“Logical? Hardly.”
“I mean, there must have been a reason, that’s all.”
“To humble me, perhaps, but this is quite a price. I never claimed to be perfect, but I pray so hard over my messages, and God knows I would never intentionally—”
“That’s what I mean, Doc. God must have wanted this to happen somehow.”
“Oh, I do not—”
“You said it yourself, you pray about this stuff. That doesn’t make your messages like the Bible, I guess, but God’s not gonna let a regular human like you mess up his plan with one mistake, is he?”
Tsion didn’t know what to think. This uneducated young man often had fresh insight. “Maybe I have myself overrated.”
“Maybe. You didn’t seem to when you were just the guy who teaches a billion people. Why didn’t you let that go to your head?”
“I do not think of it that way, Z. It’s humbling, a privilege.”
“See? You could get cocky about having this big Internet church, but you don’t. So maybe you shouldn’t start thinkin’ you’re important enough to get in God’s way.”
“Obviously I am not above mistakes,” Tsion said.
“Yeah, but come on. You think God is gonna say, ‘I had this deal all figured out till Ben-Judah went and messed it up’?”
Tsion had to chuckle. “I suppose he can overcome my blunders.”
“I hope so. You always made him out to be big enough.”
“Well, thank you, Z. That gives me something to—”
“But it goes past that, even,” Zeke said. “I still think God might have had a reason for lettin’ you do that.”
“For now I am just trying to take in that God can overrule my error.”
“You wait and see, Doc. I bet you’re gonna find that either the GC doesn’t buy it because it looks like such an obvious phony lead. Or they think they’ve found something juicy and they try to take advantage of it, only to see it blow up in their faces.”
At dawn Rayford was alarmed to find Albie with Big George, uncrating several of each of the two kinds of weapons the latter had had shipped in. “What’re we doing, Albie?”
“Your phone not working?”
Rayford patted his pocket and pulled it out. “Nuts!” he said. “Used it too much yesterday.” He pulled the solar pack from it and clipped it to the outside of his shirt pocket, where the sun would rejuvenate it, and put a fresh pack in. He found he had missed several calls.
Albie said, “Let me save you checking all those out and tell you what Hassid’s and my calls were about.”
“Everybody back off.” The newest arrival to the Temple Mount was a tall, athletic-looking, dark-haired plainclothesman with the outline of a handgun under his jacket. “Who’re you?” he said to Buck, as the rest of the Morale Monitors and Peacekeepers, including the three who had been paralyzed, stepped back.
Buck thought he had been prepared for everything, but he felt his pockets as if about to produce his ID, then pointed to Chaim. “I’m with him. Who are you?”
“Name’s Loren Hut, and I’m chief of the Global Community Morale Monitors. I have the potentate on the phone for the troublemaker.” He looked at Chaim, making the pressing crowd laugh. “For some reason my people can’t seem to get through to a demented old man. That has to be you.”
Chaim said, “Tell your boss I do not care to speak to him except in person.”
“Not possible, Mr.—”
“Micah.”
“Best you’re going to get is this call, Mr. Micah. Now I’m not feeling well this morning, and you’re already pressing your luck.”
“Not feeling well how, Mr. Hut?”
“Do you want to talk to His Excellency or—”
Chaim looked away, shaking his head.
Hut scowled and put his phone to his ear. “False alarm. Apologize to the potentate for me. . . . Well, sure, I’ll talk to him, but I don’t want to waste his—good morning, sir. Yes . . . I don’t know . . . I’ll be sure to get full reports from everyb—well, yes, I can get it done. . . . You want me to do that? I—yes, I know, but it’s not as if he poses a real threat . . . yes, sir. Nine in the clip . . . if that’s what you want . . . I don’t disagree, it’s just that he’s a frail . . . I could do that. . . . Affirmative, you can count on me.”
