Xierce, a satellite town outside New Canaan; pre-dawn.
Xierce was full of activity for a small watercourse town. It was Food Fest. A delegation of excited epicureans from all the provinces of New Canaan had converged on this town for the festival. Mish was in high spirits, moving from stall to stall to taste the variety of cuisines being sold. My mood was good, too, since we were able to maintain a measure of anonymity while we moved with the crowd.
By noon, we had made our way to Din’s Diner.
“We’re here,” I informed my son. “This is where we’re meeting our contact. We should get a booth far away from prying eyes.”
Our contact arrived ten minutes late for our appointment. Ishtiaq – he gave us only his last name – found us easily and quietly joined us at our booth. (In our phone conversation, I had described Cătălin Weber as a forty-something year-old eastern European man clad in monochromatic black who’d be in the company of another eastern European man in his mid-thirties.)
I immediately recognized him from the bath house. A slight man, likely in his mid- to late-forties, Ishtiaq had dull looking ringlets all over his head. His close-set dark brown eyes were concealed behind yellow tinted sunglasses, which were suspended precariously on the bridge of his nose. He wore his sunglasses throughout our meeting. Not unlike the men of his ancestry and culture he could never be accused of owning a defective crop of facial hair while also sporting a moustache that clung to his philtrum like a well-nourished roly-poly. On this day Ishtiaq was donning a caftan made of chenille with a tapestry-like print, bold coloured but not garishly loud. His gold-plated brand-name watch insinuated a covetous taste for designer luxe and distinction. Mish glared briefly at the damp patches on his sleeves under his pits.
“Sorry about that,” he explained to the child while he scanned the food menu, “I’m taking medication for an illness but it contains a diaphoretic. It’s chronic, the illness, I mean. Don’t worry – it’s not contagious.”
We soon found out that Ishtiaq made a living from double crossing: a doyen of the stool pigeon trade, he was well-known among his peers. He wasn’t ashamed to brag about this aspect of his professional life. Ishtiaq’s facial features were deadpan throughout the time he was endeavouring to convince us that he had a proven track record, and so we could count on him. His diction wasn’t always easy on the ear; I inferred that it was due to his prognathous jowl. A teetotaller – not for religious reasons for he didn’t subscribe to any beliefs other than the belief of himself; instead he was a reformed alcoholic whose former bibulous habit had led to a valetudinarian life – he finally ordered a diet soda and a large plate of wholemeal pasta with lentils that swam in a mouth-watering tomato-based sauce. He wolfed down his pasta when it arrived.
Mish had already ordered grilled fish for each of us; they had arrived before Ishtiaq’s pasta. The fish cost one hundred and eighty Globo each, the equivalent of two hundred and seventy U.S. dollars before the dollar was demonetized. Such was the hyper inflation of Planet Antichrist.
Notwithstanding the inflationary economy, the elite of New Canaan were still living better than the citizens of the rest of the kingdoms under the rule of the New World Order. The disparity between a wealthy kingdom, such as New Canaan (because she was Antichrist’s capital nation) and the poor kingdoms, which would be the rest of the world, was clearly understood from the victuals their citizens ate. The proletariat could scarcely meet the expense of pasta or fish, in fact, anything fresh and organic. Instead, they lived day to day on processed leftovers and anything they could scrounge from the dumpster or steal without being captured by the G.U. leader’s All-Seeing-Eye.
It went without saying that most state penitentiaries were overcrowded with thieves not astute enough to escape capture. Many convicts would risk their lives by engaging in gladiatorial matches to the death, vile sport of the plenitude, in order to be granted clemency on their prison sentences. Many more engaged in similar matches to the death, after which the winners were granted additional food rations by the plutocrats of the New World Order. (You see, hunger could always incite one to do things that one, with any ounce of amour-propre, would find appalling under normal circumstances.) This was, indeed, an evil generation.
Mish ate his lunch silently throughout our meal, which had been a quiet one because no one spoke more than monosyllables. My son was in character: he was his usual shy self. However, he was unusually restrained, responding to Ishtiaq with nods and smiles. A few times, he caught me catching him fingering the flatware. After the fourth time, he killed the habit by sitting on his hands.
I picked at my okra, stealing glances at our contact now and again to study his body language. He was guarded, his narrowed eyes shifting from corner to corner to check if we were being watched. He was also insecure; he sometimes folded his arms across his chest to make token comments about the weather, world poverty and watching his weight. And he shook his leg often, very telling in itself.
Our contact proved to be an introvert, asking Mish and me only very basic questions about our personal and professional life while keeping his private life just that. He took his time to savour his pudding, which resembled a localized version of a zabaglione. So much for choosing an abstemious way of life: I wondered if he was aware that there could be wine in the pudding.
In the course of the awkward meeting, for Ishtiaq’s reticence had given us limited prospects for a riveting three-way conversation, I managed to find the opportunity to broach the matter of our subjects. I drew out the photograph from my pocket and handed it to Ishtiaq.
I told him: “I have it on good authority that this woman’s employers want to put these kids on the child slavery market, if the price is right. My client, Mr. Beliskaia here, is willing to offer the market rate plus an additional twenty percent on top of that.”
