Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist

  Buck sighed and reluctantly agreed. He decided not to tell Chloe that he and her dad might eventually have to have it out. He didn’t know what the problem was.

  Buck climbed a tree so he could see the Wailing Wall, and there were Eli and Moishe. They still stood shoulder to shoulder, staring, unmoving, in the same position as he had last seen them. Crowds taunted.

  He called Jacov for a report on Chaim. “Good news and bad news,” Jacov said. “The tests are positive.”

  “What can be bad?”

  “The doctor can’t determine the cause of the paralysis or the speech loss. It looks and acts like a stroke, but there doesn’t seem to have been one.”

  The next morning Rayford rose and got an early start toward the Wailing Wall. The path was wet in spots, and from more than dew. He was stunned to find the crowds huge two hours before the vaunted confrontation. Rumors flew that the memorial service for Pontifex Maximus Peter the Second had been cancelled due to lack of interest and that Ms. D’Angelo had already been defrocked. Apparently Enigma Babylon would die with its founder. No room even for pagan religion in Carpathia’s orbit.

  With his Saber inside his robe, Rayford elbowed his way to the middle of the bustling crowd. He had not slept well, praying most of the night, and now he wished he could sit. But he endured. The witnesses stood like statues, as people said they had for hours. Surely they would become animated when Carpathia arrived to challenge them.

  A block away loud bands rehearsed for the all day/all night party.

  Buck tried to climb the same tree he had the night before, but GC Security shooed him away. He found a spot on a rocky ledge with a clear view over the crowd. He was saddened by the silence of the witnesses, wishing that when Carpathia arrived they would at least go down swinging. But the due time was upon them; this was the 1261st day. The Bible said they would be overcome.

  At a minute to ten the sky came alive with helicopter rotors. As at the Gala site, three choppers brought the potentates, Fortunato, no Enigma Babylon rep this time, and finally Carpathia. It marked the first time Buck had seen him without a tie. He wore expensive shoes and slacks, an open-collar shirt, and a cashmere sport coat with what looked like a Bible protruding from one of the pockets.

  The potentates and Fortunato stepped behind a barrier that separated them from the crowd. Lights beamed, cameras locked in, and Carpathia swept to the fence. His shirt was equipped with a wireless mike, and he stopped for a dab of powder from a makeup artist. He smiled to the noisy crowd and approached the witnesses, who stood still, only their chests moving with their breathing.

  Carpathia, like a magician, whipped off his sport coat and hung it from the top of a pointed bar in the fence. Whatever was in the pocket made the coat sag to that side. When Nicolae rolled up his sleeves as if to fight, the crowd went wild.

  “And what do you gentlemen have to say for yourselves this morning?” he said, looking first to the witnesses and then to the crowd. Buck prayed they would be eloquent, challenging, forceful.

  In Illinois it was the wee hours of the morning. Tsion sat before the television in his pajamas and robe and slippers. Chloe sat in a chair.

  “The baby sleeping?” Tsion said.

  Chloe nodded. “I pray he sleeps through this.”

  When Carpathia began with the challenging question, Chloe said quietly, “Give it to ’im, Eli. C’mon, Moishe.”

  But they did not respond.

  “Oh, God,” Tsion prayed. “Oh, God, oh, God. They are oppressed and they are afflicted, yet they open not their mouths; they are led as lambs to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so they open not their mouths.”

  For a second Buck wished he had a weapon. He had a clear sight path to Carpathia. What arrogance! What ego! How he would love to pop Nicolae between the eyes, even with a slingshot. He shook his head. He was a journalist, an observer. He didn’t claim to be objective. His heart was with the witnesses. But neither was he a participant.

  Rayford could hardly keep still. He bit his tongue to keep from shouting at Carpathia. He slipped his arms inside his robe and held the box in both hands. If Nicolae was going to make fools of the witnesses, maybe he would wind up the fool, lying in his own blood.

  Carpathia was in his glory. “Cat got your tongues?” he said, pacing before the silent saints, peeking at the crowd for encouragement. “The water in Jerusalem tastes cold and refreshing today! Run out of poison? Coconspirators run away? Lose access to the water supply?”

