CHAPTER 13
“I’m never going to let this happen again, Dad,” Buck said. They stood outside their two-seater jet in remote western Wisconsin at dawn, monitoring a miniature TV and a radio and waiting for Krystall’s call. “We could find out Chloe was half an hour away in St. Paul, and there wouldn’t be a blessed thing we could do about it. No car, no disguises, no IDs, nothing. Never again, Dad, and I mean it.”
Rayford didn’t appear to have anything to say, and Buck felt sorry for him. “I don’t know what else could have been done,” Buck said. “But anything more than sitting on our hands, waiting for something to happen.”
“I don’t know why Krystall hasn’t called,” Rayford said. “She’s had all day.” He looked at his watch. “It’s the middle of the afternoon in New Babylon.”
“You’d better hope they’re not onto her, haven’t bugged her phone or something. They’d know about Otto, know we know where the big confab is going to be, everything.”
“I don’t know,” Rayford said. “David and Chang have always said the GC doesn’t tap its own phones.”
“So everybody in Al Hillah’s been in meetings all day and there’s no one to tell Krystall the truth about where Chloe is? You should have given her some kind of a time frame. Doesn’t she assume we’d like to know before the execution?”
“It’s not like she works for us, Buck. She’s been a godsend.”
“Interesting thing to say about someone bearing the mark of the beast.”
Mac dropped off Zeke in Petra at about two in the afternoon. Abdullah had already readied the bigger plane for Mac and then took charge of getting Zeke settled. “I plan to get in and get out of that apartment as fast as I can,” Mac said. “Then I’m picking up Weser and his clan and getting back here. I’d like to get all that done before the GCNN goes on the air with Chloe. I won’t watch ’em kill her, but I want to see what leads up to it anyway.”
In pervasive darkness, Chloe had no idea of the passage of time. Occasionally she pressed her ear against the steel door to listen for activity in the solitary unit. So far, nothing.
She thought waiting for one’s execution would be like waiting to see the principal or facing a punishment you knew was coming, only multiplied on a mortal scale. And yet she found herself relatively calm. Her heart broke for Buck, not so much for the prospect of his missing her, but for how wrenching it would be to have to explain this to Kenny.
He was too young, and there would be no explaining it, she knew. But the daily questions, the need of a boy for his mother, the fact that no surrogate could love him like she did . . . all that worked on her.
Chloe felt the presence of God, though she didn’t see the messenger she had the night before. Her muscles ached from the positions she found herself in for prayer and then just trying to get comfortable. Hunger was a distraction she succeeded in pushing from her mind. Soon, she told herself, she would be dining at the banquet table of the King of kings.
Most gratifying was that she had fewer doubts and more assurance as the hours passed. She had put all her eggs in this basket, she had always liked to say. If she was wrong, she was wrong. If it was all a big story, she had bought it in its entirety. But for her the days of questioning and misgivings were gone. Chloe had seen too much, experienced too much. She had been shown, like everyone else on the planet, that God was real, he was in control, he was the archenemy of Antichrist, and in the end God would win.
Early on in her spiritual walk, Chloe had entertained a smugness, particularly when people berated or derided her for her beliefs. She was too polite to gloat, but she couldn’t deny some private satisfaction in knowing that one day she would be proved right.
But that attitude too had mercifully been taken from her. The more she learned and the more she knew and the more she saw examples of other believers with true compassion for the predicaments of lost people, the more Chloe matured in her faith. That was manifest in a sorrow over people’s souls, a desperation that they see the truth and turn to Christ before it was too late.
She didn’t even know what to do with her feelings of love and concern and sympathy for people who had already taken Carpathia’s mark and were condemned for eternity. They were beyond help and hope, and yet still she grieved for them. Flashes of humanity in Florence, in Nigel, in Jesse, in Jock . . . what did those mean? She couldn’t expect unbelievers to live like believers, and so she was left without the option to judge them—only to love them. Yet it was hopeless now.
While Chloe couldn’t understand how there could still be uncommitted people in the world, she knew there were. Those were the ones she would try to reach with whatever freedom God made the GC give her to make a last comment. How someone could see all that had gone on during the last six years and not realize that the only options were God or Satan—or worse, could know the options and yet choose Satan—she could not fathom.
