Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist

  Annie Christopher sighed and let her shoulders slump as she whipped off her cap. She ran a hand through her short hair and moved to the window between the office and the rest of the hangar. She closed the blinds.

  “What are you doing?” David said. “There’s no one out there, and I didn’t give you permission to—”

  “Oh, come now, Director Hassid. Do I need your permission for everything?”

  David lifted his feet off the desk and sat upright as Annie approached. “As a matter of fact, you do.”

  He opened his arms and she sat on his lap. “How are you, sweetheart?” she said.

  “I’m good, hon, but I think Mac’s about to have a heart attack.”

  Mac slid to the edge of his chair and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re both brats,” he said. “Forgive me, Miss Christopher, if I check your mark.”

  “Be my guest,” she said, leaning across the desk so he could reach her. “You can bet that’s what David and I did the day we met.”

  Mac cradled the back of her head in his palm and ran his other thumb across the mark on her forehead. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently atop the head. “You’re young enough to be my daughter,” he said, “sister.”

  Annie moved to another chair. “And for the record, Captain McCullum, I can’t stand working for either of you. Personnel has a standing request from me, demanding that I be reassigned. The director of my department is condescending and unbearable, and the captain of the Condor is unbearably sexist.”

  “But,” David said, “I have informed Personnel that she is not to be catered to. Annie has caused trouble in every department she’s served, and it’s payback time for her. They love it.”

  Mac squinted at her, then at David. “I can’t wait to hear your stories,” he said.

  Buck postponed his heart-to-heart with his father-in-law when Rayford spread the plans under a light in the basement and asked his advice on how to make the entrance impossible to detect.

  “Thought you’d never ask,” Buck said. “Actually, I have been noodling this.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “You know the freezer in the other duplex?”

  “The smelly one.”

  Buck nodded. They had discarded the spoiled food, but the stench inside remained. “Move that over here, stock it with what looks like spoiled food but only smells that way because of the residue, and hinge the food trays at the back. Anyone who looks in there will be repelled by the smell and won’t look close at what they assume is spoiled food. They’ll never think to lift the food trays, but if they do, they’ll find a false bottom that opens to the stairs to the shelter. Meanwhile, we put a wall over the current basement door.”

  Rayford cocked his head, as if searching his mind for a flaw. He shrugged. “I like it. Now if there was a way to keep it from Hattie.”

  Buck looked around. “So I was right? Floyd’s not down here?”

  “Mr. McCullum, there’s a message here for you to call Mr. Fortunato,” Annie said.

  “Terrific. May I use your phone, Corporal?”

  Annie said, “It’s not my phone, sir. It’s merely been parceled out to me. . . .”

  He phoned Fortunato’s office. “Mac McCullum returning his call. . . . Yes, ma’am. . . . Friday? . . . How many guests? . . . No, ma’am. You may tell him there was some sort of a snafu about that shipment. He’ll have to talk with the purchasing director, but no, those were not available to be delivered to the palace. . . . Perhaps when we return from Botswana, yes, ma’am.”

  Dr. Floyd Charles’s bedroom door was shut. Buck saw Tsion at his computer in the next room, forehead in his hand, elbow on the desk. “You OK, Tsion?”

  “Cameron! Come in, please. Just resting my eyes.”

  “Praying?”

  The rabbi smiled wearily. “Without ceasing. We have no choice, have we? How are you, my friend? Still worried about your father-in-law?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll talk to him. I was wondering if you’d seen Doc today?”

  “We usually share an early breakfast, as you know. But I was alone this morning. I did not hear him in the basement, and I confess I have not thought about it since. I have been writing. Cameron, we have no idea how long this lull may last between the fifth and sixth woes. I am trying to decide myself whether what John saw in his vision is real or symbolic. As you know—”

  “Dr. Ben-Judah, forgive me. I want to hear this—”

  “Yes, of course. You should check in on Floyd. We will talk later.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “You need not apologize, Cameron. Now go. We will talk later. Call if you need me.”