Hut slapped his phone shut and swore. “You,” he said to Buck, “keep your distance. Be glad for your sake I kept you out of this. And you people—” he gestured toward the crowd—“stay back!” Some moved; most didn’t. “Don’t say you weren’t warned!”
“Sores starting to get to you, young man?” Chaim said.
“Shut up! You’re about to die.”
“That will not be up to you, son.”
“Actually, yes it will. Now be quiet! Corporal Riehl, are you all right?”
“A little foggy,” she said flatly. “What do you need?”
“Find a GCNN camera crew and get ’em over here. The potentate wants me to put nine in this guy, but he wants to see it.”
“So do I,” she said, trotting off.
“Mr. Hut,” Chaim said, “will you be able to do your duty? You are getting worse by the second.”
Hut bent over and vigorously scratched his abdomen and belly. “I don’t have to be a hundred percent to kill a man at point-blank range.”
“That will not happen.”
“You think you can paralyze me?”
“I never know how God will act.”
“Well, I know how you will act. You’ll be squirming and screaming and pleading for your life.”
“My life is not my own. If God wishes it, he may have it. But as I have further responsibilities, including talking in person to the coward who would ignore me, God will spare me.”
Corporal Riehl returned with a turbaned man with a camera on his shoulder. With him was a short black woman carrying a microphone. “What are we doing?” she asked with a British accent.
“Just tell me when you’re rolling,” Hut said. “This is for His Excellency.”
“Live or disc?”
“I don’t care! Just cue me!”
“All right! Hang on!” She spoke into a small radio. “Yes!” she said. “Carpathia himself. Just a minute.” She turned to Hut. “Central wants to know your authority.”
Hut swore again and scratched himself from abdomen to shoulders. “Hut!” he said. “GCMM! Now let’s go!”
“Okay,” the woman said, stepping in front of the camera. “This is Bernadette Rice, live from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where we are about to witness an execution ordered personally by His Excellency Nicolae Carpathia. Behind me, Loren Hut, new chief of the Global Community Morale Monitors, will administer the sentence to a man known only as Micah, who has refused the mark of loyalty and resisted arrest.”
When people from other areas of the Temple Mount saw on the giant TV monitors what was going on, they flooded the area around Chaim and Buck and Hut.
“Don’t let Kenny see this!” Zeke called out. “But come quick, both of you!”
It was after midnight in Chicago, and Tsion had slipped off the arm of the couch to a cushion, where he sat hunched forward, peeking at the screen between his fingers. “God, please . . .”
“There’s Buck!” Chloe said, pointing.
Tsion thought Cameron looked weird, standing casually, hands in his pockets.
The GCMM chief pulled his side arm from its holster, paused to scratch himself with his left hand and right elbow, then prepared the weapon. He spread his legs and held the gun in both hands, aiming at Chaim’s hands, which were clasped in front of him. Hut’s angle would make the bullet pass through them without hitting his body.
The explosion of the first shot made Buck skip out of the way and the crowd recoil, but Chaim didn’t move, except to flinch at the sound. Hut stared in disbelief at Chaim’s unmarred hands and moved to his opposite side, aiming the second shot at them again. The crowd scattered. BLAM! Another apparent miss from just i
nches away.
Hut, scratching himself all the way to the knees between shots now, aimed at Chaim’s foot and fired. Nothing. Not even a hole in the robe. Hut lifted the hem with his left hand and fired at the other foot. Moaning in agony and apparently fear, Hut scratched with his free hand, pressed the muzzle onto one of Chaim’s knees, then the other. The shots produced only noise.
The crowd laughed. “This is a joke!” someone said. “A put-on! He’s shooting blanks!”
“Blanks?” Hut screamed, whirling to face the heckler. “You’d bet your life on that?” He fired shot number seven into the man’s sternum. The back of the victim’s head hit the ground first, the sickening crush of his skull clear on the TV reporter’s microphone.
