“Lara . . .”
“Of course,” she said relentlessly, “there’s all the joy we’d have in the meantime, waiting for them to do it. While your anxious handlers tried to make me into a Barbie doll . . .”
“How can you imagine,” Kerry snapped, “that I’d ever let them do that? Or thatyou would?” He crossed the room, kneeling by the couch. “You could be the best thing for this country, and for all the things you care about—like starving children. You could make such a difference—”
“That’s what you say toyourself ,” she interrupted, “isn’t it?” She saw the hurt on his face and made her tone more gentle. “Listen to yourself, Kerry—suddenly we’re in the White House. You haven’t let it go yet. Maybe you can’t.”
This left Kerry silent. “You know I’m right,” she told him. “There’d be no safe place for us, ever.”
“So I’ll withdraw,” he answered. “How many times do I have to ask? Please, give us a chance.”
Heartsick, Lara slowly shook her head. “It’s not up to me anymore, Kerry. And theywon’t give us a chance. No matter what we do.” She touched his face. “Why do you always makeme see the truth? Why can’tyou , for once . . . ?”
The quiet words seemed to pierce him. “I did see the truth,” he answered. “Two years ago. But you weren’t ready to listen.”
She looked away. “Sometimes I wish I had,” she said at last. “Sometimes I wish I’d believed you were content to stay a senator. Maybe then you’d never have learned what reallyis true.” She caught herself, voice pleading again. “Please, let’s stop this. Before we do more damage.”
Kerry touched her face. “Tell me one thing, then.”
“What is it?”
He looked into her eyes. “Do you still love me?” he asked.
Despite herself, Lara felt the tears well again. “Oh, Kerry,” she murmured, “that’s such a sad question.”
He took her hands again. “Why?”
For a moment, she considered telling the truth. And then she found a second, easier truth. Softly, she said, “Because the answer doesn’t matter.”
For a last painful moment, she let her hands rest in his. Then she gently disengaged and, rising, stood by the door again.
“It’s time to call Peter,” she said simply.
* * *
Nate sat in the alcove of the sixth floor, reading aNew Yorker . It was more comfortable than sitting in her doorway and, at one in the morning, less odd and less revealing. Besides, he could see Lara’s door from here.
He had been waiting for forty minutes. It was a good thing their colleagues were so tired, he reflected; no one had seen him.
Restless, he reread a particularly scathing film review. “Ms. Draybeck,” the reviewer said of a supposedly hot actress, “uses both of her expressions frequently.” It almost made him smile.
What was Lara doing? Nate wondered. He tried to imagine the psychic devastation Dick Mason must have wrought and then, for his own sake, tried not to. He gave up; in the next pitiless moments, Nate also saw himself, stalking a woman who once had been his friend.
Suddenly there was a soft metallic sound—heavier, somehow, than the opening of the door to a hotel room. Putting down the magazine, Nate rose and quickly turned the corner marked “Exit.”
Ten feet away, Lara Costello slipped through the heavy metal door from the stairwell.
Turning, she saw him.
His nerve ends jangled. “Hello, Lara.”
Though she was still, her expression was strangely emotionless, unsurprised. She seemed to nod, as though confirming something to herself.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked.
“Running up and down the fire escape,” she answered coolly. “Twenty times, and I’m not even sweating. You should try exercise instead of skulking in hallways.”
“Kilcannon,” he ventured, and then Lara began walking toward him. She stopped, two feet away.
“You saw him,” Nate said.
With steely deliberation, Lara drew one hand back and slapped him hard across the face.
Startled, Nate heard his teeth click, felt pain run through his jaw. He managed to keep looking at her.
She was breathing hard now—a sudden release of tension—and her eyes were molten.
“Don’t say his name to me,” she told him. “Not you.”
He did not answer. She stared at him, her hatred plain. Then she walked past him, to her room.
NINE
Silent, Kate Feeney drove Sean to his motel.
