Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

Kilcannon paused again, staring intently at the ground, as though considering whether to speak. Then he seemed to shrug. “We’d better keep walking,” he said, “or we’ll look like a couple in crisis. Besides, standing next to me in heels, you seem as tall as I am. Kit Pace is very sensitive to that.”

  Smiling, Caroline began walking again, though with care. “Brett,” the President asked. “How is that now?”

  “For me? Hard. I entertain these selfish fantasies …” Abruptly, Caroline stopped herself. “As for her, I imagine a young woman going backward in time, reinterpreting the chapters of her life—how Betty spoke of me, or didn’t; my estrangement from her grandfather; crosscurrents where she imagined something was not quite right, but didn’t know what it was. Why the family albums contained no pictures of my mother—who, US Magazine was kind enough to reveal, looked so much like Brett that it’s haunted me for years.

  “She’s a sensitive young woman, and, I think, a wise one.” Caroline glanced at the photographers ringing the White House grounds. “She’s leaning on her friends, I’d guess, trying to come to terms with this before she faces the rest of us, and all of this. Her life will never be the same, and I doubt she wants to start with a misstep.”

  Walking beside her, the President simply nodded. Though she did not truly know him, and he had said relatively little, Caroline felt his empathy, the same surprising sense of comfort she had felt at their first meeting.

  “I guess it’s pointless,” the President said at length, “for me to say how difficult these hearings could be.”

  Though this seemed a change of subject, Caroline guessed that it was not. “I have an inkling, Mr. President. I noticed with regret, though not surprise, that Senator Palmer isn’t on my schedule.”

  This seemed to make the President pensive. “Chad can’t see you,” he answered. “He’s in trouble in his party—your opponents see him as our co-conspirator. He’ll barely talk to me.”

  The President’s regret sounded as personal as it did professional. “I keep wondering where it came from,” Caroline said. “The leak.”

  The President shrugged again, squinting in the afternoon sun. “No point in wondering, Caroline. It’s done.”

  After a time, Caroline nodded. “I suppose we took our chances, both of us. But Senator Palmer did, too, and I find myself feeling bad for him.”

  “So do I,” Kilcannon said. “Believe me.”

  Caroline looked across at him; for the first time, she wondered if the President knew—or guessed—more than he was saying. But she had to trust her sense of him; she did not believe that Kerry Kilcannon would betray a promise, to Palmer or to her.

  “From what you say,” the President ventured, “I suppose Brett won’t be coming here.”

  “I haven’t asked her, Mr. President. And I won’t—to expose her, or to use her, is more than I can stand.” Caroline paused, softening her tone. “Whatever else comes out of this, I want a relationship with her. I can’t start it with another act of selfishness.”

  They stopped again, this time by the Rose Garden, while the President pretended for the cameras to point out some new plantings for the spring. “Perhaps she’ll come on her own,” he murmured.

  Despite her firm intentions, Caroline felt a spasm of hope. With great resolve, she squelched it. “Then she will. But I truly hope she doesn’t.”

  At this, the President smiled slightly. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Kilcannon seemed to study her. “Suppose I ask her.”

  Caroline stood straighter. “Don’t do that,” she said. “Please. It’s not what’s best for her.”

  The President cocked his head. “But isn’t that the problem? Everyone decided what’s best for her, except her.”

  Caroline looked at him evenly. “I don’t want to be difficult, Mr. President. But regarding Brett our interests aren’t the same.

  “I have a daughter I love, and who I hope will grow to love me. You’re looking at your nominee for Chief Justice, about to face some very messy hearings, with your own prestige on the line. And you can’t help but imagine how much better it would be if Brett came out here, and told the Senate and the world how much she values the gift of life, and appreciates that I acted out of love.

  “I hope she gets there. But she’ll have to come to that on her own. And if you call her, she’ll think it comes from me. Or that we’re both playing politics.”

  Kilcannon studied the stalks of roses. “Perhaps not,” he answered. “Sometimes the political can serve the personal.” Facing her, Kilcannon still spoke softly. “That’s the wonder of being President, I find. Some may impugn my motives, but everyone takes my calls. And even, on occasion, listens.”

