The Frankenstein Candidate Page 19

  Eleven days away from the national convention, Olivia was given the fifteenth edition of her acceptance speech. This time, she was pleased with it: it had all the right messages—the restoration of Middle America, the curtailment of the budget deficit, street law and order, the protection of the underprivileged, and a vitriolic attack on Washington special interests. Olivia was ready to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president of the United States of America. She hadn’t had an anxiety attack in weeks. She hadn’t suffered an imposter outbreak for at least two weeks. Ambition was thrilled, and Compassion was happy to get the power to do good. Even Gary was back to being with her all the time. The picture, she had to admit, looked complete.

  That’s when her cell phone pierced her equanimity. It was Dennis Ettinger. Bob Zimmerman wanted to organize a meeting with her, he said.

  “Can’t he wait till after the convention?”

  “I’m afraid not. He’s called Logan into the same meeting as well. Kirby will be there too.”

  “What’s the agenda?”

  “I’m guessing, but perhaps the financial crisis is worse than we think it is. If the solution Bob wants is radical, it will need Congressional approval.”

  “Officially, at this stage, I am a senator, no more than that.”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, you are, in my opinion, virtually the president-elect. But cast that aside and you are the nominee, as is Logan. Only the perfunctory remains to be done—if Quentin’s looking for bipartisan support, it must be big…big enough for us to…you know…quid pro quo.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow, nine a.m., Zimmerman’s office. I will organize a car.”

  “I can tell Jacques.”

  “No no…Jacques will be driving…but he is the…shall we say he will take a different route than the car you will be in.”

  “You take good care of me. Is there a real threat? I mean I won’t tolerate putting Jacques in harm’s way—”

  “Oh no, ma’am, it’s merely precautionary…standard procedure.”

  36

  Only One Shot Was Fired

  “I missed you. Did you miss me?” she said it as though talking about the weather. Francesca was seated opposite Gary in the bohemian café outside the architectural school where they had their first get-together.

  “No,” he said, but his hand rested on hers and his eyes said otherwise. This time, the café had a fair number of people. Olivia’s profile had grown immensely since their first encounter, and Gary knew the risk that someone may recognize him. Still, he was just sitting down in a café talking to someone. He felt much safer in a public place than on roads and in narrow alleyways. It dawned on him that if his hand rested on hers for an uncomfortably long time, a visitor could notice. He drew it away.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I had fun during her campaign. I could do more but—”

  “But what?”

  “I have to stay at home for the girls. My folks took them for three weeks, but this time the campaign could—”

  “You are not staying back for me?”

  “I haven’t decided about us.”

  He straightened up. He had to be careful about his posture, he thought. Nowadays, he always felt like Big Brother was watching. His eyes roved across the room: staring at the street across the window, sizing up their waitress, glancing at the couple at the next table.

  “You are still nervous…look, I think it was perhaps an accident. I mean, maybe just a rogue truck driver.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” He didn’t dare tell her yet about the detective he had hired.

  She tried to put her hands on his again, but he retracted his under the table.

  “I’m sure we’re safe.” She had a reassuring tone.

  “I’m sure too,” he said, even as the mild shake in his legs belied his words.

  They ordered a ham sandwich, a blueberry muffin, and coffee. The waitress came by with the order. She wore a long, pleated gypsy skirt, large earrings, and a big party smile.

  He noticed the fake Picasso again: “Everything you can imagine is real.” In a quick flash, he imagined a life with Francesca, in a world twenty years later—he had grown old, she hadn’t. They were together in an apartment somewhere in Los Angeles—well furnished, beautifully decorated. There were no children. He had left messages for Georgia and Natasha; his daughters had not returned calls, maybe they never forgave him. He could imagine it all—the photos on the wall were all Francesca—she had done some acting in Hollywood, she was rushing out to a shoot, playing a twenty-something schoolteacher, and then suddenly, in an instant, he knew it was not real. No, he found himself saying to Picasso.

  Out of the blue, a single rifle shot rang out. For a moment, Gary felt like an explosion rocked his chest, but the bullet was nowhere near him. A glass window lay shattered. People screamed. Francesca shrieked. The waitress ran off.

  Someone shouted, “Get down!”

  Everyone threw themselves down. The man at the next table drew a Glock G21. The owner came out with his Smith & Wesson. Francesca, Gary noticed, was terrified and shaking. Children wailed. No one moved. Cars moved on the street like nothing had happened.

  At least three different people called 911. Eight agonizing minutes later, two police cars screeched down the front. Two cops came in, two more stood by the door. The area was cordoned off. No one left the café. Everyone was interrogated.

  No one who was questioned from the street had seen anyone suspicious, but some described a black Mustang parked just outside. No one had the license plate. Then one person in the café mentioned seeing a black Mustang leave soon after, followed by a navy colored SUV. Gary knew who the SUV belonged to! At least he had a pretty good idea.

  Gary and Francesca excused themselves and left by the back entrance before the media arrived. Thank god no one had recognized him, he thought. The last thing he wanted was to be on TV. He offered to drop her home. She was still very shaken.

  “I’ll…take a cab,” she said.

