“Who’s peddling this crap?” Smolonsky says. That almost seems like a confirmation, Gold thinks.
“I can’t give up a source, Smolo, you know that.”
“I’m not asking you to publish your source’s name. I’m asking you to trade it.”
“Oh, we’re trading now?”
“You give me a hint, and I’ll guess.”
“What, are we six years old?”
“C’mon, Gary.”
“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” Gold says. “I’ll give you a hint and you tell me if you’ve heard about this Berkeley stuff.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’ve got something you want—a source—and you’ve got something I want—a confirmation.”
Smolo suddenly worries he may have gone too far.
“I’ll go first,” Gold continues. “My source is a guy who is at the center of the wheel, you might say.”
“Give me a freaking name, Mad Dog.”
“I didn’t say I would tell you. I told you I would give you a hint.”
“You are six years old.”
“Walt.”
“Yes?”
“So, you heard of this? Remember. The deal we just made?”
“No, Gary. I haven’t.”
When he hangs up, Smolonsky realizes his back is clammy with sweat.
Thirty-five
Tuesday, June 16, 3:13 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
Lawyers don’t actually call them murder boards.
They call them mock hearings. No one wants to admit that talking to a Senate or House hearing is actually murder.
This is the fourth mock they’ve held for Madison. They have one more planned but might add another. Madison needs to be better.
His Senate hearings open in five days.
“I’m sorry, Judge, time’s up,” Brooks says.
“I’m just getting to the meat of my answer.”
“Yes, but that’s five minutes.”
“I’ll be more succinct in the hearing.”
“You need to be more succinct in practice. Get the meat in the first thirty seconds. Try again now.”
To play the senators, Brooks has recruited mostly former Senate Judiciary chief counsels, people who know the process—and the senators they are impersonating. Brooks and her team have written most of the questions. Besides Rena and Brooks, the other observers are three people from the White House and one from the Department of Justice. Nondisclosure agreements up the yin-yang.
It is the second week of trying to teach Rollie Madison not to be interesting. They recorded the first mock so they could critique Madison’s performance with him. He hasn’t gotten any better. So they are recording this one, too. Rena calls it remedial video training.
Penance, Your Honor, for not learning.
“He’s so brilliant, I don’t know why he resists this,” Brooks said.
Rena did. Madison loves to learn. He just doesn’t like being taught.
Rena feels his phone vibrate.
Smolonsky. He normally emails. It must be something that needs explaining. Rena slips out of the room.
“I just got a phone call I thought you should know about.”
“Okay.”
“From Gary Gold at the Tribune.”
“Okay.”
“He knows about Madison’s dalliance in Berkeley with the radical Left.”
The feeling is always worse when your gut has warned you something will happen: Rena knew this would leak—and probably sink Madison. And knew he hadn’t fought hard enough with the White House about it.
“What’d you tell him?” Rena asks.
“I lied. Said I didn’t know a thing about it.”
“You lied?”
“I’m not like you, Peter. I don’t get all twitchy about that.”
“People remember being lied to, Walt. Especially reporters.”
“If Gary Gold never talked to me again in my life I could survive.”
Smolonsky is lying right now.
“What does he know?”
“I’m not sure. He was fishing.”
“Where do you think he got his tip?”
“Actually, he gave me a hint.”
“He did what? Why did he do that?”
“He was trying to trade information.”
Smolo may have traded more than he realizes, Rena worries.
“He said he got it from someone ‘in the center of the wheel.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, Peter. But that’s what he said.”
If someone called Gold with this, that source is probably also ready to email talking points to bloggers like Stan Krock, talk radio hosts like Dash Zimbalist and Tom Hewitt, and to the fulminating demagogues on cable news.
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
Rena tends to become calmer in moments of crisis. Things slow down, and his reactions become clearer and his mind more alert. It was a gift that, even as a kid, helped him beat more physically gifted players in soccer. They’d refined that calm for him in Special Forces. It is why they pick you for Special Forces.
He needs it now.
“He said one other thing, Peter.”
“What?”
“He asked me if Madison knew Alan Martell, the guy murdered in the park.”
That means two crises. Madison cannot survive two. He probably can’t survive one.
“What did you say?”
“I played dumb.”
“Walt,” Rena says, “you need to go to California. Find out more about whatever connection there might have been between Martell and Madison.”
“You really worried about that?”
“We can’t afford not to worry now.”
Rena can see the newspaper headline, “Supreme Court mystery: Madison knew murdered man in Rock Creek Park.” Two photos, the black-robed nominee and the wooded crime scene, the grisly details of the wounded dog in a caption.
And that isn’t the real problem.
The center of the wheel.
“I’ve got to deal with something,” he texts Brooks. He violates his rule about trying to walk and takes a cab.
“Done already?” his personal assistant, Eleanor O’Brien, says when he arrives.
