Jacob's Trouble 666

by Terry James

  "I had to act as if I were devoted that night, Jake," Karen said, lifting her face from his chest. "Conrad and the others had already deprogrammed me, but I pretended to be a part of them in order to keep you alive long enough for us to break you free. It was almost unbearable... to not be able to hold you... to love you... knowing you were feeling so alone."

  "Never doubt this girl's love, Son. Only a special sort could survive what she's been through." The diplomat paced the small room's floor while he talked. "From the time they took her at Stone Oaks and implanted the transponder in you, they worked their plan almost to perfection. And, incidentally, we took out the Sector Coordinator Allegiant while you were out. Anyway, their major flaw has always been their remarkable inability to take into consideration human will, especially the will of people who've been born into liberty and are determined to remain free, or at least relatively free, from oppressive controls.”

  "They operate on the assumption, like the Soviet system always did, that bribery, intimidation, brainwashing, blackmail, or brute force will get them anything they want. What they failed to calculate, in my case, was that I've been dealing with just such methodology for decades. The only difference was that where the Russians and Chinese and the others were across the table from me, with no real personal holds on me, the Naxos bunch had me over the barrel. Rather than fight them, I became enthusiastically dedicated to their cause... turned totally against you. To have done less would have betrayed my ultimate objective before their quite observant eyes and ears.”

  Wilson’s voice had sadness in it. “Of course, I pulled it off at the cost of, probably, thousands of lives.” His eyes glistened. “I had to become one of them… Like you did, Jacob. Totally ruthless in the administration of their earth-saving justice. My argument with myself was and is that if this dictatorship is to be somehow converted to something better, it is justifiable to sacrifice those who must die to achieve the goal.”

  “If there’s a chance for humanity to struggle out from under this, it has to begin with a nucleus group of people who hate injustice and inhumanity as deeply as Krimhler despises justice and freedom and human rights. In spite of their constant watching and listening, there are many of us who have never stopped fighting them. And, there are thousands of others who’ll join us once they know we are organized and have growing strength. The millions who worship at Krimhler’s feet will keep on worshipping, of course. But they’re not fighters. They won’t come to his defense in a military confrontation. They’re all like zombies with their out-of-body meditation, drugs… Their total lack of sexual or moral restraints, except those the INterface imposes. They will all sit down, bleary-eyed, and not knowing what to do next, once their Interface-governed lives are disrupted.”

  “Our people are as determined as Herrlich Krimhler’s elite, and probably almost as great in number. That is, as great as the number who will actively fight to the death for him. But the time for military is not yet. There’s still a lot of organizing, much planning to be done.”

  Jacob sat upright on the edge of the cot, his senses going dark before they cleared when his blood flow adjusted to the changed posture. “Why did they let me live, if they knew I killed that Sector Coordinator and was planning to work against them? It makes no sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense. At least most of it does. Once they set you up for Krimhler’s assassination, stealing your watch and planting it as evidence by the murder weapon, they had me in a position that I had to cooperate with them or else be accused of being a party to the assassination. Both Karen and I had to disavow any ties to you. The two people closest to you, testifying before INterface that you were guilty. A very convincing case!

  “They didn’t anticipate you would be quite so good at eluding them. Killing off their crack agents with that exploding attaché case, and later, the fire at Marchek’s home… How did you do that?” Wilson paused, smiling and shaking his head with amusement in his eyes, not really wanting an answer.

  “Of course they could track you, and did… until you found the Allegiant transponder and took it out. Very clever, putting it into the body and planning the fire with the helicopter to destroy their ability to identify all but the tracking device. I always thought I should’ve gotten you into CIA work.” Wilson chuckled, continuing to pace and talk, stopping periodically to make his points to his peculiar fashion of gesticulation.

  “When you removed the Allegiant, They decided to let you go on feeling your way through your confusion. Decided not to pick you up and hold you, out of sight, until the assassination was accomplished.”

  "Why?"

