Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist (23 page)

In the matchless name of Christ, Tsion Ben-Judah.

David quickly tapped a response:

Am dubious about odds for success (as I have been monitoring computer and phone and personal interaction at the highest levels here and have not heard even a conversation about Hattie), but will give this my full attention immediately. I will transmit to Captain Steele’s secure phone anything pertinent and fully understand your concern. More later, but don’t want to lose a minute.

David frantically batted away on his laptop, accessing the massive hard drive, tapping into the palace mainframe and decodifying every encrypted file. He looked for any reference to Hattie, Durham, HD, personal assistant, lover, pregnancy, child, fugitive, plane crash, and anything else he could think of. Of course, everything that had been said in the administrative offices for weeks was recorded on his monster minidisk, but the only subtitles there would be dates and locations. There was no time to listen to everything Fortunato or Carpathia had said since Hattie was reported dead.

He called Annie, who rushed to his office. He closed the blinds and locked the door so no night crew could see him pacing, running his hands through his hair. “What am I going to do, Annie? Tsion is right. Rayford is committing a huge blunder here, even if he lucks out. You know the GC either has to have Hattie in custody or have killed her. They’ll be watching the site where she was supposed to have been hidden. Whoever comes looking for her is going to find not her but GC. She’s just bait. Rayford had to know that.”

“You’d think,” she said.

“Help me,” he said.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, David, but I agree you’re looking for the proverbial needle in―”

“What were those stateside people thinking? That the GC bought the phony crash story? Surely they knew better! I didn’t know Rayford had finally gotten a bead on her until he was already gone. Why wouldn’t he have come to me for one last effort to dig up GC intelligence?”

She shook her head. “How secure are you, David?”

“Sorry, what?”

“You’re in their computers, their offices, their plane, on their phones. Has anyone even begun to suspect you yet?”

He shook his head. “The computer installation slowdown should have raised a flag, but I didn’t sense suspicion from Leon. If I had to guess, I’d say I’m in solid with them. I have too many irons in the fire to not get burned eventually, but for now I’m golden here.”

“There’s your answer then, superstar.”

“Don’t make me guess. Rayford’s in the air.”

“Just ask them.”

“Come again?”

“Go straight to Leon, tell him it’s none of your business but you’ve been noodling the plane crash news, you’ve always admired his insight and wisdom and street smarts―you know the drill. Suggest that maybe that plane crash wasn’t all it appeared, and say you want his take on it.”

“Annie, you’re a genius.”

“You want to see my projects, Cameron?” Chaim Rosenzweig said. “That would make you happy, make you feel like more of a friend?”

“It would.”

“Promise you won’t think me batty, an old eccentric as my house staff does.”

Buck followed him, realizing that regardless how Chaim appeared to the brothers and sisters in the house, he was aware of everything.

Rayford found the Turtles an all-American couple who had lost all four of their grown sons in the Rapture. “Did we ever miss it,” Dwayne said in the Super J, streaking across the eastern U.S. “Oldest boy goes off to college, gets religion we think. Doesn’t seem to hurt him any, ‘cept he starts in on the other three and before you know it, baby brother’s goin’ to church. That’s OK, but we figure it’s just little brother/big brother hero worship, know what I mean?

“Then the middle boys get invited to some church deal they probably wouldn’t have gone to if their brothers hadn’t already been Christians. They get asked to play on the church basketball team, go off to a week of camp, and come back saved. Man, I hated that word, and they used it all the time. I got saved, he got saved, she got saved, you need to be saved. I loved those boys like everything, but―”

Dwayne had gone from his rapid-fire delivery to choked up so fast Rayford hadn’t seen it coming. Now the big man spoke in a little voice, fighting the sobs. Trudy reached from the seat behind his and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“I loved those boys,” he squeaked, “and I didn’t have a bit of a problem with ‘em all wantin’ to be religious, I really didn’t. Did I, Tru?”

“They loved you, Dwayne,” she drawled. “You never gave them a hard time.”

“But they gave me a hard time, see? They were never mean, but they were pushy. I told ‘em it was all right with me, ‘slong as they didn’t expect me to start goin’ to church with ‘em. Had enough of that as a kid, never liked it, bad memories. Their type a church was better, they said. I says fine, you go on then but leave me out of it. They told me their mom’s soul was on my head. That got me mad, but how do you stay mad at your own flesh and blood when, even if they’re wrong, they’re worried about their mom’s and dad’s souls?”

