The Mark: The Beast Rules The World (15 page)

“We have no extra personnel to help with that, Commander.”

“Just as well. We’re not totally sure of the cause of death or any potential contagions.”

“It’s you and Mr. Berry and the deceased?”

“Roger, and the paperwork has been filed with International.”

“Consider yourselves processed. Oh, stand by, Commander. I’ve been reminded that a shipment has arrived for you from New Babylon.”

“A shipment?”

“It’s stamped Confidential and Top Secret. About half a skid. I’d say two hundred pounds.”

“Can it be delivered to the chopper?”

“We’ll see what we can do. If we’ve got a free man and a forklift, what say we load her for ya?”

“Obliged.”

Half an hour later, as Rayford and Albie carried Hattie to the chopper under a sheet, she whispered, “Anyone around?”

“No, but hush,” Rayford said.

“I need a new identity. This is really getting old.”

“Shut up or I drop you,” Albie said.

“You wouldn’t.”

He pretended to let his end slip, and she cried out. “You two are gonna get us busted,” Rayford said.

Once she was loaded, Rayford told her to stay out of sight until they were airborne. He got behind the controls again because he knew the way and Albie had not performed a landing inside a bombed-out skyscraper before.

Before Rayford lifted off, Albie turned and reached over the hidden Hattie and began unfastening the skid and boxes until he found a gross of black spray paint cans. The snapping of plastic fasteners and wrap made Hattie ask, “What in the world are you doing?”

“Just clearing the trapdoor so Rayford can eject you if you don’t behave.”

A full day had passed in New Babylon, and David felt well enough to leave the hospital. Hannah came to change his dressing. “How are we doing?” she asked, peering into his eyes.

“Nurses all use the collective we, don’t they?” “We’re trained in it.”

“Physically I feel a hundred percent better.” “You’ll still have to take it easy.” “I’ve got a desk job, Hannah.”

“You also have a ton of stuff to do fast. Pace yourself.” “I don’t feel like doing it anyway.” “Do it for Annie.” “Touché.”

With his new bandage in place, she put her hands gently over his ears. “I wasn’t trying to be mean, David. I mean it. I know your heart is broken. But if you wait for that pain to go away before doing what you have to do, it’ll be time to get out of here.” He nodded miserably.

“You’re going to be OK, David,” she said. “That sounds trite now, but just knowing you a little makes

me certain.”

He wasn’t so sure, but she was trying to help. “I’ve been thinking,” she added. Uh-oh. “Glad somebody’s up to that.”

“I knew I wanted to be a nurse when I was a veterinarian’s aide in high school.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’m expecting some joke about me as a patient.”

“No jokes. It’s just that one of the things our office offered was the injection of biochips into pets so they could always be found and identified.”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t that what you said the GC is going to do to everybody?”

He nodded.

“And I’m sort of an expert in that, and now you know it.”

“Guess I’m still too medicated, Hannah. Spell it out for me.”

“Aren’t they going to need to train people in how to do this and send experts here and there to supervise it?”

He shrugged. “Probably, sure. What? It looks like a plum job, a way to see the world? You want a letter of recommendation?”

She sighed. “If you weren’t hurting, I’d smack you. Give me some credit. You think I’d want to teach people how to apply the mark of the beast? Or that I’d want to watch while they do it? I’m looking for a way we can all get out of here without making it obvious why we left. You want to be among Carpathia’s top ten most wanted?”

“No.”

“No, so you get in there with Viv Ivins and offer the services of your pilots and even a nurse you know who has some background in this stuff. Get us sent somewhere to get the ball rolling, whatever. You’re the one with the creativity. I’m just shooting wild here.” “No, keep going. I’m sorry. I’m listening now.” “You get us all on the same plane, maybe a big expensive one, because the bigger the lie, the more people want to believe it. Crash it somewhere, like the middle of an ocean, where it would be more trouble than it’s worth to confirm we’re all dead. We hook up with the rest of your friends, but we’re not constantly looking over our shoulders for GC.” “I like it.”

“You’re not just saying that?” “I wouldn’t. It’s a stroke of genius.” “Well, it’s a thought.”

“A great thought. Let me run it past Mac and Abdullah. They’re good at finding holes in schemes and-”

“I already did. They liked it too.”

