Oppo

by Tom Rosenstiel

  He called Rena and walked through his frustration.

  “Tell me more about the sister,” Rena said.

  “She thought I suspected her of threatening Wendy. And seemed to want to have as little to do with her sister as possible.”

  “Why would that be?” Rena said.

  “It’s a weird vibe out here, Peter. The money guy, Farmer, is terrified. The sister is surly. The party people love Wendy because she wins and hate her because she’s hard to control. They’re all in politics and they all seem to hate that, too. The kingdom of Wendy Upton back here in Arizona is an unhappy place. I feel like she is barely known to the people she is supposedly close to. She’s powerful, admired, brave, and extraordinary. She might even be president one day. But it feels like she doesn’t have a lot of friends. Not real ones. At least not here in Arizona.”

  Rena was quiet on the other end of the line, thinking. He thought of the woman he had met by the river the day before, of her toughness and resolve, and the woman who had bucked her party to help the president last year. And felt a sense of loneliness.

  Eighteen

  Rena didn’t dwell on the feeling. He didn’t have time. He and Hallie Jobe had someone else from Upton’s past to see.

  They were meeting with Henry Nelson, Wendy’s mentor in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, JAG.

  Though she didn’t champion it much in her campaign biography, Upton had become a reformer in the military over treatment of sexual harassment cases. And according to what Jobe had learned, she had pulled Colonel Nelson along with her.

  “Guy’s got quite a story of his own,” Jobe said as they drove across town to see him. “He was chief prosecutor of the army. Huge job. And he blew it up.”

  Rena, who had blown up his own army career and knew Nelson a little, gave Jobe a look asking for more. “Apparently,” Jobe explained, “Wendy really opened his eyes about how the military dealt with these cases. Nelson became even more of a crusader than she was.”

  Some of the details were coming back to Rena. “But he pushed too hard,” he said.

  “To put it mildly,” Jobe said. “After he didn’t get the reforms he wanted from the commander of JAG and the joint chiefs, Nelson went over their heads to the secretary of defense. Total breach of the chain of command.” Jobe, an ex-marine, was shaking her head in disbelief. “That pretty much ended his military career. About seven years ago. Guy was on track to become head of JAG himself.”

  “What do we expect to learn from him, Hallie?”

  “I want to find out who in the military might hate Wendy Upton enough to help destroy her,” she answered. “Or, maybe, whether Nelson himself might be holding a grudge.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He blew up his career,” Jobe said. “Maybe he blames her.”

  “He going to tell us that?”

  “No, Peter,” Jobe said. “You are going to do your mystical thing and see it in his face with your X-ray intuition. Then we can wrap this up. I have plans this weekend.”

  NELSON WORKED FOR A NONPROFIT NOW that provided legal counsel to victims of sexual harassment in the military. His office was in Southwest D.C., across the street from JAG headquarters. In effect, he now spent his time fighting the institution he had devoted his life to.

  Jobe opened hard. “Who would want to destroy Wendy Upton?”

  All they’d told him ahead of time was they were working for her and needed to talk to him urgently. Rena watched his reaction.

  “You think I know something that could hurt Wendy?” Nelson asked.

  “That’s what we’re here to learn. Do you?” Rena said.

  Nelson was tall and lanky and had grown a goatee since leaving the service. But the ramrod-straight military bearing remained. And his eyes burned, a window into a roiling heart. He was looking back at them, already angry. Who was he furious at?

  Rena and Nelson also had history, a couple cases Rena had investigated in the army and Nelson had declined to prosecute. Another he had lost. And they had different styles. Nelson, famous for not suffering fools lightly, rarely held fire. Rena tended to share his thinking only when he believed it served a purpose. It was not a good chemical bond.

  “Do I know something that could hurt Wendy Upton? Absolutely not. And if there were anything, I would never share it.”

  Rena held Nelson’s gaze. Then Jobe came between them. She asked Nelson to tell them about his work with Upton and how she had come to change his views of the military and sexual harassment.

