"I know," Corey answered. "That figured into my thinking."
"Which brings me," Rustin said with obvious reluctance, "to the elephant in the room--if I can use that phrase about a beautiful woman who's also a registered Democrat. How does she play, Dakin?"
As Ford pursed his lips, Corey watched his friend search for a line between tact and truth. "Right into the Confederate flag issue, I'm afraid--no way Corey can duck race. We lose the bigots without picking up blacks: the voters are racially polarized, and blacks vote Democratic. But white folks of goodwill won't hold Lexie Hart against you. And people's attitudes toward race are more complex than they talk about.
"Everyone down here knew that old Strom Thurmond had a biracial daughter. But the fact that he looked after her gave him some cover with white folks who didn't want to see themselves as racists." Ford cocked his head, then asked bluntly, "Lexie gonna be coming here?"
"No. We both think it's best she steer clear of politics. At least in the near term."
Ford nodded slowly. "No matter what you do, Price will try to drag her into this. Best not to help him." He paused, then continued in an apologetic tone: "That's not just about race, Corey--it's about your sleeping arrangements. Price knows every lever you can pull down here. If he wants to invent a scandal, he can do it."
The airplane trembled, then hit a bump that drained the blood from Ford's face. "Hate flying," he admitted. "But I guess you'd fly in damned near anything."
"Only when I'm flying it," Corey answered.
ROHR's GULFSTREAM SHUDDERED again, more violently this time. In an instant, Marotta saw lightning flash across the dense darkness of thunderclouds. At the corner of his eye, he could see Mary Rose--she was awake now, her expression queasy, and she glanced at him intermittently.
"Grace," Price said, "will get a ten percent bump out of winning in New Hampshire."
"And my stock price will drop five percent," Rohr said with a sour smile.
"You'll gain it back a week from now," Price answered calmly. "South Carolina is where we destroy him."
"Destroy?" Marotta demurred. "Corey's got more lives than Dracula."
"He's fucking a black actress, Rob. If you want to parse that sentence, the operative words are 'fucking' and 'black.'" Price cast an eye toward Mary Rose. "Just keep M.R. at your side, and bring down the kids next weekend. Compared to a childless black woman, that picture's worth ten thousand votes."
"You're forgetting the other picture I'm in," Marotta replied. "The one with Grace and two dead terrorists."
"Convenient, wasn't it?" Price sat back, eyebrows arched, his expression at once cynical and dreamy. "Ever wonder why every time Grace needs some Arabs to make him look good, he finds them?"
"What the hell does that mean?" Marotta snapped. "The man may have saved my life, you'll remember."
"And now he's using that to steal your nomination." Price's tone was cold and unapologetic. "You know better than anyone that politics is jujitsu. Grace looks like a film star--so paint him as an adulterous husband and lousy father who cashes in his dazzling smile for recreational sex. Grace gets adoring coverage--so cast him as a tool of the liberal media. Grace claims to be independent--so make him a man who believes in nothing, even God. Grace is running as a hero, and so--"
"Forget it. No one reputable would accuse Corey Grace in public of being an Al Qaeda plant. I sure as hell don't want us doing anything like that."
Price's lids lowered, veiling his eyes. "By the way," he said in a conversational tone, "did I tell you Linwood Tate wants to be ambassador to England?"
"Lots of people want lots of things. My question is what you told him."
"Nothing, as of yet. Deciding about Tate is your job."
Price hit a button on the speakerphone in front of him. After a moment, a man answered. Though scratchy, the southern voice announced itself with calmness and authority. "Linwood Tate here. Been waiting for your call, Magnus."
Surprised, Marotta stared at Price. "Well, here I am," Price answered. "And Alex. And Rob."
"Evening, Senator. Welcome to South Carolina, where a friend in need is a friend indeed."
Glancing toward Mary Rose, Price lowered the volume. "And we do need friends, Governor."
"You surely do. And with all respect to Rob's friend Alex, he can't put you across by himself--the message you need to get out here is, shall we say, not quite right for the evening news. Fortunately, there are other ways to help our fine citizens to make an informed decision." After pausing, Tate said with cool assurance, "I've worked real hard to make things in South Carolina happen how I want them. Like I already told you, Magnus, I'd be proud to be the man who made your man into President Marotta."
