* * *
Despite himself, Nate found that the words—delivered with plain anger and contempt—stung him. He stared up at Kilcannon.
“You talk about issues,” he snapped. “Abortion is a central issue in this because you’ve helped make it one.
“I didn’t ask for this story, Senator. But if it’s true, you’re either a hypocrite who chose to sacrifice a ‘life’ to your ambitions, or unable to separate your own distaste forLara ’s choice from abortion as a broader question.”
Kilcannon considered him in silence, his wiry frame quite still now. “Or neither,” he said at last. “And you can never know. So it comes down to a matter of conscience, Nate—first mine and now yours.
“You can rationalize this as news, just the way you have. But you also know all the pressures to rationalize it thataren’t about news—that magazines like yours are losing out to newspapers and television, that tabloids have lowered the standards until it’s hard to find them, that scandal sells more advertising space than articles on the budget.” Kilcannon paused, as if for emphasis. “That this ‘story,’ if you print it, stands to benefit your career as surely as it will destroy Lara’s. And, perhaps, mine.
“You know what kind of person she is. And you know—at the least—that I’m not unstable, uncaring, corrupt, a substance abuser, or any of the other things that clearlywould affect what kind of President I’d be.
“If I were Richard Nixon, and using the power of government to subvert the law—then, you’d have an obligation to print the truth, and nothing you did to uncover it would be too much.
“Butthis ?” Kilcannon paused again, shrugging. “This isn’t just about who I am, Nate. It’s about what ‘news’ should be, and who and whatyou are.”
* * *
Nate regarded him in silence.
Gazing down at the reporter, Kerry felt his anger drain, recalled again how exhausted he was. The self-righteousness left him, replaced by the knowledge of his own failings, his lies, the image of Lara, still so present in the room.
In a quiet voice, Nate asked, “Are you telling me itis true, Senator? But that we shouldn’t print it in good conscience?”
For a moment, Kerry wanted to answer honestly, as one human speaking to another. But this was about far more than him, and he knew too well that his plea for reason would instead become part of Nate’s cover story.They’re not your friends, Kit Pace was fond of saying.They’re not even an audience.
“What I’m saying,” Kerry answered simply, “is that it never happened. Your conscience is your own concern.”
Nate watched his face. And then, ambiguously, he nodded.
“You’ll excuse me, then,” Kerry said. “I’ve got a plane to catch.”
The reporter stood to leave. Nate had the grace not to thank him.
Afterward, Kerry sat alone, quite still, took some minutes more to refocus on the speech in San Francisco. Then Kevin Loughery knocked on the door, and Kerry’s public day began.
* * *
Disoriented, Sean waited for the bus on Lombard Street.
His stomach felt as though it had hemorrhaged; his jacket, still damp from his frenzied efforts to remove Kate’s blood with a wet cloth, seemed to draw the morning chill into his bones. The cold reminded him of those last moments in Boston, breath misting in the air, as he wondered if he could take a life.
Five days now, five deaths. He could still feel Kate’s warm skin beneath his fingertips.
There had been no choice. He was the protector, the shepherd: with all his heart, he wished that Kate could understand. Perhaps today he would give meaning to her death.
The cold and fear made him shiver. He was alone, and enemies surrounded him. The Secret Service. The security check. The magnetometers. The protective shroud in which Kerry Kilcannon escaped God’s judgment.
The street in front of him appeared as swatches of reality—half-noticed cars, an old man walking into a coffee shop with a newspaper in his hand. Sean kept his head down. How much longer would it take them to realize that Kate was missing, to find her car?
Three hours to go . . .
At any moment, the police could trace him from Boston to here. Perhaps they already had; one computer check—nine damning numbers—and the Secret Service would discover him.
A bus rumbled to a stop in front of him and, with a hydraulic whisper, opened its doors.
* * *
Lara sat with her cameraman on the pool bus as the motorcade cruised toward the airport. She made no effort to chat with him.
