The Snare

by David A Ogunde

  “I said, ‘How was your day off?’”

  “Oh,” he said before clearing his throat. “Fine. It was all fine.”

  “Good. And you’re ready to get back on track?” The question, he sensed, was laced with something other than general inquiry; her eyes were soliciting more than a reply. She wanted a guarantee.

  “Yep. I’m good to go.”

  She gazed at him for a moment longer, searching his face for confirmation of his statement. He must have passed the test, for she released a rare smile as a reward before reminding him of a meeting they were to attend in a couple of hours. As soon as she left, James resumed his thoughts; or rather the thoughts he could not escape, that had been hounding him since yesterday, pushed back into the foreground of his mind. He had not been allowed a moment’s rest from Frank’s words since they had parted ways in the park. With painful clarity, they played like a disc, over and over again.

  “I’ve reported on child labor due to poverty: children selling stuff on dangerous streets, being kidnapped and raped, being sold into slavery, being used for sick rituals, being exposed to diseases like Ebola, and premature deaths. These are things we want to change. But go back, James. Go back to those countries and look again. Nothing has changed, or, if it has, it’s been for the worse. Funds which should have been used for education, hospitals, and developing the nation have gone into the pockets of corrupt individuals or have been used to pay outrageous interests on loans from foreign corporations like GED. These companies manipulate records to allow them tax havens, so they never pay taxes in these countries, even though they make money there. Even when they are taken to court in the Western World, the judges favor these companies.”

  James stood up and began to pace around his office like a wildcat in a cage.

  “Hawk funds.” The next track from the memory played automatically. “Economic divide and rule strategy. After the debtor is forced to default on payments, the creditors move in and impose a Structural Adjustment Program. GED will be there to provide your 'hawk loans', allowing them to indirectly own resources of that country. So, the country is doomed to creditors. GED makes money, either way. The heavy debts drive more and more people into deep poverty. These funds purchase the country's debt for a few cents on the dollar. Peru, for example, defaulted on loans of around $20 million. Hawk funds purchased it for $11 million. The buyer later sued them in the Western court and was awarded $58 million!

  “GED has strategies for every nation. I’ve done the research. From political lobbyists to government advisors who are strategically placed to con and manipulate governments in the developed nations. Latin American, African and Asian government officials who thrive on bribery and corruption also play their nations right into Maximos’ hands. No nation escapes his machinations. He’s thereby creating a massive global economic, political, and war refugee crisis.

  “Conflict is another of his schemes. Your employer uses war as a weapon. He sets people against each other and harvests their resources while they are busy killing one another!”

  The memories stirred James’ anger which pressed upon him like a hot blade wrought in the fires of fear and betrayal. He thought again about this Roland, mulling his name over in his mind. Trying to determine why it was pricking at him. Frank said Roland had jumped ship when he realized where his work was headed; and then he vanished. Without being consciously summoned, the picture of Roland that Frank had thrust into James’ face surfaced. James closed his eyes and studied the image he remembered, all the while feeling like he was missing something. Had he seen a profile like that before? There did seem to be something about the eyes. In the picture, they had been looking out of the window; but James imagined if they had instead been looking right at the camera. Right at him.

  “I’m Roland Ashante,” an echo of a whisper called from the back of James’ mind. “Don’t worry, ma’am. She’s right, I did forget.”

  James grasped at the tendril of the memory and tried to pull himself closer to the source. There was an answer here. Something important…

  Then, James’ eyes flew open as he saw them. A distinct pair of eyes boring into his. He remembered their caution, anxiety, and, now upon reexamination, their subtle plea for help. Like an avalanche ripping down a once-peaceful hillside, James crashed headlong into the truth. Roland Ashante was not the figment of some deranged man’s imagination. He had been real. He had met him, shook hands with him, introduced him to his family! Somehow, circumstances had orchestrated their meeting all those months ago at a Wednesday church service in London. Roland must have been on the run at that time. He had believed, no… he had known what GED was up to, and he had been trying to get out.

