol, the international police organization headquartered in Lyons, France. \u201cMr. Williams,\u201d he said in a thick French accent, \u201cas soon as you get this message I would like you to contact me from the nearest police station. \u2026 For your own sake, I would urge you not to delay.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m somewhat grateful here that Jenkins decided simply to inform us that \u201cLafitte\u201d speaks with \u201ca thick French accent\u201d without actually attempting to write Lafitte\u2019s words in such an accent. This is hack-work, but it\u2019s preferable to the alternative form of hack-work een weech zee inspaketor ees made to sound like Clouseau or Pepe Le Pew.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind that all of this blatant intimidation is part of a conspiracy to cover up the death of Dirk Burton, who was killed to prevent him from revealing the dangerous information that the head of the London Stock Exchange had been meeting in public with the owner of several international banks. Readers may wonder why a conversation between a stockbroker and a banker should be regarded as unusual, let alone suspicious or nefarious, but they\u2019ll just have to accept that this is how the world of Left Behind<\/i>works, and that in this book the possibility that such meetings took place is a secret worth killing to protect and legitimate grounds for a top reporter to set aside the Biggest Story of All Time in order to fly to London to investigate.<\/p>\n
All of this, again, could have been avoided if the conspirators hadn\u2019t been so clumsy in making Dirk Burton disappear, which really shouldn\u2019t have been that hard since there\u2019s been a good bit of disappearing going on lately.<\/p>\n
Buck and Steve discuss the conspiracy a bit more, although never to the extent that they begin to wonder what it is the conspiracy is conspiring to do.<\/p>\n
I mentioned earlier that a key component of any conspiracy-thriller type story like this one is an explanation of why the hero can\u2019t just go to the police. In London, obviously, that wasn\u2019t an option for Buck. But he\u2019s not in London anymore, he\u2019s in New York and there\u2019s absolutely no reason for him not to just go to the police and tell them what he knows. But Buck doesn\u2019t consider this possibility. Nor do he and Steve, the top reporter and top editor for a powerful news magazine, consider taking their information public.<\/p>\n
Instead they stick with their original plan, to go to Carpathia \u2014 a known associate of the conspirators \u2014 and ask for his help.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen Left Behind<\/i> described as a \u201cpage-turner,\u201d but you\u2019d have to be turning those pages really, really fast for any of this to seem to make sense.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve seen Left Behind described as a “page-turner,” but you’d have to be turning those pages really, really fast for any of this to seem to make sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":69785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
LBCF: Dead Man's Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've seen Left Behind described as a "page-turner," but you'd have to be turning those pages really, really fast for any of this to seem to make sense.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LBCF: Dead Man's Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've seen Left Behind described as a "page-turner," but you'd have to be turning those pages really, really fast for any of this to seem to make sense.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-04-17T19:40:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2025\/02\/LBPhone2.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"479\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"489\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/\",\"name\":\"LBCF: Dead Man's Messages\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-04-17T19:40:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-17T19:40:01+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"I've seen Left Behind described as a \\\"page-turner,\\\" but you'd have to be turning those pages really, really fast for any of this to seem to make sense.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2026\/04\/17\/lbcf-dead-mans-messages\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"LBCF: Dead Man’s Messages\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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<\/a>Hattie\u2019s message, \u201cone of the first,\u201d was presumably left before she learned of his supposed death. Generally speaking, though, a full answering machine is probably a sign that your attempt at faking your own death wasn\u2019t very convincing.<\/p>\n