Time: Modern Day
Location: Sydney, Australia

Mal and Layla treated themselves to a limo ride to the airport. They had negotiated, with Ed, to have a two week break in Hawaii on the way home, after their two-month assignment. They went through customs, on working visas, at the airport in Hawaii and used the layover time between flights to arrange their wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii on the way back.

  They were as excited by that as they were at their upcoming chance to interview the three main candidates for the upcoming Presidential election.

  Once they boarded the Hawaiian Airlines flight direct to Washington DC, Layla lay back after the dinner meal was served and thought about how to attack the meetings and the angles to bring to each individual interview.  

  Mal had drifted off in an after dinner nap after exhausting  himself with phone calls to wedding venues, cake maker and small reception houses.

  Once told of their plans the entire Cheval family insisted on attending their wedding. Mal and Layla had also agreed to pay for his lifelong racing friends to attend. So the small wedding was turning into a much bigger affair than either of them had imagined.

  Layla recalled the briefing that Ed had provided before their departure. Ed explained that what we were seeing was history in the making. The Democrat Party had decided to part with tradition and field two candidates for President.

  The DNC had come in for increasing criticism for blocking the emergence of Liberal candidates for the Presidency. The scandals, where the scales had been tipped twice to block Bernie Sanders bids to become the nominee had hurt the party and disillusioned many voters.

  The incumbent Republican candidate had endured two years as a lame duck President. The Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate since the mid-terms. This had allowed them to push through amendments allowing the fielding of two candidates.

  Their votes would be combined into a total Democrat vote to determine Electoral College votes.

  She had risen to the position of being the first female President of the USA.
Haley Finch was a street-smart lawyer who cut her teeth defending pro bono cases against many corporations. She was a Moderate who appealed to voters of multiple persuasions.

  However, the Corporate Washington machine had decided to punish her opposition to endless wars and lobbyist corruption by funding a massive advertising campaign to out her.

  It was working if the mid-terms were any indication.
She was the first appointment that they had to interview and she requested an early interview due to her busy schedule. A breakfast meeting at the White House two days into their trip.

The following day a lunchtime meeting had been arranged with Boston Tyne, the Democrat candidate favoured to win the election. He was a retired millionaire investment banker from Goldman Sachs.

  Both candidates required advanced notice of questions and the right to veto any draft articles and video content.

  They had to arrange a meeting with the other Democratic candidate once they had arrived, as he wasn't a resident of Washington DC but lived with his family in California. His name was Peter Joseph Lush. Media reports said that because of lifelong jibes about his surname and his affinity for a good Marguerita, he had decided to go with PJL like his idol JFK.

  Layla spent the rest of the flight going over the sanitised question lists that had come back from each of the candidate's campaign managers all except for PJL.

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