  * * *

  “Damn him,” Harshman said without preface.

  Gage looked up from a series of tracking polls, a survey by the Republican National Committee showing sharply polarized opinion over the Masters nomination. “Damn who? Kilcannon? Or Palmer?”

  “Martin Tierney. Saunders tells me he still won’t testify without a subpoena. The man says his family’s had enough.”

  “Now?” Gage said with faint derision. “Isn’t it a little late for him to revirginify?”

  Harshman sat. “Tierney never wanted the trial on television, so the Commitment had to go behind his back. Saunders says he’s always been difficult—he finds the good professor’s principles a little hard to parse. But whatever they are, they don’t include committing to a media blitz on Masters, or even testifying voluntarily. And goddamned Palmer won’t get on the phone.”

  With rising irritation, Gage pondered Chad’s latest dereliction. Though Gage had satirized Masters’s new supporters as “a pack of R-rated Hollywood liberals who think marriage is a ‘sexual preference,’” it was hard to counter Kilcannon’s glittering lineup with fundamentalist ministers, Christian music stars, and the aging former movie hero who served as figurehead for the NRA. “If Chad won’t call him,” Gage inquired, “will he send him a subpoena?”

  “No. He says that would be harassment, and the family’s suffered enough. Some crap about respecting their privacy—as if they had any left.”

  Gage scowled, thoughtful. “If the man’s dug in,” he mused, “a subpoena might be trouble. Guess you want me to call him.”

  Without answering, Harshman fished a slip of paper from his shirt pocket, and passed it across the desk. Scribbled on it was the name “Martin Tierney” with telephone numbers for home and work.

  Both numbers, Gage discovered after dialing, were set to ring once, then switch to a message machine. “Professor Tierney,” he told both machines, “this is Senator Macdonald Gage. When it’s convenient, I wonder if you might call me. Don’t worry about the hour.”

  He repeated his home and office numbers, then put down the phone. “All I can do, Paul.”

  Harshman’s mouth set. “We need him.”

  Glancing at his television, Gage saw the President and Caroline Masters intently talking in the Rose Garden, the President’s hand placed lightly on her shoulder. “I know that,” Gage said. “I surely do.”

  By eleven that night, Martin Tierney had not returned his call, and Mac Gage was at home.

  Or, he amended, what passed for home. It was a furnished efficiency apartment in Crystal City; his wife had never taken to Washington, and Gage returned to Lexington every weekend, where they had raised their children and where their grandchildren lived now. One of the grandchildren was African American; it seemed ironic, even to Gage, that three generations of his family had made adoption their tradition, commenced by the unknown woman who had been his mother. Reflective, Gage looked at their pictures on his wall, the sole adornment of the sterile living space, barely better than a dormitory room. Gage had never exploited his office for personal gain; anyone looking for his riches, he thought, would find them on this wall.

  Lying down on his bed, he reluctantly replaced the faces of his grandchildren with those of his colleagues, riffling the
m through his mind like flashcards as he counted votes and debts, with question marks for Senate moderates or those facing close elections. He envisioned a handful cowering between Kilcannon and himself—or bargaining with each. He was certain of forty-five votes now, with three more leaning. But even counting those, the last three votes he needed were uncertain, and Kilcannon had prevented the rush for cover which would have doomed his nominee. No Democrat had defected—though, as with the Republicans, ten were undeclared. And all twenty neutrals, Gage was certain, would watch the hearings closely before taking a firm position.

  The hearings might decide this. And if Palmer did what he should, the neutrals would have nothing left to wait for, and Caroline Masters would be done.

  Which brought him back to Martin Tierney.

  Tierney could give Palmer cover, and help them all—an agonized and loving father to offset the incest victims and movie stars. Even as Gage thought this, the telephone rang.

  In the life of a Majority Leader, his caller could be anyone. But, guessing it was Martin Tierney, Gage paused before answering, summoning all his resources of guile and persuasion.

