A Shade of Difference (58 page)

“I’m not sure yet,” Cullee said, already regretting the impulse.

“Nor am I,” the Secretary responded promptly. “Let’s let the good word stop right here, in both cases. But about this other, now—are you all right? I want you to feel completely satisfied in your own mind. That’s the only way it can possibly work.”

Cullee hesitated again, so long that he thought Orrin would break in; but for once the Secretary exercised great restraint and said nothing. Finally the Congressman spoke slowly.

“I—think so. That’s all I can say right now; I—think so. You’ll understand.”

“Yes,” Orrin Knox said, rather bleakly. “I guess I do. Well, then, assuming we can proceed on that basis, here’s what the President and I think would be the best thing to do—”

Cullee had listened alertly to their plan of action, suggested a couple of minor modifications, and finally agreed to it.

“Promise me one thing,” Orrin had said just before saying good night. “If you begin to doubt, later on—if you feel you can’t trust me, or the pressure gets too great for you from your own people or mine—don’t hesitate. I’d rather have you out of it altogether than dragging along reluctantly. Then I couldn’t trust you, and right now I do implicitly.”

And that, of course, was another effective facet of Orrin, the unqualified conferral of trust, once he had made up his mind about someone.

“You can trust me,” Cullee had said. “If I decide to let you down, I’ll let you know in plenty of time.”

“I believe you,” Orrin said. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said, feeling absurdly warmed by this, which of course, he told himself dryly a little later, was exactly what Orrin intended him to be.

5

“It isn’t as though this were some bloody picnic, after all,” the London
Daily Express
said sharply. “Why isn’t Knox here? Why does he leave it in the hands of a second-rater like Fry when his country is about to take a licking?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to sit here and face it,” the Manchester
Guardian
suggested. “Too much for the Knox pride, possibly. How about that?” he demanded of the
New York
Times
as they went down the private back press stairs and came out into the Chamber to see before them the garish blue-and-tan amphitheater of the Assembly Hall, its half-moons of shining wooden desks with their cold neon lights beginning to fill with delegates and staff as the hour neared eleven and the time approached to begin final debate on Felix Labaiya’s amendment.

“I don’t know,” the
Times
said slowly. “Anyway, I’m not sure I agree with all your assumptions. Fry isn’t a second-rater and Knox isn’t afraid to take what he has to take. It could be, you know, that he isn’t here because he doesn’t think the United States is going to take a licking.”

“Don’t you?” the London
Evening Standard
demanded. The
Times
shrugged.

“Your count’s as good as mine, pal. What have you found?”

“Not very bloody much,” the
Daily Express
confessed. “But everything I have found looks bad for Uncle Sammy.”

“There isn’t much margin either way, I’d say,” the Chicago
Tribune
said. “I’d say the breaks are going to us. After all, he needs two-thirds, you know. At the moment, he just ain’t got it.”

“Hope goeth before a fall, old boy,” the
Daily Express
remarked. “Look at Tashikov coming in, down there. Does he look like a man who’s about to take a defeat?”

“Look at Hal Fry coming in down there,” the Chicago
Tribune
said promptly. “Does he look like a man about to take a defeat?”

“Why bother to look at either one of them?” the
Evening Standard
inquired. “Go and search among our darker brethren, if ye would find the truth. I must say K.K. looks happy. Ghana looks happy. Guinea looks happy. All God’s chillun look mighty, mighty happy. I’d say that’s a better indication than the boys on the front line, wouldn’t you?”

“How’s the gallery today, by the way? Ready to riot?”

“Doesn’t look it,” the
Evening Standard
said slowly as they all turned around to stare up intently at the tourist groups with their guides, the housewives from Mamaroneck and Glens Falls, the businessmen from Milwaukee and Phoenix, the earnest dark faces that filled the greater part of the galleries.

“That raises an interesting point,” the
Guardian
remarked. “How do you see a thundercloud at night? I mean, supposing they were there, among all those nice serious darkies from the ladies’ sewing circles and the Men’s Study and Poker Leagues? How would you know?”

“That’s what the guards wonder, I’m sure,” the
Express
said. “Did you see how carefully they’ve been checking them in? You’d think it was a garden party at the Palace.”

