Leon Uris (39 page)

Quinn was going on about the Colorado gun law, saying that the provisions he was bringing up were commonsense matters.

“Tell me, Mr. Tomtree, do you believe the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution should be repealed?”

“I am going on record with our moderator to say that your line of questioning is more like a prosecutor in an inquisition. But I’ll answer you, Mr. O’Connell. We do not play politics with our Constitution. It is like toying around with the Ten Commandments. A repeal will never happen because too many Democrats hold our belief that that could cause a domino effect on the Bill of Rights. What then? Attack freedom of worship? Freedom of the press? Freedom of expression?”

“Why so contentious about the Second Amendment?” Quinn asked. “Let us read the words: ‘A well regulated Militia, militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ Can you tell me, Mr. Tomtree, why is it that the gun advocates never quote the first part? The great banner on the wall of the AMERIGUN convention read, ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ Well, where is the rest of it, and why is it missing from all your propaganda? Could it be you are hiding the first part because it is not a gun rights amendment but an amendment about forming militias?”

Thornton checked the clocks. O’Connell had used up all but two minutes of his time and they were coming up on intermission. Now to pull one out of the hat! Now to blast O’Connell before intermission so people will be hit by his words and level the playing field.

“Mr. O’Connell, I would like to get your input on
the weekly newsletter published by the highly esteemed Longacre Institute.”

“I haven’t read their most recent bulletins, but to inform the audience, the Longacre is a Washington think tank closely allied to the Christian Coalition, the Falwell, Robertson people.”

Thornton held up the newsletter. “And I quote. ‘The truth behind the Urbakkan raid,’” he said. “According to the Longacre Institute, sir, the Urbakkan raid, which occurred in 1977, was a myth. What actually happened? A rapid-response team, of which you were a member, was testing a prototype aircraft on a NATO training exercise in Turkey. You were testing various systems, and you went off course into Iranian air space. A tanker plane had been following you for an air-to-air refueling, and the cockpit spilled fuel and caught fire, killing five Marine officers, including a major general. They were burned to death. The Corps, desiring several hundred of these planes, made a cover-up story. That cover-up story was the Urbakkan raid. The raid was a sham. The legends of bravery about yourself and others were likewise a sham.”

A murmur arose from a shocked audience.

“For years,” Thornton said, “I’ve heard rumors about Urbakkan. When I went to research it, I learned that the report on the raid was sealed and under lock and key. Now we know why,” he said, holding up the Longacre newsletter.

Jesus, Quinn thought, keep your cool! The bastard thinks he can create confusion that cannot be clarified until after the election. Quinn scratched his jaw as Tomtree continued to thunder.

“I respectfully request that you lower your tone, Mr. Tomtree,” Carter Carpenter admonished.

“On behalf of my courageous buddies who gave up their lives, I cannot dignify you.”

“Sham!” Tomtree repeated. “Convenient of you not to answer.”

“There are seventeen survivors of the Urbakkan raid,” Quinn said. “We have remained close down through the years. We have never missed an annual reunion. I have been stalked about Urbakkan since I first ran for state office over a quarter of a century ago. I knew this was going to come up. Fifteen of these Marines were able to come to New York and are in the audience. Both the former commandant of the Marine Corps and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are now in the process of issuing statements to answer the Longacre Institute’s terrible lie. The reason the facts of Urbakkan were kept secret was because of the raid’s success. We did not want the enemy to learn how we did it. Moreover, the plane itself and many of its systems were kept secret for national security reasons. In fact, the surviving members of Urbakkan will hold a news conference in the McGraw Rotunda directly after the debate.”

Darnell hustled Thornton into a side office at intermission. A string of damage-control people trailed in. Darnell sat the President down. The President was a tombstone with eyes, staring at the floor. Darnell hovered over him like a manager whose fighter has undergone a beating.

“Mr. President, according to a snap poll at the Oyster Bar—” Mendenhall began.

“You, Mendenhall, out!” Darnell commanded. “And you, Turnquist, out, and you, you, and you—
out
!”

“Mr. President—” Turnquist demanded.

“Out!” Darnell yelled.

“Do what Darnell tells you to,” Thornton rasped.

Secret Service Agent Lapides moved everyone into the corridor quickly and closed himself in with Mr. Jefferson and the President.

Thornton looked up, crestfallen. “I fouled up,” he mumbled.

“Big-time.”

“Why, how did I do wrong?”

“You tried to turn this debate into a search-and-destroy mission,” Darnell snarled.

“It’s hard to get a handle on O’Connell,” Thornton went on.

