The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession (31 page)

Clearly he was jockeying for position as new supreme potentate, but here also was a man who grieved the loss of his friend and mentor and champion. And while he did not have the polish, the panache, the charisma of his predecessor, Leon knew how to milk the moment.

“If you’ll all be seated, please,” he began, his voice so thick with emotion that thousands seemed to involuntarily cover their mouths to contain their own crying.

David, his own uniform heavy with sweat, lifted one foot to cross his legs and felt the stickiness on the ground.

The heat had made his rubber soles tacky.

Fortunate made a show of collecting himself and smoothing his notes with meaty hands. “Nicolae Jetty Carpathia,” he began in just above a whisper, “excuse me.”

He wiped a hand across his mouth. “I can do this. I will do this, with your patience. Nicolae Carpathia was born thirty-six years ago, the only child of two only children, in a tiny hospital in the town of Roman, Romania, in the eastern foothills of the Moldavian Carpathian Mountains, a little more than two hundred kilometers north and slightly east of Bucharest.”

Fortunato paused again to clear his throat. “The young Nicolae was a precocious and extremely bright child with avid interests in athletics and academics, primarily languages, history, and science. Before the age of twelve he won his first election as president of the Young Humanists. He was a stellar high school student, a celebrated debater and speaker, and valedictorian, repeating that honor at university.

“Mr. Carpathia excelled as an entrepreneur and began public service early, becoming a member of Romania’s Lower Parliament before age twenty-five. His devotion to pacifism brought both criticism and praise and became the hallmark of his life’s work.

“Mr. Carpathia once told me that he believed the zenith of his career, even after being swept in as president of Romania as a young man at the behest of his predecessor, was his invitation to address the United Nations some three and a half years ago.

“Honored beyond expression, the young head of state worked hard on his presentation, outlining the history of the UN, employing every one of its languages, and mem336 orizing his speech in its entirety. Little did he know that just prior to his appearance at the General Assembly, the earth would suffer its greatest calamity, the tragedy we all know now as the day of the vanishings.

“Stripped of our children and babies—” Fortunato paused again—”and countless friends and relatives and neighbors, the world family grieved as one. We were not aware then of the truth that only a man such as Nicolae Carpathia could bring to light: that the phenomenon that brought such bereavement was preventable, one rooted in our war technology. All we knew when the Romanian president stepped to the podium at the United Nations was that we were terrified to the point of immobility. Despairing of the future, regretting the past, we prayed in our own ways to our own gods for someone to take us by the hand and lead us through the minefields of our own making and into the blessedness of hope.

“How could we have known that our prayers would be answered by one who would prove his own divinity over and over as he humbly, selflessly served, giving of himself even to the point of death to show us the way to healing?”

The crowd could not contain itself and burst into applause. Several times Leon held up a hand, but they would not be silenced. Applause turned to cheering, and then they rose, sector by sector, until again everyone was standing, clapping, cheering, mourning their slain leader.

David was nauseated.

“Give me the rough layout of the safe house,” Albie said, “where it stands, what’s around it, any other buildings, roads in and out.”

“I don’t know if you have anything similar in your country, Albie,” Rayford said. “But picture a subdivision, a housing development maybe thirty years old that has been tossed into a blender. The roads were ripped up and twisted out of the ground, and so many of the homes and businesses in that area were demolished that after rescue efforts, the area was abandoned. Best we can determine, no one lives within three miles of the place. We took over half of a badly damaged duplex, two homes in one. We expanded a cellar to make an underground hiding place, which we didn’t need-at least that we knew of-until now. We rigged our own makeshift well and solar power plant, and took various routes to the place that made it look as if we could have been headed anywhere.”

“What else is on the property?”

“About fifty paces from the back door is a barnlike garage that originally served both halves of the duplex. We hid our vehicles in there. We are now down to one, and this is it, so the garage is empty.”

“And the other half of the residence?”

“Empty.”

“Other dwellings in the area?”

“Pretty much piles of rubble that have never been hauled away.”

