Leah felt conspicuous and wondered whether anyone was behind the glass after all. Finally she marched to the door but was not surprised to find herself locked in again. “Terrific,” she said, heading back toward the mirror. “What are the magic words that get me out of here? C’mon, lady! I know you’re back there!”
“You will be free to go when we say you are free to go.”
The same woman. Leah pictured her older, matronly, and clearly Asian. She raised her palms in surrender and plopped into a chair. She started and looked up when she heard a buzz in the door latch. “You may go.”
Leah shot a double take at the mirror. “I may?”
“She who hesitates . . .”
“Oh, I’m going,” she said, rising. “Could I at least see you on my way out? Please? I just want to know—”
“You’re trying my patience, Mrs. Clendenon. You have received all the information you will get here.”
Leah stopped with her hand on the doorknob, shaking her head, hoping to weasel something from the disembodied voice.
“Go, ma’am!” the woman said. “While you have the option.”
Leah had given her best. She wasn’t willing to go to prison for this caper. For another effort, maybe, another assignment. She would sacrifice her freedom for Dr. Ben-Judah. But for Hattie? Hattie’s own doctor had died treating her, and she seemed barely grateful.
Leah moved briskly through the echoing corridors. She heard a door behind her and, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman, turned quickly. A small, trim, pale, dark-haired woman in uniform turned and headed the other way. Could that have been her?
Leah headed for the main entrance but turned at the last instant and stepped behind a bank of phones. At least it looked like a bank of phones. She wanted to pretend to be talking on one while anyone who might follow her rushed out the door, but every phone was in shambles, wires hanging.
She was about to abandon her plan when she heard quick footsteps and saw a young Asian woman hurry out the front door, car keys jangling. Leah was convinced this was the same woman who had ducked away when she turned around. Now Leah was following her.
She hesitated inside the glass doors, watching as the woman trotted to the visitor parking lot and scanned the area. Apparently frustrated, she turned and walked slowly back toward the entrance. Leah nonchalantly exited, hoping to get a straight-on look at the woman. If she could get her to speak, she would know whether she had been the one behind the glass.
An employee of the GC and she’s worse at this than I am, Leah thought, as the woman noticed her, appeared startled, then fought to act normal. As they neared one another, Leah asked where a washroom was, but the woman tugged her tiny uniform cap tighter onto her head and turned away to cough as she passed, not hearing or pretending not to.
Leah pulled out of the unattended lot and waited at a stop sign a quarter mile away, where she could see the prison entrance in her rearview mirror. The woman hurried out and hopped into a compact four-door. Determined to lose her, Leah raced off and got lost trying to find her hotel via side streets.
She called Rayford again and again. No way this could wait until Friday. When he didn’t answer she worried that his phone might have fallen into the wrong hands. She left a cryptic message: “Our bird has flown the cage. Now what?”
She drove into the country, convinced no one was following her, and found her way back to the hotel at dusk. She had been in her room less than half an hour when the phone rang.
“This is Donna,” she said.
“You have a visitor,” the clerk said. “May I send her back?”
“No! Who is it?”
“‘A friend’ is all she’ll say.”
“I’ll come there,” Leah said.
She stuffed her belongings into a bag and slipped out to her car. She tried to peer into the lobby through the plate glass, but she couldn’t see who was there. As she started the car, someone drove behind her and stopped. Leah was pinned in. She locked her doors as the driver emerged from the other vehicle.
As Leah’s eyes adjusted to the light, she could see it was the same car the woman had driven from the prison. A knock made her jump. The woman, still in uniform, signaled her to lower her window. Leah lowered it an inch, her heart thudding.
“I need to make a show of this,” the woman whispered. “Play your part.”
My part? “What do you want?” Leah said.
“Come with me.”
“Not on your life! Unless you want your car in pieces, get it out of my way.”
