No Safe Place (55 page)

The doctor placed a hand on her stomach, slowly increasing the pressure. As Lara watched, a clump of tissue shot through the tube.

“I’m sorry,” Lara whispered. “I’m sorry.” She did not know to whom.

The nurse wiped her forehead with a cool, damp cloth. “It’s all right,” she murmured. Trembling, Lara felt the nurse’s fingers curl around hers.

“We’re almost done,” the doctor promised.

The tube was clear now. The whir became a scream in Lara’s head. “Can you turn it off?” she begged them. “Please.”

The whining stopped. In a soothing tone, the doctor said, “There’s just a little more.”

With an instrument, he cleaned out the rest.

Teeth gritted, Lara held herself stiff. The instrument slid from inside her. As she turned to vomit, the nurse held out a plastic dish.

Blind, she felt the nurse’s soft touch on her shoulder. There was deep silence, nothing but the sound of Lara’s breathing, the nurse cooing words of comfort, as if to a baby. Lara still imagined hearing the machine.

The doctor, Lara realized, had vanished.

After a time, she lay back. The nurse stayed with her, patient, unhurried.

Groggy, Lara sat up, then somehow she got to her feet.

For the first few moments, she felt hollow, light-headed. The nurse supported her until she could dress.

“Our counselor’s here now,” she said in a tentative voice.

The cramping had begun. Dazed, Lara said, “I think I just need to be with someone. Anyone.”

The nurse helped her down a narrow hallway.

Inside the last office, a short, middle-aged woman with dyed brown hair sat behind a desk. As Lara sat, the counselor gazed at her with deep compassion. “I’m Nancy Philips,” she said.

The door shut behind her, and Lara and the woman were alone. Tears ran down Lara’s face.

“This can be hard,” the woman said. “I know.”

Lara told her everything.

When she returned to her apartment, a few hours later, there were three more messages from Kerry.

Dully, she listened to them.

The operation that had emptied out her body had drained her of all ability to defend herself. She had violated ethics, broken trust, for the sake of a hopeless love affair. And now she had done
this
.

From somewhere, she summoned the strength to call NBC News, and then the
Times
.

Her last call was to Kerry.

Alone in his hotel suite, Kerry listened to her voice on his answering machine, sickened.

She was leaving—first to see her mother, then to go abroad. He should not feel guilty; they had loved each other, and no one had intended this. But now it was done.

“No,” he said aloud.
“No.”

“I have to start over,” Lara’s voice went on. “Please, if you still love me, the one gift you can give to me is not to make it harder …”

Her voice broke. There was muffled crying, then the click of a connection breaking.

Kerry hurried to the airport.

The drive to her apartment was shards of consciousness: half-remembered streets; the broken words of his lover; the desperate litany in his own brain.

I’m leaving her. Marry me. Nothing else matters. We can always have more children. All I care about is that they’re ours.

Parking by a fire hydrant, he ran to the apartment. He reached her door, out of breath.

Softly, he knocked.

No answer. He rested his forehead against the door, heard nothing stir inside the room.

In a low, insistent voice, he began to call her name.

Two weeks later, Lara left the country.

She next heard of him on the BBC, alone in a cramped apartment in Sarajevo. Senator Kerry Kilcannon and his wife, the clipped voice said, were divorcing.

Throat constricted, Lara listened.

Kilcannon had no comment, the report went on. But the divorce was not expected to prevent him from running for President, as was widely anticipated since his party’s defeat in the off-year elections.

At least there was that, Lara told herself. If he had not lost everything, then neither had she.

“This is Lara Costello, NBC News, with the Kilcannon campaign in Los Angeles …”

Kerry Kilcannon bolted upright in his bed, breaking through the gauze that separated sleep from consciousness.

Lara’s face vanished from the screen.

Hours before, Kerry realized, he had fallen asleep with the television on, two briefing books for the debate beside him on the bed. Now the sheets were a disordered mess, tangled by the last panicky moments when he fought to escape the new climax of his nightmare.

For the first time, it did not end with his brother’s death. As in life, Jamie’s killer came from backstage. Yet now the assassin was not Harry Carson but someone else, his face obscured by shadows. And Kerry stood in his brother’s place.

As the assassin fired, Kerry awakened.

