Three Metal Pellets

4. The Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign Team

4

The Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign Team

Just as Priscilla and Julia stepped off their flight to the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport—situated amid a heavily wooded area, pine trees mainly—they noticed how mild it was for October in Alabama—sunny and barely humid. There was no shelter from the plane to the terminal, so the two friends proceeded, along with the other passengers, down the stairwell to the tarmac and then to the terminal. Once inside, they walked what seemed a long distance to the baggage claim area. All the while, Priscilla observed that the airport was small compared to the Port Columbus International Airport. “Kind of small, don’t you think?” she said to Julia.

Soon she and Julia were at the baggage claim area. Neither of the two friends saw any luggage, so they stood patiently with the other passengers and waited. As the baggage handlers were bringing colorful suitcases of various shapes and sizes from the storage area and arranging them on the floor for the passengers to easily identify theirs, Priscilla looked at the exit door into the lobby just beyond them, and said, “Where’s our driver, Girlfriend?”

“You mean the one with the sign with PJ Austin printed on it!” Julia laughed.

When one of the baggage handlers placed what appeared to be their suitcases on the floor alongside all the other unclaimed luggage, Priscilla and Julia hurriedly pointed out theirs and gave the man a tip. Then they grabbed hold of their luggage on wheels and started walking toward the lobby door. Right away, they saw a young man and a young woman approaching them.

“Hello, Ms. Austin and Ms. Cahill!” the young woman called out. “Welcome to Birmingham!”

But Priscilla, caught off guard, said, “But how’d you—?”

The young woman, whose badge read “Michelle Delafontaine,” stood before her. “Oh, Ms. Austin, everybody knows you. Let me take your bags and show you to our van.”

The young man, whose badge read “Doug Anderson,” had already grabbed hold of Julia’s baggage and was now engaging her in small talk.

But Julia, more alert than Priscilla, broke off her conversation with the young man, and said to the young couple, “Excuse us a moment, please.”

“Sure, no problem,” Michelle said.

Then Julia told Priscilla to step off to the side for some privacy.

The two women walked a few yards away.

“What is it, Julia?”

“Priscilla, whatever you do, keep your guard up. Remember, the test began when they greeted you. So keep quiet as much as possible. Besides, aren’t you the one who always says, ‘Things are rarely as they seem?’”

“Thanks, Julia.” Priscilla suddenly realized she had already been taken by the pleasant demeanor of the young escorts.

Julia walked hurriedly back to Michelle and Doug and asked to see their identification.

“Thanks for asking, Ms. Cahill. One can’t be too careful these days,” Doug said, and then pulled a wallet out of his back pocket and opened it and showed Julia his driver’s license.

Then, with Priscilla now standing beside her, Julia asked, “Now, how far is it to the resort from here?”

“We’re a good twenty miles or so from downtown,” Doug said, “and a little less than that from here. Would you like to see some sights along the way? Maybe do a little shop—?”

“No,” Julia said adamantly. “We’d really like to go straight to the resort. We need to rest before everything begins.”

While Julia took control of the situation, Michelle stared at Priscilla. “Ms. Austin, I see you’re in good company with Ms. Cahill.”

“Yes, you’re very observant,” Priscilla said, without even looking at the young woman.

After Michelle and Doug took up Priscilla’s and Julia’s luggage, the four-member entourage stepped through a turnstile into the large, crowded lobby. Straight ahead of them, they spotted the rolling video cameras of a television crew and a tall, smartly-dressed, blond-haired young woman holding a microphone and excitedly waving it back and forth. The crew and the news correspondent were blocking the exit door that led to the parking area.

“Uh-oh,” Priscilla said. “About face! Look for another exit!”

Grabbing hold of Julia’s hand, she started leading Julia and the young couple toward an exit on the left. But the tall news correspondent stepped quickly toward the group and waved her microphone in Priscilla’s face: “Yes, folks, it is PJ Austin, the PR consultant from Columbus, Ohio.”

But Priscilla, hardly in the mood to grant an impromptu interview, said, “Looks like we’ve got a little nuisance on our hands. Hang tight and follow my lead. Okay Julia?”

