by Allen Drury
Also in the fabled city with the topless towers as it roars awake with an animal vigor Washington will never know are its senior Senator, Irving Steinman, quietly breakfasting in his apartment on East Eighty-second Street, and the junior Senator from Wyoming, Fred Van Ackerman, sleeping peacefully at the Roosevelt in the rosy afterglow of a mammoth rally of the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT) in Madison Square Garden.
Farther north, in Franconia, the news comes to Courtney Robinson, symbol of that smaller but bothersome Senate group the Majority Leader privately classifies as Problems, as he stands before the mirror in the downstairs hall knotting his string tie around his high, old-fashioned collar. “Courtney isn’t much,” Blair Sykes of Texas is fond of pointing out about the senior Senator from New Hampshire, “but by God, he sure does look like a Senator!” This fact, Courtney’s major contribution to his times, is the result of care, not accident; and now as he knots the tie just so, settles the collar just so, puts on the long gray swallow-tailed coat, shrugs into the sealskin overcoat with the velvet lapels, takes the big outsize hat and cane from the table, gives a pat to the dirty-yellow-gray locks at the nape of his neck, and carefully puts a hothouse rose in his buttonhole, there is no doubt that the day is going to see one more smashing production of Courtney Robinson, U.S.S. Across his mind there passes a momentary genuine annoyance with the President for having created such a mess as naming Bob Leffingwell to State is almost certainly going to be, but the thought is presently dismissed as he gives himself a last approving inspection and prepares to go in town for a little politickin’. He’s speakin’ to Rotary at noon, and mebbe they’ll want to know what he thinks of the Leffin’well nomination. Doesn’t think much of it, does Courtney Robinson; doesn’t think much, period.
There are those who do, however, and in the Washington suburb of Spring Valley, in the comfortable home where the telephone has been ringing incessantly for the past half hour, the senior Senator from Illinois lifts the receiver once more and prepares to give the same answer he has already given to four other newsmen:
“I haven’t reached a final decision on this matter and don’t expect to until all the facts are in. At the moment, however, I am inclined to oppose the nomination.”
But it is not another reporter who is calling Orrin Knox this time, it is the senior Senator from Utah. Brigham Anderson’s voice, courteous and kind as always, is troubled and concerned, and Senator Knox can visualize exactly the worried look on his handsome young face.
“Orrin,” Brig says in his direct way, “what do you plan to do about Bob Leffingwell?”
“I think I’ll oppose him,” says Orrin Knox, equally direct, his gray eyes getting their stubborn look and his gray head its argumentative angle. “How about you?”
“I don’t know,” Brigham Anderson replies, and there is real doubt in his voice. “I just don’t know. In some ways I can be for him, but in other ways—well, you know the man.”
“Yes,” says Orrin Knox, and a tart asperity enters his tone. “I know the man, and I don’t like him.”
“You and Seab,” Brigham Anderson says with a laugh.
“I trust my reasons are more fundamental than that,” Orrin replies flatly. “I’m not at all sure he could be as firm as he ought to be in that job. I’m not sure he wants to be as firm as he ought to be—not that I’m prepared to say that to everybody yet, but you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Senator Anderson says. “And there’s more to it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had reason to deal with him pretty closely on the Power Commission, you know, and I’ve never been convinced he’s the great public servant the press says he is. I’ve got plenty of doubts.”
“Of course you know what the press is going to do to us if we oppose him,” Orrin Knox says.
“I guess we can stand it,” Brigham Anderson says calmly, “if we know we’re right.”
“Which we’re not entirely sure we are, at this moment,” the Senator from Illinois retorts.
The Senator from Utah chuckles.
“I’ll see you on the Hill,” he says. “I wonder what Tom August is thinking right now?”
Orrin Knox snorts.
“Does he think?” he asks. “Good-bye, Brig.”
