Balance of Power

by Richard North Patterson

  "Maybe Lexington did," Kerry said tightly. "Or maybe the SSA."

  Clayton crossed his arms. "All I'm saying is to take your time. Politics isn't therapy."

  Kerry's anger expressed itself in a mirthless smile, a voice muted with suppressed emotion. "Maybe I'm too self-involved for office. Maybe I hate the people who put this gun in Bowden's hands. Maybe I'm sublimating guilt through action. But I'm not a fool." Now Kerry's voice became quiet and cool. "If these murders are too much for me, just maybe, at last, they're too much for the country. You can take guilt and grief and anger and turn it into something better.

  "For the past few days, I've been watching Lara, wondering what to do. And there's nothing." Kerry's tone was softer yet. "I'm sick of comforting victims when there is no comfort. I'm sick of the SSA. I'm sick of guns and death."

  "Sick of guns," Clayton responded evenly. "Period. And everyone knows it. Which makes you less than the perfect Messiah." Clayton's face took on a stubborn cast. "I hope you know how little I enjoy this conversation. But we need to have it before you and Lara go to Martha's Vineyard. If you make this into Armageddon, people will be flooding gun shops, and the SSA will be shoveling money and votes at the GOP to take down every Democrat in Congress who stands a chance of losing . . ."

  "That's supposed to stop me? Fear of losing?"

  "Maybe it should," Clayton rejoined. "The SSA's the most powerful lobby in Washington—on this issue, far more powerful than you.

  "Consider how the world looks to Chuck Hampton and the Democrats in the Senate. Last November, you barely won. You lost the South, the border states, and the interior West. Thanks to the Masters nomination—at least until these shootings—you were the first Democratic President in history to achieve a majority disapproval rating from Republicans two short months into your Presidency." Rising, Clayton stood face-to-face with Kerry. "Guns are even more polarizing than abor tion. You'll have to be prepared to launch a second campaign—visiting every county sheriff in every border state, telling sentimental stories about your dad the cop until you want to throw up—and stake your Presidency on your success.

  "Maybe Hampton's people wouldn't run from you like the plague. Maybe, Mr. President, these murders have changed everything. But you had better pray that's so."

  Tense, Clayton looked into his best friend's cool blue eyes. "They could change everything," Kerry rejoined. "Now people know that a spousal abuser like John Bowden can go to a gun show and buy a Lexington P-2 and Eagle's Claw bullets. God help me, I couldn't have done better than Bowden if I'd invented him. Which, perhaps, I did."

  "Which makes it personal," Clayton shot back. "The SSA will say that you're manipulative and obsessed, that you're excusing your failure to protect Lara's family by blaming it on them . . ."

  "Fuck them," Kerry snapped. "I'll never get the Kilcannon haters, or the people who believe our government is out to get them. What I need is the majority of decent people—gun owners included—who think the life of a six-year-old girl outweighs the 'right' of a madman to buy any weapon he wants. Then maybe I can defeat the SSA in Congress, and save the next Marie." Pausing, Kerry's gaze became intense, almost implacable. "The SSA claims they've never lost. But there's a selfdestructive quality about them, a tendency to go too far and say too much. They'll cannibalize the pro-gun movement if we can corner them . . ."

  "Do that," Clayton admonished, "and they'll try to destroy you. They'll make the fight over the Masters nomination and late term abortion look like nothing."

  "Maybe so," Kerry answered with a shrug. "But what divides people over abortion is an insoluble moral question: whether a fetus is an inviolate life from the moment of conception. The SSA has manufactured the division over gun rights out of paranoia and cultural distrust, and what's manufactured can be changed."

  Perhaps, Clayton reflected, Kerry—despite his guilt and sadness—had thought this through. "I didn't ask for this," Kerry finished more quietly. "I'd give up this office in a heartbeat if I could give Lara back her mother, or her sister, or Marie. But that's not the hand fate dealt me. So now the only question besides healing Lara is how I use their deaths."

  Once more, Clayton fell silent, debating whether to speak. "Depending on what you do," he finally said, "trying to heal Lara could make this worse than you've imagined. If you put her out there with you, she'll become a target. Nothing will be off-limits." Clayton watched Kerry absorb his tacit reference to Lara's secret abortion. "Please," Clayton implored his friend, "don't let John Bowden overwhelm your Presidency. Or, if you can help it, your marriage."

  Kerry did not respond. Walking to the window, he gazed into the darkened courtyard. "Let's talk about Al Anwar," Clayton said at length.

  "Let's." Kerry did not turn. "How did you keep it quiet?"

  "With difficulty. I put the fear of God into the Pentagon, and had them ship the body in secrecy to the air force base at Stuttgart. My excuse was that we needed a positive forensic identification, and that we'd all look incompetent, and worse, if we announced the death of a terrorist who then popped up on the Al Jazeera network. But there was never any real doubt it was Al Anwar, and now there's none at all. How CNN missed this I'll never know." Clayton's tone became imperative. "We can say you were only being responsible, Mr. President. But this lends itself to less charitable interpretations. You've sat on it as long as you dare."

