Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  The driver looked at Jacob for answers, then continued talking when his passenger remained silent. "It's scary. You know? I've picked up I'll bet 40, maybe more, people tonight along the roads. You know what? Most of 'em say their kids just..." He motioned explosively with his free hand. "Poof! Vanished! Can you imagine seein' your kids just disappear right there in front of your eyes? You got kids?" Jacob nodded negatively.

  "Mine are gone. I mean they're grown up. But the little ones seem to be the ones this thing..." The driver's voice sounded worried for the first time. "You know, I've got grandkids... four of 'em. I've got to get to a phone and see if they're okay. I've been haulin' everybody else around... Guess I better call the old lady. See if she's heard from the kids. You mind if we stop up here at the station?"

  "No... whatever you need to do." Jacob said, thinking, “This was probably a good man who put himself last...probably would be a hero in war. Should say something to comfort the selfless man — offer him encouragement about his wife, his children, his grandkids."

  But his mind turned to the boxes in his lap, to the folded leather pouches in his coat — then ahead, to Hugo Marchek's home in Rockville. He looked to his wrist, then at the driver. "What time is it?"

  The fat man straightened and raised his belly to get the pocket watch from its place in his pants. "6:09."

  It would be light soon, exposing him even more to anyone who might be watching for him. Why, though, should he be concerned? Had not the men who watched the car burn said that both men died in the explosion and fire? They wouldn't be looking for him now, or for the information he carried — the materials he would get a look at once he got into Marchek's home.

  "Here we are. I'm gonna call the house. Can I bring you back a cup?"

  "No, thanks. Hope everything's okay for you."

  "Thanks, Son. I hope so, too."

  He watched the heavy driver shuffle around the corner of the station fingering the UNIVUSCARD he would use in making the call. State Highway 355 looked deserted ahead. A considerable part of the landscape beyond, visible only because the eerie glow, created by the fires resulting from the catastrophe, illuminated the horizon in all directions. It was probably 6:15 by now, not quite time for the sun to begin paling the skies.

  What he would give for just 30 minutes of sleep. Maybe he should have accepted the offer of coffee. His lids grew heavy beyond any heaviness he had felt; his body ached strangely, as if it had lost most of its circulation, like it was intent on falling asleep, even if his brain was ordering it not to. Time to get out of the van, walk around, stretch the body to convince it the brain was still in control, maybe get that cup of coffee.

  He got out of the van after laying aside the two boxes on the seat, then thought better of it and picked them up, before walking toward the service station building, around whose corner the driver had disappeared less than two minutes earlier. He heard the man's voice when he approached the corner and stopped to listen while the driver spoke into the satellite phone. Not a cell, but one for only government usage. Not the public phone attached to the outside of the building.

  "Yeah. It's him. This is the same guy I've been looking at on film and in those pictures we were given to study."

  The voice was different, the accent changed from country drawl to efficient metropolitan inflection; it displayed irritation.

  "Yeah. The guy's name is Zen. Of course, he didn't tell me his name. That's what they told us the guy's name in the dossier was. It's the same guy. He's nervous as a bird about to fly. Find out what they want me to do. Yeah, yeah... I'll hang on."

  Cold fear shot through Jacob's body, drowning the burning need for sleep, filling him with new alertness. He fought his urge to panic, forcing himself to stand his ground, to analyze the overheard words. How could they know where he was so quickly? They couldn't have traced him. A mutant occurrence of fate. He had been picked up by one of their agents! Probably one who was sent out to patrol the roads just in case he did somehow escape the fire.

  Attack the man? Or run? There were no other vehicles nearby. His chances of hitching another ride were not good, and if he were picked up, he ran a high risk of being picked up by yet another of his enemies.

  "Yeah. Gregory here. What you want me to do?" The driver paused for several seconds, listening. "Yeah. I got it. Drive two miles down the highway and pull over like something's wrong with the van. You'll have somebody there to give me a hand with him. Got it."

