“What?”
“What didn’t you hear? Do I have to repeat everything?”
“What didn’t I hear? I didn’t hear anything but you, David. What the devil are you talking about?”
David began his slow descent. “The thing talks. How did you do it? Tape loop? Disc? What? And won’t the heat or smoke destroy it?”
Guy rolled his eyes at his people. He whispered, “What are you, serious?”
“You know blamed well I’m serious, Guy.”
“So we’re back to first names, are we?”
“Can we not get hung up on that right now, Minister-Director-Poten-take-your-choice Blod? The thing speaks. I heard it twice, and I’m not crazy.”
“If you’re not crazy, you’re mistaken.”
“Don’t tell me I didn’t hear what I heard!”
“Then you’re hearing things, Director Hassid. This thing hasn’t been out of my sight since the shell was delivered. This isn’t a theme park. I don’t want giant talking action figures. OK? Are we all right now? May I have them start moving my big boy into position?”
David nodded and stepped back to let a monstrous forklift move in behind the statue. His phone chirped, and as soon as he answered he heard a tone indicating another call. “This is Director Hassid, hold please,” but as he punched in the other call heard, “Dav—!” and recognized Fortunato’s voice.
“This is Director Hassid, hold please,” he said again, switching back to Fortunato. “Sorry, Commander. I’m watching the moving of the statue, and—”
“I’m sure that’ll succeed without you, David. I’d appreciate not being put on hold in the future.” David knew he should apologize again to keep up appearances, but he was dwelling on how important his getting up before 5:00 a.m. was to Fortunato last night and how incidental it was now. “We’ve got a situation here,” Leon continued. “I need you in the conference room on eighteen as soon as possible.”
“Anything I need to bring or be thinking about?”
“No. Well, yes. Captain McCullum’s schedule.”
“Oh, he’s—”
“Tell me when you get here, David. Quickly, please.”
David switched to his other call. “That busy that early, huh, kid?” Rayford said.
“Sorry. What’s up?” David walked backward as he talked, watching the statue emerge from the preparation room and become visible to the crowds. The murmuring grew louder as people nudged each other and pointed. The statue leaned back against the forks of the truck, and not until it came into the beams of the spotlights did it become apparent to all that it was, as Guy had so delicately put it, au naturel.
Oohs and aahs rose from the crowd; then they began applauding and soon cheering.
“What in the world is going on there?” Rayford said.
David told him. “I think they’ve waited so long to see the body that they would worship trading cards if we passed them out.” Rayford told David what had happened in Greece. “I’m so sorry, Captain Steele. I only talked to Mr. Delanty a few times by phone, but I know you two were close.”
“This is a hard one, David. They don’t get any easier. Sometimes I feel like an albatross. The people who get close to me are soon gone.”
David told him he was on his way to a mysterious meeting, and they debriefed each other again on what had happened at the Gala. “No matter what they say, sir, it’s clear the shooting was accidental and that the bullet totally missed Carpathia.”
“That doesn’t make me any less of a scapegoat, but—”
“Oh, Captain, wait a second . . .”
“I hear the crowd. What happened?”
“Oh, man, it almost toppled over! They set down the statue, and it rocked forward! People were diving out of the way. The forklift guy moved up to sort of catch it on its way back so it wouldn’t fall that way, and that just made it rock forward again! I don’t know how it didn’t go over. It’s settled now, and they’re nudging it straight. Oh, man!” He told Rayford of the built-in furnace but said nothing about what he’d heard.
“That jostling must have stoked the fire, because the smoke is really pouring out now. You know they’re burning Bibles, among other holy books, in there?”
“No!”
“Sir, I’m heading inside now, and I never asked what you called about.”
“I’m at the new safe house, David.”
“Yeah? How is it?”
“It looks fabulous, but we have one problem. It must lock automatically in emergencies. We can’t get in. Can you unlock it from there?”
David was near the elevator. “I can’t talk here, sir, so let me just say yes, I’ll get to that as soon as this meeting is over. I wish I could say when that will be.”
Tsion took a call from Chloe, informing him it was likely they would be back very late. “Any evidence of GC nosing around?”
“None,” he said, but he did not add that he had been 93 million miles from Mount Prospect for at least two minutes.
She spoke briefly to Kenny, who kept wanting to pull the phone from his mouth and “see Mama.” Finally he said, “Lub-you-too-see-ya-lader-bye-bye.”
“Tsion, I appreciate this more than you know,” Chloe said.
“He’s easy,” he said. “And you know I love him.”
She told Tsion what to feed Kenny and to put him to bed at nine. Much as he had enjoyed the baby, that was good news. Kenny often slept through the night.
David had not given himself time to worry what the big meeting was about. He just hoped he would not be in there alone with Fortunato. David was the last to arrive. A dozen directors and above were there, including television personnel, most yawning and rubbing their eyes.
