Mark of Evil (5 page)

Then the rabbi said, “Mark him well, this man of sin, when he appears. For he seeks to rule the world and all that is in it. He is a liar and the father of liars. And he will tell us anything, and he will say it with brilliant, soothing words that tickle the ears. But no matter what he says, or how enticing his appearance, he seeks to destroy the followers of Jesus and to make the human race his slaves.”

Another person, a young man, shouted out, “How can we—any of us—withstand such a force?”

Rabbi ZG smiled. “Be of good courage. Remember the promises of God. The Lord of hosts is faithful.” The rabbi paused, touching his index finger to his beard. “And there is also good news. All of these events shall serve as God’s great trumpet, giving mankind yet another chance to embrace Jesus the Messiah. The perfect Lamb of God.”

He looked over to the young man who had asked the question. “So, how can we withstand so great an assault of evil?” He smiled. “Come, come! Remember the Scriptures! What does it say? God shall send us His wonder-working witnesses, who will soon be among us.” A few in the audience nodded, but the rest had a questioning look in their eyes. Rabbi ZG continued, “And those witnesses shall be two.”

SEVEN

WHITE HORSE, YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA

Beyond the edge of town, in a heavily forested area a half mile off the road, John Galligher stood poised at the top of a makeshift ladder that leaned against a pine tree. He had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, and he had just finished readjusting the wireless surveillance camera positioned high up on the trunk of the tree. If his calculations were correct, with the adjustment he had just made, the cameras should be able to capture a sweeping view of Klondike Highway a mile outside of White Horse. That would help him monitor the influx of Global Alliance troops in the city.

Now that Canada had joined the Global Alliance, Alliance military hardware and manpower were flooding into the Yukon. The smart money was on the idea that the Alliance would eventually
surround the United States from Canada in the north and Mexico in the south. What they had planned after that, though, was anyone’s guess. But as Galligher saw things, his assignment wouldn’t focus on the U.S. Instead, he was to protect at all costs the Remnant’s unique high-tech installation in White Horse from any interference by evildoers, including the Alliance. At least that’s what he’d been told. So that’s what he would do. But it didn’t mean he had to like it.

Okay, I’m a good soldier. I can take orders. Even if it means that a former federal agent from New York City who used to chase terrorist cells ends up moving to the land of Paul Bunyan and has to climb pine trees.

Galligher, still on the ladder, put his Allfone against his ear and listened to the voice mail left by his ex-wife, Helen. It had come in while he was fiddling with the surveillance camera. The message started bad and went south from there. Helen ended it on a note so low and nasty it could have qualified for the
Guinness Book of World Records
.

You know, John, I’ve really liked not hearing your voice these many months. But you spoiled that by calling. I’ve enjoyed not having your overweight presence lumbering around my home. Leaving the refrigerator open. Leaving the toilet seat up. Never listening to me when I tried to talk to you. Then slipping out of bed in the middle of the night so you can whisper on the phone to your FBI buddies about some terror group you’re going after. And then packing your bags and disappearing on your next mission for the Bureau without so much as a “Good-bye, Helen. I’m going to miss you.” So listen to me, John, when I say you can take this garbage about “my life has radically changed now” and you can stuff it. It makes me want to vomit. Divorce from you was the beginning of my new life. Got it? So don’t screw it up by bothering me.

Galligher stared at his Allfone as he clicked it off.

Best regards to you too, Helen, dear.

He sighed. He had called her with good intentions. Oh well, maybe some other time. Maybe Helen was just having a bad day. But the “overweight” business was a low blow. Galligher had worked hard to maintain his fighting weight. Two hundred and thirty-five pounds dripping wet.

He heard something. A snorting, huffing sound down on the ground. Then he felt something bump his ladder. He looked down. His day had suddenly gotten worse.