  "They wanted you free to let you help them build a case they could use in a couple of ways. You became the No. 1 enemy around which all citizens could rally. That hatred for you helped take their minds off their own miserable plight. And, they used that time you were on the loose as Herrlich Krimhler's assassin to stir emotions, making him the most loved and adored martyr in history. Thus, the Six Ways Plan, as Krimhler's legacy to them, was quickly and completely embraced by all."

  "What about the tracking device when it got out of their range? How could they keep up with my movements?"

  "Melissa Jantzen," Wilson said, stopping his pacing.

  "Melissa?"

  "Real name's Moravia Krill."

  "One of them from the start?"

  "Yes. Sent to the abandoned apartment because they knew you would eventually find out about the implantation once you viewed the stolen tapes. A helpless female, they reasoned, could do what the other agents couldn't."

  "And she did her job well! You raised an idiot!"

  "No, Son. You couldn't have known those things... Not in your state of mind during that time."

  "What about Kerry Vinchey?"

  "They got me when I left with the body of the Coordinator." Kerry Vinchey stood in the doorway, smiling. He came to Jacob and took his hand, then hugged him. "They forced me down and would have killed me or run me through one of their torture palaces, I imagine, if not for Conrad."

  "I convinced them to let me have a crack at Kerry... to learn all I could about your plans as he understood them. I, after all, knew your mind better than anyone. I convinced them after a time that Kerry would be invaluable to the cause. Made him my personal pilot. He flew you out of D.C."

  Vinchey and Jacob embraced again, Jacob's throat swelling with emotion so that he had to fight the need to cry. "And what about Francis?" he said, finally getting control.

  Wilson said nothing for a moment, his facial expression confirming the worst, before the words came. "I'm sorry, Son. I was away attending a meeting at Bonn. She was executed before I could stop it."

  "Why her? Why did they have to kill Francis? She wasn't a threat. She couldn't have hurt them."

  "She was sick and meant nothing to INterface but an unwanted effort to keep her alive. Time and personnel they could better use on other things. She was an enemy of INterface, tied to you, and could serve as an example to others who might think about resistance. They delight in demonstrating that they're not beyond butchering children or women to reinforce their demands."

  Jacob sat silent, contemplating into a mind-void which filled with hatred suppressed since his rage on the steps of the crystal pyramid throne in the Jerusalem temple.

  "INterface allowed your Sector Coordinator deception to go on until the time they considered appropriate because they knew they had you under their thumb at all times. They knew about the Bible, of your explosive belt contraption. Nothing escapes them," Wilson said, raising his silver eyebrows in puzzlement. "I don't know. Maybe Krimhler is, like his worshipers believe, some sort of supernatural being, some alien from out there somewhere." He gestured toward the cosmos.

  "His exact reason or reasons for keeping you on the hook, I don't know. But I suspect, much of it has to do with his innate cruelty to see a man go through all that struggle, thinking he's getting somewhere, then devastating him by showing him that the world is against him and
would rather believe lies than truth... Showing him, by putting him on exhibition for all to watch him kneel at the guillotine. I suspect this is one way he gets his greatest enjoyment.

  "But why you, Jacob Zen... to accuse you of being the assassin so he can miraculously rise from the dead in some crazy, symbolic similarity to the way Jesus Christ was supposed to have arisen? I just don't know, Jake. I don't know. But just as I'm sure Krimhler's miraculous resurrection was a hoax, I'm equally certain all this has a natural explanation, and this dictatorship, a natural solution."

  "No!... No, No, No! There's nothing natural in this! It's all too much like what's written in the Scriptures to be coincidence," Jacob said, his tone viciously argumentative.

  Surprised at the sudden agitation, Wilson studied Jacob silently, then spoke, attempting to bring his foster son back to reality. "Surely you can't mean you believe that stuff. Man, not some higher power, created this hell. Certainly we shouldn't blame a Judeo Christian God! If we accept that sort of thing, we're all goners no matter what we do! Man did it to himself and only man... real flesh and blood, can change things."

