The Mark: The Beast Rules The World (21 page)

“Wow.”

“You can imagine how I felt. Grief-stricken. Alone. Angry. Amazed that the weird guy on the Net got it right.”

“Can’t imagine that convincing you, though. Seems you would have been madder than ever at God.”

“In a way, I was. But I really began to see the light about Nicolae. You were here then, right? You heard the rumors.”

David nodded.

“People said he bullied his way onto a chopper on the roof of the old headquarters building-which I have no problem with. I probably would have done the same.

Self-preservation instinct and all that. But no calls for help. No orders for more rescue craft. People hanging on the struts of his chopper, screaming, pleading for their lives. He orders the pilot off the roof. Probably couldn’t have saved anybody anyway, the way the thing went down. But you’ve got to try, don’t you? Isn’t that true leadership?

“Then he was phony again. The remorse didn’t ring true. I just started doing my job and forgetting my idealism, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the Ben-Judah site. Then millions and millions joined in, and so many of them became believers. I read about the mark of the sealed believer, and I was envious. I wasn’t sure I wanted in yet, but I wanted to be part of some family.

“But you know what got to me about Tsion? Listen to me, calling a man like that by his first name. But that’s just it. He’s clearly one of the most brilliant scholars ever born. But he had a way of putting the cookies on the lower shelf for people like me. I understood what he was saying. He made it plain and clear. And he was transparent. He lost his whole family in a worse way than I did.

“He was so loving! You could sense it, feel it right through the computer. He prayed for people, ministered to them the way the best doctors do.”

“And that was what finally persuaded you?”

“Actually, no. I believed he was sincere, and I came to believe he was right. But all of a sudden I went scientific on him. I was going to take this slow, not rush into anything, study it carefully. Well, he starts predicting these plagues, and here they come. Didn’t take me long after that. People suffered. These were real. And he knew they were coming.”

“Did you ever see yourself as a sinner?”

She stood and found the small wire cutters.

“Uh-oh,” David said.

“Just relax. Listen to the nice lady’s story.” She gently pressed her fingers on each side of the staple and eased the cutting edge of the clippers in. With both hands she forced the handles together, and the staple broke with a snap.

David jumped.

“You still with us?” she said.

“Didn’t feel a thing. Just scared me.”

“Story of my life.” She snapped the other while continuing. “Tsion warned us-you know this; surely you’re part of the readership.”

David nodded. “I’ve spoken to him by phone.”

“You have not!”

He nodded.

“Don’t nod with loose staples in your head. And if you lie to me again, I’ll twist ‘em for you.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I know you’re not. That’s what makes me so jealous.”

“You know you’re going to get to meet him someday.”

“Better bring a mop and bucket. You can just squeegee me off the floor and pour me down the drain.”

“Me too.”

“But you know him already! You’re best buds.”

“Just by phone.”

She mimicked him. “Just by phone. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we talk. He calls once in a while. ‘How ya doin’, Dave? Just finished my message.’ ”

David had to laugh and quickly realized it was the first time since . . .

“Anyway,” she continued, pulling the ends of one staple neatly from his scalp. “See? Good timing, good technique. Uh-oh, do I see brain oozing there? Nope. Must be empty.”

David shook his head. “The story, Hannah.”

“Oh, yeah. Tsion promises us that if we start reading the Bible, it’ll be like a mirror to us and we might not like what we see. Remember that?”

“Do I?”

The other staple came out just as easily. She made a show of presenting it to him, and he waved it away. “I didn’t have a Bible and you don’t exactly see them lying around here anywhere. But Tsion had that site where you could call up the whole Bible in your language. Well, not Cherokee, but you know. So I’m reading the Bible on the Net in the wee hours.”

“And couldn’t get enough of it?”

“Urn, no. I did it wrong. I didn’t read his little guide on where to start and what to look for. I just started in at the beginning and I loved all those stories in Genesis, but when I got into Exodus, and then-what’s the next one?”

“Leviticus.”