The woman leaned forward. “Excellent. Now step out and let me cuff you and—”
“Are you out of your mind? I have no intention of—”
“Perhaps you cannot see my forehead in the darkness,” the woman said. “But trust me—”
“Why should I—?”
And then Leah saw it. The woman had the mark. She was a believer.
The woman pointed to the lock as she removed handcuffs from a holster on her belt. Leah unlocked the door. “How did you find me?” she said.
“Checked your alias at several hotels. Didn’t take long.”
“Alias?” Leah said as she alighted and turned so the woman could cuff her.
“I’m Ming Toy,” she said, leading Leah to the backseat of her car. “A believer comes all the way to Brussels to see Hattie Durham and uses her own name? I don’t think so.”
“I’m supposed to be her aunt,” Leah said as Ming pulled out of the parking lot.
“Well, that worked on everybody else,” she said. “But they didn’t see what I saw. So, who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Would you mind if I double-checked your mark, Miss Toy?”
“Mrs. I’m a widow.”
“Me too.”
“But call me Ming.”
“I’ll tell you what you can call me as soon as I can check your mark.”
“In a minute.”
Ming pulled into a GC Peacekeeping station. “I need an interrogation room,” she barked at the man behind the desk, still holding tight to Leah’s left biceps.
“Commander,” the man said with a nod, sliding a key across the counter. “Last door on the left.”
“Private, no viewing, no bugs.”
“That’s the secure one, ma’am.”
Ming locked the door, angled the lamp shade toward them, and released Leah from her cuffs. “Check me out,” she said, sitting and cocking her head.
Leah gently held the back of Ming’s head, knowing already that anyone who would let her do that had to be genuine. She licked her thumb and ran it firmly across the mark on Ming’s forehead. Leah slumped into a chair across from Ming and reached for both her hands. “I can’t wait to get to know you,” she said.
“Likewise,” Ming said. “Let’s pray first.”
Leah couldn’t keep from welling up as this brand-new friend thanked God for their propitious meeting and asked that he allow them to somehow work together.
“First I’ll tell you where Hattie Durham is,” Ming said. “Then we’ll trade stories, and I’ll take you back to your hotel, tell my associates that you check out as Hattie’s aunt, and let them think that you believe Hattie was transferred but that you don’t know where.”
“She wasn’t transferred?”
Ming shook her head.
“Is she alive?”
“Temporarily.”
“Healthy?”
“Healthier than when we got her. In fact, she’s in quite good shape. Strong enough to assassinate a potentate.”
Leah furrowed her brow and shook her head. “I’m not following you.”
“They let her go.”
“Why?”
“All she talked about was killing Carpathia. Finally they told her that as it was clear she had lost his baby, she was no longer a threat and was free to go, with a tidy settlement for her trouble. Roughly one hundred thousand Nicks in cash.”
Leah shook her head. “They don’t consider her a threat? She wants t
o kill him for real.”
“They know that,” Ming said. “In my opinion, they think she’s dumber than she looks.”
“Sometimes she is,” Leah said.
“But not dumb enough to lead them straight to the rest of the Tribulation Force,” Ming said. “The simplistic plan is that they follow her to the Gala in Jerusalem and to some sort of a rendezvous with one of you Judah-ites.”
“I love that title. I’m a believer first, but also proudly a Judah-ite.”
“Me too,” Ming said. “And I’ll bet you know Ben-Judah personally.”
“I do.”
“Wow.”
“But, Ming, the GC is wrong about Hattie. She’s crazy enough to go and try to kill Nicolae, but she has no interest in contacting any of us.”
“You might be surprised.”
“How so?”
“She didn’t go to Jerusalem like they hoped. We’ve tracked her to North America. I think she’s onto the GC and wants to get back to safety as soon as she can.”
“That’s worse!” Leah said. “She’ll lead them to the safe house.”
“Maybe that’s why God sent you here,” Ming said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do to protect you people. Whom was I supposed to tell? You’re the answer to my prayer.”
“But what can I do? I’ll never be able to catch her before she gets there.”