  For a moment, Kerry was silent. "Go find Ellen," he requested. "As soon as Lara and I are in the air, she can announce Al Anwar's death."

  * * *

  Kerry and his Vice President sat beside each other in wing chairs. When they had finished speaking of Al Anwar, Ellen Penn turned to guns, her dark brown eyes bespeaking her concern. "I know how hard this is for both of you," she began. "But either we change the gun laws in this country, or Lara's family becomes just another statistic. To paraphrase your inaugural address, 'If not now, when; if not us, who?' "

  "Perhaps not me. People say I polarize. And I do."

  Ellen considered this. "There's also Lara," she replied. "I watched her at the funeral, Mr. President. I saw what she can do."

  Turning, Kerry looked at her, questioning. "The Costellos are victims," Ellen continued, "and Lara gives them voice. Like her, you're a survivor of gun violence; better than anyone, you know that the decision to turn a nightmare into a cause can be profound. But Lara can speak for women and children as no one else."

  Ellen's tough and feisty surface, Kerry reflected, concealed a deep compassion. "The funeral," he told her, "was even harder on Lara than it looked. I don't know if she'll want to relive it, over and over."

  "But what if she decides to?" Ellen countered. "Would you try to stop her? And if you could, where would that leave her? Let alone the two of you."

  At this, Kerry felt an infinite weariness. "I have no idea," he answered.

  SEVEN

  Their first night on Martha's Vineyard, Kerry awoke from a restless sleep.

  Lara was gone. He pulled on blue jeans and a sweater and walked onto the deck. In the moonlight, Lara waded ankle deep into a chill ocean.

  Watching, Kerry debated whether to go to her. Then Peter Lake said quietly, "She's all right, Mr. President."

  Kerry turned. Standing beside the deck, Peter gazed at Lara.

  She's not all right, Kerry wanted to say. She barely sleeps. She drops things she's forgotten she's holding. At times she's angry and demanding, and then silence descends. She cries when she shouldn't, can't cry when she should. I don't know what to do.

  "Thank you," the President said simply.

  * * *

  At daybreak, Kerry found her sitting cross-legged on a windswept dune.

  "Care to talk about it?" he asked.

  Distractedly, Lara brushed the hair back from her face, still studying the water. She answered him with dispassion. "About hating myself? What is there to say? I abdicated my responsibilities in every possible way—assigning Joanie to you, helping the media to take her life over. Now they're all de
ad. So I sit here, hating the life we're supposed to lead."

  Do you hate me? Kerry wanted to ask. But it was not the time to express his own anguish, or to ask for reassurance. Or even, right now, fairness. He could not define what fairness was.

  "You didn't fail them," he told her. "I did. Our system of politics did, and our laws. That's how Bowden got his gun."

  * * *

  Later they drank coffee on the deck. "Politics," Lara said. This had become her recent pattern—talking in single words or phrases, at times connected to something said an hour before. When Kerry turned to her, she asked, "What will you do?"

  "Break the power of the SSA, if I can. Pass a law that works. Try to keep this from happening to some other family—at least in the way it did."

  Lara sipped her coffee. "Can you?"

  "Perhaps. At a cost." Reflecting, Kerry studied the ocean, deep grey in a lingering mist. "People like Hampton will remind me about health care, or education—all the issues which affect more people than guns do—and worry that I'll cost us the next election.

  "For my Presidency, this is a defining moment. I'm custodian of a lot of lives, a bunch of conflicting hopes, and the careers of a pack of senators and congressmen just trying to survive. Whatever I do will impact them."

  Lara resumed her survey of the shoreline. "When I covered Congress," she said after a time, "I used to observe the pettiness and backstabbing, the sheer cowardice of politics, and pride myself on my worldliness. Now the whole thing makes me sick."

  * * *

  She tried to nap. When she emerged from the bedroom, holloweyed, Kerry placed two cups of clam chowder on the table.

  Staring at the steaming cup, Lara picked up her soup spoon, put it down again. Tears welled in her eyes. "Do you know who I miss the most? My mother. She was the one who always cared for me.

  "I know—she'd already lived her life. Joanie was breaking free, and Marie was so young. Mama would have gladly died to save them . . ." Voice catching, Lara bowed her head. "I feel so violated, Kerry. She was the first person I ever loved."

  Kerry watched as tears ran down her face.

  * * *

  The night was deep and still—the faint whirring of crickets, sea grass rustling in the wind. Kerry and Lara sat on the deck, long moments passing in silence.

  "A law." Her face and voice were affectless. "Can you promise me you'll pass it?"

  This required no answer. Kerry offered none.

  "If you're trying to protect me, don't." Her voice held a first trace of steel. "They were my family, not yours. This time I won't sit back and watch you."

  * * *

  They lay beside each other, sleepless in the dark. For an hour or more, neither had spoken.

