Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages Page 7

  Rayford buried his head in his hands and tried to sleep. No dice. All he could do was pray. Chloe had been Daddy’s girl from day one. She loved school, was inquisitive, single-minded, stubborn. She was the last person in the family to come to Christ, and Rayford had no illusions that he was responsible for that. He had taught her to believe only in what she could see and smell and touch.

  Chloe always wanted to be in the middle of the action, and if someone wouldn’t put her there, she’d put herself there. He wanted to resent her for it, especially now, but he was overwhelmed with worry and fear. All he wanted was to know she was safe and back with Buck and Kenny. He knew that no matter what happened, they would be reunited someday, and that it would be less than a year from now. But somehow that wasn’t as comforting as he thought it might be.

  They were destined to be with Christ when they died, and should they survive, they would be with him on earth for a thousand years. But the prospect of dying was still a fearful thing.

  It was likely that any of the Tribulation Force who died during the next year would be martyrs to the cause of Christ, but their loved ones would still mourn them, still miss them. Worst of all, Rayford realized, he didn’t want to think about how his loved ones might die.

  The suffering might be short-lived, but no one wants to think of his beloved going through anything terrifying or torturous or agonizing. “Father,” Rayford said, “let this be a mission of relocation at worst. I have no reason more valid than anyone else

  to deserve special treatment, to have my daughter supernaturally protected. You don’t need her; you don’t need any of us. But we have pledged ourselves to you and trust you know what you’re doing.”

  ________

  Jock turned out to be a tall, heavy man with a uniform that may once have fit him but now encased him like a sausage. He had his underlings bring Chloe from a small cell to a slightly larger room.

  He pointed to a chair and she sat directly across from him at a metal table.

  Jock dropped an accordion file on the table and took off his jacket, draping it over the back of the chair. He sat wearily and let out a loud sigh. “So, Phoebe Evangelista. Where’d you come up with that one?”

  Chloe stared at him. She detected an Australian accent and noticed the number 18 on his forehead. On the back of his right hand was a tattoo of Nicolae Carpathia’s face.

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  Chloe raised her eyebrows and nodded.

  “Well, what do I care whether you mind or not? I’ve got a lot of work to do today, young lady, and you’re keeping me from it.”

  “Go do it,” Chloe said.

  “So, she talks,” Jock said, pulling a small cigar from his pocket. “I thought you were going to be one of those name-rank-and-serial-number types, minus the last two. Well, you are my work, and you’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been lying to my people, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to fess up, or you want me to tell you what we found?”

  Chloe shrugged.

  “We’re not getting a thing out of you, are we?”

  “No.”

  “Took a while, but we got it. Besides being short of people, our systems are crashing, and—”

  “You’re breaking my heart.”

  Jock reached for his file. “Yeah, well, from what we found, I can imagine. I have good news and bad news this morning, Mrs.

  Williams. Which would you like?”

  So, there it was. In a matter of hours, the prints or the eye reading had given her away. “Nothing you can say will be good news.”

  “Don’t be rash. We’re reasonable people, much as you and yours would like to think otherwise and persuade all the sheep who follow that kook Ben-Judah.”

  Tsion has more brains in his eyebrows than any ten GCs I’ve ever met.

  “I have a proposition for you, ma’am.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Let me guess. My freedom for a few leads?”

  “Well, you can play high-and-mighty all you want, Mom, but I’d think you’d be open to hearing me out when the benefit to you deals with your own child.”

  FIVE

  ALBIE’S BLACK-MARKET world was a shadowy landscape of

  operators who largely went by nicknames and initials. Albie himself had fashioned his name from his hometown, Al Basrah.

  People who needed to know who he was knew enough to reach him. Before he became a believer, Albie had been one of the top three black marketers in the Middle East. His conversion to Christ had left only two, and the death of one of them, reputedly at the hands of the other in a deal gone bad, left one. And that was who Albie needed to get ahold of.

  He had never liked Double-M, or Mainyu Mazda, even when Albie was of the same ilk and character. Killing was nothing new for Mainyu. It was how he maintained his reputation and control.

  You wanted something, anything, he was the man. But pity anyone who ever, ever tried to swindle or even shortchange the man.

  Legend had it that he had personally murdered a dozen people—

  one of them one of his own wives—who had not lived up to their end of some bargain. None dared calculate how many he may have hired others to eliminate.

  Those who claimed to know said Mainyu celebrated each

  personal killing by adding a tattooed double-M to his neck. He had begun twenty years before when he had strangled a guard in a Kuwaiti prison. He applied the first tattoo himself, the ink a concoction of rubber shavings from the soles of his shoes, paint chips from the prison bars, and blood. A sharpened paper clip heated by a cigarette lighter was his applicator. He put that first double-M directly under his Adam’s apple. He added one on either side of the original for each subsequent murder, so people could

  tell whether he was on an odd or even number by whether or not his tattooed necklace was even on both sides.

  The last time Albie had seen Mainyu, his necklace had one more double-M on the left than on the right and his count stood at twelve. The more recent tattoos were clearer and more

  professionally done, and supposedly the one for his wife had a feminine flair.

