Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  "Oh! Here we go with ghosts and spirits and the like," Lauren Winchester interrupted. "I thought you fundamentalists didn't believe in the occult!"

  "The only supernatural ghost I do believe in, Ms. Winchester, is the Holy Ghost. And when God's Spirit, the third member of the Trinity, the Godhead, is removed for a time from this planet, then you shall see the greatest period of hellishness ever in man's history. The great tribulation. The last seven years of earth's existence, as we now know it."

  "This... Antichrist... Will he be known, or come to power before this rapture thing? Or after?" the host said.

  "I believe he has a certain amount of power already within the European Parliament, or one of its consultative bodies. But he shall receive his full satanic powers to control all the world, after the restraining godly influence of the Holy Spirit is removed. The Antichrist and the unholy satanic spirit will move in to fill the vacuum left."

  The audience grumbled its disapproval, and Rance Jorgenson held both hands up asking for silence.

  "Just vanish into thin air, huh?" Jorgenson said whimsically, lowering his forehead into his hands and shaking his head in disbelieving amusement. "Well, Dr. Marchek, we did invite you here tonight, albeit to discuss Preservers of American Liberty — P.A.L. — Boy! How did we get off on this weird track? Well, I thank you at least for the entertainment value of your visit." Jorgenson rose and extended his right hand to Marchek as he spoke while the studio audience shattered the air with verbal displays of their agreement with the host's facetious remarks.

  "I would invite you to stay, Doctor, but I'm afraid you'd find it hard to love Ms. Luv, even though I know your kind loves everybody."

  Hugo Marchek smiled, looking into the host's eyes, causing Jorgenson to break his fun-poking grin and look sheepishly away.

  "Thank you for allowing me to be with you here tonight, Mr. Jorgenson. I sincerely wish you could be with us in the air, when our Savior comes for us."

  When Marchek had broken the handshake with the host and had shaken hands with Lauren Winchester, he smiled and waved to the audience and departed in a slow shuffle, amidst hoots and shouts mixed with whistles of disdain.

  "Another cup?"

  "What?... Yes, thanks." Jacob held his cup for Melissa to pour the tea. He watched Marchek slowly walk the distance from Rance Jorgenson and Lauren Winchester to the huge draperies that filled the television screen.

  He empathized with the old man. Yet, the same look of self-assuredness, he saw in the eschatologist's eyes when the two of them had talked together, was there as strongly as that night they met. Despite his age, which caused Marchek to move slowly, there was the distinct look of one who knew he had done the job he came to do the night the show was taped.

  Jacob did not really hear nor see the naked woman who led the animal onto the stage to rhythmic strains of music.

  He couldn't shake the thought that raked his mind. Everything was happening the way Hugo Marchek said it would. His friend who left him the message of hope in the computer — “the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it”--left him his Bible.

  Stronger than ever was his need to understand more about what, exactly, all of it meant. Stronger, too, his intention to try and stop his own slide into oblivion.

  Chapter 14

  "I can't see where this thing will cripple our ability to think and plan our way out. A very significant factor to think about, I believe, is that the Russians are out of the way now. So there are great and good things that can come out of all this chaos -- that have already come out of it, for that matter."

  Henry Laxton's normally solemn demeanor was upbeat, and he looked and sounded like a caricature of himself while he spoke to Lawrence Thorton in the Washington studio.

  "Like practically eliminating the nuclear threat, for example?" Thorton said.

  "That's right. It's probably the greatest thing to happen, in diplomatic terms, in history. Everybody's been looking for, praying for, a way to get all sides to the negotiating tables on that one most crucial issue. We have been trying for decades to find a common ground where we can put away self-interests, and, together, find our way out of the nuclear nightmare."

  "This phenomenon has, if nothing else, drawn into focus exactly how closely knit the family of man is, and how essential it is that a joint effort be made."

