Capable of Honor (37 page)
Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Spies & Politics, #Thrillers
“You will understand,” he said, and his tone became heavier and more portentous, the tone that some of his more acid colleagues referred to as “Walter’s advising-God voice,” “that in the context of the circumstances in which we meet tonight, it is as a challenge that I accept it.”
At this there was a stirring and a restlessness in the audience, an eager leaning-forward, an exchange of glances, an anticipatory sucking-in-of-breaths, an excited wave of now-he’s-going-to-let-’em-have-its. And so, without further preliminary, he did.
“This nation tonight is in danger as grave—if not graver—than any it has faced in my lifetime. In the short span of seventy-two hours the Administration in Washington has invaded a small, far-off, defenseless nation; cast two vetoes which have for all practical purposes destroyed the United Nations; and defied the astounded and justifiably enraged opinion of the world.
“It is quite an accomplishment,” he said with a grim little smile that brought a scattering of rather nervous amusement from the audience, “for so short a time in the life of a country.
“It took us decades to build up world respect.
“It has taken us three days to tear it down.
“We have heard,” he said, and a cold contempt came into his voice, “a great deal about honor in these fateful hours. There are various interpretations of this word. My own is based upon the belief that it is honorable to adhere to collective security, honorable to uphold the United Nations, honorable to continue a record of international decency and respect for the opinions of mankind, honorable to refrain from the use of force, particularly in our dealings with smaller countries and particularly where we are not ourselves directly threatened.
“These are what honor means to me. I ask you,” he said, and a challenging demand came into his voice as he raised it for emphasis, “if you agree with my interpretation.”
There was again a little nervous hesitation, and this time it was not Bob Leffingwell who converted it to applause. But somebody did, and after a second it rose and filled the room with a defiant and excited air.
“And so, I think,” he resumed after a suitable pause, “do most honorable and decent Americans.
“Now, Madame Chairman, Governor (and he gave this word a slight but unmistakable emphasis that sent a delicious little thrill through many in his audience), distinguished guests, what are we confronted with tonight?
“I say to you we are confronted with nothing less than the end of American influence in the world and the end of world civilization as we know it.
“I say to you we are confronted with the desperate need to find a man who can lead us out of this situation and back to sanity, without which we and the world would perish.
(“You tell ’em, pal!” Fred Van Ackerman said loudly to LeGage Shelby, who nodded solemnly, and somewhere someone yelled, “Yeaay!” A wild surge of applause and excitement rolled up from the glittering tables.)
“I say to you,” Walter Dobius said, abruptly grave, abruptly solemn, “that without such a man I do not, in all honesty, see hope for us in the months and years ahead.”
He paused and reached down for a glass of water, which Patsy placed quickly in his hand. From it he drank and then, with a curious little motion that brought renewed excited stirrings from his audience, lifted it, in what almost seemed to be a toast, in the general direction of Governor Jason before he passed it gravely back to her.
“Of the errors of judgment and misjudgment which have brought us to this pass,” he went on slowly, “of the misguided misleaders who have presided in state (there was a startled, knowing laugh, but he ignored it), over this abrupt destruction of America’s historic role of peacekeeper in the world, I see no reason to talk tonight. We all know who they are: we all know how sadly they have betrayed their solemn mission to protect and preserve the United States. Their contemporaries abhor them, history will judge them. Let us tonight regard them with sorrow, pity, and horror, but do not let the contemplation of their fearful errors divert us from keeping our eyes squarely upon the future and squarely upon what must be done to save it for us and for mankind.
“Particularly,” he said with a calm yet heavy emphasis, “do not let them divert us from our great task of finding the one to lead us safely from this perilous situation.
“What,” he asked quietly, and a sudden renewed tension and silence settled upon the room, “should be the qualifications of such a man?
“Firstly, it seems to me, he should be one deeply and sincerely dedicated to human decency, human integrity, and human honor—and when I say honor,” he said with a dry little smile, “I mean true honor, not speechifying honor.
(“By damn, he’s telling ’em!” Senator Van Ackerman said with a grin to ’Gage Shelby.)
“He should be one who believes in America’s historic role of moderator and mediator in the world.
“He should be one who honors America’s commitments to the United Nations and to collective security.
“He should be one who will always negotiate honorably first, and only as a last resort—
the
very last resort—turn to force for the solution of any international problem.
“He should be one who truly believes in a liberal and progressive policy for this nation in all her affairs, domestic as well as foreign.
