Brink of Chaos (21 page)

The sun was shining, and Alexander Coliquin enjoyed the feeling of warmth on his upturned face. He was standing next to Prime Minister Sol Bensky, who had the aged chief rabbi of Jerusalem next to him. Bensky’s two main staffers, Dimi Eliud and Chad Zadok, were hovering in the background.

Because of the threat of an Islamic intifada from a few of the noncooperative Palestinian groups, the mount had to be ringed with soldiers that day for the ceremony. The security measure was a joint effort by the IDF and the blue-helmeted United Nations troops. That was more than symbolic. It was a preview of the new Jerusalem under Secretary-General Coliquin’s peace treaty with Israel. That city would be a truly international province, jointly ruled by both Israel and the U.N.

On the other hand, Coliquin had much to be happy about. Most of the Islamic clerics were on board with his treaty because of the designation of the Palestinian Authority territories within Israel as sovereign, and the international status of Jerusalem, which took it out of the exclusive grasp of the Israelis. After all, the Arab leaders felt assured that when conflicts broke out — which were certain to happen — the U.N. would side with them against Israel.

On the other hand, giving the Jews control over a portion of the Temple Mount was a sticking point, even with the wall that was being constructed to keep them entirely separate from the Muslim Dome of
the Rock and from the Al Aqsa Mosque that had been on the plateau for centuries. But then the Palestinian leaders and the Arab League took comfort from the private assurances of Coliquin, though he knew they were not quite sure how he was going to be able to accomplish his audacious plan. He was glad for that.

Coliquin gave the signal and an international band struck up the Israeli national anthem.

When the music stopped, an old rabbi among twelve Jewish leaders at the ceremony watched as Sol Bensky stepped up to the raised podium laced with wireless microphones from every major news organization on the planet. He pointed down to the large cornerstone that was the star attraction for the final and most dramatic feature of the monumentally historic event.

“For two long millennia,” he said, “the Jewish people have waited for the rebuilding of their great temple. It was destroyed in AD 70 by an act of violence, during a time when the Roman Empire was at war with the Jewish people. But today,” he said, his voice ringing out from the Temple Mount and echoing down on the city of Jerusalem, “today we see the rebuilding of that temple taking place in an epoch full of promise — of peace, not war — of cooperation, not enmity — with two great faiths each agreeing to worship God side-by-side, with mutual respect on this sacred piece of ground. As in the days of Ezra, we raise our hands in praise for the construction that is taking place — and it is marvelous and wonderful in our sight.”

The twelve Jewish leaders then strode to the industrial lift that held the white stone monolith. The construction had already begun. Back-hoes and tractors had been busy in the Jewish sector of the plateau digging the foundation. Cranes had lowered the first row of stones, all but one — the cornerstone. Now the twelve men stepped back to allow the old rabbi to totter forward to the lever on the industrial lift.

And as in the days of Ezra, the old rabbi covered his eyes and wept. He did not weep with grief. He did not see this as a time that might soon be ripe for mourning, like the fig tree bearing fruit that was pleasing to the eye yet poisonous to consume. Instead, he wept for that which he believed had been fulfilled from the dark, dusty corners of time forgotten.

The rabbi pulled the green lever, and the engine of the lift began to grind and whir as the great stone was slowly tilted with hydraulic precision at the perfect angle so that it would slide down the smooth steel rollers. As it did, the cornerstone dropped into the space between the adjoining stones. A ground-shaking thud was heard when it found its resting place. But there was half an inch of space between the cornerstone and the neighboring stones.

The rabbi and his fellow Jewish historians and engineers and experts in the Talmud had disputed that fact bitterly with Sol Bensky. The engineers had told the Prime Minister that this was the most efficient method to accommodate the ceremony, as the project had been rushed by Bensky, with the first row of stones being laid in a tireless effort with contractors working around the clock. Bensky had ordered that the foundation be laid in a hurry, before any kind of uprising occurred from Palestinian protestors. The religious scholars told him that this design would require that mortar be placed around the cornerstone to fill in the space, something the ancient engineers two thousand years before had avoided, having brilliantly placed the stones of the Herodian temple in perfect symmetry without the use of mortar.

“But back then, thousands of years ago, they didn’t have the political problems that I have,” Bensky said in reply. And that was that.

The group of twelve rabbis, together with the chief rabbi, each recited a portion of Scripture and prayed over the row of mammoth white stones that were the foundation for the new global center of Jewish worship. With the foundation now laid, the rest of the construction could be finished with lightning speed. The engineers had assured Bensky of that.

But in the midst of the honored guests on the Temple Mount that day, Coliquin was not thinking about engineering details or Bensky’s political problems. He had his own agenda. As the last prayer was being recited, Coliquin heard in his Allfone earpiece the chimes of an incoming message. He tapped the tiny ear bud to listen. It was the Deputy Secretary-General Ho Zhu.

“Mr. Secretary,” he reported, “I have been in personal dialogue with Faris D’Hoestra. It took some time. Many layers of protection
surrounding him. But I got through and spoke with him about your desire for a meeting.”

Coliquin, in a hushed voice, asked to hear the specifics.

“D’Hoestra wanted to meet on neutral ground. I expressed your similar thoughts.”

“You’d better have done this right, Ho.”

“I said you wanted Abu Dhabi. Specifically Dubai.”

“Perfect.”

Coliquin tapped his ear bud to turn it off. It had been a very satisfying day. The U.N. secretary-general’s agenda was far bigger than some temple building on a hill in Jerusalem. And now Coliquin could see that it was getting very close to completion.

Two miles up the rough forest trail, Cal pulled the Land Rover to a sudden halt. He had spotted something. He got out and trotted to a large tree just to the left of the lane. After studying it and running his finger along a marking on the bark, he said, “This is it!”

Abigail was reading something on her Allfone, but she clicked it off, hopped out, and joined him. She stared at the bark where someone had carved an intricate image — the shape of a light bulb. Inside the outline, a lowercase
i
had been cut into the center. She asked, “What is it?”

He gave a knowing nod. “The logo of IntraTonics, the software and laser logistics company where Hashimoto used to work. Must be an inside joke. We’ve got to be close.”

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.”

“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.”