Kerry was somewhere ahead of her. Today would be hellish: spent in his presence, a few feet away, both pretending that there was nothing between them, that last night had never happened.I’m not even in my life anymore, she thought. All that seemed real washim , and how impossiblethey were.
Leaning her head back against the seat, Lara steeled herself.
Work was her salvation, she decided. Not its meaning—its details: all the focus the pool required; listening for quotes; scribbling notes; distributing morsels to the press corps; preparing to react to some terrible mischance. A series of rote steps, which she must treat as if it were a drill that had no human meaning. And then another day would have passed.
Idly, Lara touched the chain around her neck—the press pass, the service tag—and then the ID pin on her blazer.
Two more days, and she would escape. But to what? More regrets, more sham, more days and weeks of anxiety, which would end, if at all, only if Kerry lost or withdrew. To the certainty of being hunted, watched, her past fingered casually by any reporter assigned to investigate their secret. Somehow she would have to withstand it; she could not snap as she had last night, with Nate.
At leasthe was not in the pool, she told herself with bitter humor . . .
I couldhitNate,she suddenly thought.Why couldn’t I have heldKerry and let him hold me? When we’ll never be alone like that again.
Lara closed her eyes to ensure that she would not cry. When she was a semblance of herself again and looked around her, they were entering the airport.
* * *
At the sterile outbuilding for chartered planes, the Secret Service swept the press again.
TheShamrock sat alone on the runway, dull silver in the sunlight. Nate watched the pool join the usual contingent of cops and agents; among them, Kerry Kilcannon moved like a magnet that drew a swarm of followers toward the steps of the airplane.
Hastily, Nate went to the pay phone and called Jane Booth again.
She was in. “I got your message,” she said in a clipped voice. “Do you believe him?”
Nate glanced over his shoulder. A few feet away, Lee McAlpine was chatting idly with Sara Sax, pretending not to watch him. “No,” he said softly. “He won’t—can’t—respond to all this stuff that looks funny, except to say we’re contemptible for digging it up. But he’s right that we can’tknow .”
“So,” Jane answered, “we’re going to have to decide whether we can go with what ‘looks funny’—a counselor’s contemporaneous notes, sightings at odd hours, scores of late-night phone calls, Kilcannon calling to her through the door . . .”
Nate glanced at Lee, openly watching him now. “You know whatI think?” Nate asked, more quietly yet. “Kilcannon didn’t want her to do it, and was willing to risk his career. So he’s not a hypocrite . . .”
“Maybe not. But maybe that’s why it keeps spilling over into his campaign.” Jane paused briefly. “The pressure’s building. We may decide to go with what we have, on Tuesday. Sheila’s got the first draft written.”
Lee and the last stragglers began filing toward the plane. “Talk to me first,” Nate said hastily, and hung up.
TWO
Sean found Rick Ginsberg standing outside the barriers on the edge of Justin Herman Plaza.
There was a platform now, a sound system, and, across the plaza, press bleachers. In the distance, buses full of volunteers had begun to arrive and were waiting in a holding area. But t
he plaza itself was eerily empty; inside the barriers, a few Secret Service agents with sleek dogs or metal detectors walked slowly through the area, eyes downcast, like archaeologists on a dig. Feverish, Sean felt the weight of the gun inside his jacket.
Ginsberg checked his watch. “Where’s Kate?” he asked.
Sean shook his head.
Ginsberg stared at him, openly worried. “She gave you a ride last night, didn’t she?”
This time, Sean nodded. He did not trust himself to speak.
Ginsberg seemed to scrutinize him further, eyes briefly moving to his speckled jacket. “Did you get your Social Security number? I’m going to need it.”
Reaching into his back pocket, Sean withdrew a slip of paper and handed it to Ginsberg; in pencil, Sean had scribbled the number 486-24-2119.
Ginsberg glanced at it and, without comment, began to look for Ted Gallagher.
The agent was near the press bleachers, talking on a cell phone. At the edge of the barrier, Rick waited for him to get off the phone, then called out.