“He should be one who has had the opportunity to serve either as the head of some great private enterprise, such as the management of a corporate empire—or as the head of some great public enterprise, such as the leadership of a major State of the Union—or preferably”—and the next word brought a roar of approval as Ted Jason tried to look interested yet unconcerned and found the feat almost beyond his abilities—“both.
“He should be one whom his countrymen know and love and trust.
“He should be one who makes up his own mind, on his own judgments, without turning to incompetent and ill-starred advisers who tell him, ‘Cry war!’ when his nation and the world beg for peace.
“Does America,” he asked, and again that tense, devouring silence seized the room, “have such a man? I believe it does.
(“Tell us, Waller boy!” the extra-drunk one cried out in the silence and there was a burst of laughter, but tense, nervous. Walter picked it up at once.)
“Do I need to tell you?” he asked, and Bob Munson murmured to Dolly, “Well, that’s saved him from naming names. I wondered how he was going to handle it.” And once again he and Bob Leffingwell bowed gravely to each other and winked.
“Do I need to tell you?” Walter demanded and the audience roared,
“No!”
“Do I need to point him out?”
“No!”
“Is there anyone here who has any question who he is?”
“NO!”
“Get behind him, then!” Walter cried as the sound began to build ever more frantically against his words. “Work for him, then!”—the sound grew—“Nominate him!”—there was a roar of endorsement—
“Elect him!”
—and the sound burst at last into its full animal rapacity, frantic, insistent, all-devouring. First one and then another and then, swiftly, all, were on their feet, shouting, applauding, pounding on tables, pounding on each other, laughing, crying, uttering incoherent sounds. If Governor Jason had moved at that moment the event would have passed beyond sanity into some other realm; but that realm, he knew, must be saved for the convention, if ever. He did not dare move now. Very carefully he sat as though frozen and so did Ceil, fixed smiles on their faces, prisoners already though they still hoped against hope they might somehow yet be able to stay free.
Presently, when it had gone on long enough (“Ten minutes, thirteen seconds, I make it,” CBS said to NBC. “Fifteen seconds, mine says,” NBC amended.) Walter raised his hand for silence. Finally, reluctantly, it was granted.
“My friends,” he said gravely, “I shall say no more tonight. The crisis grows, the need is urgent, the way is clear. Let all who love America rally to the cause.
“Destiny—and,” he added with a heavy emphasis—“honor—require no less.”
And he sat down. And again the room roared. And again the Governor and his lady sat frozen while Helen-Anne’s protestations were lost in the tumult. Senator Munson and Bob Leffingwell exchanged their last quizzical glance, Fred Van Ackerman and LeGage Shelby grinned excitedly at one another, and Ambassadors, government officials, Walter’s colleagues, and all, found themselves swept along in the wild, consuming tide.
And then presently the audience began to break up, many beginning to shove their way toward the head table to shake hands with the Governor, so that soon there was an enormous push and crush at the front of the room. Responding now, as he knew he must, he and Ceil leaned forward, reached down, shook hand after eager hand thrust up to them from the happy, exuberant, emotionally and alcoholically excited mob below. In the stir and shove of it, few noticed when the Governor straightened up and tilted his head back and to one side to listen to the words of a Secret Service man who had approached from behind the platform and laid a calm, insistent hand upon his arm.
"Yes, what is it?” he asked, still waving and smiling to cover the interruption.
“The President wants you to come to the White House right away,” the Secret Service man murmured. “We have a car downstairs.”
“Right,” Ted said, and with one last wave at the crowd, which uttered a disappointed groan as it realized he was leaving, he whispered the news to Ceil and Patsy. “Oh, dear,” Patsy said with a stricken look. “You don’t suppose it’s”—“I wouldn’t be surprised,” her brother said tersely. “I'll see you two at the house.” Then in a flash he was hurried out and away by the Secret Service man and a colleague who seemed to materialize from the wall.
“What was that?” Walter demanded harshly of Ceil and Patsy, but neither would tell him.
In some puzzlement and confusion but still aglow with the excitement of the anointing of a candidate whom most of them devoutly believed in, the audience dispersed into little eagerly gossiping groups and moved slowly out. In the jostle Helen-Anne happened to come alongside Cullee Hamilton. He paused and offered her his arm.