  James’ breathing increased, and he held his head in his hands as the frenzy of thoughts and revelations swarmed uncontrollably into an unbearable pinnacle. Suddenly, he felt the full weight of the cage that must have been around him all along pressing down on him, against him—heavy and suffocating. He had been set up, and now he was trapped. He knew that what Frank had said was true. All the numbers attested to it; all the evidences pointed to it. With all the meetings and goals and plans which Maximos had sold him on, he had chosen to ignore the signs. He knew that Roland was more than justified in trying to leave and expose GED’s true plots and intentions. He could feel, like slimy, squeezing tentacles, the agreements he had signed and the choices he had made to secure his future with GED. They were holding him fast now, daring him to try and do something about it.

  In a violent burst, he spun and kicked a garbage basket across the room. It clattered against the file cabinets, a hollow clang that echoed the tumult of his inner spaces. A dam had been broken, the flood waters released, demanding change. He wanted out. He needed to get out. But how? What could he do? Roland had tried to leave cold-turkey, and had not been heard of since. James knew he couldn’t risk going that route, couldn’t risk putting his family in danger. Like digits in a Chinese finger trap, if he tried to rush out, he’d only remain forcefully caught. He would have to ease back, slow and steady, continue his work like before as he looked for a way out that would not cause suspicion. For his sake and that of his family, he had to keep going, keep ensnaring these countries, keep dooming their people to poverty and pain. He had to keep smiling, keep taking bribes, and keep planning the demise of hope and the detriment of the future. He stood looking out the window, feeling the pressure of tears of frustration and guilt threatening at the edges of his eyes. In his fervor to save the world, he had ignorantly led it toward its doom and made himself a prisoner.

  A faint chime sounded around the room, yanking James from the abysmal tank into which he had plunged. “Excuse me, Mr. Mode.” James shut his eyes against the intrusion of the computer voice. “You have a meeting in five minutes in the Bengal Conference Room. To arrive on time, I would heartily suggest your immediate departure. I have your elevator waiting, sir.”

  Quickly wiping his face with his hand, James checked his tie and threw on his suit jacket before striding to the elevator, inwardly hating himself every step of the way.

  Chapter 79

  “That’s it. I quit.” John threw his hands over his head and made a show of walking toward the lab door. “You coming, Kate? Or do you want to stay in this madhouse?”

  Kate ignored her husband’s melodramatic show and looked into Pierre’s face, hoping to find some hint of a joke or game. There was none.

  Sitting on a stool beside him, Sarah remained quiet as she stared into a corner of the room, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

  “Is that what you think, Pierre?” Kate ventured to ask. “Do you believe that what Dr. Diaz told you is true?”

  “I don’t know,” the commissioner replied in a tone akin to defeat. “I’ve been sitting on it, trying to come up with any logical alternative. But none seems to click so well together as…” he trailed off with a shrug.

  “I thought we had agreed to keep up a line between reality and fantasy,” John batted. “I th
ought we weren’t going to consider anything that couldn’t be proved.”

  “The timeline can be proved, though,” slid in Sarah. Kate noticed her face was firm and her voice calm. So, she had already decided to accept it. Accept that the mysterious tablets that she and John had discovered almost at the cost of their lives held a hocus pocus ritual to be used in the near, if not immediate, future to empower a chosen person to start an evil reign over the earth, all of which was ‘foretold’ by people who wrote down their strange dreams thousands of years ago that ended up in the Bible. A crease appeared on Kate’s forehead as her admiration for Sarah inadvertently dropped a point.

  John turned from the door to argue. “A dream of a multi-metal dude and four fantasy animals don’t prove anything—”

  “There’s more,” interrupted Sarah. “Daniel was told more. I’ve been doing some studying on it and…” She looked hard at Pierre. “Did Dr. Diaz explain the weeks?”

  The commissioner nodded resignedly, a gesture which highly annoyed and slightly scared Kate. She had never seen Pierre so confused and downcast. It was causing his self-assigned professional air to slip, which in turn seemed to be shaking the very foundations of their long acquaintance—she didn’t know this Pierre.

