Shadowed Page 8

  Jack raised both hands, palms down. “First things first. Tell Dr. Stepola what our techies are finding.”

  Greenie scratched his head and wiped his face with his hand. “Okay, we’re seeing some evidence that someone might be hacking into our server.”

  “How can that be?”

  “We don’t know. We don’t see any evidence of their threatening our phones, but that would be next.”

  “What are they finding exactly?”

  “I don’t know, and you wouldn’t either if I told you, would you?”

  “I don’t suppose I would.”

  “But we trust our people, and they don’t like it.”

  The three fell silent.

  Paul stood. “I can get to the bottom of this.” He excused himself and stepped into the hall. His own phone was not part of the underground system and, as far he knew, was still secure. Paul called Felicia and indicated cryptically that she should call him from an outside line, which she did a few minutes later.

  “I was about to call you anyway,” she said.

  “Oh no.”

  “Underground’s catching on to what we’re up to?” she said.

  “’Fraid so. How close are you to totally contaminating us?”

  “Within hours. Columbia Region is wholly compromised.”

  “Already? Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Most of the others are pretty well exposed, and inside people here are telling us they’ll be monitoring every transmission in and out in all seven states by the end of the workday today.”

  Paul sighed. “I know how hard this is for you, Felicia. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You owe me, Paul.”

  “How well I know. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I’m pretty well committed to your side now, aren’t I? I’d like to know I’ve made the right choice and, frankly, what’s in it for me.”

  “For risk at your level, I’d do anything for you; you know that. What do you need?”

  “You think I’m thinking about money?”

  “We’ve got it,” Paul said. “Just say the word.”

  “You don’t know me. After all these years.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Paul. Please. What I need is God.”

  15

  EXHAUSTED AS HE WAS, Paul had trouble sleeping. He had left an important message for Felicia, whom he wished he could talk with one more time.

  Then Jae had brought him up to date on where she was with the children, how much they knew, how little they understood. For now they considered this an adventure, and while Brie was more skittish than Connor, Jae believed they were on board and would be cooperative, if not cooped up underground too long.

  It was Jack Pass’s harebrained scheme—and Greenie Macintosh’s caution against it—that rattled in Paul’s mind and kept him awake. It had been like mining spaghetti to get Jack to reveal it, especially with Greenie interrupting every few sentences to try to keep the idea locked in the sedimentary rock of Jack’s mind.

  Finally Paul had struck the mother lode.

  “Operation Noah,” Jack said.

  Paul blinked. He glanced at Greenie, who shook his head, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged. “See what I mean? Hey, I’m no scholar, but even I know God promised to never do that again.”

  “Do what?” Paul said.

  “Noah!” Greenie said. “Hello! Flood the earth.”

  Paul made a face at Jack. “He’s got you there, bro. God’s not gonna violate His own word. The rainbow was a promise, remember? Never again.”

  “Okay, selective floods then,” Jack tried. “God washes away the NPO, your father-in-law, Chancellor Dengler, our enemies in high places.”

  “That would be a worldwide flood again,” Paul said. “The enemies are everywhere.”

  “Then why not? Maybe God spares Los Angeles, keeps it a drought. Believers can flee there. For anybody else who tries, it’s feast or famine. Get washed away in a flood or die of dehydration in L.A.”

  Now Paul lay with his hands behind his head, grateful for Jae’s deep breathing. Was she finally sound asleep, feeling secure, warm, and fuzzy at the thought of her family under one roof? The comfort of being among fellow believers was scant consolation for living in hiding in this claustrophobic den beneath the nation’s former capital.

  It had been not that long ago, Paul realized, that he would have pooh-poohed Jack’s suggestion out of hand. The idea of trying to rally the various governing members of the zealot underground to pray down a judgment on the enemies of God would have hit him as ludicrous just over a year ago. Before the curse of the drought on Los Angeles. Before the angel of death slew the firstborn sons of unbelievers.

  Now Paul feared that God might actually hear and honor the fervent prayers of His oppressed resistance. Paul had to admit he was weary of judgment, of mayhem, of chaos. When God acted, it reminded him of the old joke about why lightning is reputed never to strike the same place twice: because it doesn’t have to. When God acted, there was no doubt— even in the minds of the enemy—that He was real. Once He decided to intervene on behalf of His people, there was no fighting back. Retaliation maybe, but no head-to-head competition.

  * * *

  Felicia Thompson hated working late, but that was nothing compared to risking her life to join the resistance. For years she had thought working for Paul Stepola in a high-security- clearance job in the Chicago bureau of the NPO was the very definition of stress. When she first suspected Paul had flipped to the other side, then became convinced of it, she knew who was really living with stress.

  Well, now she had joined him. There could be no playing at this, no touching a toe over the line. If she hadn’t become thoroughly convinced, she would have had to turn Paul in and let the chips fall. How anyone could still be on the other side of this battle, however, Felicia could not make compute.