But no doubt this was true. Ming had told her of Muslims who were anti-Carpathia because they were so devout in their own faith. Some practicing Jews who did not believe in Jesus as Messiah also rejected Carpathia as god of this world. George knew of militia types who refused to give allegiance to a dictator yet had not trusted Christ for their salvation either.
Was it possible, after all this time, that there were still spiritually uncommitted people who simply hadn’t chosen yet? Chloe couldn’t imagine, but she knew it had to be true. Some simply chose to pursue their own goals, their own lusts.
Chloe wondered about the others in Stateville who would die that morning. Many would be bearers of Carpathia’s mark, but surely many would not. Would she, as the prize arrest, be last on the docket?
“Clarity, Lord,” she said. “That’s all I ask for. You have already promised grace and strength. Just let my mind work better than it should under the circumstances.”
Mac dug through his luggage and found his wino outfit. No one cared to look for the mark of Carpathia under the stocking cap of a smelly man down on his luck. It had become the only ensemble Mac dared go out in during the day. He found his scooter where he had left it in the underbrush near the airstrip and rode to the outskirts of Al Basrah, chaining it securely before staggering into town.
Mac was greeted only by real drunks. He acted as if he was just wandering, but he was on a clear route. And when he got to within a block of his and Albie’s place, he ducked into an alley and found himself alone. He jogged the rest of the way and started up the stairs when he heard voices. Mac stopped and sat on the landing at the top of the stairs. Two men stood in front of his and Albie’s dingy rooms.
“You can’t be in here, old man!” one of them shouted. “Get out.”
Mac mumbled and let his head fall back, snoring.
The men laughed. “Anyway,” one said quietly, “I’m guessing he’ll come after dark. Double-M wants him alive.”
Mac recognized the nickname.
“I got two guys who can watch the entrance starting about an hour before sundown. You’re sure he wouldn’t come earlier?”
“He’s got no mark, man! Who would risk that?”
When the men moved on and Mac was sure the way was clear, he sprang to his feet and unlocked his door. The place was empty. Not a lick of furniture. None of their stuff. Now it just sat as a trap for him to return to.
Mac bounded down the stairs and ran back to his scooter, sped to the airstrip, and headed for New Babylon. He had arranged with Otto that he bring his people to the New Babylon airstrip. “Better to load up where no one can see us,” he said.
The thirty or so men and women in Otto’s charge tried individually to thank Mac, but he just smiled and kept moving them into the plane. He wasn’t going to feel at ease again until he was in Petra. Then, with a new identity courtesy of Zeke, he’d be ready for any caper Rayford could think of.
Otto was bouncing on the balls of his feet at the back of the crowd. “Once you’re on,” Mac said, “we’re off.”
“Mac, we can’t go yet.”
“Why? What now?”
“She’s dead.”
“Who?”
“Krystall.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Go see for yourself. After I was here this morning, I went back to our underground place and helped get everybody ready to meet you. When we got here, I told them to wait for you and that you would be the only person who could see enough to land. I went to thank Krystall, and that’s when I found her.”
“How do you know she’s dead?”
“I’m not a doctor, sir, but there was a stench like someone had tossed something in there. She was on the floor with the phone buzzing. I let it lie. I checked her pulse. Come see for yourself.”
“Mr. Weser, we don’t have time. If she’s dead, she’s dead, and I’m sorry. And Rayford getting her mixed up in all this may have caused it. But there’s nothing I can do for her, and we might jeopardize this mission if you and I go running off with all your people waiting on the plane.”
“You think they were onto her? Sent somebody to kill her?”
“I don’t know how they would do that if they couldn’t see.”
“I was thinking maybe they had someone who knew the palace come back and feel his way up there, make sure she was there by talking to her, and then toss poison gas or something in there.”
“Could be. That explains why Rayford never heard from her. Did you let him know?”
“I should have, shouldn’t I? I didn’t know what to do. I was so upset.”
“Get aboard. I’ll call Rayford.”
Buck looked on as Rayford took a call from Mac and covered his eyes with a hand. “What is it?” Buck said.
Rayford held up a finger to tell Buck to wait, and his knees buckled.
“What? Is Chloe already gone?”
“No, Buck,” Rayford said, on his knees in the grass. “But she might as well be.” He told him the news.
Buck sat and pulled his knees to his chest. “I can’t believe I’m stuck here in the middle of nowhere, waiting for my wife to die, not even knowing where she is.”
Rayford looked ashen. “We should get started for Petra.”
