A Shade of Difference (66 page)

“I
am
sick,” he repeated in a stubborn whisper as he waited for the elevator to take him down to First Committee and the debate over Indonesia’s threat to Australian New Guinea, “and I
must
get well.”

But whether he would, and whether strength of will and fortitude of character would be enough to permit him to carry on his responsibilities here in the crucial days before the final vote on Felix Labaiya’s amendment, he did not know. Yet he determined one thing as he stood there waiting. From this point forward, insofar as will and character could assist him, he would make no further admissions to anyone that he was feeling sick, he would do nothing to indicate to the world that he was not fully capable of discharging his duties in this time of crisis for his country, he would carry on to the best of his ability in the way in which he was needed.

He did not know what was wrong with him, but he knew it was something far more fundamental than N.Y.U.’s brightest student could possibly be direct and uncomplicated enough to perceive. Maybe by thinking very hard about the tasks ahead he could persuade himself and his body by a sheer feat of will that it was not so.

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped into the elevator, a set smile on his lips and his eyes straight ahead as the machine shot downward to First Committee.

South upon the Potomac, where men were as concerned as anywhere about the day’s debate in the General Assembly and the fate of Cullee Hamilton’s resolution in the Congress of the United States, the senior Senator from South Carolina was thinking at a furious rate as he presided, apparently half asleep, over an afternoon session of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Justice Department witnesses were before the committee, and Seab Cooley was listening with an ominous benevolence as the Attorney General made an earnest appeal for additional funds to finance the assignment of special United States marshals “in case of emergency.” The phrase brought the reaction everyone had been awaiting from the chairman.

“Now, Mr. Attorney General,” he said gently, stirring awake and giving the witness a shrewd glance from his hooded old eyes, “would you tell the committee, are these emergencies you
discover,
or emergencies you
create?
”

“Emergencies that come to us for solution, Mr. Chairman,” the Attorney General said, rather tartly. “I don’t believe it is our policy to go out of our way to create emergencies unnecessarily.”

“You don’t believe it is your policy to go out of your way to create emergencies unnecessarily.”

“No, sir.”

“No, sir. No, sir. Well, I’m glad to hear that.” He smiled blandly and the sudden tension that had come upon the alert young men of the Attorney General’s staff eased somewhat. “You may proceed, Mr. Attorney General.”

“Oops!” whispered the
Dallas
News
to the
Los Angeles
Times
at the press table. “Thought we were going to have a story there, for a second.”

“Seab’s just going through the motions,” the
Times
whispered back “I don’t think his heart is in it today.”

And, if truth were known, this press table analysis of the chairman’s rather absent-minded manner was correct. His heart was not in it. In fact his heart felt tired, and old, and, quite uncharacteristically, discouraged.

It was not like Seabright B. Cooley, who had smitten his enemies hip and thigh when they attacked him in Gath and fell upon him in Ashkelon, to feel put upon and bothered by the world, but today he did. He had been following certain matters very closely, without saying anything to anyone about it, and just before the committee session began he had stopped by the paper stand near the public elevators at the entrance to the Senate side of the Capitol and dropped in his coin for the late edition of the
Washington
Daily News.
“CULLEE HOLDS FINGER IN UN DIKE,” the paper had announced with its customary cheerful insouciance. “WINS DELAY FOR US TO SPANK OURSELVES.”

This rather carefree analysis of the debate and vote in the General Assembly was in fact, as often with the
News,
rather closer to the realities and the Washington reaction than many people cared to admit. “Of all the damned things,” Bill Kanaho had snorted, stopping by to read over Seab’s shoulder. “Why in hell should we be humbling ourselves again?” Seab had nodded and made a mental note of the name of Hawaii’s senior Senator as one who, despite his racial background, might be a tried and trusted ally in the bitter struggle that would ensue when Cullee’s resolution reached the Senate—if it reached the Senate. But of that the senior Senator from South Carolina had few illusions and little doubt. The cards were stacked in the House, and everything his spies over there told him only served to emphasize the fact. It was now Saturday afternoon, and present plans were to bring the resolution to the House floor on Monday and ram it through under a tight limitation of debate that could bring a decision by nightfall.