“You can at least warn them, right?”
Leah nodded. “My phone’s in my bag in my car.”
“And my phones are all traceable.”
They traded stories on the way back. Ming was twenty-two years old, a native of China. Her husband of two months had been killed a few minutes after the disappearances when the commuter train he was on crashed when the brakeman and several controllers vanished. She had joined the GC in a paroxysm of patriotism shortly after the treaty was signed between the United Nations and Israel. She had been assigned to the reconstruction administration in what used to be the Philippines, but there she had become a believer through the letters of her brother at home, now seventeen. “Chang’s friends had led him to faith,” she said. “He has not yet told my parents, who are very old school and very pro-Carpathia, especially my father. I worry about Chang.”
Ming had applied for work in the peacekeeping forces, hoping for just this sort of opportunity to aid fellow believers. “I don’t know how much longer I can remain inside undercover.”
“How did you get to a position of authority over so many guards?”
“It’s not so big a deal as it sounds. The population decimation didn’t hurt.”
“C’mon! You’re in management.”
“Well, in all humility, a stratospheric IQ doesn’t hurt. That and wrestling,” she added, seeming to fight a smile. “Two out of three falls.”
“You’re not serious.”
“They know Greco-Roman. I know martial arts.” Ming pulled into the hotel parking lot. “Call your friends right away,” she said. “And stay away from Buffer. I’ll cover for you.”
“Thank God for you, Ming,” Leah said, again overcome. They traded phone numbers. “The day will come when you need a safe place too. Keep in touch.” They embraced, and Leah hurried to get her bag and get back into her room.
There was no answer at the safe house, and Leah worried it had already been compromised. Had it already been overrun? And what of her new friends? She tried Rayford’s number, then the safe house, again and again.
Unable to reach anyone, Leah knew she had a better chance of helping the Trib Force in North America than from a Brussels hotel room. She found a flight and headed home that very night. All the way back she tried the safe house phone, to no avail.
CHAPTER 1
Buck braced himself with his elbow crooked around a scaffolding pole. Thousands of panicked people fleeing the scene had, like him, started and involuntarily turned away from the deafening gunshot. It had come from perhaps a hundred feet to Buck’s right and was so loud he would not have been surprised if even those at the back of the throng of some two million had heard it plainly.
He was no expert, but to Buck it had sounded like a high-powered rifle. The only weapon smaller that had emitted such a report was the ugly handgun Carpathia had used to destroy the skulls of Moishe and Eli three days before. Actually, the sounds were eerily similar. Had Carpathia’s own weapon been fired? Might someone on his own staff have targeted him?
The lectern had shattered loudly as well, like a tree branch split by lightning. And that gigantic backdrop sailing into the distance . . .
Buck wanted to bolt with the rest of the crowd, but he worried about Chaim. Had he been hit? And where was Jacov? Just ten minutes before, Jacov had waited below stage left where Buck could see him. No way Chaim’s friend and aide would abandon him during a crisis.
As people stampeded by, some went under the scaffold, most went around it, and some jostled both Buck and the support poles, making the structure sway. Buck held tight and looked to where giant speakers three stories up leaned this way and that, threatening their flimsy plywood supports.
Buck could choose his poison: step into the surging crowd and risk being trampled or step up a few feet on the angled crossbar. He stepped up and immediately felt the fluidity of the structure. It bounced and seemed to want to spin as Buck looked toward the platform over the tops of a thousand streaking heads. He had heard Carpathia’s lament and Fortunato’s keening, but suddenly the sound—at least in the speakers above him—went dead.
Buck glanced up just in time to see a ten-foot-square speaker box tumble from the top. “Look out!” he shrieked to the crowd, but no one heard or noticed. He looked up again to be sure he was out of the way. The box snapped its umbilicals like string, which redirected its path some fifteen feet away from the tower. Buck watched in horror as a woman was crushed beneath it and several other men and women were staggered. A man tried to drag the victim from beneath the speaker, but the crowd behind him never slowed. Suddenly the running mass became a cauldron of humanity, trampling each other in their desperation to get free of the carnage.
