Preserve and Protect (57 page)

Three
Preserve and Protect

1

“Tonight,” said Frankly Unctuous on his evening news roundup, chipmunk face with pursed lips and nubbly teeth earnest and intent, voice heavy and pontifical as always in its rhythmic, emphatic cadence, “Washington waits.”

“It does not seem too strong to say that it waits in gloom, depression and uncertainty the next step in the elaborate game of Presidential power politics that has brought Secretary of State Orrin Knox at last to the nomination he has sought so long.

“It waits to see whether any nomination won under such circumstances can bring anything but disappointment to the nominee and disaster to his country.

“It waits to see whether violence will die, now that those who courted violence have used violence to meet the violence their own tactics perhaps made inevitable.

“The view may be exaggerated and unduly emotional, but in the opinion of many in this riot-ravaged capital tonight, only one last, desperate hope for national unity and peace remains.…”

“You didn’t have to come here,” he said. “I’d have come there. All you had to do was pick up the phone—”

“I know,” the President said, looking back for a moment into the glaring lights, the television cameras, the ring of reporters and still photographers held back by a police cordon three deep around the house in Spring Valley, “but I thought this might emphasize something to people who need it emphasized.”

“Mr. President!” the reporters shouted. “Mr. Secretary—will you turn this way, please? Will you shake hands, please? Mr. President? Mr. Secretary?”

“Shall I introduce you as the next President of the United States?” the President murmured as they obliged. Orrin smiled.

“It might be a little premature.”

“You don’t really think so.”

“No, but one never knows. Why don’t I introduce you as the next Vice President of the United States?”

The President laughed aloud as the reporters strained closer to try to hear.

“That
would
be keeping it in the family. If only it were that simple.”

“Yes,” Orrin said grimly. “If only it were.”

But of course they knew it was not, and as the minutes went by, and as they decided to call in Senator Munson and Robert A. Leffingwell—KNOX HUDDLES WITH PRESIDENT, CAMPAIGN AIDES. “BIG FOUR” MAY DECIDE V.P. NOMINATION—and as the minutes lengthened into hours, it became even more complicated; until, at nine-forty-five p.m., all the bells on all the news tickers all over town rang merrily to herald a

BULLETIN—KNOX CALLS CROY TO V.P. MEETING and Frankly Unctuous, holding tightly to his mantle of pseudo-impartiality though it kept slipping and his excitement kept showing, was able to inform a tense and fascinated nation:

“There appears to be a growing possibility at this moment that Secretary Knox may have to accept as his Vice Presidential running mate the man he beat for President this afternoon.

“Former Governor Roger P. Croy of Oregon, who has spearheaded the campaign of Governor Edward M. Jason of California since before the San Francisco convention, is presently arriving at the Knox home in the Washington suburbs. Observers here believe the announcement of Governor Jason’s selection could come even before the National Committee reconvenes tomorrow. It is generally felt that—”

“Governor!” they shouted as he left. “Governor! Can you give us a statement, Governor?”

“Why,” said Roger P. Croy blandly, “you know of course that any statement will have to come from Secretary Knox himself. I was simply asked to come in and clarify certain things—”

“Such as that Governor Jason
will
accept if the Vice Presidential nomination is offered him?” ABC asked.

“I repeat,” Roger Croy said comfortably, “you boys will have to ask the nominee and Governor Jason himself. I’m just a go-between here.”

“But a happy go-between,”
The Greatest Publication
suggested with a grin.

“I have known worse days,” Roger P. Croy admitted cheerfully.

The President had left, taking Bob Munson and Bob Leffingwell back to the White House; press and television, frustrated by a firm and unshakable refusal to comment, had regrouped into disgruntled but ever-vigilant little groups about the lawn; at last there was a moment to think.

It did not last long.

There was a peremptory rap on the study door.

“Who is it?” he asked. A voice he hardly recognized said,

“Me.”

“Oh,” he said, and suddenly felt tense, nervous and sick inside. “Come in.”

He glanced up quickly into the haggard, unhappy eyes of his son and glanced quickly away again.

“Sit down.”

