The Frankenstein Candidate

by Kolhatkar, Vinay

  “I don’t know if he has made up his own mind about standing for nomination. In any event, it is the party’s decision, and it is up to the party’s registered voters ultimately.”

  With that, he left the room. The room buzzed with BlackBerries and mobile phones even as security tried to usher the assembly out.

  Olivia was serene. As the energy around her exploded in hushed tones, fast paces, and ringing mobiles, she left the press room rather quickly.

  On her way home from the White House, Olivia’s car passed a large gathering of the homeless passively demonstrating against the lack of jobs, squalid conditions, and the biting DC cold with placards that said “Give us jobs,” “Washington does not care,” and “I am cold and my baby needs a home.” She took it all in. The army of the homeless in DC had doubled, according to her aides. Compassion made her want to get out of the car. Ambition agreed that it would look good on her CV.

  “I will only be a few minutes,” she said to her driver.

  It never bothered her that she would look out of place in her designer outfit.

  “Hello, I’m Olivia.”

  “And why should we care?” one of the men asked, a gentle-looking, bearded giant of a man. His was a voice of authority: deep, firm, and articulate. His frame stayed steady, like an oak tree stuck into the middle of the concrete curb with no soil around it, no fence—a city designer’s idea of a confrontational mistake.

  “You giving us any money?” someone asked. She heard his whining tone—a male voice, but a weak one—like a shrub interrupting the authority of the oak tree.

  “No, but I’m going to fix things,” she said.

  They all laughed.

  One of the others had noticed the U.S. flag on the hood of Olivia’s car. “She is one of them,” he hissed. A tree, a shrub, and now a snake.

  “Except that I’m—”

  She stopped as she noticed a larger, more rambunctious crowd turn the corner. There were perhaps thirty or forty of them, mostly youth.

  “Miss, you better get away,” the gentle giant said. It was expressed without fear.

  “From what?” was the only phrase she could summon before some in the frenzied mob started throwing gasoline bombs, hollering slogans as they got closer to her car. The odor of burning gas filled the air. Olivia heard screams from all directions as civilians began to flee the scene. The siren of a police car wailed. She was about thirty feet away from the car.

  “Here!” the giant shouted. “Get behind me!” He stood between her and the mob.

  Instead, Olivia darted around and started running toward the car screaming, “Jacques, get out, Jacques.”

  But the angry mob had caught up with the car. Baseball bats began to smash the glass windows and repeated kicks dented the metal. Men jumped on the roof and someone snatched the U.S. flag and promptly torched it. A thought raced through her mind in a lightning-fast blink: Was that a crime these days, to torch an American flag?

  The bearded giant caught up with Olivia. He was holding her back from the carnage, very gently holding her right wrist with his left hand. He didn’t hold it hard—persuasion should be enough. Somehow, Jacques, her driver, got out of the passenger side, pieces of glass sticking out of his cheeks and blood trickling down his crisp, white chauffeur uniform.

  Jacques fell to the pavement, and a baseball bat was raised above his fallen form, headed for his head. Olivia wrested her hand free of the giant’s grip and ran straight into the bat’s arc. The man with the bat hesitated. Behind her, the giant screamed, “No, let them go!”

  Oblivious of her own safety, she went down on her knees, carefully removing the shards of glass from Jacques’ bleeding cheeks.

  The baseball bat swung further on its upward arc. The oak tree burst into the scene, grabbing the bat by its thin end with his left hand while his right hand clenched into a fist, a profusion of hard knuckles the size of a football.

  The hammer of a revolver was cocked, and the barrel of a gun pressed into the giant’s head. Yet the oak tree stayed firm, a primal energy humming from him, like a race car at the start line—all that was needed was a push of the foot to accelerate purposeful motion, the calm before the storm.

  “Yer riskin’ yer life for one of them?” a sarcastic voice yelled.

  “She ain’t one of them,” the giant oak said.

  “Yeah? Look at her.”

