The Power Broker (5 page)

“When are they meeting?” Kohler asked.

“Soon.”

“Where?”

“It hasn’t been decided yet.” Hewitt knew, but he wasn’t going to tell Kohler. He wasn’t going to tell Kohler about the meeting he was having with Gillette, either. He didn’t like the way Kohler was acting, or how he seemed to be influencing McDonnell. He was starting to think Kohler might be the cancer.

“Why does Wood want to meet with Gillette?” Laird asked.

“Financial support and the support of Gillette’s investors,” Hewitt explained. “Gillette can bring the heat when it comes to money. According to my sources,
Forbes
and
Fortune
didn’t even come close when they tried to rate Gillette’s ability to raise dollars.” Hewitt grimaced. With Gillette’s backing, Wood could become unstoppable.

“Will Wood get Gillette’s support?”

Hewitt shrugged. “We can’t get a clear read on where Gillette is politically. There’s no pattern to his voting record. He’s an enigma as far as that goes. As far as a lot of things go, really. His investors at Everest Capital are mostly WASPs, and they love him for how much money he’s made them, but his best friend is a black guy who’s a managing partner at the firm. And he just hired a black guy to be head coach and general manager of that new NFL franchise Everest controls. He supports a lot of minority causes, but he’s also a member of places like the Manhattan Lawn and Tennis Club. The only minorities who’ve ever walked through those doors are employees.”

“Sounds like a nigger lover to me,” Massey spoke up. “Probably one of those idiots who donated a lot of money to help all those hoodlums in New Orleans after the hurricane hit.” He chuckled. “I swear, every looter you saw on CNN was a fucking nigger.”

“Maybe that’s because they were the ones who couldn’t afford to get out,” McDonnell spoke up. “And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use the term ‘nigger.’”

“Agreed,” Hewitt said firmly. “Let’s get back on point.”

Dahl shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense for Gillette to support a Democrat like that. What about his father? What about Clayton?”

Hewitt flashed Dahl a reproachful glare. “I can’t answer your question, General Dahl, but this I do know: Gillette and Wood are meeting. Which isn’t good.”

“It makes sense for Gillette to meet with Wood if he thinks Wood has a chance of being president,” Laird observed. “It’s always a good idea to have the next chief executive of the country on your side, even if you don’t agree with his politics. And it sure looks like Wood has a chance of at least winning the Democratic nomination.”

“It’s a
lock
he’ll win the donkey nomination,” Hewitt agreed. “Look at the primaries he’s already won.”

“He’s the clear choice for the Democrats,” Fleming seconded. “The other two candidates got crushed by the man in charge four years ago. Their stories are old—so are they. People under forty can’t stand either of them.”

“And they’ve both got baggage,” Massey added. “I talked to people who know, and there’s a couple of things Jesse Wood’s handlers could leak to the press that would have each of the other guys running for cover. No, Mr. Hewitt’s right on target here. Jesse Wood will be the Democratic nominee.”

“Our problem is that Jesse might win in November, too,” said Hewitt. “It’s looking more and more like that every day. Which,” he continued quickly before anyone could say anything, “brings me to our most important agenda item. I have the new population projections,” he announced, opening a manila folder and passing papers down both sides of the table. “The figures are startling, and make our discussions about Jesse Wood even more relevant.” Several of the men pulled out reading glasses and donned them as Hewitt kept going. “The Census Bureau now projects that by 2030, whites will be less than fifty percent of the United States population.
We
will be the minority at that point.”

“Jesus,” Fleming whispered, gazing at the page Hewitt had passed around, a stunned look on his face. “My children’s lifetimes, maybe even
mine.
”

“Definitely yours,” Hewitt agreed, “if the trend continues.”

“I thought it was 20
40,
” McDonnell said. “That’s what I have in my notes from last time.”

“It was,” Hewitt confirmed, “but the numbers have changed.” He pointed at the second line on the page. “And the acceleration of the decline in the white percentage is what’s most alarming. In 1990 we were seventy-six percent of the population; in 2000 sixty-nine percent; today we’re only sixty-four percent.
And,
” he said, his voice rising as his fingertip moved across the page, “by 2030 the numbers say we’ll make up less than half the projected four hundred million people in this country.”

