Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem Target: Antichrist Page 8
“I don’t have that mind, but I do have questions. You were working on your commentary about the second woe, the sixth Trumpet Judgment.”
“Which I am late on,” Tsion said. “With everything that happened, I was unable to post it yesterday. I hope to have it done this morning. And I hope my absence for a day did not cause panic among the audience.”
“Everybody prays you will not be taken off the Net.”
“David Hassid assures me we can stay ahead of Carpathia technologically. Yet when he explains how he bounces our signal from satellite to satellite and cell to cell, I am lost. I just thank God he knows what he is doing.”
Buck rinsed out his glass. “You were wrestling with something yesterday.”
“I still am,” Tsion said. “For centuries scholars believed prophetic literature was figurative, open to endless interpretation. That could not have been what God intended. Why would he make it so difficult? I believe when the Scriptures say the writer saw something in a vision, it is symbolic of something else. But when the writer simply says that certain things happen, I take those literally. So far I have been proven right.
“The passage I am working on, where John sees—in a vision—200 million horsemen who have the power to slay a third of the remaining population, seems by necessity figurative. I doubt these men and animals will be literal beings, but I believe their impact will be very real nonetheless. They will indeed slay a third of the population.”
Buck squinted, and the teacher looked away. “This is a new one,” Buck said. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Tsion shook his head. “Yet I feel a great responsibility for the readers God has entrusted to me. I do not want to get ahead of him, but neither do I want to hang back in fear. All I can do is to be honest about how I am tussling with this. It is time many of these believers start interpreting the Scriptures for themselves anyway.”
“When is this judgment supposed to happen?”
“All we know for sure is that it comes next chronologically and that it must occur before the midpoint of the Tribulation. Unless God himself makes it happen in an instant, it appears it could take several weeks.”
Tsion had, the day before, merely transmitted the scriptural passage he would comment on the next day. Running the body of text alone resulted in the largest cyberspace audience in history, awaiting Dr. Ben-Judah’s fearful teaching on Revelation 9:15-21:
So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind.
Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them.
And thus I saw the horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of the horses were like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and brimstone.
By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed—by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths.
For their power is in their mouth and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they do harm.
But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.
And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
David returned to his office conflicted by the fear Leon had engendered and the thrill of having toyed with the man once again. From his laptop, ignoring a flashing Message sign, he ordered another gross of the computers, directing that they be delivered to the palace airstrip. No sense drawing further suspicion. He could thwart whatever his experts detected by planting viruses in the equipment or merely misinterpreting their findings.
Buck sat with the others at a meeting of the stateside Tribulation Force at 11 a.m. Tuesday. He reported he’d just gotten word from David that Abdullah Smith was to be Mac’s new first officer. Rayford raised a fist of celebration.
Then Rayford said, “A couple of updates. We’re getting the word to people we trust to keep an eye out for Hattie. She can do us more harm than anyone I can think of. I’m calling a break on work in the cellar for a day. Chloe and I are meeting with T this afternoon. All right, Mrs. Rose, the floor is yours.”
Leah stood to speak, which seemed to surprise the others as much as it did Buck. They scooted their chairs back to soften the angle as they looked up at her. She spoke softly and seemed more self-conscious than when she had met them the night before. Her story came in a monotone, as if she were covering her emotions.
“I gather that you people were fairly normal before the Rapture, except that you weren’t believers. I was messed up. I grew up in a home where my dad was an alcoholic, my mother a manic-depressive. My parents’ fights were the neighborhood entertainment until they divorced when I was twelve. Within three years I smoked, drank, slept around, did drugs, and nearly killed myself more than once. I had an abortion when I was seventeen and then tried to drink away the horror of it. I dropped out of school and lived in a friend’s apartment. I consumed more booze and dope than food, and when I found myself wandering the streets and passing blood in the middle of the night, I came to the end of myself.
“I knew I was a bum and that if I didn’t do something about it, I would soon be dead. I didn’t want that because I had no idea what came next. I prayed when I was really in trouble, but most of the time I didn’t even think about God. I went into a free county rehab center and wondered if I dared live without junk in my system. When I finally began to think rationally, the people there discovered I had a brain and had me tested. I had a high IQ, go figure, and proclivities—whatever that meant—for the sciences.
“I was so grateful to those people that it sparked in me some latent soft spot for the needy. I got back into school, graduated a year late with almost straight A’s, and worked as a nurse’s aide and a signer for deaf students to pay for community college. I met my husband there, and he put me through state school and a nursing program. I was unable to bear children, so after about six years of marriage we adopted two boys.”
As soon as she tried to say their names, Leah clouded over and could barely speak. “Peter and Paul,” she whispered. “My husband had been raised in a religious home and, though he hadn’t gone to church for years, had always wanted sons with those names. We wanted to expose the boys to church, so we started going. The people were nice, but it might as well have been a country club. Lots of social activities, but we didn’t feel any closer to God.
