Balance of Power

by Richard North Patterson

  At two-thirty, Sarah left the office, having taken only two calls.

  The first was from Lara Kilcannon. With a depth of emotion Sarah had not heard before, Lara told her how grateful she was, even more for the President than herself. "Is there anything we can do for you?" she asked.

  "One thing," Sarah answered simply. "When anyone asks, make it clear I did this on my own. Or the whole situation will be that much worse for me."

  The second call was from Gardner Bond. "I'm issuing an order," the judge said with a coldness more daunting than angry. "But court orders don't seem to impress you very much, so I thought I'd deliver this one in person.

  "Tomorrow afternoon, at four o'clock, I'm holding a contempt hearing regarding your activities this morning. You may wish to consider attending."

  Without awaiting Sarah's answer, Bond hung up.

  * * *

  Paul Harshman was the first of the Republican leadership to reach Fasano's office. As he entered, Fasano was watching a liberal columnist eviscerate the SSA on MSNBC.

  "This all could be a smear," Harshman cautioned. "Orchestrated by Kilcannon."

  Fasano turned to him. Evenly, he inquired, "Do you really think that?"

  Harshman's expression took on an obstinate cast. "What do we really know about this man Callister . . . ?"

  "Give it a rest, Paul. Let's focus on saving this bill." Fasano's tone brooked no argument. "I'm not taking calls from Charles Dane. I don't want you to take any. As soon as we're through here, I'm going to distance us from Dane as quickly as I can, and you'll be right there with me. Just like Sarah Dash and Mary Costello."

  * * *

  Gathered in the Oval Office, Kerry, Kit and Clayton watched Fasano on CNN.

  Flanked by Paul Harshman and others in the Republican leadership, he stood in the rotunda of the Capitol. None of us, he said, can know what Mr. Dane intended to convey to Mr. Callister, and its precise connection to the President's own admission of his personal conduct prior to assuming office.

  "Do remind us," Clayton said caustically. "Some may have forgotten."

  Only Mr. Dane knows, Fasano continued. But we cannot be blind to the implications of what we learned today. The blackmail Mr. Callister suggests has no place in our public life. However committed we may be to the protection of unborn life—and, for that matter, gun rights—we in the Republican Party utterly repudiate such despicable tactics.

  "But not their benefits," Kerry said softly.

  Senator Fasano, Kate Snow of CNN called out. How does Ms. Dash's revelation affect the prospects of overriding the President's veto?

  It's too soon to tell, Kate. Frankly, we're still absorbing this. But I can tell you what logic suggests, at least to me. Fasano's expression was grave, his tone measured. This is, as I've said, a sad chapter in our civic life. But—just as Mr. Dane's alleged conversation should not reflect on the four million members of the SSA—Mr. Callister's charges have no more to do with the merits of the Civil Justice Reform Act than does the private life of the President and First Lady.

  Gun immunity is only a small portion of the comprehensive and badly

  needed reform of our legal system contained in this important bill. Whatever our problems—including gun violence—in my opinion the current culture of litigation makes them worse. I intend to press for an override as vigorously as before.

  Having delivered his message, Fasano left the podium.

  "The sonofabitch is smart," Kit told the President grudgingly. "He's put all the daylight he needed between himself and Dane. But he wants to keep the SSA in his debt, and their votes and money in his party's pocket. And if he can override your veto after this, he's king of the Hill."

  "Not on my watch." Kerry felt both anger and exhilaration, the freedom of knowing who was responsible, and what he needed to do. "I've got some senators to call."

  "What about a statement?" Kit interposed.

  Kerry smiled. "I'll take care of it myself."

  * * *

  At six o'clock in the east, sufficient time to make the evening news, the President appeared as promised in the White House press room. Fasano, Majority Whip Dave Ruckles, and their leadership team watched on CNN.

  Earlier today, the President began, Senator Fasano suggested that "none of us can know what Mr. Dane intended to convey to Mr. Callister." For myself, I find statements like "I have personal information that the President and First Lady can never survive," and "the President can be handled if he gets in the way" less ambiguous than does the senator.

  Let me review the sequence of events. I was threatened through an "anonymous" phone call relayed by Senator Slezak, I nonetheless vetoed the Civil Justice Reform Act, and some very "personal information" promptly became public. Mr. Callister has now identified the source. The President's tone took on a trace of irony. To be fair, the Majority Leader has found this sequence sufficiently damning to separate himself from Mr. Dane. I also agree with him that the membership of the SSA does not believe in blackmail. But its leadership plainly does . . .

  "Saying isn't proving," Harshman scoffed. "No matter how many times he says it."

  Fasano was silent. Of all the men in the room, only he was as certain of Dane's involvement as Kilcannon. But he could never admit this to the others. "There's no reason for Callister to lie," he said at length, "and now the President can unleash the FBI. The prudent thing is to assume that, sooner or later, the President will pin this on Dane."

