Turning Final

By David A. Mallach

Turning Final is David Mallach’s sixth novel. Set in the wake of a momentous political victory for Senator Becket Rosemore, the story that unfolds takes us behind the scenes of a man who would be president. Setting his sights on the White House, Beck embarks on a journey to become the most powerful man in the world. He enjoys rock-star status and appears to be a force for change and equality. He enlists the help of his fiancée, Camille O’Keefe, a renowned author and spiritualist, who can bring a wider, softer appeal to his candidacy. Everything in Beck’s life is going according to plan.

As the story progresses, Turning Final heads in a very different direction. Mallach takes us into a world we seldom see, a world where the most powerful men in the world reveal who they really are. What unfolds is a penetrating, disturbing tale of privilege, deceit, and abuse. Mallach shows us the darkness that lurks inside the men who run our world, a world on the precipice of moral decline, and he does so with startling clarity and frankness.

In the midst of the turmoil, Camille O’Keefe emerges as a force of her own, a genuinely female voice that gives us hope for the spirit of possibility. Camille O’Keefe must wend her way through a world which she is ill-equipped to handle. She must find within herself the well-spring of her own power, a model for hope and humanity the world over.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David A. Mallach
• Release date: May 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310729027

David A. Mallach

David A. Mallach resides in the Philadelphia area, where he has devoted his entire professional career since 1973 to helping investors develop strategies for income growth and capital appreciation. David has lectured to investors and professional investment advisors in the U.S.A., Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Book preview

Thinking back over the last fifteen years, I’ve realized something about myself – I like to write in trilogies. I’m not quite sure why this is. My first three books functioned together as a comprehensive novelization of my investment strategies. Working within the great literary tradition of the roman à clef, my first three books are narrative presentations of my reality as a money manager. My characters’ hopes and aspirations, their flaws and their failures… I have seen it all happen in one way or another. My first three books search out the beautiful in life because I’ve seen so much good happen as a result of making the right decisions. Similarly, the anguish that’s woven in the pages of my first three novels is rooted in the misguided values I still see lurking around every corner.

Always, though, I seek a positive path to follow, and my books will always explore the realm of opportunity that is the quintessence of human experience. But the world seems tougher now than it did when I first put pen to paper in 2000. Things seem to happen so much faster now for better and for worse as the scope of our actions can stretch across the globe in seconds. We see and hear a lot more now even as it’s happening. As a writer, I’ve always tried to capture the predominant ethos of our time, toss my characters into the mixing bowl, stir and see what happens. These days, it just seems like the finished product is more hard boiled, more desperate, more wanton because our world is. That’s what I see. And yet, as a writer, I feel it’s my responsibility to challenge this by infusing hope and humanity into the recipe.

My second trilogy began with The Trillion Dollar Sure Thing. This book was a departure for me as a writer. Unlike my first three books (and the stand-alone fourth entitled Myth), The Trillion Dollar Sure Thing was not a fictionalized depiction of reality but rather something very different. I found myself creating a world of illusion in which some pretty bad people try to have their way with the rest of us. The more I wrote, the more I realized I was taking on an entirely new set of challenges as a writer. Where I once sought to dramatize the world of finance I knew so well, my course suddenly changed. I found myself intrigued by the interrelationship between money, power, and terror. As a matter of course, The Trillion Dollar Sure Thing was a springboard for me to create on a much larger canvas. Of course, this meant taking on much larger challenges, as well.

Turning Final is the second book in the new trilogy. Even today, the characters populating these pages still fascinate me as they all find themselves caught up inextricably with the competing forces of darkness and light. I can’t tell whose winning. That’s for you, the reader, to decide. For me, the role of the novelist is to bring narrative life to the corners of our world we seldom see. For me, the role of the novelist is to call into question why we do what we do without passing judgment. Passing judgment is for you, the reader. Writing is an act of ambiguity; reading is an act of judgment.

The cast of characters in Turning Final run the gamut from spiritual medium to self-serving politician, from selfless hero to conniving banker. I know I have written well because I am still stunned by some of the things my characters do. I wonder where they came from. Camille O’Keefe, Becket Rosemore, Harry Pierson, Frank Lonza, Abdul Al-Alibri, Nikolai… are they all a part of me? And yet, I suspect the characters in Turning Final reflect different parts of all of us. The question is in what proportion. It is a balancing act to be sure. Do you wonder what that would be like? Well, here it is in Turning Final.

