Mark of Evil (3 page)

Standing there in the shadow of the huge rock outcropping, Gikas was going on and on about the robotically operated drone planes that had been employed by the Global Alliance for surveillance and police work. “If they scan you from the air and don’t see your BIDTag, you get one warning over the loudspeaker from the drone, telling you to stop and to wait for someone to arrive on the ground to arrest you. A second warning if you don’t stop. Then they start shooting from the air.”

Ethan nodded. This was old news for him. Except that he knew something Gikas didn’t: for Ethan there would be no second warning, or even a first.

“Yeah,” Louder replied. “We’re pretty up on all of that.” He gave a knowing glance at Ethan. Both of them knew that because Ethan was a leader of the resistance, his image had been cataloged into the facial-recognition program of the Global Alliance ID data centers—the main one in New Babylon, Iraq, and the others in Rome, London, Frankfurt, and Singapore—and they were all digitally linked and uploaded to the drone-bots around the world.

Gikas concluded his point. “Just have to be careful. Need to keep an eye on the sky.”

“The drone-bots have a recognizable pitch to the engines,” Ethan said. “I can usually hear them coming.”

“Anyway,” Gikas went on, “let’s get back to why you’re here.”

Ethan jumped to his main point. He explained how he needed assurance that if his Remnant followers joined Jo Li’s underground economy they would not be linked to anything criminal. No dirty money. No tie-in to drugs, prostitution, human trafficking.

Gikas stretched out his arms in wonder. “What kind of people do you take us for?” He laughed loudly and so did his bodyguard.

“Ethan March is a guy with principles,” Louder said. “I thought you knew that.”

“Okay, okay,” Gikas replied. “I know about you people. Goody-good. Nicey-nice. All squeaky clean and talking all about God and Jesus. Which is why I’m happy to tell you that our trading system is completely legit. The people who trade back and forth in our system are just people who didn’t get BIDTagged, and so they need to be able to buy and sell some other way. Jo Li’s system is legal because he found a loophole in the law.”

“I need to see how his financial system actually operates,” Ethan said. “I need more information.”

“For that, you will have to talk to Mr. Jo Li himself,” Gikas said.

“Where is he?”

“Not here,” Gikas replied.

“Close?”

“Not very. Hong Kong.”

Ethan took a moment to consider that. Then he asked something very different. “Tell me, Gikas, do you believe in God?”

Louder smiled as if he wasn’t surprised.

Gikas answered, “Sure. Yeah. Why not.”

“You don’t sound very convinced,” Ethan said.

Gikas winked at his bodyguard as he answered. “It’s just that, you know, there’s a lot of unknowns.”

Ethan asked, “Do you know anything about this huge rock we’re standing next to?”

Gikas took a step toward the historical marker attached to the outcropping and eyed it. “Yeah, something about Paul the apostle doing something here. Some religious thing.”

Ethan began to explain how two thousand years ago, at that exact spot, Paul had told the great philosophers of ancient Athens about the God who had been unknown to them but could be known through His Son, Jesus.

The big bodyguard shuffled his feet and nudged Gikas, motioning with his head, like it was time to leave. But Gikas took a second to study Ethan. “You people are a strange bunch,” he said and thrust an index finger toward Ethan. “I’m going to have to figure you out.”

“Will you arrange the meeting with Jo Li?” Louder asked.

“Maybe,” Gikas said with a shrug. “It’s up to him, not me. He’s the big guy. I’m a nobody.”

“Wrong,” Ethan said with a smile. “God thinks you’re somebody.”

Gikas was about to reply, but now Ethan hushed him as he held a finger to his lips. He gazed straight up. “There’s a drone-bot approaching. I can hear it.”

A second later they were all eyeing the sky.

Ethan searched for somewhere to hide. The high mount of the Acropolis was too far away. He would never make it. Down toward the city? That was a mile at least to the nearest building. Probably more.

Now they could see the clean white underbelly of the drone approaching their position.

“We’re exposed!” Ethan yelled. He pointed to the grove of trees off to the side of Mars Hill. “Head to the trees.”