“I’ll ask around,” Ishtiaq stated brusquely, folding up and pocketing the photograph. He finished his pudding and soda without another word. Then, leaving his tab under the carafe, he ordered me: “Email me your passport details, both of yours, and also your travel documents and itinerary; how you flew here and on what carrier, et cetera, et cetera. No exceptions, or no deal.”
“Check your Inbox,” I informed our contact, prefacing it with a deliberate smirk.
He gave me a suspicious scowl before doing as asked. “But how did you . . . ?”
“Of course you would want documentation,” I replied. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“Fine,” he whispered, getting up to leave. “I’ll have you checked out immediately. Now get rid of your cell phone. I’m no fan of the leader and his junta but I don’t want trouble either. Don’t contact me again; I’ll find a way to contact you somehow.”
Mish turned toward me while I watched our contact disappear round a street corner. “Can he be trusted?” he asked in a whisper.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” I replied. I waved my palm over my cell phone, completely altering every iota of data last contained in it.
Our mission was at a standstill for the next two days. This tested my son’s patience. He’d been pacing the floor for an hour when I suggested that we took a drive into the country.
“Are you serious?” my son exclaimed. “Right now?”
I nodded: “Oh, yes, Little One, I’m very serious and right now; lest cabin fever should overtake you.”
“Do we go in our cover or as we are?” he asked.
“As we are,” I replied. “Unless you think Misha Ben-Rubin’s going to be recognized?”
He shook his head: “I seriously doubt that.”
We teleported to our Lincoln. The GPS proved versatile, navigating us toward several rural settlements outside the city. Our day’s off-the-cuff itinerary had included a hill top trek and white water rafting on the outskirts of a pristine hamlet.
“No messages?” Mish asked between chewing on his mutton pilaf.
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been checking your phone on the hour,” he explained. “No messages?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t expecting one from Ishtiaq. Not on this phone anyway.”
“So what were you checking for?” the child asked.
I shrugged: “Nothing in particular. I was just killing time.”
Mish chuckled: “You’re not forming a creature habit, are you? You’ve been on earth far too long.”
Night fell. We left the café and drove back to Xierce.
On the fifth day of our operation, Mish and I were handed a message from our contact. We were at the same diner in town when an underaged cadge – New Canaan was replete with street urchins – approached our booth. He left a piece of note paper on our table before scurrying toward the kitchen. I unfolded the note paper.
“Ishtiaq’s come through for us,” I informed my son after reading his message. “It looks like he may have obtained for us an appointment to meet with Avalin Harary.”
“Brilliant,” Mish smiled.
The next morning, we showed up at a market in downtown New Canaan, exactly as Ishtiaq had instructed us.
“Meet me at this address at eleven tonight,” Ishtiaq advised me with an imperious sense of self-importance, pressing a crumpled piece of paper into my palm. We were at the fish section of the crowded market. Ishtiaq was bidding for some prime halibut.
He added: “I’ll take you to Avalin myself. She rarely meets with anyone that’s not in her usual clientele, so make tonight’s appointment count.”
His two expensive acquisitions handed to him wrapped with butcher paper, he quickly rose from the bench. He beat a hasty retreat, vanishing like a phantom between the meat stalls.
“There he goes again,” Mish whispered. “Poof! Like a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“It’s a demanding life . . . having to look over your shoulder all the time,” I responded. “But he’s skilled at keeping himself under the radar.”
My son and I returned to our motel. After resting for a bit, which was mostly for my son’s gain, we assumed our disguises for our next task, masquerading as a pair of grizzled and bespectacled professors emeritus named Dr. Duncan Neely and Professor Kamen Hahn. We spent the rest of the day, afterward, at the cafeteria of Mount Shinar University, one of New Canaan’s premier Ivy League schools. The entire student body of the university was a small one, numbering about one hundred and sixty in toto. As we were to discover, during this late stage of the Tribulation, only the uber wealthy could afford a tertiary education for their children.
Mish and I sat at a table occupied by a trio of first-year Philosophy students. It was with their permission, of course. Using their first names only, they introduced themselves as Veronica, Dharma and Ellery. I discreetly checked their wrists; all of them were wearing Antichrist’s Mark.
Our nostrils bombarded by the wafts of home-grown dack, smoked ad infinitum by the portion of the student body assembled at the cafeteria, we proceeded to engage the trio in an informal tête-à-tête on Logic, Ethics and Religion. At times, we managed to import into our conversation the Creation story and the gospel message.
“The basis for Descartes’ existence,” Ellery, the young woman with the rainbow-coloured dreadlocks drawled, “was his capacity for thought.”
“Cogito ergo sum,” the young man, named Dharma, added.
I asked: “But what was the basis for Descartes’ capacity for thought, if not the existence of God?”
“Why must there be a basis, Dr. Neely?” Dharma challenged me. “And why must the basis be God? The material’s all there is for it’s all we can test.”
Mish jumped in: “You can’t test thought, however. The law of cause and effect stipulates that the cause is always greater than the effect; hence, the first cause of intellect, necessarily, must be intelligent.”
“The basis for thought, therefore, must be God because there must exist a Being of superlative intelligence to create someone like Descartes with the faculty to think, process thinking and, in turn, effect a creation of such intelligible complexity as poetry, philosophy and technology,” I reasoned.
“That’s deep,” Ellery whispered.
Dharma smirked. “Really, Ellery,” he said. “She sways wherever the wind blows.”
