CHAPTER 3

Rocketing over the Mediterranean in the middle of the night, Rayford had about a two-hour flight to Greece. For the first fifteen minutes he monitored the radio to be sure he was not being pursued or triangulated. But the radio was full of merely repetitious requests for more aircraft to help evacuate Jerusalem in light of the earthquake and the assassination. There were also countless calls for planes available to cart the mourning faithful to New Babylon for what was expected to become the largest viewing and funeral in history.

When the Gulfstream was far enough out over the water, local tower radio signals faded. Rayford tested that by trying to call his compatriots, to no avail. He switched off phone and radio, which left him in virtual silence at thirty-one thousand feet in a smooth-as-silk jet, most of the noise of the craft behind him.

Rayford suddenly felt the weight of life. Had it really been a mere three and a half years ago that he had enjoyed the prestige, the ease, and the material comfort of the life of a 747 captain for a major airline? He’d been no prize, he knew, as a husband and father, but the cliché was true: You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Life since the Rapture, or what most of the world called the disappearances, had been different as night and day from before—and not just spiritually. Rayford likened it to a death in the family. Not a day passed when he didn’t awaken under the burden of the present, facing the cold fact that though he had now made his peace with God, he had been left behind.

It was as if the whole nation, indeed the whole world, lived in suspended mourning and grief. Everyone had lost someone, and not a second could pass when one was able to forget that. It was the fear of missing the school bus, losing your homework, forgetting your gym clothes, knowing you’d been caught cheating on a test, being called to the principal’s office, being fired, going bankrupt, cheating on your wife—all rolled into one.

There had been snatches of joy, sure. Rayford lived for his daughter and was pleased with her choice of a husband. Having a grandchild, sobering though it was at this most awful time of history, fulfilled him in a way he hadn’t known was possible. But even thinking about Chloe and Buck and little Kenny forced reality into Rayford’s consciousness, and it stabbed.

With the Gulfstream on autopilot nearly six miles above the earth, Rayford stared into the cosmos. For an instant he felt disembodied, disconnected from the myriad events of the past forty-two months. Was it possible he’d, in essence, lived half a lifetime in that short span? He had experienced more emotion, fear, anger, frustration, and grief that day alone than in a year of his previous life. He wondered how much a man could take; literally, how much could a human body and mind endure?

How he longed to talk with Tsion! No one else had his trust and respect like the rabbi, only a few years older than he. Rayford couldn’t confide in Chloe or Buck. He felt a kinship with T Delanty at the Palwaukee Airport, and they might become true friends. T was the kind of a man Rayford would listen to, even when T felt the need to rebuke him. But Tsion was the man of God. Tsion was one who loved and admired and respected Rayford unconditionally. Or did he? What would Tsion think if he knew what Rayford had done, starting with abandoning both Leah and Buck, but worse, wanting, intending, trying to murder the Antichrist, then perhaps doing so by accident?

Something about the altitude, the coolness he allowed in the cockpit, the tension he could postpone until overflying Greece, the comfort of the seat, and the artificial respite he enjoyed from his role as international fugitive, somehow conspired to awaken Rayford to what had become of him.

At first he resisted the intrusion of reality. Whatever comfort he had found in the buffering quality of life on the edge was stripped away when he allowed raw truth to invade. He told himself to stay with the program, to keep himself as well as his plane on autopilot, to let his emotions rule. What had happened to the scientific, logical Rayford, the one who had been left behind primarily due to that inability to accede to his intuitive side?

When he heard himself speaking aloud, he knew it was time to face the old Rayford—not the pre-Rapture man, but the new believer. He had wondered more than once during the past few months whether he was insane. Now talking to himself in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? Much as he hated the prospect, introspection was called for. How long had it been since he had indulged, at least honestly? He had questioned his sanity the past few months, but he seldom dwelt on it long enough to come to any conclusions. He had been driven by rage, by vengeance. He had grown irresponsible, unlike himself.

As Rayford allowed that to rattle in his brain, he realized that if he pursued this, turned it over in his mind like the marshmallows he had tried browning evenly as a child, it would not be himself he would face in the end. It would be God.

Rayford wasn’t sure he wanted the blinding light of God in his mental mirror. In fact, he was fairly certain he didn’t. But the hound of heaven was pursuing him, and Rayford would have to be thoroughly deluded or dishonest to turn and run now. He could cover his ears and hum as he did as a child when his mother tried to scold him. Or he could turn on the radio, pretending to see if the satellites had been realigned, or try the phone to test the global system. Maybe he could take the plane off autopilot and busy himself navigating the craft through trackless skies.