“Hello, Ms. Austin!” the news correspondent said excitedly. “It is PJ Austin? I’m Stephanie Conover, political news correspondent for WCKX TV News, Birmingham. May I get a statement from you? Is it true that you’re here to meet with Congressman Hollingsworth regarding his bid for the presidency?”

“Wow! That was a mouthful,” Priscilla said. “I’m surprised you didn’t choke. But I have absolutely no comment and would appreciate it if you’d step away from the exit. Please Ms.? Conover is it?”

“But Ms. Austin, I’m not letting you off that easy. Besides, you haven’t answered my—”

Pointing to the exit sign, Priscilla said, “Ms. Conover, perhaps you and your camera crew don’t realize it, but you’re impeding our passage through the exit; you’re a fire hazard.”

The camera crew quickly moved away from the exit. Then Priscilla, Julia, Doug, and Michelle rushed out of the terminal to Doug’s van. A few minutes later, the van—Doug at the steering wheel, Michelle sitting beside him, and Priscilla and Julia in the back seat—headed out of the parking lot onto the highway towards the Choctaw Ridge Resort. Even though it was a mild, sunny afternoon, Priscilla was absorbed by the encounter with the news correspondent. She believed that her encounter with Ms. Conover had been taped live; she had seen the camera’s lenses rolling, and she had heard the vigor in Ms. Conover’s voice. It was as if she had captured the scoop of the day. So now Priscilla realized that she had been “used” by the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team: that PJ Austin had even showed up in Birmingham had generated more free media coverage than all the paid advertisements the campaign could ever have produced. She was furious. Priscilla did not like being used, so she dwelled on how to counteract what had just transpired. Meanwhile, the trip to the Choctaw Ridge Resort was not as pleasant as she had once anticipated.

As they continued on their drive to the resort, Michelle turned to the backseat and tried to engage Priscilla in conversation, but to no avail. First she talked about how she had admired Priscilla’s courage during her time in Africa and about how she had felt bad about the death of her fiancé Jonathan Morgan. Priscilla did not respond. Then Michelle told her about her desire to learn public relations skills and about how impressed she had been with Priscilla’s work on the premiere of the documentary film Mandela. Still, Priscilla did not respond. Finally, Michelle said, “Ms. Austin, the congressman will be very upset with me if you tell him that I performed my job unsatisfactorily.”

“Don’t worry, Ms.—What’s your name again?”

“Delafontaine, Michelle Delafontaine.”

“Yeah, well, Ms. Delafontaine, you needn’t worry. My mind is elsewhere. You two have done your jobs well. Don’t you agree, Julia?”

“Yes, I agree.”

But Julia knew full well that Priscilla had already begun contriving a way to get back at the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team or whoever had been responsible for her unexpected encounter with that reporter. But Julia could not understand why someone presumably affiliated with the congressman had demonstrated such effrontery so early in the game, especially since Priscilla had not even signed on. Then again, perhaps that was the reason for having staged the confrontation with the local news correspondent in the first place; someone did not want PJ Austin to be retained by the Hollingsworth camp.

Just after Doug drove onto the highway toward the Hollingsworth estate, Priscilla pulled out her cellular telephone and pressed the number to FBI Agent Rothschild. He was a tad more approachable than CIA Agent Froley.

“Yes, my friend, PJ Austin here.” Why she always recited her full name to people who knew her, even with caller ID, was always odd, but Priscilla was so unassuming.

“Yes, yes, but I’m in a situation,” Priscilla said to the agent. “Someone leaked my arrival to a local TV news correspondent named Conover. Where’d that contact originate?”

Meanwhile, although Michelle had no idea to whom Priscilla was speaking, her nerves frayed as she listened.

“Please, Ms. Austin, I had nothing to do with that,” she said. “My cousin Doug and I need these jobs. We’re college students, just grateful to have even gotten on at Hollingsworth Industries. Our job was to greet you and Ms. Cahill and to bring you back safely to Choctaw Ridge Resort. That’s all. We knew nothing about that camera crew.”