  In addition to his repudiation of blackmail, the President continued, I

  offer Senator Fasano this practical suggestion: that his party return the over two million dollars the current leadership of the SSA gave it in the last election cycle— or, at the least, that it refuse to accept such money in the future. That might help them, to borrow the senator's phrase, focus on the "merits" of the Civil Justice Reform Act . . .

  "Whoever leaked the story," Dave Ruckles observed, "I sure as hell don't like blackmail. But our quality of life was better when this guy felt more chastened . . ."

  Consider one compelling fact. If the Senate had overridden my veto a mere two days ago, instead of tomorrow as the senator hopes, this bill would have prevented George Callister from being sworn to tell the truth—about the destruction of evidence, the SSA's unlawful domination of Lexington Arms, and Mr. Dane's use of blackmail to advance the SSA's agenda. From the standpoint of the SSA, the bill's "merits" are now clear: suppressing truth and perpetuating injustice.

  Fasano turned to Ruckles. "Where does Palmer stand?" he asked.

  * * *

  At that moment, the senior senator from Ohio had no wish to be on Capitol Hill. He was at home with Allie, refusing to answer the phone. This still was true three hours later, when Charles Dane appeared on Larry King Live.

  "This," Chad told his wife, "should be one for the time capsule."

  Larry, Dane said with deep sincerity, I share Senator Fasano's feelings of indignation over charges such as these. But however Mr. Callister chose to interpret our many conversations, never once does he claim that I mentioned Lara Kilcannon's abortion.

  What's important here is to examine Callister's motives. Lexington and the SSA are codefendants in an inflammatory lawsuit which is bad for Lexington's image. So he's blaming the SSA instead of the President for its existence, and trying to pass on to us any liability they might have . . .

  But why would he do that, King interrogated sharply, with the Senate about to wipe out the lawsuit altogether?

  "How uncharitable," Palmer observed. "Larry's becoming Tim Russert."

  Clearly, Larry, Callister hedged his bets—and it backfired. He never considered that President Kilcannon and his legal surrogate, Sarah Dash, would use his calculated lies to practice the politics of smear and victimization against American gun owners.

  Kilcannon and his followers smear us because we're the most dedicated upholder of every decent American's right to defend themselves and their families against murderers, rapists and child molester
s—the scum of the way-too-permissive society exemplified by the Kilcannons. Then the President tries to advance his true agenda—confiscation—by pretending to be the victim of the big bad SSA.

  "Pretending?" Allie said.

  Dane's voice filled with scorn. In the Kilcannons' narcissistic world, everything is about them, everyone is after them, and anyone else is responsible except for them. So let's call a spade a spade. They had the affair. They aborted their unborn child. And now they want the four million law-abiding members of the SSA to pay for their immoral conduct that sickened decent people everywhere . . .

  In profile, Chad saw Allie's eyes brim with tears. "It's hard to watch this," she told her husband. "It's too much like what they did to our daughter."

  I call on every patriotic American to reject these ugly machinations, and to urge their senators to support the reform of our civil justice system.

  The telephone beside Chad rang. At first he ignored it, and then saw the identity of his caller flash up on the iridescent panel of the phone.

  "Watching Larry King?" the President asked.

  "Never miss him." Chad hesitated, then added softly, "Dane's making a mistake, Mr. President. More than that, I'm deeply sorry."

  "I know that, Chad." The President paused in turn. "I need your help on this. What's at stake transcends the Civil Justice Reform Act."

  "That's the problem," Chad answered. "This is way too personal to me, and there are a lot of things at stake. I need time to think it through."

  The President's laugh was quiet and without humor. "You and I have twenty-four hours. That's how much time Fasano's given us."

  FOURTEEN

  For Kerry, the predawn hours were punctuated by two events.

  The first was Lara rising from bed, treading softly to the bathroom and carefully shutting the door. Though muffled by running water, Kerry heard the quiet but unmistakable sound of his wife becoming sick.

  He waited until he heard Lara splashing more water on her face. Then he slowly opened the door.

  Dabbing her face with a towel, Lara saw him in the mirror. "Can I get you something?" he asked.

  Her skin was pale, Kerry saw, and her expression was wan. But she managed to smile at his inquiry. "Maybe a new stomach?"

  He tilted his head. "What about a different life?"

  Closing her eyes, she gave the briefest shake of her head, swallowing as though she still felt sick. "It's not that," she answered in a weak but insistent voice. "If stress did this to me, I'd have never survived Kosovo. I'm coming down with the flu again."

  Perhaps that was all it was. Lately, they had both been more prone to colds. But Kerry felt again the cost to Lara of marrying him, the tragedy, and now the misery which had followed. So much had happened since Slezak's warning; that they had so little time to absorb it, or do anything but cope with its impact on his Presidency, struck Kerry as inhuman.

