by D. W. Buffa
She did not say anything for a few moments. Though she had eaten next to nothing, we were finished with dinner. She sipped on coffee.
“It’s nice you worry about me, Antonelli,” she said presently. “I’m not sure anyone ever has before.”
I did not have to ask what she meant. She could have anyone she wanted, she always could; why would anyone ever think her vulnerable and alone?
“What else about today, Antonelli? What else happened in the trial you haven’t told me about?”
Scratching my chin, I tried to think of something that others might not notice.
“The jurors. Five men, seven women. Two Asian, one Hispanic, one black. What you might expect. One of the women is five months pregnant. She was asked if she wanted to be excused, whether she thought because of her pregnancy she would rather not serve. The woman, Alice Milham, said she thought she owed it to her child—this was to be her first—to meet her obligations as a citizen. No one was really surprised. Alice Milham is an Army veteran, served two tours in Iraq. That’s why this jury is a little unusual. There are five veterans, two of them the two oldest men, both in their sixties. The other three, including Alice Milham, are all women, young women in their twenties or thirties, who joined up. One of them will be foreman, I’m sure of it. When they enter the jury box every morning, all the others defer to them. St. John thinks that because Bridges was commander-in-chief, and they are former military, they’re more likely to think there is no excuse for what Fitzgerald did. He’s wrong. They’re the best chance Fitzgerald has. They’re one of the reasons I wanted those photographs put into evidence. The chain of command is one thing, but their sense of honor, of sacrifice, of doing whatever you have to do for your country, is everything.”
I STARTED WHERE Fitzgerald had ended his first day of testimony.
“Michael Donahue met twice with General Rostov, once at a restaurant in Paris, but the other time, the first time, in Washington, at the Russian embassy. Is that what you told us yesterday?”
Tricia Fitzgerald brought her husband a different change of clothes every day. This morning, he was wearing a dark blue pin stripe suit, white shirt and light gray tie. He looked more like what he was, a young and ambitious United States senator, than the defendant in a murder trial. He did not lean to one side or the other in the witness chair, but bent slightly forward, just enough to emphasize his intense interest in the questions and his eagerness to respond.
“That’s correct. Two meetings. The one at the Russian embassy lasted nearly all day.”
“This meeting took place before Walter Bridges had the nomination?”
“It was in early June. Bridges did not have the nomination yet, but it was pretty certain he was going to get it.”
“Do you know what was discussed in that meeting? Was it just General Rostov, or was the ambassador also involved?”
“They were both involved—Rostov and the ambassador. There were three main lines of discussion,” he said as his eyes moved from me to the jury. “The Bridges campaign and how they might help; how relations between Russia and the United States could be improved; and, finally, how the world had changed, how the old attitudes needed to be replaced with a different, more informed understanding of a nation’s self-interest. This came late in the day,” he added, “and Donahue was doing most of the talking. The Russians listened, but did not really comment. They were clearly more interested in the first two things: the election and what might happen if Bridges somehow managed to get elected.”
“Start from the beginning. What did they discuss about the Bridges campaign and, as I think you put it, how they could help?
Fitzgerald nodded twice in quick succession. He could barely wait to begin.
“Rostov told Donahue that there were things about the other party’s candidate, Madelaine Shaw, that would be extremely damaging if they were ever made public, that there were things about some of the people in her campaign, people who had been close to her for years, who would cause the kind of scandal that could disrupt, and possibly even destroy, her candidacy. A lot of it was financial—money paid for things that were never done, contributions that had never been reported and that instead of going into the campaign had gone into various off-shore accounts—tens of millions that could not be explained.
“You have to understand,” said Fitzgerald with a grim, determined expression, “the Russians did not believe for a moment that Bridges could win. That was not what this was about. They wanted to help him only as a way of hurting Shaw, to weaken her as much as possible. They were very good at this. I’ll get back to this in a minute. Madelaine Shaw was going to be the next president of the United States. That seemed a given. The Russians hated her. They had had dealings with her before, when she was in government. They thought her overrated, a lightweight, someone who would never take a chance on anything, someone—and from their point of view this was decisive—who would always stand in their way, because it allowed her to seem more tough minded than she really was. The goal was to make the election as close as possible, and in that way deprive her of any chance to claim a mandate of what she, and her party, wanted to do. That was the reason they were so eager to use people like Michael Donahue, to get him, and some others, involved. They needed people on the inside, people who could tell them the best time to release what they had, how to do this over time, so each new disclosure would add to the overall, cumulative effect that whatever you thought of what Madelaine Shaw wanted to do for the country, whatever policies she wanted to pursue, whatever changes she wanted to make, you could never trust her.”
Fitzgerald sat back, a rueful smile at the corners of his mouth, the grudging admiration for a scheme of Machiavellian proportions.
