Abigail wasn’t convinced. “I know you emailed your contact that we were coming, but we can’t wait for them to find us. I’m running out of time. Josh’s case is being heard in a federal court on the other side of the country tomorrow, and I’m the only one who can handle it. I had hope that Harry Smythe would be my backup, but I just got a text that he’s been hospitalized. It may be his heart again. I hope not. So, I have no other legal counsel who can pitch in. I’m it. We have to find these people now.”
They climbed back into the Land Rover and drove up the trail a quarter of a mile. Cal slowed the car again, then stopped. He gazed out at the woods to the left. “Not exactly a road,” he said, pointing to a spot where the underbrush looked less dense, “but wide enough for a four-wheel drive … maybe.” He rolled down the window and clicked off the ignition so he could listen.
“I hear something,” Abigail said, “like some kind of vehicle approaching.”
“Someone’s coming,” Cal said, pointing to the cleared space. Moments later, a black Hummer bounced into sight, winding slowly around trees and hitting ditches and rises in the forest floor. It stopped. Four men with beards, sunglasses, and stocking caps on their heads jumped out, mostly decked out in dirty lumberjack shirts and overalls. Two were carrying shotguns.
Abigail had a sudden, fearful thought. What if these men have nothing to do with the Underground? Maybe they’re simply thugs living in the wild, running from the law.
One of the unarmed men approached them first.
“We’ve been looking for you —,” Cal started to say.
“Shut up,” the man barked, “until we ask you to talk.”
“What’s your name?” he asked Abigail. She identified herself, trying not to tremble.
He stepped up closer, grabbed her, and forced her to the ground as he pulled long plastic zip ties from his pocket. He looped them around her wrists. Cal leaped at him, jamming his forearm under his neck and locking it until the man started gagging and let go of Abigail. Cal then yanked him off of Abigail and tossed him sideways to the ground and shouted, “What are you doing? You know who we are and why we —” But Cal didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence. Two of the other men jumped him from behind, and one of them slugged him twice in the side of the head. Abigail screamed, but they ignored her. The two men pinned Cal and zip-tied him while the other secured Abigail.
At that moment a small all-terrain four-wheeler came rushing out of the woods and slammed on its brakes next to the Hummer. Another bearded man hopped out, this one dressed in dockers and a clean sweatshirt. He had a photocopy of the headshots that Cal had emailed the group when he had first set up the meeting. The man compared the faces in the picture with Cal and Abigail on the ground. He said, “Okay, men, no need to get rough. These are the ones.” He bent down to Abigail. “Sorry about the inconvenience, Mrs. Jordan, but we can’t be too careful. The government would love to know our location.” Then he ordered the men to cut the zip-ties.
As Abigail and Cal stood up, the leader added, “But I’m going to insist that you wear hoods over your heads until we reach the compound.”
An hour later, Abigail found herself sitting across from the mysterious Chiro Hashimoto in a forlorn camping lodge. The front yard was filled with tall weeds, and the main building, constructed of split logs, had moss creeping up its outside.
Hashimoto was a slim Japanese man in his early forties, but he looked younger with his head of wild, untamed black hair, which seemed to sprout in all directions. Now that Abigail had her personal audience with the iconoclastic computer genius, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. “You men are outrageous! Cal gave you notice that we were coming, and why. Roughing us up was uncalled for!”
Hashimoto seemed nonplussed. “You’re the one who needs me, not the other way around. So we can treat you any way we want.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Hashimoto laughed loudly. “So, you’re going to act like my mother now?”
She glanced around at the dirty dishes stacked on a table in the corner. “You clearly need one around here.”
“Look,” Hashimoto shot back, “the way your son went after my guy, you should be glad that neither of you got shot. And you know what else?” Hashimoto stiffened his back and tilted his head slightly. “I think your son is a punk.”
Abigail went snake-eyed and blurted out, “You may think he’s just a computer geek because he managed to hunt you down, but if it was just the two of you in a fair fight, he’d break both your arms.”
