Balance of Power

    "They've 'thought' that before," Kerry said. "How long until they know, I wonder."

    Clayton shrugged. "It's bad terrain, and tunneled. It could be days, weeks, months. But suppose you get a phone call in an hour, and find Al Anwar on your hands?"

    It was choices like this, Kerry reflected, that nothing could prepare you for—a fateful decision, made in a moral quagmire, with untold consequences. "If that happens," Kerry answered, "it's too late."

    Looking past him, Clayton stared out the window at the Rose Garden, then sipped from his mug of coffee. "You'd have to put Al Anwar on trial, I expect. Except that he'd make a rotten prisoner."

    Slowly, Kerry nodded. "Bad for hostages, you mean. His people could kidnap more Americans, demanding his return. And when I didn't cave, Al Qaeda would start mailing me their prisoners' severed limbs."

    "You'd have to assume that."

    "And the World Court?"

    "Legalities aside, same problem—except that our allies would hate it. Imagine NATO once Al Anwar starts bombing Italian lovers in cafes, or blowing up Big Ben. We'd lose support for rolling up his network." Pausing, Clayton stared into his coffee cup. "And so . . ."

    Kerry was silent. As often as he had imagined being President, the weight of lives in the balance felt heavy beyond his reckoning. At length, he answered, "We hope for the ideal outcome. Where there's nothing to decide."

    There was nothing more to say. Clayton understood him well: tomorrow morning, perhaps, Kerry would learn that Al Anwar was dead.

    "Guns," Kerry said.

    The verbal shorthand was typical of them. "They'll be here at ten," Clayton answered. "Martin Bresler and five gun company CEOs."

    "Voluntary safety locks." Kerry's tone combined wonder and disgust. "Thirty thousand deaths from guns a year, and this is the best we can do."

    Clayton shrugged again. "If these folks don't get kneecapped by the SSA for doing this, maybe next time they'll help you keep guns away from criminals. That might actually save some lives."

    "Amazing," Kerry said. "We pass a law requiring licensed gun dealers to run background checks so felons, wife-beaters and drug abusers can't buy weapons. But all you have to do is say you're a collector, not a dealer, and you can take your arsenal to a gun show and sell semiautomatic weapons to Charles Manson. A loophole big enough to drive Mahmoud Al Anwar through, courtesy of the SSA." Shaking his head, Kerry finished, "The 'right to bear arms.' The SSA thinks that means the right to arm bears, or anything old enough to pull a trigger."

    Clayton's smile was thin. "How many pickup trucks did you see last election with stickers like 'Ban Kilcannon, not guns'? For a lot of folks, guns are a symbol—the system's stacked against them, and now a city boy with no kids and a celebrity girlfriend wants to take their guns away. Or so the SSA keeps telling them in every fund-raising letter . . ."

    "All this paranoia. When all I want is to keep innocent people from dying."

    "Paranoia," Clayton answered, "is what the SSA has to sell. Gun owners voted against you three to one. But the people who worry about gun violence care about sixteen other things, too."

    "Don't I know it," Kerry said with weary resignation. "Even school shootings have the half-life of a fruit fly. And so here I am, going hat in hand to gun companies, begging for scraps."

    Clayton frowned. "They've got their problems, too," he pointed out. "Big tobacco has the highest cash flow in America, and they can export death to the third world like hell won't have it. But the gun industry is small and fragmented—dozens of companies struggling to get by. So the SSA has them by the balls—they've got the money, the scariest lobby in Washington, most of the Republican Party, more than a few Democrats, and half of these guys' customers. What do you have to offer them?"

    "Decency. And survival." Kerry leaned back in his chair. "I swear I can make this issue work for us. Sometime, somewhere, there's going to be a tragedy so awful that people will wake up."

    "And what will that be? It wasn't Columbine." Clayton's voice was quiet now. "Your brother was shot, then you. And nothing happened.

    "I know how you feel, Kerry. But don't break your heart over this one. Take what you can get, and move on."

    The remark, with its reminder that Clayton—and Clayton alone— called Kerry by his given name in private, also bespoke his friend's role as pragmatist. Don't bet your Presidency on guns, was Clayton's unspoken message. You're still an untested President, who won by a handful of votes, searching for a comfort zone with the millions who doubt you. Look for your successes elsewhere.

    "I'll try to pull back from the precipice," Kerry said at length. "In the meanwhile, cheer up. I'm about to clean up my values problem."

    "How? By adopting twins?"