Mark of Evil (18 page)

“To be honest,” she said flashing a smile, “I was hoping you’d let me pay with my CReDO card instead.”

The man shook his head no.

“Would you happen to be Rudy, the owner of this store?” she asked.

The man shook his head again. “Naw. Rudy’s gone. Someone bought him out.”

She looked at the small basket of groceries on the counter. Her six-year-old tugged on her shirttails. “Ma, are we going to get some food today?”

“Listen,” the clerk said as he looked her up and down, “give me a minute. I’ll check on something. Maybe I can help you out.” He disappeared into the back room.

For a moment she wondered whether she shouldn’t just leave the food on the counter and exit as quickly as she could. She waited for a few minutes, feeling increasingly uneasy.

The clerk popped his head around the corner. “It’ll just be a few more minutes. I’m trying to get authorization for the old CReDO payment. Hang on . . .” He disappeared again. Another few minutes passed. Just as she was about to turn and leave, the clerk strolled back in. “Okay. All done. Let me see your CReDO card.”

She handed it over. The clerk placed the card under the scanner and there was a little buzz. He looked at the screen on his register. “Hmmm. That’s a funny one. It should have worked.” He swept the card under the scanner again. It buzzed a second time. “Oh, I know
what the problem is. Wow, I’m a regular codger now, aren’t I? Hang on . . .” And he ducked into the back room again.

The clerk still had her CReDO card. She was getting restless and decided that as soon as he came back, she would ask for her card, forget about the groceries, and promptly leave the shop with her sons.

After several minutes a
ding
sounded as the shop door opened. She thought it was some customers, but she didn’t want to look, so she kept staring ahead at the closed door where the clerk had just disappeared. The feet of the people behind her sounded heavy as they strode up to where she was standing. Her oldest son turned to look.

“Ma, it’s police,” the six-year-old said.

She wheeled around to see two Global Alliance policemen in light-blue caps standing just inches away. “Ma’am,” one of them said. “Have you been imprinted with a lawful BIDTag?”

After a moment’s hesitation she said, “I would like to speak to my lawyer, please.”

“If you need to,” the officer said. “But only after you’ve been arrested first, on suspicion of violating the international welfare law on personal identification.” He clamped a set of thick nylon handcuffs on her wrists while her boys looked on in silent alarm and then burst into tears.

The officer pointed to the cross around her neck. “Are you a member of a Jesus-affiliated group or organization?”

“I am, but so what—” she began to say.

The other officer grabbed her two boys as the children began calling for their mother.

“What are you doing?” she screamed.

“Your children will be placed in the custody of the child welfare center while your case is being heard,” they intoned as they began to lead them all away.

By then the shop clerk had returned to his place behind the counter.
He called after the officers, “Hey, am I going to get my reward for turning in a Jesus nontagger?”

“We’ll be back to give you the digital code,” the officer said over his shoulder as he dragged the mother toward his squad car. “Then you can apply for your debit reward electronically.”

TWENTY-THREE

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL

Three Jewish priests—men who could trace their lineage all the way back to the Old Testament priest Zadok—crossed the Western Wall plaza. They strode toward the private entrance to the newly completed temple that loomed above them on the Mount where smoke spiraled up to the sky.

They were easy to spot, dressed in blue-and-white robes with long red sashes and their heads wrapped in white linen turbans. They were on their way to take their turn overseeing the animal sacrifices that had been reinstituted ever since Israel had been granted sole possession of the Temple Mount—part of the bargain struck between Israel’s prime minister Sol Bensky and Alexander Colliquin, who had negotiated it on behalf of the United Nations and its successor, the new Global Alliance.
Since then, the temple had been carefully constructed in accordance with every detail the scholars and architects could find about the dimensions and layout of the last Herodian temple; they had scoured everything they could find in the Old Testament and in references contained in the Jewish writings—the Mishnah, Gemara, and Talmud.

On that day, the plaza below the great temple was busy. In the crowd there were a dozen young men who had just finished two straight days of partying in the brothels and the New Amsterdam Marijuana Emporium located just outside the Dung Gate of the Old City area, in the shadow of the temple. The young men eyed the priests and then started taunting them. The biggest one among them shouted, “You guys are really bizarre. And what about animal rights, hey? Maybe we ought to cut you guys up instead of letting you kill goats and sheep. How about that? And maybe set you on fire, man. How’d you like that, huh? Light you up and see if we can get some smoke comin’ out of you. . .”

One of the priests, the older one, slowed down to respond, but his partners whispered to him to ignore the harassment. But the priest had to say something. “You young men should know better than to make fun of what the Lord calls holy.”

“Oh, so you’re holy, right?” another of the young men yelled out, and in an instant the group started striding toward the priests. Now they were within arm’s length. A crowd started to form, with others starting to jeer at the priests too.

The two younger priests tugged at the older man’s robe. “Come away. Come away and don’t speak to them.”

But the older priest would not be silenced and pointed his finger at the group of young men, nearly touching the nose of the biggest one. “Beware! Beware!” he cried out.

“Ooooh, we’re scared!” one of the young men shouted back at the older priest.

In the growing melee, no one seemed to notice the two bearded men about fifty yards away, dressed in camel-hair robes, one man short and scruffy and the other tall. They quietly observed the events unfolding on the plaza.

The older Jewish priest began to recite something, shouting it in a trembling voice:

Many nations will pass by this city; and they will say to one another, “Why has the L
ORD
done thus to this great city?” Then they will answer, “Because they forsook the covenant of the L
ORD
their God and bowed down to other gods and served them.”