Buck could not help. The entire scaffolding was pivoting, and he felt himself swing left. He hung on, not daring to drop into the torrent of screaming bodies. He caught sight of Jacov at last, trying to make his way up the side steps to the platform where Carpathia’s security detail brandished Uzis.
A helicopter attempted to land near the stage but had to wait until the crowd cleared. Chaim sat motionless in his chair, facing to Buck’s right, away from Carpathia and Fortunato. He appeared stiff, his head cocked and rigid, as if unable to move. If he had not been shot, Buck wondered if he’d had another stroke, or worse, a heart attack. He knew if Jacov could get to him, he would protect Chaim and get him somewhere safe.
Buck tried to keep an eye on Jacov while Fortunato waved at the helicopters, pleading with one to land and get Carpathia out of there. Jacov finally broke free and sprinted up the steps, only to be dealt a blow from the butt end of an Uzi that knocked him off his feet and into the crowd.
The impact snapped Jacov’s head back so violently that Buck was certain he was unconscious and unable to protect himself from trampling. Buck leaped off the scaffold and into the fray, fighting his way toward Jacov. He moved around the fallen speaker box and felt the sticky blood underfoot.
As Buck neared where he thought Jacov should be he took one more look at the platform before the angle would obscure his view. Chaim’s chair was moving! He was headed full speed toward the back of the platform. Had he leaned against the joystick? Was he out of control? If he didn’t stop or turn, he would pitch twelve feet to the pavement and certain death. His head was still cocked, his body stiff.
Buck reached Jacov, who lay splayed, his head awkwardly flopped to one side, eyes staring, limbs limp. A sob worked its way to Buck’s throat as he elbowed stragglers out of the way and knelt to put a thumb and forefinger to Jacov’s throat. No pulse.
Buck wanted to drag the body from the scen
e but feared he would be recognized despite his extensive facial scars. There was nothing he could do for Jacov. But what about Chaim?
Buck sprinted left around the platform and skidded to a stop at the back corner, from where he could see Chaim’s wheelchair crumpled on the ground, backstage center. The heavy batteries had broken open and lay twenty feet from the chair, which had one wheel bent almost in half, seat pad missing, and a footrest broken off. Was Buck about to find another friend dead?
He loped to the mangled chair and searched the area, including under the platform. Besides splinters from what he was sure had been the lectern, he found nothing. How could Chaim have survived this? Many of the world rulers had scrambled off the back of the stage, certainly having to turn and hang from the edge first to avoid serious injury. Even then, many would have had to have suffered sprained or broken ankles. But an elderly stroke victim riding in a metal chair twelve feet to concrete? Buck feared Chaim could not have survived. But who would have carried him off?
A chopper landed on the other side of the platform, and medical personnel rushed the stage. The security detail fanned out and began descending the stairs to clear the area.
Four emergency medical technicians crowded around Carpathia and Fortunato while others attended the trampled and the crushed, including the woman beneath the speaker box. Jacov was lifted into a body bag. Buck nearly wept at having to leave his brother that way, yet he knew Jacov was in heaven. He ran to catch up with the crowd now spilling into the streets.
Buck knew Jacov was dead. From the wound at the back of Carpathia’s head, he assumed Nicolae was dead or soon would be. And he had to assume Chaim was dead too.
Buck longed for the end of all this and the glorious appearing of Christ. But that was still another three and a half years off.
Rayford felt a fool, running with the crowd, the hem of his robe in his hands to keep from tripping. He had dropped the Saber and its box and wanted to use his arms for more speed. But he had to run like a woman in a long skirt. Adrenaline carried him, because he felt fast as ever, regardless. Rayford really wanted to shed the robe and turban, but the last thing he needed just then was to look like a Westerner.