Protect and Defend

by Richard North Patterson

  Feverishly, Kerry had worked the phones to keep the seven Republicans from committing to Gage, and to chip away at the support for a filibuster. But no one dared approach Chad Palmer; no one knew how, or whether, Kyle’s death might affect his vote. Just as no one outside the White House was certain what Kerry intended by the subpoena to the Internet Frontier, or the FBI’s seizure of Charlie Trask’s files.

  There had, of course, been the predictable protests. The New York Times had denounced these actions as “chilling” and “a raid on the First Amendment.” The White House had greeted the protest with stony silence; on the President’s instructions, Kit Pace gave the press corps a clipped response—that this was a “criminal matter” on which she could not comment. This remark, along with the death of Kyle Palmer, seemed to impose an unusual and uneasy quiet on the members of the Senate. And hanging over all of this was the latest Gallup poll: forty-nine percent now supported the Masters nomination, and thirty-seven were opposed. The fact that this reflected a swing toward Caroline Masters among suburban women, a crucial voting bloc, seemed to stall Macdonald Gage’s pursuit of the last three senators needed to defeat her.

  Kerry was gazing out his window, thinking of Chad Palmer and the battle to come, when his telephone rang.

  The director of the FBI, Hal Bailey, was a career federal prosecutor who had made his reputation bringing organized-crime cases in New York City. Though Kerry’s impression of him was favorable, he had not yet indicated whether Bailey could keep his job, the pinnacle of his career, and Bailey’s term would soon expire. This, the President knew very well, had now become useful. In his bland, professional way, Bailey seemed prepared to please.

  “I’m sorry it took two days,” the director told Kerry. “But the fingerprint base is extremely large.”

  “You were able to get prints?”

  “A number of them, including yours—the sheer volume most of the problem. To extract the prints we used a chemical called ninhydrin, which is extremely reliable. From there it was a matter of determining whether the same set of prints recurred on your envelope, Trask’s documents, and those we got from the Internet Frontier.” He paused, voice lowering in what sounded like discomfort. “The prints offer the only definitive evidence, Mr. President. Whoever gave the boyfriend cash also gave him a false name, and the kid doesn’t seem to know or care who sent this guy. As for the doctor, it appears that someone got into her office, copied the consent form, and left. She didn’t even know it had happened.”

  For Kerry, this confirmed his fears—the persons responsible for Kyle Palmer’s death had been thoroughly professional. “But you were able to match up prints.”

  “Yes.” The reluctance in Bailey’s voice returned. “One set appeared on every document.”

  “Whose?”

  Bailey hesitated. “If you don’t mind, Mr. President, I’d prefer to give you the report in person.”

  * * *

  Thirty-five minutes later, Hal Bailey was in the Oval Office. Dark-eyed and balding, with the short haircut and lean intensity of an ex-Marine turned fitness fanatic, Bailey perched on the edge of his chair. With seeming reluctance, he glanced at Clayton Slade, who sat at his side.

  “I thought,” the President explained calmly, “that Clayton should hear this.”

  Hesitant, Bailey gave Clayton a sidelong look, and then passed five single-spaced pages to the President. “I typed it myself,” Bailey said. “I didn’t want this leaking before you saw it.”

  Composing his face into an expressionless mask, Kerry began to read. He forced himself to work through Bailey’s prose—three pages of bureaucratic throat-clearing which described each step—without flipping to the end. It took some moments to reach it.

  Staring at the final page, Kerry made no effort to mask his emotions.

  “Who is it?” Clayton asked.

  For a moment, Kerry simply nodded at the report, feeling his anger merge with a sense of the inevitable—that yes, in the end, only this made sense. Then he looked up, into the face of his oldest friend.

  “My esteemed ex-colleague,” Kerry answered. “Senator Mason Taylor.”

  A few minutes later, the two men were alone.

  Clayton’s expression remained grim. And yet, beneath this, the President saw a certain brightness, a satisfaction which matched his own.

  “Stupid,” Clayton said. “For a man that smart.”