Turning final is a term pilot’s use. It refers to the change in course that puts the plane toward the runway on approach. No other changes in direction are needed after turning final. As a pilot, I feel the title of this novel is my way of saying that this journey is about to end. Of course, a new journey or destination will start immediately. The change in course that emerges in this story involves a stark assessment of power and deceit. These characters find themselves confronting their own tendency to accept deeply troubling behavior from the handful of men who run our world. Turning Final asks why we tolerate and even admire men who demonstrate a disturbing capacity for selfishness, violence, adultery and abuse. Amidst the turmoil, a woman emerges as the herald of a new world, a new way of seeing that focuses on possibilities instead of foregone conclusions about the things that really matter – respect, kindness, love, and compassion.

Turning Final surprises me. This story of Camille O’Keefe and Becket Rosemore has taken on a life of its own. This story scintillates with beauty but also quivers in fear of the darkness that lurks in the corners of our world, places we never want to go. But in our new global world, these dark places now come straight to our doorstep courtesy of social media. Turning Final is a novel about answering the door and dealing with it.

As always, I want to thank Todd Napolitano for his dedication to my vision and his deep respect for the possibility of narrative. He is a student of the art form as much as he is a practitioner. This is inspiring for me. I also want to thank his family for understanding all that is required emotionally when writing a novel. Thanks to Todd, I have developed as a writer these last fifteen years. Our collaboration has been the source of learning and inspiration. As we craft these stories together, we inevitably take on bigger and bigger challenges. Through the act of writing, Todd and I have grown. This is what it’s all about. As my protagonist Camille O’Keefe would say, Todd and I share a connection that predates this lifetime. Similarly, the character of Frank Lonza is based on a dear friend of Todd’s who left this earth far too soon. They, too, shared a connection beyond this lifetime. I am sure they will meet up again.

I am also deeply indebted to the following people:

Jeanette Freudiger, to whom once again I owe special thanks for her long-term work so closely related to this novel and my previous works. She was always ready with her wit, help, and advice to insure that this novel was designed in the most thorough and entertaining fashion;

Sharon Cromwell, my senior editor who made this manuscript and all my books readable novels;

Stephanie Heckman, for her tireless editing of this novel;

John Sasso, for his complete attention to every detail in this novel;

Marine Captain Sean Sasso, for his dedication to our country and our way of life;

Bob Wagner, my Costa Rican advisor whose book cover design skills are simply the best;

Kyle Mallach, It’s nice to see one of my sons editing skills help with this novel;

Rhonda Branch, for her editing skills;

Lastly, I thank all the wonderful investors I have known, who in their quest for growth chose to honor me with their trust.

Chapter One

The driver eased the limousine up to the curb in front of 420 H Street. The car sat idling ominously. Nobody got out.

The H Street district was an artsy, hip part of D.C., a modern composition of cultures, boasting an eclectic array of quaint bistros and chic galleries juxtaposed with dive bars and hipster hot spots. Gentrification was a rising tide, and the area was quickly making a name for itself among the city’s opportunistic investment community. It was only a matter of time before $40 Kobe skewers and cocktails with names like Pink Sextini made their way onto the local bill of fare.

But the neighborhood had seen troubling times during the ‘68 riots and had an identity all its own, an identity that was almost a persona. H Street held onto traces of urban blight, keeping that memory close to the vest with a shrewd resistance to upping the ante too fast. The socioactive half-life of a jaded past still emanated from beneath the floorboards where discontent had once paced angrily.

A bottle smashed somewhere off in the distance. Young people laughed. It was after midnight, neither the time nor place you’d expect to find a United States senator sitting in an idling car outside some woman’s brownstone, especially a senator as famous as Becket Rosemore. Then again, it was Becket Rosemore, so just about anything was possible. The senator was coming from a black-tie fund raiser for America’s corporate elite hosted by the National Republican Congressional Committee. Senator Becket Rosemore – or Beck as he was called by his colleagues and a few friends – was the keynote speaker. It was early June, and the event was intended to take advantage of Beck’s popularity while the NRCC still could. If nothing else, the junior senator was learning quickly that politics valued striking with a hot iron over slow, methodical character building. It suited him just fine. Who had time for all that?