“But what if someone—”
“No one who knows is going to tell us, Buck. It’s time to give it up.”
“Give up, you mean.”
“Yes, Buck,” Rayford said, standing, emotion in his voice. “I have given up. She’s in God’s hands now. If he chooses to spare her somehow, he’s apparently decided to do it without our help.”
As Rayford boarded, Buck stood and spread his palms on the fuselage of the aircraft, his head hanging. “Chloe,” he rasped, “wherever you are, I love you.”
After a long night of praying, Chloe actually drifted off. She was awakened, she wasn’t sure how long later, by the unmistakable thwock-thwock-thwock of helicopter blades. More than one chopper. Maybe as many as three. For an instant she allowed herself to wonder if her deliverance had come.
Deep inside she knew her husband and her father, and perhaps many in the Trib Force, would work to free her until the end. But she also knew that without a miracle there was no way they could know where she was. That had been the whole point of her transfer.
Had they somehow found out? She never ceased to be amazed at the resources available to so many of her compatriots. Should she prepare to flee in the event they did break in and look for her? Did they know more than where she was? Did they know the architecture and layout of the prison, where solitary was, somehow which cell she might be in? And how many were there? Could they overpower the GC?
Her questions were answered in an instant when her friend reappeared and the darkness of her cell was turned to noonday.
“May I know your name?” she said.
“You may call me Caleb.”
“I am not to be rescued today, am I, Caleb?”
“You will be delivered, but not in the manner you mean.”
“Delivered?”
“Today you will be with Christ in paradise.”
That drove Chloe to her knees. “I can’t wait,” she said. “There are so many here I will miss desperately, but not much else. How I long to be with Jesus!”
Besides the choppers, Chloe heard only the loudest noises from outside and none from inside. Vehicles. Metallic hammering. Shouts. Construction of some sort. In spite of herself, she began to grow nervous. “I want to be the picture of a child of God,” she said, trying to control her emotions.
“God will keep you in perfect peace if your mind is stayed on him.”
“Thank you, Caleb. But suddenly I feel so fragile.”
Finally Chloe heard sounds from inside solitary. A rap on the steel door, the smaller door sliding open. Jock’s face appeared. “How we doing this morning, missy? Bathroom break.”
“Give me a minute, please.”
“Oh, tough girl.”
She looked desperately to Caleb.
“‘Peace I leave with you,’ says your Lord Christ,” he said. “‘My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’”
Chloe knocked on the steel door. “I’m ready,” she said.
A guard opened the door. When Chloe emerged, she found Jock in his dress blues, gold buttons, the whole bit. She also faced a woman wearing a GCNN blazer and carrying a leather bag. “My, my,” the woman said. “That won’t do. Let me know when I can join you in the bathroom. And, Jock, get her a clean jumpsuit.”
“Dressing me for the kill?” Chloe said.
“All pageantry, my dear,” the woman said. “Justice will be served, but it will be clear you were not mistreated.”
“I see,” Chloe said, as the woman followed her. “Snatched from my family, starved, drugged, flown halfway across the country, injected with truth serum, and held in solitary confinement overnight is your idea of fair treatment?”
“Hey, I’m just the makeup artist. Call for me when you’re ready.”
“For what?”
“I’ll fix your hair, make you up a little.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Oh, I have to.”
“You don’t have a choice?” Chloe said.
“If you were presentable, maybe, but look at you.”
“Surely I have a choice. I ought to be able to look however I want.”
“You’d think. But no.”
Chloe caught a glimpse of herself on the way past the mirror. She did look awful. Her face was greasy and smudged. Her hair a tangle. Bizarre. When was the last time someone fixed me up? And here it was, free, when her appearance was the last thing on her mind.
“Don’t dawdle,” the woman called out. “We’re on a TV schedule, you know.”
Chloe shook her head. TV people. They expected even the condemned to play team ball.
“I’m putting a fresh jumpsuit on the sink! Tell me when you’ve changed!”
Chloe changed but said nothing. When she came out, the woman said, “You were going to tell me when you were ready.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Let’s go back in there so I can use the mirror.”
“Feel free. I don’t need it.”
“Come on! I have to get you ready.”
“I’m ready.”
“Wait, stop! Hold still.”
Chloe looked the woman full in the face. “Do you not see the absurdity of this? It’s not bad enough that I’m to be put to death? You have to make a spectacle of it?”
“I have a job and I’m going to do it.”
