Oppo

by Tom Rosenstiel

  He wanted to “strip down and remake the GOP and the rest of the country,” he said, “get the nation fit again,” even if it meant “putting it through basic.”

  He was tall and broad. Even out of uniform people guessed he’d been either a soldier or an athlete. He had dirty-blond hair, and his head tilted down slightly, a habit he had from being bigger than most people. His face was rugged and impish, and it was not uncommon for women to stare.

  “Senator, I’d like us to be friends,” Scott said. “We don’t know each other as well as we should. I’d like to change that. I’m not necessarily the character you see on TV.” They walked a few more steps without Burke reacting, and Scott added, “We all have characters we play, right?”

  Burke still said nothing, and Scott went on: “I think there is a good deal I can learn from you, Lew, from your experience and your wisdom. I hope you might be willing to teach me. I know I’ve moved quickly in politics, but I don’t pretend to know everything. I respect experience. I was a soldier, and I believe in the chain of command.”

  “That is the kind of thing older men usually like to hear,” Burke said with a smile. Then, in an earnest way that was genuine but also careful, he added, “But the older I get, the more I find I can learn from the young. When we stop being students, we begin to die. Don’t you think?”

  Scott stopped walking. He nodded and grinned. Oh, that smile. “See, I’m learning from you already.”

  Then he put his hand on Burke’s shoulder again. “Lew, to me, being friends means being honest. I want to be honest with you, if you’ll permit me.”

  Something in Scott’s tone made Burke cautious.

  “By all means,” Burke said.

  “I didn’t ask you here today to plead for your endorsement of my candidacy,” Scott said. He’d started walking again. “Maybe in time. I certainly hope so. But I did want to discuss your thoughts about the field of candidates.”

  Burke kept walking and said nothing.

  “This is awkward, but I promised to be candid,” Scott continued. “I know, Senator, that you would have a hard time supporting Richard Bakke—”

  Burke interrupted his host, an uncharacteristic display for him of ill manners. “Why do you think that? Dick is a member of the U.S. Senate. We’ve worked together. We’re colleagues.”

  Scott stopped. “Are you thinking of endorsing him?”

  Burke said: “Putting aside the fact that I could endorse you instead, Governor, is there a reason I shouldn’t endorse Senator Bakke?”

  Scott smiled differently now, a smile of recognition rather than charm. The patrician and pleasant Burke was not just careful, Scott was thinking. He was also shrewd, and Scott was seeing it close up for the first time. This old dog was going to be harder to manage than he’d realized. He should have known.

  “Since I am being honest, I’ll just come out and say it,” Scott said. “I thought you wouldn’t endorse Dick Bakke because you don’t like him.” He paused. “If he wins the nomination, of course, that’s a different matter. Then we all come together as a party.”

  The timing of this meeting was no accident. They both knew Burke would have to decide about an endorsement soon. The Michigan primary was eleven days away, and if Burke declined to support Scott, his home-state governor, it was a statement within the party. If he endorsed someone else, it was an insult.

  What was less clear, as the campaign had progressed and Scott’s success grew, was whether Burke, for all his own popularity, could afford to distance himself from Scott—let alone disrespect the governor by endorsing someone else. That was the subtext of this meeting. Burke had suspected it. Now he was sure that it was Scott’s message: Time to choose, old man. And see how much power you have left.

  Burke looked into the woods. He and Scott were walking side by side, their strides not quite in tandem.

  “An endorsement is more complicated than whether you like someone,” Burke said. “But of course, you know that, Jeff. It’s also a matter of where you agree and disagree with someone. And whether either of you can compromise.”

  Burke disagreed with Scott—and with Bakke—on almost every issue where Republicans could differ. On climate change, social policy, how to reform the military, how to reform domestic policy. Scott was doubling down on Dick Bakke’s antiestablishment, revolutionary GOP rhetoric, but adding charisma—and even some winking sense that he wasn’t serious about any of it. Llewellyn Burke had no idea what Jeff Scott really believed. Dick Bakke, for all his loathsomeness, was transparent and sincere. And it was increasingly likely that one of these two candidates would win his party’s nomination. It was some choice: A misguided and unlikable true believer. Or a dashing, ruthless, and perhaps cynical young neophyte, for whom everything seemed like a means to an end.

