Appointment? Tonight? Hank? He hadn’t talked to Bob a month ago. He was sure of that. And who the hell was Hank? Bob obviously was talking in code. Why? Through months of preparation for the judiciary hearings Ben never considered that his phone might be tapped. Bob Reynolds obviously suspected that it was and was talking gibberish just in case. Well if someone else was listening he already had let his silence go on too long.
“Bob sorry, these days I’ve got six phones ringing at once and somebody was talking into my other two ears. Who did you say was joining us?”
“You remember Hank. The graphics guy. He’s staying with us for a few days.”
Now Ben was sure that Bob was giving him signals and that the real topic was so sensitive they couldn’t discuss it on the phone.
“It sure would be fun to see Hank again. Look, you were dead on. Tonight’s meeting would have blown right past me. I see it now on my calendar. Let me cancel a couple of things. If I run into trouble I’ll call you back, otherwise I’ll be there. What time’s best?”
“Any time after 7:00. And we’re in a new place here now. Come to Healy Hall, Room 202.”
In all the tough campaigns he’d been through, including presidential campaigns, Ben was fairly certain no one had ever tapped his phones. This obviously was a different kind of combat. How come the Reverend Bob Reynolds had figured it out? Maybe he hadn’t. Probably he hadn’t. It must have been “Hank,” whoever that was.
That evening, Ben drove from his office in Georgetown to the University campus, usually no more than a five-minute trip. But now, suddenly conscious of the possibility he was being watched as well as tapped, he wound his way around Georgetown’s narrow streets, an eye constantly in the rear view mirror. It didn’t look like he was being followed. Then he realized they wouldn’t need to follow him. If they’d listened to the conversation they knew where he was going. Ben, he said to himself after slapping his forehead, you’ve got a lot to learn about how to play in this league.
He parked on 37th street, bordering the campus, and walked the path across the grassy Copley Lawn to Healy Hall. Was he being followed now? He didn’t think so. Fall classes were just getting under way and the campus was buzzing with new arrivals. The night was temperate, making the outside world appealing, drawing to it hordes of young company.
Healy Hall, an imposing, neo-medieval structure, was the backdrop for the movie The Exorcist. Its interior even provided scenes for the follow on, Exorcist II: The Heretic. While its exterior profile can be either picturesque or ominous depending on one’s point of view, for Georgetown University, Healy Hall is a campus nerve center. Many of the world’s most important leaders in politics, the arts, literature, and science have spoken in Healy’s Gaston Hall auditorium. Healy houses monumental libraries that would hold their own for their architecture and collections with most university libraries. Healy is where Georgetown’s president has his office. And it’s where Father Reynolds wanted to meet him.
Ben entered the building through the main entrance and walked the stairs to the second floor. “Development office” was etched on the brass plate next to the number 202. The door itself was locked. He could see nothing through the door’s glass. The lights were off.
Puzzled, Ben stood looking at the door. He was sure Bob said 202. Maybe there was another entrance. Focused on this problem he didn’t hear the figure approach him from a dark corridor.
“Ben.” It was a low, vaguely conspiratorial voice, out of the darkness in the stairwell behind him. Ben thought he was alone in the semi-darkened hallway of office suites, long-shuttered for the evening. The voice was so sudden and unexpected Ben physically jumped at the sound.
“Bob, you scared the shit out of me. Oh, Christ. Sorry for the profanity.”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before.”
Father Bob Reynolds was a bear of a man, shaped like the football tackle he was when he played for the College of William and Mary. The years and too many covered-dish suppers had added girth, and with his shaved head and generally light facial features Bob had the appearance of a clerical snowman.
Ben started to say more, but Bob raised his fingers to his own lips and motioned for Ben to follow him—down the same darkened corridor from where he appeared. The corridor led to a stairwell. They walked silently down two flights of stairs. Then another door, unmarked, which led to another flight of stairs. Now they were in the bowels of the building. Near the boilers and water systems and radiant pipes that kept Healy Hall going. The corridors were wide. An opening led to a large, bare, gym-like space marked with a sign that read “Civil Defense Shelter.”
Finally, Bob spoke.
“You know in the age of GPS and microphones that can record through walls you can never be too sure who’s tracking or listening.”
They walked a few more steps, to the end of the corridor. Bob opened a door to a small room, a meeting room capable of comfortably holding no more than a dozen people. As they entered the door, Ben was met by an unusually slim, almost pixie-like man with weathered features and, like Bob Reynolds, wearing the habit of a Jesuit priest. The visitor held out his hand like an old friend.
“Ben. So good to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you from my sister.”
Ben had never met this man.
“Ben,” said Father Reynolds, “Meet Father Federico Aragon.”
Ben looked at him, puzzled, still not immediately grasping the significance.
“The president’s brother.”
33
Federico Aragon’s olive features could not hide the cracks, the wrinkles, the used flesh that becomes nature’s own when devoid of human comforts. He appeared to be a man in his sixties, fully gray, including eyebrows that seemed half again too large for his otherwise oval, slim face. His shoulders formed too small a hanger, causing his clothes to float around him. A small man in a big tent. While slight physically, when Federico spoke, what emerged as voice was a surprising contrast. Deep but soft, mellow, comforting. His trade was giving comfort to the discomforted. His voice and demeanor were in harmony with his work.