  “Perhaps, we’d better take a field trip upstairs,” the commissioner suggested after a moment.

  “Where to?” John’s voice held an accusatory tone. He, too, felt hurt that his friend on whom he and Kate had relied in many respects seemed to have thrown out all he had ever stood for in favor of inexplicable machinations.

  Pierre looked up. “Just follow me.” He opened the lab door and silently slipped into the hallway. Sarah followed immediately; John and Kate shrugged their shoulders and took up the rear. They followed the commissioner down the corridor and up several stairways steps, saying nothing.

  At one point, Pierre looked back and spoke to his followers. “Have I ever told you I once studied to be a minister? Well…it didn’t last very long. My father was one, and he felt he wanted to ‘pass the mantle on’, as they say. I made a go of it for the sake of my parents, eager to make them proud. As a child, I had professed my faith and listened to what my father taught me. He wasn’t a scholar per se, but he knew his way around a Bible. I started at seminary fresh out of secondary school with as much zeal as a young man may muster. But by the end of my first year I had lost it. I asked too many questions, you see. I had found the Bible fascinating, particularly from a historic and anthropologic point of view, and I wanted to investigate it. I was unwilling to be satisfied with traditional answers for the sake of their being traditional. I became scorned by my fellows, brushed off by my professors, and several times labeled ‘blasphemous.’ So, at the expense of breaking my parents’ hearts, I left the seminary and enrolled at the University of Milan where my ardor for history and investigation was nurtured and cultivated.”

  He suddenly stopped in front of a glass case in one of the galleries and turned to his companions. “I’ve never forgotten, you see,” he explained as John and Kate moved closer to the glass and peered in, “the questions of my youth. As much as I’ve tried to repress that time because of the schism with my parents and shunning of my curiosity, like a rubber ball being pushed into the water, the Scriptures keep popping up; my interest in them fanned anew. And, friends, I feel like I can no longer deter them. The tablets are real; and I believe what they are to be used for was prophesied by Daniel.”

  He didn’t give John and Kate time to comment on his declarations; he didn’t want an argument. Instead, he directed their attention to what was in the case before them. It was a clay cylinder about nine inches long, the diameter of its ends about three. Impressed in the surface of the dried clay were neat rows of cuneiform markings representing the Babylonian language used around the 500’s B.C. - a language different than what was etched in cuneiform symbols on their tablets.

  “Cyrus’ decree,” Sarah announced in soft tones. Kate and John appraised the artifact with archeological appreciativeness, but their faces showed no recognition of understanding how it connected with their tablets.

  “Fascinating,” said John in an unmuted sarcastic tone. It wasn’t that he didn’t know its place in history—how, after the Medo-Persians overtook Babylon, the new king, Cyrus, allowed the Jewish people who had been captives in Babylon for seventy years to return to their homeland and reestablish their city and temple—he just didn’t understand its relevance to the current situation.

  “Besides Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the four-metal statue and Daniel’s later vision of the animals,” Pierre explained like a teacher trying to coax a child to see something obvious. “Daniel was also given another timeline—a pattern of time based on increments of seven years. 70 increments of seven years, to be exact, equaling 490 years all together. This timeline was to commence at the rebuilding of Jerusalem, between 445 and 538 B.C. This decree,” he tapped a finger on the glass, “triggered the countdown.”

  “Here.” Sarah reached into her slacks, pulled out a small book, and turned hastily through the pages.

  “You keep a Bible in your pocket?” asked Kate, noticing the cover. It wasn’t meant so much as a statement against Sarah, but rather based on Kate’s notion that religion and reality did not often mix well. The supernatural didn’t belong with science.

  Sarah ignored the question and began to read a passage. “Seventy weeks are determined to put an end to all rebellion, to bring an end to sin: to make atonement for all wickedness and bring everlasting righteousness.”

  “You see,” said Pierre scribbling 70 x 7= 490 on the back of a brochure from a nearby table. “The prophecy refers not to 70 weeks of days, but of years—a concept familiar to the ancient Jews. Here is a timeline. If we begin the calculation at the Cyrus decree, historically around 452 B.C., and go to when the Messiah was made ‘atonement for all wickedness’ by his crucifixion in 32 A.D, we get exactly 483 years.”

