Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist

  Buck urged his readers, “Keep your copy of Global Community Weekly, the finest example of newspeak since the term was coined. The day before each new issue, visit The Truth online and get the real story behind the propaganda the government has foisted upon us.”

  David Hassid loved the reaction at the palace to Buck’s weekly counters of GC Weekly. The Truth was indeed the truth, and everyone knew it. David had written a program that allowed him to monitor every computer in the vast compound. His statistics showed that more than 90 percent of GC employees visited Buck’s magazine Web site weekly, second in popularity only to the porn and psychic sites.

  Using the enormous satellite tracking capabilities and microwave technology, it was theoretically possible to trace any cyberspace transmission to its source. Most clandestine operators moved around a lot or built in antitracking shields that made detection difficult. Besides having helped design the transmission protocol for the stateside Trib Force, David took double precautions by inserting a glitch into the computers in his department.

  The complicator was purely mathematical. A key component in plotting coordinates, of course, is measuring angles and computing distances between various points. On paper such calculations would take hours. On a calculator, less time. But on a computer, the results are virtually instantaneous. David planted, however, what he called a floating multiplier. In layman’s terms, any time the computer was assigned a calculation, a random component transposed side-by-side digits in either the third, fourth, or fifth step. Not even David knew which step it would select, let alone which digits. When the calculation was repeated, the error would be duplicated three times in a row, so checking the computer against itself was useless.

  Should someone’s suspicions be raised and they checked the computer against an uncontaminated calculator, the computer would eventually flush the bug and give a correct reading. Once the techie was convinced the previous had been human error or a temporary glitch, he would move on to the next calculation and probably not realize until hours or days later that the computer had a mind of its own again.

  David assumed that by the time the inconsistencies of the machines became an issue, the project would fall so far behind that it would be scrapped. Meanwhile, the computers used to generate Tsion’s teaching and Buck’s magazine were programmed to change their signal randomly, changing every second between 9 trillion separate combinations of routes.

  Under the guise of getting a bead on Williams’s base, the techies in David’s department spent a lot of time studying the on-line magazine itself. It was clear to everyone that Williams had inside information, but no one knew his sources. David knew Buck used dozens of contacts, including David himself, but Buck always cleverly shaded the input to protect his informants.

  The last issue of GC Weekly had carried the story of the failed assassination attempt on Carpathia by Regional Potentate Rehoboth. The magazine pretended to be totally forthcoming by revealing that this had been a shock to the Carpathia regime. “Honest, forthright men of character seek to discuss their differences diplomatically,” an editorial began.

  Such a man of honor was Mwangati Ngumo of Botswana, who insisted more than three years ago that Nicolae Carpathia replace him as secretary-general of the United Nations. That selfless, forward-thinking gesture resulted in the great Global Community we enjoy today, a world divided into ten equal regions, each governed by a subpotentate.

  His Excellency asked Supreme Commander Leon Fortunato to visit the honorable Mr. Ngumo and try to persuade him to let the potentate’s reconstruction effort rebuild Botswana. Ngumo, the great African statesman, had insisted that his own nation wait until even poorer countries were helped. Mr. Ngumo had been so benevolent that the meeting had to be held in Johannesburg rather than Gaborone, because the Botswanian capital airport still could not accommodate the large GC plane.

  When United States of Africa potentate Rehoboth learned of the meeting, he generously offered every courtesy and offered to sit in for the sake of diplomacy. This the Global Community politely declined, because the nature of the business was more personal than political. Potentate Rehoboth was promised his own meeting with His Excellency.

  Rehoboth must have misunderstood somehow and assumed that Potentate Carpathia himself would attend the meeting with Mr. Ngumo. While the GC was unaware of any jealousy or anger over Rehoboth’s exclusion from the meeting, clearly the regional potentate was murderously angry. He assigned assassins to murder Ngumo and his aides, replace them as impostors, and board Global Community One (the Condor 216) to murder His Excellency.

