No Safe Place (67 page)

To Kerry, Dick Mason sounded numbed by the savagery of their last encounter and by the events that had intervened, so threatening to his life’s ambition.

“I still won’t campaign,” the Vice President said. “Not until you’re up and at it.”

“No mercy given,” Kerry answered lightly. “And none expected. Except on certain subjects.” His voice slowed. “As
far
as I’m concerned, Dick, you should continue your campaign. It’s wrong whenever something like this stops the process.”

There was silence on the other end, Mason taking in the emptiness of Kerry’s offer: he must know too well, as Kerry did, that to campaign now would lose him votes—assuming that the voters, focused on Kerry’s recovery, noticed him at all. “About this other business,” Mason finally said. “Yours and mine. I mean to stick to the agreement.” He finished in a lower voice: “I’m very sorry that ever happened.”

Kerry glanced at Clayton, sitting across the room. “I understand,” he said to Mason.

He did, of course. Mason was preserving his place in line, hoping to secure Kerry’s forbearance if, by an agency other than Nate Cutler, the affair with Lara brought Kerry down. It was, Kerry thought, the usual self-interested selflessness that goes unremarked in politics—even if Kerry had not, for the next few months, some potential need for Dick’s support.

“Give my love to Jeannie,” Kerry told him. “As ever.”

Clayton took the telephone from his hand. “So you’ve ‘for-given’ him.”

“Of course. Just not retroactively.”

Though Kerry said this with a smile, Clayton could read his eyes. Should Kerry become President, Dick Mason was finished: for what the Vice President had done to Lara, there would be no forgiveness. Clayton felt himself smiling back—his friend was still recognizably himself, and comfortably short of sainthood.

“If you really want to stick it to Dick,” he observed, “Frank Wells has a suggestion.”

At five-thirty, the time set in Kit Pace’s hasty announcement, Kerry tried to stand up.

The pain ripped through him. He gave a short, involuntary cry, and white flashes blurred his vision. His legs felt shaky, uncertain.

Frank O’Malley grasped one arm, Clayton the other. “You don’t have to do this,” the doctor told him.

Kerry steadied himself.
Politics,
Liam had said,
like rust, never sleeps.

He wished that Lara were here. But, until tomorrow, she was staying out of sight. “I’ll manage,” he murmured to O’Malley.

The three men inched toward the window, the tube in Kerry’s chest obscured by his robe. Behind them, a nurse carried the pole on which the tube ended with a plastic bag.

“They need to see you,” Frank Wells had advised. “To know that you’re able to function.”

About the window itself, Kerry realized, he had been profoundly incurious. He had no idea how many floors up he was; though he was touched by the knowledge that countless strangers cared for him, even loved him in a way, the idea of hundreds keeping vigil below had seemed abstract, surreal.

“Which floor are we on?” he asked O’Malley.

“The third.”

They reached the window.

There
were
hundreds of them, spread across the lawn—young and old, men and women, of all races, wearing everything from suits to jeans. Beside him, Clayton spoke so quietly that only Kerry could hear.

“They’re not here for
him
, Kerry. They’re here for you.”

A ragged cheer rose, audible through the glass, and then some in the crowd began waving.

Kerry blinked. Suddenly this was not about Dick Mason, or even about votes.

Raising his arm, Kerry waved back.

Below, Nate Cutler watched him—a slight figure, badly injured, but clearly still himself. Nate would be less than human, he told himself, not to feel the elation around him. Or to be haunted by the profile he saw on the roof above, a Secret Service sharpshooter.

“Amazing.” The admiration in Lee McAlpine’s voice was close to warmth. “These people don’t miss a trick.”

“It’s Mason who’s dead,” Nate answered, and knew, as soon as he said it, that this was true.

Above them, Kilcannon vanished from the window.

It was time, Nate decided, to return Jane Booth’s beeper message. He drifted to the sidewalk; dialing, he took in the
city traffic, the line of police cars parked in front.

“Hello,” Jane answered.

“It’s Nate. I’m on a cell phone.”

There was a brief pause. “There’s a meeting tomorrow,” she told him. “In New York. I want you to catch the red-eye. Now that he’s in for good, we need to decide what to do.”

Election day dawned clear and bright.

