The Frankenstein Candidate Page 24

  “What about the bonds?” one of the bankers queried.

  “What about them?” It was still only 9:20am, and markets had just opened. At another time, perhaps it may have been excusable that this chief hadn’t been appraised…but not today, not at this time, not in this hour of crisis, not for a man taking home $2.8 million annually before bonuses.

  “They are all selling—the Chinese, the Japanese, the Saudis, the Russians.”

  “What, in unison?”

  “Where are the yields?”

  “Treasury bond yields are in the sixes now…you have done well to keep up the buying side. We have seen future orders for six hundred billion this morning already,” Bob said. “Gentlemen, we cannot contain interest rates to below ten at this rate at the short end…fifteen at the long end.”

  “Double-digit interest rates would ruin all of us!”

  “Dealers have to buy the whole lot,” Bob said. “Make markets.”

  “Make markets? Where would the real buy order be?”

  “Thirty, forty, fifty percent yields…who knows?” another banker said.

  “You are the backstop. There are no buy orders anywhere, Bob, and you know it.”

  “The Chinese are taking a loss?” one of the bankers asked.

  “Yes, at sixes they are, but they will recycle the money into farmland, stocks, shale gas reserves…they have all the deals lined up,” replied a younger suit seated next to Bob Zimmerman.

  “We can’t possibly give you a fixed price on this one,” Bob said.

  “But if we buy at sixes and sell to you at nines and tens, we would lose hundreds of billions. The whole system would go down. Everyone. Not just IFG, Sixth, and East Coast.”

  “I know,” Bob said.

  “We will buy. Buy the long bonds at four and five percent yields even…provided we can sell it all back to you at the same price at least, without profit for us. “

  “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.

  44

  The Accident in San Francisco

  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—”

  H
e 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.”

  Net Station’s ratings had already soared.

  He pecked her when he left to board his flight, his lips brushing hers at the edges, her face registering neither surprise nor embarrassment at the action. Alert as ever, Mike Rodrigo noticed, but he was sworn to secrecy. If there had been paparazzi around, photographs would have been taken. They didn’t care. Newly intertwined souls do not worry about such things. In fact, they don’t worry, period.

  In any event, Mike Rodrigo had organized a chartered plane, and they were not at the usual, busier, terminal. Seemingly, there were no paparazzi around.

  San Francisco was a huge success for Frank. The crowds kept multiplying. Thirty thousand attended his address at the Giants stadium on September 11. Never had so many congregated to listen to what they didn’t want to hear.

  The suits had to switch course.

  “I say we finish the job now.”

  “He is too popular now for an accident to go unnoticed.”

  “Raul is already on his way. Right now, as we speak.”

  “Stop him. We have a better plan,” the queen bee of the suits said.

  It was late in the evening. Mike Rodrigo always shifted the car Frank was in, always at the last minute. Frank stayed behind this time, checking into a hotel while one of Mike Rodrigo’s men, Silvio Zappa, similar to Frank in height and build, wore Frank’s overcoat and stepped into the first car.

  Frank was resting and getting ready to retire when Mike called.

  “A truck and a trailer…at least four people are dead, many more injured. The driver of the truck is dead, a guy called Raul Fernandez, but they can’t even get his body out yet.”

  “Is Silvio all right?” Frank demanded.

  “Yes, just concussed, a little bit of whiplash, that’s all.”

  “We need to find who is behind this… if it wasn’t an accident.”

  “It wasn’t. I’m already on it.”

  “I will ask for Secret Service protection again.”

  “They are required to provide it now…under the 120 days to election rule. But I want to oversee them.”

  “I understand. Do me one favor.”

  “Sure, Mr. Stein.”

  “Let’s not raise the possibility that it wasn’t an accident, even with the Service. I don’t want them to think that anything other than a routine accident occurred. Keep it from Kayla, especially from Kayla. I don’t want her worried sick.”

  “I was going to recommend this anyway. We need them off guard,” Mike said.

  The stakes had elevated. He had to be very careful, Frank realized. For security reasons, Frank’s campaign offices were always on the move. Even Mike Rodrigo himself didn’t know the day after tomorrow’s office location—he worked it out day by day.

  Mike Rodrigo made no mention of Silvio Zappa taking Frank Stein’s place in the car to the police when they showed up. The police were methodical, efficient; an accident report was issued the next morning. Four innocent people had died along with the driver of the truck, and no suspicion was aroused. The item was briefly mentioned on page ten of the San Francisco Monitor and on local radio.

  Nevertheless, Frank fully intended to appear at the first presidential debate on September 17. But first, he needed to announce a running mate for the vice-presidency.

  He hastily organized another meeting with Olivia. He had seen it before—the complete ideological reversal, someone, who in their deepest introspection, had found a new ideology and, driven by the force of their new convictions, had betrayed their old creed. It was the wrong reversal that he had
seen…with Mardi thirty-one years ago. It was the right reversal he so badly wanted to see.

  Olivia came to Frank’s makeshift office the day he came back from San Francisco. They started to gauge the serious possibility of her joining his campaign.

  “I am a great believer in public education. It’s about equal opportunity,” she said.

  “It’s the best way to sell it,” he replied.

  “So you too believe in the public education ideal?”

  “I didn’t say I did. It’s just the best way to sell it. Who can be against equal opportunity? What better way to control minds than to take them young and mold them to your will?”

  “You really believe that…that the funding of public education is a conspiracy?”

  “There are serious benefits including, as you say, some equalization of opportunity. There is a cost, and it is not limited to taxing people who would rather have privately funded education for their children or those who have no children. The real cost is the nonsense they disseminate in the social sciences.”

  Olivia wasn’t going to give up her long-revered ideals so quickly. She did agree to meet Frank every other day and consider all her options. He was in no hurry. He had a sense that she had turned the corner by starting to question her every cherished ideal. Apart from her possible participation in the televised vice presidential debate, he had no reason to hurry; in fact, he didn’t want her to join until she was ready and she knew it.

  45

  Everything Is a Game

  “Everything is a game, Olivia,” Colin Spain said. “Everything.”

  Olivia had finally agreed to meet with him. They were together at his house, where he was still recovering. The furniture was a blend of the ostentatious and the sedate; the walls were colored in dark shades, yet the ceiling was spotless white—she wondered if that was the way he perceived life—contradictory, perplexing. Her question was about to be answered.