This situation was, of course, attributable principally to the one man to whom such bursts of legislative speed in the House were almost always attributable. The Speaker, who moved in obvious and powerful ways his wonders to perform, had followed up his success in bringing the resolution out of the Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday on a 15-13 vote by arranging for the House Rules Committee to meet later this afternoon and approve the debate rule for Monday. Even with the parliamentary delaying tactics permissible under House rules, this would probably mean a final vote not later than 9 or 10 p.m.; assuming, of course, that the narrow vote in the Foreign Affairs Committee did not accurately reflect the divided sentiment in the House, and assuming also that Seab’s southern friends would not stand together. If the South remained solid and the House was as divided as the Foreign Affairs vote indicated, then the resolution might be stopped in the chamber of its birth and Seab would not have to fight it in the Senate.

Of this pleasant and desirable outcome, however, he was not at all positive as he heard, with just enough attention to make the Attorney General nervous, that hard-working official’s concluding paragraphs. Jawbone Swarthman had shown toward the Speaker the same qualities of malleable timidity that had made Seab sponsor his political career in the first place; the only trouble was that this time he had shown them toward the Speaker instead of toward his senior Senator, and this defection had left Seab feeling like a parent stabbed by his own child. Jawbone had called him right away, of course, apologizing profusely, and had explained that his decision to vote with the majority to bring the Hamilton resolution out of committee had simply been due to “pressures over here that you understand, Senator, sure you do.” Seab had said dryly that he did, but that he had a few pressures himself to exert against Jawbone in South Carolina and perhaps it was time he did so. For the first time this threat had not produced its customary result. Jawbone had said merely, “Yes, well, you know how it is, Senator,” and this vague response had been more alarming to Senator Cooley than any amount of open defiance. It had indicated quite clearly that Representative Swarthman, too, thought he was slipping and was no longer quite so afraid of his vengeance as he had always been heretofore. Of course Jawbone had assured him, sure now, sure now, that he would oppose the Hamilton resolution when it reached the floor of the House.

“You don’t think I’d let that little old resolution get through the House, now, do you, Senator?” he had demanded indignantly. “Speaker wanted it out of committee, so I let it get out, but you sure enough don’t think I’d stand for that kind of nonsense on the floor, do you?”

“Will you speak against it?” Senator Cooley had asked quickly, and Representative Swarthman had replied without a moment’s hesitation, “Got to, Senator. Got to!” But whether he would if the Speaker got sufficiently threatening, Senator Cooley was not at all sure. Jawbone might just do what he had done before at crucial moments, duck out home and not come back until it was all over.

And of course behind the Speaker stood the President and Orrin Knox, playing their game of global politics and try-to-please-everybody, which, as he had told Orrin the night he had eaten dinner at his house, simply could not work in the face of all the fantastic and unending pressures confronting the United States. He had not heard from the Secretary since he had attacked him and set in motion the wave of press condemnation of Cullee as the stooge for Orrin’s political ambitions, and he told himself with a grim little smile now that he wasn’t about to make the first move. Orrin could beat him in the House, if he got the Speaker and everybody else lined up, but he would have a tougher time of it in the Senate and he knew it.

Even so, the Senator from South Carolina was uneasy and disturbed. He was seventy-six and the winds of time were blowing about him. Added to them now were the winds of change in a hurrying, heedless century. He did not know whether he could withstand the two of them together.

“That was a powerfully moving statement, Mr. Attorney General,” he said with a sleepy sarcasm. “We will try to take all you say into account when we put our grubby little hands upon your bill.”

“I
think,” the President said as the early sunfall of autumn began to sift across the White House lawn and throw a golden light into his oval office, “that the best thing is to make them a simple offer without any strings attached. Export-Import Bank can do it, or the Bank for International Development. Or I may even be able to lay my hands on a couple of million somewhere in the Defense Department budget. The important thing is to get to them fast.”