“With all due respect, Professor Hahn and Dr. Neely, you can’t believe that and live,” the one, who called herself Veronica, maintained. She was inhaling the smoke of her cigarette deeply into her lungs. Every one of her right fingers bore a cocktail ring; on one finger was a skull, on another an Uroborus symbol. Her index finger wore a baphomet cross, and her middle finger an ankh.
Dharma laughed: “What Veronica means to say is that you have to conform. You see this Mark on my wrist – it’s why I conform, why I’m able to conform.”
“Antichrist is god, man,” the poster child of syncretism scoffed. She took another drag of her cigarette: “And by imputation because we’re his subjects, we’re gods, too.”
“There’s only one God,” Mish reasoned. “And He’s the Creator of the universe. In the beginning, God thought, speaking into existence the universe and all that were in it. He thought and spoke into being man and woman, creating them in His own image and breathing into their nostrils the breath of life.”
“That’s written in the first book of the Old Testament,” I qualified. “It’s in God’s Word.”
“God is the First Cause,” Mish declared.
A surveillance camera at the door, above the transom, blinked on cue. I smiled.
I added: “So, unlike Descartes who could only theorize that he existed because he thought, I know that I exist because God thought. Descartes’ ontological model for knowing one’s existence is best indicated by the adage, ‘I think, therefore, God is the I Am’.”
The camera blinked again.
As our chinwag progressed to its closing stages, I concluded what I had known from the start: the seeds we were planting that day were on barren soil. Nevertheless, the whole exercise had been a revealing one.
The moon had risen over the union building. Students and faculty were hastily streaming out, waving their transponders or Mark over various strategically placed scanning machines. The turnstiles on the campus were locking down.
Our hour for meeting Avalin Harary was nigh at hand. Mish and I assumed invisibility before teleporting to our Lincoln, parked outside the university.
“Did our exercise confirm Ari’s reports?” Mish asked in the car. We were evaluating our polemical discussion while the GPS on the dashboard was directing me to our next destination.
I nodded. “The outcome was predictable. There was plenty of textbook regurgitation.”
“They rarely seemed in control of their faculties,” my son opined. “Was it the weed or the lager?”
I nodded: “It was both but, mostly, it was the Mark – as Ariel has reported, something in Antichrist’s Mark is turning the wearers into mindless robots, brainwashed by his ideologies. Even the crème de la crème of academia and society’s next generation of intelligentsia are not immune.”
“They were, otherwise, civil,” he commented next. “The whole conversation had been civil, if a bit robust with their ad hominem attacks whenever Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion was put in the spotlight. Did you notice the camera blinking whenever God was mentioned?”
I nodded. “I guess we won’t be coming back,” I jested.
“Not as Professor Hahn and Dr. Neely,” he smiled.
In our guises as Sasha Alekseev and Cătălin Weber once more, Mish and I arrived at the club where Ms. Harary lived and earned a living. Our contact met us in the vestibule outside the club. Behind us, a growing stream of New Canaan’s fashionably well-heeled was adding to the long line of patrons already gathered behind the heavy glass door. They included former architects, photographers, dancers, musicians, fashion designers and advertising executives, as well as all the rest of the Watanabe wannabes, the Hieronymus Bosch has-beens and the Almodóvar also-rans that, in the halcyon days, were on the cutting edge of innovation in the fine arts. Now, on Antichrist’s planet, they were dead to the world, only rousing when the sun had set to cultivate their backyard weed. Friday nights were an exception; on Friday nights, they’d chill at the most modish clubs in the city’s chicest strips.
Tonight was a Friday night. In the patrons’ way of a good time were the two heavy-set bouncers standing at the entrance. The bouncers were screening them for information on their social credit scores. On the surface, being born in the purple didn’t stand any of the patrons in good stead with the bouncers: one at a time, their wrists or foreheads were thoroughly scanned for the Mark. Scratch under the surface, however, and we realized that everyone had a price: occasionally someone managed to sneak past the bouncers, usually as a result of pecuniary having changed hands.
Such as in our case. I spied Ishtiaq offering a wad of bills to a bouncer. Then, he led us into the club where he found us a booth by the exit. This was the last time we’d see our contact again as he quickly disappeared among the revellers carousing on the dance floor.
Mish had seemed disappointed when he found out. “I had wanted to wish him the best,” he explained. “His lifestyle and livelihood aside, I thought he was relatively trustworthy.”
“Keep him in your prayers,” I advised.
A waitress came to deliver a Gin and Tonic, which Ishtiaq had taken the liberty to order for me. He had generously picked up the tab for it as well: his way of thanking me for the large commission he was going to pocket from securing our meeting with Ms. Harary and her employers. In essence, it suggested that he was confident ours would be a done deal.
“I’ll get one of that, too, please,” Mish requested from the waitress. The identification tag on her uniform informed us of her name: Natalya Nordqvist.
“All right,” Miss Nordqvist smiled, her mood upbeat. “That’s one more Gin and Tonic coming up. That’ll be fourty Globo. How would you like to pay tonight, sir? Will it be the Mark or the Globo?”
“The Globo,” I replied, my fingers rummaging in my coat pocket. I stopped Mish from reaching for his money pouch. Counting out the global currency in my palm, I handed Miss Nordqvist the payment, including the obligatory fifteen percent value added tax and tip. She happily pocketed the tip.
