The Race

by Richard North Patterson

  Sitting up straighter, Rohr responded in a low, chill tone. "Forgive me, Senator, if I find that litany insulting."

  "How exactly? Because you thought I was suggesting that you personally troll Hook-Up? It's hard to know what else you could mean, given that you've lowered the standards of journalism in every media outlet you've acquired. Not to mention the standards of this body--"

  "Senator Grace," Halprin interrupted.

  Still watching Rohr, Corey said, "Indulge me for a moment, Senator. Mr. Rohr claims to find my 'litany' insulting. And yet he's spent millions in lobbying fees trying to persuade the Senate to reject a bill that would ban his company from abusing Netcast in precisely the ways I just enumerated." Leaning forward, Corey asked Rohr, "That much is true, isn't it?"

  Rohr glanced toward one of his lawyers, a slight, bespectacled man who, to Corey, had the face of a mortician. As Corey and the onlookers waited, the lawyer whispered in Rohr's ear. "Senator," Rohr said testily, "I fail to see how vigorous advocacy of a legitimate point of view lowers the standards of the Senate. And I remind you that other independent voices--including Consumers for Internet Choice--are prepared to testify regarding the benefits to customers should we acquire Netcast."

  Suppressing a smile, Corey asked, "So you've never once attempted to mislead us."

  Glancing toward his lawyer, Rohr looked, in Corey's estimate, less like a seal than a ferret. "Absolutely not."

  "So tell me, Mr. Rohr, who funds that 'independent voice' that is about to help us out--'Consumers for Internet Choice'?"

  Silent, Rohr scrutinized Corey as the lawyer-mortician whispered in his ear. "I hope you're not just finding out," Corey added with an air of solicitude. "It took my staff three weeks."

  From someone in the audience behind Rohr came a brief, nervous chuckle. At Corey's left, his friend and colleague Chuck Clancy shot him a sideways grin. "I'm informed," Rohr said grudgingly, "that some funding may have been provided by a subsidiary of Rohr Vision."

  "You're 'informed,'" Corey repeated with mild incredulity. "So you didn't know that Rohr Vision was funding this group until I asked about it?"

  With quiet pleasure, Corey watched his quarry weigh the risks and benefits of perjury. In a monotone, Rohr answered, "I don't recall knowing about my company's involvement."

  This time the laughter was mildly scornful. Though Rohr did not turn, his face was a frozen mask. "Well," Corey said dismissively, "you've been busy, what with acquiring Hook-Up and introducing our kids to God. A small matter like trying to mislead the United States Senate could easily slip your mind."

  As Rohr flushed, the decorum of the audience broke down in yet more laughter.

  Rohr, Corey was certain, understood that this moment of humiliation would make the evening news. And Corey knew two other things: that, for the moment, he had made Rohr's newest plans radioactive, and that Rohr's enmity would follow him far longer. For Alex Rohr, worse than being thwarted was being made to play the fool.

  "Thank you," Corey told Rohr politely. "That's really all I wanted."

  3

  "IT's DONE," COREY TOLD BLAKE RUSTIN COOLLY.

  Restless after the hearing, Corey walked with Rustin along the Ellipse. Bespectacled and bald, his chief political adviser gave him a shrewd sideways glance and, as Corey intended, chose to drop the subject of Alex Rohr. Instead Rustin contented himself with matching Corey's brisk pace, waiting to prod his most important client on the subject that permeated their every conversation: whether Senator Corey Grace should run for president.

  "So why am I going to this thing tonight?" Corey inquired at last.

  "Good question," Rustin said tartly. "Seeing how you refused to speak. After all, it's only a chance for would-be presidential candidates to impress a thousand of the party's biggest donors."

  "That's the point," Corey rejoined. "Unless the current political dynamic changes entirely, I'm not running. So why put myself in a cattle call with Rob Marotta, an evangelist who thinks he's God's anointed, and three governors who, at most, are angling for America's traditionally most pathetic office, the vice presidency.