Down deep he could never live with himself if he resorted to those evasive tactics, so Rayford endured a shudder of fear. He was going to face this, to square his shoulders to God and take the heat. “All right,” he said aloud. “What?”

Buck straightened to relieve the aching in his joints from kneeling to check the lifeless women. Standing in the darkness of his old friend’s sepulchral home, he knew he had never been cut out to be a hero. Brave he was not. This horror had brought a sob to his throat he could not subdue. Rayford was the hero; he was the one who had first come to the truth, then led the way for the rest of them. He was the one who had been rocked only temporarily by the loss of their first spiritual mentor but stood strong to lead.

What might Rayford have done in this same situation? Buck had no idea. He was still upset with the man, still puzzled over his mysterious self-assigned task that had left Buck and Leah on their own. Buck believed it would all be explained one day, that there would be some sort of rationale. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that Rayford had grown testy and self-absorbed. Look what he had lost. Buck stubbornly left him on the pedestal of his mind as the leader of the Tribulation Force and as one who would act honorably in this situation.

And what would that entail? Finding Stefan, of course. Then challenging whoever was watching this house of death, fighting them, subduing them, or at least eluding them. Eluding didn’t sound so heroic, but that was all Buck was inclined to do. Meanwhile, the most heroic he would get would be to finish the task inside—finding Stefan and Chaim, if they were there—and then running for his life.

The running part was the rub. It would be just like the GC—even decimated by population reduction, busy with the Gala, pressed into extraordinary service by the earthquake, and left in a shambles by the assassination—to dedicate an inordinate number of troops to this very house. It would not have surprised Buck an iota if the place was surrounded and they had all seen him enter, watched him find what he found, and now waited to capture him upon his departure.

On the other hand, perhaps they had come and pillaged and slaughtered and left the place a memorial husk.

Feeling ashamed, as if his wife and son could see him feeling his way in the dark, fighting a whimper like a little boy rather than tramping shoulders-wide through the place, Buck stepped on flesh. He half expected the victim to yelp or recoil. Buck knelt and felt a lifeless arm, tight and muscular. Was it possible the GC had suffered a casualty? They would not likely have left one of their own behind, not even a dead one.

Buck turned his back to the windows and switched on the flashlight again. The mess the enemy had left of Stefan made Buck’s old nature surge to the fore. It was all he could do to keep from screaming obscenities at the GC and hoping any one of them was within earshot. Revolting as it was, Buck had to look one more time to believe what he saw. Stefan lay there, his face a mask of tranquility, eyes and mouth closed as if he were asleep. His arms and legs were in place, hands at his sides, but all four limbs had been severed, the legs at the hips, the arms at the shoulders. Clearly this had been done after he was dead, for there was no sign of struggle.

Buck dropped the light, and it rolled to a stop, luckily pointing away from the windows. His knees banged painfully on the floor, and when he threw his palms before him to break his fall, they splashed in thick, sticky blood. He knelt there on hands and knees, gasping, his belly tightening and releasing with his sobs and gasps. What kind of a weapon would it have taken and how long must the enemy have worked to saw through the tissue of a dead man until he was dismembered? And why? What was the message in that?

How would he ever tell Chaim? Or would his dear old friend be his next discovery?

At four o’clock in the afternoon Friday in Illinois, Tsion sat near the TV, trying to sort his emotions. He was still able to enjoy, if that was an appropriate word anymore, the ceaseless curiosity and antics of a one-year-old boy. Kenny cooed and talked and made noises as he explored, climbing, grabbing, touching, looking to his mother and to “Unca Zone” to see if he would get a smile or a no, depending on what he was doing.

But Kenny was Chloe’s responsibility, and Tsion didn’t want to miss a second of the constant coverage of the assassination. He expected news of Carpathia’s resurrection and allowed himself only brief absences from the screen. He had moved his laptop to the living room, and his phone was close by. But his main interest was in Israel and New Babylon. It would not have surprised him if Carpathia was loaded onto his plane dead in Jerusalem and worshiped as he walked off under his own power in New Babylon.

Tsion was most upset at hearing nothing from other members of the Trib Force, and he and Chloe traded off trying to raise them, each of them, by phone. The last word they had heard from overseas was that Leah had not seen Hattie in Brussels, that she had told Buck Hattie was gone, and that she had not been able to communicate with Rayford. Since then, nothing.