  “There are other questions that matter to me,” Burke said.

  “Such as?”

  “What kind of people does a candidate hire around him? How will the candidate react to the inevitable crisis? What is their capacity to grow? To learn? To listen? No one, Jeff, is prepared to be president the day they begin.”

  Jeff Scott had a practiced look of concerned concentration on his face. “Well, I hope home-field advantage, Lew, is worth something,” he said. “Us both being from Michigan.”

  “Of course. You’re a very popular governor and you’ve touched something in the people of Michigan. In the whole country.”

  Scott stopped walking. “What would it take to win your endorsement, Lew?”

  Burke stopped, too. He had wanted to avoid this moment, setting terms—ones that Scott might meet, boxing Burke into a corner.

  “Our country’s in trouble, Jeff. I want a nominee who can help us heal.”

  Scott’s smile returned, slowly at first, then fully flowered.

  The charming, mischievous movie star smile, sweet but knowing and with just a hint of menace.

  “This is where it starts, isn’t it,” Scott said.

  Burke wondered what Scott was talking about.

  “What starts?”

  “The hunger for public service,” Scott said. “It starts at home. When you’re young. Listening to your neighbors. Talking about their dreams. It’s like a first love—discovering you want to help people. And learning you can do it by leading them.”

  They were at a private hunting lodge—a place where billionaires met, catered to by servants. But the billionaires who built this place were beginning to back Scott. That was why they were here—so Scott could remind Burke without saying a word that he had their backing.

  “Gray Hawk isn’t exactly where the people are,” Burke said.

  “Oh, I know. I just think when you’re away from Washington, you can be more honest.”

  There was that word again. Scott used honesty in a way that had too many meanings, thought Burke. Scott leaned toward him. “I know you wouldn’t be part of these rumors encouraging a cross-party ticket. Maybe with Senator Upton. I cannot believe you would.”

  How much did Scott know about the offers to Upton? Burke’s mind tried to move quickly around the possibilities.

  “You think it would be unwise if the country had a bipartisan ticket?”

  Scott was smirking. “Well, it would be suicide for Senator Upton. She’d never belong anywhere again.”

  “Some think a bipartisan ticket might help the country heal,” Burke offered. “If you win the nomination, you could pick one, too.”

  The laugh that came out of Scott began low and was deep and unexpected. “That depends on what kind of healing you want,” he said.

  “Is there more than one kind?”

  Scott began walking again—and Burke had to hurry to keep up.

  “Senator,” Scott said, “things are changing. That’s a fact. The party’s changing. And its leaders need to change with these new times. If they don’t, they become leaders out of time and get left behind.” Scott glanced at Burke. “If someone is a leader out of time, they’ve lost the feel of thei
r people. It’s like a commander losing the feel of the battlefield. The enemy starts to move in a way you don’t expect. You aren’t sure what they have in mind. Then you don’t know where to place your own troops. It’s a terrifying, helpless feeling.” Scott quickened his pace. “It happens at some point to everyone. All political careers end with someone being left behind and no longer having power.” He stopped and turned to Burke, whom he had purposely kept a half step behind.

  “I think there are two kinds of leaders, Lew. Those who shape their times, and those who adapt. Very few leaders are true shapers. Reagan. Teddy Roosevelt. Lincoln. Washington. Maybe Andrew Jackson. Most of us must listen and adapt.”

  Burke waited for Scott to come to his point.

  “We need to understand our time, Senator. To lead, to channel our people. Not get caught behind.”

  Scott paused and then, his voice low and intimate, said, “This is not the same America we grew up in. Or the same Michigan. We need a new Republican Party or the party will die. I hope you can be part of that. You said you wanted to learn from the young. I think we can teach each other. I hope we will.”

