Nightrise

the southern end of Broadway in Lower Manhattan. There were two men with him. The driver, as always, was a Secret Service man.
    Trelawny knew that he was armed and in constant contact with his backup team in a second car, probably just a hundred yards behind. And Warren Cornfield was sitting next to him. His private head of security was such a large man that he barely left enough room for the senator, but over the past few months, Trelawny had gotten used to it. From the day that he'd started his run for president, there had been many things he'd had to get used to— and never being alone was the first of them.
    "I'll be one hour," he said, and reached for the door handle.

    "I'm coming in with you, sir," Cornfield announced.
    Trelawny hesitated. This was an argument he'd had a hundred times. He appreciated what Cornfield was doing. Essentially, it was his job. He just wished he liked him more. "It's all right, Warren," he said.
    "This apartment building has its own security and nobody knows I'm here. I'm having lunch with an old friend and you're not going to tell me she's a security risk."
    In the end, they compromised. Cornfield came with him through the lobby but allowed him to enter the elevator on his own. There were times when Trelawny wondered if all this security was really necessary
    — but he supposed it only took one crazy person with a gun to prove that it was. And of course, it was so easy to buy a gun in America. That was one thing he planned to look into one day, if…
    He barely felt any motion as he was whisked up to the seventieth floor. The owner of the penthouse knew that he was coming and had programmed the elevator to take him there. Trelawny thought about the woman he had come to see. The two of them had known each other for most of their lives —
    although he sometimes thought that what the two of them didn't know about each other probably outweighed what they did. She was very wealthy. She had made a fortune creating and selling low-cost computers to inner-city schools, hospitals, and youth clubs. She had supported his campaign from the start, holding a series of fund-raising dinners on both the East and West coasts. The strange thing was, he probably trusted Nathalie Johnson more than any woman on the planet, even including his own wife.
    And she knew things. She had connections all over the world and seemed to be in tune with the stories that never made the news. He thought of her as a keeper of mysteries. That was why he had come to see her now.
    The elevator doors opened directly into a fan-shaped living room with windows giving extraordinary views over the Hudson River on one side and the East River with the Brooklyn Bridge cutting across on the other. His eye was instantly drawn to the panorama. There was the Statue of Liberty, looking very small and distant at the entrance to New York Harbor. And there was Ellis Island, where the great waves of immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had first arrived. The floor-to-ceiling windows were like a picture postcard on a gigantic scale and captured one of the most famous views in the world.
    "John! How are you?"
    Nathalie Johnson had come out of the kitchen, carrying a tray with two glasses and a bottle of wine. She set the tray down and the two of them embraced. She was about fifty years old, slim and serious-looking with dark, reddish-brown hair that came down to her shoulders. She was wearing a simple black dress.
    In all the time that Trelawny had known her, he had never seen her in jeans.
    "It's good to see you," she went on. "How long are you in New York?"
    "Just a few days." Trelawny sighed. He was never in one place for very long. "I have to go back to Washington, then Virginia, and then next month I'm heading back to California. My hometown is giving me a parade."
    "Auburn?"
    "It's my birthday. They're closing the whole place in my honor."
    "That's very sweet! Maybe I should come."
    ''You'd be very welcome."
    The two of them sat down. Nathalie poured the wine and for a few minutes they talked about the campaign, the speech in Los Angeles, the latest negative advertisements that had been playing on TV.
    But after a while, Trelawny fell silent.
    "There was something you wanted to ask me about," Nathalie said.
    'Yes." He rubbed a hand over his mouth, trying to work out where to begin. "Something happened when I was in Los Angeles," he explained. "It's like nothing I've ever experienced and I can't get it out of my mind.