  “Why? It’s all right.”

  “No, Gary, it’s not okay. I can’t…not anymore.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “I can’t see you anymore, Gary, I am too scared.”

  He understood. Frankly, he was relieved. He had seen the future, and it wasn’t real. She got a cab. He wondered whether he would ever see her again. As soon as she was gone, he called Micah Zelman.

  “Mr. Zelman? Gary Allen,” he said. “I believe you just came by Roberto’s café.”

  “Yes, Mr. Allen, I tracked him down.”

  “Who is it? Who does he work for?”

  “Mr. Allen, I think you need to come by my office, you are not going to like this.”

  37

  The Commandment of Courage

  “A person who wishes to start a new business in the United States,” Frank Stein said to the crowd of a hundred or so that had assembled in Central Park, “must fill out fifty-six applications with nineteen different regulatory agencies.”

  Mike Rodrigo had hired five cameramen, and they were stationed at various angles. It wasn’t for publicity. Only one of them had his camera focused directly on Stein and the rest were filming the crowd. If anyone took a shot at Frank, Rodrigo wanted to make sure he was filmed. It was likely to deter at least some would-be assassins. Mike and three others were patrolling the perimeter; one more of his men mingled with the crowd. The area had been cordoned off. A pat down at the checkpoint had been necessary. After the Net Station incident, Rodrigo was taking no chances.

  Frank had applied for Security Service protection. Under the rules, it was only provided to the president, the first lady, the president-elect, and the presidential nominees in the final four months of the campaign. Things in America had become far more vicious, but for the moment, rules were rules, and Olivia Allen and John Logan also needed to rely on privately organized security.

  “After the bureaucrats, the theater, Hollywood, and
novelists are done with demonizing successful businessmen and women, the regulators hound them with lawsuits should anything go wrong. They are damned if they succeed and damned if they don’t.”

  The crowd was silently contemplative. There was no raucous applause. There were no punch lines. It was the kind of crowd he was attracting—a lecture room full of serious graduate students intent on absorbing every word of wisdom, their thirst for understanding accentuated by a collective insight that this was a lecturer with something to give…except that the crowds contained all ages from fourteen to eighty-four, and he was giving away what he knew for free.

  There were the usual Central Park sounds: the chirping of birds, distant traffic noise, joggers, mountain bikes, the wind. But the contemplative crowd easily blanked out those distractions.

  One man in the crowd reached into his jacket. Rodrigo’s man was onto him in a flash. The man’s hand had barely begun to reach out when the cold barrel of a gun settled on his head.

  “Drop it.”

  This distraction was real and intense. A student walks into a lecture hall and announces he has a gun and the lecture ceases…as simple as that. Many in the crowd screamed. Some threw themselves down. Startled, the man dropped his cigarette lighter. He raised his hands, shaking with fright. Rodrigo’s man smiled, slightly embarrassed.

  “It’s all right, folks,” shouted Rodrigo. “False alarm…sorry, Mr. Stein, please continue.”

  But he could not keep going. People began to scramble for the makeshift exit. They had been unnerved enough by the visible security even before the incident.

  Frank motioned to the cameraman focused on him to continue. Just six people remained for the rest of Frank’s address.

  Waiting for Bob Zimmerman in the lounge of the Federal Reserve headquarters in DC with Larry, Olivia Allen picked up the last pieces of the courage speech on the GQ channel.

  Bob Zimmerman joined the group as soon as John Logan arrived, and he took Olivia, John Logan, Larry Fox, and Charles Palmer, Logan’s economic adviser, to his private office. Quentin Kirby was already waiting inside, seated at one end of a large, oval-shaped, Cuban mahogany conference table. He stood up to shake hands with the invitees. If he was still smarting from his defeat at the hands of John Logan, he did not show it.

  Bob Zimmerman got straight to the point.

  “The U.S. economy shrunk in the fourth quarter of 2019, as you all know. Early numbers indicate that the first quarter of 2020 could be appreciably worse. We are looking at the possibility of a three percent decline, and that number is not annualized.”

  Charles Palmer gasped. He downed the full glass of water in front of him in one gulp.

  “So we have a technical recession. That’s not the real bad news. IFG and Sixth National are both technically insolvent. The currency buying we undertook did not stop the carnage. We are now looking at additional carrying losses at these institutions of somewhere around four to five hundred billion each.”

  “We just have to let them go, Bob,” Kirby said.

  “Is that why we are here?” Larry asked.

  “It can’t be a loan,” Bob said. “We need to recapitalize them or let them fall over. Congressional approval is needed. Only a plan backed by the two nominees has any chance of succeeding.”

  “Not yet nominees for a week,” Olivia said.

  “True, but we can’t wait for a week. We need to act very quickly. Unbeknownst to us, the finance ministers of six large oil producers got together with central bankers of Japan, China, Germany, and Russia last week. They want to re-denominate the global oil trade,” Bob said.

  A second glass of water was skulled, and Charles Palmer almost choked. No one noticed.

  “You mean in currencies other than the U.S. dollar?” It was Logan asking the obvious, nervously seeking reassurance.

