Balance of Power

TWENTY-THREE

"I liked it when you danced with me," Marie informed the President.

Together, Kerry and Lara laughed at an image from the evening before—Kerry in white tie and tails, scooping up a six-year-old in a frilly pink dress for a makeshift waltz. "We'll send you lots of pictures," the President promised.

He had come to see off Lara's family; the motorcade waited at the East Gate, their suitcases already in the trunk. Quickly, Kerry said goodbye to each in turn, Joan last. "Come back soon," he requested. "And, please, call me if there's anything you need. I don't think there's much more I can screw up, and we want to see you two through the rest of this."

Joan kissed him on the cheek, then gazed up at him, her face expressing gratitude, and more. "I still say Lara's lucky," she said, and then trundled Marie into the black limousine.

Saying goodbye to Mary, it struck Kerry that, once more, the youngest was the last in line. "You don't have to wait for the others," he told her. "Part of being single is that you can come see us anytime."

Smiling, Mary said she would, and then Lara squeezed her husband's hand. "Meet you at Andrews," she told him, and Kerry left for his national security briefing.

First, however, he placed a call to the head of the San Francisco security service recommended by Peter Lake. "Have your people meet them at the airport," he requested of Tom Burns. "With all of this publicity, I don't want them bothered."

"Mr. President," Burns answered, "it's as good as done."

* * *

Amidst flashing lights and shrieking sirens, the First Lady and her family headed for Dulles Airport.

Eyes narrowing in a mock wince, Inez murmured, "It gives me such a headache." But Marie could hardly contain herself—squirming in her seat belt one way, then the other, she watched the Metro police lead and follow on motorcycles, intersection by intersection, from the E Street Tunnel onto Interstate 66.

"Why do they do that?" Marie asked her aunt. "The sirens and everything."

"To protect us," Lara answered, and then, rather than explain the risks attendant to First Families, she resolved to focus on the intricacies of protection—the leapfrogging of motorcycles, the interplay of police and Secret Service, which kept Marie enthralled until the motorcade reached Dulles.

They proceeded to an empty building in General Aviation, home to private planes, which was easiest for the Secret Service to secure. The airport police were waiting—from here, Peter had explained, the police would escort Lara's family to their gate, putting them on their flight before the other passengers. They had four first-class tickets, a gift from Kerry and Lara.

Lara knelt in front of Marie. "I'm like Kerry," she told her niece. "I absolutely demand that you come back."

Marie looked at her solemnly, then gave her mother a tentative glance. "Do you think we can bring Daddy?" she asked Lara, then looked hastily away. "If he's good to Mommy, I mean. I don't want him to feel bad."

Lara and Joan shared a look of surprise; with a child's sensitivity to forbidden subjects, Marie had not mentioned her father since arriving. And yet, Lara knew, a child's desire for the archetypal family, a mother and father who loved her and each other, was profound, and the slow death of such a dream created damage of its own. At six, Marie still nurtured the dream, an image of family where her father did not feel the pain she felt. Kneeling, Joan put her arms around her daughter. "We'll see," she told Marie. "I want Daddy to feel better, too."

Lara saw the ambiguity of Joan's answer reflected in the child's eyes. But there was little else to say. And so she kissed Marie's forehead and then, standing, hugged her sister. "I'm sorry," Lara told her. "Sometimes I'm a hard sister, I know. But I love you very much."

Joan looked at her steadily. "So do I," she answered, and kissed Lara on the cheek. Suddenly, Lara recalled them sleeping together as children, heads beneath the sheets, whispering so their mother would not hear, innocent of all that would come. Silent, she held her sister close.

But it was nearly time for them to go. Turning to Mary, Lara said, "I meant that bouquet for you."

Mary flashed an ironic smile. "You can't manage everything, sis. But Marie's promised I can be her Maid of Honor."

Lara kissed her mother last. "Go," Inez said firmly. "You'll be late for your own honeymoon." But she fought the tears in her eyes.

