Jacob's Trouble 666

Jacob's Trouble 666 is a novel by Terry, which was published a number of years ago. It tells the story of Jacob Zen, a young, lower echelon U.S. government official, who is forced to take on staggering responsibilities, when millions of people vanish, and his world begins coming apart. Terry wanted to share with you this fictionalized account of the Rapture and of the first part of the Tribulation era in serialized form. Although it is fiction, it is a story that could take on startling reality with your very next breath, because Christ's shout: "Come up hither" (Rev 4:1) could happen at any moment!

Chapter 15

Tragedy hung in the early morning darkness like death's decay-sweet odor. The sense of euphoria at Brussels, which had briefly touched Boston, was not evident now, while Jacob drove Melisa's small station wagon toward Cambridge. Downcast men and women milled about or shuffled along the streets. Some were the victims of the human predators who roamed, others still dazed from the sudden loss of people they loved. Herrlich Krimhler's message of hope had made, then lost, its impact upon these pathetic souls, who, when Jacob moved past them, looked at him, then at the car, as if it might be a source of help out of their torment. Realizing they would not awake from their nightmares, their glazed, stuporous looks returned, their minds once again in their private hells.
The sense of hopelessness was once more upon him, as well. The manic-depressive pendulum of emotion having swung from the high optimism he had felt when Melisa removed the Allegiant from his scalp (at that time thinking that now he could operate free of the chains binding him to Naxos) to this depth of knowing the odds he faced.
Why not give up? Appeal to them? Tell them he had not understood the good intentions of the Naxos planners, but now, after hearing Krimhler, his outlook was changed. After all, he was not without talents to offer them. He could fight them better from inside their ranks, maybe win others to his point of view. Surely there were others who, like him, saw beyond their promises of Utopian bliss -- saw the megalomania of their design.
If he gave himself up, convinced them he now saw the light, the error of his ways. No! He had proven he knew what they were up to and that he was death-pledged against them. He proved, too, that he could think independently, and to have members of the glorious new order who could think in such a way, would be unacceptable. "He is incorrigible," they would say when they sentenced him to whatever death-method was prescribed for the enemies of INterface.
They would be right, of course. They could not change him, and so if they intended to eliminate him they would have to find him. If they could know that he had the capability of throwing them off his trail by using the biosensor, which was no longer their tool, but his. But, how to use it? The ploy must be developed — and quickly, because they could home in on the device as easily with it wrapped in a handkerchief and tucked away in the overnight bag, as they could if it remained in his flesh.
Toward that end, devising such a ploy — his mind, now refreshed and clearer, and at an even higher emotional peak than it had been in days, formed an embryo of stratagem. Far-fetched as the hope of putting them off his scent while at the same time getting inside INterface machinery seemed, things even more bizarre had come to pass in an unbelievably short time. Things unthinkable. The selling of the United States to a European oligarchy headed by a computer-genius. The disappearance of hundreds of millions of people, as if on cue by some master director. The astounding swiftness with which the Naxos Utopians consolidated power and put INterface networking into place following the unexplained devastation of the Russian federation's war machine. The zeal shown by the representatives at Brussels, most, ideologically incompatible with each other. The dramatic ideas put forward by the young German, ecumenically hailed by hardened veterans of the world's diplomatic community.
"Watch out!"
Jacob jammed the brake pedal when Melisa screamed, but the face seemed already in the car with them. Huge, fear-bulging eyes that smashed into the windshield, breaking the glass into a million crystalline fractures and smearing it crimson. The rolling, thumping of the body seemed to go on forever after the man's head-first crunch into the station wagon's front end. Jacob had swerved, but too late! He eased the wagon to a stop along the curb.
Melisa was bent forward, holding her face between her hands, sobbing; she stiffened when he touched her.
"We've got to keep ourselves together," he heard himself say coldly, thinking of the probability of being caught because of the attention drawn by the accident. Thinking, too, that he felt like slapping the girl to make her act contrary to her natural instinct. "Did you hear me? We cannot do anything about that man, but if we don't handle this right, we might be worse off than him. Do you understand, Melisa?!"
He shook her violently but managed to restrain himself from striking. She nodded, trying to stifle her sobs.
"I'll take care of it. All you have to do is sit here. Try to compose yourself." While forcing himself to use a more soothing tone, Jacob analyzed their situation, looking around at the men and women who gawked through the windows. Faces, seemingly distorted, more zombie-like than human, with their silent, dispassionate stares.
