The Race (21 page)

MAROTTA'S OFFICE WAS on the first floor of the Russell Building, Corey's on the second. Corey walked slowly down the marble stairs. With each disheartened tread he imagined the relief and satisfaction Marotta would struggle to conceal.

Corey had reached the bottom step when he heard gunshots.

In the sunlit rotunda of the southeast entrance, a security guard lay sprawled on the marble floor as two armed men burst into the opposite end of the corridor that Corey was about to enter. Stunned, Corey flattened himself against the wall of the stairwell.

No longer able to see the gunmen, he heard their footsteps echo on the marble floor. One of the invaders spoke hurriedly in a language Corey recognized from his captivity. Across from where he hid, only the open door of Marotta's office—the last on the corridor—remained visible. Marotta's receptionist appeared in the doorway, peering out as two visitors stared up at her from a leather couch.

Caught between fear and the instincts of a fighter pilot, Corey watched the receptionist shrink back from what she saw.

The gunmen burst into Marotta's office. Framed in the doorway, one turned to the two men on the couch, unloading a burst of gunfire that caused them to twitch like puppets, blood spattering the wall. Corey stopped thinking.

As the second man cut down the receptionist, he sprinted across the corridor.

Startled by his footsteps, the second gunman spun. Desperate, Corey lowered his head and lunged for the man's stomach, disrupting his aim with an outflung arm. The man's companion spun around and fired.

Corey's head struck his target's midsection. The man's upper body absorbed the bullets; a spray of blood hit Corey's face. Reaching out, he grasped the stock of his automatic weapon as the terrorist fell across him. Sheltered by his body, Corey found the trigger.

More bullets hit the dead man's back. Thrusting out the gun, Corey fired blindly.

The weapon jumped in his hand and escaped his grasp. Frantic, Corey lunged to retrieve it.

Silence fell, sudden and eerie.

The first terrorist was sprawled with his back against one of the dead visitors' legs, blood gushing from a throat wound that had nearly decapitated him.

Crawling forward, Corey picked up the gun.
"I need help here,"
he called out.

Slowly, the door to Marotta's suite of offices cracked open. Staring at the carnage, Rob Marotta blinked at the sight of Corey's blood-spattered face.

A sudden clicking sound made Marotta flinch instinctively. Spinning to fire, Corey saw a photographer. "Don't shoot," the man cried out, and his camera kept clicking.

THE SAME PHOTOGRAPH filled the front page of every newspaper in America. In the foreground, Corey held the terrorist's weapon, his face smeared with the dead man's blood; behind him stood Marotta, peering from the doorway. The headline in the
New York Times
was almost superfluous: "Senator Kills Terrorists in Capitol Raid." So was the subheading that followed: "Grace Saves Rival's Life as Al Qaeda Gunmen Murder Four."

Though the image was horrific, Brian Lacey could not help but note, "Marotta looks scared, doesn't he?"

They sat at Corey's conference table. Corey still felt stunned; his only statement to the media—written, not spoken—had expressed sorrow for the dead and gratitude for his own survival. His first call had been to Lexie. "I saw," she said in a near whisper. "I'm so glad I didn't lose you."

She sounded as shocked as he felt. "Do you need me to come back?" she asked.

Corey struggled for clarity. "In a day or so, I'd like that. Right now there's so much to deal with I'm drowning in it."

And he was: the police, a media obsessed with terror, a newly anxious public, cameras everywhere he went, and, invariably, the siren song of ambition—his advisers' desires, and his own need, to process the shift in the country's psychic landscape. As Rustin gazed at the photograph that Lacey was already calling "an iconic image," Rustin said, "You've been touched by the hand of God and Al Qaeda.

"Fate's an amazing thing, Corey. Two Al Qaeda sleepers can't figure out how to kill the president, and then it dawns on them that Marotta, possibly our next president, has an office with practically no security. So they go on his Web site, read his schedule, and decide to drop in. And, in the process, maybe create the
real
next president by accident—with a little help from you, of course.

"But as you always say, character is fate. Yours and Marotta's." Rustin shook his head in disbelief. "The same guy who flies to Cabo to meet an actress sprints across the hallway to jump a terrorist. And Marotta looks like he lacks the guts to open his fucking door."

