Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist

  “There is a lot you don’t know about me, Cameron.”

  “May I consider you a dear friend, sir?”

  “I wish you would. But do dear friends refer to each other so formally?”

  “It’s difficult for me to call you Chaim.”

  “Call me what you wish, but you are my dear friend and so I am happy to call myself yours.”

  “Then I want to know more about you. If there is a lot about you I don’t know, I don’t feel like a friend.”

  Chaim pulled a drape back and peered out. “No smoke today. It will come again though. Tsion teaches that the horsemen will not leave us until a third of mankind is dead. Can you imagine that world, Cameron?”

  “That will leave only half the population since the disappearances.”

  “Truly we are facing the end of civilization. It may not be what Tsion thinks it is, but it’s something.”

  Buck said nothing. Chaim had ignored his salvos, but perhaps if he did not press . . .

  Rayford hung his head. “T,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse and weak, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You knew what to say to Bo. You played him like a—”

  Rayford held up a hand. “Please, T. You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “You seemed to enjoy it.”

  Rayford wished he could disappear. “God forgive me, I did enjoy it. What’s the matter with me? It’s like I’ve lost my mind. At the house I fly off the handle. Leah, the newcomer I told you about, she’s brought out the worst in me—now, no, I can’t put that on her either. I’ve been awful to her. I don’t understand myself anymore.”

  “If you ever understood yourself you were way ahead of me. But don’t be too hard on yourself, bro. You’ve got a modicum of stress in your life.”

  “We all do, T. Even Bo. You know, not just tonight, but never ever have I seen Bo as anything but a scoundrel.”

  “He is a scoundrel, Ray. But he’s also—”

  “I know. That’s what I’m saying. The day I met him he was putting down believers, and I’ve had a thing about him since. I want him put in his place and I was glad for the chance to do it. Some saint, huh?”

  T didn’t counter. Rayford got the point.

  “What do I do now, chase him down and start being Christlike to him?”

  T shook his head and shrugged. “Got me. I’d sooner think your best approach is to disappear from his life. He’s going to suspect any radical change.”

  “I should at least apologize.”

  “Not unless you’re ready to prove it by paying him for the information he thought you were buying.”

  “Now he’s the good guy and I’m the bad guy?”

  “I’ll never say Bo’s the good guy, Ray. As for you being the bad guy, I didn’t say it. You did.”

  Rayford sat slumped for several minutes while T busied himself with paperwork. “You’re a good friend,” Rayford said finally. “To be honest with me, I mean. Not a lot of guys would care enough.”

  T moved to the front of the desk and sat on it. “I like to think you’d do the same for me.”

  “Like you need it.”

  “Why not? I didn’t expect you’d need it either.”

  “Well, anyway. Thanks.”

  T punched him on the shoulder. “So what’s the deal with the Tuttles? You gonna get to fly a Super J?”

  “Think I can handle it?”

  “All the stuff you’ve flown? They say if you can drive a Gulfstream—the big one—this is like a fast version of that. Sort of a Porsche to a Chevy.”

  “I’ll drive like a teenager.”

  “You can’t wait.”

  David was at first warmed, then alarmed, when he received a personal e-mail early the next evening from Tsion Ben-Judah. After assuring David he wished to meet him sometime before the Glorious Appearing, Tsion came to his point.

  I do not understand all that you are able to do so miraculously for us there with your marvelous technical genius. Normally I stay out of the political aspects of our work and do not even question what is going on. My calling is to teach the Scriptures, and I want to stay focused. Dr. Rosenzweig, whom I am certain you have heard of, taught me much when I was in way over my head in university botany. My specialty is history, literature, and languages; science was not my field. Struggling, struggling, I finally went to him. He told me, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” In other words, of course, focus!

  So I am here focusing and letting Captain Steele and his daughter put together the co-op, Buck Williams his magazine and the occasional furtive mission, and so forth. But, Mr. Hassid, we have a problem. I let Captain Steele run off on his mission to track down Hattie Durham (I know you have been kept abreast) without asking him what he had found out about Carpathia’s knowledge of her whereabouts.

