“Cass,” he said calmly, “let me explain. This is a public relations firm. We’re in the business of…we apply fig leaves. We spread calm where there is uncalm. If there is noise, we apply silence. We make things better. At the very least, we seek to make things seem better. See where I’m taking this? Do you think that our clients come to us for help because on the side we urge people to-rise up against the United States government? Let me answer that. No. That is not what we do at Tucker Strategic Communications.”
“CASSANDRA has nothing to do with TSC.”
Terry said, “You’ve been reading Ann Rand again. I can tell.”
“Ayn Rand. And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Except every time I see one of that nutty broad’s books open on your desk, you start acting like some fruitcake messiah.”
“Who was it who told me, a long time ago, ‘Anger is the best motivator’? Wasn’t it your generation that started the whole youth movement thing? Come on, Terry. Forgotten what it’s like to be young and angry?”
Terry shrugged. “I’m middle-aged and angry. With good Scotch, I can deal with the anger.”
“So we’ve gone from ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty’ to ‘Don’t drink any Scotch under thirty’? Is this what’s become of your revolution?”
“The anthems from my revolution are now background music in TV commercials for cholesterol pills, onboard navigation systems for gas-guzzling SUVs, and hedge funds. Everyone sells out. Boomers just figured out how to make it an industry.”
“Well, there’s something to make you feel good in the autumn of your life. In your gated community golf courses. While my generation, in the spring of our lives, are forking over half our paychecks to pay for your meds and martinis.”
“I don’t even play golf. All right. Fine. You save the world. I’ll deal with the fucking minks.”
Terry stormed off. He pushed an Aeron chair out of his way; it slid across the conference room and slammed fecklessly into the credenza where he kept his “Spinnies,” the Oscar statuettes given by the American Academy of Public Relations.
Cass thought, Uh-oh. Dad’s mad. But there was work to do.
It was at 4:02 a.m. the following morning that the idea came to her.
She’d had little sleep, a lot of NoDoz, and way too many Red Bulls. In a calmer, sunlit hour of the day, she might not have written what she did. But the day had been a trying one. A few hours after her head butting with Terry, she read on the Internet that her father, now hugely wealthy from yet another California high-tech start-up, had just donated $10 million to Yale University.
She was no longer on speaking terms with him, and she didn’t want to upset her mother, who was not all that well. She called her brother, who was in some sort of touch with their father. His report did not improve Cass’s mood. Lisa, the current Mrs. Frank Cohane, had a son by a previous marriage. He was now seventeen and applying, as it happened, to Yale. As her brother relayed all this, Cass remembered her father telling her years ago, “I’ll buy Yale University a whole new football stadium!”
Cass hung up the phone in a daze. No doubt this unhappy episode contributed to the 4:02 a.m. posting on CASSANDRA calling for “actions against gated communities known to harbor early-retiring Boomers.”
“Turn on CNN,” Terry said when she arrived at work just before noon, tired, but a good tired.
“Why? What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing. Riots on golf courses in Florida. You know, the usual youth movement thing.”
Suddenly awake, Cass went to her office, flicked on the TV, and watched. She slumped in her chair. There’s a difference between typing on a computer all alone at four in the morning with your veins pulsing with amphetamine courage, calling for insurrection, and watching the results on TV at noon in your office on K Street. Terry buzzed her on the intercom.
“Turn on Fox News. You just missed a great helicopter shot of some kid chucking a Molotov cocktail at a police riot vehicle. They just turned the water cannon on him. He’s down.…?Oooo. Ouch. That boy’s not throwing anything more anytime soon. Those Florida troopers, they do not mess around. By the way, you’ll be pleased to hear that the governor is considering calling in the National Guard- Excuse me. That’s my phone. It’s probably our most lucrative client, calling to cancel their account. Call you right back.”
Cass watched numbly. She saw the words “Boomsday Rage” appear at the bottom of the CNN screen; felt a rumbling in her tummy. The phones began to ring. They didn’t stop.
She was on the phone with a producer for one of the networks when her secretary buzzed to say that “two men from the FBI are here to see you.” Terry, already alert, buzzed her and told her under no circumstances to say anything until his lawyer arrived.
As she gathered her thoughts, Cass reflected that there was probably no better place than here to face the storm. As Terry liked (privately) to say, “Disasters R Us.”
She was in the middle of not answering the third or perhaps fourth question put to her by the two extremely unsmiling FBI agents when Terry walked into her office. The agents asked him to leave; he told them politely it was his firm and if they didn’t like his company, they could leave. Or they could remain and meet Allen Snyder, Esquire. The Allen Snyder. Of Hogan and Hartson. The name was familiar? Surely? Friend of the director of the FBI? Well, ha, friend of everyone. The Man to See. Rumored to be on the short list for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dist-
“Okay, Mr. Tucker,” said one of the agents wearily. “We get it. Mr. Snyder is an eminent personage.”
The four of them sat around in awkward silence (“Would you two like some coffee?” “No, thank you.” “Water?” “No…”), waiting for the great man’s arrival, which came twenty minutes or so later, to the vast relief of everyone-especially Cass, who was trying not to hyperventilate. How embarrassing is that-passing out in front of your boss and the FBI?
No one likes lawyers until you need one, at which point they assume the raiment of knights. Despite their impatience with Terry’s trumpet fanfare buildup, the agents instinctively recognized that they were now dealing with a lion of the bar. For his part, Mr. Snyder was gentle, courtly, soft-spoken, and professional. There was no “As I said to your boss last night while we were skinny-dipping in the White House pool with the president and the chief justice of the Supreme Court” or any of the usual Washington chest thumping and pecker flexing. Straight to the point, barely above a whisper: “So, gentlemen, how can we resolve the situation?” Brilliant, Cass thought, the way he embeds optimism in the very gambit. It was simply a “situation” in need of “resolve.” Nothing so serious as, say, felonious incitement to violence against persons and property. Nothing of the sort.
One of the agents handed Mr. Snyder a printout of Cass’s increasingly legendary 4:02 a.m. blog posting, explicitly inciting the furious disenfranchised youth of America to visit violence upon the nation’s…golf courses. Well, Mr. Snyder said, that’s certainly very interesting, and we’ll all want to take a closer look, but it has hardly been established that Ms. Devine wrote this. He was no computer expert, but it seemed to him that anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the Internet could hack into a mainframe and send out postings under his client’s name. And even so, under the various statutes of the law, it was very far from clear, from the wording of the posting, that the person who actually wrote it was specifically urging acts of violence. “Actions” here could be understood to mean, well, a number of things, including peaceful demonstrations. Protected constitutionally under the First Amendment to the Constitution, providing for rights of assembly.