The Eye of Moloch (52 page)
“But all that’s in the future. For now, we have some new resources that will help sustain us through these early days, and we also have new friends who’ll do the same.
“I want to welcome all of you. It’s not going to be easy, but I doubt any one of you would really expect it to be. You know, as I do, that our rewards will only come from the trials of the struggle ahead.”
Noah looked around at all the faces before him and it occurred to him then that he should stop now, and take his own good advice. There’d been more than enough said already; it was time to begin to do. With a few closing words the meeting was over and he bid them all good night.
• • •
Despite what Hollis had said about him, that dog seemed to have taken an immediate shine to his new roommate. On Noah’s walk home the animal emerged silently from some hunting expedition in the nearby woods and sauntered up beside him, and then stayed with him all along the way.
When he was almost to the cabin, Noah paused at a great granite stone that had been hauled up and placed to the side of the main trail. The dog sat beside him, and waited.
This was the stone that would serve as the basis of the monument he’d mentioned to the crowd. It was still quite rough from the quarry and would take a great deal of work and polish before it was done. But when it was completed, it would no doubt still be standing with its message for a thousand years to come.
A stencil had been perfectly hand-lettered and taped in place to serve as a guide for the stonecutter’s chisel. Noah read over the closing words there, and when he was finished he read them once again, aloud.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:
’tis dearness only that gives everything its value.
Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed
if so celestial an article as freedom
should not be highly rated.
There weren’t going to be any names carved on this memorial stone. There would be far too many, and too many more were still to come. This fight had been going on since the dawn of man and it certainly showed no signs of ending anytime soon.
He took it slow along the path as he walked the rest of the way, and when he reached the cabin he found his friend there, already tending to some minor maintenance around the hearth.
“Nice speech,” Hollis said.
“Thanks. Hey, I need your help with something. Probably you and Lana and Tyler.”
“Just name it.”
“Back in Colorado, Ira Gershon gave me a little radio to listen to, something Molly’s people—” He stopped himself. “Something
our
people used to stay in touch in that prison. It was just some wires and a few pieces cobbled together; it didn’t even need a battery. I wish I could show it to you but I had to leave it behind.”
“Sounds like an old foxhole radio. Hell, I just need a coil, a razor blade, a pencil lead, and a safety pin, and I can toss together one of those before lunch tomorrow. If I can dig up a crystal and a cat’s whisker it’ll be even better, just like uptown.”
“No, I don’t need a receiver,” Noah said. “I’m going to need a transmitter.”
Hollis thought about that for a moment, and then he smiled and stood to leave. “Okay, then. I’ll see you in the morning.”
When he’d gone Noah found that though he was tired he wasn’t quite ready for sleep. He went to the front window, where the dog, Cody, was again sitting and watching the landscape, as though a loved one might still be out there, trying to find her way home.
Noah had little idea of what the coming day would bring. He wasn’t certain of very much, in fact, but he knew one thing for sure. Now he had what he’d lacked for so many wasted years. Now he had a mission.
Aaron Doyle and his minions, Warren Landers, if he was still out there alive and scheming—they would all soon be wishing for the days when they had only Molly Ross to worry about.
A
s morning came to his desert paradise, as the dawn’s first light touched the very pinnacle of his crystal palace in Dubai, Aaron Doyle stood at the tall, wide windows and listened to the rain begin to fall.
This time it wasn’t any mere man-made shower that he’d summoned for his own brief amusement. As uncanny as it was in this arid climate, these angry clouds had formed completely of their own accord. As he’d watched, they spread and filled and darkened, they flashed and rumbled, moving slowly inland from the roiling sea at the bidding of the hand of another.
The storm worsened, the overcast advanced to hide the eastern sun. He felt something arising within him, something that had been rare indeed through the many triumphs and defeats in his long, storied life.
For just one terrible moment, he was afraid.
The doubt lingered only briefly and then it was gone, and then a comforting fury rushed in to fill the awful vacuum in his heart. On an impulse he pushed open the sliding door and the violent wind and rain lashed in and nearly struck him down. But he kept his feet beneath him,
fought back into the face of the tempest, reached out blind, and staggered to the rail.
“Here I stand!” Doyle shouted. “And here I’ll stand against you, to the end!”
He raised his spindly arm and shook his fist to the heavens, bellowing his rage over the rising thunder, and as he swore damnation on anyone or anything that would ever dare to challenge him again, he felt more alive than he had in many years.
• • •
When they’d searched for their frail master and spotted him through the windows, the servants were so overcome with worry that a brave few finally risked his wrath to venture out onto the narrow balcony and bring him back inside.
They’d walked him to his study, and there he sat before the fire, wrapped in thick blankets and surrounded by fussing caretakers. There was no need for all this concern; he was strong again, so strong it was far beyond their understanding. He sat up when he could endure no more coddling and dismissed them with a motion of his hand.