“No, I forgot something,” he tells her. In his office, he moves quickly among the files spread out on the table. Several hours later he is gone again.
Thirty-six
6:07 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
The shot rises, peaks, begins a soft descent, then slides through the net.
Josh Albin, in a pair of gray cutoff sweatpants and a Heritage Foundation T-shirt, walks over to the ball rolling toward the fence, picks it up, and carries it, without dribbling, back to the spot from where he shot. Then he repeats his routine and shoots again. And again.
Albin feels exhilarated. The emotion is not typical for him. You work, you build, you struggle. But the moments of genuine satisfaction at what you have accomplished, those are rare. And if they come at all, it is usually on the eve of victory, not at the moment itself. The recognition of an imminent triumph—the prospect of an opponent’s face two moves ahead when he sees he has been bested—is always sweeter than its arrival. This is one of those moments.
It’s all the better, Albin thinks, that he is here, shooting hoops, doing something physical, alone.
He looks nothing like a basketball player—he never has. He is short and stubby. His shot is awkward. His hands are too small to launch the ball properly, so he has to use his legs more to avoid overusing his arms. He had figured all this out studying the classic shooters. And he has grooved the motion over the years into something repeatable. That is one of the satisfactions of his life, too, that he has learned to become good at this.
In his youth in West Texas, sports were a torment, and basketball was the most painful humiliation of all—for it was the sport he loved most. As an adult, when he developed the metho
d that he believed helped transform himself into a leader, he included basketball. In his formula, you identified your weaknesses and developed a plan to strengthen them. He kept a diary of practices, and took an inventory of his progress. Basketball fit well. He could quantify how many shots he made in one hundred attempts and could chart the progress. It was good exercise, and it took his mind off work. And though he was not entirely conscious of it, he also wanted to prove something to himself. His youth might have been different. If you can shoot, people will forgive everything else. If you can shoot, you can score. You can play. If he can shoot now, he has changed himself. And if you can change, the stronger your belief in yourself.
So every Tuesday and Thursday night Albin is here, at Baskerville Park in Georgetown, on a half-court that is too small to attract many players. Practicing by himself.
He finds the spot again, goes through his routine, and shoots. The arc is right and so is the line. The ball falls through the net with a satisfying swish.
He notices a figure across the street watching him.
“I heard you could shoot like Larry Bird, and that, like Bill Bradley, you had learned to do it by sheer will.”
The figure has crossed the street and entered the park. Albin puts his hands on his hips and looks at him.
“I’m Peter Rena,” the man says.
Rena had seen that phrase somewhere—“the center of the wheel”—and found it in one of Wiley’s background files—a profile about Albin by Gary Gold written years ago. “The upstart activist said he saw himself as the ‘center of the wheel’ of the conservative revolution.”
Baskerville Park had been even more of a long shot. In a couple of pieces Albin had talked about his theory of working on your weaknesses, including basketball. One mentioned this park, though Rena had no idea what night. He just came.
He is not quite sure what he expects to happen. This is an improvised interrogation, with an extremely intelligent opponent, and he has one shot at it.
Rena doesn’t extend a hand. No pretend friendship. Albin would sense hypocrisy and take it as fear.
“I know who you are,” Albin says. “You just happen to show up to play basketball in the same park I’m at?”
“I live in this neighborhood.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re not here by accident.”
“You’re right. But there are no accidents in life. Just events you don’t anticipate.”
The line is an Albin aphorism.
Its author smiles condescendingly. Then he turns and shoots.
Swish.
“What are you doing here?” he demands.
“I want to know what you want, Josh.”
“What I want from what?”
Rena picks up the ball and tosses it softly to Albin.
“From the Madison nomination.”
Albin shifts his feet, loosening his hips, bounces the ball once, then raises his hands, bends slightly, and shoots. The shot again dives through the net.
“I heard you were blunt,” Albin says. The ball is rolling to the fence. “So let me ask you a blunt question. Don’t you feel a bit like a whore, a Republican working for a Democratic president? Do you take any client who comes along?”
Rena had assumed Albin would be aggressive. It is his style. Going further than others are comfortable going. It is Rena’s, too.
“Actually, Josh, I’m kind of picky,” Rena says. “I only work for people I trust. That tends to narrow the list.”
Albin retrieves his own shot this time and says to Rena, “In my experience the best test of whether someone is trustworthy is what they believe in.”
He tosses the ball to Rena. “I spent most of my life in the military.” Remind the tin soldier of his tin. “But in my experience ideology says nothing about character.” Rena offers the interrogator’s stare. “Any moron can buy a team shirt.”
Rena passes the ball back to Albin. Hard.
“Ah yes, you believe in compromising and calling it progress. The middling half loaf. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Albin shoots but misses this time.
Rena ignores the ball and walks instead to Albin. He gets his face close to the other man and speaks softly. “I’ve found that anyone who thinks they know what perfect is, Josh, is a fool.”