Lara smiled at this. "I won't," she promised. "You have no idea what a good wife I'm about to be."

In spite of her emotions, this elicited from Inez a look of wry humor. "Oh, I believe you, Lara. You've never failed at anything you wanted."

Tentative, a policeman approached, waiting until Lara acknowledged him with a look. "Ready, Mrs. Kilcannon? We should get your family on the plane."

Lara glanced at her mother. "We're ready," she affirmed. And then her family was off, Inez turning to wave for a final time.

Lara watched them go; her sisters, whom she loved despite all of their differences; the child who would be the first of the next generation of Costello women; the mother who still cared for them all. And then she turned, escorted by two Secret Service agents, and hurried off to continue her life with Kerry Kilcannon.

* * *

Four hours later, a little before five, Lara and Kerry walked the beach on Dogfish Bar, trailed at a distance by a skeleton crew of reporters and photographers.

"A honeymoon," Kerry said dryly, "unlike most others."

In truth, Lara knew, it was a bastard compromise—the product of a four-sided dogfight between the First Couple, who wanted a measure of privacy; Peter Lake, who wanted to keep them safe; the media, who wanted images of the Kilcannons for their covers, front pages, and newscasts; and Kerry's political advisors, who considered the honeymoon spun gold, its choreographed "private moments" an invaluable piece of political property. The result was a limited schedule of photo opportunities, interspersed with much longer periods of media banishment, wherein the press scraped for news where there was none. This process had reached a premature apotheosis when CNN had asked Kit Pace for the First Couple's reading list. " 'Reading list,' " Kit had echoed, barely suppressing laughter. "Is that a serious question?"

"What are we reading?" Lara asked now.

Kerry took her hand. "I told Kit to say the Kama Sutra," he

answered. "In all sixteen editions." Nodding toward the cameras, he added, "It helps to have a sense of the absurd."

It did. But Lara knew all too well the dark side of the press pool watching every move. When Lara had covered Kerry's campaign in California, her peers had openly called it "the death watch"—even on a slow day there lurked, beneath the surface, the prospect that another madman would make history as one had done with Kerry's brother. And it was against this threat that Peter Lake had arrayed a security presence far more elaborate than the press would ever know.

Pausing, Lara surveyed the locus of Peter's challenge. The beach was a mile of white sand and half-buried rocks, stretching toward the final red clay promontory on which the Gay Head lighthouse stood, a deserted spike against the blue sky of early evening. To one side were the blue swells of the Atlantic, bathed in pale sun and tamed by a sandbar on which, at low tide, they could walk a quarter mile out; behind them was a gentle slope of sand and sea grass, at the top of which was the beach house where they stayed, all wood and glass and light. Starting with the house itself, Dogfish Bar was not what Peter would have chosen: there was a half mile of low vegetation beyond the house, and then a ridge of hills, looking down on them, dotted with homes and blanketed with trees which offered cover to intruders. Only the water was at all to Peter's liking: no one but a frogman could approach without being seen, and Peter had frogmen of his own.

They were among the more hidden aspects of Peter's plan. To ward off danger, he had chosen to advertise the area surrounding Dogfish Bar as an armed camp, with roadblocks, choppers, and Coast Guard cutters patrolling a half-mile perimeter. Close residents had been displaced—for exorbitant rents—by Secret Service agents, a medical staff, and the personnel essential to the continuing conduct of the Presidency or, should the worst occur, to confronting an emergency. Yet Peter had done all this, Lara appreciated, without depriving the Kilcannons of the sense that, the media aside, they existed in a cocoon of privacy.

Wearing jeans and cotton sweaters, they faced the ocean, a light breeze cooling their faces. In the distance, a patrol boat, barely audible, left a white skein in its wake. "Are you regretting all this?" Kerry asked.

"Not yet. How long until it's just us and the frogmen?"

"Six o'clock."

Lara glanced at the distant clump of photographers and cameramen, lenses glinting in the sun. Grinning, she said, "Then I suppose we should give them something," and, on tiptoes, kissed her husband for precisely seven seconds.