Loud techno music swelled from the amplifiers, assailing my hearing. While Mish and I waited to meet Ms. Harary, we watched the revellers pound their feet on the dance floor and gyrate their hips to the hypnotic rhythm of the music. I found the movements in the dances sometimes suggestive, even orgiastic. I pretended to sip my drink.
Someone came over to solicit Mish for a dance. He declined. The pretty woman shrugged as if to imply it was Mishael’s loss, and left. She quickly found her next prey, who willingly bought her a drink.
Mish smiled modestly at me. “Easy come, easy . . . ,” we commented with one mind.
After that, he popped a handful of peanuts into his mouth and rested his chin on his fisted palm. It covered most of his lips. He watched the crowd pensively, tapping a finger on his nose in timing to the music’s bpm.
I, next, followed his gaze to a table occupied by three men. Sitting away from their mate, two of these men were enjoying their passionate tryst, huddled in each other’s arms in a parody of conventional coupling. The third man, probably completing their ménage a trois, caught Mish’s gaze and smiled.
Mish averted his gaze, turning his attention to a group of women who’d just been allowed through the entrance. He appeared to recognize several of the socialites in the group. He cast his head downward and held his breath. The women, clad in red or black leather and thigh high boots, sauntered to our table and subjected us to their scrutiny. Realizing we were not of any benefit to them, by way of furthering their social standing or physical well-being, they proceeded to the next table.
Mish exhaled.
“You know them?” I asked him.
“Not personally but I’ve seen them around,” he replied. “They’re what the society pages call the It-girls in the club scene. They routinely check out patrons new to the circuit to score or peddle their drugs.”
“Locals?” I asked.
He nodded: “But they get around.”
Six men, from the international militia belonging to Antichrist, rose from their bar stools. They spread out, making optimal use of their space to exert their influence. The music plodded to a dirge while the club patrons waited on edge for the eventual plot to unfold.
From where we were observing the proceedings, the soldiers’ stature approached goliath size. In partial army regulation of camouflage pants, black short-sleeved T-shirts and their unorthodox leather fingerless gloves, each of these soldiers was a generously proportioned hulk of a man, in possession of an elongated cranium, closely cropped hair, angular jaw line and cheekbones, and hirsute skin visible on his bare arms. Something about the soldiers’ eyes did not seem human. The pupils, deeply set within their eye sockets, were black and opaque. The six soldiers undertook a perfunctory survey of the vicinity, their eyes scarcely blinking.
Mish had the perspicacity to identify the soldiers with accuracy. “Antichrist’s transgenic army,” he whispered.
I nodded: “And not even in disguise. I want you to pass me your right arm; do this carefully under the table.”
My underling obeyed without question, discreetly passing his arm to me. Grasping his hand, I wielded my angelic power, which surreptitiously transplanted an ersatz microchip under the skin of each of our wrists.
“No one will be able to tell that these are fake chips,” I informed him quietly.
We heard the scurrying of feet around the dance floor, which alerted us to a young couple – transients like us – being toddled away from the amplifiers. A fervent revulsion for their apprehension was impressed on the man’s animated face.
“Hey, take your hands off my woman,” this young man hollered as his hands were being cuffed behind him. He cursed the soldiers for his lover’s broken stiletto heel: “Hey, those Choos cost fifteen thousand Globo, ‘kay?”
I think he meant to say shoes, my underling snickered telepathically.
I smiled, replying telepathically to him: No, he did mean Choos, as in ‘Jimmy Choo’ shoes.
Ah, Choos – I mean women’s shoes – aren’t quite my thing.
While the young man’s girlfriend was being similarly detained, he continued spewing his defiance which was laced with some choice expletives: “There’s no need to employ such coercive methods, ‘kay? We know our rights. We were going to get the chip implants next week, as soon as we returned to the East, ‘kay? Let go of me, you gauche lout.”
The truculent young man caught me closely studying him and his girlfriend about the same time the Lord was revealing their identities to me. Of Oriental descent, Joo-weon, for that was the name of his christening, was the son of an influential triad leader, born with no other agency than his adoption as heir presumptive of an international syndicate that was involved in every illegal activity known to man including human trafficking, drug smuggling, gun running and money laundering. His girlfriend was Aera Young, the daughter and only child of his father’s business partner. A member of Mensa with an IQ of 152, she was a graduate of the London School of Economics and now kept the books for the syndicate. Aera was as composed and cooperative throughout her apprehension as her boyfriend was curmudgeonly and confrontational.
“Have you any idea what you’re dealing with?” Jye swore defiantly. “Whom you’re dealing with? My father will have your heads over this, ‘kay?”
One of the soldiers was now prodding him and his girlfriend away from the dance floor. On the way to the side exit, the young man turned back toward the crowd of onlookers.
“There’s no God and there’s no Devil,” he yelled. “You’re all superstitious morons. Antichrist is no god, ‘kay? He’s just a man. My father will neutralize his influence, you’ll see. Just mark my words. Revolution. Revolution now.”
The bacchanalia on the dance floor had completely died. Outside the club, the doors of a vehicle slammed and engine was being revved up. There was a low rumble from the vehicle’s exhaust pipe and, after that, silence.