  “You know how JAG attorneys work, right?” Nelson said. “That they work both sides of the street?”

  Jobe’s question already had focused him on something other than his dislike for Rena.

  They nodded.

  In military court, unlike civilian, an attorney might represent a defendant in one case and serve as prosecutor the next. Everyone wore a uniform, and the goal was the integrity of the military.

  “Well, Wendy was a superb lawyer, diligent, prepared, aggressive. For both sides. And early on she defended a lot of male officers accused of sexual misconduct. But at a certain point she decided she could only prosecute those cases.”

  “Why?” Jobe asked.

  “Because she concluded the women bringing these accusations, the victims, were almost always telling the truth.”

  “And why’d she think that?”

  “Because they are almost always telling the truth.” Nelson’s voice rose.

  “Look, it’s absurd to think many women cry rape and pursue false allegations against men out of revenge, or some feeling of regret, or to enhance their own self-esteem. In real life, bringing a charge of sexual misconduct is a horrific process. That’s why most assaults are never reported.”

  Jobe was listening. Rena could see she wasn’t sure what to make of Nelson.

  “But that presumption, that women will accuse men unjustly, is embedded in military law—even more than civilian. Accusers can be ordered to give repeated pretrial interviews and depositions to the defense. And unlike in civilian court, defendants at trial can call friends to provide ‘good character’ evidence, which, by itself, if done well, can raise reasonable doubt for acquittal.”

  Nelson spoke with precision and authority. It was easy to imagine him a fierce courtroom advocate.

  “When Wendy came to say she no longer wanted to defend sexual harassment cases, only prosecute, you found a way for that to happen?” Jobe asked.

  “And that,” Nelson said, “was when she went from being a good lawyer to being a great one.”

  “You didn’t recognize these problems in the system before?” Rena asked.

  Nelson gave him a hard look back. “Wendy saw injustice I should have recognized years earlier. Decades before. That is one of the things Wendy does. She notices things other people miss, and she makes you notice them, too.”

  Jobe glanced at her notes. “But she didn’t just stop defending cases, did she? She also began to advocate for changes.”

  Nelson was nodding. “You have to understand how tilted the system was. Accusers in these cases had no counsel of their own. The commanding officers on base not only convene all court-martials, but as the convening authority they can overturn sentences, too. And too many commanders can’t believe, or maybe don’t want it known, that there are sexual predators in their command. So some of them may try to hide those cases, not prosecute them, or push for lighter sentences.”

  “When Wendy began to push to change that,” Jobe said, “that didn’t make her enemies?”

  A smile of remembrance crossed Nelson’s face. “Wendy has a way of making arguments that pull people with her. Of advocating in a respectful way and doing it through channels. And of only asking for changes she thought the military would make.”

  Rena, watching Nelson, said: “But you became impatient. Especially after Wendy left the military.”

  Nelson took a deep breath. “Maybe because I’d done more cases, or felt more guilt, or had less
time left in my career. But yeah, I thought it wasn’t enough.” He was shaking his head now. “You know that 59 percent of women who report sexual harassment in the military also report being punished for doing so? I was part of that system. I had a duty to change it. You get medals in combat for giving up your life for your fellow soldiers. This, to me, is the same thing.”

  Nelson had changed things, and it had cost him his career. His outspokenness had helped make reforming military justice a major public issue. And in no small part thanks to his pushing, there were competing pieces of legislation in Congress to change the rules and impose restrictions on commanders’ control over the outcome of cases.

  “Did Wendy encourage you to become the radical she never was?” Rena asked.

  “Still think I’m holding a grudge, Peter? No, just the opposite. She discouraged me. Told me I was committing professional suicide.” He folded his hands. Rena thought he was, literally, trying to get hold of himself. “She was right, but I have no regrets. I would have regretted not acting.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling us,” Jobe said.

  Nelson scowled back. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Your marriage ended, too. You blew up your career and your marriage. Did Wendy Upton have anything to do with that?”

