by Theo Cage
Within seconds the street was full of anxious people circling the scene like nervous ants. At the center, Chapertah lay in the impression he had made in the car roof, his arms and his head at impossible angles.
Kam had felt his knees give out, and for a second feared he might tumble out into the street as well. He hobbled back to the bed and picked up the desk phone. There was a tinny double click, then a friendly voice had answered. He almost expected something else. Somehow he was able to explain to the astonished desk clerk what had happened.
Exactly seven minutes later, two police officers arrived. Kam sat on the bed, unable to move, that picture still playing over and over again. The Internet? Chapertah in all his brilliance had somehow drawn the insane conclusion that the Internet was the devil’s invention. Maybe it was all chemical.
He explained as well as he could to the two uniformed officers, then to a plain clothed detective, why he was in the suite. He had a sudden chilling realization that they would automatically suspect he was involved; that they thought he might have pushed the man. They asked questions about how they knew each other, where they met. Somehow it didn't make sense that Chapertah would call on a stranger to witness a suicide.
Kam could see that there was some doubt in the detectives eyes. Kam couldn't answer that question. Chapertah had said that the answer lay in History. He didn't think the police would buy that. They couldn't hold him, they said, disappointment in their voices. Just stay close to home. We may need a further statement.
Kam pulled his cell from his inside jacket pocket and selected his home number. Tamara answered from the den. "Tamara, Chapertah killed himself". He heard her suck in her breath. She could have asked a dozen different questions then, but the first thing she wanted to know was how he was. Was he all right? He must have sounded terrible. "I'm still shaking. Why in God's name did he pick me as his witness?"
"It had to be a cry for help, Kam. Maybe he thought you could save him, poor man."
"A lot of good I did him." They were both silent for a few seconds, the waste of this mans' death weighing on their thoughts. "He was almost delirious. He was raving about Revelations again. I didn't know what to tell him."
"I read some of it," Tamara said, almost distantly. Kam knew her moods well - she was trying to put something together, trying to discern the pattern. Kam didn't respond, some new sense of dread flooding in.
"Did he say what his theory was?" she asked.
"You mean, the Information Highway being Satan's road or some such garbage?" Kam couldn't believe he was even willing to repeat that nonsense. But he couldn't erase from his memory the look of fear the man had etched into his face. What was scaring him so badly?
She had the document in her hand – he could hear the pages rustling over the phone line. She had been reading it when he called. "It was co-written with a number of other professors, but this Kaufmann from Stanford seems to be leading the charge. Maybe he would know something."
"Tamara, I'm not staying tonight. I'm coming home, but I have that doctor’s appointment in two hours so I’m stuck here. Do me a favor. Kaufmann's email address is on the front page of Chapertah's manuscript. Please write him and get a phone number so that I can call him. I'm not going to get this out of my head until I understand why he was so upset. If you don’t get a reply, maybe you can track down contact information on the Internet."
:
Tamara hung up the phone and walked over to their computer, the manuscript still in her hand. It seemed heavier now, more significant in the light of Indra's death.
The message she sent to Dr. Kaufmann, through his assistant, was as straightforward as he could make it without revealing too much about the madness of the past hours.
I am a friend of Dr. Chapertah's. He has left me a document, which he has indicated you may be willing to help me with. Anxious to hear from you. Please send a number I can contact you at immediately.
She sent the e-mail as "Private", although she couldn't imagine how confidential the message could stay considering the labyrinth of systems it would wind through to get to its final destination. Kaufmann obviously stayed close to his computer. He answered four minutes later under his own address.
I will need Chapertah's permission to discuss this matter with you. Awaiting his reply.
He had copied Indra on the message. Tamara was shocked by the response. If Kaufmann contacted Chapertah's family, he may be connecting before the police were able to contact next of kin. She wanted him to understand, but she didn't want to expose Chapertah's family to a debriefing at a time like this. She also didn't feel she had the luxury of waiting until it was public knowledge.
Chapertah has sadly committed suicide. Please leave his family out of this for now. We need to talk. Could you give me your voice phone number?
His reply came back, the terseness of it radiating from the words on the screen.
I have taken the liberty of checking your personal records. Ronald Sylvan of Boston University speaks quite highly of both you and Professor Koblaski.
Due to his personal recommendation only, I have agreed to reply to your scandalous assertion about Indra. I don't know where you get your information, but there is certainly no one here who has heard any negative news. His wife is unavailable, but I have left a message for Chapertah at his hotel, where they insist that there is nothing to be concerned about. The manager confirmed for me that Indra was still checked in for several days, and that he would personally give him my message.
Lines of worry had formed at the edges of her mouth. She picked up the phone and called Kam's cell again.
"Kam, I just got a message from this Kaufmann fellow. He insists that Chapertah is fine. Says he called the Royal York."
