“That was the officially sanctioned part of the operation. But now the Quail Hunter added his own twist. Once it became clear that Arabia had taken the bait, he sent Company agents into America to make contact with militia groups and start laying the groundwork for the post-invasion insurgency.
“The idea was to create a proxy army,” Koresh explained. “The Quail Hunter hadn’t told anyone in Austin about the mirage, and even if he had, there was no way they were going to authorize violent action against Arabian citizens—they were trying to avoid a war between the UAS and Texas! But the Quail Hunter realized he could use Americans to do the job for him—it’s not like they’d need much encouragement to take up arms against occupying troops. He’d let them bleed the Arabians for a while, and be bled in return, and then once he figured out which specific Arabs had stolen his birthright, he’d have a legion of battle-tested crusaders with no direct connection to him . . . It was a cunning plan.”
“And what were you doing while this cunning plan was taking shape?” Mustafa asked. “Playing in your sleep lab?”
“Labs, by that point,” Koresh said. “Mount Carmel was still my base of operations, but the Quail Hunter had converted a spare building on the Crawford campus over to artifact production as well. I traveled back and forth between the two sites and met with an in-house think tank whose job was to collate information from the objects we recovered. I kept the Quail Hunter informed of our progress.
“But what I was really doing, of course, was working on my scheme to bring the man down. His perversion of Operation Curveball alone was enough to get him removed from power—if I could get proof to the right people. And that was hardly the only abuse he’d committed: The Quail Hunter ran the CIA the way I’d used to run the Center.
“Of course he was extremely paranoid about security breaches, but the reign-of-terror mode he operated in didn’t exactly breed loyalty. A lot of people at Crawford hated his guts, and I managed to recruit some of them to the Waco faction. They told me secrets and stole documents for me.
“By mid-2004 I’d collected enough hard evidence to burn the Quail Hunter for sure. All I needed was someone high up in the government to report him to. I didn’t know anyone in Austin, but I had a few names. In particular there was this one elder statesman, H., who Lee Atwater had been friends with and who he’d always spoken very highly of.”
“H.?” said Mustafa.
“One of his middle initials,” Koresh explained. “People called him that to distinguish him from his oldest son, who was a family embarrassment. I’d never been introduced to H., but I knew if I could show him what I had, he’d be able to help me. The problem was getting to him. He wasn’t the sort of man you could just drop by and see, and I was afraid if I tried to make an appointment the Quail Hunter would find out somehow.
“Then one day an Austin dignitary named James Baker made a surprise visit to Crawford. Baker was another name I knew from Lee Atwater; he and H. were supposedly close. When Baker showed up, I was giving the Quail Hunter a report on the latest crop of artifacts. Instead of dismissing me, the Quail Hunter had me wait in his outer office. One of Baker’s aides was cooling his heels out there too, and we struck up a conversation.
“The aide’s name was Irving Liebowitz. While we made small talk, I tried to work up the nerve to slip him a note to pass to Baker. Then the Quail Hunter’s secretary got called away for a minute, and as soon as we were alone I just blurted it out: ‘I need you to get your boss to get me a meeting with H.’ ‘What about?’ Liebowitz said. ‘I can’t tell you here,’ I said, and nodded towards the inner office door, ‘but it’s a matter of national security. Please.’ Then the secretary came back and I couldn’t say any more, but Liebowitz gave me his card and told me to call him the next time I was in the capital.
“A few days later I had the Mount Carmel staff cover for me while I drove down to Austin. I called Liebowitz from a hotel and he agreed to come see me on his lunch hour. The deal was, I’d show him what I had, and if he agreed about the implications, he’d take my evidence to Baker and set up a meeting between me and H.
“I told him everything. I was worried how he’d react to the stuff about the mirage, but I’d brought some artifacts with me, and they made enough of an impression that at least he didn’t dismiss me as a nut. And he was very interested in my documents about Curveball and the other operations the Quail Hunter had subverted. ‘You were right to come forward with this,’ he said finally. He told me his boss had suspected for some time that the Quail Hunter was up to no good, but until now there’d been no way to pin anything on him.
“I wanted to go back with him to see Baker, but he said that wouldn’t work, he needed me to stay in the hotel room and wait for his call. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll only be a few hours,’ he promised. ‘Then I’ll send somebody to take you to H.’ I was so relieved, I almost cried. ‘Thank you, Mr. Liebowitz,’ I said. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘call me Libby. All my friends do.’
“So I waited, but he never called. I started getting nervous again. To calm myself I got out a Bible, but it slipped out of my hand and when it hit the floor it opened to Matthew 26—the chapter where Judas Iscariot conspires with the high priests. My blood ran cold when I saw that. I picked up the Bible and closed it and flipped it open at random. Luke 22: Judas and the high priests.
“I didn’t need a third warning. I walked out of the hotel and got in my car and laid rubber for Mount Carmel. I’d already worked out an exodus plan with the staff in case the worst happened, and now I called them on my cell and told them to be ready to go as soon as I got back.
“I stopped for gas outside Troy. Another car pulled in while I was using the restroom, and when I came out I recognized the driver as one of the Quail Hunter’s centurions. Then before I could react three other men blindsided me. They grabbed me, tasered me, and threw me in the trunk.
“If they’d taken me to Crawford I’m not sure how I would have escaped. But after we left the gas station I could tell from the sound the tires made that we weren’t following the main highway. I figured we were probably headed out into the county and the centurions’ orders were to dispose of me in some farmer’s field.”
“What did you do?” Mustafa asked.
“The only thing I could do,” David Koresh said. “I took a nap. I didn’t have any Elefaridol on me but I thought this once God would let me work the trick without it. I closed my eyes, started reciting, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ and by the time I got to ‘pray my soul to take,’ I was back in the burning building. Not trapped this time. Searching. Looking for a room where guns were kept . . . I found it just in time. Picked up a rifle, gripped it tight. Then the car stopped, the centurions opened the trunk, and I woke up and became death.
“One of the centurions managed to draw his own gun before I killed him.” Koresh placed a hand on his abdomen. “He got me here, same place Jesus was wounded. I was bleeding pretty bad, but I stayed conscious long enough to get back to the highway. I called the Center again and told them what mile marker I was at. Then I passed out.
“I woke up a day later in a caravan headed north. We’d already crossed the border into Oklahoma Territory and the staff told me everything was fine—we’d made a clean getaway. I knew that wasn’t true, though. While I was out, God had sent me another dream, a detailed prophecy. During the first stage of our exodus God had confounded our pursuers, made them think we’d gone south, but they’d realized their error now and the Quail Hunter was determined not to let us get away. His centurions were screaming up the road behind us with orders to kill us all . . . But God had arranged some reinforcements for us in Oklahoma City. I knew just where to go. And that was how we met Timothy.”