Mark of Evil (2 page)

Louder quickly surveyed the rooftop. They were still alone. “Two things. First, on a personal note”—he broke into a grin—“I ran into Rivka a few days ago at a safe house in Jerusalem. She was traveling through on her way back to Hong Kong. She said to say hi.”

Ethan’s face brightened slightly. “Oh? Did she say anything else?”

“Only that she would really like to see you soon.”

Ethan shrugged. “Well, she knows the encrypted underground number. She can locate me that way anytime she likes. In fact, she could have done that a year ago.”

Louder snickered. “Do I sense that you’ve got some feelings on that subject?”

Ethan waved the comment off. “What’s the second thing?”

Louder sobered. “Speaking of the Global Alliance, I think I was tailed today. Two rough-looking guys.”

That was something Ethan didn’t want to hear. He could feel his jaw tensing. “Did you lose them?”

“Yeah, about a block from here. They didn’t look like Global Alliance police. More like bounty hunters. Probably sniffing after the reward money the Alliance is offering.”

“I wondered when the Alliance was going to raise the bounty.”

“Well, on you they have. Big money. But for the capture of little ol’ me,” Louder said, “they’re just offering dresser change.” He gave out a fake whimper. “My male ego is still aching about that.”

Ethan managed a grin. But silently he mulled over the bounty hunter issue. He hoped Louder had lost the guys tailing him.

He shook it off and changed the subject. “All right, on the subject of an underground barter payment system, where are we on that?”

“I’ve been in contact with the black market guy. His name is Gikas. A local Greek. He’s the Athens point person for Mr. Big.”

“Jo Li?”

“Right. I’ve already set up the introductory meeting with Gikas.”

“Where is Jo Li now?”

“Don’t know. But we may find out shortly. You and I have a meeting with Gikas up at the Acropolis, like, right now. That’s why I came by to pick you up. Sorry about the short notice. If he clears us for the next step, then we get a meeting directly with Jo Li.”

“Good,” Ethan said, snatching his short-sleeved shirt off the roof and slipping it on.

“Just one thing,” Louder said. There was caution in his voice. “We just don’t know a lot about Jo Li’s operation. I’ve only heard rumors. We have to be careful.”

“Sure. But those of us in the Remnant who refused to get laser imprinted with the BIDTag identification don’t have any choice,” Ethan shot back. “Ever since the Alliance linked the universal monetary system to everybody’s BIDTag via the web, we’ve been stuck. I’m hoping Jo Li’s system will be our ticket to an alternate method to buy and sell.”

Louder smiled as he watched Ethan launch into one of his favorite subjects.

“If we fail in this,” Ethan continued, “our people won’t eat. Won’t be able to pay for housing. And we’ll be strapped for communications money to deliver the truth to a world on the verge of imploding. And then there’s our field operations budget. Without that, how are we going to protect God’s people from the evil empire? This is a ‘Moses at the Red Sea’ moment.”

“I thought you said you weren’t called to be a preacher,” Jimmy cracked with a sly smile.

Ethan shrugged it off. “Okay, so I guess I’m cranked up this morning.” He looked out beyond the rooftops and up to the ancient ruins on the top of the hill in the distance. He studied the columns of the ancient Acropolis from his position on the rooftop, and then he asked a question that came out more like an answer. “Most people just don’t think their own civilization will crumble, do they? Josh kept telling me how one day the whole planet would start collapsing into chaos, right before God wraps up history once and for all. Brings Christ back to establish His kingdom. Like an idiot, I didn’t take it seriously back then. But Josh was right. He was right about a lot of things.”

Louder studied him. “You miss him, don’t you?”

“I miss all of them,” Ethan shot back. “The whole Jordan family. Josh. And Abby too. Boy, she really sized me up when she first noticed I was interested in her daughter!” He laughed. “And I miss her too. Deb Jordan, I mean. I know now why it never would have worked between the two of us, though I didn’t have a clue at the time. And I miss Cal, of course. We ended up like brothers. But right now I know that none of them are looking back. No regrets. And meanwhile you and I, because we dragged our feet in making a decision about Jesus, ended up being left behind.”

Louder bobbed his head. “At least we’re on track now.”

Just then Ethan heard a sound, as if someone approached. He was instantly on the alert, like a hunting dog. The noise came from the far end of the rooftop where it was accessed by a single door
set into a copula. Ethan narrowed his eyes and pointed to the door. “When you came up to the roof, was anyone hanging around in the stairwell?”