Albin looks at Rena with his famous silvery blue eyes, and Rena sees fury mixed with uncertainty. It is good they are outside, Rena thinks, doing something physical. That gives Rena the advantage.
“What do you believe in, Mr. Rena?”
Time to stop screwing around. Rena ignores the question.
“What do you really want, Josh?”
Albin’s eyes narrow.
“I want a better nominee.”
“I thought you were different,” Rena says. “I thought you were serious. But you aren’t. This is just another fund-raising exercise for you, just like everybody else.”
Albin steps back and raises a finger at Rena, but it isn’t a steady one.
“The difference between us, Mr. Rena, is that you believe people should accept a bad result and be grateful it isn’t worse. You know who also believed that? The good Germans who went along with the Nazis.”
“Democrats aren’t Nazis, Josh. They’re just people you disagree with.”
Albin turns to leave. Rena has messed this up.
“The president would listen to you,” Rena tries again. “If you were willing to offer counsel.”
Albin stops.
“If you were serious about making a difference.”
Then Albin turns back to face Rena.
A man who likes the last word.
“Have you looked around at our country lately, Mr. Rena? Have you been to Michigan? To Ohio? These places are dying. It’s crushing the people who live there. Six million manufacturing jobs lost in a decade. We don’t make anything anymore. We’re not an economy. We’re a market. And you know why? Because the two parties compromised around economic policies like NAFTA, ideas that ignored borders and helped corporations. That’s your half a loaf. Good intentions are evil if they make people’s lives worse.”
Contrary to the caricature his critics make of him, the man is a good deal more than the sum of his resentments, Rena thinks.
“And we don’t have the will to face it, Mr. Rena. Our enemies in the Middle East can see it more clearly than we can.”
Rena realizes he likes Albin. This would be easier if he didn’t.
“We are fighting for our lives. This is a war. It’s a war against the delusion that greatness is free or inevitable. That is why principles matter.”
Unfortunately, Rena needs to make this more personal. He steps closer and whispers.
“Don’t talk about war, Josh. Politics isn’t war, and I don’t like civilians who confuse the two. War is about killing people. Looking through the sight of a rifle, pulling a trigger, and watching a man’s brains fly out the back. No one ever died in a goddamn committee hearing. You make people laugh at you.”
Their faces are inches away from each other. Is that enough, Rena wonders?
Albin steps closer, not back. “I will let you in on something,” Albin says, his voice tense. “Your man Madison has a history, and I am prepared to judge it. Most Americans would be shocked at the prospect that James Nash would presume to have a man who attacked the military and preached revolution and terrorism on the Supreme Court.”
Albin’s face is scarlet.
“And you knew about it. You were hoping you could sweep it under the rug. Well, when it comes out, this will be over, and you will be hurt. And not for the first time.”
Rena had come here with no particular plan—other than to get under Albin’s skin. He had only been guessing that Albin had been’s Gold source. He has gotten lucky.
Albin’s great vulnerability is being viewed as a fake. So he had run at it.
“It’s too bad, Josh,” Rena says.
“What is?”
“If you
were serious, I think you could have a real influence on the president.”
“Good night, Mr. Rena.”
It takes Albin an uncomfortable minute to collect his gym bag and head off.
Rena punches in a speed dial number on his phone.
“Randi.”
“Where are you? I’ve been looking for you.”
“Someone has leaked Madison’s campus radicalism to Josh Albin.”
“Jesus, Peter.”
“And the leak came from inside our office.”
Thirty-seven
6:47 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
It will be a small needle to thread.
They have to catch Madison’s opponents by complete surprise, which means being swift. And they have to knock them on their heels. Which means being thorough.
To do that, it has to be clear Madison’s antiwar activities in 1970 were the actions of a bright but innocent seventeen-year-old student—not something radical or out of the mainstream.
And it has to be clear the attempts by his opponents to depict them as something else are a smear that distorts the truth.
Madison’s nomination represents something new, an attempt to move beyond this kind of cartoon politics. And Madison’s team is coming forward now with this information about the judge’s antiwar activities to preempt that kind of smear. Madison long ago promised his friends to honor their desire for privacy. Given the threat to try to destroy him now, they have released him from that promise.
“Madison has to be quoted,” says Brooks.
He also, they agree, should neither sound defensive nor try to trivialize what he did. He cannot repudiate being a war protestor. He has to embrace how passionate he felt about the war, and acknowledge how, with time, he sees this expression of his passion as well-meaning but naïve. A slim needle.
And he has to say something else, Rena adds into the phone, “Or I am not comfortable with this.”
He has to say that “in hindsight protests that made soldiers feel ashamed for fighting were wrong.” He does repudiate that facet of the Vietnam antiwar protests. It was a lesson hard learned for the country, and for him.
Shining City Page 18
