Balance of Power

    Shortly after eight o'clock in the morning, a wan Kit Pace appeared in the President's office and handed him copy from a right-wing Internet columnist. Its narrative was devastating: that Kerry was married when his relationship with Lara began; that they had commenced a "two-year clandestine affair" while Lara had covered Capitol Hill for the New York Times; that Lara had become pregnant; that she had "aborted Senator Kilcannon's unborn child"; that she had exiled herself by taking an overseas assignment to preserve his political future; that after Kerry's subsequent divorce, "having laundered their secret, Kilcannon and Costello presented themselves as newly involved, concealing the truth so that they could seek election as America's sweethearts"; and, finally, that "their presence as First Couple is the result of cold-blooded infanticide and a coolheaded deception designed not only to disguise their moral unfitness but to endear themselves to an unsuspecting electorate." The story was accompanied by a verbatim transcript of the counselor's notes from her postabortion interview with Lara, still dazed from anesthesia, her torrent of emotion recorded under the veil of supposed confidence.

    Kerry had never seen the notes. The devastation he found there evoked the visceral memory of his own desperation—making call after call which went unanswered; pleading with Lara through her voice mail to save their child; rushing to her apartment to find her gone; her final call to him, once it was done, to say that they had loved each other, that neither had intended harm, that their relationship was finished, that Lara was going away. "I have to start over," had been her final words. "Please, if you still love me, the one gift you can give me is not to make it harder . . ." Then her voice had broken off, just before the click of her telephone preceded a dial tone.

    Looking up, Kerry knew at once that Kit had read it all. Within hours, the embarrassment and pain he could see on her face would be reflected, often with less charity, in the hearts and minds of every American within the reach of a television, or radio, or computer, or telephone, or newspaper, or of any friend, neighbor, coworker or stranger at a grocery store who had heard the story first. All that his adversaries had needed to do they had done: the Internet column was a pebble dropped in an electronic pond, and its ripples would swiftly reach the water's edge.

    "I've already prepared copies of our statement," she told him. "If we don't get it out now, the Bob Woodward game will start—a media freefor-all, with thousands of reporters competing for new details. At least this way the story will lead with what you have to say."

    Gazing at the counselor's notes, Kerry shook his head. "I don't think our statement covers this. It's not enough now."

    When Kit had gone, Kerry called Lara and, a few difficult moments later, Minority Leader Chuck Hampton. Then he picked up a legal pad and swiftly scrawled some notes.

* * *

    At nine-fifteen, the President appeared in the White House press room. A stunned Frank Fasano watched his office television with Senator Paul Harshman; Fasano had known of the story for less than twenty minutes and he was still absorbing, with no little sense of dread, the pattern and meaning of the events which now enveloped Kerry Kilcannon.

    Kilcannon looked somber but composed. I have a brief statement to make, he began. I will not be taking questions.

    "My God," Fasano said, "it's true."

    "Of course it's true," Harshman answered with grim asperity. "The only value he's ever held is accumulating power."

    The caustic remark, Fasano found, induced a brief reflexive sympathy for the President he opposed—even in the face of personal conduct which appalled him. On television, the slightest edge of disdain entered Kilcannon's voice. Ten days ago, the President continued, Senator Jack Slezak came to the White House. He said that he'd received a warning—anony

mous, he assured me—that if I vetoed the Civil Justice Reform Act certain facts regarding my life before becoming President would be made public.

    Dane, Fasano thought. Only this could explain the confidence with which Dane had assured him that Kilcannon would be beaten. Glancing at Harshman, Fasano surmised that he did not know. Through deliberate hints, Dane had wanted Fasano to discern—at the same time as Kerry Kilcannon—the secret behind Kilcannon's ruin and, to that extent, for Fasano to be complicit in the SSA's hidden exercise of power. Never again would Fasano doubt the risks of defying Charles Dane.