The Race

by Richard North Patterson

  "Most of all, it gives Corey a chance to stand for love and marriage. And marrying a black woman would confirm that he's the candidate with guts--"

  Corey began laughing.

  "Did I miss the punch line?" Jack Walters asked him.

  "Why don't we just get Lexie on the line and explain that marriage will be better for my image? Then one of you can pop the question." Corey shook his head. "That would be one of the odder proposals in the history of marriage."

  "Maybe so," Lacey said. "But not in the history of politics. Lexie Hart has all the elements of a good political wife. She's poised, gracious, and articulate. She's already dealt with fame and the media--nobody needs to tell her there's no such thing as off the record--and she's learned what to give and what to withhold. She's an incredible draw in her own right, with magnetism to burn. Not even Mary Rose Marotta can compete with that.

  "More and more people of color are crossing over into the American mainstream--Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey. Together, you're the best-looking couple on the planet: Jack and Jackie Kennedy, only from appealingly modest backgrounds. And in a general election, she'll help pull in new constituents you need to win, like minorities and the young." Lacey paused for emphasis. "The worst of both worlds, Corey, is where you are now--having an affair. If you love her, marry her, and the faster the better. Otherwise, you really do have to get out of Dodge."

  All at once, Corey felt drained. Looking from Lacey to Rustin to Walters, he said, "I believe that Cortland Lane could have been elected president. You may disagree. But the political impact of my involvement with Lexie can't dictate the fate of our relationship.

  "I'm seeing Lexie Hart--at least if she's still agreeable. But it's completely absurd to imagine that I'd marry her for political damage control. Even if I wanted to, she wouldn't."

  Head bent forward, Ruskin touched his eyes. "Then don't run from it," Lacey advised gamely, "and don't flaunt it. Go out socially--but not in Hollywood. Buy her a one-piece bathing suit. Book separate hotel rooms: Rohr and Price will be all over pajama parties. The snapshot you want is of two smart and mature professionals with serious intentions."

  Rustin gazed across the table, his expression bleak, his feelings of shock and betrayal so apparent that Corey felt genuine sympathy. "You would have been president," he said quietly. "I swear it."

  "And now I can't be?"

  Rustin's shrug was a heavy, dispirited movement of his shoulders. "I've given you my best assessment. If you're still considering a run, I'll poll it."

  "Do that," Corey said softly. He was not sure whether he said this just to mollify Rustin or because some stubborn part of him could not abandon hope.

  "'DATING'?" LEXIE ASKED with faint amusement. "Sounds like a step backward to me. Is your brain trust hiring a chaperone?"

  Returning from Lacey's horse farm, Corey watched rain and sleet spatter the car windows. "That's where I drew the line. Seriously, Lexie, this is what I want."

  "As opposed to the presidency?"

  "I haven't decided." Corey hesitated. "Is that absolutely a deal breaker?"

  Lexie was silent. "I'm a deal breaker, Corey. If your advisers knew--"

  "One step at a time," Corey said. "First, I need to ask you for a date."

  THEY PUT OUT a joint press release, emphasizing their regard for each other and the seriousness of their relationship.

  This only increased the frenzy. Reporters from Rohr's media empire and elsewhere staked out their homes and badgered friends for comments; Marotta laced his speeches with references to "Hollywood values"; more forthright, Bob Christy called their relationship "unacceptable not because of Ms. Hart's race, but for the moral example it sets for children of any race." The photograph of Lexie became a staple of cable news; a virulent right-wing talk-show host accused Corey of "thinking with an organ more commonly associated with the tawdry excesses of Democratic presidents"; Jay Leno called the relationship a "bold departure from the Republican tradition of pedophilia and petty graft." Corey's e-mails and telephone calls were more unfavorable than not, including a number from Ohioans professing their regret for having supported him. Consoled by early polling that suggested Americans were, on the whole, more generous than his mail, Corey felt more pain for Lexie than for himself.

  Her first trip to Washington was difficult. At Citronelle, the smiles of fellow diners were offset by the fat inebriate who, passing their table, expressed sympathy to Corey for the hard life of a politician. Nodding to Lexie as if she were a potted plant, the man said pointedly, "You have to be real careful who you're seen with, Senator."

