by Allen Drury
“‘There were immediate indications that the resolution may have tough sledding in both houses of Congress. Experienced observers felt that its greatest difficulty will come in the Senate.
“‘There, the resolution was attacked soon after its introduction by Senator Seabright B. Cooley of South Carolina, who charged that it was a “put-up job.”
“‘Rep. Hamilton, the Senator said, was “acting as water boy for the political ambitions of Orrin Knox” (Secretary of State Orrin Knox) in introducing the resolution.’”
Well, that figures, Hal Fry thought through his pain as the Indian Ambassador finished reading and a little silence fell. Finally Krishna Khaleel shrugged elaborately.
“Well, what does it mean, eh? Just words. Just a resolution in the Congress. It does not affect us here, Hal. Surely you do not think it affects us here.”
“Felix knows,” Hal Fry said with a casual air that cost him much, for the agonizing sensations again were everywhere throughout his body. “Don’t you, Felix?”
“I know it means a very difficult project for the Congress,” the Panamanian Ambassador said tersely.
“You know it means the turning point here,” Hal Fry said.
“If it goes through there.”
“It will.”
“We shall see,” said Felix Labaiya.
“Well!” the M’Bulu exclaimed with a cheerful laugh, rising to his full height and draping his robes carefully about him as he prepared to leave. “So old Cullee fooled us all. What do you know.”
After they had gone, after he had made farewells which seemed and sounded to him terribly shaky but which they in their annoyance and frustration apparently did not notice as such, the Senator from West Virginia sat for what must have been many minutes at his desk as the waves of pain came and went, came and went. Gradually they began to subside, and presently the time arrived when he was able to conclude instinctively that the terrible storm, which had swept through his body was beginning to die away.
My God, my God, he repeated to himself in a sick and frightened bafflement, what is it? And later, with a grim determination, whatever it is, I’ve got to keep going; I’ve simply got to. And finally, almost too much to bear now, prompted by the thought of a handsome boy sitting in the sun far up the Hudson, the agonized cry: If you could only be here to help me, Jimmy. If we could only help each other.
But they could not; and after a few more minutes, during which his vision gradually returned to normal and the dizziness slowly subsided so that he could stand up without fear of falling, he rose shakily, squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and prepared to go across the street to the UN.
Perhaps forcing himself to conduct his normal business would provide surcease; perhaps there would come the blessed calming of customary things. But he knew as he stepped out of U.S. delegation headquarters and started, feeling steadily better now, across First Avenue to the Secretariat Building, that things were not the same.
Perhaps, he recognized with a terrifying honesty, they could never be the same again. In the space of half an hour fear had come to live with him, and he did not know, now, when, if ever, it might depart.
“Señor Varilla of Ecuador, please,” the young lady at the telephone desk said with a bored intonation. “Mr. Takasura of Japan … Mr. Ben Said of Morocco, please …”
“So you see, boy,” Fred Van Ackerman concluded expansively, “that’s the way it shapes up. All of us want to get together and put over the real liberal viewpoint, and you’re just the man to do it. DEFY’s got to front this thing; it’s the only move that makes sense. The Jasons are interested, COMFORT will come in on it, and I suspect the New York Post and the Washington Post and all that crowd will give us all the support they can, and that’s plenty. But it’s up to you to start it moving, right?”
“I don’t know,” LeGage said slowly. “I just don’t know. I’m not so sure I want to run with that bunch on this.”
“Why not?” the Senator from Wyoming demanded sharply. “Aren’t we good enough for you? Why, see here, boy, that’s the best support you could possibly ask for. It’ll give us a chance to show up Knox and some of these other phonies who seem to think they can grab the liberal cause for their own political advantage. Nothing like the genuine article, now, is there?”
“I wouldn’t know,” LeGage said with a trace of sullenness. “Folks I represent aren’t quite so concerned about labels as you seem to be. They’re more concerned with results.”