Worried about the ramifications, Tsion and Chloe left most of the lights off, and they double-checked the phony chest freezer that actually served as an entrance to the underground shelter. Tsion normally left strategy and intrigue to the others and concentrated on his expertise, but he had an opinion on the security of the safe house. Maybe he was naive, he told Chloe, but he believed that if Hattie were to give them away, it would be by accident. “She’ll more likely be followed to us than send someone for us.”

“Like she did with Ernie and Bo.”

Tsion nodded.

“And who knows whom they might have told before they died?”

He shrugged. “If she was to give us up just by telling someone, she would have done it before she was imprisoned.”

“If she was imprisoned,” Chloe said. And suddenly she was fighting tears.

“What is it, Chloe?” Tsion asked. “Worried about Cameron, of course?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “Not only that,” she said. “Tsion, can I talk with you?”

“Need you ask?”

“But, I mean, I know you don’t want to miss anything on TV.”

“I have DVR. Talk to me.”

Tsion was alarmed at how much it took for Chloe to articulate her thoughts. They had always been able to talk, but she had never been extremely self-revelatory. “You know I will keep your confidences,” he said. “Consider it clergy-parishioner privilege.”

Even that did not elicit a smile. But she managed to shock him. “Maybe I’ve been watching too much TV,” she said.

“Such as?”

“Those staged rallies, where everyone worships Carpathia.”

“I know. They’re disgusting. They refer to him as ‘Your Worship’ and the like.”

“It’s worse than that, Tsion,” she said. “Have you seen the clips where the children are brought to him? I mean, we all know there’s not a child among them as old as three years, but they’re paraded before him in their little GC outfits, saluting over their hearts with every step, singing praise songs to him. It’s awful!”

Tsion agreed. Day care workers and parents dressed the kids alike, and cute little boys and girls brought flowers and were taught to bow and wave and salute and sing to Carpathia. “Did you see the worst of it?” he asked.

Chloe nodded miserably. “The prayer, you mean?”

“That’s what I mean. I was afraid of lightning.”

Tsion shuddered, remembering the knockoff of the Lord’s Prayer taught to groups of children barely old enough to speak. It had begun, “Our Father in New Babylon, Carpathia be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done. . . .” Tsion had been so disgusted that he turned it off. Chloe, apparently, had watched the whole debacle.

“I’ve been studying,” she said.

“Good,” Tsion said. “I hope so. We can never know enough—”

“Not the way you think,” she said. “I’ve been studying death.”

Tsion narrowed his eyes. “I’m listening.”

“I will not allow myself or my baby to fall into the hands of the enemy.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying just what you’re afraid I’m saying, Tsion.”

“Have you told Cameron?”

“You promised you would keep my confidence!”

“And I will. I am asking, have you told him your plans?”

“I have no plans. I’m just studying.”

“But you will soon have a plan, because it is clear you have made up your mind. You said, ‘I will not . . . ,’ and that evidences a course of action. You’re saying that if we should be found out, if the GC should capture us—”

“I will not allow Kenny or me to fall into their hands.”

“And how will you ensure this?”

“I would rather we were dead.”

“You would kill yourself.”

“I would. And I would commit infanticide.”

She said this with such chilling conviction that Tsion hesitated, praying silently for wisdom. “Is this a sign of faith, or lack of faith?” he said finally.

“I don’t know, but I can’t imagine God would want me or my baby in that situation.”

“You think he wants you in this situation? He is not willing that any should perish. He would that you would have been ready to go the first time. He—”

“I know, Tsion. I know, all right? I’m just saying—”

“Forgive me for interrupting, but I know what you are saying. I just do not believe you are being honest with yourself.”

“I couldn’t be more honest! I would kill myself and commit inf—”

“There you go again.”

“What?”

“Buffering your conviction with easy words. You’re no better than the abortionists who refer to their unborn babies as embryos or fetuses or pregnancies so they can ‘eliminate’ them or ‘terminate’ them rather than kill them.”

“What? I said I would com—”

“Yes, that’s what you said. You didn’t say what you mean. Tell me.”

“I told you, Tsion! Why are you doing this?”

“Tell me, Chloe. Tell me what you are going to do to—” He hesitated, not wanting to alert Kenny they were talking about him. “Tell me what you’re going to do to this little one, because obviously, you have to do it to him first if it’s going to get done. Because if you kill yourself, none of the rest of us will do this job for you.”

“I told you what I would do to him.”

“Say it in plain words.”

“That I will kill him before I let the GC have him? I will.”

“Will what?”

“Kill him.”

“Put it in a sentence.”

