Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  "Like I said, their wanting me is tied somehow to these unexplainable happenings. I've got to find the connection, and that's why I've kept the biosensor. If I use it the way I plan, I think I can get inside their operation and at the same time get them off my back. I just need time to think it all out."

  While kneeling, Vinchey considered Jacob's words, tossing the small stones one at a time into the high grass.

  "There's this little island place I get away to sometimes out in Hingham Bay. I don't think we'd be bothered out there, unless your friends pick up on that gadget's signal again."

  Jacob took Vinchey's hand. "Thanks, Kerry. It means a lot to me that you believe me. That I've got another friend to share this with."

  "I don't have anything else to do," Vinchey said, smiling weakly. He saw the pilot's eyes become liquid, and understood.

  More than a week had passed since they arrived at the rocky point of land, whose beige sand dunes, topped by silky yellow-brown grass, contrasted starkly with the blue-green Atlantic waters of Hingham Bay. It was small, like its namesake had described, and one of the farthest of the islands from the land mass that was Boston.

  Vinchey Island was more than promised, with its two gasoline-powered generators providing for all electrical necessities and for most conveniences. Both men scanned the white protrusion of land in the distance, Vinchey with binoculars and Jacob with a telescope permanently mounted on a tripod set in a slab of concrete. It was easy to see why Kerry Vinchey brought his family here most summers during those happier, more sane times, and why the pilot was sick at heart now recounting days spent with those he loved most.

  "Kirk loved spotting boats and ships from here, so I bought that scope and mounted it for him. He got pretty good at it... recording class, tonnage and all that... for a 10-year-old boy."

  The urge was strong to say: "He must be quite a boy," the desire to encourage with: "He'll be here before you know it, spotting boats again." Best to say nothing. To simply keep looking along the island that lay eight miles across the stretch of water. To offer hope when they both knew there was little would be wrong; to do so with conviction would be impossible. Just continue scanning the bone-white dunes for the enemy who took Karen from him; who somehow had a hand in banishing those better times to an irretrievable past. Maybe, just maybe, there was to come a better day than now. Not the same as before, perhaps, but a better time, to be forged from the beastly realities of the present. A future where little boys and fathers could again, at their leisure, watch passing boats across untroubled waters.

  "It's been six days since we put the sensor on that island. Surely they'd have found it by now if they were still trying to get at you." Kerry Vinchey removed the binoculars from his eyes. "With the smog almost cleared up these past three days, we couldn't have missed any activity over there, Jacob."

  "Maybe they have given up. Maybe they figure I can't hurt them. But it just doesn't feel right to me. You think I'm paranoid?"

  "Of course not, but I still think six days is plenty to give them. They must've given up on you. They would've found that thing by now, otherwise."

  "Let's give it another day. Make it a full week. We'll pick it up Friday morning."

  "Jacob!"

  Both men watched the woman struggle toward them up the dune, her gray-streaked hair whipping in the cold wind. She held her long, once elegant fingers together over her eyes to shade against the brightness, made more intense by the high, thin haze. Francis Lodierman caught her breath after reaching the concrete plateau, then spoke.

  "Jake!... You've got to see it. It's just terrible!" She clutched his shirt, gasping for air.

  "You shouldn't be out here, Francis." He steadied her, studying her weak eyes. "Now calm down."

  She tugged at his jacket sleeve, pulling him down the sandy incline toward Vinchey's gray-with-white-trim frame house, which stood in the dark grass of another plateau 150 feet from the observation point. "Hurry!"

  Melissa met them on the porch steps, her face ashen, her eyes glistening with fear verging on panic.

  "It happened about 10 minutes ago," she said, preceding them into the rectangular room at the center of the house where the television set blared.

  "Arab and Israeli governments are to be more than congratulated for their wisdom in concluding this, one of the most important peace pacts in man's history. They deserve the praise and the gratitude of all peoples."

  Herrlich Krimhler sat between the Israeli Prime Minister and the King of Saudi Arabia, the collective Arab nations' representative for the occasion. Each man looked to the young speaker, whose tanned hands were interlocked and resting on the brilliantly polished conference table top, his eyes fixed on the camera directly in front of him.

  "Peace shall grow from this moment, as mankind marches into the New Age of INterface, in which all citizens will be linked one to another, each the brother, the sister of the other. This was God's intention from the beginning."

  Krimhler took a small stack of white, printed pages from someone standing behind, and placed the sheets on the table in front of him.

  "So, they're going to officially sign the peace pact between the Arabs and Israelis. We knew that, Melissa. Why did you call us down here for that?" Jacob said.

  "No... this is taped. It happened a few minutes ago... Watch."

  Herrlich Krimhler slid the papers to his right, to in front of the burnoosed Saudi king, who signed the peace document and returned it to Krimhler. The German passed it then to the white-haired Israeli Prime Minister, who signed, then looked up from the task, a solemn expression on his face.

  The scene changed quickly to a large number of people gathered behind and in front of a small lectern, to which Herrlich Krimhler walked and stood behind.