“At the hospital where I worked one of the chaplains tried to convert me. Though he seemed sincere, I was offended. And the woman who ran the day care center our boys went to gave me literature about Jesus. I assured her we went to church. I was incensed when my sons came home with Bible stories. I called the woman and told her they went to Sunday school and that I wished she’d stick to just watching them.”
Leah’s voice was husky with emotion. “I found my boys’ beds empty the morning after the Rapture. It was the worst day of my life. I was convinced they had been kidnapped. The police couldn’t do anything, of course, because all children were gone. I hadn’t heard of the Rapture, but it was quickly put forth on the news as one of the possibilities. I called the hospital chaplain, but he had disappeared. I called the day care center, but the director had vanished too. I raced over there, but no one knew anything. In a rack in the waiting room I found more pamphlets like the ones the director had given me. One, titled ‘Don’t Be Left Behind,’ said that someday true believers would disappear into heaven with Jesus.
“That was in my purse when I got home and discovered my husband in the garage with the door shut and his car runnin
g.” Leah paused and collected herself. “He had left me a note, saying he was sorry but that he was frightened out of his mind, couldn’t live without the boys, and knew he had no answer to my grief.”
Leah stopped, her lips trembling.
“Do you need a break, dear?” Tsion asked.
She shook her head. “I tried to kill myself. I swallowed everything in the medicine cabinet and made myself violently ill. God must not have wanted me dead, because apparently much of what I ingested countered whatever else I took. I awoke hours later with a horrible headache, stomachache, and rancid taste. I crawled to my purse to find some mints and came across that pamphlet again. Somehow it finally made sense.
“It predicted what had happened and warned the reader to be ready. The solution—well, you know this—was to seek God, to tell him I knew I was a sinner and that I needed him. I didn’t know if it was too late for me, but I prayed just in case. I don’t know how I found the energy, but as soon as I could get myself out of the house, I looked for other people like me. I found them in a little church. Only a few had been left behind, but they knew why. Now there are about sixty who meet in secret. I’m going to miss those people, but they won’t be surprised I’ve disappeared. I told them what was going on, that I had treated a GC fugitive and all.”
“We’ll get word to them that you’re safe,” Rayford said, clearly overcome.
“Am I safe?” Leah said, sitting down with a sad smile. “Do I get to stay?”
“We always vote,” Tsion said. “But I think you have found a home.”
Early in the evening in New Babylon, David sat in his office after hours, missing Annie. Being alone with her was risky, so they spent time on their secure phones and computers. He built into his unit the capability to erase both their transmissions, to serve as a backup if she forgot. He couldn’t imagine that either of them would forget to remove from their computers evidence of their relationship and especially their faith.
“Maybe we should reveal our love,” she transmitted. “By policy I would be forced to move to a department outside your supervision, but at least we could see each other without suspicion.”
He tapped back: “It’s not a bad idea, and we could use another pair of eyes in other departments. Where you are right now is strategic, though, because of what we can smuggle out of here and into believers’ hands in other countries. Keep thinking, though. I can’t stand being apart from you.”
Suddenly the TV monitors in his area—all of them—came on. That happened only when GC brass believed something was on that every employee would want to see. Most of the time it meant that Carpathia or Fortunato was addressing the world, and it didn’t make any difference whether anyone in a sector was working. If there was a TV there, it came on.
David spun in his chair and leaned back to watch the monitor in his office. A GC CNN anchorman was reporting a plane crash. “While neither the plane itself, reportedly a large private aircraft, nor the pilot or passenger have been sighted, personal belongings have washed ashore in Portugal. Listen to this Mayday call, recorded by several tracking stations in the region.”
Mayday! Mayday! Quantum zero-seven-zero-eight losing altitude! Mayday!
“Radar trackers lost sight of the craft soon thereafter, and rescuers searched the area. Luggage and personal effects of two people, a man and a woman, were discovered. Authorities assume it will be just a matter of time before the wreckage and bodies are discovered. Names of the victims are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.”
David squinted at the screen, wondering why GC brass thought this newsworthy until the victims were known. Then the internal caption scrawl appeared on the screen:
ATTENTION GC PALACE PERSONNEL. PROBABLE VICTIMS IN THIS CRASH, ACCORDING TO RESCUE AUTHORITIES, ARE AS FOLLOWS: PILOT SAMUEL HANSON OF BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA, UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, AND HATTIE DURHAM, ORIGINALLY OF DES PLAINES, ILLINOIS, U.S.N.A. MS. DURHAM ONCE SERVED HIS EXCELLENCY THE POTENTATE AS PERSONAL ASSISTANT. CONDOLENCES TO THOSE WHO KNEW HER.
David phoned Mac. “I saw,” Mac said. “What an obvious fake!”
“Yeah!” David said. “The pilot must be cashing in a huge insurance policy, and Hattie has to be somewhere in Europe.”
“Maybe they’re shopping for more Stupid pills,” Mac said. “Are we supposed to believe Carpathia and Fortunato fell for this?”