“Rostov, the ambassador, they’re sitting there with Donahue over lunch, safe to say what they really think about a woman all of them despise. The ambassador, who had been in Washington for nearly a decade, who knows everyone; Donahue, who had only ever visited, a tourist from out of town, new to politics but certain, because he’s read a few books, that he knows why everyone in Washington is wrong; the two of them, with Rostov nodding his agreement, talking about what an extraordinary thing it is that a woman with so little to show for a life’s work in politics and government could actually find herself this close to winning the presidency.
“‘Everyone knows she’s as crooked as they come.’ That was a line the ambassador kept repeating, and every time followed it with the almost casual remark that the material he had seen that proved it was ‘overwhelming.’ All Donahue knows are the rumors that, like everyone else, he has heard. But the Russians have proof. Or so they tell him. That is one idea they plant in his mind. There is another one to which Donahue is particularly susceptible. Everything in Washington is fixed. Nothing is done, legislation is never passed, decisions are never made, unless money changes hands, unless the lobbyists for special interests agree. And nothing happens at all, money is never spent or offered, unless it does not threaten the permanent interests of the real government, the one that had never been elected and holds all the power—the Deep State you heard him testify about in court. Everything is rigged for its advantage. The ambassador asks—and there is no one more subtle, more insidious at this sort of thing—‘What makes you think those same people can’t make sure the election turns out the way they want it to? Isn’t the whole system rigged? Do you really think they’re going to let someone like Walter Bridges get elected so he can tear down everything they have built?’”
I was leaning against the front edge of the counsel table, one foot crossed over the other, listening, like the jury, to a soliloquy on the study of political intrigue and influence. Fitzgerald had a way of telling a story that made you feel you were there, inside the room, listening in person to the beginning of a conspiracy that would change the way everyone thought about their country and the people leading it.
“There was a kind of genius in the way they handled Donahue. They would tell him something, stunni
ng in its implications, and then dismiss the importance of what they had just told him with the suggestion that there was more, much more than that. And every time they mentioned something, it was accompanied by some remark that while they did not have this information themselves, they were reasonably certain they could get it. They wanted Donahue to take the initiative; they wanted him to express an interest. They wanted to have a way to protect themselves when questions started to be asked—as they surely would be after this material started to be released—a way to make everyone believe that some independent source was doing this on their own. Donahue believed everything they told him. They had the same interest; they wanted to do anything they could to make Madelaine Shaw seem illegitimate, a woman who cheated her way to the nomination and would, given half a chance, steal the election. And if any proof was needed that she was not qualified to hold the office, there was the question of what she would do if she actually won. The question, in particular, of what she would do about this country’s relations with Russia.”
“The second thing discussed that day at the Russian embassy?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” replied Fitzgerald as he rubbed his forehead. He stared at some point in the middle distance, concentrating, as it seemed, on how to explain the precise nature of what had taken place. “This is where it gets complicated, where things begin to converge. When I testified yesterday, when I described what the Russians had learned about Bridges, the various relationships that had been formed with him, the material they had compiled, I talked about how they had made certain that Bridges knew what they had. You had to, unfortunately, see some of the photographs that had been taken of Bridges in a Moscow hotel. But now, suddenly, all of this, all the material they had gathered, everything Bridges knew they had, became relevant in ways they had not imagined. Think what a surprise it must have been. They could not believe their good luck. Walter Bridges, a rich, mindless American in the judgement of their intelligence services, someone who because he did not care where the money came from, they had been able to use as a conduit for money they had reason to hide, is now a candidate for the presidency. He isn’t going to win, but that is not important. What is important is that he now commands the national stage. What is important is that, in addition to all the speeches he is going to make, all the interviews he is going to give, he will debate, not once, but several times, Madelaine Shaw on national television. He can attack her at any point where she is vulnerable. He can, with a little helpful advice, attack her for her failure to understand how Russia, instead of an enemy, can become an effective and valuable partner in the fight against terrorism. That is what they really want, and, whatever Donahue may know about what the Russians have on Bridges, they know Bridges knows. And why would he object to doing what they want? The only thing he knows how to do is attack, and there’s no one he likes to attack more than someone who stands in his way.” Fitzgerald gave the jury a long, significant look. “The Russians knew what they were doing.”
We went back and forth, question and answer, rounding out his testimony about the Russian involvement in the election, until a few minutes past noon. We finished that line of inquiry and were ready to move on to the still more vital discussion of what happened after the election, after Walter Bridges, to everyone’s astonishment, became president. Judge Silverman recessed the proceedings for lunch.
I did not eat, and neither did Fitzgerald. We sat together in a small conference room, going over one last time the explosive revelations that would either save his life or send him to death row. At one thirty we were back in court and in front of a jury that had lost nothing of its sense of anticipation and a courtroom packed with reporters ready to take down every word. I started with the question the whole country had been waiting to hear.
“Senator Fitzgerald, why did you kill Walter Bridges?”
