Desecration Page 6

  He had enjoyed the respite from his uncomfortable cot, but while he and Chloe monitored the boring TV feed from Jerusalem, waiting for the fiasco to reach the Garden Tomb, Kenny had fallen asleep. Chloe looked at Tsion apologetically as she attempted to rise with the toddler in her arms. She poked out a free hand and he reached to pull her off the couch. As she made her way to Kenny’s crib, Tsion thought he heard something from his study. Chang again?

  He padded back and found a timed message composed two days before and sent automatically on a schedule determined by the sender. It read:

  Dr. Ben-Judah,

  Please pass this along to my brothers and sisters in Christ, old friends and new. I don’t know what to make of it except that I believe I have been called of God to risk my life for the cause. It certainly was nothing I was seeking, and I hope you all know I have no grandiose view of myself.

  I knelt to pray in my hotel room in Tel Aviv . . .

  Tsion stood, his spirit recognizing that this was no frivolous imagining from a new believer. He bent over the screen and read, finally groaning and making his way back out to where Chloe was watching the end of a brief speech by Walter Moon. “I have forwarded a message to your computer that you need to read right away,” he said, knowing his quavering voice scared her.

  “Is it Buck?” she said. He shook his head. “Chaim?”

  “No,” he said. “Please wake the others. We will want to pray. And you will want to call Cameron.”

  David ignored the signal that he had a message from Tsion. That could wait as he checked the upload from Chang. Not only had the young man pieced together recordings from devices in the palace, starting in the Wongs’ guest apartment the morning in question, but he had also taken the time to include a translation, where necessary, from Chinese to English. David would check the tape with Ming later to be sure the translation was accurate. Chang began with the news that he remembered “only snatches of this before the so-called anesthetic. You must have known they use no such thing.”

  David knew. But he hadn’t known any more than Chang about what had really gone on. Chang’s pieced-together production began with the audio of another loud argument between him and his father. Mrs. Wong kept trying to pacify her husband and son, but she failed.

  “You will be among the first to take the mark of loyalty!” the subtitles read, as David listened to Mr. Wong fiercely whisper to the boy in Chinese.

  “I will not! You are loyal to Carpathia. I am not!”

  “Do not speak such heresy to me, young man! My family is loyal to the international government as I have always been to my superiors. And now we know the potentate is the son of god!”

  “He is not! I know no such thing! He could be the son of Satan for all I know!”

  David heard a slap and someone crashing to the floor. “That was I,” Chang wrote.

  “You saw the man resurrected! You will worship him as I do!”

  “Never!”

  A door slammed. Then a phone call. “Missah Moon! Son talk crazy. Say he not want mark, but he just scared of needle. You got tranquilizer?”

  “I can get a tranquilizer, Mr. Wong, but it comes in the form of an injection.”

  “Injection?”

  “Shot. Hypodermic needle?”

  “Yes! Yes! I can do.”

  “You can administer the injection?” Moon said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Give the shot?”

  “Yes! You bring!”

  They rang off, and Mr. Wong apparently returned to where Chang had locked himself in a room. “You be ready to go in ten minutes!”

  “I’m not going!”

  “You will go or answer to me!”

  “I’m answering to you now. I’m telling you I’m not going. I don’t want to work here. I want to go home.”

  “No!”

  “I want to talk with Mother.”

  “Very well! Mother will talk some sense into you.”

  A few minutes later, a quiet knock. “Mother?”

  “Yes.” The door opened. “Son, you must do what your father says. We cannot survive in this new world without showing loyalty to the leader.”

  “But I don’t believe in him, Mother. Neither does Ming.”

  A long silence.

  “She doesn’t, Mother.”

  “She told me. I fear for her life. I cannot tell your father.”

  “I agree with her, Mother.”

  “You are a Judah-ite too?”

  “I am, and I will say so if he tries to make me take the mark.”

  “Oh, Chang, don’t do this. I will lose both of my children!”

  “Mother, you must read what Rabbi Ben-Judah writes too! At least look into it. Please!”

  “Maybe, but you cannot cross your father today. You take the mark. If you are right, your God will forgive you.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. I have already made my decision.”

  Mr. Wong returned. “Let’s go. Mr. Moon is waiting.”

  “Not today,” Mrs. Wong pleaded. “Let Chang think about it awhile.”

  “No more time for thinking. He will embarrass the family.”

  “No! I won’t! You can’t make me.”

  Silence. Mrs. Wong: “Please, Husband.”

  “Very well, then. I will tell Mr. Moon not today.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  “But someday soon.”

  “Thank you for your patience, Husband.”

  It sounded as if both parents left. Then the door opened.

  “Father?”

  “You will think about it?”

  “I have been thinking about it a lot.”

  The bed squeaked. “Father, I—ow! Don’t! What are you doing? What’s that?”

  “Help you relax. You get some rest now.”

  “I don’t need any rest! What did you do?”

  “See? You are not so afraid of needles! That did not hurt.”

  “But what was it?”

  “It will help you calm down.”

  “I’m calm.”

  “You rest now.”

  The door shut.

  “How long take, Missah Moon?”

