Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

  Until he could not reach her, and only the thought of Allie kept him alive.

  One night in Beirut, filled with scotch, Chad had been snatched off the street by three men speaking Arabic. His journey ended he knew not where, in darkness, a cell. For the first time—endless, minuteless hours and days—Allie was the center of his thoughts, her memory more precious than her presence had been, the hope of seeing her again all that kept him, amidst torture, from wishing to die. Though not— and this still astonished him—enough to make him tell his captors what they wished to know.

  And then he was free.

  When Chad Palmer came home, more in love than he had thought possible, he found a wife who did not conform to his memories.

  Their daughter, Kyle, slept surrounded by his photographs. But Allie had thought him dead. Now she did not seem to need him: for two years Allie had managed her own life.

  “You’re not the same,” she told him. “Neither am I. I’ll never be that girl again.”

  Her distance hurt him. Finally, he said, “I don’t think you missed me like I missed you.”

  She appraised him with a level gaze he had never seen before. “Maybe there was less to miss,” she answered.

  In some ways, Chad came to realize, he was more lost than he had been in prison. He had returned with a sense of seriousness unforeseeable in him, and rare in any man, to a wife transformed by his disappearance, and a daughter he did not know. The central purpose of his life—to fly—was gone: though his body healed well in time, he could no longer do certain things required to qualify as a fighter pilot. Nor did he know the man he had become by accident: a public figure hailed as a “hero” by the media, the air force, and more politicians than he had ever known existed.

  Slowly, from the ashes of his career, Chad constructed a new purpose for his life. Solitude had impelled him to reach conclusions about himself, and the society in which he lived. That was a gift, and so was every day thereafter. And if he did not see himself as a “hero,” he was wise enough to know that heroism had its uses and that, in politics, modesty would enhance this all the more. Both parties wanted to use him; he chose the Republicans out of a genuine congruence of beliefs. What he did not tell them, and what they learned only gradually, and to their sorrow, was that Chad was no conformist. He had learned in prison who he was.

  Together, he and Allie found a way to reconstruct their marriage. They moved to northern Ohio, where Chad had grown up, and he ventured into politics. He was an image-maker’s dream—plainspoken yet appealing, handsome as a film star. After, as Chad sardonically put it, “ten hard months spent proving my fitness for national leadership,” he declared himself for senator, and undertook the itinerant life of a candidate for office.

  If not enthused, Allie was tolerant. Perhaps it was because she now had a place of her own, and a daughter to love. Perhaps Kyle’s problems, appearing in her teens, consumed her. And, Chad thought ruefully, perhaps she still loved him enough to know—and appreciate—that whatever his faults and ambitions, Chad Palmer now loved her far too much to touch another woman.

  Allie finished with his tie. “There,” she said. “You look handsome enough for your own inauguration, God help us.”

  Chad kissed her forehead. “And you,” he said lightly, “look hot enough to create a scandal.”

  “Tonight all eyes will be on Lara. I wonder how it feels to be thirty-one, and have the Post calling you ‘either the most beautiful about to be First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, or the most scintillating presidential girlfriend since Marilyn Monroe.’”

  Chad smiled. “I don’t know how she feels. But Kerry told me a couple of weeks ago it’s like being two teenagers with two hundred seventy million parents.”

  Allie eyed him curiously. “Do you think he’ll really marry her?”

  “I don’t know—Kerry’s not big on revealing himself, especially to someone who may run against him four years from now. But I wonder more if she’ll marry him. Sometimes I think there’s stuff going on there I don’t quite understand.”

  “Something personal? Or does she just not want the life?”

  “Not sure. The life’s hard, as we all know.”

  Allie looked up into his face. “Will you run next time?”

  “I wanted to run this time, Allie. You know that. So you know what it depends on, and that you’re part of it.”

  She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I do know, Chad. I’m sorry.”

  “And I understand.”

  After a moment, Allie turned. “Zip me?”

  “Sure.” The zipper was no problem, Chad thought—it was the damned eye-hook. “Is Kyle coming?” he asked.

  Allie shook her head. “It was sweet of Kerry to ask— especially with all he’s got on his mind. But she says she wouldn’t know what to say, or who to bring.”

  Was there anything more crippling, Chad wondered, than lack of self-regard? Or more mysterious in origin? It would ease his conscience, he supposed, to think that Kyle was born this way. But then Chad had too seldom been there for her. Whatever the causes, the Palmers had a twenty-year-old daughter as fragile as she was lovely, and the lingering worry for her shadowed Allie’s face as she turned to him again.

  “What did Mac Gage want?” she asked.

  Chad grimaced. “Supreme Court politics. The Chief’s not dead three hours, and Mac’s trying to position me. Either I use the committee to put the screws to Kerry’s nominee— whoever he is—or Mac may try to cause me trouble.”

  Allie considered this. “When,” she inquired, “have you ever avoided trouble?”

  Once more, Chad’s thoughts circled back to Kyle. “Maybe,” he promised her mother, “it’s not too late to learn.”

  EIGHT

  “WHAT WOULD you do?” Sarah asked.

