“Don’t let me down, boy,” Albie called after him.
Buck gave Albie a look. “Thought you were mute.”
“Somebody had to bail you out.”
“He was my own rank!”
“That’s why you refer to me! I’ve got the clout, but you’ve got to use it. Try again.”
“What now?”
“I told you. We need a vehicle.”
“Ach!”
Buck strode into the terminal, which was crawling with GC. With the crackdown on the underground churches, it would be a noisy area for a while. “Give me your papers,” he told Albie.
“What for?”
“Just do it! Hand ’em over!”
“Now you’re talking.”
Buck stepped to the front of a line of GC Peacekeepers. “Hey!” the first in line shouted.
“Hey yourself,” Buck said. “You a deputy commander or are you escorting one? Because if you’re not, I’d appreciate your standing down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Buck raised an eyebrow at Albie, then spoke to the GC officer at a desk behind a window. “Corporal Jack Jensen on behalf of Deputy Commander Marcus Elbaz, here on assignment from the USNA. Need a vehicle for transport to Ptolemaïs.”
“Yeah, you and a thousand other guys,” the officer said, lazily looking over their IDs. “Seriously, you’re about two hundredth in line.”
“Seems to me we’re near the top, sir, begging your pardon.”
“How come your superior officer is USNA? He looks Middle Eastern.”
“I don’t do the assigning, pal. And I wouldn’t recommend getting into it with him. No, better yet, it would be fun. Tell him he looks Middle Eastern and that you’re questioning his base of operations. Go ahead. Really.”
The officer pursed his lips and slid the IDs back under the window. “Something basic do ya?”
“Anything. I could push for something fancy, but we just want to get in and get out. Anyway, tell you the truth, Elbaz has been so touchy today, I don’t think he deserves a nicer ride. We’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
The officer slid Buck a set of keys attached to a manila ticket. “Show this at the temporary motor pool behind the exit gate.”
As they headed that way, Albie mimicked Buck. “He’s been so touchy today, I don’t think he deserves a nicer ride. I oughta bust you down to Boy Scout.”
“You do and you’ll be walking home in civilian clothes.”
“Carpathia’s up to something,” Mac said, sitting next to Abdullah in David’s office.
“I am going to be so glad to say good-bye to this place,” Abdullah said.
David shifted in his chair. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, don’t you want to get out of here too?”
“I’m sorry, Smitty,” David said. “I was talking to Mac.”
“Oh! A thousand pardons.”
“Watch him now,” Mac said. “He’ll be pout in a New Babylon second.”
“I am not pout! Now stop teasing!”
Mac smacked Abdullah on the shoulder and the Jordanian smiled. “Anyway,” Mac said, turning back to David, “Carpathia calls me a little while ago and asks me do I know where his weapons are. ’Course, I don’t, but I’d sure like to. Tell you somethin’, guys, people can talk all they want about the miraculous rebuilding Carpathia did all over the world. But nothin’, and I mean nothin’, compares to him getting all those countries to destroy 90 percent of their weapons and give him the other 10, and then him storin’ ’em somewhere that nobody ever talks about.”
“Loose lips sink ships,” David repeated.
“You think people know but won’t say?”
“Obviously.”
“How does he keep a secret that big among so many people?”
“I think I just heard how,” David said, and he briefed Mac and Abdullah on it.
Abdullah sat shaking his head. “Nicolae Carpathia is a bad man.”
Mac looked at Abdullah and then at David. “Well, yeah! I mean, come on, Smitty. You just come to that conclusion, or have you known all along and just been keeping it from us?”
“I know you are teasing me,” Abdullah said. “Just wait until I know your language good.”
“You’ll be dangerous; that’s a fact.”
David’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and held up an apologetic finger. “It’s Ming,” he said.
“Should we go?” Mac said.
David shook his head.
“They were fighting over what you assumed they were fighting over,” she said. “My father wants Chang to take a job right away with the GC and be among the first to take the mark. Chang swears he will never take the mark.”
“Did he tell your father why?”
“No, and I am coming to see that he never can unless my father himself somehow becomes a believer. I have not lost faith and I keep praying, but until that happens, Chang cannot tell him. He would expose us.”
“Does your mother know?”
“No! She would eventually tell him. I’m afraid she is so intimidated that she would not be able to stand up to him in the end. David, you cannot let Chang get a job there, especially if new employees are the first to get the mark.”
“It appears that prisoners are going to be first, but yes, new employees soon. As they are hired, apparently. And even the rest of us within a couple of weeks.”
“What are you going to do, David? You and your friends?”
“We’re talking about that now. Obviously, we run or we die.”
“Can you take Chang with you?”
“Kidnap him?”
Ming was silent. Then, “Did you hear yourself, David? You want to leave him to take the mark or be beheaded for refusing so you won’t run the risk of kidnapping him? Please! Kidnap him! For one thing, he will go willingly.”
“I’m supposed to interview him for a job tomorrow.”
“Then either find a way to eliminate him, discredit him as a potential employee, or tell him where to meet you when you escape.”
