Apollyon: The Destroyer Is Unleashed (6 page)

“I confer upon this gathering the blessings of the universal father and mother and animal deities who lovingly guide us on our path to true spirituality. In the spirit of harmony and ecumenism, I appeal to Dr. Ben-Judah and others in your leadership to add your rich heritage and history and scholarship to our coat of many colors. To the patchwork quilt that so beautifully encompasses and includes and affirms and accepts the major tenets of all the world’s great religions, I urge you to include your own. Until the day comes that you agree to plant your flag under the umbrella of Enigma Babylon One World Faith, rest assured that I will defend your right to disagree and to oppose and to seek our multilayered plural godhead in your own fashion.”

Mathews turned regally and traded places with Fortunato, both clearly pretending to be unfazed by the apathy of the crowd. Fortunato announced, “And now it gives me pleasure to introduce to you the man who has united the world into one global community, His Excellency and your potentate, Nicolae Carpathia! Would you rise as he comes with a word of greeting.”

No one stood.

Carpathia, a frozen smile etched on his face, had never―in Buck’s experience―failed to captivate a crowd. He was the most dynamic, engaging, charming speaker Buck had ever heard. Buck himself was, of course, far past being impressed with Nicolae, but he wondered if the seal of God on the foreheads of the witnesses and their converts also protected their minds against his evil manipulation.

“Fellow citizens of the Global Community,” Carpathia began, waiting for the interpreters and appearing to Buck to work hard at connecting with the crowd. “As your potentate, I welcome you to Israel and to this great arena, named after a man of the past, a man of peace and harmony and statesmanship.”

Buck was impressed. Nicolae had immediately tried to align himself with a former mayor of the Holy City, one a huge percentage of this crowd would have heard of. Buck began to worry that Nicolae’s power of persuasion might sway someone like Jacov. He put a hand on Chloe’s shoulder and whispered, “I’ll be right back.”

“How can you walk out on this?” she said. “I wouldn’t miss this show for the world. Don’t you think Peter’s getup would work on me, maybe as an evening kind of a thing?”

“I’ll be with Jacov for a minute.”

“Good idea.”

As Buck stepped away, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “Buck here,” he said.

“Where you goin’?”

“Who’s this?”

“That was you at stage right with the blonde, right?”

Buck stopped. “I have to know who this is.”

“Mac McCullum. Nice to meet ya.”

“Mac! What’s up? Where are you?”

“On the chopper, man! This is the best theater I’ve seen in ages. All this friendly folderol! You should have heard these guys on board! Swearing, cursing Ben-Judah and the whole crowd. Carpathia spit all over me, railing about the two witnesses.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. Hey, you sure this connection is secure?”

“Only my life depends on it, son.”

“Guess that’s true.” Buck told Mac where he was going and why.

“Nick’s a piece of work, ain’t he?” Mac said.

“Chloe’s particularly fond of Mathews’s sartorial resplendence.”

“Hey, me too! Gotta go. Don’t want to have to tell ‘em who I was talkin’ to.”

“Keep in touch, Mac.”

“Don’t worry. But listen, make yourselves scarce too. I wouldn’t put anything past these guys.”

“Wait,” Buck said, a smile in his voice. “You mean we can’t take Carpathia at his word? He’s not a trustworthy guy?”

“All right, just watch yourselves.”

Knowing the GC brass was away from New Babylon, Rayford E-mailed David Hassid at the underground shelter. “Be where you can receive TX at six your time, brother.”

At nine in the morning Chicago time, an hour before the Meeting of the Witnesses was to be broadcast live internationally via the Internet, Rayford reached David by phone. “Where are you?” he said.

“Outside,” David said. “Things are pretty quiet with Abbott and Costello away.”

Rayford chuckled. “I would have guessed you way too young for them.”

“They’re my favorites,” David said. “Especially now that they’re ruling the world. What’s up? I was about to watch the festivities. They’ve got it on the wall-sized screen in the compound.”

Rayford filled him in on the latest. “Sad to say, the next time I see you may be because you need to hide out with us.”

“I can’t imagine escaping here, but Mac’s right that it’s good you slipped away. Your days were numbered.”

“I’m shocked Nicolae didn’t do me in months ago.”