  "When I was little," Lara finally said, "my father owned a gun. Even then it scared me—like he did. Just passing a gun shop gave me the creeps.

  "Then you were shot, and I nearly lost you." Her voice softened. "I made a pact with God—that if you lived I'd never leave you, no matter what sacrifices I'd have to make. And when you survived I believed that He had given you back to me, and now would never take you."

  In the pause that followed, Kerry touched her hand. "He gave me you," she finished. "And then He took them in exchange . . ."

  Heartsick, Kerry listened to the sound of muffled crying.

  * * *

  They walked the beach on a cool midmorning, hands in the pockets of their windbreakers. Out to sea, a Coast Guard cutter sliced along the perimeter mapped out by Peter Lake, beyond which two cabin cruisers carried photographers with telephoto lenses.

  "Next week," Lara said, "there'll be a magazine cover of this moment, to remind me I'm First Lady. That's what I am now—a symbol. The only job I have."

  "True. But there's much a First Lady can do."

  Abruptly stopping, Lara turned to him. "Please, if I decide to do something about guns, support me."

  In his worry and ambivalence, Kerry found no words. "Before this happened," she told him, "it might have been race and poverty—somewhere I could use my skills to make people see lives they choose to ignore, and actually give a damn. But I don't have a choice now. Now it's guns."

  * * *

  They ate more chowder by candlelight. "It's better the second day," Lara said.

  Smiling faintly, Kerry watched her glass of wine kick in. At length he ventured, "There are some realities we should talk about."

  "Such as?"

  Aimlessly, Kerry stirred his chowder. "When it comes to First Ladies, Americans have problems with gender and lines of authority. They don't want the President's wife formulating policy, or running a task force. Marriage isn't enough—to push an agenda or propose new laws, you have to get elected to something."

  "What about dead relatives," Lara answered coldly. "Is that too feeble a credential?"

  "No. Not if your goal is to make people feel the tragedy of gun violence, the pain of lives lost for no good reason . . ."

  "Because I'm a victim," Lara interrupted in anger and derision. "Do you know how much I hate being a victim? That's how too many people are most comfortable with women—as victims. 'Protect the mommies, save the children' . . ."

  "There's more to worry about," Kerry warned. "If you get out front on this, people will say it's all about you—that if you'd become a paraplegic we'd be going full bore for stem cell research . . ."

  "They say that about you," Lara snapped. "You need me, Kerry. You need women. You know it yourself—the only way to win this is by making women care even more than the gun fanatics do.

  "I'm not going to tour the country with home movies of my mother, Marie and Joanie. They're dead, dammit—there's nothing I can do for them. But there are thousands of living people out there who've lost someone they love to guns.

  "I know this can't be Lara Costello's traveling memorial service." Her tone was low and determined. "If I go out and do this, it will be with other men and women who are looking for a way to keep some other husband, wife or parent from suffering as they did. I can be that way."

  * * *

  At midnight, Kerry and Lara stood together, jeans rolled up, chill water nipping their feet and ankles. "There are risks to what you're proposing," Kerry said.

  "Such as?"

  "Getting shot, for one. We still get letters telling me how much better Jamie looked without the top of his head . . ."

  "I'd have protection . . ."

  "So did he. So did I."

  Lara turned to him. "They killed my family, Kerry. When they killed Jamie, you didn't hide. You ran for Jamie's seat . . ."

  "Dammit, Lara, to the kind of crazies who equate an AK-47 with their penis, you're a minority career woman with a high-toned education and a background in the liberal press, and now you want to take away their guns."

  Lara shook her head, resistant. "I can't help it if people are crazy. Or that some frightened males see any assertive woman as emasculating."

  Kerry watched a clump of seaweed swirl at his feet. "All right," he said wearily. "There's the abortion."

  " 'The abortion,' " Lara repeated in mordant tones. "If that's to stop me, why didn't it stop you from wanting to get married?"

  "Because I love you. I thought you knew that."

  Silent, Lara gazed at him. Clasping her shoulders, Kerry spoke softly. "This is different. Like it or not, you're now a figure of sympathy for millions. It's a power you've never had before. Use that power, and the SSA will search for ways to destroy you.

  "That would be enough for them. But it might not be enough for some fanatic with a gun. Guns and abortion is a combustible mixture— it's gotten too many people killed already. I don't want the next one to be you."

  Lara studied him. "Is that all you're afraid of?" she demanded.

  "What else do you think it's about?" he answered with real heat. "My visceral distaste for feminism? Or just politics?"

  Lara's mouth formed a stubborn line. "If it isn't politics, don't try to intimidate me. My life, my ch
oice." Her voice became more level. "You nearly died, then got out of bed and kept on running for President. All I could do was pray. Don't ask me to turn my back on this so you don't have to worry."

  * * *

  Later, Kerry held her. But that was all. They had not made love since the murders. To Kerry, Lara's grief had left her hollow.

  "I don't want a child," she murmured. "At least not now."