  "Besides, the donor classes are already lined up behind Marotta, hoping Rob will cut their taxes even if it drives America into bankruptcy. All I'd want to do tonight is say what they don't want to hear: that the tax cuts we already gave them are crippling the government, screwing seniors and the poor, and saddling our grandkids with debt--none of which they seem to care about. Be glad that I'm so bashful."

  Rustin stopped walking and stood, hands on hips, shaking his head in a pantomime of despair. "I've been doing this for twenty years, Corey, and I've helped all sorts of candidates win races they deserved to lose. But you know what working with you is like? It's like watching a fucking oil well spill oil all over the ground--a complete and pointless waste of resources. I just stare, helpless, and all I can do is cry."

  Corey grinned. "That's really touching, Blake."

  "So can't you at least get married? Preferably to a war widow with two wholesome and adoring kids. Most normal men would find thirteen years of romantic conquests sufficient."

  Corey felt his good humor slowly fading. "When it comes to my love life, people give me too much credit. Anyhow, I didn't plan that part. It just happened, a day at a time."

  As they resumed walking, Rustin fell silent. Corey watched the late-afternoon shadows lengthen and, against his will, recalled a time when, unschooled in love by anything he saw in his parents' marriage, he had imagined himself capable of better.

  JANICE HALL WAS the commandant's daughter.

  The first time Corey saw her, at a formal ball in the fall of his fourth year, she was someone else's date. But even gliding in Bob Cheever's arms she was the image of the woman he had wanted but never found: tall and elegant, with a widow's peak and long brown hair that framed a face he could not stop watching--a perfectly formed chin, even lips, high cheekbones, and, most arresting to Corey, cool gray eyes that at once suggested challenge and vulnerability, the need to hold something back. He stared at her across the room until, inevitably, she saw him.

  There were other things she could have done--pretend not to have noticed or redirected her glance in shyness or annoyance. Instead, her face resting on Bob Cheever's shoulder, she gazed back at Corey as though daring him to look away. Though it might have been mere seconds, the moment seemed frozen, a still photograph of desire imprinted on Corey's mind. And then the dance ended, and the girl seemed to remember Bob Cheever. But for Corey, his own date, currently occupied in the ladies' room, was already consigned to history.

  "Who's the girl with Cheever?" he asked Jerry Patz.

  Jerry told him. "Cheever's afraid to touch her," he added. "Can you imagine fucking the commandant's daughter?"

  For the rest of the evening Corey danced with his date and joked with his peers, acting as though the commandant's daughter had vanished from his thoughts. Only at the end of the evening did he contrive to brush her shoulder as they passed. When she glanced at him, he saw that she was as aware of his presence as he was of hers.

  Under his breath, Corey said, "I'll call you."

  Janice's level gaze did not waver. "Is this about me, or my father?"

  "You."

  For an instant, Janice hesitated. And then she murmured a telephone number and turned away.

  Two days later, Corey called her. Coolly, she told him, "My father says you can come for dinner."

  This was not what Corey had envisioned. Nor had he anticipated that when he arrived at the commandant's house in crisp military dress, General Hall, a widower, would be in Washington and his daughter would be alone.

  When Janice opened the door, her father's house was nearly dark. Corey entered, and then she closed the door behind them.

  "So," Janice said softly, "is this what you wanted? Or dinner with Dad?"

  Corey could feel his own pulse. Pushing aside his misgivings, he answered, "This."

  He reached out for her, cradling her agai
nst him as he smelled the freshness of her skin and hair. She held her body separate, neither yielding nor resisting. But when Corey kissed her neck, she quivered and then whispered, "God, you are so not what I wanted."

  For Corey to ask why, he sensed, would destroy his chances of possessing her. Instead he cupped her chin, kissing her softly, until the resistance of her body dissipated with a slow intake of breath.

  As they kissed, Corey found the zipper of her dress. Her back felt cool, a slim sculpture of perfection. He no longer thought of consequences.

  When they were naked, Janice led him to the living room.

  They made love on the floor, Janice moving with him and yet silent, as though she had willed her soul to depart her body. Even before she cried out in ecstasy or anguish, Corey somehow knew that her eyes, though averted from their act, were closed.