Fitzgerald did not hesitate. I did not doubt that he had been thinking about the question from the moment he killed him; I did not doubt, really, that he had been thinking about it long before that. He must have thought about it from the time he first decided that it was something he had to do. It was part of the equation, the justification, for what, as he knew better than anyone, no one had ever done before. That had become clear to me. He was not some crazed assassin, willing to kill and be killed in return. He had never intended to die in the attempt. He was always going to go to trial. The death of the president had, in his mind, become necessary, but so was his own vindication.
“It’s very simple. Walter Bridges was going to make sure we did not have another election. He was right in the middle of doing it. That was the reason he had come to California.”
You could have heard a pin drop, the silence in the courtroom was that profound. Everyone was holding their breath, afraid they might miss what he was going to say next, the explanation of this extraordinary allegation.
“You say he was going to make sure there was never another election. How was he going to do that?”
“It started with what the Russians did. They knew how to get into computer systems, how to find out what people communicated electronically. It’s all well-known now, but what hardly anyone paid attention to was how they created stories, put them out on the internet, sent them directly to people they wanted to influence, thousands, maybe millions at a time, false stories, pure invention, but with enough connection to what was really going on to create uncertainty about what was real and what was not. That gave some of the people around Bridges the idea. If the Russians could do this, why can’t we? Not to try to influence a Russian election, but here, at home, use the same technique to make the American electorate think what they wanted. They knew,” insisted Fitzgerald, a warning in his eyes, “that they had been lucky, that the Russians could not have done what they did if Bridges had been running against a candidate with nothing to hide and who could at least give a halfway decent speech.”
Fitzgerald bent closer to the jury, as if to take them into his confidence. He talked to them as if they knew as well as he did the lengths to which Bridges had been willing to go.
“You heard one of them testify that Bridges would have lost by more than twenty points against me,” he said, shaking his head to dismiss the suggestion that this had very much to do with him. “He would have lost by that much to anyone who ran against him. He knew it, they all knew it. They had not expected to win the presidency, but now that they had it, they were going to keep it. They had only one appeal—fear. You make people afraid of terrorism by always talking about the danger, by insisting that you’re the only one who knows how to fight it, by promising that you know how to end it. Safety, not freedom, is what you preach. And it works. No one tries to argue when you spend billions on wars in the Middle East. But what fear do you appeal to if you want to make sure you won’t, or rather, can’t, be defeated in the next election?”
He looked at the jurors one by one, telling them with that look that they could trust him to tell them everything he knew. It made a silent pact that he trusted them to grasp in all its dreadful implications the secret, the state secret, he was about to reveal.
“The Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Intelligence Committee, the FBI, the CIA, every intelligence agency we have, and almost every reporter in Washington, were investigating the same thing: what the Russians had done in the last election, and whether anyone in the Bridges campaign, including Bridges himself, had been involved, whether there had been, to use the word everyone was then using, ‘collusion’ between Bridges and the Russians. I’m on the Intelligence Committee. There was not any doubt what had happened, no doubt that Bridges himself had been involved. The only thing missing was the kind of proof that would satisfy everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, those who had voted for Walter Bridges and those who had not.
“The truth was we didn’t have enough. There would have been enough, but there was not time. Bridges, the people around him, and especially Michael Donahue, knew they had to do something, because if they did
nothing, if they just sat by, even if they tried to stop the investigation, eventually, there would be enough evidence, and with the evidence the kind of public demand nothing could resist, for impeachment proceedings to begin. This was not Nixon, who understood he could not survive impeachment; this was not Clinton, who understood he could survive a scandal. This was a case where articles of impeachment would include a charge of treason. No one, least of all Walter Bridges, could survive that. They had one chance: convince everyone, or at least a majority in the House and Senate, that the Russians had done a good deal more than anyone knew.”
Becoming more intense with each word, the sense of urgency palpable and real, Fitzgerald slammed his hand on the arm of the witness chair and with a penetrating stare held the jury mesmerized as he went on.
“The Russians had managed to gain access—hack their way into—the computer systems that keep the records of registered voters. It was much more extensive than anyone knew, and the meaning of what the Russians were doing obvious to anyone who cared about the integrity of our elections. The Russians were planning to take over the computers that tabulate the results and change the outcome. The Russians, not the American electorate, were going to decide who governed us.
“That was the fear they thought they could exploit. They were careful. They knew they could not just come out and say they were going to cancel the next election and then keep postponing it until they could guarantee that each vote would be counted the way it had been cast. No one, not even members of their own party, would stand for that. They appointed a presidential commission to look into the fictitious allegation that there had been massive voter fraud. The commission concluded, without a shred of evidence to support it, that there had been, or rather, because they were careful here as well, that there could be. Could be. That was crucial because it seemed to dovetail neatly with what all the people who voted against Bridges had been saying: that the Russians had interfered with our election and that kind of interference could never happen again. The system was rigged, the system did not work, the system could be manipulated by foreign powers. It did not matter the nature of your complaint, whatever it was, it led to the same conclusion: something had to be done, the system had to be protected, it had to be made safe from any possible abuse or interference.”