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"I hope not. He'd feed on our media like botulism on tuna salad. You'd better hope he w
because now maybe he won't be looking for you again."
"Who's he looking for now?"
The agent sighed, snapped the photographs against his thigh. "Soft targets," he said.
"You mean he's not particular."
"Oh, yes. Yes, he's very particular, Graham. Sleep well," Polsky said, and hurried away.
FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER, 1980:
The identification of Hakim Arif came twelve hours too late for Mary Kellam, who had given
on Thursday night to the damp little fellow with the canvas bag so she would not have to fight s
while driving to Bremerton. The sleep that overtook her was endless. Hakim mutilated the path
old corpse before dump-ing it because the knife lent authenticity to the appearance of a bizarre
crime.
By dawn he had abandoned the Kellam car. While awaiting a connection at the Tacoma
terminal, he idly watched television. He consid-ered calling Talith, but chose to wait until he
better equipped. He must not erode his lead-ership of Fat'ah with signs of vulnerability.
The hour was equally early in Anaheim, fif-teen hundred kilometers to the south, w
television's regulators, the Federal Communica-tions Commission, had convened fittingly,
newspaper quipped, adjoining Disneyland. Maurice Everett stared out his window in the hotel to
small bogus Matterhorn that stood several hundred meters from his suite in the Marine Tower. I
squinted enough he could almost imagine it was a massif in the Rockies. Born a hundred and
years too late to be a mountain man, Maury Everett had moved from Iowa to Colorado as soo
he had a choice of terrain. His executive career with Oracle Mi-croelectronics in Colorado Spr
was all but inevitable, once his college and military re-quirements were behind him. The end
com-pacting of communication devices made it clear that Oracle would either get into televisio
make way for some company that could. By 1980, Everett had years of liaison with ENG news
who used Oracle's Electronic News Gathering equipment, and good connections with conserva
democrats. How this qualified him to be appointed a Commissioner, one of the FCC's famed se
dwarfs, was a mystery solved only in Washington. But mavericks had settled the west, and some
evidently felt that they might settle the electromagnetic spectrum. Maury Everett was not dispose
argue. At the moment, he was strongly disposed to chuck the damned agenda in favo
Frontierland. He squashed his whimsy with a faint sigh, shrugged the big sloping shoulders,
ordered enough breakfast for two smaller men.
Everett noted that the recent appointees tended to arrive promptly; the older hands took their t
He filled the conference room doorway punctually at nine to find Barbara Costigan hiding her p
features under counterculture beads and poncho, sharing coffee with Dave Engels. Everett slid in
seat across from Engels, nodded into the merry hyperthyroid eyes of the `retired' FBI man. En
was a terror on the handball court but that nervous energy did not meld easily with sedentary w
At the mo-ment, he was swirling his coffee to see how close he could come to spilling it.
Costigan tore her eyes from the Engels coffee and smiled her relief at Everett. "We w
won-dering where everybody's going to stand on the religious broadcast thing," she said.
"I thought it was pretty clear yesterday," Everett rumbled softly, tugging at his tie. He frowne
the ceiling, trying to recall the quote: "Stance of neutrality, acting neither to promote
inhibit same old wording, Barb. I think it'll carry."
Engels's head jerked up to glance beyond Everett. The new arrival was John Rooker; tiny, b
tweedy, the professor of political philos-ophy. Rooker sat down with Leon Cole, a snappy dre
who understood political cam-paigns better than any other member because he had managed
many, so well.
Last to arrive was the attorney and Chairman, Thomas Wills. Powell, they all knew, would no
coming. Thick and slow moving, Wills eased down into his seat and bestowed a Santa Claus s
at the assembly. "With apologies for the time," said the reedy old voice, "I can tell you we h
those videotapes now."
Everett cursed to himself. Most videotapes at these conferences were dull affairs. The religi
broadcast controversy went as Everett had guessed, and more quickly than usual.
Moving to the next items, Wills studied his notes. "We have tapes of the Texas courtroom E
problem, the Conklin kidnapping in Phoenix, and that outrageous thing in Buffalo. Do I he
motion?"
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