Free The Race by Richard North Patterson Page A

held up his hand to ask for silence. "I'm facing a great decision," Christy told his audience. "Should I run for president, or should I resist the siren song of temporal power? Please, I remind you, tell your Senate to spurn the abomination that is stem-cell research. Most of all, keep our country in your prayers."
    Jack gave the screen a blank, puzzled look—though his appearance was guileless, Jack had seen two decades of Senate infighting and was used to gauging politicians thoroughly grounded in this world. "This guy really
is
from some other planet. Didn't you tell me you'd once met him?"
    For a moment, Corey was silent. "Our paths crossed," he amended. "We never actually met."
    He said this dismissively, as though the memory were of little moment. But this was far from true—for reasons too personal, and too painful, ever to reveal to Jack. When Jack turned back to watch Christy, Corey's gaze, inevitably, lit on the photograph of his brother, Clay.
    Throughout the rest of the program, Corey was silent. When it was over, he left to meet the adviser he valued most.
    "I'M THINKING ABOUT running for president," Corey said bluntly. "And I still don't get Bob Christy. Never have."
    Standing at the helm of his powerboat, Cortland Lane steered them at a leisurely pace down the brown-blue waters of the Potomac. Even here, Corey thought, Lane's close-cropped steel-gray hair made him look more like a general than a recreational boater. But at sixty-four, Lane was now retired: four years before, while he was secretary of state, his quiet but persistent reservations about the president's Middle East policy had led to his resignation. Yet Lane was still so widely admired that some in the party, and many around the country, had hoped aloud that he would run for president.
    Instead, Lane had withdrawn from public life to pursue his lifelong interest in religion at Harvard Divinity School. Over the years, Senator Grace had sought Lane's council, first on military matters, then on foreign policy, until the general who'd once daunted Corey had become a friend. But the purpose of this meeting was unique: to seek Lane's thoughts on the intersection of politics with religion—a subject, Corey readily conceded, to which he had never given enough thought.
    Scanning the water, Lane inquired, "What precisely don't you 'get'?"
    "His whole worldview." Corey took a sip from a bottle of mineral water. "To me, Christy's a cousin of Alex Rohr, a man who seeks power by narrowing the American mind. And he's succeeded to the point where you damn near can't admit you believe in Darwin and hope to
win
our party's nomination.
    "As far as I can tell, he's never read
On the Origin of Species
. To him, the Flintstones are a documentary—people living with dinosaurs. I find that incredible."
    In profile, Lane's mouth showed the trace of a smile. "A word of caution, Senator. First of all, more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than the theory of evolution. Second, Christy is nothing new: evangelists have been in and out of politics for the last two hundred years, mostly to advance progressive causes like abolition and women's suffrage."
    "_And_ the temperance movement," Corey pointed out. "In that inspiring episode, they set out to make us sober and wound up giving us Al Capone."
    "True enough," Lane conceded. "That was one of the things that helped drive them to the political sidelines. But the biggest factor was the Scopes monkey trial, where the great fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan prosecuted a high school biology teacher in Tennessee for implying that monkeys were, in fact, our ancestors."
    "When I saw the movie about Scopes in high school," Corey said, "I thought it was a comedy. But now they're running the government—albeit with the help of that southern-fried Machiavelli Magnus Price."
    Steering to avoid a water-skier, Lane was quiet for a time. "Magnus," he said at length, "may think he's Moses. But it all began with the sixties, and a