“I will. I will . . . kill . . . my own baby.”

“Baby!” Kenny exulted, running to her. She reached for him, sobbing.

Quietly, Tsion said, “How will you do this?”

“That’s what I’m studying,” she managed over Kenny’s shoulders. He hugged her tight and scampered away.

“And then you will kill yourself, why?”

“Because I cannot live without him.”

“Then it follows that Cameron would be justified in killing himself.”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “The world needs him.”

“The world needs you, Chloe. Think of the co-op, the international—”

“I can’t think anymore,” she said. “I want done with this! I want it over! I don’t know what we were thinking, bringing a child into this world. . . .”

“That child has brought so much joy to this house—” Tsion began.

“—that I could not do him the disservice of letting him fall into GC hands.”

Tsion sat back, glancing at the TV. “So the GC comes, you kill the baby, kill yourself, Cameron and your father kill themselves . . . when does it end?”

“They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.”

“You can’t. And you won’t.”

“I thought I could talk to you, Tsion.”

“You expected what, that I would condone this?”

“That you would be sympathetic, at least.”

“I am that, at the very least,” he said. “Neither do I want to live without you and the little one. You know what comes next.”

“Oh, Tsion, you would not deprive your global church of yourself.”

He sat back and put his hands on his knees. “Yet you would deprive me of yourself. You must not care for me as much as I care for you, or as much as I thought you did.”

Chloe sighed and looked to the ceiling. “You’re not helping,” she said in mock exasperation.

“I’m trying,” he said.

“I know. And I appreciate it.”

Tsion asked her to pray with him for their loved ones. She knelt on the floor next to the couch, holding his hand, and soon after they began, Tsion peeked at a sound and saw Kenny kneeling next to his mother, hands folded, fingers entwined, eyes closed.

David found Guy Blod more outrageous and flamboyant in person. He showed up with a small entourage of similarly huffy and put-out men in their late thirties. Despite their differences in nationality, they could have been quints from the way they dressed and acted. David offered only Guy a chair across from his desk.

“This is what you call hospitality?” Guy said. “There are six of us, hello.”

“My apologies,” David said. “I was under the impression it was the responsibility of the guest to inform the host when uninvited people were coming.”

Guy waved him off, and his sycophants glumly stood behind him with arms crossed. “The Supreme Commander has commissioned me to do a sort of bronzy iron thingie of Nicolae. And I have to do it fast, so can you get me the materials?”

They were interrupted by an urgent knock on the door. A woman in her late sixties, blue-haired, short, and stocky, poked her head in. “Miss Ivins,” David said. “May I help you?”

“Excuse me,” Guy said, “but we’re in conference here.”

David stood. “It’s all right, Miss Ivins. You know Guy.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding sadly.

“And Guy, you know Vivian is—”

“Yes, the potentate’s only living relative. I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am, but we—”

“How may I help you, ma’am?” David said.

“I’m looking for crowd control volunteers,” she said. “The masses are already showing up from all over the world, and—”

“It’s after midnight!” Guy said. “Don’t they know the funeral isn’t for at least two days? What are we supposed to do with them all?”

“Commander Fortunato is asking for any personnel below director level to—”

“That leaves me out, Vivian!” Guy said. “And Hayseed here too, unfortunately.”

“How about your assistants, Guy?” David suggested.

“I need every last one of them for this project! Viv, surely you don’t expect—”

“I’m aware of your assignment, Guy,” Viv Ivins said, but she pronounced his name in the Western style, and he quickly corrected her. She ignored him. “I’m on assignment too. If either of you gentlemen could spread the word among your people, the administration would be grateful.”

David returned to his seat and tapped out the notice to be broadcast to his workers’ E-mail addresses as Miss Ivins backed out and shut the door.

“Aren’t we efficient?” Guy said.

“We try,” David said.

“I know what her assignment is,” Guy said. “Have you heard?”

“I have enough trouble keeping up with my own.”

David had acted uninterested enough that Guy turned to his own people and whispered, “That regional numbering thing.” David was dying of curiosity but unwilling to admit it. Guy spun in his chair to face David. “Now, where were we?”

“I was about to check my catalog file for bronze and iron thingie suppliers, and you were going to be a bit more specific.”

“OK, I’m gonna need a computer program that allows me to figure out how to do this. I’m going to be supplied by the coroner with a life-size cast of Carpathia’s body—how ghastly—and I need to quadruple that in size. That means four times.”

“Yeah, I recall arithmetic, Guy.”

“I’m just trying to help. Truce?”

