A Shade of Difference (40 page)

After he had heard them, he grinned.

“You’re the greatest little fixer, Hank.” He picked up his brief case and kissed her good-by.

“This is a very serious matter,” she reminded him with a smiling echo of his own words.

“I know it is,” he called back as he started down the walk toward the waiting State Department limousine. “You don’t have to convince me. You’ve just made a sale.”

The director of the President’s Commission on Administrative Reform, seated at his desk in the wonderful old gingerbread castle at Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue known as the Executive Offices Building, was engaged in what he liked best: the smooth and efficient completion of an administrative task. There were times when Robert A. Leffingwell regretted, and regretted bitterly, the sequence of events that six months ago had persuaded him to lie to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and thus forfeit his chance to be Secretary of State; but for the most part he had found hard work to be an antidote to the despair that otherwise might have gripped him with the contemplation of how willfully and arrogantly he had thrown away the high office he had so desperately wanted. Though he did not show it to the outward world, Bob Leffingwell had learned much from his experience.

He did not wear it on his sleeve, for he had never been a man to make his private thoughts public, but he had been humbled to a very considerable degree. Carried on by his desire to be Secretary of State and his furious anger at anyone who dared stand in the way, he had fought back desperately, lied to cover a foolish and utterly inconsequential flirtation with home-grown Communism buried deep in his past, even consented, indirectly but nonetheless culpably, in the sequence of events that had led to the suicide of Brigham Anderson. A sick horror had come to him over that tragic event, and although he had kept his banners flying to the end, he had known the moment he heard the news that it meant the end of his hopes. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he had faced himself fully. It was not a pretty picture at that particular moment, and although he had never once relaxed his rigid self-control with anyone, even his wife, he had lain awake in the night after his defeat by the Senate and acknowledged bitterly, over and over again, “I deserved it. I deserved it.” Then had come the President’s unexpected decision to keep him in the government, an act of compassion and mercy for which he would be forever grateful, and from that moment Bob Leffingwell had been a different man. Different and, he liked to think, better.

It was true, of course, that he would not have been human had he not accepted willingly the organized campaign of rehabilitation begun immediately by his journalistic supporters. He had written the articles requested, granted the interviews, begun to move about again cautiously but effectively in the world of the opinion-makers. But he was a subtle enough student of the operations of a certain type of mind so that he realized that
of course
he had to be rehabilitated: it was the only way that his supporters might be rehabilitated, too. They had been repudiated by the Senate along with him, and it was even more necessary to their egos than it was to his, that a rationalization should be instantly found and a program be instantly begun to blur and fuzz in the public mind the outlines of responsibility for what had happened. He had to be rescued because they had to be rescued: it was as simple as that. The sooner the public could be confused on the basic truth of what had happened, the better for the reputations of all concerned. He knew all that with a shrewd and sardonic understanding.

Except that there was a difference. His supporters were interested only in saving his reputation to save their own. The President, to some degree out of the needs of politics but even more out of the genuine kindness of his own decent heart, had saved
him.
This imposed upon Robert A. Leffingwell an obligation both to the President and himself that he had determined never to betray. So it was that he picked up his telephone to learn, with a sense of shock and an instant determination not to give a single inch on anything, that the Honorable Fred Van Ackerman, junior Senator from Wyoming, was in his outer office.

His first impulse was to say he was busy, but he knew Fred was too shrewd and demanding to accept that. He told his secretary to send the Senator in and braced himself for whatever this particularly unfortunate result of the electric franchise might have to say. As he might have known, it was both devious and direct.

“Bob,” the Senator from Wyoming said, shaking hands with an elaborate vigor, “you’re looking wonderful. And you’re doing a wonderful job down here, too. Everybody says so.”

“Thank you, Fred.” There was an awkward pause, into which Fred Van Ackerman smiled without humor.

“Can’t say the same for me, though, is that it?” He brushed aside Bob Leffingwell’s halfhearted gesture of denial and dropped into a chair with a sudden dark scowl. “I’ll get the bastards yet,” he promised, apparently a reference to his Senate colleagues who had censured him for his part in blackmailing Brigham Anderson. Abruptly he got up and went to the window, snapped his fingers impatiently, and returned to his chair while Bob Leffingwell waited, outwardly impassive but inwardly baffled by both the visit and the attitude. No doubt it would all come clear, he assured himself ironically, if one would only be patient.

