“I’m not going to—”
Grafton spoke, which cut off Molina. “Sarah.”
She was seated at the end of the table. She had her computer out of its case and was fiddling with the keyboard. “I bugged the White House,” she said, “at Admiral Grafton’s order. We used every electronic device in the White House as a listening device, including computers and cell phones.”
Molina turned ashen.
“Including yours, Mr. Molina, and President Soetoro’s.”
Molina gaped at her. The way she said it, matter-of-factly, as if she were making a report to her boss, made it impossible to disbelieve her. Then Sarah pushed a button.
The president’s voice came from the speaker, quite plain. “Martial law will give us the opportunity to remake America the way it should be, take charge of industries and banks, tax the rich, redistribute income, give full citizenship to illegals, take power from the states, and rule from Washington. We’ll make America into a progressive socialist country that all of us will be proud to live in, and, incidentally, we’ll make a good start on saving the planet.”
Molina’s voice: “It won’t work, Mr. President. The majority of Americans will never approve. Revolutions from the top down never work. You can’t take the American people where they don’t want to go.”
Sarah pushed a key and the sound stopped. She hit a few more and closed the computer.
In the silence that followed, Molina turned his attention to Jake Grafton, who had his eyes on him.
Jack Yocke broke the silence with a question aimed at Sarah. “What have you done to that file?”
“The background noises have been digitally suppressed so the speakers’ voices are clearer. That’s it.”
He grunted and faced Jake Grafton. “You knew that they were waiting. For a terrorist incident? Did they arrange those incidents?”
Grafton turned those gray eyes on the reporter. “They let those people into the country, lied about the vetting they would receive. They played for a terrorist incident, or incidents, and they got them. Considering who they were letting into the country, it would have been a miracle if there weren’t any terror strikes.”
“You could have stopped it. Hundreds of innocent people were killed. Obviously you didn’t stop it.”
“And just how do you think I should have accomplished that feat?”
“You sacrificed those people.”
Grafton’s face didn’t even twitch.
“You are a ruthless man, Admiral,” Yocke said softly.
“I think this has gone quite far enough,” the admiral said. “Jack, go find someone to interview. You might start with Congressman Jerry Marquart. I am sure he has quite a story to tell.” His eyes moved to Molina. “You stay,” he said.
Yocke stomped out with little grace. That’s the free press for you. When the door to the room was once again closed, Grafton said, “I think it is time for a confession from you, Sal. Not one in the hearing of the Washington Post, but here before me and Sarah and these men who risked their lives to drag us out of that concentration camp a few hundred yards away.”
Molina seemed to have shriveled and aged ten years. He tried to compose himself, but it was a lost effort.
“Let me start your confession for you,” Jake Grafton said. “You were never Barry Soetoro’s advisor — you were his controller. Your boss is Anton Hunt, the billionaire left-wing financier. He created Barry Soetoro, and you were there to tell him what to do, to make him obey Anton Hunt, so he could make more billions and create the kind of world he thought we all should live in.”
Molina licked his lips. “I—”
Grafton smacked the table a healthy lick with his palm. It sounded like a pistol shot. “I’ll do the talking. You even suggested that Soetoro arrest me as one of the conspirators in the fake plot to take over the government. You argued that spies are easy to blame, and people would automatically give credence to any story of nefarious activities at the CIA. When you reported Soetoro’s plans to Anton Hunt, he was horrified. He hadn’t signed on to a communist dictatorship.
“He thought Soetoro was a black man of modest intelligence with a good gift of gab who would be grateful for all Hunt had done to lift him to the highest place in America and make him the most powerful man in the world. He thought he could control Barry Soetoro because he had written evidence of all he had done for him: a fake birth certificate, passport applications removed from the State Department, bribes to get him into school, bribes to conceal his academic records, all of it. He thought the evidence would ruin Soetoro if it ever came out, but the evidence was a two-edged sword. Soetoro knew the evidence would also take down Anton Hunt, so Hunt didn’t dare to ever reveal it.”
Molina licked his lips and wiped a sheen of perspiration from his forehead.
“But somewhere along the line,” Grafton continued, “Hunt began to realize that he had no control over Soetoro, but the reverse was true. Soetoro controlled him. Perhaps the revelation occurred when Soetoro demanded Hunt fund demonstrators to protest racial injustice, demonstrations designed to drive a wedge between white and black America. Or perhaps the light dawned for Hunt when Soetoro sacrificed an ambassador and several Marines to the Taliban. Perhaps you can tell us, Sal. When did Hunt see the evil in Soetoro?”
Sal Molina was staring at the tabletop.
“Certainly both of you were in no doubt when Soetoro plotted martial law and suspension of the Constitution. You knew then, didn’t you, Sal?”
Silence.
“Answer me!” Grafton roared.
“Yes.”
“One of the most amazing things I heard on Sarah’s eavesdropping program was Soetoro telling you that Hunt thought he had a nigger slave in the White House, and the nigger had made a slave of him. And he made a slave of you, the slave driver. Do you remember that? Remember his laughter?”
“He’s a monster,” Molina whispered. “He loathes white people. He wants to rule a nonwhite America. He’s willing to ignite a race war, burn America, and rule in the ashes.”
“And you didn’t think it would work.” That wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“I didn’t,” Molina said.
“You argued, unsuccessfully, and only managed to convince him you were disloyal and a danger, so he sent you to the gulag.”
Grafton leaned back in his seat, his eyes fixed on Molina. “You were lucky that sadist Sluggo Sweatt decided to have his fun with me before he got to you, because Soetoro wanted you dead. But Soetoro gave Sweatt his priorities. First the scapegoat, then the traitor.”
“You don’t know that,” Sal Molina whispered.
“I deduce it. I thought it was a stroke of luck that FEMA brought me to the concentration camp here at Dawson, because that is where we — my friends and I — agreed to rendezvous two weeks after Soetoro declared martial law. Then Sweatt began his program of forcing a confession. The irony is, I was and am guilty of a conspiracy to remove the president of the United States from power, which was Sweatt’s accusation. I thought it likely he would beat me to death.
“Not that my death would have made any difference. If I weren’t here, the others still would be. There are two thousand five hundred men and women here at Camp Dawson, and they are committed to the hilt. It’s victory or death for them. If they don’t kill Soetoro, he will kill them. They understand that.”
Grafton smacked the table again. “Yocke accused me of being ruthless. I am. The life of the United States is at stake. If I had thought it could be done, I would have shot Soetoro myself.” He pointed his finger at Molina. “If I thought your death would move Soetoro one inch away from the White House, make an iota of difference, I would shoot you myself, here and now. Do you understand?”