  No one but the uncaring public believes she went down in a plane. That the GC allowed that patent falsehood to be circulated tells me it somehow plays into their hands. My fear, of course, is that they now feel free to track her down and kill her, for in the mind of the public she is already dead. Her only advantage in pretending to be dead is to somehow embarrass or even endanger Carpathia.

  All that to say this: I had been under the impression that none of your clandestine work there had turned up anything about knowledge of her whereabouts on Carpathia’s part. I cannot help thinking Rayford would have been more prudent to wait on searching for Hattie until he knew for sure he would not be walking into a GC trap.

  I may be a paranoid scholar who should stick to his work, but if you know my history, you know that even I have been thrust into violence and danger by this evil world system. I am asking you, Mr. Hassid, if there is any possibility of digging up the remotest clue that could be rushed to Captain Steele before he walks blindly into danger. If you would be so kind as to let me know you received this and also indicate whether you believe there is any hope of turning up anything helpful, I would be most grateful.

  In the matchless name of Christ, Tsion Ben-Judah.

  David quickly tapped a response:

  Am dubious about odds for success (as I have been monitoring computer and phone and personal interaction at the highest levels here and have not heard even a conversation about Hattie), but will give this my full attention immediately. I will transmit to Captain Steele’s secure phone anything pertinent and fully understand your concern. More later, but don’t want to lose a minute.

  David frantically batted away on his laptop, accessing the massive hard drive, tapping into the palace mainframe and decodifying every encrypted file. He looked for any reference to Hattie, Durham, HD, personal assistant, lover, pregnancy, child, fugitive, plane crash, and anything else he could think of. Of course, everything that had been said in the administrative offices for weeks was recorded on his monster minichip, but the only subtitles there would be dates and locations. There was no time to listen to everything Fortunato or Carpathia had said since Hattie was reported dead.

  He called Annie, who rushed to his office. He closed the blinds and locked the door so no night crew could see him pacing, running his hands through his hair. “What am I going to do, Annie? Tsion is right. Rayford is committing a huge blunder here, even if he lucks out. You know the GC either has to have Hattie in custody or have killed her. They’ll be watching the site where she was supposed to have been hidden. Whoever comes looking for her is going to find not her but GC. She’s just bait. Rayford had to know that.”

  “You’d think,” she said.

  “Help me,” he said.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to, David, but I agree you’re looking for the proverbial needle in—”

  “What were those stateside people thinking? That the GC bought the phony crash story? Surely they knew better! I didn’t know Rayford had finally gotten a bead on her until he was already gone. Why wouldn’t he have come to me for one last effort to dig up GC intelligence?”

  She shook her head.
“How secure are you, David?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “You’re in their computers, their offices, their plane, on their phones. Has anyone even begun to suspect you yet?”

  He shook his head. “The computer installation slowdown should have raised a flag, but I didn’t sense suspicion from Leon. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m in solid with them. I have too many irons in the fire to not get burned eventually, but for now I’m golden here.”

  “There’s your answer then, superstar.”

  “Don’t make me guess. Rayford’s in the air.”

  “Just ask them.”

  “Come again?”

  “Go straight to Leon, tell him it’s none of your business but you’ve been noodling the plane crash news, you’ve always admired his insight and wisdom and street smarts—you know the drill. Suggest that maybe that plane crash wasn’t all it appeared, and say you want his take on it.”

  “Annie, you’re a genius.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “You want to see my projects, Cameron?” Chaim Rosenzweig said. “That would make you happy, make you feel like more of a friend?”

  “It would.”

  “Promise you won’t think me batty, an old eccentric as my house staff does.”

  Buck followed him, realizing that regardless how Chaim appeared to the brothers and sisters in the house, he was aware of everything.