People from all walks of life were lining up across the country to hear Beck speak. Apparently, the American public liked a hot iron, too. Regardless of the high-end political fund raisers like the one he was coming from, charity benefits, guest lectures at America’s finest universities, or staged surprise visits to some downtrodden urban school - Beck regaled audiences with stories of his historic diplomatic achievement in the Middle East that was still landing him on front pages across the nation. Of course, what Beck purported to be a behind-the-scenes look at the deal he cut with China and a blow-by-blow account of his struggle against Allah’s Fortune was, in fact, a staged production. Like Che Guevara wearing full fatigues when addressing the United Nations, Beck never revealed what really went on. These were details the general population simply did not need to know.

Simply put, Beck could never reveal the secrets of his diplomatic success. There was little to be gained and much to be lost. Some of the information was too sensitive, classified at the highest levels. Others tidbits were far more mundane than he wished to acknowledge to his admiring public, which preferred to imagine their new American hero forever galloping across an endless horizon atop his gallant white steed. And where success was a matter of luck… well, Beck had grown quite adept at conjuring the caprices of chance into fables of his own ingenuity. A media darling, he was savvy enough to find the path of least resistance and better at giving the people what they wanted to hear as opposed to the truth, which could someday blow up in his face.

Like a modern-day alchemist, Beck could turn simple good fortune into political gold. Indeed, Beck had a genuine talent for promoting himself above everything else. This made him an ideal politician despite his nascence on the scene. What made it all work in his favor was his knack for maintaining enough modesty, seasoned with an ample amount of self-deprecating humor, to put even his harshest critics at ease. He didn’t actually believe the criticisms he leveled at himself in public. He just put them out there to pacify his critics and make him appear more sympathetic. Plus, he had a grin that could charm a cobra or Nancy Pelosi, whichever happened to be hissing at the time. All this he had learned from the master, Bill Clinton, who seemed to be unassailable even when caught in flagrante delicto with a moist cigar and a sizeable human stain, as they said.

At first, Beck was a bit uncomfortable with his rock star status. It happened so fast, he hardly had time to process it before Republican bigwigs, corporate icons, and lofty university presidents were vying with one another to get him to speak at their functions, which seemed to occur daily. He had to be careful he didn’t become a tool for delivering someone else’s agenda, despite his fame and the wind in his sails, Beck could see himself becoming exhausted quickly, running around and around chasing after the enticing scent of cheese while trying to learn how to navigate the maze.

It all came at the expense of his social life, although for Beck, this never involved love. Never one to welcome intimacy in any form but always game for an anonymous sexual encounter, Beck preferred the simplicity of a one-night stand. For him, breakfast the morning after was farther than he was willing to go. Sex was a conquest for him, which really boiled down to a process of admiring his own prowess by counting the number of hot trophy women he’d managed to bag. No sooner was the deed done – the shot fired as it were – then he was slipping into the backseat of his limo and disappearing safely into the burgeoning dawn. It was like his chopper hitting a hot exit to pluck him from the crap back in his Special Forces days.

As might be imagined, this need for emotional distance, combined with the rigors of his new senatorial post, had a lot to do with the dissolution of his brief relationship with the totally fabu Camille O’Keefe. And while he might have been as crass and immature as Camille often said, he was never stupid. Worse for Camille, there was something about him that pulled her in like a super magnet did nails. For her, it was karma at work, and she knew Beck would be hard to shake, no matter how shabbily he treated her.

She believed her relationship with Beck was fated. More than that, she believed they had been together countless times in a tumultuous history of past lives. This is what she believed. Likewise, Camille knew intuitively that, despite his many flaws, shortcomings that would inevitably hurt her deeply, Becket Rosemore had an amazing ability to glimpse the big picture. Unfortunately for Beck, Camille also knew just as surely that he inevitably failed to act on that vision.

That’s why she was always pushing him to do more with the power she knew he would garner rapidly over the months that followed. She demanded the highest virtues from Beck, and expected him to lead the people of the world toward a more enlightened, interconnected coexistence. Beck resented it. What was he supposed to be, her Messiah or something? That’s what he used to say to her when she urged him to set his mind free, urged him to recognize and draw power from what she called his vast pool of karmic energy.

Beck just didn’t see himself in this way. He gladly accepted all the praise a woman could lay upon him, Camille O’Keefe or anyone else for that matter, just as long as he could envision himself slipping into her pants. His ego soaked it up like a dry sponge in water. But if too many expectations came with it, he became resentful, preferring instead to act out, move on to the next conquest, taking his sponge to another woman’s kitchen. In his mind, that would always show a chick who was boss.

