Balance of Power

the few surprises which are nice ones.'

* * *

    A day later, after the President's noontime speech on corporate responsibility to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Kit Pace surprised the traveling media contingent by announcing an unscheduled three-hour stopover in Las Vegas. She explained this only as 'personal time'; to repeated inquiries, she intimated that Kerry would be meeting with unspecified supporters. 'I doubt he'll be playing the slots,' she observed, 'but I'm sure the press pool will catch him if he does.' All of which, Kerry was certain, would suggest to the ever-alert White House press corps that something surprising was up—the precise reaction he had hoped for.

    On the flight from San Francisco, Kerry placed a congratulatory call to the Majority Leader on the birth of his fifth son. 'Come up with a name?' Kerry asked.

    'Francis Xavier Fasano, Junior.' Kerry heard the smile in Fasano's voice. 'After five boys, Bernadette's a broken woman, and we'd about run out of names. So I was able to sneak 'Frank Junior' by her.'

    It would be a nice anecdote for the media and home-state audiences; to Kerry's trained ear, it already had a certain practiced sound. But beneath this he heard Fasano's joy and pride—even in an obligatory conversation with an adversary who, Kerry well knew, Fasano personally disliked. Feeling a moment's envy, Kerry rued the absence of children in his life, and then, sadly, thought of Marie. 'Lara has a will of steel,' he told Fasano, 'and I'm sure we'll stop well short of six. I doubt the world will ever see Kerry junior.'

    'For some of us,' Fasano said dryly, 'Kerry senior is more than enough to handle.' But this was the closest they got to politics. Kerry passed over his own family concerns, including today's source of anxiety and anger— Lara's deposition. Hanging up, he wondered how it was going.

    In search of distraction, Kerry went to his private quarters with Kit, to review the television ads prepared by the Trial Lawyers for Justice.

    Of the first five, his favorite showed a retired Army general—a veteran of Vietnam—dressed in hunting gear and holding a Lexington P-2. When I was in Vietnam, the general said brusquely, I needed this kind of gun. But I sure don't need it for hunting deer. All it's good for is hunting people . . .

    'Who don't have a sporting chance,' Kerry added softly. 'We have to separate the hunters from the crazies. This one does.'

    'That's not bad,' Kit agreed. 'But check out the next one.'

    Abruptly, the war hero was replaced by pictures of a picturesque frontier town. This, the narrator began, is Libby, Montana.

    It's a place where folks work hard, and don't ask for anything more than a fair shake. But now many of its people are dying from asbestosis, and their families are facing an uphill battle against asbestos companies who are using big donations, deceptive ads, and high-priced lobbyists to persuade our elected representatives in Washington to protect them . . .

    'Didn't take Lenihan long,' Kerry remarked.

    The bucolic scene was replaced by somber faces. First, a gentle, greyhaired woman said, They killed my husband, and now my four boys are dying, too. Then came a man with sad eyes and hollow cheeks, They lied to us, he explained. We knew it was dusty, but we didn't know it was deadly.

    To Kerry, the testament of real people packed a raw power no artifice could match. Three members of my family died, a pretty young woman told the camera. My brother Hank, my Uncle Lee, and my cousin Alex. We'd be held accountable if it was us who did this . . .

    'Not,' Kit interrupted, 'if you've given Leo Weller a hundred thousand or so.'

    As if on cue, Weller's face appeared. Now Senator Leo Weller, the young woman's voice continued, is sponsoring legislation to keep us from holding the company responsible.

    With a jarring abruptness, Weller was replaced by a dying man breathing through a respirator. I'd like an apology from Leo Weller, he said in a labored wheeze. But he wouldn't even meet with us. I want to know before I die what makes an asbestos company's profits more important than my life . . .

    'Seems fair enough,' observed Kit. 'Wonder what Weller would tell him.'

    The first woman reappeared, her words more piercing for the plainspoken flatness of her speech. The asbestos industry is spending millions of dollars pushing legislation they wrote, sponsored by Senator Weller, to protect them from the people they poisoned. They call it the Civil Justice Reform Act. We hope you'll call Senator Weller and ask him why he won't stand up for us.

    Against a black background, the telephone number of Weller's Washington office appeared in white. Softly, the woman finished, Please help us, and then the screen went dark.

    It was a moment before Kerry spoke. 'Know what the media buy is?'

    'Two million,' Kit answered. 'In Montana, that's enough to run it every night, on every station, for the next three weeks. Lenihan's people have already taken this to CNN and Nightline, and they're both looking at doing stories.'

    Kerry looked up at her. 'A couple of weeks of this and Leo may be a tad more flexible on tort reform.' He briefly shook his head. 'It's exactly what I wanted them to do—put their money on the screen. It's also what Chad Palmer and I spent half our careers complaining about— except now the trial lawyers are almost as powerful as the corporations, and they're both at least as powerful as the parties they're trying to buy. All that's changed is that we've all become a little worse, and the system a little worse off.'

    Kit did not answer. Kerry realized that the plane had slowed; glancing out the window, he saw the mirage which was Las Vegas.

    'Do you really want to do this?' Kit asked. 'You've got no idea in the world what will happen.'

    Kerry smiled faintly. 'Just stand back from me a little. With any luck, they'll miss you.'

SIX

At two o'clock in the afternoon, Lara and Avram Gold entered the conference room of Nolan's firm.

    Though it felt awkward, Lara greeted Sarah with polite formality. The others—Lenihan and the defense lawyers, Nolan, Fancher, and their associates—shook her hand with deference, a receiving line of litigators. This false decorum made her edgy. Despite all of her experience as a public person, the risks she had run as a war correspondent, she had not been able to eat since breakfast. There was a knot in the pit of her stomach.

    She sat across from Nolan. Somewhat theatrically, Avram Gold looked about the room. 'What,' he inquired with a mocking edge, 'no video camera?'

    To Lara, a trace of cynicism showed beneath Nolan's mandarin air of calm. 'For Mrs. Kilcannon,' he answered smoothly, 'we didn't feel it necessary.'

    Lara studied him. His face was broad and flat, his forehead high, and he wore a double-breasted blue pinstripe like an armor of wealth and privilege. Lara detested the fact that this stranger—the representative of so much she disliked—could make her relive the worst moments of her life, or account for her relationship to those whom she had lost. She determined to give him nothing—no emotion, no pretense of cordiality, only a cool facade. They would see who would be the first to crack.