  "And you know, Larry, one of the most amazing aspects of the phenomenon is the fact that many, many of those who opposed our New Age marvels, and opposed those visionary technologies that offer so much hope, were taken in the cosmic disturbance. I don't mean to sound cruel or like an occultist or religionist, but by fate, or whatever, the road that can lead us to a peaceful, productive future has been cleared of much of its congestion."

  "Thank you, Mr. Secretary," the journalist said, turning to face the camera. "And that, we are told, is basically what the telecast from Brussels is to be about. That broadcast coming up in..." He looked to a clock on one wall of the studio then back into the camera's lens, "...about five minutes from now."

  Out of habit, Jacob started to glance at his left wrist, but remembering the missing watch, looked at Melissa Jantzen's table clock. 7:01. Six minutes faster than Thorton's clock; the broadcast was scheduled for 7:00.

  Fingering the Naxos videotape he had not yet viewed, his mind zagged between wanting to have a look at it and wondering what would be forthcoming from Brussels. He got up from the sofa and walked into the bedroom.

  "Melissa..." He shook the girl gently and spoke quietly. "It's time."

  She lurched upward at his touch, her face open-mouthed with fright.

  "It's okay... It's okay," he said. Her expression softened and she relaxed. "You wanted me to wake you at seven."

  "I must've been dreaming something awful. I can't remember what," she said sleepily, pressing against his chest and wrapping her arms around him while he sat on the bed beside her. He wanted to cradle her, to reassure her. Nothing lustful in his motive, just a momentary feeling. But when she pulled his face downward, forcing his lips to hers, he felt the embrace meant more to her.

  "They won't hold up the broadcast for us, I'm sorry to say." He broke their kiss, but bent to again brush her lips lightly with his, saying with his eyes he did not disapprove of the invitation, only its timing.

  From the living room, the voice of Lawrence Thorton announced that the U.S. networks were joining Euronetwork in a live broadcast from Brussels. Melissa followed Jacob to the sofa, from which they watched hundreds of men and women mill about in the huge Parliament chamber of the U.E.S. headquarters building.

  At first, the camera swept the delegates, then drew back to frame the entire chamber. Far away, a colorfully attired figure walked slowly toward the lectern on the vast podium. The camera zoomed in on the figure until only he filled the television screen in Melissa Jantzen's apartment.

  A man in religious robes of white, red, gold and purple, with medallions, shaped-like crosses and unfamiliar symbols, suspended against his breast by gold chains. A tall, gleaming headdress sat atop his head, while he moved to the ornate lectern and held aloft a scepter, which glinted in the beams of brilliant light radiating from the ceiling.

  As if the raising of the scepter was a signal, the people stood and applauded, while the television cameras captured their ecstatic expressions from many angles. The religious man's face and diadem filled the screen in a ghost image over the mass of people. Still cameras flashed and strobe-like lights illuminated the ecclesiastical figure and the men and women of the audience while the applause increased, along with shouts of approving exultation.

  "Is that the Pope?" Melisa said, not taking her eyes from the scene.

  "Him, too?" Jacob said, concluding with disappointment that even this man, probably the best loved pontiff in history, had been taken in by the Naxos lot. Maybe not. Perhaps His Holiness would now make the announcement that the plot had been uncovered — that the murderous, would-be rulers, of what was left of the world, had bee
n forced out of their Naxos burrow, and the rest of humanity could now safely come out into light again. This earthy, humble, though brilliant man, whom he had personally met at the Vatican, who had made him feel genuinely loved, could not be a part of the monster. Not unless the pontiff thought the monster to be something other than what it was.

  Still, the religious man stood receiving the accolades, the scepter held aloft in his right hand, holding the other hand above his head in a symbolic gesture of humble acceptance and gratitude.

  "His Holiness looks to be enjoying his first public appearance since succeeding his predecessor," Lawrence Thorton said from the D.C. studio while the applause continued.