And yet, even as he studied the photograph, Corey's reflections were deeply personal. He pondered about the thin line between action and inaction, between the seemingly heroic and the ostensibly craven, and, most haunting, between life and death. Rob Marotta had felt it, too. In the brief moment before the police had arrived, Marotta, shaken by what might have befallen him, had become more human than Corey had ever seen him.

"I don't know if I could have done that," he'd murmured to Corey.

Corey had looked around them at the dead. And then he, too, had given way to his emotions—a toxic compound of what Rohr, Marotta's backer, had done to Lexie and how Marotta had exploited their romance to further his own ambitions. "I wouldn't waste time on it," Corey had responded tersely, "because you'll never know. What happened is what you get to live with."

Marotta's face had closed. He had already sensed, as had Corey, what he would have to live with.

"This is a transcendent moment," Blake Rustin said now. "You didn't plan it, and the way you responded will define forever who you are. It's like Giuliani after 9/11—a remission of all prior sins."

Brian Lacey placed his finger next to Marotta's stricken face. "This is also defining for Marotta. Like few others—and unlike the snapshots Rohr's jackals took slinking around Cabo San Lucas—this photograph captures an essential truth. You're the hero, and Marotta's Humpty Dumpty. Not even Magnus Price can put him back together.

"People are afraid again. They need a real leader." Standing, he placed a hand on Corey's shoulder. "I know this was horrific, Corey. No one knows why these things happen. But this is your time."

Corey sat there, silent, his attitude of reflection so deep it felt close to prayer. Looking up at last, he said, "And Lexie?"

Rustin and Lacey stared at him, as though stupefied by the inconsequence of the question. "Whatever," Rustin answered. "This is your chance to say what you want and realize your destiny. For Godsakes, take it."

"THEY'RE RIGHT," LEXIE told him.

An hour after Corey's return from the funeral for Marotta's receptionist, Lexie lay beside him in her suite at the Madison Hotel. They had made love hungrily, celebrating the fact he was alive. Only afterward could they discuss the larger implications of his survival.

"I know they are," Corey answered. "I also want you in my life."

Lexie touched his face. Softly, she said, "I just may be in love with you, Senator."

Corey felt a rush of feeling. "Lexie—"

"Let me finish, please." She looked deeply into his eyes. "Remember when I said a man should never tell a woman she can't have children—that no one can deprive another human being of something so essential to her life?"

Corey smiled ruefully. "How could I forget?"

"In a way, Corey, this is the same thing. A week ago whether you ran was a judgment call that could have gone either way."

"I'd already decided, Lexie. I was bowing out."

For an instant, her eyes closed. "That was then, Corey. And it was about me."

When he began to protest, Lexie placed a finger to his lips. "Then, I could have accepted that. I even could have convinced myself that it was best for you. Now, I can't." She paused, seeming reluctant to continue. "I'm afraid for you," she told him in a husky voice, "afraid some madman with a gun will shoot you because of me. Afraid of what this terrible process will do to us. I'm even afraid for me. But I can't—won't—be the reason that you don't run.

"Maybe running will put an end to us. But if you don't run, I think it will end us for sure—maybe not soon, but soon enough. Our only chance is for you to run, and for us to take our chances."

Corey felt both elation and apprehension. "But what will you do?"

"I thought about that the whole flight out here. I think it's best for us if I stay away from your campaign, at least for a while, until things are clearer to us both." She mustered a smile. "Like you, I'm not going anywhere—at least not yet. And we're pretty good on the phone."

At that moment, Corey wanted to say that he, too, was falling in love. But it was the wrong time, and he was not certain she would believe him. "Yeah," he answered. "We're pretty good on the phone."

WHEN COREY ANNOUNCED his candidacy, his parents, but not Lexie, were with him.

He stood in the band shell at Taylor Park, where Bob Christy once had spoken, savoring the irony. His father and mother sat behind him, unavoidable props in his political pageant, looking proud, discomfited, and somewhat mystified. Even they, Corey suspected, sensed what he knew all too well—that campaigning for president is the American odyssey, and the journey tests those who undertake it in ways they can only guess at, and in others they never suspect until the crisis is upon them.