“We don’t need to worry,” Dahl growled. “The people at the Census Bureau don’t know what they’re doing. The projections keep changing so much they can’t be accurate.”

“I think they know
exactly
what they’re doing at Census,” Hewitt argued. “I think they’re sandbagging us.”

“Huh?”

“The top statistics guy at Census is a man named Raul Rodriguez. Someone we know there says Rodriguez is putting out conservative numbers on purpose.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He knows that whites will become the minority
sooner
than 2030. He’s hiding that data so when the numbers actually flip, it’ll take us by surprise and we won’t be able to do anything.”

“Christ.”

“It’s the Hispanics,” Laird hissed, analyzing the data. “This thing shows they’ll be twenty-seven percent of the population by 2030, up from thirteen percent in 2000. Are they really screwing that much more than us?”

“They fuck like rabbits on Viagra,” Massey said loudly, “and they never use birth control, for Christ sake, because they know we’ll take care of them.”

“They do tend to have larger immediate families,” Hewitt agreed, “but a lot of the growth in that number is due to immigration.”

“Yeah,” Fleming spoke up. “I read the other day that there’s something like thirty-five million foreign-born people in this country, mostly Latin Americans. That’s about twelve percent of the population. And the number’s up from twenty-six million in 2000.”

“You’re lucky you
could
read it,” Laird snapped. “Pretty soon everything in this country is going to be printed in Spanish. I think more people speak Spanish in America now than English. I got on a plane a few weeks ago and the flight attendants did the preflight blah-blah babble in Spanish
first.
Can you believe that?”

“People shouldn’t be allowed to be citizens of this country until they can at least
speak
English,” said Fleming.

“We ought to build walls around our perimeters to keep these bastards out,” Dahl muttered. “With machine-gun nests every five hundred feet. Then we won’t have to worry about people speaking Spanish anymore.”

“Or, more realistically, make the naturalization process tougher,” suggested Laird. “Five years here without a felony and you can put Jesse Wood into office. That’s basically all it comes down to now.”

Fleming shook his head. “Do you all know that there are four million people in all of Puerto Rico, and two million Ricans in the United States?”

“Which,” said Hewitt, “brings up another alarming fact involving our friend Senator Wood. Two weeks ago he met with the Puerto Rican governor and the island’s congressional representative. The men flew to New York secretly and met with Wood somewhere in Brooklyn—we believe it was East New York. Our information is that the discussions centered around full statehood for Puerto Rico if Wood is elected.” Hewitt gestured toward Massey. “That gets to Senator Massey’s point about him being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Granting PR full statehood would give the left another one and a half percent of the population.”

“Most Puerto Ricans vote Republican,” Kohler objected loudly. “That’s documented. Hell, they probably wouldn’t take full statehood if we offered it to them on a silver platter anyway. Too much national pride, and, besides, what do they get for it? Just higher taxes.”

“They’d accept statehood if they knew they’d be with the majority coming in, my friend,” Massey retorted. “Then everything would change.”

“So, if I’m hearing you right, Senator Massey,” Kohler replied, “you’re saying we have a whole
nationality
acting like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You’re saying there’s some big conspiracy going on here
and
in Puerto Rico. That all of them in this country are trying to fool us by voting Republican now so we’ll never expect it when the secret signal goes out and they flip on us. Right?”

“What’s so far-fetched about that?”

“Oh, come on,” Kohler groaned, making clear that he thought the entire discussion was absurd.

“But, look,” McDonnell spoke up, “the president can’t just grant Puerto Rico statehood. Congress would have to vote on it.”

“He can sure make it one hell of an issue,” Massey replied. “Believe me, I know. A man like Wood could turn the screws on congressmen who didn’t come into line with him. Get the minorities and special interest groups fired up to rain hell down on them if they didn’t vote like he wanted them to. Most of them would probably vote for it to avoid the bad publicity. They’d figure it was no big deal, that most people already think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States anyway. Why should I risk getting a big part of my constituents all pissed off at me for the next election? That’s what they’d say to themselves.”