“Yeah. Ugh! I’m wondering, where’s the mirror? I don’t like what I’m seeing, all right, but it’s no mirror. Finally, I go into his site where you can ask questions. Only a million people a day do that. I didn’t expect him to answer personally, of course, and he didn’t. Probably was on the phone with his pal Dave. But somebody pointed me to that guide place. I start with John and then Romans and then Matthew. Talk about desperate for more and seeing yourself! My besetting sin, the way Tsion described it, was pride. I was my own god. Captain of my own destiny. I got to that Romans Road thing, taking you down the path of being born in sin, separated from God, his gift is eternal life . . . man, I was there. Stayed up all night and didn’t even feel the effects working a full shift the next day. Wanted to tell everybody, but wanted to stay alive too.”

Hannah doused David’s head with disinfectant and dabbed it dry with a clean towel. “I’m going to cover you with Betadyne now, friend, so you don’t look like a skunk with a lateral stripe. You’ll still look funny, but not from so far away. And we’d better get out of here before they send in a search party.”

/‘‘Just a minute.”

“Hmm?” She was dabbing at his head again.

“Just wanted to thank you. I needed to hear that. Those stories never get old.”

“Thanks, David. Can you imagine how long I’ve wanted to tell someone that? Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Say hey to Tsion for me?”

“You don’t either,” Buck said.

“I do too!” Zeke said. “C’mere, look.”

Buck followed Zeke to his room, turning to give Rayford and Chloe a do-you-believe-this? look. Sure enough, just as Zeke had claimed, hanging in his closet were four soiled, wrinkled GC uniforms. “Where in the world?”

“After that horsemen deal,” Zeke said, “remember?” Buck nodded. “Dead GC all over the place. Dad cruised me around in the middle of the night, trying to stay ahead of the recovery teams. I didn’t like yankin’ clothes off dead bodies, but Dad and me both thought they were gifts from God. I got their IDs and everything, but you can’t use the same name as goes with the uniform.”

“I can’t?”

Zeke sighed. “These guys turned up missin’. Unless somebody identified their naked bodies, they’re listed as
AWOL
or unaccounted for. You show up with their name, rank, and serial number, who do you think they’re gonna pin the murder on? Or the swipin’ of the uni?”

“I get it.”

“Yeah, huh?”

“So, what do you do, put a new name patch on? Make a new ID?”

“Yeah, only I mix and match. Well, here, first see if this one fits. It’s the biggest I got.”

“I can see already it’s going to be short.”

“But look at the cuffs in the shirt, the pants, and the jacket. They leave lots of hem in ‘em so they won’t have to make custom-made duds for everybody.”

“You do tailoring work too, Zeke?” “Not in front of everybody, and I don’t brag on it, but yeah. I do everything. Full-service shop.”

Buck found the trousers about two inches short and the waist snug. The shirt was close but needed another inch in the sleeves. Same with the jacket. The cap was way too small. Buck shook his head when Zeke rummaged around and found his sewing kit. It was all he could do to keep from bursting out laughing when the big kid popped a half dozen straight pins in his mouth and knelt to do his work.

“What do you mean, you mix and match?” “Well,” Zeke said around the pins, “your ID is probably gonna be from a dead civilian. You’ve already done your own facial surgery, not on purpose, but you did. I’ll dye your hair dark, use dark contacts, and shoot a picture to go with the new papers. You want to find someone you like? You’ve seen my files before. You pulled Greg North out of that stack. Grab a few. Pick someone about your same size and everything. The less I have to change, the better.”

“Can you give me a rank above Albie’s?” “No can do,” Zeke said. “See the shoulders and the collar on that jacket? That’s your basic Peacekeeper. If your collar had another stripe or two and stuck straight up instead of layin’ flat, you could be as high as a commander.”

“And you can’t do that much tailoring.”

“That’s big-time work. I’d hafta charge you double.”

Buck smiled, but Zeke roared. “Did you almost check your wallet to see if you could handle it?”

“Almost.”

“Dad says I’m a card.” Zeke was suddenly sober.

“Know where your dad is yet?”

Zeke shook his head. “Didn’t like what I saw on TV, though. Something about startin’ that mark thing with guys they’ve got behind bars already. Use ‘em as test cases.” He shook his head.

“Your dad won’t take the mark.”

“Oh, I know that. No way. Never. Which means I’ll probably never see him again.”

“Don’t think that way, Zeke. There’s always hope.”

“Well, maybe, and I’m prayin’. But I’ll tell ya when there’s no more hope, and that’s when they line these guys up for the mark. They get a choice, right?”