Kam started to protest, but she cut him off. "Either the Hotel is confused or . . . who's crazy here, Kam? Kaufmann? Chapertah? Or us?"
"You're beginning to doubt me?"
"No."
"Yes you are – I heard it. I can hardly blame you. I'm beginning to doubt myself."
"How do you explain Kaufmann?" asked Tamara
"He's putting me on. Or Chapertah was right."
"About Revelations?"
"About the phone." She cocked her head. "Kaufmann would have phoned the hotel and asked for the manager. Only problem is, what if he didn't talk to the manager? Maybe he didn't even get through to the hotel and doesn't know it."
Kam felt a sliver of cold run through him. He had no answer so Tamara continued. "If this whole unfortunate situation was over a couple of million dollars or a new scientific breakthrough or even a miracle wrinkle cream, I could understand. But what could this be over? Who would go to all this trouble? Who would try to drive a man like Chapertah crazy? And then try to make it sound like it didn't happen?"
Kam scratched his thinning hair. "Maybe you're right? Maybe this whole Revelations business is just a screen for something else. Was Chapertah working on anything with military applications?"
She sighed. "Worm holes."
"Worm holes?"
"Poor Indra spent the last decade of his life searching for worm holes out in the cosmos. The only government application I can think of, would be to use them as places to hide the national debt. Chapertah's research was very theoretical. And very benign."
"That was what they said about cloning.” Tamara failed to see the humor in this comment, so he continued. “That brings us back to the Biblical texts. You really think that was the point?"
"What did he say to you before he died?"
Kam sunk his head. "He was obsessed by his translation. He really thought there was something to it."
"Well, you haven't really explained his theory. Did you read the full text of his translation?"
"I've gone through it a couple of times."
"Well?"
"In a nutshell. Are you ready for this? Chapertah and his egghead posse have a theory that the Satan of the Bible has come back, as predicted, and is presently plotting the destruction of ci
vilization as we know it."
"You're pulling my leg."
"I wish I was, as well as other favored parts of your anatomy."
"Chapertah actually believes that?"
"It gets better."
"Oh really!"
"Well, the Devil of today is a much more dangerous creature than the one of history. In fact, he has taken on the disguise of something else, has become something that we can't recognize until it's too late."
"What?
"The Internet."
Kam had his face in his hands. He was feeling dizzy again. He had been watching news feeds for the past month covering a story called J-Day. J-Day was a wild rumor that hackers all over the planet were conspiring to attack together at noon this coming Monday. Their goal was to shut down commerce globally: Internet shopping sites, game sites, online banks, travel sites, everything Net related.
Hackers, or more precisely, booters – experts on system attacks – were impossible to herd. So most pundits were ignoring the claims, but Kam wasn’t so sure anymore. Could there be a connection with this end-of-days theory?
Kam heard a soft beep in the background. He could hear Tamara clicking on her computer keyboard. “It’s Professor Kaufmann. He sounds spooked, I don’t know why. Now he wants to talk.”
“What’s his number?”
“He has another suggestion. He wants to connect by smart phone on video. He says he has something he needs to show you visually.”
“What could that be?”
“He says that he needs to insure that it’s you he’s actually talking to. I’ll text you his cell phone number.” Kam shook his head. The Internet was the dark road? This didn’t make sense, but he wanted to talk to Kaufmann, even if he was a nut.
Kam knew he had to end the call and speak to Kaufmann, but he was reluctant to let Tamara go. Something had spooked him. “You know, Tamara, sometimes I wish I had never met some of your crazy friends.”
Tamara sighed unhappily. “I’ve said this before, Kam. Be very careful what you wish. Sometimes you get what you ask for.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Gideon finished his dinner at ‘the farmhouse’, he liked to walk the grounds of Parkhurst. Today, like many days, he glowed with satisfaction. His community hummed like a well-balanced top.
From his headquarters at the southern end of the property, he typically headed north first, pausing to chat with women and children clustered around the community center. This was a gigantic white steel building housing kitchens and the dining areas for the thousands of residents as well as sleeping quarters. Men were rarely seen here except during a communal dinner each night at seven.
It was Gideon’s firm rule that the men were to work in the fields to the north during the day as well as participate in training exercises and lectures in the late afternoon. After dinner, the men were permitted a few hours with wives and children, and then sent back to their barracks at night. Conjugal visits could only occur in designated areas of the community center before ten. At that time, a bell was rung, which many called the “fire alarm”, and designated group leaders then marched everyone back to their proper and safe corners.
Gideon had been an active student of human behavior his entire life. He firmly believed that the greatest threat to humans was something scientists called emergent behavior. Weather was an example, where very small changes in normal conditions could create monstrous chaos somewhere else in the system. Evil for Gideon wasn’t about hate or greed; it was lack of control. He needed to control everything around him and Parkhurst was a perfect example of a scientifically controlled environment. His world organization was about controlling thousands of individuals with absolute precision. And when he needed these people to follow through on his plans, they rarely had a choice.