  “Not long. Don’t wait too long or he won’t be able to walk by himself.”

  “Okay. You help.”

  They returned.

  “Chang?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You come with us now?”

  “Who?”

  “Missah Moon and me.”

  “Who?”

  “You know Missah Moon.”

  “No, I—”

  “Come on now.”

  “I will not . . . take . . . the . . . mmm . . .”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “No, I’m . . .”

  The sound continued with the two men encouraging Chang to walk with them and his mumbling in Chinese and English about not wanting to, refusing.

  “Now, watch this,” Chang wrote. “The surveillance camera from the hallway picks up that they’re pretty much carrying me down the hall, and look what I’m doing! Crossing myself! I don’t even know where I got that! And look! Here, I’m pointing toward heaven! I know it’s impossible to prove what I was doing, since whatever they gave me made me forget even the conversation with my mother. And I can’t tell what words I’m trying to form there, but I had to be trying to say I was a believer!”

  The whole rest of the way, as Chang tied together the angles from various cameras all the way to the corridor leading to Building D, David watched as Walter Moon and Mr. Wong prodded Chang along. At some point a third man met them, carrying a camera. The boy wept, pointed, and tried to form words. Moon reassured the photographer and any onlookers that the boy was “all right. He’s okay. Just a little reaction to medication.”

  Most shocking was that indeed there was a surveillance camera in Building D, and by the time they got Chang there, he was unconscious, eyes shut, drooling, moaning. “Take cap off,” his father said. “Smooth hair.”


  A woman technician who looked Filipino fired up the device. “This boy, he is all right?” she said.

  “Fine,” Moon said. “What’s the region code for the United Asian States?”

  “Thirty,” the tech said, setting the implanter. “I worry that I might get into trouble for—”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m telling you to do your job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The woman swabbed Chang’s lolling forehead with a tiny cloth and pressed the mechanism onto his skin, producing a loud click and whoosh. “Thank you,” Moon said. “Now be sure this place is ready for the lines in about an hour.”

  The technician left, and Mr. Wong and Mr. Moon took turns keeping Chang sitting up. “Thing wears off almost as fast as it goes to work,” Moon said.

  “Fix hair more,” Mr. Wong said, slapping Chang’s cheeks. “We get picture.”

  The photographer shot Chang with a digital camera. The boy came to, and his father held the camera before his face. “There!” Mr. Wong said. “Look at new employee, one of first to take mark!”

  Chang wobbled and pulled back, reaching for the camera and trying to focus on the picture. His shoulders drooped and he glared at his father, his face stony. When Mr. Wong and Mr. Moon stood him up, he said, “Where’s my hat?”

  He jammed it on and stood there until he regained his equilibrium. He said something to his father in Chinese. “I said, ‘What have you done?’ ” he wrote.

  “Someday you thank me,” Mr. Wong said. “Now we go somewhere, relax till interview.”

  “I remember just snatches of the argument from the apartment and my father injecting me,” Chang wrote. “I have a vague recollection of the flash of the camera and being angry at my father. After that, I only remember sitting awhile in a side room with Moon and my father and slowly realizing that I had been given the mark of loyalty. I wanted to kill them, but I was also embarrassed. I worried what you would think. I was still out of it for the first part of our meeting, but then I decided to play tough, try to make you see the benefits. You already know, though I didn’t, that the meeting in your office was recorded too. I can send that if you need reminding, but that’s the end of this upload.”

  David sat back and realized his legs had gone to sleep. He rolled his head to release tension in his neck. By now, Chang should be busy monitoring the Garden Tomb. David clicked on the message that had been forwarded from Tsion.

  Buck’s phone vibrated in his pocket, but he didn’t look to see who it was. He was prepared if God was calling him to take Chaim’s place, but that was foolish. Surely, the chosen one would be an Israeli believer. Maybe Chaim was calling, lost in the crowd. Buck reached in his pocket and shut off the phone. Let him find his own way. It was long past time for the man to accept his role. Nobody said it would be easy. Nothing was easy anymore. But God’s call wasn’t hard to recognize. It was clearly on Chaim. If Hattie had the courage to do what she had done, surely knowing she couldn’t survive, how could any of them shirk their duties again?

  Carpathia stepped from behind a draped curtain near the tomb, smiled, and opened his arms to the crowd. Less animated now, they merely applauded. The cheering, the kneeling, the waving were over. It seemed most just wanted to get on to the Temple Mount and get in line for their mark. That would insure them against the fiery fate of the crazy woman at Mount Calvary.

  “I was never entombed!” Carpathia announced. “I lay in state for three days for the world to see. Someone was said to have risen from this spot, but where is he? Did you ever see him? If he was God, why is he not still here? Some would have you believe it was he behind the disappearances that so crippled our world. What kind of a God would do that? And the same people would have you believe I am the antithesis of this great One. Yet you saw me resurrect myself! I stand here among you, god on earth, having taken my rightful place. I accept your allegiance.”

  He bowed and the people clapped again.

  Moon stepped back to the mike and read from his notes. “He is risen!”

  The people murmured, “He is risen indeed.”

