Over a period of a few years, Nelson and his wife had found their lot in life becoming steadily more beautiful and luxurious. Whereas they had once stayed at good hotels, now they stayed at great ones, and in large suites. They traveled in what they thought of as their own jet, though it was owned by St. Clair, through a maze of corporations. Their children were at Groton, Mount Holyoke, Harvard, and Princeton. Before the election there would be a gorgeous new concert venue completed in New York City, named Knott Hall, and it would rival Andrew Carnegie’s best work.

Her clothes came from Paris and Milan; his from St. Clair’s own London tailor, shirtmaker, and bootmaker. They lived in four houses, one of them in Branson, Missouri, and in a Fifth Avenue apartment—all designed by leading architects, and their books and artwork were chosen by Christian and impressed all who visited. Nelson had recently become a member of old-line, prestigious clubs in New York and Washington, and he was already playing golf at Augusta National.

Nelson Knott had a quality that Christian had never seen in another human being: he could take the hand of a man, look into his eyes, and become what that man wanted him to be, whether it be hillbilly or mandarin. He could sit at table in elegant homes bought with old-money fortunes, or at the grubbiest fried chicken joint on the interstate and relate, in manner and in depth, with whoever was his dining companion.

He could converse on subjects from Jane Austen to Einstein to foreign policy with experts on those subjects and hold his own, or he could produce baseball and football stats in quantity from memory. He could knock the socks off any journalist who sat down to interview him on any occasion.

Nelson had been profiled in The New Yorker and Fortune; he would soon be on 60 Minutes, taking up a whole hour, touring his properties, showing off his offices, and unhesitatingly answering any question they could come up with on any subject. When St. Clair had first met him a dozen years before, his mind had been a clean slate, and now, with Christian’s careful tutoring, it was a large, impressionist painting of an American life well lived.