The Latina President...and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her

by Joe Rothstein

  The train’s operating engineer ordinarily would have been a prime suspect. But he had no role in sending ammonium nitrate on this particular run. Perhaps it was opportunistic. He knew the cargo from the train’s manifest. He could have planted the bomb without raising suspicion. Maybe. But he needed an accomplice to press the trigger. Backgrounds were checked, phone logs requested and received. Nothing suspicious.

  While there were other possible avenues to pursue, the deeper Bergman’s team delved into rail operations, the more convinced he was that the answer lay in the control room, with four people on duty that night, anyone of whom could have ordered the train crew to stop where it did, when they did.

  The break in the case came from an alert D.C. traffic cop. Officer Jerry Riles was driving west on Independence Avenue when the explosion rocked his car. Disoriented by the source he pulled to the curb just as a speeding car careened onto Independence from 2nd Street and raced west at high speed. Instinctively, Riles clocked the speed and snapped an image of the car. Then, seeing the explosion’s fireball, he followed its source to the hotel. All night Riles remained on duty at the hotel. It was two days later, after learning about the IED device and its remote trigger, that Riles recalled the speeder. He checked his instruments, saw that he had captured the license plate number and forwarded it to the FBI investigators.

  “Turk Winslow?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  Winslow was at home when two members of Clay Bergman’s FBI investigation team arrived at his door.

  “FBI,” said agent Bryce Dent.

  Winslow’s eyes widened and immediately lit up the words “guilty of something” for the trained agents on his doorstep.

  “We’re here to talk with you about the explosion,” said Dent.

  “God,” said Winslow, “How on earth did you find me?”

  Winslow had been caught totally off guard, expecting from all media reports that the bomb trail would lead to Middle Eastern Islamic terrorists, not to his suburban Virginia home. He had pushed the button that triggered the tanker car to hurl death and destruction through the Washingtonia Grand, a confession impulsively made, impossible to withdraw.

  Hours later, Clay Bergman and six other agents arrived at another suburban Virginia home, this one belonging to Paul Rendowsky. Rendowsky was the railroad’s night traffic supervisor. At work, a day earlier, he had denied any involvement. Now Winslow had involved him.

  Turk Winslow and Paul Rendowsky were members of a Virginia militia group whose members considered the new Immigration Act treasonous. They were convinced that unless Congress repealed the law, the United States would soon be transformed into just another Latin American country. An act of terror by home-grown patriots, they believed, would convince Congress that the opposition would never tolerate the inevitable invasion. President Tennyson, whom they considered a secret agent for Mexican interests, had steered this threat through Congress. With her out of the way, her successor could end it.

  When they learned about the event at the Washingtonia Grand they realized that with a single bomb they could not only strike down the hated president, but also destroy the leadership of the immigration reform movement. It was too rich a prize to pass up. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up the Murrah building hoping to trigger a right wing revolution. Winslow and Rendowsky’s goal was more modest. They just wanted to repeal a law.

  Rendowsky had gone to work the afternoon of the explosion, like all afternoons, after picking up his young children from school and depositing them at home, just across the Potomac River, in Arlington, Virginia. Coworkers at the railroad reported he performed that night, as any other, with no outward sign of nervousness or tension. Winslow had sat in his car, alone, six city blocks from the hotel, watching a video stream of the banquet on his cell phone, waiting for President Tennyson to take center stage before activating the explosives.

  It took only four days from explosion to the filing of criminal charges, not just against Winslow and Rendowsky, but also against five other militia members who took part in the conspiracy.

  43

  In ancient China, when there was flood, plague, pestilence, hunger and other hard times, it was commonly believed that the ruler had lost the mandate of heaven. That’s when empires were overthrown. In a twenty-first century context, even though economic times were improving, the bombing seemed like a final dreadful act in a particularly fretful reign. Members of Congress were anxious for a breather, some time to inhale and get relief from an unending push for controversial change, much of it unpopular and threatening to their own careers.

  Counterintuitively, the hotel attack on Tenny weakened her support among many of the Democratic Party senators she needed to fend off conviction and removal. Think of it as sensory overload. For nearly three years, they were shoved into the center of a legislative caldron, forced to make definitive decisions on long-stalled issues—extended healthcare, immigration, reining in of the big banks, serious climate initiatives, the most massive infrastructure program in U.S. history, election law reforms, and for the past two years the massive America’s Future Plan, which forced them to choose among every powerful interest group in Washington. In tandem with the hard choices and possibly career-ending votes, the senators had to defend the president against a roaring bonfire of rumors and testimony that linked her with drug cartels and gun runners, sordid tales of sex for profit, the strange circumstances of her brother’s death, and now, all that capped by the worst terrorist attack since 9/11, aimed not at the United States as a nation, but at the president herself.

