CHAPTER FIFTEEN
3:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
34th Floor
The Willard Intercontinental Hotel, Washington DC
“Mr. O’Brien?” a voice said.
It was a young female voice, just outside his door. Gerry the Shark sat behind his vast desk. He could picture the face, and the body, without having to see them. Her name was Katie, and she was a campaign aide, actually an intern. Good-looking, fresh-faced.
Fresh meat.
She had joined this movement, and gotten this close to the action, because her father was a rich, hardcore true believer in business-friendly conservative dogma—trickle down economics, tax breaks, union busting, rollbacks of environmental and workplace regulations. Gerry was fine with all that stuff, to the extent he thought about it, which wasn’t much.
It was all beside the point