After speaking to several of the younger women in the community center and fixing their names in his exceptional memory, he marched towards the men’s barracks, his head high. He thought of how the spreading and crippling chaos at several large corporations was emerging from a few simple incursions his team had made, basic modification to their systems. That chaos created uncertainty, and soon, unbridled panic. His control over the news media, based on billions spent on advertising campaigns and expensive lobbyists insured that nothing much was being mentioned yet in the popular press. Some of the news blogs, which were more difficult to control, were picking up on how unreliable computer systems were becoming across government departments, but nothing that could be linked back to Parkhurst yet. And very soon it wouldn’t matter.
The march down the gravel road to the men’s barracks was long and dry, a daily trek that took about thirty minutes.
Then he passed through a guardhouse, nodding at the soldiers, past the tall cement walls that enclosed the living areas.
Soon he was walking past perfectly irrigated fields of corn and red Durham wheat, all weeded and tilled by hand. He waved to a team of workers preparing one large field that lay fallow this year. They were laying down cow manure from the milk barns and mixing it into the soil, according to his precise instructions. He smiled, knowing that as millions would soon be starving in surrounding counties, his soldiers would be well fed from their crops and stores. They would thank him with their loyalty. Nothing would be able to stop them.
In the distance he glimpsed the shooting ranges and the mortar testing area. Gideon thought back to 1994 when one of his company's bought Parkhurst. He struggled for months over the issue of how to defend his new acquisition. He would be centralizing his operations here, closing down and selling training centers and campgrounds, factories and warehouses all across the country and moving in hundreds of families. This would attract a lot of attention from his enemies, the FBI, the BATF and powerful commercial interests his father used to refer to as ZOG.
It wasn't until he was almost twenty that Gideon learned that ZOG stood for Zionists Overtaking the Globe – a group that his family had both feared and hated for decades. ZOG was never as direct as the FBI or the local State Troopers. Because they controlled the media, they might start with a campaign to bend public sympathy away from the Parkhurst commune and militia – make them all look like child and wife-abusers or religeous fanatics. Then the local police would have to act on a tip or a complaint and start snooping around. An impromptu search would be dangerous considering the stockpile of weapons that was hidden here. That was how Waco exploded.
From down the road, Gideon heard his name being called. He turned to see a noisy quad headed in his direction. It was one of his private security men, whose job it was to stay in the distance until needed. He was holding up a cell phone. It must be an important call to risk disturbing Gideon like this on his daily rounds.
The young man handed the phone to the leaser, seeing the disdain in the older man’s eyes. Gideon abhorred technology, including the noisy gas-burning buggy that broke the silence of the afternoon and sent up a cloud of dust around them. He took the phone and saw immediately who it was on the display screen. He waved the quad away so he could talk in private.
The call must be important. It was one of the key disciples he had deployed worldwide to help run his organization
In order to protect Parkhurst, Gideon had brought in more than 1,000 militiamen and a high-tech security system. But he also needed powerful friends in high places outside of the commune to further his ambitions. His disciples were the key to the first guard program – very generous and well-placed bribes to senior government officials, local councilmen and police officials seeded Gideon’s’ worldwide operation. Never a Jew or a black man though, and that was tough in many jurisdictions. Those people were rewarded with threats and incriminating evidence. Or sometimes simply dispatched by his elite team of twelve.
The Twelve disciples were his most trusted operatives. And they had proven countless times that their lives were on the line for service to the head of the Church of Patmos.
Gideon placed the phone carefully to his ear.
“Th
e worm is in,” the disciple said pointedly, without introduction. The disciple knew the old man was holding the phone to his ear as if it were an insect about to bite. The ‘worm’ was a full-out virus attack they had begun against the Feds that week to keep the Feds off balance. The virus would attack their communications systems and their data centers. Gideon wanted them present at Parkhurst on the big day, for PR reasons, but not fully awake. Despite his discomfort, Gideon appreciated his disciple’s abbreviation. Gideon was always concerned with federal surveillance of his phones and Parkhurst and so insisted on this code speak.
Gideon looked up at a cloudless blue sky. “I trust my favorite agency is grinding its teeth on the fallout?”
“All the incursions have had their effect. The shop is in panic mode. They just won’t admit to it.”
Gideon nodded his head, pleased. “Who do they suspect?”
“No one has any solid theory yet, but they are whispering Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary in the hallways. Some are even thinking China. The paranoia spreads.”
“Good enough.”
There was a pause, a burst of background traffic noise. It made Gideon cringe at the sound – the whine of civilization. The disciple continued, “One of their fishes suspects something.”
Gideon often referred to intruders or accidental witnesses as fish. Something you would grind up for pet food. “And how do you know this?”
“Gideon, as you know, we have insiders where it counts. As you predicted, threat levels have gone up over the last week.”