  While his henchmen succeeded in destroying the plane and killing four staff personnel, heroic measures by both the pilot and first officer—Captain Montgomery (Mac) McCullum and Mr. Abdullah Smith—saved the life of the supreme commander. Immediate response by Global Community Peacekeeping Forces resulted in the deaths of the assassins.

  Photos of the grand celebration honoring the wounded cockpit crew accompanied the article. The Truth, six days later, took the story apart. In his breezy style, Buck ran down the facts:

  What the Global Community brass doesn’t want citizens to know is that the relationship between Carpathia and Ngumo had long ago gone south. Ngumo had not been so magnanimous as we have been led to believe. He stepped down from his UN post under heavy pressure, believing he would receive one of the ten regional potentate positions and that Botswana would be awarded use of the agricultural formula discovered in Israel, which Carpathia has used in negotiating with many other countries.

  Ngumo had gone from near deity to pariah in his own homeland because of the shameless neglect on the part of the Global Community. The formula was never delivered. Botswana was ignored in the reconstruction effort. Ngumo saw his potentate status bestowed instead on his archrival, the despot Rehoboth—who had pillaged his own nation of Sudan and made multimillionaires of his many wives and offspring. He was so unpopular in Sudan that he located the opulent GC regional palace in Johannesburg rather than Khartoum, as inconveniently noncentral as he could have without placing it in Cape Town.

  The GC knew Rehoboth and Ngumo were bitter rivals, and by deliberately scheduling the high level meeting on board GC One, they forced it onto Rehoboth’s own turf. Rehoboth assumed Carpathia was on board and vulnerable to attack because Ngumo thought he was on board as well. This ruse to slap Ngumo in the face also fooled Rehoboth, who had been invited to join the meeting as yet another surprising insult to Ngumo.

  Personnel who escaped with their lives were more lucky than heroic. GC Peacekeeping Forces had been swayed by Rehoboth and did not respond for several minutes after the plane was fired upon. The assassins were not shot. One fled and two died from the smoke and fire and sulfur plague, as did many others that day.

  Rehoboth knew enough to stay at his palace during what he hoped was Carpathia’s execution. When it went awry and he himself was eliminated, the peacekeeping forces once again immediately fell into line and finally contained the area. The deaths of Rehoboth’s entire family, attributed by the GC to the plague, were clearly executions. Thus far the plague has killed roughly 10 percent of the earth’s population. What are the odds that every member of an extensive household would be stricken in one day?

  Buck’s cybermagazine commented on all the follies of the Carpathia regime, the “penchant for putting a pretty face on international tragedy, and an assumption that you care about parades in the potentate’s honor when death marches the globe.”

  David enjoyed patching in to Carpathia and Fortunato’s offices shortly after Buck’s magazine hit the Net each week. “Where are we on tracing this?” Carpathia demanded of Leon that morning.

  “We have an entire department section on it full-time, sir.”

  “How many?”

  “I believe seventy were scheduled, but due to attrition, probably sixty.”

  “That should be plenty, should it not?”

  “I should think so, sir.”

  “Where is he gettin
g his information? It is as if he is camped outside our door.”

  “You said yourself he was the best journalist in the world.”

  “This goes beyond skill and writing ability, Leon! I would accuse him of making this up, but we both know he is not.”

  That afternoon David received a memo from Leon, asking that the metal detectors destroyed in the airplane be replaced “before His Excellency appears in public again.” That gave David an idea. Might he have a role in Carpathia’s demise if he could ensure the metal detectors would malfunction at strategic junctures? If he could make computers whimsical, could he make metal detectors fickle?

  He wrote back: “Supreme Commander Fortunato, I shall have the new metal detectors delivered and operational and stored on the Phoenix 216 within ten days. In the meantime I have a crew thoroughly going over every detail of the plane so it meets the standards of the potentate. I am personally overseeing this with the input of the cockpit crew.”

