It certainly didn’t have the intrigue of the miles of salt mines beneath Michigan and Ohio where the Heartland underground was headquartered. And neither was there the dark charm of the catacomb-like, candlelit rooms that housed the Italian resistance in Rome.
This was more high-tech, Paul decided. Every room and cubbyhole seemed to have a purpose. And the brains behind this faction of the USSA underground had taken full advantage of the resources left behind. Besides hundreds of rooms that served as private living quarters for families, larger rooms had been cordoned off for media centers housing discs and computers and phone banks. There were mass kitchens and dining areas, huge restroom facilities. Paul found various schoolrooms for all ages.
And suddenly here she came. Angela. Paul noticed the weariness around her eyes. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Someone dedicated to giving herself to this cause, regardless of the cost, had to eventually show the strain. And only the most twisted person would take any joy or find any satisfaction in the “victory” God had wrought, especially when it brought such tragedy.
It was clear Angela was forcing a smile, as it did not involve her eyes. Paul didn’t read anything into that but exhaustion. She took his hand in both of hers. “How nice to see you again. And this must be Jae.”
* * *
Jae was taken aback when Angela eschewed her offered hand and embraced her.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” Angela said. “All good, and all, of course, from Paul. Welcome.”
“Thank you.” Jae wanted to say she had heard a lot about Angela too, but she certainly didn’t want to get into the fact that she had seen Angela in NPO surveillance photos.
Most impressive was that Angela immediately knelt and looked the children in their eyes and called them by name. “Bet you can’t guess what my job is here, Brie.”
“Cook?”
“No!” Angela said, laughing.
“Clown!” Connor said, and she roared.
“You guys are silly! We’re going to have so much fun. I’m in charge of kids your age. And I needed one more girl and one more boy. Raise your hand if you’re in!”
They raised their hands, beaming, and Jae had to admire how Angela had apparently seen the fear on their faces, distracted them from the reality that they had been uprooted and relocated, and immediately made them feel not just welcome, but also needed.
“If it’s all right with your mom and dad, we’re having a movie in about ten minutes.”
“Where?” Brie said.
Angela pointed down the hall. “About five minutes that way, so we’re going to have to get going. Oh, don’t worry; I’ll take you. You’ll be my special guests, and I’ll introduce you to the other kids. Fair enough?”
“What’s the movie?”
“The Boy Who Gave His Lunch to Jesus.”
“To who?”
“Oh, you’re going to love this. Is it okay, Mom? Dad?”
Jae looked to Paul and he nodded. Jae motioned with her head, and Angela leaned close. “I’m a brand-new believer,” Jae said. “The kids have had zero exposure.”
Angela raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Good to know. We’ll take it slow and just answer questions. I’ll keep you informed. This is the perfect movie for an introduction to Jesus. By the time it’s over, your stuff will have been delivered, you’ll be settled in your quarters, and I’ll bring the kids to you.”
In spite of herself, Jae already loved Angela. How could she not? She had been prepared to be defensive, to look for something to envy, to dare Paul to show some flicker of familiarity.
As the kids eagerly walked off with Angela, Jack introduced to Jae another woman who would take her to their quarters and help gather their belongings. “I need to borrow Paul for a few moments,” Jack said. “If that’s all right.”
Despite the welcome and the security she felt, Jae hesitated. The fact was, she didn’t want to be apart from Paul and the kids again so soon. These strangers seemed wonderful, and she was eager to see where the family was to land and get off her feet, but still she shot Paul a desperate look.
“I won’t be long,” he said. “They want me to meet a prisoner, an infiltrator.”
There would be no keeping him from that, but naturally Jae wondered: if there had been one turncoat, were there more? Did she have to suspect everybody down here, regardless of their smiles and friendliness?
* * *
“We thought it would be good to locate our makeshift lockup as far from the general population as possible,” Jack said, pointing Paul to the passenger seat of an electric golf cart. They rolled several hundred yards past half a dozen checkpoints, where ersatz security guards nodded to Jack and couldn’t hide that they were sneaking peeks at Paul.
Jack finally stopped outside a heavily reinforced door with a window replaced by plywood and wire mesh. Inside a sweating man with short brown hair sat at a cafeteria-style table, eating a substantial meal with one hand. His other was handcuffed to a pipe on the wall.
“He’s our only prisoner,” Jack said, “but we made an executive decision to feed him the way we do the general population. We don’t treat him bad, don’t torture him. We just ask questions. He swears he’s one of us, and for a long time we thought he was. Said all the right things, helped out, all that. He was here with his only son, and when the curse hit, that son dropped dead. Meet Ernie Marmet.”
Marmet looked up but kept eating, which Paul knew was no small thing, because he had to recognize Paul. “That’s not Ernie Marmet,” Paul said. “That’s Roscoe Wipers from western Gulfland, specifically Louisiana, Baton Rouge NPO bureau. How you doin’, Roscoe?”
“Been better, Doc.”
“Bet you have. So have you already made this place to the NPO?”
“Me?” Wipers said, a cheek full of food. “No, man. I’m like you. Converted. Playing both ends against the middle.”