  Three weeks had elapsed since the assassination attempt, six days since President Tennyson was released from the hospital, far from healed but determined to return to the White House. She arrived in a wheel chair, a boot protecting her broken left leg.. Her bandages required freshening twice a day. Her left arm was elevated by a sling to keep her repaired clavicle in place. The days immediately following the explosion remained a blur to her. There was a period of short term memory loss. Episodes of odd behavior. Now that was behind her. Her mind was clear. She was back in charge. For how long was a matter for the U.S. Senate to decide. The final vote would be held in two days. The Senate had resumed its debate about her future.

  The last day of summation on the impeachment resolutions dawned without a clear picture of how the saga would end. The mood was not positive in the West Wing. Internal head counts had every senator’s commitment, except for four. Tenny needed two of those four to survive. With one last shove, Senator Jane Lyman of North Carolina could be persuaded to oppose the resolutions. She feared a primary against her in next year’s election and she knew that a coalition of women’s groups that had always supported her could head that off. Fish was delegated to broker such a deal.

  Ken Geary, from Montana, said he wanted to be with Tenny. But his wife, who remained in Bozeman while Geary served in Washington, was surrounded by fiercely anti-Tenny friends and neighbors. She told her husband she would be mortally embarrassed if he sided with the president. Family harmony would be at risk. That deal was much harder for an outsider to broker.

  And those were the most likely two votes.

  The other undecided senators were long-time opponents, Democrats who had not supported Tenny in the presidential primary and gave only lip service after she defeated their favorite, Rusher. Now if Rusher ascended to the Oval Office, they would have a friend in the White House and an altogether more productive working environment for themselves.

  That should have been enough to put them in the conviction column. But in each of their states, Iowa and New Hampshire, Tenny was more popular than the national norm. Voting against her carried electoral risks and both were up for re-election next year. Ben’s advertising and PR efforts had squeezed them hard locally. That succeeded in freezing each of them from making a declaration of intention. There was still hope.

  On this day of summation, Ben wasn’t sure they could get two, or even one of the uncommitted vot
es. When you’re a winner, you know it. You feel it. When you’re not, you hang your hat on hope...a very thin reed if you are out of options to do anything more about it.

  Tenny didn’t have such doubts. She was a winner. She always had been a winner. How could a Latina woman who wound up president of the United States consider herself anything but invincible? After Federico’s murder she plunged into deep despair. For a time, she considered the possibility that her streak of fortune may have outlived its expiration date. But the fact that she had survived that massive explosion, which killed and maimed just about everyone on the stage with her, an explosion aimed explicitly at killing her, removed her doubts for all time. A slight hearing loss, a few facial scars that one day could be surgically erased, a mild concussion that required her to take care not to have any further head trauma. Minor stuff compared to all that went on around her. No, this was her destiny. She would not, could not lose.

  

  In his office in the Executive Office Building, Vice President Rusher was decidedly on edge. Everyone around him knew it. His staff, his family, his Secret Service detail. For the thirty years he had served in the Senate, he learned how to be an accurate judge of voting strength. Because many of his former colleagues still served there, he had a pipeline to information few others could tap into. He knew exactly where the vote count stood and who remained in doubt. Publicly, he fully supported President Tennyson. He had been properly deferential during the weeks of her incapacity. Twice he had visited with her at bedside. Privately, he had tasted the power of the West Wing. It was delicious.

  During the months’ long slog from Judiciary Committee hearings to now, the eve of the final vote, Rusher had played the good soldier. Privately, carefully, ever so carefully, he did what he could to undermine her. It was a risky game in an arena where there was little trust, even among supposed friends.

  For Rusher, everything about the past two and a half years had been risky. Agreeing to join a ticket with a woman he personally disliked and whose political agenda was far from his own, the humiliation of taking second place to someone who didn’t have a tenth of his knowledge and experience about how things worked, who knew nothing of foreign policy, and then having to bite his lip until it bled watching her get that damn fool agenda passed through Congress.

  Tennyson didn’t seem to care what he thought. She was so convinced of her own righteousness. It was like she knew the ten steps to heaven and she was climbing them, unconcerned with any advice not to be so almighty certain. Except for occasions where the two of them had to share a stage, they didn’t. They didn’t have breakfast, lunch or dinner together. Their families didn’t socialize. He went on obligatory trips around the country and around the world. They were cordial, like urban neighbors with nodding acquaintance but too busy to stop and talk.

  One of those obligatory trips before impeachment fever infected the House Judiciary Committee was to Nigeria, eight months ago, for the inauguration of its new president. He led the U.S. delegation that included four members of Congress, the secretary of energy and a half-dozen corporate types closely tied to Nigeria’s oil and mining industries. At the reception following the formal ceremony, Pete Garner, Texas Global Oil Company’s CEO gripped Rusher’s elbow in a friendly gesture. They had known each other and worked together for more than a dozen years. Rusher was one of the shrinking number of senators who oil men felt really understood their industry and could be counted on for support.

  Garner steered Rusher to a corner of the cocktail reception where they could be alone among the crowd.

  “That president of yours is a real handful, Rod.”

  Rusher smiled, nodded knowingly and shook his head in easy agreement.

  “That she is. I hope she doesn’t do so much damage it can’t be corrected later.”

  “You mean the next election?”

