Read Online The Brethren by John Grisham - Free Book Online

had managed to upstage the spectacle in New Hampshire by simply snubbing it. Lake’s name had not been on the ballot, and he was the first candidate in decades to be proud of that fact. “Who needs New Hampshire?” he’d been quoted as saying. “I’ll take the rest of the country.”
    Lake signed off amid thunderous applause, and reshook all the hands on the stage. CNN returned to its studio where the talking heads would spend fifteen minutes telling the viewers what they had just witnessed.
    On his table, Teddy pushed buttons and the screen changed. “Here’s the finished product,” he said. “The first installment.”
    It was a television ad for candidate Lake, and it began with a brief glimpse of a row of grim Chinese generals standing rigidly at a military parade, watching massive hardware roll by. “You think the world’s a safer place?” a deep, rich ominous voice asked off-camera. Then, glimpses of the world’s current madmen, all watching their armies parade by—Hussein, Qaddafi, Milosevic, Kim in North Korea. Even poor Castro, with the last of his ragtag army lumbering through Havana, got a split second of airtime. “Our military could not now do what it did in 1991 during the Gulf War,” the voice said as gravely as if another war had already been declared. Then a blast, an atomic mushroom, followed by thousands of Indians dancing in thestreets. Another blast, and the Pakistanis were dancing next door.
    “China wants to invade Taiwan,” the voice continued as a million Chinese soldiers marched in perfect step. “North Korea wants South Korea,” the voice said, as tanks rolled through the DMZ. “And the United States is always an easy target.”
    The voice changed quickly into one with a high pitch, and the ad shifted to a congressional hearing of some sort, with a heavily bemedaled general lecturing some subcommittee. “You, the Congress,” he was saying, “spend less on the military each year. This defense budget is smaller than it was fifteen years ago. You expect us to be ready for war in Korea, the Middle East, and now Eastern Europe, yet our budget keeps shrinking. The situation is critical.” The ad went blank, nothing but a dark screen, then the first voice said, “Twelve years ago there were two superpowers. Now there are none.” The handsome face of Aaron Lake appeared, and the ad finished with the voice saying, “Lake, Before It’s Too Late.”
    “I’m not sure I like it,” York said after a pause.
    “Why not?”
    “It’s so negative.”
    “Good. Makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t it?”
    “Very much so.”
    “Good. We’re going to flood television for a week, and I suspect Lake’s soft numbers will get even softer. The ads will make people squirm, and they won’t like them.”
    York knew what was coming. The people would indeed squirm and dislike the ads, then get the hellscared out of them, and Lake would suddenly become a visionary. Teddy was working on the terror.
    There were two TV rooms on each wing at Trumble; two small bare rooms where you could smoke and watch whatever the guards wanted you to watch. No remote—they’d tried that at first but it had caused too much trouble. By far the nastiest disagreements occurred when the boys couldn’t agree on what to watch. So the guards made the selections.
    Rules prohibited inmates from having their own TV’s.
    The guard on duty happened to like basketball. There was a college game on ESPN, and the room was packed with inmates. Hatlee Beech hated sports, and he sat alone in the other TV room and watched one banal sitcom after another. When he was on the bench and working twelve hours a day, he had never watched television. Who had the time? He’d had an office in his home where he dictated opinions until late while everyone else was glued to prime time. Now, watching the mindless crap, he realized how lucky he’d been. In so many ways.
    He lit a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked since college, and for the