Capable of Honor (39 page)

So there is a good deal to bellow about, at the moment. And again he thinks grimly: Let ’em!

He smiles at himself as he sits down and presses the assorted buzzers that will summon his staff. Old Fearless Peerless is really eating fire this morning. Slow down, Harley, he tells himself, slow down. It will be a busy day, and this is no mood in which to begin it. He takes a deep breath, finds that it calms him considerably, and looks up with his usual unruffled smile as his secretary comes through the door.

“I have quite a few people I want to talk to today,” he says, “so you might as well get started on putting through the calls.”

While the first call is being arranged he thinks again, as he has so often in these past weeks, of the discussion that preceded Ted Jason’s rather wistful, genuinely envious comment upon his capacity to make decisions calmly. The hour previous had been a good testing ground, a crucible in which the bitter challenge of desperate events had shown most of his colleagues for what they were. Himself, Orrin, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, most of the Cabinet—the response had been almost automatic. It had not been quite so automatic with the Majority Leader, the Speaker, and the chairmen of the major Congressional committees.

“We’re getting the heat from home,” Bob Munson had said. The Speaker had nodded agreement.

“Seems like this scare talk from Walter and his pals is getting through to some of ’em. You saw what we did on the Gorotoland resolution. It reflected the way the mail’s been running. It was a leeettle close.”

“Hasn’t there been a turn?” the President asked. The Speaker shrugged.

“Oh, yes, some. But not enough yet to make the Hill feel really happy. We have a lot of skedaddlers up there, you know. Doesn’t take much to make some of ’em run for cover.”

“Some of them never get out from under it,” Senator Munson said tartly. “Panama on top of Gorotoland will really make them quiver.” He turned on the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a suddenness that made the senior Senator from Minnesota jump. “Isn’t that so, Tom?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure,” Tom August said in his customary timid, don’t-look-too-hard-at-me-I-don’t-know-anything manner. “I—I think there may be some question.”

“On Panama?” the President demanded. “Now, Tom, surely that’s an obvious enough case of national security being involved.”

“But Panama has a right to run her own affairs,” Senator August said with a surprising stubbornness. “And she has some good arguments on the Canal. I just don’t know whether we should barge in and—” His voice had trailed away, but he had looked, for Tom, surprisingly defiant.

“That’s the way it seems like to me, too, Mr. President,” Jawbone Swarthman blurted out. “Now this here may be a little old bitty crisis, possibly, it may upset us a little, but I know Felix, now, Mr. President. Why! Felix just wants what’s best for his country down there. He isn’t mad at
us,
Mr. President. He’ll sign up with us the minute you give him his rights down there. What we doin’ in his back yard anyhow, that’s the way it seems like to me!”

“You see what we mean, Mr. President,” Senator Munson remarked. “It’s complicating.…However, that doesn’t answer your question on the consensus here tonight. Yes, I’m for going in, I don’t think Felix leaves us any choice, do you, Bill?”

“Nope,” the Speaker said. “Let him have it.”

“And you, Tom and Jawbone?” the President inquired in a tone that brooked no evasion. Senator August blinked and looked about, rather like a worried rabbit. Representative Swarthman puffed and pouted and looked indignant; but finally they both nodded.

“I guess so,” Tom August said. “But it isn’t going to be any picnic!”

“Nobody said it was,” the President said shortly. “Orrin?” And even though no one in the room expected any surprises from the Secretary of State, there came an extra tension as they realized that of all who were being tested tonight, he and their visitor from California had the most to lose or gain.

“What would you expect me to say?” Orrin Knox inquired impatiently. “Of course we should go in. Of course we should meet the challenge. I just don’t see how anyone can hesitate. Again we face a situation, not nice theories about it. Certainly: act.” An ironic glint came into his eyes for a moment. “Nobody’s going to hang us any higher than we are now.”

“Governor?” the President said thoughtfully, and the attention of some forty men swung upon Ted Jason with an intensity he might have found frightening were he not already becoming used to it from voters who examined him as though their eyes would turn him inside out, if need be, to find his true essence.