Off to the side, the shorter man in the camel-hair robe said to the other man standing with him, “He quotes from Jeremiah.”

“Yes,” the taller man responded. “But maybe he should have quoted what comes after: ‘Behold the days are coming, declares the L
ORD
, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.’ ”

Now the group of young men were poking and pushing the three priests as they tried to walk away, continuing to shout at them. “We worship the weed! And we worship the whore. And every pleasure we can find. It’s better than your ridiculous God.”

The bigger man in the group grabbed the older priest by his sash and yanked on it until the old man tripped and fell. Several of his gang began to kick the priest while he was on the ground.

That was when a squad of Global Alliance police who had been at the far end of the plaza trotted over to the scene. When the young men saw them, they sprinted in the opposite direction. The police ordered the crowd to disperse. The two priests helped the old man up to his feet and brushed off his garments. One of them asked the police, “Aren’t you going to pursue those ruffians?”

But the cop shook his head. “We’re here to keep the peace. We’ve
told you people several times to create a different entrance for yourselves so you can get up to the temple without disturbing the civilians. They have rights too.”

All the while, the two men in the rough-hewn robes watched with countenances like stone. The shorter one finally spoke. “The fathers have abandoned their sons. The young men have rejected the fathers. And this is what results.”

The taller man nodded. “Which brings us to this hour. The fullness of time.”

In Agion House, the prime minister’s white stone mansion just off of Balfour Street in the stylish Rehavia District of Jerusalem, Sol Bensky had just finished dinner with his wife, Esther. As the servants cleared the table, both of them waved off the idea of dessert, but Esther asked for chamomile tea and Sol for some plain black coffee.

“You’ll be up all night if it’s not decaf,” Esther said gently.

“I’ll be up all night regardless,” he replied. “The presence of the Global Alliance controlling us here in Jerusalem has become a nightmare. The Knesset has a number of proposals to counter this drastic stranglehold of the Alliance. I need to review them tonight.”

“Who is leading the anti-Alliance movement?”

“Joel Harmon.”

“The fighter pilot? The hero from the War of Thunder against the Russian-Arab coalition?”

Sol rolled his eyes. “Everyone says that. Yes, he’s a hero.
Was
a hero. But to me he is simply a thorn in my flesh.”

“Really, Sol? You think so?”

“A few years ago he had the audacity to bring the American, that Colonel Joshua Jordan, into my office for a meeting. Colonel Jordan ended up insulting me to my face.”

“I think I remember that, dear.”

“How could you possibly—”

“Didn’t he quote from 1 Kings 11:1 in that meeting?”

Sol’s face fell, but he waited to reply because the kitchen aide was bringing in his coffee and his wife’s tea. When she left, Sol responded in a blistering voice, “Yes, the part about Solomon having many foreign women! Can you imagine the outrage?”

“I believe, dear, that Colonel Jordan was using that as a metaphor.”

“I don’t care what he was using it for.” But a few moments later he asked, “A metaphor for what?”

“Spiritual adultery of Israel. The kind that comes with dalliances with foreign intruders and idolatry and false religions.”

Sol grimaced and tossed his napkin on the table. “And you agree with the American, I suppose?”

Esther paused for a long time and took a slow sip from her teacup. She wiped her mouth demurely with her napkin and then answered him. “I heard there was another incident down by the temple today. Three priests were accosted by a group of young toughs who sound like they had been high on pot or liquor or both. I imagine those young men were probably in town to savor the delights of our fine array of sex-trade shops and drug cafés.”

“Enough!” he shouted as he rose to his feet and began to head toward his study. “I am not responsible for the decadence and the depravity that has infiltrated Jerusalem.”

“Perhaps you’re right, my love,” his wife said in her soft voice. “But if not, who is?”

TWENTY-FOUR

NEW BABYLON, IRAQ

If it had been under a big top, it would have been the world’s biggest three-ring circus. Three separate gatherings were simultaneously taking place in different parts of the one-hundred-square-mile complex of buildings within Iraq that belonged to the Global Alliance. And each of the conclaves had their own ringmaster.

In the case of the geopolitical meeting, Alexander Colliquin held the position of master of ceremonies, seated in his elevated faux throne, overseeing the proceedings while the caucuses took place in different corners of the Alliance’s World Parliament. He was monitoring their progress through the use of the touch screen of his wireless control panel that was set into the extra-wide arm of his chair.

There was even a kind of high-wire act taking place, performed by
former U.S. president and now temporary regent Jessica Tulrude, who scurried around the hall counting votes, twisting arms, and making deals as the personal envoy of Alexander Colliquin. The global chancellor desperately needed a yes vote on the single motion on the slate for today, and he had tasked Tulrude, his political insider, to get it done.

The motion up for consideration had required the convening of a full assembly of nations. Delegates filled the mammoth curved chambers decorated with three-story-high double Romanesque pillars in each of the four corners. As soon as the caucuses ended, the ten regents from each of the ten global regions would be seated in the inner lighted ring in the well of the chamber; they would be surrounded by the larger concentric circle of the arena, populated by two representatives from each of the nations that constituted their respective region.

The motion to be debated and then voted upon was the draconian set of trade sanctions Colliquin wanted imposed on the United States. The logic behind those drastic measures was simple: it was an attempt to finally bring America to its knees, forcing the current Hewbright administration—or his successor, if he was removed from office by the Senate—to join the rest of the Alliance.