The Frankenstein Candidate Read online

  “A very enjoyable story. An intricate and suspenseful plot. I never lost interest.”—Joseph Ducie, Cedar Sky Publishing

  “Vividly rendered, flawed, and interesting characters. An engaging multilayered plot.”—Glenn Dallas, San Francisco Book Review

  “This book is a fantastic read. Once I started reading it, I could not put it down. While the plot is detailed and credible, it makes for an easy read for a political novice. There are parts of the book that, had it been a movie, would have had you sitting at the edge of your seat.”—Tanu Thomas, columnist, Indus Age

  “The Frankenstein Candidate is an excellent novel. Kolhatkar should be commended for constructing a brilliant brief to the broader world of pro-individual politics.”— Tim Sondalini, Mannkal’s Musings Magazine

  “Well-rendered, complex political climate of the future.”—Kirkus Book Reviews

  “Packed full of twists and turns, and should cement Kolhatkar’s place as an original writer.”—Sukrit Sabhlok, Liberty Australia

  “I was very impressed with the structure and pace of this novel. I thought it told a great story—and being a political editor and politics junkie myself, I loved the way that all the various threads interconnected. The tension built well, the pacing was good, and the events were believable within the context of the theme.”—Jon VanZile, Editing for Authors

  “This is a captivating novel that unmasks the unsavory and intrigue-filled side of presidential politics. The author teases out the lives of the main protagonists in ways that are quite engaging. The reader is driven to read on to find out how they all unravel.”—Chitra Sudarshan, columnist, Indian Link Magazine

  “I see Jack Nicholson in a movie version.”—Mark Tier, Author, Trust Your Enemies

  THE

  FRANKENSTEIN

  CANDIDATE

  A woman awakens to a web of deceit

  VINAY KOLHATKAR

  This novel is a work of fiction. Other than minor, and largely factual, references to well-known political figures, the names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is unintentional and entirely coincidental.

  Published through On-Demand Publishing LLC, Las Vegas, NV.

  First published January 6th, 2012. Republished September 2012.

  Digital formatting and layout provided by Everything Indie.

  Copyright @ 2011 by Vinay P Kolhatkar.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  ISBN-10:1463796714

  ISBN-13:9781463796716

  eBook ISBN:978-1-61914-906-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011913867

  CreateSpace, North Charleston, SC

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1 The White House, November 7, 2019

  2 The White House, November 21, 2019

  3 Rage the Likes of Which You Can Scarcely Imagine

  4 Olivia Allen, Monday, November 25, 2019

  5 In the Home of the Homeless

  6 The Commandment of Honesty

  7 Iowa, where it all began

  8 Francesca Oliviera

  9 The Future Is Now

  10 The Monster Begins to Bubble

  11 The Country Beckons

  12 The Commandment of Forbearance

  13 Love Knows No Boundaries

  14 Threading Cleopatra’s Needle

  15 The Imposter

  16 New Hampshire

  17 The Trail

  18 This Is Not a Test

  19 The New Media Darling

  20 Why Were All the Exits Closed?

  21 Medical Bankruptcy

  22 The Prelude to Super Tuesday

  23 The Commandment of Temperance

  24 Oh, What a Super Tuesday It Was

  25 The Commandment of Respect

  26 The Winner Takes All

  27 Picture Perfect in the Public Eye

  28 Inconsistent Forthrightness

  29 Black Monday

  30 The Commandment of Integrity

  31 What Were They Hiding?

  32 The Presidency

  33 Decision Time

  34 Super Wednesday and the Commandment of Kinship

  35 Ready or Not, Here She Comes

  36 Only One Shot Was Fired

  37 The Commandment of Courage

  38 Ambition Was Always a Horse You Could Tame

  39 The Carbonistas

  40 The National Convention

  41 Defeating the Black Dog

  42 The Unforgettable Summer of 2020

  43 The Grey Pinstripe Suits

  44 The Accident in San Francisco

  45 Everything Is a Game

  46 Wall Street

  47 The First Presidential Debate

  48 The Ghost of Weimar

  49 The Vice Presidency Drives the Polls

  50 The Felony Conversations

  51 Hopeless, Clueless, Nerveless, and Powerless

  52 Courage Is Contagious

  53 Deadlock

  54 The Forty-sixth President

  55 Trial by Jury

  56 The Catharsis

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  To Neel and Nina, with love

  If you don’t control your politicians, they will control you.

  Prologue

  San Francisco, Friday, September 11, 2020

  Never before had so many congregated to listen to what they did not want to hear.

  More than thirty thousand people had filled the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T stadium, exactly nineteen years to the day after the attack that rocked America. Yet there was no Giants game on that evening. They were all there to listen to Frank Stein. Everyone had an opinion about him. Some hated him, some loved him, and there was nothing in between. Frank Stein made sure of that.

