Francis Kennedy could not tell his wife this. He could not tell her because he could not believe it. He mustered all his resources, contacted all his powerful friends, even consulted the Oracle. There was one hope. At medical centers all around the United States there were research programs testing new and dangerous drugs, experimental programs available only to those who had been pronounced doomed. Since these new drugs were dangerously toxic, they were used only on volunteers. And there were so many doomed people that there were a hundred volunteers for each spot in the programs.

So Francis Kennedy committed what he would have ordinarily thought an immoral act. He used all his power to get his wife into these research programs; he pulled every string so that his wife could receive these lethal but possibly life preserving poisons into her body. And he succeeded.

He felt a new confidence. A few of the people had been cured in these research centers. Why not his wife? Why could he not save her? He had triumphed all his life, he would triumph now.

And then began a reign of darkness. At first it was a research program in Houston. He put her in a hospital there, and stayed with her for the treatment that so weakened her that she was helplessly bedridden. She made him leave her there so that he could continue campaigning for the presidency. He flew from Houston to Los Angeles to make his campaign speeches, confident, witty, cheerful. Then late at night he flew to Houston to spend a few hours with his wife. Then he flew to his next campaign stop to play the part of lawgiver.

The treatment in Houston failed. In Boston they cut the tumor from her brain and the operation was a success, though the tumor tested malignant.

Malignant, too, were the new tumors in her lungs. The holes in her bones on

X ray were larger. In another Boston hospital new drugs and protocols worked a miracle. The new tumor in her brain stopped growing, the tumors in her remaining breast shriveled. Every night Francis Kennedy flew from his campaign cities to spend a few hours with her, to read to her, to joke with her. Sometimes Theresa flew from her school in Los Angeles to visit her mother. Father and daughter dined together and then visited the patient in her hospital room to sit in the darkness with her. Theresa told funny stories of her adventures in school; Francis related his adventures on the campaign trail to the presidency. Catherine would laugh.

Of course Kennedy again offered to drop out of the campaign to be with his wife. Of course Theresa wanted to leave school to be with her mother constantly. But Catherine told them she would not, could not, bear their doing so. She might be ill for a long time. They must continue their lives. Only that could give her hope, only that could give her the strength to bear her torture. On this she could not be moved. She threatened to check out of the hospital and return home if they did not continue as if things were normal.

Francis, on the long trips through the night to her bedside, could only marvel at her tenacity. Catherine, her body filled with chemical poison fighting the poisons of her own body, clung fiercely to her belief that she would be well and that the two people she loved most in the world would not be dragged down with her.

Finally the nightmare seemed to end. Again she was in remission. Francis could take her home. They had been all over the United States; she had been in seven different hospitals with their protocols of experimental treatments, and the great flood of chemicals seemed to have worked, and Francis felt an exultation that he had succeeded once again. He took his wife home to Los Angeles, and then one night he, Catherine and Theresa went out to dinner before he resumed the campaign trail. It was a lovely summer night, the balmy California air caressing them. There was one strange moment. A waiter had spilled just a tiny drop of sauce from a dish on the sleeve of Catherine's new dress. She burst into tears, and when the waiter left she asked weeping, "Why did he have to do that to me?" This was so uncharacteristic of her-in former times she would have laughed such an incident away-that Francis Kennedy felt a strange foreboding. She had gone through the torture of all those operations, the removal of her breast, the excision from her brain, the pain of those growing tumors, and had never wept or complained. And now obviously this stain on her sleeve seemed to sink into her heart. She was inconsolable.

The next day Kennedy had to fly to New York to campaign. In the morning Catherine made him his breakfast. She was radiant, and her beauty seemed greater than ever. All the newspapers had polls that showed Kennedy was in the lead, that he would win the presidency.

Catherine read them aloud. "Oh, Francis," she said, "we'll live in the White House and I'll have my own staff. And Theresa can bring her friends to stay for weekends and vacations. Think how happy we'll be. And I won't get sick again. I promise. You'll do great things, Francis, I know you will." She put her arms around him and wept with happiness and love. "I'll help," Catherine said. "We'll walk through all those lovely rooms together and I'll help you make your plans. You'll be the greatest President. I'm going to be all fight, darling, and I'll have so much to do. We'll be so happy. We'll be so good. We're so lucky. Aren't we lucky?"

She died in autumn, October light became her shroud. Francis Kennedy stood among fading green hills and wept. Silver trees veiled the horizon, and in dumb agony he closed his eyes with his own hands to shut out the world.

And in that moment without light, he felt the core of his mind break.

And some priceless cell of energy fled. It was the first time in his life that his extraordinary intelligence was worth nothing. His wealth meant nothing. His political power, his position in the world meant nothing.

He could not save his wife from death. And therefore it all became nothing.

He took his hands away from his eyes and with a supreme effort of will fought against the nothingness. He reassembled what was left of his world, summoned power to fight against grief. There was less than a month to go before the election and he made the final effort.

He entered the White House without his wife, with only his daughter, Theresa. Theresa, who had tried to be happy but who had wept all that first night because her mother could not be with them.

And now, three years after his wife's death, Francis Kennedy, President of the United States, one of the most powerful men on earth, was alone in his bed, fearful for his daughter's life, and unable to command sleep.

Sleep forbidden, he tried to stave off the terror that kept him from sleep.

He told himself the hijackers would not dare harm Theresa, that his daughter would come safely home. In this he was not powerless-he did not have to rely on the weak, fallible gods of medicine, he did not have to fight invincible cancerous cells. No. He could save his daughter's life. He could bend the power of his country, spend its authority. It all rested in his hands and thank God he had no political scruples. His daughter was the only thing he had left on this earth that he really loved. He would save her.

But then anxiety, a wave of such fear it seemed to stop his heart, made him put on the light above his head. He rose and sat in the armchair. He pulled the marble table close and sipped the residue of cold chocolate from his cup.

He believed that the plane had been hijacked because his daughter was on it. The hijacking was possible because of the vulnerability of established authority to a few determined, ruthless and possibly high-minded terrorists. And it had been inspired by the fact that he, Francis Kennedy, President of the United States, was the prominent symbol of that established authority. So by his desire to be President of the United States, he, Francis Kennedy, was responsible for placing his daughter in danger.