by Tim LaHaye
“Something like that.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“We? Who’s we?”
Chloe stood and realized her friend was gone. She plunged on. “Jock, do you realize that the day is coming—and much sooner than you think—when everyone will have to acknowledge God and his Son?”
“Think so?”
“‘It is written: “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”’”
“Well, honey, not me.”
“Sorry, Jock. ‘Each of us shall give account of himself to God.’”
“My god is Carpathia. That’s good enough for me.”
“What about when Jesus wins?”
“He wins?”
“‘Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’”
“I hope all that gives you some comfort when you’re standing in the hot sun tomorrow morning, smelling that smell, seeing heads roll, and knowing yours will be next. Maybe I’m not the interrogator I thought I was, and maybe you paid a lot of money to be trained and prepped for truth serum. But there’s nothing that brings clarity to the mind like knowing you’re next in the guillotine line.
“I’ll be watching you in the morning, girl. My money says you’ll be shaking and wailing and pleading for one more chance to save yourself.”
At 8:30 a.m. Palace Time, Mac was still about seven hours from Petra. He called the number Rayford had given him for Otto Weser and identified himself.
“He is risen,” the German said.
“Christ is risen indeed,” Mac said. “What’ve you got for me?”
“I gotta tell you, Miss Krystall has been a gem. I wish she was on our side. She let me listen in on a conversation from a man named Suhail Akbar, head of Sec—”
“I know who he is, Mr. Weser. All due respect, cut to the chase.”
“Carpathia has assigned him and his people to do two things. First, get the government running in Al Hillah, and second, prepare for a real Oktoberfest for all the leaders of the world in Baghdad six months from now.”
“So, not in October?”
“That was just an expression. It’s going to be what you Yanks would call a big blowout. All the pomp and circumstance, flags, banners, light shows, bands, dancers, everything. If the lights come back on in New Babylon, the government goes home. But even if they do, the big deal still happens in Baghdad.”
“Exactly where? Do we know?”
“It’s a brand-new building, Mr. McCullum. On the site where the Iraq Museum used to be, before the war. It’s supposed to be state-of-the-art, plush accommodations, room for the meetings and the pageantry. I mean, there are only ten other heads of state, but apparently besides the private meetings with his cabinet, Carpathia wants some festivities open to the public.
“To his people he is referring to the meetings with the sub-potentates, however, as the final solution to the Jewish problem.”
“To a German, that has to resonate with your history books, eh, Mr. Weser?”
“Frankly, sir, our history books don’t read the same as those of others who write about us, but I know what you mean, yes. We’ve been down this road before.”
“Anything on Chloe Williams?”
“Krystall says she’s at Angola Prison in Louisiana.”
“She basing that on the same news we saw, or does she have inside information?”
“Let me ask.”
Otto came back on a few seconds later. “Both. She says she heard that newscast but that she’s also heard Security and Intelligence people talking about Chloe being there. Latest word is that she is to be executed at 1000 hours Central Time.”
“We’ve got to go and take George and a few others with us, Rayford,” Buck said.
“It still makes no sense,” Rayford said. “Why would they broadcast where she is?”
“Maybe to trap us.”
“Then it’s less likely she’s there.”
“You think they’re on to Krystall?” Buck said. “Giving her bogus info to test her?”
“Let’s get Sebastian in on this.”
Since before dawn, Chang had been at his computer in the tech center. When Naomi arrived, she stood behind him, hands resting lightly on his shoulders.
“Troops, troops, and more troops,” he said. “The ones from Greece could overpower Israel, let alone those from all over the Carpathian States. And this is just the beginning.”
“What’s the latest on Mr. Williams’s wife?”
“Everything I’m getting from communications going into the palace from Al Hillah puts Chloe in Louisiana and sentenced to death at 6 p.m. our time.”
“Oh no.”
“That’s not the worst of it, Naomi. They let that out over international television, and they never tell the truth. If they want to lure the Trib Force, they could have left her in San Diego. Rayford and Buck are in the thick of the evac from San Diego, but they’re not going to know what to do now. I hope they can see through this. For all we know, Chloe is an hour from San Diego. All the GC has to do is have her somewhere where a GCNN affiliate can send a live feed.”
Naomi pulled up a chair and sat next to Chang. “If ever there was a newscast you’d want to interfere with, it has to be that one, doesn’t it?”
“No way I want the world to see it.”
“But we would want them to see and hear what Chloe might say.”
“Definitely. I’ll just be ready to flip it when they’ve lost patience with her.”
Rayford found that Sebastian agreed with him. “No way they’re letting out where she really is,” he said. “It would be a major gaffe.”
“Then where are we?” Buck said. “I’d rather know the worst than not know anything.”
“Let’s see if Krystall’s ready to take a chance,” Rayford said. “I’ll call her.”
When she came on the line, Rayford said, “I need to ask you to do something bold for me.”
“I could be executed for what I’ve given you people already.”
