Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist

  “This is the new world, Abdullah. This is individual freedom, sanctioned by the international government.”

  “Celebrated even,” Abdullah said. Suddenly he stopped and leaned against a fence. “Captain, these are the times when I long for heaven. I don’t want to die, especially the way I have seen others’ lives end. But to survive until the Glorious Appearing will be no easy thing.”

  Mac nodded. “What happened to the Tuttles was awful,” he said. “But they probably never knew what hit them. They woke up in heaven.”

  Abdullah turned his face to the sun and a cloudless sky. “God forgive me if that is what I wish for. Quick and painless.”

  Mac could hear Eli and Moishe preaching from half a mile away but couldn’t make out their words. “I’ve heard so much about them,” he said. “I don’t suppose we should risk being seen there.”

  “I would love to see them,” Abdullah said. “How about we walk back to the hotel and at least go past there. We do not have to join the crowd, just see what we can see and hear what we can hear.”

  “Say no more, Smitty,” Mac said.

  All along the way Mac and Abdullah passed bars, strip clubs, massage parlors, brothels, pagan sanctuaries, and fortune-telling establishments. In a city with a history of religion dating back millennia, and where—like in the rest of the world—half the population had been wiped out since the Rapture, these businesses were not hidden. They were not seedy, not relegated to a certain inevitable section of town. Neither were they operating in darkness behind black doors or labyrinthine entrances that saved the “real” treats for those who were there on purpose.

  Rather, while the rest of the Holy City seemed to crumble for neglect and lack of manpower, here were gleaming storefronts, well lit and obvious to every eye, proudly exhibiting every perversion and fleshly evil known to man.

  Mac quickened his pace despite Abdullah’s pronounced limp, and the two hurried toward the Temple Mount and the two witnesses as if from a sewer to a spring.

  CHAPTER 21

  As he was sure was true with others in the safe house, Buck could not figure the relationship between his father-in-law and Leah Rose. She seemed a burr to Rayford, and yet surely he had to appreciate what she had brought to the Tribulation Force, besides her fortune.

  Rayford was not above squabbling with her, and she held her own. Yet they had seemed to spend more and more time together as the time drew near the halfway point of the Tribulation. The announcement of Rayford’s plan to fly her to Brussels made their new closeness less mysterious to Buck. Rayford apparently needed her to do a job, and she was eager to do it. Maybe there was nothing more to the relationship than that.

  Zeke Jr., the tattooed Z for short, dolled up splendid documents for Leah. With bleached-blonde hair, darker contact lenses, and a tiny dental appliance that gave her a not unattractive overbite and slightly bucked teeth, she was transformed. Leah was now Donna Clendenon from California, formerly married to one of Hattie Durham’s mother’s brothers. She carried news of Hattie’s sister Nancy’s demise (which was, unfortunately, true). That, Rayford speculated, would get her visitation privileges at the Global Community lockup in Brussels, which, typically, had been christened the Belgium Facility for Female Rehabilitation. Those familiar with it knew the BFFR, or Buffer, as a maximum-security prison. Dissident women went in, but they rarely came out. When they did, they were anything but rehabilitated.

  Buck’s hope—which he assumed was also Rayford’s—was that the GC saw enough value in Hattie that they would not simply eliminate her. Carpathia must have seen her, at the very least, as bait to help lure Rayford, Buck, or even Tsion Ben-Judah. Those in the safe house hoped the GC hadn’t lost patience with Hattie in frustration over twice nearly having had Rayford in their grasp.

  Buck appreciated that the good-bye was not as bad as it would have been if Chloe had wanted to again vent her feelings. She had told him in private, as well as at the meeting, that she considered his interest in the Gala a reckless obsession. “It’s not that I would deprive you of covering one of the great historical events ever, but you’re willingly walking into an earthquake, and the stakes are greater for you now than ever. You’re more committed to your word to Chaim than to protecting your family.”

  But the day she and Tsion and the baby saw the other three off, Chloe had apparently decided she had no more need to make her points. Buck assumed she had resigned herself to his going. She gave him plenty of time with Kenny, then held him tight and promised her prayers and undying love. “And yours had better be undying too,” she said.

  “My love will not die, even if I do,” he had said.

  “That was not exactly what I wanted to hear.”

  He thanked her for letting him go. She punched him on the arm. “Like I had a choice. Didn’t I make your life sufficiently miserable? I’m probably the reason you’re going.”

  She seemed to maintain her good spirits, though tears came as Buck and Rayford and Leah pulled away from the house under Tsion’s prayer, blessing, and “Godspeed!”

  “Do you believe this?” Mac asked Abdullah as they gawked at the television lights and cables and satellites erected near the Wailing Wall. There seemed nearly as many cameras as at the festival site.

  Abdullah, typically brief, merely shook his head.

  Mac felt a thrill at seeing Eli and Moishe, even from a distance. They were preaching loudly and evangelistically, and the crowd seemed schizophrenic. Mac had heard that the preachers’ audience was usually quiet, either out of respect or fear. They kept their distance from the strange pair—who had been known to incinerate attackers, leaving charred remains. No one wanted to be mistaken for a threat.