  Rayford found the Tuttles an all-American couple who had lost all four of their grown sons in the Rapture. “Did we ever miss it,” Dwayne said in the Super J, streaking across the eastern U.S. “Oldest boy goes off to college, gets religion we think. Doesn’t seem to hurt him any, ’cept he starts in on the other three and before you know it, baby brother’s goin’ to church. That’s OK, but we figure it’s just little brother/big brother hero worship, know what I mean?

  “Then the middle boys get invited to some church deal they probably wouldn’t have gone to if their brothers hadn’t already been Christians. They get asked to play on the church basketball team, go off to a week of camp, and come back saved. Man, I hated that word, and they used it all the time. I got saved, he got saved, she got saved, you need to be saved. I loved those boys like everything, but—”

  Dwayne had gone from his rapid-fire delivery to choked up so fast Rayford hadn’t seen it coming. Now the big man spoke in a little voice, fighting the sobs. Trudy reached from the seat behind his and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “I loved those boys,” he squeaked, “and I didn’t have a bit of a problem with ’em all wantin’ to be religious, I really didn’t. Did I, Tru?”

  “They loved you, Dwayne,” she drawled. “You never gave them a hard time.”

  “But they gave me a hard time, see? They were never mean, but they were pushy. I told ’em it was all right with me, ’slong as they didn’t expect me to start goin’ to church with ’em. Had enough of that as a kid, never liked it, bad memories. Their type a church was better, they said. I says fine, you go on then but leave me out of it. They told me their mom’s soul was on my head. That got me mad, but how do you stay mad at your own flesh and blood when, even if they’re wrong, they’re worried about their mom’s and dad’s souls?”

  Rayford shook his head. “You don’t.”

  “You sure don’t. They kep’ after me. They got their stubbornness from me, after all. But I was good at it too. And I never caved. Tru almost did, didn’t ya, hon?”

  “Wish I had.”

  “Me too, sweetie. We wouldn’ta met Mr. Steele here till heaven, but I’d just as soon be there than here even now, all things considered. You too there, Cap?”

  “Me too, Dwayne.”

  “You can guess the rest. Before we ever go to church one time, the thing they told us might happen happened. They were gone. We were left. So where’d we go first?”

  “Church.”

  “Church! Not so stubborn now, are we? Doesn’t sound so lame to be saved now, does it? Hardly anybody left at that place, but all we needed was one who knew how a person gets saved. Mr. Steele, I’m an actor myself. Well, aircraft salesman and demonstrator, but always actin’ on the side since college. Specialize in voices.”

  “Mac told me about your Aussie.”

  “There, right, like ’at. He liked that, did he?”

  “I don’t know that he was feeling good enough to appreciate it, but he’s sure you fooled Fortunato.”

  “A deaf turtle could fool ’at boy, Rafe. You don’t mind if I call you Rafe, do ya? I like to find shortcuts so I can get more words in in a shorter time. Just kiddin’, but you don’t mind, do ya?”

  “My first wife called me that. She was raptured.”

  “Then maybe you’d rather I not—”

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “Anyway, Rafe, I’m a gregarious guy—I guess you figured. Salesman has to be. But I always put all of my theater training into it. I was known as a straightforward, opinionated guy, and people pretty much liked me. Unless they was too sophisticated. If they was, I’d use the word was where I’m s’posed to use were, like I just did there, and tweak ’em to death. So, I’m this friendly, confident, outgoing guy who—”

  “Loud is the word you’re lookin’ for there, hon,” Trudy said.

  Dwayne laughed as if at the first joke he’d ever heard. “OK, Tru, all right then, I’m this loud guy. But you gotta admit I was a people magnet. Only I wasn’t a church guy, OK. Well, now all of a sudden, I am. I’m saved. I’m a day late and a dollar short, but I’m learnin’ that it still counts. We’re still gonna suffer, and we’re never going to wish we hadn’t got saved earlier—don’t kid yerself—but all right, we’re saved. So, now I’m still this gregar—”

  “Loud.”