He, too, was quiet. Surreptitiously, he watched her as they turned from Broadway onto Van Ness, her face lit by the few cars that—even at this late hour—sped down the other side of the six-lane avenue. A few more hours, and it would be dawn.
Just before leaving, Rick Ginsberg had asked for their Social Security numbers.
They had been alone in the plaza, the last three to leave. Promptly, Kate had given hers; squinting in the darkness, Rick scribbled the numbers on the back of a business card.
“John?” Ginsberg asked.
Tense, Sean hesitated; the number would expose him as Sean Burke. “I can’t remember,” he finally mumbled. “My card’s at home—New York.”
Rick frowned. “Can you get it from someone? I’ll need it first thing tomorrow, or the Service won’t let you do this.”
Sean nodded. He had felt chastised, suspect; perhaps he only imagined Kate studying his face.
“Can you find your number?” she asked now.
Remembering the artist’s sketch, Sean folded his arms, afraid to look at her. “My mother knows,” he lied.
Bending forward, he hugged his own chest. The bloody acid sourness snaked from his stomach to his throat. “My mother knows,” he repeated. “She knows everything . . .”
“John?”
Kate’s voice had filled with concern. Did she care for him, Sean wondered, or fear him? He stared at the floor, tears misting his eyes. “I feel sick,” he murmured.
Turning onto Lombard Street, Kate gave him another quick glance. “We’ll be fine tomorrow,” she said in a soothing tone. “Everything will go fine.”
Was shewith him? he thought with fearful wonder. In his riptide of panic and hope, the street looked surreal, its glowing electric signs—a gas station, a bar, a hotel—the guideposts to a seedy world filled with enemies and strangers. He did not know whether to hide from Kate or to beg her to come to his motel, to await the morning with her arms around him. As his mother had done after she stopped drinking . . .
Sean coughed spittle into his hands.
“Are you allright ?” Kate asked now. “Should we stop?”
Hands covering his face, Sean shook his head. Kate continued down Lombard faster, headed for Sean’s motel. He had pills there, Sean thought desperately. All he needed was to get to them.
Helpless, he felt the sickness rise within him. He sensed, but could not see, Kate turning into the motel parking lot.
As the car came to a stop, fear and nausea overcame him. Shuddering with shame, Sean retched miserably into his hands.
He felt Kate reach for him.
Gently, she dabbed at his face with a tissue, then tugged at his jacket. “You need to get this off,” she told him.
Docile, Sean let her ease one arm from its sleeve, the left side of his jacket falling free.
The sudden silence in the car felt like a cry suppressed. He could feel her stillness.
Turning, Sean stared at her.
Her lips were parted, and she gazed down at the seat, stunned. His eyes followed hers.
His gun lay between them, a dull metallic shape.
Kate’s eyes moved from the gun to his face, appalled. “What is that?” she managed.
Swallowing flecks of vomit, he reached for the gun.
I had to stop him,he had said to the red-haired woman.Your sympathy should be with your baby, the life I came to save . . .
“John. . .” Kate’s voice was hoarse now. “Wh
at are youdoing ?”
Hand trembling, Sean raised the gun. For a split-second, he saw the street punk, the last threat he had faced.
Gingerly, he placed the gun to Kate’s throat.
There was no one but them—the parking lot was dark, the motel a dim shadow with a flickering, fluorescent sign. In the cocoon of Kate’s car, her shocked eyes shone with tears; her throat twitched where the metal touched it.
She said his name again.
Do you love me?he wanted to ask.
“Please,” Kate whispered. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Please, I only came here for an IUD.
The woman had given the police his portrait. If Kate turned on him, they would find him quickly, and then what meaning would his mission have? Sean’s hand shook more violently; he could feel her breath on his face.
“Please . . .”
Her eyes were beautiful, blue. He could no longer look at them.
“Please . . .” To Sean, it sounded like a prayer.
Closing his eyes, he pulled the trigger.
