Mark of Evil (22 page)

Kora reached out his hands to the unseen billions watching him.

Won’t you join me? Join me in rallying your neighbors, your friends, and fellow members of your worship communities? Remember, some of our global citizens are, sadly, still very reluctant to become part of this movement. We respect that. Those who do not feel comfortable with religion are still permitted the full freedom not to join with us. But then, there are also those—the religious zealots, the cultists who preach this dangerous lie against humanity called the Rapture of the Christians—who have sought to conceal the mass suicides and mass murders of their fellow Jesus worshipers. They say they exalt life, yet they embrace death. They say they are enlightened, yet they blindly obey Bible writings from thousands of years ago. Imagine the risk they pose to peace on earth and good will toward mankind. We grant them the right to their freedom of opinion, as delusional as it is. But we do insist that they be exposed to the truth. For, my friends, imagine a world where such deluded persons can receive counseling and help and an opportunity to be healed from their spiritual disability. Please, won’t you let us know who they are, so we can provide them with some information and personal help?

Kora’s image on the screen was replaced by a web/Allfone address: [email protected].

As Micah looked on at the screen and the web address, it was clear to him that the word
report
was not intended to be a noun, but a verb.

Kora added a final thought before ending the telecast.

For those of you who care enough to share the identity of someone in this kind of need, you will be blessed with a generous contribution credited directly to your digital CReDO account. This is our way of thanking you and helping you in this time of global
economic distress. Thank you. And may the Common God of our Common Creation bless you all. Have a beautiful day.

After Micah clicked off his pocket web TV, he studied the faces of his fellow Jesus Remnant members. He pointed to the screen of his little TV, but was only able to utter three words: “Blasphemies from hell—”

A distant sound stopped him from finishing his sentence. A drone-bot was cruising overhead. An instant later several dozen Global Alliance police charged at them from several directions, their weapons drawn.

Someone cried out, “They’ll drag us all to a Jesus Ghetto!”

Micah’s mind whirled. Colliquin and his dreaded Alliance must have betrayed Prime Minister Bensky. He turned furtively around, three hundred sixty degrees, looking for a way of escape. But found none. The police were almost within reach.

Then Micah spotted two transport trucks approaching, each with the blue-and-white Global Alliance insignia. The trucks drove quickly down the tree-lined lane toward them and slammed to a stop. Blue-helmeted police surrounded Micah’s group as the drivers of the trucks got out and opened up the big double doors of the transport vehicles. It was clear what was going to happen next.

Closing his eyes and lifting his hands, Micah cried out, “Father in heaven, by the blood of Jesus Christ Your Son and through the power of the Holy Spirit and by Your matchless might, protect us this day.”

The commander of the Alliance unit stepped forward and called to them loudly with his French accent, “Don’t be ridiculous. Stop your silly prayers. Come with us, all of you, and you will not be harmed.”

Micah took in the frightful sight: more than thirty armed men in Alliance uniforms, with their weapons poised and aimed. One of Micah’s men stepped forward. Micah called out to him, “Don’t do it. Our God is faithful.”

The commander pointed to Micah and called out an order to the two officers standing next to him. “Arrest him for insurrection. He’s a leader.”

Two Alliance cops pointed their extended-clip Berettas at Micah’s chest as they stepped toward him. That was when Micah felt the presence of something—or someone—brushing past him on either side from the midst of his group. Two men strode toward the Global Alliance police. The hair stood up on the back of Micah’s neck as a numinous shiver came over him. There was something unspeakably powerful about these two. One was tall and magisterial, the other short and stocky with a thick neck that was hairy on the backside. Both were bearded and they wore rough robes that looked like they had been woven out of camel hair; the robes were gathered at the waist with coarse rope.

The short man held up his hand, palm out toward the Alliance forces. When he spoke, it was like the roar of a great lion, and the sound of it seemed to have a force that could stop even one of the new high-speed “qwiktrains” in its tracks.

“In the name of the Son, the Holy Lamb of God, the slain One who rose again, and in the name of the Father who is Lord of the universe, I command you: you shall not pass!”

As the stranger in the coarse robe spoke those words, a shimmering wall of fire rose up like a curtain from the ground. It created a barrier between the Alliance police and Micah’s group.

The commander screamed for his troops to commence firing. All of the barrels of their guns burst smoke as the troops let go with a volley of gunfire aimed directly at Micah and his Jesus followers. Micah winced, half closing his eyes. He was about to be executed. But when nothing happened, he opened his eyes again. He saw, in the curtain of fire, the bullets hanging in midair, then melting into little globs and falling to the ground.

The short man in the rough-hewn robe wasn’t finished. He balled
up both of his fists and then in one motion tossed his hands forward, fingers open, toward the squad of slack-jawed Alliance police. The entire group of armed men were lifted up into the air and blasted fifty feet back, where they then landed onto the ground in a tangled human heap as if they had just been dropped to earth by the force of an EF-5 tornado.

The two men in robes turned to face Micah, and the tall one pointed down toward the Old City below, where Rabbi ZG’s apartment was. Micah nodded, understanding exactly what was meant even though it had not been spoken in words.

“Yes, I will take you there,” he muttered, still numb from what he had just witnessed. He looked over his wide-eyed group, all of them staring in shock and disbelief.

Leading his followers, Micah strode down the hill toward the Old City; as he walked, the curtain of fire continued to surround and protect the entire group of Jesus Remnant followers as the stunned troops on the ground began to regain consciousness.