Hashimoto grinned back. “And what makes you think I fight fair?” He gave a loud guffaw as he sat cross-legged, jiggling his foot. His face turned. “Okay. Chitty-chat is over. I know what you want. You got a problem. No BIDTag. And you want Chiro Hashimoto’s magic solution.”
“I’ll be frank with you,” Abigail said, “because I’m desperate. In about —” she glanced at the atomic clock on her Allfone — “nineteen hours, I’ve got to be in a federal court of appeals in Washington, arguing my husband’s case.”
“You’re not going to make it, lady. How you going to get there in time from here?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got my travel plans set. But what I can’t do is pass through a BIDTag scanner without your help. I’m a nontagger.”
“When chips are down, you need Chiro Hashimoto,” he said with a sly smile.
“That’s right,” she said, “but first I want to make sure Cal is okay. Where did they take him?”
Hashimoto waved to a man standing outside who had been peering in through a dirty window. The man disappeared, and in a minute Cal was led into the room. Hashimoto dismissed his man and pointed to a chair next to Abigail. He asked Cal to sit. “I’ve read up on you guys,” Hashimoto said, “all of you. You Jordans are some kind of wild, wacky family.” He tittered. “Don’t really know, though, if I like your Roundtable. Maybe some of your agenda is okay. Other stuff, not quite so sure. But I like the way you tell the big fed power tyrants they got to watch out.”
“I think you’re the real rebel here,” Cal said. Abigail could see that Cal was trying to win Hashimoto over. “You masterminded the biggest global computer network hacking job ever accomplished. If, in fact, that was you —”
Hashimoto grinned. “Kid’s stuff. I just used some advanced spear-phishing emails contaminated with malicious software and spread through botnets — my own design — aimed at worldwide organizations and several countries. They click onto my infected link and — presto — I get an open door into their entire network. I was on the verge of an attack even bigger — an instant entrée into all thirteen root servers that control the entire Internet.”
“So, why’d you leave China?” Cal asked.
“The IT bureau guys in Beijing said they would hurt me bad if I didn’t do everything they wanted. That was like a big poke in the eye. I kind of woke up, you know? I decided to get out fast. Next stop, Seattle, and IntraTonics.” He turned to Abigail and added with a grin, “Also lady, I don’t really think Cal is a punk. I was just playing with you.”
Cal jumped in. “Chiro, can my mother get one of your masking BIDTag facsimiles?”
He rubbed his chin and turned his attention to her. “So, your husband, Colonel Jordan … I’ve read some of the tech journals on his RTS invention. Nice little system he’s developed. So, this legal case he’s got …”
“He’s been charged with treason. The real story is he’s a patriotic American hero who has done nothing wrong, but President Tulrude is bent on using the attorney general’s office to destroy him. This goes all the way back to when Tulrude was vice president. Josh’s AmeriNews Internet service started to expose her corruption. She knows that the Department of Defense is resentful of her sellout of our country and sympathetic to what the Roundtable is trying to accomplish — to educate the American people about the garage-sale giveaway of American national security and sovereignty by Tulrude’s administration.”
&
nbsp; “Okay, yeah,” Chiro said, “interesting. But I don’t get why you need my help, lady.”
“I’m my husband’s attorney. I’ve got to plead his case tomorrow. If I don’t, he and I will be forced to stay on opposite ends of the earth, and Josh will never get a fair trial. Ever. But I can’t take a single step into that federal court building — through the scanners — unless I’ve got something that looks and acts like a BIDTag on the back of my hand.”
“I guess you and I have something in common,” Hashimoto said. “Neither of us wants to be a tagged chicken in the government’s henhouse. But I always wondered why the government wouldn’t let people get tagged after the deadline … you know, for people who change their minds. Just make them pay a fine, that kind of thing. It didn’t make sense.”