  The television narrator explained. "After the signing by the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi King, Mr. Krimhler moved to the main conference room, where he was to add his signature to the treaty, after a brief statement."

  "Peace has come at last to the Arab and the Jew. Let us make this conciliation the example for what can, what must come to be between all peoples of this fragile planet."

  Krimhler's black eyes glared into the camera, taking possession of the viewer's concentration even through the time-buffering effect of the videotape.

  "The terrorists who detonated the atomic devices in Cairo and in Damascus two days ago, as despicable as such barbarism is, performed a service those anarchists could not foresee. The act proved that mankind must join hands, together in a chain of sanity through INterface networking, and must serve notice to all such diabolists that now, from this point forward, there is no place to hide from the 'Six Way Plan,' which will deal with their murderous treacheries!"

  Krimhler paused while those in front of and behind him applauded with enthusiasm; he spoke again, then. "Let this pact for peace between two peoples, who have been at bloody odds longer than any other... giving the Palestinian a permanent homeland, assuring the Israeli protection under INterface law, and the right to establish a temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem... serve notice to all who would perpetuate hostilities that making war will no longer be tolerated!"

  Applause again exploded in the room, then settled to a conversational drone. The young German opened his mouth to speak again.

  Deja vu pulsed through Jacob, yet distinctively different than the sensations of the other times. He was witnessing a momentous instant of history, but something more profoundly affecting. History transcending war and, peace and diplomatic nuance; a rending instant in the ebb and flow of eternal events, when time-past and time-future is inexplicably predestined by some great eclectic agglomerate force to merge, then fuse in a millisecond, altering the direction and velocity and, therefore, forever, the destiny of humankind.

  A dime-sized spot of black materialized an inch-and-a-half above the left eyebrow. The dark hair lifted as if disturbed by a sudden wind. Blood spurted from the frontal hole, and at the same instant, blood and brain tissue e
rupted from the rear of the exploded skull and sprayed the dignitaries behind the lectern in a fan of pink profusion.

  Assassination! Replaying for the shocked eyes of the world familiar, grotesque, sudden death. Cameras gone mad, their lenses capturing wild, lurching images of people fighting to reach cover. Panic-stricken faces, eyes widened in fear, searching for medical help for the leader, who lay crumpled and unmoving, face-down on the blood-soaked carpet beneath the security men and diplomats hovering over his body.

  Jacob's enemy, the leader of his enemies, lying wounded! No one could survive such a thing! Not a head shot like that!

  Thoughts of what it meant flooded his brain. Now, would they concentrate on more pressing matters? Now that their leader was dead? Would they lose interest in so petty a matter as Jacob Zen, and get on with the grander design of enslaving a world? Did the death of Herrlich Krimhler mean all that Interface and "The Plan" envisioned had changed in that instant when the German's head exploded?

  From subliminal mind-strata involuntarily searched, one thought emerged; the "Six Way Plan" was not altered by the death of its architect; INterface was not made impotent. Krimhler's assassination was part of, a gigantic part of "The Plan." "The Plan" was not obliterated when the leader's cranium flew apart. It was instead, in some way, he could not analytically determine, but intrinsically knew, galvanized and set in motion by the spectacle. The inner voice that told him so was Hugo Marchek's.

  "So, yet another assassination. An assassination of unrivaled proportions, as far as the importance of the victim to the world is concerned. The man who seemed so much more than just that... a mere man... Herrlich Krimhler, Chief Designer and Chancellor of the INterface system, the man who had single-handedly, just moments before his death, brought together the Arabs and Israelis in an unprecedented pact of peace, although he died before he, himself, could sign it. Dead at the hands of an assassin."

  Lawrence Thorton narrated in his familiar baritone voice, a stony expression on his face.

  "Since the time the shooting took place, about eighteen minutes ago, there has been, as might be expected, an intensive search of the area. I understand they may now know who is responsible for this, certainly one of the most reprehensible acts in the history of the world."

  Thorton turned to face the big monitor on the wall behind the broadcast desk. "John Farber has with him Maurice Clary, Chief of Security for interface. John, is this report accurate? That security might have a line on who did this?"

  The thin journalist, at first could not hear because of the noise in the room, but turned to the Frenchman when a technician repeated the question through the headset Farber wore.

  "Yes, Larry. It is true. Mr. Clary, can you tell us about the evidence you've uncovered about the assassin?"

  While Clary answered in his native tongue, the speech synthesizer translated in the many languages of those watching the telecast.

  "Irrefutable proof has been found. We have located the weapon and identified the assassin's fingerprints. Along with this evidence, we found his wristwatch, which he apparently pulled from his wrist and laid it aside to keep it from being damaged while ne rested his arm against the floor for steadying his aim. He left the wristwatch in his haste to get away after firing the shot."

  "Then you know for certain the identity of the assassin. Can you give us the name, or will we have to wait until your investigation is concluded?"

  “We can tell you now. Our investigation of this...” The Chief of Security stammered, his eyes growing moist with emotion; the translation voice hesitated then continued. "I will tell you, because so far as we are concerned, the murderer has been positively identified. Also, because he is an enemy who has eluded us. A terrorist. We earnestly ask the assistance of all citizens of INterface in the apprehension of this assassin. He must not escape the peoples' justice."