  Buck had never grown used to the privilege of living in the same house as the man whose daily words were like breath to millions around the world. Though Tsion was usually within a few dozen steps, when he was too busy or too tired to talk, the others in the household downloaded and saved his messages from the web. The best part about living with him was that he was as excited about the messages as were his audiences. He labored over them all morning and most of the afternoon in preparation for transmitting no later than early evening. All over the world sympathetic translators converted his words into the languages of their people. Other computer-literate believers invested hours every day in cataloguing Dr. Ben-Judah’s information and making it easily accessible to newcomers.

  When Tsion came across some startling revelation in his study, Buck often heard him exult and knew he would soon pad out to the top of the stairs. “Listen to this,” he would call out, “anyone who can hear me!” His knowledge of the biblical languages made his commentary the absolute latest thought on a given passage by the world’s most astute Bible scholar.

  Buck couldn’t wait to hear what Tsion was wrestling with about the prophesied sixth woe. But for now he worried about Doc. He tapped lightly on his bedroom door. Then louder. He turned the knob and entered. It was the middle of the afternoon, the spring sun high in the sky. But the room was dark, the shades pulled. And Doc Charles was still in bed. Very still.

  “Goin’ to Africa Friday,” Mac said. “Fortunato’s agreed to a face-to-face request by Mwangati Ngumo. ’Course Ngumo thinks he’s meeting with Nicolae. Bet Mwangati’s wonderin’ when Carpathia’s gonna make good on his promises.”

  Annie Christopher snorted. “Imagine what the potentate must have promised him to get him to give up the secretary-generalship.”

  “We’ll know Friday,” Mac said. “At least I will.”

  Annie looked at Mac. “They let you sit in on these meetings?” she said.

  Mac glanced at David. “You haven’t told her?”

  “Feel free,” David said.

  “Come with me, Corporal,” Mac said.

  She and David followed him out. “I’ll keep calling you Captain or Mr. McCullum, even in private,” Annie said. “I let you check my mark and kiss me on the head. But the most formal thing you’re allowed to call me from now on is Sister.”

  “I don’t know,” Mac said. “I’d better keep it formal, just so I don’t slip up in front of somebody.” She followed him into the cockpit.

  “Doc?” Buck said, approaching the bed. He detected no movement. He didn’t want to scare him.

  Assuming the light would be less blinding than sunshine, Buck flipped it on. He sighed. At least Floyd was breathing. Perhaps he had merely had trouble falling asleep and was catching up. Floyd groaned and turned.

  “You all right, Doc?” Buck tried.

  Floyd sat up, his face a mask of puzzlement. “I was afraid of this,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Buck said. “I just—”

  Floyd whipped off the blankets. He sat on the edge of the bed in a long terry cloth robe that fell open to reveal him fully clothed in flannel shirt, jeans, and boots. He had sweat through it all.

  “Was it that cold last night?” Buck said.

  “Open those drapes, would ya?”

  Floyd covered his eyes as
the light burst into the room.

  “What’s the matter, Floyd?”

  “Your vehicle in running order?”

  “Sure.”

  “Get me to Young Memorial. My eyes still yellow?”

  He squinted at Buck, who bent to look.

  “Oh, Floyd,” Buck said. “I wish they were.”

  “Bloodshot?”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “No white showing?”

  Buck shook his head.

  “I’m in trouble, Buck.”

  CHAPTER 3

  David, Mac, and Annie Christopher sat in the luxurious lounge of the Condor, twenty feet behind the cockpit. “So,” Annie said, “the what-did-you-call-it reverse thingie—”

  “Reverse intercom bug,” Mac said.

  “—lets you hear everything in the cabin?”

  Mac nodded. “Lounge, seats, sleeping quarters, lavs—everywhere.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Somethin’, ain’t it?” Mac said.

  “Amazing you haven’t been caught.”

  “You kiddin’? They discover it now, I disavow knowledge of it. I had nothing to do with it, Rayford never told me it was here, I never stumbled upon it. They already see him as a traitor. And neither they nor I know where he is, do we?”