A mammoth brown bear stood at the foot of the ladder, staring up at him. Part of Galligher knew he had planned for this eventuality; preparation for chaos was a specialty of his. The other part of him broke out in a cold sweat. The grizzly looked to be fully grown. When he first arrived in the Yukon two weeks before, he’d read up on the species, just in case. The females would often reach four or five hundred pounds. The males could be even bigger, sometimes up to eight hundred pounds. But he had no interest in resolving the gender question on this one. All he knew was that it was grotesquely huge.

The humpbacked grizzly now opened its massive jaws and roared, so loudly Galligher thought he could feel his hair blowing. Then it raised itself on its hind legs like it was going to climb up the ladder after him. He was tempted to kick the ladder down to the ground, but quickly thought better of it.

Stick to the plan.

Galligher carefully lifted the canvas bag off of his shoulder, making sure he didn’t drop it. That would be a disaster. As the brown bear reached up to the fifth rung of the ladder, he pulled out a plastic freezer bag. In it were two big salmon he had thawed out that morning, heads, fins, and tails still intact. He waved the bag in the air. The bear halted, sniffed loudly, and stared at the bag with a deadly kind of resolve.

Now for the hard part. Galligher lifted the plastic freezer bag high and cocked his arm, then let go with a solid throw. The bag with the
smelly fish sailed through the air and landed on the ground about fifty feet away.

The bear had been reaching up the ladder with its massive front paws, hind feet on the ground. When Galligher tossed the bag, the monster barely flicked its shaggy head in the direction of the throw before returning its eyes to the man at the top of the ladder. Galligher was now sweating bullets. He’d had only the one trick up his sleeve, and he had just used it. He had nothing left.

Lucky for him, the bear leaned to one side and then, with the grace of a giant ballerina, pushed off from the ladder, almost sending Galligher tumbling down. The animal loped over to the bag of fish.

Galligher clutched his Allfone, one arm wrapped around a tree limb and his foot hooked between the slats of the ladder to keep it from falling. He repositioned the ladder beneath him until it was safe to climb down. Then he descended while keeping a close eye on the big brown bear sitting on its haunches and calmly ripping the plastic bag apart. He fought the temptation to run. It would have been fruitless; he’d read grizzlies could hit thirty miles per hour. But he walked quickly, keeping his arms to his side to avoid catching the bear’s attention, as he made his way to his jeep parked about a hundred yards away. When he got there he locked the doors and turned on the ignition. It wasn’t until he heard the jubilant sound of the engine revving that he finally relaxed.

Thanks, Lord, for having my back.
Galligher shook his head and added,
Again.

Putting the jeep into gear, he bumped along a fire trail, ending up at the highway, which he then drove into White Horse, crossing through to the other side of town. He pulled up in front of a three-story, 126-year-old hotel and shut off the ignition. He was feeling pretty good about besting a big brute of a brown bear.

He strode into the nineteenth-century hotel. The first-floor lobby was dolled up in gold rush décor, with lots of gold brocade and velvet
curtains. It looked like the kind of place that would have been amenable to tourists once upon a time, before the global depression slowed the tourist trade. Manning the front desk was Bobby Robert, a young Native American from the Tlingit tribe who wore his black hair in two long braids. Like several others who worked the fake hotel, he was a local member of the Remnant. He was posing as the desk clerk and was reading a magazine.

As Galligher shared with Bobby the story of his close encounter with the hungry grizzly kind, he expected a minor show of admiration. Instead, the Indian man began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

Bobby shook his head. “So you think you saved yourself with that trick, using that bag of fish?”

“I know I did. Why? What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, just this,” Bobby replied, suppressing more chuckles. “Bears can smell food for miles. That bag of fish is probably what drew that bear to you in the first place.”

Galligher rolled his eyes, gave a hapless shrug, and went into the back office, where he clicked on the monitor that included the surveillance sector by the Klondike Highway. He needed to make sure that after all the excitement the camera had been aimed correctly and the video feed gave him a good view of the highway. He checked it out. Mission accomplished.