“Then you’re going to do it right here and right now.”
The woman bent to set her bag on the floor and rose with a comb and brush. She worked vigorously on Chloe’s hair. Then she used a wetnap to wash Chloe’s face and dabbed rouge on her cheeks. When she produced mascara, Chloe said, “No. Now that’s it. No mascara, no lipstick. We’re done.”
“You know, you’re really quite an attractive girl.”
Chloe arched an eyebrow. “Well, thank you so much. When I look back on this, that’s going to be the highlight of my morning.” What a comforting thought. I have a chance at having the best-looking head in the Dumpster.
When Chloe was delivered back to Jock, he said, “Do I need to cuff you, restrain you?”
“No.”
“That’s my girl.”
She gave him a look.
“Nothing personal,” he said. “I’m just doing what I have to do.”
“Then make sure I get a few last words.”
“If it was up to me—”
She spun and faced him. “It is up to you, Jock, and you know it. Anybody who could tell you what to do is thousands of miles away. Take responsibility once, would you? Make a decision here. Announce that I’m going to speak and then let me. In the end I’m gone, and you’re headed for your promotion. What’s the harm?”
Jock avoided her gaze. He led her up the stairs and into the morning sun. She shielded her eyes. Not only was the Carpathia-run press out in full force, but stands had been set up and apparently the public invited. Chloe wondered what all the noise was about until she realized the crowd apparently recognized she was the main attraction and was applauding and cheering.
The other prisoners, mostly men, were already in their respective rows, waiting behind the tables. Some bounced nervously. Others seemed to hyperventilate. Officials sat at each table, one with a mark applicator. What was the point? At this stage, even the ones who took the mark still endured the blade. Did they think the mark gave them some sort of an advantage in whatever afterlife Carpathia offered?
Cross-legged on the ground around each guillotine sat prisoners in dark denim. These, Chloe realized, were the lifers Jock described as collectors. They would dispose of the remains. They looked excited, smiling, joshing with each other.
Jock led her to the back of the line at the middle table. “Well, I guess this is it,” he said, and to Chloe he sounded apologetic. “You can still—”
“We should have made it a bet yesterday,” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“You were sure I would be making last-minute pleas about now.”
“You win that one,” he said. “You’re a strange woman.”
Chloe was aware of lights on high poles, scaffolding that supported cameras and cameramen, technicians wearing headphones running here and there, people checking their watches. In line at the table to her right, a middle-aged man bearing Carpathia’s mark—which meant he had been sentenced for some other capital crime—had fallen to his knees, shuddering and sobbing. He grasped the pant legs of the man in front of him, who laid a tentative hand on his shoulder and looked ill at ease.
An older woman, yet another line beyond, stood with her face buried in her hands, swaying. Praying, Chloe assumed. In every line were Jews, identified with stenciled Stars of David or wearing self-made yarmulkes, some made of scraps of cloth, some of cardboard. The people were wasted, scarred, having been starved, beaten, sunburned.
Chloe knew enough from Buck’s research and the inside stuff from David Hassid and Chang to know that Carpathia wanted these to be tortured to within an inch of their lives but not allowed to die before their public beheadings.
Chloe had been as alarmed as anyone when television had gone from bad to worse and from worse to unconscionable. The worst possible perversions were available on certain channels twenty-four hours a day, and literally nothing was limited. But when studies showed that by far the most-watched television shows every day of the week were the public executions, she knew there had been one more far corner for society to turn after all, and it had turned.
The bloodlust was apparently insatiable. It had come to the point where the most popular of the live-execution shows were those that lasted an hour and included slow-motion replays of the most gruesome deaths. When guillotines malfunctioned and blades stuck, victims were left mortally wounded and screaming but not dead. . . . This was what the public wanted to see, and the more the better.
Each execution was preceded by a rehearsal of the misdeeds of the recalcitrant. The more sordid the past, the more satisfying the justice, the logic went. Chloe knew what kinds of stories circulated about her. She could only imagine what was said about the truly guilty.
Chloe watched Jock make his way back toward the stands and a single microphone. What appeared to be a stage manager quieted the crowd, waited for a cue, then signaled them to applaud while he read from a script, introducing Jock Ashmore. He called him one of the Global Community’s crack lead investigators, single-handedly responsible for the capture and arrest of Chloe Steele Williams, the highest level anti-Carpathian terrorist apprehended to date. The people cheered.
