Promise of Joy (18 page)
Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Spies & Politics, #Assassinations, #Thrillers
“And so what is one to make of Orrin Knox?” Walter Dobius wrote rapidly in the study at “Salubria,” quiet in the hush of the soft Virginia countryside. “Peace in the one hand, arms in the other: was there ever a new Administration that began with more dangerous incongruity for the world? Couple it with an appeal to American ‘virtue,’ tell the rest of the world how pure, how noble, how ineffably ‘good’ Americans are, and you have the basis for a completely disastrous course in foreign affairs. Washington hopes desperately tonight that the Congress will have the sense to reject out of hand this bare-faced appeal to an antiquated militarism whose bankruptcy has been demonstrated over and over again in recent years. Washington also hopes that the Soviets and the Chinese will treat his high-handed demand that they meet him in Geneva with exactly the contempt it deserves. Only then, one suspects—after the dash of cold water which he obviously needs—can his fearful countrymen dare to hope that President Knox will settle down and give them the kind of leadership they so earnestly seek and so desperately deserve.”
It was not until approximately 11:45 p.m. however, that Walter and his friends of Supermedia were to have their prayers answered. Up to that time, events had moved in the old, traditional pattern: the parade had ended (without a murmur from the hot lines), the First Family and the Cabinet had retired, with Ceil Jason and Valuela Randall, who had been invited by the President to spend the night at the White House, for a private dinner.
Dinner completed, they had emerged to re-enter their closely guarded limousines and depart for the four inaugural balls that were being held that night at the Kennedy Center, the Museum of History and Technology at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, the Washington Hilton and the Sheraton Park Hotel.
At each of these the new Chief Executive had been greeted by the bedrock faithful, sufficient of whom had turned out to make of the gatherings a scene of reasonable encouragement, excitement and gaiety.
Many who attended had found the President’s speech disturbing—not so much because of the basic thesis, with which many of them agreed, but because of the general somber and challenging tone. Although he had carefully avoided putting it on that basis, it had been a little too close to “blood, sweat and tears.” Americans as a people did not like to be called to sacrifice, or even to consider the possibility of being called to sacrifice. They had had it so good for so long that they did not want to face the possibility that it might not be so good from now on.
Much as many of them admired Orrin Knox, he had made them uneasy with his stern call for strength as the imperative foundation for peace. They would much rather have had it the easy way, for such had been their conditioning under several Presidents in the recent past. His partisans at the inaugural balls greeted him with a flattering excitement and a genuine warmth because they had always liked and respected him. Their cordiality did not necessarily mean that they would follow him with equal enthusiasm into the future, any more than would Walter and his friends—if it was to be so harsh and demanding a future as he apparently foresaw.
Nonetheless, he was greeted with an encouraging friendliness which he needed; and when he came back to the Museum shortly after eleven-thirty to make the customary brief farewell remarks before returning to the White House and a well-earned rest, a last cordial burst of shouts and cheering accompanied him to the stage.
There he stood for a moment looking out upon them in his characteristic moment of silent appraisal; and then in a relaxed and conversational tone he began to speak.
“My friends,” he said, “thank you for a long and most enjoyable evening. You have made me, my family and our friends, feel most welcome. We will always remember the cordial atmosphere of this night.
“Now we must all go home and rest up for tomorrow. I don’t know about you”—he smiled and friendly laughter responded—“but for me, it promises to be a busy day.
“I end this inaugural day as I began it: with faith in America—if America is strong; with confidence in the future—if we meet it bravely, firmly and unafraid; with an appeal to the Congress to give us the means to be both strong and brave; and with an appeal to the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to meet with me in Geneva to negotiate the basis for a genuine and lasting peace, in the two war zones, and everywhere.
“So far, I must confess”—his tone turned grave, they stirred uneasily, they did not really want to hear it, they wanted to go home drunk and happy, with the difficult world far away—“I have not received any response from them to my appeal. So far they have not given any indication—” He paused abruptly, looked sharply across the mass of jammed-in humanity to the farther door, noted a disturbance there, perceived his Secretary of State pushing forward toward him through the crowd with a determination both obvious and grim. “Or have they?”
Instantly jovial murmurings died, happy smiles faded, drunkenness turned rapidly sober, tension rose. Fear, as palpable as though he could reach out and touch it, was suddenly everywhere.
“Make way for the Secretary of State!” he directed sharply. “Let him through, please.”
Probably in seconds, though to everyone in the room, everyone who was watching anywhere, it seemed many endless minutes, Robert A. Leffingwell was at his side, a Signal Corps message was spread before him on the lectern.
