Balance of Power

by Richard North Patterson

  * * *

  In the silence, Kerry's phone rang.

  It was Senator Chuck Hampton. "Tell the First Lady, Mr. President, that her interview was extraordinary, and deeply moving."

  "Thanks, Chuck. I'll do that. And on your end?"

  Hampton laughed softly. "If you mean my end of Pennsylvania Avenue, she's an asset. Frank Fasano can't be happy, and neither can the SSA."

  Nor, Kerry realized, did he himself feel quite as happy as he could be. There was far too much to wonder about.

  * * *

  After the last hour, Sarah realized, it was hard to refocus on her brief. When her telephone rang, she almost welcomed the distraction.

  "Is this Sarah Dash?" the woman asked.

  The voice sounded so familiar that Sarah felt her skin tingle. "It is."

  "This is Lara Kilcannon. Would it be possible to see you?"

  FOUR

  Sarah Dash and Lara Kilcannon met in the solarium.

  Sarah had never visited the White House. But she understood that this area was the First Lady's domain; that, for reasons of politics, Lara could not conduct her business in the West Wing; that she did not wish Sarah to be seen at all. For Sarah's part, no one but the Director of the Kilcannon Center knew that she was here.

  Briskly crossing the room, Lara took Sarah's hand. "For two weeks," she said with a smile, "I didn't miss a day of the Tierney trial. Though I imagine you could have done without the cameras."

  At once Sarah felt at ease. "I hated them," she acknowledged. "And the media as a whole—the total invasion of privacy, this sudden interest in my personal life. I still can't pass through an airport without people coming up to me. Some of them are supportive. Others call me a babykiller. All I want is to crawl into a hole."

  This seemed to strike a chord. "Too late," Lara said with sympathy. "But everyone I know admires what you did. I know that Kerry was very glad to hear you'd joined the Kilcannon Center. He thought you were wasted in corporate law."

  Kerry, Sarah thought. Already she felt the seductive power of the White House; on meeting, Lara Kilcannon referred to the President as though Sarah were an intimate. Though this flattered Sarah, it made her wary. The Tierney case, and its impact on the Masters confirmation, had taught her much about politics at the highest level—most of all that it was intoxicating, and that those who entered this world often pay too dearly.

  The thought brought her up short, and back to the First Lady. Lara Kilcannon was quite beautiful, with pale skin, black hair and deep brown eyes more sensitive than television conveyed. In another context, Sarah might have given in to the fascination of meeting her. In this context, she must redouble her efforts to keep her wits about her, mindful of the crosscurrents between the Kilcannons' aspirations, and her own.

  "Mrs. Kilcannon," Sarah ventured, "before we start . . ."

  " 'Lara,' " the First Lady requested good-humoredly. "I know there's

  a place for protocol. But 'Mrs. Kilcannon' sounds like one of those sour oil paintings they've hung on the first floor."

  "Lara," Sarah corrected with a smile, "you want this conversation to be confidential. Does that mean, in your mind, that it's covered by the attorney-client privilege?"

  Lara's own smile reappeared, more faintly. "It does. For now, let's assume that I'm a potential plaintiff in a wrongful death action against Lexington Arms. As is my sister Mary."

  "And you're considering asking the Kilcannon Center to represent her, or you. Or both of you."

  The First Lady nodded. "The Kilcannon Center has been counsel in numerous suits against the gun industry. We think you can best represent our values."

  Our values, Sarah thought. There was something more beneath the surface, beginning with Lara's pretense—which she clearly meant for Sarah to see through—that she herself was considering a lawsuit. Bluntly, Sarah asked, "Does Mary agree?"

  A certain sadness, Sarah thought, surfaced in Lara's eyes. Watching, Sarah found her sense of caution tempered by a deeper feeling—that, for Lara, something still to be said occasioned genuine pain.

  "I don't know," Lara answered simply. "I haven't talked to her yet."

  * * *

  Sarah Dash, it was already clear to Lara, had a grasp of the unspoken and an intuitive sense of people. There was no point in attempting to delude her, and Lara had no heart to try. "The painful truth," she continued softly, "is that, on a visceral level, Mary holds us both responsible for what John Bowden did. At least for now."

  Speaking this aloud, Lara found, deepened her sense of sorrow. For a moment, she felt the impulse to express her misgivings about what she was about to ask, both of Sarah and of Mary. But though Sarah seemed to regard her with sympathy, this was not the reason that Lara had asked her here.

  "The President," Lara told her, "has a personal interest in a lawsuit."

  For a moment, Sarah was quiet. "In the lawsuit," she asked, "or in its conduct?"

  "Both," Lara answered. "I think it was Clausewitz who said that war is diplomacy by other means. This lawsuit would be politics by other means."

  "How so?"

  "One of the harsher lessons Kerry's learned is that there are powers a President doesn't have, or can't exercise because the political price is far too high." Pausing, Lara heard the bitterness beneath the softness of her voice. "We couldn't protect Joan's privacy—the media wouldn't allow it. We couldn't use the Secret Service to protect her life—the law wouldn't allow it. We couldn't get background checks at gun shows—the SSA wouldn't allow it. And now Kerry can't be seen as using the legal system to advance a 'personal agenda.' That's what saving lives is called when a President's relatives are murdered."