  “Of course. I don’t see how she can be re-elected with all the wreckage she’s causing.”

  “We can’t take that chance. Our assessment is she could be re-elected.”

  “Good heavens. What a dismal prospect. Well, it won’t be with me on the ticket. I never should have agreed to be on it in the first place.”

  And then, Garner’s words sunk in.

  “What do you mean you can’t take that chance? What’s your alternative?”

  “I wondered whether you knew. You should. We’re going to make you president. Impeachment. You should know it’s coming and it’s all set up. You’re going to be president before the term is over.”

  “Impeachment! What’s she done?”

  “That’s all being taken care of. Some of us are handling the details. I can’t tell you anymore, and probably shouldn’t anyway. But you need to know so that when some things come to your attention that you may not understand, you’ll know why. It may be that we’ll need some help from you and your people.”

  “To do what?”

  “Be a conduit for some information. Confirm a few things. This is all in good hands. You’re going to be president, Rod. Count on it.”

  Rusher remembered that conversation nearly word for word. As it turned out, he wasn’t asked to do much. He verified a few erroneous dates and names of people who supposedly were in places they actually weren’t. Some notarized papers to generate. Simple stuff, but the kind of things “truth” depends on.

  Three months before the Washingtonia Grand explosion, with impeachment very much on track and being artfully managed toward its conclusion, Rusher was in Mexico City, the president’s representative at a conference on world hunger. Rusher had little to do there. Hordes of others in the U.S. delegation were talking soil nitrogen levels, genetic modification, and other language of the new agriculture. Rusher’s role, similar to most events he attended, was merely to wave the U.S. flag and to excuse the president from having to make the trip.

  The opening conference reception was hosted by Para-Gon, the energy and chemical division of Groupo Aragon. It was an evening featuring Mexican food delicacies, carefully calibrated not to seem too opulent for a conference about hunger, but impressive enough to appeal to the delegations from the eighty-four attending countries.

  Javier Carmona, long-time CEO of Groupo Aragon was there to welcome the delegates, sharing the stage with the president of Mexico and Vice President Rusher. As they sat together, waiting to be introduced, Carmona leaned in toward Rusher and quietly invited him to his private hotel suite for brandy and a cigar as soon as social etiquette permitted them both to leave the reception.

  Rusher was well aware of the entwined history of his president and Groupo Aragon. It was hard to miss, given all the sordid testimony passing through Congress on the way to an impeachment vote. That testimony also peaked curiosity. There were things to be learned from this man, Carmona, one of the most influential business people in the world, and no doubt the repository of many secrets about President Tennyson.

  Later, in Carmona’s suite, they sat on the balcony smoking fine Cubans and drinking Armagnac. Carmona was in an ebullient mood, talkative about his company, world affairs and his history with President Tennyson. Carmona knew much about conspiracies from decades of masterminding them and attempting to foil them. All his instincts born of that knowledge warned him to not say what came next. But he could not resist. The future president of the United States was sitting here, on his balcony. The two of them, alone. How many times in life do such opportunities occur?

  “Señor Vice President, we appreciate your participation in our project to make you the next president. We look forward to your ascension.”

  Rusher was startled. The only personal contact he had had about it was from Pete Garner, months ago, in Nigeria. Since then, papers and contacts related to the president had floated through his office. He dutifully signed off on and forwarded documents he otherwise would have questioned had it not been for Garner’s heads-up. Garner had said “some of us are handling the details.” But he didn’t know who else. He could assume, though, that oil p
eople were certainly involved. That was encouraging. Oil people were very reliable and dependable. Carmona was also an oil guy, through his Ener-Gon division. Not just oil, but huge worldwide chemical operations. That and Aragon’s many other interests put him in a much higher league than Garner.

  “May I ask the nature of your participation,” asked Rusher, cautiously.

  Carmona laughed, unable to restrain his claim to bragging rights. Rusher would have to know the incredible debt he was about to owe to Carmona.

  “In America, you might call me the ringleader. Señora Tennyson I knew as a little girl. She was bright, lively, and pleasant. But as a woman, she is most dangerous. We knew that before anyone else. From the beginning I warned my close friends that something had to be done. Fortunately, others agreed.

  “I want you to know you are in the best of hands, Señor Vice President. The small group of us who are managing this project have all the wealth needed to support it, and all the contacts required to make it successful.

  “My card, with my private phone number, Señor Rusher. Please, contact me whenever you believe I can be of assistance.”

  Rusher hardly knew how to respond. But sitting in the richly paneled suite, drinking expensive brandy, smoking a Fuente Don Arturo AnniverXario, the finest cigar he had ever smoked, listening to one of the richest men in the world tell him that he and his friends were organized to make him president, Rusher could only say, “Thank you.” No further questions or answers were necessary.

  For Carmona, it was mission accomplished. The next president of the United States, just as the current president of Mexico, would be beholden to him.

  That was three months ago. Before Federico’s murder, a development that terrified Rusher, who, for the first time, sensed the danger in the game that was being played on his behalf.