  This crowd—larger than normal and boisterous—was apparently made up of early arrivers for the Gala. Some responded to the pair’s every sentence, cheering, clapping, whistling, amen-ing. Others booed, hooted, catcalled. Mac could only gawk at several on the edge of the crowd who danced and ran toward the fence, as if showing their bravado. It was clear the preachers could distinguish would-be assassins from foolish newcomers who considered this just part of the Gala hullabaloo.

  Strangest, however, was a group of about two dozen who seemed moved by the preaching. They knelt within ten feet of the fence and appeared to be weeping. Eli and Moishe traded sentences, pleading with the crowd to come to Christ before it was too late. These evidently were doing just that.

  “One reason to be grateful,” Mac said, “in the middle of all this.”

  The two witnesses seemed especially urgent. The timing was not lost on Mac. He was a student of Tsion’s as much as anyone else was, and he knew the “due time” they had so often mentioned coincided with the opening day of the Global Gala half a mile away.

  Further insight into the relationship—or the lack of one—between Rayford and Leah came to Buck on the drive to Palwaukee. Her conversation centered on Tsion.

  Tsion?

  “He seems so lonely,” she said.

  “He is,” Rayford said. “Except for Chloe and Buck, we’re single people in very artificial close quarters.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said. She asked about the details of Tsion’s life before he joined the Trib Force, so Buck filled her in.

  At Palwaukee, T had the Gulfstream fueled and the charts on board. He had even stocked the refrigerator.

  “That’s above and beyond the call, T,” Rayford said.

  “Don’t mention it. Our little church body is praying for you all, though I have, obviously, given them no details.”

  From Israel, Mac checked in with David in New Babylon late Sunday night. “It’s like a ghost town here,” David said. “I have free reign but no one to spy on. Annie and I are getting time together, but we spend it planning to escape from here and deciding where we’ll go.”

  “Don’t leave before you have to,” Mac said. “We need you right where you are.”

  The clock showed two hours earlier, Belgian time, when Rayford put down
in Brussels. He was as nervous as when he had approached Hattie’s apartment door in Le Havre. He had to cover his feelings. For all his son-in-law and Leah knew, his job here was just chauffeur. How would they interpret uncalled-for nervousness?

  “Donna” would check into a hotel not far from the infamous Buffer, planning to attempt a visit the next day. Buck, under his new alias, Russell Staub, would head for his commercial connection to Tel Aviv.

  “You’ve entered my secure phone number?” Rayford asked Leah as he taxied closer to the terminal.

  “Yours and Buck’s.”

  “There’s not much I can do for you if you can’t reach Ray,” Buck said.

  “If I can’t get hold of Rayford,” she said, gathering her stuff, “I’ll need someone to say good-bye to. Wish me luck.”

  “We don’t do luck,” Buck said. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Pray for me then.”

  Rayford knew he should respond, but he was preoccupied. And Leah was gone.

  “Where are you going to be, Ray?” Buck asked him.

  Rayford shot him a look. “The less you know, the less you’re accountable for.”

  Buck held up his hands. “Ray! I just mean generally. Have you got a place, things to do, ways to blend in?”

  “I’m covered,” Rayford said.

  “And Leah knows everything we want to communicate to Hattie?”

  “I wouldn’t bring her all this way and have her go in there unprepared.” He could tell he was annoying Buck. What was the matter with him?

  “I’m just getting everything set in my head for my own peace of mind, Ray. I’m going into a stressful situation, and I want fewer things to worry about.”

  “You’d better get going,” Rayford said, looking at his watch. “If you find a way to worry about fewer things, let me know. We’re sending a brand-new mole to a prison, and smart as she is, who knows what she’ll do or say under pressure?”

  “That puts me at ease.”

  “Time to grow up, Buck.”

  “Time to lighten up, Dad.”

  “Be careful, hear?” Rayford said.

  Rayford felt very lonely when Buck left the plane. He was undecided about his quest, and he knew what the others would think of it. If God did use him to kill Carpathia, he couldn’t imagine escaping. He feared he had seen his loved ones for the last time. And he hoped he wasn’t putting too much on Buck, who would have to somehow get Leah back to the States.

  Ten minutes after Buck disappeared into the terminal, Rayford refueled and asked the tower for clearance to take off. He had considered looking for any airstrip other than Ben Gurion or Jerusalem, but decided his best chance at slipping through under his new alias—Marv Berry—was to go where the most traffic was. Ben Gurion.

  It was all David could do, even with Annie’s help, to keep straight who was who now that three stateside Trib Forcers were using aliases overseas. He made himself a card that listed the real initials, in reverse order, next to the alias. Thus: “RL Donna Clendenon; SR Marvin Berry; WC Russell Staub.” For good measure he added Hattie’s: “DH Mae Willie.”

