As a guttural outcry came from Marotta's delegates, some turned to stare up at Lexie. His voice level, Corey said, "You could have stopped this in South Carolina, Rob. You could have stopped it anytime you wanted to."
He heard Marotta stir, and then the congressman's lips began silently moving above the word "mute." Only then did Corey turn to Marotta, remarking, "Beginning to wish that hatred made no sound?"
Marotta's expression evinced sincerity, even regret. "I wish a lot of things, Corey. But whoever you blame for whatever's happened, it'll take both of us to stop this now. If we don't, the party may be torn apart, the nomination not worth having. Then both of us will bear the blame."
Not for the first time, Corey marveled at the complexity of humans, and of this human, the beloved son of a hardworking family, by all accounts as good a husband and father as his ambition allowed, and yet so ambitious that, in the end, his strivings to achieve his most cherished goal robbed him of the decency that would give this achievement meaning. "We both are who we are," Corey told him. "The race has taken us too far."
Marotta shook his head, offering a small smile of demurral. "Even for the sake of the country? Who we both are, I hope, is men who believe that some things are bigger than ourselves."
Watching Marotta, Corey felt goose bumps on his skin. "What are you suggesting, Rob?"
"That you hear me out." Marotta seemed to will his body into stillness, his expression into a semblance of calm. "I'm offering you the vice presidency. Not just the nomination--the office. If we run as a ticket, no one can beat us."
For all his readiness, hearing this from Marotta stunned Corey. "After all that's happened," he said softly.
"Yes." Marotta leaned forward. "Is it really so astounding? We both want to be president. After eight years as my vice president, it'll be your turn."
Caught between ambition and revulsion, Corey saw them as two men about to define themselves forever. "So Blair is willing to step aside."
Slowly Marotta nodded, his eyes still fixed on Corey. "For the good of the party, yes. But only for you, Corey."
Corey felt a quiet laugh escape him. "After the Gulf War," he said, "I never thought another man could make my skin crawl. But I should never underestimate you, Rob."
Anger and confusion surfaced in Marotta's eyes. "I know Blair's gay," Corey told him. "I know you're blackmailing him to hold his delegates. I know you've offered his spot to Costas. And now you've offered it to me.
"If you were me, Rob, and knew all that, what would you do?"
In the silence that followed, Marotta's face turned ashen. "But then we both know the answer," Corey said. "You'd take me down by destroying Blair. That gives you the next hour or so to wonder whether I've become like you."
Marotta stood. "What do you want, dammit?"
Corey rose to face him. "We'll both have to see. But there's one thing you shouldn't worry about. I won't ask you to be vice president."
Turning, Corey left the room.
RIDING BACK TO the Essex House, Corey watched CNN and talked to Spencer. "Tully can't crack Illinois," Spencer reported.
"Hear any rumors about Blair?"
"Not yet--he's still holding the delegation by a single vote. What the hell did Marotta want?"
"Me for a running mate."
"You're joking."
"No. By the end I could almost smell his desperation. He's like us--worried about Illinois. Except that he doesn't know what we're going to do."
Spencer was silent for a moment, and then said sourly, "Or not do. If Blair holds on, I think we'll lose on the first ballot."
On CNN, Jeff Greenfield told Wolf Blitzer, "To clinch the nomination, Senator Marotta needs the votes of one thousand and fifty-one delegates. According to our count, Senator Marotta is within five or six delegates of that. Even should Governor Larkin hew to his favorite-son status, if Christy breaks for Marotta, the game's over."
"What about Christy?" Corey asked Spencer.
"He's still holding out. But he's under pressure to pledge his delegates to Marotta. Why be on the sidelines when Marotta hits a thousand fifty-one?"
Corey thanked him, and called Drew Tully.
WHEN COREY PHONED, Tully was in the middle of the Illinois delegation, his forehead covered with sweat, watching Blair give a hasty pep talk to a cluster of delegates Tully was pursuing. Blair's frenetic attentiveness suggested desperation, and his gaze darted from one face to another as though he were a playground monitor among a gaggle of fractious children. The atmosphere of antagonism within the delegation was exacerbated by the heat and the claustrophobic anger of rival delegates packed too close together. As he answered, Tully scrolled his BlackBerry for fresh intelligence. "Anything new?" Corey asked.
