Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (29 page)

 
          
 
It was troublesome. Difficult. Fascinating.
Scary. Heady.

 
          
 
He reread the NSC draft of the toast.
Diplomatic platitudes galloping on a field of boundless praise. He underlined a
couple of useful statistics, then set the draft aside. He turned on his IBM
Correcting Selectric III, rolled a sheet of paper around the platen and
straightened it, flexed his fingers and held them poised above the humming
keyboard. He felt like Robert Stack at the controls of a B-29, about to embark
on a mission in Twelve O'Clock High; like Matthew Broderick tapping into the
Pentagon's nuclear codes in War Games.

 
          
 
He began to type.

 
          
 
An hour later, he was finished. The speech was
still four hundred words long. It had to be. ("I will have
four-hundred-word toasts," the President insisted, "four paragraphs
long, with four sentences to a paragraph, four words to a sentence and four
letters to a word. I won't have the goddamn duchess passing out in her
Jell-0.") But otherwise, it bore no resemblance to the NSC draft.

 
          
 
The light-hearted comparison of Banda's
weather to
Washington
's was gone. Burnham had decided that there
should be no comparison of Banda with anything in the
United States
.

 
          
 
In its stead was a reference to the length of
the pasha's journey and recognition of the fact that issues of great moment
were always more fruitfully discussed face-to-face.

 
          
 
Instead of a recitation of Banda's
relationship with the U.S., the President would (respectfully, not
condescendingly) refer to Banda's youth as a nation and express his hope that
the pasha would look to older nations for examples of wise leadership—touchy,
but phrased so delicately (Burnham applauded himself) that only a master of
fancied slights could take offense.

 
          
 
The body of the speech detailed the agreement
that the President and the pasha would be working to achieve. It contained
phrases like "mutual interest" and "bulwark of freedom" and
gave the President the chance to (as Burnham knew he would) ad-lib about the
great strides in education, health and social welfare that Banda would
undoubtedly make with the bonanza from its new-found wealth. (This would be the
President's hedge against the day when and if the pasha was unmasked as a
vicious tyrant. "He swore up and down to me that he was going to pump that
money into social programs," the President would say. "What was I
gonna do, call the man a liar? Look how long it took John Kennedy to get wise to
Fidel Castro.")

 
          
 
There was no praise for Banda, nor for the
pasha himself. Burnham opted to praise Banda's people, some 30,000 rice
farmers, banana growers and sugarcane workers. Many of them had but to look
over their shoulders to see the Bronze Age, and the vast majority were
illiterate. Their deities were the very practical gods of sun, rain, moon and
fire. They were afflicted by leprosy, rickets, beriberi, yaws, dengue and most
of the other wasting and rotting diseases. But Burnham referred to none of
that: He called them good, simple. Godfearing people whose lives would probably
be changed by affluence but who, the President would pray, would retain their
basic virtues.

 
          
 
Finally, there was the toast—to Banda, to the
people of Banda, to the opportunities for the people of Banda, to cooperation
with Banda, and—almost, but not quite, as an afterthought—to the pasha of
Banda.

 
          
 
Burnham was proud. The toast was good. It said
what he wanted to say, albeit mostly by omission. A perceptive diplomat or an
astute reporter would be able to read between the lines and realize that the
pasha was a man the President intended to feed with a long spoon.

 
          
 
He gave the toast to Dyanna to type clean and
in delivery form—triple-spaced, wide margins, each new statement beginning a
new line, every place name and proper name phoneticized ("BAHN-da,"
"BAH-bar SOOM-bahay-MEER"). Later, after the President had approved
the text, it would be typed on heavy bond on the speech typewriter. Then he
returned to his desk to ponder the cover memo he would send to the President.

 
          
 
The memo was more of a challenge to Burnham
than the speech itself. He had to appear informed but not presumptuous —after
all, the National Security Council was a team of professional experts, and he
but a petty scribe—helpful but not pushy—a writer's franchise was to enunciate,
not formulate, policy—confident but not critical—the NSC draft was first-class,
of course, but perhaps a few altered phrases would better convey the
President's message.

 
          
 
The memo could contain no slips, no errors, no
double-entendres. Communicating with the President was an unforgiving art.
There was no such thing as a confidential—let alone secret—communication. It
was seen, first, by a secretary, then (more often than not) by anyone who
happened to be in the room with the President when he read it, then by anyone
with whom the President chose to check the missive's accuracy, then
(inevitably) by Epstein, then, finally, by the archivists who had to find a
slot for it in the vast mountain of Presidential papers that would eventually
repose in a multimillion-dollar Winslow library in Ohio. A simple memo could
become a footnote to history, and the careless writer who let slip an offhand
remark or a lame witticism or a sly barb at a staff rival ran the risk of
becoming a carbuncle on the ass of posterity.

 
          
 
Burnham wrote and rewrote, crushing discarded
attempts into paper balls that he aimed at his wastebasket and that invariably
missed since most of the mouth of the wastebasket was covered by the shredder.