“Let’s get started, people,” Leon began. “We have a crisis. No one is leaving New Babylon. Despite the decimated population in the last three and a half years, hotels are jammed and people are even agreeing to double up, two whole families in each room. Others are sleeping in the street, under lean-tos. The airport is crowded with big jets. They bring in capacity loads for the viewing, but they’re canceling most outbound flights for lack of interest. You know what’s happening, don’t you?”
“The viewing is not meeting their felt needs,” a woman said. David recognized her as Hilda Schnell, head of Global Community Cable News Network.
“I’m glad it was you who answered, Hilda,” Leon said. “We need your help.”
“What can I do? I’m staying for the funeral too.”
“We were not prepared for this size crowd,” Leon said. “This will be twice as large as the Jerusalem Gala.”
Hilda said, “I still don’t understand how GC CNN can help. Even at the Gala we merely—”
“Bear with me,” Leon said. “As you know, we already pushed back the funeral and burial to accommodate the crowds. We assumed that a million or so people would still be waiting to view the body by the time we were ready for the ceremony. With more than three million here already, another estimated million on their way, and virtually no one leaving, we have to regroup. Where are the big screens we used in Jerusalem and do we have more?”
Someone from Event Programming said they were in storage in New Babylon and that there would be enough—supplemented by smaller monitors—to handle the larger crowd. “But,” he added, “that will require a lot of man-hours and, of course, a layout scheme. The way the courtyard is cordoned off now will certainly not handle a crowd that size, especially if the ones who have already passed by the bier stay for the funeral, and I can’t imagine why they’re still in the city if that is not their plan.”
“My point exactly,” Leon said. “I already have engineers on the new schematic. And let me be clear: laborers are starting to rearrange barricades, chairs, crowd control ropes, and so forth. All this work will go on with no interruption of the viewing process. If the line has to be moved, that should be able to be done in an orderly fashion without stopping the procession.
“My question for you, Ms. Schnell, is whe
ther your equipment can feed that many monitors. Some people, naturally, will be hundreds of yards from the podium.”
“We don’t worry about that, Commander,” Ms. Schnell said. “We concern ourselves with providing the best visual and audio coverage of the event for television and leave it to your event organizers to make it work for their purposes.”
Leon stared at her, expressionless. “What I am suggesting, madam, is that you do worry about it. We have singers, dancers, speakers, and the like to make this ceremony appropriate, not only to the occasion and the size of the live crowd, but also to the stature of the one we honor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Just tell us what you want, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for the privilege.”
Now Fortunato was smiling. “That the big screens from Jerusalem are already here, Director Hassid, eliminates my need for one of your pilots to go get them. If we could make use of your entire hangar crew, cargo staff, pilots and all, in crowd control, I would appreciate it. Viv Ivins will be coordinating that, so let her know how many are available and who they are.
“The new times for the ceremony and burial are noon and 2:00 p.m. today respectively. Some dignitaries’ speeches may be shortened, but those times are firm and may be announced effective immediately. Ms. Schnell, I’m assuming this event supersedes all other programming so that the entire globe may participate, including those who reach the airport in time to watch on television but too late to be here in person.”
She nodded.
David fidgeted, knowing Rayford, Chloe, and Leah were waiting to get into the Strong Building. He wasn’t certain he could remotely unlock a door, but he’d rather have been studying that than sitting through a logistics meeting. Fortunato soon left the details in the hands of his engineers, and David hurried out.
On the way to his office, he saw the laborers already at work refashioning the massive courtyard into a vista that would accommodate the expected flood of humanity. According to the snatches of news reports he caught on the monitors lining the hallways of the palace complex, Leon was right. People of every ethnic background were interviewed at the airport, in line, and on the streets. Nearly every person expressed a desire to attend the funeral, even if they had already passed by the body.
“This was the greatest man who ever lived,” a Turkish man said through an interpreter. “The world will never see another like him. It is the worst tragedy we will ever face, and we can only hope that his successor will be able to carry on the ideals he put forth.”
“Do you believe Nicolae Carpathia was divine in any sense?” the reporter said.
“In every sense!” the man said. “I believe it’s possible that he was the Messiah the Jews longed for all these centuries. And he was murdered in their own nation, just as the Scriptures prophesied.”
As David settled in behind his computer in the privacy of his office, he left on the TV monitor hanging from the ceiling in the corner. GC CNN had followed that interview with a live feed from Israel, where thousands were listening to enthusiastic preachers, running forward, falling on their knees, and then shouting of their new allegiance to Jesus the Messiah.
The Jerusalem correspondent had with her a religious expert, who attempted to explain. “In the vacuum created by the deaths of both the head of the One World Faith and the supreme potentate of the Global Community, whom many considered every bit as much a religious as a political figure, spiritually hungry people are rushing to fill the gap. Longing for leadership and bereft of the one man who seemed to fit the bill, they now find attractive this fairly recent craze of ascribing to the historical figure of Jesus the Christ the qualifications of the Messiah Israel has awaited so long.
“This phenomenon existed in small pockets of conservative fundamentalist Christian sects but was fueled shortly after the vanishings by Dr. Tsion Ben-Judah, an Israeli biblical scholar. He had been commissioned by the State of Israel to clarify the prerequisites of the prophesied Messiah for the modern Jew.
