Capable of Honor (31 page)

“Sweetie,” Patsy said, “you MUST speak out. The world is waiting for you. Won’t you PLEASE say something before it’s too late?”

“Pat,” her brother said, using the nickname and tone she knew from childhood meant: shut up, “will you calm down? I know perfectly well what I’m doing and I’m going to do it my own way. O.K.?”

“All r—ight,” she said doubtfully, “but I still don’t think you know the feeling that’s developed.”

“Of course I know the feeling,” he said impatiently. “It’s screaming at me from every headline, radio, and television screen. My papers out here are as rabid to get me committed as any back there. Walter is calling me every hour on the hour, urging me to do something and promising dire things if I don’t.” He chuckled. “University faculties and students from San Diego to the Oregon line are threatening to march on Sacramento. I know the feeling. Where,” he added abruptly, “is Bob Leffingwell?”

“In town.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Waiting to see.”

“Very smart of him,” the Governor said dryly. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“You can’t do it FOREVER,” his sister said.

“Watch me.”

“You’ll have to say something tomorrow at Walter’s luncheon. You’ll just have to. It would make it such an
exciting
meal!”

“It’s an exciting age,” Governor Jason said, "But don’t let it get you down. Meet me at the airport at eleven tomorrow, will you? And don’t tell the press I’m coming in.”

“Of course I will. You don’t think they won’t know it anyway, do you?”

“O.K.,” he said indifferently. “By the way, what’s your damned husband up to?”

“I really don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I haven’t heard a word from him since he went down there.”

“That would be all I’d need to make my position perfect,” he said sardonically.

“It would give you something else to be mysterious about,” she couldn’t resist. He laughed.

“Who needs it?”

In this he was undoubtedly right, for in Spring Valley his silence was a major topic as it was at many another dinner table around town on this evening of national uncertainty, international outcry, and rising political pressures. Helen-Anne had been invited, and now the Secretary, his lady, and their acid-tongued friend were sitting in front of the fire having coffee and liqueur.

“You realize,” Orrin said with a smile, “that you’re probably damning yourself forever, being in such awful company at a time like this. I’m one of the two men who’s destroying America, the UN, the world, and—so I gather from Walter’s columns—the whole damned universe. I admire your courage.”

“I admire yours,” Helen-Anne said. “How do you stand it?”

“It isn’t easy,” Beth admitted. “Somebody left a homemade bomb near the back door last night.”

“No!” Helen-Anne exclaimed, genuinely shocked. “Did you call the police?”

“No,” the Secretary said, “though I did get in one of the department security men to take care of it. It turned out to be a dud. Anyway, I don’t want to stir up a lot of trouble. The atmosphere is tense enough as it is. Just suppose what it would be like if I had a couple of cops put on the house. We’d never hear the end of it.”

“I don’t want to hear the end of
you,”
Helen-Anne said grimly. “I don’t think you should be a damned fool, Orrin. The country needs you.”

“Talk to your ex,” Orrin said with an equal grimness. “He and his friends are creating this climate. They may have a lot to answer for.”

“I’ve told him so. He knows how I feel. Of course he thinks you and the President created it.”

“Whoever created it,” Beth said with some impatience, “when you’re dead you’re dead. Personally, I think we ought to have guards.”

“I’m with you,” Helen-Anne said. “There’s such a thing as being courageous and such a thing as asking for it.”

“I’m not going to do it,” Orrin said flatly. “Think of the reaction in the country and around the world! It would transform this whole thing into something that’s terribly serious.”

Helen-Anne snorted.

“Oh, lover, stop being silly. Transform it into something serious, he says. What in hell do you consider it right now? Stop being disingenuous and phony, Orrin.”

Beth chuckled.

“Amen! Let him have it, girl.”

“Well, it’s ridiculous. You get those guards on this house right away, Orrin, and stop acting like a noble damned fool. And don’t go into crowds, and watch when you get out of cars, and for heaven’s sake be careful. Some people in this fight are playing for keeps, particularly with a potential President.”

Orrin grunted.

“Huh! Not very potential right now.”

“Potential enough for me. It’s no fun being press officer to a corpse.”