 
          
 
When at last he had a document he liked, he
pulled a clean sheet of White House stationery from his desk. "The White
House, Washington," was all it said. Nice understatement. He intended to
type the final draft of the memo himself, partly because he often rewrote when
he retyped, but also because he felt proprietary toward the memo: It was his,
his statement, his position, his first foray into the no man's land of policy.

 
          
 
He hesitated briefly before applying the
ultimate classification slug. It was not to be used lightly. Staffers had been
chastised, even demoted, for scattering it indiscriminately about the
Executive, treating it like a tool to enhance their own stature. Burnham had
never used it at all, except in jest to the other writers, knowing that it
would humbug no one but the archivists. It wasn't that the classification was
particularly effective, but rather that it was regarded as a privilege reserved
for the exalted.

 
          
 
What the hell . . . This was a memo based on a
Top Secret CIA paper that accused a head of state of being a homicidal
pyromaniac. If this wasn't an appropriate occasion for the ultimate slug, what
was?

 
          
 
So he typed the portentous words: EYES ONLY.

 
          
 
EYES ONLY

 
          
 
THE WHITE HOUSE

 
          
 
Washington

 
          
 
Memo to the President

 
          
 
from: Timothy Y. Burnham

 
          
 
re: Banda toast tonight

 
          
 
Here is a new draft of tonight's toast to the
pasha of Banda.

 
          
 
The President's instincts were acute: The
pasha is not a man with whom the President should appear to be on friendly
personal terms. He is a man of unstable violent personality, and there is
evidence that he has slaughtered many of his own people.

 
          
 
I believe that this draft acknowledges the
need for cooperation between the
U.S.
and Banda without, in any way, endorsing
the pasha himself or his lunatic views.

 
          
 
The President should be aware that the pasha
has several wives, of whom three will be at the dinner. It is important that
the President avoid dancing with any of the pasha's wives, since the pasha
might, on mercurial whim, offer a wife as a gift to the President. Declining
such a gift from a man who believes he is God incarnate could be extremely
awkward.

 
          
 
Burnham was pleased. The memo flattered the
President without criticizing the NSC. It documented the case against the pasha
without going into such lurid detail that the President would worry that he had
been suckered by staff flakes into breaking bread with a dimestore Hitler. And
it demonstrated that Burnham was, as advertised, well-wired and savvy enough to
propose a way for the President to avoid unnecessary embarrassment.

 
          
 
He buzzed for Dyanna. When he gave her the
memo, he saw her face light up as she saw the EYES ONLY slug. Then, discreetly,
she looked away.

 
          
 
"Make two copies," he said,
"then put the original with the original of the toast, and—''

 
          
 
"Take them to Mr. Cobb."

 
          
 
"No." Burnham had decided to route
the memo directly to the President, as he felt he had Cobb's tacit leave to do:
Time was short; the President had requested Burnham by name, so Cobb would not
presume to edit the draft before the President saw it. And the normal routing
procedure would place a draft with the NSC, from which aggrieved protests were
bound to erupt. "Walk them over to Evelyn Witt and tell her we're on a
tight deadline."

 
          
 
"Yes, sir!" Dyanna smiled a smile
that Burnham thought she would have reserved for a marriage proposal from the
Secretary of State.

 
          
 
Burnham looked at his watch. It was
11:40
. "I'm going to play squash. I should
be back by one or a little after."

 
          
 
"Right!" Dyanna wheeled as
enthusiastically as a
Parris
Island
recruit and
marched out of the office.

 
          
 
Watching her go, Burnham thought: There's
something pathetic about this. Today we are rich in the coin of the realm. The
President likes us, and so we exist. We are affirmed. Tomorrow he may not like
us, and we will be denied, we will not exist.

 
          
 
And that kind of thinking, he said to himself
as he stood and pushed his chair back, is a waste of time. You want to play the
game, you play by the rules.

 
          
 
He kept his squash bag and racket in a cabinet
beneath a bookcase. He opened the cabinet. It was empty. It took him a second
to remember: Of course it was empty. He had left his racket and clothes in his
room, four stories above the squash courts.

 
          
 
His room. It didn't sound right, didn't feel
right. Wasn't right.

 
          
 
He hadn't thought about Sarah all morning, and
now that he did, his stomach began to hurt. He felt guilty about not having
thought about her, and stupid for feeling guilty because he hadn't done
anything— she had done it all—and cowardly for feeling helpless because there
had to be something he could do—he wasn't going to let fifteen years of
marriage go down the chute because of a misunderstanding— and tormented because
he knew that it wasn't just a misunderstanding—that was only the trigger, Sarah
was falling (had fallen?) out of love with him because she couldn't separate
her emotional life from her political life—and angry because that wasn't fair,
and confused because maybe it was fair to use a person's attitude toward the
Big Issues as a basis for an emotional attachment, and frustrated because why
should stuff like apartheid be allowed to wreck his marriage, where is it
written that we all have to be our brother's keeper all the goddamn time?—and
determined that he was going to fight.