Free The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page B

toward the other room. “Is he all right for a minute?”
    She nodded.
    “You’d better sit down,” he said.
    Chloe looked stricken. “Was there news? Is Buck all right?”
    “Nothing from Buck or Leah,” he said, and she seemed to finally exhale. “But you need to know about your father. ...”
    David tried e-mailing Viv Ivins a list of those in his department who might be available for double duty over the next few days, but the message bounced back undeliverable. He would go past her office on the way to the hangar anyway, so he printed out the message and took it with him.
    On the way he received a call from the foundry foreman.
    “You know what you’re asking, don’t you?” the man said.
    “Of course, Hans,” David said. “You have to know this didn’t originate with me.”
    “Unless it’s from Fortunate himself, I don’t see how we can be expected—”
    “It is.”
    “—to comply. I mean, this is way too-it is?”
    “It is.”
    “‘nough said.”
    David slipped the printout into the slot on Viv Ivins’s door, but it was not shut all the way and swung open.
    The small, dark office immediately brightened as the motion-sensitive light came on. The gossip around the palace was that on occasion, Carpathia’s alleged aunt on his mother’s side dozed for so long at her desk that her office went dark. If something woke her or caused her to move in her sleep, the lights came back on, and she resumed working as if nothing were awry.
    David made sure she wasn’t in there dozing, then reached to shut the door. But something on her desk caught his eye. She had laid out a map of the world, boundaries between the ten regions clearly marked. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, except that this was an old map, one drawn when the ten regions were members of the newly expanded United Nations Security Council. When Carpathia had renamed the one-world government the Global Community, he had also slightly renamed the ten regions. For instance, the United States of North America became the United North American States. Viv Ivins had not only handwritten these adjust80 ments, but she had also added numbers in parentheses after each name.
    David felt conspicuous and nosy, but who knew what significance this might hold for the Trib Force, the Judahites, tribulation saints around the world? He concocted his alibi as he moved toward the desk. If Viv were to return and catch him studying her map, he would simply tell the truth about the door tripping the light and the map catching his eye. How he would explain his scribbling the numbers, he did not know.
    With one last look out her office window, David grabbed a business card from his wallet and wrote furiously in tiny script as he bent over Viv’s map.
    The United Holy Land States* (216)
    The United Russian States (72)
    The United Indian States (42)
    The United Asian States (30)
    The United Pacific States (18)
    The United North American States (-6)
    The United South American States (0)
    The United Great Britain States (2)
    The United European States (6)
    The United African States (7)
    David traced the asterisk after “The United Holy Land States” to the bottom of the map, where Viv, or someone, had noted in faint, tiny pencil marks “aka The United Carpathian States.”
    That was a new one. David had never heard another moniker for the Holy Land States. As he was straighten81 ing to leave he saw more pencil writing that appeared to have been erased. He bent close and squinted but needed more light.
    Dare he turn on Viv’s desk lamp? No. Rather, he held the whole map up to the ceiling light, knowing he would simply have to confess to pathological curiosity, if necessary. He only hoped that Viv, like nearly everyone else in the compound, was watching Carpathia’s body being transported from the Phoenix 216 to the morgue. He was glad to miss that, knowing that most would hold hands or hats over their hearts, and he wasn’t prepared to do that even as a