  Annie moved to a couch behind a highly polished wood table. “This is where the big man himself watches TV?”

  David nodded.

  She turned back to Mac as if she had just thought of something. “You have no trouble lying?”

  Mac shook his head. “To the Antichrist, you serious? My life is a lie to him. If he had a clue, I’d be tortured. If he thought I knew where Rayford was, or Ray’s daughter and son-in-law, I’d be dead.”

  “End justifies the means?” Annie said.

  Mac shrugged. “I sleep at night. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “I’ll sleep a little better myself,” she said, “knowing you’ve got Carpathia under surveillance.”

  “At least when he’s on board,” Mac said. “Actually, Leon’s more entertaining. There’s a piece of work.”

  “Wish I could go with you,” Annie said.

  “Me too,” David said. “But unless we’re in the cockpit, we wouldn’t hear anything anyway. Speaking of that, Mac, you still worried your first officer’s on to you?”

  “Not anymore,” Mac said. “Got him promoted. He’s gonna be Pompous Maximum’s pilot.”

  Annie laughed. “I love it! I got in trouble for forgetting part of his title once. It’s His Excellency Pontifex Maximus, Peter the Second, isn’t it?”

  Mac shrugged. “I call him Pete.”

  “You should see the plane he’s ordered,” David said. “Nicolae and Leon are beside themselves.”

  “Better’n this one?” Mac said.

  “Way better. Fifty percent larger, costs twice as much. Used to belong to a sheik. I’m taking delivery in a week.”

  “They approved it?”

  “They’re setting him up,” David said, “letting him hang himself. Will his new pilot be able to fly it?”

  “He can fly anything,” Mac said. “I liked him. Good skills. But a total Carpathia loyalist. Much as I wanted to get to him—you know, really talk to him—I didn’t dare give myself away. He was already getting pitched by a believer in C sector.”

  “Maintenance?” Annie said. “I didn’t know we had any believers over there.”

  “We don’t anymore. My guy ratted him out. Would’ve done that to me, too. God’s going to have to reach him some other way.”

  David stood and ran his fingers along the base of the wide-screen TV. He turned it on, muted the sound, and idly watched the Carpathia-controlled news. “Amazing reception inside a metal building,” he said.

  “Nothing surprises me anymore,” Mac said. “Turn that up.”

  The news mostly carried stories of Carpathia’s accomplishments. The potentate himself came on, smooth and charming as ever, praising some regional government and humbly deferring praise for his own reconstruction project. “It is my privilege to have been asked to serve each and every member of the Global Community,” he said.

  “There you are, Mac,” David said, pointing out the pilot in the background as Carpathia was welcomed to yet another former Third World country that had benefited from his largesse. “And there’s Peter’s new pilot. You bringing in a believer to replace him?”

  “If I can sneak him past Personnel.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Jordanian. Former fighter pilot. Abdullah Smith.”

  Buck’s Land Rover bounced along toward Palatine. Floyd Charles lay across the backseat. “What is it, Doc?” Buck said.

  “I’m a fool is all,” Floyd said. He sat up, settling directly behind Buck. “I felt this coming on for months, telling myself I was imagining it. When the vision started to go, I should have contacted the Centers for Disease Control. It’s too late now.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Let’s just say I figured out what almost killed Hattie. I contracted it from her somehow. In layman’s terms, it’s like time-released cyanide. Can gestate for months. When it kicks in, you’re a goner. If it’s what I’ve got, there’ll be no stopping it. I’ve been treating the symptoms, but that was useless.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Buck said. “If Hattie survived, why can’t you?”

  “’Cause she was treated personally and daily for months.”

  “We’ll pray. Leah Rose will get what you need.”

  “Too late,” Doc said. “I’m a fool. A doctor is his own worst patient.”

  “Are the rest of us in trouble?”

  “Nah. If you haven’t had symptoms, you’re in the clear. I had to have gotten it when delivering her miscarriage.”

  “So, what about Leah?”

  “I can only hope.”

