NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (16 page)

DeLay waited for a minute before he spoke. He tried to control his temper and kicked himself for being suckered. He should have seen all this coming.

“I told you I can’t divulge the name of the person who hired me,” he finally said.

“I’m sorry, Mr. DeLay,” Nussbaum said. “I thought we had already reached an agreement in principle for you to represent Mr. Westmoreland. However, we are talking about a matter of trust now. J. Franklin Westmoreland is the political and moral leader of a movement. As such, he cannot allow people with divided loyalties to serve as his personal advisors. I’m sure you understand.”

“I understand all right,” DeLay said. “Tell me where I would stand with Mr. Westmoreland if I gave you the information you are requesting.”

“I feel certain he would reward your commitment and welcome you as head of his legal team in one of the most high-profile criminal cases in the country’s history. Such a thing couldn’t be bad for a man’s career,” Nussbaum said.

“Any information I give you would have to be held in the strictest confidence,” DeLay said.

“Of course,” Stanley said.

“Leon hired me,” Blackie said. “He paid me $250,000 up front. The check was written on some offshore company’s bank account. His name wasn’t on it. I’ve helped him out a few times through the years.”

“If you want to work on our team,” Nussbaum said, “you’ll have to withdraw from that case and give him his money back. Understood?”

“Sure. But my price just went up considerably,” Blackie said.

“I’m shocked,” Stanley said. “And what would you do about Chirp McVeigh?”

“I know enough to know that she can’t hurt Frank. She will have to find her own lawyer. I’ll throw her under the bus. She can sink or swim,” Blackie said as he calculated his next move.

“Very well, Mr. DeLay,” Stanley said as he stood up to show Blackie out of his office.

“What do you mean?” DeLay said. “I thought you were going to brief me on Westmoreland’s case so I could get started.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Nussbaum said. “I don’t believe J. Franklin Westmoreland would ever trust a man who would so easily divulge client confidences in return for a fee. I appreciate your coming all this way. I will ask my secretary to cut you a check for your time and expenses. Have a good day,” he said.

Before Nussbaum shut his office door behind him, Blackie said, “So I’m not on the case?”

“Now you know how it feels when someone throws you under the bus,” Nussbaum said as he slammed his door shut in Blackie’s face.

DeLay slinked across the room with his head down as he surveyed the room to see who had witnessed his last exchange with Nussbaum. As he neared Betty’s desk, she held out an envelope for him.

“Mr. Nussbaum asked me to give you this,” she said. “It’s an expense check for you.”

Blackie took the envelope and started to tear it in two. Then he thought better of it, stuck the envelope in his pocket, threw his shoulders back and walked towards the front door of Nussbaum’s publishing business. Just before he stepped out into the elevator lobby, he turned and spoke to Betty.

“Can you give Nussbaum a message for me?” he asked her.

“Certainly, Mr. DeLay,” she said.

“Tell him that he and J. Franklin Westmoreland can go fuck themselves.”

He slammed the office door, brushed past a couple of people in the elevator lobby and was the first to enter the elevator for his ride to the ground floor where he beat a hasty exit out of the building.

Inside Nussbaum’s office, Betty delivered DeLay’s message to Nussbaum word for word.

“He’s nothing but a snake,” Stanley said. “At least now I know who the traitor in our midst is.”

BASS WHITFIELD RAN
his fingers through his thinning hair, stood up, and paced back and forth across his office floor. He had become a pacer in college during exams and continued the practice throughout the rest of his life. It allowed him to concentrate. After fifteen or twenty minutes of walking and mumbling to himself, he would sit and write down a flurry of notes, insights that were like built up flood waters behind a dam that had broken. But tonight no inspiration came.

Trials for J. Franklin Westmoreland and Ithurial Finis loomed large on the horizon. The union that had weathered so many storms stood at the brink of collapse. He knew soon he must face the most terrible prospect he could imagine, calling out troops whose job might include firing on their countrymen.