“I will if you’ll look me straight in the eyes,” Hal said in a voice so low he could hardly hear it.

“Very well,” he said, though it cost him as few things in life had.…“Now do you want to sit down, or had you rather stand?”

“Why?”
Hal demanded, standing. “In the name of God,
why?”

“Because there are times when politics offers cruel choices,” Orrin said slowly, “and sometimes, even with the best will in the world, one gets caught in them.”

“Do you realize that that man, or his people, killed my son and your grandson?” Hal asked in a strangled voice.

Orrin sighed.

“Yes.”

“And do you realize that his gangs may do anything—destroy the country—put us under dictatorship—anything?”

“I think there is that potential, yes, if they’re not controlled.”

“Do you think that millionaire lightweight is controlling them? Was he controlling them this afternoon?”

“Sit down, Hal,” he said quietly, “and stop being rhetorical. I know just about everything there is to know about the character and motivations and strengths and weaknesses of Edward M. Jason, I believe. I don’t think there’s much you can tell me. And I don’t think there’s much to be gained from our fighting about it.”

“But I want to know why,” Hal said, sitting slowly down on the sofa. “I want to know
why
my father, whom I have always loved and respected and looked up—” his voice began to break but he forced himself on—“looked up to—why he has decided now that this man is worthy to move up one step from the White House. I don’t—I don’t even know why you think he’s worthy to associate with
you
personally, let alone be Vice President.…You’ve got to tell me something,” he said, staring at the rug. “I’ve got to have something left to believe.”

For several minutes Orrin did not reply, though his first impulse was to go to his son and put his arms around him as though he were a little boy; but it died, as such things do, because he wasn’t a little boy. Instead he tried to piece together something coherent that would make sense. He wasn’t sure it would, in Hal’s present mood—or in his own, for that matter—but he knew he had to try.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that Ted Jason, at heart, is not a bad or an evil man. I think to a large extent he is sincerely convinced that he has a better answer for this country than I do. I think he really believes that if he could be elected President, things would somehow straighten themselves out and he could bring peace to the world at large, and to us domestically. I think he really thinks that.”

“Does that give him a license to kill my son?” Hal asked with a withering bitterness. His face suddenly dissolved. “My
son,”
he said in a choking voice. “Like I—like I was for you, when I was born.
My son.”

Orrin closed his eyes and sat back with his hands over them for a long moment. Then he looked up, though not at his son.

“You make it very difficult.”

Again Hal spoke with a devastating bitterness.

“Am I supposed to make it easy?”

“Easier,” his father said. “Just a little—easier—that’s all.…I don’t think there’s anything you’ve felt in these past few days that I haven’t—well, I’ll amend that, because I do remember how it was with you, and I do know you’ve been feeling things I can only imagine. I don’t really
know
because back in those innocent days, this kind of violence didn’t stalk America the way it does now. I didn’t have to worry about my family then as we all do now. I didn’t think I was taking my life and theirs into my hands every time I took a stand on a public issue. But it’s getting close to that now. Give us another five years like this, and freedom of opinion will be pretty much gone. Unless”—his expression too for a moment became bitter—“you’re on the right side.…

“All I’m saying about Ted Jason,” he resumed presently, “is that he’s in that curious state of mind in which ambition really does dominate all. It dominates so much that everything is related to it. Everything becomes possible to it. Everything seems right to it. Everything can be fitted in … and everything that feeds it can be justified.”

“And that doesn’t make him a dangerous man?”

“Of course it does,” Orrin said. “Of course it does. And yet not a
bad
man, in the sense that, say, Fred Van Ackerman is a bad man.”

“How do you separate them?” Hal asked with a skepticism that at least, Orrin was relieved to note, replaced the bitterness a little. “Behind Ted Jason stands Van Ackerman. And all the rest of them. If you take one, you take them all.”

“I think they can be separated,” Orrin said, “because I think in Ted’s mind they
are
separated. I think if he can be shown what they are, and what they’re helping to get the United States into, he will break away from them. Because I think, as I say, that at heart he’s a decent and well-meaning man.”

