Advise and Consent (84 page)

It was while he was still feeling happy that he had done the right thing that the phone rang again and he found to his pleasure that perhaps he could be helpful to someone after all. “Harley,” Orrin Knox said bluntly, “how do you feel about Bob Leffingwell now?” “Just the way you do, I imagine,” Harley Hudson replied. “Good,” Senator Knox said. “Come down to my office if you can. We’re having a strategy meeting and I’d be very gratified if you’d join us.” “I will, Orrin,” the Vice President said. “I’ll be right down.”

At the Office of Defense Mobilization the press was informed that the director would not be in today. There was no answer at his home.

The line of cars moved slowly around the Tidal Basin in the sparkling sun, the cherry trees floated along the water in great pink clouds. It had been a silent ride from the Westchester, and when they parked by the Jefferson Memorial and got out it was Hal who spoke first.

“It seems corny to come here,” he said, “but maybe it’s as relaxing as any place.”

“I think so,” Crystal said, taking his arm. “You know,” she said, with the pleased air of rediscovery Washingtonians feel each spring, “these things really are lovely, aren’t they?”

“Beautiful,” Hal said. “I suppose this isn’t the time to make the remark about ain’t nature grand and aren’t people awful.”

“No,” Crystal said, quite severely. “It isn’t the time at all.”

“All right,” he said meekly. “I won’t.”

“Good,” she said.

“Walter!” a nearby tourist ordered loudly. “Walter, you and Mimi go stand on the steps. Go stand on the steps. I want to take your picture. GO STAND ON THE STEPS!”

“By God, Walter,” Hal murmured, “you’d damned well better go and stand on the steps or you’re going to get your little tail tanned. Or maybe,” he added, “it should be the remark about tourists are fascinating, they’re so representative of America. What do you think?”

“I think you’re making a valiant attempt,” Crystal told him with a rather wan smile, “but I’m not sure it’s good enough.”

“Oh, now,” he said. “Don’t let it get you down.”

“How can I help it?” Crystal asked. “Doesn’t it get you down?”

“Well, sure,” he said, “but you’ve got to keep going.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “People always have to keep going. That doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Well, I don’t think—I don’t think he’d want us to mope,” Hal said.

“It makes me feel the way I felt once when I was ten and heard a man shouting at his wife at the beach,” she said. “Scared to death of the grown-up world.”

“Well, we’re grown up,” he said. “We’re part of it.”

“It makes me want to go back,” Crystal said, and her eyes filled suddenly with tears.

“Now, stop it,” Hal said severely. “Just stop it. That isn’t going to get anybody anywhere. Let’s go see old Tom.”

“Now who’s being corny?” Crystal asked with an attempt at a smile that almost succeeded and would in another moment or two. “Let’s go see old Tom and stand by his statue and think Big Thoughts, no doubt. Now who’s corny?”

“We won’t be able to stand by his statue,” Hal said. “Walter and Mimi will be there having their picture taken. However, it doesn’t hurt to think Big Thoughts once in a while. That’s what places like this are for, I gather, so that we can occasionally.”

Above them loomed the statue of the President who announced to the world that he had sworn eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man, staring across the water at the city where quite a few people still tried quite conscientiously to remain true to his principles.

“I wonder,” Crystal said, “what he would have thought of all this.”

“I don’t think he would have approved,” Hal said, “but he probably would have understood. After all, he was a politician himself, you know.”

“Why does politics have to be so dirty?” Crystal asked bitterly. “Why does it?”

“I don’t know, is it?” Hal asked reasonably. “I don’t think Stanley Danta is a dirty politician. I don’t think Orrin Knox is. I know lots of people I don’t think are dirty politicians. Don’t you?”

“I suppose so,” she said as they turned away and left the shrine to the tourists, “but they never seem to win out.”

“They don’t seem to win out as often as you’d like, that’s what you mean,” Hal said. “They win a good deal of the time. It seems to balance out in the long run.”

“Always reasonable,” she said. “That’s you men, always settling for half-best.”

“Certainly not!” he declared with a sudden grin. “How can you depreciate your own value that way?”

“Oh, come on,” she said with the first genuine smile of the morning, “you’re so cute. Anyway, I think you’re just building up a rationale to justify going into politics yourself.”

