campaign manager and put Dennis Spain in charge of his reelection.
As a political strategist, Spain was magic. While still in college, he’d ingratiated himself with New Jersey state politicos and key members of the tristate media. From his decade aiding then running local election campaigns — in New Jersey, then New York— Spain had learned all the simple but effective tricks, and in Cheever’s senatorial race he used every one of them with ruthless precision.
Most effective were the Sunday morning press conferences Spain had instituted. In the campaign manager’s deft hands, they became a forum to announce programs and initiatives, to spotlight “problems and concerns,” to highlight studies by think tanks that supported his political stands. Whether, in the end, anything truly useful came out of Cheever’s announced agendas was beside the point. The press conferences became a way for Senator Cheever to showcase himself. On a slow news day like Sunday, Senator Cheever always got his mug on the evening news, complete with a pithy sound bite penned by his campaign consultants. Constituents would be left with the impression of the Senator’s diligence and effectiveness, which would be the basis for his next reelection campaign — because, of course, when it came to politics, impressions were always, always more important than results.
It was Dennis Spain who taught Cheever how to cozy up to the policemen’s union and the professional class of political malcontents and activists at the same time, using the very same tactics with both. “Just tell them all what they want to hear,” Spain advised his boss — and it worked. Within six months of Spain’s coming aboard, with a handpicked advance team, speech writer, and key media contacts, major magazines and newspapers were all publishing stories about “the new Senator Cheever.”
Under Spain’s tutelage, the former lame duck breezed through the primary and won reelection with a handy two-to-one margin over his rival. Since that time, Dennis Spain had guided Cheever’s political activities as well. Spain drafted legislation for the Senator to propose, wrote policy speeches for the Senator to deliver. More importantly, Spain used the Senator’s years of senatorial service as clout. Using Cheever’s seniority, Spain muscled him onto several important committees and steering commissions. One of them was the newly minted Air Transportation and Travel Committee, established to recommend ways in which the deregulated airline industry could more efficiently operate in a climate of rising oil prices and falling revenues.
It was a powerful committee, and one that immediately attracted the attention of lobbyists for the airline industry, and through them, the top airline CEOs themselves.
Dennis Spain reached for his telephone. He would begin today’s frantic schedule by phoning the CEOs of those very airlines, to remind them of a critical video conference on the future of the American airline industry, hosted by Senator William S. Cheever, Chairman of the Air Transportation and Travel Committee, scheduled for four-forty-five p.m. that very afternoon.
13. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 9 A.M. AND 10 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
Nina dropped her reading glasses onto the desk, rubbed her tired eyes. When she refocused on the monitor she had to fight to keep the lines from blurring. For the past hour she’d been examining the last five years’ worth of state and federal tax records for the Green Dragon Computers store in Little Tokyo.
Hundreds of digital pages had to be scanned, but no computer could do the job right. Only a human analyst possessed the skill and intuition to find the tiny jewels buried in the reams of worthless data. The process was time consuming and labor intensive, but at the end of sixty minutes, Nina had managed to narrow her search to four promising references.
During a second pass, two of those items were eliminated immediately. But a third clue produced unexpected results. According to the records, one of the most lucrative customers in Green Dragon’s Little Tokyo store was Prolix Security, a New York City firm with no offices in Los Angeles.
Nina knew immediately that the facts didn’t compute — why would a Manhattan company do business with a store in LA when there were plenty of franchises in New York City?
A cross-check of Prolix Security records produced a revelation, and a clear connection to terrorist activities. In the last eighteen months, huge sums of money had been funneled from Prolix’s Security to several Banque Swiss accounts in Zurich, Switzerland. Other transactions involved the Iraqi government — though
U.S. businesses were restricted from trade with Sad-dam Hussein except through the United Nations Oilfor- Food Program.
But Nina knew those weren’t the real leads.
The important discovery involved the ownership of the firm. Though the company had been established in 1986, Prolix had just recently been acquired by a former insurance executive named Felix Tanner — the same name Jack’s female informant Caitlin had mentioned during an interrogation about the Lynch brothers.
Putting aside her other tasks, Nina Myers concentrated on finding out everything she could about Felix Tanner.
Griffin Lynch tramped on the gas. Tires shrieking, the Mercedes swung around the lumbering delivery van, then swerved in front of it. The Boar’s Head meats truck skidded to a halt, the driver bellowing a curse at what looked like the typical New York asshole businessman — silver hair, well-dressed, and in a hurry. In seconds the black Mercedes was gone, zooming down Roosevelt Avenue under the shade of the elevated train tracks.
The day was already hot. With the window down, the clattering subway rolling overhead drowned out almost everything else. Cars double-parked along the busy avenue made vehicular progress slow. Griff clutched the steering wheel impatiently, even though the pub was only a few blocks away.
He was more than a little bit cheesed at Shamus. Bloody brilliant of the boy not to show at the shop, this morning of all mornings, thought Griff. With so much to do, so many loose ends to tie up and final decisions to be made, Shamus was behaving like a tool. Bad enough he’d been more interested in fast-money deals with the local swains than taking care of their real business. Now the boyo’d vanished, along with the pub sketch he’d been shagging. Griff had been calling Shamus repeatedly since eight-thirty, but no one at The Last Celt would answer the bloody phone. With zero hour less than half a day away, Griff had no choice but to get in the car himself and drive to the pub.
It was bloody reckless of Shamus to act so irresponsibly, but Griff wasn’t all that surprised. He’d noticed changes in his brother over the past few months. At first Griff assumed it was Caitlin. Since the explosion that maimed Griff so badly, the joys of women were denied him, but he hadn’t forgotten the power of the mating urge. Griff indulged his younger brother’s need to get his hole now and then — but when he compared his brother’s professional attitude in Somalia to his fuck-ups lately, he realized Shamus hadn’t been the same since they’d set up shop in New York City.
It was the seductive lure of the fast-money American way that warped him, Griff knew. Shamus would rather remain in New York and exploit the opportunities at hand than go for a really big score and retire in a banana republic with a fat bank account. Not that his little brother had directly challenged Griff’s plans. But it was obvious enough to Griff that Shamus wanted to stay.
The boy just didn’t understand. Living in America was an impossible dream. It hadn’t taken Frank Hens-ley very long to track them down. The fact that the FBI agent was as crooked as a turf accountant was a bit of luck. Griff had been able to make a deal with Hensley, but sooner or later another FBI agent — an honest one — or someone from the police department, the DEA, or CTU would find them and the bomb would explode in their faces.
Griff understood that there was no future for them anywhere in America or Europe. He and Shamus had already done too many things for the Cause to turn back now. In that sense, the Duggan brothers had already made their choice, back when they became Provos.
Griff topped a small rise, and The Last Celt was in sight. Luck was with him — he spied an empty spot on the corner, right in front of the pub. As he parked, he calmed down a bit. Most likely Shamus got royally flustered and had simply slept in. He’d be hungover this morning, but after coffee, food, and a bitch slap from his elder bro, Shamus would be up to the task at hand — and not so crazy over Caitlin’s melt that he’d balk when the time came to say adieu. Griff would off the ninny and her brother himself if it came to that.