  Yet many still lived in denial. The remaining brass, mostly men who had not been firstborns, seemed not only entrenched against the enemy and against God, but also livid. They strode purposefully around headquarters with red, pinched faces. In some ways Felicia was grateful there was no longer the banter that accompanied this type of work. Too many had lost too much—herself included. Losing a son—a bright, beautiful, overachieving, in-love twenty-seven-year-old—had doubled her over with grief. And her husband. Well, Felicia feared for him. Years of teaching and coaching at a middle school, one of the more upbeat people she had ever met, and now Cletus seemed suicidal.

  She had left several messages for Paul before he had finally called her back, just before she was to leave for home in north suburban Deerfield. At that time of night she could make it from the Loop in less than an hour, despite debris decorating the shoulders of the Edens and 294 North from what the media was now calling The Incident.

  “Either tell me what I need to do to join your side,” Felicia told Paul in one message, “or point me in the right direction.” She waited none too patiently for his callback, then discovered he had left her a message, most likely while she was on the phone with Cletus, promising she would be home in a few hours.

  Paul had informed her of a secret file, something he had kept even from her, which surprised Felicia. She thought she had known all his secrets, codes, passwords, hiding places. He told her where it was in his credenza and what code would open it. “It appears to be random notes about the crazy believers,” his message said, “but it is a prescription for receiving Christ.”

  Felicia’s fingers trembled as she found the file and stuffed it into her oversize purse. She pulled on her full-length mink—not as expensive as it looked but still a reminder of how good the NPO had been to her, a longtime employee. How she had once loved that coat, and how merely functional it seemed now.

  On her way out Felicia was joined in the elevator by Hector Hernandez, a late-twenties computer whiz who had briefed her and others on her floor about the progress his team had made in hacking into the system of the underground resistance. “
The zealot underground is in trouble technologically,” he had announced, giving her pause.

  She wasn’t sure why the phrase had bothered her so. Maybe it seemed too obvious, too overt for what was at stake. Everyone knew what the techies were up to and what was at risk for both sides. Merely presenting an update, a progress report, would have been sufficient. No one had to be told the consequences.

  Felicia nodded at the young man. “Hector,” she said.

  “Ma’am.”

  “You must be near the age of my son,” she said.

  “Thirty next month, Mrs. Thompson.”

  “Danny was twenty-seven.”

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am. Truly, I am.”

  “With all your ma’ams and Mrs.s, you’re talking to me like I’m your mama.”

  “I apologize. But I was raised to respect my . . . you know . . . to not call you Felic—you by your first name. And I’m sorry, but I couldn’t even if you asked me to.”

  “Would you do me a favor, Hector? Would you walk me to my car?”

  As their shoes echoed in the concrete chamber, Felicia could see her breath. The young man kept holding his, then letting it out in great clouds. She sensed Hector steeling himself to say something. Finally he slowed and whispered, “Would you greet Agent Stepola for me?”

  She gave the young man a long look. “Surely you know his status. . . .”

  “Of course. I also know the high regard with which you held each other, and I just thought—”

  “I will,” she said. “If I hear from him.”

  Hector drove out of the garage behind her until their paths split and they waved. As soon as he was out of sight, Felicia pulled in front of a dark store and tore into the file. There it was. Paul had written:

  These people believe their eternal destiny is sealed when they ‘receive Christ.’ They base this on verses from the New Testament that seem to claim that every person is born in sin and is thus separated from a Holy God. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death but that eternal life is God’s gift through His Son, Jesus Christ.

  Later, in the Gospel written by John (1:12), it says that to as many as ‘received’ Him, to them He gives the right to become the children of God.

  People ‘receive’ Christ by what they call the A-B-C Method. Accepting this truth. Believing in God and Jesus and what He did on their behalf—dying on the cross for the their sin. And Confessing this, or telling someone else. The transaction, as some like to call it, happens when they acknowledge this in prayer—that they are sinners, need God’s forgiveness, and receive it and Him.

  Prayer. Felicia had older—much older—relatives who still prayed. Two aunts and an uncle were judicious and careful in public but made no secret that they had never bought into the government edict against God and faith. Felicia herself had been ten when the ban on religion had been instituted, and while she couldn’t remember having practiced any religion before that, she had to admit to herself that she had believed there was a God. Until it had been all but shamed out of her in elementary school.

  But prayer? Perhaps she had never prayed, unless railing against God for taking her son could be considered such. She had cursed Him. Raised her fist at Him. And, she knew, by doing so, she had acknowledged something she hadn’t considered since childhood: that He was there and had acted.

  Felicia checked her rearview mirror. The last thing she wanted was to attract attention, particularly that of a cop. How would she explain sitting there in the dark, reading a top-level-security- clearance federal file by the tiny car ceiling light, and weeping?

  All she saw were emergency vehicles and wreckers here and there, moving and loading abandoned cars, as they had been doing for days. The disabled vehicles were moved out of the roadways first. The abandoned cars were moved to central lots as there was time. And the wee hours of a weeknight was the best time.

  Felicia found herself overcome—by what, she didn’t know. She felt an urgency to get home to Cletus, and yet something about that foreboding house of death repelled her. It wasn’t that anyone had died in the modest two-story where she had raised a family a block and a half from the tracks. They had bought it years before in the only section of Deerfield they could afford, and they wouldn’t be able to afford their own house today.

