Preserve and Protect (28 page)

Again the Governor was silent. At last he shrugged and stood up with a smile that was both tolerant and pitying.

“I must concede your sincerity in these strange remarks,” he said, “but I really see no reason to prolong the interview. You obviously really believe that I am a fool, an idiot, a dupe and possibly even a traitor. So I think there’s no point in any further communication, except officially. Isn’t that correct?”

The President remained seated, staring up at him with an intently appraising air, head cocked to one side, eyes half-closed, shrewd and analytical.

“The only thing I think you are,” he said finally, “is an extremely ambitious man who has been gifted by birth with freedom from all restraints, financial, moral or in personal character, upon his ambition. And so I think you’re getting into things that may well destroy you, and certainly if carried to their extremes will come pretty close to destroying the country. At least in my judgment. So I guess I have a duty to oppose you, don’t I?”

“You haven’t been in doubt on that point for six months.”

“No,” the President said slowly. “But I kept hoping you might see of your own accord where you’re headed.”

“I told you,” Governor Jason said with a sudden, quite genuine smile, gesturing toward the desk. The President smiled too, but there was no humor in it.

“I might say, over my dead body,” he remarked softly. “Except that it might be true.”

For a long moment the Governor of California stared at him with a look filled with many things, anger and contempt and pity, and a sort of overriding disbelief that there could be such a man, with such an opinion. Then he bowed quickly, said, “You will forgive me, I must go,” turned swiftly and left the room.

He could not have analyzed, had anyone asked him, the conflicting currents of anger, emotion, revulsion, determination, which had brought him in Patsy’s gleaming black Rolls-Royce to this apparently deserted house at this post-midnight hour. He had given the order to the chauffeur almost without thinking; almost automatically, it seemed, he had acted on the impulse to see the man he had last seen in the heat of anger at the convention. He was not entirely sure why he wanted to see him now, not even sure where the impulse had come from—some urgency developing out of the earlier events of the evening, some headlong rush of decision coming from his tumbling thoughts, something that seemed logical after his bitter, frustrating talk with the President. He had not even known the correct address: the Secret Service man the President had kindly assigned to him yesterday had called Patsy to find out.

Now here they were, and the house was silent and dark in the steaming hot night. For a second only he debated whether to pass on and try to arrange something tomorrow. Then he strode forward up the winding walk, jabbed his finger forcefully and repeatedly on the bell. Somewhere deep in the house he could hear it ringing, apparently unanswered. He was about to turn away when he heard the scrape of shrubbery alongside the house.

“I’ve been out back at the pool,” Bob Leffingwell said in a politely puzzled voice. “Did someone wish to see me?”

“I did,” he said, and for a moment there was silence from the shadowy figure standing at the corner of the house.

“I’m sorry I didn’t turn on the light,” Bob said in a voice that indicated nothing. “Watch your step as you come around the walk, here. One or two of the slabs are a little uneven.…Sit down, Ted,” he said when they had traversed the house, the sloping lawn, and so come to the dim expanse of the pool, its placid surface reflecting a little of the light of the city across the Potomac. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Ice water, thank you,” he said, taking one of the chaise longues beside the water. His host made some sound he could not quite analyze, partly amused, partly, perhaps, quizzical.

“I, too.”

When they were both seated, he spoke abruptly and without preliminary.

“What would you think, Bob, if you had just been accused by the President of the United States of conspiring against the country, threatening it with destruction, and perhaps even plotting to kill him?”

For a moment his host said nothing at all, nor could the Governor see in the darkness what expression might be on his face. Actually there was none, for Bob was taking pains to keep both face and voice impersonal.

“I think I might wonder,” he said finally, “what could prompt so very grave an accusation from one in such position, and whether I had done anything to warrant it. If I concluded I had, I think I would begin to look around for a way to change what I was doing.”

It was Ted’s turn to remain silent. When he spoke it was in a half-amused, half-quizzical tone of his own.

“Well, that’s straightforward enough.”

“I try to be.”