"Nothing," Tully said, and then a text message from his friend Sean Gilligan appeared: "Urgent--check out the Gage Report ASAP."
"Call you back," he told Corey.
BY THE TIME Corey reached his suite Dana Harrison and Jack Walters had gathered to watch the balloting, and Spencer was calling on his cell phone. "Tell Dana to get the Gage Report on her laptop," Spencer said hurriedly.
For an instant, Corey wondered why Spencer was bothering with that rabid right-wing blog and then, as swiftly, understood. "Someone fed Blair to David Gage."
"Everything but the pictures," Spencer replied.
ON THE FLOOR, Drew Tully grabbed Blair by the arm, wresting him from a huddle with two supporters. In a shrill voice, Blair snapped at Tully, "I've got no time for you."
The delegates--a paunchy state senator and a well-coifed teacher, the substitute for Walter Riggs--gaped in astonishment as Tully clapped his hand behind Blair's neck and pressed his face inches from his own. "Make time," Tully whispered roughly. "I just opened your closet door."
He watched Blair's eyes turn glassy. From the podium, the chair of the convention proclaimed, "The roll call of the states will begin ..."
"You're all over the Gage Report," Tully told Blair under his breath. "So here's what you're going to do. We're having our own caucus, right here on the floor, and you're going to enlighten us as to your 'status.' It's not kosher to make people vote without them knowing that you're finished."
IN THE SKYBOX, Spencer called Christy's manager, Dan Hansen. "Crunch time, Dan. What you boys gonna do?"
"Hold out, if we can. But Louisiana's crumbling--we may have an uprising on our hands."
Spencer gazed down at the Louisiana delegation and saw two delegates face-to-face, their posture and gesticulations betraying bitter conflict. "They got a laptop over there?"
"Sure."
"Then tell them to check out the Gage Report. That may be all you'll need."
AT THE ESSEX House, Corey and Jack Walters watched the balloting begin as Dana Harrison scanned the screen of her laptop. Turning, she looked at Corey in wonder. "Blair's gay. The Gage Report just outed him."
Torn between pity and relief, Corey imagined the scene in the Illinois delegation and then, in the hours to follow, the swift and terrible unraveling of Blair's entire life. "I know," he said softly. "Blair's done."
"But that's good for us. The man sold you down the river."
"Alabama," the chair called out on CNN.
The head of the delegation, a silver-haired ex-congressman, proclaimed, "It is with much pride that, on behalf of the great state of Alabama, I cast all forty-eight votes for the next president of the United States, Senator Corey Grace."
As the crowd erupted, the camera panned to Lexie Hart, smiling as Dakin Ford's wife, Christie, whispered in her ear. But amid the Alaska delegation, the next to vote, a tall man in an Uncle Sam costume screamed, "Traitors!" at the delegates from Alabama.
"Alaska," the chair called out.
THE ROLL CALL proceeded, with each delegation hewing to its expected vote.
"Idaho."
Impatient, Corey waited for Idaho to follow the script. "The great state of Idaho," its governor shouted back, "home of Boise State, the new football po
wer of America, proudly casts all thirty-two votes for Senator Rob Marotta."
"Illinois."
As the camera panned to Illinois, Corey saw that the delegation had pressed around Blair and Tully in a disorderly scrum, straining to see and hear. No one acknowledged the call of the roll.
"Illinois," the chair repeated shrilly.
Sitting beside Corey, Jack Walters mumbled, "Come on, Drew." On the screen, Tully spoke rapidly to Blair, his expression venomous, as a rumble of confusion spread across the convention floor. Then Tully thrust a microphone in Blair's face.
Taking it, Blair turned toward the podium, his face slack. In a strained voice, he responded, "Illinois passes."
"That," Jeff Greenfield said on CNN, "is a shocker. What's going on, Candy?"
Standing in the aisle beside the Illinois delegation, Candy Crowley looked stunned herself. "At this moment," she answered, "I can't answer you precisely. But rumors have begun to circulate that Governor Blair will withdraw as Senator Marotta's choice."
"Indiana."
"Indiana," its chairman responded in a subdued and bewildered tone, "casts its fifty-five votes for Senator Marotta."