“What hides you?”

“Besides that no one comes to that area except by mistake, there are mature trees and lots of open fields beyond our place.”

“And the usual route from the airstrip takes you into the area from what direction?”

“We use various routes to keep from attracting attention, almost always travel by night, but usually find ourselves coming in from the south.”

“Miss Leah,” Albie said, “if you find an inconspicuous place to stop, please do.” Away from paved roads already, Leah pulled into a shallow gully between two small groves of trees. “Thank you. Now, Captain Steele, your best guess of how the GC would approach the house, if they wanted to surprise.”

Rayford searched for a scrap of paper and drew an aerial view of the place.

“They’d come through the trees at the north,” he said. “Buck, what do you think?”

Buck studied the schematic, then showed it to Chloe and Leah. They all nodded.

“All right, Leah,” Albie said. “Come in from the south as usual. As far away from the safe house as you can, drive without lights. Stop about half a kilometer away, ideally where you can see the safe house but someone there would not likely see you.”

“Half a kilometer?” Leah said.

“About three-tenths of a mile,” Chloe said. “There’s a little rise about that far away, isn’t there, Dad? Just past where we turn to head toward Des Plaines?”

“Yeah, and we notice it because the rest of the whole area is so flat.”

“Let’s get there quickly,” Albie said. “Lights off as soon as you’re confident.”

As Fortunato held forth, alternately bringing the masses to their feet and making them weep, David surreptitiously pulled his binoculars from a side pocket. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, he trained the glasses on the great crowds seated just past the courtyard. He found the placard that read Sector 53

and carefully panned, looking for Annie. At first he didn’t see her but was then intrigued to see a pair of binoculars pointed his direction. Despite hands and glasses covering her face, he could tell it was Annie.

They stared at each other through the lenses, then tentatively waved with just their fingers. David, with his hand still on the binoculars, held up one finger, then four, then three. She mirrored the message, their code for the number of letters in each word: I love you.

“I shall have some closing remarks as well,” Leon said, winding down. “But I want to give your representatives from every global region the opportunity to express their thoughts before interment in the palace mausoleum. We’ve requested these be kept brief due to the weather, but we also want these potentates to speak from their hearts. First, from the United Russian States, Dr. Viktor …”

“Captain Steele,” Albie said, “call Tsion and tell him who I am so I may speak to him without his suspicion.”

Tsion answered on the first tone. “Tsion, it’s me. We’re within a half mile of you. Are you OK?”

“So far. Kenny is asleep. I’m packed and ready to go and feeling claustrophobic.

I want out of this place.”

“Tsion, I’m giving the phone to my dear friend and new believer, Albie. You’ve heard me mention him before.”

“Yes! And he is one of us now?”

“Thanks to your teaching, which we can discuss later. He is using the name Marcus Elbaz and posing as a Global Community Peacekeeping deputy commander.”

Tsion sat on the steps in the darkness, phone to his ear, the two tied-together packed pillowcases at his feet. All he had to do was grab them in one hand and the baby in the other, and he could be up through the freezer and out the door in seconds. But for now, he had no transportation and no idea whether the GC was waiting to ambush him.

He had heard so much about Rayford’s black-market friend, he could hardly believe he was about to speak with him.

“Dr. Ben-Judah?”

“This is Tsion, yes. Albie?”

“Sir, I want to get right to business, but I must tell you, I owe you my soul.”

“Thank you, sir. It appears I may soon owe you my life.”

“Let’s hope so. Tell me, have you heard anyone, anything, that might tell you the GC are nearby?”

“To tell you the truth, I nearly phoned Rayford about half an hour ago. It may have been paranoia, but I heard vehicles.”

“Close?”

“Not very, but they were north of here. What frightened me was that they were intermittent.”

“Meaning?”

“Starting, stopping, moving. I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“You don’t usually hear any cars or trucks?”

“Right.”

“And you’ve heard nothing since about thirty minutes ago?”

“About that.”

“All right, listen carefully. Do you recognize the sound of the Land Rover? I mean, could you confidently distinguish it from, say, a GC Jeep?”