“Good-bye, Orrin,” Brigham Anderson says, and hangs up with a laugh, noting as he does so that the paper boy, a good-looking kid of fifteen, is only just now delivering the Post out front. For a moment the Senator considers a reprimand for this increasing tardiness; but the dark head turns suddenly toward the window, there is a wave and a smile, and Brig forgets the reprimand as he watches the straight back ride on down the block. At the corner the head turns again, there is a final smile and wave and the boy disappears. Brig starts out to get the paper just as Mabel Anderson comes from the kitchen on her way to do the same; they meet at the door and in the small domestic laughter of their near-collision the ghost of a wartime summer goes back-to rest, until the next time, in the Senator’s heart.
As of that moment similar telephone conversations on the nomination are passing between many other friends in the Senate, and from none of them, Bob Munson would be interested to know, is anything very constructive coming. Right now it is not entirely clear, even to those most astute in judging such things, just how far the fight over Bob Leffingwell is going to extend.
The President; the Senate; some labor and business leaders; the Barres and the Maudulaynes, K.K. and the Indians, Vasily Tashikov in his closely guarded embassy on Sixteenth Street, and all their respective governments; the chairman of the National Committee; the Speaker of the House; that lively, cocktail-partying Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Thomas Buckmaster Davis; Dolly Harrison with her incessant parties at Vagaries in Rock Creek Park; even a lonely young man nobody but one in the Senate has ever heard of, far away in the Midwest—all will be swept up and drawn into the endless ramifications of the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State.
But mostly, as they well know, it will be the ninety-nine men and one woman who compose the United States Senate who will bear the burden; and to each of them on this morning when a Presidential decision becomes a world reality the news has come, is coming, or soon will come, with exactly the same impact. For a brief moment amid the hubbub of morning they are losing their identities to become imperceptibly, inexorably, for a subtle second, institutions instead of people: the Senators of the United States, each with a vote that will be recorded, when the day arrives, to decide the fate of Robert A. Leffingwell and through him, to whatever degree his activities may affect it, the destiny of their land and of the world.
The split-second feeling of overwhelming responsibility strikes them all, then is instantly superseded by thoughts and speculation about “the situation”—how many votes Bob Leffingwell has, how many Seab Cooley can muster, what Orrin Knox thinks, what Bob Munson is planning, who will do what and why, all the web of interlocking interests and desires and ambitions and arrangements that always lies behind the simple, ultimate, final statement, “The Senate voted today—”
Underneath, the feeling of responsibility is still there. It will come back overwhelmingly for them all on the afternoon or evening some weeks hence—will it be two, or four, or twelve, or twenty? None knows; all speculate—when a hush falls on the crowded chamber and the Chair announces that the time has come for the Senate to decide whether it will advise and consent to the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell.
It is the events between now and then, the bargains to be struck, the deals to be made, the jockeying for power and the maneuvering for position, which occupy them now. From Lafe Smith, staring wryly at his naked body in a mirror at the Woodner, to Hugh B. Root, airborne above the lonely following plains and folded hills of Jim Bridger and the mountain men, each is aware that the Senate is about to engage in one of the battles of a lifetime; and each is wondering what it will mean for him in terms of power, reputation, advantage, political fortune, national responsi
bility, and integrity of soul.
***
Chapter 3
“Oh, damn,” Victor Ennis said as the elevator deposited them in the lobby of the Sheraton-Park. “There’s Seab. Shall we look the other way?”
“No,” said Bob Munson, “maybe he will.” But of course he didn’t, and they met at the door.
“Good morning, Senator,” Seab said slowly to Victor Ennis. “Good morning to you, too, Bob.”
“Good morning, Seab,” Senator Munson said gravely. “I trust you breakfasted well.”
“Poorly, Bob,” Senator Cooley said. “Poorly. I kept seeing that man. I kept thinking about them both. I kept thinking, Bob. It made me mad.”
“It’s got us all a little concerned, Seab,” Victor Ennis said heartily, “but I imagine we’ll get it all worked out in time.”
