David dealt with his grief by working every waking moment and then crashing hard till he had no choice but to sleep. He assigned Mac and Abdullah the task of planning their disappearance, as conceived by Hannah. Meanwhile, he planted far and wide in the complex access numbers that would allow him, with the right keystrokes, to hack into the system and monitor the goings-on as fully as he was able to do now, at least for as long as the current system was used.
David found listening in on Nicolae and Leon and Hickman almost addictive, but he also enjoyed hearing what Security Chief Walter Moon had to say. While it was unlikely Moon would become a believer, who could know for sure? If he did, it would have to be before the initiation of the mark on employees, because, as Tsion taught, Scripture was clear that that was a once-and-for-all decision. But Moon, from what David could gather, shared openly with both his assistant and his most trusted subordinate that he believed he had been overlooked for the role of Supreme Commander. He spent most of his time swearing, ironically, "on a stack of Bibles," that he wouldn't have taken the job if it had been offered. But the opposite was so obviously and patently true that even his confidants felt free to tell him, "Of course you would have, and it should have gone to you."
David daydreamed of having Moon on his side, a grouser within the palace who had the potential for subversion.
The new intelligence director, replacing Jim Hickman, was a Pakistani named Suhail Akbar. A devout Carpathia supporter, he was a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, quiet and slow to voice an opinion but with a resume that far outstripped his former superior's for experience and training. David feared he was bright enough to be a problem. Bright was not an adjective ever applied to Hickman.
"It is crucial," David e-mailed Mac one afternoon following a heavy day of hacking and setup for a future of the same, "that we leave no room for questioning our loyalty to the GC and to Carpathia specifically. I challenge the brass occasionally for the very purpose of keeping them from suspecting me, and I believe they do suspect those who seem blindly loyal. I want them to ask themselves, Why would Hassid challenge us and yet stay and serve so capably if he is not simply trying to make the place the best it can be?
"Mac, we have to plan ahead, plant the problem that will explain our demise and cost the GC some plum pieces of equipment. I wouldn't mind seeing the plane go down with a few million Nicks' worth of biochip injectors and even loyalty enforcement facilitators. Wonder if guillotines are listed that way in the top end head-chopping paraphernalia catalogs? Sorry for the gallows humor; it's no laughing matter. Praise God he can make glorified bodies even of those saints who have been dismembered, cremated, or lightning struck.
"At the risk of insulting your intelligence, I must caution against even considering wasting the Phoenix 216. Much as I would love to tweak Carpathia's nose with the loss of his precious ride, we have way too much invested in the bugging system, which I am now able to access even from outside the plane. For whatever time God allows us the freedom to listen in, I can imagine no greater source of information. I have developed a program that can even track the position of the craft via satellite. It is always fun and enlightening, isn't it, when Nicolae thinks he's in a wholly secure environment and lets his hair down? The bluster and posturing among his people is one thing, but to hear him cackle and admit to his most trusted aides the very things he denies everywhere else, well, that's when it's worth it.
"Speaking of that, he has a meeting scheduled with Hickman, Moon, Akbar, and Fortunato that I plan to tape. If you think his go-rounds with just Leon were hilarious, wait till you hear this. I'll upload it to you. Remember the unique secure code for all this privileged information and secure transmissions. Should anyone, yourself included, try to access these files with the wrong code, I have programmed in a bug so nasty that it really should be called a monster. This is a creature that ignores the software programs and attacks the hardware.
"If I hadn't developed it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. This thing will literally intercept the impulses being relayed from point to point in the processor, carry them to the power source, whether battery or AC, and draw the current into the motherboard itself. If there were an incendiary device in there, I could get a computer to literally blow up in a hacker's face. Given that all that is in there is plastic and metal, the best I can do is produce a lot of heat, smoke, and some melting. Regardless, the victim computer is irreparable after that.
"More later, confrere. I'll look for something concrete from you and Abdullah within forty-eight hours. Meanwhile, it's less obvious and risky for you to have occasion to run into Hannah than for me to. Keep her warm and courageous as a compatriot and assure her that we will get out in time and have productive years left to devote to the cause of the kingdom."
Rayford, who had been kept up-to-date by David once he was up and around again, worried about the calendar. He had been noodling the most effective roles for each member of the Force, and the prospect of a sudden infusion of four members displaced from the palace had both its up- and downsides. Were he to bring them all to Chicago, he would add to the base of operations two pilots, a nurse, and one of the world's greatest computer geniuses. Clearly he had the room, but he wondered if having virtually everybody in one place was the most efficient use of resources.
Not just for their own psyches but also for the sake of the two-pronged overall mission-stymieing Carpathia where possible and winning as many people to the kingdom as they could-it might make more sense to spread the talent around the globe. Hattie and Leah were restless and eager for assignments. Chloe was resigned to staying, because of Kenny and the work of the co-op, but Buck needed live exposure to what was going on to make his cyberzine as effective as it could be.
Rayford and Albie needed all the pilots they could get, but planes weren't plentiful either. If he and the insightful if inarticulate Zeke were right about what Tsion was up to, thousands of pilots and planes would have to be recruited from around the world to airlift Jewish believers to safety. Veteran pilots like Mac and Abdullah could help make that happen.
But in an instant in the middle of the night, Rayford went from thinking he had more than two more weeks to think and plan how to best make use of the New Babylon contingent to realizing he had to act quickly. Time was a luxury he never had enough of, but an emergency threw everything into turmoil.
Rayford's phone rang, but no one was there. He checked the readout. A message from Lukas (Laslos) Miklos. "Have been found out," it read. "Pastor and my wife detained, among others. Pray please. Help please." The underground church in Ptolemai's was the largest in Greece and likely the largest in the United Carpathian States. Up to now the local GC presence had not been a problem. The Greek believers had been careful, Rayford knew from personal experience, but even they feared GC Security and Intelligence sources could not look the other way much longer. Part of the reason they felt they had been ignored was that local GC leadership believed Carpathia wanted the region that bore his name to have the lowest reported incidence of insurgence of the ten global supercommunities.
Whatever public relations sensitivities Carpathia had exhibited before his assassination, since his resurrection his emphasis had been on enforcement. Apparently, Rayford deduced, the new Carpathia would rather eradicate the opposition within his own duchy than pretend it didn't exist. Rayford would ask David to check into the situation and see what would be served by a Trib Force party showing its face over there.
Rayford had known Mrs. Miklos to be a quiet, deeply spiritual woman. But Laslos had told him she was also opinionated, stubborn, and brave. She was not the type to back down if confronted over the exercise of her beliefs by those in authority. Rayford imagined the GC storming a meeting and Mrs. Miklos resisting and even putting up a fuss rather than allowing her pastor, Demetrius Demeter, to be taken into custody.