Balance of Power

by Richard North Patterson

  "If I veto gun immunity," Kerry shot back, "I'm not giving into blackmail, am I?"

  "You're not being candid, either. You need to speak to the American people without a filter. The Washington Post aside, Barbara Walters is not such a terrible idea. If you can tell the public what you've gone through, with the appropriate references to human infallibility and your own belief in God, they'll hear you . . ."

  Clayton turned to her. "The media age," he interjected, "is so permeated with bad taste that we're forgetting what good taste is. No matter how they say it, how do the President and First Lady keep their audience from cringing? How do they keep from cringing?

  "We'd need an identifiable enemy to redirect the focus. An interview might work if we had enough evidence to blame the SSA. But without proof we'd only be making the SSA look like the victim of two maudlin demagogues slandering American patriots—in this case, to cover their own immorality." He turned to Kerry. "Then consider the Senate. You know how hard this fight over guns has been on swing-state Democrats. For the people who've stuck with you against their better judgment, it may not be enough to criticize your morals. They may feel the need to override your veto."

  "And so?"

  "A lot of people hate the media. They won't like whoever puts this out. Once they do, we answer with a brief and dignified statement, then hope the story starves for lack of oxygen."

  "They won't let it die," Kit demurred. "The right wing or the media."

  "Then let them wallow in their own shit until the American people turn away in boredom and disgust. What else is there to do once the President acknowledges the truth, and regrets the environment in which such a private matter is fodder for the press." Facing the Kilcannons, Clayton spoke softly. "I'm truly sorry for what you'll have to go through. I know it's easier for us to tell you what to do than for you to do it. But Lara is one of the most admired First Ladies in recent history, and you're both objects of great sympathy. You'll receive more sympathy for handling this with grace, and for drawing the line." Clayton paused, eyes glinting. "I think this story will damn whoever touches it. If I were President, I'd consider leaking the story to Fasano, then blaming him when it comes out."

  "There's a certain appeal in that," Kerry answered with the flicker of a smile. "But when does it ever end?"

  Clayton shrugged. "I suppose," Kit ventured gamely, "that the announcement of a pregnancy is way too much to hope for."

  No one answered. Kit hesitated, and then faced Kerry again. "There's one more option," she said bluntly, "and someone has to raise it.

  "I agree with Clayton: guns are a hard issue, even with all that's happened. Gun immunity's an even harder issue, especially when it's mixed with tort reform—a lot of people don't like lawsuits, and Democrats pay the price." Pausing, Kit appeared to steel herself once more. "As of now, you've got a single vote in the Senate standing between you and a veto override. We need to ask: is this the issue, and the time, that we want to risk a scandal in exchange for a 'victory' against tort reform that a lot of Democratic senators never wanted in the first place?"

  "In other words," Kerry said, "give in to blackmail for the good of the party. Not to mention my own."

  "I understand, Mr. President," Kit responded evenly. "But you are President, with a responsibility to look beyond your own feelings, to facts. The facts are different than they were this morning."

  The room fell silent. Taking Lara's hand, Kerry asked her, "Do we have anything else to add?"

  His wife gazed at him, weary but unwavering. "Only that if you decide to give in to blackmail, there'll be no end to this."

  The President turned to Kit and Clayton. "Thank you," he said. "We'll let you know what we decide."

  FIVE

  After a few hours of fitful sleep, Lara called her sister.

  It was five-thirty in San Francisco. "What's wrong?" Mary asked in a voice slurry with sleepiness and anxiety.

  With as much dispassion as she could muster, Lara told her.

  Finishing, she awaited a response. "You had an abortion?" Mary said in obvious wonder. "I didn't know."

  To Lara, this statement of perplexity carried the faintest hint of being slighted—that, as always, Lara had held herself aloof, as the distant, superior sister who offered help, or direction, but needed nothing from her family. "No one knew," she answered. "This wasn't just about me, but about Kerry. I couldn't tell anyone."

  "Except a stranger," Mary gently amended.

  This allusion to the abortion counselor who had betrayed her reopened the wound anew, threatening Lara's precarious calm. "Mary," she said in a strained voice, "my world was coming apart. I'd fallen in love with a married senator I was covering as a reporter, and suddenly I was pregnant. I did what I thought was best—for Kerry even more than me. But I was sure it was the end for us, and had to be. That was why I took the NBC job overseas. If I'd thought that you, or anyone, could fix all that . . ."

  Her voice trailed off in a memory of hopelessness. "You could have come to us," Mary insisted. "We were your family."

  "Maybe," Lara conceded, "I could have come to you. But knowing about my abortion would have broken our mother's heart." Hearing herself, Lara heard emptiness and evasion. The stark truth was that she had never considered leaning on her sisters, or believed that they would understand. Perhaps, she thought sadly, pride of place had become her habit, the duty of perfection a form of spiritual imprisonment. And then another thought struck her, so glaring now that she wondered at her failure to see it as clearly as she needed to when it would have mattered most. Just as Kerry's life had been defined by being James's younger brother, Lara, to the detriment of them all, had been her sisters' James Kilcannon. "Mary," she began again, "having me for a sister has cost you too much already. I don't want you to pay for this as well. That's why I'm telling you now."