He had wasted several precious days in the doldrums, but that was over now. Embraced in the solace of all his relics and his priceless material things, he collected his thoughts and considered his options in the light of the recent events.
These latest developments had been quite unexpected, but how invigorating it was to have the gauntlet thrown down before him once again. It was a new beginning; the game was now reset to its starting positions. Though he harbored no real doubt of his ultimate victory, he felt eager as a child for this final, deciding contest to commence.
Aaron Doyle looked across the ancient chessboard, and gave a sly old smile to the empty chair on the other side.
“Very well, then, Mr. Gardner,” he said. “Your move.”
As readers of
The Overton Window
already know, I love “faction”—fictional novels that are rooted in fact.
The Eye of Moloch
fits that genre well, and I hope you’ll spend some time searching online for any of the words or events included in the story that you suspect might have some truth to them.
I don’t want to ruin
all
of the surprises, but here are a few things to get your hunt started.
In Chapter 1
we see the impressive strength of the country’s domestic weapons arsenal. The following information gives a look into some of the known capabilities of the Department of Homeland Security.
“Modernizing the Department of Homeland Security’s Aerial Fleets,”
Lexington Institute,
Daniel Goure, February 29, 2012,
http://bit.ly/10381jR
.
“Why Is the Department of Homeland Security Buying So Many Bullets?”
Fox News,
February 14, 2013,
http://fxn.ws/YhfT2r
.
“Homeland Security Is Serving Warrants Using Mine-Resistant Vehicles,”
Business Insider,
March 4, 2012,
http://read.bi/13sAGH3
.
In Chapter 3
there is a reference to George Lincoln Rockwell. He
was the founder of the American Nazi Party and continues to be an influential figure for the Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists of today. He believed all blacks in America should be deported to Africa and every Jew dispossessed and sterilized. He was assassinated in 1967.
“1967: American Hitler Shot Dead,”
BBC,
August 25, 2005,
http://bbc.in/9OSe0w
.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/25/newsid_3031000/3031928.stm
.
William H. Schmaltz,
Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party,
(Brasseys, Inc., 2001),
http://bit.ly/ZvXvFY
.
More from Chapter 3:
America has its own history with the Nazi Party. In February of 1939, twenty thousand supporters attended a German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden. Among other things, the speakers condemned President “Franklin D. Rosenfeld” and his “Jew Deal.”
“German-American Bund Rally Address by Its Leader Fritz Kuhn,”
National Archives,
February 20, 1939,
http://1.usa.gov/ZvXTUU
.
Though George Pierce’s character was created for the story, it is true that at least one American who had past associations with the Ku Klux Klan was voted into office. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke was elected into the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989.
“Winner in Louisiana Vote Takes on G.O.P. Chairman,” Frances Frank Marcus,
New York Times,
February 20, 1989,
http://nyti.ms/17K7BGF
.
In depicting radical white-supremacists as the muscle behind enemy actions, we were faced with the need to use some particularly ugly and objectionable words in dialogue. For the worst of it, then, it seemed best to use actual quotes from some prominent public figures who’d largely been given a pass for their language by the press. Some of the racist and bigoted phrases used by the George Pierce character are among these. For example, in 2007 Joe Biden described then-Senator Obama as “articulate, and bright, and clean.” In a 2008 campaign interview, Obama outlined some negative characteristics of the “typical
white person” and Senator Harry Reid reportedly said that Obama was a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
“Biden’s Description of Obama Draws Scrutiny,”
CNN,
February 9, 2007,
http://bit.ly/17tRjyL
.
“Barack Obama Tries to Explain That ‘Good People’ Still Hold Racial Stereotypes,” Michael McAuliff & Michael Saul,
New York Daily News,
March 21, 2008,
http://nydn.us/1778iZo
.
“Reid Once Called Obama Light-skinned with ‘No Negro Dialect,’ Media Mostly Mum,” Noel Sheppard,
NewsBusters,
January 9, 2010,
http://bit.ly/6D08kt
.
Some of the racist comments that George Pierce uttered to Molly Ross are references to actual quotes from President Harry Truman and the late Senator Robert Byrd. For example, in a 1911 letter to his wife, Truman wrote, “I think one man is just as good as another as long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman.”
“The Conversion of Harry Truman,” William E. Leuchtenburg,
American Heritage,
November 1991,
http://bit.ly/11aoAQL
.
In 2001, former KKK recruiter turned Democratic senator, Robert Byrd, said, “My old mom told me, ‘Robert, you can’t go to heaven if you hate anybody.’ We practice that. There are white niggers. I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time. I’m going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I’d just as soon quit talking about it so much.”
“Top Senate Democrat Apologizes for Slur,”
CNN,
March 4, 2001,
http://bit.ly/1038JxI
.
When George Pierce says, “This is your army. We’re ready to march. Now let’s do what we have to do and take these sons of bitches out,” he’s repeating a quote from Teamsters president James Hoffa. Hoffa was appealing to President Obama in 2011, urging an open offensive against the Tea Party.