“Why, Helen-Anne,” he said with a mock astonishment, though she could tell he was genuinely pleased. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“We weren’t sure you could do it, you know,” Beth said. “When you talked to me the other night, you were uncertain whether—”

“Oh, yes, I can swing it. The dear old
Star
is agreeable, though slightly convinced I’m crazy, but they’ll give me leave if I want it and so will the syndicate. All that’s necessary is for you to persuade Harley not to run. And that, my friend,” she said with a quizzical smile, “I do not think you are going to be able to do. So it’s all academic, anyway.”

Orrin looked amused.

“You know, I think you’re right? I do believe you are. How about being Harley’s press secretary?”

“He’s already got one and we fight like cats and dogs. No, I’ll stay where I am and help through the column unless you’re the nominee. At least,” she added automatically in political Washington’s favorite phrase, for few in the capital burn any bridges they can retain, “that is my present intention.…Tell me,” she said abruptly. “How are things going over there in Gorotoland, really?”

The Secretary frowned.

“Not good. You saw the evening headlines. It’s deceptively simple terrain, plains in one part and hills and highland plateaus in the other—but it isn’t as simple as it looks. Short of gunning down the entire population, which Walter thinks we’re bloody-minded enough to do, but aren’t, it’s a matter of slow, steady slogging. Which means delays—and that means boys dying and families being broken and all the other murderous appurtenances of our age—and that means more chance every day for Walter and his friends to say, ‘We told you so.’” He sighed. “It’s going to be a tough fight and a long one.”

“Will we negotiate?”

Orrin shrugged.

“When they’re ready. Which they won’t be until we get out. Which we won’t do until they’ll negotiate. So there we are.”

“You paint a cheerful picture.”

“I’ve
got a cheerful picture,” Beth said lightly, producing it from an envelope on the coffee table beside her. “Take a look at Hal and Crystal Danta Knox, five months pregnant.”

“She looks darling,” Helen-Anne agreed. “So does he. But then, of course, they always were darling kids.” She sighed, too. “God, how time rushes in this age. It seems like a million years ago that I went to their wedding at the Cathedral. How’s Hal getting along?”

“Fine,” his father said. “He’s in a law firm in Pekin, Illinois. He may run for the legislature next year.”

“Repetitions, repetitions,” Helen-Anne said with a smile. “Can’t you Knoxes ever do anything but guzzle off the public payroll?”

“It seems to be an ingrained habit,” Orrin said, “How about some more B and B?”

“No, thanks, love, I really must run. I thought I might go up to the Senate and see what’s going on. They’re into a filibuster, aren’t they?”

“Van Ackerman is,” the Secretary said. He smiled. “I think the rest of his support has dropped by the wayside by this time. Bob Munson called about an hour ago to tell me he’d bought off Arly Richardson and terrified Tom August, so that takes care of them. A lot of Senators are very uneasy but they’re going along, sometime tomorrow when Fred gets tired out.”

“I hope it kills him, after what he did to Seab Cooley,” Helen-Anne said coldly, thinking of what the Senate had come to regard as Fred’s murder-by-filibuster of South Carolina’s gallant old senior Senator.

“He’s a lot younger,” Orrin said. “It won’t kill him, the way it did Seab. And also, he’s on the popular side, this time—just as he was then, actually. I think Fred is out, this evening, to make himself the spokesman for all the dissident groups in the country and then swing them behind Ted Jason, if he can. He may succeed, too,” he added grimly. “He’s not dumb.”

And with this judgment, though they hated his guts, most of the colleagues of the junior Senator from Wyoming were in agreement as he talked on toward midnight, while above him the galleries, emptied during dinner, filled up again with an attentive and sometimes applauding audience. He spoke from a bitter, and apparently absolutely righteous, conviction, twisting the knife in the Administration with attack after slashing attack. Inside he was telling himself with a savage satisfaction that this time he had the pious bastards on the run. Not only the Committee on Making Further Officers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT) was behind him, but around 9 P.M. he had been called from the floor to take a call from LeGage Shelby of DEFY in New York. Defenders of Equality for You, Gage said, was wholeheartedly in favor of any attempt to stop the resolution, and its national executive was even then planning to join demonstrations in key cities tomorrow. Nor was that all. Shortly before Fred had taken over the floor from Arly Richardson at eleven-sixteen he had been called out again.

This time the call came from Dallas.