  David and Annie, along with Mac and Abdullah, both slowly mending, spent their off-hours planting a bugging device in the Phoenix 216 so sophisticated that it delivered near recording-studio sound quality to the headsets of both pilot and first officer.

  When it was finished, David asked his top technicians to check the plane for bugs. A unit of four experts combed the fuselage for six hours and judged it “clean.”

  Rayford was bemused by Bo Hanson, standing outside the Palwaukee gate trying to flag down help. “What an idiot,” he said.

  T, still sitting behind him at the tower desk, said, “What’s he doing?”

  “Hitchhiking, I think. Ran out of gas.” He turned around to reach for the phone. “Well, I’ve got to tell Dwayne Tuttle how to get here.” T was rising. “Don’t get up,” Rayford said. “It’ll be a short call.”

  “I’ve got something I have to do anyway,” T said. “Then can we talk?”

  Rayford looked at his watch as Tuttle’s phone rang. “I’m good for a little while.”

  Mrs. Tuttle answered, and as Rayford introduced himself and reminded her of his daughter’s e-mails and how he had gotten their number, he idly strode back to the window. Trudy called Dwayne to the phone, and Rayford was glad he didn’t have to speak for a few seconds. He had lost his breath. T had driven out to Bo’s car and was pouring gasoline into his tank from a can. Was it possible they were in league with each other? Could T have fooled him all this time?

  Something told him that if he had a moment to think about it, he could come up with some other explanation. The locusts had not bitten T. He had the mark of God on his forehead. He knew church people, said the right things, seemed genuine. But now aiding and abetting the enemy? Helping the man responsible for Hattie’s flight?

  “Mr. Steele!” Dwayne said.

  “Mr. Tuttle, or should I call you Dart? That was quite a story, sir.”

  T returned and slowly mounted the stairs as Rayford finished making arrangements for the flight to France. When he hung up he looked askance at T as they sat across the desk from each other. T’s dark face mirrored Rayford’s own look.

  “You think I didn’t notice?” Rayford began.

  “Notice what?”

  “What you were just doing. That little something you had to do.”

  “So what was I doing?”

  Rayford rolled his eyes. “I saw you, T. You were giving gas to Bo.”

  T gave him a “So?” look.

  “The guy who—”

  “I know who Bo is, Ray. I’m beginning to wonder who you are.”

  “Me? I’m not the one—”

  T stood. “You want to check my mark, don’t you? Well, come on and do it.”

  Rayford was stunned. How had it come to this? They had been friends, brothers. “I don’t need to check your mark, T. I need to know what you thought you were doing.”

  “I asked to talk to you, Ray. Remember?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “I wanted to know what you thought you were doing with Bo.”

  “What’s the mystery, T? I got him to give me the information I needed. I didn’t aid or abet him.”

  “Like I did.”

  “Like you did.”

  “That’s what you call what I did.”

  “What do you call it, T? You guys working together against me, behind my back, what?”

  T shook his head sadly. “Yeah, Ray. I’m in concert with a kid two sandwiches short of a picnic so I can turn the tables on my Christian brother.”

  “That’s what it looks like. What am I supposed to think?”

  T stood and walked to the window. Rayford couldn’t make any of it make sense.

  “What you’re supposed to think, Ray, is that Bo Hanson is not likely long for this world. He’s going to die and go to hell just like his buddy Ernie did the other day. He’s the enemy, sure, but he’s not one of those we treat like scum to make sure they don’t find out who we really are. He already knows who we are, bro. We’re the guys who follow Ben-Judah and believe in Jesus. We don’t buy and sell guys like Bo, Rayford. We don’t play them, lie to them, cheat them, steal from them, blackmail them. We love them. We plead with them.

  “Bo is dumb enough to have given you what you needed without making him think his ship had come in and then sinking it for him. I’m not saying I have the answers, Ray. I don’t know how we could have got the information another way, but what you did sure didn’t feel loving and Christian to me. I’d rather you had bought the information. Let him be the bad guy. You were as bad as he was.

