The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (302 page)

“Most of us stayed, sleeping in here, watching, listening, studying, praying to get Jesus, and all of a sudden, World War III. Chicago’s toast. We’ve got one TV and one computer hooked up. First we hear it was not nuclear; then the next wave is, and we expect to die of radiation poisoning. It doesn’t happen, but we don’t dare test the atmosphere outside. We knew if it was full-blown radiation, we were not protected just because we were inside some basement, but we figured we were safer in than out. Till now.”

Rayford called George and asked if he wanted a mission on his way back to San Diego. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

Rayford gave him the gist of the assignment and said, “I can’t give you papers on short notice, but if I can reach our guy in New Babylon, you can bluff your way around in Greece. If they check on you, you’ll appear to be in the system.”

“I can come up with some reason why I don’t have papers. And you want these kids delivered to Chicago?”

“Unless you’re prepared for them in California.”

Knowing what was coming that evening, Chang felt out of touch with the Trib Force. Not until after his “surprise” visit at about eight o’clock could he key in the stuff Rayford wanted for this George Sebastian, nor could he find out what had happened on the Phoenix 216. He made sure he was watching GCNN and reading a book at the time, but even he was surprised at the nature of the drop-in.

Chang thought Figueroa’s assignee—a cocky, condescending Scandinavian named Lars—would have at least knocked. But at a few minutes after eight, as Chang watched coverage of Carpathia and his senior cabinet being enthusiastically welcomed back to New Babylon, he heard a key in his door. It was just as well. He quickly turned up the TV and pretended he didn’t hear a thing until they burst in. This was the best cover. He was relaxing, watching TV, reading, not even thinking about his worthless laptop.

The door swung open and two uniformed Peacekeepers marched in. “Mr. Chang Wong?” one said.

“That’s me,” he said, rising. “Did I forget to lock my door?”

“Turn off the television, please, sir, and join us over here, if you would.”

“What if I wouldn’t?”

“Now, sir.”

“Thanks for making me feel welcome in my own place.”

“This is not your place, Mr. Wong. This is the property of His Excellency, the potentate, and you serve here at his behest.”

Chang made a show of turning off the TV and dropping his book onto a chair. As he approached, the Peacekeepers moved aside and one of them announced, “This, sir, is Mr. L—”

“Lars!” Chang said, smiling, though he had barely done anything more than greet the guy. “How are you, man? I know him! We’re in the same department.”

“We need your cooperation and silence, Mr. Wong,” the Peacekeeper said.

“Ooh, okay! What’s up?”

The peacekeepers asked if they could search Chang’s apartment. “For what?” he said.

“Routine,” they told him.

“You won’t find any routine here. I am studying English words new to me and my current favorite is
serendipity.
That’s what you’ll find here, the opposite of
routine
.”

“Funny. We don’t need your permission. We were just being polite.”

“Of course. My clue was your use of a master key to get me to answer the door.”

While they searched the apartment, Lars set up a high-powered laptop on Chang’s small kitchen table. “I’ll be asking a few questions,” he said.

“No, you won’t.”

“Stop being a smart aleck,” Lars said. “This is my assignment.”

“Do the questions relate to finding a leak from the palace to the suspected mole?”

Lars turned ashen. “You’ve already been interrogated?”

“No, but I have my reservation in with another
interlocutor
—another new word. You like?”

“Computer!” the other Peacekeeper called out. “Looks like his personal laptop.”

“If you had told me what you were looking for, I could have directed you to it.”

“This your only one?”

Chang was tempted to pretend there was another, but the fun of watching them try to locate it wouldn’t be worth their leaving the place in more of a shambles. He nodded.

“Over here with that,” Lars said.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Lars,” Chang said. “I had everything on that hard drive, and I mean
everything.
Maybe you won’t feel so bad about losing the interviewing assignment to our boss if you have this project to work on.”

“Project?”

“I crashed the hard drive, and I’ve tried everything.”

“Everything
you
know.”

“That’s right! That’s why I’m so glad you’re here. I must be missing something, and even if it’s something complex, I know you can solve it.”