  Not since the WikiLeaks scandal in December 2010 had a civilian so enraged the upper echelons of power. Many of them wished for him to be dead or in jail.

  Frank Stein had committed no crime. He didn’t even possess any information that could implicate anyone who had. He was not leaking classified information. He had none to leak.

  Why then did so many powerful people want him dead? Why did so many ordinary people want to listen to what he had to say?

  Frank Stein was no ordinary civilian. A smart, well-heeled, middle-aged, and professorial money manager who had made billions was not anyone’s idea of an underdog. In a high-stakes presidential campaign of the most powerful country on earth, though, he was the quintessential underdog candidate: an outspoken independent pitted against the might of the two dominant political parties and their carefully orchestrated campaigns. A first-time politician who had so ruffled the feathers of the Washington eagles and the media in their pockets that there was no turning back now—Stein had well and truly crossed the Rubicon.

  Frank Stein spoke calmly into the microphone, “Now is the time, more than ever, when we need to hear the truth. The truth of what is destroying America.”

  Raul Fernandez took one long look at Stein through his binoculars. A clear shot was possible, but Raul was not a sniper, he was a trucker. He just thought he would have a good look at Stein first. In any event, Stein’s padded torso suggested to Raul that he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Raul himself was dressed for the cool San Francisco summer in overalls and a wind jacket. Raul’s long, me
ssy hair concealed the tiny Bluetooth hearing device in his ear.

  “Go” was the only sound he heard. It was enough. Raul started to make his way to the stadium’s parking lot.

  As Raul got into his semi-trailer truck, replete with twenty-six massive and shiny wheels, Stein was just wrapping up with his usual sign-off “No more rhetoric!” Raul’s earpiece buzzed again “U.S. Route 101, wait at the top of the Cuesta Grade segment.”

  Raul keyed the ignition, and the crowd chanting “No more rhetoric” stifled even the roar of Raul’s ninety-ton vehicle.

  He sure knows how to work a crowd, Raul thought. It was a pity, because within hours he would be dead; but pity was not uppermost in Raul’s mind, safety was—his own, of course. The brakes would fail to respond quickly enough. The mechanic would take part of the blame, and Raul would get at worst three years for manslaughter. That’s how it was going to work. They would take care of his debts. As an illegal, he would be deported back to his native Mexico to serve his sentence. When he got out, he would have three million waiting for him in a bank in Costa Rica, where he was to live happily ever after. It was that simple. What could possibly go wrong?

  Later, Raul waited at the truck stop at the top of the steep descent of the Cuesta Grade segment of U.S. Route 101 for over an hour. He was in luck. A billowing white fog—the majestic product of sea spray, wind, and Central Valley heat—was taking hold. The fog answered his prayers for mitigating circumstances. He heard “Five minutes now” in his earpiece, and soon after, his quarry arrived. There were three cars, just like they said. They were all in the middle lanes. Stein’s car was the first in the pack, said the unknown master in his earphone.

  Raul shifted into third gear as he accelerated and came up behind the line of cars. He honked, which seemed to scare the bejesus out of the driver of the third car, who swerved into the right lane. Raul kept cruising speed, keeping his rolling giant in good control. Stein’s driver had put some distance between him and the second car, for which Raul was thankful—there was enough space to swerve into the middle of the two and isolate Stein, but he didn’t have to. Raul edged closer to the second car. The mere sight of the monster in the rearview was enough for the second car to make way.

  Now only the tiny two-ton target was in front of him, although there was plenty of traffic in the other lanes. He kept a safe but steady distance and waited for the side lanes to clear. It would be gruesome, he thought, like an offensive lineman smashing straight into a three-year-old kid.

  Three minutes into the grade, Raul had his moment. There were no vehicles on either side of Stein. Raul pressed his foot on the accelerator, moving into fourth gear just as someone screamed in his ears, “Abandon mission, abandon—”

  Raul smashed his foot on the brake, but the delayed reaction worked exactly as it was supposed to. Ninety tons of galloping steel swerved and swayed in the seconds before impact as Stein’s driver made a desperate turn into the bank, having the presence of mind to maintain full speed.

  Nevertheless, the behemoth clipped its target and rolled over on the grade. The semi spun out of control, sweeping gigantic arcs of screeching metal across the tarmac and swallowing five vehicles in its turbulent fury.

  For one brief second before his skull was cracked open by the lacerating force of a steel tsunami, an upside-down Raul thought again of Costa Rica.

  1

  The White House, November 7, 2019

  Olivia Allen was beginning to feel like a threesome: herself and the two quarreling voices in her head. Lately, she hadn’t been at peace. Her beloved country was shaken to its very roots. Olivia had always believed in a compassionate society. But was compassion only the first layer of the onion skin? Peel it away, and what do you see? How do you become compassionate when you have nothing to give? Whenever she had time, like right now, waiting for someone to appear, the voices in her head started to discuss such issues, then debate, then argue, and finally quarrel.