“I believe I could.”

“Would you hear it plainly if it came between the house and the garage?”

“Certainly.”

“And you can hear garage sounds? Doors opening and closing?”

“Yes, but these aren’t typical American garage doors. They are manual and they swing like barn doors.”

“All right. Thank you. If in the next fifteen minutes you hear what sounds like the Land Rover, it will be us. Any other noises or sounds, please let us know immediately.”

Each potentate was greeted by music from his region and wild demonstrations from his people. Some had their people largely together; others saw them spread throughout the crowd. Most of the speakers echoed the sentiments of the potentate of the United Russian States, who listed Carpathia among not only the greatest heads of state and military leaders the world had ever known, but also among the most revered religious leaders and even deities of various faiths and sects.

The Asian leader, the second potentate to speak, said, “I know I speak for every citizen of my great region when I say that my reverence for His Excellency, the supreme potentate, has only increased in his death. I worshiped his leadership, his vision, his policies. And now I worship the man himself. May his fame and legend and glory only grow, now that he is again in heaven from whence he came!”

The potentate of the United Indian States intoned that “while we once believed that a good man comes back at a higher level, and thus that a bright star like Nicolae Carpathia would be guaranteed the role of a Brahman, he himself taught us-with his brilliant vision for a one-world faith-that even such traditional religious views have lost their currency. Even those who have come to believe that when you are dead, you are dead, and there is nothing more, have to admit-and I say this directly to Nicolae Carpathia-you will live for as long as we live. For you will always be alive in our hearts and in our memories.”

Though the throng responded enthusiastically, David was intrigued that Fortunate seemed to feel the need to clarify, or at least modify, the effect of that speech.

Before introducing the potentate from the United African States, Enoch Litwala, Fortunate took the floor briefly.

“Thank you for those sentiments, Potentate Kononowa. I appreciated the reference to the one-world church, which shall reappear here in New Babylon as an even better expression of a pure, united religion. Ironic, isn’t it, that of the two sects most resistant to the ideas of a unified faith, one saw our great leader fall in its own homeland, and the other was responsible for his assassination.

“I do not blame the Israelis, as they are a valued part of the United Carpathian States. They cannot be held responsible for the climate engendered by their stubborn Orthodox Jews, most of whom have resisted to this day the inclusive invitation of the one-world faith. And then the Judahites! Espousing such exclusivistic, closeminded doctrines as there being but a single path to God!

Should we be surprised that the very assassin of our beloved potentate is a leading member of that cult?”

With that pronouncement and the attendant applause, the great black statue to Leon’s left began to smoke profusely, the wisp of black vapor becoming billowing clouds. Leon seemed to take this in stride, quipping, “Even Nicolae the Great has to agree with that.

“But seriously, before our African potentate comes, let me reiterate. Any cult, sect, religion, or individual who professes a single avenue to God or heaven or bliss in the afterlife is the greatest danger to the global community. Such a view engenders divisiveness, hatred, bigotry, condescension, and pride. I say to you with the confidence of one who sat in the presence of greatness every day for the last several years, there are many ways to ensure eternal bliss, if anything is eternal. It is not by walling yourself and your comrades off in a corner claiming you have the inside track to God. It is by being a good and kind human being and helping others.

“Nicolae Carpathia would have been the last person in the world to espouse a one-way religion, and look how he is revered. We will worship him and his memory for as long as we are alive. And that, my friends, will keep him and his ideals alive.”

David wondered if the crowd would ever get as sick of itself as he was of the predictable clapping and cheering. Enoch Litwala cast a pall on the proceedings when his inappropriately brief and lukewarm tribute fell flat. All he said was, “As potentate of the great United African States, it falls to me to express the sentiments of my people. Please accept our sincere condolences to the leadership of the Global Community and to those of you who loved the deceased. The United African States opposes violence and deplores this senseless act by a misguided individual, ignorantly believing what has been spoon-fed him and millions of others who refuse to think for themselves.”