to express.
'I was in the infantry,' Conn said abruptly. 'One morning I was walking point. In twelve days I was going home, and they still had me rooting for land mines.' The smile twitched. 'I missed one.
'Three men were mangled beyond help. But it took Boynton—the black guy—two hours to die.' A film moistened his eyes, and his smile betrayed an effort of will. 'In the movies, he always told me, the black guy dies first.'
For Sarah, this last detail invested the banal sparseness of Conn's account with the echo of a long-ago psychic explosion. But the glimmer of empathy did little to ease her fear that he might be unstable, or that his view of reality was skewed by guilt, the distrust of authority bred by having become flotsam in a senseless war.
'If what you know can help us,' she admonished, 'we'll have to list you as a trial witness. Not only would your employers know, but they'd take your deposition. Secrecy's not an option.'
Conn's gaze was implacable, almost contemptuous. 'I was nineteen,' he said. 'Ever since, I've wished I could go back and save three lives. Now I've got a second chance, even if I never know how many lives, or whose.'
For the first time, Sarah acknowledged the briefcase at his feet. 'What's in there?' she inquired.
Reaching for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, Conn's eyes bored into hers. 'The documents they told me to destroy.'
* * *
Alone in the motel room, Sarah called Lara Kilcannon on her private line. She felt exhausted. The brown briefcase lay beside her on the bed.
'I'm glad you called,' Lara said without preface. 'I've got something to tell you. We need to find the person who sold John Bowden the P-2, correct?'
Lara seemed so intent that Sarah decided to defer her discovery, however important. 'To start,' she answered. 'Ultimately, we need to prove that Bowden bought it because of Lexington's ad.'
Lara was briefly silent. 'There may be more to it than that. Let me tell you where to look.'
TWELVE
On the crisp Sunday morning before Thanksgiving, Kerry and Lara kayaked across Chilmark Pond.
Martha's Vineyard was sunny, fortuitous for their weekend away. The rambling home on the pond, new to them, was quiet and filled with books. They did not stay on Dogfish Bar, or even visit. On Saturday, they had read and talked and enjoyed each other, renewing themselves. On Sunday, more ambitious, they packed bagels and a thermos of coffee and set out in two kayaks for the beach. They moved steadily across the water toward the dune concealing the ocean, Lara rotating her paddle with a graceful, almost mathematical precision, Kerry making up in vigor what he lacked in form. A breeze rippled the pond, bright with sunlight, stirring the sea grass at its edge. The only sound was the soft thudding of outboard motors powering the rubber rafts driven by the Secret Service; the only other humans visible were two more agents atop the dune.
Beaching their kayaks, Lara and Kerry climbed the wooden catwalk which traversed the dune, pausing at its top to gaze out at the blue sweep of the Atlantic, curling outward on their right to the Gay Head cliffs. In late fall, the water seemed a chalkier blue, and the confluence of sand and surf and distant cliffs had a stark severe beauty marred only by the figures of more agents stationed along the shoreline. Taking the catwalk to the beach, Kerry and Lara spread out a woolen blanket and poured steaming black coffee into two mugs, warm in their cupped hands.
'I almost hate to bring this up,' Lara said. 'But where do we stand on gun immunity?'
It was the first reference since their arrival to politics or, more obliquely, to the loss of Lara's family. Kerry chose to address the question as asked. 'In the House,' he answered, 'the SSA will jam it through. But it's close in the Senate and the final push begins tomorrow.
'Chuck Hampton thinks we've got roughly two weeks. It's time for me to start personally leaning on the Democratic swing votes—promising to campaign or swapping dam projects and jobs for relatives; pressing Chuck to withhold money from the Senate Campaign Committee for senators who vote with Fasano.'
'Will he do that?'
Kerry sipped his coffee, its warmth as bracing as the cool breeze in his face. 'Maybe,' he replied. 'As with Fasano, Chuck's leadership is on the line. The carrot is that we've done some polling, to show people like Torchio and Coletti how they can sell a vote against the SSA.' Kerry put down his mug. 'I'll do whatever I need to do. Losing this would feel like death to me.'
Lara turned to him. 'How can I help?'
Her words reminded Kerry—despite all that had happened—of the ways in which the tragedy united them. Not only did they share a common goal, but Lara understood what a President must do and accepted it without judgment.
'Joe Spivey,' Kerry answered, 'wants you to campaign for him. He thinks that could help him clean up his problems with pro-choice women—especially his vote against Caroline Masters.'
As Lara smiled at this, Kerry saw the irony of an ex-reporter who once had covered the senator from Missouri—with all the disillusion bred by that experience—and who recognized that, as First Lady, she now had the power to help him perpetuate his mediocrity for yet another term. 'Tell Senator Spivey,' she authorized her husband, 'that I've got no more shame than he does. But only if he gets it right this time.'
* * *
Monday morning, the President began calling, or summoning senators for breakfast or lunch or cocktails in the residence or Oval Office.
On the telephone with James Torchio, he promised a personal call to Torchio's principal fund-raiser. Over breakfast with Ben Jasper of Iowa, he politely inquired if the SSA could help the senator with flood relief, or whether that was something which might require a President. In the Oval Office, he more pointedly asked Jason Christy of Maryland—who badly wanted to succeed him when Kerry's term was over— whether he thought he could win their party's nomination over the opposition of the incumbent. All of this involved the usual trafficking in favors, a knowledge of each senator's motivations reinforced by their clear understanding of Kerry's; hence none of it surprised him. The exception was Hank Westerly of Nebraska.
They sat in Kerry's private quarters in the White House, sipping Scotch from crystal glasses. Westerly seemed so tormented by his dilemma that Kerry felt something close to pity. 'I often thought,' he told his former peer, 'that being a senator would be terrific if we never had to vote.'
But Westerly seemed beyond the salve of humor. He blinked at Kerry behind thick glasses, his genial midwestern face a portrait of uncharacteristic misery. 'I'm afraid of these people,' he blurted out.
'The SSA?'
'Yes.' His tone became confessional. 'I mean, physically.'
This was one fear for which Kerry was not prepared. Reading the President's face, Westerly seemed to wince, recoiling from this admission to a man who had not only lost his brother and the greater portion of Lara's family to guns, but had also been shot himself. Softly, Kerry answered, 'Unlike the pro-life fanatics, the pro-gunners don't seem to shoot their adversaries. Although I suppose there's always a first time. But if my experience is any guide, it probably won't be you.'
The senator made no attempt to answer. With the same quiet, Kerry said, 'I need your help,