“Surely not,” David said. “Unless they engineered it. Maybe they found Hattie and had her killed, and now they’re covering. They’d better come up with wreckage or bodies.”
David heard the ping that told him he had a new message. “I’ll get back to you, Mac.”
Rayford and Chloe sat in T’s office at the base of the Palwaukee tower with T and two men from his house church. Chloe outlined how she planned to link the major players on the co-op network and start testing the system before actual buying and selling got under way. “We have to keep it secret from the beginning,” she said. “Otherwise we’ll be grouped with all other commodities brokers and put under the GC’s aegis.”
The others nodded. Rayford’s phone beeped. It was Buck. Rayford laughed aloud as Buck recounted the strange news report. “Turn on the TV, T,” he said. GC commentators mournfully discussed the tragedy, though names had not been revealed outside New Babylon and so far nothing but papers and belongings had been found. Rayford shook his head. “Someday Fortunato, or whoever tried to take advantage of this, is going to embarrass himself beyond repair.”
Chloe tugged at his sleeve and whispered. “At least we can be pretty sure Hattie’s all right for now.”
“The question,” he said as the meeting broke up, “is where she is. She’s not smart enough to get any thinking person to believe she went down in that plane. Could she still surprise Carpathia?”
When the churchmen were gone, Rayford, Chloe, and T jogged upstairs to quiz the tower man about the 11:30 flight the night before. He was fat and balding, reading a science fiction book.
“Sounded southern to me on the radio, though I never saw him,” the man said. “Bo signed off on the landing and takeoff.”
“He was here?” T said.
“No, he called me about eight to preapprove it.”
“I didn’t see the plane’s numbers on the computer.”
“I wrote ’em down. I can still enter ’em.” He rummaged under a pile of papers. “Oh-seven-oh-eight,” he said. “And I guess you know it was a Quantum.”
“Can we find out who that’s registered to?” Rayford said.
“Sure can,” the man said. He banged away at his computer keyboard and drummed his knee as the information was retrieved. “Hm,” he said, reading. “Samuel Hanson out of Baton Rouge. He’s got to be related to Bo, doesn’t he? Isn’t Bo from Louisiana?”
CHAPTER 7
Reuniting with Abdullah Smith warmed Mac. In his earliest days as first officer to Captain Rayford Steele, Mac had met the former fighter pilot from Jordan. Abdullah had lost his job when Carpathia confiscated international weaponry, but he quickly became one of Rayford’s leading black market suppliers.
Abdullah had been disgraced four years before the Rapture when his wife had become a Christian. He divorced her and fought for custody of their two small children, a boy and a girl. When he could not get relief from months of travel at a time for the Jordanian air force, he was denied custody and took up full-time residence at the military base.
A man of few words, Abdullah had once revealed to Mac and Rayford that he was heartsick to the point of suicide. “I still loved my wife,” he said with his thick accent. “She and the children were my world. But imagine your wife taking up a religion from some mysterious, faraway country. We wrote long letters to each other, but neither could be dissuaded. To my shame, I was not devout in my own religion and fell into loose morals. My wife said she prayed for me every day that I would find Jesus Christ before it was too late. I cursed her in my letters. One sentence pleaded with her to renounce the myths and return to the man
who loved her. The next accused her of treachery and called her despicable names. Her next letter told me she still loved me and reminded me that it was I who had initiated the divorce. Again, in my anger, I lashed out at her.
“I still have the letters in which she warned me that I might die before finding the one true God, or that Jesus could return for those who loved him, and I would be left behind. I was enraged. Just to get back at her I often refused to visit my children, but now I realize I hurt only them and myself. I feel so guilty that they might not know how much I loved them.”
Mac recalled Rayford’s telling Abdullah, “You will be able to tell them one day.” Abdullah had merely nodded, his dark eyes moist and distant.
Abdullah became a believer because he saved his wife’s letters. She had meticulously explained the plan of salvation, writing out Bible verses and telling him how she had prayed to receive Christ. “Many times I crumpled up the letters and threw them across the room,” Abdullah said. “But something kept me from tearing them or burning them or throwing them away.”
When Abdullah heard that his wife and children had disappeared, he had lain prostrate on the floor in his quarters in Amman, his wife’s letters spread before him. “It had happened as she said it would,” he said. “I cried out to God. I had no choice but to believe.”
Because of his Middle Eastern look and his fondness for a turban and a blowsy, off-white top over camouflage trousers and aviator boots, the diminutive Jordanian was the last person anyone suspected of being a Christian. Until the conversion of the 144,000 Jewish witnesses from all over the world and their millions of converts of every nationality, most assumed they could identify a Christian. Now, of course, only true believers knew each other on sight, due to the mark visible only to them.
Abdullah, thin and dark with large, expressive features, was as quiet as Mac remembered him. He was also extremely formal in front of others, not giving away that he and Mac were both spiritual brothers and old friends. He didn’t pretend they had not met, for Mac had concocted a former military connection. But they did not embrace until they were alone in Mac’s office.