  Jacob put the boxes on the ground. After several seconds of a frantic search for a weapon, he picked up a two-foot piece of iron pipe lying against the building's concrete foundation. Defensive maneuvering seemed to be allowing him to be drawn deeper into their whirlpool. From this moment forward he would take the offense — beginning now, with his driver friend.

  The solid thud of the pipe against the fat man's head felt good. He regretted, in that instant, only that he used but one hand to deliver the blow. The man groaned, still semi-conscious and Jacob drew the pipe back to strike again. He couldn't do it, conflicting urges battling to dominate his exhausted will. He threw the pipe aside; if there was to be any civilization left after this, he would remain a part of it.

  Killing, even after what they had put him through, even with what he still faced, was repugnant. The pleased way he accepted the explosive horror at Stone Oaks — the almost sensual feeling when the iron pipe contacted the man's skull — he was becoming one of them — like the would-be masters of a world gone mad.

  Karen's pretty face kept him going, sometimes fading into the fatigue-created brain-fog, but always returning to beckon him toward whatever would be the ultimate ending to the nightmare. He left the van along the shoulder of 355, pointed southward toward Washington, then walked back along the outside of the north-bound lane toward Rockville and Hugo Marchek's old stone-façade home.

  Luck was with him, having managed to steal a van, much older than the previous one, whose driver lay in a drunken stupor after apparently having pulled to the side of the highway to sleep it off. The man probably had no idea of what had happened during the course of the past 13 hours, Jacob reflected, guiding the rattling van to a stop. Nor would the drunk know why or how he was deposited here, a block-and-a-half from the late eschatologist's house. From this vantage point, Jacob could safely watch the area for the next hour — giving his antagonists time to check out their suspicions, should they have them, that he would, for some reason, return to Marchek's home. He hoped that the pointing of the other van in the opposite direction along 355 would send them searching elsewhere.

  Two things bothered him: they had pinpointed his location on the grounds across from Stone Oaks, and he had, before knocking the fat man unconscious, been headed in the direction of Rockville. The driver had probably told them by now the direction their quarry had been headed before stopping at the station. Jacob hoped the van had thrown them off the scent, but he would take no chances. He chose to sit here, with the drunk man sleeping it off in the rear of the van, and observe Marchek's block for signs his ploy had failed. An hour should be enough.

  Soon, though, a burning want to know what Marchek had hidden, and the mind-image of Karen in the grasp of the likes of the men who dogged him, combined to make a more persuasive case for leaving the van. His caution made for staying put. The sun was up now, its light muted, however, by a purple-red overcast that permitted only limited view beyond 200 yards. Marchek's old rock home lay, slightly less than that, away from where he walked along the antiquated, badly cracked sidewalk which disappeared into the early mist. His imagination, heightened by his weariness, played tricks. His strained eyes seeing dark objects moving toward him from the fog, then, in the next instant, seeing nothing but the barely visible black trunks of the big trees lining the yards of the homes beyond. Movements to the right and left — between the houses — imagined eyes peering from the fog...

  He carried the boxes beneath his right arm, while hurrying along the concrete walkway, forcing himself to over
come his apprehension, turning his thoughts to the interior of the house. Where to begin the search? What to look for? The thing that had so upset Karen.

  The boxes he carried with him — where would their revelations lead? Certainly, they could not put him any deeper into confusion. They had to help. If the papers he carried were so important that only the President of the United States had clearance high enough to digest them, they should provide clues to his own boggling dilemma — to the Vice President's treason — clues to Karen's fate.

  Karen — the thought ignited his hate-passion. Answers lay close by and he would rip away the deceptive, rotting flesh that covered the frustration-beast trying to devour him from within, and would get to those answers. The specters that had been raging in his imaginings dissolved while he drew within 20 feet of Marchek's front door. No matter what, he was committed.

