Balance of Power

FOURTEEN

Two mornings later, Martin Bresler met with Bob Lenihan and Sarah Dash.

To assure that no one saw them, Sarah rented a vacation home in Sea Ranch, a windswept compound along the rugged northern coast of Sonoma County, set amidst low vegetation and sheltering pines. The three sat drinking coffee on a wooden bench at the tip of a bluff overlooking the ocean, watching high waves slap against rocks and cliffs which turned blue water into a perpetual white spray. Seated between the lawyers, Bresler hunched in a defensive crouch.

"No affidavit," he stated flatly. "Nothing in writing."

He was a small man, with receding dark hair, liquid eyes and a mobile, expressive face. There was something diminished about him, Sarah thought, a natural volubility turned to suspicion. "We can't do that," Lenihan insisted. "What's to keep you from telling us any story you want, then walking away from it when crunch time comes?"

Remaining hunched, Bresler did not look at anyone. "And if crunch time never comes? What if your case settles or gets thrown out? I don't want some document sitting around with my name on it . . ."

"Are you that scared?" Sarah interjected.

"Are you that naive?" Bresler snapped. "Once you hear my story, you'll understand. Right now, let me ask how you'd enjoy this scenario—I can't get hired in the gun industry; Republicans treat me like a pariah; and I'm scouring Washington for a lobbyist job when the last one blew up in my face.

"I'm talking to you because it's the only way to avoid having to testify. But if I'm forced to, I don't want to have signed an affidavit so that Lexington's lawyers can use it as a fucking blueprint to grill me with." Pausing, he sipped coffee, still gazing at the sparkling blue water beneath an electric blue sky. "So do you want my help? Or do you want a deposition from someone who's suffering an enormous memory lapse?"

Sarah looked past him, at Lenihan. "Let's talk," she said.

* * *

Sarah and Lenihan stood at the edge of the bluff, out of hearing distance from Bresler. A high wind whistled past their ears. "Fuck him," Lenihan said. "Stick the little pissant in steerage and fly him back to Washington where he belongs. If we want his testimony, we take his deposition."

Sarah crossed her arms. "When the First Lady calls, she's calling for the President—as well as for herself and Mary, who's our client, after all. What do we lose by hearing this guy out?"

"Hearing him," Lenihan answered, "is probably just a waste of time. But relying on what he tells us is criminal stupidity." He turned toward Martin Bresler with an air of disdain. "That's treachery in human form."

Sarah shrugged. "He's also what we need."

* * *

Placing his mug on the burl redwood coffee table, Bresler settled back on the couch. "It started," he told the lawyers, "with me thinking I could find a middle ground between Kilcannon and the SSA. It ended with me as political roadkill, the First Lady's family slaughtered, and Lexington staring down the barrel of a lawsuit."

Still annoyed, Lenihan frowned at Bresler's portentousness. "We know how it ended," he said. "Just try your hardest to get us there. From the beginning."

* * *

Four months earlier, seated in his office, Frank Fasano had looked from Bresler to Jerry Kirk, Vice President of Bresler's association of gun manufacturers, the Gun Sports Coalition. As always, Kirk, with a placid face and sandy hair as thin as his glasses were thick, wore an expression of myopic amiability. "Marty's right," Kirk assured Fasano. "If you announce an agreement on trigger locks between our manufacturers and the Republicans in Congress, you steal the issue from Kilcannon and all of us look reasonable for a change. It's the classic win-win, which is why we're coming to you instead of him."

Bresler felt Kirk's enthusiasm feed his own. "Gun politics," he told Fasano, "is stuck in this endless loop: Kilcannon versus the SSA, with the rest of us—including your party—watching like we're hypnotized. We need movement, Frank."

Fasano nodded, seemingly interested but noncommittal. Bresler felt him calculate the political geometry. "Let me take some soundings," he said at length. "On this issue, I can't get ahead of my people."

For three days, Bresler hoped for a breakthrough. And then he encountered Paul Harshman in the corridor of the Russell Building. With a solicitous air, Harshman took him aside. "Watch yourself, Marty. You shouldn't ask us to abandon our friends."

That afternoon, without explanation, Fasano turned them down.

* * *

Bresler and Kirk met with Clayton Slade in a motel room at Dulles Airport.

"You've got three weeks," Clayton told them bluntly. "If we can't reach an agreement, the President's introducing legislation and taking on the industry. He's more than a little sick of begging you for safety locks."

Bresler glanced at Jerry Kirk. "All we can do," Jerry told Clayton, "is talk to our companies."

For an intensive week of meetings and phone calls, they did—at Bresler's insistence, in total secrecy. Gradually, reluctantly, the five CEOs agreed that a modest safety measure, even in partnership with Kerry Kilcannon, was better than more lawsuits and terrible public relations. Bresler called Clayton and set a date for an announcement.

This time, Paul Harshman did not wait for a chance meeting. "This is far worse than the last time," he told Bresler by telephone. "Now you're turning your back on us."

Bresler put the phone down and called Clayton Slade. "Who knows about our agreement?" he demanded.

"Jack Sanders. The President. That's all. So it's not coming from us." Clayton paused. "I want to move this up before the SSA unravels it."

"How far up?"

"Two days from now, at a Rose Garden ceremony for police chiefs."

"That's not enough time . . ."

"We can't afford more time. Call your CEOs, and let me know."

Bresler and Jerry Kirk began dialing.

* * *

"Kilcannon was terrific," Bresler told Lenihan and Sarah.

For a moment, his expression changed, remembering a day when he was at the center of things and could imagine that gun politics was on the cusp of a tectonic shift. "He was easy and engaging," Bresler continued, "like a normal guy meeting other normal guys, one who honestly cared about saving lives. When he joked about putting us all in the witness protection program, everybody lightened up.

"That night we were all over the evening news—me, Kilcannon, and my CEOs, with a backdrop of police chiefs in blue uniforms. My CEOs loved it, Kilcannon loved it. The next day he called me personally, to thank me and say let's get to work on background checks at gun shows. Sure, I told him." Bresler emitted a harsh laugh, returning to reality. "Marty Bresler, the center of the known political universe. The honest broker, the media darling, impregnable as long as I succeeded for my members. With Kerry Kilcannon on my team, even the SSA would start returning my calls."

* * *

They didn't. Most Republicans barely did. An old friend, now at the SSA, told him in private that his photograph was taped inside the urinals at SSA headquarters. His only consolation was that his five member companies had suffered no public reprisal.

They never did. The day that everyone but George Callister withdrew their support and funding, one chagrined CEO told him, "I'll deny I ever said this. But once the SSA heard you were dealing with Kilcannon on gun shows, we had no choice."

"But how did they hear?" Bresler asked in a daze.

Heartsick, he broke the news to Jerry Kirk. Jerry took it better than Bresler had expected. Placing a collegial hand on Bresler's shoulder, he said, "Just worry about yourself, Marty. I'll be fine."

He was. The next week the SSA hired Jerry Kirk, and Bresler knew who had betrayed him, and why his career was over.