When he stepped to the pavement, a vehicle, its blue lights flashing, converged on them. Now he would have to produce identification, go to a police station, and have his life searched by computers. Computers almost certainly linked by now to those of the Naxos system. These officers would not be directly a part of the hunt for him, but would they have an APB out? Or a high priority missing persons report? If so, and the policemen discovered that they had found the subject of such a search, he would take the first chance to bolt. Melisa would have to be left behind. But she knew a great deal of what he knew. He was stupid to have shared so much with her. She didn't know everything, however. Not about his plans.
"Are you the driver of this vehicle, sir?" The big policeman said, approaching from behind the station wagon.
"Yes." Must stop shaking. Maintain control! "Give me your UNTVUSCAKD, please." How long before they run down the fact that he was being sought? Should he lie? Tell them he had lost his wallet? No. That would prompt a computer check for certain. The uniformed officer who asked the question, looked past Jacob to a short, thick man in a sportcoat and tie. The approaching man had just stepped out of a black car which had pulled to a stop behind the police cruiser.
"I'll take care of it," the plainclothes officer said, taking the UNIVUSCARD from the uniformed man and glancing at it, then handing it to Jacob. There seemed a glimmer of recognition in the man's eyes. Probably just a policeman's naturally suspicious way.
"Mr. Zen. You look like a sober, law-abiding guy. A guy who wouldn't hit anybody intentionally." The stocky man's tone was facetious, but not maliciously so.
"To be honest with you, this is your lucky night, because we don't have time to spend on this sort of thing right now, what with the more pressing problems we're having to contend with. If we take you in, it'll tie you up, it'll tie us up. And, what's one more body more-or-less these days? The guy felt it just wasn't worth it any more, so he chose you to end all his problems for him. That's how I see it. Why should we be penalized for his lunacy? It wouldn't cramp you too much if you just wash your car, straighten your dents, and we forget that it ever happened, would it?"
"No, sir." Jacob tried to hold the smile, wanting to keep from the policeman his nervousness and relief.
"Clear the area!" The plainclothes officer shouted gruffly, causing the onlookers, their faces still devoid of expression, to wander aimlessly down the streets as they had been doing before they were attracted to the death scene.
"You'd better move along now, Mr. Zen, before my Chief calls for me and I have to tell him about this. He might cause us both problems we don't have time for."
"Uh... Yes... I will," Jacob stammered, feeling as dull-witted as the people who had surrounded them, the numbing effects caused by the rush of events having returned in greater measure.
"Is the man dead?" Melisa said when he slid into the driver's seat. He turned into the traffic lane and edged by the policemen, who knelt over the When he stepped to the pavement, a vehicle, its blue lights flashing, converged on them. Now he would have to produce identification, go to a police station, and have his life searched by computers. Computers almost certainly linked by now to those of the Naxos system. These officers would not be directly a part of the hunt for him, but would they have an APB out? Or a high priority missing persons report? If so, and the policemen discovered that they had found the subject of such a search, he would take the first chance to bolt. Melisa would have to be left behind. But she knew a great deal of what he knew. He was stupid to have shared so much with her. She didn't know everything, however. Not about his plans.
"Are you the driver of this vehicle, sir?" The big policeman said, approaching from behind the station wagon. "Yes." Must stop shaking. Maintain control! "Give me your UNTVUSCAKD, please." How long before they run down the fact that he was being sought? Should he lie? Tell them he had lost his wallet? No. That would prompt a computer check for certain. The uniformed officer who asked the question, looked past Jacob to a short, thick man in a sportcoat and tie. The approaching man had just stepped out of a black car which had pulled to a stop behind the police cruiser.
"I'll take care of it," the plainclothes officer said, taking the UNIVUSCARD from the uniformed man and glancing at it, then handing it to Jacob. There seemed a glimmer of recognition in the man's eyes. Probably just a policeman's naturally suspicious way.
"Mr. Zen. You look like a sober, law-abiding guy. A guy who wouldn't hit anybody intentionally." The stocky man's tone was facetious, but not maliciously so.
"To be honest with you, this is your lucky night, because we don't have time to spend on this sort of thing right now, what with the more pressing problems we're having to contend with. If we take you in, it'll tie you up, it'll tie us up. And, what's one more body more-or-less these days? The guy felt it just wasn't worth it any more, so he chose you to end all his problems for him. That's how I see it. Why should we be penalized for his lunacy? It wouldn't cramp you too much if you just wash your car, straighten your dents, and we forget that it ever happened, would it?"