“Calm down, young lady,” Julia said to console the young people. “Ms. Austin also has a job to perform. So if you really had nothing to do with that little episode, carry on as usual. And, oh yeah, you didn’t hear that telephone conversation, either.”

As Priscilla would learn later, from Stacey McMasters—the communications consultant on the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team, someone with whom she would become friends—while she and Julia were on their way to the Choctaw Ridge Resort, the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team met in an upstairs conference room at the First National Bank of Birmingham. Some fifteen people were seated at a long, wooden, cluttered conference table. A big screen was spread over one of the walls between the two large windows. To the left of the table, three technical staffers sat at workstations in front of 1987 IBM computers and printers. The remainder of the key staff sat around the conference table, leafing through pages of data about demographics, donors, electoral voting stats, and policy proposals. One of them was glued to a television screen and a radio, listening and watching for anything remotely of interest to the campaign team. That staffer occasionally adjusted the volume on the radio and the television and pointed to images he was projecting from the television onto the big screen.

Seated at the head of the conference table was the illustrious presidential hopeful, Congressman Fleetwood Marshall Hollingsworth.

“Folks, I believe we’ve effectively eluded the media once again,” the congressman said.

But the tactless Theodore Samuelson retorted, “You don’t say?” Theodore was in line to become the White House Director of Domestic Policy.

“Okay, Teddy. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, Congressman, I’ve just received a phone call about a local news story that’s appeared in nearly every media outlet in the country,” Theodore said. Then several other members of the team looked at the big screen that the staffer was monitoring.

“Zoom in on one of the local news channels,” Theodore said to the staffer monitoring the telecommunications equipment. “Anyone of them will do.”

A very authoritarian figure, Theodore had wanted to be the campaign manager, but he rated too far below the highly favored Tillman Cummingsmaster on the short list of contenders.

“What the—?” the congressman said, as he and the other campaign team members watched WCKX local news reporter Stephanie Conover on the big screen attempting to corral PJ Austin into granting her an interview near the exit of the terminal at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.

Then, as soon as Tillman realized what he was watching on the big screen, he said, fuming over the news story, “Why, I bet I’ll—. Her boss will hear from me.”

“Hold on a while, Tillman,” someone else said. “Let’s see how this plays out.”

As the members of the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team watched their highly sought-after marketing consultant maneuver her encounter with Ms. Conover, they all gradually simmered down when they observed the baffled expression on Ms. Conover’s face about her camera crew having blocked the exit and especially when Priscilla essentially brushed her off.

After coverage of the attempted television news interview at the airport ended, Tillman said, “You know, Congressman, she’s pretty good at this game. Suppose she never saw what could have been a staged test coming?”

Then he said something unexpected, “So-o, who do you suppose leaked her visit to the media?”

“Leaked her visit?” Theodore asked. “How ’bout the obvious leak about the existence of our campaign team in the first place? And this early in the game, too! So there’s a mole among us. Damn it all.”

“All right, already, Teddy,” the congressman said. “We’ll have our chance to discuss the matter with Ms. Austin this evening at the reception. But something tells me otherwise. It just doesn’t make any sense for her to generate any attention; that’s not her MO.”

Then everyone became silent.

As everyone seemed to contemplate who could have leaked the story about the creation of their campaign team, Tillman leaned over and whispered to the congressman, “Okay, boss, I’ll bet you have your own suspicions, though. I know you do.”

Fleetwood Marshall already had reason to be greatly troubled about possible backlash from someone with whom he had once shared an intimate relationship. His former girlfriend, Gilda Marie Hawthorne, had served as advertising agent for his three consecutive congressional races. She was known to be a vicious adversary. Mostly, she had never gotten over that Fleetwood Marshall had chosen to marry an Atlanta socialite over her. And she had found out about their engagement through the society column of a local newspaper, not from him personally.

Besides, it was Tillman who had informed Gilda about the selection of the New York-based Lazaron Media Group to handle communications and PR for the congressman’s bid for the presidency, not her firm, the Hawthorne Advertising Agency. So Gilda must have felt as if she had been cast aside or thrown under the bus.

In his response to Tillman, the congressman said, “Nah, she wouldn’t have done this.”