Marotta glanced sharply at Price. Calmly, Price said, "How much you gonna need, Governor?"
"I figure the whole campaign will cost about two million, most of it offshore. A paltry price for the sovereign state of South Carolina."
When Price turned to Rohr, eyebrows raised, Rohr nodded. "We can do that, Governor," Price said smoothly. "Any questions, Rob?"
There were no questions he could ask, Marotta suddenly understood, where it was safe for him to know the answer. Staring at the speakerphone, he tried to envision himself as president--a far better president than Corey Grace, more deliberate, less impulsive, a man who accepted the world as it was. A man forced to make decisions that his rival's luck had spared him. A man who had worked too long and hard to be derailed by a terrorist's random act. A man who accepted that power had a price.
"None that won't keep," Marotta answered softly. "I won't forget this, Linwood."
Abruptly standing, Marotta went to see his wife.
Pale, Mary Rose looked up at him. "I've been watching you, Robbie. Something happened tonight."
Marotta kissed her forehead. "As soon as you feel better, I want you to go home."
Still watching his face, she shook her head. "Magnus says I can help you here. And I'm feeling like you need me now."
Mary Rose, Marotta thought, knew him all too well. He managed a smile. "I always need you, sweetheart," he said gently. "But our kids need you even more. Better that I do South Carolina on my own."
5
FLYING INTO COLUMBIA AT 1:00 A.M., COREY LOOKED DOWN AND SAW the scattered illumination of a thinly populated state and then, amid the dark rectangle of an airstrip, a field of flickering lights that resembled an array of stars. As he peered out the window, Ford smiled in delight. "Cigarette lighters," he told Corey. "We hired a band called the Blue Dogs and sent buses to damn near every college in the state, promising a concert and free beer. You're riding into South Carolina on a wave of sheer idealism."
Corey laughed. "Drunken college kids are my natural constituency."
Fifteen minutes later, when Ford and Corey jumped up on the platform to join the band, three thousand or so jacked-up college students emitted a full-throated roar, some brandishing beer or whiskey bottles. Smiling, Corey murmured to Ford, "Guess they're not from Carl Cash University."
"Doesn't matter," Ford assured him. "These young people are truly lit by a higher power." Seizing the microphone from the lead singer for the Blue Dogs, Ford proclaimed, "Guess you all saw what happened in New Hampshire ..."
THE NEXT MORNING, on four hours sleep, Corey, Ford, Rustin, the campaign staff, and a pack of reporters sped toward Charleston in a bus dubbed the Silver Bullet. Looking up from his BlackBerry, Rustin reported, "We're already getting a flood of Internet donations. They're calling you the new Teddy Roosevelt."
"And Lincoln," Ford suggested, "and Washington. You might even be Franklin fucking Roosevelt."
"Wrong party," Kate McInerny of the Post interjected. "What about Harding, or maybe Coolidge?"
"Or maybe," Rustin told her amiably, "the person above your head."
Looking up, Corey saw the television suspended over the aisle. On tape from C-SPAN, Bob Christy spoke at an evangelical church. "Senator Marotta," he warned, "is the face of corporate mater
ialism, hidden behind the mask of false religiosity."
"Looks like Christy beat us here," Rustin said.
Ford shrugged. "Suits me. He's nothing but trouble for Marotta."
From behind them came the squeal of police sirens. The bus slowed, gliding to a stop on the shoulder of a four-lane highway. A burly highway patrolman appeared in Corey's window, beckoning him outside. "If I don't come back," Corey instructed Ford with a smile, "call my lawyer."
The morning air was chilly. The highway patrolman, a heavy-set man roughly Corey's age, ambled toward him.
"Going too fast?" Corey asked.
"Not for me," the patrolman said. "You can't get to the White House fast enough." Grinning, he held out his sizable hand. "I was in the Gulf War, like you. Just wanted to say 'Welcome to South Carolina' to a genuine American hero."
What, Corey wondered, would Joe Fitts think of this? Smiling, he shook his new friend's hand. "Want to ride with us to Charleston?" Corey asked.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN, Marotta sat alone with Carl Cash.