Despite fuming inside, Paul smiled. “Nice try. Difference between us is that everybody in the underground knows about me. I don’t hide my identity from the side I’m really loyal to. How long you been here?”
“About four months.”
“Six months and three weeks,” Jack said.
Paul shook his head. Part of him wanted to attack the defenseless Wipers right there. One two-step maneuver and the man would be dead in seconds. He could tell Wipers knew that too, his eyes darting and his breathing accelerating as he seemed to try to maintain composure by slowly eating.
Ironic, Paul thought, wanting to kill a man for doing well a job that Paul had done for years.
“This is bad, Jack,” Paul said. “NPO has to know exactly where you are by now.” Then, to Roscoe: “What’s your daily check-in time?”
Wipers just stared.
“C’mon, Roscoe,” Paul said through clenched teeth. “You’re a prisoner of war, man. We’re not people of violence, but you’ve put everybody in this place in mortal danger. At some point these nice people are going to ask me whether it makes sense to let you live. You know what I’m going to tell them?”
“Pray tell.” Wipers shoved his tray aside and slurped a juice box.
“You and I both know procedures are in place in the event you don’t check in at your assigned time. If you’re willing to check in, mislead the NPO, take the heat off this place, I might decide you’re worth more alive than dead.”
Wipers scratched his forehead. “It’s all just business with me, Stepola. I’m out of options. I can’t make contact unless you want me to, so I’m stuck. I got to play ball.”
“So, when do they expect to hear from you?”
“Two hundred hours on the dot, every day.”
“Uh-huh. And your contact person?”
“You know her.”
“Balaam? Bia Balaam?”
“She’s the one.”
“So at two in the morning, you’re willing to check in, tell her this place is no more, everybody cleared out, and you’re just following the crowd to a new location that hasn’t been announced y
et?”
“I’m easy, man.”
9
JAE WAS SOON ALONE in a den of two rooms with a bathroom down the hall. When their stuff arrived, she busied herself unpacking and making a makeshift home of the place. It wasn’t spacious and hardly opulent, but there was privacy, ample bedding, and seating. When she was finished, she followed directions and left the empty luggage and boxes outside in the hall. Soon they were hauled away for storage.
Jae stretched out on her back on one of the beds. When she felt herself drifting she prayed for her kids and for her husband. She even prayed for her father and for Aryana. Jae rolled to her side and wept for her mother, her grief quickly moving to great sobs. She lay on her stomach and soon slept.
* * *
“I’ll be back to walk you through that call, Roscoe,” Paul said. Maybe in the meantime Paul could talk himself out of doing what he wanted to do to the man.
Wipers nodded resignedly and saluted with his free hand.
Outside in the hall, Jack Pass whispered, “I was never military or law enforcement, Paul. Education was my game. So correct me if I’m wrong, but all that seemed a little too easy.”
“No, you’re right. All he has to do is call in at the wrong time, leave out one code word, or say something cryptic, and NPO knows he’s been made. They’ll be on you like Elvis on felt.”
“And so?”
“I’m assuming you have secure phones.”
“Of course. We have everything. Wait till you see what we’re doing with cars and dead people’s clothes.”
“With what?”
Jack looked at his watch. “In due time. You need a phone?”
“I could call with my own connection, but I hate to compromise my contact. I think I’m secure, but I’m calling Chicago NPO, and they have the latest in tracking and recording capability.”
Paul rode with Jack to a massive communications center, where he was directed to a padded booth that eliminated surrounding sounds.
“Any one of these units,” Jack said, gesturing toward a bank of cell phones, “has flying, centrifugal, random-code technology that could not be matched in a million years’ worth of a million digital combinations per second.”
Paul shook his head. “Good enough for me.” These people were somehow on a par with the NPO. What Jack meant was that the phone unit threw out a digital code in an ever-accelerating manner that, in essence, spun the numbers in a circle, not unlike a line of crack-the-whip skaters. Duplicating the scrambled code was virtually impossible.
Paul dialed the Chicago NPO office, disguised his voice, and asked for Felicia. He pictured her, scared, weary, probably working at his desk.
“This is Felicia,” she said.
“Oh,” he said in his own voice, “I must have the wrong number,” and before she could say, “Paul?” he hung up.
Not two minutes later she called his molar-implanted personal phone. “Okay, cowboy,” she said. “I got the hint and am out for another smoke break. What do you need?”
“Something that will put you on my side,” Paul said.
“It’s too late to be talking in code, boss.”
“There was a reason I left you out of this for so long, Felicia.”
“You couldn’t trust me.”
“It wasn’t that. I didn’t want to assume you would flip like I had, compromise you.”
She sighed. “Like I said before, Doctor, you apparently didn’t care enough about me to try to spare me what has happened.”
Paul didn’t know what to say. Yes, he had believed the sword of death would smite firstborn males and, yes, that many of his friends would suffer. “What would you have said or done if I had tried to warn you, Felicia?”
“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t have turned you in; I know that. And then, when it happened, I would have been grateful that you tried to spare me. And who knows? I might have flipped. I mean, c’mon, Paul, widespread death is pretty hard to argue with.”
