The Race Read online

  Instead, they freed him.

  THE PRISONER EXCHANGE took place in a blur. His captors were a rogue element of a disintegrating army, Corey learned; the Iraqis who found and freed him offered vague apologies but otherwise told him nothing. His return to America occurred in a twilight of sleep and exhaustion until, at last, he felt a different Corey Grace occupying his shattered body.

  The humor revived, but his careless elan was muted by a deep, unsparing self-appraisal. And the bleakest aspect of this honesty involved Joe Fitts.

  In a moment of vainglory, he had traded his friend's life for the chance to kill an Iraqi general. Miserable, he wished he could have those split seconds back, even as he faced another bitter truth: the primal Corey who had survived would not have traded his own life for Joe's. But the pledge with which Corey tried to salve his conscience--that he would imbue the rest of his life with meaning--struck him as a pathetic, even narcissistic way of seeking redemption for the death of a better man.

  He could say this to no one. As Corey convalesced at Walter Reed Hospital, Janice treated him with an unvarying kindness that felt to Corey like an act of will. For Corey's part, his penance to his wife lay not in professions of love, promises of change, or gratuitous confessions of infidelity, but a new resolve to see her with clarity and compassion. But what he glimpsed in her kept him from speaking of Joe Fitts: the impeccable consideration with which Janice treated him was not informed by love. She could not even speak the word.

  Perhaps, Corey thought, time would heal them, just as it might transform the solemn five-year-old who stood by his bedside into a girl who adored her father. But time was the one thing he had too much of: though his arms and shoulders would function adequately, doctors assured him, Captain Corey Grace would never fly again.

  Beyond his family, and self-reflection, Corey was a man without a purpose.

  Joe Fitts never left him. Corey dictated letters to Joe's parents, his wife, and even to the five-year-old Maxwell, hoping that, as the boy grew older, Corey's words would bring his father to life. Each letter, an affectionate accounting of Joe and of his stories of their family, was as comprehensive as Corey could make it in all but one respect: the nature of Joe's death, and the reason for it. "All of you," he wrote, "helped make Joe the happiest person I ever expect to know."

  Corey revealed his secret to no one. He wondered if that meant there was no one to say it to; or that the permutations of Joe's death were too profound to speak; or that he was simply afraid for anyone to know the truth. Life had given Corey a pass he could no longer give himself--and, it turned out, life kept on doing so.

  The president gave him a medal.

  THERE WAS ALSO a medal for Joe, of course.

  Joe's parents came to the White House with Janie and Maxwell. When Janie met Corey, she embraced him fiercely, as though to reclaim some part of her husband. Gazing up at him, Janie's eyes were moist. "Joe loved you, you know."

  Corey tried to smile. "And he loved you more than life. He talked about both of you so much that it was like I was living in your home." He glanced over at Maxwell and saw the boy holding his grandmother's hand--the only child of her only child. "Will he be all right?"

  Pensive, Janie considered her son. "In time, I think--there's a lot of love in his life. Every night I read your letter to him." Facing Corey, she added quietly, "That was a kind thing you did for Maxwell, giving him a father who was both a hero and a man. Though the world of a five-year-old's a funny place: right now the hero is more important than the man. When he leaves here wearing Joe's medal, he may believe for a time that was worth the trade."

  At this moment, and for every moment until the ceremony was over, Corey wished himself off the face of the earth.

  Instead, he kissed Janie Fitts on the forehead and, despite the pain in his shoulders, scooped Maxwell up in his arms. Then, for once, Corey tried to take refuge in his family.

  The three adults had come--his wife, mother, and father. And Clay was there, a slim, eager boy of fifteen whose reticence in their parents' presence was outshone by his worship of Corey and his wonder at finding himself in the White House. As the Grace family clustered together in the Map Room, Clay showed an instinctive touch with Kara, eliciting the smiles she seldom granted her father. But the others, Janice and Corey's parents, milled about like strangers awaiting a train that had somehow been delayed.