And so one day he simply stopped calling her. He cut Camille out of his life suddenly and entirely. She waited for over an hour at the restaurant where they had planned to meet for dinner. Worried that something bad had happened, she called him repeatedly until his phone starting going straight to voice mail. She worried about him for several days. When she started reading about him in the papers, she realized he was just fine and had just decided to toss her away. That’s when she began feeling like a used wad of tissues balled up on the floor next to the bed after sex. Months had passed, and she still felt that way about herself.

Beck wanted what he wanted, not what Camille or some other woman wanted for him. It didn’t take long before he felt Camille wanted too much from him. What Camille wanted from Beck and what he wanted from her were entirely different. He quickly became suspicious of her lofty idealism and karmic intuition, feeling instead that she used all kinds of esoteric spiritual talk to distract him from his game and change him into some sort of United Nations-loving socialist or something like that. He didn’t understand half of the concepts she put forth, so how smart could she really be? Always ready to recite his growing list of achievements, Beck wielded Occam’s razor like a Freudian samurai – if he couldn’t understand an ideological appendage, he lopped it off from the body of the conversation as if it had no value in the first place.

Beck felt anything put forth that he couldn’t readily understand could not be all that important, so why bother with it? On the one hand, he liked what he liked. Fame, fortune, and power suited his tastes quite nicely. He liked his luxurious limousine complete with every amenity, his chauffeur/bodyguard, courtesy of the Secret Service, and his private phone book with the names and numbers of not only the best lays in every major city across the globe organized by fetish, but the world’s most famous power brokers as well. The fact that it was all subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer made it all the more fulfilling.

The fund-raiser he was coming from cost $25,000, per plate. The price of a full table of ten was more than the value of Camille’s entire crappy brownstone, although she referred to it as a comfortable and modest home. The place was as much a part of her as the tattoos that adorned her sleek body. It was all crap to Beck, who figured wealth counted for something far greater than love, which was a cheap commodity everyone could have. Even if they had love, very few people could have what he had. If he loved anything, it was the way money flowed around him. Beck’s universe was lavish, and he was the sun at its center. He considered it a sign that he was preordained for greatness. Orbiting around him were the best, the brightest, and the most beautiful, powerful people in the world.

And yet there he sat, idling away outside Camille’s brownstone, contemplating how to get back inside. Despite his grandiose fascination with his own achievements, Becket Rosemore felt that something very important was missing from his life. It was not something he would ever admit was a flaw, but he was aware of a void within himself nonetheless. He’d felt that way for as long as he could remember. And as much as Beck needed emotional distance from people, he also knew he had to get back in touch with Camille O’Keefe. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why.

He felt caught in the middle of something bigger than he was and he didn’t like feeling that way. For starters, Becket Rosemore believed he was bigger than anything. Believing otherwise was, for him, a path leading to treacherous ground. Like intimacy, he believed humility would only lead to trouble in the long run. He preferred to avoid them both. Still he sat there, basking in his congressional comforts, sitting in his chauffeured limo, outside of Camille’s spiritual studio. Politics could be a sprint, Beck knew that for sure. He also knew he had to reground himself and get back to basics in order to maintain his course on a positive and productive life journey. Thoughts like that sometimes managed to break through his protective walls and smack him upside the head. Drawing on his days as an Army operator, Beck knew almost intuitively that he would have to carefully marshal his energies – physical, emotional, and spiritual – if he were going to run a marathon. At the same time, he fought tooth and nail to remain in control of all things affecting him… or at least he believed he could do that.

The irony did not escape him. Idling in front of Camille’s brownstone, Beck sat in the backseat, contemplating the cosmic forces that seemed to draw him to her. The pull was strong, very strong… undeniably strong. Was there really something to all that karma and cosmic energy nonsense she was always talking about? All he knew was that some unknown force kept pulling him ineluctably toward her, despite his attempts to remove her from his life.

Chapter Two

In the limo with Beck was Frank Lonza. Frank was the Secret Service special agent assigned to protect Beck. With his meteoric rise, Beck was more of a celebrity than a politician. Making appearance after appearance across the country, Beck was out there constantly and, as a result, recognizable everywhere he went. Although nothing like the masses who had mobilized to catch a glimpse of President Obama during his first inaugural tour, sizable crowds assembled well in advance of each appearance Beck made.