  Olivia finally realized what was going on. A complete stranger had just risked his life to save hers. She looked up at the rock-solid, towering figure, and the oak smiled back at her.

  “One of whom?” she asked.

  “Them, the politicos,” the whining voice from the back said.

  “Can’t you see she is different?” The giant pointed down at her with his free hand, supremely confident that the gun at his head would not be fired. The others realized she had risked herself to assist her injured driver.

  The gun went down. The baseball bat was retracted slowly. The giant let his hold on the bat go and stepped back.

  “Thank you,” Olivia said to the bearded man as she whipped out her cell phone.

  The rioting crowd kept going further down the road, chanting “Down with Washington.” Down the road, Olivia saw them set a car alight just as her phone call was answered.

  “You have called 911. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Bleeding man. He is wounded. Corner of K Street and Seventh. Needs medic now.”

  “Is this either a gunshot wound or a stab wound, ma’am?”

  “No, glass. Lots of it. Arterial cuts. We need an ambulance right away.”

  “I’m B-minus, and I take a blood thinner,” Jacques managed to whisper above the din.

  A fire bomb exploded at the end of the street. Riot police appeared and swung into action. Ambulances were heard. Someone else had also obviously called 911.

  “Seventh and K…there are several in the area now, ma’am. I’ll direct one your way.”

  Olivia switched off as two paramedics were already running toward Jacques, a stretcher in their hands. She saw tear gas explosions at the end of the street. The mob scrambled.

  “You need to get out, ma’am,” one of the medics said.

  “I am coming with you,” she said as they loaded a bleeding Jacques into their ambulance. Snapping a picture of the oak on her cell phone, Olivia jumped into the ambulance. She was quickly on the phone to Sibley Memorial, calling the chief of operations and getting voice mail.

  “Uni Medical is the closest,” one of the medics said.

  “I know. A lot of hospitals may be short of B-minus,” she replied. Jacques was barely conscious. She had no qualms about using her political pull to get rare B-minus blood supplies transferred from Sibley Memorial.

  “I am going to fix things once and for all,” she said to herself.

  “Why didn’t you drive off?” Olivia asked Jacques, holding his hand.

  Sixty-two-year -old Jacques shook his head—not many clients would have risked serious harm for the sake of their driver. But Olivia was truly special. In his thirty years of chauffeuring, he had never chauffeured someone like her.

  2

  The White House, November 21, 2019

  Late one Thursday evening, exactly two weeks after President Young’s announcement, four people, including the vice president, were having a conference in the Roosevelt Room.

  Vice President Quentin Kirby was fifty-one years old. A Republican Party faithful all his life, he became vice president when William Young won the presidential election in November 2016. Kirby was a large, bearish man with a thick neck and protruding lips, a look more befitting a retired football player than a vice president. In contrast to his frame, he was so soft-spoken that at times he almost whispered. He was known for his cunning and calculating ways. The softer he spoke, the more the respondent feared him.

  It had only been ten days since Kirby had publicly announced his candidacy. Kevin Heller was his campaign manager. Kirby was seated with Kevin H
eller, party strategist Spencer Blumenthal, and Secretary of State Jacqueline “Jackie” Harding. Jackie had already agreed to run as vice president with Kirby in a secret, closed-door deal that no one but Kirby, Heller, and Harding knew about.

  “I am planning to go to Iowa on December second, straight after Thanksgiving,” Kirby said. He looked at no one in particular, but the question was obviously directed at Kevin Heller. Heller was a shrewd political campaign manager. At thirty-five, he was young for a presidential election campaign, but he had already led two Republican governors to large electoral wins and his reputation in Washington DC was blossoming rapidly. Those in the know were not surprised that Kirby had chosen him. Heller cleared his throat.

  “I think you should actually go this week, Mr. Vice President. We have a Thanksgiving Saturday fundraising function in Des Moines. Plenty of donors, the kind who could fund Phase Two.”

  “I would rather spend Thanksgiving with my family.”