“What did you think of that?” she demanded as they resumed their slow progress through the crowd. He shrugged. “About what we expected, wasn’t it?” “How are you going to stop him?” she asked. He looked down at her with the quick, knowledgeable glance of political Washington. “Only one man can, I think,” he said, nodding in the general direction of Pennsylvania Avenue. “And that, only by telling him flatly. No.”
But if the Governor of California had any idea that this was what awaited him at a White House outwardly hushed and deserted but inwardly quivering with tension, he was soon disabused. His was not the only limousine to drive straight to the Diplomatic Entrance on the south side of the White House. Orrin was just alighting from one when Ted arrived, two of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense were getting out of another, the Under Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs descended from yet another. Babble greeted him as he entered the beautiful old house that has seen so much of a nation’s hopes and agony. He had time only to exchange a few quick greetings with others as baffled as himself, only time to realize suddenly that, whatever it was, the President was seeing to it that he was committed from the start, only time to realize once again with a surprised, ironic little smile that it was wise not to underestimate Harley, when the White House usher appeared at the head of the stairs and said gravely, “Gentlemen, the President will see you now.”
And then he and all of them knew what it was that had brought them there, and knew also that, quite possibly, it really did not matter in the long run what such as Walter Dobius said or did not say, since what would happen now really lay in the hearts and minds of a very few men.
Across the room the Governor of California met without flinching the steady eyes of the Secretary of State, knowing, as he could see Orrin did, that in the last analysis probably only three of these really counted; and knowing also that in all probability their future and that of their country had been decided by the events of the last three furious days and this ominous night; and that things were frozen now into a pattern that could not be broken by any of them.
Now they must move forward as history dictated, no longer—though each of them thought defiantly in his heart that he, at least, would somehow remain so—free agents to do as they would.
***
Book Two
The President’s Book
***
Chapter 1
The handling by Walter’s world of the state funeral of the American dead from Gorotoland, and the simultaneous story out of Panama that Felix Labaiya had finally moved to seize the country and the Canal, was, of its kind, a classic.
In some calmer century there might have been time for the student to observe, during the memorial ceremonies at the Capitol which held the attention of the nation and the world for forty-eight somber hours, how respectfully the dead were treated and yet how suavely, in what hushed and fitting tones, the blame for their brutal demise was somehow removed from those who had killed them and placed upon the President of the United States … how tenderly and with what dignified sorrow the cameras dwelt upon the faces of the bereaved, and yet with what loving attention they somehow seemed to keep coming back again and again to the gravely handsome visage of the Governor of California, so that he frequently appeared to be the only mourner present … how meticulously and with what careful attention most of the dignitaries were noted, yet how casually and almost absent-mindedly the President and the Secretary of State were passed over in fleeting glimpses and casual comments, so that the viewer or reader could almost be excused if he somehow had the hazy impression that they really weren’t there at all … and how profoundly, with what deep sorrow, but with what shrewd and subtle slantings under the shroud, the various “teams,” the various “roundups,” the various discussion groups composed of Our Correspondent From Here, Our Reporter From There, and Frankly Unctuous the Anchor Man From The Home Office In New York, were able to link Gorotoland and Panama, and in the hush of benediction use them both to beat the Administration over the head.
Thousands of churches were open, millions upon millions worshiped, the President’s desire for a Day of Dedication was amply fulfilled; yet from the members of Walter’s world there poured a steady counter-stream of cutting-down, weakening the effect, subtly but effectively destroying the mood.
It was one of their finest hours, and they gave it their best.
So also did they for Panama. The news of Felix Labaiya’s coup had not really surprised them much more than it had the government, for there had been fairly clear intimations during the preceding week; but no innocent citizen would ever know it, to hear the reports. Shocked and shattered by America’s response. Our Correspondent, Our Reporter, and Frankly Unctuous The Anchor Man announced with a grave dismay the sudden explosion of one more act of inexplicable violence by the United States. The shock and dismay were compounded a hundredfold because, as one of them put it, “in this nightmare world produced by hasty and impulsive action in Africa, the United States Government seems to be heading straight for a repetition six thousand miles away in Latin America.”
Endlessly Walter’s world repeated the story of the midnight White House meeting, exactly as before; the apparent determination to go it alone once again despite the outraged and embittered outcries from around the world, exactly as before.
“They say repetition is boring,” said Frankly Unctuous crisply as he brought to a close the fifth unanimously condemnatory round table he hosted for his network on that fantastically repetitive weekend filled with the ritual of one war and the bulletins of another, “but when repetition could mean the death of a great nation as well as the world’s hope of survival, it perhaps behooves us to pay attention.”
