Advise and Consent (82 page)

“I am saddened and shocked about Senator Anderson’s death,” the President said, “and I have just issued a statement saying so.”

Have you? Powell thought rather dryly. That’s nice.

“Yes,” he said again.

“So I won’t waste time talking about that,” the President told him. “I want to talk about the situation which now confronts me and Bob Leffingwell. What is it, in your estimation?”

The junior Senator from South Dakota paused for a moment before answering.

“Bad, hm?” the President suggested into the silence.

“Yes,” Senator Hanson said.

“Hopeless?” the President inquired.

“No,” Powell Hanson said slowly, “I don’t think so. Not if you can find people who will stand by you and help.”

“Will you?” the President asked bluntly.

“I might.” Senator Hanson said carefully.

“I thought possibly you and Fred Van Ackerman—”

“Not with Fred Van Ackerman,” Powell Hanson said, so sharply he forgot to be polite. “You leave him out of it, if you want to get anywhere.”

“Well, you and Tom August, then—” The President offered. Senator Hanson snorted.

“I met Tom on his way to Orrin Knox’s office a few minutes ago,” he said. “They’re having a council of war.”

“Oh?” the President said sharply.

“Yes,” said Senator Hanson.

“Is Bob Munson in it?” the President asked.

“I don’t know,” Powell said. “Tom didn’t know who else was involved.”

“Have you seen Bob?” the President asked.

“No, sir,” Powell said.

“I would give a lot,” the President said with a sudden flattering candor, “to know just what Bob is going to do about all this.”

“Why don’t you ask him, Mr. President?” Senator Hanson suggested.

“I tried to reach him at his apartment, but he had already left,” the President said. “Then I tried to reach him there and Mary said he wasn’t in yet. I’m not sure,” he added with the same candor, “that she was telling the truth. Just between you and me, I think maybe Bob doesn’t want to talk to me this morning.”

Senator Hanson absorbed this confidence for a moment.

“If that’s the case,” he said, “you
are
in trouble, Mr. President.”

“Oh, I’ll keep trying,” the President said cheerfully. “In the meantime, if you see him try to smooth him down for me a little, will you? I’d appreciate it.”

“I will,” Powell promised automatically, though it occurred to him a second later that this threw a startling light on the President’s position at this moment, that he should appeal to a junior in the ranks to smooth down the Majority Leader for him. “In any event,” he added, “you can count on me. I am very upset indeed about Brig’s death, but I don’t feel that it should have any effect on judging the nomination. I think we should be able to separate the two when we come to vote.”

“Thank you,” the President said. “I think you should too. I think that shows real statesmanship, which of course is exactly what I expected from you. It’s why I called, in fact. Will you do some work on it for me, then? Talk to some of the others and try to hold them firm?”

“Well—” Powell Hanson said doubtfully.

“It could be a big opportunity for you in the Senate,” the President suggested. “It could lead to many things.”

“I know,” Senator Hanson agreed, though he wasn’t sure he did.

“After all,” the President said, “Bob won’t be Majority Leader forever.”

This so startled Powell that he exclaimed right out loud.

“Oh, I expect he will,” he remarked. “At least in my lifetime. However,” he said, “I do appreciate your confidence, Mr. President. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Maybe you can hold a council of war yourself,” the President proposed. “Call in the press, and give them something to speculate about.”

“A counterirritant, if nothing else,” Powell remarked with just the faintest trace of sarcasm. The President chuckled.

“All you young fellows are too clever for me,” he said. “You see through everything.”

“Yes,” Powell said on an impulse he couldn’t explain except that it sprang from his own decency. “All of us but Brig.”

There was an abrupt silence and for a second he thought he too had ruined himself forever with the President. But the stakes were obviously too high to let an unfortunate truth jeopardize them.

“I
can
count on you, then?” the President asked calmly, as though the other remark had never been made.

“Yes,” Powell said. “I’ll see who I can round up right away, and we’ll
do some planning.”

“Don’t forget the press conference,” the President said.

“I’ll take care of all aspects,” Senator Hanson promised. “Just one thing, though, Mr. President—don’t call Van Ackerman. He’s finished in this place.”

“I know that,” the President said. “I was just testing to be sure.”

