The Frankenstein Candidate (40 page)

“How charitable, Bill. We are saving your asses here,” Bob said.

“How much could there be?”

“Eleven trillion in all,” one of Bob’s assistants said.

“Do you need Congress to vet this?”

“There is no time. We are authorized to do this, we will buy,” Bob said finally.

“With what? You don’t mean that the country will have a new infusion of eleven trillion in raw hard cash, do you?”

“Over the next six to ten weeks.”

The seven men sat there, stupefied. They had just seen an image of the ghost of Weimar Germany, and it was about to visit the United States in the invisible, bloodcurdling, form which it preferred: hyperinflation.

Meanwhile, 225 miles away in New York, Rita Savlino was feasting over the photographs she had taken the past few weeks while on vacation and how they had fetched her $50,000, half of which she shared with her sister.

Rita was a freelance photographer and blog journalist with a penchant for finding celebrities. She had a decade-long career as a freelancer selling scoops to tabloid magazines and the sort of red-top news dailies that frequented subways.

Rita had been on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland, with her sister. But Rita always carried her HD camera with the inbuilt mike, wherever she went. One never knew when the next money-earning opportunity would present itself. Rita also had the knack of taking photos with the twenty-megapixel camera in her cell phone while pretending to be on the phone. Rita could scarcely believe her luck. Normally, she went looking for the Hollywood red carpet types in Malibu and often ended up with snaps that more than paid for her own shopping and vacation. This one time, she really wanted to be with her sister, who had just been divorced. But the couple in the café didn’t just look interesting, they looked unusual. The hats and shades had never come off either of them, and Rita had noticed that the glare from the sun had long since gone. Rita had followed the man and persuaded her just-divorced sister to follow the woman, telling her it could be worth thousands. It certainly was.

When the story broke in the newsy tabloid
Who & Where
, it said that Olivia Allen was suspected of having an affair with Frank Stein.

The issue hit the newsstands on a Monday morning. Olivia started getting phone calls right from nine a.m. onward. She issued her own press statement straightaway. She didn’t deny meeting Frank Stein but said she was considering supporting his platform of truth.

“Time to get her embarrassed and strain her marriage. Let’s see if America loves a divorced mom,” the men in pinstripes were told. Of course, neither Olivia nor Gary was considering a divorce or even a separation anymore, but all it was going to take was a few phone calls to start that notion simmering in the media. The men in pinstripes and white collars and silk ties did the kind of work that even the men in overalls wouldn’t get their hands dirty with. What’s more, they even managed to let the prima donnas stay under the radar. It was easy for Sidney Ganon to say he knew nothing of it because he really didn’t—it was meant to be that way, and he wasn’t told any specifics.

Some people lapped it up. In the days of the mature Internet and five hundred channels, politics was not news unless it was scandal-worthy, salacious, and smutty. Nevertheless, the
New Economic Times
and Fox News, among others, reported that a financial tsunami worth trillions of dollars was headed toward America.

The captains on Wall Street were distressed. The chanting monster, as they liked to call Frank Stein, was starting to get popular. God forbid, if he had his way, the Federal Reserve could be ended, and with that, Wall Street would go. Wall Street had bred more multimillionaires in the past decade than all of Boeing, Caterpillar, Apple, and Microsoft combined…this in an era of financial downsizing. Buying Treasury bonds and reselling to the Fed at a profit made millions for everyone. No other business except banking could be over 90% debt financed. Borrow cheap, lend high, make profits, pay bonuses—it was all too easy. The captains got thirty to fifty million a year, and all the way down, some juniors five years out of grad school were making half a million. Even a great depression didn’t scare the fat cats as much as Frank Stein did. Something had to be done.

The young woman was in the shower when Frank’s cell phone woke him up. It was the new chief executive officer at Alpha Corporation, letting him know about the sell-off in treasury bonds. They had prepared for this scenario for months. They didn’t speak for long.

The woman in the shower was one remarkable woman. She had made the first move, asking Frank out on a date. He suggested dinner at a popular restaurant, knowing well that they would be seen together. “Just another interview is what they would assume,” he said, tongue-in-cheek.

He had dropped her off afterward at her apartment block. He hadn’t even meant to go up to her floor, let alone going in and sharing a glass of dessert wine. But she reminded him of Susan more than anyone since the real Susan. She was small and beautiful, she had soft hands, and she was breathtakingly courageous. After they made love, they talked for three hours. She had never known how difficult his childhood had been. He was awestruck by her survival stories. They were almost a generation apart, yet their taste in music and literature intermingled as if they were twins.