  Lexie's face went blank. Coldly, Corey answered, "I am. So please leave."

  The man opened his mouth, then silently retreated. "Sorry," Corey told her.

  Lexie shrugged. "He was drunk. Sober he'd only have thought it." Reaching out, she covered his hand, adding softly, "Let it go, Corey."

  But he couldn't quite. The next night, at a Republican gala, well-dressed men and women vied to meet this emissary from a wholly different world, many friendly or at least polite, a few staring openly. Lexie was unfailingly gracious. "It's okay," she murmured to Corey. "We may not feel like Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, but people think we are."

  Only later could she tell him what she had overheard in the ladies' room of the hotel. "She's very well-spoken," one woman told a friend sotto voce. "Usually they're not so well educated." She paused, then added tartly, "Actresses, I mean."

  "She does seem nice," the first woman insisted. "And even more attractive in person than on film. There must be some Caucasian blood there, don't you think?"

  "Whatever race she is," her friend responded, "it's enough to make a United States senator lose his senses. At least some of his senses."

  Sitting in the underground parking lot of her hotel, Corey watched her expressionless face for clues as to how she felt. The vignette, he concluded, was clue enough. Kissing her, he said lightly, "Actually, my senses have never worked better. All of them."

  Lexie rested her forehead against his. It was then, though he refrained from telling her, that Corey Grace decided not to run for president.

  23

  THIS DECISION, COREY FOUND, DID NOT PUT AN END TO HIS AMBIVALENCE.

  He still did not tell Lexie, rationalizing that this might help her feel less responsible for his decision when he announced it. For another week he maintained his hectic schedule in the key primary states, torn between the vision of a relationship with Lexie unimpeded by presidential politics and dread of the letdown he would feel on the day of public relinquishment, made more bitter by the satisfaction it would give men like Rohr and Magnus Price.

  Oddly, it was his mother who provoked him to move out of this twilight zone. Calling Corey over a busy weekend in New Hampshire, she informed him that she and his father worried, along with the Reverend Christy, that "carrying on with this woman is lowering the morals of our children." When Corey gently rebuked her, she implored him, "Please, Corey--try to imagine what your own brother would think of you now." Appalled by her appropriation of a boy she had understood so little, Corey answered quietly, "I really can't, Mom. And neither can you."

  Hanging up, Corey reflected sadly on his distance from the woman who had borne him. But she had crystallized a larger truth: for too many people like her, his relationship with Lexie had been defined by his antagonists. Lexie did not deserve this, and he would be selfish to continue making her a target.

  Later that day, when Marotta called to request a meeting, Corey understood his purpose: to suggest that, in light of Corey's new realities, his only rational choice was to support Marotta over Christy. It was then that Corey called Blake Rustin and Brian Lacey, informing them of his decision: he would tell Marotta that he had chosen not to run, and let the conversation flow from there.

  MAROTTA'S OFFICE WAS on the first floor of the Russell Building, Corey's on the second. Corey walked slowly down the marble stairs. With each disheartened trea
d he imagined the relief and satisfaction Marotta would struggle to conceal.

  Corey had reached the bottom step when he heard gunshots.

  In the sunlit rotunda of the southeast entrance, a security guard lay sprawled on the marble floor as two armed men burst into the opposite end of the corridor that Corey was about to enter. Stunned, Corey flattened himself against the wall of the stairwell.

  No longer able to see the gunmen, he heard their footsteps echo on the marble floor. One of the invaders spoke hurriedly in a language Corey recognized from his captivity. Across from where he hid, only the open door of Marotta's office--the last on the corridor--remained visible. Marotta's receptionist appeared in the doorway, peering out as two visitors stared up at her from a leather couch.

  Caught between fear and the instincts of a fighter pilot, Corey watched the receptionist shrink back from what she saw.

  The gunmen burst into Marotta's office. Framed in the doorway, one turned to the two men on the couch, unloading a burst of gunfire that caused them to twitch like puppets, blood spattering the wall. Corey stopped thinking.