“The latter is more likely. What could possibly disqualify him? He looks like a gold mine to any department, especially mine.”
“Make something up. Say he has AIDS.”
“And let your father kill him himself?”
“Well, how about a genetic defect?”
“Does he have one?”
“No! But work with me.”
“I’m not a doctor, Ming. It would just stall things.”
“That’s better than nothing.”
“Not if it makes me look suspicious. We’re hoping to get out of here without their suspecting we are subversives.”
“Great idea. Tell them you want to take Chang with you to check him out before hiring. Then, whatever happens to you happens to him. He’s free and he can help you wherever you go.”
“Maybe.”
“It has to work, David. What choice is there?”
“What if they don’t go for it? What if they say no, just hire him, give him the mark, and then take him on assignment?”
“You have to try. He’s brilliant, but he’s a child. He can’t fend for himself. He can’t even defend himself against my father.”
“I’ll do the best I can, Ming.”
“That sounds like an excuse after everything fails.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do better than the best I can do.”
“David, he’s my brother! I know he’s not your flesh, but can you pretend? If it was Annie, would you do your best? Or would you do whatever you had to do to save her?”
David couldn’t speak.
“Oh, David! Forgive me! That was so wrong of me! Please! That was cruel.”
“No. I—”
“David, please blame that on my fear and my situation.”
“It’s all right, M—”
“Please tell me you forgive me. I didn’t mean that.”
“Ming, it’s all right. You’re right. I understand. You put it in perspec
tive for me. Count on me. I will do whatever I have to do to protect Chang, all right?”
“David. Do you accept my apology?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you. I’ll be praying for you and loving you in the Lord.”
When David rang off, Mac said, “What in the world did she say, man? You looked more like me than like an Israeli there for a second.”
David told him.
“Tell you what,” Mac said, “and Smitty you speak for yourself on this, but if that boy’s a believer and he’s got the mark to prove it, he’s with us. And anybody else we can find before we get out of here. Right, Smitty?”
“Right, I think. If I understand. Other believers here all go with us, yes. Of course. Right?”
“That’s what we’re saying.”
“Mac, a question. Who else would speak for me?”
On the drive north, Buck used a secure phone to call Lukas (Laslos) Miklos. The man was distraught. “Thank you for coming, but there is nothing you can do. Surely you did not bring weapons.”
“No.”
“You would be so hopelessly outnumbered anyway that you would never get out alive. So why the trip? What can you do?”
“I wanted to see it firsthand, Laslos. Expose it to the world through The Truth.”
“Well, forgive me, Brother Williams. I love your magazine, and I read it almost as religiously as Dr. Ben-Judah’s messages. But you go to all the time and trouble and expense and danger to come all the way here, and it is for a magazine article? Did you know that the guillotines have arrived?”
“What?”
“It’s true. I would pass it off as a rumor myself if it weren’t for the brothers and sisters who told me. The GC is carting them through town in open trucks so the people can see the consequences of thinking for themselves. We are part of the United Carpathian States, a name I have to spit when I say. Nicolae is going to make an example of us. And you are here to write an article!”
“Brother Miklos, hear me. You knew there was nothing we could do. We would make matters only worse if we tried to free your wife and pastor and fellow believers. But I thought you’d want to know we were here so we can tell you—if we get in—what the conditions are, how their spirits are, whether they have any messages for you.”
Silence. Then Buck heard Laslos weeping.
“Are you all right, my friend?”
“Yes, brother. I understand. Forgive me. I am upset. It is all over the television that the guillotines will be set up first in the prisons, then at the mark sites. It is just a matter of days for us now. But it could be just hours for the prisoners. Please tell my wife I love her and am praying for her and long to see her again. And tell her that if I don’t see her again in this life, I will meet her in heaven. Tell her,” and he began to weep aloud, “that she was the best wife a man could have and that, that I love her with all my heart.”
“I will tell her, Laslos, and I will bring you any message she may have as well.”
“Thank you, my brother. I am grateful you have come.”
“Do you know where she and the others have been taken?”
“We have an idea, but we dare not go looking or we will all be rounded up. You know our church is made up of many, many small groups that are not so small anymore. When the GC raided the main one, they took my wife and Pastor D and about seventy others, but they missed more than ninety other groups.”
“Wow.”
“That is the good news. The worst of it is that apparently some in the original group have cracked under the strain. I can tell you without question it would not have been my wife or my pastor, but someone was tortured or scared or deceived into telling of the other groups. More raids have begun, and now they dare not meet at all. It is only a miracle I was not at the meeting with my wife, but if she becomes a martyr, I’ll wish I was there to die with her.”
“We came up with a question, besides a suggestion, David, and Smitty was very helpful on this, by the way,” Mac said. “We tease him about the language, but that’s a pretty shrewd brain in there. That’s a compliment, Abdullah.”
“Well, hey, cowpoke, I know that much right now!”
“I guess if I can make fun of Jordan, he can make fun of Texas. Really burned me there, didn’t he? Anyway, the question is this: Do we want to play this out to the end, assumin’ you’re gonna have an inside track on exactly when employees have to take the mark? Or do we want some wiggle room?”