“I’m going to trade information with you that will prolong your life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re a visitor to Dr. Ben-Judah’s Web site, right?”
“I told you I was.”
“Then you know he has shown from the Bible, in advance, all these plagues and judgments that have hit the earth.”
“Yeah, it’s spooky.”
“It’s spooky, but it’s real, and we know the next thing that’s going to happen in New Babylon, only we don’t know exactly when.”
“And what is that?”
“God is going to destroy the entire city in the space of one hour.”
“Oh my—”
“He will call his own people—like Otto and his friends—out of there so they will be spared. You need to get out too.”
“Where will I go?”
“Anywhere but New Babylon.”
“And you’re sure this is going to happen?”
“If it doesn’t, it will be the first time one of these prophesied events hasn’t happened. Now, Krystall, I can’t promise you’ll be safe just because you leave New Babylon. The rest of the world will suffer as well, but maybe not as severely and quickly as New Babylon. Getting out of there will be your only hope.”
“Is Carpathia sending all these armies into Israel one of the prophecies too?” Krystall said.
“Ever hear of Armageddon? This is it. But the end of New Babylon comes first.”
“And for that fair warning, you want me to do what?”
“Call someone. Someone who would know. And I want you somehow to work Chloe Williams into the conversation. Tell him you saw it on the news or whatever, but you’re just curious. Is she really
going to be executed and where? Can you do that?”
“You don’t believe it’s going to be in Louisiana?” she said.
“Finding that hard to swallow.”
“No promises, but I’ll see what I can find out.”
“What’re you doing tonight, Jock?” Chloe said as he walked her back to solitary.
“Sleeping like a baby. Big day tomorrow. We tell the world you sang like a canary, but that in the end you refused the mark and wouldn’t pledge allegiance to Carpathia. Our hand was forced.”
“And you’re the hero.”
“Probably promoted. Shipped off to International.”
“Which is where now?”
“What do you care? You can’t tell anybody or do anything about it.”
“Then what’s the harm in telling me?”
He cocked his head at her. “Rumors say I’ll be assigned to the Jezreel Valley.”
“Oh? What’s going on there?”
“Not at liberty to say.”
“But you know?”
“Well, yeah, ’course I do.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“Sky’s the limit, huh?”
“I guess,” he said.
“Want a little inside information?”
“You’re a little tardy with that, but I’m listening.”
“New Babylon is never getting back to normal.”
“And you know that for a fact.”
“Sure as I’m standing here,” Chloe said.
“Well, I doubt you’re right, but you won’t be around to find out. And I will.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that either.”
“See you in the morning, ma’am.”
Chloe sat in the dark chamber and asked quietly, “Are you still here with me?”
“Always,” came the reply. “To the end of the age.”
Chloe prostrated herself on the floor and prayed the rest of the time, unable to sleep. She sang, she quoted Scripture, she praised God, and she listened.
Mostly she listened. As he comforted her heart.
CHAPTER 13
“I’m never going to let this happen again, Dad,” Buck said. They stood outside their two-seater jet in remote western Wisconsin at dawn, monitoring a miniature TV and a radio and waiting for Krystall’s call. “We could find out Chloe was half an hour away in St. Paul, and there wouldn’t be a blessed thing we could do about it. No car, no disguises, no IDs, nothing. Never again, Dad, and I mean it.”
Rayford didn’t appear to have anything to say, and Buck felt sorry for him. “I don’t know what else could have been done,” Buck said. “But anything more than sitting on our hands, waiting for something to happen.”
“I don’t know why Krystall hasn’t called,” Rayford said. “She’s had all day.” He looked at his watch. “It’s the middle of the afternoon in New Babylon.”
“You’d better hope they’re not onto her, haven’t bugged her phone or something. They’d know about Otto, know we know where the big confab is going to be, everything.”
“I don’t know,” Rayford said. “David and Chang have always said the GC doesn’t tap its own phones.”
“So everybody in Al Hillah’s been in meetings all day and there’s no one to tell Krystall the truth about where Chloe is? You should have given her some kind of a time frame. Doesn’t she assume we’d like to know before the execution?”
“It’s not like she works for us, Buck. She’s been a godsend.”
“Interesting thing to say about someone bearing the mark of the beast.”
Mac dropped off Zeke in Petra at about two in the afternoon. Abdullah had already readied the bigger plane for Mac and then took charge of getting Zeke settled. “I plan to get in and get out of that apartment as fast as I can,” Mac said. “Then I’m picking up Weser and his clan and getting back here. I’d like to get all that done before the GCNN goes on the air with Chloe. I won’t watch ’em kill her, but I want to see what leads up to it anyway.”
In pervasive darkness, Chloe had no idea of the passage of time. Occasionally she pressed her ear against the steel door to listen for activity in the solitary unit. So far, nothing.