Gikas yelled back, “They’ve got body sensors. They can still scan us in the woods.”

As he started racing toward the trees, still limping slightly, Ethan explained, “But the bullets may get blocked by the trees!”

He watched the drone dropping in altitude over their position. Then the laser orb on the belly of the unmanned attack plane flashed. On the ground Ethan was bathed with red light. “I’ve been painted!” he cried. “Everyone scatter. Get away from me!”

“Ethan!” was all Louder had time to scream.

A mere three seconds later—just enough time for the onboard computer in the drone to recognize Ethan from the sky—bullets from the fifty-caliber gun in the drone’s belly turret started blasting down at him. He yelled to Louder as he kept running clumsily toward the grove of trees. “Jimmy, get out of here! Meet me back at the apartment. Gikas, make the arrangements for the meeting with Jo Li.” Pistoning toward a full run as bullets exploded around him, he ducked inside the small wooded area. The bullets ripped through the treetops.

He found a large tree and wrapped his arms around the trunk, pressing against it as hard as he could, and waited. He could still hear the drone up in the sky, cruising back and forth over the trees. He glanced at his Allfone watch. The usual protocol was a seventeen-minute gunnery pursuit, and then the drones usually departed if they hadn’t confirmed a hit on their target. The only thing he could do now was wait it out and not move a muscle.

He stood absolutely still, pressed against the rough bark of the olive tree, until he heard the sound of the plane’s engine fading. Finally the drone was no longer visible in the sky. He let go of the tree and breathed. And breathed again.

Thank You, God
.

But he couldn’t relax. Not yet. He had to get out of Athens. He knew that in a matter of minutes the plaza around Mars Hill would be crawling with Global Alliance police forces.

As he made his way down the hill, he had another thought.
So much for taking me alive.

FOUR

AMMAN, JORDAN

Bart Kingston sipped a cup of Turkish coffee at a sidewalk café. The Jordanian man on the other side of the little glass table held a small, handheld AllView image display unit. He looked uncomfortable and was passing it back and forth from one hand to the other. The Jordanian was obviously a man under pressure.

Kingston wondered about the overly public place his contact had picked for their rendezvous. “Can I ask you something?” he said. “Why here? Why not a quiet hotel room?”

The Jordanian laughed, but not as if something was funny. More like a cynical snort. “Hotel rooms have only two exits. The Global Alliance breaks down the door and now you have only one way out—through the window.” He put the AllView unit down and finished his
coffee. Then he glanced around and picked the unit up again. “At least here I keep my options open. You know, for running.”

Kingston, a former journalist for GNN, knew the stakes. The news footage chip in the image unit was the kind of stuff that could make the Jordanian—or a newsman like Kingston, for that matter—disappear forever if he was caught with it.

“You say, Mr. Kingston, that you are now with this AmeriNews group?”

Kingston nodded.

“I hear the Alliance hates you people,” the man added with a scowl.

“Sure,” Kingston answered. “Because we are American based. Because we’re the only web-based news service left in the world that’s still independent. Not controlled by the Global Alliance, or by any of its ten world government regions. Or by the Alliance’s web-news network, for that matter.”

The Jordanian man set the compact device on the table, exactly in the middle between the two men. “Two thousand units. Agreed price. The digital video chip is already in the recorder.”

“Agreed,” Kingston said.

Before Kingston began to electronically transmit the money, both men glanced around the café again, just one more time. Looking for snoops. Spies. Agents of the Alliance. Close by, a couple sat arguing about something. Two tables away, a young man was smoking a cigarette and eyeing a trio of attractive women passing by. It all looked normal enough.

“Okay,” Kingston said. “I need your BIDTag.”

Kingston held out the screen of his Allfone, and the Jordanian man placed the back of his hand to the screen of the digital communications device until it could read his BIDTag. The screen flashed. Next Kingston passed his finger over a tab with a dollar sign on it. His Allfone was an older model, and the symbol was a relic of the past now
that the dollar had been abandoned as the monetary unit in America and anywhere else.

