by Tim LaHaye
Doc nodded, looking tired.
Buck hated the bright red around his dark pupils. “What’s wrong with him, Leah?”
She ignored Buck, grabbing a gown from a cabinet and tossing it to him. “If he needs to use the bathroom, now’s the time. He’s not likely to get out of that bed again.”
“For how long?” Buck said.
“Ever,” Doc slurred. “She knows what’s going down here.”
Leah pushed the speaker button on the wall phone and continued working as she talked. “CDC delivered some antivenin yesterday. Get me two vials to 6204.”
“Stat?” her receptionist said.
Leah made a face. “Yes, stat!” she said. “Like now.”
“You’ve got a phone call.”
“Do I sound free to take a call? Stat was your word, girl. Would you hurry please?”
“OK,” the girl said. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
Leah tugged Buck’s sleeve and pulled him close to Doc’s bed. “I need to ask him some questions. When that girl knocks, just take the medicine and shut the door.”
He nodded.
“Now, Doctor,” she said. “First symptoms?”
“Quite a while ago,” he mumbled.
“Not good enough. When?”
“I’m a fool.”
“We know that. How soon after you brought that miscarriage in here?”
“Maybe six months.”
“You’ve done nothing about it?”
He shook his head. “Just hoped.”
“That’s not going to work.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“You know the closest CDC can get to an antidote is antivenin, and no one knows—”
“It’s too late anyway.”
Leah looked at Buck and shook her head. “He’s right,” she said. “The antivenin won’t even let him die comfortably.”
“What’re you telling me?” Buck said. “He hasn’t even got a chance?”
Doc shook his head and closed his eyes.
“The maximum antivenin dosage will be like spitting into the wind,” Leah said. “What can you see, Doctor?”
“Not much.”
Leah pressed her lips together.
There was a knock at the door. Buck opened it, reached for the medicine, and the girl pulled back. He made a lunge for it and ripped it from her hands.
“Miz Rose,” she called over his shoulder. “That call was from GC!”
Buck shut the door, but Leah pushed past him and called after her. “GC where?”
“Wisconsin, I think.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“That you were busy with a patient.”
“You didn’t say who, did you?”
“I don’t know who. ’Cept he’s a doctor.”
“You didn’t say that, did you?”
“Shouldn’t I have?”
“Wait right there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Just wait there a second.”
Leah returned and quickly filled two syringes. She drove them into Floyd’s hip, and he didn’t even flinch. “Have her come in here,” Leah told Buck.
He looked down the hall and signaled for the girl. She hesitated, then came slowly. “C’mon!” he said. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
As soon as she poked her head in the door, Leah said, “Bring me my purse as fast as you can, will you?”
“Sure, but—”
“Stat, sweetheart. Stat!”
The girl ran off.
“What’s happening?” Buck said.
“Get your vehicle and bring it around the back. There’s a basement exit, and that’s where I’ll come.”
“But if he’s dying, how can y—”
Leah grabbed his arms. “Mr. Williams, Doctor Charles and I have not just been talking. This man could be dead before we get him to the car. If you want to bury him or cremate him or do anything with him other than have him found here, I’ll deliver him to the back door. GC in Wisconsin ring any bells? That’s where he worked, remember? That’s where he’s AWOL from. They’ve been nosing around, watching for him, figuring he’s in this area and might show up here sometime. They don’t know—at least from me—that he was already here once. I’ve been lying through my teeth. They find him here, dead or alive, we’re all in trouble. Now go!”
“Any chance you can save him?”
“Get the car.”
“Just tell me if he’s better off here or in the c—”
Leah whispered desperately, “He’s dying. It’s just a matter of when. Where is irrelevant now. The best I can do for him I have already done. The absolute worst would be his being discovered here.”
Mac looked at his watch. “Just enough time for you two to tell me how you got together, you know, romantically.”
“I think you’ve heard enough details, Captain.”
“C’mon! I’m an old romantic.”
“It hasn’t been easy,” David said. “Obviously I kept her from you and Rayford.”
“Yeah, what’s that all about?”
“At the time we believed the fewer who knew the better.”
“But we need all the comrades we can get.”
“I know,” David said. “But we’re both so new at this, we don’t know who to trust.”
“If you wondered about Ray and me, you sure never showed it.”
“It was a good exercise, let me just say that. What’s going to happen when the brass start looking for a mark that’s not there, rather than not seeing a mark that is?”
“There’ll be no hiding then, kids.”
Buck took the main elevator to the first floor and realized he had to exit past the receptionist. The last thing he wanted was to have her see his Rover. He planned to distract her with a fake emergency, but as he breezed through the lobby toward the front door, a substitute was in her place, a thick, middle-aged woman. Of course! The original girl was taking Leah her purse. Leah had thought to divert her.
Buck hurried to his car. As he pulled around the side of the building toward the back, he saw the substitute standing at the window, staring at him. He only hoped Stat Girl had not told her to find out what he was driving.