  “Senator Gage?” The man’s voice was familiar from television.

  “Professor Tierney,” Gage answered, in the welcoming tone his wife wryly called “Southern Comfort.” “I’ve been wanting to make your acquaintance, but I’ve hesitated to call. I know how hard all this must be.”

  “Yes,” Tierney answered. “It has been. And is.”

  His tone was pointed, hinting at resistance to what he surmised must be Gage’s purpose.

  “Well,” Gage said somberly, “I don’t know how much it helps, but you have the admiration and gratitude of millions of Americans. Including me.”

  Tierney’s voice softened a bit. “Thank you, Senator. I appreciate that. I also have a wife who finds this devastating, and a daughter who barely speaks to us.”

  “That’s a high price to pay,” Gage acknowledged. “Even for an hour, or a day. In all honesty, I don’t know if I could do it. Which makes it so impressive that you have.”

  “Believing as we do,” Tierney answered, “we had no choice. But there are days when I wonder, as a husband and a father, whether I could have gone to court if I’d foreseen this moment. And I ask myself why God put this on our doorstep.”

  Gage considered musing aloud about the imponderables of faith, the mystery of God, and rejected this approach as inutile. Tierney sounded too weary and untrusting. At length, Gage said, “I guess you know why I’m calling, Professor.”

  “Yes.”

  Gage felt his tension rising; the one-word answer was not promising. In tones of sympathy, he said, “It must seem like too much for you, at times. Going the last mile.”

  “All the time.” Tierney’s voice was even. “I don’t see myself as a martyr, Senator, suffering for principle. I see my daughter, and my wife.”

  “I understand.” Gage kept his voice soft. “But they’re not who the country’s seeing now—or you. Between Judge Masters and the President, your healthy and loving family has been replaced with drunken and incestuous fathers, indifferent mothers, and pitiful daughters. And your grandson has been altogether lost.

  “You’ve gone this far. But now it’s about the future of the Court, and of the pro-life movement. As well as what it’s always been about—your daughter and her baby.” Gage’s voice rose in peroration. “All of us, Professor—you, and the movement—are in danger of losing everything.”

  “The movement,” Tierney answered softly, “put my family on television. Or do they think that’s escaped me.”

  Surprised, Gage called on his reserves of calm. “I’m over my head here, Professor. I don’t know what issues you may have with the Commitment. Although, in my experience, they’re as good and honorable a group of folks as I can think of …”

  “How fortunate for you,” Tierney answered with asperity, and then seemed to force on himself a more even tone. “You’re about to ask me to rise above any personal antipathy, and put our common principles first.

  “I’ve done that—throughout the trial. I’ll do it in the Supreme Court. But I’ll be damned if I’ll excoriate my daughter in the Senate, on television. Or even attack Judge Masters.” The vigor vanished from his voice, replaced by a deep fatigue. “I loathe her opinion. She may well have signed my grandson’s death warrant. But now I’ve heard her story, and I can’t quite summon the level of animosity required to blind me to the further damage I’d be doing.

  “The judge has done her damage already. My grandson’s only hope lies in the Supreme Court, not the Senate.”

  Gage felt his temples throb. Quietly, he said, “I understand the stress you’re under, believe me. But as you’ve said yourself, it’s not only about this baby, but all babies. If Masters is confirmed, it’s not just the Court which will change. The whole pro-life movement will be weakened, and the most pro-abortion president in our history will be emboldened.” As he spoke, Gage felt his own political interests merge with the truth of what he said. “This is an epochal moment, Professor. I beg you to consider that.”

  There was a long silence. “I’m sorry,” Tierney answered quietly. “My family has done enough for the movement. We’ll leave the rest to you.”

  Gage hesitated. “While I don’t feel this way,” he began, “others want to serve you with a subpoena …”

  “So the Democrats can subpoena Mary Ann?” Tierney’s voice was cold. “Tell the ‘others’ this: If they send me a subpoena, I will come, and state my beliefs as I always have. I’ll also call a press conference, repeat this conversation, and tell the media that I implored your party not to do this. You and Mr. Saunders can decide, Senator, whether that serves your purposes.”