  Albie put the word on the street that he wanted an audience with Mainyu, and within two hours a note was slipped under his door with an address deep in the street markets on Abadan Island on the Shatt al Arab River in southwestern Iran.

  It was like MM to follow the money. Pipelines connected Abadan’s huge refinery to the oil fields of Iran. Of course Mainyu did his black marketing in the city’s underbelly.

  Like anyone anywhere who didn’t bear a mark of loyalty to Carpathia, Albie had become nocturnal. He and Mac shared a flat in a forsaken corner of Al Basrah, where the landlord didn’t know or care about one’s loyalty to the Global Community provided the rent envelope was full and waiting the first of every month. Albie had taught Mac that the best way to get around was on motor scooters small and light enough to be stored indoors or hidden in the woods near where they hid their small plane.

  Albie would wait for the sun to disappear before venturing out to a ferry that would get him and his scooter to the island, where he would find the address some thirty miles from home.

  ________

  When big Jock said something about it probably being past Chloe’s breakfast time, her mouth watered. “But as you can understand, ma’am, we don’t feed uncooperative prisoners. Oh, at some point, you’ll get some sort of nutrition bar that’ll keep you

  alive until your execution.” He patted the big file. “I can’t say for sure until I hear from International, but this has all the makings of a spectacle. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “That’s not my call.”

  “But your baby—what’s the name?”

  Chloe leveled her eyes at Jock and pressed her lips together.

  How she loved to say her baby’s name. Kenneth Bruce Williams.

  Kenny Bruce. Kenny B. But she would not tell this man. There
was no official record of Kenny’s birth, and the GC didn’t even know whether she’d had a boy or a girl.

  “Surely there’s no harm in my knowing the name.”

  “Phoebe Evangelista Jr.”

  Jock looked at the ceiling. “You know what? I am not the least bit amused. I’m not surprised either, because I’ve dealt with enough of your type. Some say there’s something admirable about you people, sticking with something this long even though in the end you’re going to lose, and you know it. But I would have thought a religious person—and come on, that’s what you are, isn’t it?—I would have thought you’d care a little more about the disposition of your child. Is it a girl? How old is she now?”

  “Look,” Chloe said, “you know who I am and what I am and what I’m not, which is a Carpathia loyalist. That’s punishable by death, so why don’t you just—”

  “Oh, now hold on, ma’am. These things are still negotiable.

  Don’t be jumping to concl—”

  “I will not be providing you any information to reduce my sentence. I’m not interested in life in prison. I would not take the mark even if you promised freedom for my family. And everybody knows that even those who take the mark now are executed anyway.”

  “Oh, where did you hear that? That’s terrible. And a lie.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Jock leaned back in his chair and called out, “Nigel?”

  “Sir?”

  “Could you open a window? It’s stuffy in here.”

  The young guard entered and opened a window behind heavy bars. There would be no escaping.

  “It’s only fair that I outline what I have to offer,” Jock said.

  “You see, we know more than your name. We know you dropped out of Stanford University six years ago. We know you’re the daughter of Potentate Carpathia’s first pilot. We know that you know that your father became a subversive and may have either conspired or participated in the assassination of the potentate.

  “Your husband is also a former employee of His Excellency and now publishes a contraband magazine. They’re deeply connected with Tsion Ben-Judah and the traitor assassin Rosenzweig. And you, Mrs. Williams, are no retiring bride either.

  No. You run the Judah-ite black market, keeping alive millions without the mark, who have no legal right to buy or sell.

  “No ma’am, you should be offered nothing, no plea bargain, no break, nothing even for your child. Because more than that, you were involved in an operation in Greece where you impersonated a Global Community officer.”

  “How did you know that?” It was out before Chloe could think.

  Was there a mole in their own operation? She couldn’t have been recognized.

  “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me something.”

  “Never mind.”

  “It’s the beauty of iris-scan technology. Normal security cameras, like the ones in our headquarters in Ptolemaïs, can get a good enough read on your iris to match it with the one recorded when you enrolled at Stanford. It has four times as many points of reference as a fingerprint, and there has never been a recorded error. Lucky for the one among your number who murdered one of

  our operatives in that very building that we weren’t able to trace you to him. But he’s from right here in town, isn’t he? How far away can he be? How far from where you were jogging?”

  ________

  Buck could barely believe what he was hearing. And from Sebastian, of all people, who was sitting there because of the selfless, heroic efforts of the Tribulation Force, Chloe in particular.

  “It’s not easy to say, Buck,” George said. “But we have to weigh the welfare of two hundred people against springing one person in the face of almost impossible odds.”

  “First,” Buck said, “you’re assuming the GC has her. She could be anywhere. But even if you’re right, how is that any more impossible than the situation you were in?”

  “Buck, I know, okay? And there’s no way I want to just do nothing. But there’s one big difference here too. The prisoner in that situation was a very big and strong man, trained to kill. And, you’ll recall, for all Mac and Hannah and Chloe did on my behalf, it came down to me against one of my captors. Even then the odds were bad, and it could have gone either way. Let’s say I’d failed and the three of them had been compromised. We lose four people.

  We blast into local headquarters here, we could wind up giving away everything.”