  But memories were bound up in that two-story brick with the postage-stamp backyard. It was there her children had gone from infancy to gap-toothed smiles, and from awkward puberty to first dates and dances. It was where she had met Danny’s girlfriend, the one who had become his fiancée, the one who had placed a hysterical call just a few hours ago to tell Felicia that Danny had died in her arms.

  Felicia raised her collar, wishing the car would warm quicker, and stared at Paul Stepola’s notes through watery eyes. Did it matter, she wondered, how little she understood? This was all so new, so foreign. Accept? That there was a God? Who could not now? He had bludgeoned His way into everyone’s consciousness, into everyone’s life, into everyone’s family. The Los Angeles business from the year before had sobered her, stopped her, made her wonder. This latest attack—what else could she call it?—had pushed her over the line.

  Did she believe? That was no longer a question. Did she feel like a sinner? Could she acknowledge that to a God she felt was her enemy? And could this Enemy save her soul? She felt puny; she knew that. Defenseless. Insignificant. What kind of basis was that for this “transaction,” as Paul called it?

  What Felicia wanted, she decided, was a God who loved her, cared about her, could comfort her. But was He not the one who had caused this pain? Somehow she had to reconcile that. She tried praying, tried apologizing for having cursed Him. Yet that very memory washed her anew in resentment and anger. “Why? Why?” she railed. “Why did You have to do that to me, to Cletus, to Danny, to my friends, to everyone?”

  Felicia sat silent as the interior of the slow-warming car fogged over. How bizarre to have gone from a thoroughgoing, docile atheist to praying and expecting an answer! She really wanted to know, to hear a response. And she fully expected one. Anyone powerful enough to slay His enemies in one terrible act could answer the sincere challenge of a grieving mother; could He not?

  Felicia put the folder back in her handbag and folded her arms, feeling her body slowly warm. She set her jaw and settled in, waiting. She could not be convinced that hers was other than a fair question, a legitimate challenge. The niggling need to get home to her husband abated as she nestled there, resolute.

  She had made her decision. There would be no more pretending God didn’t exist. And she had already put her career and her very life on the line to serve the resistance through Paul. But to personally make the transaction? That would require some answer. It was one thing to feel disenfranchised. In many ways that cliché had been her lot for as long as she could remember. But it was another to be made to feel responsible for the terrible act of God that took one’s own son.

  16

  CHANCELLOR BALDWIN DENGLER emerged from his limo in the underground parking facility beneath the International Government of Peace headquarters in Bern, Switzerland. As his two bodyguards flanked him and headed toward the elevators, he paused.

  The men stopped and turned. “Forget something, sir?” one said. “Can I get it for you?”

  “I’ll be a moment,” he said.

  Tall, graying, and elegant, Dengler handed his leather portfolio to one of the men and reached deep into the pockets of his cashmere coat and pulled on calfskin leather gloves. He grabbed the ends of his scarf and tucked them into his coat, buttoning it to the neck. He’d heard on the radio that the daybreak temperature was zero degrees Fahrenheit. “Fitting,” he said.

  “Sir?” one of the bodyguards said, and Dengler noticed he caught the eye of the other.

  “The temperature,” Dengler said. “Fitting.”

  The chancellor had turned and moved toward an exit.

  “Where are
we going, sir, if I may ask?”

  “I want to walk on the river,” the older man said. “You stay here and stay warm.”

  “You know we can’t do that, sir.”

  “Suit yourselves.”

  In his abject grief over the loss of his son, the father of three of his grandchildren, it was not lost on Dengler that everything about him had changed. Not just his voice, which had gone from a crisp, forceful baritone to a hoarse whisper, but also his gait. He had long been amused by press reports that his stride was half again longer than a normal man his height’s. He was sure it wasn’t true, but something about his walk—at least once he had been elected chancellor—produced wonder, if not awe, in observers. Perhaps it was a stride of confidence that caused his expensive brogans to announce each purposeful step.

  But now he shuffled along, bent. What had reduced him to an old man but mourning? He wore the same clothes, bore the same appendages. And yet he felt like a shell of a man. He would not shirk his duties, despite sleepless nights, would not turn over the reins—even temporarily—to the vice chancellor, who was dealing with her own son’s death. And he would somehow cover his personal turmoil when the cameras rolled. But now, just now, he could not face the palatial office, the marble floors, the teak and mahogany he had once accepted as the trappings of his station.

  Now he simply wanted to walk alone on the Aare. Its sterile, icy surface matched the temperature of his soul, and—who knew?—maybe he would simply veer into the frigid water itself and let it take him to wherever his beloved son was.

  “You mean the bridge, I assume,” his bodyguard said, following Dengler out the door and signaling the other to wait.

  Dengler didn’t want to speak. He shook his head. “I mean the river,” he said.

  “It’s not frozen all the way over,” the man said. “And there’s a foot of snow on either side.”

  Dengler stopped and faced the man, as weary and resigned as he had ever felt. It was as if he had to muster every last ounce of strength to meet this challenge. He sucked in an icy breath. “Please,” he said. “Please. Wait here for me. I will return presently.”