  The people cheered and mocked. “Throw them out!” someone yelled.

  “Arrest them!”

  “Jail them!”

  “Kill them!”

  Rayford wanted to shout, “Shut up!” but would have been drowned out by the bloodthirsty mob anyway. And Carpathia played them.

  “Was that rain on my window this morning? What happened to the drought? Say, does anyone see locusts? Horsemen? Smoke? Gentlemen! You are impotent!”

  The crowd ate it up. Rayford seethed.

  “I proclaimed this area off-limits to you two years ago!” Carpathia said, his back to the crowd but the microphone allowing him to be heard everywhere, including on TV. “Why are you still here? You must leave or be arrested! In fact, did I not say that if you were seen in public anywhere after the meeting of the cultists that you would be executed?”

  Carpathia turned to the crowd. “I did say that, did I not?”

  “Yes! Yes! Execute them!”

  “I have been remiss! I have not carried out my duties! How can I stand before the citizens who have charged me with upholding the dictates of my office when I have allowed this crime to go unpunished? I do not want to be shamed before my people! I do not want to be embarrassed at their party today!

  “Come! Come out from behind that fence and face me! Challenge me! Answer me! Climb over, fly over, transport yourselves if you are able! Do not make me open the gate!”

  Carpathia turned to the crowd again. “Should I fear their very breath? Will these dragons incinerate and slay even me?”

  The crowd was not as loud now, laughing nervously. The witnesses did not move.

  “I am at the end of patience!” Nicolae said. The head of the GC Peacekeeping Force produced a key from his pocket and handed it to Nicolae. He unlocked the gate, and the crowd edged back. Some gasped. Then they fell silent.

  Carpathia opened the gate with a flourish and rushed the witnesses. “Outside!” he shouted, but the two ignored him still. He moved right of Eli and shoved him into Moishe, making them both stumble toward the gate. He herded them through, pushing, bumping, jostling.

  The crowd fell back more. Carpathia grabbed Eli and Moishe by their robes and slammed them back against the fence, then turned his back on them and smiled at the crowd. “Here are your tormentors!” he said. “Your judges! Your prophets!” He spat that last. “And what do they have to say for themselves now? Nothing! They have been tried and convicted and sentenced. All that is left is the rendering of justice, and as I have decreed it, I shall carry it out!”

  He turned to the two, tugging their robes again until they stood six feet in front of the bars.

  “Any last words?”

  Eli and Moishe looked at each other and lifted their heads to heaven.

  Carpathia strode to his jacket and removed the black object from the pocket. Rayford was stunned to recognize it. Nicolae hid the box from the crowd, his back to them, as he separated a Saber handgun from its adjoining piece. He backed about ten feet away from the witnesses and pointed the weapon at Eli, on his right. The sudden explosion made everyone recoil and cover their ears. The bullet entered Eli at the neck, and the force knocked him off his feet, his head slamming into the fence before his body crumpled to the ground, blood gushing. The huge exit wound splattered gore on the fence and the stone building behind.

  Moishe knelt and covered his eyes as if in prayer. Carpathia shot him through the top of the head, making him flop into the fence and land on his chin, l
imbs splayed.

  Rayford’s mouth was dry, his breath short, his pulse reverberating to fingers and toes. All around him people held their ears and gawked at the remains. Carpathia fitted the gun back together, slipped it into the jacket pocket, put the jacket back on, and with a closed-mouth smile executed a deep bow to the crowd.

  Rayford was overcome with such a passion to shoot Carpathia that he lowered his shoulder and rammed into the man in front of him, who let out a horrific grunt just as the crowd responded to Carpathia. They jumped and spun and cheered and laughed and shouted and danced. Rayford bulled forward, trying to get to Carpathia, all the while trying to detach his own Saber.