  “The race is tougher than we first thought, sir. There is almost no precedent for an incumbent president to be not nominated for a second term, at least not for over a hundred years. As the sitting vice president with the president retiring, you should be regarded as the incumbent. Well, we have to play it that way anyway. Let’s keep highlighting the larger and larger role you are playing in the administration. The advantage of winning big in Iowa and New Hampshire is to eliminate rivals early. Donors will not want to waste money. We need a bigger war chest for November next year.”

  “You think Reed and Logan will simply quit?”

  “If they lose Iowa and New Hampshire by ten points or more, yes.”

  Vice President Kirby was pensive for a moment and then, as he had done so often in the past, he turned to one of the party’s longest-serving strategists.

  “Spencer?”

  An on-field campaign manager his whole career, Spencer Blumenthal had been the campaign strategist for President Young. He was in his seventies now and bore a striking resemblance to Woody Allen. He often spoke in a shrill voice.

  Spencer was unequivocal. “It looks a lot like the vice president cares. Like the vice president takes nothing for granted.”

  “Jackie?”

  Jackie’s was always the final opinion he sought on every major decision. She was one of the fastest rising stars of the party, becoming secretary of state at forty-two. Intelligent, with a master’s degree in international relations from Princeton, she had also been tipped by party insiders as a future presidential candidate herself.

  “It’s only a matter of ten days. You will never regret going early.”

  “Okay, we will leave for Iowa on Thursday next week. What about the Democrats?” the vice president asked.

  “It is too early to tell, but theirs looks like a three-way race between Ganon, Spain, and Rogers. My guess is it will come down to Spain and Ganon. Either way, that is the ticket, the Spain-Ganon or Ganon-Spain ticket, that could hurt us. Spain has already raised over fifty million.”

  “Who else do we need to be worried about?”

  “No one in particular.”

  “Good.”

  “There is one matter, Mr. Vice President, that I must mention, one candidate rather. Not that you need to be worried about him. It’s just that he is peculiar. He is the only independent this time. He is about to announce he will run. Frank Stein. I believe you know him.”

  “Of course. In fact, he was my classmate at school. I knew him well, but we lost touch. He’s running for president?” Kirby was incredulous.

  “Sources say he will announce soon, before Christmas. Stein has funds of course. Billions. Fortune magazine estimates his net worth to be around two billion, give or take. He is prepared to spend a few hundred million for his candidacy. If he does run in the end.”

  “What’s in his closet?”

  “Everything. Stein is openly atheistic for a start, which makes it hard even for conservative Jews to vote for him, let alone our conservative base, which wants neither Jews nor atheists. He is dead against business regulation. Of almost any sort. Pro-choice. Pro-immigration. Single, heterosexual. No children. Never married, is around fifty years of age. Has had many partners, but no stable relationships. We have not started looking, but there could be more skeletons in that closet than Barry Bonds’ home runs.”

  “We don’t need to be worried about him. But we could use a man like Frank Stein. Ask him what he wants. The one thing or two at the top of his ‘want’ pile. He knows he can’t possibly get elected.”

  “Of course. Ideally, it would need to come directly from you, Mr. Vice President.”

  “Set up a meeting. As soon as possible. Before he announces. We could use a few hundred million here. As long as we don’t give him pro-choice. We can give ground on business regulation, as long as it’s not Wall Street. Does he want that?”

  “I will set up a breakfast early next week. He often shuttles between New York and San Francisco, but I’m sure we can fly him to DC.”

  Spencer said, “Next week, Mr. Vice President was going to have an energy bill discussion with the congressmen from Alaska.”

  “Spencer,” Kirby said, “this is a man with billions and an election agenda.”

  “I think the plan may not work. Stein is too proud. I know him,” Jackie proffered.

  “Maybe we don’t really need to put a candidate from hell behind the scenes. They self-destruct so beautifully on camera. But we can’t ignore a few hundred million, can we, Kevin?” Kirby chuckled.

  “What do we do if Stein doesn’t agree?” Spencer said.

