Early Warning by Michael Walsh Page B
Authors: Michael Walsh
Tags: United States, Fiction, thriller, Suspense, Thrillers, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Suspense fiction, Intelligence Officers, Political, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Terrorism, Fiction - Espionage, General & Literary Fiction, Prevention, Officials and employees, Cyberterrorism - Prevention, National Security Agency
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followed with the news that the bride’s father had invested upwards of $500 million in Jake Sinclair’s media company for acquisitions, with which money he partly financed his hostile takeover of Time Warner and thus now owned People . So the two million bucks was money well spent, especially since it had landed back in his pocket. Plus he had some really great family photos.
He liked Jenny the Second well enough, but he would have liked her more had she allowed him his favorite Scotch at a time like this. Which was the closing of yet another deal. For even by Jake Sinclair standards—Sinclair often thought of himself in the third person, although he rarely slipped into that particular locution, at least in public—it was a big deal. As his father often told him, it was a stupid man who could not make financial hay in an economic meltdown, and Jake Sinclair’s father had not raised a stupid child.
Which was why, at this moment, he had just decided to divorce her.
Since he had been a kid, he had anticipated this day. Not just to own a major newspaper chain, a major newsweekly, a major television network, and even a major Hollywood studio—but to own all four. The superfecta of media, made possible by other men’s blind greed, blinkered overreaching, and sheer sightless stupidity. During the 1980s, when corporations were merging faster than actors on a movie set, Sinclair—then a junior executive in a media mini-conglomerate—had watched, listened, and learned. Watched as one moron after another, so fearful of being left behind in the tsunami of M&As, had yanked the cord on his golden parachute and sold out his company for a mess of pottage and a face-saving seat on the board, which was soon revoked. One dope after another had fallen for the snake-oil salesman’s charms of “high tech” whispers and “transformative transaction” pornography. Most of them, like his principal rival, had ended up padding the beach at Santa Monica with their New Age replacement wife in tow, spouting some holistic bullshit and telling Us Weekly how glad they were to finally be out of the rat race and living on a mere million dollars a year.
Well, fuck them. They were out and he was very much in, and glad to be here. For it wasn’t an honor just to be nominated—for Jake Sinclair, the only honor that counted was to see his face on the cover of as many magazines as possible, to have his minions chart how many hits his name garnered on Google every day, to ferret out references to himself in novels, television shows, and movies, where he often appeared, thinly veiled as an Important Tycoon or a Media Mogul.
Well, fuck that, too. He was not just an important Media Mogul. He was the Media Mogul. He could afford to divorce Jenny II and get seriously involved with the Other Woman.
That was another thing. Most people laughed at him when, during a time of collapsing “old media” value, Sinclair Holdings, LLC, had snapped up failing properties like Time Inc. and the New York Times . Well, they were as dumb as the people who bailed on New York City during the Abe Beame administration, when Gerald Ford famously told the city to drop dead.
He could taste the Scotch. The cigarette, too. And, if he tried real hard, he could taste her.
Jake Sinclair rose and padded toward the bar. He pressed a switch under the sink, recessed behind the garbage disposal. The false back of one of the cabinets slid aside, revealing his private stash of Oban Scotch and Balkan Sobranie cigarettes, the ones with his initials monogrammed on each coffin nail.
Houses were like wives, he thought as he sipped his Scotch and sent the smoke from the Sobranie cigarette spiraling toward the extractor fan, in that you didn’t hang on to them for the memories—you tore them down, rebuilt them, or replaced them with somebody’s else’s. Memories, good or bad, were noxious.
He was glad he didn’t have any children. This was an evil world, and it would be criminal to
He liked Jenny the Second well enough, but he would have liked her more had she allowed him his favorite Scotch at a time like this. Which was the closing of yet another deal. For even by Jake Sinclair standards—Sinclair often thought of himself in the third person, although he rarely slipped into that particular locution, at least in public—it was a big deal. As his father often told him, it was a stupid man who could not make financial hay in an economic meltdown, and Jake Sinclair’s father had not raised a stupid child.
Which was why, at this moment, he had just decided to divorce her.
Since he had been a kid, he had anticipated this day. Not just to own a major newspaper chain, a major newsweekly, a major television network, and even a major Hollywood studio—but to own all four. The superfecta of media, made possible by other men’s blind greed, blinkered overreaching, and sheer sightless stupidity. During the 1980s, when corporations were merging faster than actors on a movie set, Sinclair—then a junior executive in a media mini-conglomerate—had watched, listened, and learned. Watched as one moron after another, so fearful of being left behind in the tsunami of M&As, had yanked the cord on his golden parachute and sold out his company for a mess of pottage and a face-saving seat on the board, which was soon revoked. One dope after another had fallen for the snake-oil salesman’s charms of “high tech” whispers and “transformative transaction” pornography. Most of them, like his principal rival, had ended up padding the beach at Santa Monica with their New Age replacement wife in tow, spouting some holistic bullshit and telling Us Weekly how glad they were to finally be out of the rat race and living on a mere million dollars a year.
Well, fuck them. They were out and he was very much in, and glad to be here. For it wasn’t an honor just to be nominated—for Jake Sinclair, the only honor that counted was to see his face on the cover of as many magazines as possible, to have his minions chart how many hits his name garnered on Google every day, to ferret out references to himself in novels, television shows, and movies, where he often appeared, thinly veiled as an Important Tycoon or a Media Mogul.
Well, fuck that, too. He was not just an important Media Mogul. He was the Media Mogul. He could afford to divorce Jenny II and get seriously involved with the Other Woman.
That was another thing. Most people laughed at him when, during a time of collapsing “old media” value, Sinclair Holdings, LLC, had snapped up failing properties like Time Inc. and the New York Times . Well, they were as dumb as the people who bailed on New York City during the Abe Beame administration, when Gerald Ford famously told the city to drop dead.
He could taste the Scotch. The cigarette, too. And, if he tried real hard, he could taste her.
Jake Sinclair rose and padded toward the bar. He pressed a switch under the sink, recessed behind the garbage disposal. The false back of one of the cabinets slid aside, revealing his private stash of Oban Scotch and Balkan Sobranie cigarettes, the ones with his initials monogrammed on each coffin nail.
Houses were like wives, he thought as he sipped his Scotch and sent the smoke from the Sobranie cigarette spiraling toward the extractor fan, in that you didn’t hang on to them for the memories—you tore them down, rebuilt them, or replaced them with somebody’s else’s. Memories, good or bad, were noxious.
He was glad he didn’t have any children. This was an evil world, and it would be criminal to
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