“Yes,” Ted agreed; and said, with a pleasant edge, “these days.…So is he correct, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t presume to pass judgment on his judgment,” Bob said, his voice impervious.

The Governor laughed without much humor.

“I wouldn’t call that straightforward.”

“I didn’t know you had the capacity to judge—” Bob Leffingwell began quickly, broke it off and started over. “I’m sorry. Yes, in my estimation, he is correct, at least about endangering the country. The conspiring and plotting may have been exaggeration on his part or exaggeration on yours.…Though I can see,” he added quietly after a moment, “that a fair fear could be raised if things continue as they’re going.”

“You really think so,” Ted said in a thoughtful tone. “You really do think so.”

“What you must realize,” Bob Leffingwell said with a sudden sharpness, “is that perfectly sensible and intelligent people
are
very much concerned about the course you’re apparently taking. Even though,” he added slowly, “other perfectly sensible and intelligent people, I know, approve.”

“Exactly,” Governor Jason said. “That being so, I have some warrant, I think, for doing what I believe to be right.”

“Right for what?” his host inquired, his tone again sharp. “You? The country?”

“Many people,” Ted Jason said with the quiet objectivity that in Washington accompanies only the greatest of egotism, “seem to consider the two identical.”

“And that justifies anything you want to do,” Bob Leffingwell said. “Well …” In the dim light the Governor could see his profile as he stared at the city. It indicated nothing. “Well, I suppose that sense of identification is necessary if one is to seek the Presidency. I wouldn’t know, thank God.…In any event,” he added with a sudden firmness, “a fair fear still lies. You haven’t reduced it much this evening.”

“What have I done this evening?” Governor Jason demanded. “Made a speech to the National Committee. Stated my position candidly to the country. Made clear to the President and Orrin that they have a fight on their hands—”

“Met secretly with a pathological black racist, a paranoiac demagogue of a U.S. Senator and an unbalanced right-wing weirdo,” Bob Leffingwell snapped. “Isn’t that enough to make decent people worry?”

“Oh, that’s the problem,” Ted said dryly. “Helen-Anne has been talking to you too.”

“I haven’t seen Helen-Anne since I left the Hilton.”

“But she called you.”

“She did,” Bob Leffingwell said. “It was a damn-fool, stupid, asinine, fantastically dangerous thing for you to do. Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?” he demanded with a sudden, furious disgust. “And what the hell do you think you’re trying to do to this country?”

“I am trying to provide it with a leadership that will take it out of this dreadful impasse the Administration has led it into,” Ted said quietly. “In that task I need the help of as many good men as I can get. I need yours. That’s why I’m here”—and he realized this was true, it was what had really prompted his almost instinctive urge to talk at once to Bob Leffingwell. “May I have it?”

“Well,” Bob began, and it was obvious that he was literally at a loss for words in the face of an audacity so great. “Well, I—” And in the dim half-light from the city across the river the Governor could see him shaking his head in a helpless fashion as his voice trailed away.

“The task is difficult,” Ted went on in the same quiet tone, “the challenge enormous; but the reward, I think, great. Suppose we can lead America back to sanity, you and I,” he said, and his voice became touched with an almost evangelistic fervor. “Suppose we can sweep away all the sickness and insanity, the evil policies that have taken us into wars and divided our country and set us one against the other in senseless, self-destroying bitterness. Suppose we can create policies men can believe in, bring back decency, banish the violence that springs from the conviction that protest is helpless in the face of arrogant power. Help me do that, Bob! Come back to the side you really belong on! Your old friends,” he concluded, his voice sinking to a grave conclusion, “await you. Democracy and decency need you. Help me do what must be done to save this beloved land.”

For several moments after he finished Bob Leffingwell did not move, uttered no sound. A little wind stirred the dogwood and the tulip trees, an owl murmured petulantly. The traffic over the bridges and along both sides of the river was thinning, the lights on the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial were out. Full night was settling finally on the District of Columbia.

At last Bob shifted position and spoke.

“You are an extraordinary man, Ted,” he said quietly. “But I suppose anyone big enough to want to run that town is extraordinary.