“I suppose you’re for him,” the Senator from South Carolina cried with sudden vehemence, stopping dead in his tracks in front of two bellboys and a wide-eyed young couple from Montana who were trying to get in. “I suppose you’re all for him and nobody but poor old an-ti-quated Seabright B. Cooley is against him. I suppose that’s how it is, Senators. I suppose I’ll have to fight alone.”
“I dare say it will be another of your magnificent, lonely battles, Seab,” Bob Munson broke in dryly. “How about sharing a cab to the Hill?”
For a second the wizened old face glared at him without expression; then it changed abruptly and a little twinkle came into the heavy-lidded eyes.
“Why, that’s the kindest thing you’ve said to me all morning, Bob,” Seab Cooley said softly. “You’re a kind fellow, Bob. I like you. One of God’s noblemen, I always say when people ask me. That’s what I say about Senator Munson, Bob.”
“I tell them you’re one of God’s most amazing creations, too, Seab,” Senator Munson said. “I tell them He really outdid Himself when He made you. I tell them we may not see your like again.”
“I’ll bet you say, ‘Thank God for that, too,’ Bob,” Seab Cooley said. “I’ll bet you’ll all be glad when poor old Seab Cooley is dead and you can get on that funeral train to South Carolina and stand by his grave and say, ‘Thank God he’s gone.’ That’s what I’ll bet, Bob!”
“These people are trying to get by, Seab,” Bob Munson said calmly. “Shall we let them?”
“That’s all you think about, getting rid of me!” Senator Cooley cried bitterly. “Poor old Seab Cooley, seventy-five if he’s a day, and they’re all ganging up on me, ma’am. They’re all ganging up on me! Now you pass right on through, and excuse me for blocking your way, ma’am. When you get home, you tell your folks you saw Senator Cooley of South Carolina and his enemies trying to lay him low. But you tell them it didn’t work, ma’am. You tell them Senator Cooley is still here battling for the Republic. Yes, ma’am!”
“For heaven’s sake, Seab,” Bob Munson exclaimed, leaving Christ out of it, because the young lady from Montana was getting wide-eyed to the point of explosion, “will you come on and get in the cab?”
“Here’s one now,” Victor Ennis observed brightly. “Just in time.”
“Just in time for what?” Senator Cooley asked ominously. “And take your hand off my arm, Bob. I’m not an old man, Bob. I can manage. You don’t have to help me. I can manage very well, Bob. I don’t have to be helped. I’m not senile, Bob, though you’re all trying to drive me there as fast as you can.”
“No, Seab,” Bob Munson agreed patiently. “You’re not senile, and I imagine you’ll drive all of us crazy before we drive you anywhere. Except to the Capitol.” He added to the driver, “Old Senate Office Building, if you will, please.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said, and with Senator Ennis on one side, Senator Munson on the other, and Senator Cooley squeezed in unyieldingly in the middle, they set off on their fifteen-minute ride to the Hill, while behind them the bellboys smiled and the young couple from Montana told each other excitedly that their Washington visit had certainly begun with a bang.
Sitting on his side of the cab as it passed down the curving drive, made the short turn on Connecticut Avenue, and then angled right and plunged down past the Shoreham into Rock Creek Park, Bob Munson reminded himself as he had often before that he needn’t have been Majority Leader and let himself in for all this if he hadn’t wanted to. The paths of ambition lead to strange places sometimes, but in his case he could hardly claim that he hadn’t known where they would take him. Grandfather Durham had been in the Senate from Massachusetts, and that was enough to decide that. A relatively undistinguished man who, to be frank about it, had accomplished very little in three terms, he had nonetheless imposed from his grave an obligation upon his likeliest male descendant to set his sights for Capitol Hill. By general family agreement, this meant the only son of the old man’s only daughter; and after graduating from the University of Michigan in the state where his parents had moved shortly before the First World War, he had gone on to Harvard Law School and then had come home dutifully to apply himself to the task of winning a seat in the United States Senate.