“Would you mind?” he asked seriously.

“Right now,” she said thoughtfully, “I would. After this is over, I’ll probably feel differently. After all, it’s been my life.”

“Mine too, of course,” he said. “I can’t remember anything else, really.”

“Nor can I,” she said. “‘Vote for Orrin and Beth’—‘Vote for Hal and Crystal.’ I suppose it’s a natural.”

“Hal and Crys,’” he amended. “Sounds more folksy. Got to sound folksy, you know.”

“We’ll folksy ’em,” Crystal said. “When do you plan to start this?”

“Oh, a couple of years,” he said. “Go back to Springfield and settle down. Run for the legislature, and so on. After all, the pattern’s all there. Plus the name. Plus your name. How can we miss?”

“All right,” she said. “Just be prepared for missing. Be prepared for awful things. They can happen.”

“Now, don’t spoil it,” he said soberly. “Awful things aren’t going to happen to us.”

“I hope not,” she said fiercely. “Oh, I hope not.”

“Now you’re going to make me scared of the grown-up world,” he said ruefully, “and that’s no way to launch a political career.”

She smiled.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is your father going to run for President next year?”

“He hasn’t said,” Hal said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Is he going to make it?” she asked. He frowned thoughtfully.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m proud of him for trying, anyway. At least they know where he stands.”

“That’s what I like about his son,” she said, squeezing his arm suddenly. “Want to drive out to the Blue Ridge? It must be beautiful out there today.”

“I think that’s a fine idea,” Hal said. “We can eat at Waynesboro and then swing over to Charlottesville and on up, if you’d like.”

“Anything to get away for a while,” she said as they reached the car.

“All our troubles will be over tomorrow,” he said with a smile as they got in.

“Do you really think so?” she asked quizzically. He smiled again.

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But at least we’ll face them together, and that ought to help.”

“Yes,” she said, and he was aware that she was studying him with an appraising look in which love and affection and worry and many other things including, he was perceptive enough to see, Brigham Anderson, were inextricably mixed. “That ought to.”

“Somehow,” the
Newark
News
remarked as they came away from the hastily-called press conference in which Powell Hanson had assured them stoutly that he was satisfied there would be sufficient votes in the Senate on Thursday to confirm Mr. Leffingwell, “I get the feeling his heart isn’t really in it.”

“Whose is?” the
Los Angeles Times
inquired. “If there were an easy way to ditch this nomination right now, the Senate would do it.”

“If the President would withdraw it, of course—” The Memphis
Commercial-Appeal
said mockingly.

“He won’t,” the
Chattanooga
Times
said. “That’s why Brig died, isn’t it?”

“So I hear,” the
Commercial-Appeal
said shortly. “Well, I guess we’d better get back to Knox’s office. They ought to be ready to break pretty soon.”

But at Orrin’s door they found the reporters they had left behind when they went to Senator Hanson’s office just coming away in considerable disappointment.

“What did they say?” the
L.A.
Times
wanted to know.

“They wouldn’t say anything,” the
New York
Times
said. “Except they all looked like grim death.”

“Stanley Danta came out early on his way over to the airport to meet Brig’s brother,” AP said, “but he wouldn’t talk, either. He only said one thing—‘You will find that nothing discussed in this office this morning will ever be divulged to the press’—which was strong language, for Stanley.”

“And apparently,” said UPI, “they mean it.”

“Well, did they all seem to be in agreement on what they were going to do?” the
Commercial-Appeal
asked.

“That they did,” the
Herald Tribune
said. “That they really did.”

“So Knox, Cooley, Smith, Danta, Strickland, Tom August, and Harley are all agreed,” the
Times
summed up. “And since we already knew how Knox and Smith and Cooley felt, that means bad news for somebody.”

“I think we’ve got enough for a new lead,” UPI said.

“Indubitably,” said AP.

Calming down Walter Calloway of Utah, the Majority Leader decided, had been good for him. The habits of thought of many years began to function again, he found he was automatically studying, considering, weighing alternatives, making plans, even as his emotions tried to adjust to last night and its consequences. Minding the store was something he did instinctively, it was something outside emotions and he was very glad to be called upon to do it, for it was holding him steady to the course he had decided upon and giving him things to think about in the meantime. Brig’s pedantic, fussy little colleague, showing a forcefulness no one could have imagined he possessed, wanted to introduce a resolution to censure Fred Van Ackerman.