  Putting his hands on Lara's waist, he rested the side of his face against hers. She smiled again in the mirror. "Don't get too close," she advised. "You'll catch it."

  "Are you going to be all right?"

  Her eyes, reflected in the glass, seemed to query how he meant this. "You might call down for some ginger ale," she answered.

  Kerry left it there.

  The second event was the arrival, with Lara's ginger ale, of the earlymorning edition of the New York Times. The headline "SSA Accused of Blackmailing President" led a spate of articles which confirmed what Kerry already knew—that the body politic was shell-shocked; the Senate in flux; and that the Democratic expressions of outrage had not, thus far, translated into a change of any votes. The problem—as the Times pointed out—was that upholding the President's veto was an all-ornothing proposition. Tort reform remained overwhelmingly popular in the Senate, and there was no longer any way to separate gun immunity from the rest. All that seemed likely was that the President would hold the thirty-three votes which remained after Leo Weller's defection. Though a single senator might set off a chain reaction, on the surface Kerry remained a vote short.

  Head propped on a pillow, Lara read along with him, then kissed him on the cheek. "Good luck," she said. "It looks like a big day at the office."

  * * *

  His seven a.m. meeting, with Tony Calvo of the Chamber of Commerce, had been scheduled at Calvo's urgent request. The President had granted him fifteen minutes, and Calvo wasted none of them.

  "We'd like to revisit the deal you offered us, Mr. President—with modifications. We won't support an override if you'll support the passage of the Civil Justice Reform Act without the gun immunity provisions."

  At once, Kerry grasped two essential facts—that Calvo was uncertain that Fasano's votes would hold, but that Calvo viewed Kerry as so damaged that he could drive a hard bargain. " 'Revisit'?" he inquired with a smile. "What about 'rewrite'? The compromise I offered you did not include the corporate goodies Fasano's trying to jam through."

  Calvo nodded. "True, we're looking for some movement. But we're offering to help save you from an embarrassing defeat, at the worst possible time, on the worst possible issue for you. Guns."

  Like any Faustian bargain, Kerry thought, the blandishment was seductive—saving the President from a defeat which was, at least in prospect, catastrophic. So it took him longer than he liked to ask quietly, "What do you take me for? However you may couch it, you're piggybacking on what the SSA has done to us—most significant, in my mind, to Lara . . ."

  "That's not so," Calvo protested.

  "Nonsense, Tony. You think I'm so weakened that I'll sell you the store in exchange for selling out Charles Dane. I can't fault your practicality, or blame you for trying. But don't blame me for being insulted."

  "Mr. President," Calvo said more soberly, "I deplore what was done to you and the First Lady."

  Propping his face in the palm of his hand, Kerry considered him. "I appreciate that. Though not quite as much as if you'd said it earlier, in public, when these people were dragging Lara through the mud.

  "But understand that this is more than personal. I don't think politics should ever be conducted in this fashion. For the sake of the next President, and whoever else comes after, I can't cave in to this. You're asking for too much, too late."

  Calvo held his gaze. "If that's true, Mr. President, I'm sorry."

  "So am I." Kerry's voice remained even. "Before you tell your coalition that you've failed, I'd like you to take a moment, and think very hard about your support for a Senate leadership team that subordinates your interests to a pack of blackmailing fanatics who may wind up getting your wife or children shot.

  "This game so many business interests keep on playing puzzles me. You compromise with fundamentalists who want to outlaw Charles Darwin and put women in their place. You get in bed with gun nuts. You tell yourself that's the only way you'll get what you deserve—tort reform, and all those tax cuts—and that it's okay to let these people dictate our social policy as long as they don't get to come to dinner and fill your children's heads with nonsense."

  Kerry's last comment induced, in Calvo, the glimmer of a sardonic smile. "As long as I'm President," Kerry told him, "they're not running anything. On the other hand, I believe the interests you represent are essential to the country—just as long as you don't think you are the country, or that this yawning wealth gap we've developed is good for you or anyone. The system only works if people are secure and treated fairly." The President's tone grew firm. "No matter what you think, the trial lawyers don't own me. If you want fairness and not your usual wish list, my door is always open. Otherwise you're going to have a very long three years."

  Thoughtful, Calvo studied him. Then he asked the question Kerry had been hoping for. "How can we start over, Mr. President?"

  Kerry smiled. "For openers? Stop pushing Vic Coletti to support an override."

  * * *

  Senator Coletti, Hampton thought, had seldom looked less happy.

  They sat alone in Hampton's office, se
aled from, but ever mindful of, a Senate tense with rumor and confusion, each side waiting for a break in the other's ranks which might not come.

  "It's up to you," Hampton told him bluntly. "This isn't about tort reform anymore, or even about adultery. It's about blackmail, and whether a Democratic President who stood up to it will fail or succeed."