  “Me? Run like a thief, of course.” Turning from the stove, the Honorable Caroline Clark Masters gave her former clerk an ironic glance. “The case you’re imagining is a nightmare— legally, politically, and professionally.”

  They sat in the open kitchen of Caroline’s penthouse on Telegraph Hill, spacious and tastefully furnished, with floor-to-ceiling windows which afforded a panoramic view of the San Francisco skyline. Each detail, from the modern art and wire sculpture to the flavorful Chassagne-Montrachet the two women sipped as Caroline cooked, reflected Caroline’s tastes, as elegant as the woman, and yet, like the woman, un-revealing. The one personal touch was a photograph of a beautiful young woman with olive skin who, when asked, Caroline had identified as her niece. But Caroline said little else about her: despite her relative celebrity, unusual for a jurist, Caroline remained persistently, sometimes maddeningly, elusive.

  The woman herself was striking—tall, erect, graceful, with sculpted features, a long aquiline nose, wide-set brown eyes, a high forehead, and glossy black hair which began with a widow’s peak. She looked and sounded like what she was, the daughter of a patrician New England family, except for a touch of the exotic—the darkness, olive skin, a somewhat sardonic smile—which suggested her mother, a French Jewish woman whose parents had died in the Holocaust. Combined with near-flawless diction and a natural air of command, her vivid looks had helped imprint her on the public mind several years before when, as a state court judge, she had presided over the televised trial of Mary Carelli, a famous television journalist accused of murder. By the time Carelli had gone free, after a trial watched by millions, Caroline was almost as well known.

  To Sarah, Caroline’s every step since—acceptance of a partnership in Kenyon & Walker, then a high federal judgeship—served an ultimate aim so lofty Sarah dared not mention it. Now, though the sound was low, the small television beside the stove was tuned to a replay of the Kilcannon inaugural—as much, Sarah guessed, for its sudden, startling implications for the Supreme Court as for the accession of a new president. In Sarah’s mind, no ambition Caroline held could be too great: her year as Caroline’s clerk had impressed on her the older woman’s integrity and intellectual r
igor. Were Sarah asked whom she wished to emulate, her answer would be Caroline Masters.

  Why Caroline maintained their friendship seemed less clear. Yet she exhibited an older-sisterly, almost maternal, interest in Sarah’s career and life. Perhaps, Sarah had concluded, it was because Caroline had no children of her own, and seemed to regard her only sibling—the niece’s mother— with detachment. Whatever the reasons, Sarah was pleased to benefit.

  “‘Run like a thief’?” Sarah repeated. “Why? Because of the firm?”

  “That’s one reason.” Caroline smiled again. “My old partners at Kenyon & Walker may snatch this poisoned cup from your lips before you take a swallow. For once I can hardly blame them. They want to be known as the West Coast’s leading corporate firm, not its leading proponent of abortion rights. Any lawsuit to invalidate the Protection of Life Act would be bitter, and the issues are thorny and emotional.” Caroline’s tone took on its familiar combination of irony and tough-mindedness. “If you have any illusion that this is merely an open and shut case of legalizing ‘infanticide,’ wait until advocates for the disabled accuse you of wanting to abort fetuses just because they’re unsatisfactory—by your standards, whatever they may be. You’d better have an answer.”

  The issue, Sarah realized, had not occurred to her. Taking a sip of her wine, Caroline spoke more softly. “All that I’m asking is that you ponder this with care. The people on both sides of this one, including politicians and activists, have deep convictions and very long memories. Some days I’m very glad to have never ruled on an abortion case.”

  Or for that matter, Sarah realized, offered her personal opinion about abortion at all—perhaps because Caroline believed that, for a judge, idle chatter about volatile topics was impolitic. And her analysis was depressingly acute: for someone with judicial ambitions, even as nascent as Sarah’s, entanglement with issues as inflammatory as parental consent and late-term abortion could be as lethal as denouncing the death penalty. “I keep thinking about the clinic,” she answered. “The Christian Commitment nearly shut us down. Now the pro-lifers say they’re appropriating the bodies of teenage girls in their best interests, through a ‘protective’ new law, when what some of them really want is to punish them.

  “It’s hard not to respect many of the pro-lifers I meet; they’re sincere, and their concerns aren’t trivial. But the Christian Commitment tries to have it both ways—substantive in public, and scary at the margins. This guy who confronted Mary Ann seemed like a lot of them—marginal, a loner, and resentful of women. I’m sure it’s psychosexual: they’re so afraid that women will compete with them—or even, God help them, expect an orgasm during sex—that making us have babies is their last line of defense. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so scary.”

  Caroline’s faint smile quickly vanished. “It’s a mistake to satirize your opponents,” she admonished. “Or to be confused about what drives them. Maybe this man today couldn’t get a prom date. But Martin Tierney is a philosopher.”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve seen him, in debates.” Turning, Caroline eyed the sea bass she was preparing, and commenced to stir the sauce. “His beliefs—moral and religious—are consistent, well developed, and intellectually compelling. However much you think you’ve considered the issues, he’s considered them more. Add the fact that he is this girl’s father, and squaring off with him in court would not be easy. I know I wouldn’t relish it.”

