The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 21

‘T here’s something else you might like to think about, Mr President,’ Dan Esposito said, after the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense had left. ‘Your second term still has a while to run, and you will have left this country and the world an enduring legacy, but we need to give some consideration as to who you’re going to support to succeed you in this office. If the Democrats run someone like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, we’re going to need a candidate who is tough and uncompromising on the war on terror, someone who represents the values of the American people.’

‘Do you have anyone in mind?’

Dan Esposito nodded. He’d already quietly canvassed the idea on the Hill and when he’d put forward Richard Halliwell’s name the response from the Republican heavyweights, already nervous over the war in Iraq, had been overwhelmingly positive. Esposito’s research had revealed that Richard Halliwell had started his career working in CDC’s Level 4 labs as a biochemist. The President’s advisor had noted that it hadn’t been long before Halliwell had been attracted by the bigger bucks on offer in private enterprise. Paralleling the staggering rise of Enron, in a little over three decades, Halliwell had taken a medium-sized biotech and turned it into the world’s biggest pharmaceutical. Halliwell had a reputation on Wall Street for being a ruthless, successful and mega-wealthy businessman and ‘ruthless’ was something Esposito understood and could work with. The Halliwell conglomerate was more than a match for GlaxoSmithKline and the rest of Big Pharma combined, and Halliwell shares had just reached a new high of $141 on the New York Stock Exchange.

There was something else that attracted the politically astute Esposito, who was forever looking for an advantage over the Democrats. Esposito had discovered that Halliwell was a prominent Southern Baptist and a member of one of the largest churches in the country; the Buffett Evangelical Center for Christ could seat 15,000 worshippers. America was overwhelmingly a Christian country and Esposito’s latest research indicated that over 50 per cent of the population were Protestant, 25 per cent Catholic, and another 11 per cent described themselves as Christian without specifying a denomination. Esposito had separate plans for the Catholics, but he knew that with evangelical preachers like Jerry Buffett on side a big part of his next election campaign could be fought from the pulpit. In a country where voting wasn’t compulsory, voter apathy was an ever-present danger but if the evangelical right were convinced a candidate was one of them, several thousand preachers could be brought into play. The growing power of the Christian Right could be harnessed to get over 30 million evangelicals, who were in church on a Sunday, down to the polling booth the following Tuesday.

‘Richard Halliwell,’ Esposito replied, endorsing his candidate without hesitation. ‘I know he would have a lot of support on the Hill, and he would also have the support of Jerry Buffett and a lot of the Reverend Buffett’s colleagues,’ he added, appealing to the President’s relationship with his spiritual advisor. ‘It will be important for your place in history, Mr President, for the country to continue to support the Republican ideals that you’ve set in place.’

‘What about Bolton?’ the President asked, more than well aware of his deputy’s ambitions.

‘He’s a good Vice President,’ Esposito replied carefully, ‘but he’s made a lot of enemies over the years, and frankly, Mr President, he’s carrying too much baggage for an election campaign. The Democrats would re-raise his share portfolio and we’d spend the whole campaign defending him.’ Esposito did not go so far as to air his intelligence from his contacts in Inland Revenue. Should that ever surface the President needed to be in a position to employ the time-honoured defence of ‘I wasn’t told’.

The President looked thoughtful. Esposito was right. Although he wasn’t eligible to run again it would be important that his legacy continued.

‘Halliwell’s smarter than the Vice President and he’s clean,’ Esposito said, sensing he had won the President’s support. ‘For now we’ll need to keep this under wraps. Halliwell’s a pretty good golfer, so I suggest you and I have a quiet round with him and that way any suggestion that we met for other than social reasons will be deniable.’

President Harrison grinned. ‘He’s good,’ he said, ‘but not that good. I whipped his ass the last time we played.’ There was nothing the President liked better than a game of golf. It not only got him away from the war on terror and any one of a dozen other crises that seemed to constantly swirl around the White House, but it was a much more likeable form of combat. On the golf course you could see your enemy and assess his every move.

Dan Esposito allowed himself a smile. He hated golf with a passion but it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Whenever Esposito wanted to get the President’s complete attention on something, he could often achieve far more over eighteen holes than he could in the Oval Office. It was a small price to pay. Richard Halliwell was a man after his own heart, he mused. Yes, ruthless and uncompromising, but the war on terror and a strategy to deal with the raging Chinese required nothing less.

For once Esposito’s research lacked its usual depth and thoroughness. He’d been blinded by Halliwell’s business acumen and membership of the big Southern Baptist Church. If Dan Esposito had carried out his research into Richard Halliwell with the same meticulous attention to detail that he gave the poll data that flooded into his office each week, he might have discovered that Richard Halliwell’s reputation on Wall Street, like his membership of the Buffett Evangelical Center for Christ, was not all it seemed.