  The voices belonged to her father and her mother. Olivia was forty-four years old, but the voices had never left her, even though her mother had passed and her father was living over a hundred miles away in a retirement home.

  Compassion was a virtue she learned from observing her father practicing it consistently—children do what their parents do, not what their parents tell them to do. Ambition and Mother to her were virtually indistinguishable. The voices’ tug on her was fearsome and usually conflicting. In her head, they even had names: Compassion and Ambition—she never talked to them, but they told her things.

  She was born into an upper middle-class family in Philadelphia, the second of two sisters. She was not bad looking, but her elder sister was beautiful. By far, though, Olivia was the clever one. Her father had been a compassionate congressman who represented Pennsylvania for two decades before being pushed out of politics by…well, politics. Her mother had been a high school teacher. She was very bright, but she’d been born in the wrong era, a Baby Boomer who just missed out on the feminist revolution as she came of age. Mother was determined to get one of her girls to do everything she could have done if only she had been born thirty years later. So as it turned out, the cleverer one was the unfortunate one.

  Dressed in a pin-striped business suit, her calm, hazel-green eyes hiding the storm inside, her brown locks straying across her forehead, Olivia sat in the back row of the press room of the White House.

  The president had called an urgent press conference. Emma Coleman, the White House press secretary, owed her a favor, and Olivia had called it in.

  Olivia looked around and saw the usual faces: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the East Coast Chronicle, CNN, PBS, CBS, ABC, and NBC. The president was Republican, and Olivia was a Democratic senator. Olivia was neither media nor part of the administration, but that was not why she felt the way she did. Amidst all the slick suits, the important people, the adrenaline, the microphones thrust every which way, the rolling cameras, and the security staff, one of the most powerful women in Washington DC felt like she simply did not belong there. Ambition was not pleased. Ambition was scolding her inappropriate emotion as if, like a bouncer at a club’s door, she could regulate every emotion that would be allowed to enter the club. But emotions come and go, and one can’t get much value by scolding them.

  Nevertheless, Olivia did not leave. She could not leave, for if she left, she would have to go where she did belong. She was forty-four, but she had not figured out just where that was. So she stayed—quiet, aloof, and as nondescript as possible.

  Whatever it was the press was about to find out had been kept very close. Normally, there were at least rumors surrounding a press address. Not this time.

  From her back row seat, Olivia could not see the diminutive Kayla, but Olivia knew she would be there. Kayla Mizzi had been with the Washington Post for six years. She had recently joined Net Station, an integrated online television programming, newspaper, and magazine web site. She was lucky enough to get a front row seat.

  Emma Coleman, the White House press secretary, appeared first and said, “Thank you all for coming here at short notice. The president himself will be making this announcement. He is extremely busy. So I’m afraid there will hardly be time for questions afterward, albeit he can take a maximum of two.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Emma Coleman continued, “the president.”

  President William Young strode onto the podium in his usual confident manner. Watching him, dressed in his sober grey suit, Olivia thought he looked younger than his sixty-five years. It appeared he had lost weight lately, which suited his large frame and his tendency of being heavy.

  President Young spoke concisely.

  “Thank you for being here at short notice. Unfortunately, I am in a hurry today so let me cut to the chase. Over the past few weeks, I have suffered a recurring illness that my doctors had some difficulty diagnosing. Unfortunately, it is not good news. I have malignant lymphoma, and it is in an advanced stage. At this stage, it is most
likely a fatal diagnosis…but doctors are optimistic as regards a three- to four-year survival rate.”

  The collective gasp at the words “fatal diagnosis” cut through the room like a fallen glass that shattered. Pens scribbled while fingers texted and twittered.

  “However, after considerable deliberations with my advisers, I have made some decisions. Firstly, I will not resign or step down from the position of president. However, Vice President Kirby shall take an increasing role in the administration from here on.

  “Secondly, I will not contest the 2020 presidential election. This decision is regrettably necessary, and it is very much in the best interests of the American people. Thirdly, if my condition worsens before January 2021, I will allow for an orderly passage of power to Vice President Kirby, but neither my doctors nor I believe that will be necessary.

  “That is pretty much all that I was going to say. As you all know, we have a situation developing in the Middle East. We have room only for a few questions.”

  Shock descended on the hall, but Olivia felt more tired than shocked. Ambition had worn her out.

  The first question related to Vice President Quentin Kirby’s new responsibilities. President Young answered dismissively, citing foreign policy. Pens scribbled again.

  Many hands went up. Olivia spotted Kayla’s raised hand in the crowd.

  “Miss Mizzi?” President Young had spotted Kayla. Olivia was now alert, for she knew Kayla’s reputation for asking difficult questions.

  “Mr. President,” Kayla drew a breath, “do you support Mr. Kirby as a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2020 election?”

  Some in the audience recoiled at the audacity of the question. The president wore a wry smile. He had expected Kayla to go for the jugular.