The screen on Kingston’s handheld read
Transaction Ready
. Kingston placed the back of his own hand to the little screen. Another flash. The screen read
Amount to Transfer?

After the monetary units were typed in, the screen lit up again.
Monetary transfer complete. Thank you, Mr. Kingston
. The corner of the screen flashed with a summary of the payment and the identities of the parties involved.

“Done,” Kingston announced and displayed the screen of his Allfone to the Jordanian, who nodded and looked satisfied but still very nervous. The Jordanian slid the video recorder over to Kingston. Then he added, “Please do not tell who I am or where you got this.”

Kingston nodded.

“I think I know why you want this,” the Jordanian said, pointing to the image recorder. “The raw footage from the Alliance Network. Used for those news stories about the disappearance of the Christians.”

“We call it something else.”

“Yes, yes. I know.”

“Followers of Jesus call it the Rapture.”

The Jordanian searched Kingston’s face. “Then why, if you are one of those Jesus persons, aren’t you disappeared too?” The man gave a little laugh and raised an eyebrow.

“Because,” Kingston said, “I was a foolish man back then. I didn’t make my decision about Jesus until after the Rapture had happened. So here I am.”

The Jordanian pointed at the recorder. “Me? I think that the Alliance Network is right when they say this Rapture didn’t happen. I think what happened was like they say: millions of Christians went out into desert places and all killed themselves, because they thought it would bring Jesus back to earth.”

“And if that’s true, where are the bodies?” Kingston said with a
grin. Then he added, “As for that mass suicide business, it’s a lie from hell.” He leaned across the table, closer to the other man, and tapped the video recorder. “And I intend to prove it.”

The Jordanian stood up and looked around, ready to leave, but stopped and pointed at Kingston’s right hand with a surprised look on his face. “You have a BIDTag. And yet you are a Jesus person?”

“Yes, before I ever became a Christian,” Kingston said, “I got tagged. Another foolish thing.”

The Jordanian shrugged, shook his head, and in a moment was gone.

Kingston flipped open the screen of the recorder and swept his finger over the
Play
tab. He needed to verify what he had just bought.

The screen displayed a Global Alliance logo and a warning in several different languages, including English. The good news was that Bart Kingston was now in possession of the raw footage he had been tracking for more than a year. The bad news became clear the instant he read the warning notice.

Global Alliance Information Network Property of the News Division WARNING!

Unauthorized viewing or possession of this material is a violation of the international code and will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Any usage of this material by a member of a subversive organization that causes harm to international peace is punishable by imprisonment of a minimum term of twenty years and a maximum punishment of execution through humane, lethal injection.

After reading that, Bart Kingston thought about his long career in the investigative news business. And how that business had taken a deadly turn.

FIVE

NEW BABYLON, IRAQ

Alexander Colliquin, chancellor of the two-year-old Global Alliance of Nations, left his office on the top floor of his twenty-thousand-square-foot “Hanging Gardens” suite. At his side walked stone-faced Ho Zhu, his deputy chancellor. The men were flanked by a squad of security guards. In his breathless, long-legged pace, Colliquin strode ahead of them on the moving walkway, making his way over to the adjoining white stone headquarters of Global Internet Connectivity.

A private, heavily guarded corridor led directly from Colliquin’s office to the IC building, part of the new massive complex of buildings that took up one hundred square miles—land that had been deeded to Colliquin years ago by the United States when his friend
Jessica Tulrude, the former U.S. vice president, was finishing out the term of critically ill President Virgil Corland.

Now Colliquin stopped at the bulletproof, triple-layered glass door leading into the IC center. He placed his right eye in the pupil recognition socket and placed his index finger and thumb on the fingerprint ID pad. A laser beam scanned his Romanesque facial features—the kind of face you might expect to see on the cover of
GQ
magazine—and then electronically outlined his tall, athletic profile from head to foot.

A digital voice spoke from the security console. “Thank you for your cooperation, Chancellor. Have a nice day.”

The airlock hissed as the thick glass door opened, followed by another, and another, until Colliquin reached the lobby of the IC facility where the chief of digital imagery, dressed in a light-blue lab coat, waited for him.