“Results!” Fred Van Ackerman said. “Results! God damn, ’Gage boy, you just stick with me and you’ll see results!”
“Yes, I know,” LeGage said like a flash. “You got resulted right into a censure motion, seems like I recall.”
“Bastards!” Fred Van Ackerman said with a brooding emphasis. “I’ll get them yet, see if I don’t. That’s why it makes so much sense for us to get together, boy. You people and I, we both want revenge. We’ve both had a dirty deal.”
LeGage was silent for a moment at the colossal arrogance of this, but spoke finally in a soft voice.
“Oh? You think it’s equal?”
“You’re damned right I do,” Senator Van Ackerman said. “Look now,” he said with a sudden urgency, gripping LeGage’s arm again, though the chairman of DEFY tried, too late, to move it out of reach, “how about it, now, boy? Just give the word and we’ll start getting things organized any way you say. Under your orders, if you like, too, okay?”
“I want to think about it. I don’t want to be rushed.”
“Let me call you at 2 p.m.,” Fred said. “If you want to call me earlier, I’ll be at the St. Regis, or you can leave word at the delegation.” An expression of spiteful satisfaction came into his eyes. “Most of ’em hate my guts, but I’m still United States Senator and they have to deal with me whether they like it or not.”
“Why are you so hot to get involved in this thing, Senator?” LeGage inquired quizzically. “I don’t remember you being such a big wheeler and dealer on the race issue up to now.”
“It’s in the times,” Fred said quickly. “It’s in the times. Nobody can escape it, if he wants to be a good servant to the country and help the cause of true liberalism. Why, God damn, we’ll take the ball away from Knox and that old fuddy-duddy in the White House so fast they won’t know what hit them!”
“We will?” LeGage said with a dryness that escaped the junior Senator from Wyoming. “I see.”
“Remember what I said now, boy! We’re all counting on you. I’ll see you later, now, understand?”
“I understand,” LeGage said, as Fred jumped up restlessly and moved off with a final wave.
“Good!” he said in farewell. “I knew we could count on you.”
That LeGage, he told himself as he left the Lounge through the strolling delegates with his restless, questing air of always looking for some personal certainty and security he would never find, was a good boy. Personally he, Fred, could take them or leave them alone, preferably the latter, but in a fight like this you needed all the help you could get. LeGage was a damned good boy, for a nigger. LeGage, he told himself, could be quite an asset. Yes, indeedy, quite an asset.
As for the chairman of DEFY, it was with a sick distaste and anger that he watched the Senator depart. Except for Felix, it seemed to him, he got the same treatment from all the whites, and most annoying of all was this arrogant no-good who did so much fancy spouting about being a liberal. Him and his damned labels, LeGage thought bitterly. Of all the phonies! He could feel Fred’s personal distaste for him oozing through every phony word, and he returned it a hundredfold for Fred and all his phony friends. “Been patronized enough for one day,” he muttered with a fearful scowl that seriously alarmed a lady member of the British delegation, sitting nearby. “Just been patronized enough for one day.”
Thus he was in a more than receptive mood when the Ambassador of Panama approached a few minutes later with the news of Cullee’s resolution and the fruitless talk with Hal
Fry. For a short time he was taken aback and abashed by Cullee’s action—although it gave him a moment of savage pleasure when he thought of Fred Van Ackerman’s boasted plans and how dismayed he would be when he found Cullee had beaten him to this phase of them—but the more he turned over in his mind what Cullee had done, the more he became convinced that it was just what Seab Cooley said: a put-up job for Orrin Knox. “Never thought I’d agree with that old man,” he remarked with an unamused laugh; but his bitter suspicions and jealousies persuaded him. And the angrier he grew, with a deep, emotional, personal anger that was just something between Cullee and him that nobody else could understand, at this betrayal by his ex-roommate and this attempt to take the spotlight away from him in the eyes of the whites and his own people.
