"Take her." Joan's voice was anguished. "Then how can I do this?"
"By protecting her. If John has to see her, it should be at a visitation center. Otherwise, the order should say that he can't go near her—at your home, her school, or wherever. Make sure her principal and teacher have a copy of the order. Then change your locks, and start looking for another place . . ."
"We'll help her," Lara whispered from behind him.
"We're here for you," Kerry finished. "Don't worry about money. And if you want Lara to fly out there, she will."
Once more Joan was silent. Though he was careful not to say so, Kerry shared her trepidation for reasons of his own: in Kerry's first domestic violence case, the husband had shot his wife to death on the eve of trial, in front of their young son. Joan and Marie were poised on razor's edge; she could not stay with him, and yet leaving was the moment of greatest danger—the time when a husband's violence, fueled by the desperate sense that control was slipping away, might turn lethal.
"We'll get John in a program," Kerry promised. "Each step of the way, I'll be with you."
Through the phone, he first heard quiet, then a sigh. "If you talk to them first," Joan told him in a choked voice. "I'll try."
* * *
Afterward, Kerry and Lara returned to the porch. The Mall surrounding the monument was silent now, the festivities ended. The air was moist but cooler.
Head bent, Lara touched her eyes. "I don't know," she murmured.
"About what?"
"Anything. Even me."
Watching her, Kerry waited until she spoke again. "I'm so damned scared for her. But it's all a tangle." She faced him. "This was supposed to be our night. Instead you've taken on my sister.
"I'm angry with her, God help me—why did she marry this man, why did she stay so long, why did she have to call tonight? And angry at myself. I can't even get her to talk about this, except through you." She gave a brief shake of her head. "I didn't say it was pretty."
But at least that was honest, Kerry thought. Wearily, he perceived that he had become part of a complex triangle in which Lara, despite her guilt over this, might resent both him and Joan.
"She's in danger," Kerry said.
"I know that. I can feel it from here." Her voice softened. "If anything happened to her or Marie it would kill me."
"I know that, too." Kerry reached for her hand. "So listen to me, okay?
"You've done so much for me. But you don't have to do everything anymore. Because there are also things I can do for you.
"It'll take some getting used to, for both of us. But some morning we may wake up feeling sheer relief at being able to lean on someone else." Pausing, Kerry saw that he was asking, at least in one sense, for a favor. "Protecting them means a lot to me. Please, let me help her. Who better, after all?"
Studying him, Lara took this in. Then, at length, she said, "Whatever you do, Kerry, I want to know before you do it. She's still my sister, and I can't let go."
SE VEN
"The Army thinks they've trapped Al Anwar," Clayton Slade told the President.
The two men sat in the Oval Office. Kerry had slept little, worrying about Joan. But the Presidency did not stop. It was his iron routine that at seven a.m., he and his Chief of Staff met to sort out their priorities, the endless list of choices a President must make.
So, as always, the first sight of Kerry's workday was an AfricanAmerican with a round face, short, greying hair, clipped mustache, gold wire-rim glasses, shrewd black eyes and a laconic wit which cut to the core of whatever came their way. Since meeting as young prosecutors, Clayton had been Kerry's closest friend and, in politics, they complemented each other—Kerry was intuitive, at once "ruthless" and a romantic; Clayton was earthbound, pragmatic, deeply attuned to consequence and, at times, a brake on Kerry's impulses. Kerry relied on Clayton's judgment—between the two of them, he once had quipped, they might just add up to one reasonably decent President. But Clayton had learned—and this was the most delicate part of their relationship—that he could not act in Kerry's name.
Now their daily meeting was as integral to Kerry's comfort as the decor which made the Oval Office his—bookshelves filled with biography and poetry; busts of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the world globe on his desk, a reminder of his power and its limits; a table with photographs of Lara, his mother, his godfather Liam Dunn, his brother James. All of them had helped define who Kerry was; only Lara knew him as well as Clayton did.
They had much to consider: the budget battle, in which Kerry was fighting for more social spending; a conference in Brussels to discuss expanding NATO; a goodwill visit to Lara's ancestral village in Mexico; this morning's event with gun manufacturers. But Clayton's reference to the terrorist Al Anwar erased all else. For Americans, Mahmoud Al Anwar was the newest face of terror: he had moved from kidnapping and executing Americans abroad to financing the two fanatics who, shortly after Kerry's election, had flown a private airplane filled with explosives into a football stadium, killing or maiming several thousand onlookers and scarring the national psyche. And so Kerry had inherited the hunt for a captive Al Anwar and his inner circle, now directed by the Special Forces through one of two warring factions in the Sudan.
"They've 'thought' that before," Kerry said. "How long until they know, I wonder."
Clayton shrugged. "It's bad terrain, and tunneled. It could be days, weeks, months. But suppose you get a phone call in an hour, and find Al Anwar on your hands?"
It was choices like this, Kerry reflected, that nothing could prepare you for—a fateful decision, made in a moral quagmire, with untold consequences. "If that happens," Kerry answered, "it's too late."