“Your son-in-law better lay low, too. His name pops up all the time. They’ve assigned me to locate where his webzine originates. But you know, Rayford, as hard as I work on that and as much time as I put into it, I just can’t seem to break through the scramble and find it.”

“No kidding.”

“I’m doing my best. Honest I am. Boy it’s frustrating when you can’t deliver information to your boss that would cost the life of a brother. Know what I mean?”

“Well, you keep working on it, David, and I’m sure you’ll at least find a misdirection that can waste more of their time.”

“Great idea.”

“Listen, can you walk me through hooking my laptop to a TV so we can see this meeting easier?”

David laughed. “Next you’ll tell me your minidisc player is blinking twelve o’clock all day and night.”

“How’d you know?”

“Just a lucky guess.”

“You know we consider you a member of the Tribulation Force,” Rayford said, “though the others have not met you. You and Mac are our guys inside now, and we know well how dangerous that is.”

David grew serious. “Thanks. I’d love to meet everybody and be with you all, but like you say, when that happens, it’ll be because I’m running . . . and from the most technologically advanced regime in history. I may not see you until heaven. Until then, you need a plane or anything?”

“We’re going to have to talk about that here. If all’s fair in love and war, it might make sense for us to appropriate enemy equipment.”

“You could abscond with millions’ worth and not cripple the GC. You wouldn’t even scratch them.”

“How much longer will you be underground?”

“Not long. The new palace―yeah, it’s a palace this time―is almost done. Spectacular. Wish I were proud to work here. It’d be a pretty good deal.”

After David got him set up, Rayford set the TV where he, Dr. Charles, Ken Ritz, and Hattie would be able to see it. Hattie lay rocking and groaning. She refused food or medication, so Rayford merely covered her. A few minutes before ten, he asked Ken to rouse Floyd, who wanted to watch with them.

The doctor expressed alarm when he saw Hattie. “How long has she been this way?”

“About an hour,” Ken said. “Should we have woken you?”

The doctor shrugged. “I’m shooting in the dark, experimenting with antidotes for a poison that hasn’t been identified. She rallies and I get encouraged, and then she reverts to this.” He medicated her and fed her, and she slept quietly.

Rayford was moved to tears by the broadcast from Israel, but the men laughing at Peter Mathews’s apparel awoke Hattie. She slowly and apparently painfully pushed herself up onto her elbows to watch. “Nicolae hates Mathews with a passion,” she said. “You watch, he’ll have him murdered someday.”

Rayford shot her a double take. She was right, of course, but how did she know? Had it been in the plans as early as when Hattie worked for Carpathia? “You watch,” she repeated.

When Nicolae emerged from the helicopter and joined Fortunato and Mathews onstage, Rayford’s phone rang. “First chance I’ve had to call you, Ray,” Mac said. “First off, nobody knows you’re gone yet. Good job. ‘Course, I can play dumb only so long. Now listen, your son-in-law and daughter―is he a good-looking kid, early thirties, and she a cute blonde?”

“That’s them. Where are they? I can see the copter, but I don’t see them.”

“They’re off camera, in the wings.”

“Mac, let me tell you what Hattie told me about―”

“I’ve only got a second here, Ray. Let me call Buck. Will he have his phone on him, the one with the number you gave me?”

“He should, but Mac―”

“I’ll check back with you, Ray.”

As Buck emerged from the stadium, Carpathia’s eloquence reverberated. When Buck reached the van, he saw Jacov facing front, hands on the wheel. He seemed to be peering over the crowd at the monitor while listening to the radio. Buck reached for the door handle, but Jacov had locked himself inside and recoiled at the sound, looking terrified.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, unlocking the door.

“Who were you expecting?” Buck said, climbing in.

“I just didn’t notice you. I apologize.”

“So, what do you make of all this?”

Jacov held his hand out, palm down, to show Buck that he was trembling.

Buck offered Jacov his bottle of water. “What are you afraid of?”

“God,” Jacov said, smiling self-consciously and declining the bottle.

“You don’t need to be. He loves you.”

“Don’t need to be? Rabbi Ben-Judah teaches that all these things we have endured are the judgments of God. It seems I should have feared him long ago. But pardon me, I wish to hear the potentate.”

“You know Dr. Ben-Judah is not a friend of his.”

“That is clear. He has been received most coldly.”

“Appropriately so, Jacov. He is an enemy of God.”

