 The protagonist of the novel is Attorney General Christopher Collins, whom Wallace modeled on Ramsey Clark, who, while in that office, became one of Hoover's bitterest enemies.At the time when the novel begins, his predecessor, former United States Army Colonel Noah Baxter, is ill, and indeed dying, from a stroke he had suffered.Tynan, the novel's primary antagonist, is responsible for having proposed the 35th Amendment and sold it to Andrew Wadsworth, President of the United States, and the Congress.