  The Frenchman held up a large photograph of a man's face, and the camera framed it in close-up for the global television audience.

  "He is a former member of the United States diplomatic service. His name is Jacob Zen."

  Chapter 16

  Each being of the human kind must in times of acute personal crisis — be it physical crisis that threatens life, or moral crisis that promises personal gain at the price of one's own decency — every person must at a crucial, pivotal moment, set a course that is in most instances irreversible, once selected and begun. In the face of totalitarianism, both types of crises merge at once to confront the resistant victim, and so, too, the decision to be made. Whether to walk the broad road of submission, almost certainly to destruction, because: 1) if one does nothing, simply hides away from those who seek his life, the seekers will sooner or later accomplish their purpose, or 2) if one joins the system surreptitiously, quietly acting the obedient subject of the evil rule (a thing nearly impossible because the innate, irrepressible will of the true resistor against such evil cannot long allow the pretense), he will be found out. Or, whether to walk the narrow path of aggressively combating the evil, no matter the cost to one's fellow beings, thereby, at the very minimum, delaying one's own demise (life is the greatest personal gain of all) while discharging one's pent-up hatred into the enslaving system.

  Jacob already knew the course he had no choice but to follow. His philosophical ponderings were as much to salve his conscience with the idea that he had made his choice after long, rational deliberation, as it was to think through his plan to become a part of INterface.

  He sucked the smoke into his mouth and inhaled deeply, letting it escape slowly from his lungs through clenched teeth before snuffing out the cigarette. It was the latest of 10 he had smoked since being left alone four hours earlier by the others, who now slept in the various rooms of Kerry Vinchey's island house.

  He had killed before; why did the pricking inner-voice not realize that fact and leave him alone? Before, with the attaché case, then again at Marchek's home, the killings were self-defensive. The act he contemplated now would be one of premeditation, dredged out of the black recesses of the mind-realm from which the moral being must remain aloof, must constantly wage war with. But wasn't being falsely branded a murderer, an assassin, being made a hated, hunted creature marked for eradication, like a plague-carrying rodent, justification for doing whatever it took to fight them? Wouldn't a planned murder be a preferable, even moral action against a monstrous system that would soon be blood-purging itself of all dissenters?

  Jacob stood from the kitchen table chair and stretched his aching body. He picked up the Bible and adjusted his position to read in the light of the single bulb above the table.

  Common sense told him all things that had happened were either products of natural laws broken by men, or by-products of the actions of men trying to bring things back under man's control.

  The disappearance of millions of people. The swift ascent to power by the European Confederation, led by Herrlich Krimhler. Human sensibility, said these things, and those written thousands of years ago by biblical prophets, as related to each other, could be no more, than coincidence. But, if they were true --these prophecies Hugo Marchek believed as strongly as anyone ever believed anything — nothing could be more important than this old book, to himself, to the world.

  Jacob picked up the videocassette and pondered its significance, weighing it balance-fashion in his right hand against the Bible in his left, while walking into the small den. He fed the cassette into Vinchey's recorder and used the search mode to locate the point at which he wanted to begin.

  Through neither desire nor fault of his own, he had been driven into the tangle, beginning when he met the eschatologist and continuing until now. Krimhler was dead; he, himself, stood accused of the murder before the world. If it were all a part of biblical prophecy, and if Hugo Marchek was right about the Bible having the answers, surely Krimhler's death was recorded somewhere, maybe even his own involvement in the death.

  He shook his head, smiling, almost laughing out loud. It was all too fantast
ic! Hunted, hated by the newly restructured world for murdering its savior. Framed like a hapless protagonist in some inconsequential detective novel. Jacob Zen, smack at the center of it all!

  "...the Antichrist will be revealed in his time."

  Hugo Marchek's voice jolted Jacob from his thoughts. He watched the give-and-take between Marchek, Rance Jorgenson and Lauren Winchester, sensing again power in the old man's calmness.

  The eschatologist spoke after several seconds of reflection. "Paul wrote in his second epistle to the Thessalonians regarding the matter of the last great dictator of the world, beginning in chapter two, the first verse."

  Jacob heard for the second time Marchek's phenomenal recollection of the Scriptures; his own sense of concentration heightened when the old man quoted:

  "...And now ye know what restraineth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hindereth will continue to hinder until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming."

  Moments later, Marchek, departing from quoting Scripture, said: "When God's restraining hand is withdrawn, the time of tribulation shall fall on mankind. Society will degenerate, become vile, so horrible, that it will make Hitler's Germany look like a picnic. And, like the Germans of Hitler's time and Americans during the early 1930's, the people of the United States and Western Europe will be willing to give total authority to anyone who can convince them that he has the answers to their dilemmas. This son of perdition, this Antichrist, receiving his deceptive powers of signs and lying wonders from Satan, will be able to delude everyone into believing he is the long-awaited Messiah."

  The tape continued to roll, Jacob mulling Marchek's words; the analysis short-circuited when Marchek's taped image continued to speak.