Louder shook his head.

Before Ethan could reply, the door burst open and two men rushed out onto the rooftop. In the lead came a bounty hunter sporting a Mohawk and a sleeveless shirt that revealed tattoos running down both arms. He was followed by a tall, lanky man with his hair tied back in a ponytail who hung back.

“Hold it right there!” the tattooed guy screamed as he stood his ground at the other end of the roof. He pointed a strange-looking gun in their direction. “We’ve got a piece of paper from the Global Alliance. And you know what?” He broke into a big grin. “It’s got both your names on it.”

“They had those kinds of papers in Nazi Germany too,” Ethan called back.

“Nice history lesson, Jesus freak,” the man yelled, following up with a string of profanities. “But I didn’t come this far to chat. Wait till the Alliance starts putting the screws to your head,” he said with a laugh. “I wish I could see that.”

Ethan whispered to Louder, “I’m not carrying at the moment. Are you?”

“Nope,” Louder replied in a hushed voice.

Ethan sucked in a deep breath and stared at the two tough guys edging cautiously toward them. “Looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

TWO

Ethan and Louder raised their hands. As they stepped slowly toward them, the bounty hunters eyed them like jungle animals stalking a prey that could fight back.

Ethan kept his eye on the little black weapon with four barrels that was gripped in Tattoo Guy’s hand. “Looks like one of those Russian pistols. The PB-4M,” he whispered.

“Rubber bullets?”

“Maybe.” Rubber bullets or not, Ethan knew that a shot to his skull from one of those would knock him out, and could even be fatal. And a hit anywhere else would certainly disable him. “They must want us alive.”

“What’s the plan?”

Ethan surreptitiously glanced around. They were standing about five feet from the wrought-iron fence at the edge of the building’s flat rooftop. “You slide down the rope. I’ll handle the
illustrated man
with the gun.”

“I thought you were the master rope climber.”

“But you’re the old guy. Age before . . . whatever.”

“Shut up!” the tattoo guy yelled. Without warning he fired his pistol, winging Ethan in the thigh. Ethan howled, grabbing his leg. He grunted to Louder, “Yeah, rubber bullets. Get down the rope. Meet me at the Acropolis.”

The two bounty hunters were now about five feet away. Louder turned and launched himself over the fence, sliding down the rope. The tattooed shooter aimed for him, but Ethan leapt forward and buried his head in the man’s midriff, taking him to the ground as the pistol clattered out of his hand. The tattoo guy gasped for air, the wind knocked out of him.

The tall man with the ponytail jumped into the fray and locked his arm around Ethan’s throat from behind. Ethan grabbed the ponytail and tossed the man over his shoulder, sending him onto his back with a smack.

Struggling to his feet, Ethan began to limp toward the edge of the building. But the tattoo guy had recovered enough to catch him by the ankle and trip him. As Ethan jumped to his feet again he saw Mr. Ponytail scrambling over to the pistol. Ethan hobbled toward the fence, coming within a couple of inches of the rope before the tattooed bounty hunter caught up to him and wrestled him to the ground. As the two men struggled, Ethan caught a glimpse of Ponytail picking up the pistol. An instant later the man had the multibarrelled gun in his hand and with three shots left was running full speed toward Ethan.

It was now or never. Ethan punched his assailant solidly in the face, knocking him out. As the ponytailed gunman ran toward him, Ethan lifted up the listless bounty hunter and held him like a shield. Mr. Ponytail fired and hit the bleary-eyed tattoo guy squarely in the back. With a low groan he registered the strike, now only semiconscious.

Ethan dropped him and vaulted over the fence to rappel down the rope. By the time he reached the porch of the second floor below, Mr.
Ponytail was aiming his gun down at him. Ethan swung himself out of sight onto the patio.

An elderly couple sat there on the deck in folding chairs. They watched him, wide-eyed with mouths agape.

“Folks,” Ethan announced hurriedly, “you’d better go inside.” He pointed to the sliding door that led to their little porch. “Stay there for your safety. I’m borrowing one of your chairs.”

The elderly man nodded hesitantly, like he was trying to understand. He and his wife rose unsteadily to their feet, Ethan helping the wife until she had both feet planted beneath her, and made their way into their apartment.