The man was near eighty, Marotta guessed, with translucent skin, a gaunt face, and the glinting, humorless eyes of a bitter saint. "A true disciple of Christ," he told Marotta in his phlegmy voice, "holds four immutable beliefs. That the Bible is inerrant. That salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone. That we must be born again. And that all Christians must spread the Word of God. Do you believe those things?"
What I believe, Marotta thought, is that you're out of your fucking mind. "I've never heard it summed up like that, Reverend--"
"That's because you're Catholic," Cash interrupted harshly.
"Because I'm Catholic," Marotta answered firmly, "I believe that to be fully human, man must be animated by a higher power--"
"By Jesus Christ, Senator." Cash's voice became sepulchral. "Moses is dead. Buddha is dead, Mohammed is dead. Confucius is dead. We alone serve a risen Christ, the son of God, who shall return to us."
This isn't a conversation, Marotta thought--it's the Spanish Inquisition in reverse. With calm persistence, Marotta said, "That's what I believe, Reverend Cash."
Cash slowly shook his head, his gelid stare riveting Marotta. "As a scholar of religion, I've dissected the Catholic apostasy. A son of Rome cannot claim, as we do, to have embraced our Lord Jesus in a single moment."
His temper fraying, Marotta fell back on the catechism that, an hour before, he had improvised with Magnus Price. "Perhaps not. But I can never recall a time I didn't believe in Jesus." Marotta hesitated, then continued quietly: "My father died six years ago, of cancer. When I said my last good-bye to him and looked into his suffering face, I felt Jesus enter my soul. That's when I knew who my father truly was."
Cash watched his eyes in silence. Gathering himself, Marotta said with quiet urgency, "I can be your messenger, Reverend, because I can win. Bob Christy can't. And can you imagine our country in the hands of Corey Grace--"
"And his woman," Cash chided irritably. "Don't ever forget her."
From the other side of the curtain came the sounds of a restive audience. "There are several reasons," Marotta temporized, "why Grace shouldn't become president."
"That colored woman's a big one," Cash snapped. "You do know that the godless Internal Revenue Service took away our school's tax-exempt status, solely because of our biblical opposition to the commingling of races."
This is it, Marotta thought, the core of Cash's fury at the government. Carefully, he recited the answer Price and he had crafted. "Even if--as the unbelievers say--there's a 'separation of church and state,' the state should not intrude on, let alone punish, the religious beliefs of any Christian institution.
"That will be the policy of my administration. And you, Reverend Cash, will always be welcome at the White House."
Cash regarded him with an opaque solemnity. "Let us pray together," he said at last.
As they knelt in front of the folding chairs, eyes raised to the ceiling, Marotta silently asked for John Marotta's forgiveness, both for polluting his death with a falsehood and because that decent man, unlike so many of his neighbors, had taught his oldest son that racial hatred profaned the spirit of God.
"Bless us, Lord," the Reverend Cash intoned.
STANDING BESIDE MAROTTA, Cash spoke to an auditorium filled with fresh-faced and attentive white kids--the boys' shirts collared and their hair uniformly short, the girls wearing skirts exposing nothing but their ankles. It was a time warp, Marotta thought, taking him back to his earliest days in a strict parochial school.
"Here at Carl Cash University," Cash proclaimed, "we live by the teaching of Proverbs: 'Train up the child in the ways to go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.'
"From the evidence of his family, Senator Marotta has done this--at least by his best lights. Corey Grace has not." Abruptly, Cash's voice dripped with disdain. "Grace divorced his wife. Grace abandoned his child. Grace leads a personal life degrading to all our children. And last night, in South Carolina, he arrived amid a godless bacchanalia of whiskey, beer, and music."
Expressionless, Marotta tried to conceal his discomfort. But Cash's diatribe plainly resonated with these students. In the front row, Marotta saw, a sweet-faced blonde had bowed her head in sorrow. "Corey Grace," Cash continued, his voice rising, "is the enemy of life. Corey Grace will not endorse a constitutional ban on gay marriage--that breeding ground of pederasts, that sanctuary for the most unnatural, abominable act ever conceived by man at his most evil. Corey Grace is an enemy of God."