He skimmed it rapidly. His face turned stern, he made no attempt to disguise his feelings. That they were angry and not dismayed was probably all that prevented the outbreak of a racing panic in the room and in the country.
His head came up sharply, he spoke in a perfectly level and unemotional voice.
“Please be calm. I must tell you that the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China have rejected my appeal. They have, in fact, launched massive new offensives in Gorotoland and Panama. American forces have already suffered heavy casualties and are being pushed back. I must return at once to the White House.
“Be of good faith and good courage. Your President is determined to handle this, and will do so.
“God bless you, and good night.”
So ended the inaugural day of Orrin Knox, in a wild confusion of frightened people, hurrying autos, a city of celebration celebrating no longer, a nation stunned and desperately anxious to find, somehow, safe haven from history’s savage winds.
His anger and determination grew steadily as they rushed him back through suddenly deserted streets to what now was home: the beautiful building, white and ghostly in the snow-laden mists of the icy night, mysterious, shimmering, ominous, remote.
When he got out of the limousine and hurried up the steps of the South Portico, his path flanked by solemn, frightened young Marines at rigid attention, he realized that the temperature was dropping again.
Cold blew the wind off the Potomac, and cold blew the wind in the corridors of the world.
If he had ever had any illusions that his Presidency would be an easy one, this took care of them.
Neither for him nor for his country would the Presidency of Orrin Knox be easy.
***
Book Two
1
“Bill,” he said crisply, “can you get Bob Munson and Warren and get down here as fast as possible?”
“We’ll be there in half an hour,” William Abbott said from the bachelor apartment at the Sheraton Park to which he had just returned after vacating the White House. It was not, in historical perspective, a humorous moment, but he could not resist a smile. “You mean you want
us
to tell
you
what to do? That doesn’t sound like Our Orrin.”
“Your Orrin knows what to do,” the President said, “and he’s already starting to get it done. I want your support, however, and a public statement thereof. And the sooner, the better.”
“Yes, sir,” Bill Abbott said gravely. “We are at your service.”
And within half an hour they were all there, the people upon whom he would rely, now and in the hectic weeks to come: the ex-President; Senator Munson, Senator Strickland; the Vice President, the Secretary of State; Blair Hannah, former national committeeman from Illinois, whom he was appointing Secretary of Defense; Ceil Jason; Lafe Smith; his son.
He was not in the Oval Office when they were ushered in shortly before 1 a.m., but within five minutes he entered swiftly through a side door. They stood and turned toward him with that hushed, expectant, demanding yet beseeching look with which Presidents are greeted on desperate occasions.
“Please be seated,” he said quietly. “Thank you for coming.” A quick humor, quickly dying, touched his face. “You might know my time in this house would begin with a bang. Nothing dull and routine for good old Orrin.” His expression sobered, he spoke gravely and without embellishment.
“I have just been down in the Situation Room. As Bob Leffingwell and Blair Hannah already know, I have taken the actions which seemed to me to be called for in this instance. I could have waited for advice, but of course I have been aware for some weeks of the possibility that something like this might occur the minute I got in here. So I have been mentally ready for it—although actually, I suppose, one never is really ready for anything of the enormity of this.
“I too have ordered a worldwide alert. More to the point, I have ordered an immediate counteroffensive in both Gorotoland and Panama. Additional planes, troops, anti-aircraft missiles, ammunition, supporting matériel are already on their way. I have ordered a blockade of Panama. I have again opened the hot lines to Moscow and Peking and I have made clear that I desire to hear from them immediately. I expect that when I do”—he smiled with a certain grimness—“their comments will not be jovial. But at least now they understand that I do want to communicate.” He paused and looked slowly around the room at their tense and worried faces.
“I trust what I have done meets with your approval.”
His predecessor hesitated for a second, then nodded.
“It meets with mine,” William Abbott said. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Nor I,” said Warren Strickland. “It is risky. But it has to be done.”
“I believe so,” the President said. “I am also opening a diplomatic counteroffensive, whose chances are rather less, I imagine, than the chances of the action in the field, but it is a necessary concomitant.
“I am instructing our delegation to the United Nations to introduce a resolution in the Security Council tomorrow morning—this morning—condemning the Soviet and Chinese aggressions and demanding their immediate withdrawal.
“This will of course get nowhere at the hands of our enlightened friends from Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, the Middle East and all other points of the fair-minded unhypocritical globe, but it must be done for the record. It will be a difficult and harsh debate, a tense and exhausting initiation for our new Ambassador to the UN If you are willing, Lafe, I would like you to continue on the delegation, at least for the time being, to give her such assistance as she may require.”