Buck skidded to a stop on an asphalt apron that led to a basement exit. He leapt from the Rover and opened the door as Leah, her bag over her shoulder, rolled out a gurney containing Floyd Charles with a sheet to the top of his head.
“He’s gone already?” Buck said, incredulous.
“No! But people kept their distance, and nobody’s going to identify him, are they?”
“Only your receptionist.”
Buck lowered the backseat and Leah slid the whole bed in. “You’re stealing that?” he said.
“I put more in my purse than that bed’s worth,” she said. “You want to debate ethics or fight the GC?”
“I don’t want either,” he said, as they climbed into the front seat. “But we’re committed now, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know about you, Williams, but I’m in with both feet. This hospital has been GC-run for ages. How long was I going to be able to work for Carpathia when there’s no way I’d ever take the mark of the beast? I’d die first.”
“Literally,” Buck said.
“Well, I just appropriated a bed and a lot of medicine from the enemy. If you have a problem with that, I’m sorry. I don’t. This is war. All’s fair, as they say.”
“Can’t argue with that. But, um, where am I taking you?”
“Where do you think? Take a left, and I’ll take you out around the long way. Nobody will see you from the front of the building.”
“Then where?”
“My place.”
“What if the GC are there?”
“Then we’ll just keep going.”
“But if they’re not, you’ll try to nurse Floyd back to—”
“You’re not thinking, Mr. W—”
“Quit with the formality, Leah. You put a dying f
riend in my car, so just run down the program for me.”
“All right,” she said. “If we can beat GC to my apartment, I’m going to grab as much of my stuff as I can in sixty seconds. You know they’re on their way, as soon as they find me gone from Young.”
“Then where do I take you?”
“Where do you live?”
“Where do I live?”
“Bingo, Buck. I need to hide out. You and yours are the only people I know who have a place to hide.”
“But we’re not telling anyone wh—”
“Oh, yes, you are. You’re telling me. If you can’t trust me after all we’ve been through, you can’t trust anybody. I helped you discharge your patched-up pilot, Ritz. And I helped Doc with the miscarriage of guess-who’s baby. How’s that young woman doing, by the way?”
“Getting better.”
“There’s irony. Doc helps her beat the poison, and it’s going to kill him.”
“We lost Ritz.”
“Lost him?”
“Killed in Israel. Long story.”
Leah suddenly fell silent. She pointed directions and Buck lurched along, double-clutching and shifting till he thought his arm would fall off. “I liked that guy,” she managed finally.
“We all did. We hate this, every bit of it.”
“But you’re taking me in, cowboy. You know that, don’t you?”
“I can’t make that decision.”
She glared at him. “What are you going to do, leave me at the corner blindfolded while you and your compatriots vote? You owe me and you know it. This isn’t like me, inviting myself. But I’ve risked my life for you, and I have nowhere else to turn.”
Doc’s death rattle began. His labored, liquid breathing pierced Buck. “Should I pull over?”
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do now but shoot him full of morphine.”
“That’ll help?”
“It’ll just make him pain free and maybe knock him out before he dies.”
“Something!” Floyd called out in a mournful wail. “Give me something!”
Leah spun and knelt in her seat, digging through her bag. Buck slowed involuntarily as he tried to watch. This was too much. Floyd was going to die while Buck was racing around in the car! No good-byes, no prayer, no comforting words. Buck felt as if he hardly knew the man, and he had been living with him for more than a year.
“Watch the road,” she said. “This will quiet him, but he’s never going to leave this car alive.”
Sobs rose in Buck’s throat. He wanted to call Chloe, to tell her and the others. But how do you do that on the phone? Doc’s dying and I’m bringing a nurse to live with us? Pulling into the safe house without notice, carrying Floyd’s corpse and a new houseguest wouldn’t be much easier. But Buck had run out of options.
Leah’s neighborhood, what was left of it, crawled with GC vehicles. The morphine had quieted Floyd. Leah slid onto the floor under the dash, and Buck avoided her street. He headed to Mount Prospect, hoping Floyd might at least have the privilege of dying in his own bed.
CHAPTER 4
David Hassid walked Mac McCullum back to his quarters in the GC palace residential annex late that night. “There are things I haven’t told even Annie,” he said.
“I knew you had somethin’ to tell me, kid. Otherwise, you’d be walking her back, wouldn’t you?”
“We’re trying to not be seen together. I don’t even know if her meeting’s over.”
“So, what’s up?” Mac said as they stood in the corridor outside his door.
“You know I was on the palace antibugging installation task force.”
“Yeah, how’d you wangle that appointment?”
“Just kept telling Leon how important I thought it was to ensure total impregnability. I came in as a starry-eyed idealist, and they still see me that way. You know about the installation?”
Mac nodded. “Best in history and all that.”
“Yeah, except it needs constant monitoring.”
“Naturally.”