“Here comes Felix,” the
Standard
said as they all turned back and resumed their study of the floor. “I see he and Hal are going through the motions. We ought to be getting under way pretty soon.”

Below them in the long left aisle running down to the distant green marble rostrum, the acting head of the American delegation and the Ambassador of Panama were indeed going through the motions, though it was, in Hal Fry’s case, even more of a burden than it would have been otherwise. He had spent a troubled night, waking suddenly to heavy waves of dizziness and unexplained cramps through his stomach and back, his breath short and his heart palpitating painfully, drifting off again into a blurred, hazy world between sleep and waking that had given him very little rest. Orrin had called at eight with the plan for the day, and that had ruined the only period of really restful sleep he had been able to achieve. He had only picked at breakfast, feeling nauseated and weak, and it had been by another effort of sheer will—God, if the world only knew what a stout character I have! he had told himself wryly—that he had been able to get to U.S. delegation headquarters and go through the motions of getting ready for the debate.

Lafe had dropped in early, looking fresh as a rose, though the Lord knew where he had unfurled his petals the night before, and had immediately begun to question him on his health. That hadn’t helped much, either.

“I hear you went back to the doctor,” he said accusingly, and Senator Fry shook his head.

“I suppose she tells you everything I do,” he said. Lafe smiled.

“Enough to keep me informed. I hear it’s still nervous tension.”

“That’s the pet medical fad of the century, yes. There’s a certain type of doctor that would be lost without it.”

“How is it this morning?”

“I didn’t have a very good night. Or eat a very good breakfast. But I’m feeling a little better now.”

“Think you’ll make it for the debate all right?”

“I’ve got to make it for the debate. Orrin isn’t coming up, so—”

“How’s that? I thought sure he’d be here, especially since you aren’t feeling so well—”

“He doesn’t know exactly how I’m feeling,” Hal Fry said firmly. “And I don’t want you to tell him, understand?”

“I’ll see.”

“Please now, Lafe. Please.”

The junior Senator from Iowa stared at him thoughtfully.

“All right. Up to a point. But you can’t go on very long like this, buddy.”

“Do I look that bad?”

“You look pretty good, as a matter of fact. Except your eyes, which don’t look good, to me, anyway. Others might not notice, but I know you so well I can tell.”

“Lafe,” he said suddenly. “There’s one thing that troubles me”—he gave a wry half-laugh—“among many other things, but”—he sobered again instantly—“this one most of all.”

“If I can help,” Lafe said simply, “you know I will.”

“You know about my son,” Hal said. The Senator from Iowa nodded slowly.

“You’ve never told me, but Orrin did, once.”

“If anything should happen to me,” Senator Fry said with a sudden bleakness that wrung his colleague’s heart, “what would happen to him? I’ve left him provided for, of course, but—he needs company.”

“Does he?” Lafe asked quietly, with a compassion that robbed it of hurt. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve got to think so,” Hal Fry whispered. “I’ve just got to think so. I have to have—some hope, Lafe, even when they tell me there isn’t any.”

“Well, in the first place, I don’t believe for one minute that there is any reason at all for you to think you aren’t going to snap out of this, whatever it is. But in the second place, assuming worst came to worst and everything bad happened, you can rest easy about your son. I promise you he’ll have company. I’ll go and see him myself, regularly, as long as I’m in Washington.

“And when they finally kick me out of the Senate”—he grinned a little—“I probably won’t go home anyway, but if I do, I’ll try to get him moved somewhere where I can see him regularly. How’s that, good enough?”

I mustn’t cry, Hal Fry told himself desperately, but in spite of himself his eyes filled with tears.

“You’re—very kind,” he said. Lafe gave a strange smile in which bitterness and irony and protest were mingled.

“Oh, I have one or two small virtues. Nobody thinks so, but I do.”

“You—have a great many,” Hal Fry said. He added quickly, for now the physical pain was beginning to return strongly again, complicating and multiplying the emotional, and he did not think he could continue much longer without breaking down altogether and making a real spectacle of himself, “His name’s Jimmy.”

“Jimmy,” Lafe repeated gravely. “I’ll remember.”

“Thank you,” Hal Fry said humbly. “Thank you.”