“I’m sorry. I care about you and your family; you know that. I didn’t know what to do, and doing nothing certainly wasn’t the right thing.”
“All right,” Felicia said. “So we still love each other in spite of it all. What do you need?”
“This is going to make you take sides.”
“You already made that clear. I’ve spent a lot of years here, Paul. And I’ve also spent a lot of years letting the government convince me there’s no God. Well, if there’s no God, who killed all the men? I’m not saying I’m ready to become a devotee. I mean, I finally find out God is real, and this is the kind of a person He is? But I sure don’t want to be on His bad side either.”
“And so?”
“And so I’m now in this for myself. If helping you earns me points with Him, count me in.”
“I don’t think it works that way, Felicia.”
“Well, someday I’ll let you tell me all about it. All I know is, you’ve been suspected around here for months. I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe if you were a double agent, you might tell me, but then why would you? The fewer who knew the better, right? Did Bob know?”
“Of course not. Nobody inside knew.”
“Well, that makes me feel better. So now I know, and scary as this all is, I’d rather be on your side than where I’ve been; know what I’m saying?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you want something. You want me to be your inside contact. I get caught and I’m in the same boat with you. But if I don’t do it, maybe I’m in trouble with God. Right now I’m more afraid of Him than I am of the NPO.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best motive, Felicia, but I do need your help and have to trust you.”
“You could have always trusted me, Paul, but how could you know that? Just tell me what you need. I’m going home in a little while no matter what. I’m so tired I can hardly see straight.”
“Okay, you want to write this down or you going to trust that memory of yours?”
“Just fire away, Paul.”
“All right, there’s an encoded file that Bob Koontz and I share. It’s invisible until you bring it up with the following code. The code changes every day, based on date and time, so here’s the calculation.” He recited it for her. “Once you’re in it, you’ll find a list of NPO infiltrators, their code names, their passwords, their contacts, their reporting times. I need everything you can find on Roscoe Wipers out of the Gulfland bureau.”
10
JAE AWOKE to a light tap on the door and rose to find Angela Pass Barger with Brie and Connor. The kids looked tired but also wired. They eagerly told her all about the movie and the miracle of Jesus feeding thousands of people with one small boy’s lunch.
“I never even heard of Jesus before,” Brie said, and Jae wondered how old she herself had been when she first heard of Him. Probably junior high school.
She sent the kids down the hall to get ready for bed and sat with Angela. “Thanks for watching out for them,” she said.
“They’re delightful. And how are you doing?”
Angela seemed to say that with such compassion that Jae was immediately overcome. And when Angela laid a hand on her arm, Jae broke down. She found herself gushing her life story, telling Angela of her upbringing, her marriage, how she had seen a change in Paul, how she herself had come to faith, the loss of her brother and then her mother. “I prayed with her just before my dad got home,” she said. “I’m so sorry to lay all this on you.”
“Not at all,” Angela said. “You’ve sure had more than your share.”
“I feel so guilty about the children,” Jae said. “Have we started too late? It isn’t that we told them God or Jesus was bad or even a myth. We simply never mentioned either of them.”
“And of course neither did the schools,” Angela said.
Jae nodded.
“Actually, Jae, they’re at a perfect age. It would have been good to have them younger, of course, but at eight and six they have no guile, no cynicism. We
’ll take it slow, but it won’t be long before they realize all the other kids love Jesus. And imagine all the great stories they have yet to hear.”
“I can’t wait to hear them myself,” Jae said. “I’m embarrassed at how little I know about the Bible and the stories of Jesus.”
“I could use an assistant,” Angela said. “You can work and hear the stories all at the same time, and no one will be the wiser.”
* * *
Paul sat across the table from Roscoe Wipers while Jack Pass stood behind Paul.
“So your contact person is Bia Balaam and you call her every twenty-four hours at two in the morning.”
“Right,” Roscoe said.
“And what’s your code?” Paul said.
“Catcall.”
“And your password?”
“Git mo.”
“Uh-huh. And if something’s wrong, what’s your catchphrase?”
“I’m to say, ‘Everything’s going fine here, just fine.’”
Paul planted his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Roscoe, what am I going to do with you? You can’t be so stupid as to not realize your life is in my hands. You think these people would have a problem with my breaking your neck right now?”
“Trust me. Why would I lie? I got nothing to gain and everything to lose.”
Paul rested his chin on his fists, then turned and gazed at Jack. “I don’t know. You want my professional opinion?”
“’Course.”
“You ought to let me put him out of his misery.”
“It’s your call,” Jack said.
Roscoe cocked his head. “It’s his call. Why is it his call? Isn’t he new here?”
“This is war, Roscoe,” Paul said. “We’re people of faith, people of redemption, people of second chances. But you’re an enemy of God. We believe your lies, and we could lose our whole population. You’re willing to be responsible for that and yet you think we’d have qualms about eliminating you?”
“I’m not following.”
“Sure you are. The only thing you’ve told me so far that rings true is that Bia Balaam is your contact. But you don’t talk to her directly because she’s an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type.”
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