  Startled, Gage hesitated. “Maybe,” he said warily, “you should talk to your wife. Or perhaps I could …”

  “Good-bye, Senator.” The phone clicked off.

  FIFTEEN

  TWO HOURS before the hearings recommenced, Caroline Masters breakfasted alone in her suite at the Hay-Adams.

  It would, she knew, be a long and emotional day. There had been an influx of death threats; by order of President Kilcannon there were two Secret Service agents in the hallway. A small army of reporters and Minicams awaited her below, and on Capitol Hill crowds were gathering to demonstrate for or against her confirmation. For the next hour or so, she would try to find the serenity to face whatever came.

  There was a knock on the door. Surprised, Caroline wondered if—oblivious to the drama of the moment—the hotel intended to restock her minibar. She rearranged her robe, then cracked open the door.

  The first face she saw belonged to Peter Lake, head of the President’s protective detail. Beside him was her daughter.

  Brett regarded her with a gaze at once tentative, reserved, and avid for detail; it struck Caroline that this was Brett’s first experience of seeing her and knowing who she was. Caroline felt her stomach constrict.

  “Thank you,” she said to Peter Lake. Brett stepped inside.

  Silent, they faced each other.

  “The President?” Caroline made herself ask, though she hoped this was not so.

  “Yes. He called me, and then sent Air Force One.”

  Brett’s voice was uninflected. She did not move, but seemed to soak up Caroline’s features with Nicole Dessaliers’s startling green eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said.

  She meant many things: that she was sorry for leaving her; sorry for a lifetime of deception; sorry that Kerry Kilcannon was the reason Brett had come. And sorry for the time and manner of her appearance, surely the President’s doing. With any warning, Caroline might have discouraged her daughter from coming, or arranged a meeting more private and less dramatic: were she to switch on CNN, Caroline would no doubt see a film clip of Brett arriving moments before, emblazoned with the words “breaking news.”

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline repeated, “for everything.”

  Brett sa
id nothing. Nor could Caroline seem to find more words. Twenty-seven years evanesced: she reexperienced the last moment of holding the newborn Brett, smelling her fresh skin and soft wisps of hair, before placing her in Larry’s arms.

  “So much to say,” Caroline ventured in a wan attempt at humor, “so little time. This isn’t how I wanted it.”

  Brett gazed into her face. “That’s what the President said. But he also said you needed me here.”

  Caroline drew a breath. “Personally?” she asked. “Or politically?”

  “Both.”

  Caroline looked down. “Then you must know how this is bound to hurt your mother. You, on television, coming to me.”

  “Yes.” Brett’s voice was soft, but controlled. “I explained the President’s call as best I could. And that your needs seem to have a deadline.”

  At this, Caroline felt ashamed. “How did she take that?”

  “It’s hard to know. She breaks down on the phone, and I feel for her. But it’s hard to get much out of her—about how she felt, what she thought, why she couldn’t at least tell me I was adopted.”

  Caroline paused. “Of the two of us, Brett, I think your mother’s wounds go deeper. Perhaps too deep to explain.”

  Brett stared at her, reluctant to speak, yet, to Caroline, so hungry for comprehension that she felt obliged to try. “I was never an easy sister,” Caroline said. “Our father deeply loved my mother—at least for a time—and saw himself in me. I was always treated as the smart one, the important one, until I became as reflexively dismissive of your mother as he was.

  “Betty had lost her mother, and then her place in the family. She wanted her own child desperately, and couldn’t have one.” Caroline’s voice softened. “At twenty-two, I didn’t care much, but could. Whoever said ‘life is unfair’ must have had Betty in mind.”

  Brett considered her, silent. Even now, Caroline realized, she could not talk of Betty without a touch of condescension. “Listen to me,” she told Brett, “and you’ll feel how wounding I am to her, even now. My best efforts at compassion turn to pity.”