“Without strings attached,” Bob Munson echoed rather dryly. The President smiled.

“Well, only one, of course—that Felix withdraw his amendment and behave.”

“Mr. President,” Orrin Knox said with some irony, “you are not trying to tell us that the President of the United States is resorting to international bribery. How shocking.”

“The President of the United States is doing his best to protect the United States,” the President said calmly. “It is a duty he has.”

“And one that Felix won’t be moved by in this instance, I’ll bet,” Senator Munson said. “I’m afraid there’s something deeper there that can’t be bought off with a gift of a few millions.”

“I agree,” the President said. “But, after all, Felix isn’t the government of Panama.”

“Yet,” the Secretary of State said. He frowned. “I wonder if it would do any good to talk to Patsy.”

“Assuming there is anything left of that marriage,” the President said, “perhaps so. But is there? Lucille tells me there isn’t.”

“The feminine grapevine,” Senator Munson said, “is something beyond the comprehension of mere man. Dolly tells me the same thing. Senator Bessie Adams tells me the same thing. No doubt Beth tells you, too, Orrin. But there are still plenty of reasons why Felix wouldn’t want it to collapse just now. He isn’t President of Panama, and he needs the Jason family for a while yet. God help us when he becomes so, however.”

“He will,” the President said. “Of that I am convinced. In the meantime, as long as a reasonable man sits in
La Presidencia,
we’ve got a chance to stop this present monkey business.”

“Perhaps we can also dislodge Felix,” Orrin said, “or at least set back his timetable a while. Suppose I ask Hal Fry to make the offer direct to him at the UN and meanwhile let his government know about it in an informal way. Then if he turns it down he should get a reaction from home. It might give him pause.”

“Of course,” the President said thoughtfully, “he must have the support of his government in offering his amendment or he wouldn’t offer it.”

“I don’t think so,” Orrin said. “He occupies a rather peculiar semi-independent position down there because of his father. He’s been excused a great deal already because of Louie, and the same tolerance apparently extends to what he does at the UN—up to a point. Maybe we can arrange for this to be the point.”

“I hope so,” the President said. “Maybe we can also offer something along the lines of giving Panama more say on the Canal Board. That might be more appealing than money.”

“He’s obsessed with the Canal, of course,” Orrin said, “and of course so are they all. It may make it difficult to create a division, but at least we’ll try. I’ll talk to Hal.”

“Good,” Senator Munson said. “Meanwhile, back at the Capitol, there is the little matter of passing Cullee Hamilton’s resolution. I understand the Speaker has the skids greased in the House, but you know the Senate. Those who grease skids in that great body sometimes find themselves sliding down ass-over-teakettle while those who were supposed to slide stand on the sidelines and give out with the merry heehaw. Sentiment is very divided on my side of the Hill, however smoothly Bill’s machine may be operating.”

“I’m not so sure it is,” the Secretary of State said. “The reports I get are of considerable uncertainty there, too. It’s going to be a very close vote, I think, and that of course will encourage all the skittish in the Senate. You have your work cut out for you once again, dear Robert.”

“Great,” the Majority Leader told him. “Dolly and I were supposed to be boarding the
Leonardo da Vinci
this morning to sail for lovely Italy and the golden isles of Greece. Here I am in Washington, plotting crafty stratagems. There ought to be a law.”

“I’d veto it if there were,” the President said with his comfortable smile. “Another week of work won’t hurt anybody, even if it has been a long session. The problems of the world don’t diminish.”

“Lord, no,” Bob Munson said. “How reliable is young Cullee, Orrin?”

“He has troubles. I believe his wife and LeGage Shelby and a lot of his own press and people are after him for not being radical enough. And for being a stooge of the Secretary of State, in Seab’s handy phrase.”

“Can he stand the gaff, do you think?” the President asked. “It’s my impression he will, but one never knows when the pressure grows.”

“It will test him,” Orrin said. “But he’s been tested before.”

“Not like this, though,” Bob Munson said. “It’s different when your own people turn against you.”