Authors: Shawn Hopkins
—Albert Pike
After a moment of quiet thought, Scott said, “You still haven’t told me what the ring is.”
But just then there was a knock on the door the ring had been delivered through — the one Smith’s Mossad comrades were behind, people like Daniel. Zionists.
“Come in,” called Mr. Smith.
The big door swung open and a short man wearing a suit walked in. His face was full of bottled up information, his breath short.
“What is it?” asked Smith.
“There was an explosion in Washington. The President is dead.”
Scott whipped his head around, not sure if he heard that right.
Mr. Smith walked quickly around the table so that he was standing in front of the messenger, ignoring Scott now. “The Prime Minister?”
“We think he was in the car, too.”
After only a split second of hesitation to get his thoughts together, he nodded to the smaller Mossad agent and said, “You know what to do.” And then he turned back to the desk as the man hastened out of the room.
Not sure what to say, Scott asked, “The President of New America and the Prime Minster of…”
“Israel.”
Scott cursed. “What’s the Prime Minister doing here meeting with the President?”
“It was a secret meeting. My sources tell me that the Prime Minister had something to tell the President, something that could only be told in person. Israel has no idea that he even left the country. He will be declared missing. They are orchestrating their war. They are molding the public’s opinion. Now everyone in the world will be crying for the Arab states to pay.” He paused. “This is how they are finally going to get the Middle East. To destroy religion.”
Scott cursed again.
“There is much more that I should explain to you about my people. About the Temple Mount, what we believe lies beneath it. The battle between secular Israel and religious Israel. What the ring of Solomon unlocks...” He walked over to the door the shorter agent had come and gone through. “But, unfortunately, I cannot continue conversing at this time.” He opened the blank door. “My people will help you disappear again, if that is what you want. But I have a feeling that God has a specific role for you in all of this.” Then his eyes grew soft, sympathetic. “And I doubt that you have finished exorcizing your demons anyway.”
Scott took a step away from the desk as the display went dark, his world uneven once again.
Mr. Smith smiled politely and then left, closing the door behind him.
Scott needed air, needed to get out before the walls came in and crushed him to death. Everything that once offered stability to his uncertain life had just been erased with one conversation.
The huge steel door behind him opened.
27
T
he man was about six inches shorter than Scott and of medium build. He was dressed in gray slacks and a black silk shirt. A leather belt circled his hips and supported a holstered pistol. His eyes were vivid, intense, his lips tightly pressed.
“You have two choices,” the man said without even an introduction.
Scott nodded, anxious to hear what Mr. Smith had in mind for him.
“We can get you to Canada, and you can disappear just as you had planned, or you can help stop what is happening here.”
He smiled. “Are you offering me a job?”
“No. Just direction.”
“Direction?” Scott raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think I know where I’m going?”
The man answered straight-faced, not wasting time. “That depends on your choice.”
Scott thought about it for a second. He could feel his view of Canada begin to fade further into the distance, Mr. Smith’s words,
And I doubt that you have finished exorcizing your demons anyway,
flying in circles about his head.
“You win,” he finally responded.
“It is not a game that anyone can win, Mr. Scott. It is only an opportunity to be used as an instrument of good. There are but three categories in life. Those doing evil, those doing good, and those doing nothing. Nothing, as I suspect you have finally figured out, does not aid the forces of good as much as it does the forces of evil. Therefore, there are really only two categories.” He shook his head. “And it is not a game. It is life and death. It is light and darkness.”
He felt like he was being manipulated into a situation he didn’t believe in, but what other choice did he really have? They were after him now, regardless of whether or not he had the ring. If he declined and walked out the front door, the facial recognition cameras would identify him before he made it to the curb. Besides, he had something to say to these monsters who were running the world, something on behalf of Edward. Jack. Melissa Strauss. Cindy. His wife. The three German Shepherds. For the countless millions who had suffered through all their wars. “Whatever,” he said.
The agent looked him in the eyes, as if seeing what was taking place behind them, and smiled. “There is someone that Mr. Smith wants you to meet. Someone who can answer your questions. Someone you can trust. Once you speak with him, you will know what it is that you should do.”
Scott had no long term intention of playing by their rules, but they would serve for now in helping him get out of here. “Fine.”
The man reached into what had to be a rather large back pocket and pulled out the priest’s books. “Mr. Smith recommends that you read these on the way.”
He took the books and flipped them over in his hands. The
Book of Tobit
and the
Testament of Solomon
. He’d already read enough of the one. “Can’t wait,” he muttered.
Then the agent turned and walked back into the corridor, signaling for Scott to follow. And so he did, his conscious self a raging sea, every one of his thoughts contradicting the next. The priest and Mr. Smith, a Catholic and a Jew, both told him that God had plans for him in all this; but maybe they were wrong. Maybe he had his own plans. He certainly didn’t care about Jerusalem or the ring that could allegedly build its temples.
Titus Mayhew was sitting at a desk waiting for him. There was a clock above his head that indicated half an hour had passed. He looked distressed, like something unseen was pressing down on him and crushing him. Scott knew what it was.
“Cindy?” he asked as he walked into the room, the Mossad agent closing the big vault door behind them.
Mayhew shook his head. “She didn’t make it.”
A sorrow-laced spike plunged into Scott’s heart. He drug her into this mess. And now she was dead. Because of him. Because she helped him.
Walking past him and toward a door deeper within the fake office, the Mossad agent said, “We leave in ten minutes.”
Scott didn’t even know how to answer him. His head was spinning. Cindy was dead.
Mayhew stood up. “She was conscious right at the end. I got to pray with her.”
“Good,” he mumbled, not able to swallow the lump in his throat. He started walking to the door the Jewish agent had just disappeared through.
“Wait,” Mayhew called.