“Truce?”

“Start over, no hassles?”

“Whatever, Guy.”

“Be nice.”

“I’m trying.”

“Anyhoo, I wanna make this like twenty-four-foot replica of Carpathia out of pretty much bronze, I think, but I want it to come out in a sort of ebony finish with a texture of iron. Ebony is black.”

“I remember crayons too, Guy.”

“Sor-ry, David! You don’t want any help!”

“I’m going to need it if I’m to find you this material quickly. What do you think you need and how fast do you need it?”

Guy leaned forward. “Now we’re getting somewhere. I want the thing to be hollow with about a quarter-inch to three-eighths-inch shell, but it has to be strong enough and balanced enough to stand straight without support, just like Nicolae would if he were that tall.”

David shrugged. “So you make him to scale and cheat on the shoes if you have to, since an inanimate object won’t make the unconscious balancing maneuvers to stay standing.”

“Shoes!?”

“What, your statue will be barefoot?”

Guy giggled and shared the mirth with his clones. “Oh, David,” he said, lifting his feet and spinning in his chair. “My statue will be au naturel.”

David made a face. “Please tell me you’re joking!”

“Not on your life. Did you think the mortician was going to make a body cast of him in his suit?”

“Why not?”

Guy fluttered the air with his fingers and said, “Forget it, forget it, you wouldn’t understand. You obviously have some hang-up about the human form and can’t appreciate the beauty. You just—”

“Guy, I’m assuming this statue is to maintain a prominent place within the palace—”

“Within the palace? Dear boy! This will be THE objet d’art of history, my pièce de résistance. It shall stand in the palace courtyard not thirty feet from where the potentate lies in state.”

“So the whole world will see it.”

“In all its glory.”

“And it’s your masterpiece.”

Guy nodded, appearing unable to contain his glee.

“So if I took a picture of something and then traced it, I could be an artist too?”

Guy looked disgusted. “You’re about as far from an artist as I am from—”

“But what of this reproduction of a dead man’s bare body is your work?”

“Are you just insulting me, or is that a sincere question?”

“Call it sincere. I really want to know.”

“The concept! I conceived it, David! I will supervise the construction. I will do the finish work on the face, leaving the eyes hollow. I was asked to create a huge statue to represent the greatest man who ever lived, and this came to me as if from God himself.”

“You’re on speaking terms with God?”

“It’s just an expression, Hayseed. It’s from my muse. Who can explain it? It’s what I blame my genius on, the one thing that keeps me from unbearable ego. Can you imagine how embarrassing it is to be lauded for everything your hands create? I mean, I’m not complaining, but the attention becomes overwhelming. The muse is my foil. I am as overwhelmed at my gift—the gift from the muse, you see—as anyone else. I enjoy it as the masses do.”

“You do.”

“Yes, I do. And I can’t wait to get to this one. I’m assuming I would have access to the GC foundry, as we won’t have time to have this done off-site.”

David shut one eye. “The foundry is on three shifts, seven days a week. We could have this more cheaply done in Asia, where—”

“Help me stay civil here, David, as it is clearly my fault for not clarifying. Supreme Commander Fortunato—who, in case you couldn’t figure this out on your own, will likely be the new potentate once Carpathia is entombed—wants this monument in place no later than at dawn Sunday.”

Guy stared at David, as if to let that sink in. It almost didn’t. David looked at his watch. It was crowding 1:00 a.m. Saturday, Carpathia Standard Time. “I don’t see it,” he said, “but I don’t imagine you can be dissuaded.”

“Why, I believe we have begun to connect!”

Anything but that, David thought.

“Zhizaki,” Guy said, “if you please.”

With a flourish, an Asian with two-inch green nails produced a computer-generated schedule. It called for the procuring of materials and determining the manufacturing site by noon Saturday, concurrent with computer design by the artist and cast making by the mortician. By midnight Saturday, the foundry was to create a cast to the artist’s specifications, produce the shell, and deliver it to the back of the palace courtyard. There Guy and his staff would do the finish work until the product was ready for positioning in view of the mourners just before dawn Sunday.

“That’s more than ambitious, Guy,” David said. “It’s audacious.”

“Audacious,” Guy said with a faraway look. “Now there’s an epitaph.”

“You’ll have to work with materials already on hand,” David said.

“I assumed that. But we’ll need you to override current projects, get this at the top of the list, and let me in there to make sure the consistency and the color are right.”

“You’ll have to wear protective clothing and a hard hat,” David said.

Guy looked at his mates. “I love new clothes.”