stepped out on the curb.
“Pick me up here in thirty minutes,” he said, not looking at the chauffeur as he hustled into the building.
Inside, the guards greeted him like an old friend and waved him through the metal detectors.
“Is Mr. Westmoreland in this afternoon?” he joked with them.
“He’s taken the afternoon off to play golf, I think,” one of the guards cracked back at him.
Leon took the elevator to the top floor of the building which had served as Westmoreland’s home away from home since May Day. When the jailer at the control panel saw it was Martinez, he buzzed him through the heavy steel doors, and another jailer escorted him to a private room, larger than those where the attorneys met with their clients. Leon paced back and forth like a fox chained to a clothesline pole as he waited for Westmoreland. In about a minute, the door to the room opened, and Westmoreland, dressed in an orange jump suit, walked in. They shook hands, and Westmoreland motioned for Leon to take a seat on one of two metal stools next to a dilapidated table pushed up against the wall on the side of the room.
“The Lord has told me that you would come bearing good news today,” J. Franklin said.
“I have indeed,” Leon said. “We have four state conventions slated for this weekend. The politicians in each state are quaking in their boots before the power of God.”
“As they should. Do we have firm commitments from our delegates that they will be willing to take courageous stands against the government that has brought us to this crisis?”
“They are awaiting the nod from you, Frank. If you give me the words to say, I will serve as your spokesman. Even the Texas governor is prepared to join the movement at your urging,” Martinez said.
Westmoreland reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of letter-size, hand-written documents, folded in half long ways.
“Study these, my friend, and find your own voice,” Westmoreland said.
Then he reached into a pocket sewed into the inside of his jumpsuit. This time he brought out an even larger sheaf of papers, also hand-written. “In the twenty-five days I have sat in this prison, the Lord has moved on my heart daily. I am convinced that my presence here is for a purpose, and I am dedicated to fulfilling it. These are the initial pages of a work he has led me to entitle ‘God’s Struggle.’ Please guard them with your life until you deliver them to Stanley Nussbaum, a friend who runs a small press in Charlotte, North Carolina. His address is on the back page. He will handle the rest.”
Martinez accepted the papers like a person handling the Hope Diamond. “I will not sleep until I have placed them in his hands,” he said.
“I look forward to your next report, my son. The Lord is using you in a mighty way to build his kingdom,” Westmoreland said.
The two men rose and embraced. Westmoreland beat on the locked door to their conference room a couple of times to call for the jailer who responded immediately and took him back to his cell. In a few moments, the jailer returned and escorted Martinez through the steel door that led to the free world. Leon Martinez took the elevator to the ground floor and walked out of a meeting with one of the most high security prisoners in federal custody without ever suffering the indignity of a search.
When he walked out on the sidewalk, his chauffeur stood at attention near the opened rear door of the limo. The driver waited until Martinez was in the back seat, closed the door for him, walked around the rear of the car and took the driver’s seat.
“Ralph, take me to the Hermitage Hotel. I need to get some shut eye,” Leon said as he grabbed a bottle of Glenlivet from the limo bar and poured himself three fingers neat.
CHAPTER 12
FRIDAY BEFORE MEMORIAL Day, Ert and Beth Roberts sat next to each other in a Southwest Airlines jet on final approach to Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. Since 4/11, they had