  Of course! Jacob thought. So much attention had been given to the calamities caused by the disappearance phenomenon there was no time for hoopla about the changes at the Vatican! This was not the same Pope, the man he knew.

  "There is gathered in that great hall probably the largest, most diverse cross-section of the world's nationalities ever assembled anywhere at any time. Even the United Nations has never seen anything like it. From just about every known country, representatives have come, at the request of this new Pope. Every religion, including Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and the many sects and denominations within those great religions, as well as many reclusive, little known cults, have come at the request of His Holiness."

  Thorton was silent for 20 seconds, letting the video and the noise of the adoring throng within the great hall of the U.E.S. put across to the viewer the exultation of this historic moment. Finally the crowd began to quiet.

  "We don't know what language His Holiness will use, or whether he will speak more than one language; he is a master of many. Whichever he chooses, those in attendance at Brussels, and we here, will have the benefit of instantaneous translation, thanks to the recent breakthroughs in computer-language vocoder technology, which can almost exactly duplicate the speaker's own voice tone after translating the meanings of his words."

  "Greetings!" the holy man said in mildly accented English, smiling when the mass of people before him responded with a tumultuous, synchronized shout. "It is past time that we come together as one!" Again, a single shout of response. "Now... Let us begin anew!" The people were on their feet before the pontiff could finish his sentence. A sustained, frenzied show of acceptance. The screen in Melissa's apartment was imaging the Brussels' camerawork that combined a series of quick-cuts, dissolves and super-over impositions, which captured the spirit of oneness raging within the chamber. The man drew his hands into a palms-together position, holding the scepter erect between them, and bowed toward the representatives while maintaining the prayerful pose. The exuberance was infectious, drawing one into its excitement. The talk of oneness; of the brotherhood of man; of beginning anew. All deceptions of the most insidious kind, promising a bright future — all problems solved — perfection.

  Maybe this religious man really did believe, but Jacob knew the price for the proffered paradise. He had experienced the utopian bill collectors. The memory of their painful tactics made it easy to churn his own hatred back to the surface while the eager, accepting faces beamed glowingly toward the pontiff, who now stood with his hands clasped before his bowed face.

  Jacob watched the faces, those bright faces, effulgent in the television lights while the cameras panned up and down the aisles. They differed in expressions from all the faces he had seen since that night the secret service agent's face vanished from the car's rearview mirror. Absent was the fear, the apprehensions. As if they knew something other faces of the world did not know. And somehow, in an instant of fleeting foreknowledge, Jacob, too, knew what those faces at Brussels held secreted away behind their glowing, jubilant facades. This religious man who stood before them had the map that would, they thought, lead them out of the greatest world crisis ever. He was about to introduce them to the system, the person, who had the answers.

  "How could the Pope be mixed up in government that would be cruel to people? They wouldn't have selected a man who wasn't concerned about people, about human rights. He couldn't be a part of a dictatorship, could he?"

  "Not if he knew the things I know. Not, and be the kind of man everybody thinks he is."

  Jacob's confusion was no less than Melissa's. Popes were regarded as the world's great champions of social justice, constantly putting forward the principle that man is responsible for taking care of man, and that the individual's rights must not suffer at the hands of any collective will. That society must serve the individual, not the other way around. Yet this man had apparently thrown his lot in with those who spit on that principle.

  "Maybe he's decided the Naxos idea is the lesser of evils. That what they're offering is better than the chaos we have now," Jacob said, thinking that the real answer was that this Pope had been fooled by the promise that once things were under control a more humane rule could be instituted. One that served rather than oppressed. His Holiness had not experienced the real character of the Naxos assassins.

  It ran through his mind that Melissa might be questioning his own truthfulness. "Are they after him because he is the one actually at fault? Is he the real liar in all this?" He imagined her asking herself. It was easy enough to understand how she could be entertaining such suspicions from the glorious appeal gushing from the Brussels meeting.