“Anything left for me, or can you keep everybody in the palace healthy and stitched up and do my job too?”

She bit her lip. “I was just trying to help.”

“And you did.”

“But we both know I can’t do your job. Nobody can. So I mean it when I say you have to channel your grief into productivity and do it for Annie. It’s the only way to make any sense out of this. Mac tells me the Tribulation Force sees you as second in importance only to Dr. Ben-Judah.” “Oh, come on.”

“David! Think about it. Look what you’ve done here. It doesn’t have to fizzle when we all leave if you can figure a way to keep it going from anywhere.”

When Buck’s phone rang, he assumed it would be Rayford, telling him he and Albie and Hattie were close. But it was Mac McCullum.

“Hey, Mac!” he said, holding up a hand to quiet the others. Buck had to sit when he heard the news. “Oh, no. No. That’s awful. . . . Oh, man . . . how’s he doing? . . . Tell him we’re with him, will you?” Buck’s face contorted and he couldn’t control his tears. “Thanks for letting us know, Mac.”

Chloe rushed to him. “What, Buck? What’s happened?”

“Excuse me, Rayford,” Hattie said, a hand on each of his shoulders as he directed the chopper over Chicago toward the Strong Building. Albie was dozing.

Rayford slipped off one headphone so he could hear her, and she let her hands slip to the top of his chair. “I’m worried about how I’m going to be received.”

“Are you joking? I can think of three who will be overjoyed.”

“I’ve been terrible to them.”

“That was before.”

“But I should apologize. I don’t even know where to begin with you. Planting that stuff about Amanda. Making you all wonder about her.”

“But you admitted that, Hattie.”

“I don’t remember apologizing for it. That seems so weak compared to what I did.”

“I won’t say it wasn’t an awful time for me,” he said. “But let’s put it behind us.”

“You can do that?”

“Not by myself.”

“Chloe really lost patience with me.”

“With me too, Hattie. And I deserved it.”

“She forgave you?”

“Of course. Love forgives all.”

Hattie fell silent, but Rayford felt the pressure of her hands on the back of his chair. “Love forgives all,” she repeated, as if mulling it over.

“That’s from the Bible, you know. First Corinthians 13.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “But I hope to learn fast.”

“Want another one? I’m doing this from memory, but there’s a verse in the New Testament-more than one, I think-that quotes Jesus. He basically says that if we forgive others, God will forgive us, but if we don’t forgive others, neither will God forgive us.”

Hattie laughed. “That puts us over a barrel, doesn’t it? Like we don’t have a choice.”

“Pretty much.”

“You think I should find that verse and memorize it so I can quote it to them when I get there? Tell them they’d better forgive me, if they know what’s good for them?”

Rayford turned and raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “But, um, you think they all know that verse?”

“You can bet Tsion does. Probably in a dozen languages.”

She sat quiet awhile. Rayford pointed out the Strong Building in the distance and rapped lightly on Albie’s knee with his knuckles. “You might want to be awake for this, friend.”

“I’m nervous,” Hattie said. “I was all psyched up, but now I don’t know.”

“Give them some credit,” Rayford said. “You’ll see.” He hit the button on his phone to call Buck and handed it to Hattie. “Tell Buck the next sound he hears will be us.”

Buck had told Chloe the news about Annie, then gathered everyone in the safe house to tell them. None had met her, of course, but Tsion, Buck, Chloe, and Leah had had enough interaction with David that they felt they knew Annie. Chaim and Zeke were brought up to speed; then they all prayed for David and Mac and Abdullah. Zeke asked if they would mind praying for his father too.

“I don’t know ‘xactly where they took him, but I know Dad, and he ain’t gonna be cooperative.”

“David says they’re going to try out the mark on prisoners first,” Buck said.

“Dad would die first.”

“That might be the price.”

“Ten to one he’d take a couple of ‘em with him,” Zeke said.

Buck’s phone rang, and he was grateful when Chloe reached for it.