WATCHING FROM ABOVE, Hollis Spencer could see it happening: like a large and clumsy organism--Spencer thought of a dinosaur sending a message from its small brain to its tail--the convention was responding to a stimulus it did not fully comprehend. "The next harbinger," Jeff Greenfield said, "is Louisiana."
On his cell phone, Spencer asked his chief delegate handler, "What's the count?"
"Depends on Christy. If he goes to Marotta, it's over; if he holds on, looks like it's down to Illinois."
"What the hell are they doing?"
"Trying to take a head count. It's way fucked up down here."
"LOUISIANA," THE CHAIR called out.
"Here it comes," Dana said to Corey.
The head of the delegation, a minister himself, announced firmly, "The Louisiana delegation--committed to a nation under God, which respects the sanctity of marriage and human life in all its forms--proudly casts all forty-five votes for the personification of those values, Reverend Bob Christy."
Corey slumped in his chair. In a tone that hovered between wan and wry, he said, "Thank God."
"With this vote from Louisiana," Jeff Greenfield reported, "the sole remaining shoe to drop belongs to Governor Larkin."
The next states fell into line: first Maine, then Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota.
"Mississippi."
The state chair, Larkin's ally, crooned smoothly, "Mississippi votes for its favorite son, Governor Sam Larkin."
He still wants a job, Corey thought.
TWENTY-ONE MINUTES LATER, Corey watched as the chair called out the final state.
"Wy-o-ming."
On the corner of the screen, CNN's running total showed Marotta with 1,015 votes, Grace with 837, Christy with 109, and Larkin with 38.
"Wyoming," the chair of her delegation answered with a sense of moment, "casts all twenty-eight votes for the next president of the United States, Senator Rob Marotta."
"With that," Wolf Blitzer said excitedly, "Senator Marotta is within eight votes of winning the Republican nomination. And so this ballot comes down to Illinois, the home state of the senator's putative running mate, Governor Charles Blair. Under the unit rule, a single delegate can determine the vote of the entire delegation, and thus decide whether Senator Marotta will win on this initial ballot."
Agitated, Corey pushed the speed dial on his cell phone. "What's happening?" he asked Spencer.
"They're still voting, we think."
The camera closed in on the Illinois delegation. In its midst, Senator Drew Tully thrust a scrap of paper in Blair's face and wrested the microphone from his grasp. Swiftly, the picture switched to Lexie, impassive but for the slight parting of her lips; then to Mary Rose Marotta, fingering the cross dangling from her neck as her other hand clutched her oldest daughter's; then back to Illinois. In close-up, tears surfaced in Blair's eyes.
Corey's hand tightened around his cell phone. With his back turned to the governor, Drew Tully announced with evident satisfaction, "Illinois casts all seventy-three ballots for the candidate who will lead us to victory in November, Senator Corey Grace."
As the convention erupted in cheers and bitter catcalls, Corey bent forward. "Yes," Dana shouted as Walters placed a hand on Corey's shoulder. "We're still alive."
"This," Wolf Blitzer said, "is one of the most dramatic, not to say unexpected, political moments in this reporter's memory. And it comes amid fresh reports--neither confirmed nor denied by Senator Marotta's communications director--that Governor Blair will be replaced."
"To say the delegates are confused," Jeff Greenfield added dryly, "fails to do justice to those who are catatonic."
On the podium, the chair of the convention huddled with the chairman of the Republican Party, an ally of Marotta's, as Blitzer continued: "The next development, it would seem, will be to call the roll for a second ballot. Candy?"
Reporting from the Illinois delegation, Candy Crowley looked somber. "The turnabout in this delegation, we now know, resulted from an Internet report detailing Governor Blair's alleged involvement in a homosexual affair."
"There won't be a second ballot," Corey said quietly. "Not tonight. Marotta's friends will pull the plug."
"Because of Blair?" Dana asked.
"Yup. They need time to roll out Costas and try to repair the damage while they work on Christy and Larkin. Either one will do--all Marotta needs is eight more votes."
Appearing flustered, the chair of the convention returned to the podium. "The convention is adjourned," she hastily announced, "until one P.M. tomorrow."
Reaching for his cell phone, Corey called Lexie Hart.
IN A DARKENED limousine, Corey rode with Lexie to a post-balloting party being held in a hotel ballroom. "Sure you want to do this?" she asked.