  It was a benign way of reminding Sarah of her own inexperience: at forty-nine, Caroline Masters had spent twenty more years in the law—beginning as a public defender—and was known as a brilliant trial lawyer. But Sarah felt pride, and stubbornness, overcome her. “In civil trials,” she rejoined, “experience is overrated. What you need most is ability and preparation, to make sure the other side doesn’t surprise you.”

  Caroline considered her, wineglass touching her lips. “Actually, I agree with you—at twenty-nine, I was defending indigents accused of rape or murder. The difference is that no one hated me for it, except the survivors. If any.” Sipping her wine, Caroline finished, “The times when a judge can duck a case are few and far between. That’s not true of a lawyer. For you, I think the standard should be, ‘Do I, as a matter of moral choice, absolutely have to take this case?’”

  Placing her glass on the black marble kitchen island, Sarah leaned forward on her stool, arms folded: as Caroline no doubt intended, her advice had sobered Sarah. “Let me ask you this,” Sarah said at last. “Under the case law, what are the odds of winning?”

  Caroline shook her head, demurring. “There’s a chance, however slim, that this case will wind up in the Court of Appeals, with me on the panel. Even if there weren’t, I shouldn’t be giving legal advice to prospective litigants.”

  For the first time, Sarah felt frustrated. There were twenty-one active judges on the appellate court, with three assigned at random to any given case, making Caroline’s chances of drawing an appeal one in seven. But Caroline’s code, Sarah knew, did not admit exceptions.

  Caroline seemed to read her disappointment. “I wish I could be more helpful,” she observed gently. “But judges are the opposite of politicians: we’re real people who pretend not to be. I’ll very much want to know what you decide.”

  Turning, Caroline returned to the matter of the orange sauce. Beside her, on television, the Chief Justice of the United States was collapsing in slow motion. As if by instinct, Caroline glanced over at the screen.

  “Incredible,” Sarah remarked. “What was he like?”

  “A superior intellect, of course.” On the screen, Senator Palmer rushed to the fallen man’s aid; watching, Caroline added, “Also rigid, narrow-minded, and as self-serious as a judge in a Marx Brothers comedy. And he made no secret that he despised Kerry Kilcannon. His death must have come as a crushing disappointment—especially to him.”

  The mordant summary was so like Caroline—a woman who disdained false sentiment—that Sarah found herself smiling. But Caroline was not. Still watching the television, she observed, “This could change the whole Court. Depending on what the President does.”

  “Because the Court’s so divided?”

  “Partly. But a new Chief Justice can be much more than just another vote.” Caroline’s voice assumed the tone of rumination. “Every first-year law student knows that Brown v. Board of Education ended legalized segregation in the public schools. But few learn that the first hearing left the Court sharply divided, with Chief Justice Vinson strongly in favor of maintaining segregation.

  “Before the result could be announced, Vinson died of a heart attack. Earl Warren took his place. The case was reargued, and Warren went to work, using all his skills of consensus-building and persuasion. The result was the unanimous opinion which, some would say, launched the civil rights movement and forced us to confront the issue of race.

  “Of course, as bitter as that was, the abortion issues you’re raising are nearly as divisive, and public life is infinitely more vicious. I don’t envy Kilcannon the problem.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “The President? Not personally. My loss, clearly.”

  Elliptical as it was, this was the closest Caroline had come to admitting the ambition Sarah believed she held. Emboldened, Sarah observed, “But you do know Ellen Penn.”

  “Yes. And I already owe the new Vice President my current job.” Turning, Caroline fixed Sarah with an enigmatic gaze. “Please, Sarah, don’t even think about it.”

  After a moment, Sarah smiled. “I’ll censor my thoughts, Caroline. But a girl can dream, can’t she?”

  NINE

  AT A LITTLE past one-thirty in the morning, Kerry Kilcannon and Lara Costello entered the President’s darkened sitting room. Before this moment, she had never been upstairs.

  Elsewhere in the White House, Kerry had informed her, were fifty or so people—staff, the Secret Service—who knew where they were. “So now you’ve seen it,” Kerry said. “My new home. The
crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system.”

  Smiling, Lara looked around her, sharing his sense of awe and strangeness. The room was carefully appointed in antiques. At one side was a small plaque left by Jacqueline Kennedy, saying: This room was occupied by John Fitzgerald Kennedy during the two years, ten months, and two days he was President of the United States. January 20, 1961–November 22, 1963.

  The glossy magazines compared her to Jackie. And it was all so unreal. Lara was no aristocrat: her father, an alcoholic Irishman, had abandoned his family when Lara was eight; her Latina mother had supported Lara and her sisters by cleaning other people’s homes; until two years before, when NBC had lured her from the New York Times, it had been a struggle to help her mother and pay off her sisters’ student loans. And she and Kerry were not married.

  Yet here she was at the White House, wearing a stunning Gianfranco Ferre gown, in the President’s private quarters.

  Hands in his pockets, Kerry stood at the window, watching a light snow fall on the grounds below. Lara touched his elbow. “Hard to believe, isn’t it.”