  "Because you're not sure Kerry can protect my lawsuit."

  The quiet statement, with its echoes—perhaps intended, perhaps not—of his inability to protect their family made Lara pause again. "If you take this money," she answered, "I don't think Kerry can hold the Senate. But if you turn it down, and this comes out, you both may lose. That's not something I could keep from you."

  "What if he doesn't veto it? That's what they want him to do."

  The question drove home how unwilling Lara was to imagine this. "Then we all lose," she said simply. "But I won't let him do it on my account. For me, I'd rather face whatever happens."

  For a moment, her sister said nothing. Then, still quietly, she asked, "If you were me, Lara, what would you do?"

  Replaying the question, Lara searched her sister's tone for irony, and could detect none. "I'm not you," she answered. "I can't begin to know. All that I can promise is to love you, and never to judge whatever you decide."

  Pausing, Lara suddenly realized how much she needed this to be true, and fought against the tremor in her voice. "We're all that's left of Mama, Joanie, and Marie. I don't care what you do about the lawsuit. What I need from you is love and understanding and forgiveness for what my marriage has brought upon our family."

  In Mary's silence, Lara sensed that hearing this surprised her as much as, seconds before, saying it had surprised Lara. "Are you going to be okay?" Mary asked with a curious timidity. "You and Kerry, I mean."

  Lara realized that, in all of her imaginings, she had shrunk from imagining that which was most personal, and most important. "I don't know," she answered softly. "It's so hard to know how all this will turn out for us."

  "I'm sorry," Mary said with equal softness—whether in condolence, or in apology for what she was about to do, Lara could not tell.

  * * *

  Sequestered in the residence to ponder his decision, his cover a spurious sore throat which required Ellen Penn to stand in at a breakfast sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, Kerry felt himself diminishing moment by moment.

  "How did Mary take it?" he asked Lara.

  "She was kind." Lara sat besi
de him on the couch. "I realize I'm so

  used to listening for an undercurrent of blame or resentment I may supply one where there is none. But I've got no idea what she'll decide, and I told her it was up to her. I guess that just leaves us."

  Kerry studied her face, the bruises of sleeplessness which reminded him, with an intensity so piercing that he still flinched from it, of the days and nights which had followed the murders. "What do you think?" he inquired.

  "That what would help me the most is winning. The next best thing is doing all we can."

  The flicker of harsh memory lingered in Kerry's mind. "That's what I thought I was doing for Joanie—all I could. Even when we decided to go public about Bowden. And look what's come of it."

  Lara touched his face. "There's something about deconstructing your own guilt," she told him, "that puts other people's in perspective. Consider all the trouble you'd have saved yourself by deciding not to marry me."

  Kerry managed to smile. "Oh, I knew better. I just couldn't help myself."

  "Neither could I." Lara paused. "You took a chance because you loved me. So did I, because I was too selfish not to love you back. I even thought that, once we had a child, we could put the hurt of my abortion behind us."

  This was something she had never put into words. It touched him more than he could tell her, even as he reflected on the sad, retrospective innocence of her wish to heal damage which was dwarfed by that which followed. "Instead, we're here," he answered. "So what do I do now?"

  "What you always intended to do—veto the Civil Justice Reform Act. The only questions are when you do that, and how—or whether—you tell the world about us."

  Braced by her dispassion, Kerry knit together his thoughts. "The 'when' part is simple—I wait out the eight days I've got left before I veto the bill, and pray that we can somehow pin this on the SSA."

  Lara's expression betrayed that she felt little hope of this. "And the rest?"

  Kerry took both of her hands in his. "First, I want you to believe me about something—that the reason I don't want you crawling across ground glass on national television involves more than male pride, or even love for you. It's about who we are, or should be. Once you allow someone to violate your own best sense of that, you're no one. That's fatal in a person—or a President.

  "Clayton knows me far better than Kit. What he was doing, though he'd never say it, was speaking to who I am, and who I need to be." Kerry looked at her intently. "I think he was speaking for you, as well. If we don't draw the line for ourselves, how will we feel later? And what validation will we be giving to whoever decides to victimize the next First Family, or the next? What public act of contrition will they have to perform in order to top ours? However we leave this place, I don't want that to be our legacy."

  "Then it won't be," Lara answered. "Whatever else."

  SIX

  At nine the next morning, Sarah sat next to Lenihan at Bond's red mahogany conference table. Glancing at Nolan and Fancher, she pondered the twelve-million-dollar offer from Charles Dane which neither knew of. Mary Costello's dilemma was as complex, and as delicate, as any Sarah could imagine.

  "The first order of business," Bond said, "is to set some dates. First, for hearing defendants' summary judgment motions. And then, should the Court deny them, for a trial."