  He put his arm lightly on Burke’s shoulder again.

  Burke looked up and realized they were back at the lodge. The trail they had taken was a loop.

  Burke held out a hand to Scott. “Governor, you said we should know each other better. I am glad that is beginning to happen.”

  Scott took the hand and looked Burke in the eye, trying to read the older man’s meaning. He said, “Too bad your wife couldn’t make it this morning. It would have been nice to have breakfast, the four of us.” He only paused a half a beat. “I think your car is waiting.”

  “Maybe next time,” Burke said.

  “I hope we see more of each other, and establish an honest friendship. That’s rare in politics. But after family, friends are all you have in life.”

  “Another insight from a thoughtful young man,” Burke said.

  FROM THE ESCALADE Burke called his wife, Evangeline.

  “What did he want?”

  “To threaten me.”

  “How?”

  His wife rarely sounded surprised when they discussed his life in politics, and he often wondered where he would be if Evangeline Harris, the startlingly intelligent southern belle he’d met at Princeton, had not agreed three decades ago to marry him.

  “If I don’t support Scott for president, I’ll be challenged in my next primary. And Scott is pretty sure they can beat me.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Not those words. But as Dad used to say, listen to what a man means, not what he says.”

  Burke’s wife took a moment before asking: “How much do you think he can really hurt you?”

  As the Escalade drove off, Burke looked back through the rear window. Scott was waving.

  “If they find the right person to challenge me, I’m beginning to think I’ll be history.”

  “Lew, no.”

  But Burke hadn’t finished his thought. “That’s what Scott threatened me with: being a man past his time.”

  On the other end of the line Evangeline Burke was silent.

  Thirty-Three

  1820 Jefferson Place

  Washington, D.C.

  Samantha Reese was waiting for Rena in his office when he arrived. She was sitting on his sofa with Randi Brooks.

  “You found something,” he guessed.

  She nodded grimly.

  Rena had first called Sam Reese in Colorado four days earlier, the afternoon he and Brooks were summoned to Senator Burke’s house to meet Wendy Upton, and asked her to fly to D.C. in case he needed her. Two nights ago, the night they were interrogating Upton and Rena discovered someone monitoring his house, he asked Reese to start following Upton twenty-four hours a day.

  Rena sat down beside her now.

  Sam Reese was no ordinary person. She was one of six women to have completed the Army Ranger School and a celebrity as an Olympic-caliber athlete. She was a biathlete—the cross-country skiing and shooting sport. But not long after her Rangers accomplishment, Reese became frustrated with the assignments the army was offering her and was set back in her Olympic training by an injury. She resigned her military commission and moved back to Colorado. She owned a gym now in Snowmass, rehabbed her injured leg, and amused herself leading a small group of other former military women who took occasional jobs doing surveillance and security. People rarely spotted women doing this kind of work. They always looked for men.

  “What’d you find?” Rena asked.

  Reese was tall, five ten, in her early thirties, with sun-washed brown hair and the sculpted lean but muscled look of an athlete. The strength in her arms and legs, however, was hidden by her clothing, a dark blazer over a blouse with slacks, like a check-in clerk’s at a hotel, an outfit chosen to be easily forgotten.

  “Maybe nothing,” she said, taking her time. Brooks, impatient, shifted on the sofa. “There’s a woman she’s been with. A lot. Night and day.”

  Wendy Upton had told them there was no one romantically in her life. That part of her, she said, had been all but shut down.

  Rena was shaking his head. Was this the secret that could destroy Upton’s career, he wondered? That she had a current lover, not just a couple of gay experiments in her long-ago past? Did someone think they could use this as blackmail to keep her from the race? And possibly drive her out of the Senate?

  The answer wasn’t as simple as whether the country would accept a lesbian as vice president. It was, instead, whether Bakke or perhaps even Traynor would take that risk. If history was any guide, the answer would be no.

