Читать книгу Fallout - Mark Ethridge - Страница 11

Harry Dorn saluted, waved and strode off the ballroom stage of the Greenbrier Hotel with his audience in the middle of a standing ovation. Always leave them wanting more, he had learned early on.

As often as he had given the Liberty Agenda speech, it never failed to inspire almost everyone in the audience—including him. Tonight had been no exception. He’d been at the top of his game, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d done a table count during the Pledge of Allegiance. There must have been six hundred people in the audience. And the introduction! “Ladies and Gentlemen, the next senator from West Virginia and the future president of the United States!” Way overdone, but still . . .

The applause continued as he slipped out a side door. Before the speech, he’d been tired, dying to get out of his monkey suit and out to his weekend retreat on the river at Possum Island. But the speech had energized him. He was on a roll, eager for the next item on the agenda.

He ducked into the men’s room and went immediately to the mirror. He arranged his remaining hair in the manner the consultant had suggested, straightened his black bow tie—he had switched to hand-tied at the consultant’s suggestion—and prepared for the parade of men and women who had paid extra to have their photographs taken with him, pictures they would proudly display on den walls and office credenzas all over America.

Who could have imagined? What had the USA Today profile called him? A paunchy, balding congressman with a funny name from a backward state with few electoral votes? True, in large part, he conceded. But so what? Ike had been bald. He wouldn’t be the first “Harry.” Bill Clinton’s Arkansas didn’t offer any more electoral votes than did his West Virginia. And hadn’t the West Virginia primary given Jack Kennedy just the win he needed in 1960?

He didn’t mind the photo ops, the endless grip-and-grins. They allowed each donor to feel personally connected, yet they required almost no effort on his part. The aide who handled the introductions indicated through a code whether the congressman and the donor had previously met. “Of course, I know who you are,” he would say to those he was meeting for the first time, inflating them with the illusion of official notice. “It’s so good to see you again,” he would say to the others, as if the previous meeting had been one of the memorable moments of his life.

He left the men’s room and walked briskly to the private function area, shaking a few hands along the way. He took his place between the aide who introduced the donors and the aide in charge of ensuring they didn’t tarry after the photo. Through the thin partitions, he could hear the clattering of dishes, the buzz of the staff as they cleared the adjoining room. A line of well-dressed people waited.

The end of the line did not arrive until after 11 p.m. By then, Dorn’s right hand ached. He’d been blinded by the camera’s flash so often that it took five minutes for his pupils to dilate enough for him to see. He passed the lobby bar—happily noting that Dan Clendenin, his chief political strategist, was procuring a paper cup of ice and scotch from a waitress in an intriguing Tinkerbell-like outfit—and collapsed into the back seat of a black Lincoln Town Car that waited beneath the hotel portico. A moment later, Clendenin slid in beside him. Dorn accepted the paper cup once the door closed. “Possum Island,” he said, as much to comfort himself as to direct the driver. The congressman and Clendenin sipped and sat without speaking for thirty miles as the Lincoln swooshed over the interstate through the deep crevices of the West Virginia valleys, made darker than the night by the steep hills that loomed on either side.

Clendenin broke the silence. “I talked with the Carbon Forward people. This global warming stuff’s really got their attention. You impressed them tonight. They want to help.”

Dorn yawned. “They’ve helped us since they were the Fossil Fuels Council. They can’t afford to have more tree-huggers elected.”

Clendenin swirled his drink. “Really help us. Not just piddly individual contributions to your campaign. We’re talking underwriting bloggers, Political Action Committees and 527 groups. It’s powerful stuff.”

Dorn couldn’t argue. The Fossil Fuels Council had shown it had plenty of money to spend when it changed its name to the more progressive-sounding Carbon Forward and adopted the upbeat slogan, “Carbon—The Building Block of Life.”

He retrieved that morning’s USA Today from his briefcase and turned to the politics page. “Harry Dorn,” the headline read. “Bigger Than The Boardroom.” The sub headline added, “Not Just in Corporate America Has W.Va.’s Harry Dorn Become a Hero.” Dorn, the story noted, was favored to become the next senator from his state and was already being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate following his Senate term, although possibly as soon as the next election. The story revealed that the head of the party in New Hampshire had issued a personal invitation for an escorted visit—a fact Dorn himself had only learned that morning when he’d first read the story in the breakfast alcove of his Georgetown brownstone.

