NEXT BEST HOPE (The Revelation Trilogy) (28 page)

“I understand, sir. I’ll keep you informed,” the general said.

Frank spun around in his chair and looked at Leon. “I’ll let you know when I need your advice, Leon. Don’t burst in on me like that again.”

“You’re getting a little huffy, aren’t you, Frank? We got here together, didn’t we?” Leon said.

Westmoreland stood up and looked at the wall of flat screen monitors that were streaming real time video about troop movements. His face was blank as he tried to process all the information.

“You’re right, Leon. I guess the pressures of war and governing have frazzled my nerves. Take a seat at the table, and I’ll brief you on recent developments,” he said.

“I can handle that for you, Prophet Westmoreland,” Stanley said.

“Sure. I forgot Stanley was my intermediary with your office,” Frank said. “He will fill you in.”

“I’d rather hear it from you, Frank,” Leon said, refusing to follow Stanley to his office.

Stanley walked to where Leon sat in his chair, grabbed his arm, leaned down and whispered in his ear. “If you want a briefing, you’ll get it from me. If that doesn’t satisfy you, then haul your ass out of here, and we’ll see you in the Supreme Court of New Israel.”

Leon leaned close to Stanley and whispered back to him, “Fuck you.” He grabbed the arms of his chair and waited for Westmoreland’s briefing.

“Go ahead, Prophet Westmoreland,” Martinez said.

J. Franklin walked to the map on the wall and took a pointer in his hand. Before he could detail troop movements for Leon, the door to the War Room opened again unannounced. The men turned their heads and tried not to look surprised when a mountain of a man entered the room, walked to the blackboard, studied it and took the pointer out of Frank’s hand.

“It’s a trap,” Ithurial Finis said looking at the map. “The federals will come in behind you and close off the path of your retreat. Your advance to Washington will mean nothing but your certain defeat.” He threw the pointer on the conference table and sat down next to Leon.

“The showdown is in Washington. If we win there, the country is ours,” Westmoreland said. “The people are ready to follow our lead.”

“The people don’t have a clue,” Finis said. “When I came to you and Leon and told you what I was thinking, I explained that this wasn’t a democratic process. If you want to follow the Lord, you don’t ask for a vote or a show of hands. You strike against his enemies. The only way you can come out the winner in this scenario is to strike Bass Whitfield. No compromise will work. If you agree, I will help you; if not, I put you on notice that I fight for the Lord, not for you.”

“Don’t come in here and threaten us,” Westmoreland said.

Finis drew his Smith and Wesson .357 caliber revolver from his shoulder holster and pointed it at Leon’s head. He cocked it and put his finger on the hair trigger. He reached into Leon’s pocket and drew out the apostle’s Glock 9 mm semiautomatic pistol. Before Finis threw it down on the floor, he sniffed the barrel and looked at Leon like he had just learned something that surprised him.

“One of your own sits here with a loaded pistol in his pocket, and you worry about me?” Finis said. “He has killed already; he will kill again if the need arises.”

Stanley and Frank looked at Leon, who tried to hide his face from them.

“Where’s Ralph?” Stanley said.

“Floating face down in the Trinity last time I saw him,” Leon said. “He was a spy for the federals, so I had to put an end to it.”

Stanley sat down in a chair at the conference table and put his head in his hands. After a couple of minutes, he raised his head.

“He wasn’t spying for the federals. He was working for me,” he said.

“For you?” Leon said in disbelief.

“Yeah. I needed to know if you planned to betray us. Ralph agreed to help me keep tabs on you,” Stanley said.

Finis looked at all three men with contempt. “I haven’t come this far to see our plans falter. We will prevail if we hold our course. Push to Washington, but don’t forsake the Lord at the crucial moment.” He looked at Frank. “If you do,” he said, “you will have to answer to me. Are we clear?”

“We’re clear,” Westmoreland said.

“Good. I’ll see you in the District six days from now where we will celebrate the coming of the kingdom of God.”