“This is Rufus Kleinfert,” the voice said in its oddly accented tones, traces of York County Pennsylvania Dutch still lingering after forty years in Texas oil. “I am Knight Kommander of the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism.” He paused and added carefully, “K-E-E-P—”

“Sure, sure, Rufe,” Fred broke in heartily. “Good to hear from you, buddy. What’s on your mind? Going to join me in this great fight against war and these power-mad bastards downtown? I need all the help I can get, Rufe, I’ll tell you that.”

“K-E-E-P,” Rufus Kleinfert said carefully, “believes it must speak out. It believes your gallant battle tonight is the battle of all of us who fear the entanglement of our beloved country in foreign wars and alliances. K-E-E-P believes that our entanglement in Gorotoland is a Communistic plot to drain our manpower and resources as they have been drained in so many places in recent decades. It believes that the President and Secretary of State, if not knowing Communist agents, are at best Communist dupes. K-E-E-P intends to oppose this course, not just at this moment, but, if need be, at the national convention of the President’s party in July, and in the national election later. K-E-E-P—”

“Say, Rufe,” Senator Van Ackerman broke in, “that sounds like great stuff. Why don’t we have a little talk next time you’re in D.C. or I’m in Dallas? I think maybe with this issue the way it is, with the national outcry in the press and all against this insane stupidity on the part of Half-Brain Harley and Odd-Ball Orrin, that we just might be able to swing the whole deal for a really great American.”

“Who’s that?” Rufus Kleinfert asked with an abrupt suspicion.

“Governor Jason, who else?” Fred said briskly. “Now, Rufe—”

“K-E-E-P,” its Knight Kommander said coldly, “is not convinced that Governor Jason is really With Us in our fight to preserve America’s traditional freedoms from foreign betrayal and entanglement. How do we know where he stands? Has he spoken out? Everything he has said on other issues up to now indicates that he is no better than a dangerous, radical, Communistically oriented liberal, of exactly the sort the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism was established to combat. K-E-E-P has opposed every such dangerously radical individual it could in recent years. K-E-E-P—”

“You’ve done a great job, boy, a great job,” Fred Van Ackerman said cordially. “I don’t know where the country would be without you.”

“K-E-E-P also has the feeling,” Rufus Kleinfert said, unimpressed, “that you yourself. Senator, have espoused many dangerously liberal causes in your Washington career. What reason does K-E-E-P have to believe that
you
are sincere and dedicated in this great battle to—”

“Now, just a minute, Rufus buddy,” Senator Van Ackerman said harshly. “Who made this phone call? It wasn’t me, was it? You must think I’m on your side or you wouldn’t be talking, would you? Now, cut the crap and let’s talk sense on this. We’ve all got to stand together on the side of keeping the peace and getting the hell out of Gorotoland—the side of upholding the UN instead of destroying it!—the side, Mr. President,” he shouted, as his colleagues watched him with something of the apprehension with which they would have watched a rabid ocelot, and the galleries leaned forward excitedly to enjoy the drama he was precipitating below, “of saying to the world that America does not go along with this insane drive of Harley M. Hudson and Orrin Knox to re-elect themselves to another term with the treasure of America’s coffers and the blood of America’s boys!

“That is the side on which I stand, Mr. President, the side of fighting this madness to the last breath that’s in me! That is the side on which the vast majority of Americans stand. And, Mr. President,” he said, his voice dropping to a menacing calmness, “I think our two distinguished and oh, so able, former colleagues will find it out in November. Yes, Mr. President, I say to them, let them run! They will learn in November what their countrymen think of their insane course! Isn’t that a fact?” he demanded abruptly of the Majority Leader, who had returned from the Stricklands shortly after eleven and had been sitting at his desk, still in tuxedo, impassive and expressionless, ever since. “Isn’t that a fact, I ask their defender, the distinguished Majority Leader?”

“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, rising slowly to his feet, “I’m not defending—or denouncing—anybody. I’m just waiting for the Senator to get through so we can vote on this resolution.”

“Oh, we’ll vote on it, I will say to the amusing Majority Leader,” Fred Van Ackerman cried as a little scythe of laughter cut its way across the Senate, “we’ll vote on it, sometime tomorrow, as he wishes. But before we do, Mr. President—before we do—I intend for this Senate—and the country and the world—to understand exactly what is going on in this city of Washington. I intend for the world to understand how an ambitious pair of politicians, who may or may not be knowingly playing into the hands of the Communists, Mr. President—”