He marveled at the turn of events.

As a boy, he had taken his state’s high unemployment and poverty and low education levels as a given. As an adult, he had come to believe that these problems could be remedied and that he could help do it. Once elected to Congress, Dorn had brought literally thousands of jobs to his district through defense contracts and tax breaks for new industry. There was no question he had worked hard and that he had a real passion to serve.

He had also quickly become adept at playing political hardball—a requirement in West Virginia where votes were bought for a couple of slugs of moonshine and where terms in the governor’s office were often followed by longer terms in federal prison.

But a lot of it, he had to admit, had to do with just showing up. You get elected to Congress. Then you get re-elected. And then you get a seat on an important energy committee because you represent a coal state and on a defense committee because you followed the party leaders and can always be counted on to support the military because, by God, that’s where half the boys and girls in your impoverished state land when they graduate from high school or drop out. Jobs and contracts for your district follow, along with no shortage of lobbyists with checkbooks waiting in your anteroom.

He accepted the need to raise money. Despite all the recent efforts at reform, it was still the price of the game if you wanted to have an impact and especially if you had ambitions. He understood that it was endless.

Asking for the money was the easy part. The hard part was repaying the favor once elected because nothing in this business was ever given away for free. They always wanted something. A mitigation of a fine. A delay in the implementation of a new pollution standard. Maybe something like a custom-made, one-time tax credit for some company or somebody. “So what do I have to do?” he asked Clendenin.

“Carbon Forward has no doubt about your politics. They know you’ve been good for industry, good for America. Hell, good for the free world. They want to see you senator, then president. They’re believers in the Liberty Agenda because they understand the Creator intended for natural resources to be used and that government is getting in the way of that.”

“Not to mention getting in the way of their profits,” Dorn interrupted.

“And they’re right!” Clendenin continued. “We pay a bundle for gasoline while some of the world’s great gas and coal reserves lie unexplored and unexploited, for God’s sake. Harry, their only question is whether you can win. These people don’t like throwing their money down a rat hole. We have to show you ahead in the polls, ahead in the money-raising, a lead pipe cinch to become senator. We have to show them that lots of others are behind you.”

Dorn finished his scotch. “We can. We’re going to shock them in the primary.”

“By then, it’s too late. We need to lock up the money now before the other candidates come calling. We need a TV ad and we need to get it out there now.”

“We don’t have money to spend on TV advertising this far in front of the primary.”

“We won’t have to pay to run it, just to film it. The Swift Boat people paid to air their Kerry attack ad once or twice. The media ran it over and over for free. Think YouTube. We make the ad now and we leak it. Better yet, we invite some national media to watch it being made and they leak it for us. We get two hits that way—now and when it airs for real. Plus, we get national attention, not just here in West Virginia.” Clendenin leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Something dramatic and visual. Prosperity and patriotic crowds. Misty-eyed parents and their perfect two-point-five children bursting with hope, with belief in Harry Dorn and his agenda. We need a setting that really connects you to the Liberty Agenda, proof of what the Liberty Agenda can mean.”

Dorn had been sucking on an ice cube and spat it back into the paper cup. He had intended to remind his advisor about some talking point but found now that he couldn’t remember what it was. Clendenin’s vision had swept this—and all other thoughts—from his mind. Replaced them with cheering, adoring crowds.

The scotch began to have the desired effect. He slipped off his shoes and loosened his seatbelt. In moments he had fallen into that world between sleep and consciousness—still aware of the hum of the tires on the concrete, the press of his head against the window. He saw himself standing at a lectern before a vast sea of howling supporters, their faces ecstatic with adulation, eyes glowing with orgiastic fervor, with strength, pride and solidarity of purpose.

The Lincoln hit a bump. Dorn felt as if he were falling and jerked to full consciousness. “The TV ad,” he said. “I know just where to shoot it.”