David thought about it. “It’s more than wiggle room, Mac. It’s part of the impression. If we wait till the last second and still try to make it look like we were killed, the timing alone is going to make it suspicious.”
“That’s what I said!” Abdullah said. “Isn’t that what I said, Mac? I said that.”
“That’s what he said. Good point. OK, if we’re going to do this sooner than the actual deadline, we have lots of options. Peacekeeping just started shipping its first loads of—what are they calling those contraptions now? Loyalty somethin’s or other.”
“Call ’em what they are,” David said.
“OK, they shipped guillotines into Greece last night.”
“Not from here,” David said. “I would have known that.”
“No, these were actually manufactured in Istanbul and driven down. Pretty soon they’ll be flyin’ ’em here and there, and you know we’ll be pressed into service. You ought to pick a particularly strategic place you want to see or a shipment you want to monitor, find a reason to bring Hannah and Chang what’s-his-name, and I’ll have to requisition a Quasi Two.”
“A Two? How will you justify that? We want to avoid suspicion. You can fit two pilots and three passengers in something cheaper than a 15-million-Nick aircraft.”
“Yeah, but let’s say we want to take a huge load of guillotines and skids of biochips and injectors.”
“I’m listening. Still need more ammo to justify a Two.”
“Well, let’s say it’s somewhere that St. Nick hisself is gonna be.”
“Tell him who thought of that,” Abdullah said.
“I think you just did, big mouth.”
“Big mouth?”
“Teasin’, Smitty. Slow your camel down now.”
David cocked his head. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“Is this a game?” Abdullah said.
“We are,” Mac said. “Jerusalem.”
David sat considering the possibilities. “I pass the word up the line that we want to be there, bring the injection expert and my best new computer prospect. We want to carry the maximum cargo load in an impressive craft that will look good for the potentate, play to his ego.”
“You think he’s egotistical?” Mac said, as seriously as if he meant it.
David smiled.
“Is he joking again?” Abdullah said. “Not enough cloth in Jordan to make a turban for Nicolae’s head.”
Mac threw his head back and laughed.
David was still deep in thought. “And the Quasi Two can be flown remotely.”
“Just about any plane can nowadays, but I’ve got lots of experience with these.”
“So we land somewhere out of sight on our way there. Then, from the safety of the ground, you fly that very expensive jet, with all that precious cargo—except us—in it, nose down right into the middle of one of the deepest bodies of water we can find.”
“With people watching.”
“Come again?”
“Let ’em see it! You wanted us to think about a logical explanation for the accident. Well, forgive the painful subject, but we recently lost our cargo chief. She would have prohibited that much weight on that particular plane, but me bein’ a veteran, I thought it would handle it. Flyin’ it remote and also broadcasting from it remote, I start hollerin’ about a weight shift, cargo rolling, hard to control, Mayday, good-bye cruel world.”
“You guys are brilliant.”
“Thank you.”
“Both of us,” A
bdullah said. “Right?”
“Of course,” David said.
“Just thought of one more good one,” Abdullah said.
“Hold on now, Smitty,” Mac said. “Is this new to me?”
“Slow down your pony. You’ll like it. You want to do this in front of people, do it in Tel Aviv. Carpathia is flying through there. Do air show for him and crowds. Crash into Mediterranean, so deep they know we’re dead and plane is too deep to bother with search.”
“And where are we supposed to be during all this?” Mac said. “It’s going to be awfully hard to hide in Tel Aviv with Carpathia and all his crowds.”
“We don’t take off from Tel Aviv. We come straight from here to show, only they don’t know we stopped in Jordan. I know that place. We can land where no one sees. Send plane to Tel Aviv, do show, crash.”
“From how far away do you think I can remotely fly that plane, Smitty?”
“Sort of not remote. Take off remote, but flight plan, tricks, everything programmed into computer.”
Mac looked from Abdullah to David. “He may just have something there.”
“Really?” David said. “You can program the thing that specifically?”
“It would take some time.”
“Get on it.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Abdullah said. “Camel jockey come up with one.”
David’s cell phone chirped. “Readout says ‘Urgent. Call Hannah.’”
“Do it,” Mac said.
“Hey, what’s up?” David said.
“You’re 100 percent certain this connection is secure?”
“Absolutely. You all right?”
“I’m in a utility closet. Did you know Carpathia had a Peacekeeper executed today?”
“Actually, I did. Santiago?”
“Thanks for telling me. I just had to go get the body from Security lockup.”
“There wasn’t time to tell you, Hannah. Anyway, who knew you’d get assigned?”
“It was awful. I deal with death all the time, but he was shot between the eyes at point-blank range. And they aren’t even pretending it’s anything but what it was. He was executed by Carpathia himself! You know what for? Well, of course you do. You know everything.”
“I heard he talked too much.”
“Doesn’t sound very technical to me, David, but that’s what I heard too. Apparently he told someone something that Carpathia said in a private meeting.”