“I invited you here,” the President said, “rather irregularly, probably, because of a fact none of us need blink, which is that you are potentially, and perhaps soon to be actively, a contender for this office.” He smiled without much humor. “I thought this would be an admirable chance for you to find out how it’s done. And also,” he added, quite seriously, “we need all the help we can get, and quite likely you can help.”

For a moment Governor Jason returned his gaze impassively. Then he smiled and spoke in a measured and careful voice.

“And also,” he said, “I can be committed to the Administration’s policy—which is another aspect none of us need blink.”

The President looked at him without expression for a moment. Then he gave him a little mock bow and a cheerful laugh.

“How astute people are. How astute! I am afraid I shall never be able to hide my crafty ways.…But,” he added with a calm insistence, “tell us what to do.”

“I’m in a somewhat difficult position, you know,” Ted Jason said with an engaging grin, “since it is my brother-in-law, as a matter of fact—a matter of present fact—who happens to be leading this revolution down there. I do not know,” he said with a tight little smile, “how long he will remain my brother-in-law. You aren’t interested in family secrets, I know”—the smile broadened—“but for some time things have not been too frightfully cordial in that household. So we shall see. Presently, it is the fact.

“It will not, of course, influence me in any way in doing what seems best for the United States. Were he my dearest friend, Felix is still an enemy of my country, and for that, I think he should be brought to book and I think his effort should be overthrown.…I do wonder a little, though,” he said slowly, “whether the course proposed here is exactly what we want to do at this particular moment. Have we exhausted all the good offices of the UN, for instance? Has the O.A.S. been given time to consider it? Have we made use of neutrals who might be able to help? Obviously, no. The event has only just happened, as I understand it—”

“Two hours ago,” the President said.

“—and yet here we are—here
you
are, the Administration—preparing the most forceful and most direct reply, apparently without consultations with anyone. I wonder,” he remarked thoughtfully, “if this is really warranted, and what effect it will have upon America’s reputation abroad, particularly since it comes on top of similar direct action in Gorotoland.”

“Ted,” the President said, “you bespeak a certain point of view, and you bespeak it very well. I admire you for having the courage to do it in these circumstances—”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of you,” Governor Jason said pleasantly, and again the President gave him a little bow, and smiled.

“I should hope not. But, have you tried to get the good offices of the UN applied to a situation at once, right now, this minute, before it deteriorates to the point where the Communists take over? Have you ever asked the O.A.S. to stop squabbling with itself and move, move fast, on an issue where something must be done at once or disaster will occur? Have you ever approached a professional neutral like India, for instance, and asked for help immediately and without equivocation in negotiating a difficult problem? Holy Toledo, man!” he demanded as their laughter rose to accompany his words, “have you ever tried to get Krishna Khaleel to tell you the time of day in one sentence? It can’t be done!”

“I know, I know,” Ted Jason agreed. “I don’t minimize the difficulties at all. I just wonder if it wouldn’t look better if we waited, say, forty-eight hours, tried all these things openly on the record, and then, having failed, moved in. Surely Felix can’t do a great deal of harm in that time.”

“He can be recognized as the official government of Panama by a great many non-friends of ours,” the President said. “We can get ourselves bogged down very neatly in appeals and counter-appeals to the UN. We can find ourselves in the middle of next month still arguing with the O.A.S. We can let ourselves be drawn into a sea of molasses with K.K. and Company. Meanwhile Walter and his friends can start a great hamstringing clamor around the world against our doing anything. And Panama and the Canal can be lost to us and the free world.”

“Suez wasn’t,” Ted remarked.

“Suez was somebody else’s jugular,” the President said grimly. “This is ours. No, I will not have it. The choice is action—or endless jawing, and defeat. I won’t have it.”

Governor Jason shrugged and smiled.

“Well, if you won’t have it—you won’t have it. You’re the one man in a position to say.”

The President studied him thoughtfully.

“Are you with me?”

The Governor gave him look for look, and though a good many in the room disagreed with his position, it was impossible not to admire his guts.

“I’m not against you, certainly. Neither am I wholeheartedly for you. There must be a middle ground, there always is, in democratic experience—”

“These takeovers are not democratic experiences,” the President said quickly. Ted nodded,

“I still think middle ground could be found. But obviously,” and he smiled calmly at them all, “you don’t think so, so what I think doesn’t matter.”