  Her first quiet words, oddly toneless, answered the question he had not dared to ask. "My mother was a drunk. Not because she liked the taste of it, but because she hated this life. Suicide was her ultimate escape."

  The bitter story evoked in Corey his clearest thought: they were both escapees, but running in different directions. "I'm not your father," he answered.

  She turned to him, and he felt her search his face in the darkness. "Maybe not," she said. "My father was faithful to her."

  Unsure of what to say, Corey held her close. When they made love again, to his surprise it was Janice whose touch signaled her desire.

  The next time he came for dinner, her father was home.

  In his quiet way, General Hall seemed pleased. Perhaps, Corey guessed, he saw his daughter's involvement with Corey as a form of acceptance or, maybe, forgiveness.

  Perhaps they were in love.

  They certainly had chemistry. Between bouts of withdrawal, Janice was a match for him: she was not only bright, an honors student at Colorado College, but funny and sometimes scarily perceptive, with a candid and somewhat jaundiced humor that cut to the core of most human situations. And she was beautiful in a way that turned heads, and that always gave Corey that same jolt of recognition and surprise he had felt the first time he had seen her. On a spring afternoon, Corey reached for her hand across a picnic blanket and said what he believed: "We're supposed to be together."

  Janice studied him, her smile suddenly wistful. "A life sentence, you mean? Then God help us both."

  Two months later, a week after Janice's graduation, they were married in the chapel of the Academy.

  By then Corey's flying career had begun its swift ascent. He craved the feeling of flight, a thrill unlike anything he had experienced on earth. Blessed with reflexes and hand-eye coordination that even his instructors found impressive, Corey shot through flight school at the top of his class. Within a year, Janice was eight months pregnant and Corey, immersed in flying F-15s in Thailand, had spent an evening with a fetching Thai girl that meant--or so he tried to tell his conscience--only that he was far away from home.

  Repentant, he returned for the birth of his child.

  They had saved the gender for a surprise. But Janice, perhaps disoriented by childbirth, greeted her newborn daughter with a pensiveness so deep that it reminded Corey, somewhat uneasily, of the night they had first made love.

  Returning from an errand four days after Kara's birth, he approached the bedroom of their apartment and heard Janice's voice. Staring into their daughter's bassinet, Janice did not see him. "Not again," she promised Kara. "Not for you."

  Corey had gone back to Thailand without asking what she meant.

  "ALL I CAN tell you," Rustin said now, "is that--and I speak as a student of politics and a scholar of history--no single, divorced man has ever been elected president."

  "Someday there'll be a first time," Corey responded. "Anyhow, I won't be scaring up a wife for you by the election, Blake. As for marriage, I seem to recall having tried that."

  Hands shoved in his pockets, Rustin shrugged. "Maybe we can sit," he suggested after a time. "Some of us don't think talking politics requires aerobic exercise."

  They found a bench facing the Reflecting Pool, which ended at the Lincoln Memorial. With the arrival of the fall weather, Corey missed seeing as many families, the kids often tired or cranky yet sometimes filled with wonder. But there was something in the setting--perhaps the glassy reflection of the water--that soothed his often restless spirit. "As to why you're attending tonight's event," Rustin reminded him sardonically, "I want you to consider who else our Grand Old Party has to offer America. Leaders in the noble tradition of Abe Lincoln: Senator Rob Marotta and Governors George Costas, Sam Larkin, and Charles Blair. It's a time for greatness--what with terrorism, a failed war, deep economic uncertainty, and the growing threat of a nuclear apocalypse--and the Republican Party stands ready to answer the call."

  Corey gazed at the water, shimmering with the reflection of two joggers running past them, the woman glancing swiftly at Corey. "It's sad, I know. I'd feel a lot better if Cortland Lane were running."

  "Lane was right," Rustin said flatly. "The country isn't ready to elect an African-American. Certainly our party isn't."

  Corey shook his head. "I disagree, at least about Cortland. I think Americans are ready for a candidate who transcends race, and who they can actually imagine as president."

  Rustin shrugged. "Anyhow, Lane's out of it. But if it's novelty you're looking for, there's always the Reverend Christy."

  "Terrific."