So they did, and the effort they had expended upon Gorotoland began to seem only rehearsal before they were through. Again there were the violent editorials, the savage commentaries, the headlines that twisted, the news stories that half-told, the photographs that misrepresented, the programs that smeared and subtly undermined—all the customary weapons of Walter’s world striving desperately to hold to the last vestige of sanity as they believed it to be. With a mounting hysteria they demanded that the United States submit the Panamanian issue to the United Nations, though the President had announced in his statement early Monday morning that the United States would again use the veto if any attempt were made to interfere with preventive action against what he described as “the clearest and most direct attack yet made upon the safety and security of the Western Hemisphere.” With an equal fury they demanded the intervention of the Organization of American States, though that argumentative and uncertain body was again wallowing helplessly in its own mutual suspicions and consternations. The CIA report listing the presence of Soviet and Chinese Communists in Felix’s “Government of the Panamanian People’s Liberation Movement” was treated with scorn and skepticism in many major publications and programs, almost completely ignored in others. The President’s statement that the United States had no choice but to meet an immediate situation with immediate action was dismissed by The Greatest Publication That Absolutely Ever Was as “an empty and obvious cover-up for American aggression, of a type the world has seen before in the Caribbean area.”
Repetitions there were, all right: the repetitions of Walter’s world, bound and determined that it would force the facts of an ugly century to conform to its own fond beliefs of what the United States should do, if it had to slant those facts, twist them, corrupt them, or suppress them altogether in order to make its case.
Confronted with this continuation, and in many cases escalation, of the furious attacks upon him, the portly man with the kindly face who sits at the big desk in the haunted house does not find it too difficult, on this morning three weeks after the start of hostilities in Panama, to maintain a relatively calm approach to the problems that confront him. He has called a press conference for 4 P.M. this afternoon, his first in almost a month, and in the hours between he is preparing firmly yet unhurriedly to do the things that must be done before he makes the statement he is planning for that time. Some will be pleasant, some painful, some, perhaps, a curious mixture, yet all, he feels, are necessary.
He looks forward to them with interest, for he is, among other things, an amateur but increasingly experienced student of human nature. It always intrigues him to observe how it will react to the pressures of ambition, disappointment, and hope.
Harley M. Hudson at sixty-two has been President of the United States for a year, and having satisfied himself at Geneva in the first week of his magistracy that he was equal to its demands, he is not about to shiver and shake now, either when he faces major decisions or when he is under attack. It is true that few Presidents have received the condemnation that has been his in the days since he moved in Gorotoland, ordered the vetoes, and then, three days later, found himself forced to move in Panama. But it is also true that few have been more comfortably supported by the conviction that what they have done has been the only thing possible if the country is to survive.
It would have been neater, he sometimes reflects with a rueful smile, if history had given the world time to assimilate Gorotoland before he was called upon to throw Panama in its face: yet history in these times is not neat. Crisis crowds upon crisis, disaster tumbles upon disaster. History never pauses to give men breath before it renders new demands upon them. They find they have survived one challenge with reasonable heroism only to discover that new heroics are required before they have time to get a shave and shower. They no sooner put out one fire here than another bursts out there. A ham sandwich, a gulp of Coke, a quick cigarette, and Marlborough
s’a va t’en guerre
again. It is all rush, rush, rush and the devil eager and anxious to take the hindmost.
It is all, in fact, hectic, dangerous, traumatic and upsetting, and it imposes upon the sheer luck of rapid decision the burden of whether or not the country, and with it some semblance of a free and decent civilization in the world, will survive.
So there was no time in Panama, precious little in Gorotoland.
Things had to be done.
He did them.
Psychologically and emotionally, his countrymen are still reeling, particularly that small but highly influential number comprising what he, in common with many who have felt the sting of its self-righteous savaging, thinks of as “Walter’s world.” They pay him their disrespects every day in a thousand different fashions, some direct—“The President’s Policies Are Foolish,” one of Walter’s lesser colleagues had entitled a column yesterday; some more crablike—“President May Wish To Protect Associates’ Holdings in Panama,” Washington’s most famous hit-and-run artist had put it the day before—but the essential song is the same. With it, the corollaries: an increasingly bleary-eyed academic community, staggering through its umpteenth teach-in; earnest gentlemen of the cloth almost, though none quite, asking Jehovah to strike him dead; an occasional full-page ad, signed by the more self-conscious members of the cultural community, still appearing with a weary defiance in the
New York Times
. The opposition may be groggy, but it is as grimly determined to thwart his purposes as it ever was. Now, as a month ago, he and his policies remain the issue.