  The crowd swayed together, falling, wrestling, enjoying themselves. Rayford tumbled in the middle of it, his arms inside his coat, unable to get up. He forced one hand out of a sleeve so he could push off the ground to stand, but he was knocked over halfway up. He swung his elbows to clear space, but in the process the Saber box rattled to the ground. He felt for it as he sat there, battered back and forth by waves of revelers. He forced both arms out just as someone knocked him back and his head slammed the concrete. He rolled and jumped up, a bump rising on the back of his head. Where was the Saber? Had it stayed together? It was fully loaded, and there was no safety.

  Buck stood on the rocky ledge, drained. He watched the dancing, the carousing, the helicopters collecting Carpathia and the other VIPs and whisking them to the party site. Buck hated the sight of the grisly bodies of his beloved preachers. How he had come to cherish their dark, leathery skin, their thick, dirty feet, their smoky sackcloth robes! They had been so regal, majestic, patriarchal. Their bony hands and shoulders, wrinkled necks and faces, long gray hair and beards only added to their wonderful, supernatural mystery.

  Their bodies had been destroyed. Formerly invincible, they had been blasted against the iron fence, leaving them next to each other in grotesque heaps. Buck was embarrassed for them, exposed in death. Their robes rode high on their legs, their hands curled beneath them, eyes open, mouths agape. Their blood ran the blackest red under bodies torn apart by a weapon so technologically advanced that calling it a handgun was the ultimate understatement.

  Buck knew what came next. He did not need to witness the celebrating that had been scheduled for noon to midnight but which would last more than three days. He looked with deep sadness on sin come to fruition, on evil personified in people who had had every chance, been given every warning.

  Tsion lowered his head, “I could not have imagined how ghastly . . .”

  Chloe appeared unable to tear her eyes from the screen. “Buck must be there.”

  Tsion rose. “Chloe, we have turned a terrible corner. This is only the beginning. Soon Carpathia will not even pretend propriety. Most will be powerless to resist him.”

  Rayford spun and crouched, desperate for the Saber. He stepped on it, reached for it, and was knocked about again by crazed dancers. He dropped to his knees and grabbed it with both hands, hugging it to his chest as people climbed over him. Finally he tucked it back inside his robe and fought to the edge of the crowd. Carpathia was long gone by now.

  Buck headed back to the hostel, passing celebrants on every corner, crowded around TV sets. He phoned Leah. No answer.

  For the next three days the Gala was centered at the party venue. Music blared and speeches decried the Jerusalem Twosome and praised Nicolae. Fortunato urged everyone to view Carpathia as a deity, “perhaps the deity, the creator God and savior of all mankind.” And the people cheered.

  The only mention of the death of Peter the Second came from Carpathia himself, who said, “Not only was I tired of the pseudoreligious preachers and their legalistic imperialism, but I was also tired of the intrusive Enigma Babylon Faith, which shall not be reinstituted. Individual souls can find within themselves the deity necessary to conduct their lives as they wish. I esteem individual freedom over organized religion.”

  Rayford began to spend time near the Gala stage where the closing ceremony would be held Friday night. He calculated angles, lines of sight, when to arrive, where to stand, where to move, how to get himself in position should God choose to use him. The ceremony would end after dark with a speech by Carpathia. Perhaps that would be the moment.

  All over Jerusalem, people celebrated. Buck was sickened that every newscast showed Eli’s and Moishe’s bloated, fetid bodies, decayed and steaming in the sun. Day and night crowds danced around them, holding their noses, sometimes venturing close to kick the corpses. Blood and tissue formed a sticky mess around them.

  From all over the world came reports of celebrations, of people exchanging gifts as they would at Christmas. From the occasional commentator came the suggestion that it was “time to get past this, to give these men a proper burial and move on.” But the celebrants would have none of it, and global polls showed huge majorities favored refusing them burial, letting them lie.

  On Wednesday evening, Buck had finally been permitted to see Chaim in the hospital. Though his color was good and his speech had improved, his face drooped. His left side was stiff. His right hand was curled. Chaim’s doctor was still puzzled by the results of his tests, but he was reluctant to accede to Chaim’s request to “go home and die in peace.”

  Chaim pleaded pitifully to Buck, slurring, “Just wheel me out of here! Please! I want to go home.”