“What sort of reaction are you getting?” the
Miami Herald
asked the
Philadelphia Inquirer
as they met shortly before ten in the corridor outside the silent and deserted Caucus Room. The
Inquirer
thumbed quickly through his notes.

“Jack McLaughlin of Georgia,” he quoted rapidly, “‘I believe in view of the event of last night that it will now be quite difficult to confirm Mr. Leffingwell.’ Clement Johnson of Delaware, ‘While there is no evidence on the record that Mr. Leffingwell was involved in this tragic development, it is inevitable that it will have some effect upon the Senate in passing judgment upon his nomination.’ Courtney Robinson, that old stupe: ‘There has been a grave turn of events in the nomination. I question now whether it can be confirmed.’ Sam Eastwood of Colorado: ‘I was for him. I’m not now.’”

“Well, good for Sam, a man who knows his own mind and isn’t afraid to say so,” the
Miami Herald
remarked dryly. “That’s pretty much what I’m finding, too. I’ve got Don Merrick, Lacey Pollard, Bill Kanaho and Dick Suvick, if you want them.”

“I do,” the
Inquirer
said, scribbling busily. “Same thing?”

“Pretty much,” the
Miami Herald
said. “I expect we’re going to find it pretty general all through the Senate.”

“In spite of—Brig?” the
Inquirer
asked.

“A lot of them don’t know the story yet,” the
Miami Herald
said. “We didn’t use it, and apparently nobody else did either. For once our great profession seems to have kept its mouth shut, all over the country.”

“Didn’t anybody anywhere have it this morning?” the
Inquirer
asked in some disbelief.

“Apparently not,” the
Miami Herald
said. “Nothing on the wire services, and they would have picked it up if anybody had. We’re really being very decent.”

“That’s nice of us,” the
Inquirer
observed, “seeing as how we helped to hound him to death
....
Well, I still think there’s
somebody
left who’s for Leffingwell.”

“I’ll bet its dwindled to less than fifty overnight,” the
Miami Herald
estimated. “Papa in the White House had better be talking fast, because he’s got his work cut out for him.”

“I’m still betting on Bob Munson,” the
Inquirer
said. “He'll pull it through yet, wait and see.”

“He might as well,” the
Miami Herald
said indifferently. “He hasn’t got anywhere else to go.”

But this judgment, rendered out of the cold distaste for politics which occasionally sweeps the press in the wake of some particularly flagrant development—closely akin to the bitter annoyance which sometimes grips politicians following the latest bit of slanting by the press—was perhaps a little unjust. The Majority Leader was not in the position he was in by free choice, exactly, even though there had been a moment when the choice could have been his to make. Nor was he in a position anyone could envy, as he sat now at his desk, staring absently at his hands as they played idly and pointlessly with a letter opener. Like Justice Davis, he felt that he would carry a heavy burden for a long, long time, although there was a difference in that he was quite sure, too, that his own life was full enough and busy enough so the day would come when the burden would not weigh quite so heavily upon him as it did right now.

There was no minimizing it at the moment, however, any more than there had been in the long night when he had lain awake and reviewed without hope the bitter sequences of events that had ended in the Office Building yesterday afternoon. He had not spared himself in this review, and he was not sparing himself now. He had been grievously, terribly, unforgivably at fault; and finding some way to live with himself again was not his only problem. Knowing the Senate, he knew that perhaps the most serious and difficult challenge of all was the problem of somehow regaining the respect and approval of his colleagues. For his own peace of mind this far transcended anything else; and he was gradually coming to the conclusion that there was probably only one way to do it.

That it must be done he had known as soon as the news flash came over the radio. His instinctive appreciation of what it meant for him personally had been confirmed half an hour later when he had received a call from a voice he barely recognized, it sounded so muffled and heavy with pain. The junior Senator from Iowa, though he obviously could hardly talk from emotion, was straight to the point. “I just wanted you to know,” he said with a slow determination more terrible than abuse, “that you and I aren’t friends any more. You and your God damned Administration that you toady for can go to hell. Maybe you can count on me for a vote now and then, but inside here, where
I
live, there isn’t anybody home to you, any more, Senator Munson. So just keep your distance and ... leave ... me ... alone.” And he had hung up abruptly, because he obviously couldn’t trust his voice to hold steady any longer. The Majority Leader had braced himself for other calls of a similar nature, and when none had come he had understood that Senator Anderson’s close friends were telling him their reaction in a way more crushing than words could ever have been.