He had two options. He could let the seceding states alone, allow them to go their own ways, form a country next door to his. Asa Cockburn’s vision, neighboring nations that would covenant together to fight common enemies while maintaining their separateness, had its own logic. European nations had morphed like this for centuries and shed the blood of millions in the process. He had read enough history to realize that kingdoms and nations were fluid. They adapted to changes over time and survived to become countries that resembled their forebears, but represented something new.

But he didn’t trust the ambition of CM. His instincts told him that the militants would not rest with the formation of a small nation dependent on its larger neighbor for its continued existence. Rather, he saw an apocalypse brewing. A fight of good versus evil in which his country, the country he had sworn to defend against all enemies, domestic or foreign, stood in jeopardy. Ministers had taken to their pulpits to denounce the godless United States of America, carving out for themselves the high moral ground as they called their followers to stand on God’s side, to oppose to the death the ways of Satan, the ways of the federal union.

Once again he opened the Bible and sought its guidance, guidance that was confusing at best. He read that a nation divided against itself cannot stand, that vengeance belonged to the Lord, that the greatest commandment was to love God and your neighbor. He read in the Decalogue that one should not kill, but he found passage after passage where God had blessed the children of Israel in battles where he commanded them to annihilate their enemies totally.

He put the Bible on his desk and put his hand on the notebook Ert had left him. It contained his notes from Joshua Issacharoff’s journals. Those notes told of a war that would threaten to destroy his country, a war that could be won only through sacrifice, through true moral leadership.

He didn’t know if he was up to it.

He paced for two more hours until the clock on the wall read two o’clock. As he prepared to retire for the evening exhausted from the weight of decision on his shoulders, his cell phone rang.

“Mr. President?” asked Sherman Aloysius.

“Yes, Sherman,” Bass said.

“I see that your lights are still on. Would you like some company?”

“I would. It would be nice to have someone to talk to for a little while,” Bass said.

“I’ll be upstairs in a minute,” Sherman said.

“How about I meet you outside?” Bass said.

The President changed into his running shoes and let himself out of the building without notifying his keepers. In the Rose Garden, he found Sherman standing alone, his arms crossed, his head bent as if he was looking at something, trying to figure out what it was. When Bass walked up to him, Sherman asked him, “Do you think this is a good idea, sir? You never know who may be watching for an opening.”

“Let’s take our chances. I need some fresh air,” Bass said.

The two men strolled together out of the protective cocoon of the White House to the National Mall. They turned left and began to talk, oblivious to the Smithsonian buildings on either side.

“Do you think Americans will fight each other if Frank Westmoreland gives the word?” President Whitfield asked Sherman.

“I’ve been thinking about that question for months, Mr. President,” Sherman answered.

“And where have you come down on it?” Bass said.

“I think if they believe God is on their side, they will do whatever he says, even if that means they must take up arms against people in whose homes they have visited, people who have not lifted a finger against them or ever intended them any harm,” he said.

“I was afraid you would say that,” Bass said. “I feel the same way. The conundrum is that if we make a pre-emptive strike, it will embolden citizens of the seceding states to rise up against us, and if we do nothing, we will find ourselves subjugated by a tyrant dressed in Jesus’s robes.”

Aloysius stared at Bass as he marveled at the wisdom of this man who had risen from complete obscurity to lead his nation. He couldn’t imagine a starker contrast than the one between Bass Whitfield and J. Franklin Westmoreland, one a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Almighty, the other a humble man trying to save countless lives while holding to his sense of justice and fairness.

“We must show force, Mr. President,” he said. “The decision whether to use it will ultimately fall on your shoulders. I see no other way it can play out.”

“I am still praying that there may be another way,” Bass said. “Do you have our contingency plans in place?”

“We are ready, Mr. President.”

They had made a loop back to the White House. President Whitfield shook Sherman’s hand and entered the White House grounds.

“Thanks for the late date,” he said to Sherman as he waved to him before he moved out of sight.

