Mark of Evil (14 page)

Hewbright managed a smile. “That’s what I’ve been told. Although politics is never certain. It’s always been more art than science.”

“I’m sure you’ve done a rough head count for votes in the Senate,” his VP said. “They seem locked into a guilty vote to remove you. I’m sure your lawyer has already told you how they’re trying to expedite this. A blazing-fast Senate trial, now that the Alliance is threatening to crush this nation with a worldwide economic boycott.” Zandibar paused and added, “You’ve made a, well,
interesting
choice, by the way, going with Harry Smythe as your defense attorney for the trial, rather than your White House counsel. Harry’s getting a little old and a little tired for a case like this, don’t you think?”

Hewbright shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Harry’s the right man for the job.” Then he shifted the subject. “I was just told that riots have broken out along the Magnificent Mile in Chicago after the news of the potential boycott against the U.S. Several people are lying dead near Water Tower Place. This country is being shaken to its core.”

“Which is why,” Zandibar shot back, “I think the two of us should keep in closer contact through this chaotic time. We need, you and I, to keep talking through your decision to stonewall the Senate’s vote on the Global Alliance Treaty. And you need to reconsider your
executive order. Just think about it for a moment—your executive order directing the Pentagon and every federal agency to resist cooperating with the Senate’s vote to bring us into the Global Alliance. We need to deal with the facts as they are. And the facts are that the Senate ratified that treaty, and the Alliance is anxious to bring America into their fold. Your decision makes us an isolated island surrounded by an ocean of trouble.”

“And you know my position on that,” Hewbright snapped back. “The Senate alone doesn’t have the constitutional power to dissolve this Republic. So am I to ignore the illegality of that vote? Stand by and watch our borders disappear and our Constitution get shredded and place us into the hands of international masters?”

Then he went right to the point. “Darrell, are you ready to lead America if I am removed?”

“I’m not looking for the presidency,” Zandibar said. “Not yet. And certainly not that way.”

“But are you ready?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Your trust.”

“If I’m out,” Hewbright said, “will that matter?”

“To me it will.” Zandibar tapped a finger on the arm of the couch where he sat. “I know you’ve cut me out of some of your higher-level strategy meetings.”

Hewbright didn’t hesitate. “True enough. I’ve had some concerns.”

“About?”

“Loyalty. You forget: one of the perks of the presidency is access to intelligence. I know that two weeks ago you and Jessica Tulrude had a private meeting in her suite in the Hay Adams Hotel. Why didn’t you share that with me?”

Zandibar took a few seconds before responding. “I didn’t think I needed to. Frankly . . . I just wanted to hear what she had.”

“Against me?”

“Yes. I know you are an honorable man, Hank. An honest man and a patriot with a great vision. But I just didn’t know—”

“Whether she had some dirt on me that I had been hiding?”

“I had to make sure.”

“And?”

“Actually, the whole thing was a joke. Tulrude kept going on and on with the same tired line against you—your efforts to block America from joining the Alliance. What she called your ‘sick addiction to an outdated view of the Constitution.’ ”

“Oh, that,” Hewbright said with a smile. “You mean that old yellowing piece of parchment paper that I pledged to uphold, with my hand on the Bible, when I was sworn in as president?”

Zandibar nodded and looked thoughtful, as if he was trying to choose his words cautiously. Then he said, “In any event, there was nothing there, Hank. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Hewbright said. “If you’re telling the truth.”

“Hank, if you let me, I will do everything in my power to defend you and protect your presidency. But you need to let me in on your strategy. Let’s remember, I am still president pro tem of the Senate.”

“But once the Senate removal trial against me is commenced, the guy sitting up there in the big chair won’t be you. It will be Chief Justice Straworth from the Supreme Court. He’ll be presiding. The man appointed to the Court by Jessica Tulrude as payback, no doubt, for his having done some favors for her when he was back in the Senate. I suspect the whole thing will be a rigged trial.”

“You mean,
if
the trial commences,” Zandibar added.