Scott took a breath, turned. “What?”
“What are you going to do?”
“They want me to see someone who can explain things to me.”
“You’re getting involved?”
He shrugged. “Got nothing better to do, I guess.”
“Can I go with you?”
“Sure,” he said, hoping he wouldn’t regret it. He didn’t think it was his decision anyway. For the time being, he was following someone else’s set of rules.
They walked out of the office together and entered another hallway. To their left were three men by the elevator. They stood to attention when they saw Scott and Mayhew exit the room and walk toward them.
“Are we going with you?” asked Scott.
“Yes, but we have to move fast,” one said. “The military is mobilizing, getting ready to descend on Columbus.” He pushed the button for the elevator and the doors opened. They filled the small box and pushed the button for the parking garage.
Mayhew stood silently, watching the floors light up on their way down. He seemed to be concentrating hard, and Scott wondered what he was thinking, if they were thinking the same things. Like why the Mossad was willing to use precious fuel and risk the lives of their men for this little side-trip. Scott exchanged a quick glance with Mayhew just as the elevator’s decent came to a stop. It was a mutual look, one of understanding. A message communicated without words. As the doors slid open from the center, Scott stepped out into the same garage they had arrived in less than an hour ago — when Cindy was still alive.
“Hurry,” said one of the agents as he walked toward a black Suburban with tinted windows and government plates. “We do not have much time.”
And so the five of them loaded into the vehicle and took off to get some answers from yet another stranger. Because it was the least the Mossad could do for the people who brought them the ring.
Scott didn’t buy it. Not for one second.
28
T
he empty streets of Columbus were roaring past them as the Mossad agent held the gas pedal against the floor through standing red lights. They were trying to get out of the city before the military came sweeping through the quiet streets, banging on doors, rounding people up, and establishing checkpoints. Scott wasn’t really looking forward to loudspeakers, barbed wire, vaccinations, and detention centers so he didn’t mind the ridiculous speed they were traveling. But though he was glad to be escaping Columbus, he still didn’t understand their situation. Were these Israelis secular Mossad agents or the trusted anti-Zionist Orthodox friends of Mr. Smith? Were they the ones who brought Smith the ring or the ones who took it from him? It would have been a nice piece of information to have before being pushed into the vehicle and sped out of town. Two of them were in the front seats, and the other was positioned in the back behind Scott and Mayhew.
Turning in his seat, Mayhew was going to ask the agent behind them a question when he suddenly stopped, catching a reflection off the back window.
Scott noticed, and he could feel Mayhew tense up beside him. Something was wrong.
The Suburban flew down a one way street and passed straight through another red light and into an intersection that actually contained some activity. A bread truck slammed on its breaks, the driver hammering the horn in disgust as the agent at the wheel simply pressed the gas pedal even harder, transforming the nearby buildings into blurred streaks. They were pushing 90mph.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw something so close that he barely had enough time to brace himself.
The impact was enormous, like they had been struck by a meteor falling for light years from another galaxy. Crunching metal, exploding glass, screeching tires, the world spinning...
No one had been wearing seatbelts, and they were whipped around inside the vehicle like rag dolls until another huge collision stopped all forward momentum in an instant. The Suburban rebounded up and backward a few feet, sending everyone flying forward.
Scott found himself lying on the floor halfway beneath the seat he’d just been sitting in. His head throbbed, and when he moved, glass spilled off him. Managing to pull himself up onto the seat, he looked around, his world not quite coming into focus yet but understanding what happened nonetheless.
The front of the Suburban was gone, pushed in and shoved up through the dashboard, a brick wall now where the driver had been sitting, the driver himself like a smashed insect against it. The agent in the passenger seat was at least still alive, though he was spraying blood everywhere. Mayhew was bent over the end of the bench seat, his head on the floor by the door.
“Mayhew,” he whispered, reaching for him. But before he could get a response, another black Suburban came to a screeching halt beside them, its front end smashed.
The doors swung open on the other vehicle, and men in black suits stepped out into the silent morning with automatic weapons held tight against their shoulders. The sound of their footsteps tapped across the street as they neared the wreck. And then their weapons began firing.
Crack
.
Crack. Crack.
The blasts echoed off nearby buildings and charged down the vacant streets before returning, the empty casings bouncing off the asphalt.
Scott didn’t move. He was afraid to even breathe. The first shot exploded the head of the agent still struggling for life in what was left of the front passenger seat. So far, however, none of the ensuing shots were being directed at him or Mayhew. Not wanting to give them a reason to fire at him, he slowly raised his hands into the air above his head, fingers spread apart.
After what seemed like an eternity, the side doors opened, and more glass fell into the street. One of the men stepped close, checked Mayhew’s vitals, and then pulled him out of the wreckage. Scott could only stare ahead as another guy stepped close — a guy in a black silk shirt and gray slacks, an automatic rifle now slung over his shoulder with its barrel smoking.
“Are you okay?” he asked Scott.
Scott nodded while lowering his hands and tried to speak. He could taste blood in his mouth.
“Come on then,” the guy from Mr. Smith’s office commanded.
Scott struggled toward him, pain wracking his every step. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The man helped him out onto the street and walked him around to the back of the disabled Suburban. Two more men in suits pulled open the rear doors. There, lying in the back, with a bullet hole in his head, was Mr. Smith. His eyes were frozen open and staring into nothingness.
Scott cursed under his breath and turned away, a wave of dizziness leaving him off balance. That’s what Mayhew must have seen in the reflection, he realized. He needed to sit.
Then another one of the suits came walking back around from the front of the vehicle.
“Got it.”
“Is it damaged?” asked the guy from the secret room.
“No.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
They bent over to help Mayhew, who was just regaining consciousness, up into the working Suburban.