  It was hard for presidents to know what to look for in a running mate. Often they sought balance. If you were old, pick young—Eisenhower picked Nixon; if a northerner, pick a southerner—Kennedy tapped Johnson; if a conservative, pick a liberal—Carter chose Mondale. There were exceptions, but balance was the first norm. Yet even then it was hard to know how much a veep really helped, whether the balancing act actually won you any new states, except maybe the VP’s own.

  The only sure thing, the only incontrovertible truth of vice presidential selection, is that a poor VP pick could hurt you. The reason was simple enough. In the basic calculus of politics, if there was a problem or scandal involving a veep, the head of the ticket would have to spend weeks “off message,” defending their running mate from whatever accusation had erupted. Worse, they’d have to explain why they had not more carefully vetted their choice. That was why, ironically, the people picked as VP were often cleaner, and blander, than those elected president.

  “You have pictures?” Brooks asked.

  Reese held up her phone. There was Upton with a dark, rather elegant woman, a brunette who looked somewhere around forty.

  There were different shots from different times, usually at night.

  “You know who she is?” asked Brooks.

  “We did a little Internet hunting, but I figured we’d use your team to be sure. We just wanted to establish they had spent the night together and that there was a pattern. Last night they did.”

  “I’ll get Arvid,” Brooks said, meaning Arvid Lupsa, one of their two Internet sleuths. She leaned over her phone to send him a message.

  Rena asked: “Your team have eyes on her now?”

  “On the hotel where our mystery woman’s at. Waiting for her to come out. And on Upton, who’s at her office.”

  Brooks looked up from her phone at Rena. “What are you thinking, Peter?”

  Rena had a penchant for what Brooks considered dramatic acts, but he looked back at her, lost in thought, and didn’t answer the question. She sensed, however, that her partner was beginning to form a plan.

  Lupsa arrived, and Brooks explained the pictures on Reese’s phone. “Text them to me,” he said cheerily, “and then we’ll go people searching.” His face had lit up. “I’ve got some new facial recognition software. The stuff is really improving.”

 
They followed him to the office he shared with Ellen Wiley. Lupsa had three large computer screens arranged in a semicircle on his desk, a multitasking paradise. Reese, Rena, and Brooks hovered behind Lupsa. His fingers danced over a keyboard. Brooks, who still looked at the keys when she typed, marveled at his speed.

  On his center screen, Lupsa scanned the images of the woman in Reese’s pictures with whatever software he had been referring to; he clacked more strokes on the keyboard; then they watched as the software seemed to scan through countless pictures from the Web at a pace beyond their meager human skills.

  “You looking for pictures she’s tagged of herself on Y’all Post?” Brooks asked.

  Lupsa said, “More than that. This is using more sophisticated facial recognition software to scan any pictures of her on the Web, whether they are tagged with a name or not. It’s also reading her facial imagery closely enough that we’ll get results when she might look much younger.”

  In less than a minute the following words appeared on the screen: IMAGES OF SARA BERNIER. Underneath were numerous pictures of a woman who looked like the ones on Reese’s phone.

  A few moments later the words IMAGES OF SUZANNE BRENNER appeared and, underneath them, other pictures of apparently the same woman.

  Then came IMAGES OF ELLA BRUENER and more pictures of the same woman.

  “We have a bingo,” Lupsa said with a soft thrill in his voice.

  “Three bingos,” said Reese.

  Brooks was leaning in, squinting. “Why would this person have multiple names? You sure your software’s working?”

  “She has aliases,” Lupsa enthused. “It’s the same woman, I promise. Your senator is spending time with Sara Bernier, aka Suzanne Brenner, aka Ella Bruener.”

  Brooks was giving Rena a look. “Now who would use aliases?”

  Rena stared back.

  “Spies, criminals, and undercover cops,” said Reese.

  “And which one is she?” Brooks said.

  “Can you tell?” Rena asked Lupsa. “Can we figure out who she works for?”

  “I’m going to do some pairing so we might find out,” Lupsa said.