It was only the timing that was terribly awkward—he was in the middle of his first political campaign. Love happens, however—she knew that. She had confessed to liking him from the first time she set eyes on him. She was under thirty, he was fifty—it was bound to set tongues wagging in this town, giving more ammunition to the people who loathed him, to the people who were worried about or worried by her, and to the people who were scared of both.

Kayla was drying herself when Frank got another call—this one from Olivia Allen, explaining the scoop that had just hit the newsstands. He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Kayla asked.

“Today some tabloids are claiming a romantic relationship between Olivia and me.”

“That’s not funny. If she wasn’t married—”

He smothered the next few words with his caress, grasping her towel, not tugging it off her but instead using it to dry her skin, gently, efficiently as one would dry a little child. She found it incredibly invigorating at first, then as his toweled hand went over her breasts, her earlobes, and her hair, arousing, exciting, and funny. She giggled, letting her arms go limp, her body standing motionless, relaxed. She raised her arms, letting him dry off her underarms, then let them fall again as he meticulously patted her shoulder blades, taking care to be not rough but not leaving a single drop of water reside on her nubile young body. Abruptly, he moved down, over her curves, grabbing her legs, one at a time, and sliding down to her ankles. She raised her feet, one at a time, to let him dry her soles; he was on his knees, massaging her toes, gently, one at a time, seemingly oblivious of the fact that her mouth had opened. Then the towel rubbed her where she needed it most, but the more it dried her, the wetter she got. Her fingers were running through his hair, the soft moans that left her lips getting quicker, more urgent. Then, as one arm encircled her, drawing her tightly into his embrace, her body started to tremble and her fingers started to grab hairs; she felt the soreness that a treble shudder the previous night had left her with. But it was too late, past the point of no return, and yet another tremor of joy left her collapsing on his broad shoulders. As he got up, he carried her limp, elated, and unusually quiet body into the bedroom, dropping the towel and picking the moisturizer on the way, a glint in his eye suggesting an encore. Her eyes were welcoming, understanding, even as her head shook as if to say no. Her lips barely parted in whispering “Oh my god,” then finally her hands revolted, clutching her soreness and refusing the repeat, but thankful that it was offered.

She let him rub the moisturizer into her limbs, watching his visage, the hair falling across his forehead, his dedication to the task, her eyes commanding him to be sensual and asexual at the same time, observing his rising to the unsaid challenge.

“Now dress me,” she chuckled, opening drawers, picking underwear, stockings, and perfume she wanted to wear. Opening her wardrobe, she picked a smart pleated business skirt, a jacket to match, and a formal top.

He went to work, methodically, like it was his duty, yet delightfully joyous precisely because it wasn’t.

“I can drop you off at the airport,” Kayla said, all dressed up with nowhere to go.

“I always have to travel with Mike,” he responded. “But you can come along.”

“To San Francisco?”

“To the airport,” he said. “Perhaps we should not be seen together too often…yet.”

“I have to tell my employer if I am in a relationship with anyone I may care to interview,” she said laughingly.

“So tell them.”

Afterward, as they made their way to the airport in the bulletproof car provided by Mike Rodrigo, he spoke about the impending economic depression and the prospect, if not the certainty, of rampant inflation.

“So should we delay the initial public offering of Net Station shares?” she asked suddenly. The familiarity between them was striking, as if they had been a couple for years, as if they were happily growing old together, where the conversation could change from mundane to sensual to shop talk in an instant, and yet it had all seemingly started the night before. Sure, there had been affection—the affection that had kindled a spark. There was also a camaraderie born of common values, an unbridled laughter they shared so deeply that it was impossible to tell from whose soul it originated—one had the hoarseness of a middle-aged man and the other the audacity of a young, confident woman, but it was the same soul nevertheless, a soul that was ever ready to attest to the joy of living rationally, a soul that had compassion and found no reason to believe the nonsense that compassion and rationality did not mix, a soul that knew that rejection of rationality meant the rejection of productivity, of integrity, of honesty, and that compassion could never reside where honesty was unwelcome.

Net Station wanted to grow quickly. Any other banker would have advised Kayla to wait. But Frank always looked at the fundamentals.

“November would be perfect for going public with your firm,” he said. “People will realize by then that you are not beholden to Washington. They will support the only news station in the country that is truly objective. Watch your ratings soar in November. People would be hungry for your share offering but for the fact that many don’t have enough to eat.”