At the start, this did not appear to be a simple project, but in the first of the events which were ultimately to give him a certain sense of personal destiny—a modest one, which he never tried to push too far, but satisfactory enough, since it got him where he wanted to go nine times out of ten—he made a fortuitous connection with one of the leading law firms in Detroit and soon after discovered to his pleased surprise that he had been gifted with the ability to make quite a speech. Shortly after this revelation he happened quite by chance to be invited to address a group of auto workers, and since Grandfather Durham in any event was not a political fool and had transmitted some savvy down the line, his descendant perceived from their response and an astute study of changing economic conditions that this might be a sound foundation for the goal he hoped to achieve in Washington. He thus became one of the first to ally himself with the rising political power of labor, and because he was Bob Munson and not some other, he managed to do so without making himself its slave as well. Looking back, he was not always entirely sure how he had managed to do this and still retain his independence, and there were still occasions now and again when it was sometimes nip and tuck even at this late date. But on the whole he had managed to work out a very satisfactory accommodation which had seen him through his only failure, a close but unsuccessful race for the governorship at the age of thirty-four, two successful campaigns for the House, and four consecutive terms in the Senate. Along the way on his walk in the shadow of Grandfather Durham he had done all the things that people do in America to reach the Congress: made the speeches, shaken the hands, joined the clubs, formed the friendships, established the loyalties, created the ever-widening web of favor and counterfavor which forms the basis of so many lives that ultimately find their way into the close-packed pages of the Congressional Directory.
Also he had married well, to the daughter of one of the larger auto manufacturers, an interesting match from a political standpoint which was accepted pleasantly on all sides and which, because he was Bob Munson and somebody quite genuinely and universally liked, gave him a foot in each camp which neither held against him. There had been no children, and in the final ten years before her death, from cancer, a tragic event now six years in the past, they had found increasingly little to talk about; but there was no doubt that May had been a help to him all along the way. In the early days she had been his faithful companion at meetings, rallies, county fairs, and union conventions; after he won election to the Congress, she had turned her energies to the task of winning a steadily increasing standing in the life of the capital. She had loved Washington, as most people do who spend any time there, and aside from her activities in the Senate Ladies Club, to whose presidency she had aspired and presently risen, she had given any number of cocktail parties, dinners, and “conversations” at the big, old-fashioned place they used to own in Cleveland Park in Northwest Washington before her death. A “conversation” at the M
unsons, usually held on a Sunday afternoon, drew its participants from politics, government, diplomacy, and the press with an astute and well-managed abandon that always guaranteed a good time; two Presidents and three Chief Justices had occasionally dropped in, and all in all the whole business had been a great success and a great assistance to the Senator in his gradual evolution from prominence, which so many have, to power, which is achieved by so few.
If over the years of this process he and his wife had become friendly strangers who happened to be devoted to the same ends, that was a condition not without precedent in the world in which they moved. Inexorably, perhaps Inevitably, May had become like so many wives of famous men in Washington—not exactly loved by her husband, not exactly disliked, not exactly criticized, not exactly tolerated, but just someone who had been married a long, long time ago when the world was young and who was inextricably part of the show now with no way to get around it. Many a man in the capital showed just that air of rather tired sufferance Bob Munson developed in their closing years together; and for her part, May made the best of it, continuing her extensive visits to the state, her work on his campaigns, her entertaining in Washington, her bright, brisk way of going about things. She had loved him rather more than he had her, he suspected, even in the days when they were in love, and he still felt guilty at times that this had been so; but life is the way it is, and he had done his best for her. If she had perceived the absence of the added ingredient of genuine caring whose presence would have made her really happy, that was sad but not uncommon, and in material comforts and the position which went with being the wife of a United States Senator and one of the best of them, she had not been neglected. It was not a perfect bargain, but it held its own with the best that most people managed, and indeed there were many who never came near it; so the Senator did not feel too badly. He had never been unfaithful to her, and he knew she knew it, and since that was something that seemed to mean so much to women, maybe it had made up for the rest of it. He hoped so, anyway.