The Left Behind Collection: All 12 Books (242 page)

“Where’d that come from?”

“Every tribe and nation!” Guy said, and his people laughed. “Seriously, we have an unlimited supply of holy books from all over the world, the last contribution of the late Pontifex Maximus. He shipped from Rome all the holy texts that had been confiscated and donated from the various religions and sects when the one-world faith was established.”

David was repulsed, now certain he didn’t want the closer look, but he was stuck. “Note the handiwork on the way up!” Guy said. What was there to see but polished black iron? “You can touch, but be careful! It’s delicately balanced!”

Nearly two and a half stories up, David could hardly hear Guy anymore. Smoke wafted out the eyes, nostrils, and mouth of the quadruple-size image of Carpathia. It was uncanny. Though from that close the illusion was lost that the eyes were real, the features, having been made from the actual cast of the body, were perfect replicas.

David was high enough to see past the statue to the horizon, where the sun’s pinks were just beginning to wash the sky. Suddenly he flinched and backpedaled, hitting the safety bar just above his waist. The whole scaffold shuddered, and he feared it might topple.

“Hey!” one of Guy’s assistants hollered.

“What’s going on up there?” Guy yelled. “You all right?”

David waved. He didn’t want to admit what he’d heard, what had made him jump. He steadied himself and listened. A low rumble, echoing as if from the belly of the image. Muffled and sonorous, it was clearly Carpathia’s timbre. What was it saying, and how had they gotten it to do that? A chip? A disc player? A tape?

He felt the vibration again, heard the hum, cocked his head to listen. “I shall shed the blood of saints and prophets.”

David whipped the control so the scaffold lurched down about five feet and stopped, swaying again. “How did you do that?” he called down.

“Do what?”

“Get a recording in there!”

Silence.

“Well, how did you? Where’s the hardware, and what does the phrase mean?”

Guy was still staring up at him, obviously holding out.

“Guy!”

“What?”

“What didn’t you hear? Do I have to repeat everything?”

“What didn’t I hear? I didn’t hear anything but you, David. What the devil are you talking about?”

David began his slow descent. “The thing talks. How did you do it? Tape loop? Disc? What? And won’t the heat or smoke destroy it?”

Guy rolled his eyes at his people. He whispered, “What are you, serious?”

“You know blamed well I’m serious, Guy.”

“So we’re back to first names, are we?”

“Can we not get hung up on that right now, Minister-Director-Poten-take-your-choice Blod? The thing speaks. I heard it twice, and I’m not crazy.”

“If you’re not crazy, you’re mistaken.”

“Don’t tell me I didn’t hear what I heard!”

“Then you’re hearing things, Director Hassid. This thing hasn’t been out of my sight since the shell was delivered. This isn’t a theme park. I don’t want giant talking action figures. OK? Are we all right now? May I have them start moving my big boy into position?”

David nodded and stepped back to let a monstrous forklift move in behind the statue. His phone chirped, and as soon as he answered he heard a tone indicating another call. “This is Director Hassid, hold please,” but as he punched in the other call heard, “Dav—!” and recognized Fortunato’s voice.

“This is Director Hassid, hold please,” he said again, switching back to Fortunato. “Sorry, Commander. I’m watching the moving of the statue, and—”

“I’m sure that’ll succeed without you, David. I’d appreciate not being put on hold in the future.” David knew he should apologize again to keep up appearances, but he was dwelling on how important his getting up before 5:00 a.m. was to Fortunato last night and how incidental it was now. “We’ve got a situation here,” Leon continued. “I need you in the conference room on eighteen as soon as possible.”

“Anything I need to bring or be thinking about?”

“No. Well, yes. Captain McCullum’s schedule.”

“Oh, he’s—”

“Tell me when you get here, David. Quickly, please.”

David switched to his other call. “That busy that early, huh, kid?” Rayford said.

“Sorry. What’s up?” David walked backward as he talked, watching the statue emerge from the preparation room and become visible to the crowds. The murmuring grew louder as people nudged each other and pointed. The statue leaned back against the forks of the truck, and not until it came into the beams of the spotlights did it become apparent to all that it was, as Guy had so delicately put it,
au naturel.

Oohs
and
aahs
rose from the crowd; then they began applauding and soon cheering.

“What in the world is going on there?” Rayford said.

David told him. “I think they’ve waited so long to see the body that they would worship trading cards if we passed them out.” Rayford told David what had happened in Greece. “I’m so sorry, Captain Steele. I only talked to Mr. Delanty a few times by phone, but I know you two were close.”

“This is a hard one, David. They don’t get any easier. Sometimes I feel like an albatross. The people who get close to me are soon gone.”

David told him he was on his way to a mysterious meeting, and they debriefed each other again on what had happened at the Gala. “No matter what they say, sir, it’s clear the shooting was accidental and that the bullet totally missed Carpathia.”

“That doesn’t make me any less of a scapegoat, but—”

“Oh, Captain, wait a second . . .”

“I hear the crowd. What happened?”

“Oh, man, it almost toppled over! They set down the statue, and it rocked forward! People were diving out of the way. The forklift guy moved up to sort of catch it on its way back so it wouldn’t fall that way, and that just made it rock forward again! I don’t know how it didn’t go over. It’s settled now, and they’re nudging it straight. Oh, man!” He told Rayford of the built-in furnace but said nothing about what he’d heard.