With the crowd running for cover and Bernadette Rice falling out of the picture, Loren Hut fired at Chaim’s left shoulder from six inches, then pressed the gun to the unharmed old man’s forehead. Chaim looked sympathetically at the shaken, writhing Hut, and casually plugged his ears. The barrel of the gun left a small indentation on Chaim’s skin. The bullet proved harmless.
Hut tossed the gun away and threw his arms around a tree, rubbing his body against it for relief. He cried out in agony, then turned and summoned Corporal Riehl. He reached for her rifle and pointed it under his own chin. Chaim approached calmly.
“No need for that, Mr. Hut,” he said. “The death you have chosen will overtake you in due time. Put down the weapon and summon Carpathia for me.”
Hut threw down the rifle and staggered away, but already Buck heard the thwocking of chopper blades. Two helicopters touched down, and the crowd—which had largely retreated—cautiously returned, avoiding the corpse that lay in a pool of blood.
Carpathia was the only civilian in either bird, and he wore his jet-black, pin-striped suit over a white shirt and brilliant red tie. He strode directly to Chaim and Buck while seven uniformed Peacekeepers formed a semicircle behind him, weapons trained on Chaim.
Nicolae smiled at the crowd and turned to locate the GCNN cameraman. Bernadette was still on the ground, trembling. “Keep rolling, son,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“R-R-Rashid.”
“Well, stand right here, R-R-Rashid, so the world can see who dares mock my sovereignty.”
Carpathia approached Chaim and faced him from three feet away, arms crossed. “You are too old to be Tsion Ben-Judah,” he said. “And you call yourself Micah.” He cocked his head and squinted at Buck, who feared that Nicolae recognized him. “And this is?”
“My assistant,” Chaim said.
“Does he have a name?”
“He has a name.”
“May I know it?”
“There is no need.”
“You are an insulting dolt, are you not?” Carpathia spoke to a guard, nodding at Buck. “Get him out of here. The mark or the blade.”
Buck set himself to resist, but the guard looked petrified. He cleared his throat. “Come with me, please, sir.”
Buck shook his head. The guard looked helplessly back at Carpathia, who ignored him. Suddenly the guard dropped, wriggling on the ground, scratching himself all over.
“All right,” Carpathia said. “I concede I have you to thank for the fact that nearly my entire workforce is suffering this morning.”
“Probably all of them,” Chaim said. “If they are not, you might want to check the authenticity of their marks.”
“How did you do it?”
“Not I, but God.”
“You are looking into the face of god,” Carpathia said.
“On the contrary,” Chaim said, “I fear God. I do not fear you.”
Rayford spread a topographical map on the hood of a truck. “Let’s get Mac and Smitty in on this too,” he said. Albie phoned them.
Big George leaned in. “Anywhere we could hunker down within a couple of miles of Petra?”
Rayford shook his head. “I don’t know. Whole area looks a lot different on paper than from the air. I know you’re gung ho ho and everything, but I’m not prepared to do any killing.”
“All due respect, Cap,” George said, “but they’re going to be killing our people. You might change your mind when you see that.”
“We’re here to get people to safety, not to kill the enemy.”
Albie slapped his phone shut. “What if killing the enemy is the only way to get the Israelis to safety?”
“That’s God’s job.”
“I agree,” Albie said, “at least from what Dr. Ben-Judah says. But I’d hate to see us lose one brother or sister, and if these weapons are what it takes, I say use ’em.”
Buck would never forget a detail of this macabre meeting, and the entire world was watching.
“So, Micah,” Carpathia said, shifting his weight, “what will it take for you to lift this magic spell that has incapacitated my people?”
“There is no magic here,” Chaim said, in a voice that sounded as far from his own as Buck could imagine. “This is the judgment of almighty God.”
“All right,” Nicolae said, smiling tolerantly. “What does almighty God want in exchange for lightening up—” and here he made quotation marks with his fingers—“on this judgment?”
Chaim shook his head.
“Come, Micah. If you would negotiate on behalf of God, surely you can think of something!”