  “I think I follow his reasoning,” Kerry replied. “Whatever he did, there were risks. He didn’t want a go-between, anyone who could flip on him. He couldn’t ask a secretary to mail it. To fax it might be traceable. So that meant handling it himself—ninhydrin must not be on his radar screen.”

  Clayton stared at him. “If it’s Taylor,” he said finally, “it’s Gage.”

  “I expect so. But we can’t prove that yet.”

  “You’ve got a vote tomorrow.” Clayton’s tone was filled with an anxious determination. “Busting Gage could make the difference.”

  “Yes,” Kerry replied with the same quiet. “I’ve considered that. From the beginning.”

  “Then what will you do with this?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  But perhaps he did, Kerry thought to himself. Perhaps he had known all along. Perhaps he pretended otherwise so as not to face—at least until he had to—how far he was willing to go, and whom he was willing to use. But until he crossed that threshold, a trace of doubt remained.

  “I don’t know,” he repeated.

  And, as he entered the cathedral for Kyle Palmer’s funeral, it seemed, at least for a moment, that this was so.

  Lara was beside him and a cluster of official Washington was there, including, the President noted with dark irony, a somber Macdonald Gage. For a moment, Kerry wondered why Chad had not barred them all—left to her own devices, Kerry was sure, Allie Palmer would have done so. But, in many ways, official Washington was their family. And if in Chad Palmer’s mind, some of its inhabitants shared the blame for Kyle’s death—or at least for the cycle of viciousness which had placed her private struggle in public view—Chad might want them to bear witness.

  Chad carried himself with the grim composure of a warrior faced with a bitter and ineradicable sorrow. He appeared gaunt and, though Kerry perhaps imagined it, his shirt collar seemed loose, as if he had begun shrinking from the inside out. Beside him, Allie was waxen, her face drawn, and her eyes puffy from crying. If he had seen Allie on the street, Kerry might not have recognized her.

  Following Kerry’s gaze, Lara squeezed his hand. Like an electric current, this surfaced an even darker thought: besides Lara, of all those present, perhaps one other person knew what Kerry knew. But Kerry alone could decide what to do with it and thus, quite possibly, alter the fate of both the guilty and the innocent, here and elsewhere.

  The service was muted and, to Kerry’s mind, lacking in catharsis. Chad Palmer shed no tears. Standing beside his daughter’s casket, he seemed to have receded so completely that Kerry could feel how shattered Chad was. His brief words to Kyle, a father’s simple, helpless assurance of love, stirred emotions Kerry found difficult to bear; when Allie told her daughter that “a part of me died with you,” Kerry felt the simple truth of this. And, with finality, felt the weight of his responsibility, the choices which awaited.

  For a time, the dark and somber church receded. The Palmers faded into shadows; the touch of Lara’s hand was light as a sparrow in his palm. His most vivid image was of a man he could not see—Macdonald Gage, seated behind him in the second pew.

  Determinedly, Kerry forced himself to focus, as he should, on Chad and Allie Palmer, standing beside the beflowered casket which held the body of their only child. It was in his power to change forever the chemistry of their grief, turn this to his purpose. But did anyone—president or not—have the right to tamper with their lives when another man already had altered them so cruelly?

  Unresolved, this question haunted him through the moments which remained. The
n the pallbearers bore Kyle Palmer from the church, her parents following, and Kerry and Lara, flanked by the Secret Service, emerged into the rain.

  There were police cars in front, barriers, more agents—a reminder of the cumbersome machinery constantly devoted to his protection. Looking to his right, he saw Macdonald Gage, his gaze moving from the funeral hearse to Kerry’s vigilant protectors, and wondered at the flow of his thoughts.

  As though feeling his scrutiny, Gage turned to him, his face sober and, to Kerry’s embittered mind, arranged in formulaic piety. Gage hesitated, and then took a few steps forward, to speak to him quietly.

  “A sad day, Mr. President.”

  Kerry placed a hand on Gage’s shoulder. “Mac,” he said softly, “I think you have no idea.”

  Silent, Macdonald Gage watched Kerry Kilcannon disappear into his black limousine.