There came a point when he jumped up, startling Felix with his abruptness.
“See you later,” he said. “I’ve got things to do.”
Felix gave him a quick smile.
“I hope so. Then you’ll—”
“I’ll see you later,” LeGage repeated impatiently.
“Good,” Felix said with satisfaction.
But the chairman of DEFY did not hear him as he hurried out with his loping, pantherlike gait. His mind was filled now with just one thought, bitter and shrouded in an agonized unhappiness, and it was driving him on in a way he could not have imagined until it happened. He knew there was just one thing to do now, and he was on his way to do it.
The Ambassador of Panama remained seated in the Lounge for a few minutes, nodding politely to other delegates as they passed, pretending to read La Prensa, reviewing the morning, appraising events. He was under no illusions about the potency of Cullee Hamilton’s resolution in this present context. It would, if successful, be a serious and probably fatal blow to his own amendment here, for the United States then would be able to argue that it was making more than ample apologies to Terry and also moving in good faith to set its own house in order. But the “if successful” was a powerful qualification that encouraged optimism. He had had occasion many times in Washington to observe the ponderous grindings of the Congressional machine, and he was not worried that it could produce action on the Hamilton resolution overnight. Certainly it could not do so by Thursday, when the General Assembly would resume debate on his amendment here.
He was forced to admit, however, that the development did make his own task more difficult. A gesture had been made, now, and much propaganda could be manufactured from it, even if it died in committee in the House and never came to the floor at all. He also suspected that Seab Cooley was correct, and that this was, among other things, a shrewd move by Orrin Knox to bring Cullee into his political camp and thereby weaken Ted Jason in California and at least partially negate his appeal to the Negro vote. Thank God, he told himself with a grim satisfaction, that certain powerful newspapers were so down on Orrin. That would take care of that, he hoped, imagining the knowing editorials, the harsh cartoons, the savage imputations of motive and character that would now be unleashed upon the Secretary.
And thank God, too, that he had been given the inspiration to find the lever that would finally tip the wavering LeGage in the direction he wanted him to go.
“I do think it is a real pity,” he had said thoughtfully, “when you two are such deep friends, to discover that he would introduce his resolution for Orrin Knox, when he wouldn’t do it for you.” A startled and embittered expression had leaped into LeGage’s eyes as this thought took hold, and in an instant’s time he had reached his decision, jumped up, and hurried away, bound upon the errand Felix had been trying for twenty-four hours to persuade him to undertake.
As for his own over-all problem here, he did not think the Hamilton resolution made his chances so very much worse. It wouldn’t be as easy as it had started out to be, but he could manage. Oh, yes, he thought with a calm confidence as he rose and prepared to meet the Soviet Ambassador for lunch and convey the invitation he had been asked to convey, Felix Labaiya-Sofra could manage. And would.
“It isn’t as though we don’t want you to succeed in whatever it is you want to do, old chap,” Lord Maudulayne remarked as he stared about the Delegates’ Dining Room with a speculative expression, “but of course you understand that it does pose a delicate problem for us.”
“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to do anything really forceful and affirmative,” Hal Fry said with some sarcasm, for by now he was feeling much himself again; the mysterious pain was almost gone, only a very faint echo still twinging his arms and shoulders. “That wouldn’t be in character, would it? Isn’t the British policy Ruminate and Retreat? I thought that was it.”
Raoul Barre chuckled.
“You are beginning to sound like Orrin, who doesn’t sound like Orrin any more. It is like old times.”
“And also somewhat unjustified, I think,” Claude Maudulayne said mildly. “We have problems in the Commonwealth that make a cautious policy advisable. We do what we can.”
“The handicap hasn’t disturbed you on Gorotoland’s independence,” Hal remarked. “You’re standing firm on that, Commonwealth or no.”
“We have given our word,” the British Ambassador said in a tone that canceled argument. “That is a different matter.”
“But chivvying the United States is fair fun for all, is that it?”