“That’s what I understand.”

“Dad won’t even think about it. He’s already got a mark. I’ve seen his and he’s seen mine-that’s how we know. And he won’t start wonderin’ if he can have both and stay alive. He’d never do a thing that looks like he’s a Carpathia guy. He’ll say, ‘No you don’t,’ and they’ll thump ‘im right there. I don’t know how they’re gonna kill ‘em in jails, whether they’ve got gill-o-teens or if they just shoot ‘em. But that’s how Dad’s gettin’ out of jail. In a box.”

On the way back to his office, David felt strangely warmed and encouraged. He loved Hannah’s personality and way of expressing herself. She would be a good friend. She was older than he but didn’t act like it. He had begun to wonder if there was an oasis of good feeling anywhere.

David worked his magic on the computer, patching in to the bug in room 4054. He slipped on earphones and found himself in the middle of a heated argument. He heard the television and Mrs. Wong pleading, “Shh! TV! Shh! TV!”

Her husband shouted back in Chinese. David knew there were many dialects, but he didn’t understand even one. It soon became clear that father and son were arguing and that the mother wanted to watch television. The only words David could make out from the males were an occasional GC and Carpathia. The son was soon in tears, the father berating him.

David recorded the conversation in the unlikely event he could download voice-activated software that would not only recognize the language and the dialect, but would also convert it to English or Hebrew, his two languages.

Suddenly he heard the father speak more harshly than ever, the son pleading and-it sounded like-collapsing in tears. The mother pleaded for quiet again, the father barked at her, and then it sounded to David as if someone picked up a phone and punched buttons. Finally, English!

“Missah Akbar, you speak Chinese? . . . Pakistani? Me no. English OK, OK? . . . Yes, Wong! Question for you. New worker get loyalty mark first, yah? . . . OK! How soon? . . . Not till then? . . . Maybe sooner, OK! Mrs. Wong and me get too? OK? Son, Chang Wong, want be first to get mark.”

The boy cried out in Chinese, and it sounded as if Mr. Wong covered the phone before screaming at him. Someone left the room, David assumed Chang, and slammed a door.

“Missah Akbar, you do mark on boy, mother, father? . . . You no do? Who? . . . Moon? Walter Moon? . . . Not Moon himself? . . .Moon people, OK! Son first! Picture! Take picture son! . . . When? . . . Yes. I talk to Moon people. Bye-bye.”

David heard Mr. Wong call out something more calmly, and then something from Chang, muffled. The father was angry again and had the last word. Then he whispered something in Chinese to his wife. She responded with what sounded like resignation.

David wondered if Chang had told his father why he would refuse the mark, or if he simply said no. When the apartment was silent except for the television, David saved the file and forwarded it to Ming Toy with a request. “If it’s not too much trouble or too painful, it would help me to know what was said here. I’m guessing your father is pressuring Chang to get himself hired and to be among the first to take the mark. I’ll try other sources inside to see how soon they’re going to start administering the mark, but help me with this at your earliest convenience, if you would. I regret eavesdropping, but I’m sure you want to preclude this disaster too.”

David dialed 4054. Mr. Wong answered. “Chang, please?”

“You want Chang Wong?”

“Yes, please.”

“Talk to him about GC job?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You Mr. Moon?”

“No. David Hassid. I met you last week.”

“Yes! Mr. Hassid! Chang work for you?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s what I’d like to talk to him about.”

“He here. You talk to him. You in computers, yes?”

“Much of my area is computers, yes.”

“He best. He help you! Work for you. You talk to him. Wait. . . Chang!” He switched to Chinese, and the boy argued from the other room. Finally he came to the phone.

“Hello,” the boy said, sounding as if he’d lost his best friend.

“Chang, it’s David. Just listen. Your sister told me what was going on. Let me try to help. It will get your father off your back if you get interviewed by a director, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll buy us some time. You don’t worry, OK?”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Don’t say anything, but we might even find a way to. get you out of here.”

“Before the mark?”

“Don’t say that, Chang. Just play along for now. Understand?”

“Yes, David.”

“Call me Mr. Hassid, OK? We can’t sound like friends, and we sure don’t want to sound like fellow believers, brothers, right?”