The Race

by Richard North Patterson

  "Should Christy forge an alliance between the dollar and the cross," Rustin answered, "it's conceivable that he could start a cultural revolution. But a real revolutionary would notice that the way Alex Rohr makes money, including things like Hook-Up, is antithetical to everything Christy stands for. So which is Christy--a revolutionary or a cynic as mercenary as Rohr?

  "That's why we're going tonight. I'm rooting for a revolution. No compromise with sin or Rob Marotta."

  Though he thought he knew the answer, Corey decided to ask the unspoken question at the heart of their conversation. "Just what does all this have to do with me?"

  Rustin laughed softly. "Everything. Just like it does for Marotta.

  "The Darth Vader of American politics, Magnus Price, helped get Christy started. Then Price dumped Christy for Marotta, reasoning that an extremely smart career politician was more likely to listen to him than to God." Pausing, Rustin spoke slowly and emphatically. "To Christy, Price is a Judas. So Christy hates him and, by extension, Marotta. And if Christy runs he'll drain support from Marotta and create an opening for someone else.

  "Marotta knows he has to keep Christy from running, or from having an excuse to run. That explains why Marotta absolutely needs to defeat stem-cell research--to co-opt Christy or, at the least, some of his ardent followers." Smiling, Rustin added dryly, "But I really don't have to paint you a picture, do I?"

  "No," Corey answered. "Neither man particularly likes me, but I'm important to their ambitions--like it or not. Starting with my vote on stem cells."

  "Like it or not," Rustin repeated softly. "And whether today's celebrity visitor, Ms. Hart, likes it or not. This is about more than frozen embryos, Corey. It may well be about whether you ever get--despite the odds--what I damned well know you want: the presidency.

  "Our party got its ass kicked in the last congressional elections--we'd even lost the Senate until Bob Hansen dropped dead and got replaced by a Republican, making Marotta majority leader. There's a new opening for you: someone who talks to the common interest, not just to the extremes. But the tension between the party's money people and the religious right has to boil over to give you a real chance. That's where Christy comes in."

  Sorting through his conflicting emotions, Corey regarded his adviser in silence. And then the central reality surfaced yet again: what Bob Christy chose to do was also important to his ambitions.

  "I'll think about it," Corey said.

  4

  WITH AN AMUSED DETACHMENT, COREY GLIDED THROUGH THE cavernous hotel ballroom, crowded with round tables that would seat the affluent men and women who had paid ten thousand dollars a head to hear five would-be presidents audition for their favor.

  This event was central to what Blake Rustin called the "money primary," where candidates strained and sweated to please the affluent electors who voted with their checkbooks. The donors, self-satisfied or curious or just congenitally loyal, were prepared to judge which candidate pleased them most, while the candidates hoped to amass enough donors and dollars to scare off their opponents before a single vote was cast. It was cocktail hour, and the attendees stood in an open space reserved for mingling. The largest donors--those with a network they could e-mail to raise hundreds of thousands in a week--held court like princelings while the candidates sought them out. Corey saw Rob Marotta spot Walter Prohl, a German immigrant who had founded an auto-parts empire, calling out, "Prohl-sy" with more enthusiasm than Corey suspected he felt. Prohl-sy mustered a crooked grin, his shrewd gray eyes seeming to weigh and measure the benefits of stringing Marotta along for a few more weeks or months versus the leverage he could extract through a more immediate commitment.

  "What a system," Corey murmured to Blake Rustin.

  Eyes glinting with humor, Corey kept moving, taking in the bejeweled women flush with the glow of manicures, skin treatments, massages, Botox, and whatever their plastic surgeons and personal trainers could do to slow the ravages of age. Next to them their husbands--secure enough in their gender and status to let nature take its course--spoke with placid authority. This was not Corey's crowd; he had devoted almost a decade to limiting the influence of money in politics, and many here had disliked him since the day he had remarked, "Bribing politicians with donations is the only way the wealthy can offset the ill effects of letting ordinary people vote." It wasn't that the celebrants here were malign, Corey thought--they no doubt cherished their kids and grandkids, relishing their joys and triumphs and grieving for their weaknesses and failures. What troubled him was their pervasive lack of interest in any world beyond their own. Too many of those present, Corey had long since learned, believed that their great contribution to America was simply to be themselves.

