Mark of Evil (15 page)

“If it was that obvious, why did they do it?”

“For the dramatic effect, for one. And also, as both of us know, these images were flashed over web TV sets, and the footage that the Alliance broadcasted had an imbedded no-copy matrix. So viewers only had a short time to view it. And unauthorized possession or examination of Alliance news footage is . . . Well, you know the penalties.”

Kingston grinned. He knew he had hit pay dirt. Now that he had begun his own walk with Christ and spent time reading the New Testament, he knew what had really happened to pastor Peter Campbell, his friend in Israel who disappeared with all those others.
The man had spoken to him so many times about Christ and His Second Coming, and the Rapture of His church that would happen before that—before the great and awful Tribulation.

The unbelieving, skeptical world—all of those who had been fed a monstrous and hellish lie about why millions of Jesus followers had suddenly vanished—needed to hear this.

“This is impressive,” Kingston said.

“But there is something else,” Radameyer continued. “The news report and the raw-footage identification both indicated that these photos were supposedly shot in a grassy field in Canada. But they couldn’t have been.”

“Why?”

“Look closely here and see if you can see something interesting in this grotesque field of death.”

Kingston stared at the screen as Radameyer brought the image of the bodies closer and closer. Until at last Kingston saw it.

“A butterfly. On the chest of one of the corpses.”

“Not just any butterfly. I checked it out. It’s a Freyer’s Purple Emperor. Fairly rare. Found in the former Soviet-bloc countries. Especially Romania. And the grass types in this field match the geological descriptions of the Romanian countryside.”

“Romania,” Kingston muttered.

“That means something to you?”

Kingston felt a sudden shiver. He shook it off and explained. “A number of years ago, when Alexander Colliquin was rising to power in the United Nations, a story broke through AmeriNews, the news network that I work for now, about Colliquin and about his criminal behavior back when he was a small-time local politician in Romania. The reports were that he had ordered the gassing of a group of Christian villagers who had opposed him. Dr. Radameyer, I believe that’s what we’re looking at. The victims of Alexander Colliquin. That’s why he would have had access to this footage and could provide it to the
Alliance News Network to use it as a lie to explain the disappearance of Christians. What an evil sick-o he is.”

Radameyer clicked off his computer. “So, Mr. Kingston, you have my opinions. And as long as I stay put here in the U.S. and this nation doesn’t join the Global Alliance, I guess I would have a fighting chance to avoid prosecution under international law for possessing this news footage.” He took a minute to stare at the floor. “I suppose you will want me to sign an affidavit, describing my scientific findings?”

“Better than that. I want to videotape you telling the world exactly what you just told me.”

Radameyer thought about it for a few seconds. “I’ve come this far. So I guess I’ll do it.”

As Kingston reached out and shook the expert’s hand, his stomach growled and he thought about dinner. “Can I see if any of the restaurants around here are delivering, even with the riot at Water Tower Place? It’ll be my treat.”

Radameyer smiled. “There’s a great little Italian place, Vini’s, only a block from here. I think they’ll deliver. Make mine shrimp linguine with marinara.”

Kingston nodded. “And while we’re having dinner, I’ve got another question for you.”

“I thought I answered them all for you.”

“Not this one.”

“Shoot,” the retired professor said.

“If the footage was fake—and you know that it was—and you know that the official explanation from the Global Alliance about Christians killing themselves in a mass suicide is hogwash, then here is my question to you: How do you explain the vanishing of millions of followers of Jesus? Doesn’t all of this prove the accuracy of what the New Testament says? What is written there about Christians being caught up in the clouds with Jesus Christ, in the blink of an eye?”

Radameyer stood up and made his way over to a cabinet drawer to retrieve a menu from Vini’s, handing it to Kingston. “You can make your choice for dinner and then call them. The telephone number is on the front.” The beginning of a smile broke over his face. “Meanwhile, I’ll be thinking about your question.”

TWENTY

HONG KONG

Ethan March had found a temporary home in the high-rise penthouse of Zhang Lee, a wealthy real estate broker who had recently come to faith in Christ. Rivka had first connected with him a few months before when she heard about his becoming a Jesus follower, and since then she had held regular Bible studies in his opulent suite. The place was spectacular, full of Yongzheng Dynasty vases and original oil portraits by Wu Zuoren. Now that Ethan was in town, Rivka had arranged for him to stay at Mr. Zhang’s place.

It was midday and Ethan was sitting on a small outside porch off the living room. It had a reflective privacy screen around it that would block any snooping drone-bots from spying down on the occupants. Ethan still had a good view of the cluster of skyscrapers and residential
towers that surrounded the affluent Asian Crown apartments where Zhang’s residence was situated.

His Bible was on his lap, and he had just turned to chapter six of the New Testament book of Ephesians, where he was pondering again the principles of spiritual warfare. He began to read: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.”

But then it happened. Without warning, everything in his field of sight fled. And then the vision appeared. The same as before, and yet slightly different this time. Yes, there was the same handsome face that was quickly replaced by the horrible image of the beast. But now it came more into focus. In the visions before, the image had been like an artist’s quick rendering, a charcoal sketch of a horrific face that moved and breathed and seemed to be a thing alive. But this time the image morphed into something like a finely wrought oil painting—a detailed portrait of hatred incarnate, with red eyes and a gaping mouth that dripped with the blood of its victims. Judging by the increasing amount of detail now in the image, the time of the fulfillment had to be getting closer.