  As the second man cut down the receptionist, he sprinted across the corridor.

  Startled by his footsteps, the second gunman spun. Desperate, Corey lowered his head and lunged for the man's stomach, disrupting his aim with an outflung arm. The man's companion spun around and fired.

  Corey's head struck his target's midsection. The man's upper body absorbed the bullets; a spray of blood hit Corey's face. Reaching out, he grasped the stock of his automatic weapon as the terrorist fell across him. Sheltered by his body, Corey found the trigger.

  More bullets hit the dead man's back. Thrusting out the gun, Corey fired blindly.

  The weapon jumped in his hand and escaped his grasp. Frantic, Corey lunged to retrieve it.

  Silence fell, sudden and eerie.

  The first terrorist was sprawled with his back against one of the dead visitors' legs, blood gushing from a throat wound that had nearly decapitated him.

  Crawling forward, Corey picked up the gun. "I need help here," he called out.

  Slowly, the door to Marotta's suite of offices cracked open. Staring at the carnage, Rob Marotta blinked at the sight of Corey's blood-spattered face.

  A sudden clicking sound made Marotta flinch instinctively. Spinning to fire, Corey saw a photographer. "Don't shoot," the man cried out, and his camera kept clicking.

  THE SAME PHOTOGRAPH filled the front page of every newspaper in America. In the foreground, Corey held the terrorist's weapon, his face smeared with the dead man's blood; behind him stood Marotta, peering from the doorway. The headline in the New York Times was almost superfluous: "Senator Kills Terrorists in Capitol Raid." So was the subheading that followed: "Grace Saves Rival's Life as Al Qaeda Gunmen Murder Four."

  Though the image was horrific, Brian Lacey could not help but note, "Marotta looks scared, doesn't he?"

  They sat at Corey's conference table. Corey still felt stunned; his only statement to the media--written, not spoken--had expressed sorrow for the dead and gratitude for his own survival. His first call had been to Lexie. "I saw," she said in a near whisper. "I'm so glad I didn't lose you."

  She sounded as shocked as he felt. "Do you need me to come back?" she asked.

  Corey struggled for clarity. "In a day or so, I'd like that. Right now there's so much to deal with I'm drowning in it."

  And he was: the police, a media obsessed with terror, a newly anxious public, cameras everywhere he went, and, invariably, the siren song of ambition--his advisers' desires, and his own need, to process the shift in the country's psychic landscape. As Rustin gazed at the photograph that Lacey was already calling "an iconic image," Rustin said, "You've been touched by the hand of God and Al Qaeda.

  "Fate's an amazing thing, Corey. Two Al Qaeda sleepers can't figure out how to kill the president, and then it dawns on them that Marotta, possibly our next president, has an office with practically no security. So they go on his Web site, read his schedule, and decide to drop in. And, in the process, maybe create the real next president by accident--with a little help from you, of course.

  "But as you always say, character is fate. Yours and Marotta's." Rustin shook his head in disbelief. "The same guy who flies to Cabo to meet an actress sprints across the hallway to jump a terrorist. And Marotta looks like he lacks the guts to open his fucking door."

  And yet, even as he studied the photograph, Corey's reflections were deeply personal. He pondered about the thin line between action and inaction, between the seemingly heroic and the ostensibly craven, and, most haunting, between life and death. Rob Marotta had felt it, too. In the brief moment before the police had arrived, Marotta, shaken by what might have befallen him, had become more human than Corey had ever seen him.

  "I don't know if I could have done that," he'd murmured to Corey.

  Corey had looked around them at the dead. And then he, too, had given way to his emotions--a toxic compound of what Rohr, Marotta's backer, had done to Lexie and how Marotta had exploited their romance to further his own ambitions. "I wouldn't waste time on it," Corey had responded tersely, "because you'll never know. What happened is what you get to live with."

  Marotta's face had closed. He had already sensed, as had Corey, what he would have to live with.

  "This is a transcendent moment," Blake Rustin said now. "You didn't plan it, and the way you responded will define forever who you are. It's like Giuliani after 9/11--a remission of all prior sins."

