Mark of Evil (27 page)

In the final phase of the project, every BIDTag of every human could be converted to the newer digital cube design from a remote source—namely, the Global Alliance’s tech command center in New Babylon. Of course that was just theoretical at the moment. But once the Alliance’s Iraq nerve center was linked to a site with sufficient computing power in
another part of the globe, the theory would then become a reality. The Global Alliance satellites roaming the skies and the worldwide wireless technology of the Internet would then be melded into a single dazzling display of surveillance, command, and control over every square inch of the planet, and over all who lived there.

The remote reconfiguring of BIDTags was a major breakthrough. There was no reason why the BIDTags of billions of humans could not also be modified remotely, and over vast distances, in the same way as had been done to chimp 137. Painless and imperceptible, even to the human subjects themselves.

By contrast, test subject 138 had not been given a BIDTag. Amusingly referred to as the “Jesus nontagger” by the Babylon scientists, chimp 138 would be tested today too, but in a different way.

Unlike the other chimp in the experiment, Chimp 137 had been taught three commands in varying degrees. His best trick was to jump. Next best was his ability to climb on command. But he had been insufficiently trained, on purpose, to kneel on command.

The chief touched the Holographic Imagery icon on one of the four screens in front of him. The screen lit up with a map of the chimp room on the other side of the glass. Then he leaned forward to the microphone and spoke the coordinates for the part of the room where he wanted it to happen. Then he calmly said, “Launch image.”

On the other side of the glass, in the chimp room, a three-dimensional image appeared in the air before the chimpanzees. Both of them sat, seemingly stunned for a second, slack-jawed. Then they screeched and fled to the far corner of the glass-enclosed room, only to find that the image was already there, waiting for them. They howled again and lunged on all fours to the other side of the room. The image was there again. They both ran to the center of the room, embracing each other in fear.

The lab chief touched the icon for the microphone feed into the room. “One-thirty-seven,” he said clearly. “Please jump.”

Chimp 137 hesitated.

“Jump,” came the command again. This time he obeyed, but his mouth yawed open in a tortured grimace of fear and confusion.

“Now, 137, climb.”

Again, hesitation at first, but then a moment later the chimp scampered up the little jungle gym.

The chief waited until 137 climbed down the playground equipment and joined his chimp partner in the middle of the room. Then he gave his third command. “Kneel, 137.”

The chimp waved his arms wildly about and began to screech.

“One-thirty-seven, kneel.”

But the chimp still did not kneel.

The chief touched an icon on one of the screens that read Disable Subject.

Inside the glass booth, the holographic image hung in the air above the chimp. Then the image blasted a sudden, brilliant flash. The chimp’s eyes widened as the electronic impulse that had been laser-beamed to the BIDTag imprint on its hand then jolted the command up to its brain. A monster electrical impulse raced from neuron to neuron along the circuit-like maze of axons in its head and then down through the central nervous system and into the heart, where the stimulus overload seized the monkey’s heart as if it had been caught in a factory press and then squeezed until it burst. Chimp 137 convulsed wildly, its eyes bugging out grotesquely as it flopped around on the floor of the glass cage. After a few last, involuntary, heaving movements, it lay still.

The chief was alone, so he was free to roar with celebration on the other side of the glass, clapping his hands and doing a little dance as he saw the fatal beauty of this process, so close to being perfected. Alexander Colliquin would be insanely pleased, he was sure of it. The scientist was certain that a huge promotion and obscene financial rewards would be showered upon him.

After he calmed down, he turned to the computer that would control the command to Subject 138, the chimp with no BIDTag. He touched the Heat Sensor icon and the 3-D image in the glass cage faced 138 and bathed it in an infrared light. The computer screen in front of the chief read
Nontagged
and instantly the
Auto Destruct
command flashed on the screen.

The electronic image in the glass booth blasted a laser beam at the chimp’s head. Chimp 138 dropped to the ground for a second, but then screamed and scampered up the jungle gym and continued to caterwaul with teeth bared against the menacing image.

The chief drew his lips up tight and tensed his face, as if he himself endured some kind of invisible, psychic pain. “No, no, no . . . ,” he moaned. “Not again . . .”

After a moment he pulled himself together.
Well,
he thought to himself, trying to find some kind of solace.
Until we solve this failure, we can still control the Jesus nontaggers with the drone-bots up in the air and with the droid-bots on the ground. They can still be neutralized the old-fashioned way
. Then he thought on it. And after a while he smiled.
I think I
know how
to fix this
.

THIRTY-SEVEN

It took several hours for the chief to correct the flaw in the testing protocol. When it was done, he trudged out of Animal Testing Room #5 and down the hall to his office. He needed to sync his data from the last rounds of tests, so he dumped himself down on the stool in front of the secondary computer in his office and gave the command for
Peering Coordination Data Portal
. The screen lit up.

But first . . . He was fatigued from the long day’s testing. And it would have been easy for him not to go the extra step: to retrieve the security data for the surveillance of his office computer. But he was a suspicious man. He couldn’t be too careful.

So he made the effort. He typed in the address for the remote keyboard sensing device that he had installed a few weeks ago. Then he entered the last date someone had entered his office—in this case Dr. Iban Adis—along with the time of day that he had encountered Adis, and then entered the command for the audio sensing device
that recorded and then translated key taps on his keyboard during the time frame that Adis was in his office. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk while his computer program analyzed and then configured the key taps left by Adis. After two minutes, a window appeared on the screen with a full description of all of the computer commands that had been entered by Dr. Adis.