“At least here,” the President agreed. “Well,” he went on, as the Governor remained impassive, “let me see you to the door. There’s no reason to embarrass you with the press. Nobody, I think, will tell the press you were here. Gentlemen, I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, no,” Ted said politely, “that’s quite all right. I want them to know I was here. After all, it was an honor to be invited.”

The President gave him a long look and sat down again.

“Yes,” he said softly. “So it was.”

And that was what Ted made of it when later, after his somewhat wistful farewell as the meeting broke up, he went forth to be surrounded by the clamoring reporters outside. The meeting had begun in secrecy, but as usual in Washington the secrecy hadn’t lasted long. The Chief of Naval Operations had left abruptly at quarter to eleven from a dinner party at which the UPI’s Pentagon man had also been present; across town the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs and his wife, pleading the excuse of a call from the babysitter about one of the kids having an upset tummy, departed with equal speed from a similar gathering; the AP’s State Department man was there. Within five minutes both journalists, acting on hunch, instinct, and the off-chance, had telephoned their offices and said they were going to drop by the White House, just in case. A number of other newsmen, going home from the Dobius banquet, had been intrigued to see a rash of official limousines, going—somewhere. In no time the word was all over town, and two hundred reporters were clamoring at the door. Ted Jason made the most of it as he stood before the cameras in the driveway, his gray hair ruffled a little by the cool wind that had risen after midnight:

“I have no statement to make, except that I have been here as the President’s guest, and that of course if I were to have any criticism of what has been decided here tonight—”

“What has been, Governor?” a frantic voice cried from the back.

“I assume he will tell you himself, very shortly. If I were to have any criticism of it, I should not voice it here. There are times and forums—”

“Do you?” another voice insisted. He smiled.

“Sometimes,” he said, “there is a patriotic duty to support. Sometimes there is a patriotic duty to disagree. Conscience must decide the issue.”

“Now what in hell did that mean?” a puzzled voice inquired as he waved for the cameras and stepped into the limousine that waited to take him to Patsy’s in Dumbarton Oaks.

“I don’t know,” another voice responded dryly, “but it will look good on a campaign poster. I can see it right now: Conscience Must Decide The Issue.”

And now he is about to get the word, the President thinks as the buzzer sounds and he picks up the phone.

“Ted?” he says with a little smile. “How are things in the Great West?”

“If only,” Lafe said to Cullee, standing again on the beautiful lawn dropping away to the Hudson, the sun warm and happy on the trees, the handsome boy smiling his polite and gentle, faraway smile, “I could get
through.
But I can’t seem to.”

“Maybe it isn’t meant that you should,” Cullee said thoughtfully, studying the level eyes that looked so directly yet so blankly into his. “Maybe he’s meant to stay this way. After all,” he said with a sudden bitter note in his voice, “it isn’t much of a world if he should come back.”

“I’ve thought of that, too,” Lafe said, staring away across the rolling fall of palisades to the river. “But I think Mabel has the right idea.”

Cullee smiled.

“Oh? When have you talked to her?”

“I haven’t, yet,” Lafe said, and at his friend’s kind but amused expression, added defensively, “well, it’s just seemed best not to. I’ve just decided to let it develop as it comes, and if it does, well—then it does, and if it doesn’t—it doesn’t. I mean, I’m not about to push anything that could mean something, at my age.”

“And with all your other interests,” Cullee suggested. Lafe shook his head with a peculiar little grimace.

“Ah,
them.
You can have ’em.”

“Don’t need ’em, thanks,” Cullee said with a grin. “I think I’m getting fixed to get married again, soon’s I can shake Sue-Dan. Which won’t be until after the election, probably.”

“You and Sarah hit it off pretty well, don’t you? Well, that’s good. I think it’s wonderful.”

“At least,” Cullee said soberly, “it’s peace of mind, I think … and you know something? The older I get the more I value that. Didn’t used to be very important alongside a couple of hours in bed with nothing else on your mind, but it is now. Sarah’s very calm and peaceful and I need that, now. I’ve had enough of the other.” He smiled. “My brains have been beat in long enough.”