The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(95)

If not for the tape I would have thought him insane. But King’s distinctive voice had made clear those intentions.

“At the time I had so many reservations. You heard me resisting. It was decades later, when FBI documents finally became public, that I realized Martin had been right. In early 1968 Hoover stepped up the surveillance of Martin and again began to fan white fears with smear campaigns. What he was doing became so obvious, the Washington Post ran a story exposing it. We now know that in January of ’68 Hoover asked for more wiretap authority. But the attorney general said no. So he created another of his slanderous dossiers on Martin to try to convince his superiors of the threat Martin supposedly posed. It spoke of more sexual misconduct and possible communist influences. He circulated that document to the attorney general, the State Department, the CIA, the president, even the military. He was told no again on more wiretaps. But he went ahead anyway. Martin was correct. Hoover was never going to stop.”

“But to kill him? For King to want to die? That’s extreme on both sides, wouldn’t you say?”

“It was a different time in so many ways. A white establishment truly existed then. Hoover existed. Blacks were just beginning to come out from under the clouds of segregation and discrimination. But only baby steps had been taken. Martin’s ability to mold public opinion had diminished. The FBI wanted, using Jansen’s words, to knock him off his pedestal. Before they could succeed, though, he found a way to get ahead of them. I know now that it was the correct path.”

I continued to stare at the reel-to-reel recorder and recalled what Valdez had said about meeting with Hoover. When the kill order had been issued.

Late January 1968.

Right in the correct time frame.

“There was something else that worked in our favor,” Foster said. “By March of ’68 public opinion on the Vietnam War had gone negative. A majority no longer supported the war. That’s when LBJ lost the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy and withdrew from the presidential race. Jansen was really concerned about that. He told me Martin’s opposition to the war might no longer be an obstacle. He might even be deemed prophetic. They were scared he could have a resurgence. Martin had me use that fear to move them forward with the assassination.”

“Which makes his death wish even more puzzling. He could have weathered the PR storm.”

“He’d fought the fight for a long time. He told me the fact that white people might decide that the war was bad for them would mean nothing for the oppression of the black and the poor. He might win on one front, but lose on the other. He believed his death would cut across all of that. And it did.”

I recalled what Foster had told Coleen.

I loved Martin Luther King Jr. like a father. I admired him more than any man I’d ever known. I still do to this day. I would have never betrayed him.

“You really didn’t betray him,” I said.

“I did exactly as he wanted.”

“Why did he choose you to do it?”

Foster stayed silent a moment.

Then he explained.

“It has to be you,” King said. “Andy, Jesse, Ralph have all been with me for so long. That fact alone would never allow them to be a part of this. They also each have their own agendas, their own paths to follow. They are good, determined men. The movement will need them in the future, and they’ll make a difference. But you, Ben. You are lost, and have been for a long time.”

“I can do great things, too.”

The indignation in his voice was hard to conceal.

“I agree, but there are many different ways in which to do great things. I don’t say this with any malice in my heart, nor with any ill intent. But you are not meant to be a leader of this movement. There are captains and there are lieutenants. You are the latter, so your fate will be different from the others’. You have a talent for people, a way of sensing what they think and telling them precisely what they want to hear. But, like me, you are flawed. You’re searching, Ben, looking for something in your life. Whether that will be in the pulpit of a church remains to be seen. Maybe this will help you find what it is you are searching for. You’ve done a good job keeping me pointed in the right direction. I’ve come to depend on your watchful eye. When I decided that it was time for me to meet God, you were the only one I would want to make that happen.”

“I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or honored,” Foster said. “He essentially called me a con man. But he was right. He knew me better than I knew myself. I could con the FBI because I’d spent my life conning others. I was good at it. Ralph, Andy, Jesse—none of them ever liked me. I was tolerated because Martin liked me. The day after the assassination Ralph told me that my services, as a traveling secretary, were no longer needed. He fired me.”

“None of them had any idea what really happened?”

He shook his head. “The old proverb is true. The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller but one. Thankfully, Jansen never looked close enough to realize he was being played. Martin used to say I was a little bit of a lion, but more a fox.”

I grinned.

“The FBI cut me loose after Martin died, too. They gave me the coin and told me to disappear. That’s when I decided to go back to preaching. By then I’d changed. I was a different person. Martin’s death made me someone else entirely. A new man, one I came to embrace and like.”