  The lawyer leaned back in his chair and gave out a deep breath.

  “You’ve heard that rumor.”

  “Yes,” Jobe said.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “You didn’t have an affair with Wendy that ended your marriage?” Jobe asked.

  Nelson was shaking his head. “You have it wrong.”

  Rena leaned toward Nelson and said in a soft voice, “We’re trying to save her career, Henry. And we’re just about out of time. We need to know everything. The truth.”

  “We never had an affair,” Nelson said. “No matter what you heard.” He was looking down, avoiding eye contact.

  “But you loved her,” Rena said.

  Nelson’s head stayed down. Then it slowly began to nod.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I was in love with her.”

  He looked up. “But I never told her. Or even touched her.” He took in a deep breath and it seemed to make him shudder. “I know it sounds pathetic. But what I felt for Wendy—what I came to feel—made me realize what I didn’t feel for my wife.”

  Then he exhaled for a long time. “I know how it sounds. To have those feelings and never . . . All this in my own head. An old man.”

  “Did she know?”

  “I never asked,” Nelson said. “I guess other people guessed.”

  Rena imagined Nelson, fifth-generation military, a man tightly bound to duty, finding someone in midlife whom he admired so much he changed everything—for a love unrequited. Or only imagined.

  “I know,” Nelson said. “A man blows up his career and his marriage because he’s in love with a younger woman and never even tells her. But it’s not like that. It’s not sad.” He took another deep breath. “Because I’m living my own life now, not someone else’s. My life.”

  He went on. “Wendy has that effect on people, Peter. She looks more deeply at things than the rest of us. She saw what was wrong with what we were doing. And made me realize how little I saw. She really is extraordinary. I loved her for it.” His voice cracked. “But it wasn’t that kind of love, and eventually I realized that. I know it sounds pathetic, but it’s not. And there’s no scandal here. I will attest to that.”

  Rena said very quietly, “Not pathetic in any way, Henry.”

  Jobe wasn’t so moved. “You still haven’t told us who in the military might want to hurt her,” she said. “We’re still looking for enemies.”

  Nelson seemed to laugh to himself. “I can name my enemies in the service. And it’s a long list. By comparison, I don’t know that she has any. Maybe not a single one.”

  AFTERWARD, as she drove them to the office, down Independence, past Capitol Hill and the monuments, Jobe kept glancing at Rena. “You think he’s holding something back?” she said.

  Rena, lost in thought, said nothing.

  “By the way, I’m getting married tomorrow,” Jobe said. “To a goat.”

  “I always knew,” Rena said. “But I don’t judge.”

  “Just wondered if you were listening.”

  Rena stared out the window and said, “I think he’s hiding nothing. I think he stopped trying to hide things years ago. After hiding them for years.”

  BROOKS WAS WAITING for them at the office.

  They had a lot to catch up on.

  Jobe described the meeting with Nelson. Rena recounted his morning with Susan Stroud—walking through the maze of billionaires and PACs.

  “Our list of suspects keeps getting longer,” he said.

  “I think I can help a little,” Brooks told them. She had spent the morning working the Democratic side, she said, meeting with election lawyers connected with three of the major Democratic campaigns, Maria Pena’s, Omar Fulwood’s, and Cole Murphy’s.

  “I was trying to find out if any of them had paid money to scrub Upton.” Most opposition research was hidden in payments to law firms, which in turn would hire opposition research and private detectives on behalf of their campaign clients.

  “No lawyer would ever confirm hiring someone to do that,” said Jobe.

  “Ahh, but they might confirm if they hadn’t,” Brooks said.

  “And someone did,” Rena guessed.

  Brooks winked. “Give that man a prize.” She was amped up—from exhaustion and a small victory. “I think we can strike Cole Murphy’s campaign off our list of suspects. My friend Raney Levin’s firm is doing all their campaign legal work, including funneling the payments for the oppo stuff. She wouldn’t confirm anything they’d done, but she was willing to get her guys off the hook for this. She promised they hadn’t looked at Upton.”