Federico interrupted Ben’s awkward silence. He spoke near flawless English.
“Of course you’re surprised to see me and in these circumstances. I am what you would call something of a marked man these days in Mexico. Hopefully, no one from there knows that I am here. Bob Reynolds and I were seminary classmates and during our years there and in later work we have become good and trusting brothers. My presence here must remain a secret, and so we could not let you know beforehand.”
“The phone call...”
“My clumsy attempt to be an undercover priest,” laughed Reynolds.
“Well it worked. I’m here and I managed to get here without telling anyone.”
He turned to Federico. “So why, why are you here, and why in such secrecy?”
“Señor Ben, for many years now I have been what my people call the wandering priest. I move from village to village to serve those where there is no full-time parish. All around me there are the conflicts that come with politics and drugs, and cartels and even murders. But it’s as if I’m in a bubble. I see only the wreckage left behind. I pray for victims, I help with births and sickness. I minister the old and the penniless and all those who remain faithful even though they live in conditions where no one could blame them for cursing God for abandoning Him. All of the players in the drama around me know that my singular mission is the Church’s mission, no others. It doesn’t hurt that they know I am the grandson of Don Miguel Aragon, with whatever that might mean. Even years after his death, many violent people fear retribution if they were to harm an Aragon. It gives me a measure of safety others might not have. In fact, at times, the criminals even help support my mission.”
Bob motioned them all to sit. The room was fitted with a simple pine table and six hard backed pine chairs. On the table Bob had placed a bottle of wine and three glasses. Two of the glasses had been in use before Ben’s arrival. Now
, Federico poured himself another.
“Excuse me, this wine is quite good. I enjoy comforts, you see. I haven’t forgotten how.”
Ben was taken with this priest. He spoke with ease and feeling, and despite his physical size, he had a commanding presence. The peasant priest was himself no peasant. He was an Aragon.
“So, let me explain why I’m here now. Isabel, my sister, is in a great deal of trouble, and I can help. You see, while my eyes may not reflect recognition at the evils around me, I still see them. My ears hear them. Those whom I comfort tell me many things. They know me, my background and the fact that Isabel is my sister. They know the people who are now saying that she was involved in guns and drugs and they know these are all lies. Some have been paid to lie. Others have been threatened. These facts are known where I travel.”
“Have you evidence? You simply saying it would be dismissed as a brother trying to help a sister.”
“The court you are in, Ben, is not a legal court. It’s political. And I believe I have collected and can continue to collect enough evidence to win in the political court. The question I have for you is at what point should I present it? I will do it now, or I will return when timing may be better. I will do it publicly and in any forum where it will help Isabel.”
Ben refilled his wine glass and looked hard at this unlikely man who was promising to save the Tennyson presidency.
“Why are you contacting me, and not your sister directly, or people on her staff or our legal team?”
“Isabel would send me back to Mexico with an armed guard if she knew I was here, and especially if she knew I was walking on dangerous ground. We are very close. She cares deeply about my welfare and worries constantly about my travels through dangerous areas. Whatever I do publicly must be done in a way that she suspects nothing in advance.
“As for why I wanted to speak to you, it is because of the danger. If I were to contact anyone in your government or your legal team, they would know immediately. They are everywhere. Of all those helping her, you are the least likely to be watched by them. And if you are watched, Bob Reynolds is your client. You being with him is a business call. I believe this is the safest way to get my message to all of you. Now I have. Discuss this with those defending her and let me know when and where to appear. But it should be a time when it makes the most difference, when it can move the most of your public and the votes she needs to survive and clear her name. If it’s too soon they will have time to defame me and others and find other ways to question my evidence.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
Federico looked quite surprised at the question. Ben didn’t know?
“The rich. The powerful. The strongest and most dangerous interest group in the world.”
“Rich and powerful? Do you mean banks, oil companies? Who are they?”
Again, Federico was struck by the question.
“Señor Ben. The wealth of the world is held in very few hands. Some are in my country. Some are in yours. They are everywhere. On every continent. And they are into everything. Oil and banks, yes. But they have fortunes they inherited. They are dictators and others from corrupt regimes. They own and control great parcels of land and great industries. Look at the people who run the drug cartels and who thrive in the world weapon trade.”
“Are you saying these people are connected?”
“They have more in common with each other than they have with any nation they live in. They are their own interest group, powerfully influencing what others do in finance and trade and transportation and everything else that matters to them, even military actions, even selective enforcement of laws where that suits their interests. Everyone talks about the one percent, or maybe the tenth of one percent. These are the hundredth of one percent. So few but so powerful. Did you know that just sixty people—sixty—have as much wealth as three billion on the lowest rungs of income? Of course, not everyone in this class is so motivated by greed or use their power selfishly or criminally. But many do. I know this from my own experience with the Aragon Company. I was once apprenticed to be one of them.
