Chapter Twelve
A Door Closed
Chantry looked around the crowded boardroom filled with agents and their handlers. “Alright let’s get this meeting started. I have two orders of business that I need to address. Now for our first order of business……”
The lighting of the room dimmed briefly and then it was lit in a blue haze, as bolts of electric blue intensity materialized through the structure of the ceiling of the room to strike certain individuals where they sat throughout the room.
Flint watched with interest, as the individual seated next to him jerked and shook as sparks erupted from his mouth, eyes, and ears. He’d had his suspicions about this particular fellow agent and now they were established in fact.
Sometime in the past year Agent Bendigo had been replaced with a look-alike. Of the 56 agents sitting gathered in the room 13 sat fried in their seats, as all those gathered looked on in a sort of fascinated horror.
Chantry nodded affirmatively, from his place at the chairman’s spot of the table. He addressed the room in general, “Well that concludes our first order of business. Moving on now. As the final order of business it is my responsibility and regret to inform you all that after many years of serving the cause of justice and seeing that some good is done in this old fallen world of ours, the Agency that so many of us have sacrificed so much for will be closing its doors.”
There were gasps around the room by some, but most gathered had been expecting the news. There were few dry eyes in the place though at having to see Chantry deliver it with the emotional dignity that he did. Everyone in the room knew that he was the one most affected by the decision to close the Agency down.
“I regret that this day has come for the Agency that I had hoped would go on without me, but I do not regret what I’ve done here. What all of us and those who have gone on before us have done here! We truly have done good in this world with our efforts here. When others have turned away and allowed evil to reign we didn’t! We stood in the gap and defended the innocent, the poor, and the downtrodden. Our success is not measured by how many graves our fellow agents have filled, but rather by how many lives we have saved, made better and freed from tyranny. Our work here will follow each and every one of us into eternity, because I have always placed my Creator at the heart of everything I have ever sought to accomplish with this Agency. The Father above has blessed me in particular, beyond my wildest expectations of what a small group of ordinary people gifted from above with special talents and strengths of purpose could do to affect the greater good of so many. You are all heroes because of what you have stood for and sacrificed while in this Agency, but that work does not stop here! As you leave this Agency you take with you everything that you were here and I challenge each and every one of you to take your God-given abilities and battle won experiences and brandish them bravely in whatever community or corner of the world that you may reside in and that you might affect our world for good and never evil. I send you forth, as if you were my own children, for that is how I regard you to be. I’d like to impart a blessing upon all of you before you go and then I’d like to personally say goodbye to each and every one of you before you go as I have things to say to each of you personally.”
Without further ado Chantry began in prayer, “Heavenly Father I thank you for the years that I’ve been privileged to serve with so many of the finest people I have ever known. Bless them, keep them, and enable them to do great and powerful things for Your Kingdom. Give them peace and safe havens within which to rest from there many arduous labors and always I pray, lend them Your favor in great abundance, as You’ve never ceased to keep from blessing me with it. In Jesus’s Name I ask these things. Amen.”
Amen was echoed throughout the room. Chantry smiled and cleared his throat of some of the emotion that he was experiencing, “One last item of note before we say goodbye. Long has it been a source of great speculation and conjecture by agents and our enemies alike I daresay, as to the seemingly limitless source of funding that our Agency has been blessed with through the years.”
Chantry paused for a moment before continuing, “The question as to who our benefactor has been will remain a secret much to the chagrin of those of you curious on this matter.”
Chuckles sounded out throughout the room, as to the continual wonderment of many, as to the unanswered question of funding, but Chantry’s words confirmed what Maria had already suspected.
“However our generous benefactor has graciously set aside some funds, as the last act of the Agency that are to be gifted to each and every one of you and the families of those who have fallen, as a result of their and your faithful service to the Agency. While the gifts you all will receive are extravagant they are but a small token of the level of appreciation that our benefactor has for the efforts that you have put forth to be agents of good in this world, unlike those out for their own gain and desires that far outnumber us, but have never equaled us as individuals. I will now say goodbye. Maria if you would please wheel me to the door and we’ll get started.”
Everyone stood within the room, as the white haired old man was wheeled to the door by Maria. The remnant of Chantry’s final self did no justice to the lionhearted individual he had been throughout life. He had a heart that still beat within his chest with yearning to accomplish yet more for the cause of good, limited only by the trappings of mortality, by which all mankind except for the select few eventually fall prey to.
Such is the way of man upon the Earth, until the day when those who believe and put their trust in the Savior are called by name to inherit immortality. They will be clothed in bodies incorruptible in order so that they may praise the King of all creation for all of eternity.