RALEIGH - Where does Jubal Kane end and Jesse Helms begin?

That is a question readers will likely be asking about the yet-to-be-published novel by Carter Wrenn, a longtime political strategist for Helms and other Republicans.

In conservative circles, Helms is a revered figure -- a principled fighter who helped bring about the Reagan revolution.

But Wrenn, in creating a fictional Helms-like figure named Jubal Kane, paints a more nuanced and even critical portrait.

Wrenn gives the Helms-like figure his due. But he also portrays him as a flesh-and-blood politician who has few scruples about using racial divisions to advance his cause, and who became the leading light of the Christian Right not because he had a road-to-Damascus experience, but for more pragmatic political reasons.

"Jubal Kane is a really flawed figure," Wrenn said in a recent interview. "His virtues are that he is intelligent, he is courageous, and he's dynamic, and he's articulate. His vices are that he is deceitful, and he's vain, and he's mean-spirited.

"But at the end of the day, I say about Jesse as I say about Jubal at the end of the book. The things that he [Jubal] did contributed a really good thing in American history. I think that is very true of Jesse."

Few people know Helms and his politics as well as Wrenn, who ran Helms' Raleigh-based political operation, the National Congressional Club, for 20 years.

Wrenn was operating the levers of the Helms machine when it rescued Ronald Reagan's political career in the 1976 GOP presidential primary. He was there when the machine re-elected Helms in 1978, 1984 and 1990 and when it got John East and Lauch Faircloth elected to the Senate. Wrenn was present when the Helms machine mowed down Democrat after Democrat -- former Insurance Commissioner John Ingram, Sens. Robert Morgan and Terry Sanford, Gov. Jim Hunt, and former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt.

And he was there when the Congressional Club raised an estimated $100 million for the conservative cause, and Helms emerged as a national leader of what became known as The New Right. Wrenn was the No. 2 man in the Club, reporting to Raleigh attorney Tom Ellis.

What it was really like

Now Wrenn is telling the story of Helms and the political machine -- sort of.

Why now?

And why a novel?

Wrenn, 54, a slow-talking, cigar-chomping man, is largely retired from politics. So he no longer has to worry about offending his colleagues. The Helms machine fell apart amid internal feuding in the mid- '90s. Wrenn's last major campaign was in 2000, when he tried unsuccessfully to get former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot elected governor.

Wrenn does some consulting for interest groups such as physicians who oppose Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. That leaves him time to spend with his wife and two daughters and pursue two interests -- history and writing. He has completed two books -- the Helmsian novel and a biography of Stonewall Jackson, the legendary Confederate general.

Wrenn did well enough in politics and in business that he does not slave away in some poor writer's garret. His office, in a North Raleigh office building, is large and grand enough for a prime minister. It is lined floor to ceiling with well-thumbed histories.

Those looking for deep meaning in why he is writing the novel, Wrenn says, will be disappointed. His politics are still conservative. He doesn't regret his past life as a hard-nosed political operative. Nor is he trying to settle old scores, he says, although he acknowledges that some people may see it that way. Helms and Wrenn parted on bad terms when the Congressional Club dissolved, and they haven't spoken in years.

Wrenn was part of one of the most powerful political machines in Southern history -- one that helped give rise to the current era of national Republican power -- and the amateur historian in him wanted to tell what it was really like.

"So much of what you see in politics is the tip of the iceberg," Wrenn said.

Wrenn said he hopes readers will draw two lessons from the novel -- that character matters and that backstage politics "is like watching civilization with its pants down."

Wrenn wrestled with whether to write a work of fiction or nonfiction. He said he was influenced by "The Killer Angels," the 1975 Michael Shaara novel about Gettysburg, and Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel "All the King's Men," about Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. Writing a novel, he said, gave him greater freedom to deal with people's motivations and to put in his own opinions.

Plot closely follows '70s history

The pages of the novel, which Wrenn's agent is now shopping to publishers, are filled with characters who closely resemble leading North Carolina figures -- from Ellis to former Gov. Jim Holshouser. The plot in the book closely follows actual events in the 1970s.

In a few instances, names of actual politicians such as Reagan and President Gerald Ford are used.

The roman a clef -- a novel in which actual persons, places and events are depicted in fictional guise -- is called "The Trail of the Serpent." The novel is filled with backroom wheeling and dealing, back-stabbing, preening egos and even a few chaste sexual romps -- although it should be noted that the sex scenes involve young aides, not the Helms-like figure.