“Dr. Ben-Judah created an uproar, particularly among Jews, when at the end of the live, globally televised airing of his views he announced that Jesus the Christ was the only person in history to fulfill all the Messianic prophesies, and that the vanishings were evidence that he had already come.”
David was impressed that the “expert,” while clearly not agreeing with what was going on, had an accurate handle on the issue. Having studied under Tsion online for so long, David knew that this further outbreak of evangelism in Israel would also spawn many more false christs and second-rate antichrists. Dr. Ben-Judah had often cited Matthew 24:21-24 in urging his followers—now referred to as Judah-ites—to beware:
For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
Then if anyone says to you, “Look, here is the Christ” or “There!” do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
By now David was deep into the labyrinthine inner workings of the Strong Building. While whirring through the many security pass gates using code breakers of his own design, he had a phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder.
“Captain Steele,” he said, “if I can do this, I’m going to get you in through one of the parking garage’s inner doors. The gates will be down, but you can walk around those and get to the elevators.”
“We were that far,” Rayford said. “The glass doors leading to the elevators are the ones we need opened. We could break the glass, but we’re afraid that would set off an alarm.”
“Who’d hear it?”
“I know, but usually those kinds of alarms are attached to all sorts of interrelated devices. Like at the airport, you force your way through the wrong door, and certain systems automatically shut down.”
“Bingo,” David said.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re in.”
“We’re not even on that side of the building.”
“Well, get there,” David said. “I can’t wait to hear what you find. Listen, good news: the designers of this building did two very nice things, as if they knew we were coming. First, the electrical panel room and the telephone room, both of which are traditionally on the top floor or even above in some spire, are located on the first floor, one up from where you’ll enter. Second, I think I have detected why the structure is so sound below where the bomb damage is. The blueprints show what’s called a ‘closure for stack effect’ every fifteen floors or so. It happens that there is just such a closure one floor beneath where the bomb damage occurred. This closure acts as a new roof for the building. I’m not certain yet, but you may be able to land a helicopter there, if you can deal with the complications of a three-sided opening above that.”
“Helicopter?” Rayford said. “We’re in the garage, by the way.”
“I can see you.”
“You can?”
“See the monitor up in the corner to your right?”
The three waved at David and he almost waved back, forgetting this was not a two-way visual feed.
“Yep. I see you. The door directly in front of you should be unlocked. And yes, I said helicopter before.”
“Where am I going to get one of those?”
“I don’t know,” David said. “Know anybody in purchasing anywhere?”
“We also need to start thinking about a new air base, closer to here. Different anyway. We have no friends at Palwaukee anymore.”
“How was Kankakee?”
“Might work. How about we have Albie set up there as a small private transport company, maybe serving Laslos, who’s still considered legit by the GC? Then we can come and go as we please out of there with no questions asked. And we can chopper our way
up here when we need to.”
“I like the way you think, Captain Steele.”
“I like the options you provide, David.”
“I’ll try to keep track of you floor by floor with the various monitors,” David said. “But I may have to leave you abruptly too. You know where I am.”
Leah and Chloe appeared to be working well together. Though David could hear only Rayford, he could see the women checking out sight angles from various windows.
“Leah wants to talk with you, David. Here she is.”
“You’re looking at blueprints?”
“On-line,” he said, “yeah.”
“Am I seeing this right? Are we not visible from the street, at least where we are now?”
“Affirmative.”
“And what if we turn on lights?”
“That I wouldn’t do.”
“What if we spray painted the windows black?”
CHAPTER 16
By ten o’clock Saturday night in Illinois, Tsion had survived two messy operations: feeding and changing Kenny. The boy was now sound asleep in his crib in the other room, and Tsion had turned the sound off on the television. He merely glanced at it occasionally, tired of the endless repetition.
How many times had he seen Rayford’s photograph and history and the grave conclusion on the part of Global Community Security and Intelligence forces that he was the lone assassin, the lone gunman? Rayford was also constantly referred to as a committed Judah-ite. Tsion knew, because he knew the Tribulation Force, that Rayford Steele had ceased to exist. He would neither make himself obvious to the public nor leave a trail in his own name. Tsion prayed that would preserve Rayford for as long as possible.
Tsion pored over his Bible texts and commentaries, trying to make sense of the vivid dream. He pleaded with God for another of the same, but short of that, he wanted to understand the one he’d had. Scholars were divided on who the sun-clothed woman was, the one who wore a garland of stars and used the moon as her footstool.
Clearly she was symbolic, as no woman was that large or had a child in space. Some believed she represented womankind as mentioned in Genesis when God told Satan that the woman would produce a child whose heel Satan might bruise, but who would crush his head. That was a prophecy of the Christ child, and of course that woman turned out to be Mary. Yet further details of this symbolic woman indicated that she might symbolize Israel. The Christ came from Israel, and Satan pursued and persecuted God’s chosen people even to the present day.