“Ah hell, boss,” Tillman said. “I told you to sever ties with that mean witch years ago. But no-o, you had to do it your way and keep stringing her along. Now, let’s hope that Ms. Austin hasn’t been too ruffled by that little show of force.”

Then, several other members of the team began voicing their opinions about the news story. A few others kept looking at the big screen to see how some of the other networks were covering that same story.

“You know something, Congressman,” Carmine Taglione said, “the media will run that piece for the next several hours, if not days, and bilk it for all its worth. Why, hell, they’ll interview cats and dogs just to keep viewers watching. At least now the competition knows you’re considering one of the most recognized names in the world to conduct your marketing, and that ain’t half bad, bro’.”

The fund-raising consultant, Carmine, could only see dollars. As far as Carmine was concerned, though she was not Mother Teresa, PJ Austin epitomized American apple pie.

“Hello-o, we’re looking at manna from heaven!”

But then, Stacey McMasters, who represented the Lazaron Media Group spoke.

“I sure hope she doesn’t have a problem working with our firm.” Then, she added, “Is it just me, or does she look a little younger than we expected?”

“All the better,” Tillman chimed in again. “PJ Austin has what might best be described as a deceptive demeanor, and I’m told that she uses it to her advantage. Besides, remember what the mapmaker said, ‘Diversity, youth, wit, credentials, and perceived capability’ all correlate strongly with approval for our guy.”

“Ditto that,” Dunston Shanko said. “However, I do share a bit of Stacey’s concern about Ms. Austin being a team player. Of the lot of us, no one has ever worked with her before, nor do we know her personally.” Dunston was the chief of staff for Congressman Hollingsworth’s office in Washington, and he had been asked to serve in that same capacity for the campaign team as well. Because he was a stickler for order and allegiance to the congressman, everyone agreed that Dunston had been the best choice for his post.

But then, much to everyone’s surprise, Tillman said, “Okay, now Dunston, let’s hear your real concern.”

“I’m just a wee bit concerned about any spillover Ms. Austin might bring related to her a*******n and its taking away from the campaign and all.” But it was what Dunston did not say that mattered most. After all, the campaign team knew about Priscilla’s work with the Bernhardt Foundation, so if Dunston wanted to talk about the Palestinian connection, why did he not do so? For one thing, campaign workers are no different from other people in possessing the gall to mention something controversial; therefore, no one on the campaign team had broached the obvious issues.

But sensing that the conversation was about to go haywire, Tillman interceded, “How many times do I need to go over this? Ms. Austin has made it perfectly clear that she wants to move forward with her life. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I’ll bet she can’t wait to sink her teeth into something as consuming as a presidential elections campaign. At least for now, I suggest we place our bets of Carmine’s proposition. Whatever, it’s all good for the campaign. For after all, we’re up against a long, and formidable list of contenders: former President Nathanial Roundtree, running for a second term with high approval ratings; JK McDougal, whose grandfather was a steel magnate; Jason Gavin, the son of a highly admired astronaut; New England Senator Joshua Catchpole, who, if nominated, would be the nation’s first Jewish nominee; New York Senator Bertilini Scalise, a fourth-generation Italian whose father, Antolini Scalise, represented New York as senator for nearly thirty years; Senator Tyler Moneypenny, whose family has served in both chambers of the U.S. Congress since its inception and whose lineage can be traced back to the nation’s founders; Herman Spindale, the country’s first governor of East Indian descent; economist Sara Sorensen, the daughter of the former Secretary of State to President Roundtree, who holds the enviable position of—ahem—‘presumptive heir’ to the political party’s nomination; and, Henrietta Waters, the granddaughter of a Supreme Court associate justice, who herself has served as a jurist and who, like Sara and several of the other contenders, is a child of the sixties.”

Tillman drew a breath after ticking off his “long, and formidable, list of contenders.”

He hoped that long list, together with his admonition—that “we place our bets on Carmine’s proposition”—would allay any lingering concerns about any lingering interests by the general public in Priscilla’s time in Africa, not to mention possible repercussions because of the Bernhardts’ ethnicity.