At the hotel, Corey saw, several stretch limousines were already massed in front, with others ringing the block. "I'd rather be alone with you," he answered. "But after tonight's near-death experience, I'm required to make a ritual show of confidence."
Lexie smiled. "Some would call that acting," she said, and kissed him.
SPONSORED BY A lobbying firm with close ties to the party chair, the event had been intended to serve as Marotta's victory celebration. It remained the hottest ticket in town, with numerous bars, tables of hot food, uniformed waiters passing drinks and hors d'oeuvres on silver trays, and an R&B band serving as the warm-up act for a famous comedian. Standing with Lexie at the entrance, Corey murmured, "Here we go."
Within seconds, their appearance sent a current through the revelers. A crush began to form around them, the crowd as avid to touch Lexie as Corey and overcome by the excitement of the moment. Looking as fresh and cool as though it were morning, Lexie touched hands and smiled into faces, making the small connections that those she met were craving. And then Sam Larkin stood in her path, grinning broadly.
Taking Lexie's hand, Sam held it longer than necessary. "A pleasure," he purred. "You leave me breathless."
Lexie laughed. "First you inhale," she advised him, "then you exhale. Pretty soon you'll be breathing just fine."
Larkin's eyes glinted with lascivious amusement; then he turned to Corey. "Damn near got voted off the island, boy. But for poor old Charles, you would've been. Looks like you'll be needing an ally."
With this, Corey felt any doubt about Larkin's role evaporate. "I certainly will," Corey said easily. "Or two."
A chill entered Larkin's eyes. Placing a hand on Corey's shoulder, he leaned forward for an intimate word. "Not much time left, Corey. I hear Rob's scheduled a press conference for ten o'clock tomorrow. That gives us about ten hours, mostly at night. One good thing is that I don't need much sleep."
Corey gazed into Larkin's shrewd face, wondering how it would feel to be at this man's mercy. "I need some sleep, Sam. Let's meet for breakfast."
As Larkin stared at him, slowly nodding, Corey's cell phone rang. Without taking his eyes off Larkin, he answered.
"Party's over," Dakin Ford told him. "I just met Mary Ella Ware."
13
AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING, ROB MAROTTA FOUND HIMSELF staring at the red illuminated numbers of a hotel alarm clock--unable to sleep, he was so weary that it felt like a fever coming on.
Mary Rose lay close to him, crowded by their daughter Jenny, who had once again commuted from another bedroom to theirs. But the presence of his wife and daughter did not make him feel less alone. On the eve of achieving his life's ambition, to be secured by the anointing of George Costas, Blair's public meltdown had filled him with a foreboding he could not name. The dynamics of this convention had too many moving parts--important things he did not know, human motivations he could not control, enemies he could not identify. Even the nearness of victory haunted him.
Eight votes, and he had not been able to get them--despite all he had done, for good or ill.
Larkin, who could have made him the nominee, was still holding out. Christy, who by now should have capitulated, had chosen to taunt him for a few more hours. And Corey Grace was still alive.
Grace. Always Grace.
Some men were lucky. Some, without deserving it, seemed to be God's favorites. Some, apparently defeated, seemed always to rise from the dead. Grace's navigator had died, but Grace had returned from Iraq. Had Grace come to Marotta's office a minute earlier, the terrorists would have killed him with the others; had he come a minute later ...
Marotta cringed at his own thoughts.
Looking across the body of a terrorist into Grace's blood-spattered face, Marotta had felt the wrenching certainty that he owed his life to a reflexive act of courage that he, in Grace's place, never would have performed. And so he had looked away as Magnus Price and nameless others worked to transform Grace from a hero to a traitor, all to make Marotta president. In this moment of searing honesty, Marotta understood why he despised Corey Grace so thoroughly--not just because he was arrogant, or handsome, or fortunate beyond any man's deserving, but because Grace's contempt for Marotta, his utter refusal to ally with him, surfaced Marotta's repressed contempt for himself. To wish Grace dead was insufficient; with a visceral longing more painful for its impossibility, he wished to banish Grace from his psyche. But Rob Marotta, the striver, would always feel inferior, forced by fate to do things that Corey Grace would never do, to know things about himself that no one else could know.
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