NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (26 page)

“Well I’ll be damned,” Leadoff said. “I would never have guessed the fat bastard would actually become a friend of ours.”

“I think his encounter with Ithurial produced something akin to a death bed conversion,” Ert said.

“Those sorts of things have a way of wearing off pretty quickly,” Link said. “When he sees what happens to his ratings this week, he may decide the Lord has changed his mind.”

•  •  •

Their limousine pulled into the White House compound and the three men made their ways to the Oval Office. When they entered, they found Sherman Aloysius and President Whitfield had started without them.

Sherman had a map of North Carolina, Virginia, and the District on a table with lines drawn that indicated the approach route of the CM forces and likely places where U.S. forces could engage them on their way to Washington. He was red-faced from explaining the situation to President Whitfield, who examined the map with skepticism.

“We have to cut them off at the knees, Mr. President, or they will be on our front steps intact and ready to finish us,” he said as the President’s other counselors entered the room and huddled around the map spread out on the table.

President Whitfield pushed himself away from the conference table and took a seat at his desk. He swiveled his chair so that his back was turned to his advisors. He put his right elbow on the arm of the desk chair and rested his chin on his hand as he thought about the situation.

“How long before they could get here?” he asked Sherman.

“It depends on when they are prepared to move,” Sherman said. “Our reports are that they have assembled a division. My guess is that they will move within the next week. They have to know that we are watching their every move.”

“So they can be here in a week?” Whitfield asked.

“I think so, Mr. President,” Aloysius said.

“Where have you positioned our forces?”

General Aloysius laid the map on his desk and pointed to the location of his troops. “We outnumber them three to one,” he said.

“Those numbers don’t tell what is in our soldiers’ hearts though do they, Sherman?” President Whitfield asked.

“Soldiers aren’t supposed to have hearts, Mr. President. They do what that they are ordered to do. Nothing more, nothing less,” Sherman said without conviction.

With his finger Whitfield traced Interstate 95 across Virginia to the District. “It’s not a very long drive,” he said to himself.

“May I ask what you’re thinking, Mr. President?” Leadoff said.

“I am thinking I only have one chance to save our nation. That salvation may involve the military, but our armed forces don’t have the power to win the day. Our triumph will come, if at all, another way,” he said as he glanced at Ert for a second.

Ert never took his eyes off the map.

“What I have in mind will risk the security of our country. I will understand if any of you decide you need to break ranks with me. You are free to leave my service now before the situation escalates.”

“Show us your plan, Mr. President,” Sherman said.

Bass did not hesitate.

“Here’s how I plan to play it,” he said. He folded the map and laid it aside. Then he told them his plan, the most daring military maneuver any of them had ever heard.

“I cannot recommend it from a military standpoint, Mr. President,” General Aloysius said. “But you are my commander in chief. I will stand by you to the end.”

“Amen,” the other three men said in unison.

•  •  •

At his office in Chicago, Flash Greenwald sat in his chair and watched the sailboats on Lake Michigan. He had a glass with ice water and lemon slices on a coaster within reach. His producer knocked on his door.

“Come in, Jim,” Greenwald said. He had never before called the producer by his first name or invited him into his office.

“What’s up, Flash?” the producer said. “The whole country thinks you have gone nuts.”

Greenwald smiled at him and took a sip of water.

“I was telling the truth out there today,” he said. “I have seen what I need to do. I am on President Whitfield’s side. I think he is our only hope, our next best hope, if you will. He can lead us out of this mess. Westmoreland’s way is the way of destruction. I have turned my back on it.”

Jim lowered his head and looked at the floor. When he raised his eyes, Greenwald could see tears that ran down his face.

“God bless you,” Jim said as he got up and excused himself, shutting the office door behind him.

Within a minute, Flash’s secretary buzzed him.

“It’s Leon,” she said.

“Tell him he doesn’t need to call me anymore,” Flash said into the intercom. “I’ve got nothing to say to him.”