"No, sir." Jacob tried to hold the smile, wanting to keep from the policeman his nervousness and relief.
"Clear the area!" The plainclothes officer shouted gruffly, causing the onlookers, their faces still devoid of expression, to wander aimlessly down the streets as they had been doing before they were attracted to the death scene.
"You'd better move along now, Mr. Zen, before my Chief calls for me and I have to tell him about this. He might cause us both problems we don't have time for."
"Uh... Yes... I will," Jacob stammered, feeling as dull-witted as the people who had surrounded them, the numbing effects caused by the rush of events having returned in greater measure.
"Is the man dead?" Melisa said when he slid into the driver's seat. He turned into the traffic lane and edged by the policemen, who knelt over the blood-soaked corpse.
"Yeah. He's dead."
Suddenly he felt conflicting emotions: relief, almost joy over being freed from what could have ended in capture, and profound sadness, seeing in the incident the deterioration of humanity. The people, not concerned that a man had been killed, merely curious; the officers, who wanted only to get it over with by discarding the carcass, like one would discard a dog, dead in the street.
"We've got to get settled so I can figure it all out," he said , partially to change the subject within his own mind to force the guilt over his own insensitivity from his thoughts.
Jacob's head burned where the sensor had been removed, as did the muscles of his mid-back, and his hip and thigh on the right side. A vicious consequence of nerve tautness that could be relieved only by time free from the constant pressure of having to avoid contact with his pursuers.
It was, at the same time, foolish and logical, that he came back to the place of his first time away from home, when at 18 he left the safe womb of Stone Oaks to enter Harvard. Foolish, because if they had a comprehensive dossier on him, and surely they must, they knew that McLean and Stone Oaks, Boston and Cambridge were the places he felt closest to, and therefore might expect him to return. Logical, because it was home, and here he could find friends he could depend on for help, like Francis Lodierman. His tormentors' biographical file marked 'Jacob Zen' might not go back so far as to include Francis, he convinced himself while trying to find the old brownstone home among the newer, unfamiliar structures near Kendall Square.
His inverse logic in coming here was that, they knew he was aware that they expected him to come to the Boston-Cambridge area and so, he would not; therefore he did. It just might work to thwart their own devious plottings. Still, they might scan the area for the limited-range biosensor just in case.
His reverse psychology might work on normal minds, in normal times; however, he was faced with the abnormal in both cases. No. His pursuers would kick over any and all rocks where their prey might hide.
"Francis was fun, not demanding like the people I was used to," Jacob said without being prompted by Melisa, who, like he instructed, looked over the building-cluttered block for the house he had described.
"She always listened when you had a problem. Gave you the right answers and made you believe it was the easiest way out of whatever mess you'd gotten yourself into, whether it was or not. I met her my second year at Harvard. She was thirty-five and married to a man fifteen years older, who died not long after I met her. He was in bed with some guy. Died of a heart attack. I was living in a dorm on campus, but talked Uncle Conrad into letting me move to the house Francis' husband left her. She was the first woman I'd been around to any extent since my mother died. Uncle Conrad gave his permission to move off campus, but was too busy to supervise my selection of an apartment. When he finally did find out I'd moved not just into the house, but into Francis' apartment with her, he really raised the devil, I can tell you. But, you know when he met Francis, within ten minutes he was loving her as much as I did. She's like that. Something about her you love the second you meet her.
"A nineteen-year-old boy or a world-acclaimed diplomat, it made no difference. She never changed her way of treating people. There was never anything intimate between us. Never. Something as good, though. Maybe better, more fulfilling. I became a man during those two school years spent with Francis. I learned that people aren't merely things you use to achieve your profits in life, but are to hold, and comfort, and to take comfort from. I needed that learning time with her."
"When did you last see her?" Melisa saw softness in his eyes for the first time since she removed the biosensor, and heard gentleness in his voice.
"More than five years ago, I'm sorry to say. And it's my loss." "Is that the house?"
He stopped the wagon in the middle of the deserted street and they both strained to see through the darkness. While lights could be seen as nearby as MIT to the west and the buildings between First Street and Commercial Avenue to the east, the immediate area surrounding Francis Lodierman's home was apparently without power. A yellow glow, created by the lights of downtown Boston to the south, gave meager and disfractive illumination to the old house.