  When the president appeared, he was accompanied by General Cortland Lane, the first African-American to become air force chief of staff.

  A lanky patrician who was himself a decorated flier, the president was both gracious and very human. But Corey was just as taken with General Lane. His unmistakable air of command was leavened by a gaze that was penetrating but warm, and his understated manner seemed less military than spiritual--reflecting, perhaps, Lane's reputation for a religious devotion as deep as it was unostentatious. Whatever its elements, Lane's force of character drew Corey to him with a swiftness that was rare.

  Drawing Corey aside, Lane congratulated him, speaking in a soft voice that was almost intimate. "I'm sorry about your injuries. And about Captain Fitts."

  "So am I," Corey answered. "More about Joe. Sort of makes you wonder if getting Al-Malik was worth it."

  Lane gave him a long look. "Never stop wondering. It's the cost of being human." Pausing, he added quietly, "A fuel leak, the report said."

  "Yes, sir."

  "You're lucky to be alive." Touching Corey's elbow, he said, "I should spend time with Joe's family--"

  "Sir," Corey said impulsively, "there's something I need to tell you."

  Lane nodded, watching Corey's eyes. "What is it, Captain?"

  "I'm no hero. I was like some idiot kid who had to win a video game." Corey paused. "That fuel leak--Joe saw it before I shot down Al-Malik. He wanted me to turn around."

  Lane showed no surprise. "I'd guessed as much," he said quietly. "But what do you think I should do with that fact? Or, more important, what would you like to do with it?"

  Corey shook his head. "I don't know."

  "Then let me suggest what you should do--and not do. What you should do is accept this medal, and then pay Joe Fitts as gracious a tribute as you can muster." Glancing toward Maxwell Fitts, Lane's voice was quieter yet. "And what you should not do is force his family to swap a hero for a bitter realization.

  "You made a judgment in split seconds--that's what we ask pilots to do in war. Then we ask you to live with that. But no one else can tell you how."

  Briefly, the general rested a hand on Corey's shoulder, and then turned to greet Joe's family.

  OPENING THE CEREMONY, the president spoke with genuine appreciation, commemorating Joe, lauding Corey, and emphasizing their country's gratitude. When it was Corey's turn to speak, he gathered himself, and then expressed his thanks to the president, the military, and the parents, wife, and daughter to whom he had returned.

  "I'm lucky for many reasons," he concluded simply. "But I was luckiest of all to know Joe Fitts--not just to have seen his courage, but to have felt the depth of his appreciation for the sacrifice of his mother and father, and for the gift of Janie and Maxwell." Turning to Joe's family, he said, "All of you made him the man that all of us will always love: a man who personifies all that makes our country--whatever its imperfections--worth loving."

  Afterward, shrewdly eyeing Corey, the president murmured, "You may have a future in my business, Corey. You could even wind up living here."

  Later, in the suite the air force had reserved for them, Corey repeated this to Janice. "Generous," he concluded. "And preposterous."

  For a moment, she regarded him in silence. "Is it? I was watching you, too."

  "It was all a blur, Janice. I'm not sure what you mean."

  She gave him the faintest of smiles. "That's it, Corey. You don't ever appear to know, even when I suspect you do. Other people see you as someone who just is."

  Corey clasped her shoulders, looking down at her intently. "What I care abou
t is how you see me. I'm not the same, Janice. And one important difference is that I value you the way I always should have."

  Janice's smile vanished. "Me?" she asked. "Or just the idea of me?"

  Corey could not answer.

  That night they made love slowly, as though trying to draw feeling from their every touch. Afterward, lying in the dark, Janice said quietly, "I can feel it coming, Corey. They're going to give you something else to care about."

  Within a month, a delegation of Republicans came to ask whether Corey Grace, the hero, had any interest in running for the Senate from his home state of Ohio.