Hewbright studied his vice president. Darrell Zandibar was a brilliant man. Top of his class at Harvard Law. A successful New York federal prosecutor and a young rising star in the Senate when Hewbright picked him as his running mate. But he often wondered
what he really knew about the other man. What could a person truly know about a man until the testing time came and the pressure mounted? Or when the sweet siren song of temptation floated in? What was it Shakespeare had said about screwing your courage to the sticking place? Or, better yet, the command from God to Joshua in the Old Testament as the journey across the Jordan River and then the entrance into the Promised Land was about to begin, and all those bloody battles to follow. It would be the command for Hank Hewbright as well: to be strong and courageous and to fear not.

The clock was ticking for Hewbright’s future. He knew that. And he had a sense that it was not just his political future. There was more at stake than that. During the last election cycle, on the eve of Hewbright receiving the nomination of his party, there had been an attempt on his life. He knew it was part of the job, though he was a little surprised there hadn’t been more assassination attempts, more near misses, during his presidency. But now he harbored the firm belief that his current term, and perhaps even his life, could end dramatically and soon. He believed right down to the hollow of his gut that there were not only enemies outside, but also an enemy presence lurking inside his own house. And there were very few people he could trust with that information.

As Hewbright walked Zandibar to the door and then closed it behind him and turned, alone, back to his solo vigil inside the White House, he was convinced more than ever before that the time to cross the Jordan River was at hand.

NINETEEN

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

The rioters had come from the ranks of the homeless, the unemployed, and the hopeless. Some of them were armed. They had barricaded the entrance doors and taken over the first few floors of the exclusive shopping mall high-rise at Water Tower Place and had set fire to several of the shops. On the ground level, with the help of the police, the fire fighters dodged bullets and tried to get their ladders in place to reach the fire that sent flames out of the broken glass in the tall semicircular windows over the entrance to Macy’s.

A few blocks away, in the backseat of a cab that was slammed in the middle of horn-blowing, dead-stop traffic, Bart Kingston was making a call to Dr. Terrance Radameyer, a retired professor who used to teach digital image forensics. His condo was along the Lake Shore, not far from there.

Radameyer picked up the call. Kingston spoke quickly. “Doctor, I’m sorry I’m late. Caught in traffic.”

“Yes, I know. The riots. Terrible. Are you all right?”

“I am. But I’m going to bail out of this cab and go it on foot. Be there as fast as I can.”

Kingston hung up and tossed his taxi fare over the seat to the driver, then jumped out of the cab, briefcase in hand. In little under an hour, after dodging police squads that were on their way to Water Tower Place, he made it to Radameyer’s tenth-floor condo. It was a large, classy place with a nice view of Lake Michigan.

As they sat on the couch, Kingston noticed that Radameyer had the little compact AllView device on the coffee table that he had couriered to him.

“I notice you didn’t want to talk over the phone,” Kingston began.

“Well, my late wife was a psychologist. She used to tell me, ‘Sometimes there’s a healthy side to paranoia.’ What you and I are about to discuss right now, this is potentially very dangerous stuff.”

“We’re agreed on that,” Kingston said solemnly. “I’m sure you know about the international law that outlaws even the possession of this kind of material.”

Radameyer raised both eyebrows. “That gave me pause at first. But then, Mr. Kingston, someone has to be willing to find out where the truth lies—no matter where it happens to be found.” Radameyer reached out and waved a finger over the Start icon on the little screen and it lit up. “So, Mr. Kingston, I take it you want to know my reaction to this video material marked as ‘raw footage’ from the archives of the Global Alliance news network.”

“Exactly,” Kingston said. “It supposedly shows large masses of dead Christians, with crosses or clutching Bibles, scattered in groups, lying on the ground in enormous numbers, and all in remote locations.”