  He knocked on the heavy wooden door and waited for Marchek's sister to answer. She would not have moved from this old house; she was as devoted to it as she had been to her brother when he lived here with her. She might be with relatives temporarily, though. If she weren't home, he would break a window or do whatever necessary to get in.

  No answer. He tried the door — locked. He walked to the side of the house along one of the 14-inch wide runners of concrete that made up the left half of the driveway leading to a separate garage. Finding the back door locked too, he removed his UNIVUSCARD from his wallet and slipped the card between the door latch and the door's facing, then manipulated it up and down until the locking device tripped and the door opened. It stopped abruptly, restrained by a security chain.

  "Miss Marchek! Saryeva!"

  His calls were not answered and after several seconds he stepped back and kicked hard just below the door handle, ripping the chain from its screwed-in position. Once inside, he stuck his head back through the door opening and looked outside to see if the break-in had been noticed. Satisfied, he moved quickly through the kitchen and the dining room, stopping in the foyer to see, with surprise, that the security chain on the front door was fastened, as had been the chain on the kitchen door. Probably a back way out. Yes. He remembered Marchek's study having a door to a flower garden. Saryeva Marchek probably left the house through that door.

  There was a feeling about this old place, he perceived while walking down the long hallway toward the study. Not merely an empty feeling, but a totally vacant one. It was as if the house had somehow been vacuumed of all things human —just a feeling. The fatigue, probably.

  The morning's dingy illumination filtered in through the double French doors that led to the garden. Across the doors, where they met, brass security devices were in the locked positions. Saryeva had not left the house through the study exit to the garden.

  Then he saw evidence of the old woman's fate. In the leather chair behind Hugo Marchek's desk, lay a rumpled pile of cloth — just like in the car with the Treasury agent — like all the others!

  He examined the flower-patterned print dress, finding it wrapped around underclothing. On the floor beneath Marchek's desk chair, opaque gray stockings lay crumpled over black, orthopedic lace shoes. The white slip and portions of the dress had brownish discolorations, as if the material had been scorched. She was taken by the catastrophe. The house -- like it had been vacuumed of all things human. Evidence told the story of what must have occurred. The old woman was sitting at the desk when it happened, writing on white paper, the words:

  "To honor the memory of Hugo Marchek properly is to honor Jesus Christ, because Christ meant everything to Hugo Marchek."

  The fountain pen had fallen on the paper, point first, as if she had dropped it. The pen's impact sending ink spattering across the paper and desk. He picked up and read a hand-written letter lying next to the writing the woman had begun. The penmanship was familiar.

  "As you know, Saryeva, we will be honoring Hugo Sunday evening. We would be greatly pleased if you would say a few words about your brother at that time.

  Also, Hugo told me of some information he had in his possession, which he put in his place, for safe keeping. It concerns some vital matters for PAL, which he and I discussed not long before his death. I must have them. Do you know where he might keep them?

  I couldn't call you because we are under surveillance here, so I had a friend bring this note. He will be by tomorrow for the materials. Thanks for your help. Cordially, Karen M."

  Karen! — There was still hope! He didn't know why, but he was certain she left a message in this note they forced her to write. Clues to where Marchek's secret papers were kept.

  The first part of the message's puzzle was clear. She wrote this note under the gaze of her captors. She would not address Marchek as Hugo, rather as Dr. Marchek. She would never call Saryeva Marchek by her first name. Always it was Auntie Sarah. She loved and respected the woman as much as she did Marchek, thus she was saying, that it was not her thoughts, but theirs which she conveyed.

  She ended it "Cordially, Karen M." an ending that should have been "Love, K... or, Kay." The best news in the message was that as of yesterday, Karen was alive and mentally alert enough to trick her incarcerators.

  Saryeva must have picked up on the message. Rather than gathering the materials, she began writing a speech to honor her brother, as if she was complying with the first part of Karen's note, which invited her to speak. The old woman knew about her brother's work and knew that Karen was in trouble. She began writing thoughts about Hugo Marchek to make them think she had taken their message seriously. When they came to pick up the materials, her explanation would likely be that she had no idea where Marchek kept such things. She was, in fact, his close partner in work.