And there was something else too, reflected within the eyes of the beast. Within those eyes Ethan could see the bodies of his victims strewn everywhere, murdered and martyred. And Ethan knew at that very moment who they were. They were the souls of those who would be slain because of the Word of God, and because of having testified boldly to the world about the saving grace of the God who had delivered His only Son, Jesus Christ, to be a living sacrifice and a ransom for many.

In an instant the vision was gone, just as quickly as it had come. Ethan dropped his head into his hands. He wept for the darkness he knew had come into the world, and for the unrestrained evil that was yet to come.

He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. Looking up, he wiped the tears from his eyes and saw Rivka watching him with a searching, comforting expression.

“One of your visions?” she asked.

He cleared his throat and pulled himself together. “Not my visions but
His
,” he said. “I know God gives them to me for a reason. But I search the Bible and read it and study it, and yet I still don’t know why He has decided to deliver these images to me.”

For a few minutes Rivka simply stood next to Ethan with her hand on his shoulder, and the two of them silently gazed out over the metropolis of Hong Kong spread out below them. Then she said, “Could any of us really have understood how we’d end up being caught up in the beginning of this? This terrible, last night of the world? The birth pangs of the Tribulation . . . But here we are, you and I.” Then she looked Ethan in the eye. “And by the way, Ethan, aren’t you the one always quoting your hero, Joshua Jordan? That ‘the real choice before us is always simple in the end . . .’ ”

Ethan finished the sentence. “ ‘The choice between faith and fear.’ ” He looked out over the city of Hong Kong and out even farther to the harbor and the ocean beyond. Then he added a thought. “And I know what the Bible says—that faith is the substance of things not seen, the evidence of things hoped for. So I have to trust God and His Word, especially about those things not seen, and then do my part in dealing with the things that
are
seen
,
even if it means I have to witness the world falling into flames and beginning to blow apart.”

He suddenly broke out of his dark mood, looking at Rivka with a glint in his eye and flashing a big grin. “But there’s something else I need to get off my chest: I really can’t understand why I let so much time go by without trying to connect with you. What an idiot I am! So listen carefully. Because I can’t tell you how really good it is to have you near me again.”

A little chime sounded on Rivka’s wrist Allfone watch. She tapped it. “Sorry, but duty calls. Your video conference call is about to start. You should come inside.”

IN THE UTAH DESERT OUTSIDE THE NATIONAL DATA CENTER

Henry Bender, the former New Jersey mob enforcer, didn’t like getting his silk suit dirty, but he didn’t have much choice as he knelt down in the sand of a ridge about a mile away from the outside perimeter of the U.S. government data complex at Bluffdale. He was looking through a high-powered pair of military-issue binoculars, complete with an internal digital camera. He surveyed the massive series of square, windowless buildings, each of them the size of the buildings at Houston Space Center. Bender was snapping pictures of the buildings, and also of the fully armed guard towers that were mounted every hundred yards along the perimeter of the high razor-wire fences. A road circled the complex, and two armored military Humvees cruised in a slow, routine surveillance around the property.

Dillon Ritzian sat next to him in the sand, swatting flies. “I told you, Henry, this place is well guarded. And I told you about all the stuff you’re not even seeing—the infrared cameras they got and all the human-sensing devices planted all around this place. Geez, I’m sure they’ve already spotted us up here. I’m not really excited about the possibility of having the feds bust me on espionage charges.”

“Cool your jets,” Bender grumbled. “No one’s coming after you. So are the control codes and passwords back in the car?”

“Yeah, in the contractor’s notebook I left on the seat. Everything your IT guys will need to access the computer algorithm that randomly changes the daily passwords every couple of hours.”

“And so, when my people are finally on the inside of the data center, they can quickly access the entire network? I’m talking Internet, cable, telecommunications, satellite, the whole enchilada?”

“Sure,” Ritzian said. “After that they can control everything the U.S. government has linked together here in Utah—their NSA spy satellites, aerospace data, global surveillance, a couple of million facial recognition video cameras throughout the country that are watching us, the tracking of RFD chips imbedded in everything under the sun, all of their Internet scanning surveillance that follows everybody . . .”

“And they can also track everybody’s BIDTag laser imprint, right?”

“That’s the biggie, sure,” Ritzian replied. “Look, whoever controls this place here in the desert is going to control data on every person and their movements and on every person’s contact with every other person. You know this could get scary, actually . . .” He scrunched up his face like he’d just thought of a problem that needed to be explained. “But you know, to do that your people have to physically get into the buildings down there.” He pointed down to the complex that was the size of a small city. “And the security on the outside of the buildings, hey, it’s nothing compared to the stuff I saw in the schematics about the internal security inside the building. There’s only one other way to hack into the computer system without actually entering the building—”

But Bender was starting to stand up, and he cut Ritzian off as he did. “You know something, Dillon,” he said, brushing the sand off of his suit, “you and your schematics are only a backup that my people may not even need. They really aren’t worried about security.”

“They’re not?”

“Naw, they’re not.”

“Why not?”

Bender smiled. “Because when the time is right, we’re betting that they’ll be able to stroll right into that place. And when they do, the doors are gonna swing wide open.”