  "Corey."

  Turning, Corey encountered Magritte Dutcher, the fiftyish ex-wife of a cosmetics magnate, her red-dyed hair coiffed into immobility, her face so smooth that a grasshopper could have ice-skated across her forehead. The avid glow in Magritte's large green eyes, Corey knew, came not just from vodka but from a love of power so intense that it had a certain majesty. This passion had recently been manifested by Magritte's invitation to Corey, after another such event, to spend a romantic evening on her ninety-foot yacht, one of the many spoils of her divorce. Corey had been grateful to have a semiacceptable excuse: an early-morning flight to Baghdad. Kissing her proffered cheek, Corey said, "If I were Cary Grant, Magritte, I'd say you look divine."

  Magritte gave him a glance that combined skepticism and amusement. "Cary Grant was gay, you know."

  "No kidding? So that's my problem."

  Magritte's cupid's-bow mouth turned up briefly. "Somehow I don't think so--although half the closets in Washington are filled with gay Republicans. So tell me, how was Iraq?"

  What the hell, Corey thought. "Terrific," he assured her. "Ever since we liberated them, the Sunnis and Shiites have been free to kill each other in droves. It's the ultimate Jeffersonian democracy, combining First Amendment freedom of expression with the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Everyone here should see it."

  Magritte laughed softly. "You know what your 'real' problem is?"

  Corey smiled. "Not a clue. So please don't keep me guessing."

  "You're too real to be president. You're the only dead-certain loser I ever wanted to fuck."

  Corey kissed her on the cheek. "That," he told her, "may be the most honest thing anyone says all night."

  Corey hadn't counted on Bob Christy.

  COREY AND BLAKE Rustin were seated with six of Rob Marotta's ardent backers, three married couples whose deepest passion was engineering yet more tax cuts--the party establishment's tacit reprisal for Corey's acts of heresy. His only real company came from Rustin and his own unspoken reflections, punctuated by the gelid stare of Alex Rohr from a nearby table.

  "It's clear you've made another friend," Rustin whispered in his ear.

  Corey held Rohr's gaze until his antagonist turned away. "Yeah," Corey answered. "It's this gift I have."

  On the dais, the GOP's national chairman praised the current president's courage and conviction before introducing the candidates. The three governors would speak first, then Christy; Rob Marotta was last. Though Rustin had nicknamed the governors "Larry, Curly, and Moe," Corey found all three more depressing than amusing. The first, Governor Charles Blair of Illinois, while handsome in an antiseptic way, was so completely bereft of substance that in his eagerness he reminded Corey of an applicant for an entry-level job. George Costas of New York was so ungifted as a speaker that his attempts at fist-pounding emphasis seemed robotic instead of rousing. The best of them, Sam Larkin of Mississippi, was folksy, amusing, and completely unable to shed the whiff of corruption and rascality that, despite his professed devotion to the Lord, was accented by hand-tailored suits and a florid drinker's face.

  "They should have called this event 'The Decline of the West,'" Corey murmured to Rustin, just before the Reverend Christy took the stage.

  FROM THE MOMENT Christy began speak
ing, everything changed.

  Corey had not seen him in person for fourteen years. Christy's hair was steel gray now, and his expensive suit could not conceal an ample paunch. But he had the same magnetic aura of caged energy, now placed in the service of a moral vision so absolute that he made the previous speakers seem like dwarfs.

  "Shame on us," he began in a melancholy rumble. "Shame on our party, and our country."

  The change in tone was so profound that Corey felt instantly alert. "My God," Rustin murmured, "what's the reverend going to do?"

  Christy stood tall, his voice and bearing that of a leader who brooked no doubt. "Worse, we know better. We know the difference between the America many of us were born in, a land of faith and family, and the moral cesspool we live in now. And no amount of material wealth can obscure the speed of our decline.

