The Frankenstein Candidate

by Kolhatkar, Vinay

“I want to sort it out now.” Her eyes were a cold, icy blue.

  “I can’t tell you how to run your marriage. But now is not a good time.”

  “You always had a copy of Machiavelli’s Prince on your desk.”

  He stiffened. “Did you come to wish me a recovery or to confront me?”

  “Confrontation is pointless. I learned that from you. Oh no, I want you to recover completely. You need to be well enough to stand trial. Take your medicine. Don’t die on me now, Victor.”

  “Get off your high horse, Olivia. Let’s not forget who put you there. He could have ruined everything. Just for a piece of ass…now he could be first gentleman, and you, my dear, take care to remember that the super delegates have not voted yet.”

  “I don’t need their votes, Victor.”

  “Oh yes you do.”

  “You will see…I don’t. You will see.”

  Olivia got up. She reached the door when she turned to face him again.

  “Lest I forget, Victor, they didn’t get rid of all the cancer, did they?” She slammed the door behind her as she left.

  Victor immediately began calling people. The evening nurse noticed how agitated he was. But all efforts to get him to rest were of no use. On his seventh call, Victor called Larry.

  “She knows, Larry. She was threatening me.”

  “I won’t ask how she knows,” Larry said. “It can blow up in her face too…you just need to remind her of that. I heard you have been calling people. If I may say so, the horse has bolted….it is much too late to change the super delegates’ vote now without drawing attention to certain matters.”

  “She is getting out of control, Larry. We knew there was a risk she would find out before November, but her reaction worries me.”

  “She is very ambitious, Victor…you should know, you infused her with it. But then, Ambition was always a horse you could tame.”

  39

  The Carbonistas

  Olivia carefully covered her steps. She visited several hospitals, both publicly funded and private ones, over the next two days, to discuss the quality of medical care and invited medical practitioners to offer her proposals. Kingsmead Psychiatric was only on her schedule once, but she managed to go there four times over two days, for over an hour on each occasion.

  Brendan Conway was only too happy not to ask too many questions. He looked forward to the day he could be restored in the Secret Service, and the more Olivia liked him, the better were his chances.

  Mardi’s revelations were startling, but as the picture got clearer, the calmer and icier she became.

  “It’s been going on for thirty years,” Mardi said. “It started well before my time. By the time I was somebody, I had to toe the line. Scientists who dissented from carbon alarmism had their funds cut off, their work pooh-poohed, and were labeled as Big Oil lackeys. Now, after three decades of brainwashing, almost everyone believes humans have corrupted the atmosphere.

  “The bureaucrats at the American Centre for Climate Change love it. They travel first-class and stay in five-star hotels at Rio, Stockholm, Sydney, and Cannes—wherever it is that they and their allies organize the next global climate summit. Paper-pushers with accounting and political science degrees get to discuss the so-called great calamitous challenge of our times, hash out a new tax plan disguised as scarce emission credits, or set international targets that take weeks to agree on, all wonderfully funded by taxpayers. They get to take home CEO-style salaries and oversee a staff of fifty. It is the ultimate power trip.

  “When NASA’s data showed global cooling, the space stations were either removed or moved to where the readings were more likely to be warmer. Respected Italian, British, Japanese, and of course, American scientists have seen research funds disappear for proposing a rigorous scientific investigation into climate change.

  “The tales of scorn, ridicule, and marginalization of anyone who dared contest the man-made global warming fantasy are all true. It has got so savage and so unscientific that even earthquakes are now blamed on global warming, as if there were no natural disasters in the pre-industrial age.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know,” Mardi squeaked through his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “You participated in the largest scientific fraud ever, and you say you don’t know?”

  “Perhaps the second largest fraud, Miss Allen.”

  “Spare me the economics for now; I have heard enough from Stein. Although I am beginning to believe that as well.”

  “I was lonely, all my life I was lonely.”

  “What?”

  “You asked me why I participated.”

  “Actually, you orchestrated this grand delusion, didn’t you?”

  “Not at first. Anyway, now you know why I want to end it all.”

  “You can’t go that way, Dr. Tedman. Reverse it all. It is reversible.”

  “My reputation…for me, it’s more important than my life.”

  “Your reputation will not survive without my cooperation. Mr. Conway and I saw you try to take your life. Dr. Rohl knows why you are here; he has your file. And…I have been wearing a wire all along.”

  “Isn’t that illegal? I wasn’t told.”

  “Try me in court. A little late for you to resort to lawfulness.”

  Mardi broke down repeatedly during the conversations. Finally, she agreed a plan with him. Dr. Rohl was prepared to keep him longer, but she persuaded him to release Mardi over to her. Mardi had to submit a detailed affidavit to her first, containing everything he had told her, a copy of which she would lodge confidentially with the attorney general. Mardi was to detail all that he actually believed: the unpredictability of climate science, the ease with which climate could be cooled by artificially created volcanic gas spewers, the benefits of surface temperature warmth for plants and disease control, the near impossibility of lowering temperature by controlling carbon, and the near impossibility of lowering carbon emissions themselves.

  Mardi would also name and shame the bureaucrats and the politicians who knew and were complicit, everywhere from the U.S. to the UN to Asia to Europe. Mardi would also cite the scientists whose work he respected and had been subjected to Stalinist-style assault by the climate scientologists.

  She would help digitalize photos of him at Ocean City. He would go back to work like nothing had happened.

  After her fourth meeting, she left with an affidavit ninety pages long, signed by Dr. Mardi Tedman in the presence of a state attorney she brought along to witness the signature.

  Requesting a lunch meeting at one of the Pepperoni’s private rooms, Olivia had Brendan stand guard outside while she met with the attorney-general.

  Phil Enright had been her teacher on civil law when she studied at Columbia, and he had a spotless reputation for integrity and candor. On any other day, she might have disagreed with his conservative politics, but today he was the man she most wanted to see.

  Lean, silver-haired, bespectacled, and calm, sixty-year-old Phil had overseen countless allegations, investigations, and scandals, yet if you saw his laugh lines, you would think he was a professional clown, not an attorney.

  “You had two matters, Miss Allen?” he said.

  “I am still Olivia, the student.”

  “Really? Or should I get used to Madam President?”

  “The first concerns Dr. Mardi Tedman. I have a signed copy of his affidavit that I am keeping in your custody. He asks that it be released into the public domain upon his death…howsoever caused.”

  “Do we need to call the FBI?”

  “Yes, but for protection, not investigation. I have no knowledge of any hit ordered on him. But no one has seen or read that affidavit yet.”

  “Understood. And the second one?”

  “It concerns my husband. He hired a private detective, a man by the name of Micah Zelman. Here is Mr. Zelman’s report. You won’t need to subpoena him, he is happy to be interviewed.”

  She handed him a black iPad
and a signed memo. “It’s all in there.”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “Intent to cause terror.”

  “Have you informed CTU and Homeland Security?”

  “Not that kind of terror. Directed at one person. Masterminded with political intent.”

  “This better be true, Olivia.”

  “It’s not directed at your party, Phil.”

  “What? Who are we talking about?”

  “Victor Howell to start with and some others…powerbrokers mainly.”

  Phil Enright gulped, stupefied by what he had just heard. Had the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee just reported one of the party’s elders for felony misconduct that could fire up the news stations for months…the very months that led to the presidential election? She had.

  “Before I open this, you know what this means?” he said, catching his breath.

  “Yes, it’s our very last chance to save this country.”

  She left him still gasping, and the waiter asked whether Phil needed a glass of water or a doctor. He declined both, ordered a double espresso instead, and sat down to read the two documents in the isolation of his secluded seat.

  40

  The National Convention

  The meeting had been postponed twice, but she was here now. Olivia had a quietness about her when Dr. Joshy finally saw her again. She declined to sit on the reclining couch, preferring an upright seat looking straight into his eyes. He sensed that change was already underway.

  It was the evening before the party’s national convention. Olivia had the presidential nomination all sewn up.

  “Big day tomorrow,” he said.

  “Today is a bigger day…I will say good-bye tonight to Mother.”

  “What else will you tell her?”

  “It’s my life…my decision…it should always have been,” she said. He smiled.

  “It’s who I am to me that matters most,” Olivia continued. “I like the sound of that—who I am, to me, that matters most. Everyone…almost everyone…in my life to this point has been using me for their ends…I am the vehicle. My mother, my teachers, children…you expect that of children. Not Gary…for all the wrongs he has committed, he never used me. And not my father. But yes, Colin, Larry, Katrina, Victor, all of them…the whole party structure is about manipulation.”

  “You are their leader now…what will you tell them?”

  But she kept going. “Manipulation. That’s what politics is. Manipulation of issues, of people, of discussions, of debates…the whole of life is but a game to be won or lost. It’s jungle law. I just can’t be part of it anymore. Strangely, I have never felt better than I have this past week. I discovered the worst in men. Now I know why I don’t belong. Now I know why I have always felt like I didn’t belong. I thought it was because I was not good enough to be up there…I was never good enough for my mother…it is a void that I can never truly overcome; I will never be good enough for my mother inside my heart. But the people, the creatures that I work with and for, they are not worth the fight.”

  Her eyes were glassy, not from sorrow but from an intensely felt betrayal.

  “I will always wonder how many of them knew. How many of them know now…how many of them would have rather not known, how many have been derelict by preference to avoid knowing the horror.”

  There is a kind of intense self-confidence that comes from wrath. The paroxysm of umbrage is about a fundamental goodness in you, for it’s only the good that can be betrayed.

  “You, me, and the public at large have been double-crossed on just about every issue there is. Revenge is the only answer. I have a new mission now. Retribution. Mom can take a back seat.”

  “What about your father? What about Compassion?” he asked.

