Balance of Power

by Richard North Patterson

  Secret Service agents encircled the table. The Minicam followed Kerry toward its proprietor and his wares. "Go back to Washington," someone shouted, his rasp audible in the growing silence.

  Stopping at the table, the President examined a forty-round clip; boxes of Eagle's Claw bullets; bumper stickers which read, "Kilcannon— American Traitor," and "Lara—Traitor Bitch"; a tape on a portable television demonstrating how to convert the P-2 to automatic fire. As Kerry watched, the converted handgun vaporized a pile of watermelons into a spew of pink juice. Get it while you can, the narrator urged, and a grainy photograph of Kerry replaced the slaughtered melons.

  At last, Kerry turned to the seller.

  The rictus of a smile twitched on the man's face—agitated, hostile and sickly. Silent, Kerry scooped up a box of Eagle's Claw bullets in the palm of his hand.

  He waited until the man's gaze was drawn to the box. With a soft underhand flip, Kerry tossed it in his face.

  Startled, the man caught the box inches from his eyes. "Lucky," Kerry told him. "You had time."

  The man's eyes flickered toward the camera. Kerry took a Lexington P-2 and pressed it into his other hand. "Three hours ago you sold a friend of mine two boxes of Eagle's Claw bullets, a forty-round clip, and a Lexington P-2—exactly what John Bowden bought. And you never asked his name, or anything about him."

  The man would not—or could not—respond. Stepping behind the table, Kit Pace lifted the cutout of the President and First Lady and laid it across the pile of bullets. "But it seems you know who I am," Kerry said. "How much do you want for us?"

  Still the man did not speak. Reaching into his pocket, Kerry pulled out his wallet and placed some twenties on the table. "Tell me if you think it's not enough."

  Mute, the seller stared at the green bills. Then Kerry tucked the cardboard cutout under his arm, and turned away.

  * * *

  At home, Frank Fasano watched the last few minutes, telephone propped to his ear. "Guerrilla theater," Dane was saying. "Most people will see this stunt for what it is—a President and his thugs, bullying Americans who believe in the Second Amendment for cheap political gain."

  But the SSA president sounded unsettled. On CNN, Kilcannon departed through the rows of weaponry, Lara's cardboard face still visible beneath his arm. Fasano had the sense of a conflict slipping out of control.

  "What most people will remember," he answered, "is a man standing up for his wife and her murdered family. What's the antidote to that?"

  Dane was silent. "Trust me," he answered with a renewed calm that Fasano found unnerving. "There is one."

  * * *

  In the limousine, Kerry gazed out the window. Softly, he said, "He could have been the seller."

  The ATF would question him, of course. But Kerry might never know.

  "You did enough," Kit answered. "At least for one day."

  EIGHT

  For Frank Fasano, the first harbinger of change was Senator Betsy Shapiro.

  A somewhat imperious moderate Democrat from California, Betsy had been caught between her advocacy of gun control and her ties to the high-tech overlords of Silicon Valley, an important base of financial support, for whom tort reform was fundamental protection from shareholder suits. Fasano had expected her to split the difference by supporting both Kilcannon's gun bill and Fasano's tort reform measure. But the film clip of Kilcannon confronting the seller dominated the morning news in a seemingly endless loop. When Fasano looked up from the color photo of Kilcannon at the gun show on the front page of the New York Times, the clip had been succeeded by a live interview with Senator Shapiro.

  As usual, Betsy looked buttoned-down, her dark brown coif as disciplined and controlled as she was. In good conscience, she was saying, I have to question whether giving legal immunity to the Eagle's Claw bullet can really be called "reform."

  Across from him at the breakfast table, a weary Bernadette held Frank Junior, his small head with its sparse black hair resting at her breast. "I'm not sure what I think about the politics," she told her husband. "Or the law. But that target of the Kilcannons was disgusting."

  That, Fasano thought, captured neatly what Betsy Shapiro was reacting to; with a stroke of intuition, Kilcannon had reduced gun immunity from the abstract to the personal. "Anyone who makes or sells that kind of stuff is crazy," he agreed. "But that's got nothing to do with tort reform." Excusing himself, he went to his den and called Lance Jarrett.

  It was only six o'clock in California, but—as Fasano had known he would be—the president of the world's largest chipmaker was up and running. "Is this about Betsy?" Jarrett asked gruffly.

  "Yup. She seems to have forgotten you."

  "Betsy Shapiro hates guns," Jarrett said. "So do a lot of Californians. All your pro-gun, pro-life crap doesn't sell too well out here."

  Fasano laughed softly. "As opposed to all your pro-business,

  anti-tree-hugger stuff? We appreciate your financial support, Lance. But if we want to control Congress, we need to turn out votes in states you fly over on the way to St. Moritz—like Kansas or Maine or Arkansas— where pro-gun and conservative Christian voters make a difference. As for California, you've tried to play it safe by backing Democrats like Betsy. It's time to see if your strategy pays off."

  "In other words," Jarrett rejoined, "you want me to lean on our senior senator."

  "You're one of her leading fund-raisers. She might appreciate knowing how you feel, and hearing from your mutual friends in the Valley."

