Balance of Power

Civil Justice Reform Act.'

    'That's the problem,' Chad answered. 'This is way too personal to me, and there are a lot of things at stake. I need time to think it through.'

    The President's laugh was quiet and without humor. 'You and I have twenty-four hours. That's how much time Fasano's given us.'

FOURTEEN

For Kerry, the predawn hours were punctuated by two events.

    The first was Lara rising from bed, treading softly to the bathroom and carefully shutting the door. Though muffled by running water, Kerry heard the quiet but unmistakable sound of his wife becoming sick.

    He waited until he heard Lara splashing more water on her face. Then he slowly opened the door.

    Dabbing her face with a towel, Lara saw him in the mirror. 'Can I get you something?' he asked.

    Her skin was pale, Kerry saw, and her expression was wan. But she managed to smile at his inquiry. 'Maybe a new stomach?'

    He tilted his head. 'What about a different life?'

    Closing her eyes, she gave the briefest shake of her head, swallowing as though she still felt sick. 'It's not that,' she answered in a weak but insistent voice. 'If stress did this to me, I'd have never survived Kosovo. I'm coming down with the flu again.'

    Perhaps that was all it was. Lately, they had both been more prone to colds. But Kerry felt again the cost to Lara of marrying him, the tragedy, and now the misery which had followed. So much had happened since Slezak's warning; that they had so little time to absorb it, or do anything but cope with its impact on his Presidency, struck Kerry as inhuman.

    Putting his hands on Lara's waist, he rested the side of his face against hers. She smiled again in the mirror. 'Don't get too close,' she advised. 'You'll catch it.'

    'Are you going to be all right?'

    Her eyes, reflected in the glass, seemed to query how he meant this. 'You might call down for some ginger ale,' she answered.

    Kerry left it there.

    The second event was the arrival, with Lara's ginger ale, of the earlymorning edition of the New York Times. The headline 'SSA Accused of Blackmailing President' led a spate of articles which confirmed what Kerry already knew—that the body politic was shell-shocked; the Senate in flux; and that the Democratic expressions of outrage had not, thus far, translated into a change of any votes. The problem—as the Times pointed out—was that upholding the President's veto was an all-ornothing proposition. Tort reform remained overwhelmingly popular in the Senate, and there was no longer any way to separate gun immunity from the rest. All that seemed likely was that the President would hold the thirty-three votes which remained after Leo Weller's defection. Though a single senator might set off a chain reaction, on the surface Kerry remained a vote short.

    Head propped on a pillow, Lara read along with him, then kissed him on the cheek. 'Good luck,' she said. 'It looks like a big day at the office.'

* * *

    His seven a.m. meeting, with Tony Calvo of the Chamber of Commerce, had been scheduled at Calvo's urgent request. The President had granted him fifteen minutes, and Calvo wasted none of them.

    'We'd like to revisit the deal you offered us, Mr. President—with modifications. We won't support an override if you'll support the passage of the Civil Justice Reform Act without the gun immunity provisions.'

    At once, Kerry grasped two essential facts—that Calvo was uncertain that Fasano's votes would hold, but that Calvo viewed Kerry as so damaged that he could drive a hard bargain. ' 'Revisit'?' he inquired with a smile. 'What about 'rewrite'? The compromise I offered you did not include the corporate goodies Fasano's trying to jam through.'

    Calvo nodded. 'True, we're looking for some movement. But we're offering to help save you from an embarrassing defeat, at the worst possible time, on the worst possible issue for you. Guns.'

    Like any Faustian bargain, Kerry thought, the blandishment was seductive—saving the President from a defeat which was, at least in prospect, catastrophic. So it took him longer than he liked to ask quietly, 'What do you take me for? However you may couch it, you're piggybacking on what the SSA has done to us—most significant, in my mind, to Lara . . .'

    'That's not so,' Calvo protested.

    'Nonsense, Tony. You think I'm so weakened that I'll sell you the store in exchange for selling out Charles Dane. I can't fault your practicality, or blame you for trying. But don't blame me for being insulted.'

    'Mr. President,' Calvo said more soberly, 'I deplore what was done to you and the First Lady.'

    Propping his face in the palm of his hand, Kerry considered him. 'I appreciate that. Though not quite as much as if you'd said it earlier, in public, when these people were dragging Lara through the mud.

    'But understand that this is more than personal. I don't think politics should ever be conducted in this fashion. For the sake of the next President, and whoever else comes after, I can't cave in to this. You're asking for too much, too late.'

    Calvo held his gaze. 'If that's true, Mr. President, I'm sorry.'

    'So am I.' Kerry's voice remained even. 'Before you tell your coalition that you've failed, I'd like you to take a moment, and think very hard about your support for a Senate leadership team that subordinates your interests to a pack of blackmailing fanatics who may wind up getting your wife or children shot.

    'This game so many business interests keep on playing puzzles me. You compromise with fundamentalists who want to outlaw Charles Darwin and put women in their place. You get in bed with gun nuts. You tell yourself that's the only way you'll get what you deserve—tort reform, and all those tax cuts—and that it's okay to let these people dictate our social policy as long as they don't get to come to dinner and fill your children's heads with nonsense.'

    Kerry's last comment induced, in Calvo, the glimmer of a sardonic smile. 'As long as I'm President,' Kerry told him, 'they're not running anything. On the other hand, I believe the interests you represent are essential to the country—just as long as you don't think you are the country, or that this yawning wealth gap we've developed is good for you or anyone. The system only works if people are secure and treated fairly.' The President's tone grew firm. 'No matter what you think, the trial lawyers don't own me. If you want fairness and not your usual wish list, my door is always open. Otherwise you're going to have a very long three years.'

    Thoughtful, Calvo studied him. Then he asked the question Kerry had been hoping for. 'How can we start over, Mr. President?'

    Kerry smiled. 'For openers? Stop pushing Vic Coletti to support an override.'

* * *

Senator Coletti, Hampton thought, had seldom looked less happy.

    They sat alone in Hampton's office, sealed from, but ever mindful of, a Senate tense with rumor and confusion,