Dawn was breaking. Kerry struggled to dismiss the dream, retrieve the pieces of his life, the bricks and mortar of reason.

Lara was an image on the television, out of reach. He was in Los Angeles, on the morning of a debate that could determine his candidacy and in which—if Clayton’s instincts were right—Dick Mason meant to trap him. It was six o’clock; he had twelve more hours to prepare.

And after that? A confrontation with Nate Cutler that might destroy his hopes if Mason did not. And then a rally in San Francisco, to tame the demons Kerry had unleashed by saying that a fetus was a life.

Take each in turn, Kerry told himself; until after the debate was over, Cutler did not exist. Focus was the candidate’s best
friend, panic his worst enemy. He supposed this must also be true for Presidents.

Someone knocked on his door.

Slowly, Kerry got out of bed and went to answer.

Already dressed in a suit and tie, Clayton stood between the two agents who guarded Kerry’s suite. “Don’t you ever sleep?” Kerry asked.

“Don’t you?” Clayton rejoined. Closing the door behind him, he gave Kerry—mussed hair, damp forehead, boxer shorts—a glance that combined humor with concern. “You look like you’ve taken up boxing again.”

“Bad night,” Kerry answered. “What’s up?”

Clayton took a chair, wearing a look of mild apology. “This San Francisco rally tomorrow. Ellen Penn and the advance people want it outside, in a plaza near the financial district. The Service says do it indoors: thirty hours is too short notice to make an outdoor site secure. Peter Lake insists it’s serious enough that only you can make the call. He’s as close to pissed off as he allows himself to get.”

Kerry made himself be still. With a fair show of calm, he asked, “What are the arguments?”

“Ellen and the chief of advance think the outdoor site will help them draw a crowd on a Sunday—there’s an open-air market nearby and restaurants where yuppies will be having brunch. Plus, the visuals are better: the candidate bathed in sunshine, meeting the folks with a backdrop of the city. Maybe even the Bay Bridge if the camera angle’s right.” Clayton’s tone became dry. “It’s a made-for-TV event, they keep reminding me, and we need good production values to impress the viewing audience.”

Kerry raised his eyebrows. “What if I
don’t
draw a crowd? Give me a hundred people in an outdoor plaza, and it’ll look like the world’s worst company picnic, held for the handful of pro-choice women who still support me.”

Clayton adjusted his glasses. “Ellen claims she can turn people out, and this guy Ginsberg—the local volunteer coordinator—thinks they’ve got enough volunteers to help form a crowd
and
to leaflet anything that’s open near the plaza. Use an indoor site, and you lose passersby and people in the area.”

“And Peter?”

Clayton shrugged. “An indoor site’s more secure. Obviously.”

Kerry gave a mirthless smile. “Jamie,” he said softly, “would be interested to know that.”

Clayton’s gaze was even, his voice firm. “The Service has been monitoring the Internet, Kerry. The gun-nut vitriol is getting worse. There are literally a thousand windows surrounding the plaza, and elevated lines of fire from every conceivable angle. And we need a lot more volunteers outdoors, which Peter sees as another complicating factor.” Clayton paused. “Ellen Penn may want this site. But if
she
gets shot, it’s an accident.”

Kerry’s eyes met his. “So you say play it safe.”

“Yes. For once.”

Kerry went to the window, staring out at the orange-red specter of a smudged Los Angeles dawn. “Electric cars,” he murmured. “It’s the only hope for this place.”

Behind him, Clayton was silent.

Arms folded, Kerry experienced a moment’s superstition, the residue of his dream. It was as if the nightmare had been meant to tell him something. But whether the danger lay in defiance or in letting fear control his conduct, he could not decide. And each moment of daylight took him that much further from knowing.

What was left was a politician determined to defeat Dick Mason, and a man who wished desperately to be unafraid. Turning to Clayton, Kerry said, “Do it in the plaza.”

Clipping the last article from the
San Francisco Chronicle
, Sean Burke saw Rick Ginsberg, hurried footsteps echoing in the cavernous room as he went from volunteer to volunteer. For once, Sean thought, the man’s air of benign calm had left him. “He’s coming,” he blurted to Sean. “Kerry. How much of the next day and a half can you give me?”

Sean felt Ginsberg’s excitement hit him like a current. “All of it,” he managed to say. “I don’t sleep much.”