“I want to get that little monsster,” he had insisted angrily, his teeth whistling even more than usual in his anger and indignation. “He deservess it. He’s committed murder just as ssurely as though he fired that sshot himsself. I want to get him, Bob, and I think the Senate will go along with me.”

This estimate of truths and likelihoods had been difficult to refute, and before their talk was over Senator Munson had come to the conclusion that possibly Walter had the right idea—except, as he told him, he thought that the objective could be accomplished by indirection rather than directly. Senator Calloway had been doubtful—“Sseab thinks I should go right ahead with it,” he said, and the Majority Leader said, “I’m sure”—but he came around before long.

“Suppose you call the Legislative Drafting Service and have them put it in shape for you right now,” the Majority Leader suggested, “and then bring it over and let me handle it from there for a while. I think maybe we can achieve what you want without an open fight that might put a lot of unhappy things in the Record. I’d rather do it that way, if you agree.”

Walter Calloway, who obviously had no inkling whatever that the Majority Leader had played a part in recent events and, pray God, never would know, said, “Well—” slowly. “If you agree,” Bob Munson repeated firmly; and after a moment’s hesitation Senator Calloway said he would do whatever Bob thought best.

“Good, Walter,” the Majority Leader said quickly, “I appreciate your visit and your co-operation.” And he meant it sincerely, for it opened the way to a solution for the problem of what to do about Fred Van Ackerman, and that was all to the good. One minor piece of house-cleaning would be taken care of; and not so minor, either, considering the possibilities inherent in an unchecked demagogue in the Senate. One piece of good fortune had come out of all this tragic muddle: one little demagogue had gone too far too fast and was going to be squashed once and for all; and for that the country, even though it might never hear about it, could be grateful.

Pondering the strangely confused and unexpected ways in which the destinies of America sometimes work themselves out, he found that his talk with the junior Senator from Utah—who was now, in fact, the senior Senator from Utah—had served in some measure to restore his energies for the day. They would be needed a little later on, he thought with a sigh, for the clock was moving toward noon and the toughest thing he had ever had to do as Majority Leader was steadily coming closer as the session neared. He was not entirely ungrateful or unhappy, difficult though he knew their talk would be, when Mary buzzed and told him that the minutes remaining before the session would be filled by a visit from the senior Senator from Illinois. At least it would pass the time, he thought wryly, and it was with the wry expression still in his eyes that he looked up to greet his visitor as he came quickly into the room.

“What’s the matter?” Senator Knox asked shortly. “Do you find something funny in the world today?”

Senator Munson’s face sobered abruptly, he started to protest but then dropped it.

“Sit down, Orrin,” he said in a tired voice. “There isn’t anything funny in the world today.”

“I don’t think so,” Senator Knox said coldly. “You look like the devil,” he added abruptly.

“I have things on my mind,” Bob Munson said. Senator Knox nodded curtly.

“You should have,” he said; and suddenly, having forced them tightly down inside him so that he could come and see Bob with reasonable calm, he found that all his anger and sorrow and resentment were abruptly boiling up again.

“God damn it,” he said bitterly, “that was a hell of a thing you did. How can you stand yourself this morning?”

The Majority Leader looked at him with a weary thoughtfulness.

“You know,” he said, “I wonder that too. However, here I am because I have to be. Who told you?”

“He did,” Senator Knox said. “He wrote me a letter before he—before. It was under my door.”

“Was it complete?” Senator Munson asked and then answered his own question. “But of course it would be,” he said. “It wouldn’t be characteristic of his honesty if it weren’t.”

“That’s right,” Orrin said, without mercy. “That was a fine young man you killed.” He was pleased to see an expression of sudden pain come over the Majority Leader’s face.

“Oh, please,” Bob Munson said in the same weary way. “Orrin, please. How do you think I feel about it, for Christ’s sake?” He turned away and stared out the window a moment before turning back. “Who else knows?” he asked.