  Buck flew directly into Jerusalem on a late flight and checked into a hostel under his alias. At midnight he took a cab to the Wailing Wall and found himself at the back of a crowd so large he could not see Moishe and Eli. He used the occasion to check in by phone with David, then Chloe, then Mac. Finally he called Chaim’s number, and Jacov answered.

  “Oh, Buck!” he said. “I had so hoped you would call! It’s awful, terrible!”

  “What?”

  “Dr. Rosenzweig could not get out of bed this morning, and he could not communicate. He appeared paralyzed and afraid. He drooled and moaned and his left hand was curled, his arm straight. His mouth drooped. We called for an ambulance, but it took so long, I was afraid he would die.”

  “A stroke?”

  “That’s the diagnosis. They finally took him to the hospital and are running tests. We won’t know the results until tomorrow, but it does not look good.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I can tell you, Buck, but you will not be allowed in. Not even any of us have been allowed to see him. He’s in intensive care, and they say his vital signs look good for now, everything considered. But we are worried. All the time before the ambulance arrived, we prayed over him and pled with him to become a believer. Because he could not talk, I kept watching his forehead for evidence that he had prayed. But I saw nothing. He looked angry and frightened and kept waving me away with his good hand.”

  “Jacov, I’m so sorry. Keep me posted any time there’s even a small change.”

  “We don’t dare call your number from here. Your phone is secure, but ours isn’t.”

  “Good thinking. I’ll check in whenever I can. And I’ll pray.”

  Rayford—as Marv Berry—was detained only briefly in the busy customs area, where an agent bought his story that the heavy metal box in his suitcase was a computer backup battery. Rayford rented a tiny car and checked into a seedy hotel on the west side of Tel Aviv. He called Leah’s hotel in Brussels. It was well after midnight there, but he hoped with the time change and jet lag, she might be awake.

  The hotel operator was unwilling to ring Mrs. Clendenon’s room, but “Mr. Berry” insisted it was an emergency. Leah answered groggily on the sixth ring, and Rayford was impressed that she had her wits about her. “This is Donna,” she said.

  “It’s Marv. Did I wake you?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s fine. Listen, it’s going to be impossible to pick you up until Friday.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t get into details. Just be ready Friday.”

  “Well, ah, Marv, I should be ready Tuesday.”

  “Don’t try to call me before Friday, all right?”

  “All right, but—”

  “All right, Donna?”

  “All right! You can’t tell me anything more specific?”

  “I would if I could.”

  Buck awoke early Monday and hurried to the Wailing Wall. The night before he had not been able to get close to Eli and Moishe, though he thrilled to see people coming out of the crowd and kneeling by the fence to receive Christ.

  The witnesses had always spoken with power and urgency, but Buck could tell from their delivery that they knew as well as anyone they were running out of time. The world had been left depleted of population with the plagues wrought by the 200 million horsemen, and those who survived seemed determined as ever to continue in their sin. Now it seemed the witnesses were making their last concerted effort to wrest souls from the evil one.

  Monday crowds at the Temple Mount were even bigger, because the Gala would not begin until early evening, and hundreds of thousands of delegates were curious about the preachers they had only heard about before. The sophisticated sin businesses in the center of Jerusalem were crowded too, but the majority of tourists were gaping at the strange men preaching from behind the fence.

  This was their 1260th and last day to preach and prophesy before the due time. Buck felt unspeakably privileged to be there. He shouldered his way through the crowd until he popped out of the front row, striding past new converts kneeling before the fence. Buck stood close enough that he could have touched the fence, closer to Eli and Moishe than anyone else was. Some from the crowd cautioned him, reminding him that people had died for such boldness. He knelt, his eyes on the two, and settled in to listen.

  Eli held forth with Moishe sitting behind him, his back against the wall of a small stone building. “Watch that one!” someone shouted. “He’s hiding the flamethrower!” Many laughed, but more shushed them. Buck was overwhelmed at the emotion in Eli’s voice. Eli cried out, near tears, loud enough to be heard for blocks, though he was also being broadcast frequently over GC CNN. TV reporters throughout Jerusalem filed stories about the excitement building for the Gala that evening, and every other one, it seemed, came from right here at the Wall.
br />   Eli shouted, “How the Messiah despaired when he looked out over this very city! God the Father promised to bless Jerusalem if her people would obey his commandment and put no other god before him. We come in the name of the Father, and you do not receive us. Jesus himself said, ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’”

  The crowd had fallen silent. Eli continued, “God sent his Son, the promised Messiah, who fulfilled more than one hundred ancient prophecies, including being crucified in this city. Christ’s love compels us to tell you that he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

  “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

  “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Though this world and its false rulers promise that all religions lead to God, this is a lie. Jesus is the only way to God, as he himself declared, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’”

  Eli appeared exhausted and backed away from the fence. Moishe rose and proclaimed, “This world may have seen the last of us, but you have not seen the last of Jesus the Christ! As the prophets foretold, he will come again in power and great glory to establish his kingdom on this earth. The Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.