The time it took to drive the remaining yards of broken concrete leading up to the house brought quite different thoughts. A closer look presented a badly deteriorating structure, which seemed in a death-struggle with its own disrepair to stand straight and strong like it once did when life pulsed and flowed in abundance through its many living places. What about Francis? The house so grossly neglected, not at all like the woman who was Victorian in devotion to appearance. "Looks like it's vacant, Jacob."
Had the cataclysm claimed her, too? Not Francis, too.
A faint light shone in the distance where the hallway reached its narrowest point in perspective. It was probably emerging from the room he remembered as being the dining area. There was no sign of life while he stood with his face close to the tiny rectangles of thick, beveled glass in the door. When he knocked for the third time with the tarnished corrosion-pitted knocker, the light spilling into the hallway brightened and someone appeared from the opening in the wall where the dining room should be. A thin female figure in a floor-length robe or gown, carrying a lamp whose flame silhouetted rather than fully illuminated the woman moving slowly toward them. She hesitated before opening the door only a few inches, peering at them through the crack with pale gray eyes, their irises an unhealthy yellow in the flickering light. She said nothing.
"We're looking for a lady who lives here, or who once lived here. Her name is..."
The face! Gaunt and wrinkled. Jaundiced, like the eyes. Her hair more gray than brown, and' brittle. It was! "Francis?!"
"What do you want here?" The voice gravelly, like one which had spent a lifetime enduring cigarette smoke, or was the victim of a severe hormonal change that had robbed it of its youthfulness. Her words were slurred and issued in a tone that evidenced extreme fatigue.
"I'm Jacob, Francis."
"Jacob?... Jake?!" The skin of the woman's forehead wrinkled in puzzlement, the lines running across its yellowed expanse becoming deep creases. "Is that you, Jake?" Her eyes filled with tears that refused to spill from their bottom lids.
"Oh, Francis... My Francis... What in the name of..." Unable to complete his expression of saddened disbelief, he embraced her; she spoke in a sing-song, child-like way.
"I'm supposed to tell them you are here. They will stop hurting me if I tell them you are here."
He felt her going limp and snatched the oil lamp from her hand, at the same time supporting her weight. Melisa took the lamp from him and he scooped Francis up and carried her to a sofa just off the foyer.
"She's in bad shape," he said, running his fingers caringly over her face, not knowing what else to do. "She's only forty-six or forty-seven... I can't believe she's aged like this!" He felt Francis stiffen.
"Jacob... My dearest Jake..." The words were nearly inaudible; she reached feebly to take his hand, then pulled it to her withered lips and kissed it. She began crying in a convulsive, high-pitched whine like a distraught child might make.
"Shussh... I'm here, Francis. I'm here. Don't talk just yet."
Straining to speak, despite his admonishment, her eyes grew large; she shook her head vigorously, indicating no. "I must! I must! They want me to tell them when you come to me... or they said they would..." "Who? Who wants you to tell them?"
She again shook her head negatively, her deeply creased lips moving but saying nothing. Her eyes seemed to clear when she regained a degree of sensibility; the words came more easily to her. "You must leave... Now!" She squeezed his arm.
"They think they've taken over my will. They think I will help them find you."
"What have they done to you?"
"All kinds of machinery... Makes me do things I don't want to do," she whispered, her eyes bugging wildly, her head and shoulders rising involuntarily then relaxing. "Oh, Jake!... Can't let them do this to you... to..."
"She's fainted again, Jacob. I've seen this kind of seizure before. It might be drug-induced," Melisa said, holding back the woman's eyelids to check her pupils.
"I've got to get her out of here. They'll be coming for her again. You think it's okay to move her?"
"She was walking, and still recognized you. She'll be better off than she would if she stayed here, that's for sure."
Such was his conclusion already, and his mind raced ahead to other matters. He nodded approval although not really hearing Melisa's words.
"I'll find some of her things as quickly as I can, and bring a wet towel for her face."
Dawn was breaking while he guided the stationwagon down State 28, the route he chose because there was less traffic on the road at this entrance point than on State 24 a mile farther west. That he had been so careful in the selection of this road, and yet so stupid as to not get rid of the biosensor by planting it in a vehicle heading in some other direction, was the paradox pre-eminently stabbing his mind. That, and the question: why had he chosen Brockton to, he hoped, find a place where he could plan how to best use the biosensor against his enemy — which, he decided silently, explained the paradox.
Now that he was certain his pursuers were in the Boston area, it was imperative to do something with the device. The thing to be done was clear; but how to do it, when time to learn so much that must be learned, and time to make crucial decisions that must be made, was so limited. It remained as murky as the red-orange haze that hung angrily between the wagon and the rising sun on their left. Through the mind-fog of how it was to be done, the thought of what to do remained clear — Put them off the scent, and, at the same time, infiltrate.
