Beltway Thriller Offers a Savvy Insider’s View

Florida must have flummoxed Richard North Patterson, too. In his latest political-legal thriller, “Protect and Defend”--written, we presume, in the months leading up to the election--it’s the Democrat, Kerry Kilcannon, who wins a close race for the presidency. And one of the other major characters is named, in all seriousness, Chad.

The chief justice of the Supreme Court (an older, more embittered version of William Rehnquist) is so upset at the prospect of another Democratic administration that he chokes on his own bile and dies of a stroke while giving the oath of office to Kilcannon on Inauguration Day. That allows Kilcannon the unexpected luxury of altering the ideological balance of the court at the beginning of his term.

His choice for chief justice, if confirmed, would be the first woman to hold that post--Caroline Masters, a federal appellate judge in California. Opposing her is Macdonald Gage (a more personable version of Jesse Helms), the Senate majority leader, whose motto is “no judicial activists, no liberals on crime, no red hots for abortion,” and who, in any case, plans to run against Kilcannon in four years.

Gage’s chief GOP rival is Chad Palmer, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will hold the hearing on Masters’ confirmation. Palmer (a younger, sexier John McCain) heroically endured kidnapping and torture by Islamic extremists in Beirut. He favors campaign finance reform--unlike Gage--and is willing to give Kilcannon’s nominee a fair shake.

Meanwhile, Masters’ former law clerk, Sarah Dash, is pushing a case that threatens to bring the inflammatory issue of abortion to the Supreme Court just in time for Masters to rule on it. Dash represents Mary Ann Tierney, a pregnant 15-year-old whose fetus has been found to be hydrocephalic. Probably, though not certainly, it will be born without a brain; and the major operation required to deliver it may prevent Mary Ann from having more children.

Mary Ann wants an abortion. Her Catholic parents refuse to grant the permission that a new law, the Protection of Life Act, requires for late-term procedures. So, with Dash’s help, she sues to have this (fictional) law declared unconstitutional. Successive judges rule against her, and the case moves on toward a collision with Masters’ ambitions and Kilcannon’s hopes.

Everybody has a secret. Masters’ “niece,” raised by a sister, is actually her daughter, born out of wedlock and given up for adoption. The president’s girlfriend, Lara Costello, aborted Kilcannon’s child when she was married to somebody else. Even Palmer, the soul of integrity, has something he’d prefer to keep hidden from the likes of Mace Taylor, Gage’s conduit for soft money and an expert at digging up dirt on political enemies.

Patterson structures the narrative so that Mary Ann’s case and Masters’ confirmation build to simultaneous climaxes. Whose secret will be uncovered first, we wonder, and which will be most damaging?

It would be unfair to say that “Protect and Defend” is uninteresting as fiction. It’s an absorbing story, fast-paced for its length. But what’s interesting about it isn’t its language or characters so much as its journalistic virtues--its political savvy, its descriptions of courtroom maneuvering and Senate procedure, its survey of arguments for and against late-term abortion and parental consent, in which Dash’s opponent is a worthy one: Mary Ann’s father, a law professor and pro-life philosopher.

What Patterson gives us is an insider’s view--no surprise, when we look at his list of sources: “President Bill Clinton, who shared his thoughts, and opened doors . . . another old friend, President George Bush . . . Sen. Barbara Boxer . . . Sen. Bob Dole, by common consensus one of our greatest Senate majority leaders . . . Alan Dershowitz . . . Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit . . . NATO Cmdr. Gen. Joseph Ralston . . . my fellow novelist and valued friend Defense Secretary William Cohen,” and so on and on.