It was deemed to be in the nation’s best interests to keep Beck safe. The security risk was significant enough to warrant around-the-clock protection. Frank Lonza was the man who drew the primary assignment and was appointed detail leader. Like Beck, Frank Lonza was ex-military with extensive experience in intelligence. Frank spoke seven languages, three of them fluently, including English, and specialized in foreign- language surveillance. Prior to joining the Secret Service, Frank spent two years with the CIA in Afghanistan as a field interpreter. Should it become necessary, Frank could handle himself well in the field. He was an expert with various firearms and in hand-to-hand disciplines. He had a past that was very nasty indeed. There was a lot of blood on his hands. He could carve a man up like a Thanksgiving turkey as if using with a properly-sharpened knife. Frank prided himself on his knowledge of anatomy and physiology. He could inflict maximum pain and suffering without damaging any vital organs or critical veins. His proficiency enabled him to keep a man alive for many hours until he got what he needed from him. Then, Frank’s blade would deftly find a critical spot to bring it all to an end. Frank’s interrogations were like a musical score. He directed the piece to a climactic crescendo that exploded with intense human suffering accentuated with blood, sweat, and tears.

Frank had been with the Secret Service for six years on the protection side rather than the less glamorous investigation side where they worked computer hacking and threats of that sort. As a matter of course, he underwent intensive training in all aspects of protection services, including film study of Ford, Wallace, Reagan, and other national security risks, the way an NFL quarterback might study game film. The NFL quarterback would review formations, strengths, vulnerabilities, and tendencies, until both comprehension and anticipation became second nature. He also went through constant ongoing training, practicing over and over again different real-world scenarios. He knew that one day he could find himself neck high in the crap again. A crisis could come suddenly, but never without warning. The signs were always there if he remained diligent and looked closely enough.

Since being assigned to Beck, Frank was conscious of a growing ball of anxiety lodged in the pit of his stomach. Beck was out there in the spotlight, unpredictable, and arrogant about his own fallibility. Frank had been around long enough to know that protecting a man like that inevitably led to violent confrontations of some sort. Only this time, Frank had the disconcerting feeling that he would not walk away from whatever was lurking out there. He didn’t let it get to him, but he knew something ugly was out there waiting for him all the same.

It was, to be sure, very different from his military training. A CIA ops guy like Frank Lonza was a very different sort of cat… very calculating, very disciplined, but so very dangerous. Naturally, men like Frank were a valuable commodity in times of war. With a dip in his lip, Kaffiyeh scarf around his neck, and dark aviators obscuring his eyes, Frank Lonza used to work interrogations nobody would ever know about. The good guys never saw anything, and the bad guys had a way of expiring when Frank was done with them. Interrogations were like reading a book for Frank. When he was done, he simply closed the cover.

Frank’s new role in the Secret Service required him to be much more professional, and corporate, even civilized. The days of packing a fresh dip and methodically removing fingers knuckle by knuckle were in the past now. Even if he still kept his favorite knife razor sharp, it was more out of habit than preparation. It all fit together well, though. It was a logical step to move Frank up to detail leader for Beck’s security team in preparation for a possible assignment to the presidential detail sometime in the future, should Beck decide to run. Thus, the assignment to Beck was a distinction.

Frank embodied the ideal balance between conditioned reaction and quick thinking, loyalty, and lethality that made him an ideal candidate to protect a guy like Becket Rosemore. Despite the senator’s immense popularity at home and in Europe, there were many outspoken pro-Islamist groups who were outraged by the deal Beck scripted with China, a deal which had put five-million Chinese troops on Arab soil, established energy independence for America, and brought global recognition of Israel.

Since then, there had been no fewer than thirteen public threats against Beck’s life. At one point, Beck started referring to himself jokingly as Johnny Fatw?. It did not seem to matter to these people that the deal also established a viable economy and infrastructure the Middle East had never known. All they cared about was driving Israel into the sea and watching the infidels burn. Of course, the greatest prize of all would be lopping off Beck’s head on video for the entire world to see.

It all went public the day he and Chang Hucheng stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly announcing their plan in an unprecedented display of Sino-American cooperation. It was an emergency Saturday session called at China’s behest, just when the world thought World War III was about to break out over the super carrier, the Sun Shílì, China had provocatively deployed to the Persian Gulf without warning. But Beck and Hucheng had a very different plan in mind and used the opportunity to shock the world by dropping quite a different sort of bomb. They announced the historic Middle East deal that would be termed the Rosemore Accord within minutes of the announcement. The General Assembly was thrown into an immediate uproar as the socioeconomic and political implications of the regional realignment began to spread like wildfire from nation to nation.