And there was the nomination. There, too, he had known at once what the effect would be, and so he had made no attempt to call anyone and again no one had called him. His judgment had been confirmed on that when he reached the Capitol an hour ago. He had not planned to see anyone, but as he neared the restaurant he saw a small group of men bursting out, in their center a large, disheveled, disorganized figure, obviously the life of the party. He heard someone say something he didn’t quite catch, gurgled on a burst of laughter, followed by a reference to “—good old Sam!”

How often, he could not help thinking wryly even as he suddenly decided to move forward and intercept the senior Senator from Colorado, had he witnessed just that scene, and in how many places. On the Hill, at the White House, downtown, in the Departments, on the Coast, down South, up North, at four national conventions, and once, very late at night, in a little town near the Continental Divide when he had been traveling with the President and Sam had come aboard to ride through the state. “—And that’s what we think of Sam in Washington!” the President had said and clapped him on the back, and on a roar of laughter the train had pulled out and the little round white dots of faces split by eager grins had receded faster and faster and finally disappeared altogether, swallowed up in the cold night air of the high, lonely plains.

But now Sam had seen him coming, and the amused memories vanished at once as a veiled expression came into his eyes. He was a big fat man with a smile on his mouth, but it wasn’t anywhere else.

“Oh, hi, Bob,” he had said slowly, and the Majority Leader was aware of a wall between them as palpable as though it had been of stone.

“I was just wondering—” He began, and started over lamely. “That is, I was just wondering—”

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Bob,” Senator Eastwood said. “If you mean Leffingwell, the answer is no.”

“But, Sam,” Bob Munson protested, “you told me last week—”

“Last week and last night were two different times, Bob,” Sam told him. “Isn’t that right?” And suddenly he wasn’t smiling any more at all anywhere.

“I suppose so,” Senator Munson said slowly. “I suppose that’s right, Sam.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam Eastwood said, “it is.” And then he saw someone he knew off on the other side of the corridor, and, “Well, hi,
there!
” he shouted happily, and turning his back on the Majority Leader he was gone, apparently just a big jolly man bursting with friendliness and good will for the world. Only he wasn’t.

And so it was with many of his colleagues now, Senator Munson knew; perhaps enough to defeat Bob Leffingwell. Certainly enough to make his own problem infinitely more difficult if he continued to fight for him.

Finally, there was the business of the Senate to be considered. Some way or other, the thing had to be cleaned up, and soon. It was true there had been the Fed bill and a couple of commercial treaties and fifty or sixty routine private-claims bills disposed of in the past few days, but there was no doubt the Senate was snagged on Bob Leffingwell. Half a dozen important things were piling up, a tax-revision bill, amendments to Taft-Hartley, the space-control bill, amendments to Euratom, and so on. Entirely aside from all the other aspects of it, he thought impatiently, it was time to get moving and get it out of the way; they had wasted enough time on it. His habit of mind as Majority Leader told him not much more could be tolerated. Eulogies today, services and Crystal’s wedding tomorrow, burial on Wednesday and a delegation from the Senate attending so there could be no vote then; that meant that the first day to vote would be Thursday. Well, then, he would try to get a vote Thursday and finish it one way or the other. If, he caught himself short, it was still his decision to make by Thursday. The one he was in process of making right now might interfere, providing he went through with it. He was increasingly sure he would.

Aside from Lafe, only Dolly had called last night, to invite him to come over, but he had said with thanks that he would stay where he was. “You’re all right?” she had demanded anxiously, and he had said, “Yes, as much as possible under the circumstances. I won’t pretend I’m happy.” This had made her start crying again, for him, and for Brig, and for all of them. But he had remained right where he was, ordering dinner from room service, tossing restlessly most of the night, eating again in his room in the morning and then going down a back elevator to catch a cab alone and go to the Hill. He didn’t want to see anyone for a while yet. Sam Eastwood had been unexpected, and he had only forced a conversation with him because he wanted to prove to himself that his fears and assumptions about the effect on the nomination were correct.