Harold W. Smith had a headache. He now knew the intimate details of everyone who worked at the headquarters for Billy Walker’s Evangelical Outreach Ministries. Their personnel files, their credit reports, and their online purchases were all organized and collated within the CURE computer banks, and none revealed anything remotely incriminating. From the front receptionist to the chief financial officer, all had impeccable records. Perhaps Walker knew he’d be scrutinized forever after the incident with the reporter from The Clarion, and extended that caution to his hiring practices?
Most frustrating was the lack of any electronic calendar entry that would show who the ya Homaar representative went to see. Not that it was all that surprising. Meeting with someone like Abdel Kassab, a member of a terrorist organization, is something one would want to keep out of any potential paper trail.
The reporter’s death kept nagging at him. Smith’s brought up the file on Jake Riser once more, looking over the crime photos and the digital evidence locker. His attention again was drawn to the numbers scrawled with the dead man’s blood. 1:49. What did it mean, though? He’d already ruled out time of death, as it was determined that the mugging/murder had happened later than that, and it didn’t make sense that the dying man’s last message was one intended just to help the M.E. in his analysis.
It occurred to him that perhaps the numbers were a scriptural reference. He’d been investigating a ministerial organization, after all; it would make sense. With a few taps of the keyboard, Smith brought up displays of all the biblical references with chapter one and verse forty-nine. He was surprised there were so few.
If they meant anything at all, Smith couldn’t see it, but at this point he couldn’t rule anything out. Perhaps they might mean something to someone else. He didn’t think the Numbers reference was important (“Only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel”), nor the scriptures from I Kings (“And all the guests that were with Adonijah were afraid, and rose up, and went every man his way”) or I Chronicles (“And when Shaul was dead, Baalhanan the son of Achbor reigned in his stead”).
So much for the Old Testament. The New Testament had a few that looked more promisingly laudatory, however. Luke offered “For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name,” while John topped that with “Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” Either one might sound good to shout while crashing a plane into a building or a mountain, but they were a bit wordy to be a motto. And neither of them carried anything that Smith could determine to resemble anything like a clue.
Smitty put the system to work pulling up complete histories of both Jacob Riser and Billy Walker. Perhaps they’d crossed paths sometime between the lawsuit and Riser’s death.
Riser’s history was short. After the Chicago lawsuit, he’d popped up in California several months later. This was a few years before Walker set up his operation, so it wasn’t an issue of stalking. Riser had taken on a position with a tabloid, writing under an assumed name and largely writing fictional news pieces. His work had come a long way down. From his exposé on the Cradle Robber serial killer, his work had devolved into stories about apocalyptic signs found in tacos, invisible men who could walk through walls, and a hidden tribe of anthropomorphic tiger-people living in Middlesex Fells—hackery no sane person would ever find credible. None of his articles mentioned Walker in any capacity, although it was clear Riser had never given up on that story.
Walker’s own history was more copious. After the money began pouring in, Walker lived up to the merciful and forgiving image the country saw. He did more than just manage a ministry; he put his money to work creating American jobs. With friends he made in Congress, he was able to easily get permits for oil drilling operations around the country, employing hundreds of Americans. Despite the potential windfalls he stood to reap, Walker had recently sold off the operation to an outfit from Texas, and had plowed his money into two more job-creating ventures: strip mining and urban renewal. The unions loved him, as he created employment for miners and construction workers. The digital history included two headlines about derelict buildings that had been scheduled for demolition that prior week, urging viewers to tune in to webcam broadcasts so they could watch these eyesores tumble to the ground.
The announced time of one of the demolitions struck Smith curiously. Why did that date and time sound familiar to him? Then he knew where he’d seen it, and brought up the image of the printed spreadsheet Riser’s body had covered. One of the dates and times on the list corresponded exactly with that demolition. Smith quickly checked the other. It didn’t show on Riser’s list—until Smith allowed for the time zone difference. Sure enough, it was on the list.