"I think she's sick, Jacob. Can't we stop and let her get some air?"
He looked in the rearview mirror, seeing the chalky-white face of the woman whose head bobbed about with the bumping of the station wagon on the poorly maintained road. "Did she tell you she's sick?"
"She hasn't said anything. Nothing that's coherent. But stopping might help her. I think she might have motion-sickness."
He guided the car onto the narrow shoulder and brought it to a stop. "You think she can stand for a minute?" "I believe so, but she's awfully weak." "Let's get her out." He half-lifted, half-dragged the limp woman from the rear of the wagon, then supported her while encouraging her to stand. Francis seemed to grow stronger.
"Take a deep breath, sweetheart. Try to stand on your own and walk a bit. Can you do that?"
Francis nodded affirmatively and her eyes shown with increased coherence. Jacob's attention snapped to the eastern sky, hearing the faint thump of what could only be a helicopter's engine. Its landing lights came on almost in the same instant he recognized the sound. The chopper swooped quickly to within 100 feet of them and sat down easily in the yellow-brown grass. Its engine calming and its blades slowing to idling speed.
His inclination was to push Francis into the back of the station wagon and try to get away from the machine, which sat glaringly ~ a gigantic bird of prey waiting for its intended victim to flush.
"They've found us, Jacob! What can we do?" Melisa stood between him and the helicopter's beam, looking to him for the answer. But the terrain afforded no chance of escape from the predator squatting in the heavy grass, staring at them with its three painfully brilliant eyes and growling, its cold breath whipping about their legs.
"There's nothing we can do! It will be okay!" Jacob shouted above the growl.
Through the whirlwind of debris, a man, holding his cap to his head with one hand, hurried toward them. No guns. Only one man. Reason for hope.
"Need some help?" the man said when he reached them, looking quickly at each face. His expression brightened at the same moment his eyes met Jacob's. "Is that you, Jake?... Jacob Zen!"
"Kerry?"
"The same!" The tall man grabbed Jacob's hand and pumped it vigorously.
"What are you doing out here?"
"Headed for Brockton. My friend here got sick, so we stopped. How about you? You find your family? Are they okay?"
The pilot said nothing, his eyes taking on a far-away look.
After introducing Melisa, Jacob left her with Francis and walked with the man until the helicopter's noise no longer hampered their conversation.
"I haven't rested since I let you off... Been looking all over New England. All the relatives... they're gone... Like the rest, I guess." Kerry Vinchey's moist eyes had a look that only inconsolable inner pain could elicit. Jacob put a hand on Vinchey's shoulder.
"Kerry, there's nothing I can say, I know. Like I told you on the way from D.C., I've been crazy with worry about Karen."
For some reason he felt it right to let his new friend in on what his own life had been like since the disaster. Maybe that would help Kerry Vinchey cope; perhaps sharing with another man would generate new energy within himself to carry on. Nothing he could divulge would make things worse. Even in the event that Vinchey was somehow tied to the Naxos enemy — and that was a possibility, because twice this man with the helicopter had crossed his path at a crucial juncture — a release from his nightmare existence might ultimately be preferable to his agonizing struggle through it.
"The only good thing in this mess is the FAA can't control flying. I've been able to go just about anywhere I want to without filing flight plans. The Feds have too many other things going on right now to worry with one lousy helicopter. That won't last long, though. They're moving fast on this 'Executive Order' thing. We're in a state of martial law."
His friend had changed the subject, probably to keep from breaking down in front of Jacob. But the subject the pilot chose to extricate himself would have seemed, if Jacob believed in such things, supernaturally predestined to enter their conversation at this moment. Jacob's simmering plan suddenly gelled when the pilot, himself floundering without direction, was added to the ingredients, and the helicopter.
"You asked what I'm doing here, Kerry. Once I tell you, I think we might be able to help each other."
"Sure."
"Do you have access to fuel for the copter?"
"There are deserted stations, and some small airports that've been abandoned, from here all the way to the coast. And it's probably like that all over the country. Only problem is, the radios have been abandoned, too. But I have some charts that can help me locate quite a few places, and I can set the chopper down just about anywhere. I do most of my own maintenance. Getting parts is a problem, though."