“I volunteered for that, and everybody was glad to let me have it,” David said.
“I’m listening.”
“So am I.”
“What?”
“I monitor the antibugging devices in Carpathia and Fortunato’s offices.”
“Go on.”
“My job is to find out if anyone’s trying to listen in. Well, I’m staying on top of it. And in the process I hear anything I want, any time I want.”
Mac shook his head. “I wouldn’t have minded not knowing that. Man, David, you’re sitting on a time bomb.”
“Don’t I know it. But it’s untraceable.”
“Guaranteed?”
“In one way it’s simple. In another it’s a miracle of technology. The stuff is actually being recorded onto a miniature chip embedded in the central processing unit of the computer that runs all of New Babylon.”
“The one people like to call the Beast.”
“Because it contains so much information about every living soul, yeah. But we both know the Beast is no machine.”
Mac folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “One thing I’ve learned in surveillance work is that you never want to have hard copies of anything. Anything can eventually fall into the wrong hands.”
“I know,” David said. “Let me tell you how I’ve protected it.”
Mac looked around. “You sure we’re secure here?”
“Hey! I’m in charge of that. What we’re saying could wind up on my chip, but no one else will ever hear it. I won’t hear it unless I choose to. If I do, it’s all categorized by date and time and location. And the fidelity is unparalleled.”
Mac whistled through his teeth. “Someone had to manufacture this for you.”
“That’s right.”
“Someone you trust with your life.”
“You’re looking at him.”
“So how’d you make sure no one ever finds it?”
“I’m not guaranteeing that. I’m saying they will never be able to access a thing from it. The chip is slightly smaller than a quarter-inch in diameter and, because of super-compression digital technology, can hold nearly ten years of spoken conversation if recorded twenty-four hours a day. Well, we don’t need that much time, do we?”
Mac shook his head. “They’ve got to have checks and balances.”
“They do. But they aren’t going to find anything.”
“What if they do?”
David shrugged. “Say someone catches on to me and starts looking for my bugs. They find ’em, trace ’em to the CPU, tear the whole thing apart, and find the chip. It is so heavily encrypted that if they tried random number combinations at the rate of ten thousand digits a second around the clock for a thousand years, they would have barely begun. You know, even a fifteen-digit number has trillions of combinations, but theoretically it could be deciphered. How would you like to try to match an encrypted number containing three hundred million digits?”
Mac rubbed his eyes. “I was born too early. Where do you kids come up with this craziness? How can you access your chip if it’s that encrypted?”
David was just warming to his subject. “That’s the beauty of it. I know the formula. I know what pi to the millionth digit has to do with it and how the date and time to the current second have to be used as a multiplier, and how those figures float forward and backward depending on various random factors. The number that would unlock it now is different from the number a second from now, and it doesn’t progress rationally. But let’s say someone were to get far enough into my chip where the only step left was to match the encryption code, a miracle in itself. Even if they knew the number, only a lightning-speed computer grinding away for more than a year could enter it.”
“Has what you’ve heard been worth the work?”
“It will be to the Tribulation Force, don’t you think?”
“But how can you transmit it to them without jeopardizing your secu
rity or theirs?”
David pressed his back to the wall and slid to sit on the floor. “All that’s encrypted too, though certainly not to where it takes them forever to get into it. So far we have been able to communicate by both phone and Carpathia’s own cellular-solar technology on hidden scrambled bands. Of course, he’s constantly on me to find ways to monitor all citizens.”
“For their own good, no doubt.”
“Oh, absolutely. The potentate merely cares deeply about the morale of his global family.”
“But, David, can’t anything transmitted also be intercepted?”
David shrugged. “I like to think I can bug anything. But I’ve tested my own stuff against my tracing power, and unless I drop enough bread crumbs along the road, I’m powerless too. Random scrambling and channel switching, coordinated with miniaturization and speed that makes fiber optics look like a slow boat . . . well, nothing is beyond possible anymore.”
Mac stood and stretched. “Ever wonder about this stuff? Like what Dr. Ben-Judah says about Satan being the prince and power of the air? Transmitting through space and all that . . .”
“Scares me to death,” David said, still sitting. “It means I’m on the front lines against him. I didn’t know what I signed on for when I became a believer, but I wound up on the right side, didn’t I? It’s too late to change my mind. I walk the same halls with Antichrist himself, and I play around in the air with the devil. I’m careful, but the mark of the beast will change everything. There won’t be any believers working here after that, unless they find a way to fake the mark. And who would want to do that?”
“Not me,” Mac said, unlocking his door. “We’re all going to wind up in one safe house or another one of these days. I sure hope mine’s the same as yours.”
David was so moved by that compliment that he was too stunned to respond. “Long flight Friday,” Mac added. “I’ve got to find out who’s tagging along with Leon and whether I can get Abdullah in here in time to help.”
The tension of his role, exciting as it should have been for a young man, weighed on David. But he headed toward his own quarters with a lighter step.
