Balance of Power

promised Slezak cover if he defied the President. Slezak felt impervious: his charade was Dane's message to Kerry, the final piece of a three-pronged effort—preceded by Dane's settlement offer to Lenihan and Fasano's offer to Kerry—to assure the President's quiescence. Perhaps Fasano knew; perhaps he, too, was a pawn. But of one thing Kerry was quite certain: though he could not prove it, Jack Slezak was a liar, a knowing party to blackmail.

    'Why do you suppose,' Kerry asked quietly, 'that they picked you?'

    Left unspecified was who 'they' were. In the same flat tone, Slezak answered, 'Because they knew I would deliver the message.'

    'No doubt,' Kerry told him, nodding toward the door. 'So now you can leave. Lara and I don't get much time, and I don't like being late for dinner.'

* * *

They sat on their bed as Kerry told her.

    Her reaction was more devastating than he could have imagined. Nothing but the tears on her stricken face.

    Kerry took her hands. 'I'm sorry,' he said softly. 'Sorry that my becoming President has brought so much harm to us.'

    Her eyes were black pools of horror and grief. 'They're using 'us,' ' she said with quiet wonder, 'to erase the public memory of my family.' She grazed her cheekbones with the fingertips of one hand, as though to wipe them clean of dampness. 'And you, Kerry. Nothing about what I did was ever fair to you.'

    Quiet, Kerry sorted through the tangle of his thoughts: that Lara did not deserve this; that those who had believed in him—indeed the country—did not deserve it either; that his ambition to be President had outrun his reason; that he was President, and could not let love, or even fear for their future, obscure the iron fact of his political dilemma, the harsh choices he must make. It was pointless to wish that they had never faced this moment.

    'I love you,' he said.

    With a shiver of emotion, she rested her forehead against the hollow of his neck. 'You would have loved our child.'

    Kerry simply held her. At length, she murmured wearily, 'We've got no time for this.'

    The pitiless accuracy of this statement moved her husband to protest. 'We've got time.'

    'Not now.' Leaning back from him, she said, 'You are President. And I've got Mary to think of.'

    To his own shame, Kerry realized that he had not considered Mary. Even if he did not yield to blackmail, a President crippled by scandal might not be able to sustain a veto which, even now, rested on a onevote margin. Whatever their decision, Mary would have to know. 'I suppose that's the good part,' Lara added softly. 'Never again will Mary envy me my perfection.'

    Silent, Kerry considered the toxic consequences he had thrust on Lara, the fruits of his decision to wound the SSA through Mary's lawsuit. From first to last, he had been poison to Lara's family.

    I'll do whatever you want, he almost said, and then realized he could not promise even that. 'We both know the playbook of our times,' she told him with quiet bitterness. 'I do the media calvary, the stations of the cross, dragging my sins from network to network. A few days of that will transform disgust to pity.'

    Kerry imagined her enduring this ritual of self-flagellation, the humiliating mix of theater with a remorse too personal to dramatize. Equally embittering was his regret that Lara must be so clear-eyed.

    'I'd resign,' he said simply, 'before I'd watch that happen.'

    Her lips parted, as if to argue, and then she absorbed how literally he meant that. 'And I won't watch you protect me at any cost. To you, or to me.'

    Feeling their impasse, the conflict of love and politics, Kerry absorbed anew the consequences of whatever they chose to do, their inability—now—to consider only the personal costs of dealing with a long-ago private act.

    'We'll need advice,' he said at last. 'We can't decide this on our own.'

    Once more, tears filled Lara's eyes. 'I know,' she answered.

FOUR

Pensive, Clayton stared at the carpet.

    It was a little past one a.m. Even in an administration staffed by driven and dedicated people, the West Wing was silent, allowing Clayton to slip into the Oval Office unnoticed. At length Clayton said softly, 'They'll use it.'

    Kerry was quiet. 'When I called,' he inquired at length, 'what did Carlie say?'

    'That you keep strange hours.' Still leaning forward, Clayton peered up at him, the wisp of a smile vanishing in an instant. 'She still doesn't know about you and Lara. In twenty-seven years, it's the only secret I've ever kept from her.'

    For eighteen of those years, Clayton had been his closest friend. Gazing at Clayton's round, familiar face, Kerry thought again that he could not have hoped for a better one. He knew how deeply—almost superstitiously—averse Clayton was to keeping anything from his wife. 'Does anyone else know?'

    'Only Kit.'

    Clayton nodded. During the campaign, when a national magazine had been close to uncovering the story, they had agreed that it was necessary to prepare Kit for the worst. 'But not about Slezak?'

    'Not yet.' Kerry stood, hands thrust in his pockets. 'I want Kit's advice on this.'

    Clayton puffed his cheeks, silently expelling air. 'I can already tell you, Kerry. She'll say that you have to get this story out yourself.'

    'Maybe. But I need another point of view. I'm not going to kick this one around with our political people—let alone convene a group of wise men to cogitate on Lara's abortion as if it were the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even if I could imagine that, which I can't, can you imagine the stories if it leaked?' Kerry paused. 'A few weeks ago, I might have talked to Chad. But not now.'

    Clayton gazed at him as though absorbing the dimensions of Kerry's solitude. 'Do you want me to bring Kit in now?'

    'Please. This one won't wait.'

* * *

    At a little past two a.m., Lara waited with Kerry in his private office, their chairs pulled close together—Lara dressed in a blouse and blue jeans, Kerry in khakis and a pullover sweater. When Kit and Clayton entered, Clayton rested a hand on Lara's shoulder. Without looking up, she covered Clayton's hand with hers. Then he joined Kit on a sofa facing the President and First Lady.

    Kit's round features had assumed a sober professionalism which could not mask her worry. 'Slezak's story is bullshit.'

    Kerry nodded. 'We're all agreed on that.'

    'If you could implicate the SSA,' Kit continued, 'you'd have all sorts of choices—including moral outrage. With no one to blame, your options narrow.'

    'I'm afraid that's where we are. Short of tearing out Slezak's fingernails until he implicates Charles Dane.'

    Kit glanced at Lara, and then spoke to Kerry again. 'Maybe we're so used to being afraid of this that we've forgotten what all of us know. Millions of women face this choice. To them, for you to be blackmailed over it would be grotesque, something from the Jerry Springer Show. There's