There was a popping sound, swallowed by the darkness, by whatever the bullet had struck.
Shaking, Sean looked into her eyes again.
They were shocked, stricken. The smallest sound came from her blood-flecked lips. Above her on the ceiling was a glutinous sheen.
Sean turned away, sickened.
He heard Kate slump against the seat; there was a last pitiful sound, then nothing. The car smelled of more than vomit.
Across the parking lot, a car cruised down Lombard.
Eyes half shut, Sean touched the nape of Kate’s neck, pushing her head below the dashboard. Her skin was moist, warm.
Quickly, he withdrew his fingers.
You had no choice, you had no choice.The repeated words swirled in his brain—a mantra, a plea for absolution. The hum of traffic came to him as if from a great distance.
Her keys were in the ignition.
Opening the door, he slid out the passenger side. He stood, frozen by car lights, and then circled the car with jerky steps and flung open the door against which Kate rested.
Her head fell toward him, faceup, staring at him. Her neck hung over the seat, hair spilling from the car.
Sean swallowed. Kneeling, he shoved her by the shoulders, pushing her into a half-sitting position and then into a fetal ball, curled where Sean had sat.
Sean slid behind the wheel, slamming shut the door, and switched on the ignition.
Blindly, he turned onto Lombard, Kate lying beside him.
He did not know where he was heading. Blocks passed, intervals of dissociation. And then he saw a looming swath of darkness.
A grove of trees, Sean realized, was blocking the moon and stars.
By instinct, he drove toward it. Then he saw the markers directing where he should exit: “Presidio National Park.”
Slowly, he entered the park.
It was an abandoned military base, he saw—neat signs pointed out a former hospital, an officers club, a base headquarters, a cemetery, all now shadows. To his right was the inky blackness of San Francisco Bay, distant lights flickering beyond; through the towering eucalyptus trees he saw a sliver of a distant glowing span—the Golden Gate Bridge.
For uncounted moments, Sean drove toward it, deeper into the park. He felt the darkness close around him.
Cautiously, he steered down a hill, then up again, afraid to stop. The bridge was closer now, more visible. Soon, he sensed, the park would end.
To his right he saw another sign: “Fort Point.” Beside it was a smaller road, dipping steeply.
Hesitant, Sean turned.
Winding down the side of a hill, the road traced the edge of the bay. At its foot, Sean saw a large prisonlike rectangle by the water’s edge, its backdrop the massive concrete pillars of the bridge. In the beam of his headlights, the dark shape beside the building became a parking lot.
There were no other cars.
Sean parked in the shadow of the bridge. He still could not look at Kate.
As he opened the door, a chill wind swept through the pilings. Sean shivered, lonely in this strange place; the only sounds were the cars on the span high above him, the harsh current slamming against rocks.
A memory came to him, from a film. Alcatraz was in the middle of this bay: no one could escape from it—the current, too swift, would sweep the strongest swimmer through the bridge and out to the Pacific.
Kate.
Circling the car, he opened the passenger door. She lay there, face averted, as if she had fallen asleep.
Pausing, Sean inhaled. Then he lifted her from the car, awkwardly cradled in his arms. He felt sick again, weak. Sweat chilled on his face.
He could not help this, Sean told himself. She would have betrayed him—no, betrayed the cause in which he was God’s soldier. Sometimes even bystanders must choose, and sometimes they must die.
He stopped, panting, at the edge of the rocks.
The water swirled beneath them, twenty feet below. For a moment, he did not want to let her go.
At last he loosened his grip. As if by her own volition, Kate slid from his arms and plummeted into the bay.
Tears blurred Sean’s vision again. Then he saw her far below, a vague form, at first swirling, and then slowly, half submerged, drifting inexorably toward the pillars of the bridge.
Sean turned away.
His mission was still before him, paid for with her blood.