“I could speculate,” Abigail said. As she looked at Hashimoto’s widening eyes, she could see he was interested. “It’s my guess that Tulrude’s tough, no-amnesty for nontaggers was part of some deal she made with international leaders. Part of a global plan she’s tied into. There’s somebody at the very top — higher even than the president — who needs every human on this planet to be controlled through BIDTagging.”
Hashimoto leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, yeah. The big plan. Right. The worldwide game. I’ve been thinking about that.” Then he broke into a big grin. “But I got my own plan. I can outsmart the global people. I have a plan for gaming their own game.”
“I came to you for help,” Abigail said. “So, in return, I’m going to help you. I’m going to tell you something important. You may be a computer genius, Chiro, but you need to know that some systems can’t be gamed. The prophetic events that God is about to unfold can’t be sidetracked or avoided. I’m here because I believe God is about to allow Planet Earth to be shaken in a very dramatic way. Titanic events — horrible catastrophes — human suffering, yes, all of that is about to come to pass. But in the midst of it all, a chance for everyone, including you, Chiro, to consider the most important figure in the history of the world — Jesus Christ. What He did for us in the past — His death on the cross for your sins, and His promise of eternal life for everyone who believes in Him and receives His forgiveness as Savior and Lord. And then there’s what He’s going to do in the future — when a few years of worldwide suffering have passed, Jesus will come back to establish His reign on earth. His Kingdom. I’m telling you this because, when these events are ready to burst upon the scene, my son, Cal, and I, and many, many others — all of the followers of Jesus Christ, we will all be taken off the earth.”
Abigail gave him a warm, mothering smile. “Jesus is calling His own, His true followers to Himself, those who have believed in Him and whose spirits have become born again as a result. In one, fleeting blink of an eye, we will be gone and will be in the presence of the King of Kings. I hope by that time you will be one of those, Chiro. But if not, then just remember what I told you today. If you find yourself left behind, surrounded by an unbelieving world full of chaos, and violence, growing cold, and loveless, and dark, then remember this conversation. Whatever else you do, remember what I just told you.”
Chiro was now wrinkling the side of his mouth, not smiling, not sneering, but considering the unthinkable. “You’re talking about the end, aren’t you? The end of the world.”
Abigail nodded and smiled in a way that looked into his eyes and way beyond. Then Chiro jumped to his feet. “Okay, lady, I’ll help you. Quick, quick. Follow me.”
FORTY-ONE
Special Agent Ben Boling was in his office, finishing up reports at his desk. He was summarizing his investigation into the possible threat against Senator Hewbright. He had been walking a razor-thin line with John Gallagher, collecting tips and dropping hints himself, but just short of violating Bureau rules.
When Boling was in Wichita, he scoured the records of the Better Body Health and Fitness Club where Perry Tedrich was a member and had worked out the day of his disappearance. Boling learned something intriguing. On the day that Tedrich had been there, a woman member said that, after her workout, her membership card went missing, apparently when she was in the shower. At first she thought she had misplaced it but realized it had probably been stolen. While the locker rooms were open to the public, a card was required to get into the gym itself. For some reason the owner had set up a system where the membership cards had RFID chips and ID numbers in them but no other identifying data — no picture, no name. According to the fitness center, that was to protect the privacy of their members.
When the manager of the center found out about the possible theft, he made a general announcement over the PA, warning the people in the gym to make sure their cards were secure. Boling figured that Tedrich must have heard that and placed his card in his shoe for safekeeping.
Boling asked the owner to check the computer registration log. It showed that the woman whose card was stolen entered the gym at 12:30 p.m. that day. She left at 1:20 p.m. when she had finished her workout. But someone, using the same card, went back to the gym at 1:28 p.m., about three minutes after Perry Tedrich had arrived.
One thing that had not been made public was the fact that Perry Tedrich wasn’t just the head of Hewbright’s Wichita campaign. He had also been an integral part of Hewbright’s Washington senate staff for several years, before returning to his hometown of Wichita to run that city’s campaign headquarters. He knew Hewbright as well as anyone in the capital, including a lot of personal contact with Hewbright’s late wife, who had died of cancer two years earlier. Did Tedrich have some personal or political information about Hewbright that his enemies wanted to learn?