  Jarrett was quiet. "Kilcannon really hurt you," he said at length. "Maybe you can't get past it."

  Fasano felt his jaw tighten. "You'd better hope you're wrong. Unless you're willing to take that feeble compromise Kilcannon was hawking to the Chamber of Commerce."

  "Of course not," Jarrett answered scornfully. "I just don't understand why your bill turned into the Gun Protection Act."

  "Because that's the price," Fasano snapped. "I don't tell you how to make chips, so don't tell me how to get you protected from specious lawsuits for the rest of recorded history. All I need is for you to help me realize your dream. As for Betsy, your dream should be her dream—the high-tech community is too important to ignore. Your fellow CEOs, venture capitalists, and investment bankers should be calling her day and night."

  For a few seconds, Fasano waited for a reaction. "All right." For a man accustomed to command, Jarrett's tone became unusually respectful. "I'll get to work this morning."

  * * *

  That afternoon, with great reluctance, Fasano left Bernadette and the baby to meet with his Majority Whip, Dave Ruckles.

  They counted votes over soft drinks in Fasano's office. "What's the damage?" Fasano asked.

  Lean and alert, Ruckles was the perfect operative: a fierce conservative, an indefatigable fund-raiser, a gimlet-eyed counter of votes—and, in Fasano's estimate, neither bright nor supple enough to displace Fasano himself. But he also knew that, in Ruckles's mind, this was a not-toodistant dream, and one which Fasano hoped Ruckles would think was best served by helping the Majority Leader replace a President they both disliked. "I don't know yet," Ruckles admitted. "I think what Kilcannon's done on tort reform is keep the critical votes in play—some of our people, and swing Democrats like Shapiro, Torchio, Coletti and Slezak."

  "It's a problem in two parts," Fasano reminded him. "We want to pass tort reform with the sixty-seven votes we'll need to overrule Kilcannon's veto, and this gun immunity provision's got us stuck around sixty. But first we have to keep Hampton from getting the fifty-one votes he needs to pass an amendment stripping gun immunity out of the final bill."

  Ruckles squinted at his Diet Coke. "Right now that's too close to call—a few votes one way or the other."

  Fasano agreed. With a sigh of resignation, he said, "Let's start from the beginning—who's still in play; who needs campaign money; who wants a new committee assignment; who's vulnerable to the SSA; or anyone we can get to."

  Ruckles considered hi
m. "That's all well and good, Frank. But you have to make this vote a test of your leadership. If our people know that crossing you is a personal affront, it'll be hard for them to say no. They have to succeed in this place, and that pretty much depends on you.

  "What Kilcannon's depending on is emotion. But we've both heard our colleagues give speeches which would bring tears to your eyes and didn't change a vote. Survival cuts deeper than sympathy."

  Fasano smiled at this, though perhaps for different reasons than Ruckles imagined. To make this vote a test of leadership would raise the stakes immensely. Losing it might leave Fasano more vulnerable to a challenge from Ruckles. Winning would strengthen Fasano among the party's most fervent financial and ideological backers, strengthen his claim to the Presidency, and clear a path for Ruckles in a congenially bloodless way. As to that, their interests were the same.

  "Dave," Fasano answered, "I think it's a test of us both."

  This made Ruckles smile as well. There was a certain cynical comfort, Fasano supposed, in such a seamless mutual understanding. "If we can make this an up-and-down vote on a final bill," Fasano continued, "with gun immunity still in it, we'll probably win. Getting the votes to beat Hampton's amendment is where the fight will be. On our side, that comes down to a handful of undecideds—Dick Stafford, Kate Jarman, John Smythe, Cassie Rollins."

  "Smythe is gone," Ruckles opined. "He's the price we pay for electing a Republican from Rhode Island. But Stafford's a probable, and Kate Jarman won't go off the reservation again—not after voting for Caroline Masters . . ."

  "This time Palmer's on our side. He gives the moderates cover."

  Ruckles nodded. "That brings us to Cassie. This morning I only caught her briefly. But I don't think yesterday helped."

  Fasano sipped his Coke. "She's taking too long," he said at length. "The longer she's in play, the more danger there is of losing her—like we did on Masters. It's time to make this one a matter of her survival."

  NINE

  In the chill of early evening, the President walked alone on the South Lawn of the White House, hoping to stretch his legs and breathe fresh air after too much time on Air Force One, and in hotel suites or indoor meetings and events. He and Lara needed an escape, Kerry concluded, a weekend away before the drabness of an eastern winter closed around them—somewhere with books and quiet and fewer of the artifacts of man. He paused in the descending dusk, hands in the pocket of his suit, smelling a faint, pungent odor which reminded him of burning leaves. Then he spotted the familiar form coming from the White House with a brisk, purposeful stride, and knew that his reverie was over.

  "I'm closed for business," he said in mock complaint. "Whatever it is, take care of it."

  Clayton's smile was perfunctory. "Even if the ATF may be closing in on the seller?"

  Surprised, Kerry asked, "That maggot I confronted?"