  “Oh, he will. By the way, do you know what his middle name is?” Heller said. “It’s Kenneth.”

  “I can just see the headlines,” Kirby said, laughing. He alone seemed to find the connection to the old tale about Dr. Frankenstein’s monster funny.

  Of course, when the vice president laughed, it was customary for everyone in the room to laugh whether or not they found it funny.

  Spencer’s laugh, though, was a nervous laugh. The patriarch was rarely this nervous.

  “Don’t unleash a Frankenstein,” Spencer said, trying to keep laughing. But even the nervous laughter wouldn’t come.

  Suddenly, Spencer stared at the wall as though he was hypnotized. Kevin excused himself for a few minutes.

  “If Stein is not contained,” he continued, “the spectacle of his self-destruction will take the media away from us…and our opponents.” Shaking his head as he went on, he said, “The pros play the game of question and no answer. But the amateurs, they answer. You are not supposed to answer. You get shot if you do. The amateurs never get that, the pros do.”

  Spencer was still looking at the wall. The others thought he had lost it.

  Quentin Kirby grimaced at Spencer as though he had gone past his use-by date, but Spencer never noticed; he was still “on the wall” when Kevin Heller returned.

  Quentin looked at Kevin and Jackie as if to say with a roll of his eyes that it would just be the three of them in the strategy room from then on.

  “I asked,” Heller said.

  Kirby nodded. “When is the meeting set for?”

  “There isn’t one. He refused to meet.”

  “A man refused a meeting with the vice president of the United States?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Kevin said.

  “Then fuck him,” Quentin said as he pushed a wine glass off the table. A dash of wine spilled on the fancy carpet. The glass rolled to the edge of the fireplace. Not a soul moved to pick it up. Quentin laughed, and as was customary, they all laughed with him.

  3

  Rage the Likes of Which You Can Scarcely Imagine

  San Francisco, Thursday, November 21, 2019

  Two weeks after President Young’s announcement of his condition, Frank Stein was bubbling with frustration in the way water bubbles when it is just below the boiling point. Frank was a handsome, energetic, fifty-year-old of medium build, with graying, dark brown hair. He was rich beyond
most people’s wildest dreams, but wore his wealth effortlessly, without grandeur or apology. Frank was chairman and president of Alpha Corporation, an investment company he had set up in 2008 soon after the global financial crisis.

  Frank, they said, was aptly named—he was honest to a fault. He had compassionate, brown eyes and, on most days, a gentle, assuaging manner. He did not have a temper, some said. Yet people close to him knew just how his exasperation, if intense enough, could boil over into a storm on those very rare occasions when he let it. Frank had never been married, and that fact alone made people wonder whether he was gay, notwithstanding the occasional heterosexual relationship he did have. Some said he had a girlfriend in his late teens that he never quite got over—his personal life was the one thing he never liked to talk about, although just about everything else was game. He worked incredibly hard and was very street savvy, but he was also smart in a bookish way. The money business suited his personality perfectly, and he had been superlatively successful at it.

  Alpha Corporation had been one of the most successful money management firms of the new decade, a decade characterized by extreme turmoil. Economic growth in Asia had lagged all the predictions made a decade earlier, and the economic woes of Europe and America had exceeded all but the worst economic forecasts. “But the worst is yet to come,” the pundits kept saying, and with the inevitability of a long-foreshadowed typhoon, it had almost arrived.

  Frank Stein, though, kept his forecasts to himself. Watching NBC News on his computer monitor, he was vexed at being caught unawares of a bill that sliced 9 to 10 percent off the value of most international corporations listed on U.S. stock exchanges.

  “It’s what we need for our economy,” the government spokesperson said, and the NBC News correspondent could not agree more. Two more pundits on the monitor nodded their heads in orchestrated agreement.

  “Corporations have no empathy,” one of the pundits said, reciting the symptoms of psychopathy. “They do not care about relationships, or the safety of others. They can easily lie for the sake of profit.”