By nine o’clock, Clayton arrived with the news that turnout was heavy across the state. Turning to Kerry, Lara said, “That’s good for you, I think.”

Kerry felt the first glow of hope. “This may really be happening, Lara.”

Looking from Kerry to Lara, Clayton handed each of them copies of two press releases. Perusing his, Kerry stopped to watch Lara read one, smile, then study the second more closely. “Mine should be issued through the news division,” she said to Clayton.

Clayton raised his eyebrows. “Have you told them yet?”

“Yes.” Glancing at Kerry, Lara smiled again. “There was a very long silence.”

Clayton shrugged. “At least today it’ll be story number two. After all, this election decides the nomination.”

“Timing,” Lara said, “is everything.”

Watching her, Kerry wondered again about the wisdom of their decision. She had been a journalist since college and now, abruptly, might take a path quite different, one she had never wanted, under a scrutiny so intense that most would find it withering. But this was no time to say so; with seeming serenity, Lara had taken a pencil from her purse and begun to make changes in the margins of the press release.

It was five o’clock in Manhattan—three hours later than in California—when the press releases arrived at the conference room.

For the last two hours, the conferees—Nate; Jane Booth; Sheila Kahn, the investigative reporter; the managing editor, Courtney Wynn; and Martin Zimmer,
Newsworld
’s owner and publisher—had parsed the facts in painstaking detail. Not even Jane had tried to be insouciant or witty. There was too much at stake—the character of
Newsworld
; the career of Kerry Kilcannon; the question of what journalism now was, and should be. Nate could not yet discern what the group would decide.

Sheila passed out the releases without comment. In the collective silence, Nate began reading.

“NBC News,” the first began, “announced that reporter Lara Costello had requested and received an indefinite leave of absence.

“‘For two years,’ Ms. Costello said, ‘I served as a Capitol Hill correspondent for the
New York Times
. During that period, I formed both a professional relationship and a personal friendship with Senator Kerry Kilcannon. I deeply valued all of that.

“‘The events of the last few days, and my response to them, have now made it very clear to me that my feelings for Kerry Kilcannon go beyond friendship. The senator has found them enlightening in a similar way. It is equally plain, therefore, that I cannot continue to report on this campaign, or otherwise perform duties which might raise questions regarding my objectivity, or that of NBC News.

“‘In future weeks, I mean to be with Senator Kilcannon as he recovers, and to sort out what seems right for me to do. I expect that process to be enlightening as well.’”

Smiling quizzically, Nate turned to the second press release.

It quoted Kerry Kilcannon’s reaction. “‘If enlightenment takes getting shot,’” it said in its entirety, “‘I’m just glad it worked the first time.’”

Nate looked across at Sheila. “That’s
all
?” he asked.

“That’s all.”

Nate reread the sentence and then began to laugh. “Too good—God, it really is
too
good.”

Courtney Wynn kept staring at the releases, unsmiling. “There goes one leg of the story,” he finally said. “The ethically
compromised reporter. At least
in futuro
.” He turned to Sheila Kahn. “How’s Costello’s reporting from two years ago?”

Kahn, too, looked dazed. “Bulletproof,” she answered. “Just like her campaign stuff. She may have done him favors, but it doesn’t show.”

With the suppressed nervousness of the frustrated smoker, Jane Booth hastily finished her can of Diet Coke. “The competition’s caught up with us now,” she said in an agitated tone. “Tomorrow they’ll be all over this, trying to ferret out what ‘personal friendship’ means.”

“And they’ll probably find what we did,” Wynn replied. “A lot of detail that looks very telling but doesn’t quite get us behind closed doors. And Kilcannon’s ex-wife won’t help
anyone
, it sounds like.”

Booth gave him a pointed look. “You forgot the counselor’s memo.”

In the uncomfortable silence, Courtney Wynn contemplated the table. Everyone knew that his second marriage had begun as an affair with an ex-colleague, precipitating the end of his first; Wynn was too self-aware not to feel the irony, and too good a journalist not to fight it.

“They’re lying about an affair,” Nate told the group. “Even if we can’t prove it. But, to me, this isn’t about adultery—there’s too much of it around, and we’ve got no evidence that Kil-cannon’s pathological. It’s about whether Lara Costello aborted Kerry Kilcannon’s child, and what role Kilcannon played in that. And now that they’re going to be America’s sweethearts, the story takes on a certain ‘yuk’ factor—” Cutting himself off, he gazed at Sheila Kahn across the conference table. “Do you have any sense this counselor’s crazy enough to have made the whole thing up?”