There was a stirring, a sudden comprehension, pleased and congratulatory glances.
“She?” Cullee inquired with a smile. The President nodded and smiled at Ceil.
“She.”
“Mr. President—” she protested. He raised an admonitory hand.
“Now, none of that. No false modesty, no telling us how unequipped you are, no begging off from your public duty. I need you, the country needs you, the members of the media need you, the photographers of the world need you—it’s absolutely inevitable. I think it will be rather nice for the United States to have the most glamorous ambassador in the world. We need all the image we can get. Right?”
“Mr. President—” she said again, and shook her head. Then she capitulated with a charming smile, suddenly pleased and excited. “Right.”
“Good,” he said. “You will be a member of the Cabinet, also.…Well, then: what I would like right now is a public statement of support, if I may have it, particularly from you, Bill, from Bob and from Warren. I would hope this would help to swing Congress behind me, as much as possible.”
“It won’t be easy,” William Abbott murmured. The President gave him a challenging look.
“Whoever said it would be? But I need, and I want, just as much backing up there as I can get. And who is in a better position to get it for me?”
Bob Munson hesitated for a moment, then decided to speak candidly, for this was no time for anything else.
“You know the situation up there—or maybe you don’t, having been so busy getting ready in the last few days. But it isn’t all that good, Orrin. It’s tight—very tight. The election left us very little room in which to maneuver. You have nominal control, but that’s about all. I’m going to have a hell of a fight holding people on my side of the aisle, let alone the whole Senate. Isn’t that right, Warren?”
The Minority Leader nodded, his face grave.
“It is, as Bob says, Mr. President, very tight. We’ve got a breed of new mavericks in there, many of them young, many of them stampeded to lesser or greater degree by the peace crowd—some of them
very
stampeded. Bob’s riding herd on an unruly bunch now, and so am I. Whether we can hold them in line is chancy at best.” He paused and then added quietly, “Whether we can even retain our leaderships is chancy at best.”
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” the President remarked in a startled tone. His predecessor sighed.
“Not so good on my side, either, Orrin—Mr. President,” he said. “The House is in a restless, ugly mood right now. We haven’t organized yet, as you know, because I couldn’t make a run for Speaker again until I left this place. So we’ve been poking along for the last few days with Jawbone Swarthman holding the reins, temporarily.” He smiled rather grimly. “May not be so temporary, from what I’ve been hearing in the last twenty-four hours.”
“No!” the President said. He stared out the window, a thousand calculations tracing their disturbing patterns on his face. Almost as if to himself he remarked finally, “I can’t have Jawbone in there.”
“You may have him,” Bill Abbott said, “though I’m going to do my best to stop him. But we’re on thin ice in this new Congress, Orrin—thin ice.”
“And
your
competition?” the President asked Bob Munson. The Majority Leader gave him an oblique glance.
“Who knows?” he inquired with some bitterness as he thought about the cantankerous senior Senator from Arkansas. “Arly Richardson, maybe. The old bastard has always wanted it; he’d give the young fellows a familiar name to rally behind—and he’s solid on the war issue, as they see it. Not,” he said, quoting the
Post,
“‘an Administration lackey,’ like me.”
“Arly’s a damned troublemaker,” the President said with heartfelt distaste. He sighed. “And an effective one, unfortunately. Warren, don’t tell me
you’re
going to be replaced, too.”
“No, probably not,” Senator Strickland said with a smile. “After all, I’m an almost-President, you know, I led the boys to battle and almost licked you, Orrin. I’d be hard to dump, so soon after election. But,” he said, more seriously, “I’ve got problems, too. This war thing cuts all ways from Sunday, in both parties. I think Bob and Bill will survive, but it’s going to be very close.”
“Well, then,” the President said, instantly practical and impersonal, “maybe I shouldn’t embarrass you all by asking your endorsement on what I’m doing in this new crisis. Maybe it should be every man for himself and devil take me if I can’t make it on my own.” He gave them a shrewd glance. “How about that?”
“Oh, no,” Bob Munson said, and “Oh, no,” said William Abbott—not quite quickly enough, in the President’s estimation.
“Now, see here,” he said with the sternness of long-time political and personal friendship. “I don’t want any nobility here. I want you two leading that Congress. If it will help you to get re-elected if you disassociate yourself from me on this, I want you to do it. We can worry about regrouping later, after you’ve won. Don’t let it get in the way now, okay? I can take the flak alone if I have to. I have before.”