  "We have nightclubs where you can witness sex acts live, schools that tolerate drugs but abolish prayer, women who murder babies in a holocaust that dwarfs the work of Adolf Hitler, a government that opposes moral values rather than protecting them." Pausing, Christy swept the room with a commanding gaze. "And, worst of all, a cultural and economic elite that defines the quality of our existence in terms of the material, not the spiritual ..."

  "The people in this room," Rustin whispered with satisfaction, "are going to take that personally."

  As Corey looked around, the audience seemed stunned. Despite himself, Corey began to feel a perverse admiration for the sheer nerve of this performance. "No government," Christy said in a disdainful voice, "has ever made a dead man rise. And no cut in the estate tax will save us from our spiritual death." Abruptly, Christy lowered his voice to a hush that, nonetheless, carried to the back of the room. "Our hope of redemption rests with God alone. And every moral challenge we face can be resolved in only one way: by following the laws ordained by God Almighty."

  Letting this statement linger, Christy paused before asking, "So what in God's name is wrong with our society? Why is it imperative to preserve a national park but not a frozen embryo?"

  As nervous chuckles broke the silence, Corey's tablemates--Marotta's funders--listened in stone-faced silence. Glancing about the room, Corey spotted Rob Marotta, his saturnine face watching Christy with an expression that showed nothing. "What kind of government," Christy asked, "saves one unborn baby through heroic measures, then casually kills another as though it were a rodent in a pantry? What kind of a society converts Adam and Eve into Adam and Steve?" A ripple of laughter rose before Christy finished with "And yet I'm sure that many here tonight are guilty of what I call moral relativism--that tired excuse: 'I have a relative who's gay.'"

  There was another spurt of nervous laughter. But Corey did not smile--this, he thought, was where Christy's vision led: more division, more repression, more pressure on Rob Marotta to meet the harsh requirements of Christy's God. At the corner of his eye, Corey saw a young Republican senator he'd known for years, a thoroughly decent man, fretting with his napkin as his deepest fear consumed him: that his furtive homosexuality would come to light.

  "Marriage," Christy thundered, "is not a cul-de-sac--a dead end whose only purpose is sexual pleasure. And if this party uses the deep moral concerns of Christians simply as a way of securing votes, then Christians will rise up and say, 'Quit treating us like a mistress and start respecting us as a wife. For hell hath no fury like all-too-patient Christians too often scorned.'"

  The challenge was so startling that some in the audience responded with a spattering of oddly fearful applause. Rob Marotta, Corey noticed, cast a restive glance at his watch, like a man who wishes the evening to be over but dares not speak or move.

  "Let's be honest," Christy said in a suddenly confiding tone. "There are those in the establishment of our party who have a secret disdain for Bible-believing Christians. They even hire advisers to teach them phrases like 'wonder-working power,' in the hope that if they speak to us in code, unbelievers will not notice." Christy leaned forward, speaking slowly and emphatically. "It is time for Christians to say clearly that we mean to make this the party of God, not the party of greed. And yes, that we want your children, and that you should want us to have them."

  As Rustin emitted a low whistle, a rapt silence enveloped the audience. Looking at Marotta, Corey noted the utter stillness with which he awaited Christy's next pronouncement. But Christy's gaze had fixed not on Marotta, but on someone else. "Nor," he said in a cold, clear voice, "will Christians serve the ambitions of media magnates whose sole concern is lining their all-too-ample pockets." Pausing, Christy stared at Rohr, his voice suddenly filled with anger. "Such men should now be warned: we will turn off your programming, abandon your movie theaters, shun your music, boycott your businesses, and take back our children. And then your grip on our nation will end for good."

  Narrow-eyed, Rohr stared back at Christy, ignoring the scrutiny of others. Leaning toward Corey, Rustin whispered, "Bad day for your boy Alex ..."

  "It is time," Christy repeated, "for all of us to choose. Only last year, your so-called leaders lost effective control of Congress because they ignored the prayers of conservative Christians. So please be warned.

  "Days from now, the United States Senate will decide whether to give its blessing to stem-cell research. Some believe that this is a tempest in a petri dish. It is not. Every one of these embryos is a human being waiting to be born. It is not our province to take life--even if we propose to save life." Pausing, Christy said emphatically, "That power belongs to God alone. So to those who would be president, I say, Defeat this law, or step aside."