“You probably feel as though a leper has come calling,” Fred Van Ackerman suggested with a sudden sharp glance that brought from his host another mild gesture of protest and denial. The Senator laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll try not to contaminate you too much. As a matter of fact, I’ve got an idea, Bob, and I want to talk to you about it.”

“Your ideas are always interesting, Fred,” Bob Leffingwell said warily, and covered the wariness with a laugh. “I don’t think anyone can deny that!” But his guest was not amused.

“They’d
better
be interested. I can still cause a little trouble.” He leaned forward, suddenly intent. “You know this mess we’re in at the United Nations. I thought maybe you and I could get something out of it, if we cooperated. We’ve got a lot of scores to pay back.”

“I’m not interested in paying back scores, Fred,” Bob Leffingwell told him coldly. The Senator from Wyoming gave a skeptical snort.

“Hell, you’re not, Bob. Everybody’s interested in paying back scores. It’s only human nature.”

“I’m really not, so if that’s why you’re here, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. Perhaps we’d better stop the discussion—?”

“Now, listen to me, Bob,” Fred Van Ackerman said angrily. “Don’t go high and mighty. Everything is changing, in this world of ours, and the advantage is going to those who change with it. God damn it, that’s a fact, and you know it.”

“What’s new from COMFORT, Fred?” Bob Leffingwell asked. “Are you still on their mailing list?”

At this reference to the mysterious organization, the Committee On Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce, that had sprung up overnight the previous spring and given him a nationwide sounding board from which to trumpet his slogan, “I would rather crawl to Moscow on my knees than die under an atom bomb,” the junior Senator from Wyoming gave a sudden secretive smile.

“Yes, I’m still on their mailing list,” he said in a spitefully mocking tone. “COMFORT’s not dead, you know. It’s just lying low for the time being until the country gets over its orgasm about that damned fool in the White House. Harley knew we were getting to be too strong for him, so he pulled that cheap stunt in Geneva. But we’ll be back.”

“I don’t think it was any cheap stunt,” Bob Leffingwell said sharply. “It was an act of great courage and I happen to believe it saved the country. I’m sorry I’m so mistaken about it, Fred.”

“Oh, hell,” Senator Van Ackerman said, with one of his baffling transitions. “We don’t have to fight about it, Bob. After all, our interests are the same.”

“I’m sorry. I think you’re the one who’s mistaken, Fred. Now if you’ll forgive me, I really do have things to do—”

“Relax. Relax. I think you and I and the Jasons and COMFORT and the nigger politicians like LeGage Shelby and Cullee Hamilton can all make common cause on this dustup in the UN. That’s what I’m here for. I think it’s a great opportunity to co-ordinate all the elements in the country that want a truly progressive approach to world peace and a truly liberal outlook in world affairs. I think we can get terrific backing all over the country. It’ll also give us a head start against Orrin in the campaign next year. We can carry it right on into the convention and give Ted Jason terrific backing for the nomination. It’s a natural.”

“I’m touched at your decision to include me in this great forward-marching movement,” Bob Leffingwell said, “but I think maybe I’ll pass it up, Fred. I’m a little too busy right here.”

“Now, listen, God damn it!” Fred Van Ackerman said. “I said don’t get high and mighty with me, Bob, and I meant it. After all, you’re not so pure, you know. I never lied under oath to a Senate committee.”

“Only because you never had the opportunity, I suspect. Shall I call my secretary to show you out, or can you just run along by yourself?”

“I’m not going to get mad, Bob,” the Senator from Wyoming assured him. “I’m just going to sit here and tell you what I have in mind, and then I’m going to ask whether you think it’s worth talking to the Jasons about. I’ll talk to the niggers if you’ll talk to the Jasons.”

“I haven’t any in with the Jasons.”

“The hell you haven’t. Everybody knows you’re going to manage Ted’s campaign next year when he runs for President.”

“Who said that? It’s a lie, whoever it was.”