For a soul who really loves peace and quiet, he sometimes tells Lucille with a rather grim humor, destiny has certainly cast him in a strange and hardly believable role. The furniture manufacturer from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who inherited a small family business and parlayed it into fortune, and then into fame when he was chosen by a hard-pressed party to run for Governor, really never wanted anything but to have a nice family in a nice house on a nice street, lead a friendly and productive life, travel a little, do some fishing, read a book or two. Yet here he is, fulcrum of the earth, hero to many, monster to many more, leader of the world’s strongest nation and as such repository of the hopes or hatreds of most of mankind.
It has its ironies, and Harley Moore Hudson, though not all his critics or his friends give him credit for it, has the sort of mind that can appreciate them.
If he had to categorize that mind—and once, when he was a half-forgotten, uneasy Vice President,
Life
had asked him to do so for an essay it was preparing on his peculiar office—he would probably say “good-natured,” for that is, generally, what he considers it to be. He cannot remember ever having had any particular hatreds, ever having held any particular grudges. He rarely even gets annoyed enough to swear, and then it is usually a mild, “Holy Toledo!” which in the robust Senate always used to delight his more freely-spoken colleagues, and now in the White House is capable of injecting a note of startled amusement into the most somber discussions. Not even Gorotoland and Panama, not even Walter Dobius at his most savage, can provoke much more than some such mild response from the President: the expletive, such as it is, truly reflects his nature. He is not a man of great indignations—or, at least, not of noisy ones—and he is not one who feels, as do some in public life, that he must shout at the top of his lungs to convince the country that he means something. But the convictions are there.
For many years, though the record in Michigan was plain to those who knew him, this fact was overlooked or disbelieved in Washington. In Michigan, where he grew up as the son of an earnest Dutch immigrant running a small corner furniture store in Grand Rapids (expanded, before he died, by the addition of two branch stores), Harley was known as a steady, industrious child of an almost uniformly sunny disposition and a quietly determined personality. The oldest of three brothers and two sisters, he was what his Scotch-Irish mother called “my little top,” who seemed always to be spinning about the house or the school ground, going after what he wanted and humming with happiness and good will toward the world. Troubles were few and quickly forgotten, triumphs were modest but solidly grounded in the friendliness and encouragement of his teachers and contemporaries. He was not a brilliant student but he was a reliable one, who stood somewhere in the middle of his class scholastically, somewhere near the top in affectionate liking and regard. When his father died, Harley was seventeen and president of his high school student body. He had already decided that he would return after his graduation from the University of Michigan and enter the business. When he completed his studies he did so, assuming command from the junior partner into whose hands it had temporarily passed upon his father’s death.
In college his principal achievement, as he often told audiences when he was running for Governor, was to marry Lucille Breckenridge, even then a plump, rosy little soul who had been a class behind him. Theirs had been a mild but enduring courtship that had furnished placid companionship and much serene happiness, and still did. They had married as soon as he graduated, Lucille saying calmly that she didn’t need her degree anyway since she knew he would be a success in anything he did and so she would never have to make her own living. He had been both alarmed and flattered, but despite his innate caution about the future she had gone right ahead, and, as usual, had been correct. He has been a success, and she never will have to worry should anything happen to him. Her decision to devote herself to the running of a happy home and the rearing of two delightful daughters has proved to be the best possible for them both.
In a quiet, homebody way, however, she has been fully as much of a political help as Beth Knox to Orrin or Ceil Jason, in her wryly intelligent way, to Ted. Lucille has not been much of a one for campaigning or for making speeches, but she has put in appearances often enough to please the voters, and privately she has given him advice he has usually found to be sound and sensible. She has some instinct for brushing straight through all the rationalizations to get at the heart of things, and with it she also has a shrewd ability to judge human nature, particularly in its more ambitious aspects. It had taken him, for instance, some time to really size up Ted Jason, but it now seems to him that Lucille had pegged him right the first time. “He’s an opportunist,” she had said after they met the Jasons four years ago at a Governors’ Conference in Glacier National Park. “He may be a worrying one, but when the worry’s over, he doesn’t hesitate. You'll see.” It was an analysis that has come back often to the President’s mind in this last hectic month. Ted is still hesitating, the worry isn’t over yet. Which way will he jump?
