Connecticut Senator Tom Felice, a decent, four-term, highly honored
Democratic member of Congress, fights for his life in a private
room for high-level politicians at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington. He is within mere steps of the grievously wounded
and mutilated soldiers whom he had betrayed and from which the VIP
patients in Ward 72, like the disgraced Senator Felice, are
carefully segregated.Felice was snared by French security agencies,
invisibly assisted by the Mossad, in a Paris hotel room while
accepting a bribe from a Syrian terrorist. Expelled from France as
a persona non grata, he suffered a debilitating stroke aboard the
US Air Force plane returning him home. Major Monica Howard, a US
Army Medical Corps physician with the Felice congressional
delegation on the aircraft, skillfully lessens the stroke's
potential lethality. A mere few hours earlier, she had colluded
with Mossad agents. Back in Washington, Felice's colleagues vote
his expulsion from the Senate as the Justice Department files
charges against him for abetting terrorism.In Connecticut, a
Byzantine plot unfolds, ultimately removing the acting Republican
lieutenant governor, Eileen Martino. Only months earlier, she had
replaced the former governor whose crimes of corruption led to his
imprisonment; crimes in which she is now being incriminated.
Martino's political collapse brings to office the next governor in
the line of succession, a popular state senate leader, Domenic
Guillermo, a Democrat, who appoints Bill Rice, a well-known and
Washington-based Connecticut lobbyist, to the seat of the
now-resigned Senator Felice.How did it come to this? Senator Felice
was induced by Tyler Hendricks, his former chief of staff, now a
lobbyist, to legislate the transfer of a $720 million defense
contract from a Utah company, earmarking it to the lobbyist's
Canadian client. The contract would provide the US Army with an
anabolic steroid for use by US Special Operations troops operating
in Iraq and Afghanistan at the every edges of human performance. A
terrorist cell operating in Canada dispatches four Syrian doctoral
students in the reputable York University molecular biology program
to infiltrate the company and contaminate the steroid's preparation
with a deadly bacterium. Belatedly, Canadian intelligence and other
agencies raid the company, following the French seizure of Senator
Felice and his terrorist co-conspirator in Paris. But in
Washington, greed, personal ambition and political power beggar
troop welfare. Senate Republicans shamelessly exploit their
Democratic colleague's humiliation and anticipate a Republican
replacement to Senator Felice, a move which would critically alter
the margin of Senate control. But House and Senate Democrats from
the New England delegation move aggressively in two directions;
first cooperating with the party leaders in Connecticut to keep the
seat in Democratic hands; then, to transfer the Canadian contract
to an Israeli pharmaceutical company which had only recently
established operations in Rhode Island and on the Connecticut
"pharma" coastline. Curiously, the US lobbyist for the Israeli
company is appointed to the Senate seat mere hours after the acting
governor quits, her successor sworn in and Senator Felice, now
facing life-threatening surgery, resigns.Feckless US and Canadian
intelligence agencies are slammed by elected political overseers
for their ineptness: they were idle during the scandal, fearing
political repercussions incurred from tracking a Senator or
interfering with seemingly "normal" business transactions. Nor did
Congress' hypocritical scorn of defense contracts with foreign
companies matter much in the face of effective lobbying.The story
envelops terrorism in greed. Elected political leaders are easily
deceived by slick lobbyists who readily exploit their relatively
low compensation levels and high-living aspirations. Indirectly,
lobbyists seize the reins of elect
General
Imprint: |
X Libris
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 2007 |
First published: |
September 2007 |
Authors: |
Robert Lockwood
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 19mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
324 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-4257-8262-7 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
Genre fiction >
Adventure / thriller >
General
|
LSN: |
1-4257-8262-0 |
Barcode: |
9781425782627 |
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