Balance of Power

necessary to achieve peace, or even stop killing each other into the next generation. 'Tell your people the truth,' he snapped by telephone at the head of the PLO. 'For once. They're not going back to Israel to reclaim their parents' ancestral homes. Either get them to accept that, or they'll fester for another fifty years in these squalid refugee camps terrorists use as training grounds. If you can't do that, what's the point of you?'

    But the Israeli Prime Minister was little help. 'We have to defend our settlements, Mr. President.'

    'Which you never should have put there,' Kerry retorted. 'They're an utter provocation.

    'Let me explain something. We're morally committed to your survival as a nation. But the day is past when you can use that to define our Middle Eastern policy. You've got the next Saddam Hussein two countries over, developing nuclear and biological weapons, and we can't very easily take him out—even if we decide to—because our Arab 'friends' won't help us as long as you and the Palestinians keep slaughtering each other. I'm not waiting until his anthrax hits New York for you to get this right . . .'

    'Mr. President,' the Israeli interrupted, 'I can't make the concessions you want. To make the peace, I must keep my majority in Parliament . . .'

    'Tell your friends in Parliament that the first nuclear missile will land on them, not us.' Kerry softened his voice. 'The Holocaust is one of history's nightmares. The humanitarian debt it created is Israel's precious moral capital. It's been fascinating to watch you do your damnedest to deplete it . . .'

When this conversation had ended, the skies outside were dark, and a fresh wind drove sheets of rain against the windows. Kerry glanced at his watch. He had kept George Callister waiting for forty minutes.

* * *

    At least Callister had the decency, Kerry thought, to look pained. 'I remember meeting your wife's family,' he said in his direct midwestern way. 'I was heartsick at what happened.'

    'I know. You wrote me about it.'

    Callister's frozen look hinted at his embarrassment. 'I tried to call you, Mr. President. They wouldn't put me through.'

    'They'd been dead for two days,' Kerry answered quietly. 'Lara's mother, sister and niece, murdered with a gun and bullets Bowden purchased at a gun show. The very transaction you wouldn't agree to stop two days before they died.' Pausing, the President slid a letter across his desk. 'And so you sent me this.'

    Callister's mouth compressed. 'We had to make a proposal, and respond to what had happened. It was the only way to communicate with you.'

    'I suppose that's why you chose Paul Harshman.'

    Briefly, Callister looked down. 'I'm not naive, Mr. President. Given all that had happened, we couldn't count on you to say that we'd even tried.'

    'Tried what?' In a tone tinged with irony, Kerry quoted from Callister's letter. ' 'Lexington will pay for the cost of voluntary background checks at gun shows when any Lexington weapon is sold.'

    'Who was going to volunteer, George? Bowden, or whoever sold it to him?' Kerry's voice was softer yet. 'Reading the letter, I was embarrassed for you. Hearing Harshman read it, I was embarrassed for me.'

    This time Callister's gaze did not waver. 'What is it you want, Mr. President?'

    'It's very simple. I want you to endorse what I've proposed to Congress, and put it into practice at Lexington Arms. Support background checks on all your weapons sold at gun shows. Retrofit your guns so that they only take ten rounds. Stop making Eagle's Claw bullets. In short, I want you to take the actions which would have saved Lara's family.'

    Callister drew a breath. 'I can't let that last part pass,' he said slowly. 'If Bowden hadn't found a P-2, he'd have bought someone else's gun. The result would have been the same.'

    'Maybe so. But then it wouldn't have been your gun, would it? Or your bullets. Or your responsibility. Don't hide behind the other guys. The law I'm asking you to endorse applies to everyone.' Kerry's tone was clipped. 'This is your chance to save lives, George. Don't tell me how sorry you are. Do something.'

    Callister's smile was faint and, to Kerry, melancholy. 'For myself, I would. I think you know that. As president of Lexington, I'll work with you.' Briefly Callister paused. 'But I can't endorse your program. I'm certain you know why.'

    'The SSA.'

    Callister grimaced. 'Their power is real, and it includes the power to wipe out jobs. Lexington isn't just about its guns. It's about its people . . .'

    'And you wouldn't want them to become an 'endangered species.' Like the Lexington P-2.'

    Callister folded his hands, choosing silence. 'For the rest of my life,' Kerry told him with lethal quiet, 'there won't be a day I don't imagine the six-year-old girl I danced with at our wedding, lying on an operating table with her insides torn out by an Eagle's Claw bullet. I don't want my next thought to be about your refusal.'

    For an instant, Callister looked away. Then he shook his head and, with a composure equal to Kerry's, said, 'I'm very sorry, Mr. President.'

    Kerry stared at him, the only sound the spattering of rain against glass. Then he pressed the button on his intercom. 'Mr. Callister's leaving,' he told his assistant. 'Take him out the West Wing entrance. The press is waiting for him.'

    Callister studied him with rising comprehension. 'So they can find out what you asked of me.'

    'No need,' the President answered softly. 'It's rather like your letter, George. They already know.'

PART THREE

THE

LAWSUIT

MID-SEPTEMBER–MID-OCTOBER

ONE

The next evening, the President and First Lady dined on the Presidential yacht, which Lara had renamed the Inez.

    The gesture was a fond one. As children, neither she nor Kerry had had the means to sail. But both liked the sensation of movement on water, and so, Lara discovered before the wedding, had Inez. Sitting on the deck, Lara imagined her mother's bemusement at having metamorphosed into the Presidential yacht, restored to the Presidency by its owner after thirty years in private hands.

    Surrounded by a flotilla from the Secret Service, they cruised down the Potomac in the failing sunlight of early fall. Though unannounced, the expedition had worried Peter Lake; on the open deck, both Kilcannons were exposed. But Lara had insisted; their world, both physical and mental, had become far too claustrophobic. So they sat in deck chairs, sipping wine and doing some catch-up reading between snatches of conversation.

    Kerry leafed through Newsweek. Its cover showed him addressing Congress; the lead article, headed 'KFK?' compared him to John F. Kennedy, calling his speech 'the most persuasive call to action since Kennedy's speech on civil rights . . . a quantum leap in his efforts to reach a broader spectrum of the public.'