“But I owe it to him to listen.”

Buck was tempted to keep talking anyway, to nullify any deleterious effect Carpathia might have on Jacov. But he didn’t want to be rude, and he wanted to trust God to work in the man’s heart and mind. He fell silent as Carpathia’s liquid tones filled the air.

“And so, my beloved friends, it is not a requirement that your sect align itself with the One World Faith for you to remain citizens of the Global Community. Within reasonable limits, there is room for dissent and alternative approaches. But consider with me for a moment the advantages and privileges and benefits that have resulted from the uniting of every nation into one global village.”

Nicolae recited his litany of achievements. It ranged from the rebuilding of cities and roads and airports to the nearly miraculous reconstruction of New Babylon into the most magnificent city ever built. “It is a masterpiece I hope you will visit as soon as you can.” He mentioned his cellular/solar satellite system (Cell-Sol) that allowed everyone access to each other by phone and Internet regardless of time or location. Buck shook his head. All this merely ushered in the superstructure necessary for Nicolae to rule the world until the time came to declare himself God.

Buck could see that Nicolae was succeeding in changing Jacov’s mind. “This is hard to argue with,” the driver said. “He has worked wonders.”

“But Jacov,” Buck said, “you have been exposed to the teaching of Dr. Ben-Judah. Surely you must be convinced that the Scriptures are true, that Jesus is the Messiah, that the disappearances were the rapture of Christ’s church.”

Jacov stared ahead, gripping the wheel tightly, his arms shaking. He nodded, but he looked conflicted. Buck no longer cared about rudeness. He would talk over Nicolae; he would not allow the enemy to steal this soul through slick talking.

“What did you think of the teaching tonight?”

“Most impressive,” Jacov admitted. “I cried. I felt myself drawn to him, but mostly drawn to God. I love and respect Dr. Rosenzweig, and he would never understand if I became a believer in Jesus. But if it is true, what else can I do?”

Buck prayed silently, desperately.

“But, Mr. Williams, I had never before heard the verse that Dr. Ben-Judah said was the reason for this meeting. And he was interrupted, was he not? He did not finish the verse.”

“You’re right, he didn’t. It was John 3:16, and it goes, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only―’ ”

But Buck got no further than Tsion had when Jacov held up a hand to silence him. “The potentate is finishing,” he said.

Carpathia seemed to be wrapping up his remarks, but something was strange about his voice. Buck had never heard him struggle to speak, but he had grown hoarse. Carpathia turned away from the mike, covered his mouth, and attempted to clear his throat. “Pardon me,” he said, his voice still raspy. “But I wish you and the rabbi here all the best and welcome you,
ahem, ahem
, once again, excuse me—”

Nicolae turned pleadingly to Tsion, who was still ignoring him. “Would someone have some water?”

Someone passed a fresh bottle to the stage, where Nicolae nodded his thanks. When he opened it, the release of the pressure was magnified over the loudspeaker. But when he drank, he gagged and spit the water out. His lips and chin were covered in blood, and he held the bottle at arm’s length, staring at it in horror. Jacov jumped from the car and moved closer to the monitor. Buck knew why. Even at that distance, it was obvious the bottle contained blood.

Buck followed as they heard Carpathia swearing, cursing Tsion and his “evil gaggle of enemies of the Global Community! You would humiliate me like this for your own gain? I should pull from you my pledge of protection and allow my men to shoot you dead where you stand!”

From the middle of the stunned crowd came the shouted, unison voices of Eli and Moishe. Without need of amplification, everyone within a block of the place could hear them. The crowd fell back from around them, and the two stood in the eerie light of the stadium, shoulder to shoulder, barefoot and in sackcloth.

“Woe unto you who would threaten the chosen vessel of the Most High God!”

Carpathia threw the water bottle onto the floor of the stage, and clear, clean water splashed everywhere. Buck knew the witnesses had turned only Nicolae’s water to blood and that they had likely caused him to need the drink in the first place. Nicolae pointed at Eli and Moishe and screamed, “Your time is nigh! I swear I will kill you or have you killed before―”

But the witnesses were louder, and Carpathia had to fall silent. “Woe!” they said again. “Woe to the impostor who would dare threaten the chosen ones before the due time! Sealed followers of the Messiah, drink deeply and be refreshed!”