Old Friends

A president's rise looks inevitable — until someone starts asking who built it. Martin Rourke came from nowhere: no machine, no money, no favors owed. That was the story. But when a Senate committee quietly opens a file on a foreign shipping conglomerate, a fiduciary firm in London, and a decades-old network of "e;old friends"e; first drawn together during the Suez crisis of 1967, the story starts to come apart at the seams. As journalist Mara follows the money and committee counsel Corbett tries to keep the inquiry alive without becoming the story himself, Old Friends moves between a chartering room in 1967 London and the corridors of power today — tracing how a fortune built on tankers and timing quietly financed a presidency, and what happens when the architecture behind the man in office finally comes into view. Power didn't find Martin Rourke. It was built for him.