Shock, Sean realized, had made his tone almost dull. But this seemed to have a calming effect on Ginsberg. The volunteer coordinator rested a hand on his shoulder. “There are so
many ways to fuck this up,” he explained in a softer voice. “In
the next twenty-nine hours we’ll need bleachers, leaflets and people to pass them out, car pools, a crowd, all of us to make as many phone calls as we need to make sure we
have
one. Plus, we have to work with the Secret Service.”

A second jolt hit Sean—fear—and then a vision he could hardly believe: his mission opening up for him, if only he could hide the gun. “I can build bleachers,” he said impulsively. “At home, I was a handyman.”

Rick shook his head. “San Francisco’s a union town, and there are companies that do events. But everything else I need you for.” He gave a crooked, half-crazed grin, and Sean realized how little sleep he must have had. “You’ve got a second chance, John. This time you’ll meet him, for sure.”

Three hours into the debate preparation, Clayton thought Kerry looked distracted, tired, enervated by the handlers and their constant coaching.

They were in a room usually rented by the hotel for business meetings and wedding receptions, now turned into a facsimile of a TV studio. In a blue suit, Kerry sat opposite his former senatorial colleague and friend Bob Kerrey, who had flown in from New York to provide advice and do his Dick Mason impression in a “debate” moderated by Tony Lord. In Clayton’s view, Dick Mason was having the best of it.

From their expressions of concern, the handlers thought so too. They sat in folding chairs in front of the pseudo-soundstage—Frank Wells, Jack Sleeper, Kit Pace, Mick Lasker, and Senator Ellen Penn—offering advice and scripting prepackaged lines, hoping one would become as immortal as the “You’re no Jack Kennedy” gibe with which Lloyd Bentsen had wounded Dan
Quayle twelve years prior. “When you’re talking about the economy,” Frank Wells interjected, “don’t forget the 7-Eleven quotient.”

Kerry waved his hand. “I know, I know—the price of a loaf of bread and a quart of milk. Maybe Rough Rider condoms …”

In the swivel chair next to him, Bob Kerrey smiled. “Skip the condoms,” Jack Sleeper answered tartly. “When it comes to teenage sex, most parents believe that abstinence is the only answer.”

“Then they should take up prayer,” Kerry murmured, so in-audibly that only Clayton, sitting beside him, could hear.

“Mason’s totally isolated,” Frank Wells continued, pursuing his point. “For the last eight years he’s been surrounded by Secret Service. He hasn’t driven a car, gone to a video store, or shopped for groceries. A few ‘real-life’ details can make him seem out of touch.”

With a small smile, Kerry looked around him.
Real life,
Clayton could hear him thinking.
What’s that?
Catching Tony Lord’s eye, Clayton nodded.

They were near the end of the “debate.” Under the rules originally proposed by Kerry and suddenly adopted by Mason, there were four ten-minute segments on a single subject—the economy, foreign policy, crime and social justice, protecting the American family—with the last twenty minutes on any subject. The candidates were free to question each other, and the moderator to interrupt; pretending to do so, Tony Lord read from a slip of paper.

“Senator Kilcannon,” he began—parodying the plum-pudding tones of a network anchorman, heard nowhere else in life—“the current administration signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act, barring so-called gay marriages in one state from being recognized in any other. And yet, while signing, the President intimated that the legislation was a politically motivated attempt to exploit bias against gays and lesbians. Vice President Mason seems to agree. Where do
you
stand on this and other issues involving gay rights?”

Kerry gave Lord a look of mock adoration. “Could you ask me that again, Peter? I just
love
the way you talk.”

Clayton smiled; after a moment’s struggle to maintain his
composure, Tony Lord laughed aloud. “The candidate,” Bob Kerrey observed from the side, “is punchy.”

“Still too quick for
you
, Dick,” Kerry said, spinning abruptly on his friend. “This is another example of your hypocrisy and lack of leadership. If the bill is homophobic, and you don’t like homophobia, don’t sign the bill and then say ‘those bullies in Congress made me do it.’” His voice slowed, becoming serious. “We’ll tolerate a lot from a leader who actually leads, even if we don’t agree with him or her on some issue or another. And if you can’t stand up to this, how can you stand up to some defense contractor who’s given money to the Democratic Party and wants something in return …”