“We’ve got to put our plans into full effect,” Dahl spoke up. “Immediately. We’ve got to—”

“What you need to do is get to Christian Gillette.” The speaker was James Benson, the oldest member of the Order. It was the first time since the toast to Hugues de Payens that Benson had said anything. Like Dahl, Benson was a military man—ex in Benson’s case. His last post had been director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Gillette could be the key,” he said quietly. “We should try to recruit him as soon as possible. At a minimum, we have to keep him away from Jesse Wood.”

CARMINE TORINO
eased his Cadillac inside an old wooden shack beside a run-down house as long shadows reached the steep peaks to the east. The abandoned ranch was forty miles outside Las Vegas, way up Del Costa Canyon. The closest house was ten miles away, so there shouldn’t have been anyone else out there.

Torino climbed out of the car, moved quickly to the trunk, grabbed a shotgun and shells from inside, then pulled the shack’s door along the rusty track in the gravel until it was closed—hiding the presence of the car. As he hurried toward the house, he glanced around warily at the dusty landscape—mostly just broken fences, scrub, and sage, framed by the steep rocky mountains on all sides. Thank God he still had friends inside the family.

“I APPRECIATE
your advice on Christian Gillette,” Hewitt said. He and Benson stood beside each other on the lodge’s wide front porch, staring into the darkness of the moonless night. The rest of the Order had gone to bed. “I think you’re right, Jim.” They addressed each other informally now that the meeting was over. “I think we should try to recruit him, though we don’t have a place for him right now.”

“You should try to meet with him is what you should try to do,” Benson suggested, “as soon as possible. And don’t worry about a spot for him. We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

Hewitt wasn’t going to tell anyone about his meeting with Gillette, not even Benson. “I’ll try to set up a meeting with him.”

“Gillette’s a powerful man,” Benson muttered, his voice feeble. He pulled his jacket tight. It was chilly out here with the sun down. “He’s worth over five hundred million and very connected.”

“He’d be worth a lot more if we’d let him sell Laurel Energy,” said Hewitt, a sparkle in his eye. “He thought he was going to get five billion for that thing. So did the Wall Street analysts.”

Benson looked over at Hewitt. “What’s that supposed to mean, Samuel? What are you telling me?” He grinned. “Or what
aren’t
you telling me?”

“Gillette’s been trying to sell Laurel for a while, but for some reason he hasn’t gotten any takers. Not any
real
takers.”

“I assume that ‘for some reason’ means you put the word out in the industry for people to stay away from it.”

“I did,” Hewitt admitted. “I figured we might need an ace in the hole with Christian someday. I figured it might help our cause if he experienced firsthand what we can do. If he felt some pain, then some pleasure.”

“How did you figure all that?”

“I have my ways.”

Benson shivered. “We can’t let Jesse Wood get to Gillette’s money and connections. Wood might actually win if he does.”

“That
will not
happen,” Hewitt said forcefully. “Jesse Wood will
never
be president of the United States. I can assure you of that.”

“He’s going to win the Democratic nomination, Samuel, I feel it. You do, too. You’ll have to take drastic action if you really mean what you say about him never being president.”

“I know.”

“Are you prepared to take that action?”

Hewitt nodded. “I am.”

“Good man.”

“And, like I said, I’m going to turn the tables on the Democrats,” Hewitt spoke up. “I’m going to get Gillette to join us, instead. He belongs with us, not them. I’m going to make him see that. If he needs a push, so be it.”

“Good, good.” Benson shook his head. “You know, the power and the connections we have always amaze me—and I’ve been a member a long time. By the way, when are you going to let OPEC start ramping up production again? I’m tired of paying five bucks a gallon.”

The two men shared a chuckle.

“Other than Laurel Energy, what can you use to influence Gillette if he agrees to join us?” Benson asked.

“What do you mean?”

“He isn’t married, he doesn’t have children. The usual influences won’t work. I’m sure he wouldn’t want clips of himself having sex with a woman zipping around the Internet, but it wouldn’t destroy his family or his career like it would ours.”