For a long moment the ex-President and the Majority Leader exchanged glances, their expressions quizzical, skeptical, informed, sophisticated: balancing all factors, appraising all possibilities, matching Presidential needs, national needs, their own needs. Finally William Abbott broke it with a smile and a shrug.
“Might as well hang together, or we’ll all hang separately. Probably will, anyway. No, Orrin—very kind of you, very generous, very thoughtful—but, no. The country really does need a united front right now, so as long as we can hang on, I expect you will have Bob and me. Isn’t that right, Bob?”
“Indubitably,” Senator Munson said cheerfully. “Let the zombies howl.”
“The only thing, Orrin,” William Abbott added gently, and something in his tone made them all glance at him with a sudden attention, “is—have you really thought this through? Is this
really
what you want to do?”
“My father doesn’t do things unless he wants to do them,” Hal said with a sharp defensiveness that brought a momentary smile to the President’s lips.
“True enough,” Bill Abbott agreed. “I’m just asking if he really does want to do this.” He stared thoughtfully at his successor, sitting straight and unyielding behind the enormous desk.
“It’s what you did a month ago,” the President pointed out with a characteristic tartness. “Greater in degree, but essentially the same thing: confronting them—holding the line—saying: stop
now,
this is it, you asked for it, here it is.… Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” William Abbott said, “but I didn’t have to go so far. I went part way and stopped.”
“A month ago that was sufficient,” the President said. “Now we are actually under attack, they’ve started moving, I had no choice.… At least,” he added, and an honestly puzzled frown crossed his face, “I
feel
I had no choice. Don’t you agree, gentlemen?”
And he turned to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, heretofore sitting silent and attentive in the semicircle facing the desk.
“The only other option would have been to admit defeat and surrender under fire,” Robert A. Leffingwell said. He glanced respectfully but firmly at the ex-President sitting at his left. “Or so it seems to me, Mr. President.”
“All right,” William Abbott said. “And you, Mr. Secretary of Defense?”
Blair Hannah studied the question thoughtfully for a moment, his thin, rather florid face solemn under its crown of silver hair. But his response was equally firm when it came.
“I think so. After all, Mr. President, we
have
been attacked, you know.”
“All right,” William Abbott said again. “Now,” he said, leaning forward, looking intently at his successor, “I assume you know what you have on hand to do it with, Mr. President. I assume the Secretaries know.”
“Not very much,” the President agreed bleakly. “But that didn’t stop you, and I can’t let it stop me. We both had to respond.”
“In the hope,” Bill Abbott said softly, “that a firm and prompt response would bring them to a halt before they realized how weak we really are.”
“Yes,” Orrin Knox said quietly. “That is the hope. Tashikov told me that they knew, that they would never be bluffed again. Now we shall find out.”
“But, Orrin—Mr. President,” Lafe Smith protested, “surely we are not as badly off as
that?…
” His voice trailed away uncertainly into a silence broken by a harsh snort from the Secretary of Defense.
“Are we not?” Blair Hannah inquired. “Oh, are we not? What do you think you boys on the Hill have been doing in these recent years, cutting our budgets to ribbons, knocking back defense everywhere, reducing our forces and our arms in every sector? You’ve had a fine time with it, playing the turn-tail-and-make-the-critics-happy game. A fine time!”
“I haven’t!” Lafe said sharply, and at his side the Vice President leaned forward, too.
“And
I
haven’t,” Cullee Hamilton echoed with an equal sharpness. “And Orrin—the President—hasn’t. Or President Abbott. Or Senator Strickland. God knows we all have fought and fought and fought to retain an adequate defense. You’re a little too generous in passing out the blame, Mr. Secretary.”
“Well,” Blair Hannah said, more moderately, “of course I didn’t mean to be quite so general in my condemnation. I know there has been a constant group constantly fighting, and I know you all belong to it. I apologize for getting too dramatic about it. But, my God!” He paused and took a deep breath. “Do you have any conception of how weak we have really become over the past few years? It’s been an absolutely shattering revelation to me since I’ve begun to find out about this new job, I can tell you. Apparently we’ve been sleepwalking straight into disaster. And now,” he concluded in a voice remote and nearly bereft of hope, “this may be it.”
“But you don’t really think so,” Ceil Jason said quietly, “or you would not have concurred with the President. Nor would any of us concur with him. Isn’t that correct?”
Blair Hannah gave her a long look and finally shrugged.
“We have a
fait accompli,
Madam Ambassador,” he said. “Of course we support our President.”
“If you don’t
really
support him,” Hal Knox said angrily, “maybe you’d better get out of the Cabinet, Mr. Secretary!”