* * *

On the screen, the distant profile of the ice queen met that of the little prick. "The President and Mrs. Kilcannon," the anchorwoman said cheerfully, "have begun their honeymoon on Martha's Vineyard."

In the sterile motel room which he knew to be his final shelter, John Bowden drank from his last bottle of vodka and stared at his photo of Marie. His only food was a Snickers bar; his credit card was maxed out, his bank account overdrawn, and the twenty-one dollars in his wallet all that remained after prepaying for this pea-green nightmare. His life was done, his manhood stolen, his family pried from his grasp. Consciousness was agony, and yet he could not sleep. Not even alcohol could dull the pain which gripped him like a fever.

Only, he thought, the gun lying next to him.

The magazine of the Lexington P-2 held forty hollow-tipped Eagle's Claw bullets. For this he would need only one.

With a deliberation born of alcohol and despair, Bowden placed the P-2 to his temple.

Tears filled his eyes. The lightest pull of the trigger would end his suffering.

Slowly Bowden lowered his eyelids, still gripping the photograph of Marie.

There was a sharp rap on the metal door. Bowden's fingers twitched; quickly, he relaxed his grip on the gun.

"Who is it?" he called out in a trembling voice.

"Housekeeping," a woman's voice shouted.

"Go away."

There was silence. In the stillness, second upon second, Bowden thought of the only action which would make his death seem more than pitiful.

Slowly, he put down the gun, and found the airline schedule in the crevice of his wallet.

* * *

"Their plane is late," Lara told her husband. "A mechanical problem."

"Too bad. Whenever, there'll be someone waiting for them."

They sat cross-legged on a blanket tucked in a recess of the sand dune, watching an orange-red sun recede into the ocean. Lara had made them Caesar salad, and Kerry provided the lobster: while Lara had seen far more death than Kerry—though not of anyone close to her—she could not stand dropping lobsters into a boiling pot. Sipping chilled chardonnay, Kerry remarked contentedly, "This is like The Thomas Crown Affair."

It's like before, Lara thought. Of the many people surrounding them, only they knew that, four years earlier, Kerry and Lara had come to this house as lovers. It was during those few days, Lara guessed, that she had become pregnant with Kerry's child. But she had never said this to him, not even when he proposed returning. They were making new memories now.

"The version with Faye Dunaway?" Lara asked.

"Uh-huh. And Steve McQueen. They made love on the beach."

Lara smiled. Together, they watched the sun vanish beneath the ocean, leaving striations of orange-streaked clouds in a darkening cobalt sky.

* * *

When the Costellos landed at San Francisco International, Marie at last awakened.

As the others slowly gathered their belongings, Joan dabbed the sleep from her daughter's eyes with a moistened cloth. The little girl stretched. "Are we home?"

"Nearly home."

Together, the four Costellos left the plane, reentering a life without the privileges of proximity to Lara. Marie ran ahead on the moving rubber pathway, at times turning to glance back at her mother. Reaching the security gate, she paused, looking back again.

On the other side were cameramen and people with microphones. "Marie," someone called out. But before she could answer, two men in sport coats had swooped down, standing between her and the cameras, and then she felt her mother's hand on her shoulder.

"Marie," the man called again. But Marie had already learned to stare straight ahead. She hoped that his feelings weren't hurt.

* * *

Beneath a woolen blanket, Lara gazed at the star-streaked sky, brighter for the absence of city lights. "Do you know the constellations?" she asked.

"No."

"Neither do I. Maybe we can send someone for a book on stars."

That, Lara realized, had become her notion of a major project. Content, she listened to the deep spill of the ocean.

Abruptly, Kerry tensed, touching her arm in warning. Startled, she turned to see him staring ahead of them, quite still.

The skunk, its tail arched distinctively, sniffed at Kerry's feet.

Hostage to its impulses, the two humans watched the animal, afraid to move. At last, the skunk lowered its tail and ambled away.

"Where's Peter," Kerry inquired, "when we really need him?"