Balance of Power

    Nolan turned from Gold to Lara. 'Didn't your husband decide to expose Bowden to eliminate a family embarrassment and fight off charges of undue influence in a domestic violence prosecution?'

    Lara gazed at the ceiling, as though pondering the question. 'It doesn't sound like Kerry,' she replied. 'Did you ask him?'

    'I'm asking you.'

    Lara's eyes turned cold. 'Then ask me something that's not absurd.'

    'Why absurd, Mrs. Kilcannon? Did you play any role in that decision?'

    'The person who decided,' Lara answered promptly, 'was Joan.'

    'Did you discuss it with her?'

    'Not directly, no.'

    'So you didn't know, of your personal knowledge, who decided to expose John Bowden, or what your husband and sister may have discussed?'

    'I wasn't there.'

    'After the murders, did you discuss it with your husband?'

    'Care to talk about it? ' Kerry had asked.

    'About hating myself? ' she had answered. 'What is there to say? I abdicated my responsibilities in every possible way—assigning Joanie to you, helping the media to take her life over. Now they're all dead.'

    'All such conversations,' Avram Gold admonished, 'are subject to the marital privilege.'

    With a satisfied expression, Nolan said to Lara, 'Is that your position, Mrs. Kilcannon?'

    'My position,' Lara answered, 'is that Kerry and I are entitled to whatever peace we have left.'

    'Are you at least willing to discuss your conversations with Ms. Dash?'

    'Any such conversations,' Gold responded for Lara, 'are covered by the attorney-client privilege. As I understand Ms. Dash explained during Mary Costello's deposition, as a prospective plaintiff, Mrs. Kilcannon also has the right to Ms. Dash's confidential counsel.'

    'Is that your position, Mrs. Kilcannon?'

    'Yes.'

    'It is true, is it not, that you suggested to your sister Mary that Ms. Dash represent her?'

    'Mr. Nolan,' Gold interrupted with an air of weariness, 'that's been explained to you, as well. As they are both parties in interest, Mrs. Kilcannon's conversation with her surviving sister—at least concerning this lawsuit—are privileged.'

    'Including any inducements for Mary to employ Ms. Dash?'

    'Yes,' Gold answered. 'If any.'

    Nolan spun on Lara. 'Is that your position, as well?'

    'It is.'

    'Are you also unwilling to tell me whether it was your husband who suggested Ms. Dash in the first place?'

    At last, Lara felt the trap shut, could feel the full impact of the warning beneath Nolan's line of questioning. At trial, she would become the callous and indifferent sister who left Joan's problems to her calculating husband, and then helped manipulate her surviving sister, Mary, for Kerry's political gain. Nolan meant to create two soulless ciphers and then pillory them in public, destroying Lara's relationship with Mary in the bargain.

    Lara raised her head. 'I'm unwilling to tell you anything about what my husband and I may say to each other —ever. Or even whether something was said. The same is true with Mary.' She paused, adding quietly, 'Our family's much smaller now. What's left of it is too precious to share with someone like you.'

* * *

That evening, Lara wept alone.

    She had not cracked; at last, Nolan had run out of questions. But he had made his point and, worse, ripped open wounds which had barely begun to heal. Now she wondered if they ever would, and what would happen if she and Kerry stayed on this collision course with their enemies on the right.

    Through a film of tears, Lara saw their bedside clock.

    She had, perhaps, another ten minutes to grieve. Then she must repair herself and once again become First Lady. In Kerry's absence, she was hosting a dinner for the winners of the Special Olympics and their coaches, and this was a cause dear to Lara's heart.

SEVEN

Landing, Kerry was struck by the jagged brown rocks of the mountain range beyond the city, outlined against a thin blue desert sky. The vista had a shimmering quality, enhancing Kerry's sense that Las Vegas was surreal, perhaps dropped from the moon by some impresario of excess, Walt Disney on acid. Kerry's motorcade streamed down the strip, past a sequence of enormous hotels which, together, comprised a time-bending theme park: an ersatz Paris, Venice, New York City, the Rome of the Caesars, Luxor, and Camelot, punctuated by a space needle. Kerry felt a bemused admiration for the ambition and inventiveness of man, unconstrained by the limits of either money or good taste. The unusual number of billboards advertising tort lawyers reminded Kerry of Robert Lenihan.

    Turning from the window, he steeled himself for the task ahead.

    Two hours before, an advance team, unannounced and unobtrusive, had circulated through the gun show, reporting back on what they had seen. Only then did Kerry make his final decision. Kit had not alerted the press until they landed. Avid, they followed in two buses, although Kit had designated only one pool camera and three reporters to accompany the President inside the convention hall. As his limousine pulled up to the glass doors of the sprawling tan complex, Kerry's Secret Service detail spread out amidst the startled, loitering smokers.

    For a last moment, Kerry remained inside, frozen by the risk and volatility of what he was about to do. Exiting the car, he imagined John Bowden's arrival at another show just weeks ago and, despite the searing heat, felt chill.

    A phalanx of Secret Service agents surrounded him. Startled, a beefy smoker wearing a T-shirt with an Iron Cross above the slogan 'NO FEAR' uttered a one-word obscenity as Kerry and his protectors pushed inside.

    The cavernous hall had a steel web of lights and catwalks high above hundreds of tables marked by placards offering armaments of every kind. The people crowding the tables remained unaware of Kerry's arrival. At first glance, they were white, most of them male, and their appearance evoked an urban liberal's overheated fantasy of a gun show— caps, T-shirts, beards, ponytails, tattoos and sloping bellies—reminding him of the bitter cultural divisions in the country which he governed. He would find few Kilcannon voters here.

    'This way, Mr. President,' Peter Lake directed.

    With the Secret Service detail as outriders, the alien cluster headed for Kerry's objective. Beneath a sign proclaiming 'No SSA, No Gun Shows,' two grim-faced men and a petite, pretty woman glared at him in anger and surprise.