Looking past him, Clayton stared out the window at the Rose Garden, then sipped from his mug of coffee. "You'd have to put Al Anwar on trial, I expect. Except that he'd make a rotten prisoner."
Slowly, Kerry nodded. "Bad for hostages, you mean. His people could kidnap more Americans, demanding his return. And when I didn't cave, Al Qaeda would start mailing me their prisoners' severed limbs."
"You'd have to assume that."
"And the World Court?"
"Legalities aside, same problem—except that our allies would hate it. Imagine NATO once Al Anwar starts bombing Italian lovers in cafes, or blowing up Big Ben. We'd lose support for rolling up his network." Pausing, Clayton stared into his coffee cup. "And so . . ."
Kerry was silent. As often as he had imagined being President, the weight of lives in the balance felt heavy beyond his reckoning. At length, he answered, "We hope for the ideal outcome. Where there's nothing to decide."
There was nothing more to say. Clayton understood him well: tomorrow morning, perhaps, Kerry would learn that Al Anwar was dead.
"Guns," Kerry said.
The verbal shorthand was typical of them. "They'll be here at ten," Clayton answered. "Martin Bresler and five gun company CEOs."
"Voluntary safety locks." Kerry's tone combined wonder and disgust. "Thirty thousand deaths from guns a year, and this is the best we can do."
Clayton shrugged again. "If these folks don't get kneecapped by the SSA for doing this, maybe next time they'll help you keep guns away from criminals. That might actually save some lives."
"Amazing," Kerry said. "We pass a law requiring licensed gun dealers to run background checks so felons, wife-beaters and drug abusers can't buy weapons. But all you have to do is say you're a collector, not a dealer, and you can take your arsenal to a gun show and sell semiautomatic weapons to Charles Manson. A loophole big enough to drive Mahmoud Al Anwar through, courtesy of the SSA." Shaking his head, Kerry finished, "The 'right to bear arms.' The SSA thinks that means the right to arm bears, or anything old enough to pull a trigger."
Clayton's smile was thin. "How many pickup trucks did you see last election with stickers like 'Ban Kilcannon, not guns'? For a lot of folks, guns are a symbol—the system's stacked against them, and now a city boy with no kids and a celebrity g
irlfriend wants to take their guns away. Or so the SSA keeps telling them in every fund-raising letter . . ."
"All this paranoia. When all I want is to keep innocent people from dying."
"Paranoia," Clayton answered, "is what the SSA has to sell. Gun owners voted against you three to one. But the people who worry about gun violence care about sixteen other things, too."
"Don't I know it," Kerry said with weary resignation. "Even school shootings have the half-life of a fruit fly. And so here I am, going hat in hand to gun companies, begging for scraps."
Clayton frowned. "They've got their problems, too," he pointed out. "Big tobacco has the highest cash flow in America, and they can export death to the third world like hell won't have it. But the gun industry is small and fragmented—dozens of companies struggling to get by. So the SSA has them by the balls—they've got the money, the scariest lobby in Washington, most of the Republican Party, more than a few Democrats, and half of these guys' customers. What do you have to offer them?"
"Decency. And survival." Kerry leaned back in his chair. "I swear I can make this issue work for us. Sometime, somewhere, there's going to be a tragedy so awful that people will wake up."
"And what will that be? It wasn't Columbine." Clayton's voice was quiet now. "Your brother was shot, then you. And nothing happened.
"I know how you feel, Kerry. But don't break your heart over this one. Take what you can get, and move on."
The remark, with its reminder that Clayton—and Clayton alone— called Kerry by his given name in private, also bespoke his friend's role as pragmatist. Don't bet your Presidency on guns, was Clayton's unspoken message. You're still an untested President, who won by a handful of votes, searching for a comfort zone with the millions who doubt you. Look for your successes elsewhere.
"I'll try to pull back from the precipice," Kerry said at length. "In the meanwhile, cheer up. I'm about to clean up my values problem."
"How? By adopting twins?"
"Not yet. But Lara's finally capitulated."
"A wedding date?"
Kerry grinned. "Yes. I guess she got tired of going home at midnight."
"Congratulations, pal." With a smile of genuine pleasure, Clayton added, "God knows you two have earned it."
"I thought so."
"Have you picked a date yet?"
"Labor Day, we think. Care to be Best Man?"
At this, Clayton was quiet, clearly touched. "Will I have to buy a new tuxedo?"
"Maybe blue jeans. We've decided to run away."
Above the smile at one corner of his mouth, Clayton gave him a probing, bright-eyed look. "You're joking, of course."
"Somewhat. But Lara would like a private wedding. Close friends and family, nothing like Charles and Diana."
"But you told her you knew better, right?"
Kerry smiled. "Do I?"