He gazed out at a throng that overflowed the grass, speckled with familiar faces but swollen by the trappings of a presidential campaign: reporters, videocams, supporters who arrived on buses, a documentary film crew retained to capture footage for Corey's TV ads. With him on the bandstand were his closest friends in the House and Senate, the daring few who would have backed him even before lightning struck—notably Dakin Ford, the young, iconoclastic senator from Lexie's home state, South Carolina. Seeing Ford reminded Corey of how much he already missed her.

But this was his moment, and he rose to meet it.

"In the face of all our challenges," he said, "I call for a new beginning, and an end to the willful obliviousness to all that we must face together. We must be more than the party of business or religion. We must not seek power by dividing the country on the basis of creed or culture or even the fear of terrorism. And we must speak clearly about what it means to be conservative.

"It is
not
conservative to turn one group of Americans against another.

"It is
not
conservative to saddle our children with debt.

"It is
not
conservative to despoil the environment that our children's children will inherit. Nor is it conservative to squander the lives of our soldiers in a war that degrades our military strength." Corey's voice rose. "To conserve means not only to honor the past, but to meet the challenges of the future, leaving our country better than we found it."

Speaking these words, Corey felt liberated, if only for a moment, from fear of their consequences. During the applause that followed, he again scanned the faces before him, some familiar, most not; young, old, and, in a few heartening cases, Hispanic or black. "Give me your help and your hand," he told them, "and together we will build an American future kinder than our present, and even greater than our past."

In that intoxicating, perilous moment, Corey Grace believed that he could make it so.

STUCK ON THE RUNWAY IN CLEVELAND, COREY WATCHED SLEET STRIK-ing the window.

"We're risking it all in New Hampshire," Rustin said.

They sat in the front cabin of the chartered plane, separated by a cloth curtain from the section jammed with reporters. Seated behind them, Brian Lacey reviewed potential ads on a DVD player and Jack Walters scanned Corey's schedule, while Corey's new press secretary, Dana Harrison—young, African-American, hyperalert, and nominally a Democrat—worked the press in back. The campaign was two hours old.

"No appearances in Iowa," Corey said again.

"No way. We're already deep in November—starting this late you have to pick your spots. In a caucus state like Iowa, organization is key, and we don't have any. The best network is among the evangelicals, where Christy's strong." Rustin grinned. "He's opened up his mailing list to all the local preachers—two days ago, they turned out twelve thousand Christians at a pancake breakfast for Christy, praying over the fucking maple syrup. If I were Magnus Price, I'd be terrified for Marotta."

Corey shrugged. "Still," he argued, "Marotta should win. Especially if I'm not draining off support."

"_Should_ win," Rustin amended. "But will he? Some nut of a billionaire who owns a Christian mail-order house has started running ads with side-by-side shots of Christy in the pulpit and Marotta peeking through his office door. Brutal.

"Plus, Iowa is pro-life heaven. Nobody loves the unborn more than Reverend Bob." Rustin sat back, loosening his tie. "New Hampshire's right for you—way more independents and moderates than people in prayer circles asking God who to vote for.
That's
where you take Marotta down."

"And if I don't?"

Rustin turned to him, head still resting on the seat. "You're finished."

Though Corey had heard this before, his competitive instinct was aroused. "Because of South Carolina."

"Yup. You need momentum out of New Hampshire to keep from getting flattened there. But if you win, we can do this." Rustin's gaze grew more intent, like someone in the grip of a compelling inner vision. "You can't sweep the primaries—impossible. What you
can
do is freeze the race—just by running you've kept Governors Blair and Costas from supporting Marotta, which puts Illinois and New York on the sidelines. If you can win enough of the primaries bunched up after South Carolina, especially California, Blair and Costas will want what we may end up wanting: a deadlocked convention where they swap their support for the chance to be VP.

"In their fantasies, you, Marotta, and Christy all destroy one another and the convention turns to one of
them
. But Blair's unseasoned, and Costas is too weak. When they see a president in the mirror, they don't notice that it's cracked."