“What makes you think there is the slightest chance that I would want to rejoin you?”

“For the reasons I state,” Governor Jason said. “Because obviously you belong with me and not with them. Because you’re a political realist and you know mine is the better chance. Because it becomes Bob Leffingwell to be liberal and it goes against his nature to defeat liberalism’s cause.”

“‘Liberalism’s
cause’?
Liberalism.
My God, what an easy word to throw around! To me you’re one of the great reactionaries, Ted, ruthless to your opponents, bitterly intolerant of dissent—yes,” he said angrily as the Governor moved protestingly in his chair, “intolerant of dissent, honest dissent,
liberal
dissent, any dissent that doesn’t dovetail with your own ambitions. You say I belong with you: well, that depends. There is a certain type of self-designated American ‘liberal’ that I have finally come to have an absolute horror of, because there is no one more vicious, more intolerant, more destructive, more reactionary. And all of that type you seem to have gathered around you: the smug, the superior, the self-righteous, the mindless, the violent, the cruel. That’s the way I used to be, and I know. And you know their excesses and you don’t repudiate them. God help you, I think you’ve even begun to condone them in these recent weeks. And now you meet with them in secret to further your own ambitions, and God knows what will come of that. God help you, and us.”

It was the Governor’s turn to remain silent. When he finally spoke it was in a steady tone that dismissed Bob’s comments as though they had never been.

“I understand from Patsy that you would still like to be Secretary of State. Join me and the job is yours.”

Bob Leffingwell uttered some strange sound, possibly a laugh, muffled as quickly as it began. His voice came savage and sarcastic.

“In writing, I told her. In writing.”

“Get the paper,” Ted Jason said indifferently. “I have a pen.”

For one insane moment Bob hesitated and almost—almost—let himself begin to think. But he knew instinctively that he must not, that to do so might be to fall back forever from advances sorely won. In some great inner convulsion of heart and mind and emotion that shook his being but came and went so fast he could not analyze it, he knew he must make the break final, and make it now. He stood up so abruptly that he knocked over the little wooden bench beside his chair. The half-empty glass of ice water crashed on the apron of the pool with an explosive tinkle.

“I think you’d better go, Ted. I meant what I said at the convention. I mean what I say now. I can’t go with you down the road you’re going.”

He paused and then with a sigh that made it even more devastating, concluded with the one thing he knew would terminate the interview and the association forever:

“I pity you, Ted. I wish I could help you—I wish it were still possible to help you. But it isn’t. And I can’t.”

“Hi,” he said, and again he tried carefully to keep his voice from showing too much emotion, though God knew he had felt enough in these past six hours. “Are you in bed?”

“No,” she said, sounding, he thought, a little more remote than even three thousand miles would warrant. “Just sitting out here on the terrace enjoying the night.”

“Is it a nice one?” he asked with a politeness almost nervous, almost humble.

“Beautiful,” she said, also politely. “Quite warm still. A few traces of color left over the sea, out toward Hawaii.”

“We’ll have to go there again sometime soon,” he said, very conscious of the silence of Patsy’s house, hoping she wasn’t listening, promising dire things if she were, so awkward and like a pleading schoolboy did he sound.

“Sometime.”

“Ceil,” he asked after a moment, “what are you thinking?”

He could hear her sigh. Presently she said, “Nothing, really. I’m just sitting out here, as I told you. Manuela and Tomás have gone to bed. I’m all alone. It’s very peaceful.”

“You must be thinking something,” he persisted, hating himself for it. She gave a tired little laugh.

“Must I? About you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Me.”

“Well,” she said with a dry little humor. “I’ll admit the subject has crossed my mind.”

“What have you decided about it?” he asked, adding in his mind.
Please don’t you lecture me, too: I’ve had enough for one night.
And adding immediately,
Then why call? You know she will.

Again she sighed; and, finally, “Does it matter?”

“Would I ask if it didn’t?”

“You might. You like to go through the proper motions.”

“My God,” he said, stung into genuine protest. “What kind of man do you think I am?”