“You forget,” Raoul said with an ironic blandness, “that the Commonwealth is now black. So, of course, is the French community. A majority of both are of a color different from our own; there is, as our friend K.K. is fond of pointing out, a shade of difference in what we are now and what we used to be. It makes it less easy to move, here in this assemblage of organized argumentation.”
“You French don’t think much of it,” Senator Fry said. “Why do you let yourself be swayed by it in this instance?”
‘It is not the United Nations which sways us,” the French Ambassador said with a shrug. “It is the community. But since the community is within the United Nations, we must of necessity give thought to what the community desires in the United Nations. And so with the Commonwealth. If you will forgive me for stating it with a harsh candor, what they both desire at the moment is the scalp of the United States. Unfortunately by a curious combination of mischance and miscalculation, compounded by the astute Terry and others, you have given them the opportunity to attempt it. It is most regrettable but, I am afraid, unavoidable.”
“However, of course,” Lord Maudulayne said thoughtfully, “we want to do all we can to work out a reasonable accommodation of views on this difficult issue. It is not as though we really wanted to leave you in the lurch, old boy. That would hardly be fair. Nor would it be consistent with what Her Majesty’s Government believe to be the best long-range interests of the Commonwealth, the United Nations, or the world.”
“Thanks so much,” Hal Fry said. “How do you propose to go about it, by doing nothing?”
“We are not ‘doing nothing,’” the British Ambassador said. “Both of us have had numerous conversations in the past forty-eight hours, as I assume you have, too.”
“Don’t add up to much, do they?” Hal Fry said. “Not much ground for accommodation, is there? At least I can’t find any discernible pattern, except dislike for us and a great evasiveness every time I try to pin somebody down on how his delegation is going to vote.”
“It is not clear yet at all,” Raoul Barre said. “All is mysterious and hazy and full of hints. Dark faces materialize out of dark clouds, murmur dark words and depart, leaving us in darkness. I would not say at this moment that the outcome is certain either way. Therefore, I think you should make every attempt to appear with Tashikov this afternoon when he addresses the Afro-Asian group. I think it might prove very profitable for your cause, at this particular stage of events.”
“I didn’t know they were meeting or that he was going to appear,” Hal said blankly. “They’ve kept it very quiet from the U.S. delegation, I’ll say that for them.”
“I suspect y
our Mr. Shelby has known right along, but his position is, shall we say, somewhat equivocal at best at this moment. However, it is the fact. At 3 p.m., in Conference Room 4, I believe. I think you should be there.”
“That’s obvious, if you can tell me how to go about it. I doubt if I could barge in uninvited.” Possibly because he was suddenly very concerned with this new development, or so he told himself, he began to feel a slight pain, somewhere in his body, gently ominous and insistent, making his heart contract with apprehension; but there was no time to give in to it now, even if it became ten times worse. He hurried on, hoping that if he ignored it, it would go away. “Perhaps you can arrange an invitation for me through the community or the Commonwealth. Maybe if Cameroun or Sierra Leone, or somebody relatively responsible, could ask me—” But he was aware of a silent but definite hesitation on the part of his two old friends of the diplomatic corps.
“Well, you see,” Lord Maudulayne said carefully, “if it were something that was to happen tomorrow, possibly, or next week, it would be possible perhaps to arrange something without any undue show of haste. But, as it is, only two hours away—well, I think that would seem too definitely like rushing it, would it not?”
“We mustn’t rush anything,” Hal Fry said with an annoyance beginning to be increased by the fact that ignoring his devil wasn’t working; the pain was now rising steadily, insistently, with a terrible softness like some fearful flood up through his body. “That’s for sure. That wouldn’t look right, now, would it?”
“Really, old chap,” the British Ambassador said, “I don’t think it would. I think your best gambit now is to be dignified and not beg too much, you know. I think if they get the idea you are running around frantically seeking their favors, the reaction will be contempt.”