“Patsy said it. Last night, at the Sulgrave Club. So you see, you’ll have two reasons for talking with her. You can tell her she’s a liar, and you can tell her what I have in mind. And that’s this, Bob …”

And that, Bob Leffingwell told himself with a self-scarifying disgust after his crafty visitor had left, was what you got for becoming involved with that kind of riffraff in the first place. Fred would never let him forget that he had supported him for Secretary of State, never let him forget that there was a bond of blood—Brigham Anderson’s blood—between them. He would always try to apply all the pressures he could, for whatever devious project he had in mind. It had been all the director of the President’s Commission on Administrative Reform could do to refrain from chucking him out bodily.

Still and all, he had to admit, as he settled back down at his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers that now seemed less interesting than they had half an hour ago, there was a certain amount of merit in what Fred had in mind. Whether there was any merit in its over-all political applications to Ted Jason’s cause was another matter; whether he himself should even get involved in Ted Jason’s cause was another matter still. He knew without any equivocation whatsoever that he would not do so if the President showed the slightest signs of wanting to run again; but certainly he had no cause to feel loyalty to Orrin Knox and no cause to refrain from assisting anyone who could block
his
Presidential ambitions—no cause whatsoever. Harley was a different matter. If he wanted it, Bob Leffingwell would support him 100 per cent against Ted Jason or anybody.

And yet—what did Harley actually want? Did anybody know? And how long could everything wait upon his decision? How much could others afford to delay their own planning? Was the day not coming soon when the first rule of politics—Look to yourself—would begin to apply?

He gazed thoughtfully out the window at the White House, gleaming just across the street in the autumn sun, as he considered all these questions.

Then he lifted the receiver and asked his secretary to get him Señora Labaiya on Dumbarton Avenue.

The direct phone to the White House rang in the Secretary of State’s ornate office, and in a moment he heard Harley’s polite, “Yes, Orrin?”

“Mr. President, you wanted me. Sorry to check in late, but I got in late from New York last night and overslept a little.”

The President sounded amused.

“So Beth told me.”

“You mean you didn’t have her wake me up, with the world going to hell in a handbasket? That showed admirable restraint.”

“Maybe it just showed I’m one of those Presidents who’s his own Secretary of State and doesn’t need any help from anybody. You know the type.”

“You verge on it, if I may say so.”

The President laughed.

“There’s enough for everybody. You weren’t exactly idle yesterday.”

“No. Nor today. Nor tomorrow. And tomorrow. And et cetera. That’s a tough situation up there.”

“I know. Did you get a chance to see our special envoy to the colored races, Mr. Shelby?”

“He was out somewhere organizing a demonstration at the time, I believe.”

“I’ve asked him to drop in for lunch. At my desk, strictly informal. Just a chat between us boys. To find out how it looks through a glass, darkly, and also to put a stop once and for all to these demonstrations, if I can. I’d like you to join us, if you will.”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve just been setting up a date of my own with Cullee Hamilton. Possibly I could bring him along? Or, on second thought—”

“Yes, I think that would be better. Let’s get the picture on LeGage first, and then you can talk to Cullee alone afterwards. I think it might be better to approach them separately.”

“I have plans for Cullee I’d like to talk to you about.”

“So have I,” the President said. “I told LeGage to come by at twelve-thirty. Why don’t you come over at twelve?”

“Yes. I’ll tell Cullee something unexpected has come up, which it has, and ask him to see me at three. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“Good. Oh, by the way. Did the Lebanese Ambassador get to you the other day?”

“He wants to give you an ornamental rug for the White House, I told him we’d set it up someday soon when it’s convenient for you.”

“You mean somebody wants to give
us
something? Don’t let that man get away!”

It was absolutely ridiculous to feel nervous about this, Patsy Labaiya told herself as Grayson swung the car into Sixteenth Street and headed north toward the Hamiltons’, but she had to admit that she did. There had been something about her previous conversation with Sue-Dan that had left her distinctly uneasy. She had been given the feeling that she was patronizing the Congressman’s wife and she
knew
she wasn’t patronizing the Congressman’s wife. Being forced into a position where she had to deny that she was patronizing the Congressman’s wife was just too much; it was as though she were, in effect, being patronized herself. She knew instinctively that this was exactly what the little b-biddy had intended. It was just too much. Really, they were so ANNOYING, when they wanted to be. It was just too much.