33
Tuesday, February 2, 2021, 12PM Eastern Standard Time
“That son of a bitch.”
The President’s son-in-law was seething. He got up and closed the door of his office in the West Wing of the White House. He came back and sat down behind his desk.
“I know.” Max King oozed sympathy.
“I want that guy in prison,” he said, resuming his diatribe.
“I know you do. But it’s not going to happen. Not soon, anyway. He’s got the kind of money that buys countries.”
“We’ve got the biggest country already. We should be able to do whatever we want to anyone we want.”
“Yeah. I get it. But you have to be patient. Brent is too powerful at the moment. Also…”
“Also?”
“Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but he did write a check to us for $30 million.”
“It should have been $3 billion!”
“Yes. But it never was going to be. We don’t want to bankrupt the RNC. Hell, they got us re-elected.”
The Son-in-Law considered this.
“That is true. But he didn’t have to go after my father that way. The son of a bitch. I want his head on a pike.”
“Some day, maybe,” Maxfield King said. “Now, let’s talk about something more cheerful. I’ve got the numbers in for the antiviral drug. We may actually make up that $3 billion shortfall.”
“Really?” The Son-in-Law brightened.
“We’ve had Dr. Mo flogging it for over a year. His ratings are off the charts. He’s going to want a cut, of course.”
“How much?”
“A lot. Not $3 billion. But a lot.” Max smiled.
The Son-in-Law grimaced.
“How soon can we expect that windfall?” he asked.
“Are you having liquidity problems?”
The Son-in-Law was silent.
“The building in New York?”
“We thought we had turned the corner after the sheiks gave us that cash infusion. But this freaking virus. It’s thrown all our projections out of whack. Half our tenants have stopped paying rent.”
“Have you tried telling them that the virus is a Deep State Hoax?” Max said, smiling. He instantly saw that his joke had gone over with a thud.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “You get anything out of the bailouts?”
“Of course,” the Son-in-Law said. “We set up the usual shell corporations so we could qualify for small business loans and grants. The lawyers know how to do that in their sleep by now. As you know.”
“So what’s the issue?”
“It’s not enough.”
“You bought that building at too high a price, just like they said. It happens. Win some, lose some.”
The Son-in-Law radiated a look of hatred toward him. Max realized that this topic was never going to elicit anything other than bad feeling.
“Don’t even go there,” the Son-in-Law said.
“Anyway, cash should not be a problem for you right now, even with that building. We are making a ton off the virus testing facilities and the MK medallions. The profits from those are being routed through the shell corporations too, right?”
“Yes,” the Son-in-Law said.
“You can surely figure out how to get some of that cash back into the country. And I can forward you some cash. Move some stuff around. The usual friendly rate.”
“Thanks,” the Son-in-Law said flatly, with no gratitude whatsoever.
“Don’t worry so much. I tell you, we are getting some serious coin out of this drug. Medicare and Medicaid are buying this stuff like aspirin.”
“But hopefully not for an aspirin price.”
“Not even close. We’re going to need those lawyers to concoct a lot more of those special vehicles so we can direct this money offshore. We can’t let it out that the President’s family and friends are minting money off this disaster.”
“Let me know when that money is coming in,” the Son-in-Law said. “I’m going to need the lawyers to help me figure out how to get that cash where it’s needed.”
“New York,” Max said. “Listen… I can always get our friends in Moscow to chip in.”
The Son-in-Law almost visibly shivered. “Not those guys.”
“Come on, they’re great guys.”
“Maybe to you.”
“They like you.”
“They like me for dinner. Let’s just say, there’s a reason my family left that place in a hurry in the 1890s.”
“Suit yourself,” Max said. “But seriously, what we are getting from the drug must be able to cover anything you need for the building.”
“What about the vaccine?”
“We are in competition with some foreign elements. We are praying the Europeans don’t get there first. They’re talking some bullshit about making any vaccine a ‘Global Public Good.’ It’d be a disaster, like the Salk polio vaccine – cheaply available to everyone, no excess profits at all.”
“Jesus,” the Son-in-Law said. “That would be all we need.”
“This disease would be gone overnight. The whole market opportunity would collapse.”
“That would be a catastrophe, like the oil price plunge last year,” the Son-in-Law said.
“But let’s be optimistic. Our guys might get there first. And they realize we’re the only conduit to Medicare and Medicaid. We’ll get a nice haircut then. You can dump that building, or buy five more if you want.”
“And if the Chinese get there first?”
“We’ll still get a cut,” Max said. “As you know, I’m tight with the Chinese. Even if your father-in-law isn’t.”
“He’s just holding their feet to the fire. Like they do with us.”
Max didn’t respond to this. There was no foot-holding, or fires, before the President got in, he thought to himself. He’d had to walk a tightrope with the Chinese ever since the President had gotten in, and even more so since the President had started claiming that the Chinese government had released the virus on purpose to damage him. Max’s entire contract for building dozens of camps in Xinjiang had at times hung in the balance. But his clients there knew how close he was to the President, and they also knew that he knew exactly how many Uighur civilians were being held in those “military bases,” and they correctly figured that he had made arrangements to leak that information to the right people in case he met an untimely accident. He did retain some mutually beneficial partnerships with Chinese pharmaceutical firms, and he was reasonably optimistic that they would offer him and his associates, the Son-in-Law and the President among them, a respectable cut in order to get FDA approval and Medicare-Medicaid distribution for any vaccine they came up with.
But the Europeans were a different matter. They were far less amenable to such “businesslike” practices.
“Well, I have to go,” Max said. “Let’s hope those Euro-trash idealists don’t fuck things up for us.”
“Right,” said the Son-in-Law. “And let’s try to keep Dr. Mo’s demands reasonable. He’s not worth that much.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Max said, getting up. “Cheer up, man. Things are looking up.”
The Son-in-Law watched him leave with a grim look on his face.
I don’t trust that guy, he said to himself.
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian