No Safe Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

rights cause trouble for you in California?”
    Intent on his supporters, Kerry ignored him.
    “Senator,”
the newsman tried again. He twisted his body to thrust the microphone at Kerry and then, quite suddenly, fell.
    Kerry felt an involuntary rush of fear. The crowd rippled with confusion; instinctively, Dan Biasi pulled Kerry away, shielding his body.
    “It’s Mike Devore from NBC,” Kerry managed to say. “I think something’s wrong with him.”
    Joe Morton positioned himself at Kerry’s back. Kerry could see the newsman on the floor; his head twisted back and forth, and his face was contorted in pain.
    Kerry saw the swarm of agents look around them, refusing to be diverted. “I didn’t hear shots,” he heard Joe murmur.
    Dan Biasi pushed the onlookers aside and bent over the fallen man. Dan felt the man’s leg and foot and then came back to Joe and Kerry. “Looks like he tripped,” Dan said. “I don’t know how, but he may have broken his ankle.”
    “Get someone,” Kerry said. “Use the ambulance outside.” He did not need to add the rest:
the one you keep for me.
    Dan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Senator. We can’t do that.” He pulled out his cell phone to call 911.
    The paramedics were there in ten minutes, carrying a stretcher. They took the reporter away. Kerry resumed shaking hands, suddenly feeling tired and mechanical.
    Clayton Slade appeared behind him. “Ready to roll,” he said crisply, and the Service convoyed them to Kerry’s limousine. Clayton did not mention the incident.
    Lights flashing in darkness, the motorcade of black Lincolns rolled toward the airport. Kerry’s car was flanked by cops on motorcycles. There were two Secret Service agents in the front seat; Clayton and Kerry sat in back, staring into the formless night of a city that could have been anywhere.
    Back in the bubble,
Kerry thought. Once more he marveled at the vortex he had created, of which the motorcade had become a symbol: a force that swept up thousands of people—politicians, volunteers, the press, the countlessstrangers whofelt they loved him—in the hope he would serve their dreams, their aspirations, their cold ambitions. It was a world unto itself, sealed off from any other reality; Kerry had stepped into the crowd out of more than the need to prove to himself what he could never prove—that he was not afraid. He also needed to meet people one at a time, as he had in Iowa and New Hampshire, when far fewer of them seemed to care. The age of innocence, Kerry thought.
    He turned from the window. “This debate,” he said. “What’s Dick up to?”
    Clayton’s gold-rimmed glasses reflected the swirling red of flashing lights. His index finger grazed his salt-and-pepper mustache.
    “I’m trying to work that one out,” he answered. It was all he said; it had become their shared trait to use no more words than necessary.
    Kerry fell silent. “Ellen Penn called today,” Clayton said at last.
    “What did she want?”
    “To ask if you’ve lost your mind.”
    Clayton did not need to elaborate. Ellen Penn was the feisty junior senator from California, the chairman of Kerry’s campaign there. Her support of abortion rights was as fervent as her barely concealed dislike for California’s senior senator, Betsy Shapiro, a preeminent politician who supported Mason. Ellen Penn had risked supporting Kerry from a complex mix of motives, all unspoken: idealism; a desire to best Senator Shapiro; the hope of becoming Kerry’s Vice President. In the new environment—a strengthening of pro-life forces in Congress, the continuing and corrosive war over late-term abortion, a surprising Supreme Court majority that threatened to cut back on abortion rights and thrust the issue to the forefront—Ellen Penn would see Kerry’s comments as worse than an embarrassment. And now there was Boston.
    Kerry slumped back in the leather seat. It was nearly midnight; the flight to San Diego would take three hours. He hoped