“Hattie?” she said. “Where are you guys? . . . That close? See you in a few then. . . . Yeah, we heard Dad and Albie found a, um, friend on the inside. You ought to be grateful for all the time and expense and effort that went into-well, I don’t know if you realize how risky that was. And investing Dad and Albie’s time and an aircraft-I mean-it’s not like you did anything to deserve it. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just saying . . . don’t start the waterworks with me, Hattie. We go back too far. For all we know the old safe house is ashes now because of-Yeah, we can talk about it when you get here. ... Of course I still care about you, but you may not find all of us as soft as my dad. There’s a delicate balance here and a lot more people than before. Even in a place as huge as this, it’s not easy living together, especially with people who have a history of putting their needs ahead of everybody el-OK, all right. We’ll see you in a minute.”

Hattie clapped the phone shut and slapped it into Rayford’s hand. “I take it that wasn’t Buck,” he said.

“She hates me!” Hattie said. “This is a bad idea. You should have left me there, let them take me back to Buffer and take my chances. I might not have lasted, but at least I’d be in heaven.”

“Should we have let you kill yourself too? Then where would you be?”

“Chloe didn’t sound like she’s going to forgive me. Ah, I don’t blame her. I deserve it.”

Rayford felt Hattie sit back and she muttered something.

“Can’t hear you,” he said, maneuvering toward the

building.

“I said she probably only said what I would have if the

shoe was on the other foot.”

Hannah Palemoon had dressed David’s wound differently, applying a tight-fitting bandage that adhered to the shaved part of his head and did not touch his hair. It aided the stitches in keeping his scalp together for fast healing, she told him, and he didn’t need the layers of gauze covering his ears and extending under his chin anymore. He felt almost normal except for the residual pain-much less-and the itching he knew he had to ignore. The best he could do was to gently press around the edges of the bandage, but as the stitches would not be removed for at least another two days, he had to be

careful.

Still, his cap fit again. He stopped by his quarters for a fresh uniform, checked the mirror, and realized how incongruous he looked. His youthful, Israeli features and dark complexion went well with the tailored, form-fitting garb of the senior GC staff. But as he studied his visage, he wondered if any of the Nazis he’d seen in history books hated the swastika on their snappy uniforms as much as he hated the insignia of the Global Community. How he would love abandoning the whole look. And it wouldn’t be long.

He stopped with his hand on the inside door handle.

Though he was better, he still felt the fatigue of one whose body was trying to heal itself. Part of him wanted to stretch out on the bed and not move for twelve hours, to simply lie there in his grief and embrace the gnawing emptiness. David found some solace in Hannah’s insistence that Annie would not have suffered even for a split second. But why couldn’t the power that obliterated her nervous system and baked her vital organs also destroy the longing in him she could now never fulfill? No lightning bolt of any magnitude could extinguish a love so pure.

He bowed his head and prayed for strength. If he had, say, two months, he might have allowed himself the luxury of another day or two to take the hardest edge off his pain. But even the time he had was not really enough for all he had to do. For Annie, he told himself as he headed for his office. And he would remind himself of that every few minutes for as long as it took to keep himself going.

His relegating Annie to a sacred, protected part of his mind was not helped when he encountered Viv Ivins in the corridor outside his office. “I need to see you,” she said in her crisp, delicate voice and Romanian accent. “My office or yours?”

He was so glad she had not begun with the obligatory “He is risen,” which he and Mac and Abdullah and Hannah had decided they would respond to with “He is risen indeed,” privately knowing they were referring to Christ. Perhaps Vivian eschewed the formality because technically she was outside the hierarchy. She did not even wear a uniform, though her light blue, dark blue, black, charcoal, and gray suits were uniform enough. She wore sensible shoes, and her blue-gray hair was teased into a helmet-like ball.

Giving David the option of meeting with her in his own office was unusual, for while Ms. Ivins bore no official title, everyone knew she was akin to the boss’s daughter, or, in this case, the boss’s aunt. She was not a blood relative, as far as anyone knew, but Carpathia himself made it plain that she was as close to him as anyone in the world. She had been a dear family friend and had, from almost the beginning, helped his late parents raise their only child.

She did not overtly lord it over anyone that she had clout without title. There was simply an unspoken knowledge between her and everyone. What she wanted she got. What she said went. Her word was as good as Carpathia’s, and so she didn’t have to assert herself. She employed her understood power in the same way everyone else accepted it.