  PART I

  The Senator

  1

  ON A CRISP SEPTEMBER DAY THIRTEEN YEARS LATER, WHEN SENATOR Corey Grace met Lexie Hart, the controversy he wished to avoid did not concern his romantic life.

  "The actress?" he asked his scheduler that morning. "What's this about?"

  Eve Stansky, a pert, droll-witted blonde, was amused by his perplexity. "Life and death," she said cheerfully. "Ms. Hart is lobbying senators to vote for stem-cell research."

  Sitting back in his chair, Corey rolled his eyes. "Terrific," he said. "The bill's only sponsors are Democrats; it's a direct rebuke to a president of my own party, who dislikes me already; ditto the Christian conservatives, who like me even less. This is a real winner for me." His voice took on a teasing edge. "The election's next year, the nomination is wide open, and you schedule this. Don't you want me to be president, Eve? Or are you just indifferent to the fate of frozen embryos?"

  "You have to vote anyway, Corey," Eve pointed out in her most unimpressed voice; like the rest of his staff, she called him by his first name. "Unless you're planning to hide that day. And everyone in the office wants to meet her. The least you can do is give the rest of us a little bit of excitement."

  "Has life around here really been that dull? Or have you already decided how I should vote, and hope I'll be seduced?"

  Eve grinned. "I definitely know how you should vote. And no--you're certainly not dull. I'm just worn out from scheduling dates with girlfriends who've got the half-life of a fruit fly. Here at Fort Grace, we call whoever's the latest 'the incumbent'--except that their terms are shorter."

  Though Corey smiled in self-recognition, the comment stung a little. There were many reasons why he had remained unmarried for so many years after his divorce, and not all of them--at least he hoped--stemmed from some fatal defect in his character. But this was not a subject he felt like discussing with Eve or, for that matter, anyone.

  "I doubt Ms. Hart is coming here," Corey answered sardonically, "to change my life. Merely to ruin my career. Just remember that when you and I are watching the inaugural ball on C-SPAN."

  AS THE DAY turned out, Corey had an unusual luxury: a ten-minute respite between a lunch meeting with Blake Rustin, the savvy political adviser counseling him about his prospective run for president, and this encounter with the actress whose mission would be no help to such plans.

  Alone in his office, he did something he rarely had time to do: contemplate how he had reached this point--a genuine presidential prospect whose road to the White House was, nonetheless, filled with potholes all too often of his own making. Yet he was single, with no personal life worth the name, and too often he still felt solitary. The root of all this was captured by two photographs that pained as much as warmed him: one of Kara, now a college student in Sydney, the only visible evidence that he had ever been a father; the other of Joe Fitts, a reminder of the debt he owed to make his career in politics matter.

  At forty-three, he was a better man, he could only hope, than the one who had been Joe Fitts's friend. There was no doubt that he loved his country--America had kept faith with him, and he was determined to serve it well. Certainly his ordeal in Iraq had given him a deep sense of the transience of life, the need to live a "crowded hour," using whatever gifts God gave him to seize the moment, take risks, and make a difference--all, he hoped, in the service of something more than the greater glory of Corey Grace. Always, it seemed, he felt this driving restlessness, a clock ticking in his head, as though every moment since Joe's death had been borrowed. Nor did he worry much about making friends in the Senate if the cost was his integrity: his closest friends remained those who had served with him in the air force and shared his sense of what mattered--loyalty, perseverance, and the aim of living an honorable life.