  "Over ten million people watch him," Rustin remonstrated, "and half of those think he's God himself. The man's serious, Corey."

  Pensive, Corey remembered the first and only time he had encountered Bob Christy, and the reverberations that had followed. "Christy," Corey answered softly, "has been serious for a while."

  "He's more serious now. And he turns issues like stem cells into dynamite--because he believes, truly and absolutely, in the version of morality he preaches. For a whole lot of people, he's America's last hope in uncertain times--God's regent, meant to rule us in God's name until the Messiah comes again. And those who follow him are God's new chosen people."

  Corey shook his head. "There's a political ceiling on the Apocalypse. Except maybe in states like South Carolina, the man won't break twenty percent."

  Rustin turned to squint at him. "Even twenty percent can change the outcome. And Christy's got an instinct for power. Got time for a quick story?"

  "Sure."

  "Before you entered the Senate, when Christy was already on the rise, the president started holding prayer services at the White House. I was the president's political director. So one day, Christy calls to ask if he can preach some Sunday.

  "I'm not a complete fool. So I said, 'Yeah, sure--as long as you wouldn't mind giving us your mailing list.'"

  Corey laughed. "After all, you were all on the same team: the president, Christy, and God."

  "Exactly. But then Pat Robertson got wind of it and called me to raise hell--there was no way, Pat said, he'd put up with us giving his prime competitor the chance to brag that he's the president's preacher.

  "I had to call Christy back. To say he was offended doesn't cover it--not only did he not give us the mailing list, but he used it to start the Christian Commitment." Rustin allowed himself a rueful smile. "That was the day, I always thought, that Christy decided, 'If I can't preach to the president, I'll be president.'"

  "A nice story, Blake. It illuminates Christy's spiritual nature."

  "Christy's complicated," Rustin cautioned. "He truly believes the sky is falling. But he also believes in power. He's tough, charismatic, and one helluva businessman--from his TV program to a string of Christian theme parks, everything he touches mints money. All of which, in his mind, is another sign of God's approval. And all of which can help him finance his own campaign."

  "Money's not enough," Corey objected. "Look at Ross Perot."

  "Perot got nineteen fucking percent, Corey--and that was after people figured out that he was certifiable. And even when C
hristy says things that are nuts, he doesn't seem nuts. He's like the grandfather who worries for his grandkids--you just know that he'll take care of things. And he's an opportunist in the finest sense. Remember when that judge in Mississippi moved a marble statue of Jesus into the state supreme court at midnight?"

  "Sure. They damn near had to jackhammer Jesus to get him out of there. The judge became a national celebrity."

  "Well, Christy put him up to it, and then made that marble Jesus the center of a fund-raising campaign that netted the Christian Commitment another twenty million. On his TV show, Christy started railing against godless federal judges and the separation of church and state, and in favor of putting the Ten Commandments in every courthouse in America. Which, by the way, registered sixty-four percent in favor in the latest Zogby poll." Rustin stood, stretching his congenitally aching back. "So don't sell the reverend short. What he offers folks is not just hope, but certainty. You don't need to think or wonder or question anymore--all you need is to interpret the Bible literally. By shunning sex, science, and the sixties, you not only save yourself and your kids, you can also save America from hell. If you bought the premise, wouldn't you find it kind of tempting?"

  Corey grimaced. "My mother already does."

  "And how does she feel about stem-cell research, pray tell?"

  "Against. Ever since the show where Christy claimed that God told him to oppose it." Corey shook his head. "At least when God speaks to me I've got the sense to know it's a long-distance call."

  Arms folded, Rustin gazed down at him. "Christy's God is always at his side, and wants him to be president. The question is whether Bob's pragmatic enough to transform his Jesus into a tax cutter who wants to give greedheads like Rohr whatever they want. If Christy reaches out to them, his God is giving him some very shrewd advice."

  Slowly, Corey nodded. "The Alex Rohrs of the world can get their daughters or girlfriends an abortion anytime they want. If Christy could give them whatever else they want, they'd be pleased to let him repeal the theory of evolution as long as he doesn't come to dinner and fill their own kids' heads with nonsense."