Greenwald bounced to his feet, threw his jacket over his shoulder, walked down the hall to the elevator and took it to the ground floor. He stepped out of the lobby onto the sidewalk and strolled along Michigan Avenue. He spoke to the people on the street, smiling when they looked his way. He hopped on a tour bus with an open air observation deck, sat down and craned his neck to see the top of the John Hancock building, regretting all the years he had lost.

At the bus’s third stop, he got off and walked the two blocks to his high rise. When he reached the outside of the building, the doorman swung the door open for him and he walked through the wide entry way. Half-way into the lobby he stopped and went back to the doorman.

“What’s your name, sir?” he asked him.

“Robert Kowalsky, Mr. Greenwald,” he said.

“Thanks for taking such good care of me all these years, Robert,” he said as he stuck out his hand and gave him a firm handshake.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Greenwald,” Robert said.

“Call me Flash,” Greenwald said as he turned and walked into the building.

Robert felt something in his hand and glanced down to see a hundred dollar bill Flash had slipped him when he shook hands.

“Thank you very much, Flash,” he said.

But Greenwald was already out of ear shot.

Flash got in the elevator, took his key out of his pocket, and inserted it into the keyhole that allowed him access to his exclusive residence on the eighteenth floor. When he reached his condo, he went in and threw open the shades. He leaned up against the picture window to take in the view of downtown one last time. He grabbed a diet Coke from the refrigerator and placed it on his desk where he sat down in his writing chair and flipped through a few pages of the journal he had started when he got out of the hospital.

He picked up his roller ball black pen and began to write where he had left off the day before. He wrote the date and time and dropped to the next line.

“It took me fifty-eight years, three months and twelve days to find peace,” he wrote before he stopped to collect his thoughts.

It was then that he felt the cold steel barrel of the pistol against the back of his neck. He glanced up in time to see his reflection in the picture window. Behind him, he saw a dark silhouette shrouded in the muted light of the room just as he heard a muffled explosion and everything went dark. His mind floated away into an eerie euphoria as his head fell on the desk, and his heart in its final beats pumped his blood out on the journal, where it washed away his last words.

As Ithurial Finis raced down the eighteen flights of steps, he paused on a landing just long enough to send a text.

“You have one less problem,” it read. He stuffed his cell phone in his pocket on the run and stole out of the building, a deadly apparition on a mission from God, vanishing into the black Chicago night.

“I always finish what I start, Flash,” he said under his breath.

ERT ROBERTS HAD
not made a solo trip to Kilgore, Texas, since 4/11. He flew into Shreveport and put his one suitcase in the trunk of a rented Toyota Camry that smelled like cigarettes. He hit Interstate 20 and headed west. At the checkpoint in Waskom, Texas, he showed his Texas driver’s license to a CM soldier who looked at it for a second, glanced at the car, and motioned for him to pass.

On the highway, he saw deer grazing near the shoulder of the road and thought back to the time one ran out in front of him and tore up the front end of his new sedan.

“The body shop never could get it fixed right,” he said to himself.

The sun was low on the horizon when he passed the Kilgore city limit sign near the exit to U.S. Highway 259. He got off the Interstate and took a back road into town that carried him past his law office. He slowed down long enough to see the shutters still in place, the weeds gradually taking over the lawn.

It was dark when he pulled in the driveway to his house. He picked up a dozen old newspapers and threw them in the large plastic trash can that sat next to the north wall. He dragged the trash can to the curb out of habit and stuck his hand in the empty mail box.

Inside he checked the doors, turned some of the lights on and off, and looked in the refrigerator where he found several bottles of water Beth had left for him the last time she was there.

He went to his study, turned on his computer, and checked his e-mail. Then he removed a file marked Joshua Issacharoff from his briefcase and laid it on his desk. He sipped occasionally on the water bottle as he turned the loose yellow pages torn from a legal pad that contained his notes from Issacharoff’s journals.

He called Beth’s cell. When the call went to voice mail, he left a good night message for her.