  “Well, I said more than I planned. You play this one however you want, but keep me out of it from now on.”

  Buck half expected Chaim Rosenzweig to be in his wheelchair, but the old man was everything he had remembered. Small, wiry, aged more perhaps, wild white hair. A beatific smile. He opened his arms for an embrace. “Cameron! Cameron, my friend! How are you? Good to see you! A sight for old, tired eyes! What brings you to Israel?”

  “You do, friend,” Buck said as Chaim led him by the arm to the parlor. “We’re all worried about you.”

  “Ach!” Chaim said, waving him off. “Tsion is worried he won’t convert me before the horses trample me.”

  “Should he be? May I take back the news of your conversion?”

  “You never know, Cameron. But you need not ask, am I right? You who can see the horses can also see each other’s marks. So, tell me. Does mine show?”

  The way he said mine made Buck’s heart leap, and he leaned forward only to see nothing. “We can see each other’s, you know,” Buck said.

  “And the mighty men on the lion horses too, I know.”

  “You don’t believe it.”

  “Would you if you were I, Cameron?”

  “Oh, Dr. Rosenzweig, I was you. Don’t you realize that? I was a journalist, a pragmatist, a realist. I could not be convinced until I would be convinced.”

  Chaim’s eyes danced, and Buck was reminded how the man enjoyed a good debate. “So I am unwilling, that is my problem?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And yet that makes no sense, does it? Why should I be unwilling? I want it to be true! What a story! An answer to this madness, relief from the cruelty. Ah, Cameron, I am closer than you think.”

  “That’s what you said last time. I fear you will wait too long.”

  “My house staff, they are all believers now, you know. Jacov, his wife, her mother, Stefan. Jonas, too, but we lost him. You heard?”

  Buck nodded. “Sad.”

  Chaim had suddenly lost his humor. “You see, Cameron, these are the things I don’t understand. If God is personal like you say, cares about his children, and is all-powerful, is there not a better way? Why the judgments, the plagues, the destruction, the death? Tsion says we had our chance. So now it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy? There is a cruelty about it all that hides the love I am supposed to see.”

  Buck leaned forward. “Tsion also says that even allowing seven years of obvious tribulation is more than we deserve from
God. We did not believe because we could not see it. Well, now there is no doubt. We’re seeing, and yet people still resist and rebel.”

  Chaim fell silent, then clapped his palms to his knees. “Well,” he said at last, “don’t worry about me. I confess I am feeling my age. I am fearful, frightened, homebound, you know. I cannot bring myself to venture out. Carpathia, in whom I believed as I would my own son, has proven fraudulent.”

  Buck wanted to probe but dared not. Any decision had to be Rosenzweig’s idea, not a plant from Buck or anyone else.

  “I am studying. I am praying that Tsion is wrong, that the plagues and the torments do not keep getting worse. And I keep busy.”

  “How?”

  “Projects.”

  “Your science and reading?”

  “And more.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, you are such the journalist today. All right, I’ll tell you. My staff thinks me mad. Maybe I am. I have a wheelchair. You want to see it?”

  “You need a wheelchair?”

  “Not yet, but the day will come. The torment from the locust weakened me. I have blood counts and other test results that show me at high risk for stroke.”

  “You’re healthy as a hor—as a mule.”

  Rosenzweig sat back and laughed. “Very good. No one wants to be healthy as a horse anymore. But I am not. I am high risk and I want to be ready.”

  “It sounds defeatist, Doctor. The right diet and exercise . . . fresh air.”

  “I knew you would get to that. I like to be prepared.”

  “How else are you preparing?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What are you working on? In your utility room?”

  “Who told you about that?”

  “No one who knew anything. Jacov merely mentioned that you spend a lot of time on projects in there.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it? What are you doing?”

  “Projects.”

  “I never knew you to be handy that way.”