  No, Gage corrected, he had an idea. The President had dispatched the FBI himself, Gage calculated; helpless, he could only wonder what Kilcannon—a vengeful, ruthless man on the best of days—knew, or thought he knew, and which the Majority Leader of the United States Senate wished never to know for sure. But there was one thing Kilcannon could not know—the depth of Gage’s regret at the death of Kyle Palmer, the fervent wish that whatever caused it could be undone.

  Yet it was done, and Gage must somehow consign the burden of what he did know to the recesses of his mind. Some day, Macdonald Gage himself might be President. But first there was a nominee to vanquish, a president to defeat. Tomorrow, power lay in the balance: to Gage, Caroline Masters personified a contest, though sometimes murky in its particulars, between what was best for the country and what was not.

  Gage returned to his office, to work.

  Silent, Kerry and Lara followed the funeral cortege. Aided by Kerry’s escort, the line of cars drove steadily toward Arlington, the splash of rain beneath their wheels a low whisper.

  “What will you do?” Lara asked.

  As with Clayton, Kerry did not answer. Lara took his hand again.

  They stood by the grave site in Arlington National Cemetery, relatives and a few close friends, beside where Chad would someday lie. Given the sensitivity of veterans to the sanctity of Arlington, Kerry had called key veterans groups and the appropriate chairman in Congress, to ensure that Kyle could be buried there. Perhaps, Kerry reflected, that was why Chad had suggested he could accompany them on his daughter’s last journey.

  A little apart from the others, the President and his fiancée watched the clumps of earth cover Kyle’s resting place.

  In the end, it was Chad who approached him.

  With a few soft words, Lara moved away, leaving them alone. “I’m sorry,” Kerry told him.

  There were tears at last in Chad’s eyes, though his voice was flat. “This never should have happened,” he murmured. “They never should have done this to her.”

  Nodding, Kerry paused, looking into his ravaged face. Then he placed a hand on Palmer’s arm. “I know how hard this will be,” he said at last. “But I’d like to see you tonight. I think there’s something you should know.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IT WAS past ten o’clock before Chad Palmer came to the White House.

  Entering the President’s study, Chad looked haggard. Kerry closed the door behind him.

  “How’s Allie?” the President asked softly.

  Chad looked down, then shook his head. “Sedated,” he answered.

  For Kerry, the single word conveyed Chad’s helplessness; his inability, even now, to fully grasp what had become of them; his discomfort at having left his wife with others. His presence seemed an act of will.

  He sat, looking weary and detached from his surroundings. When he spoke again, it was with a kind of disembodied patience, as though he accepted that Kerry would not have asked him to come unless it was important in ways that Chad Palmer, at this moment, could not imagine or care about.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Kerry considered offering some sort of apology, or explanation, or account of how much he had agonized before making this decision. But any words which came to him seemed pointless and self-serving. Without preface he took the FBI report from his desk, and handed it to Chad.

  Chad began to read.

  After a moment, Kerry saw a subtle change: Chad’s air of exhaustion replaced by utter stillness. He did not speak, move, or look up from the report. More than any words or gestures, this drove home to Kerry the weight of what he had just done. As Chad turned the final page, Kerry watched, silent.

  When Chad looked up at last, tears ran down his face. “What do you want for this?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It’s yours.”

  Slowly, Chad nodded. Without saying more he stood, cheeks still stained with tears, and left.

  Alone in his darkened sitting room, Chad began living with the truth.

  The last relative was gone; alone, Allie still slept. There was no one with whom he could share his guilt.

  He had not protected Kyle. He had risked too much with Gage; gone too far in helping Kerry Kilcannon. Some of that had come from ambition, some from ego of another kind—that Chad Palmer did what was right, no matter what the consequences. Now his pride had helped to kill his daughter; with merciless clarity Chad saw that his fingerprints, too, were on the envelope.

  That Taylor had acted with Gage’s knowledge he had no doubt; in his way, however oblique, Gage had tried to warn Chad. But in the end Gage had acquiesced—or more—in the act of cruelty which led to Kyle’s death.

