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When a person’s name by itself could not automatically get a great table in a five-star restaurant, having The Card would do the trick. The Card became more famous than the people carrying it, and it opened doors that no other credit card had ever been able to open.

Another interesting aspect of the The Card was that owing money did not cost the cardholder the outrageous interest rates that the other credit card companies charged. Whereas MasterCard might charge eighteen percent on unpaid items, The Card would charge ten. It encouraged its super-high-spending clients to get lazy about paying it off, so with a ten percent interest rate and a ten-thousand-dollar yearly fee, business was great.

The spending limit on The Card was also very high, three million dollars. And if someone took The Card to Macau and ran up a two-million-dollar gambling debt, they didn’t need permission from the hotel. The Card would cover them automatically, providing, of course, they had liquid assets to back it up. Susanna’s last major coup before she left the company was to make arrangements with the world’s finest hotels to set aside entire floors for The Card members. That had never been done before, and the day Susanna retired there was a waiting list of twelve thousand rich folks hoping to receive notice that they’d been accepted to the world’s most exclusive credit card organization.

President Bernstein knew that this woman had made her fortune dealing with the rich, and quite frankly he worried about that. Would she have any connection to regular people? He thought the new secretary of the Treasury should have a broad understanding of the people who lived in the United States, but that was the kind of discussion he wanted to have in person. Also, previous secretaries had been rich or had come from big Wall Street companies and some of them turned out to be a good fit, so he wasn’t going to make any judgments until he spent some time with her.

He called her at the hotel at eight o’clock just to welcome her to Washington and to tell her to come to the White House for lunch the next afternoon. The phone call lasted almost an hour.

Matthew Bernstein was a no-nonsense phone person. He figured that anytime he spoke with someone he was being recorded, and that caused him to keep his conversations short and to the point. So when he glanced at the clock and saw that he and Susanna had been talking for fifty-eight minutes, just talking, like friends, he was quite amazed. She was funny and smart and had that soothing sound of an older woman who has been around the block and has great stories to tell about it. They were to meet at noon the following day, and after he hung up he realized he hadn’t even mentioned specifically why he’d requested that she come to Washington. And she hadn’t asked. That was highly unusual.

When he went upstairs to the living quarters, he told Betsy how he had talked to this woman for an hour, and his wife looked almost jealous. She had never seen her husband stay on the line for that long. “What were you talking about?”

“Washington, business, growing up, just stuff.”

“Does she sound like she’ll be good at the job?”

“I don’t know; she sounded like she would be a better mother.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“She sounded wise. Sort of what you’d like your mom to sound like on the phone.”

“Really? Well, if she’s not good at Treasury, hire her as a shrink.”

The President laughed. If only I could have a shrink without the world finding out. “I’m going to meet her tomorrow. I’ll know more then.”

“Sounds like you know now.”

The President was excited when he got up the next morning. Who was this woman who kept him on the line and made his wife jealous? He would find out in a few hours.

When he went downstairs, Van Dyke was waiting for him. “We have a debt-reduction meeting in an hour and you have a meeting at one o’clock with General Marshal.”

“One o’clock? I have a lunch with Susanna at noon; what if it runs over?”

“Well,