The Frankenstein Candidate
Read The Frankenstein Candidate Online
Authors: Vinay Kolhatkar
“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
FRANKENSTEIN
CANDIDATE
A woman awakens to a web of deceit
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
To Neel and Nina, with love
If you don’t control your politicians, they will control you.
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, messy 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?