  “So, what, we let her rot while we move to Petra?”

  ________

  “Here’s what I have in mind for your child, Mrs. Williams,” Jock said, “in the event you come to your senses and help us a little. I’m guessing you would prefer your son or daughter to remain in the tradition you and your husband have begun. Obviously, that would

  be counterproductive to our aims. We would like to see all children enrolled in Junior GC before they start school.

  “But in your case, we’re willing to treat your child as a nonentity until he or she is twelve years old.”

  “And who would raise him?” Chloe said, wincing, realizing hunger was an effective tactic after all.

  “So we’re talking about a boy, then. Fair enough. Want to give me a name to make it less awkward to carry out negotiations?”

  Chloe didn’t answer. These weren’t negotiations. All she had to do was protect Kenny for one more year and the GC wouldn’t have a chance at him.

  “Come now, Mrs. Williams. You’re a bright woman. You have to see what a prize you are to us. We have been inconvenienced and, I’ll admit it, embarrassed by the Judah-ites. There is little doubt you people are somehow behind our little problem in New Babylon right now. You can help us. I’m not naïve enough to think you want to do that, but I’m trying to give you a reason. You have some huge bargaining chips.”

  “May I stand?”

  “You may, but I need to warn you that we are locked in. I’m three times your size, but just for smiles, let’s say you overpower me, get the drop on me. You could break my neck and kill me, but you’re not getting out of here.”

  “I just want to move a little, sir.”

  “Feel free. And call me Jock.”

  Yeah, you’re my best friend now.

  “Hey, you want some breakfast?”

  “Of course.”

  “Me too. What do you like?”

  “I’m not fussy.”

  “I am. I go for the old artery-clogger special. Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, pancakes with lotsa syrup. Want some?”

  He had to be kidding. Chloe stood with her arms folded and turned away.

  “Come on! Can’t get you to call me by my first name. Can’t get you to tell me what you want to eat. How ’bout it? Will you join me? Will you have what I’m having?”

  “I told you, I’m not fussy.”

  “You also told me you were hungry. I’ll order for us, eh, Chloe? You mind if I call you Chloe?”

  “Actually, I’d rather you not.”

  “Oh, well, then, by all means. It’s all about you. Just let me know all your desires and preferences. If the pillow in your cell is not soft enough, give me a holler. Or call the front desk.”

  So the gloves were off. Chloe had convinced him she wasn’t going to cooperate, so he was done playing good cop.

  Or was he? Jock moved past her and summoned Nigel again, and she overheard him ordering the very breakfasts he had described. He turned back to her.

  “Food service here is about the same as at any jail, Chloe, but even a hash slinger is hard-pressed to mess up breakfast. Now listen, while we wait . . . I can see you’re no pushover. I didn’t expect you to be and wouldn’t have respected you if you had been.

  Here’s the deal. You know nothing you give us is going to set you free. How would we look to the public? But I can get your execution commuted to a life sentence, and I can get that in a livable facility. You’d have my word on it. It’d be maximum security, of course, but you would have full custody of your son until he�
�s twelve years old.”

  The fact was, Kenny was safe with Buck, and if she could maintain her sanity, that might not have to change. If only she could get word to Buck to get everyone out of there and to Petra.

  Chloe felt light-headed and hunger gnawed. “And that deal is in exchange for . . . ?”

  “Taking the mark of loyalty would be a given. No way we would have any credibility otherwise. That gets you life instead of death. But what gets you the nice facility and custody of your son is information.”

  “You think I’m going to flip on my people.”

  “I do, and you know why? Because you’re a loving mother.

  You think your people wouldn’t give you up in a second to keep their necks out from under that blade? Give me a break.”

  ________

  Albie shuddered, tooling through Abadan on his scooter, cap pulled low over his eyes. Al Basrah was no better, but this had to be what Sodom and Gomorrah had been like before God torched them. Every form of sin and debauchery was displayed right on the street. What was once the seedy side of town now was the town.

  Row after row of bars, fortune-telling joints, bordellos, sex shops, and clubs pandering to every persuasion and perversion teemed with drunk and high patrons. Hashish permeated the air. Cocaine and heroin deals went down in plain sight.

  The GC Peacekeepers and Morale Monitors had once made a noisy bust or two weekly to keep up appearances. But with their ranks shrunk, they now concentrated on crimes against the government. Skip one of your thrice-daily bowings and scrapings before the image of Carpathia and you could be hauled off to jail.

  Caught without the mark of loyalty? Zero tolerance. They enjoyed playing with people’s minds and telling them they had one last chance. When a gratefully weeping soul eagerly approached the mark application site, he or she was pushed or dragged screaming to the guillotine as an example.

  Bad as Abadan had become, there was a worse part of town, and it was where Mainyu Mazda and his kind plied their trade. In

  the open-air market, where loud haggling and swindling were the daytime sport, were makeshift dens of clapboard squares, which consisted of just walls and a locking door, no roof. A tarp in the corner could be hastily attached to corner posts in the event of rain, but otherwise, black marketers and their henchmen (one always standing guard outside) held court inside, meeting with people who wanted something, anything, and were willing to pay a lot to get it.