  Chad replayed the last few weeks, like a film the end of which he knew but could not change. From the funeral he could retrieve but a few dazed images, as though he, too, were sedated. The most vivid impression was the soft echo of the first clump of earth, Chad’s own, spattering on Kyle’s casket.

  What acts of his now, he wondered, could possibly do justice to his daughter?

  Suddenly, the thought struck him as pitiful. Nothing Chad could do could help his daughter or, he was certain, fully restore the woman in their darkened bedroom to who she had been before. And so he sat alone, living with all the pointless, thwarted love of an imperfect father whose daughter was now a memory.

  There was nothing he could do. Except try to act with honor, to hope that tomorrow there was something, if he could find it, which might send some ripple of good into the future, to commemorate the woman Kyle Palmer could have been.

  * * *

  Clayton sat where, moments before, Chad had read the FBI report. Unsettled by this memory, Kerry paused before speaking.

  “Did you call Sarah Dash?” he inquired.

  “Yes. The abortion’s set for tomorrow morning.”

  Kerry gave a grim smile; no comment was required. “What will Palmer do?” Clayton asked.

  “I have no idea.” Kerry’s voice was soft. “It was all I could do to watch him.”

  Clayton gave him a complex look of sympathy and concern. “Does he know what we mean to do?”

  “He will. Once he thinks about it.” Kerry’s voice assumed a tinge of irony. “Do it the way you did with Caroline Masters. Only this time it’s the Post’s turn.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  AT SEVEN the next morning, Sarah Dash sat outside an operating room at San Francisco General, waiting for Dr. Mark Flom to abort Mary Ann Tierney’s seven-and-a-half-month fetus.

  They had come in secrecy, before dawn, in an ambulance dispatched to conceal Mary Ann’s arrival. Mary Ann was composed yet frightened; she had rejected her father’s agonized last appeal, but her fears were both spiritual and physical. Still, her deepest fear, repeated to Sarah in the middle of the night, was, “What if he’s normal, Sarah? What if he would have been all right?”

  Sarah did not tell her about the call from Clayton Slade.

  The call did not surprise her—by now, nothing did. Nor was she offended: she was grateful to Kerry Kilcannon, and admired his advocacy of Caroline Masters. But she found the Chief of Staff’s bl
unt practicality unnerving.

  “The debate begins tomorrow,” he told her. “If the fetus turns out to be abnormal, we hope you’ll make that public right away.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do,” Slade answered calmly. “But from your client’s perspective, I would think that the less said, the better.”

  So now Sarah waited, fearful for Mary Ann, pondering her obligations. She could not help but visualize the procedures taking place behind closed doors. The pro-life forces had been clever: they had targeted a procedure the visceral horror of which obscured the medical reasons for it. Understanding this, Sarah had used all of her skills to bring Mary Ann to this moment. But now, like Mary Ann, she was consumed by fear that—despite the medical odds—inside the operating room they were ending the life of a viable, healthy child.

  Still, this was not all that worried Sarah. Two days before, Mark Flom had said to her, “People can argue all they want. But when it’s all said and done, there are times when this procedure is necessary.

  “It’s also quite difficult—not many doctors can do it. With every week, it becomes that much harder. The Tierneys have made it two months harder, on us all.”

  Now, while the extraction of the fetus proceeded, Sarah was overcome by the consequences—not only to Mary Ann, but to others. Glancing at her watch, Sarah calculated that it was past ten in Washington, and that the Senate had begun debating whether to advise and consent to the nomination of Caroline Clark Masters as Chief Justice of the United States.

  Distractedly, she read her New York Times. On the eve of the vote, the lead article reported, it was unclear whether Macdonald Gage had the forty-one votes needed to support a filibuster. If not, both Gage and President Kilcannon presently were at least two votes short of the fifty-one required to defeat or sustain the nomination. A final complicating factor was Senator Chad Palmer: despite the avalanche of reporting which surrounded his daughter’s death, no one knew whether Palmer would emerge from his seclusion.