That was when Boling put in a city-wide request for hotels, restaurants, bars, and movie theaters — all of which now were using RFID scanners as well as BIDTag scanners — to see if the computer chip in the membership card registered a hit at any one of them that day. He received one result. The card carrier had entered the Red Steer Bar and Grill at 3:00 p.m. At the exact same time, the RFID chip in Tedrich’s membership card also registered a hit as he also walked into the restaurant. At 4:50 p.m., Perry Tedrich’s credit card was hit for a lunch for a party of two. No one at the Red Steer remembered Tedrich or the mystery woman, but the cards showed that they left together.
Boling felt he was closing in. He was about to put it in writing when a flag showed up in the corner of his computer screen. It read: “Assignment Status Report.”
He read it over, groaned, and shot back an insta-memo to the sender. “Is this true?”
The reply showed up on his screen five minutes later. “Yes. Effective immediately.”
Boling sat at his desk, staring out the window for nearly half an hour. Then he called his wife. “Hey, it’s me. Okay, honey, how about dinner out tonight? Your choice of restaurant.”
“Sure, but I’ve already thawed some pork chops.”
“Feed ‘em to the dogs.”
“Something wrong?”
“I just need to get out and get my mind off my job.”
Wichita, Kansas
That same day, John Gallagher had managed to persuade the manager of the Better Body Health and Fitness Center to let him roam among the clients in the gym. Gallagher had simply explained that he was “working the case with FBI Special Agent Ben Boling.” Technically true, he mused. Sort of.
He arrived on the same day of the week — at the same time — as when Perry Tedrich had last been there. Gallagher interviewed every woman in the gym, but none of them could remember a thing about that day. He strolled over to a man on the elliptical machine. He flashed a picture of Perry Tedrich, and the man stopped his routine and took a look. “Yeah, he looks familiar. I’ve seen him here.”
Then Gallagher asked whether he recalled the day of the incident and gave the date and added, “The desk records say you came in that day.”
The guy became a little ill at ease, but Gallagher assured him he wasn’t the focus of any investigation and had nothing to worry about. So he started opening
up. He said he vaguely remembered Tedrich being there that day.
“Do you remember any new faces that day?”
The man smiled. “Oh, yeah. A real looker. A really fine-looking woman working one of the ellipticals down the row there.”
Gallagher asked for a description, after which he pulled out pictures of some of the women on Hewbright’s staff, together with a few wildcards thrown in for good measure. He showed them to the man and told him to take his time.
“This one,” he said, pointing to one of the photos. He picked that photo out in an instant, and Gallagher knew why. He thanked the man, trotted out of the fitness center, and immediately speed-dialed Ben Boling.
When the FBI agent answered, Gallagher skipped the pleasantries. “Ben, hot off the press. I know you don’t want any official help from us Roundtable types, but I also know the politics of the new FBI since Tulrude took over — and how you guys have your hands tied behind your back. So I’m about to give you some really sweet unofficial help on this Hewbright case. You can thank me later. I’ve just made a positive ID on one of Hewbright’s national advisors — Zeta Milla — as the woman Perry Tedrich was with on the day he vanished.”
Boling was in the lunchroom of the FBI field office where several other agents were milling around. He asked Gallagher to hold on as he went back to his desk.
When Boling got back he said, “Okay. That fits with what I’ve got. I found out that our victim was with the same person both at the gym and then at a restaurant later that day.”
There was silence on the other end. Finally Gallagher replied, “Awfully nice of you to share some information with me, Ben. Really appreciate that.”
Now Boling was the silent one, as he was figuring things out.
“So, listen,” Gallagher continued, “I’ve also found out something else. Zeta Milla’s got this cover story about being a heroic survivor who escaped Cuba as a little girl, but I believe she stole the identity of that Cuban girl.”