Ethan snatched up a folding chair and collapsed it. He stepped up to the edge of the patio and waited. Two seconds later Ponytail came sliding down the rope with his gun now jammed in his pocket. When he saw Ethan staring back at him, he grabbed frantically at the weapon, trying to yank it out of his pocket as he swung back and forth on the rope.

Ethan raised the folding chair. “Stop persecuting God’s people.” He swung the metal chair and smacked it into the man’s midsection. Mr. Ponytail dropped off of the rope and fell straight down, clipping through an awning and finally landing on his back on the roof of a car.

Ethan grabbed the rope and finished rappelling down to the sidewalk below. The ponytailed thug was rolling around in pain on the car’s roof like a turtle on its back. Reaching into his pocket, Ethan pulled out a gospel tract and tossed it onto the man’s chest. “Read that,” he said to him. “Seriously. You’re on the wrong side. There’s still time to turn your life around.”

Then he placed under the windshield wiper of the car a few old-fashioned international CReDO currency bills. He’d heard a few merchants were still accepting those remnants of the last one-world currency that had been in circulation before the world’s money system went totally digital. Those bills would cover the damage to the
car roof. He felt bad about the torn awning, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

He limped across the street to another apartment complex and made his way through the lobby to a back entrance that led to an alley. He’d have to use a staggered route for the first part of his walk up to the Acropolis to avoid detection. He was feeling the heat from the Global Alliance in Athens.

Only one thing to do:
After
the
meeting, time to leave the area and relocate
.

Ethan made his way to Therios Street, where it took a steep turn up to the Acropolis and its overshadowing marble structures, the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena—monuments to the long-dead prestige of pagan Athens. Therios Street would put him in the wide open, but there wasn’t any other way to get there. Once up among the ancient ruins, things might be safer, at least on the ground. With the devastating effect of worldwide depression, tourism was a bust. The grounds surrounding the ancient sites were usually vacant, except for hordes of homeless people sleeping under trees.

As Ethan glanced up at the familiar remnants of ancient Greece where he would meet Louder and Gikas, he began to silently pray. For a successful meeting. For some way to provide a financial system for millions of new Jesus Remnant members around the world. And for some way to protect them as long as he could while the rest of the world continued to collapse.

THREE

When Ethan arrived at the large rock outcropping near the ancient ruins of the Acropolis, Louder and Gikas were there, along with a big, ominous-looking “assistant” who Ethan took to be the bodyguard. Gikas, a short, stocky man with bushy eyebrows, announced that he was the local agent for Jo Li, the reputed mastermind behind an underground network for buying and selling. But Gikas looked distracted. He kept nervously scanning the sky. When Ethan started to dialogue, Gikas put up his hand to silence him. Gikas craned his head quickly back and forth, surveying the Acropolis. After a moment he said, “I thought I heard one of them.”

“One what?” Ethan asked.

“One of those Global Alliance drone-bots they use for flyovers. Very little armed security on the ground here in the ruins.”

“We’ve noticed that,” Louder said.

“Yeah, now they are doing it from the air,” Gikas continued. “They use the drones for nontaggers like you guys.”

Gikas launched into a diatribe on the problems that global surveillance had created. Everyone—and especially Ethan—knew what Gikas was talking about. Ethan didn’t need a lecture on the dilemma of nontaggers who, like his own group, had refused to receive a BIDTag—the invisible, biological identification tattoo with a hidden QR code, required by force of law to be lasered onto the backs of hands or on the foreheads of every citizen on the planet, including those in America. People had been told it was for homeland security purposes. But with the onslaught of global depression, the BIDTag had been converted for another use as a human debit card—a cashless, worldwide electronic system for payment and banking.

When they’d worked shoulder to shoulder in Israel, Josh Jordan had continually drilled Ethan on the significance of those events. Josh kept reminding his younger apprentice how it fit into the tapestry of Bible prophecy. So when Josh and his family were raptured, Ethan was already trained to understand “the signs of the times,” as Josh would put it: the geopolitical events happening around the world and in the United States. Like the fact that the United States Congress had voted to join the world’s universal payment scheme, but President Hank Hewbright had promptly vetoed it. Then Congress overrode his veto in a squeaker of a vote. That’s where matters still stood in America. Appeals to the Supreme Court had been fruitless; the vanishing of several Supreme Court justices at the Great Disappearance meant a weakened high court, with several members missing and President Hewbright unable to get any of his judicial nominees confirmed.