“Here you go, sir,” a monotonous voice came through, breaking the eerie silence. It was our waitress. She put the glass of Gin and Tonic in front of my underling saying, again in a monotonous voice: “Have a lovely evening.”
How quickly Miss Nordqvist’s demeanour appeared to have changed.
A rotund man approached our table. He eyed the remaining soldiers for a split second before turning back to us.
“You the guys that know Ishtiaq?” he asked, with a cautious and crotchety carriage about him.
I nodded: “We’re acquainted with Ishtiaq.”
“This way,” he continued.
Passing the super soldiers who scanned our hands with their eyes, we were led into a back room. There, we were told to wait once more.
A few minutes later, she joined us – Ms. Harary. We introduced ourselves, shook her hand and followed her into another room where we sat at a rectangular Perspex table.
She wasted no time getting down to business. She identified herself and her wards, the twins, and asked us what we were offering. Maintaining a calculated reticence, I ran my ballpoint pen over a piece of paper. I handed her the piece of paper. She studied the figure for a while, silently mulling over its ramification. Then, with a succinct nod, she accepted the offer. The deal sealed, we rose and shook her hand.
“I’ll bring them to you tomorrow night,” she said nervously. “You’ll have the money by then?”
We nodded. She gave us the address to meet her the next night.
Mish’s stomach had tied itself in knots as we waited for the hour we were scheduled to rendezvous with Avalin Harary. His foot wouldn’t stop tapping on the tarmac. He might be unconscious of the habit, so I briefly patted his thigh to still him. He apologized and climbed up the hood of our Lincoln.
A dog extraordinarily pranced up to us. It was a Doberman. It looked to be advanced in age. The Doberman stood a few paces from the child, panting with its tongue hanging down to its neck. Mish tobogganed down the bonnet of our car and stooped down on the tarmac. He dangled his left hand in front of the dog, waving it lightly. In a friendly voice, he began to entice it toward him. The animal doddered uncertainly toward my son. When it was near enough to be reached, Mish raised his hand to stroke the top of its head. After that, he rubbed its dewlap genially.
“Hey, big fella,” the child smiled, “what are you doing here? Are you lost?”
Then, just as extraordinarily, the dog turned its body and pranced away, disappearing into the night.
“That was odd,” Mish sighed.
I nodded while I checked the time.
“Is it nearly time?” the child asked me.
Nodding again, I replied: “The hour’s nigh.”
When the hour in question finally arrived, Mish uttered: “High time.” During the last ten minutes, he had been visibly egged on by his desire to consummate the trade off in order to put a happy end to Ms. Harary’s ordeal. Of course, more than anything, he had wanted to put an end to his trepidation for this mission.
We walked briskly to the old airstrip, still deserted when we sighted the high beam lights of the white limousine pulling up. The limo swerved slightly before coming to a halt. Avalin Harary and her employer, the one she called Hatem Badawi, disgorged from it. Avalin was holding the toddlers’ little hands in hers.
My son and I met our fellow-punters at the midpoint between their vehicle and our Lincoln. In my hand was a loaded briefcase. I left Mish to follow me from a short distance while I approached Mr. Badawi on my own. Avalin introduced her boss to me. I greeted him civilly. Making the choice to keep conversation to a bare minimum, because we weren’t having a social engagement and it was many hours past the twins’ bed time, I handed the briefcase to Mr. Badawi. As soon as he had inspected and approved of the booty, Ms. Harary led the twins to my son, swiftly delivering them into his safe arms.
Mish carried the girl on his hip while he held the hand of her brother. The little girl started to bawl, fearful about being handled by a stranger. My son shushed her with soothing words and a big friendly smile, which instantly calmed her down. In contrast, her twin brother had readily entrusted his welfare to my son, hanging tightly to him. He looked up at his sister with his innocent round eyes while he offered her his lollipop. She accepted the lollipop. Both children lost themselves in each other’s world of baby talk, ignorant of the fact that their tumultuous existence was never going to be the same again.
The transaction, from its initiation to its consummation, had taken under five minutes of our time. Ms. Harary and her employer retreated to their limousine. “So long, my darlings,” Avalin was sobbing over Samantha’s subsiding tears. “Please try to be good.”
I closely watched the distraught aunt roughly shoved back into the limo, which slowly eased itself into an arterial road. Mish and I moved in haste to bundle the children in the back of our Lincoln, carefully buckling them into their booster chairs. The twin siblings had already started to nod off.
A figure, with the form of a woman, appeared behind my son. He jumped.
“Who . . . ?” he exclaimed, spinning round. He stepped back from the woman, falling against the car door.
“Oh, this would be the angel, Saraqael,” I informed him. “For the next few hours, Saraqael is disguising as Saraia Keller, the children’s nanny. Do you have the children’s travel papers, Saraqael?”
Saraqael nodded: “Right here.” He waved a tubular container in his hand, smiling at my son at the same time.
I turned back to my son, who was still gawking at ‘Saraia’. I instructed him: “Hasten now back to the helipad with Saraqael and the twins. You’ll find the angel, Jekuthiel, waiting for all of you there; I’ll catch up with you later. ‘Saraia’ will produce the twins’ travel documents at the turnpike. The officials should, then, let you through the checkpoint. If all goes according to plan, we shall be in Petra by the morrow.”