  Perhaps out of respect for Lara's feelings, Sarah paused before asking, "What does the President want from this?"

  "The same things I want," Lara said firmly. "To expose the facts behind the development and marketing of the gun and bullets that killed my mother, sister and niece. To split Lexington off from the industry, and show that the SSA can't protect it any longer. To find out where the murderer got the gun. To keep building support for the law Kerry wants enacted. In short, to coordinate the legal and the political, without publicly acknowledging his role."

  "And how would we accomplish that?"

  Briefly, Lara hesitated. "Through me."

  Sarah's gaze grew contemplative. "I admire you," she confessed. "You don't know how much. Part of me wants to help you in any way I can.

  "But the more cautious part has to question my own motives. Am I so young—or ambitious—that I'd take direction from a President without knowing where it leads? Or so flexible that I'd put his interests ahead of my presumptive client's?"

  The questions, Lara thought, reinforced her good opinion of Sarah Dash. "None of the above," she answered. "You simply care about this issue for its own sake."

  "Same problem," Sarah rejoined. "Mary might wonder when caring about the issue takes precedence over her. She can find a host of able lawyers to represent her interests."

  "That's the problem. One may have already found her. Robert Lenihan."

  "Bob Lenihan?" Sarah said in surprise. "He's more than able. He's spent the last ten years extracting a fortune from my old firm's corporate clients."

  Lara nodded. "Then you know that he also has his own agenda— notoriety, political influence and money. Do you really think you'd have less concern for her than he might?"

  Sarah gazed at her in open curiosity. "Just how," she inquired, "will you go about shouldering aside Bob Lenihan?"

  Nothing but total candor, Lara realized, would satisfy Sarah Dash. "We won't. That's not in Kerry's political interests—he needs the plaintiffs' lawyers, and their money, as a counterweight to the SSA. What we envision is that you and Bob Lenihan will serve as Mary's cocounsel . . ."

  "Wait," Sarah held up her hand, her tone combining humor with incredulity. "On top of everything else—including enough political and familial complications to challenge Machiavelli—you'd be throwing
me in a scorpion pit with an egomaniac with twenty more years' experience, a talent for treachery and manipulation, and all the motive in the world to turn these gifts on me."

  Lara found herself smiling. "I think that pretty well states it," she said wryly. "Or, perhaps, understates it."

  Despite herself, Sarah began to laugh. "Please," she said, "don't try to oversell this. It's so attractive on its own."

  * * *

  Once more, Lara Kilcannon transformed before Sarah's eyes. While still pleasant, her expression became serious, her voice soft. "I know this is a lot to take in. All that I can tell you is that I'm not asking just for Kerry's sake. Or I could never ask Mary to consider how best to value the family we both lost."

  Pensive, Sarah composed her answer. She had not fully gauged the pitfalls of the First Lady's proposal, most of all entering the world of Kerry and Lara Kilcannon. But that they had invited her was compelling. At heart, Sarah agreed with them—the case was far bigger than Mary Costello. It was the case of any lawyer's career: the chance to establish moral, if not legal, responsibility for the death of Lara's family and, by doing so, to transform America's relationship to guns. "If Mary wants to meet me," she said at last, "I'd explain that I'd be taking this on as a cause; that her lawsuit would be a political weapon; that whatever money she might recover is not my sole concern. After that, it's up to her."

  For a moment, Sarah imagined the relief she saw on Lara's face warring with her deeper worries about Mary. "Thank you," the First Lady said simply.

  FIVE

  "So now you want to pick my lawyer," Mary said.

  On a bright fall afternoon, she and Lara walked along a path in Golden Gate Park. The cramped space of Mary's studio apartment, with its newly framed photographs of Inez, Joan, and Marie, had been too much for Lara. The park, with its spacious paths, the menthol scent from eucalyptus overhead, reminded her of the family picnics Inez would organize after Sunday Mass, evoking happier memories. But now her Secret Service detail led and followed. To Lara, the two surviving sisters composed an awkward picture—intense, unsmiling, walking slightly apart—belying the benign explanation that the First Lady had flown to San Francisco merely to spend time with Mary before commencing her travels as advocate.

  "I can't pick your lawyer," Lara answered. "Only you can. But we wanted you to have the broadest range of advice. The Kilcannon Center sees these suits not simply as wrongful death actions, but as a way of saving lives. Isn't that what we want?"

  " 'We'?" Mary's tone was pointed. "The other day, at school, a new teacher I barely know came up to me. I could see how hard it was for her to tell me how she felt.

  "I was ready to say that I was okay, and that I was grateful for her thoughts." Mary's voice became quiet and bitter. "Do you know what she asked me, Lara? 'How is your sister doing?' She'd watched you with Cathie Civitch, and she was worried for you."

  For a moment, Lara was speechless. For her, the appearance on NBC had been an ordeal, intensified by the pressure of an audience which had proven to be the largest ever for a prime-time interview. But, for Mary, it was another chapter in the lifelong story of Lara eclipsing her sisters, served up with a sad new twist—Mary as the forgotten mourner. "I'm sorry," Lara said.