“Yeah, he can beat you to death with the truth. If we are on a losing slide, you go out with dignity, Thornton. It’s liar’s poker, and you got called. You walked into a couple of sucker punches with your fucking ocean floor and Urbakkan raid. Who the hell at Longacre did you assign to write this newsletter?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Darnell turned to the door. “Lapides, the President is soaking wet. He has a clean shirt in the bathroom.”

Thornton was led to the sink and mirror. The damage was not beyond repair. He freshened up. Darnell tied his tie, watching his man’s mood go from self-pity to anger.

“Five minutes!” they heard a voice from the corridor.

“I think I’ll go back in early,” Thornton said.

“I know by your expression what you’re thinking,” Darnell said. “You can’t do it.”

“It’s legitimate!” Thornton said, gaining authority by the instant.

“You will not bring up an affair Rita O’Connell had thirty years ago.”

“She left her wedding bed to run off with a drug cartel lawyer!”

“You will not bring that up,” Darnell cried.

“I’m the president. I can do any goddamned thing I want!”

Darnell held him by the lapels. “Pucky has been having an affair for two years. O’Connell knows about it.”

Thornton tried to brush Darnell’s hands off him, but Darnell held on tightly. Thornton blinked, and blinked again.

“Was this affair with a male or a female?”

“A man.”

“Well, thank God for that. Do you think O’Connell will sit on it till after the election?”

“I warn you, don’t go after his wife.”

“I see,” Thornton said. “And you’ve known about this all along and didn’t tell me?”

“I learned about it when I met with Greer Little and Professor Maldonado in Chicago.”

“Greer Little!” Thornton spat. “That bitch!”

“You’ve got it backward, Thornton. Greer uncovered Pucky’s affair. O’Connell made her swear to keep it a secret. Maldonado was the one who spilled it to me. When O’Connell learned, he fired Maldonado on the spot, his own father-in-law.”

“Who the hell is this O’Connell?” Thornton moaned.

“One minute!” the voice called from the corridor.

“Darnell, what should I do?”

“You have to apologize. You say that in Longacre’s zeal to get O’Connell, they fed you disinformation which you disavow!”

Thornton nodded his head. “Darnell, are you going to leave me?”

“No, I won’t leave you, Thornton.”

For the first time in their long years, Thornton threw his arms about Darnell and hugged him strongly, then went to the door.

“Thornton.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you want to know the name of Pucky’s…lover?”

“What the hell’s the difference? How could Pucky have done this to the presidency?”

Thornton Tomtree had a hundred seconds to resurrect himself, and he did. He spread his options out. The news of Pucky’s affair was annoying. Who the hell could have wanted her? That’s not the point, he told himself. How much damage would it do before the election? If O’Connell showed enough desperation to make an attack, Thornton’s spin people could throw it back in O’Connell’s lap and show the American people his Democratic opponent would stoop to anything. With the knowledge out Thornton would get to play “the wounded Lincoln” suffering.

Even as he followed Darnell to the door, a plan evolved. The Urbakkan raid still had enough mystery to it to cause confusion over the real facts.

The crowd had thickened in Times Square a few blocks away under the great news screen.

In this home and that, the intermission chores were closed up with a final flush of the toilet, snap of the Coke and beer bottles, and gathering in about the television.

America’s downtowns were empty.

This land, so diverse, realized that a particular moment of epiphany was about to take place.

“Thornton,” Darnell whispered, “the people know you are still the president. There is a fear of O’Connell. This next hour is the moment of your life.”

Thornton nodded to Carter Carpenter as he cozied to his lectern.

“Mr. Carpenter,” Thornton said, “because of the
nature of our debate before the break, I’d like to make a statement.”

“It is not your turn, sir,” Carpenter said.

“I’ll cede to Mr. Tomtree,” Quinn said.

“It’s a rock-bottom humiliation for a politician to look in the mirror and see egg on his face. This Longacre report was only published today, and because the issue of the truth about Urbakkan has become vital to this election, I accepted it because of Longacre’s decades-long devotion to the truth.”

The loved ones in Quinn’s section paled. There seemed to be loved ones in Thornton’s seats besides Pucky, but they were faceless to a father who didn’t know their birthdays.

“Why did this spring up now? If Longacre published this account and it is proved false, then I would be greatly embarrassed. But, my fellow citizens, Urbakkan has been sealed for three decades. I believe the truth is that someone on O’Connell’s staff deliberately fed disinformation to the writer of this article. What media power fits the bill, and will she answer?”

“Mr. O’Connell?”

“Mr. Tomtree’s reference was to my campaign manager, Greer Little-Crowder. The Longacre think tank has marched to T3’s drumbeat for twenty years, fed by your generosity of over three million dollars.”

“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.”