He locked the car and walked away into the dark. Half lost, he retraced his route by instinct. Several hours later, hungry, sick, exhausted, he at last heard the traffic sound and then found the mouth of Lombard Street again—a lone man, the blood and vomit on his army jacket concealed by the dim neon light.
In the first red streak of dawn, Sean reached the motel.
The Campaign
DAY FIVE
ONE
Facing Nate Cutler, Kerry was gripped by the ironic thought that, six hours earlier, Lara had sat where the reporter sat now.
It was seven a.m. The time suited both their purposes—neither wanted the press to know. Nor could Kerry do this any later: five hours and four hundred miles away, in San Francisco, he had another speech to give. But that could not matter now, any more than Kerry, sleepless, could dwell on the hopelessness he had felt in the hours after Lara left his suite. Survival is our most basic instinct, he thought with a certain bleakness, no matter how dismal our life may seem.
He let the silence stretch, Nate’s question linger unanswered.
With some satisfaction, he watched Cutler’s own discomfort: the nervous rubbing of the fingers of one hand, a defensive look in the intelligent dark eyes behind the wire-rim glasses. At Kerry’s insistence, the two men were alone.
“Let me understand this,” Kerry said at last.
“You’ve gotten some notes from a psychologist who—by her own admission—has violated her legal obligation of confidentiality to advance her own political agenda. You’ve stolen my cell phone records. You’ve been telling people—though you can’t know this—that Lara Costello and I were lovers. And you’re doing all this, among other reasons, because you’re worried abouther professional ethics.”
Nate seemed to tense. “Are you going to answer the question, Senator?”
“Are you?” Kerry asked, and then his voice became sardonic. “Oh, I’ve forgotten. You’re draped in the First Amendment, like a communion dress. So nothing you do matters. But I’m accountable to you for every aspect of my life, no matter how private—”
“She washere ,” Nate interjected. “Last night.”
Kerry gave him a long, chill look. “Was she, now?” he answered. “And you’re here this morning. Just think of the implications.”
Briefly, Nate flushed. “Were you having an affair?” he persisted. “I need a quote.”
With exaggerated patience, Kerry looked at his watch, then into Nate’s face again. “No,” he said at length. “I hope that’s not too up
setting.”
Nate leaned forward, taut. “Then how do you explain this memo, describing in detail Lara Costello’s anguish over abortingyour child?”
Imagining Lara’s solitude then, her horror at this betrayal now, Kerry fought his own anger. “I don’t,” he answered with a fair show of calm. “I didn’t write it. And I can’t begin to explain anyone who would give this memo toyou .”
Nate clasped his hands in front of him. “We have records of long-distance calls from you to her, at all hours of the night. We have neighbors who saw you leaving her place in the morning. Others who saw her leavingyour place.”
Kerry fixed him with the same unblinking stare. “We were friends,” he said. “And I liked her very much. You did too, I thought.”
Nate sat straighter. “I’m not a candidate,” he answered. “And I didn’t stay at her place, or she at mine.”
Kerry gave him a cold smile. “Well,” he said, “that’s a relief. All of it. As for me, if what youdo have—phone calls and visits—is news, print away. This race has been focused on the issues for far too long.”
Nate shook his head—refusing, Kerry saw, to rise to the bait. “Do you deny, Senator, starting an affair with Lara after the correspondents’ dinner?”
“An affair? Yes, I deny it. For the second time, and for the record.”
“You wereseen . Leaving Lara’s building the next morning, still wearing a tuxedo.”
Kerry stood. “What’s the question? Where I rented the tuxedo?” His tone became cutting. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m busy. The question was whether Lara and I were lovers. I’ve answered it. I’m not going to account for every UFO her neighbors might have seen.” His voice flattened. “If that’s the price of public office, I refuse to pay it. Maybe Mason will.
“We’re through here, Nate. I have only one more thing to say to you.” He paused again, his words low and emphatic. “I don’t expect much for myself. I don’t expect my political opponents to be any better than they are. But I expected better fromyou than what you’re doing to Lara.”
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