  “And you believe her?” said Jobe, who tended to be suspicious of everyone.

  Brooks gave her a confident look.

  “But no one else?” Rena said.

  “And not for any goddamn lack of trying. I drank so much coffee today, I felt like I was studying for the bar exam all over again. I even ate pie with one of them, which I needed like a brain tumor.”

  “And?” Rena asked.

  “And my friend working for Omar Fulwood said she honestly didn’t know but might call me back if she has anything to share. I doubt she will. But my friend working for Maria Pena, well, he wouldn’t tell me a goddamn thing. Guy’s an asshole. A good lawyer; I’d hire him in minute. But he wouldn’t tell me whether Pena had done opposition research on Upton or anyone else. Got all high and mighty. Prick. The ethics of being a campaign lawyer? Fuck me!”

  Rena waited a beat for Brooks to calm down. “But you think Pena’s people might be good for this?”

  “If they got wind of Traynor’s offer, I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

  One of Pena’s key arguments was that the left lacked a killer instinct. She had raised enough money in Hollywood and Silicon Valley to already be doing oppo research on every possible vice presidential candidate in both parties.

  “So Pena stays on the list,” Rena said.

  Brooks nodded and said, “You ready for tonight?”

  “What’s tonight?” asked Jobe. “You’re watching the debate?”

  It was the night of the so-called bipartisan primary debate, which promised to be a chaotic and possibly ugly display, four candidates from each party onstage together.

  “No,” Brooks said, “we’re sitting down with Upton. Time for a little intervention.”

  That was her term for getting in a client’s face and scaring them into finally admitting the secrets they hadn’t told you before. Tonight they would let Upton know what absolute hell she was really in.

  Jobe smiled wanly at Rena. “Who doesn’t like a little intervention?”

  Nineteen

  Nashville, Tennessee

 
It was the brainchild of the people at Y’all Post, the social media company, and BNS, the cable news channel.

  Put people from both parties onstage together. Get them discussing the same questions. And maybe, just maybe, they reasoned, we can find our way back to some common ground.

  Matt Alabama feared the bipartisan presidential primary debate might have the opposite effect. Candidates across parties might hurl even worse insults at each other than they would at opponents in their own party. But he tried to resist the journalists’ instinct for expecting the worst.

  People would watch—of that he had no doubt. The format was novel, and viewers would be curious how far the candidates would go. What was democracy, the organizers argued, if not a gathering of people in the public square?

  The event was being held at Belmont University in Nashville. Alabama was upstairs walking past the classrooms in Struhman Hall that had been converted for the evening into “greenrooms” where each candidate could rest and prepare.

  He paused outside the one with a handwritten sign on the door that read TONY SOTO. The room was assigned for the evening to the Nevada governor. Below the sign with Soto’s name was a piece of paper with a note: PSYCHOLOGY CLUB MOVED TO 204 TURNER. The door was closed. Alabama knew the young governor liked to do push-ups before debates to burn off pent-up energy.

  Two doors down, a thick man stood guard outside the room where Michigan governor Jeff Scott waited. Scott preferred to sip red wine before a debate, something he had read Ronald Reagan was fond of. Closed doors and greenroom bouncers were common at these encounters. People running for president tended to prefer privacy before debates. And they usually despised running into one another.

  There were more greenrooms one floor below, where Maria Pena, Jennifer Lee, and Janice Gaylord waited. It was the only floor in the building with women’s bathrooms.

  Alabama made his way downstairs, past the theater where the debate would occur, and walked into the large reception room next door. Inside, dozens of long portable tables were set up in rows, with names of publications and media outlets written on white placards. Spaced every ten feet or so apart on the tables sat television monitors. This was the temporary press room from which more than a hundred journalists and bloggers would watch the debate. As soon as it ended, no matter what had transpired in the theater next door, the candidates and their aides would rush here to claim victory. Over the years, that spectacle of absurd and grandiose claims had given these makeshift press rooms the name spin rooms.