No Safe Place Read Free Page B

should help a little.” Her tone became dry. “You were quite eloquent, in fact.”
    Kerry gave her a quizzical smile. “Did I use the word ‘life’?” he asked, and then Dick Mason appeared on the screen.
    The Vice President was flanked by Jeannie Mason and their three children—a girl and two boys, all young adults, their faces as clean and unthreatening as their father’s. But the children lacked Dick Mason’s shrewdness or his actor’s gifts. Their faces were contorted in smiles so spurious they seemed like open wounds, while Mason’s smile for the crowd wasbroad,his chin tilted at a Rooseveltian angle of confidence and challenge. Imagining the emptiness in Dick Mason’s stomach, the terrible, almost inconceivable prospect that a lifetime of striving might come to nothing, Kerry saw in his opponent’s smile an act of will that was close to bravery. He wondered if what helped sustain Dick Mason was lingering disbelief …
    “You can’t win,” the President had said to Kerry. “Dick won’t let you.”
    It had been less than five months ago, a bitter-cold December day. The President had kept him waiting in the reception area of the West Wing. Idly, Kerry had studied the oil paintings of historic scenes, a gilt-framed clock, an ornate brass chandelier. He was being made to hang out with the donors and the lobbyists, Kerry thought with humor, and commenced watching the children of a pudgy man who must have contributed money to the President or Dick wheedle boxes of presidential M&M’s from the somewhat starchy receptionist. That no one seemed to recognize Kerry only heightened his amusement.
    At length, the President’s assistant, Georgia Heckler, appeared and led Kerry to the Oval Office.
    The President looked gaunt, more tired than Kerry had seen him, his graying hair more sparse than even the month before. Wondering if the rumors about the President’s health were true, Kerry imagined Dick Mason watching this man for signs. A lonely job, they always said.
    Georgia shut the door behind them.
    The President gave Kerry a thin smile. “So you think you want this chair,” he said without preface.
    Kerry appreciated the opening; the President knew how much Kerry despised the political politesse that the President himself called “the dance of the cranes and the swallows.”
    “I plan to run,” Kerry answered with equal directness. “I know you support Dick. But I hope you’ll withhold a formal endorsement until we see how the primaries shake out.”
    “Stay neutral, you mean? Just as you did when the press was falsely accusing me of destroying a long-dead marriage, and Dick stepped forward to defend me.” The President folded his hands, tone softening. “In a very real way, Kerry, you’ll be running against me. To run against Dick, you’ll have to.And Dick’s been loyal
and
effective.”
    Kerry watched his face. “Loyal, I’ll accept. Do you want the price of loyalty to be a Republican Congress
and
President?”
    “Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that.” Above his smile, the President’s eyes were keen. “You’ve got the virus, don’t you. You looked around and decided you were better than anyone in sight. Including Dick and me.”
    Kerry shrugged and smiled, waiting him out; as a child, he had learned the gift of watchful silence.
    “That’s only the first step,” the President said at length. “The easiest and the most deluded. Later you find out that the demands of a presidential campaign are much greater than you imagined, that the fishbowl you’ve entered is far more degrading, that the sheer enormity of what it takes to run for President—let alone the chance that you might win—threatens to overwhelm you.
    “The few men who become President refuse to acknowledge any of the realities that would stop anyone else: that they’re giving up all hope of privacy; that their life is run by strangers and semifriends who want what only a President can give them; that