Rayford shook his head. “You don’t.”

“You sure don’t. They kep’ after me. They got their stubbornness from me, after all. But I was good at it too. And I never caved. Tru almost did, didn’t ya, hon?”

“Wish I had.”

“Me too, sweetie. We wouldn’t a met Mr. Steele here till heaven, but I’d just as soon be there than here even now, all things considered. You too there, Cap?”

“Me too, Dwayne.”

“You can guess the rest. Before we ever go to church one time, the thing they told us might happen happened. They were gone. We were left. So where’d we go first?”

“Church.”

“Church! Not so stubborn now, are we? Doesn’t sound so lame to be saved now, does it? Hardly anybody left at that place, but all we needed was one who knew how a person gets saved. Mr. Steele, I’m an actor myself. Well, aircraft salesman and demonstrator, but always actin’ on the side since college. Specialize in voices.”

“Mac told me about your Aussie.”

“There, right, like ‘at. He liked that, did he?”

“I don’t know that he was feeling good enough to appreciate it, but he’s sure you fooled Fortunato.”

“A deaf turtle could fool ‘at boy, Rafe. You don’t mind if I call you Rafe, do ya? I like to find shortcuts so I can get more words in in a shorter time. Just kiddin’, but you don’t mind, do ya?”

“My first wife called me that. She was raptured.”

“Then maybe you’d rather I not―”

“No, it’s all right.”

“Anyway, Rafe, I’m a gregarious guy―I guess you figured. Salesman has to be. But I always put all of my theater training into it. I was known as a straightforward, opinionated guy, and people pretty much liked me. Unless they was too sophisticated. If they was, I’d use the word was where I’m s’posed to use were, like I just did there, and tweak ‘em to death. So, I’m this friendly, confident, outgoing guy who―”

“Loud is the word you’re lookin’ for there, hon,” Trudy said.

Dwayne laughed as if at the first joke he’d ever heard. “OK, Tru, all right then, I’m this loud guy. But you gotta admit I was a people magnet. Only I wasn’t a church guy, OK. Well, now all of a sudden, I am. I’m saved. I’m a day late and a dollar short, but I’m learnin’ that it still counts. We’re still gonna suffer, and we’re never going to wish we hadn’t got saved earlier―don’t kid yerself―but all right, we’re saved. So, now I’m still this gregar―”

“Loud.”

“―loud guy but I got a whole new bee in my bonnet now. I’m knockin’ people over with it. Even our pastor says sometimes he wonders if I don’t turn people off rather than wooin’ ‘em―that’s his term, not mine―wooin’ ‘em to Jesus. I learned that lesson in sales, but I figure it’s different now. It’s not about whether I’m gonna make my quota or get my bonus or whether you can afford not to have this beautiful new airplane. People got to know, brother, that this is no sales pitch. This is your everlasting soul. Well, I get wound up.

“I always wondered what I’d do if I met up with ol’ Antichrist himself. I’ll tell you what, I’ll bet he’d either have me killed or get saved hisself, one of the two. Get it? Well, sir, I was encouraged that I didn’t lose any of my braverido or brovura―”

“Bravado,” Trudy offered.

“Right, I didn’t lose any of that when I saw his number two boy t’other day. My heart was a-pumpin’, I don’t deny, but hey, I’m gonna die anyway. I’d like to be here when Jesus comes back, but goin’ on before can’t be all bad either. The day I got saved I decided I wasn’t ever gonna be ashamed of it. It was way too late for that. I’m gonna see my boys again, and―”

As suddenly as before, big Dwayne clouded up. This time he couldn’t continue. Trudy put a hand on his heaving shoulder again, he looked apologetically at Rayford, who took over the controls, and the Super J rocketed east into the night.

“What in the world is it?” Buck asked, looking at a highly polished strip of metal.

Chaim mince-stepped over and shut the door, and Buck realized he was privy to something Rosenzweig had shared with no one else.