“But that isn’t why you’re taking him,” Hal said with a sudden shrewd bitterness. “Not just because you think maybe you can reform him someday.”

“Sooner than that,” Orrin said. “But, no, you’re right. That isn’t why.”

Hal gave him a long look, so painful for him that he actually squinted as he did so. His father could barely hear him when he spoke.

“You’re taking him because of some deal, then.”

“No,” Orrin said, and thanked God he could say it truthfully. “No deal.” A smile lit his face briefly. “Do you really think if I’d made a deal I wouldn’t have made it for more than twenty-three votes, boy? What kind of a dealer do you think I am?”

“Well,” Hal said, and briefly he too smiled a little, “maybe not. But there must be some reason—some reason. There’s got to be something that makes sense”—and again his voice dropped very low—“if you are willing to put the murderer of your grandson on the ticket.”

Again Orrin sighed and looked away.

“You do have a way of cutting a man up.”

Hal laughed, a dry, humorless sound.

“I’m told it’s inherited,” he said, and at his father’s sudden angry look he did not flinch or drop his eyes. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“I’m trying. Give me a chance, will you? In the first place, Ted isn’t a murderer—except as I suppose we are all murderers, who let things slide to a point where—things like that—can happen. Maybe I’m equally guilty, Hal. Did you ever think of that?”

Hal made a protesting movement but his father continued inexorably.

“Maybe I should have stepped aside at the convention. Maybe I should have stepped aside now. Maybe I’m driven by power and ambition, too, beyond the point of decency—many think so, here and abroad. If I’d stepped aside, probably nobody would have hurt your wife and your—son. If I’d stepped aside in San Francisco, Harley would have had to take Ted, and maybe Harley would be alive now; who knows? It’s a fair assumption, even though Ted of course had nothing to do in any direct way with what happened to Harley. It was the climate, but maybe I’m as responsible as he is for the climate. Maybe if I’d gotten out of the way, Ted’s backers wouldn’t have felt they had to get desperate and do the things they have done. Maybe Helen-Anne would still be alive. Maybe all of this is my fault as much as his. Maybe all men who don’t deny the ambition for power when they catch a glimpse of where it can lead to are guilty.…Did you ever think of that?”

“But you couldn’t just walk away and let him have it!” Hal protested in a half-whisper.

“No,” his father said quietly, “I could not, or I should have betrayed everything I believe in for this country, everything my whole life has stood for. So it isn’t so simple. And it isn’t for him, either.” He sighed. “And that’s probably the answer to your question, I suppose. Because he isn’t actually a murderer, though some behind him are; and he doesn’t consciously mean to do harm, though some behind him do; and he does have good and genuine qualities; and he does, I think, really want to do the best he can to help and save the United States—even though some behind him do not.…

“And furthermore, there’s another point, which
I
have to take into consideration. The country is badly divided right now. We have enemies everywhere, both inside and outside, who would love to see us brought down, even though the fools will go down with us if we aren’t here to protect them. We need unity. He does command an enormous support among a great many sincere citizens who really do see in him the hope for peace that they honestly cannot see in me. This extends overseas as well. I’ve denied him the top spot by a very narrow margin, and many of those people are not going to be satisfied unless they can see him beside me—unless they can feel that he is offering some moderating influence on my policies, which they think are so horrible.”

“But you
can’t
accept his views on appeasing and giving in,” Hal said in the same dismayed half-whisper.

“No,” Orrin agreed again, “I can’t. But one thing he said at the Center this afternoon did make sense, and that is that times change and people change.” He smiled a wry little smile, almost wistful. “I’m not anywhere near the positive soul I was in the Senate a year and a half ago, you know. I’ve been close to the center of the machine for a while, and I know it isn’t so easy. It isn’t all black and white and cut and dried; it’s a sort of horrible gray, like fighting your way through a dirty fog where everything is hazy and blurred and you’re not even sure that the light ahead is a light: it may be just a—just a mirage.…No, I’ve changed, and I like to think for the better. And so can he. So
will
he, if I have anything to say about it. And I think I will.…So: he has good qualities—he wants to do what’s right for the country, I think—he just needs to be shown. And he does command an enormous popular support—”