Turning, Cash walked slowly behind Marotta and placed both hands on his shoulders. "This man," he told the students, "is a man of God."
Rapt, the students gazed up at Marotta. Experienced though he was, Marotta realized, he was not immune to the fire of this man's certitude. "Listen to his words," Cash concluded in a tone sonorous yet hushed. "Then listen to your hearts."
Applause, Marotta realized, would only tarnish such a moment. Walking to the podium in the silent spell induced by Cash, he spread his speech before him. "These are the words of the Bible," he began. "'Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which lives and abides forever.' And it was Christ himself who said, 'I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.'
"These things we all believe, and more.
"We believe the Bible is inerrant, and that homosexuality violates God's law.
"We believe that our schools should ban homosexuals as teachers; balance the teaching of Darwin with opposing theories; abolish all 'sex education' except chastity until marriage." Pausing, Marotta was grateful that the Reverend Cash had also forbidden tape recorders. "Like you, I believe that the 'separation of church and state' is the invention of modern secular humanists, not of Madison or Jefferson. Like you, I believe that churches should be free to endorse candidates for office without being punished--as was this university--for their beliefs."
Filled with pent-up emotion, the audience burst into applause. "Reverend Christy," Marotta told them, "may well believe as we do. But I alone can guarantee you a Christian presidency. I alone can keep Senator Grace from holding an office he should never, ever have."
In the first few rows, students began standing. It was too late, Marotta thought, to omit his next words. He waited for the applause to die. "I owe Senator Grace my life," he said quietly. "For that, my family and I will be forever grateful. But no amount of gratitude could justify my moral abdication.
"His beliefs and his personal conduct undermine our moral fabric. And the fibers of that fabric are the values of this university." Standing taller, Marotta said firmly, "Not the values of a Hollywood elite that has made drugs and violence and promiscuity our secular religion."
Suddenly they were on their feet--all of them--clapping and shouting. "Amen," someone called out from the rear, and then Marotta saw the signs appear.
Across a photograph of Lexie Hart in close-up was stamped a scarlet X. "Just say no to Hollywood," the placards re
ad--the work, Marotta knew, of a professional.
6
HEADED FOR THE COAST IN THE SILVER BULLET, DAKIN FORD SAT WITH Corey, remote control in one hand, restlessly switching channels while monitoring his cell phone. "Marotta's already been to Carl Cash," he reported. "Looks like he's letting Price put his candidacy in that old bigot's hands."
Eyeing the screen, Blake Rustin said, "Not just Cash's."
On the Rohr-owned station in Columbia, a trim brunette with an incandescent smile stood beside Rob Marotta beneath an enormous sign whose bold letters read "Creation Park." "What the hell is that?" Corey asked.
"Jurassic Park for evangelicals," Ford replied. "A thrill ride through the seven days when God created man--Adam, Eve, and the serpent, blissfully free of our simian ancestors or cesspools of primordial ooze.
"And that," Ford continued, pointing at the screen, "is Dorrie Hoyle, our leading lady evangelist and Linwood Tate's main squeeze." He feigned a wince. "Some sex acts don't bear thinking about. But Dorrie'd fuck about anyone for money, and Linwood raised the cash to help Dorrie build this Disneyland of decency."
Pointing the remote, Ford turned up the volume. "You all know I can't endorse candidates," Hoyle was telling her audience. "But I'd just love it if you'd e-mail me the names of any church where good Christians want to spread the word on behalf of a good Christian candidate." Placing a sisterly hand on Marotta's shoulder, she finished in a mock-conspiratorial whisper: "Guess who that might be ..."
Corey watched Marotta feign a smile and shrug. "Rob's feeling like a prop," he said.
"Doesn't matter," Ford rejoined. "Price is using Cash and Dorrie to cut Bob Christy's balls off. Other thing that's gonna happen is Rohr's TV stations and newspaper won't cover Bob at all. In terms of local media, the Christy crusade's gonna shrivel to a rumor."
Around them, several reporters--Kate McInerny of the Post, Miles Miklin of the Times, and Annie Stevenson of the AP--leaned forward to participate. "What's in store for Senator Grace?" Kate asked.
The Race Page 19