Free Born with Secrets: A Political Thriller by Bowen Greenwood Page B

committee
headquarters. He had a ton of fundraising phone calls to make, and he was
behind schedule because of the business with Matt.
    When he entered, he pressed his finger to his lips
as he passed the receptionist, giving her a wink. Then he whispered, “Don’t
tell Gina.”
    He was arriving really late, and he wanted to avoid
the yelling from the campaign manager that always came with reduced production
in fundraising calls.
    The receptionist grinned and didn’t say a word as
Mike walked down the hall to the office they let him use. The party kept space
where members of Congress could come and conduct political business since they
couldn’t do that in their official, taxpayer-funded offices. However, the space
was barely large enough for Mike and for his campaign manager when she was in
town.
    Alas, today she was in town. Mike was barely
finishing his fourth call when Gina came in, sat in the guest chair across the
desk from him, and calmly waited until Vincent hung up the phone. The moment he
clicked off the line, the yelling started.
    “Mike, two hours of no calls being made costs us
twenty thousand dollars in lost donations!”
    She had a spot of ink on her lower lip. She’d been
chewing on a pen and had it explode again. It happened to her frequently.
Gina’s gray hair looked like she hadn’t had time to wash it in a couple of
days. That was well within the realm of possibility, Mike knew.
    “I’m sorry, G,” he said. “I got caught by surprise
by some personal life stuff this morning. I’ll make the time up.”
    “Those calls were scheduled, Mike. I had two guys
who could write five thousand dollar checks waiting specifically for a call
before ten in the morning!”
    “I’m sorry, Gina. Let me call them right now. Tell
me which ones had an appointment, and I’ll call right away.”
    She took his call list and circled three different
names before passing it back to him, then said, “Not right away, though. Oppo
turned up something last night that I want to go over with you.”
    “Oppo” was short for “Opposition Research.” It
referred to the business of finding out all the bad, embarrassing, unsavory
things about their opponent so they could be turned into commercials. Vincent’s
campaign had a consultant who did that for them.
    Gina was somewhat hard to take because she was
almost always angry, but the Oppo consultant was something else entirely. That
guy just loved knowing dirty secrets about people, and it made Mike feel
unclean.
    The campaign manager said, “Doyle’s brother got
fired last night.”
    “Doyle Cobalt’s?”
    “It’s not a common name, Mike. How many other Doyles
are you hanging out with?”
    Mike felt the sarcasm set off his temper and had to
remain silent for a few moments before his desire to retaliate was under
control.
    After a second or two he asked, “What happened?”
    “His name’s Luther Cobalt. Apparently, he took a job
as a Federal Correctional Officer in the prison system a couple months ago.
Last night, FCI-Rocky fired him. He was still in his probationary period, so
they could do that. No explanation given.”
    The Congressman asked, “Why would Doyle Cobalt’s
brother be working as a prison guard? Doyle makes enough to keep his whole
family in spending money, and prison guard doesn’t seem like a job you do out
of love for the work.”
    Gina just shrugged. “He’s done a lot of security
guard type jobs. Doyle’s brother has actually been kind of hard for our Oppo
guy to track. From what we can gather, he’s got some ties to the intelligence
community. His name has shown up in a court case as an informant for the
Department of Homeland Security, along with some allegations of having used
excessive force. The most solid record we have of him is that apparently he
once worked for that corrupt contractor you made your name on. Electron
Guidewire, wasn’t it?”
    The Congressman nodded. She, of course, would have
no idea about what was going on, but