  He looked at her profile in the brightness projecting from the screen. No. There was no easy acceptance of what was going on in the U.E.S. Council Chamber. Unlike the faces at Brussels, there was still apprehension on hers. With him, she was in the presence of flesh and blood. One whom she could touch, receive comfort from. Despite the broadcast's appeal, it was an unembraceable appeal that could not solve her hurts.

  "We have come to a most crucial time in man's history," the holy man said when the noise quieted. "A most terrible time. And yet, a most opportune time. For we hold in our hands the ability to destruct our world in a moment of nuclear insanity, or to destroy it through years of slow deterioration. At the same time, we have the capability to build heaven on earth. Does it not make better sense, human, common sense, to choose the course of life, rather than make the choice of extinction for the human race?"

  Again, the great hall at Brussels erupted in deafening applause and shouts of agreement, while the video presented the faces of the hundreds of world representatives.

  "There is, I am convinced with all my heart, one sent from God to lead us upon that sensible path that will take us into the prophesied millennium. And, this servant, I am equally convinced, has been given 'The Plan' drawn directly by God's hand. A plan as divinely appointed as the Ten Commandments and all the great truths God has given mankind throughout the ages. Give your ears and your hearts to this, God's servant."

  The Pope put his palms together and addressed his deity, face raised toward the ceiling.

  "Oh great Father, the Light of the universe. Grant your Son the power to lead in this hour of trouble. Grant, too, the understanding of us all and give us the will to accept what thou hast for us through Thy divine hand upon this your chosen one, whom you have borne into this world to lead the way into Thy eternal kingdom. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

  The prayer concluded, the pontiff waited for the audience to settle, his robed arms stretched forward, his white hands gripping the edges of the lectern's top.

  "My friends, my children... God's man for this critical hour!"

  Spotlights near the stage swung their beams from the pontiff and crisscrossed, their large circles of light congruently fixing on a human figure approaching the lectern from the darkened area behind the platform. A striking masculine form in a dark suit, whose quick, graceful stride was of youth. He smoothed the suit coat near the hips while he walked, reaching then to take the hand of the Pope, who met him enthusiastically.

  There seemed an unnatural stillness in the chamber while the men held hands briefly in the circle of light, then broke their grasp. The holy man issue
d the other toward the lectern with a gesture of his right hand. The camera zoomed in for a close-up, and, as Jacob expected, the young man was Herrlich Krimhler, a somber expression on his handsome face.

  The Pope was smiling broadly and saying something to Krimhler the microphones could not pick up. The audience responded at first with a few scattered handclaps, then, more sure of what their response should be, released their feelings in a frenzy of cheering and applause.

  Krimhler stood behind the lectern, acknowledging with generous, though controlled, smiles and slight nods of his head to his right, his left, and to those directly in front of the lectern. He began in the familiar, slightly accented baritone that charismatically commanded the attention of all whose ears the famous voice fell upon.

  "We have indeed reached, as His Holiness said, 'a terrible moment in man's history.' Yet it is a moment of magnificent opportunity--a time which, I assure, will never again be ours. For in the words once spoken by a great leader, 'Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.' And, as John Kennedy also said, 'Asking His blessings, and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God's work must truly be our own.'

  "That is the message I bring to you, my friends of the global community. This is the hope that rests within our own God-given capabilities. To be... To really be... or not to be." Krimhler held an index finger aloft and paused, looking about the vast chamber at the many faces held in the grip of his words. "Ahhh...That is truly the question of our precarious time, my brothers and sisters of the world-family. What shall it be? The joining of hands and hearts and minds to eradicate poverty, disease, crime, hunger, natural catastrophes, and war? Or will we begin again to take the same path mankind has taken for so long? That of self-serving nationalism? Thus, all of the scourges that such a course brings with it, ending in nuclear holocaust. And, as His Holiness said, 'extinction as a species' — the end of the greatest drama God has allowed mankind to act out. Only we can write the next chapter. Only we can begin writing the most glorious chapter of all!"