Mish nodded before getting into the car with Saraqael. He turned the key in the ignition and activated the auto-wind in his window.
“You think you could’ve forewarned me about Saraia’s appearance?” he stated through the open window. He sounded a bit narked.
“It honestly slipped my mind,” I answered apologetically. “I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
“Nah, it’s quite all right,” he replied, shaking his head. “We’ll wait for you, Dad, however long it takes. Godspeed.”
“Stay safe and Godspeed,” I said. I watched the car leave the airstrip until it resembled a jot on the horizon. I, then, took on my celestial form. I pursued Avalin’s limousine, catching up to it in no time.
I was gliding over the airfield when, lo and behold, I caught sight of the Doberman. Its eyes were scarlet and glowing as it growled at me. An abundance of dribble was leaking down its fangs.
“Hound from hell,” I sneered.
I waved my arm. I banished the beast back to the abyss where it belonged.
That’s the end of that, I thought. But if Lucifer’s demons are active tonight, something’s definitely in the offing.
No sooner thought than seen: passing the aerodrome watch tower, a large mob of men, young and old, was running toward the CBD. I wasn’t too obtuse to deduce the mob’s intention: with a machismo mask over each of their faces, and Molotov cocktails and C4s in their hands, these men were on their way to set off a riot. Riots were rife on Planet Antichrist for multifarious reasons. A member of the mob stopped at a triptych to Antichrist, one of many such icons that were placed in front of the city’s edifices and landmarks as a gesture of veneration to the would-be deity. He stomped on the triptych with his shoes, smashing it to pieces. His mates laughed; they went on to bolster the iconoclasm by further desecrating the altarpiece, setting it alight with a Molotov cocktail. To think that, only early last year, Antichrist was still the darling of the legacy media and the liberal masses. The men, then, resumed their course toward the CBD, chanting their party line: Down with the Global Unity. Death to the New-world Leader. This was obviously a populist mob. But the mob was none of my business tonight: it was the business of the authorities, the reporters and the street cleaners.
Half an hour of tailgating Ms. Harary’s limo later, I arrived outside her chamber. I stole in from the bathroom window. I had assumed my identity as Cătălin Weber once again.
I sneaked up stealthily behind the aunt. She was on her bed, appearing beside herself with grief. Her auburn hair, which had been piled into a chignon earlier, was now loose, falling down to her waist. Avalin Harary was trying, without much success, to stay her heart from falling to pieces.
I reached Ms. Harary. She never heard or sensed me once over her noisy sniffles. Putting my palm firmly over her mouth to keep her from uttering a sound and alerting her employers, I whispered into her ear: “Come with me, if you fear for your life.”
“Who are you exactly?” she asked in her muzzled voice. She looked over her shoulder to identify me. Her kohl-rimmed eyes were smudged and mascara was running down her face.
She continued as she wiped her face and eyelids with the backs of her hands: “Oh, is it you again? Look, Mr. Weber, the only reason you even got an audience with me was the fact that you had come with Ishtiaq’s commendation. The whole thing had been very risky for me and the kids. Even for my bosses, but there’s no love lost between them and me. But the choice was between you and this other crime syndicate from the East, and I chose you because you had seemed the lesser of the two evils; with the other syndicate, however, my poor babies would have their limbs amputated and turned into street vagrants. Now I’ve given you what you wanted, so let me be. But, please, just look after my babies.”
My heart was burdened with sorrow for her. Certain that I could trust her, I slowly released her.
“I’m not who you think I am,” I told her, without divulging too much information. “I can’t say any more except that you can trust me. I’m here to rescue you from your employers and the Antichrist’s mandate.”
“I don’t need to be rescued now,” she maintained. “Hatem – he’s one of my employers; you met him earlier tonight – well, he’s given me his word. He’s not going to hand me over to Antichrist’s junta as long as I agree to surrender the kids as a trade off. Now I’ve done that, so you can leave me alone.”
“Listen to me,” I reasoned, “do you think you can put off the mandate to receive the Mark when, without it, you can never buy or sell anything? And do you think you can trust Antichrist not to send his super soldiers to hunt you down? Everyone is under surveillance twenty four-seven; even without an RFID chip in your body, you’re not safe from Antichrist’s surveillance.
“Consider the fact that everything contains a microchip implant that has been encrypted with a surveillance device – foodstuff, pets, bus tickets, clothing, and pharmaceuticals. If you’ve bought any one of these on credit in the last ten years, your data’s already stored someplace – a shop, a supermarket, clinics, a bank, you name it – and accessible to anyone who wants to undertake a verification of your status and location.
“And do you have a MyFace page? What about a SIM card: have you uploaded one recently? Or what about electrical and electronic appliances? Have you bought a fridge or lap top; or a smart television or radio; or maybe a microwave oven or camera, in the last ten years? If your answer is yes, then, you’ve already bugged your own house. Since the mandatory quid pro quo that all household appliances be installed with a web-connected surveillance device and GPS tracking mechanism that are linked to social networking sites like MyFace, your house has been bugged and you’ve been under surveillance for the last ten years. Of course, you already know this.