“Crazy? Sure. Who else would do what she’s done? But I don’t think she just made it up.”

With a tentative air, Martin Zimmer leaned forward: he was the rich amateur who had purchased the others’ talent and, for all his success on Wall Street, they seemed to intimidate him. “Isn’t this situation,” he asked, “the reason you’re still supposed to need
two
sources? You’ve shown me an affair, I’m pretty sure, and I think we know Costello was at the clinic.
But
did she tell anyone besides this woman—with ties to the Christian Commitment—that the baby was Kilcannon’s?”

Jane Booth frowned. “The circumstances argue for authenticity,” she said. “It’s like confessing to a priest, or a lawyer.”

“Do you want Dick Mason to be President?” Zimmer asked her bluntly. “Or whoever the Republicans finally choose?”

Jane looked genuinely irritated. “As political editor,” she answered, “I don’t want
anyone
.”

“Well, you’d be choosing
someone
. Just not Kilcannon.” Zimmer turned to Nate. “We’re sure Mason planted this, right?”

Nate nodded. “The debate made that clear.”

“That’s what Nat Schlesinger says.” Zimmer shifted in his chair, more subdued. “We had another call from him—Courtney and I. The question he asked is this: Do we torpedo Kerry Kilcannon on the basis of a single source, provided by Dick Mason?”

Nate watched Courtney Wynn; without moving, Wynn subtly seemed to disassociate himself from his publisher, so that no one would think he was carrying water for the Kil-cannon campaign. But Schlesinger’s question, Nate had to acknowledge, was an excellent one.

Before anyone tried to answer it, Wynn’s secretary arrived with a message on a slip of paper.

Wynn went to a corner, picked up the telephone, and had a brief conversation while the others listened. Turning, he explained, “That was a friend at ABC. They’ve done their first exit polling: they can’t release the results yet, but it looks like Kilcannon’s ahead.”

Across from Nate, Martin Zimmer raised his eyebrows.

“This is out there,” Jane Booth said at last. “And it’s like the sword of Damocles. What if the Republicans use it to take Kil-cannon down? How do we justify not printing it?”

Courtney Wynn gave her a measured look. “That depends on who
else
wants to print it,” he responded. “The Republicans can’t do it alone, any more than Mason could. Even if they want to. So
my
question is this: Who sets our standards—
us
or somebody else? And is this the kind of story
Newsworld
wants to run—at least without more than we have now? Or
have we become Matt Drudge?”

Nate gazed down at the press releases. Alone among the others, he could sense what the laconic words had cost two people, and how much more their risk might cost them yet. Then Martin Zimmer broke into his thoughts. “I don’t like this story,” he said simply. “Is there anyone here who does?”

Jane Booth grimaced. “This whole thing smells,” she persisted. “Clayton Slade let Costello in the ambulance because
he
knows the truth. And I don’t think anything that’s happened—not the shooting, not this meretricious story they’ve ginned up—cures the ethical problem of a reporter warning a candidate about a story. Especially when
they’re
the story. Jesus, what kind of journalistic standards are we tolerating here?” Facing Nate, she demanded, for Zimmer’s benefit, “
You’re
satisfied she went to Kilcannon, right?”

Nate nodded. “Or to his people.”

“But can you prove it?” Wynn asked them both.

Jane’s eyes narrowed. “No,” Nate answered. “But you could pick up the vibrations.”

“‘Vibrations,’” Zimmer repeated.

Jane turned to Nate again. “After I asked you to follow her,” she asked, “did you see anything?”

Nate hesitated. This was her final hope, he knew, of keeping the discussion alive.

“No,” he said at last. “But then who would be that dumb?”

It was almost over.

By seven o’clock, Jack Sleeper had called Kerry to say that his numbers forecast a substantial victory. “An hour to go,” Kerry reminded him—at eight o’clock, the polls would close, and speculation would be overtaken by fact.

When Kerry hung up, Lara asked, “Did you reach Kate Feeney’s parents?”

He nodded. “Do you know what her mother told me? That they’d gotten out to vote for me today. I suppose it’s a way of keeping her alive.”