  Buck’s phone chirped.

  “Where are you?” Chloe asked.

  “Running an errand with Floyd. Didn’t want to bother you.”

  “It bothered me to hear you take off and not know where you were going. Errands in broad daylight? Daddy’s not happy. He was supposed to go see T at the airport today.”

  “He can use Ken’s car.”

  “Too recognizable, but that’s not the point. No one knew where you guys went. Tsion’s worried.”

  Buck sighed. “Floyd’s not well and time is crucial. We’re on our way to Young Memorial. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “What’s—”

  “Later, hon. OK?”

  She hesitated. “Be careful, and tell Floyd we’ll pray.”

  “We shouldn’t be seen together a lot,” Mac said, and David and Annie nodded. “Except what would be normal. Anybody know you’re here now?”

  Annie shook her head. “I’ve got a meeting at ten tonight.”

  “I’m clear,” David said. “But there’s no normal workday anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed. You’ve got to wonder when Carpathia sleeps.”

  “I want to hear you guys’ stories, David,” Mac said. “I know you still have family in Israel. Where you from, Annie?”

  “Canada. I was flying here from Montreal when the earthquake hit. Lost my whole family.”

  “You weren’t a believer yet?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t guess I’d ever been to church except for weddings and funerals. We didn’t care enough to be atheists, but that’s what we practiced. Would have called ourselves agnostics. Sounded more tolerant, less dogmatic. We were tight. Good people. Better than most religious people we knew.”

  “But you weren’t curious about God?”

  “I started wondering after the disappearances, but we became instant devotees of Carpathia. He was like a voice of reason, a man of compassion, love, peace. I applied to work for the cause as soon as the U.N. changed its name and announced plans to move here. The day I was accepted was the happiest of my life, of our whole family’s life.”

  “What happened
?”

  “Losing them all happened. I was devastated. I’d been scared before, sure. Knew some people who had disappeared and some who had died in all that happened later. But I had never lost anyone close, ever. Then I lose my mom and dad and my two younger brothers in the earthquake, not to mention half our town, while I’m merrily in the sky. We wind up landing in the sand at Baghdad Airport, see other planes go down. I find out GC headquarters is demolished, finally report to the underground shelter, and see the ruins of my little suburb on CNN. I was a mess for days, crying, praying to who-knows-who, pleading with Communications for word about my family. They were slower than I was on the Internet, so I just kept searching. I finally found dozens of names I knew on the confirmed-dead list. I didn’t even want to look under C, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

  Annie bit her lip.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if—”

  “I want to, Mr. McCullum. It’s just that it seems like yesterday. I checked into un-enlisting, going back for memorial services, looking into claiming the bodies. But that wasn’t allowed. Mass cremations for health reasons. There wasn’t even anyone left to commiserate with. I wanted to kill myself.”

  David put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell him what you found on the Net.”

  “You must know,” Annie said, looking up with moist eyes. Mac nodded. “I first saw all the rebuttals of Dr. Ben-Judah coming from the shelter. That was even before I found his Web site. When the GC made noises about making it illegal to even access that site, I had to see it. I was still a blind loyalist, but Carpathia preaches individual freedom even while he’s denying it. The whole praying thing scared me. I had never given God a second thought. Now I wished he were there for me. I had no one else.”

  “So you found Tsion.”

  “I found his home page. I couldn’t believe it. A number in the corner of the page—you must have seen it—showed how many people were accessing the site every so many seconds. I thought it was exaggerated, but then I realized this was why the GC was already trying to counter him. Someone gaining that vast an audience was a threat. I clicked through the site and read that day’s message from Ben-Judah. I recalled having heard of him when he declared his conversion over international TV. But that’s not what impressed me. And I didn’t too much understand what he was communicating that day on the Net either. It looked like Bible stuff and was beyond me, but his tone was so warm. It was as if he were sitting there next to me and just chatting, telling me what was going on and what to expect. I knew if I could ask him questions, he would have answers. Then I saw the archives. I thought, Archives already? I mean, how old could the site be?