Sean watched helplessly.
Gallagher walked to the barrier and took the paper from Rick’s hand. Ginsberg inclined his head toward Sean; Gallagher glanced over, nodding, and squinted at the numbers.
It was the Social Security number for Sean Burke.
Sean felt his fingers twitch as if he were fondling a string of beads. Fervently, he prayed that the check would be delayed, that Gallagher would not hear back for another hour and a half. Or that the name Sean Burke, whatever the Boston police might now suspect, would not yet appear on the computer system for the Service.
Holding the paper in front of him, Gallagher dialed his cell phone again.
Tense, Sean saw the agent seem to repeat the numbers.
Before Sean was aware of it, Ginsberg was at his side again. “Damn Kate,” he said impatiently.
It was the first time Sean had seen the volunteer coordinator fretful, and it increased his own agitation: he could not tell if this was the pressure of a last-minute event, or something else.
“What’s wrong?” Sean blurted.
Rick grimaced. “All their magnetometers aren’t here yet, andyou can’t help them check our people through, not by yourself—you don’t know enough of them. SoI need to vouch for them all.”
Sean hung his head, assaulted by the confusion of his roles: shame at not being valuable to Ginsberg; fear of the computer; shock at his frightening good fortune.
All their magnetometers aren’t here . . .
Then, across the plaza, Sean saw Gallagher walking toward them.
They know.
Sean felt his knees buckle. He stood there, unable to move, ignoring Ginsberg. Following his gaze, the volunteer coordinator turned to Gallagher. The agent’s last few steps, closing the distance, seemed unbearably slow.
He looked first at Sean, then Ginsberg. “We’re through with the sweep,” he said. “Time to start letting your people in.”
Sean swallowed.
Were they still checking? he wondered. How many minutes would it be until he felt Ted Gallagher’s hand on his arm? For a fearful instant, he wished for that. And then Gallagher gave him a staff pin and a tag to wear around his neck.
Turning, Rick Ginsberg put a hand on Sean’s shoulder, as if to apologize for his curtness. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll get these folks checked through. You can hand out the signs.”
Sean followed him for nerve-racking minutes, circling the plaza, the complex scheme of barriers erected to thwart car bombers and filter the crowd through checkpoints. And then, for the second time in twelve hours, Sean was walking through the chute, as he had in the dark, with Kate.
In another hour or so, Kerry Kilcannon would pass through this same passageway—toward him, if somehow Sean had not been caught.
Two more agents in sunglasses waited at the rear end of the chute. In front of one were three boxes of signs with “Kilcannon” printed on both sides.
Ginsberg took a checklist from an agent. “We’ll have all the magnetometers here soon,” the man told Ginsberg. “But for now, you have to vouch that these people match their name and number.”
Sean pulled out a sign. A trickle of volunteers—mostly young, some older, a cross-section of sizes and races, similar only in their eagerness—started through the chute.
Behind him, Sean could feel a crowd building, the people who had filled the buses now moving through the checkpoints. Nervous, he patted the gun inside his jacket.
Suddenly Sean saw two heavy-set men in suits hurrying between the volunteers. The first, large-framed and graying, wore the pin that identified him as a Secret Service agent. But it was the black man with him who made Sean freeze.
They’ve come for me,he thought.
Rick stepped out to meet them. “Mr. Slade?” he said. “I’m Rick Ginsberg, the volunteer coordinator.”
The two men shook hands. Behind them, the volunteers had bunched, waiting. Sean stared at the ground.
“John,” Ginsberg was saying, “this is Clayton Slade. The senator’s national campaign manager.”
Clayton, glancing at Sean with shrewd black eyes, stuck out his hand. Limply, Sean took it. Then the agent with Slade shouldered between them, speaking to his colleagues. “We should have a magnetometer here,” he told them. “In about ten minutes.”
Clayton Slade regarded Sean for another moment. Then, glancing at the volunteers behind them, Slade said to the agent, “I think we’re holding up progress here.”