  “—loud guy but I got a whole new bee in my bonnet now. I’m knockin’ people over with it. Even our pastor says sometimes he wonders if I don’t turn people off rather than wooin’ ’em—that’s his term, not mine—wooin’ ’em to Jesus. I learned that lesson in sales, but I figure it’s different now. It’s not about whether I’m gonna make my quota or get my bonus or whether you can afford not to have this beautiful new airplane. People got to know, brother, that this is no sales pitch. This is your everlasting soul. Well, I get wound up.

  “I always wondered what I’d do if I met up with ol’ Antichrist himself. I’ll tell you what, I’ll bet he’d either have me killed or get saved hisself, one of the two. Get it? Well, sir, I was encouraged that I didn’t lose any of my braverido or brovura—”

  “Bravado,” Trudy offered.

  “Right, I didn’t lose any of that when I saw his number two boy t’other day. My heart was a-pumpin’, I don’t deny, but hey, I’m gonna die anyway. I’d like to be here when Jesus comes back, but goin’ on before can’t be all bad either. The day I got saved I decided I wasn’t ever gonna be ashamed of it. It was way too late for that. I’m gonna see my boys again, and—”

  As suddenly as before, big Dwayne clouded up. This time he couldn’t continue. Trudy put a hand on his heaving shoulder again, he looked apologetically at Rayford, who took over the controls, and the Super J rocketed east into the night.

  “What in the world is it?” Buck asked, looking at a highly polished strip of metal.

  Chaim mince-stepped over and shut the door, and Buck realized he was privy to something Rosenzweig had shared with no one else.

  “Call it a hobby that has become an obsession. This is nowhere near my field, and don’t ask me where the compulsion has come from. But I am striving toward the sharpest edge ever fashioned by hand. I know the big machines with their micrometers, computers, lasers and all can reach near perfection. I’m not interested in artificially induced. I’m interested in the best I can do. My skill has outstripped my eyesight. With simple clamp-on angle-setters, I am filing blades so sharp I can’t see them with the naked eye. Not even powerful bifocals do them justice. I must look at them under much light with my magnifying glass. Believe me, this is more appealing than those creatur
es you and I studied under it half a year ago. Here, look.”

  He handed Buck the magnifying glass and pointed him to a shiny blade, probably three feet long, clamped between two vises. “Whatever you do, Cameron, do not touch the edge. I say this with utmost gravity. You would lose a finger before you felt the edge touch your skin, let alone before you felt the pain.”

  Sufficiently warned, Buck peered at the magnified edge, amazed. The line looked multiple times thinner than any razor blade he had ever seen. “Wow.”

  “Here’s the interesting part, Cameron. Back away carefully, please. The material is super-hardened carbon steel. What appears flexible as a razor because it is so microscopically sharp, is rigid and strong. You know how a conventional knife dulls with use? And usually the sharper the edge, the quicker the deterioration?” Buck nodded. “Watch this.”

  Rosenzweig produced from his pocket a dried date. “A snack for later,” he explained. “But this one is fuzzy, I don’t want to wash it, and I have more. So it becomes my object lesson. Notice.”

  He held the date delicately between his thumb and middle finger, barely pinching one end. He slowly, ever so lightly, drew it across the edge of the blade, reaching beneath it with his other palm. The severed half dropped into his hand as if it had not been touched. “Now let me show you something else.”

  Rosenzweig looked around the cluttered room and found a balled-up rag, stiff from neglect. He held the rag about eighteen inches above the blade and let it fall. Buck blinked, not believing his eyes. The rag had split without a sound and seemingly without resistance.

  “You should see what it does to fruit,” Rosenzweig said, his eyes bright.

  “It’s amazing, Doctor,” Buck said. “But, why?”

  The old man shook his head. “Don’t ask. It’s not that I have some deep dark secret. It’s just that I don’t know myself.”

  David didn’t call Fortunato. He showed up in Leon’s waiting room late that evening. “I just need a second with the commander, if possible,” he told Margaret, who was packing up her stuff after an obviously long day.