Vinchey appeared to know instinctively that the things Jacob was talking about went much deeper than their casual conversational tone suggested. Despite the pilot's calm words, it was obvious he very much wanted the help a mutual effort might bring. Still, Jacob's cautious side kept prodding his thoughts. The pilot's fortuitous crossing of his path at critical junctures. A Naxos ploy?
Yet the very fact that the coincidences were so improbable made it unlikely. Vinchey could be a part of any Naxos deception. And, there was no reason, at least no reason he could fathom, why the Naxos group would string him along, when they could capture him and wring out of him anything they wished, at any moment they chose, if the pilot was their agent. Something in Kerry Vinchey's eyes, reflections of Jacob's own hurting, of pain, the depths to which only a father's love for his missing children could descend. Little to lose by trusting this man.
"Give me a chance to finish before you decide I'm out of my mind. Or maybe I am... But hear me anyway."
The pilot's expression did not change while he was told all that Jacob knew, all he suspected. Like when he emptied his emotions on Melisa's ears retelling it now soothed his own nerves. The burden shared. Its weight redistributed across yet another set of shoulders. Even if Vinchey did not accept Jacob's fears as credible, the telling of them felt good while they stood near the helicopter, watching the occasional traffic move along the highway.
The sun was fully up now, and despite the haze, they could make out the structures across the field. "You really believe the disappearance thing has something to do with that preacher's idea about Biblical prophecy?" Vinchey's tone said he wanted to accept Jacob's view. Said the pilot had struggled with his own rationalizations, but after bumping into many dead-ends, he was ready to explore the less rational.
"Is the Biblical prophecy angle any more unbelievable than the fact that it happened, than the garbage they're trying to feed everybody? An evolutionary leap into some higher cosmic realm for the worthy. A punishment for others. All determined by some Great Universal Mind..."
"There are other theories about what caused it."
"And the official explanation is as unbelievable as any of them. I've got to get inside, Kerry, and find out what's going on. I'm limited now, but your helicopter can give me, give us, the ability to put distance between them and us, quickly. That's important to the first part of my plan."
"But why single you out? Look, I believe you when you tell me somebody tried to kill you. That they've taken Karen. But why you?"
"It's all tied up somehow with Hugo Marchek and the prophecies. At first, I thought it was because of my ties to Conrad Wilson and the government, their need to do away with all nationalism, and to get control of our nuclear forces. But they've got all that. When the President disappeared and the fabric of society in the United States disintegrated, the European States — this Naxos group, usurped, absorbed this country's essence with the blessings of Grant Halifax. And they still want me. What can I, one person, possibly do to threaten them? They wouldn't go to all the trouble they've gone to just to get revenge."
Vinchey toed the pebbles on the barren spot where the men stood, then knelt to pick up a few of the stones while deeply in thought. "What about that tracking device? They'll be able to follow you as long as you have it. And why haven't they already been drawn to it, if it's still operating?"
"When I flew with you, we took the thing out of their range so quickly, they lost contact. For some reason, they have trouble relocating its signal when it moves rapidly. That's one reason your copter can be of use... To move out of their range quickly. It forces them to guess, rather than know in advance where I'm going next. You saw what they did to Francis. That was one of their guesses.
"Like I said, their wanting me is tied somehow to these unexplainable happenings. I've got to find the connection, and that's why I've kept the biosensor. If I use it the way I plan, I think I can get inside their operation and at the same time get them off my back. I just need time to think it all out."
While kneeling, Vinchey considered Jacob's words, tossing the small stones one at a time into the high grass.
"There's this little island place I get away to sometimes out in Hingham Bay. I don't think we'd be bothered out there, unless your friends pick up on that gadget's signal again."
Jacob took Vinchey's hand. "Thanks, Kerry. It means a lot to me that you believe me. That I've got another friend to share this with."
"I don't have anything else to do," Vinchey said, smiling weakly. He saw the pilot's eyes become liquid, and understood.
More than a week had passed since they arrived at the rocky point of land, whose beige sand dunes, topped by silky yellow-brown grass, contrasted starkly with the blue-green Atlantic waters of Hingham Bay. It was small, like its namesake had described, and one of the farthest of the islands from the land mass that was Boston.
Vinchey Island was more than promised, with its two gasoline-powered generators providing for all electrical necessities and for most conveniences. Both men scanned the white protrusion of land in the distance, Vinchey with binoculars and Jacob with a telescope permanently mounted on a tripod set in a slab of concrete. It was easy to see why Kerry Vinchey brought his family here most summers during those happier, more sane times, and why the pilot was sick at heart now recounting days spent with those he loved most.