Together, the two men walked through the checkpoint. Mechanically, Sean handed a sign to a smiling black woman, who thanked him.
* * *
Waiting for Kerry, Clayton stood with Peter Lake on the speakers’ platform.
At their backs was a thirty-story office building with at least five hundred windows; the row of buildings to Clayton’s right had perhaps a thousand more. But Peter had been correct: placing the platform at the foot of this building had eliminated countless lines of fire.
Clayton was restless. He had preceded Kerry here this morning and still had no account of the meeting with Cutler. Based on the debate, the momentum was with Kerry now, and Ellen Penn was urging Clayton to buy all the airtime the campaign could afford. Clayton could find no graceful exit strategy: to lose the race, he thought wearily, was proving harder than he once had thought.
Next to him, Peter watched the crowd form; once more, Clayton noted with appreciation, the Service had secured the site, swept the area, closed the windows, identified the sight lines, made a car or truck bomb effectively impossible. “Sorry for the late notice,” he said to Peter. “But this was what we needed to do.”
Peter kept eyeing the crowd, the placement of his agents. “The senator helped us,” he answered.
There was a certain wryness in Peter’s voice. Clayton turned to him, asking, “For once, you mean?”
Peter smiled. But his only response was to say, “Nice crowd.”
It was. The volunteer coordinator had done well, and, it seemed, a number of the curious from local restaurants and the farmers market, slowly filtering through security, were helping to swell the audience. The plaza was filling; a banner floated over them, proclaiming “Kilcannon—The Woman’s Choice,” and volunteers with signs continued to trickle through the chute and take their places in front of the platform. At the rear of the plaza, a few kids in jeans and T-shirts had climbed the twisted concrete sculpture to get a better view.
“Look at that sculpture,” Clayton remarked to Peter. “It’s Nazi Stonehenge.”
Peter gave a second, brief smile. Following his gaze, Clayton saw two sharpshooters positioned behind the clock tower of the Ferry Building, perhaps two hundred fifty feet away. “We just got notification from the FBI,” Peter said at length. “A possible suspect in those Boston shootings apparently flew out to San Francisco. Right after it happened.”
Clayton turned to him again. “Do they think he’s still around?”
Peter shrug
ged. “They don’t know. They’ve started to look, but it’s pretty low-profile—they don’t want to warn him. Still, they wanted to alert us, and Mason’s detail too. For a right-to-lifer gone insane, an event like this could be a lightning rod.”
Clayton gazed out at the barriers, the checkpoints, the sharpshooters, and thought again how dedicated Peter Lake was to his mission. “Two more days,” he said, “and they’re holding an election.Then what will you do?”
Peter rested a comradely hand on his shoulder. “I’m going snorkeling, Clayton, in the British Virgin Islands. With the woman who—as far as I know—is still my wife.”
For a moment, Clayton allowed himself to envision some unbroken time with Carlie, who was tending their now-empty nest. This made him think sadly, as he so often did, of Ethan. Then he had another thought: that Peter had not mentioned Lara Costello, either directly or by implication. And never would.
When Clayton looked at his watch again, it was close to eleven-thirty.
* * *
Sean glanced over his shoulder.
Perhaps twenty feet away, at the corner of the platform, Clayton Slade talked quietly with the gray-haired agent. They did not seem to notice him.
Sean passed out another sign. Next to him, Rick Ginsberg checked off names on the list, thanking each volunteer.
A magnetometer was on its way, and Sean was trapped here.
“Rick?” someone called.
Turning, Sean saw the sound specialist from the countdown meeting, now wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and an expression of intense worry.
“Hold our people here,” Rick said to Sean, and went to the checkpoint.
From behind the two agents, the soundman said to Rick, “There’s a problem with the sound checks. The mult-box isn’t working.”
“What the fuck is a mult-box?”
“Never mindwhat it is,” the soundman said with equal impatience. “We need it to get good sound for the press and the TV people. I can have one here in fifteen minutes. The question is how my guy’s going to getthrough all this mess.”
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