  In profile, Mary's thin face, gazing straight ahead, conveyed her sense of distance. "I'm just trying to make you see this, Lara. You can go on television. You can give speeches, tell people what laws to pass." Abruptly, Mary stopped, standing with folded arms and tears filling her eyes. "I didn't decide how to 'protect' Joanie and Marie. No one even asked me. I had to hear about it two days before your wedding.

  "Three days later they were dead. I was there, Lara—I saw them die. I went to the hospital and prayed for Marie. But all I've got is recurring nightmares and a lawsuit against the company who made the bullets that tore them apart. And you want to control that, too."

  Despairing, Lara clutched her arm. "I don't want anything from this."

  "As long as I let your lawyer run the case." Turning on her, Mary demanded, "Are you still my sister, Lara? Or are you just his wife?"

  Lara's mouth felt dry. "I'm your sister. That makes us both Inez's daughters, Joanie's sisters, Marie's aunts. We both hurt. Why fight over them when they're dead?"

  "Because they were my family," Mary retorted. "Not a prop at a wedding, or an unpaid political advertisement, or people whose problems I can talk about on television . . ."

  "The Chronicle was about to print the story." Wounded, Lara stopped herself, feeling the depth of her own guilt. "I couldn't help what happened, Mary."

  "You can help what you do," Mary said with muted anger. "Or expect me to do."

  They had to stop this, Lara knew. She tried to step outside herself, to see two grieving sisters. "Tell me, Mary, what this lawsuit means to you."

  "More than money," Mary answered with fierce possessiveness. "It's my way of remembering them, and honoring my mother."

  "My mother," echoed in Lara's brain. "Then when you're alone," she implored her sister, "ask yourself how she would want us to be."

  Silent, Mary gave her a wary, guarded look.

  "Alone," she said at last. "Right now that's all I want."

  Five hours later, Mary called Lara at her hotel, and said that she would meet with Sarah Dash. Only then did Lara cry.

  SIX

  To Sarah's surprise, when Mary Costello appeared at the Kilcannon Center, Robert Lenihan was with her. As soon as Sarah had led them to her office, he said in a proprietary tone, "I gather that Mrs. Kilcannon wanted you to meet my client."

  Casting a disdainful glance at Sarah's spartan office, he sat back, hands folded comfortably across his belly. His own office in Beverly Hills was as legendary as his ego: a former colleague of Sarah's had described its decor as "late Byzantine, accented by photographs of the Emperor Bob receiving tribute from Presidents and other lesser men." In contrast to Lenihan's arrogance, Mary's blue-green eyes conveyed the aftershock of a trauma so severe that it seemed to have overwhelmed her.

  At once, Sarah decided to focus on Mary. "What I understand," she said gently, "is that you wanted to discuss a potential action for wrongful death."

  Silent, Mary nodded. "What's your take?" Lenihan inquired of Sarah. "My message to the jury will be simple—that Lexington designed and marketed the P-2 as a weapon uniquely suited to killing human beings."

  "That's fine," Sarah rejoined. "But you have to put the P-2 in its context." Pausing, she spoke to Mary. "Financially, the gun industry's in trouble. Guns don't wear out, and their traditional owners are slowly dying off.

  "So the industry faced a choice. They could expand their customer base by making guns safer, or by persuading urban and suburbanites that they needed superguns capable of firing more rounds more quickly, and of inflicting deadly wounds." Her voice softened. "You saw the choice they made. Morally, it's analogous to big tobacco deciding to put more nicotine in cigarettes . . ."

  "The difference," Lenihan objected, "is that people don't smoke in self-defense. As Lexington will drive home to a jury."

  Lenihan, Sarah thought with irritation, was positioning himself as the voice of experience, uniquely capable of persuading twelve ordinary citizens to decide for Mary Costello. "Self-defense," she said to Mary, "doesn't begin to explain the record rate of gun violence in America.

  "In nineteen sixty-three, there were a little over half a million handguns in America. Today, there are over three million. In 1963, only fourteen percent of handguns had a magazine capacity of ten rounds or more. The next year, the percentage of those guns tripled. And the P-2 is among the worst. It's not designed for self-defense. It's simply not accurate enough. All it's good for is spraying the most bullets in the least amount of time." Turning to Lenihan, she finished, "That's your case. Because that's why Bowden bought it."

  Mary's gaze darted back to Sarah. "But why do ordinary people want one?"

  "Fear," Sarah answered. "Fear of minorities, or civil disorder, or the govern
ment, or violent crime. Fear sells guns to homeowners, and single women." Before Lenihan could interrupt, Sarah continued. "Fear even sells guns to cops. The gun industry sold the first superguns to police, then told them they were threatened by the even more lethal guns they'd begun selling to civilians, then offered the cops the newest superguns in exchange for their old ones, and then resold those guns on the open market, double-dipping while increasing the number of lethal weapons on the streets. Which increased the risks to cops . . ."

  "It's an arms race," Lenihan interposed, "as the President suggested. The message is that the world is a scary place, populated by people who are armed and dangerous, so you'd better be better armed than they are."