It was Buck’s grandchildren, her beloved Amanda and Gus, who made things right for her. Ann Montgomery wasn’t wealthy but she had all the money she would ever need and a home for life.

Ann allowed her vision to become soft-focus as she stared into the mirror. Instead of the formidable old woman she had become, she saw instead the raven-haired beauty who had loved Buck Hartmann. And continued to love his grandchildren.

Then she took a deep breath and reached for the telephone on her bedside table. First she called Freda. Then she called Gus. He answered on the second ring.

“My darling boy, there’s something I think you need to know,” Ann said.

Jamie was watching CNN-which she had come to think of as her best friend, after Ralph, of course-when she heard a knock at the door. When she opened the door, one of the housemaids handed her a cardboard box.

Jamie thanked the girl and shut the door. Inside the box was her correspondence course. Finally, she thought. She didn’t even mind that Miss Montgomery had opened the box and probably riffled through the lessons and textbooks. After all, she had to make sure that the University of Texas wasn’t sending her a stash of drugs or cartons of cigarettes.

Jamie wondered if the university had inadvertently omitted a cover letter from the professor or if Miss Montgomery had confiscated it.

That evening Jamie began reading the assignment for the first lesson. When she started nodding off, she picked up the remote control and scrolled through the channels until suddenly she was startled to see Amanda Hartmann’s face on the screen. “Oh, my God!” she said, causing Ralph to jump to his feet.

Jamie sank onto the sofa and stared at the screen. Amanda’s eyes were closed. She was telling God that more than seven thousand souls had gathered here this night to ask his forgiveness for their sins and offer him their souls. The prayer was accompanied by a harpist playing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

The camera was tight on Amanda’s face, which was even lovelier than Jamie remembered. She seemed to glow with an inner radiance. Or maybe it was just clever lighting. Whatever, the woman looked like an angel. Her voice was as beautiful as her face and filled with such hope and exultation as she promised the Lord’s forgiveness. All they had to do was ask, and their souls would be washed clean. They would live the rest of their days on this earth with joyful hearts, and when they died they would rise through the clouds and be welcomed by all of those who had gone before them and would see the face of the one true God.

Then the scene was shown through another camera’s eye, with Amanda a small kneeling figure in the middle of a huge stage at the front of a vast auditorium. Huge television screens, one on each side of the stage, showed close-ups of Amanda’s face.

A trailer running across the bottom of the screen announced that this was the Amanda Tutt Hartmann Crusade being broadcast live from Cincinnati.

Ralph slipped into Jamie’s arms, and she hugged him close, her eyes glued to the screen. The baby inside of her belonged to this woman. A holy woman. A woman pure of heart and soul.

I should be happy, Jamie told herself.

SINCE THERE WERE only four guests, dinner was being served in the smaller of Victory Hill’s two dining rooms. The paneled walls and stone fireplace of the more intimate “petite salle” offered a relaxed atmosphere and did not call for formal attire, although Amanda was wearing a red silk gown with a plunging neckline that drew admiring if surreptitious glances from their male guests.

Gus always enjoyed watching the disconcerting effect his sister had on men, who were never quite sure how they should respond to a female spiritual leader with sex appeal, which she still had in abundance even though she was approaching her fiftieth birthday.

Of course, none of the men seated around this table were devout. At least Gus didn’t think so. Although he had known them for decades, such a topic had never been discussed. And even if they went regularly to places of worship with their families and celebrated holy days in their homes, he knew that these men practiced politics first, with religion a distant second if they practiced it at all.

Not that any of tonight’s guests were politicians. In the United States of America, politicians-whether they were believers or not-were now required to make a big show of their piety. They interspersed their public rhetoric with biblical references, expounded their faith at every opportunity, and equated belief in God with patriotism.

But Gus and the other men seated around this table had no need for public shows of faith. Few people even knew they existed. They called themselves the Committee of Five. Gus was their chairman.

No matter how diversified their holdings or how many disparate corporate boards they sat on, his fellow committee members were, in their hearts and souls, oilmen like Gus himself. Oil was their Holy Grail. They understood that oil was the world’s most important commodity and knew that governments, economies, and their own private fortunes could not endure without it. At its core, their interest in politics came from a need to make sure no law was passed and no regulation enforced that impeded the flow of oil into the pipelines and money into the coffers of oil companies. To accomplish these goals, it was necessary for those who controlled the oil industry also to control the White House and other key positions in the U.S. government.

Like Gus, the four guests seated around the table had been born to great wealth. Even though few in this country and abroad even knew who they were, they were among the nation’s most powerful individuals. They were the kingmakers who bought and sold politicians, who put them into office and cast them out. It was Gus who had brought them together. And it was Gus-through the Alliance of Christian Voters-who had provided the swing votes that had put their candidate in the White House.

Amanda understood all this at some level but did not concern herself with the details. Her motives were purer. She unequivocally believed that a nation in which everyone was a devout Christian-preferably of the evangelical variety-would be a better place for all. And to achieve that end, the United States of America needed a devout Christian electorate and a devout Christian in the White House. Her passion and sincere beliefs were what moved her flock, what brought people to their knees before a God who wanted them to regard voting as a holy sacrament.

Amanda had just completed a triumphant tour of ten cities, speaking in churches, auditoriums, and even sports arenas, mixing political ideology with religion as only she could do. After all, she wasn’t running for office, nor was her husband. Her motives were sincere. She envisioned a country where abortion clinics closed their doors because no one wanted or needed an abortion, where the rich fed the poor and the strong helped the weak and homosexuals repented. To achieve such a nation, voters must elect individuals to public office-from city hall to the White House-who believed as they did. Gus was always quite moved when he heard his sister preach, not because she made him want to praise the Lord but because he found her quite amazing and so very lovely. Her ability to reach people never ceased to astonish him. When she held out her arms inviting people to come forward and give their lives to Jesus, endless lines of them came, many on their knees, all with tears streaming down their faces, their arms lifted in praise, hallelujahs on their lips. Amanda, angelic in white, would descend from the stage and put a hand on their forehead or shoulder, telling them how much God loved them, how joyous God was that they were allowing Him into their hearts. Some would call out to her that her mother had saved their soul many years ago and they wanted to rededicate themselves to the Lord. And some came to be healed, and while Amanda had never presented herself as a healer, there were always those who swore that a touch of her hand had cured their arthritis, stuttering, seizures, infertility, or whatever. People would wait for hours to receive Amanda’s blessing. Afterward, she would be so drained that she needed help to walk to the waiting limousine. Now that she had Toby the muscle man as her consort, he probably lifted her in his arms and carried her.