Beck had to be escorted from the building under the tightest security. It was exactly as wished. In fact, the whole thing went according to plan. He started the day as just some junior senator from North Carolina, but within hours he was the most talked about politician in the world. His next stop, he figured, could very well be the White House and the job of being the most powerful man in the world. He wasn’t sure if this was the path he would follow, but it certainly looked like a foregone conclusion at the time.

From that moment on, Beck was a prime target for the dark powers seeking to voice their rage by assassinating the next U.S. president. Within weeks of making his historical announcement at the U.N., Becket Rosemore was getting more press than any other politician, including the president in the last year of his second term. He found himself suddenly swept into a whirlwind of speaking engagements and other opportunities to advance his career. It was about that time that Frank was assigned to Beck’s security detail. It was certainly a lot of money and manpower to commit to a first-term senator, but the situation warranted the elevated precautions.

The death threats coming in couldn’t be overlooked. Having made history with the Rosemore Accord – a heralded troop withdrawal, and what looked like a feasible end to the Arab-Israeli conflict – the world couldn’t afford any harm befalling the man who put it all together (oddly, nobody bothered making death threats against Chang Hucheng). There was too much riding on the deal to risk Beck becoming another JFK or Anwar Sadat.

As the senator’s appearance schedule heated up, the network of regional Secret Service offices provided local support while Beck was on the road speaking in one city or another. Frank became Beck’s shadow. In fact, wherever Beck planned to go, a Secret Service advance team was already there, taking the appropriate measures to ensure his safety at all times. True, a sterile route was neither required nor ensured for Beck as it would be for a president. Still, the risk level was high with Beck, and so too was the level of precaution.

Some four thousand agents deep, the Secret Service prided itself on depth of preparation and efficient process control to ensure that all possibilities were accounted for. But of course, it is impossible to predict the unpredictable except to assume something unexpected will inevitably happen. Spontaneity posed the greatest risk. True to form, the security details assigned to Beck did everything in their power to discourage him from making unscheduled trips, even if he only wanted to pop into the drug store. What Beck feared most should he become president – namely, the loss of his personal freedom – was beginning to happen already, and he hadn’t even decided to run for the office. Responsible now to the nation as a whole, he was no longer free to come and go as he pleased. This extended to his many amorous moonlight interludes. He did what he could to slip away from his security detail like a child trying to sneak away from his babysitter.

It wasn’t long before Beck was away from D.C. more than he was there. Not that his colleagues or constituents cared very much. People saw him as the herald of a new world order, ushering in a new age in which the United States no longer did the world’s dirty work. Americans were happy to have the billions of dollars once spent on troop deployment in the Middle East redirected to more pressing needs at home. Military families were elated to have their children back home safe and sound. More liberal Americans were able to boast of a new peace dividend, and the overwhelming majority of people in the middle of the bell curve went about their business with a better feeling about themselves and their country.

Whether in D.C. or on the road, Frank Lonza was at Beck’s side just about all the time. As detail leader, Frank was in charge of any regional-office deployment when Beck was on the road. That meant lots of travel for Frank, as well. Never married, no children, and currently single, Frank had no problem with this. He was a lot like Beck himself. When Beck was back home in D.C., there were several other special agents who could share the load, but Frank preferred to work as much as possible. He was single by choice and a workaholic by nature. It suited him to a tee.

Naturally, Beck and Frank shared a certain bond, cemented by the intense dedication and loyalty only a very special agent could possess. Frank learned to anticipate Beck’s desires and went out of his way to accommodate the senator’s need to maintain both autonomy and personal freedom. Frank may have had to run around a bit more because of it, and Beck was sure to throw him a curve from time to time with special requests like dining in a hot new restaurant, catching a ball game, or even going for a fifty-mile bike ride. But the way Frank figured it, he was a lot better off than the guy who had to jump out of a plane with George H.W. Bush when the former president decided to skydive for his 85th birthday.

Anyway he cut it, Frank Lonza loved his current assignment. The travel, the hectic pace, the quirky demands of an up-and-coming politician turned celebrity… That all made it more fun. Given all that Beck meant to the world, and all he had yet to do in the future, Frank considered his role akin to guarding a vital global resource. This helped assuage the gnawing in his stomach that was growing stronger every time he thought about laying his life on the line. He never knew which day would be his last.