  “Unfortunately, yes. It will take effect sometime in August. The U.S. dollar will have a 20 percent weighting in the basket of currencies used to price oil.”

  “So will the U.S. dollar slide even further?” Larry queried.

  “Slide would be the good scenario. Another sharp devaluation of 30 to 40 percent is the likely one. The really bad scenario is a collapse.” Bob Zimmerman cleared his throat. “The Japanese and the Russians have told us they will let go of their dollar currency reserves, all of them. We are looking at doubling, maybe even a trebling of prices by year’s end. A highly likely scenario of depression will follow if we seek to control the price rise.”

  “What about unemployment numbers?” Olivia said.

  “In a shrinking economy, we are looking at 30 percent, and that’s if we save IFG and Sixth National. Otherwise, the depression will worsen and we will be staring at 40 percent unemployment—”

  “Forty is ludicrous. We didn’t have forty in the Great Depression,” Larry said.

  “Well, some of my more pessimistic staff are calling it the Greater Depression.”

  By now, Palmer was white as a ghost, and he finally spoke. “What about the debt that is due this year…two trillion in notes and bonds, how do you roll it over?”

  “We don’t,” Zimmerman replied.

  “America will not default on its sovereign debt!” Kirby screamed. “Not on my watch.”

  “Not technically. We are already in the process of rapid monetary expansion.”

  “Two trillion?” Palmer was barely coherent.

  “We have done a few hundred billion already. Seven.”

  “I don’t think you actually mean printing money to repay creditors like Japan and Saudi Arabia. This isn’t a banana republic.” Larry was incredulous.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Fox, there is no alternative. None at all, I’m afraid.”

  “We need to speak urgently with the Japanese and Russian heads of state,” Logan said.

  “All of that has been tried,” a grim Zimmerman replied. “They say they have no choice…the OPEC nations have laid down the new rules.”

  “Within six months,” continued Zimmerman, “we could be looking at unemployment rising above 30 percent and gas at ten, maybe eleven dollars a gallon at the station.”

  “But full employment and stable prices are the Fed’s twin objectives,” Olivia said.

  “We are helpless against international forces, Miss Allen.”

  By the time the meeting finished, an astonished Olivia got in the same car as the equally nonplussed Larry. She asked him to urgently organize a get-together with the business chiefs.

  “What do you want to do with them?”

  “As many company presidents as you can cram into one room in Manhattan from the S&P top twenty. As soon as possible…and book us for New York on the chartered jet tonight. Please. Just do it.”

  “Olivia, we can’t—”

  “I know what we can’t reveal, Larry. I just want their perspective on employment and business.”

  “What about your acceptance speech? Are you happy with it?”

  “Tell them to tear it up and start all over again. At least we should be the first to tell the world.”

  She had learned the game fast, he thought, her confidence was multiplying.

  Oblivious of the security personnel assigned to her, Olivia swung into a cab to rush back home. Security followed her. Gary wanted to see her urgently, and she had been putting him off till the Zimmerman meeting.

  She was rushing across the front lawn when her phone rang. The caller ID said Victor Howell. She switched it off.

  “Did you know there was a shooting incident in the city today?” Gary said casually as she walked in.

  “I picked it up in the news. Just one bullet…no one was hurt. Strange things are happening these days. The country is in a bad state, Gary.”

  “Would you like some coffee?” Gary was brewing some for himself.

  “Yes, stronger than usual. I need it.”

  It was still midmorning, but he could tell she was already weary. He wondered whether it was the right time to tell her. They sat down together on th
e couch side by side, his hand on hers.

  “I was in Roberto’s café this morning.”

  “Oh, my God. After or before the shooting?”

  “During.”

  “Gary!” She hugged him, speechless.

  “You are good at this.”

  “What? Good at what?”

  “Well, politicians have to be good actors.”

  “Watch it. I am still trying to forgive you.”

  “The shooter was a hit man. Did you know who was paying him?”

  “Why would I? I am a public servant…I…did you…did you meet her there?”

  “It was meant to lure the shooter.”

  “Gary, oh Gary, I love you…please….I love you.”

  “Your marriage is still perfect, as far the media are aware. Go on, get elected, and then we can discuss our future. “

  “No no no…Gary, I had nothing to do with any hit man.” She tried to kiss him, but he spun his head away so she went on.

  “Listen, whatever happens between us, I will get to the bottom of it. Tell me…tell me everything. If you must leave, leave. But don’t see that woman till we track this man down and put him away. I will use all my connections. I will find him, I will—”

  “I have already.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Just how well do you know Victor Howell?” Gary was staring straight into her eyes. They were shocked. The eyes always betray the soul.

  She retreated into her mind even as her hand continued to hold and squeeze his. Teary-eyed, she said nothing as her mind raced down an internal labyrinth of facts, evidence, and theory. The name Gary uttered said it all—it was a theory that fitted the facts, the only one. The penny dropped on Olivia and Gary at the same time. She was their puppet. They wanted her, or rather a picture-perfect image of her, to present to the audience. It was a show. She was the actress cast for the lead, and the role was not hers to refuse or rewrite. Woe unto those who would dare soil the most marketable entity.