Operation Hell Gate - Marc Cerasini [66]
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
9:01:00 A.M. EDT
CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
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