So he trotted out of the office and climbed the red-carpeted spiral staircase up to the second floor. Making his way down the narrow hallway with fake gaslight sconces on the walls, he slipped a key into his door and opened it up. It wasn’t just one room inside; it opened up to all the other rooms lining that side of the hallway. The whole place was crammed with computers and paper-thin monitor screens linked together. Rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling racks held electronics equipment and big cases that looked like digital suitcases wired together. Black fiber-optic cables connected everything.

In the middle of all of that sat Chiro Hashimoto, a Japanese man in his forties with a wild lock of untamed hair, in a little secretarial-type chair on wheels in front of a computer screen. The only other computer geek in the place besides Chiro was a fellow named Manfred who sported a little goatee on his chin. Manfred, like Chiro, had at one time been an employee of IntraTonics, the world-class technology company with headquarters in Washington State. Manfred was at the far end of the computer network room, peering into one of the racks.

Galligher was still getting to know Chiro, and there was a lot about this high-tech outpost of the Remnant that he didn’t understand. All he knew was that it was a secret computer facility posing as a gold rush tourist hotel. So he decided to do a little probing.

“When Ethan March sent a message to me, asking me to provide security up here,” he said, “I was game. But the thing is, Chiro, I’ve got a lot of unanswered questions.”

Chiro smiled. “Go ahead. Ask me.”

“Well, I realize I’m not supposed to be privy to the endgame about this computer network. And what it has to do with the Remnant, exactly. And I’m good with that. In my career, I’m used to the ‘need to know’ approach. But I’m worried about the Alliance being able to pick up what you’re doing from the outside. You know, some kind of external scanning.”

Chiro nodded. “I had new siding put on the building. Reflective material, impervious to audio surveillance. Blocks incoming radio waves. Our wireless field inside is all segregated within the rooms. Can’t be seen or tapped from the outside. Even if a computer expert came into this building carrying a wireless Internet receiver or an advanced packet sniffer—the kind that not only invades Wi-Fi hot spots but also bypasses even secured systems—he still couldn’t find us.”

“I’m pretty old school,” Galligher remarked with a tired grin. “I still don’t trust any hardware that doesn’t use AA batteries, so you’ve
left me in a cloud of dust. But what I think I’m hearing you say is that your computer work here can’t be intercepted from the outside.”

“Exactly. No way. I’m totally sure of that.”

Galligher eyed the Internet genius. He had read up on Chiro before heading north to meet him—this guy who had been hired by China to leave Tokyo and move to Beijing, where he invented the most sophisticated international computer hacking scheme the world had ever known. He’d later had to flee the Walled City when his life was threatened by the Communist bigwigs, arriving in the United States to become the head of Internet research for the megapowerful electronics company IntraTonics in Seattle. But then he left that company and went rogue for reasons that defined the word
ironic
for Galligher, even though Galligher wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever use that word.

“So,” Galligher asked his host, “I hear you’re the one who created this whole mess. You know, the BIDTag laser process.”

Chiro stopped in his tracks and turned to face Galligher, but he looked down as he spoke. “I did. I am guilty of that. Created it for IntraTonics. Didn’t know back then that the U.S. government and President Tulrude and all other nations would buy it—and use it against citizens. When I realized the monster I had created, I quit. Hid out in Olympic National Forest in Washington with my buddies in an abandoned camp lodge. Built a lab and figured out a way to design a fake BIDTag for people who didn’t want the government controlling all their private, personal information. Controlling their every move. I used to call my camp in the wilderness Ice Station Zebra, after the movie. Then one day I finally watched the movie. And I said to myself,
That is a stupid name for my lab in the wilderness; it is nothing like the movie!
” Chiro laughed with machine-gun staccato.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Galligher studied him.
I
think
I’m going to like this Chiro guy. He’s a little weird, but in a good way
.

Chiro said something that broke him out of his thoughts. “I have
asked God to forgive me many times for this terrible thing I created—the BIDTag system.”

“Go easy on yourself, Chiro,” Galligher said. “My list of screwups is the size of the New York City phone directory.”

“Okay,” Chiro replied, looking intense, “but how would you like to be known as the guy who made the human-marking process that the Prince of Darkness is going to use to rule the world?”