He paused for a minute to take another sip from his wine glass, enjoying his brief encounter with the spirits inside.
“Isabel knows these things, too. That’s why they are trying to destroy her. As long as she is president of the United States she is a threat to them.”
Ben turned to Bob Reynolds.
“Do you agree with Federico, there’s a conspiracy among an element of the super-rich to bring down the president?”
“Ben, the Church is everywhere, too. We see things we don’t or can’t talk about if we want to stay on our primary targets—saving souls and helping the poor. We do what we can, but we’re not big enough to take on the people Federico’s talking about. If we openly tried it would go hard on the Church and even harder on our people. We’re totally aware of this problem and danger.”
For the next two hours, Federico described to Ben the nature of his evidence, the names of others who would testify on Tenny’s behalf, the pressure, the bribes, the threats, all connected with those testifying against her.
They knew of Gabe’s affair with Tenny. He didn’t know how they found Gabe, but once they did, they set up the arrest in Mexicali to own him. Gabe was a fraud. Hotel registers had been forged to show Tenny and Gabe as guests where they never were, at times they never were there. Drug enforcement people who testified were doing so either because of cartel threats or for pay or because they or their families were being blackmailed.
How did Federico come by all this information? His connection with President Tennyson was well known. His friends throughout the region began warning him as soon as she was elected president. Questions were being asked. People were being made offers. Villagers don’t need fiber optics to communicate with one another.
They parted as they met, with handshakes in the evacuation center, sealed from GPS and unwanted listening devices.
“Where will you go now?” asked Ben.
“Back to my mission. It would be suspicious to everyone if I did not keep my schedule.”
“Where do they think you are?”
“Houston. At a week-long retreat Jesuit priests attend each year. We wear hoods a lot, you know. It’s hard to tell one of us from another when we are together. It’s quite a good disguise.”
Federico could be as impish as his sister. It must run in the family, Ben thought.
“And how do we find you again?
“Through me,” said Reynolds. “Tomorrow I will sign a contract with your firm to update our PR program. You’ll have business reasons to be in contact with me on a regular basis. It won’t appear suspicious. I’ll know how to find Federico on short notice.”
They left Federico alone in the small room while Reynolds escorted Ben up the stairs. Before they reached the top landing, Ben stopped and turned to Reynolds.
“How is this peasant priest able to come to Washington in secret and have enough cover so that anyone else might think he was at a Catholic retreat in Houston?”
“The Church is a big organization, Ben. We’ve got a lot of resources.”
“So you’re not the only man of the cloth who’s in on this?”
“Me? No, he laughed. I’m the messenger boy.”
“Who else knows?”
“He’s got a lot of fellow priests in Mexico. The confession booths are quite a grapevine of information—sort of like an ancient internet.”
“And these priests can act politically on their own?”
“In a tightly structured organization like the Catholic Church? Hardly.”
“You mean,” here Ben hesitated before saying what just popped into his head.
“The Vatican knows and is trying to help us?”
Father Reynolds gave him a wink along with a final handshake.
“The Church greatly admires President Tennyson.”
34
The small strategy group gathered in the conference room of Delacott
and Seltzer, the lead law firm handling Tenny’s impeachment defense, listened transfixed as Ben related the details of his meeting with Federico Aragon. A number of those present being lawyers, Ben became the object of rapid cross examination. Federico’s manner of telling. Did it seem authentic? Did he perspire? Fidget? Stumble at inappropriate times? How strong were his sources? Would they be accepted as confirmation? Some at the table remained skeptical that Federico’s testimony would be credible, given his family relationship.
Alistair Seltzer, the lead litigator and the face of the defense, saw nothing but opportunity in Federico’s testimony and fended off the concerns of others on his team. Their case was thin enough. They could use all the help available, and if Federico was as convincing as Ben described, a collared priest who could handle hostile cross examination would at least increase the level of doubt about the charges. Doubt was their first line of defense. The more uncertainty, the less likelihood of the opposition getting to sixty-seven votes.
The Senate vote was genuinely in doubt. Revealing Federico in that forum, at the right moment, could break the impeachment fever. There were two beneficial effects of waiting until near the end of the process to reveal Federico. It would give the opposition little time to discredit him before a final vote. And it would keep Tenny from protecting him by quashing his appearance. Although it was exceedingly irregular, the accused could not know about her most important defense witness until he was called to the witness stand. They all would have to deal with her wrath afterward.
Chairman Bowman ran a tight ship. The House Judiciary Committee compressed its hearings into three weeks, a fraction of the eight-week marathon the public endured during the Clinton impeachment. With Clinton, the public ultimately overdosed on relentless carping and turned aggressively negative against the Republican accusers. This Republican leadership was determined not to repeat that mistake. Also driving the accelerated committee timetable was the presidential election year calendar. President Tennyson had now made it clear to all that, unless she was removed from office, she would run for re-election. The Republicans felt they had to dispose of President Tennyson before year’s end, before the primaries gave her more forums to raise her positive profile.
The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her Page 21