  "Like we've changed things to this point? Like going from clean air to this stench; from gun powder to nuclear weapons? From democracy to a degree of dictatorship the Third Reich didn't even approach achieving? Man really knows how to build a better world! He had the chance to create something good but instead created something that can obliterate everything on the planet!"

  "Coincidence. It could've gone either way. To the good, or to the bad."

  "But it went to the bad. It always goes, in the long run, to the bad, doesn't it? Just like the Scriptures say."

  "Fallen man?... Original sin?" Wilson still in puzzlement of Jacob's stand.

  "You have a better explanation for our ways?"

  "Man is an ambitious animal; I certainly can't deny that. The more ambitious ones among us always seem to agree. But that's all been explained by Darwin."

  "It was explained by Scriptures. The love of money is the root of all evil. Money is power; power is control. The greater the control, the greater the degree of subservience, and, ultimately, slavery... even worship."

  "The Judeo Christian God demands worship," Karen interjected, still massaging Jacob's neck. He stopped her and stood from the cot.

  "God doesn't demand in the sense Herrlich Krimhler demands. With God, there is free-will choice. Man chooses. With the Krimhlers of history you either worship or are tortured or killed, or both."

  Jacob pulled his shirt on with Karen's help, his mind turning to Hugo Marchek.

  "You shouldn't move around for a while, Son. You'll cause more bleeding," Conrad Wilson said, steadying him.

  "What do you think you're doing, Jacob?" Karen said, seeing the determination on his face she had seen many times before.

  "I'm going to prove that it's all part of the prophecies. That this will all end only when the prophecies have been fulfilled. We can't change any of it, but we've got to try to understand it."

  "What are you talking about?" Karen questioned, more with concern for him than with irritation.

  "Dr. Marchek said there would be a mass disappearance of people just before the end of what he called the 'dispensation of grace.' That is the period between Christ's crucifixion and the rapture of His church, which is what he said the mass disappearance would be."

  "Which church is that? The Catholic? The Episcopal? The Baptist, Methodist? What?" Conrad Wilson asked, his voice tinged with sarcasm.

  "The Church, according to Marchek, is, was, made up of all who truly accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior... trusted His sacrifice on the cross at Calvary to atone for their sins... trusted that act to serve as the only sacrifice acceptable to God the Father. Since the rapture, salvation can come only through what Dr. Marchek described as 'enduring to the end.' If necessary, one must die for faith in Christ as the only Son of God, the only Redeemer. The disappearance caused the instantaneous changing of human, mortal flesh into immortal matter designed for eternal existence. At that point, the Church Age ended and the tribulation period, which includes the rise and dictatorial world-rule of Antichrist, began.”

  "A short time later, apparently having something to do with Israel making a security covenant with Krimhler and the U.E.S., the era of the apocalypse was initiated."

  "Come now, my boy! That's too fantastic for a logical mind such as yours to swallow," Wilson said, holding Jacob's shoulders, speaking as if he could reason the madness out of his foster son.

  "It all fits." Jacob pulled away from Wilson, then limped to the doorway where Kerry Vinchey stood listening to the debate. Jacob turned to Wilson and Karen. "Clothing remained wherever the people were before they vanished. All the infants and young children, not old enough to be accountable for their souls, were taken."

  "There are children," Karen said.

  "Infants -- children born since the thing happened, yes, and some in their teens. But have you seen any between those ages?"

  Karen thought a moment, a look of puzzled agreement coming on her face; she did not answer.

  "I haven't analyzed it, but if I had, I'll wager all who disappeared would fit very similar theological profiles. I think we'd find they believed about Jesus Christ in the same way. I'm certain of it."

  "You spoke of proof. Present it if you have it, so we can all believe this... prophecy stuff," Wilson said lightly. No matter that Wilson's tone and expression said, the old diplomat wouldn't be convinced regardless of evidence produced. Jacob must know for himself whether his gut-felt suspicion, or spiritually-discerned revelation, or whatever it was urging him onward, was right, and whether it would lead him to the truth.