Radameyer reached out and touched the Pause icon, then turned to Kingston. “I don’t think I saw this footage at the time when it was
first played on the web television news stories. But I obviously read about it later. Everybody did. Telling the story about millions and millions of Christians spontaneously migrating to remote locations. Deserts. Wilderness areas. And then committing mass suicide, all at the same time. Those were the headlines. But being a forensic expert who has testified in court about faked video images over the last thirty-five years—two hundred and three times to be exact—I have developed a certain amount of skepticism when stories don’t add up. My first question was: Where are the bodies?”

Kingston nodded. He had made the same point himself, many times.

The retired professor explained the counterargument. “But then the Alliance officials said that many of the bodies were detected to have dangerous biological contaminants and had to be buried in mass graves immediately. A public health hazard, they said. Of course they refuse to tell anyone where these supposed mass graves are located.”

Kingston wanted to pursue another angle. “On the other hand, you’ll notice, Dr. Radameyer, that the footage of all of the supposed mass suicides were outside of the United States. In other words, in countries under Global Alliance control. No real attempt to document any alleged mass suicides in America. When this news hit, the only press mention of alleged U.S. suicides among Christians was a handful of still photographs of some bodies on farm properties, lying on barn floors, supposedly somewhere in the plains states. No location was ever given. I’m betting that those photos were lifted from police files on actual suicides of a few of those poor folks who took their lives after their farms went belly-up—decimated by a combination of drought and of course the bankrupting of the whole American economy courtesy of some terrible decisions in Washington over the years.”

Kingston pointed to the little video player on the coffee table.
“The problem is, as logical as those explanations are, it isn’t enough. I’m after hard evidence—facts—that prove definitely that the Global Alliance news feeds were fraudulent in the way they tried to portray the disappearance of Christians.”

Radameyer swept his finger over the Forward icon and the news footage flashed on the screen. Then he set the Elapsed Time button at a specific point and fast-forwarded the footage to that spot. “Okay,” the professor said. “I’ve picked the most dramatic depiction that was aired by the Global Alliance News Network over web TVs all over the world. This piece of footage was shown more times than any other. And when I dug a little further, I learned that it had more hits on the Internet than any other news story that year.”

But then Radameyer hit Stop on the screen and stood up. “I think, to give you a better picture, I’d like to show you this on the bigger screen in my study.”

He led Kingston into his library. It had only one wall lined with books, and the rest of the bookshelves were lined with cases of videos, DVDs, MP3 cartridges, and little cartons of megapixel zip drives all carefully labeled and alphabetized. He had an ultra-wide computer screen on his desk. The computer was already on and humming, and in less than a minute he synced the little video player with his computer. Then he hit Play.

On the screen was the familiar footage. Kingston had seen it many times. And he had heard people remark how it seemed to explain—at least to some extent—the bizarre disappearance of so many Christians.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bodies lying together in a field in various postures. Many of them grasping Bibles and crosses. Their faces twisted in the final grimaces of death.

“This is the footage I was referring to,” Radameyer said. “Now, let me show you a close-up.”

He brought the view into a close-up of a man on his back, his eyes staring straight up, clutching a Bible. Next to him a woman in a scarf,
also staring out blankly. “This is where there has been artificial image rearrangement—fakery.” He brought the image even closer, to where just the eyes of the man and the eyes of the woman were visible in two separate viewing panes on the screen. “I applied a mathematical formula—standard stuff for people in my area of study—to the light refraction you see on these eyes. Taking into consideration their position next to each other, and in reference to a supposed common light source, what kind of specular highlights—in other words, the glint in the eye—should they have had? I have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that the man’s position was real, but the woman with a cross around her neck was inserted into the photo artificially. Obviously for dramatic effect, to show these were Christians who were dead. This footage is doctored. Now this is pretty hard to detect unless you know what to look for. But I also found some other, more obvious signs of fraud.”

Kingston perked up. “Like?”

“I found six examples in this footage of image cloning—where the shot of a small group of bodies was pasted repeatedly into distant sections of this group photo of bodies—to inflate the size of the group, to make the mass of victims look larger. It was done smoothly, mind you. Well done. But obviously tampered with.”