"Kirk loved spotting boats and ships from here, so I bought that scope and mounted it for him. He got pretty good at it... recording class, tonnage and all that... for a ten-year-old boy."
The urge was strong to say: "He must be quite a boy," the desire to encourage with: "He'll be here before you know it, spotting boats again." Best to say nothing. To simply keep looking along the island that lay eight miles across the stretch of water. To offer hope when they both knew there was little would be wrong; to do so with conviction would be impossible. Just continue scanning the bone-white dunes for the enemy who took Karen from him; who somehow had a hand in banishing those better times to an irretrievable past. Maybe, just maybe, there was to come a better day than now. Not the same as before, perhaps, but a better time, to be forged from the beastly realities of the present. A future where little boys and fathers could again, at their leisure, watch passing boats across untroubled waters.
"It's been six days since we put the sensor on that island. Surely they'd have found it by now if they were still trying to get at you." Kerry Vinchey removed the binoculars from his eyes. "With the smog almost cleared up these past three days, we couldn't have missed any activity over there, Jacob."
"Maybe they have given up. Maybe they figure I can't hurt them. But it just doesn't feel right to me. You think I'm paranoid?"
"Of course not, but I still think six days is plenty to give them. They must've given up on you. They would've found that thing by now, otherwise."
"Let's give it another day. Make it a full week. We'll pick it up Friday morning."
"Jacob!"
Both men watched the woman struggle toward them up the dune, her gray-streaked hair whipping in the cold wind. She held her long, once elegant fingers together over her eyes to shade against the brightness, made more intense by the high, thin haze. Francis Lodierman caught her breath after reaching the concrete plateau, then spoke laboredly.
"Jake!... You've got to see it. It's just terrible!" She clutched his shirt, gasping for air.
"You shouldn't be out here, Francis." He steadied her, studying her weak eyes. "Now calm down."
She tugged at his jacket sleeve, pulling him down the sandy incline toward Vinchey's gray with white trim frame house, which stood in the dark grass of another plateau 150 feet from the observation point. "Hurry!"
Melisa met them on the porch steps, her face ashen, her eyes glistening with fear verging on panic.
"It happened about ten minutes ago," she said, preceding them into the rectangular room at the center of the house, where the television set blared.
"Arab and Israeli governments are to be more than congratulated for their wisdom in concluding this, one of the most important peace pacts in man's history. They deserve the praise and the gratitude of all peoples."
Herrlich Krimhler sat between the Israeli Prime Minister and the King of Saudi Arabia, the collective Arab nations' representative for the occasion. Each man looked to the young speaker, whose tanned hands were interlocked and resting on the brilliantly polished conference table top, his eyes fixed on the camera directly in front of him.
"Peace shall grow from this moment, as mankind marches into the New Age of INterface, in which all citizens will be linked one to another, each the brother, the sister of the other. This was God's intention from the beginning."
Krimhler took a small stack of white, printed pages from someone standing behind, and placed the sheets on the table in front of him.
"So, they're going to officially sign the peace pact between the Arabs and Israelis. We knew that, Melisa. Why did you call us down here for that?" Jacob said.
"No... this is taped. It happened a few minutes ago... Watch."
Herrlich Krimhler slid the papers to his right, to in front of the burnoosed Saudi king, who signed the peace document and returned it to Krimhler. The German passed it then to the white-haired Israeli Prime Minister, who signed, then looked up from the task, a solemn expression on his face.
The scene changed quickly to a large number of people gathered behind and in front of a small lecturn, to which Herrlich Krimhler walked and stood behind.
The television narrator explained. "After the signing by the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi King, Mr. Krimhler moved to the main conference room, where he was to add his signature to the treaty, after a brief statement."
"Peace has come at last to the Arab and the Jew. Let us make this conciliation the example for what can, what must come to be between all peoples of this fragile planet."
Krimhler's black eyes glared into the camera, taking possession of the viewer's concentration even through the time-buffering effect of the videotape.
"The terrorists who detonated the atomic devices in Cairo and in Damascus two days ago, as despicable as such barbarism is, performed a service those anarchists could not foresee. The act proved that mankind must join hands, together in a chain of sanity through INterface networking, and must serve notice to all such diabolists that now, from this point forward, there is no place to hide from the 'Six Way Plan,' which will deal with their murderous treacheries!"