It was almost sunup when Bass made it to his private living quarters. Before he got into bed, he picked up the phone and called Link Jefferson.

“Sorry to call so early, or so late,” he said when Link answered.

“That’s all right, Mr. President,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I want you to release J. Franklin Westmoreland today. Tell him I read his book and that his struggle is his own, not God’s. See that someone delivers him to Waco, Texas, where he can rule over his movement until the Lord makes other plans for him.”

“Yes sir, Mr. President,” Link said. “I’ll give him the message in person.”

TOM MOONEY, THE
man federal agents arrested on his way to the farm house near Waco, had never spent a night in jail. He had never even had a speeding ticket. He was the straightest of straight arrows, a man who believed everyone should obey the law, work hard and go to church on Sunday and any other time the church doors were open. A deacon from a big Baptist church in Tyler, Texas, he had agreed to deliver a package to a man he had never met because a CM operative had visited Wednesday evening prayer service at his home church and made an impassioned plea for help.

“We need God’s children to step up to the plate and assist us in the struggle to bring in the kingdom,” the speaker had said to an auditorium packed with CM well-wishers. “The Bible says, ‘Faith without works is dead.’”

Dozens had come forward to enlist as friends of the Movement. His minister, Pastor Preston, had tacitly encouraged civil disobedience when he invited the speaker to the meeting and introduced him to the crowd as a man of God.

But when Tom ended up in jail, his friends at church, his pastor, even his family turned their backs on him.

“I told him he was crazy to do such a thing,” his wife told FBI agents when they came to her home to interview her. “I talked to a lawyer yesterday. He’s going to file my divorce papers this week.”

The FBI got similar stories from church members who had attended the Wednesday night CM rally. All of them had signed up to help the CM; none wanted to be associated with their Christian brother now that he was in federal custody.

Pastor Preston refused to see the agents until they threatened to return with an arrest warrant. Under duress, he showed them into his office at the church where he sat behind a seventeenth century antique French desk in front of a picture window that looked out on a fifty million dollar sanctuary and a new thirty million dollar education facility, under construction, half-built.

“Nice place you have here, pastor,” Agent McDonald said to him as he glanced out the window at the view. “Is all this paid for?”

“We don’t owe anybody a penny,” the pastor said as he spouted his usual sales pitch before he realized he wasn’t talking to potential donors. “The Lord always provides for his people,” he added.

“He’s not doing much providing for Tom Mooney right now,” the agent shot back. “You know Tom Mooney don’t you, pastor?”

“The name doesn’t ring a bell,” Preston lied without a second’s hesitation.

“That’s funny,” Agent McDonald said. “He certainly knows you. His bank records show he gave thousands of dollars to help you build these buildings. His wife says she counseled with you last week after his arrest about whether she should file for divorce, and you told her she should.”

“I don’t believe in divorce, so I would never have said such a thing,” the pastor replied. “In her anguished mental state, she is probably confused about the facts.”

“So you are telling me you don’t know Tom Mooney?” the agent pressed him.

“I wouldn’t know him if I met him on the street.”

Agent McDonald had all he could take.

“I thought the Bible said not to bear false witness against your neighbor, pastor. How do you explain this?” he asked as he slid a photo of the pastor and Tom Mooney standing on each side of the CM operative on the night of the prayer meeting. “Lying to a federal agent is a federal crime, pastor. Would you like to reconsider your statement?”

“I would not like to reconsider anything,” the pastor said as he stood up out of the ornate antique chair behind his desk. “If you haven’t heard, Agent McDonald, Texas is no longer part of your jurisdiction. Please get out of my office. If you think you can bully me, you have another think coming.”

“If you think you can lie to federal agents in the course of an investigation of the assassination of the President of the United States and not suffer any consequences, pastor, then you have another think coming. A pissant like Frank Westmoreland can’t just wave his hand and declare himself above the law of the land,” the agent said as he got up and walked out of the opulent office, wiping construction site red clay mud from his shoes on the eighteenth-century rug.