“Those who have taken your mark and worship your image shall suffer.”
Carpathia moved close, his smile gone. “Do not tell my beloved not to accept the mark of loyalty or worship me!”
“They know the consequence and can see it here.”
Rashid began to pan the camera around to take in many agonized loyalists. “Do not!” Carpathia whispered to him, grabbing his shoulder and swinging him back. Then to Chaim, “If anyone refuses my mark, I will put him to death myself!”
“The choice then,” Chaim said, “is life with excruciating pain or death at your hand.”
“What do you want?”
“You will carry out your plan for the temple,” Chaim said, “but many will oppose you for it.”
“At their peril.”
“Many have already decided against you and have pledged themselves to the one true God and his Son, the Messiah.”
“They will pay with their lives.”
“You asked what I wanted.”
“And you propose that people be allowed to shake their fists in my face? Never!”
Rashid dropped to one knee, trembling. Carpathia shot him a look. “Get up!”
“I can’t!”
“I see the 42 on your forehead, Rashid! You need not fear!”
“I am not afraid, Excellency! I am in pain!”
“Agh! Set the camera on a tripod and tend to your sores!”
Chaim continued calmly. “A million of God’s chosen people in this area alone have chosen to believe in Messiah. They would die before they would take your mark.”
“Then they shall die!”
“You must let them flee this place before you pour out revenge on your enemies.”
“Never!”
“The recompense for stubbornness is on your hands. The grievous sores on your followers shall be the least of your troubles.”
Buck looked past Carpathia to where the mark application lines had been replaced by makeshift medical tents. Lines of people waited in misery for treatment. Some held their friends as they gingerly moved about, only to collapse under their own pain. Bernadette had crawled away. Rashid was headed toward the tents. Every guard who had accompanied Nicolae staggered away. One of the helicopters stopped idling and the pilot tumbled out, whimpering. The pilot of the other was slumped over the controls.
Civilians, many of whom had been among the last to take the mark and worship the image, tried to run from the Temple Mount, only to stumble with sores appearing all over their bodies.
Chaim said, “Your only hope to avoid the next terrible plague from heaven is to let Israelis who believe in Messiah go.”
&nb
sp; Finally Carpathia appeared shaken. “And what might that next plague entail?”
“You will know when you know,” Chaim said. “But I can tell you this: It will be worse than the one that has brought your people low. I need a drink of water.”
Carpathia caught the eye of a loyalist and told him to “fetch Micah a bottle of water.” Chaim stared at the potentate as they waited.
“You are nothing but a thirsty old man in an outsized robe.”
“I am not thirsty.”
“Then why—”
“You shall see.”
“I can hardly wait.”
The man came running with the water. He gave it to Carpathia, who handed it to Chaim. The old man held it up and peered at it. “I could not drink this anyway,” he said.
“What is wrong with it?” Nicolae said.
“See for yourself.”
Chaim handed it back, and the bottle turned nearly black as the water turned to blood.
“Ach!” Carpathia said. “This again? Do you not know what happened to your two associates at the Wailing Wall?”
“Any advantages you gain are by God’s hand, and they are temporary.”
Nicolae turned to see the disaster at the Temple Mount, nearly everyone writhing. He turned back to Chaim. “I want my people healthy and my water pure.”
“You know the price.”
“Specifics.”
“Israeli Jews who have chosen to believe Jesus the Christ is their Messiah must be allowed to leave before you punish anyone for not taking your mark. And devout Orthodox Jews must be allowed a place where they can worship after you have defiled their temple.”
“The Orthodox Jews do not even agree with you, and yet you speak for them?”
“I reserve the right to continue to attempt to persuade them.”
“Would you take them to Petra with the Judah-ites?”
“I would propose Masada as a site for them to gather. Any we are able to persuade would then join us.”
“In Petra.”
“I did not say where.”
“We already know where, you fool, and it required no intelligence on our parts.”