The Doomsday Equation

CHAPTER 12

A woman known by many names, but whose given one is Janine, runs her fingers up the back of the high-tech executive’s leg. He emits a low sound, deep from his throat, a guttural murmur that predates mankind, the reptilian linking of the primitive brain and the reproductive organs. She trails a fingernail over the crest of his buttocks.

He swallows hard and pulls his head from her shoulder to look at her eyes. She smiles, telling herself she shouldn’t. Not this smile. In her eyes, the look: you soon will burn. He sees the blue eyes twinkle, a startling contrast to the brown skin the color of wet beach sand, an irresistible modern beauty. But rather than exciting him further, the smile for some reason makes him shiver.

She watches his eyes leave hers, then trail down to the deep scratch along her neckline. She’s told him that her cat went bananas on her, something he clearly didn’t believe but chose not to think too much about. In fact, she wasn’t totally lying. Her scratch did come from a cat, a feline. A lion. The extraordinary beast she loosed from the zoo.

The man buries his head and sinks into her. She generates a moan. She clenches her fist behind his back, feeling her nails dig into her palm.

Her phone rings. From her purse on his dresser. Not any ring.

“Redemption Song.” Bob Marley.

Have no fear of atomic energy. None of them can-a stop-a the time.

She’s programmed that ringtone to indicate an emergency call. That she’s been away too long. The Guardians need her.

She shouldn’t have spent the night. But why can’t she get her kicks? Besides, she can’t take any chances. No complaints, no inquiries. Not when they’re this close. Even if he yields no further intelligence. Maybe this guy doesn’t know where the scions of Silicon Valley will hold their gathering. Maybe word hasn’t trickled down to this relative minion. Maybe he’s too smart to tell her.

Now she needs something else: she needs him to be done with her, even if it leaves her unsatisfied. Easy enough.

Redemption Song. Redemption Song.

“Do you need to get that?” he whispers.

“Mais, no.” She forces a giggle. “I need this.” She tugs his shoulder and urges him on his back, a move about which he will only later remark to himself: she’s quite strong. Straddling him, she puts her head back, squeezes her muscles, looks at the ceiling, reaches between his legs and runs fingernails lightly over him. That’s all it takes. He’s done with her.

And, predictably, up and off to shower and work minutes later. She doesn’t care for the money on the dresser. What she wants is information. Dates and times. A location. Names of others in the network. Where will they hold the big meeting? The one that will become ground zero for the return of the Messiah.

But she got none of it. Nothing of value in his glove compartment. Nor in his closet. Nor from his phone.

She listens to the water in the shower. These technology moguls must know what they’re doing or they wouldn’t take such precautions. They would join forces to bring their soulless tools to modernize the Holy Land. Modernize? Do they have a clue at what cost? Can they possibly know how backward their notions are?

Regardless, they will soon know what they’ve wrought.

They will know the error of their ways, along with the adherents of modern, liberalized religion — the practitioners of contemporary versions of Islam and Christianity, Catholicism and Judaism. These groups think they can pick and choose from God’s teachings. They have made their devotion selective, based on their Earthly yearnings, based on their understanding of how the world works, not the Word. And they, like those who make an idol of capitalism, have jeopardized eternity for everyone. Not without a fight they won’t.

She opens her eyes and spies her bulky black purse sitting on a low bookshelf filled with business tomes. She can imagine the powerful knife nestled inside her purse. Should she unsheathe it and use it to pull any information from the heretic in the shower?

She shakes her head.

The man appears at the edge of the bathroom, wearing a towel.

“I …” he stammers. “I’ve got a conference call. I should go.”

So should I, thinks Janine. Though the idea of whatever spontaneous thing she might do to this googler fills her with shivers of excitement.

Twenty minutes later, back at her room, she turns on the fax machine. A few minutes later, it rings. She sits on the bed, stares at the slowly emerging pixelated image, sips lukewarm jasmine tea, calming her stomach.

The first quarter of the page is indiscernible, a dark, jumbled mass, the product of an antiquated machine using outdated technology. But fax machines are an occupational hazard; for the most important commands and messages, there can be no use of computers, no sent or saved files, no digital traces, no signatures or key words that are searchable by the vast government surveillance machine. Sure, the Internet chat rooms and virtual worlds allow for basic communications, the first level of recruiting. Not for heavy lifting. The weapons of mass destruction are more sophisticated than ever. But planning to use them is typically and necessarily an analog exercise.

She looks out the wide picture window in this fetid rented room. Fog covers the top of the distant Golden Gate Bridge. Weather. Merde. She doesn’t want to worry about weather. So many variables she can’t control, too many unknowns. She’s hearing rumors inside the group: They’ve still got to identify the location of the attack. The near vicinity will not do the trick. To make this statement, it’s got to be precise. How can they not know that yet?

Is the answer in the fax machine?

As the paper begins to emerge from the fax, she sees that the bottom half of the image, the dark morass, is a big, bushy beard. And as the paper falls to the floor, she can make out the rest of the face. Predictably pronounced nose, soft eyes looking to the side, huge beard. She thinks the man has an old face but the wicked soul of a three-year-old boy who hates having his picture taken. At the top of the page, three scrawled words: “your better half.”

Then, in small, fine script: Oakland Port, tonight.

Her better half.

She winces at the cruel joke.

Not a location, an ally, another one. A key one. It’s a joke because he has the visage of a historic enemy. He’s a Slav, worse, a Jew.

But a Guardian too.

She calms herself: we’re all on the same side now. There is a much bigger picture. Only through an unholy alliance, only through the Guardians, can we bring holy peace.

She strikes a match and lights the edge of the picture. It gives her no solace to watch the hairy visage burn.

She turns and looks at the door of her small closet. She can picture the suitcase inside it, packed with the precious piece of metal, smooth, seemingly so innocuous. Her half of the bargain.

Now just miles away, the bearded man listens to the voices in the corridor. “Adam.”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are. Adam.”

Adam. Hearing the name, the bearded man grits his teeth. He hopes he didn’t kill someone named Adam, a holy name.

This Adam, the bearded man thinks, now packed beneath piles of socks, destined for some low-cost retailer.

Outside, the waves have stopped. The storm has passed. The bearded man closes his eyes, presses himself in the dark between the containers, tries not to make any sound that would alert the searchers to his presence. He calms himself with the knowledge of his purpose, the purity of his purpose. I am, he reminds himself, a Guardian of the City. He wonders: How many others have faced much worse peril with much more courage? How many have acted on the basis of such faith, anonymous contacts and dead drops and unseen allies? He considers the rumors, the whispers: that there are now so many allies, the belief and wisdom multiplying beyond any previous comprehension.

How many others like me are out there, right now, en route to undo a century of calamity, millennia of political folly? Are they enjoying this much good fortune?