“Thank you,” Jock began. “We have thirty-six executions to carry out for you today—twenty-one for murder, ten for refusing to take the mark of loyalty, four for miscellaneous crimes against the state, and one for all those charges and many, many more.”
The crowd cheered and shouted and whooped and whistled.
“I am happy to say that though Chloe Steele Williams did not in the end agree to accept the mark of loyalty to our supreme potentate, she did provide us with enough detailed information on her counterparts throughout the world to help us virtually eradicate the Judah-ites outside of Petra and put an end to the black-market co-op.”
The crowd went wild again.
“But more on her when she becomes today’s thirty-sixth patient of Dr. Guillotine.”
When the crowd finally settled, Jock said, “We begin this morning in line 7 with a man who murdered his wife and two infant sons.”
Chloe caught a glimpse of a monitor where the mutilated bodies of the boys were shown in ghastly detail. “God, give me strength,” she said silently. “Keep me focused on you.”
A woman directly in front of her, pale and sickly and with no mark of loyalty, turned suddenly. “Are you Williams?” she said.
Chloe nodded.
“I don’t want to die, and I don’t know what to do!”
Thank you, Lord. “If you know who I am,” Chloe said, “you know what I stand for.”
“Yes.”
“Your only hope is to put your faith in Christ. Admit you’re a sinner, separated from God. You can’t save yourself. Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so if you believe that, tell God and ask him to save you by the blood of Christ.”
“I will still die?”
“You will die, but you will be with God.”
The woman fell to her knees and folded her hands, crying out to God. A guard pointed to a collector and then to the woman, and the man jumped up and ran toward her. Just as it appeared he was about to bowl her over, Chloe lowered her shoulder and sprang toward him.
Her elbow caught him flush in the mouth and snapped his head back. He flopped in the dirt, screaming and spitting teeth and blood. The woman continued to pray. Finally she stood. The man made a move toward the woman again, but Chloe merely pointed at him and he skulked away.
“I prayed,” the woman said, “but I am still scared. How do I know it worked?”
“Let me have a look at you,” Chloe said, and she saw the mark of the believer on her forehead. “What do you see on my forehead, ma’am?” Chloe said.
“A mark, as if in 3-D.” She reached to touch it.
“I see the same on you,” Chloe said. “Only the children of God are sealed with this mark. No matter what happens to you today, you belong to God.”
The crowed roared as collectors dragged the first man to the guillotine by his hair. He dug in his heels; he kicked and screamed. He let his legs go limp and had to be carried into position. The man squirmed and fought so much that extra collectors were called in to hold him down. When the executioner made sure everyone’s extremities were clear, he pulled the cord and the great blade fell.
The rusty thing, blackened by blood, flipped at an angle just before it bit into the victim’s neck. Chloe recoiled as it sliced only halfway into the man, causing him to lurch and pull back, flailing at the collectors who tried to hold him.
He somehow broke free and spun and staggered, flinging blood and gore. The collectors ducked and laughed and made sport of him as the executioner quickly banged at the blade, straightened it, and raised it again.
Two collectors grabbed the man and pushed him headlong into position again, whereupon the cord was pulled yet again and the job done right this time. The reaction of the crowd showed they thought it was the perfect way to start the day.
“Next,” Jock said, “we begin with the first of ten in a row who refused to take the mark, minus our guest of honor, of course, as we save the best till last.”
But before he could say anything else, Caleb appeared in all his brightness in the middle of the courtyard, between Chloe and Jock. He appeared fifteen or sixteen feet tall in raiment so white that when Chloe turned to see the crowd’s reaction, it was clear it hurt people’s eyes.
They shrieked and froze. Chloe saw Jock turn to see what scared them so. He fell, holding the microphone, and stared, seemingly unable to move.
When Caleb spoke, the ground shook and a wind blew dust about. Chloe was sure everyone wanted to flee, but they could not.
“I come in the name of the Most High God,” he began. “Hearken unto my voice and hear my words. Ignore me at your peril. ‘Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!’
“For He satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness. You who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death are bound in affliction because you rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High.
“Cry out to the Lord in your trouble, and he will save you out of your distress. He will bring you out of darkness and the shadow of death and break your chains in pieces.
“Thus says the Son of the Most High God: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.’
“But woe to you who do not heed my warning this day. Thus says the Lord: ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
“‘And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.’”