The two bearded men strode solemnly and silently behind Micah.

It was then that Micah remembered something, and as he did a shivering sense of awe overcame him. He remembered the words of Rabbi ZG and the Bible prophecy he had spoken of. Now Micah was certain of it.

They’re here
.

TWENTY-NINE

U.S. SENATE

Washington, D.C.

President Hank Hewbright sat in an ornate wingback chair that had been brought into the Senate chambers specifically for his testimony. The chair was positioned on a slightly raised platform so the chief justice could have a clear, unobstructed view of the witness. And the witness could look up and see Chief Justice Straworth.

Hewbright, during the direct examination conducted by attorney Harry Smythe, had given a long and detailed explanation of his decision to issue an executive order to all branches of the military and to every federal department and agency following the Senate’s vote ratifying the Global Alliance’s so-called treaty. His order directed the Pentagon and those federal agencies to “resist cooperating with
both the spirit and the letter of the Global Alliance document that was approved by the Senate, and that wrongly purports to a lawful treaty, and that the Senate wrongly presumed to have been within its jurisdiction and powers to ratify.”

Everyone knew the president’s reasons and the constitutional and legal basis for his decision. But now, in cross-examination, prosecuting attorney Corbit Hibbings submitted Hewbright to a withering battery of questions, most of them designed to extract admissions from the president that he had full knowledge his decision—even if it was constitutional—to buck the Global Alliance might end up causing the financial collapse of America because of the Alliance’s retaliatory worldwide boycott. That he knew his decision might even risk a civil war breaking out in the nation’s streets as a result.

“And you,” Hibbings called out in a powerful voice, “were willing to place the fate of this nation on an altar of high principles—your personal principles—at the risk of destroying the very nation that you were sworn to protect?”

“These are not just my personal principles,” Hewbright replied softly. “They were shared by others.”

“Oh, you mean the Founding Fathers, I presume?”

“Yes, every one of them, I believe.”

“So your defense here today, in this trial, is that your principles were shared by a small group of men who have been dead for two hundred years, some of whom held slaves and didn’t see the benefit in granting the right for women to vote? You mean those men?”

“Not just them,” Hewbright replied.

“Then who?” Hibbings boomed out, loud enough that his voice reached the gallery. “By all means, name names, Mr. President.”

The president paused. And then he looked to his lawyer, Harry Smythe, who smiled and nodded to his client. Hewbright was ready to answer.

“Here in the Senate there is a procedure—we all know it—called
special orders
. The ability, sometimes late at night, after the regular business of the Senate has been completed, for a senator to place on the congressional record some additional thoughts. Many times those comments are preserved when there is only that single senator present, talking in these chambers, and the audio taping system of course is recording it all.”

“We all appreciate your recollections of Senate procedure, Mr. President. But I don’t see the relevance—”

But Hewbright kept talking and cut right through. “And there was this one evening—I was a senator back then when it happened—and another senator was talking during special orders. I was standing in the back, and I don’t think that senator saw me. Except for the two of us it was an empty Senate chamber. Thinking back to that night, I imagine that man was baring his soul a little because he felt safe to do so, entirely alone with his thoughts. I can’t recall the legislative issue he was addressing at the time, but regardless, what that senator said was profoundly true. I made a point of remembering it. He said, ‘The government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has one duty above all others: it must preserve the American Republic and the constitutional rule of law upon which it is founded. Because if those foundations be removed, how can our house be saved from ruination?’ ”

Hewbright continued, “Now I was up in the far corner, listening. That senator and I were from opposite parties. Often locked in bitter disputes. But what he said that night was true and right and it has stayed with me ever since.”

Attorney Hibbings sneered. “And we are to believe, Mr. President, that this little tale about that unknown senator has stayed with you all these years and was conveniently retrieved from your memory just in time for your impeachment trial?”

“No, Mr. Hibbings,” Hewbright said in a gentle voice. “Not an
unknown
senator, but a very
known
one.” And with that, he looked over
to the tall judicial chair at the bench above him, and into the eyes of the chief justice sitting in it. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Chief Justice? Because those were
your
words spoken that night, back when you were a senator, in these very same Senate chambers.”

And with that, Hewbright turned to the hall full of senators and members of the press and citizens up in the gallery. He now asked his own question. “Mr. Chief Justice, and ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, I have to ask myself: How is it, exactly, that we have allowed this nation to sink down to this miserable state of affairs?”

PARIS, FRANCE

At three in the morning Paris time, the Allfone on the table next to the bed started ringing. Vlad Malatov bolted up from sleep and reached over to tap the Receive icon on the cell.

“Who is this?” Malatov asked.

It was Henry Bender on the other end, calling from New Jersey. “I’m the newsboy. Morning paper.”

Malatov glanced at the time function on his Allfone. “Talk.”

“The Senate finished deliberating. My contact says they just returned to the Senate chambers and voted.”

“And?”

“Failed. Two votes shy of removing Hewbright.”

Malatov didn’t say anything.

“A little surprising,” Bender continued. “They thought it was a done deal. So congratulations, I guess, to you. Sort of like being awarded a government contract, huh?”

On the other end, Bender laughed a little at his own pun, but Malatov gave no response as he sat in bed.

“One more thing,” Bender added. “This is a rush-rush deal.
There’s a lot riding on this. A lot of moving pieces. My boss says that any delays—”