“Yes,” Lafe said. “Now,” he went on with a sudden briskness that deliberately broke the mood, “if you’re not feeling up to it, I want you to let me do the talking today, okay?”

“I’m all right,” Senator Fry protested, but his colleague went on in the same no-nonsense tone.

“We’ll go over and get started as usual, but the minute you don’t feel up to it, you let me know and I’ll take over. I want you to promise, now. It’s great to be heroic, but there comes a time to be sensible.”

“I have my duty to do,” Hal Fry protested with as much vigor as he could muster. “I can’t let the country down, just because I’ve got the screaming williwaws.”

“It’s my country, too,” Lafe said with a smile. “Now, no nonsense, buddy. I mean it. The minute you need help, you sing out. I’m going to be watching you, so don’t try to pull any fast ones.”

“Yes, Big Brother,” he said through the reddish screen that was beginning to come between him and the world. Lafe grinned.

“Good. I’m going to go answer my Senate mail now. I’ll see you over on the floor about ten to eleven.”

And now here they were in the Assembly Hall, and Lafe was indeed watching him as he stood nearby exchanging suave insincerities with the smug young delegate of Kenya. He himself, feeling somewhat better now, though still with a strange clamping tightness in his chest and throat and still with the strange feeling that he might fall if he walked or moved or turned too fast, was doing the same thing with the Ambassador of Panama. Felix looked, he thought, rather the worse for wear himself, this morning.

“Got it all sewed up, I suppose,” he suggested, and Felix smiled his small, tight smile.

“I have reason to feel confident.”

“That’s good. I wish we all had that privilege.”

“You do not, then,” the Ambassador said with a polite quickness. The Senator from West Virginia managed to smile through his physical difficulties with what appeared to be a comfortable humor.

“Oh, it isn’t that I don’t think we’re in good shape. It’s just that I learned in the Senate years ago that it doesn’t do to be too sure of anything before a vote.”

“I have received many pledges of support,” Felix Labaiya said.

“I too. Some rather surprising ones, in fact.”

“Oh?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, you will excuse me. I have to talk to the Indian Ambassador.”

“You may have the pleasure,” Hal Fry said, seeing that worthy at the moment far across the chamber talking to two gorgeously robed Nigerians and a sheik from Mauritania. “Give him my love.”

“He will be pleased,” Felix said with a dry little smile.

“I’m sure,” Senator Fry said with a reasonably cheerful grin. “Meanwhile,” he added as he saw a figure equally colorful come down the aisle in stately progress, “I shall talk to Terry.”

“Senator,” the M’Bulu said, holding out an enormous hand and engulfing Hal’s cordially within it. “How pleasant it is to see you this morning.”

“And you. I’ve been hearing all sorts of interesting things about you. And reading about you. And seeing you on television. You’ve been a busy man recently, haven’t you?”

Terrible Terry smiled, a complacent, self-satisfied expression, and looked about the hall, now abustle with arriving delegates. The roly-poly little President from the Netherlands had taken his seat at the dais beneath the map of the world, and the Secretary-General had just come in and assumed his place alongside. It would not be long now before the opening gavel would fall.

“Yes, I have been rather occupied, you know.
Today
—
Tonight
—
Meet the Press
—
Face the Nation
—White Paper—UN Report—Accent—Impact—Shock—Smash—Challenge—Answer—Question—NBC, ABC, CBS, Mutual—parties, rallies, Madison Square Garden—” He gave an elaborate sigh, and adjusted the drape over one arm. “You know the routine.”

“It is boring, isn’t it?” Senator Fry agreed in a tone that prompted a sudden sharp glance from his towering companion. But Terry had the grace to laugh, a lighthearted, happy sound that indicated complete confidence in the outcome.

“Oh, yes, but necessary if one is to mobilize American public opinion behind an anti-American cause. One needs to appear on all those programs if one wishes to win sufficient publicity in this country to really defeat your government’s purposes. It is really, still, quite powerful, you know.”

“Oh, is it?” Hal Fry inquired over the distractions of some little man who was kneading the small of his back with a pair of iron calipers. “I wasn’t so sure.”

The M’Bulu looked, for a second, quite thoughtful.

“I think we have you beaten,” he said candidly, “but one is not always sure a battle is over until the last man is dead.”