Linnear 03 - White Ninja Read Online Free PDF Page B

intoxicating aroma of supremacy.
    But, as must be the case in the modern world, to a great degree Branding owed his power to his friends. While he had many acquaintances among his political brethren, his true friends resided in the media. Branding cultivated them with precisely the same fervour that they pursued him. He was, perhaps, aware of the symbiotic nature of the relationship, but he was a politician, after all, and had willingly dived into a sea of symbiosis when he had entered his first election campaign.
    The media loved Branding. For one thing, he looked good on TV, for another he was eminently quotable. And, best of all, he gave them the inside stories - their lifeblood - as they were breaking. Branding was savvy enough to make them look good with their producers or their editors which, in turn, made the producers or the editors look good with the owners. In return, the media hounds gave Branding what he needed most: exposure. Everyone in the country knew Cotton Branding, making him much more than New York's senior Republican senator, chairman of the Senate Fiscal Oversight Committee.
    In one sense, Branding was unaware of the breadth of his power. That is to say, he was unused to taking full advantage of it. His wife, Mary, recently deceased, had been especially fond of pointing out his devastating effect on women when he walked into a crowded Washington room. Branding never believed her or, perhaps, did not want to believe her.
    He was a man who believed in the American system: executive, judicial, legislative, a careful counterbalance of powers safeguarding freedom. He understood that in becoming a senator he had put one foot into a kind of professional Sodom, where colleagues were regularly indicted for all manner of fraud. These people disgusted him and, as if he saw in their heinous behaviour a personal affront to his unshakeable faith in the system, he was quick to hold news conferences vilifying them. And here, too, his ties with the media gave him an enormous advantage.
    Influence-peddling, on which he was regularly quizzed, was another matter entirely. The very threads of the legislative fabric of the American government were woven into the pattern of barter: you vote for my bill and I'll vote for yours. There was no other way to do business on Capitol Hill. It was not the way Branding himself would have chosen, but he was nothing if not adaptable.
    He believed in the innate good he was doing - not only for his own New York constituents but for all Americans. And, although he would never openly admit to thinking that the ends justified the means, that was, in effect, how he had chosen to live his professional life.
    This strict, almost Puritan morality was, after all, the genesis of Branding's antipathy towards his fellow senator, Douglas Howe, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was Branding's opinion that, ever since Howe gained that lofty position, he had been throwing his weight around not only the halls of Congress but the Pentagon as well. But this was apparently not enough for Howe. It was said that the senator had meticulously gathered sensitive intelligence on the private lives of a certain number of generals and, from time to time, exercised this extortionate control over them. The abuse of power was, in Branding's mind, the most heinous crime of all and, as was his wont, he had spoken out on more than one occasion against Howe's misuse of the public trust.
    Mary, of course, had counselled a more diplomatic course. That was her way. Branding had his. When they had quarrelled, it had been around their differing approaches to life.
    Still, Cotton Branding had always striven to keep the professional and the personal separate. Now Douglas Howe had closed that division, threatening to lead Branding down a treacherous and potentially disastrous road.
    Howe was using his own public forum to denounce Branding, and the work Branding was doing with the Advanced Strategic Computer Research