A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [164]
“You see there, how you are trying to distort—”
“Longacre didn’t verify a single fact, Mr. Tomtree. It was a hatchet job to create suspicion over the raid. There are only one or two persons who could have written it. We’ll know soon enough, and it won’t hold till after the election.”
Well, now, he had dared O’Connell and O’Connell had not thrown out the Pucky affair. Even if Quinn attacked, the revelation would backfire on him. O’Connell could then easily go down as a raider and a shark.
On the other hand, if Quinn misses this opportunity, he will show he is too weak to duke it out with me, Thornton thought.
“The American people will have an answer on this in a few days,” Carter Carpenter said. “I think it propitious to move on to other issues.”
Just what Thornton wanted, to create doubt and confusion, leave it unsettled, challenge O’Connell’s hero status.
Thornton was now wired with charts and graphs—over the hills and down to the dales, to grandmother’s house we’ll go—lines and colored bars and round pieces of pie all sliced to percentages. Thornton was in a boardroom posture where he could lay a hundred and one booby traps with the figures distorted, omitted…and with three you get egg roll.
“I’ve got a real problem with your charts,” Quinn laughed.
“Yes, I know, of course you do,” Thornton replied. His blood circulated faster as his full strength returned. Thornton hung tenaciously to the visuals, unfinished portraits.
“Gentlemen,” Carter Carpenter said, “we are running low on time. You both have enough for a three-to five-minute summation. Mr. Tomtree.”
“So what if the Urbakkan article proves to be wrong? All it proves is that after three decades under seal, someone in O’Connell’s court was able to slip disinformation to us, using an honorable institution as a dupe. It is this kind of confusion that the American people will be facing from the White House if this man is elected.”
“Hot damn!” Thornton congratulated himself. “I whacked him good! Now, nail it on, T3.”
“Is it not fitting,” Thornton continued, “to have had this debate in this great library? Nothing could better explain the difference between us. I am of the new American breed who has made possible transmitting every piece of information in this library anywhere on earth, in a fraction of a second. Since this new century began, we have moved to the cusp of forging a great electronic world. Men like Quinn Patrick O’Connell would rather carve in stone than have a printing press. Yes, there is greed and sin and garbage on the Internet and on the cable channels.
“When has the human face been free of greed? Every time a new invention comes into play for the betterment of the human race, greedy legions pounce on it.
“I know that. I also know who of the two of us is better suited to deal with this complicated new world technology. Quinn Patrick O’Connell has shown himself to be a one-issue candidate. The sophistication and needs of man’s new electronic age cannot be mastered by him.”
“May I?” Quinn asked.
“Yes, Mr. O’Connell,” Carter said.
“Thornton Tomtree will indeed keep us busy regulating the two-bit stockbrokers, children’s porno, scams, and slap a wrist for the massive invasion of American privacy. There will be sensational trials and rigid regulations. That will be for the greedy little flies buzzing around a dead carcass. But Thornton Tomtree will leave the big players alone. T3’s seven hundred and forty industrial, commercial, shipping, banking networks are the greatest instruments for greed this world has ever seen. He’ll use his power to ride shotgun on the little fish while, at the same time, he covers up billions of dollars moving daily in utter secrecy.”
Quinn had weighed carefully but quickly, and the words seemed to tumble out of his mouth.
“This is not a Tut’s tomb or an obsolete dinosaur. This is my father’s generation who gave more of themselves for the betterment of this nation than any other.”
A great