  Corey did not attempt to articulate any of this in public. It would have seemed self-glorifying, a deliberate effort to distinguish himself from his many less than courageous peers. And though he had friends in both parties, he knew very well the envy felt by many of his Republican colleagues--most of all by Senator Rob Marotta of Pennsylvania, the assiduous career politician who was the majority leader of the Senate, and who had resolved to run for president. To Marotta, as to others, Corey's arrival in the Senate had been as easy as his smile, greased by an act of heroism that seemed to induce an uncomfortable self-doubt in those never called on to be heroes. It did not help that the current president, like all presidents, tended to view disagreement as disloyalty, or that Corey, in a moment more candid than tactful, had told him that his secretary of defense's plan to invade a Middle Eastern country was "crack-smoking stupid" and a "waste of lives"; it had helped even less when events suggested that Corey was right. It didn't help that, as a bachelor, he was not required to adopt the grim pretense of devotion that characterized some political marriages. Nor did it help that, in his colleagues' minds, an all too adoring press trumpeted Corey's candor and penchant for voting his conscience. "Senator Grace," a feature in the Washington Post style section noted, "seems never to have bothered to craft a public persona any different from his private one." When asked about this, Corey had merely laughed. "If you're the same person twenty-four hours a day, you have a lot less trouble remembering who you are."

  It was not that simple, of course--Corey's inner self, the residue of guilt and hard experience, was something he shared with no one. When he'd once remarked, "Life has taught me that there are worse things in the world than losing an election," his colleagues had assumed that he meant being hung from his broken shoulders. But his reasons went deeper than that: there is nothing worse, Corey knew, than losing yourself.

  Pausing, Corey gazed at his photograph of Clay.

  As far as it went, his mother had been right--his long-dead brother had lost himself by trying to be like Corey, instead of his more vulnerable, at least equally valuable self. But the fault lay far less in Clay than in his family--all of them--and in the facile scapegoating of "the other," which had marred the social environment of his country and, too often, the politics of his own party.

  There were important reasons that Corey was a Republican: his dedication to national defense; his belief in private enterprise; his worry that Democrats too easily dismissed the genuine threats to America in a world of hostile regimes, fanatic terrorists, and nuclear proliferators. But he had not come to the Senate armed with a rigid set of orthodoxies; a newly voracious reader and a seeker of advice, Corey distinguished himself from many conservatives by a concern for the environment, a distaste for static belief systems, and an openness to opposing points of view. And there was something else he did not need to think about: Senator Corey Grace despised a politics that pitted one group against another, and policies that promoted the abuse of the weak by the strong.

  From his first years in the Senate, Corey had been a passionate advocate of human rights. To him, the overriding reason was clear: to lead the world, America needed to stand for more than military strength or pious rhetoric. He never mentioned Joe Fitts's execution or his own torture. Nor did he ever seek to excuse the incident his political enemies used to exemplify his impulsive nature, disregard for protocol, and general unfitness to be president.

  Shortly after entering the Senate, Corey, along with his chief of staff, Jack Walters, arrived in Moscow as a first step in acquainting himself with Russia in the volatile post-Sovie
t era. In a van driven by a Russian security man, Corey went to meet with the Russian president. Abruptly, a demonstration had clogged the street--a line of soldiers confronting young people armed only with epithets and placards. "What's this about?" Corey asked the driver.

  The man shrugged his heavy shoulders. "They say our president imprisons dissenters on false charges. It is nonsense, as you know."

  Corey did not know; he intended, in a suitably diplomatic way, to raise this very question with the president. But he chose to say nothing. And then, through the windshield, he saw a Russian soldier swing the butt of his rifle at a demonstrator who had just spat in his face.

  Framed in the bulletproof glass like an actor in a brutal silent film, the soldier struck the man's head with an impact that made Corey wince. The demonstrator fell to his knees, blood streaming from his scalp as the soldier again raised the butt of his rifle, while his fellow soldiers aimed their rifles at the remaining demonstrators. At the second blow, Corey's hand grabbed the door handle; at the third, which caused the demonstrator to fall sideways, Corey started to jump out of the car.

  Jack Walters grabbed his arm. "No."

  Corey broke away. Pushing through the crowd, he saw the soldier raise his rifle butt yet again. "Stop!" Corey shouted.

  He felt the driver and Jack Walters pin his arms behind his body. The driver called out in Russian. The soldier, rifle frozen above his head, stared at him, then at Corey, and slowly lowered his weapon. To one side, Corey heard the distinctive clicking of a camera.