  Silent, Sarah shot an untrusting glance at Lenihan. Since his effort to settle the case around her, they had struck a wary truce, agreeing that Mary's interests—whether in going to trial or further enhancing the settlement offer—were best served by stepping up the pressure on Lexington and the SSA. Part of this strategy was to appear unfazed by politics. After all, as Sarah's hasty reading of this morning's Times had confirmed, with three days left for a veto message no senators seemed inclined to switch their votes. If that held—and Sarah could not see why it wouldn't—the Senate would sustain Kilcannon's veto.

  "Give us George Callister," Lenihan said on cue, "and we're ready to move swiftly. His deposition's all we need to oppose the defendants' motions, or prepare for an early trial. Frankly, I wish we were deposing him tomorrow. If Lexington hadn't held him out so long, we'd be in trial right now. As matters stand, and subject to your convenience, we're prepared to respond to any motions within five days of his appearance, and to go to trial two weeks later."

  "This case is too complex for that," Nolan began in protest.

  "Really?" Bond interjected tartly. "You've given me the impression that it was simple. The words 'frivolous' and 'groundless' leap to mind."

  "If aggregated in sufficient bulk," Nolan rejoined, "even frivolous arguments and groundless assertions demand a detailed rebuttal. Preparing our motions will require more time than Mr. Lenihan proposes."

  "Which brings us back to Mr. Callister," the judge replied. "Five days ago I gave you two weeks to produce him, and plaintiff's counsel complains that they still don't have a date—let alone a mutually conve nient venue." Bond's tone combined patience with a trace of judicial testiness. "I've given you all of the discovery you've asked for, whenever you asked for it—often at considerable inconvenience to Mr. Lenihan and Ms. Dash. So where do things sit with Callister?"

  Sarah expected Nolan to commence a mournful litany of difficult logistics, the intricacies of Callister's extended business travels, and then ask for another week—giving the Senate sufficient time, should Senator Fasano muster the votes, to override the President's veto. Bond knew this very well: in Sarah's estimate, the judge's show of huffing and puffing was only that. In the end, Nolan would innocently wonder aloud what possible difference one more week could make to Mary Costello, and Bond would give him the sternest of warnings that this was his last delay. Merely another piece of theater, a moment from Gilbert and Sullivan.

  "Mr. Callister," Nolan responded calmly, "is willing to interrupt his travels to assuage the Court's concerns." Turning to Lenihan and Sarah, he asked, "Would five business days from now, in San Francisco, meet your needs?"

  Three days past the veto deadline. Astonished, Sarah briefly thought to press for an even earlier date, but could find no basis for complaining. Nor, it seemed, could Lenihan.

  "Cat got your tongue?" Bond asked him. "Or do you want to hold the deposition in your living room?"

  Lenihan glanced at Sarah. "No, Your Honor. Our San Francisco office will do just fine."

  "Good, Mr. Lenihan. Then let's thrash out the remaining dates."

  Moments later, leaving the judge's chamber, Sarah glanced over her shoulder. "What was that about?" she whispered. "I expected to depose Jimmy Hoffa before we saw George Callister. Why so amenable at the eleventh hour?"

  Lenihan grimaced. Pointedly, he answered, "Maybe somebody from Nolan's firm reviewed all of our discovery with Callister, and reassured themselves that he's a complete dry hole. Which bears on our next appointment, doesn't it?"

  Both fell silent. Their next appointment was with Mary Costello, and it overshadowed the conundrum of George Callister. Once more, Sarah and Lenihan would be adversaries; today was the deadline for responding to Dane's offer.

  * * *

  They met in Sarah's office. Even by the standards of her prior behavior—quiet, confused, often overwhelmed—Mary Costello seemed unusually subdued. But then, Sarah supposed, not many women had been offered eight million dollars in exchange for their murdered relatives.

  "This is it," Lenihan told her. "Not just the deadline, but defendants' moment of maximum uncertainty, and your moment of maximum leverage. The President's poised to veto the bill; Callister's set for deposition; the trial date's set in stone. That may be good for a couple of million more."

  "If the President can hold his veto," Sarah retorted, "your leverage will mushroom exponentially. Lexington and the SSA do not want a public trial, with our evidence trumpeted in the media, and neither does Fasano. Even if you decide to settle—and I hope you won't—don't do it now. Do it on the eve of trial."

  Mary gazed at her so steadily that it seemed artificial, an eff
ort of will. Sarah had a curious memory: that she herself had used this expression as a teenager, when she'd tried concealing something from her mother. To her dismay, Sarah wondered if Lenihan and Mary had reached some private understanding, and that this meeting was yet another charade that only Sarah could not comprehend.

  "Mary," Lenihan countered with quiet insistence, "the leverage Sarah imagines will exist only if the President wins. If he loses, and he still may, this lawsuit ceases to exist. There'll be no money, no trial, no justice for your family . . ."