“What’s more, without Antichrist’s Mark, where would you get food when your fridge is empty, or medicine when you’re sick; how would you pay your bills; how would you get on a bus, or train, or cab, to visit the ones you love; how would you make a call to a friend or family member to see how they’re doing; what would you use to pay for board when you’re out of town, or petrol to drive out of town? Even if Antichrist’s counter-insurgency forces do not come looking for you, they’d be counting on you to out yourself when you attempt to satisfy these basic human needs. No matter where you escape to, you’d be found out sooner or later as a political dissenter and hunted down like a fugitive till you’re secured in Antichrist’s prison.”
“What do you suggest I do?” she asked.
“Make the choice to come with me,” I told her. “We’ve arranged passage to Petra for you and your children. But you must come willingly.”
“Petra,” she exclaimed softly. A slight glint of hope flashed in her hazel eyes. “I’ve heard about the things that are going on behind the rocks and mountains – how great multitudes of people are taking salubrious refuge there from Antichrist’s junta. This must mean that you’ve been sent by the God of Israel, the only true God of heaven and earth.”
I nodded: “The Lord has sent me.”
“The rumours are true, then: you’re one of them? You’re an angel of God?” she asked. “But you look just like a man.”
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| "You’re an angel of God?” |
She continued: “It’s okay, mister. You don’t have to say anything. And your identity’s safe with me.”
Her face became a vignette of remorse unalloyed. She buried it in her hands. “But why does God care about me?” she cried. “It’s too late for me. The Lord knows that my sins are many. I’m going to die here like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, I know of His warning, too: New Canaan is about to come under His judgment, so I’m far from worried about being found by Antichrist’s junta. All I wanted was for my children to get as far away from here as possible. As for me, I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m going to stay here and die here. But I deserve to die here. I deserve to be punished for my sins. I don’t deny I have sinned greatly against God.”
I consoled her lightly in my arms.
“The Lord sees what’s in the heart,” I assured her. “It is written that He formed you in your mother’s womb and knew you before the world was made. Surely, God cares about you: He has bought your life with a ransom – the blood of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. That makes you precious in His sight. The blood of the Lamb has redeemed you from your sins, if you have trusted and believed in Him. So trust and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I say to you truly, it’s not too late for you. The Lord has seen your desire to repent of your lifestyle. He knows that all you need is a break. It’s why He’s specifically sent us to rescue you before this city comes under His judgment. He doesn’t want you to perish here. He knows you do not want to perish here. He knows all your heart’s desires. But you can tell Him all that’s in your heart on your way to Petra. Only it must be your decision. It would have been a simple task to abduct you and the children, but this is not God’s way. The Lord will not violate your free will. However, you must decide quickly, for we haven’t much time to escape.”
There was no need for further hard sell. It made sense to Ms. Harary what her recourse from her desperate situation was. Heeding me without abandon, Avalin prepared to flee with me: first, she tied back her hair with a scrunchie. After that, she wrapped her head with a large silk headscarf, an Hermès knockoff. Last of all, she grabbed her tote bag from her dressing table before following me out in silence. I led us out of the club through a back access.
Outside the club, behind an occlusion of meretricious Art Nouveau sculptures, I spotted Gabriel waiting in one of our army jeeps. He had teleported to Xierce from Jerusalem where he had, only moments ago, completed his mission at the Temple Mount. Still in his human disguise, which he had assumed for his Temple Mount mission, he lowered his pince-nez to identify me while I led Avalin to the back of the jeep.
“Hey,” I greeted him, helping Avalin into the back seat.
Gabriel nodded, acknowledging me. I took my place in the front seat next to him. Then, we greeted each other once more with multiple kisses on the cheeks. He seemed cheerful, a good sign. More important, he was safe.
On the way to the helipad, I asked him about his mission in Jerusalem.
“Excellent,” he smiled, drawing my attention to the plaster on his neck, “but not without some danger from the Antichrist’s new race of Nephilim, those humanoid super soldiers. I sustained this flesh wound from one of them, but it’s nothing serious. Yes, it was a bumpy ride here and there but, by God’s grace, my troops finally succeeded in evacuating the rabbis and their apprentices out of Jerusalem.”
I lightly touched his plaster. “Close shave?” I asked.
“Was that your attempt at a witticism?” he replied. “But yes, it was, indeed, a close call. I was going to have Raphael seal up the wound but, as an afterthought, I decided to let it heal on its own and, in the meantime, wear my plaster as a badge of courage.”
“And all the rest of our men are safe?” I asked.
He nodded: “All are safe and celebrating our victory at base. The angels, Jerel and Shealtiel, deserve their furlough that’s coming up.”
I smiled. “That’s excellent news. But I assume you hadn’t been able to avoid a personal encounter with Antichrist himself?”
Gabriel shook his head. “Not a chance. Despite my human disguise, he knew exactly who I was, he and the False Prophet with him. They’d been on a diplomatic mission with the leaders of the Jewish Sanhedrin to discuss temple matters. Nor were they easily fooled by the mock sacerdotal anointing of our brethren, Jerel and Shealtiel, as a couple of Jewish priests. Antichrist ordered an injunction to prevent them from removing the rabbis and their acolytes from the city before placing the rabbis under house arrest.”
“So, then, how were your troops finally able to remove the rabbis from Jerusalem?” I asked.