The chief peered at it with astonishment. Then he muttered a single word in a guttural voice of disgust: “Traitor.”

There was a cancer in the building, and he would have it removed swiftly and mercilessly. The chief spoke into his emergency console. “Security, immediately to the office of the chief of the digital imagery lab.”

A voice in his console responded. “What level, sir?”

“Red alert. And come armed.” He then strode out into the main room full of cubicles. Even though it was evening, the staff was buried in their work. He strolled very slowly down the aisle, glancing into the cubicles on each side. He kept walking until he came to Dr. Iban Adis, who was in the process of packing up for the night. “Hello, Dr. Adis,” he said blandly.

“Good evening, sir,” Adis replied. “I was just heading home.” Then he added, “My wife has dinner waiting for me, I think.”

“That’s nice,” the chief said. Suddenly there was the sound of heavy footsteps as a dozen armed security guards burst into the far end of the hall. “I’m sorry that you won’t be able to enjoy it.”

HONG KONG

Ethan March had planned on having Rivka go with him to the wrapup with Jo Li. But at the last minute she was called to an urgent meeting with the doctor for her young ward, Meifeng. The former
teen prostitute was suddenly showing an unexpected adverse reaction to her withdrawal from a designer cocaine mix Chow had gotten her hooked on. Ethan was impressed by Rivka’s devotion to Meifeng: hard-line when the girl needed it, but always passionate about what was best for her. But more than that, Ethan kept thinking what a great wife she would make—tough and direct and amazingly resilient, yet tender and with a heart bursting with a love for God and totally sold out to the same mission that had enveloped Ethan.

As he thought about the dangers ahead, Ethan also knew that he couldn’t imagine facing all of that without Rivka. Even with all of the ins and outs between them over the years, Ethan had slowly, but deeply, fallen head over heels for her. True, they didn’t always agree on everything. Ethan had to smile when he thought about how the two of them viewed the possible deal with Jo Li so differently. Rivka had had lingering doubts. But Ethan had already resolved all of his.

As Ethan walked alone into the Hennessy Street office building where Hadley Brooking’s office was located, he figured that it might even be for the best that Rivka was not there to toss cold water on it; after all, it was the only strategy that could provide financial sustenance for members of the Jesus Remnant as they followed Christ in a dangerous world and waited for His return.

When Ethan stepped into the little lobby of Brooking’s office, the Englishman was waiting for him. Brooking shook his hand firmly and with a broad smile invited him into his inner office. Jo Li was already there, seated.

Ethan sat down next to Jo, and Brooking took his seat in his highback chair behind his desk.

“Gentlemen,” Brooking announced, “I think we all know why we are here. Mr. Jo, perhaps you can begin.”

Jo Li started talking. But what he said right out of the gate was a little strange. “As I sat here waiting for you, I asked myself a question, Mr. Ethan March. The question was this: Should I describe
my financial system to Mr. March or not? But I decided, yes, that I would.”

Ethan didn’t reply to that. Not yet. He needed to hear more from Jo and figure out where he was heading after his bizarre opening comment.

“So,” Jo said, “here is the basic structure: you go to a certain website and enter a password. Your screen will say that the site is no longer in existence. You repeat the password again but with two additional characters on the login and that takes you to the first portal. That first password changes daily and we let you know what it is via a secure, encrypted site. When you’re through the first portal, you enter your own private password. You have to change yours every five days. Once you’re in, you can access your credit account. It’s like a cyber bank account.

“Every time you do business with another member of our system—let’s say you buy something from that person—your account is hit and the value that you’ve agreed to pay gets deducted and credited to the other person’s account. There is also another private account that you can log into so you can locate other members of my underground system—or my ‘private investment club,’ as my lawyers call it. That’s so we can qualify for the Global Alliance loophole. As long as you deal with members of the club, it all stays in my system, and it all stays private. Away from the eyes of the Global Alliance.”

“A rather brilliant concept—” Brooking began to say.

But he was interrupted by a surprisingly rude Jo, who said to Ethan, “The only reason I’ve even told you this much is because I am proud of what I have achieved. But I am afraid that this private financial market of mine is something that neither you, nor your religious band, will ever be using.”

As a black-ops pilot, Ethan knew an incoming missile when he saw one. One time a heat-seeker had hit his wing and downed him in
Syria, and he’d had to survive for three days on the ground, ducking the Muslim Brotherhood.

This comment from Jo was a missile of a different kind, but just as deadly. As he sat there in Brooking’s quietly civilized office with English landscapes on the walls and brass lamps on the end tables, he visualized the incoming missile blip on his screen and he heard the heart-throbbing sound of the warning bell.

Ethan was on his feet in an instant. He said to a smirking Jo Li, “Time for me to bail out on this.”

“Bail out?” Jo remarked with amusement. “Yes, of course. You were an American pilot. But you’ve forgotten something, Mr. March.”

Ethan was already at the door to Brooking’s inner office, ready to open it, when Jo finished his thought. “You are jumping without a parachute.” Then Jo Li chuckled.

Ignoring him, Ethan swung the door open. Six members of a Global Alliance SWAT team stood in the lobby waiting for him. The first two lunged at him and tried to wrestle him down to the ground, but he tossed them off and tried to bolt through the rest of them, like a fullback, in the direction of the outer door. It took all six of the commandoes to force him down to the ground. They manacled his wrists behind him with computer code-secured, kryptonite handcuffs.

The team leader stepped over to Jo Li.

“My superiors at the Alliance HQ in Babylon send their warmest appreciation,” he said. “Your help with capturing the ringleader of the Jesus Remnant won’t be forgotten.”