  By Friday dawn, Buck had still been unable to reach either Leah or Rayford. He did, however, receive a surprising call from Jacov. “I don’t know how he did it, but Chaim talked his way out of there. He has improved enough to come home, and the doctor now believes he may have had a small stroke that acted like a big one. He looks no better to me, but he can make himself understood. And he’s ordering me to take him to the closing ceremony tonight.”

  CHAPTER 23

  As Buck showered Friday morning he realized he would do anything but sacrifice his identity to be at the Wailing Wall that day. He believed Tsion, he believed the Bible, he believed the prophecies. He couldn’t imagine anything as satisfying as seeing the mockers of Eli and Moishe get theirs.

  Buck had promised to help Jacov persuade Chaim to stay home from the Gala finale that evening, provided he was fortunate enough to find himself in the 90 percent of Jerusalem that would be spared the foretold earthquake.

  Rayford slept most of the morning, ignoring his beeping cell phone except to note that the caller, every time, was Leah. What could he say? Sorry I can’t pick you up tonight and ferry you back to the States, but I might be in prison or dead?

  He was careful to be well rested and well fed. He wanted to be prepared and sharp, regardless which way the day went. Rayford was also careful to pray that God would tell him if he were heading off on his own. He was willing to get to the plaza at least three hours before sundown, stay in the middle of crowds, and make sure he was in the spot he had scouted. Past that, God would have to pull the trigger.

  Rayford glanced at his phone and punched up Leah’s last message readout: “Our bird has left the cage. Now what?”

  Hattie was not at Buffer? Now what, indeed? He phoned her. But now Leah wasn’t answering.

  Buck was angry with himself for not going even earlier to the Wailing Wall. His spot on the rocky ledge was taken. GC guards let no one up the trees. The area teemed with drunken celebrants, some Buck would have sworn had been there for days. How long could this party last? Dancing, public lewdness, shouting, singing, drinking, people staggering about . . .

  Thousands chanted in various languages, only the bravest now approaching the blackening, oozing carcasses that had split in the heat of the sun. Buck smelled the rancid cadavers from a hundred yards. Still, he was determined to get closer. He walked far around the left side of the Wall and found himself in a grove of trees and high shrubbery. Buck couldn’t risk being recognized, but this gambit was worth the danger. If it led, as he hoped, to the same underbrush that had allowed him to get close to Eli and Moishe once before without drawing the ire of the guards, he
could be an eyewitness to one of the greatest miracles of history.

  Tsion and Chloe, up before dawn and watching TV again, took turns distracting Kenny when the cameras showed Eli and Moishe’s gruesome remains. “Awful as the deaths were,” Tsion said, “what is coming should be exquisite.” He sat rocking on the couch, unable to sit still. Anytime he caught Chloe’s eye he was reminded of his daughter when she was a little girl on the morning of her birthday.

  Buck slithered through the brush past two guard outposts and around the opposite side, where he was finally as close to the fence as he could be without being seen. He could not believe his luck. Unless by accident, Buck would not be discovered. He was reminded of his admonition to Leah. We don’t do luck.

  “Thank you, Lord,” he whispered.

  Buck could barely stand the sight of what was left of the mighty men he had come to love. Except for the occasional kicks from the most irreverent of the partiers, the bodies had not moved in three and a half days. Animals picked at them, birds pecked, bugs crawled. Buck decided he would not let his worst enemy rot in the sun.

  A raucous band invaded the area, and the carousers became feverish. The bravest danced side by side, arms interlocked at the shoulders, encircling the bodies. Buck feared he would miss the miracle now, blocked by these crazy drunks. Their misshapen circle flattened as it snaked between the bodies and the fence.

  Faster and faster they danced until someone reversed direction. The whole line stopped and went the other way, but soon several had ideas of their own and the thing disintegrated. Dancers collided, laughing, hollering, guffawing until tears rolled. A middle-aged woman, one shoe missing, bent to vomit and was bowled over by some who thought the circle was still going.

  Several went down, giving Buck a clear view of Eli and Moishe, now just hideous, distorted, repulsive collections of body parts in putrid piles. A sob of pity rose in his throat.