Why would Riser be carrying a list of construction kickoffs? And why would he be killed over them? He cross-checked the rest of the times with Walker’s public schedule of renovations, but nothing matched. Smith didn’t believe the alignment of the two times were coincidental, so what did the other ones on the list signify? His fingers flew over the keyboard, and he brought up the timetables for the mining operations, including planned detonations. Two of those detonations, adjusted for time zones, fit neatly into Riser’s list. But why?
There was something else about the list, something he hadn’t noticed before, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
The phone rang—the special phone—and Smith’s headache grew worse.
“We need to have a discussion about these unscheduled calls,” Smith said into the phone without salutation.
“Smitty, I need help!”
Smith felt his heart skip a beat. Remo was the one Smith went to when he needed help. Whenever Remo needed help from him, things had gotten just about as bad as they could.
“Smitty! I need you to tell this doctor not to administer any drugs to Chiun,” Remo insisted. “This nut’s going to kill him.”
Smith wondered for a half a second why Chiun wasn’t the one killing the nut. “I need more information.”
“Later, just stop him.”
Smith heard the phone being passed over, and a European voice came on the line.
“Is this Doctor Harold Smith?” the voice asked questioningly.
“It is,” Smith answered. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Is Mr. Parks your patient?”
Smith cleared his throat. “I see to his care, yes.”
“Dr. Smith, Mr. Parks was brought to us in a comatose condition. His vitals are alarmingly low, his breathing is shallow, his heartbeat is barely detectable,” said the man across the ocean. “All I’m trying to do is give him some basic antibiotics to stave off infections, plus nutrients to prevent malnutrition. His friend, this maniac, continues to prevent me from doing my job.”
“Smitty, I swear to God, I’ll break his arms off,” Remo yelled in the background.
“Who am I speaking with?” Smith asked.
“Doctor Tavis Munro, with Island Medical Centre,” he answered. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. It’s just that I’m a bit flustered at all this.”
“I understand your frustration, Dr. Munro,” Smith said. “Dr. Munro, Mr. Parks has a very delicate condition. There are very few medications he can take that won’t end up killing him.”
Munro paused. “What sort of condition?”
“I’ll send over his paperwork,” Smith said. “In the meantime, administer nothing but hydration.”
The other doctor sighed. “I’ll do that for now, but I need to see his history as soon as possible.”
“Understood,” Smith said. “Please put the young man back on the phone before you begin.”
Before Remo could start in, Smith assured him nothing more than basic saline solution would be given to Chiun.
“And you think this happened to Chiun because of earthquakes?” Smith asked after Remo explained how he had found Chiun comatose before his television set.
“I’m certain Chiun believed it,” Remo said. “And I’ve got to tell you, Smitty, I’m starting to feel like the third time around the tilt-a-whirl myself. What the hell is going on?”
Smith pursed his lips, his face pinching into a look of constipation. “I don’t know,” Smith said. “But we’ll find out.”
Smith hung up the phone and turned back to the computer. Much as Remo’s situation concerned him, there was precious little CURE could do to prevent natural disasters, even if they were occurring in more frequent intervals.
Intervals! Smith cursed himself for having missed the obvious—simple mathematics. He subtracted one time from the next, and had his answer. Just to be certain, he went down the entire list. Without fail, adjusting each date and time into the same time zone, the answer came up the same. Each event was happening at a consistent interval.
Exactly one hour and forty-nine minutes apart.
But what did it mean? Smith knew he’d stumbled upon an important piece of a puzzle, but he still didn’t have the picture he was supposed to construct. He went back to the CURE main screen, staring intently into the construct, that floating digital model of a molecule, as if the answer were somewhere to be gleaned from the floating bits and bytes.
Sprouting from the ya Homaar cluster like buds on a tree, two more notices of earthquakes appeared. Smith shook his head. It was just a little bit ago he had moved yet another report about an earthquake into the trash. Could it be that he’d been wrong all along, that the CURE system was actually reporting a valid threat?
He opened the wastebasket and restored the earthquake stories to the data mine. The visible results were dramatic. No longer were there a cluster of various sized threats interconnected on a three-dimensional floating wireframe. Now there was only one threat, one pulsating sphere, dominating the entirety of the screen. The computer had indeed identified a threat, and had even assigned a name to who was behind it. Unfortunately, that man had been dead for almost a hundred years.