  Brian Lacey placed his finger next to Marotta's stricken face. "This is also defining for Marotta. Like few others--and unlike the snapshots Rohr's jackals took slinking around Cabo San Lucas--this photograph captures an essential truth. You're the hero, and Marotta's Humpty Dumpty. Not even Magnus Price can put him back together.

  "People are afraid again. They need a real leader." Standing, he placed a hand on Corey's shoulder. "I know this was horrific, Corey. No one knows why these things happen. But this is your time."

  Corey sat there, silent, his attitude of reflection so deep it felt close to prayer. Looking up at last, he said, "And Lexie?"

  Rustin and Lacey stared at him, as though stupefied by the inconsequence of the question. "Whatever," Rustin answered. "This is your chance to say what you want and realize your destiny. For Godsakes, take it."

  "THEY'RE RIGHT," LEXIE told him.

  An hour after Corey's return from the funeral for Marotta's receptionist, Lexie lay beside him in her suite at the Madison Hotel. They had made love hungrily, celebrating the fact he was alive. Only afterward could they discuss the larger implications of his survival.

  "I know they are," Corey answered. "I also want you in my life."

  Lexie touched his face. Softly, she said, "I just may be in love with you, Senator."

  Corey felt a rush of feeling. "Lexie--"

  "Let me finish, please." She looked deeply into his eyes. "Remember when I said a man should never tell a woman she can't have children--that no one can deprive another human being of something so essential to her life?"

  Corey smiled ruefully. "How could I forget?"

  "In a way, Corey, this is the same thing. A week ago whether you ran was a judgment call that could have gone either way."

  "I'd already decided, Lexie. I was bowing out."

  For an instant, her eyes closed. "That was then, Corey. And it was about me."

  When he began to protest, Lexie placed a finger to his lips. "Then, I could have accepted that. I even could have convinced myself that it was best for you. Now, I can't." She paused, seeming reluctant to continue. "I'm afraid for you," she told him in a husky voice, "afraid some madman with a gun will shoot you because of me. Afraid of what this terrible process will do to us. I'm even afraid for me. But I can't--won't--be the reason that you don't run.

  "Maybe running will put an end to us. But if you don't run, I think it will end us for sure--maybe not soon, but soon enough. Our only chance is for you to run, an
d for us to take our chances."

  Corey felt both elation and apprehension. "But what will you do?"

  "I thought about that the whole flight out here. I think it's best for us if I stay away from your campaign, at least for a while, until things are clearer to us both." She mustered a smile. "Like you, I'm not going anywhere--at least not yet. And we're pretty good on the phone."

  At that moment, Corey wanted to say that he, too, was falling in love. But it was the wrong time, and he was not certain she would believe him. "Yeah," he answered. "We're pretty good on the phone."

  WHEN COREY ANNOUNCED his candidacy, his parents, but not Lexie, were with him.

  He stood in the band shell at Taylor Park, where Bob Christy once had spoken, savoring the irony. His father and mother sat behind him, unavoidable props in his political pageant, looking proud, discomfited, and somewhat mystified. Even they, Corey suspected, sensed what he knew all too well--that campaigning for president is the American odyssey, and the journey tests those who undertake it in ways they can only guess at, and in others they never suspect until the crisis is upon them.

  He gazed out at a throng that overflowed the grass, speckled with familiar faces but swollen by the trappings of a presidential campaign: reporters, videocams, supporters who arrived on buses, a documentary film crew retained to capture footage for Corey's TV ads. With him on the bandstand were his closest friends in the House and Senate, the daring few who would have backed him even before lightning struck--notably Dakin Ford, the young, iconoclastic senator from Lexie's home state, South Carolina. Seeing Ford reminded Corey of how much he already missed her.

  But this was his moment, and he rose to meet it.

  "In the face of all our challenges," he said, "I call for a new beginning, and an end to the willful obliviousness to all that we must face together. We must be more than the party of business or religion. We must not seek power by dividing the country on the basis of creed or culture or even the fear of terrorism. And we must speak clearly about what it means to be conservative.