Christopher Buckley - Thank You for Smoking

"Uh-uh." My kingdom for a wintergreen Life Saver.

"Up twenty percent."

"Wonderful," Nick murmured.

BR added, "Wait until after Nick's anti-smoking campaign." Quite a few chuckles. "By the way, when do we get to see boards?"

"I'm videoconferencing with Sven this afternoon," Nick said, noticing that his fingers had gone cold again. Should he call Dr. Williams? You smoked a cigarette?

"I'm sure we're all eager to see what he's come up with. Okay," BR said, "now I'd like to turn the meeting over to Carlton, who is going to brief us on some new security procedures."

Carlton warmed up his audience with a joke about two guys who go camping and a grizzly bear attacks them in the middle of the night and one guy puts on his sneakers and starts lacing them up. The other guys says, "Why are you putting on sneakers, you can't outrun a grizzly bear." And his friend tells him, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you." The point, Carlton said, was that in anti-terrorism, a phrase that put everyone into buttlock, you win by making the terrorists pick on the other guy. People glanced uneasily at each other. We few, we happy band of brothers.

Warming to his message — and was Carlton ever in his element— he emphasized the importance of not setting patterns. Everyone should leave for work at a different time every day, take a different route every day, be alert to strangers, especially ones wearing uniforms. He passed out photocopied sheets entitled what to do if you find yourself locked in a car trunk. People stared at it, hemorrhaging macho. Locked. in a trunk?

"Now let's talk about explosives." This part of his presentation went on for a full quarter-hour, during which he enumerated some three dozen types of bombs, including one that was attached to your windshield wiper blades. "Turn on the wipers and boom, eye-level, in the kisser." Betty O'Malley went pale.

BR interjected, "Now give us the good news." Carlton opened a case and passed out little black things that looked like beepers. They were electronic locator devices, like the ones in life rafts that send out emergency signals. If anyone was snatched, they should push the two little buttons together and the whole U.S. government would be alerted. Then he opened another case and gave everyone little canisters of pepper gas. These were to be spritzed into the faces of any suspicious individuals. But only after they'd made the first move. And only if it looked like they were about to kill you. Otherwise, do exactly what they said, even if they wanted you to get into that lockedtrunk.

Any questions? By now you could have heard a pin drop, and the floor was carpeted.

"I'm not sure I understand," said Charley Noble, from Legislative Affairs, "are we all targets?"

"I don't know the answer to that," BR said, "but I'm not prepared to take any chances. Carlton has arranged for everyone here, and I mean everyone, no exceptions — except of course for you, Nick — to spend next weekend at a facility in West Virginia where they train government people in anti-terrorist driving tactics."

There was intense murmuring. "You'll all receive instruction in— what is the drill, Carlton?"

"Examining a vehicle for bombs, evasive maneuvers, J-turns and bootleg turns, proper ramming technique, and surveillance detection."

"Bombs?" said Syd Berkowitz of the Coalition for Health. "Are there bomb threats?"

"Just a precaution. I assure you that the FBI is going to have these people in custody very, very soon. In the meantime, we've made arrangements with 1800 K Street to use their basement parking. For the time being, there'll be no parking in our own underground garage."

By now the murmuring was quite loud. BR had to raise his own voice to be heard. "People, people. This is just precautionary. There have been no bomb threats. Anyway, we're on a high floor here. And I'm certain everyone here could handle a little smoke inhalation."

Jeannette laughed. No one else did.

After the meeting, BR took Nick aside. He handed him a box of NicoStop patches. Nick held it as if BR had just handed him a fresh, steaming turd.

"Guess what?" BR said. "Sales of your 'deadly Band-Aids' are off forty-five percent since your gig on the Today show."

Nick handed him back the box with a shudder. No more nicotine for him.

"I feel awkward scoring points off this rotten business, but, God, talk about stepping in shit and coming out smelling like roses. Look at this press." He handed Nick a thick folder, a veritable media hero sandwich, clippings sticking out like bits of lettuce and ham. Nick had already seen most of them. He'd been on all the morning network shows, all the cable shows. The Europeans and Asians, who were still puffing away happily, couldn't get enough of him. Nick had experienced the thrill of being simultaneously translated. The French interviewer, a very fetching and soulful-looking woman, had done a little medical research on vasoconstricting and had put it to him: had it affected his "romantic capabilities"? Nick blushed, said no, pas du tout, and broke out in cold sweat. He'd been on Slovakian TV, a very important appearance as Agglomerated Tobacco, the Captain's own company, was moving into the former Eastern Bloc in a big way, introducing a brand whose name translated as "Throat-Scraper." The Eastern Euros, who'd been brought up on cigarettes that tasted like burning nuclear waste, were old-fashioned about their smokes: they demanded more, not less tar. To them, lung cancer was proof of quality.

"Jeannette tells me that Young Modem Man wants to do a week-in-the-life story on you," BR said.

"Yeah," Nick said, again annoyed at the Jeannette-BR pipeline, "I'm inclined to pass on that one."

"Japan's very important to us, and they do reach two out of three Japanese men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one." This was the age group known within the Academy as "entry-level."

"I just don't know if I want Japanese reporters hanging out in my office for a week. Or any reporters. I think maybe I'm getting a little overexposed."

"Two out of three, Nick. Millions and millions of young, modern Japanese. You're a hero to these people. That brings a certain responsibility."

"I'll get back to you." The nice thing was that Nick was now a certifiable, eight-hundred-pound gorilla, with I'll-get-back-to-you privileges.

"I spoke to the Captain earlier. He hopes you'll be able to do it." Agglomerated was moving into Japan, too, now that the U.S. trade rep had threatened to slap imported soy sauce with a 50 percent tariff unless they opened their ports and lungs to U.S. tobacco products.

"I'll get back to him, too." Nick was pushing the envelope a little here, but all BR could do was make a face that said, All right, but I hope you know what you're doing.

All this attention. And Sammy Najeeb had called this morning to

ask — to insist — that he go back on the Larry King show. She and Larry were sure, knew in their bones, that the threatening caller would call in again, and could Nick imagine what kind of TV that would make?

"By the way," BR said, full of drama, "Penelope Bent is coming in next week and guess who she wants to meet?" Penelope, now Lady Bent, had recently signed a seven-figure-a-year deal with Bonsacker International, formerly Bonsacker Tobacco, Inc., to lend a little clahss to their board and annual shareholders' meetings. This was increasingly common among the Big Six tobacco companies, which were retaining a lot of substantive celebrities — Vietnam-era POWs, former presidents of prestigious universities; they'd even asked Mother Teresa — to shill for them under the guise of celebrating freedom of speech, or the Constitution. The former British PM was their latest acquisition.