About ten o’clock, he got in bed and set his alarm for four in the morning. He tossed and turned until three o’clock when he got out of bed, took a shower, locked the house up, and got in the Camry. He went to an all night convenience store and filled his tank with gas. Before he left Kilgore, he cruised through downtown and admired the newly re-furbished sidewalks where halogen bulbs in iron street lamps simulated a day long past, a simpler time when he had walked from home to buy a candy bar at the five and dime store, now a video rental outlet.

He drove by the First Baptist Church, its steeple also bathed in artificial light. A sad grin came to his face when he thought of Brother Billy, ten years the minister of that church, where his loyal parishioners showed him the door when he wouldn’t violate his conscience.

He turned the Toyota towards U.S. Highway 31. He drove southwest and passed through Tyler and Athens. About five-thirty, he came upon a café with an open sign lighted in the window and a half-dozen beat up pickups in the parking lot.

He went inside and ordered the meat eaters deluxe breakfast that came with bacon, sausage, grits, hash browns, three eggs, biscuits, and gravy. The waitress came to his table every five minutes and filled his Dallas Cowboys coffee mug.

At a booth near the back of the room, a group of old men smoked cigarettes, drank coffee, and laughed as they talked hunting, football, and women.

When he went to the cash register to pay his bill, he noticed on the wall a large framed picture of J. Franklin Westmoreland. Someone had taped a hand-written note at the bottom of the portrait that said, “God Bless Prophet Westmoreland.”

•  •  •

By seven o’clock, Ert sat on a concrete bench near a picnic table at a roadside park a few miles south of Corsicana and watched the sun rise over the mesquite bushes. In a few minutes, he watched as a black limousine pulled off the highway and stopped at the far end of the park.

A man in a chauffeur uniform got out and looked around. When he spotted Ert, he hiked down the caliche drive to him.

“Ert Roberts?” he asked.

“I am. Who might you be?”

“Just call me Ralph, Mr. Roberts,” the man said. “Leon, I mean, Apostle Martinez, is in the car. He told me to fetch you,” Ralph said.

“Is he too good to bring his scrawny ass down here where I am?” Ert said.

“Could be, Mr. Roberts,” Ralph said as he winked at Ert.

“Sonofabitch,” Ert said as he stood up and walked along next to Ralph.

Leon was leaning against the limo when Ert reached it.

“I’ll take it from here, Ralph,” Leon said.

Ralph tipped his cap. “Wave when you’re ready to go,” he said as he walked back to the table where Ert had sat.

Ert and Leon looked each other up and down. Ert went to the picnic table closest to them and took a seat on the bench. Leon sat down across the table from him.

Leon looked at the sky and scanned the scrubby fields that surrounded the park. “The Lord has given us another beautiful day,” he said.

“Save that shit for your congregation, Martinez,” Ert said. “I’m here to find out if you can set aside your ambition long enough to save your people. Can you?”

“Bass Whitfield was nobody until 4/11. Don’t accuse me of fueling my ambition. He had the most to gain from the assassinations,” Leon shot back.

“There are some dumbasses in this world who probably believe that,” Ert said. “But you know better. I have firsthand accounts that put Ithurial Finis and you together in this deal. One or both of you have called the shots since before 4/11. And now you have taken out Flash Greenwald. He wasn’t even a threat to you. His fans would have forsaken him within a week. Don’t act like Bass Whitfield is the culprit,” Ert said.

Ert watched the expression on Leon’s face change when he made the revelation about his involvement with Finis. He knew he had landed a blow.

“Finis did Flash without any prompting from me,” Leon let slip before he could stop himself. He turned his back on Ert, took a few steps towards the car and then stopped and came back.

“You came all the way from Washington to talk to me. You must have something on your mind other than a bunch of false accusations,” Leon said trying to regain the upper hand.

Ert controlled his temper as he laid out the plan.

“We know that CM forces are preparing to move on Washington. If that happens we will cut you off and destroy your troops. All the preaching in the world won’t bring those boys back.”

“So?” Leon said.

“So, we want you to meet with Westmoreland and call off the invasion. If you agree to do so, we will convene a summit within the next thirty days and try to establish some ground rules for the peaceful co-existence of the two nations,” Ert said.