  "They don't think so. But two weeks ago, some guy on parole robbed a convenience store in Oklahoma City with a P-2 from the same stolen batch as Bowden's."

  Kerry felt his weariness drop away, replaced by a new keenness of mind. "Do we know where he got the gun?"

  "At a gun show in Phoenix." Clayton's voice had the suppressed excitement of a prosecutor on the verge of a potential breakthrough. "Last week there was another show in Phoenix. When the ATF took our perpetrator there, he identified the guy who sold it to him.

  "Just to make sure, an ATF agent bought another P-2 from this same guy. Its serial number matched still another gun stolen with Bowden's. So the ATF got a warrant, searched the guy's truck, and found nine more stolen P-2s. That was when they busted him."

  "Who is he?"

  "A man named George Johnson. He's a member of something called the Liberty Force—a pack of white supremacists located in rural Idaho. The ATF's theory is that they were financing their activities by selling stolen P-2s at a premium to people who don't pass a background check— sort of like Tim McVeigh and his friends did . . ."

  "Is Johnson talking?"

  "Only through his public defender. As of now, he admits stealing the batch of P-2s but says that he's never been to Las Vegas. There's no evidence he ever was."

  Impatient, Kerry shook his head. "Even if that's true, he's got to be the source of Bowden's gun. Either Johnson knows who put it in Bowden's hands, or—at the least—he sold to the guy who did."

  Clayton folded his arms. "You know the problem. There's no record of the sale, or who had booths at the Las Vegas gun show, or even of who went there. So the evidence that Bowden bought it there is circumstantial. We're at the mercy of a racist who hates the U.S. government and, I'm sure, you."

  "He doesn't have to like me," Kerry answered softly. "He just has to be afraid of spending some very long years in jail, making a few very special friends from among the more diverse elements of our populace. A grim prospect for a white supremacist from Idaho."

  "There's always that." Clayton's eyes contained a fleeting, cold amusement. "Which is why, I suppose, Johnson's lawyer implies his man didn't steal these P-2s by himself."

  Silent, Kerry imagined Johnson's calculations: that the ATF's questions about John Bowden meant that he might hold the key to the Costello murders and, if so, had all the leverage on the President that implied. Then, tracing the likely path of Bowden's gun, he much more viscerally envisioned the racist underbelly of America spawning the murder of Lara's family in a hothouse protected by the SSA and advertised by Lexington Arms. "What an irony," he murmured in a bitter tone. "Seven deaths, and Lexington made no money from them."

  Clayton said nothing. Kerry turned from him, gazing up at a full, ascending moon in the twilight gathering around them. "I need the seller," Kerry said at length. "I don't care how."

  "I think you should. For a lot of reasons . . ."

  "Clayton," the President interjected coldly, "the seller connects John Bowden to the gun show, and to Lexington's ad. A paramilitary seller means that the worst forces in our society cashed in on Lexington's ads in order to sell stolen P-2s, without the background check which Lexington refused to require of gun-show promoters.

  "It reinforces the case for my gun bill. It gives Dash and Lenihan the evidence they need to prove that Lexington's ad drew Bowden to Las Vegas. It even makes me wonder whether Lexington has known for months that this batch of stolen guns could lead us to the seller, and decided not to reveal that fact to Mary's lawyers or to me."

  "All true," Clayton answered. "But first consider the cost of finding out. Johnson's already committed three violent felonies. That means that under the federal sentencing guidelines, he's due to get a minimum of fifteen years in a maximum security prison for theft, possession of stolen guns, and trafficking.

  "That doesn't leave much leeway for a deal short of throwing out his case . . ."

  "That's a lot to ask."

  "There's more," Clayton continued in the same impervious tone. "Johnson's lawyer implies that the guy who sold to Bowden may be a fellow member of the Liberty Force. You may think that helps you. But I think Johnson's pitch will be that helping you puts his life in danger, in or out of prison."

  Kerry turned to face him. "You mean he'll ask for a Presidential commutation. And a place in the witness protection program once he's done with testifying."

  "It smells like that." His friend's stocky form seemed rooted to the ground in stubborn warning. "Think about the implications of that— legally, morally and politically. What President, you'd have to ask, would kick a man like Johnson loose."

  "Maybe this one," Kerry answered. "But only if he gives me what I need."

  * * *

  Sarah had a date—rare since the Costello suit had propelled her around the country—and anticipation of dinner with Jeff Weitz, a longtime friend who seemed intent on becoming more had, for once, left her eager to leave the office. And so when the telephone rang she hesitated, glancing at the caller ID panel before deciding to answer.

  "Private," it said. Sarah recalled her resolve to miss no calls,
and the reason for it. As if the thought itself would be a jinx—as it had been for two weeks now—she answered with little hope that this call would be different.

  "Is this Sarah Dash?" her caller asked.

  Though she had heard it only once before, the man's high, reedy voice gave Sarah goose bumps. "Yes."

  "We talked earlier." Whether from an accurate sense of his importance, or the belief of an unstable mind that his reality was central to the world's, her caller seemed to know how intently Sarah had been waiting for this moment. "I saw that film of the President at the gun show, and felt we have a bond. There are things I need to tell you."