“Call it a hobby that has become an obsession. This is nowhere near my field, and don’t ask me where the compulsion has come from. But I am striving toward the sharpest edge ever fashioned by hand. I know the big machines with their micrometers, computers, lasers and all can reach near perfection. I’m not interested in artificially induced. I’m interested in the best I can do. My skill has outstripped my eyesight. With simple clamp-on angle-setters, I am filing blades so sharp I can’t see them with the naked eye. Not even powerful bifocals do them justice. I must look at them under much light with my magnifying glass. Believe me, this is more appealing than those creatures you and I studied under it half a year ago. Here, look.”

He handed Buck the magnifying glass and pointed him to a shiny blade, probably three feet long, clamped between two vises. “Whatever you do, Cameron, do not touch the edge. I say this with utmost gravity. You would lose a finger before you felt the edge touch your skin, let alone before you felt the pain.”

Sufficiently warned, Buck peered at the magnified edge, amazed. The line looked multiple times thinner than any razor blade he had ever seen. “Wow.”

“Here’s the interesting part, Cameron. Back away carefully, please. The material is super-hardened carbon steel. What appears flexible as a razor because it is so microscopically sharp, is rigid and strong. You know how a conventional knife dulls with use? And usually the sharper the edge, the quicker the deterioration?” Buck nodded. “Watch this.”

Rosenzweig produced from his pocket a dried date. “A snack for later,” he explained. “But this one is fuzzy, I don’t want to wash it, and I have more. So it becomes my object lesson. Notice.”

He held the date delicately between his thumb and middle finger, barely pinching one end. He slowly, ever so lightly, drew it across the edge of the blade, reaching beneath it with his other palm. The severed half dropped into his hand as if it had not been touched. “Now let me show you something else.”

Rosenzweig looked around the cluttered room and found a balled-up rag, stiff from neglect. He held the rag about eighteen inches above the blade and let it fall. Buck blinked, not believing his eyes. The rag had split without a sound and seemingly without resistance.

“You should see what it does to fruit,” Rosenzweig said, his eyes bright.

“It’s amazing, Doctor,” Buck said. “But, why?”

The old man shook his head. “Don’t ask. It’s not that I have some deep dark secret. It’s just that I don’t know myself.”

David didn’t call Fortunato. He showed up in Leon’s waiting room late that evening. “I just need a second with the commander, if possible,” he told Margaret, who was packing up her stuff after an obviously long day.

“David Hassid?” Leon barked into the intercom. “Of course! Send him right in.”

Leon stood when David appeared. “Tell me there’s progress on the tracing operation,” he said.

“Unfortunately not,” David said. “Those people must be using some technology no one else has ever heard of. We’re back to square one.”

“Sit,” Fortunato said.

“No, thanks,” David said. “I’ll just be a minute. You know I don’t make a habit of bothering you about―”

“Please! I’m all ears!”

“―about matters outside my area of responsibility.”

Fortunato’s open look froze. “Of course there are many confidential matters at my level that I would not be at liberty to―”

“I just had a suggestion, but it’s none of my business.”

“Proceed.”

“Well, the death of His Excellency’s former personal assistant recently …”

Fortunato squinted. “Yes?”

“That was tragic, of course …”

“Yes… ”

“Well, sir, it wasn’t a secret that the woman, Miss Dunst―”

“Durham. Hattie Durham. Go on.”

“That she was pregnant and that she wasn’t happy.”

“The fact is, Hassid, that she was trying to extort money from us to keep quiet. His Excellency felt he owed her some recompense for the time they had, ah, enjoyed together, and so a generous settlement was paid. Miss Durham may have mistaken that as money intended to guarantee her silence, but it was not. You see, she was never privy to anything that would threaten international security, had no stories―true ones anyway―that could have embarrassed the potentate. So when she sought more money, she was rebuffed, and yes, it’s fair to say she was not happy.”

“Well, thank you, sir. I know you told me more than I am entitled to know, and you may rest assured I will keep your confidence. I just had a question about the whole plane crash thing, but it’s really moot now, so I’ll just thank you for your time.”

“No, please. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“It’s kind of embarrassing, because, like I say, I know it’s not my area―really none of my business. I’d really rather not pursue it, now that I think about it.”

“David, please. I want your thoughts.”

“Well, OK. I know that with someone of your ability and savvy here, nobody needs me worrying about security or public relations―”