“You bet your life I can.”

Chang, of course, was betting his life Lars couldn’t. “I don’t want to be up late, Lars.”

“Oh, this shouldn’t take long.”

“I’m just saying maybe you want to call Mr. Figueroa so he can do whatever he has to do with me while you’re retrieving my information.”

“What’re you, serious?”

“He promised.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask him that.”

“He’ll ask you the same questions I would, and you’ll answer into the same mike.”

“Only with him, I’ll answer. With you I won’t.”

“Then you’ll be suspected as the leak, and you don’t want that, guilty or not. You hear what happened to the stewards today?”

Chang didn’t like it when he was asked a question to which he didn’t know the answer. “Shock me.”

“Sentenced to death.”

That did shock Chang. “For what?”

“Subversion. Treason. They flunked the lie detector test. They were feeding information to a mole here. Conversations between the potentate and his people were acted upon before they were through talking.” Lars handed him a lapel microphone. “Put this on.”

“Not for you,” Chang said.

“For Figueroa then.”

Chang applied it to his shirt, praying silently. The key, he knew, was how the questions were worded. In his mind, a mole was an animal; he was a human being. If the questions were too specific and unequivocal, he’d be in trouble. “Start with my computer, will you? I’d really love to see all that stuff I had stored.”

“You don’t back up your stuff?”

Chang shook his head. “Nah. Do you?”

“Not as much as I should, but you gotta know you’re going to fry something—hard drive, motherboard, whatever—every few years.”

“Guess I’ve been lucky.”

Lars dialed, tucked his phone between his cheek and neck, and started pecking furiously at Chang’s laptop. “Yes, Mr. Figueroa, sir. I’m at Chang Wong’s apartment and he says—oh, you did. Well, yes, right now. I’m helping him with a computer problem, so we’ll be here. Thank you, sir.”

Slapping his phone shut, eyes still on Chang’s computer, Lars mumbled, “On his way. My, you
have
fried this thing.”

“Really, Lars? You can tell already? Wow.”

“Yeah, it won’t let me in at all. Let me try this.” He appeared to try everything. “Nothing. Believe me, Wong, if anything was here, I could get it for you.”

“No doubt.”

“But this acts like it’s been exposed to some super electromagnet.”

“Haven’t heard that term in a while.”

“You know the drive is all about electricity and that a magnet can wreak serious havoc.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, it’s quite simple.”

“For a brain like yours, maybe,” Chang said. “I just know what buttons to push.”

“Well, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“I suppose. It’s Greek to me.”

“Thought you were supposed to be some kind of a genius,” Lars said.

“Live and learn. Look what I did to my own laptop. A hundred gigs somewhere in the ether.”

“Should have called me at the first sign of trouble. There had to be warnings.”

“Yeah, I saw a lot of strange stuff, but you know, laptops are temperamental.”

“Not if they’re treated right. Did you defrag and all that?”

“Not often.”

“Obviously not. I don’t think there’s anything here.”

“You can’t help me?”

“If anyone could, I could. But there’s either something on the drive or there isn’t, and in this case, there clearly isn’t.”

“What if it was on a different drive, named something else?”

“You couldn’t do that by accident,” Lars said. “I could do it, but you have to know what you’re doing.”

“Which I don’t.”

“Obviously. Here’s what I
can
do for you. While you’re being interviewed, I can format your whole drive for you so you can start rebuilding.”

“That’s got to be hard. Complicated.”

“Nah. Won’t take much.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“What are friends for?”

Chloe had sneaked two of her new friends into the Strong Building in the wee hours of the morning. Only Zeke was stirring, and he blanched at the new faces. Chloe introduced the young man and woman with such enthusiasm that she knew he’d understand they were okay, without wondering if she was covering and he should go find a weapon.

Once he heard the story, Zeke offered to help them transfer a serious amount of foodstuffs to their place. Chloe wrote every detail she could remember and e-mailed it to the rest of the Trib Force before collapsing just before dawn and sleeping till almost noon. She assumed she would be scolded for taking such a risk, but she was so excited she was amazed she was able to sleep at all.