Wrenn hopes the novel will be the first in a trilogy charting the rise and fall of a powerful Raleigh-based political organization that dominated state politics for two decades and played a pivotal role in elevating Reagan to the presidency.

Wrenn, who gave a copy of the novel to The News & Observer, readily acknowledges that the novel is based on actual events and real people.

"A lot of the stories in there are based on real stories," he said. "But I fictionalized those characters and I changed some of the events."

It seems unlikely that Helms, 84, who is suffering from vascular dementia, will ever read the novel. His wife, Dot Helms, declined to comment.

Ellis, 85, expressed surprise that one of the novel's central figures seems based on him.

"This is the first time I heard he is doing a book that was even remotely connected with politics," Ellis said.

When told the book gives a mixed portrayal of both him and Helms, Ellis shrugged it off.

"I'm too old to worry about what anybody else is doing," Ellis said.

"I'm not surprised at most anything that happens. I hope it doesn't reflect on anybody to any degree that is negative."

'Based on Helms [but] not Helms'

Much of the interest in the novel will center on Jubal Kane.

"It's clearly related and to some degree based on Helms," Wrenn said. "But it's not Helms. I gave Jubal characteristics that Helms does not have. I put words in his mouth that Helms did not say."

In the book, Kane is the son of a tobacco farmer. Helms is the son of a small-town police chief.

Most of the novel takes place during the most consequential presidential primary in North Carolina history. In 1976, Ford had wracked up a series of primary wins and seemed on his way to winning the GOP nomination.

Reagan pulled a major upset in North Carolina when Helms' organization put its muscle behind him. Although Reagan did not win the nomination in 1976, the North Carolina primary revived his campaign and gave him the momentum he needed to win the presidency in 1980. The Reagan victory contributed to the national Republican conservative tide of the last generation.

Reagan's chief issue in 1976 was his opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty. But he was also helped by a leaflet put out by the Helms organization that touched on race. In the novel, Kane and company distribute a leaflet in which Ford was quoted as saying he would consider a fictional U.S. senator named Rutledge, the only African-American member of the Senate, as his vice presidential pick.

In reality, Ford said the same thing at the time about Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the only African-American member of the Senate.

"All that really mattered on that flyer was Rutledge's picture," Wrenn writes. "Because he was black. That sounds harsh. And it is. It sounds racist. And it is. There's no way to take the stink off that hog, it was wrong but it happened in a blink of an eye."

In real life, Reagan ordered the leaflet stopped when it was brought to his attention.

Wrenn says Helms and the club used race in "a pretty ruthless way."

"What I was trying to say was, 'Here is how race is used with calculation as a political issue without regard to the morality of it,' " he said. "With the exception of Reagan, who said, 'Stop it,' everybody in this book is in favor of that."

Bracing for conservative criticism

Wrenn now suggests that Helms and his advisers were on the wrong side of history on the question of race.

In the book, the Helms-like figure was a typical churchgoing Southern Baptist most of his life. Then his political organization conducted a poll asking whether voters were more likely to vote for a candidate who is a committed Christian. Soon Jubal was using "committed Christian" as a tag line in his TV ads.

"Jubal got religion in about the worst way a man can," Wrenn writes. "From a television ad."

Wrenn says the story pretty well tracks reality.

He expects criticism from fellow conservatives who feel he is being disloyal to Helms.

"Sure, I'm worried about that," Wrenn said. "I think some people are going to feel that way. ... What I hope that most people will get out of it is that we always wondered about the truth behind it, and now we know it."

Wrenn said the book is about what he did when he was young. He said there are many things he feels good about, but there are things that were -- in hindsight -- "really rotten."

"Its not a question of bitterness," Wrenn said. "It's a question: 'What did we learn about all of this?' "

A former Helms adviser, Charlie Black, a Washington-based consultant who appears in the book as the thinly disguised figure Cassie Brown, said he had heard that a Wrenn novel was in the works.

"I'm very curious," Black said. "Carter is a very smart guy. He is a good writer. It might be fun. I hope Helms still wins all the elections."

And if he disagrees with the book?

"It sounds like I have the luxury," Black said, "of saying it's all fiction if I don't like it."