  John’s forehead puckered slightly in lines that matched his frown. “So, the prophesied timeline brought them to Jesus’ death, fine. But that was 2000 years ago; it has nothing to do with our present time.”

  “That’s not 490 years,” piped up Kate. “You’re missing seven years. From Cyrus’ decree to Jesus’ death is only 69 ‘weeks’ of years, not 70.”

  “The final week has not taken place yet,” Sarah stated. “It is a prophecy given in regard to the Jews as far as their holding the office of being the vessel through which God primarily expresses Himself to the world. That office has been temporarily moved to the Church, or all those who believe Jesus is the Messiah who made atonement for sin. For this, the prophecy timeline was paused; but it will resume, and the office will be moved back to the Jews, as an entity, from which the glory of God will be expressed for the final seven years of the prophecy.”

  “And it is in these last seven years,” said the commissioner, “that this fourth creature in Daniel’s vision, this beast, this empowered ‘chosen one’ shall reign.

  “Friends,” he sighed, “I don’t know how to say this. Up 'till now, we’ve been excavating the past. But I think this time, we may have just excavated the immediate future.”

  Chapter 80

  “It doesn’t have to be the future!” John argued his point again as he began pacing around the lab (they had gone back down to a more private setting to further discuss the matter). “Not that I even believe your conclusions,” he added, “but if any part of them could be true, we hold the power, don’t you see? Let’s just destroy them! If there are no magic tablets, then, no one can use them to summon anything; the ‘chosen one’ will remain powerless. And this whole thing will be over.”

  He walked toward the display case holding the three stones and began to pry it open.

  “No, John, you can’t!” Kate ran to him and pushed his hands away. “You can’t just destroy ancient artifacts! They’re still valuable; and we went through a lot to get them!”

  “It sounds like we’re gonna to be
going through a lot more if we don’t get rid of them,” her husband answered ruefully, but he didn’t fight.

  “You have been through a lot,” Pierre acknowledged. “You’ve been living down here for weeks, suffering from break-in scares, cabin fever, mediocre food, and hiding for your lives. Hiding ever since the desert when you were set upon by those who we suspect would have undoubtedly killed you and taken the stones…but they didn’t get to you, did they?”

  “No, we lost them in that freak sand storm,” said John, crossing his arms and wondering why the commissioner’s face suddenly seemed lit with the glow of an epiphany. “What of it?”

  “I was just thinking…do you remember the account of St. Paul’s Chapel in New York? It dates back to before the United States' Revolutionary War and survived the Great Fire of 1777. Then, an attack on September 11th of 2001 brought more than two billion pounds of steel crashing down on it.”

  “And your point is?”

  “It so happened that an ancient sycamore tree stood between the church and the World Trade Center.”

  “I remember that story,” Kate said pensively. “The tree’s spreading branches absorbed the shock waves from the falling towers…”

  “And preserved the 224-year-old church from falling debris, including a direct hit from an I-beam,” finished Pierre. “Was that a coincidence? ...Or something more? And your ‘freak sandstorm’, John, that helped you escape from those that would have hurt you; that allowed you to keep the tablets and bring them here…Was that also merely a coincidence?”

  John raised a hand in a halting gesture. “Wait. You’re not going to tell me that God had anything to do with it, are you? Geez, Pierre it’s like you’ve changed into a different person. One minute you’re a professional, logical historian and then once these tablets show up, you’re suddenly diving head first into mystical, unprovable Bible stuff. Yes, that sandstorm was a coincidence; no, God has nothing to do with what’s going on here; and even if He did, it makes no sense at all! If these tablets were so evil, why did He let us dig them up, in the first place? Why would He make a sandstorm to help us get away with them? Why not just destroy them with a lightning bolt or something? I mean, if He’s ‘all-powerful,’ then, why does he move us around like chess pieces instead of just taking matters into his own hands and leave us out of it altogether?”