  "Marotta," Rustin whispered to Corey, "had better protect each embryo like it was his first-born child."

  Rustin was right, Corey knew; Christy was laying down a marker for Rob Marotta. "Perhaps," Christy continued in a dubious tone, "one of the men you've heard from--or will hear from--is the leader Christians are praying for.

  "If so, we are blessed. But if not, Christians will look elsewhere."

  Tense, the audience awaited a pronouncement that, if made, could utterly transform the race. "There are those in our party," Christy told them, "who claim that for a minister to seek high office will only hurt our cause.

  "To them I say, Rest easy. For if Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did not manage to kill American liberalism, conservatism has nothing to fear from me ..."

  As sudden laughter rose from the audience, Corey saw Rob Marotta allow himself a brief, ironic smile. "Perhaps," Christy suggested amiably, "those particular spiritual leaders did not quite match the nation's needs. Or perhaps, in these more perilous times, Americans at last are ready for a different servant of God."

  This last phrase, to Christy's credit, was delivered with a certain humor. "For now," he concluded simply, "I implore you to help make our beloved country what God intended it to be."

  Abruptly, Christy stopped, his head bowed as if in prayer.

  For an instant there was silence. Then applause rose from Christy's listeners, slowly building--perhaps reflecting courtesy, perhaps fear, but perhaps, Corey suspected, a new respect. "Think he'd settle for vice president?" he dryly inquired of Rustin.

  "Maybe." Still watching Christy, Rustin's eyes seemed brighter than before. "This much I know: if God wants you to be president, He'll tell the Reverend Christy to run first."

  5

  AT A LITTLE PAST ELEVEN THAT NIGHT, SENATOR ROB MAROTTA AND his chief strategist, Magnus Price, met with Alex Rohr on the roof deck of the Hotel Washington. From the outset, Marotta felt on guard: as wary as he was of Rohr, that Price had urged this meeting made him warier still.

  Their corner table had a panoramic view of the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials; much closer, the White House was brightly etched against the dark night sky. "Place sure looks noble," Price drawled with a smile. "All that moonlit marble with no people to screw it up. If you're dumb enough, or drunk enough, you'd almost forget this place is the ultimate proof that Darwin was right--only the
fittest, and the meanest, survive. To get to be a statesman, you first gotta be a prick."

  "So what's Bob Christy?" Rohr asked sharply.

  This was a sore point, Marotta understood. "A botched experiment," Price answered with a rueful tone. "Tonight was like watching Frankenstein escape. For thirty years I've busted my ass to bring Christians into the tent--including Christy--and now he's so delusional he thinks he owns the tent."

  Price's laconic manner, Marotta knew, belied the man's frustration. In Price's grand design, he was the orchestrator of the Hydra, through which the various tentacles of the party--business, Christian conservatives, right-wing media, and advocacy groups from the gun lobby to the tax cutters--combined to dominate America's politics and culture. "The whole idea," Price continued, "is to make sure each stockholder in our enterprise helps get the others what they want. The rich folks and the Bible-thumpers don't gotta love each other--they just gotta help each other. Nobody's bigger than the whole.

  "Problem with the Reverend Bob, Alex, is he's getting himself confused with God. And God don't go to meetings, or work through coalitions. Bob's God, to my lasting sorrow, just isn't a team player."

  "So what are you going to do about him," Rohr cut in, "when the senator's running against this bastard in the primaries?"

  "If," Price amended. "That's where Rob is gonna need all the help you can give him." Pausing, Price smiled across the table at Marotta. "I ran my own little poll after the last election. Rohr News persuaded ten percent of its viewers to change their vote and support the president. Despite his modesty, Alex here's a kind of genius. Maybe he'll treat you to what I call his 'theory of postmodernist media.'"

  Rohr did not smile; to Marotta, who knew him only casually, Rohr gave off the chill of a man who disdained anyone whose success, as did Marotta's, required a measure of human warmth. Shrugging, Rohr told Marotta clinically, "The old model was that news is fact, and objectivity the ideal. Today's truth is that 'news,' like anything else we sell to the public, is a product.