Frank wasn’t too keen about sitting parked outside Camille’s brownstone after midnight. It made him uneasy. The knot in his stomach turned. He lowered the privacy glass and turned to Beck, sitting in the backseat.

Are you sure this is the correct address, senator?

Beck nodded. Yeah, this is the place. 420 H Street. See that sign over the door there?

Frank strained to look through the passenger-side window. You mean that big flaming eye thingamajig?

Beck laughed to himself as a few poignant memories of Camille O’Keefe flooded his consciousness. He remembered what she had said to him the night they first met. The third eye sees all, she told him. The third eye sees all. And there it was, her third eye, staring right through him with that same knowing look she gave him every time he was lying to her.

Remember, Frank. You don’t want to be third eye blind.

Frank grimaced. As dirty as he got cleaning up the world’s messes, things like religion, yoga, and anything vegan set him on edge.

I don’t know, he said, keeping his head on a swivel. Looks kinda freaky to me, sir.

Kinda freaky… that described Camille O’Keefe perfectly. Kinda freaky... that’s what Beck found so enthralling about her. So much had happened since he first met her. He wasn’t famous then. He was just a junior senator who stumbled upon some critical information that put him in the spotlight. Then came his holy ascension to stardom, and making tough decisions became the norm. He told himself that leaving her sitting in a restaurant and cutting her off entirely was one of the toughest decisions he had to make, that it was for her own good, but he knew that was a lie. He had more to lose than gain from keeping her around, no matter how amazing she looked in pink boy shorts, his favorite.

Beck knew the truth. Cutting her off was one of the easiest things he’d done in the past year, maybe too easy. Believing in the fiction of his own self-sacrifice and tough love was a soothing tonic for the cognitive dissonance that would otherwise be rattling around in his head. But he never forgot Camille O’Keefe – the woman, the spiritual medium, the past-life therapist – who vexed and perplexed him so. Damn if she didn’t make his passion boil like no other woman before or since.

It all started back on that night he was standing right there in front of that very same stoop, her stoop, at 420 H Street looking for clues about a friend who had been viciously murdered. The trail led him to the mysterious Camille O’Keefe. It had something to do with a secret Chinese plot to collapse the world’s financial markets, and he was desperate for answers. Then there was the group known as Allah’s Fortune trying to capitalize on a trillion-dollar sure thing by front-running the Chinese fiscal assault on the world.

When he first met Camille O’Keefe, Beck thought very little about anything that couldn’t promote his personal ambitions. This was not to say he was always selfish or uncaring. That was his usual mode but not his only mode. Becket Rosemore was emotionally isolated, but a sense of honor always ran deep in him. By and large, he wanted progress for the world, but not at the cost of his own success. He felt the deal with the Chinese struck the perfect balance. Camille did not. She wanted more from Beck, and he just wasn’t going to give it unless it was his own idea on his own terms.

For most of his adult life, Beck had functioned off survival mechanisms. It was difficult to tell that from just looking at him. He seemed so cool and aloof most of the time. But inside him beat the heart of a warrior who had done things he wouldn’t admit to a priest even if he were on his deathbed. As deep as his sense of honor ran, he knew that on his soul was inscribed a ledger of all the hurt and death he had perpetrated and for which he would have to account someday. It didn’t matter that he was a soldier just doing what soldiers did. He figured it was better to live for the moment than worry about some vague absolution in the distant future. If there was, in fact, a judgment day when he would be called to atone for his wrongs, Beck knew he had too much blood on his hands to find salvation in some afterlife that probably didn’t exist in the first place.

It was Camille who first introduced him to the concept of karma and started him thinking about his future as a continuation of his past, as part of a great Jungian collective, as she put it. This was so radically different from a trial in front of St. Peter that it actually struck Beck’s fancy. There was no way he was getting through the Pearly Gates, but this reincarnation thing held some promise. Why worry about a trial with the Almighty when he could circumvent the whole ordeal with a do-over?

I like this idea that if I mess up too much this time around, I can make it up on the rebound, he used to tell people. It drove Camille crazy.

It’s not a Get Out of Jail Free card, she would invariably snort. It’s about progress and self-improvement.

Beck would wave her beliefs off like so many other things. Eh, it’s all the same when there’s not some ancient dude with a long, white beard and a robe looking down and passing final judgment.