"Of course you do," his friend expostulated. "You barely won a bitter election. You rammed through your nominee for Chief Justice, a single woman, by one vote after she became the poster girl for 'partialbirth' abortion. Now your approval rating is stuck at fifty-three percent." Clayton held up a hand, seeking time to finish. "I'm not arguing for a political rally. But this is huge—a once-in-a-lifetime, nonpartisan opportunity to ensure that millions love you who don't now. You've got no right to squander it."
Now Kerry's smile was fractional. "Please mention that to my fiancée."
"Lara knows. She didn't make a zillion dollars on television by not knowing." Clayton's tone was that of a man reciting the obvious. "She's got a mother, two sisters, and a niece who, from the pictures, are all adorable. That Mom's a working-class Hispanic makes them the American Dream."
"To Lara, they're her family. And families, like the American Dream, can have their dark side."
Clayton raised his eyebrows. "How so?"
"The middle sister is also a battered wife. Last night, she called us."
As Kerry summarized the call, Clayton settled back. His expression, though empathic, became guarded.
"Get me the D.A.'s private number," Kerry finished. "As soon as I'm through meeting with the gun executives, I want him and his domestic violence person on the phone."
Clayton considered this. "Watch your ethics," he admonished. "If this was a federal prosecutor instead of a local, you'd probably be breaking a law or two. Presidential fingers on the scale of justice."
"These people don't work for me," Kerry rejoined. "I'm just going to walk them through this, make sure it all goes right."
"Maybe so. But this isn't a random phone call from a casual friend. This is the President calling."
"Which is why I won't have to call them twice." Kerry paused, voice level and determined. "This can't keep happening to her, Clayton. Not on my watch."
EIGHT
At ten o'clock, Jack Sanders, the President's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, ushered Martin Bresler and five CEOs of gun companies into the Oval Office.
Collectively, the seven were an ill-assorted group. Slender, scholarly and intense, Sanders was a generation younger than the rest, a political scientist from Princeton. Bresler—small, dark, loquacious, and frenetic— headed the Gun Sports Coalition, an industry group formed to soften the image of gun manufacturers and, Bresler hoped, steer a middle ground between two implacable enemies, Kerry Kilcannon and the SSA. The CEOs were the first subjects of this improbable experiment: middle-aged and white, burly except for one, they looked as uncomfortable to Kerry as suspects in a lineup. Though respectful, they were reticent; Kerry was quite certain that none had voted for him. As Kerry greeted them, only George Callister, the CEO of Lexington Arms, returned his handshake with an unflinching gaze which bespoke a quiet confidence.
The White House photographer hurried in. Serially, each CEO posed with Kerry for the obligatory "grip and grin" shot; struck by the awkwardness of it all, Kerry idly wondered if any of these photographs would end up on a wall. Waving them to the u-shaped couch and wing chairs, Kerry amended his mental image of a lineup—they seemed more like prisoners on the wrong end of a firing squad.
The absurdity of this made Kerry smile—when all else fails, he thought, make an offering to the god of laughter. "Believe me," he told them, "I know how tough it is to be seen with me. But don't worry— right after the ceremony we're putting all of you in the witness protection program."
There was tentative laughter. Smiling, Bresler asked, "Are you telling our wives?"
"We already have," Kerry rejoined. "They all wish you guys a lot of luck."
The chuckles felt more genuine now. But even as George Callister joined in, Kerry felt Callister assessing him with genuine curiosity. With his grey crew cut, stocky build, broad face, and midwestern accent, Callister reminded Kerry of an engineer, the kind of man who worked with his head and hands. Instinctively Kerry felt that, among this group, Callister was important. Though careful to look from face to face, Kerry focused his attention on the CEO of Lexington.
"Seriously," he told them, "I'm grateful that you're here. Too many gunshot accidents can be easily prevented, too many involve young children. Look at cars—air bags, seat belts, and changes in design have all saved lives. So will this.
"To me, it seems so simple—by putting safety locks on all your guns, you're preventing needless tragedy. But I know you're bucking the SSA."
Bresler nodded. "We're willing to stand with you, Mr. President, and see where it goes."
"I appreciate that." Kerry leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him, looking intently from one face to the other. "Let me tell you where I hope it goes. Supposedly, our current laws prevent felons, wife-beaters, drug abusers, those convicted of violent misdemeanors, and the adjudicated mentally ill from buying handguns. That only makes sense— instead of locking them up after they've already killed someone, we run background checks to prevent the most dangerous among us from buying guns.
"But the SSA and its friends in Congress confined the background checks to federally licens
ed dealers, exempting anyone who claims to be a so-called private seller." Pausing, Kerry focused on George Callister. "As one example, that means that someone convicted of a violent crime can go to a gun show, and buy enough semiautomatic handguns to arm the whole Al Qaeda network. Which makes no sense."
"Maybe to you, Mr. President," Callister responded soberly. " 'But what if your private seller's a bona fide hobbyist,' the SSA would say. 'Why should he wait three days for a background check to sell a handgun to a law-abiding citizen?' "
"Because law-abiding citizens," Kerry rejoined, "don't need gun shows to buy weapons. They can pass a background check and buy from licensed dealers.
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