  Now, Saryeva was gone, and Jacob was alone in his search for a way out of his torment. Alone — the cruelest part of his circumstance.

  The key to the eschatologist's hidden materials had to be somewhere in Karen's note to Saryeva. The words and handwriting were hers, but the message's tone obviously was not. Key words in her composition ~ the way she put her captors' message together — could unlock the secret of the old man's hiding place. Too, if Jacob could accurately remember the first phone conversation he and Karen had — he at Stone Oaks, she at Brussels — he might gain insight.

  Thoughts moved in no particular order through his mind while he stood over the big desk, forcing open the first of the two boxes he had carried with him since leaving the island. At the same time, he glanced again at the letter, written in Karen's hand.

  He remembered her words: "Oh, Jake... I found the secret place and the things he was talking about in the note. I found out the reason he was murdered! I found out they killed Dr. Marchek because he learned that this country, that is, some people at the top have..." Cut off.

  He could now finish in his mind some of what she wanted to say, but could not, before they were disconnected. The traitors were about to sell their country. But the Marchek materials — the hiding place?

  Karen said that night that she had found the apparently volatile information. If his and Karen's conversation was bugged, and surely it was, the people holding her should know that she was aware of where Marchek's secrets were kept. Why, then, did they continue to search? Why did they make her write the letter to Saryeva, asking the woman if she knew where the old man kept the secret materials?

  Of course, the unwritten message Karen wanted to convey to Saryeva was that the people holding her did not know the whereabouts of the secret things and that Saryeva must lie in her reply, to the one sent to pick them up. Say to him, that she had not been privy to her brother's business affairs, therefore did not know where he kept such things. Almost certainly Saryeva did know where Marchek kept such things. Had she been around when Karen came to the house that day, Saryeva, too, would likely have been their prisoner, because Karen would have included the old woman's name when she talked with him when he was in Brussels.

  The people who made Karen write the letter were not informed that Karen had located Hugo Marche
k's materials, yet the people who bugged that Brussels call had to know. They would make her tell them.

  If they were not the people who listened in on their Brussels' conversation that night, then who? The only answer: The people, originally holding Karen, were replaced by others who did not know about the phone conversation nor that Karen knew about the hiding place where Marchek kept the information.

  The Naxos bunch, the Vice President, the others, they must have taken control from those who placed the interests of the United States above the interests of the Utopian dream. That Naxos group had not heard the phone conversation. They only knew that Marchek had information which might damage them.

  The fact that they took over so quickly following the disappearance disaster said something about the power of the European one-world nucleus. It said something else, too; they were neither omnipotent, nor omniscient. They still did not know — at least, not as of the day before this one — where Hugo Marchek's secrets were kept.

  Another question, perhaps more troubling: If their plans were already in place, if the government of the United States was already under the thumb of the Naxos group, why did they still have such a deadly interest in whatever Marchek's documentation had to say? How could they be hurt by the information?

  The letter they forced Karen to write held the answer to where Marchek deposited his secrets. There had to be a message there, in the letter. He scanned the note quickly, taking in several lines at a time for a word, a phrase, something. If not what was written, perhaps, how it was penned — maybe a change in style, a grammatical inconsistency.

  There! He read it aloud, accentuating the portions he thought significant. "Hugo told me of some information he had in his possession which he put in his place, for safe keeping..." Not a place; his place, for safe keeping. Jacob turned and looked at the rock-façade fireplace directly across from Marchek's desk. Could it be? Had she left him a clue? He examined the stones carefully, trying to dislodge the most likely ones first. All were solidly glued by a half-inch of mortar. He tried to lift the oak mantle; it wouldn't budge. Working his fingertips around the edge of the left side of the fireplace and finding nothing, he moved to the right side and began manipulating each rock with the fingertips of both hands, trying to force each of the rough stones to move. A bad guess.