No surprise to Chang, Figueroa arrived looking all business and gave him a stare that communicated he should avoid any familiarity in front of Lars.

“Ignore me,” Lars said, taking Chang’s laptop to a couch and settling in with it. “Just making sure this is ready for a whole new protocol.” Chang wondered if Lars
could
affect his encoded drive with his clumsy efforts.

Figueroa pointed to a chair and sat across from Chang. He dismissed the other Peacekeeper, then whispered, “I didn’t think you were going to hold me to this.”

“I could have let it slide,” Chang said. “Proved you were completely untrustworthy. Mind if I take a peek at that software?”

Looking bored, Figueroa pivoted the machine to face Chang. He sighed. “Newfangled stuff. Supposed to be better than the bulky old hardware.”

Chang knew it wasn’t all that new. He had seen it in China and even played with it. He made a show of tilting the screen so the light was just right. “Interesting,” he said, and as Figueroa leaned closer, Chang added, “Sequoia, ah, I mean, Aurelio.”

Figueroa sat back, obviously peeved. “I’d appreciate your addressing me by my last name.”

“Excuse me, of course,” Chang said.

Figueroa grabbed the laptop and pulled a small notebook from his pocket. “State your name,” he began, then walked Chang through a series of banal, obvious questions. “Is today Sunday?”

“No.”

“Is the sky blue?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a male?”

“Yes.”

“Do you work for the Global Community?”

“I am employed by them, yes.”

Figueroa looked up at Chang. “That’s the answer you want to give?”

“Yes.”

“Are you loyal to the supreme potentate?”

Chang closed his eyes and reminded himself that Jesus Christ was the only person who fit that definition. “Yes,” he said.

“Have you ever done anything that would be considered disloyal to the supreme potentate?”

“Not intentionally, no.”

“Stick to yes or no answers.”

“No.”

“Do you get confidential information from someone who leaks it to you from the inner circle around the supreme potentate?”

“No.”

“Is the supreme potentate risen from the dead and the living lord?”

“Yes.”

“Can His Excellency Nicolae Carpathia personally count on your continuing loyalty for as long as you serve as an employee of the Global Community?”

Chang hesitated, making Figueroa look up again. “Understand the question?”

“Of course.”

“Then your answer is yes?”

“No.”

“Don’t start playing games now, Chang, or we’ll have to do this all over again.”

“Well, Mr. Figueroa, I can certainly say in all sincerity that I will continue to show the same level of loyalty to the Global Community leader that I have shown him since the beginning.”

“So that’s a yes?”

“It merely is what it is.”

“What would he think of this?”

“Probably that you’re wasting your time, and mine.”

“You don’t want to just say yes and be done with it?”

“That’s the last question?”

“Yes.”

“How’m I doing so far?”

“It looks fine,” Figueroa said.

“Then let it ride.”

“That last answer could look evasive.”

“To whom?”

“To anybody who’s got a question.”

“Do
you
have a question, Mr. Fig—”

“Man, do you ever just give a straight answer?”

“Should I?”

“Agh!” Figueroa swept up the equipment. “Let’s go, Lars.”

“Yes, sir. Laptop’s ready to go, Chang.”

“Find any of my stuff on it?”

“No, but you can rebuild from here with a clean slate.”

“You have no idea how I feel about what you’ve done for me here, Lars.”

“Well, you’re welcome.”

It was time for the Trib Force assignees to Operation Eagle to head for Mizpe Ramon and the flight home. The overflow crowd of Israelis was bivouacking outside Petra, and Chaim was about to be airlifted to a spot where all could see and hear him, from both inside and outside. Rayford, Buck, Mac, Leah, Hannah, and Albie stood in a circle with Chaim, holding hands. Big George from San Diego sat in an idling chopper fifty yards away, waiting to lift Chaim into Petra, then transport the Trib Force to Mizpe Ramon, from where he would also fly his own plane to Greece, then to Chicago, then to San Diego. “Let’s get George in on this,” Rayford said, beckoning him with a wave. “I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing more of him.”