Finis stood up and backed towards the door with his pistol cocked. He released the tension on the hammer and holstered the gun. Before he walked out the door, he put his right hand to his forehead in a mock salute. When he saw that the men were frozen in their places, he closed the door gently behind him. As he walked out of the executive suites, he smiled at the office workers who recognized him from his football days. One lady grabbed a picture of Finis in his football jersey that she had pinned to the wall of her cubby.

“I would sure appreciate an autograph, Mr. Finis,” she said.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” he said. “How should I address it?”

“How about, ‘To Judy in the name of the Lord,’” she said.

Ithurial Finis signed his autograph, waved to the crowd that had gathered in the room, opened the door to the stairwell and started to enter it.

“I prefer to walk down. It’s better for your health,” he said as he closed the door behind him, walked down the flight of stairs and exited the building. He went to his Altima on the curb, got in and drove slowly down the narrow street.

•  •  •

At the hotel across the Interstate, Brown had watched the meeting. His hearing device, capable of zeroing in on voices at a distance of a thousand yards, had recorded the entire conversation in the War Room.

He took pictures of Finis as he got in his car and headed toward the north bound ramp of Interstate 35. As he watched, Finis’ vehicle waited at the intersection for the light to change and moved away from the white line towards the ramp. At the last minute, the car made a sudden left hand turn and headed towards downtown instead.

“Shit,” Brown said as he threw his camera in his bag and hightailed it out the door of his hotel room. He punched the lighted number one on the elevator floor number pad a dozen times waiting for the door to shut. As the elevator lowered slowly to the first floor, he chambered a round in his 1911 model .45-caliber pistol, braced himself against the back wall and prepared for the worst. At the last minute, he punched the lighted number two. When the door opened on the second floor, he stuck his head out, saw the path was clear and ran down the hall to the stairwell.

In the lobby, Ithurial Finis waited for the elevator to reach the ground floor. He rested his hand on the wooden grip of the Smith and Wesson revolver hidden under his jacket and looked as relaxed as a high school football coach come to town to watch the Baylor Bears work out.

When he saw the elevator door about to open, he positioned himself out of sight of anyone who might step off and waited. When no one came off the elevator, he glanced both ways and charged down the hall to what he figured was the exterior door leading out of the stairwell. As he opened the door from the hallway, he saw the outside door swing shut behind someone. He started to blast through the door but stopped short. He went back through the door to the hallway and ran out the lobby just in time to see a green Camaro as it screeched around the corner and disappeared into the night.

“I have one more stop to make before I see you again in Washington, Agent Brown,” Ithurial said.

He holstered his revolver and went to the Altima. When he pulled out of the hotel parking lot, he drove southeast out of town until he intersected U. S. Highway 6. He followed it south to Houston, looped around Interstate 610 to the east side of the city and picked up Interstate 10. Near the Louisiana border, he exited the Interstate and wound his way along back roads to avoid the federal checkpoint. Once he crossed the state line, he rejoined I-10, passed through Lafayette and Baton Rouge, took the Y to the right where Interstate 10 split into Interstate 12 and 10 and crossed the Lake Pontchartrain Bridge outside New Orleans as the sun came up.

In a hotel overlooking Bourbon Street, he took a room and slept like a baby until mid-afternoon.

ARCENEAU THIBODEAUX BELIEVED
in doing the right thing, but he liked to bet on winners. Because of his revered status as the state’s leading statesman, he almost single-handedly had kept Louisiana in the federal camp, despite the flack he took following the Battle of the Mississippi Bridge.

He sat in his study at his Garden District home and made phone calls to some of his more powerful constituents to reassure them that they must stay the course.

“I’ve seen national crises before,” he said. “These things run their cycle and things calm down. Trust me. A year from now, we’ll look back on this period and thank our lucky stars that we stayed put.”

He hung up the phone just as his auburn-haired daughter knocked at the door.

“You have company, daddy,” she said with her usual lilt in her voice.

“Who is it?”

“Our friend, Congressman Farragut,” she said.

“What does he want?” Arceneau asked.

“I didn’t question his intentions. I’m just the messenger,” she said as she winked at her dad.

“Okay. Show him in,” Thibodeaux said.

