Warren Murphy - Political Pressure

The worst thing about it was the skill with which the campaign was executed. Whoever these people were, this Truth-Be-Told Organization, they knew just how to strike at MAEBE with effectively damning marketing.

"But there wasn't a video camera in the hotel room!" the judge from Cleveland protested when Flicker called. "That hotel didn't have shag carpeting!"

"Doesn't matter," Flicker responded.

"Of course it matters if the evidence is faked. It won't take much to prove it."

"It will take too much to prove it. Too much time and too much publicity. The fact is, you nailed a junior high school girl. That will come out."

"Not necessarily," the judge insisted.

"It will. It already has. Look at the television."

"What channel?"

Flicker hung up on the judge. Didn't matter what channel. Pretty soon it would be on every channel. The girl was seen walking into the police station to file her grievance, and she glanced for a moment at the camera with big, gentle, sweet eyes. Dammit, she was photogenic!

The judge was doomed.

So was the state's attorney in Alabama and the governor of Oregon and the senator from Alaska and dammit, so was Lamble. Son of a bitch Lamble faked his doctorate from a nonexistent college. There were lots of ways to get yourself a degree that would stand up to scrutiny, and Lamble used an amateur's trick.

Whoever was gunning for them had penetrating resources and a knack for using them. The Truth-Be-Told Organization, or TU-TO, as the networks were calling it, could be none other than a branch of the government, and likely the same assassin's branch that had been harassing the White Hand for days.

Give him time, Flicker thought, and he could find out who they really were. He could expose them. He could propagandize those bastards out of existence.

He smiled ironically. It would be too late, just like the pedophile judge in Ohio proving the incriminating video was a fake.

"Mr. Orville Flicker," said his assistant darkly.

"What?" Flicker asked. He had never seen Kohd looking so stern. "What's wrong now?"

"What's wrong is you, sir," Kohd declared through gritted teeth. Kohd never gritted his teeth. "You are destroying yourself."

Flicker laughed, a bitter bark. "In case you weren't paying attention, Kohd, MAEBE is crumbling."

"Wrong, sir. MAEBE is you. MAEBE lives and dies with you. All those others are just the rungs in the ladder."

"The ladder is splitting up the middle, Kohd."

"But a strong man at the top can hold it together, sir, and stay upright. That is you, but all I see is a man who is giving up. I see you letting go and allowing yourself to slide down into the pool of cold mud. You are failing us all."

"You're an asshole!"

"Because I'm insulted by your weakness? Mr. Flicker, you are the greatest public-relations man ever. Nobody could have pulled this off except you. You're on the verge of being President."

"Kohd—"

"Orville, you still have the means to be President. We know how to make Senator Whiteslaw go away. We know how to exert control over the current President. The man at the top of the ladder, whether the ladder has rungs or not, stands just as tall as long as he keeps his balance. So I ask you sir, will you strive to remain erect, or will you allow yourself to topple?"

Flicker thought about it, then slowly sat up and spoke resolutely. "I choose to stay erect."

Kohd nodded and pulled out two mobile phones. "Good. Then I have calls to make."

Flicker got to his feet. "And I have a senator to assassinate."

"Hello, Robert, how are you these days?" Flicker shook the man's hands in both his own.

The redheaded guard was grinning. "Nice to see you, Mr. F. I'm sorry about all the trouble, losing Mr. Kriidelfisk and all."

Flicker nodded, appropriately somber. "It was a horrible turn of events."

"He was a good man," the guard said, saying the lines as perfectly as Flicker's press secretary had said them in interviews after the incident. Now a lot of people believed those words, even though none of them knew anything about the blackmailing, baskstabbing liar Kriidelfisk. "He was a living saint," the guard added. Another good line from the media spin.

Killing his running mate had been a cunningly successful political move, Flicker thought, his spirits improving all the time. "You bet he was, Robert."

Robert scanned Flicker with the metal-detection wand in a cursory manner. "So are you just visiting, Mr. F?"

"Seeing some old friends, Robert." Flicker said, lowering his hands and retrieving his keys and wallet from the basket.

"Gonna do some campaigning while you're at it, Mr. F?" Robert winked, waving one of his immensely bushy orange eyebrows.

"Maybe just little," Flicker said in a mock whisper. "Keep it under your hat."

The guard chuckled and Flicker received his VIP pass. His weapon undiscovered, Orville Flicker strolled into the private halls of the United States Senate as if he owned the place.

There were a number of senators who owed him favors on both sides of the aisle, and they'd assumed their debts were written off when Flicker left the White House. He had called them in today, and the indebted senators didn't dare refuse on the off chance, God forbid, the guy actually got the power he was seeking. Besides, what Flicker was asking for was benign enough. Flicker want to show he was still a Washington insider. All he needed was a pass into the Senate for some hand shaking and acquaintance renewing. It wasn't as if the man was a security risk.

The senators who got Flicker his pass, one from each party, came into the hall to greet him warmly, shaking his hand as they wove through the next security guards and escorted Flicker onto the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The Senate was not in session at the moment, but no member of that august body would have dared miss a special session intended to honor one of its own. They were talking in groups, networking, schmoozing, bartering votes like chits.

"What's going on?" asked a freshmen Republican senator from Arkansas as he watched the group in the aisle.

"It's that dumb-ass Flicker. What's he doing here, I wonder?" commented a famous heavy-drinking senator from one of the Carolinas, and the mentor to the young man from Arkansas.

"Sharp and Tosio are sure laying it on thick," the younger senator said. "Don't they know Flicker's star is falling fast? Least that's what I heard."

As he was thinking it over, the older man's cheeks ballooned with a belch that he expelled through his nose. His protege, out of habit, held his breath until the lethal whiskey stench dissipated.

"I think you and me had better go do a little paw grabbin'," the wise old politician decided.

There was a joyous greeting between the elder senator and Flicker, and a boisterous "Good to meet you!" exchange between Flicker and the younger man.

Thirty feet away a small group watched with growing interest.

"What do the 'Publicans know that we don't know?" demanded "Rocky" Rutledge, D-New Mexico in a hastily called huddle. "There's three of them over there now with Flicker!"

"It's just glad-handing," said a Hawaiian senator dismissively. "Flicker's been on the down elevator since the bad news this afternoon."

"Maybe something more is going on," Rocky Rut- ledge countered. "Maybe he's turned it around in the polls again. Maybe he's got something going."

The Hawaiian shook his head. "I guarantee you, the only reason Flicker's here is to create some goodwill before we vote on the Whiteslaw bill."

"I heard there's gonna be opposition to the Whiteslaw bill," hissed the gaunt Montanan, Kartsotis. "I hear somebody's gonna air dirt on Whiteslaw."

"If Whiteslaw becomes untouchable, the bill won't pass and MAEBE could be on the ballot nationwide," Rutledge concluded. "That hack Flicker could be the next leader of the free world."