Early Warning by Michael Walsh Read Free Book Online Page B

with extraordinary events and overcome them or endure them, secure in the knowledge that Der Wille zur Macht would see them through adversity. The very people whose will to fight has been eroded by half a century of guilt, defeatism, analysis, and Hollywood. For, when the time comes—and come it will—it is they who, more than anyone else, must once again summon the courage of their forebears and seize the day.”
    He paused and looked out over the sea of faces. It was time to go. “Thank you for your kind attention.”
    Through the perfunctory applause, a question: “So you’re advocating vigilantism?” It was the blonde. “And a follow-up—if so, then why do the American taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year on the military and the intelligence services? Are you saying that, in the end, all of our vaunted technology and martial prowess can’t guarantee our safety? And finally—”
    “Would you kindly identify yourself, please, Miss?” Mr. Grant asked.
    “Principessa Stanley. National-security correspondent, People’s News Network.”
    There were a couple of titters in the audience from the Europeans. That was to be expected. The Americans were too ignorant and uneducated to get the operatic reference, while the Europeans got it at once. She had spent most of her life trying to live up to the implications of her name, to be as regal and beautiful and as cold as her namesake, the Princess Turandot. She turned briefly and flashed her famously telegenic smile: “My father was a big Puccini fan,” she explained.
    “You understand, Ms. Stanley, that we are on Chatham House rules. Off the record, on deep background, however you care to phrase it. In any case, not for attribution.” He took a small sip of water to delay her answer, giving him time to glance down at his watch once more. The news had not gotten any better. Luckily, she was waiting for him just outside, and they would be at the airport in short order.
    Principessa smiled her famous network smile again. A cable network smile, but still a network smile, and one that had, along with her pretty face and killer figure, taken her a long way from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. If she played her cards right, pretty soon she’d move up from the mid-morning slot to the late-afternoon slot and after that, there was no telling what might happen when one of the prized evening gabfests suddenly found itself in need of a host. She had been hearing rumors, and doing her best to spread of few of her own, and in her opinion a couple of the anchors were only in need of a little push—or a gossip item dropped in the right place at the right time—and the way would be open to her. Besides, Jake Sinclair liked her, a lot.
    “Yes, I do.” She rose, letting everyone in the audience get a good look at her. Like all the interchangeable blondes on the cable newscasts, she was leggy, bosomy, brash, and the proud possessor of a law degree. One more button on her blouse was unbuttoned than absolutely necessary. “And finally…what do you have against the news media? Wasn’t it also Jefferson who also said that given a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would happily choose the latter?”
    Mr. Grant smiled; she had walked right into his trap. “Yes, Ms. Stanley. To which George Washington replied, ‘I consider such vehicles of knowledge’—that’s newspapers to you—‘more happily calculated than any other to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry, and ameliorate the morals of a free and enlightened people.’ And by ‘industry,’ of course, he meant—”
    “I know what he meant by ‘industry,’ Mr. Grant,” she retorted.
    His return glance indicated that he very much doubted that. “What Washington meant, Ms. Stanley, was that vigorous political opposition was a good thing, but that a news media, to give it its current favored term, that saps the will of the people, that reduces them to pleading,