In a minute, Farragut walked into the study. If he had had a hat, he would have had it in his hands.

Thibodeaux rose from his chair and shook Farragut’s hand. He asked him to have a seat.

“To what do I owe this honor, Mr. Minority Leader?” Arceneau said.

“The honor is mine,” Farragut said as he looked around the room at the mementos that hung on the wall, a pictorial history of Thibodeaux’s storied career on the political scene of the United States and his beloved Louisiana.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Farragut said.

“Please,” Arceneau said.

“I have misplayed my hand in this whole mess. I should have realized the wisdom of your position long before you had to put me in my place. I want to wipe the slate clean and pledge my full support for Louisiana’s continued existence as part of the Federal Union,” he said.

Thibodeaux had conducted many such interviews. He knew it was the nature of a scorpion to sting.

“That warms my heart, Congressman. But you know that reversing yourself on this issue will cost you dearly in the polls. Your strongest supporters may abandon you,” Arceneau said.

“I am not making this move for my own personal political gain,” Farragut said.

Thibodeaux knew that was a lie.

“Why are you doing it, then?” Arceneau asked.

“Because I believe it is the right thing, the moral thing. And it will in the long run be the best thing for the state of Louisiana.”

“If it is good for Louisiana, it may ultimately be good for those of us who stood firm with the Union,” Thibodeaux said. “By doing the right thing, you may see your political star ascend again.”

“I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, Congressman. But I think you may be right. If Bass Whitfield carries the day, he may want to reward the faithful who did not forsake him.”

“Indeed,” Arceneau said.

Thibodeaux rose from his chair again as a sign to Farragut that the audience was over. Arceneau escorted him to the front door. Before he opened the door, he shook hands with Farragut again.

“I’m glad we’re on the same team, Congressman Farragut. I look forward to working with you in these difficult times,” he said.

After he shut the door behind Farragut, Thibodeaux saw his daughter waiting in the next room where she had eavesdropped on his parting remarks.

“You’re a smooth one, daddy,” she said.

“Farragut is an asshole, but he’s our asshole for the time being. Would you care to take a stroll through the neighborhood with your old man?”

“My pleasure,” she said.

They donned wide-brimmed straw hats to protect themselves from the late spring afternoon sun. Arceneau grabbed his Sam Houston cane, and they walked hand in hand along the sidewalk, admiring the azaleas on both sides of the street.

“What do you really think will happen between the Federals and the CM?” his daughter asked him after a while.

“I’ve thought a lot about it, but I am still confused about the outcome,” he said. “The Federals have too much fire power for the CM to ever take them by force. The question is whether the American people will accept the message of J. Franklin Westmoreland. We would all like to see the kingdom of God become a reality here and now. But if there is anything I have learned in all these years at the State House, it is that people, not angels or prophets, are the ones who manage government. Those people fall into two groups, corrupt and less corrupt. God seldom has anything to do with it.”

“You’re not corrupt, daddy,” she said as she patted him on the arm.

“I prefer to put myself in the ‘less corrupt’ category,” he said.

A few blocks from their house, they turned down another tree-lined lane and began to work their way home.

They heard a car pull up next to them from the rear. The driver rolled the passenger window down.

“Pardon me, folks,” the driver said. “I seem to have gotten turned around. Can you direct me to the Tulane Law School complex?”

Thibodeaux and his daughter stepped next to the lowered window and smiled at the driver.

“Sure. You’re just a couple of blocks from there,” Arceneau said.

Before he could give the man directions, two explosions less than a second apart erupted from the passenger compartment of the silver Altima. The blasts knocked the bodies of Congressman Thibodeaux and his auburn-haired daughter back from the car, where they crumpled on the ground. The driver put his car in park, got out and walked to the curb. He fired a second shot into each of their heads, got back in the Nissan and drove away.

When he got to the corner where the residential street intersected St. Charles Avenue, he looked to his left where ambulances and fire trucks blocked the streets. Next to a streetcar stop, EMTs worked on a man in a desperate attempt to revive him. Finis saw them as they gave up their efforts and draped a white sheet over the body of Congressman Farragut.