  “Come, come,” Moon said, smiling nervously. “You can do better than that. He is risen!”

  “He is risen indeed!” the crowd responded, and someone applauded. The ovation slowly built until Moon held up a hand to silence it. “We are providing you with the opportunity to worship your potentate and his image at the Temple Mount, and there you may express your eternal devotion by accepting the mark of loyalty. Do not delay. Do not put this off. Be able to tell your descendants that His Excellency personally was there the day you made your pledge concrete.”

  Speaking softly now and making it sound like an afterthought but still clearly reading, Moon added, “And please remember that neither the mark of loyalty nor the worshiping of the image is optional.”

  A helicopter nosed into place and descended to take Carpathia and the rest of the dignitaries to the Temple Mount. Buck still had not seen Chaim since he had left him near Golgotha. The crowd dispersed quickly, and many ran in the direction of the loyalty mark application site.

  Unable to reach Buck, Rayford called Tsion. “Hattie was the victim, then, in whatever happened at Calvary?” he said.

  “That is what we have pieced together, Rayford. We are grieving and praying, but we are also amazed at how God spoke to her.”

  Rayford had known Hattie for years, of course, and had once jeopardized his marriage over her. He asked to speak with Chloe. At first neither he nor his daughter could speak. Finally Rayford said, “It seems forever ago that you met her.”

  “Think she accomplished anything, Dad?”

  “That’s not for me to say. She obeyed God, though. That seems clear.”

  “What was he up to there?”

  “I don’t know. If someone in the crowd was wavering, who knows?”

  “They would see what happens when you oppose Carpathia,” Chloe said. “I don’t see what it was all about. Everybody here is speechless.”

  Rayford tried to dismiss an intruding thought but couldn’t. “Chloe, are you envious?”

  “Of Hattie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course I am. More than I can say.”

  He paused. “Kenny okay?”

  “Sleeping.” She paused. “Dad, am I a scoundrel?”

  “Nah. I know how you feel. At least I think I do. But most people see you as a hero, hon.”

  “That’s not the point. That’s not why I’m envious.”

  “What then?”

  “She was there, Dad! Front lines. Doing the job.”

  “You’re—”

  “I know. Just put me out there next time, will ya?”

  “We’ll see. You heard from Buck?”

  “Can’t raise him,” she said.

  “Me neither. I imagine he and Chaim are treading carefully.”

  “I just wish he’d check in, Dad.”

  Buck waited at the Garden Tomb until the crowd was gone. He no longer cared how suspicious he looked. He scanned the horizon and worried how he would explain himself if he lost track of Chaim. Buck forgot what he had been trying to prove or elicit by leaving him. He was still frustrated with Chaim, of course, but what should he expect from an old man who had endured so much? Chaim had hardly sought this assignment.

  Buck moseyed among the olive trees, drawing glances from guards. He recalled his first meeting with Dr. Rosenzweig. He had known of him years before that. It wasn’t common to become friends with story subjects, especially Newsmakers of the Year, but it was fair to say the two had been close.

  The afternoon sun was hot. The garden was still a beautiful spot, untouched by the earthquake. An armed guard, so still he could have been a mannequin, stood by the entrance to the tomb. “May I?” Buck said. But the guard did not even look at him. “If I’m just a minute?” he tried again. Zero response.

  Buck shook his head and ducked inside as if to say, “If you�
�re going to stop me, stop me.”

  Still the guard did not move. Buck found himself in the surprising coolness of the sepulchre. The slanting light from the entrance cast a thin beam where Christ’s burial cloth would have been left. Buck wondered why Carpathia and his people had left this place untouched.

  He looked up quickly when Chaim shuffled in. Buck wanted to say something, to apologize, anything. But the man was weeping softly, and Buck didn’t want to intrude. Chaim knelt at the slab of rock where the light shone, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed. Buck leaned against the far wall. He bowed his head, and a lump invaded his throat. Could it be that Chaim would claim here the final vestige of courage to follow through on his assignment? He looked so small and frail in the oversized robe. He seemed so overcome that he could hardly bear up under his grief.

  Buck heard a sigh from outside, then the creak of leather, the crunch of footsteps. The entrance filled, the silhouette of the guard nearly blotting out the light.

  “Just give us another minute, please,” Buck said.

  But the guard remained.

  “If you don’t mind, we’ll leave in just a moment. Sir? Do you speak English? Excuse me . . .”

  The guard whispered, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? Fear not, for I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said.”

  Chaim straightened and whirled to look at Buck, squinting at him in the low light.

  “You,” Buck said to the guard. “You’re—you’re a—”

  But the guard spoke again. “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ‘This is the way you shall bless the children of Israel. Say to them: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.”’

  “ ‘So they shall put my name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.’ ”

  “Thank you, Lord!” Chaim rasped.

  Buck stared. “Sir? Are you a—”

  “I am Anis.”

  “Anis!”

  The guard stepped back outside. Buck followed, but the guard was gone. Chaim emerged, shielding his eyes from the light. He grabbed Buck’s arm and pulled him to a souvenir shop, where a young woman looked as if she was about to close up. Buck found it hard to believe such a place remained open in the Global Community.