Krimhler paused while those in front of and behind him applauded with enthusiasm; he spoke again, then. "Let this pact for peace between two peoples, who have been at bloody odds longer than any other... giving the Palestinian a permanent homeland, assuring the Israeli protection under INterface law, and the right to establish a temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem... serve notice to all who would perpetuate hostilities that making war will no longer be tolerated!"
Applause again exploded in the room, then settled to a conversational drone. The young German opened his mouth to speak again.
Deja vu pulsed through Jacob, yet distinctively different than the sensations of the other times. He was witnessing a momentous instant of history, but something more profoundly affecting. History transcending war and, peace and diplomatic nuance; a rending instant in the ebb and flow of eternal events, when time-past and time-future is inexplicably predestined by some great eclectic agglomerate force to merge, then fuse in a millisecond, altering the direction and velocity and, therefore, forever, the destiny of humankind.
A dime-sized spot of black materialized an inch-and-a-half above the left eyebrow. The dark hair lifted as if disturbed by a sudden wind. Blood spurted from the frontal hole, and at the same instant, blood and brain tissue erupted from the rear of the exploded skull and sprayed the dignitaries behind the lecturn in a fan of pink profusion.
Assassination! Replaying for the shocked eyes of the world, familiar, grotesque, sudden death. Cameras gone mad, their lenses capturing wild, lurching images of people fighting to reach cover. Panic-stricken faces, eyes widened in fear, searching for medical help for the leader, who lay crumpled and unmoving, face-down on the blood-soaked carpet beneath the security men and diplomats hovering over his body.
Jacob's enemy, the leader of his enemies, lying wounded! No one could survive such a thing! Not a head shot like that!
Thoughts of what it meant flooded his brain. Now, would they concentrate on more pressing matters? Now that their leader was dead? Would they lose interest in so petty a matter as Jacob Zen, and get on with the grander design of enslaving a world? Did the death of Herrlich Krinihler mean all that INterfaceand "ThePlan" envisioned had changed in that instant when the German's head exploded?
From subliminal mind-strata involuntarily searched, one thought emerged; the "Six Way Plan" was not altered by the death of its architect; INterface was not made impotent. Krimhler's assassination was part of, a gigantic part of, "The Plan." "The Plan" was not obliterated when the leader's cranium flew apart. It was instead, in some way, he could not analytically determine, but intrinsically knew, galvanized and set in motion by the spectacle. The inner voice that told him so was Hugo Marchek's.
"So, yet another assassination. An assassination of unrivaled proportions, as far as the importance of the victim to the world is concerned. The man who seemed so much more than just that... a mere man... Herrlich Krimhler, Chief Designer and Chancellor of the INterface system, the man who had single-handedly, just moments before his death, brought together the Arabs and Israelis in an unprecedented pact of peace, although he died before he, himself, could sign it. Dead at the hands of an assassin."
Lawrence Thorton narrated in his familiar baritone voice, a stony expression on his face.
"Since the time the shooting took place, about eighteen minutes ago, there has been, as might be expected, an intensive search of the area. I understand they may now know who is responsible for this, certainly one of the most reprehensible acts in the history of the world."
Thorton turned to face the big monitor on the wall behind the broadcast desk. "John Farber has
with him Maurice Clary, Chief of Security for interface. John, is this report accurate? That security might have a line on who did this?"
The thin journalist, at first could not hear because of the noise in the room, but turned to the frenchman when a technician repeated the question through the headset Farber wore.
"Yes, Larry. It is true. Mr. Clary, can you tell us about the evidence you've uncovered about the assassin?"
While Clary answered in his native tongue, tne speech synthesizer translated in the many languages of those watching the telecast.
"Irrefutable proof has been found. We have located the weapon and identifiied the assassin's fingerprints. Along with this evidence, we found his wnstwatch, which he apparently pulled from his wrist and laid it aside to keep it from being damaged while ne rested his arm against the floor for steadying his aim. He left the wristwatch in his haste to get away after firing the shot."
"Then you know for certain the identity of tne assassin. Can you give us the name, or will we have to wait until your investigation is concluded?" “We can tell you now. Our investigation of this...” The Chief of Security stammered, his eyes growing moist with emotion; the translation voice hesitated then continued. "I will tell you, because so iar as we are concerned, the murderer has been positively identified. Also, because he is an enemy who has eluded us. A terrorist. We earnestly ask the assistance of all citizens of INterface in the apprehension of this assassin. He must not escape the peoples' justice."
The Frenchman held up a large photograph of a man's face, and the camera framed it in closeup for the global television audience.
"He is a former member of the United States diplomatic service. His name is Jacob Zen."