Balance of Power

    'No,' he told Fasano.

* * *

    Lara gripped the telephone. 'Mary,' she said quietly, 'if we take the money on those terms, our settlement will seem like an apology. Or worse.'

    'Worse?'

    'A sellout. In either case, the votes to uphold Kerry's veto will begin to melt away.'

    Speaking from her efficiency apartment in San Francisco, Mary sounded wan. 'Did I hear you say 'we,' Lara?'

    At once, Lara realized her blunder. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I was thinking of our family.'

    'That's good,' Mary answered. 'Because it's different for me than you. It seems like from the moment I was born you were already this great success.'

    The myths of families, Lara thought sadly. 'I was in second grade, Mary—a seven-year-old who was scared to death of our own father. Now I'm a woman who, like you, has lost the rest of her family but for a sister.'

    'A woman,' Mary repeated in a tone Lara heard as both stubborn and defensive, 'who's also married to the President and made millions with NBC. Coming from you, 'we' sounds false.'

    Stop, Lara thought. 'Do you think the SSA's eight million dollars,' she shot back, 'will make you a 'success'? It's like selling our own mother to these people.' Abruptly, Lara heard herself. 'I apologize, Mary—really. Like you, I'm frayed. I understand that I've been lucky, that our lives are nothing alike. But this offer's just appalling.'

    On the other end, Mary was silent, perhaps stunned by the harshness of their conflict. 'Lara,' she said in a trembling voice, 'I'm not selling our mother—or Joanie and Marie. If I were, I wouldn't have called Sarah. That's as good as calling you.'

    Not only was that true, Lara saw, but Mary's thrust was a fresh reminder of her intrusion into Mary's suit. 'I apologize,' Lara said in a mollifying tone. 'I understand the difference between having money or not . . .'

    'Well, I don't understand the difference, Lara. I've never had the chance.'

    Once again, Lara heard the justice in her sister's words, felt the yawning gulf in their perceptions. With an anxiety close to desperation, she promised, 'I can help you, Mary. If it still matters, I can even help get you a contract for that book on our family you mentioned. Whatever I can do.'

    'What if I take this settlement?'

    Lara paused to speak deliberately. 'It would be hard to imagine a book, Mary, with that as its ending.'

    Her sister began to cry.

* * *

    As soon as Clayton entered the office, Kerry knew from his friend's expression that he was troubled.

    'What's up, pal?' the President inquired. 'It's been a long day.'

    'Slezak wants a meeting.'

    'And here I thought there were no surprises left. He must have heard about Jeannie Griswold.'

    'He already knew you'd do that,' Clayton demurred, and sat wearily in front of Kerry's desk. 'He says it's a private matter—'extremely sensitive'—which can't wait another day. And that no one should know he's coming.'

    Abruptly, Kerry felt the pulse of Clayton's instinct, the first glimmer that Slezak's insolence made a certain awful sense. With a fair show of calm, he answered, 'Doesn't sound like an apology, does it? You'd better tell him to come tonight.'

THREE

With deep foreboding, Kerry received Jack Slezak in the President's private office.

    Slezak hunched in a wing chair, ankles crossed, hands clasped, his thick body held slightly forward. But for the brightness in his light green eyes, betraying a hint of superiority, he had the somber look of a worshiper at Mass, bent before the imponderable will of God. Even his voice was hushed.

    'I'm sorry, Mr. President. I had no choice but to come in person.'

    Briefly, Slezak averted his gaze in what Kerry saw as feigned embarrassment. Increasingly certain of Slezak's purpose, the President spoke in a voice drained of welcome or encouragement. 'Concerning what?'

    Though still bent forward, Slezak gave the President a swift, keen glance which lifted the red eyebrows beneath the broad plane of his forehead. 'I received a call. The man told the receptionist he was the president of the AFL-CIO. That's a call I've got to take.' As he watched Kerry from behind his mask of reluctance, his voice became harsher. 'Turned out it was a man I didn't know, saying he had a message for you.

    'I was so pissed I nearly hung up on him. Then I thought'—here Slezak interrupted himself with a helpless shrug—'you know, that it might involve some threat against your life.'

    The tacit reference to Jamie's murder, and Kerry's own near death, made Slezak's pretense of humanity more offensive. With a faint cold smile, Kerry said softly, 'But, of course, it wasn't.'

    The disbelief implicit in Kerry's remark caused Slezak to look at him sharply. 'No. It was about the First Lady.'

    To Kerry, his own smile felt as though it could crack glass. 'Only Lara?'

    'No.' Slezak studied his clasped hands. 'He said that the two of you were involved when you were still married to your former wife.'

    Though prepared for this, a thickness in his throat forced Kerry to pause before mustering a tone of irony. ' 'Involved'? Was your caller all that delicate?'

    Plainly annoyed, Slezak looked straight at Kerry. 'He said you'd made her pregnant, and that she'd gotten an abortion.'

    With veiled contempt, Kerry murmured, 'At last.'

    Slezak stared at him. In their silence, the pale light of two standing lamps, Kerry began absorbing the calamity, long deferred, which now would fall on Lara and on him, pervading every corner—public and private—of their lives. Then Slezak added bluntly, 'There's more.'

    'I thought there would be.'

    Without the pretense of any encouragement from the President, Slezak finished in a toneless voice. 'He said they have the counselor's notes from the abortion clinic your wife went to, and that the notes confirm you were the father.'

    Despite Slezak's presence, Kerry was helpless to fight the current of memory—the emotional wreckage which Lara had become, his own pleas to have their child. 'An interesting story,' Kerry observed coldly. 'Rich in detail. Did your source explain why he was sharing it with you?'

    Slezak's eyes narrowed in shrewd appraisal. 'Not exactly. Only that you'd know that it was true. And that once I told you, so would I.'

    The tacit statement of Slezak's leverage triggered, in Kerry, a mute fury at his own impotence. Standing, he said dismissively, 'So now you know whatever you assume to know.'

    Slezak stood as well, seemingly propelled from his chair by a banked antagonism of his own. 'That's not the end,' he said curtly. 'The guy said if you veto the Civil Justice Reform Act, all of America will know.'

    And Charles Dane already knew. To Kerry, the pattern was now crystalline. The SSA had the memo, and had