  “Retribution is compassion. It’s compassion for the victims of this immense tragedy. We can do no better for the victims than show them how they have been manipulated and victimized and how they can get out of it. They are capable. They don’t need our charity but they need our discovery. Frankly, we have run out of the means to give. There is no excess wealth in America anymore. You can’t give away what is not even created—that’s what Stein says, and I am immensely surprised that I am quoting him. Politics, Dr. Joshy, was about compassion—to me anyway. I got tricked. My colleagues are very compassionate with other people’s hard-earned money.

  “Maybe I will always fall short in my mother’s eyes. I will always have some fear of being unmasked. But the more I feel the fury, the more they have to fear me. They are the ones who are going to be unmasked. All of them.” She was icy, stern.

  “Nothing so tranquilizes a mind as a steady purpose,” he said.

  “Now where have I heard that before?”

  “The line was in the old classic tale of Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley. If you need to set right the wrongs that have occurred, then the new purpose in your life will keep you from wondering about—”

  “Whether I am made of the right material…because I am,” she finished his sentence.

  Olivia Allen had never felt clearer in her life. Rohan Joshy had rarely felt happier. When she left, Dr. Joshy felt that she might never come back as a client, which, of course, delighted him.

  Olivia went straight to the airport, where Gary was waiting for her. They boarded a flight to Miami. It was Friday, May 15. Eight thousand people were to gather at the Miami Beach Convention Center for the three-day Democratic Party Convention.

  On day one, the keynote address was delivered by rising star Claire Derouge. Claire was a congresswoman from Florida with a background not dissimilar to Olivia’s. Born into an upper middle class, well-educated, political family, with a penchant for oratory and a touch for reaching out to people, Claire seemed to be destined for public life.

  Claire was only thirty-nine and had been in politics for ten years. It was rare for the party to ask someone so young to deliver a keynote address at the national convention. But the seniors knew they would get extensive media coverage. The old and the tired hadn’t worked. Here was an opportunity to send out a message of hope renewed. Olivia, they knew, would be a hit. They also knew that the public had become distrusting of the entrenched. The Victor Howells of their world knew their future careers now lay only as kingmakers.

  “More than at any other time in American history,” Claire said, borrowing phrases liberally from the hackneyed addresses of the past that described the American dream, “we are at crossroads with destiny. This nation, unlike any other before it, was a land of opportunity where skill not birthplace, tenacity not connections, and talent not money mattered the most. Not any more. The America I grew up in…it wasn’t like this. Back then, people worked hard, but for those who worked hard, the American dream remained viable. Now that dream has all but vanished from the landscape. We all know who is to blame for that…”

  The pause was designed for applause, and loud, rancorous applause is what Claire got. Eight thousand people, thought Olivia, desperate to cling on to the safety of belonging to a crowd, delirious with the feeling of togetherness, singing and shouting in unison, on cue from the speechmaker of the day. Only the baton was missing, but it was hardly ever needed. For hours on end, it was the party to end all parties, the mother of all rock concerts, as Olivia disappeared several times to mull over her speech, her direction, her decision.

  She smiled at everyone and everyone smiled back at her. They could not stop congratulating her. But what had she achieved really? She had glimpsed the truth, but the accolades kept flowing in for all the wrong reasons. Once again, she felt like she didn’t belong here. She didn’t deserve to be here, but not because she wasn’t worthy. For the first time in her life, she felt that she didn’t belong because she was worthy and “they” were not.

  Olivia was well known to the high priests of the party, and everyone wanted a piece of her. She had to spend time slipping away in a sun hat or in the bathrooms just to get time to reflect on everything that
was unfolding.

  With every strained smile, yet another part of Olivia screamed at her. Every handshake felt like it was made in a parallel universe. Every acceptance of praise played in a movie that was being shot as she played her character, Olivia Allen the senator, Olivia Allen the presidential nominee. She wondered when she could get out of character and speak her mind.

  Finally on day three, it was Olivia’s turn to speak to the huddled brethren eagerly waiting. Thirty-seven television cameras whirred to record Olivia’s acceptance of the presidential nomination. They said her speech had been redrafted sixty-nine times. Even Olivia admitted that the only way she could do justice to the speech was to read from the written page.

  Olivia took her place on the podium. Her assistant made a quick dash across the stage to give her a copy of the great acceptance speech.

  My god, she left it behind in a moment of nervousness, he thought.

  She hadn’t forgotten. Olivia took the papers and tore them up.

  Wow, what an effective opening, thought the thirty-seven camera operators.

  “I am sorry…that speech did get redrafted sixty-nine times,” Olivia said, “and I tore it up because it does not speak my heart. It is time we spoke to America directly from the heart.”

  She paused then, but only to gather herself for her momentous revelation. Just ten or eleven of the eight thousand people clapped. That’s all it took for the eight thousand strong to string together two whole minutes of palm-reddening clapping.

  “William Young and Quentin Kirby will go down in American history as the men who threw oil into the fire that was destroying our livelihoods.”

  More applause followed…boy, she was going for the jugular, they thought.

  “The fire was lit thirty years ago by Ronald Reagan. Under the elder George Bush, the fire got out of control. With every successive government, Democrat or Republican, the fire got more and more out of control.”