She thought waiting for one’s execution would be like waiting to see the principal or facing a punishment you knew was coming, only multiplied on a mortal scale. And yet she found herself relatively calm. Her heart broke for Buck, not so much for the prospect of his missing her, but for how wrenching it would be to have to explain this to Kenny.
He was too young, and there would be no explaining it, she knew. But the daily questions, the need of a boy for his mother, the fact that no surrogate could love him like she did . . . all that worked on her.
Chloe felt the presence of God, though she didn’t see the messenger she had the night before. Her muscles ached from the positions she found herself in for prayer and then just trying to get comfortable. Hunger was a distraction she succeeded in pushing from her mind. Soon, she told herself, she would be dining at the banquet table of the King of kings.
Most gratifying was that she had fewer doubts and more assurance as the hours passed. She had put all her eggs in this basket, she had always liked to say. If she was wrong, she was wrong. If it was all a big story, she had bought it in its entirety. But for her the days of questioning and misgivings were gone. Chloe had seen too much, experienced too much. She had been shown, like everyone else on the planet, that God was real, he was in control, he was the archenemy of Antichrist, and in the end God would win.
Early on in her spiritual walk, Chloe had entertained a smugness, particularly when people berated or derided her for her beliefs. She was too polite to gloat, but she couldn’t deny some private satisfaction in knowing that one day she would be proved right.
But that attitude too had mercifully been taken from her. The more she learned and the more she knew and the more she saw examples of other believers with true compassion for the predicaments of lost people, the more Chloe matured in her faith. That was manifest in a sorrow over people’s souls, a desperation that they see the truth and turn to Christ before it was too late.
She didn’t even know what to do with her feelings of love and concern and sympathy for people who had already taken Carpathia’s mark and were condemned for eternity. They were beyond help and hope, and yet still she grieved for them. Flashes of humanity in Florence, in Nigel, in Jesse, in Jock . . . what did those mean? She couldn’t expect unbelievers to live like believers, and so she was left without the option to judge them—only to love them. Yet it was hopeless now.
While Chloe couldn’t understand how there could still be uncommitted people in the world, she knew there were. Those were the ones she would try to reach with whatever freedom God made the GC give her to make a last comment. How someone could see all that had gone on during the last six years and not realize that the only options were God or Satan—or worse, could know the options and yet choose Satan—she could not fathom.
But no doubt this was true. Ming had told her of Muslims who were anti-Carpathia because they were so devout in their own faith. Some practicing Jews who did not believe in Jesus as Messiah also rejected Carpathia as god of this world. George knew of militia types who refused to give allegiance to a dictator yet had not trusted Christ for their salvation either.
Was it possible, after all this time, that there were still spiritually uncommitted people who simply hadn’t chosen yet? Chloe couldn’t imagine, but she knew it had to be true. Some simply chose to pursue their own goals, their own lusts.
Chloe wondered about the others in Stateville who would die that morning. Many would be bearers of Carpathia’s mark, but surely many would not. Would she, as the prize arrest, be last on the docket?
“Clarity, Lord,” she said. “That’s all I ask for. You have already promised grace and strength. Just let my mind work better than it should under the circumstances.”
Mac dug through his luggage and found his wino
outfit. No one cared to look for the mark of Carpathia under the stocking cap of a smelly man down on his luck. It had become the only ensemble Mac dared go out in during the day. He found his scooter where he had left it in the underbrush near the airstrip and rode to the outskirts of Al Basrah, chaining it securely before staggering into town.
Mac was greeted only by real drunks. He acted as if he was just wandering, but he was on a clear route. And when he got to within a block of his and Albie’s place, he ducked into an alley and found himself alone. He jogged the rest of the way and started up the stairs when he heard voices. Mac stopped and sat on the landing at the top of the stairs. Two men stood in front of his and Albie’s dingy rooms.
“You can’t be in here, old man!” one of them shouted. “Get out.”
Mac mumbled and let his head fall back, snoring.
The men laughed. “Anyway,” one said quietly, “I’m guessing he’ll come after dark. Double-M wants him alive.”
Mac recognized the nickname.
“I got two guys who can watch the entrance starting about an hour before sundown. You’re sure he wouldn’t come earlier?”
“He’s got no mark, man! Who would risk that?”
When the men moved on and Mac was sure the way was clear, he sprang to his feet and unlocked his door. The place was empty. Not a lick of furniture. None of their stuff. Now it just sat as a trap for him to return to.
Mac bounded down the stairs and ran back to his scooter, sped to the airstrip, and headed for New Babylon. He had arranged with Otto that he bring his people to the New Babylon airstrip. “Better to load up where no one can see us,” he said.
The thirty or so men and women in Otto’s charge tried individually to thank Mac, but he just smiled and kept moving them into the plane. He wasn’t going to feel at ease again until he was in Petra. Then, with a new identity courtesy of Zeke, he’d be ready for any caper Rayford could think of.
Otto was bouncing on the balls of his feet at the back of the crowd. “Once you’re on,” Mac said, “we’re off.”