  "I wish I didn't have to ask you to risk your neck after everything you've been through for me, Kerry," he said, turning to his friend. "But I can't fly that thing, so it looks like you're my only hope... again."

  "Just say where to and when," Vinchey said, grinning and taking Jacob's arm to help him from the room.

  They left at dusk, which, because of pollution, no longer differed significantly from earlier times of day. The helicopter's nose tipped slightly downward while Vinchey throttled its engine to optimum speed. Reaching Rockville would take 20 minutes, allowing time to ponder what they might find when they got there, if indeed they could carry out the search for answers without being shot from the sky or picked up once they landed.

  "What's this about, Jacob?" Karen interrupted his thoughts, pressing against his shoulders for the closeness she had missed. "You really should've let that leg rest."

  "There's no time. They're looking for us, and I've learned that they find what they look for. I'm hoping they won't expect us to be moving around so freely. That they'll be looking for us to hole up somewhere. When they've exhausted their search in the hidden places, they'll start looking for us to be moving among them openly. We've got to get this done now, before they begin checking everything that moves."

  "Why Rockville?"

  "To prove to myself, I guess, that we're up against something more than just another attempt at world conquest."

  "What difference does it make what kind of dictatorship it is? We're all on the same side. We all want to destroy it. It doesn't matter if you're right or if Conrad is right."

  "The difference is important because if Uncle Conrad is wrong, and if Hugo Marchek was right, we can't fight against them... against Krimhler, the way dictatorships and dictators have historically been opposed."

  "You really do believe Dr. Marchek was right, don't you? That INterface is prophecy being fulfilled."

  "Of course he doesn't really believe it, my dear," Conrad Wilson said from the seat in front of them. "He would never go to such lengths to convince himself, otherwise. And I wouldn't come along, if I were not equally determined to watch him prove the fallacy of Marchek's contention."

  "He believed it with his whole heart," Karen said. "He was a wonderful man, and one who would never deliberately lie."

  "Of cour
se he was a fine person," Wilson said, reaching behind him to pat Karen's hand. "My question to Jacob is: How can Marchek prove his theology to us now that he's dead, when he couldn't prove it while he was alive? It's the old thing of trying to prove the existence of God scientifically. It cannot be done."

  "Maybe now it can," Jacob said with some irritation.

  "How can you find anything at Rockville? There's nothing left. Dr. Marchek's home is gone," Karen said.

  "There's something of him still there. Or maybe there isn't; we'll see shortly."

  "I'll say this, the two fellows we took with us when we broke you out of D.C. believe the prophecy angle," Wilson said. "What?"

  "Those two Orthodox Jewish prisoners. But, of course, you couldn't know. We emptied the cellblock when we stormed the place."

  "And you took those two men with you? The ones who were in with me?"

  "Yes."

  "Where are they now?"

  "Back at the compound we just left. They said something about some exodus from the INterface Pharaoh, but wouldn't be more specific."

  "They said something about that to me," Jacob said. "You say they talked about prophecy?"

  "I heard one of them say something about a place prepared by God to hide his people during a time of persecution. The other one quoted Scripture... from Isaiah, I think he said it was," Karen said.

  "There's a place I can put down just ahead, Jake. Some pretty good cover from the trees, looks like," Kerry Vinchey shouted from the pilot's seat.

  "How far from the cemetery?" Jacob shouted, leaning forward to hear the pilot's answer.

  "According to the chart, it's no more than one, one-and-a-half kilometers due north."

  "Good! Let's do it!"

  Vinchey swung the big copter around, then nestled it gently into the open area of high weeds surrounded by trees, whose leaves struggled to achieve natural colors but could not because of the caustic atmospheric inversions that frequently squatted at ground level. Although the season should produce moist, hearty foliage that clung to its sources of nourishment, the dried vegetation flew about in the fury whipped by the helicopter blades. Jacob scanned the area through the small porthole, looking through the dust and debris for signs they might have been detected.