“By a sheer turn of events in our favour,” Gabriel replied. “Surely the Lord had been merciful. Antichrist’s diplomatic mission was interrupted by a row that broke out between his entourage and the faithful in the Zionist Movement. His super soldiers were, thereafter, mobilized to quash the altercation. We saw the squabble as our chance to sneak the rabbis and their families out of their homes, where they’d been placed under house detention pending their trial for sedition. Hence, this flesh wound in my neck – I was in the midst of rescuing the acolytes. We were attempting to evade the super soldiers that were guarding the prisoners’ quarters.
“The acolytes, too, had been placed under house arrest, but in separate quarters. Of course, the house arrests were nothing more than a public relations manoeuvre by the Global Unity plenipotentiaries to garner Jewish support for their leader. Antichrist had every intention of ordering his soldiers to exterminate his opponents as soon as he had fulfilled his mission in Jerusalem. But by God’s grace, the rabbis and their loved ones are all safely out of Antichrist’s way. Oh, and there’s something else: during the altercation, a head wound was inflicted on Antichrist. Everyone thought it had been a mortal wound, but he was seemingly raised back to life before millions of witnesses. Now, everyone’s saying that surely this man was the messiah that had been miraculously raised back to life.”
“As in the prophetic word,” I whispered.
Gabriel smiled: “Indeed; but I personally suspect that Antichrist has been indwelt by Lucifer himself, or by another high-ranking demonic angel sent by the Enemy. I don’t believe he’s been genuinely resurrected, since we know that the power of life and death belongs exclusively to the Lord. The Lord Jesus alone is able to give life.”
I nodded. “It’s just another instance of Lucifer’s sorry attempt at counterfeiting the nature and will of Jehovah. Nevertheless, the important thing’s that the rabbis have been taken out of Antichrist’s way, as the Lord decreed. So, job well done, my friend. As for Antichrist’s objective of being in Jerusalem, prophecy will be fulfilled. He will enter the Temple, cease the oblation he had himself instituted and, thereafter, the False Prophet will desecrate the Temple by setting up Antichrist’s image there to proclaim him god.”
Gabriel nodded: “That’s when Antichrist will shift his new Headquarters to Jerusalem.”
“That would be his plan,” I concurred. “The Lord would have destroyed New Canaan by then and this would include his Headquarters there.”
My colleague nodded again. He asked next: “How is he? How’s the youngling?”
“You be the judge,” I told him.
“He’s not harmed?” he asked again.
I shook my head: “No, he’s not harmed.”
“Any issue with the confab?” he pursued further.
I shook my head once more: “None that I was able to ascertain; God willing, we’re well and truly on our way toward putting that behind us.”
“Good to know,” he nodded. “How was your time there?”
I smiled: “In a nutshell, a mixed bag. The mission, although a success, had been a test of Mishael’s principles and resolve. Aside from that, there was a fair amount of waiting around for something concrete to happen. This time wasn’t wasted, however. I took advantage of the time to bond with Mish. We visited the hamlets outside the CBD. We soaked up the civic culture and sights. He was excited to visit a simian enclosure in one of the hamlets. Who knew, huh? He bought some souvenirs there – to bring back for the kindred. He bought a whole lot of paper weights with simian motifs on them. We’re talking about primates of all possible genera, the whole hog.”
“Chalk that up to his sense of eccentricity,” Gabriel chuckled.
I nodded: “Mm. His eccentricity aside, it was an excellent time of bonding with my son.”
“Sounds like time very well spent,” Gabriel smiled.
I smiled back: “It was, indeed.”
We arrived at the helipad after a three-hour drive. Gabriel had taken a detour through the desert. This was to avoid the checkpoints at the turnpike.
Jekuthiel’s humble Seahawk was waiting for us, its rotor blades already twirling on its mast. In the cockpit beside Jekuthiel was Saraqael, still in his disguise. Gabriel and I helped Avalin into the back where her niece and nephew were already secured in their cots. After that, we watched her with damp eyes as she sobbed joyfully at being reunited with her little ones.
“Oh, my darlings,” she cried. Her tears ran down unchecked on the twins’ little blush pink cheeks. “My darlings. I didn’t think I would ever see you again. Oh, thank you, God. Thank you, God.”
Mish had made room in the front for Gabriel and me. In his latest alter ego, Gabriel’s identity eluded the underling. Sasha Alekseev’s true identity had not evaded Gabriel, however.
“Impressive,” Gabriel commented, studying his underling and nodding toward me.
The child smiled shyly at the stranger beside him, uncertain about what had just transpired between us.
“I don’t believe you’re acquainted with Lieutenant-General Riel Bathshua, are you, Mish?” I asked as I introduced them.
His face drew a blank: “I can’t say I am . . . the only Riel I know is my Commanding Officer, but he’s also Briel to some of us, Gabe to others . . . none are his real name, though. Yeah, no, I’m quite certain we’ve never met. I would remember if we have.”
Gabriel was noticeably attempting to stymie his smile. He put on his signature scowl instead and murmured: “Hmm.”
As my son shook the Lieutenant-General’s hand politely, I said in addendum, “You were so close, Mish. In fact, you’re more than a little acquainted with Lieutenant-General Bathshua; he is your Commanding Officer, Gabriel.”
The child’s jaw dropped.
“Get out of here,” he exclaimed. “Gabriel? No way.”
Gabriel nodded: “Yes way.”
Laughing, the elder opened his arms to receive into them his surprised but elated underling.