“That jostling must have stoked the fire, because the smoke is really pouring out now. You know they’re burning Bibles, among other holy books, in there?”

“No!”

“Sir, I’m heading inside now, and I never asked what you called about.”

“I’m at the new safe house, David.”

“Yeah? How is it?”

“It looks fabulous, but we have one problem. It must lock automatically in emergencies. We can’t get in. Can you unlock it from there?”

David was near the elevator. “I can’t talk here, sir, so let me just say yes, I’ll get to that as soon as this meeting is over. I wish I could say when that will be.”

Tsion took a call from Chloe, informing him it was likely they would be back very late. “Any evidence of GC nosing around?”

“None,” he said, but he did not add that he had been 93 million miles from Mount Prospect for at least two minutes.

She spoke briefly to Kenny, who kept wanting to pull the phone from his mouth and “see Mama.” Finally he said, “Lub-you-too-see-ya-lader-bye-bye.”

“Tsion, I appreciate this more than you know,” Chloe said.

“He’s easy,” he said. “And you know I love him.”

She told Tsion what to feed Kenny and to put him to bed at nine. Much as he had enjoyed the baby, that was good news. Kenny often slept through the night.

David had not given himself time to worry what the big meeting was about. He just hoped he would not be in there alone with Fortunato. David was the last to arrive. A dozen directors and above were there, including television personnel, most yawning and rubbing their eyes.

“Let’s get started, people,” Leon began. “We have a crisis. No one is leaving New Babylon. Despite the decimated population in the last three and a half years, hotels are jammed and people are even agreeing to double up, two whole families in each room. Others are sleeping in the street, under lean-tos. The airport is crowded with big jets. They bring in capacity loads for the viewing, but they’re canceling most outbound flights for lack of interest. You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

“The viewing is not meeting their felt needs,” a woman said. David recognized her as Hilda Schnell, head of Global Community Cable News Network.

“I’m glad it was you who answered, Hilda,” Leon said. “We need your help.”

“What can
I
do? I’m staying for the funeral too.”

“We were not prepared for this size crowd,” Leon said. “This will be twice as large as the Jerusalem Gala.”

Hilda said, “I still don’t understand how GC CNN can help. Even at the Gala we merely—”

“Bear with me,” Leon said. “As you know, we already pushed back the funeral and burial to accommodate the crowds. We assumed that a million or so people would still be waiting to view the body by the time we were ready for the ceremony. With more than three million here already, another estimated million on their way, and virtually no one leaving, we have to regroup. Where are the big screens we used in Jerusalem and do we have more?”

Someone from Event Programming said they were in storage in New Babylon and that there would be enough—supplemented by smaller monitors—to handle the larger crowd. “But,” he added, “that will require a lot of man-hours and, of course, a layout scheme. The way the courtyard is cordoned off now will certainly not handle a crowd that size, especially if the ones who have already passed by the bier stay for the funeral, and I can’t imagine why they’re still in the city if that is not their plan.”

“My point exactly,” Leon said. “I already have engineers on the new schematic. And let me be clear: laborers are starting to rearrange barricades, chairs, crowd control ropes, and so forth. All this work will go on with no interruption of the viewing process. If the line has to be moved, that should be able to be done in an orderly fashion without stopping the procession.

“My question for you, Ms. Schnell, is whether your equipment can feed that many monitors. Some people, naturally, will be hundreds of yards from the podium.”

“We don’t worry about that, Commander,” Ms. Schnell said. “We concern ourselves with providing the best visual and audio coverage of the event for television and leave it to your event organizers to make it work for their purposes.”

Leon stared at her, expressionless. “What I am suggesting, madam, is that you
do
worry about it. We have singers, dancers, speakers, and the like to make this ceremony appropriate, not only to the occasion and the size of the live crowd, but also to the stature of the one we honor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Just tell us what you want, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for the privilege.”

Now Fortunato was smiling. “That the big screens from Jerusalem are already here, Director Hassid, eliminates my need for one of your pilots to go get them. If we could make use of your entire hangar crew, cargo staff, pilots and all, in crowd control, I would appreciate it. Viv Ivins will be coordinating that, so let her know how many are available and who they are.

“The new times for the ceremony and burial are noon and 2:00 p.m. today respectively. Some dignitaries’ speeches may be shortened, but those times are firm and may be announced effective immediately. Ms. Schnell, I’m assuming this event supersedes all other programming so that the entire globe may participate, including those who reach the airport in time to watch on television but too late to be here in person.”

She nodded.

David fidgeted, knowing Rayford, Chloe, and Leah were waiting to get into the Strong Building. He wasn’t certain he could remotely unlock a door, but he’d rather have been studying that than sitting through a logistics meeting. Fortunato soon left the details in the hands of his engineers, and David hurried out.

On the way to his office, he saw the laborers already at work refashioning the massive courtyard into a vista that would accommodate the expected flood of humanity. According to the snatches of news reports he caught on the monitors lining the hallways of the palace complex, Leon was right. People of every ethnic background were interviewed at the airport, in line, and on the streets. Nearly every person expressed a desire to attend the funeral, even if they had already passed by the body.