Sometimes, all Camille could do was laugh. And she laughed quite a bit. It was Camille who first introduced him to the idea that intuition and emotion could prove as powerful as logic and reason. It was Camille who made him understand that being a big, seething ball of ego could be as counter-productive as the impulse of Oedipus to tear his eyes out because he couldn’t bear to look at his own faults. Where would that sort of thing get anybody in the end? It was the sort of question that had never occurred to him before he met Camille.

After the deal with the Chinese and his defeat of Allah’s Fortune, Beck opted to take a different path than Camille would want. They hadn’t spoken for months. As Beck liked to remind himself often, he was too busy becoming the most powerful man in the world. He could garner his peace dividend, too, now that the Chinese were policing the Middle East after the United States had successfully withdrawn almost all of its troops. As for the men of Allah’s Fortune… they were dead to a man.

He deduced from his great political success that he must have made all the right choices with his life no matter how gruesome some of the details had been. It was all part of a grand scheme. That’s what was running through his head as he sat outside of Camille’s place, reminiscing and wondering what she was up to on the other side of that brick wall. It was after midnight, but lights were still flickering in Camille’s front windows. As he sat there, staring at the potted plants lining the steps leading up to her red front door, he saw his own face reflected in the dark, tinted, bullet-proof glass. Déjà vu enveloped Beck like fog enveloping a bridge.

He watched the light flickering in her windows as his memory-sense reactivated the smell of those candles. God, he loved the way her place smelled. As his senses came to life in the choreography of his memory, he could almost see the candlelight dancing before his eyes as if he was sitting inside with her. He could almost feel the fabric of the green dress she wore the first time he laid eyes on her. That deep red hair of hers still transported him to times long past when, according to Camille, their past lives intersected time and time again in an ongoing drama that would catch even Freud’s attention. Her hematite anklet, her sweeping declarations about Universal Law that would make him cringe and want to pull his hair out… it was all part of the mysterious package that was his relationship with Camille O’Keefe. And of course, how could he forget her foot tattoo? The images raged back like a tsunami of desire mixed with the longing and despair of a spiritual bond that never fully came to fruition.

What did it matter how much he liked her? Beck saw his path heading in an entirely different direction from Camille. If he did, in fact, run for president, Beck feared that Camille O’Keefe was no First Lady. Ironically, the things that turned him on most about her were the very same attributes that disqualified her, in his opinion, from going along with him for the big ride.

Could you imagine JFK marrying Marilyn Monroe? A little slap and tickle with the generation’s hottest celebrity was one thing, but First Lady? Come on now.

That’s how he explained it to Camille one night, and it hurt her more deeply than he could ever discern. It made her feel cheap and slutty, or like a freak. It reminded her of when she was a girl and the popular kids always ditched her after school. They spread awful rumors about her, things you wouldn’t even hear at a truck stop because that’s how teenage girls can be when they need to gnash their teeth on someone more vulnerable and insecure than themselves.

Beck didn’t notice Camille’s tears as he pontificated on about JFK and Marilyn. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered much. He honestly felt he had no choice but to distance himself from her. All her wackiness and spiritual mumbo jumbo… who wanted that in the White House? He didn’t notice her tears the time he told her that, either. Sometimes, he felt terrible thinking about people as things, but pragmatism had to rule the day. That’s what Becket Rosemore was good at… being pragmatic and ice-cold in his decision making. He felt it would make him an excellent president if ever it became nut-cutting time when vital decisions had to be made. He figured his ability to cut off a gorgeous redhead meant he would be able to drop a bomb on a city full of people if push came to shove. It was all the same for him. Seeing people as things made tough decisions much easier. If anything, he might regret losing a fine piece of ass more.

Lately, though, Beck had been toying with the idea of using Camille’s best attributes to his advantage. Were he to run for president, his victory in the Middle East would fail to impress the American Left that mustered enough votes to have meaning. He could use a softer touch, as one of his people phrased it, to bring the Lefties toward the center just long enough for them to cast their votes for him. After that, who cared what they did?

Camille O’Keefe was nobody’s second when it came to the higher values by which she measured success… honesty, love, compassion, spiritual fulfillment, striving to make herself and the people around her better. She used these principles as a sort of self-correcting mechanism with which she automatically weeded out from her life people who were too ego driven to accept anything other than their own self-image. Beck didn’t quite pass